India last month saw the closure by its Supreme Court of two cases that had witnessed years, and decades, of controversy and political turmoil, and had even contributed to the fall of a government in 1989. 

Without going into the merits and tonnes of evidence that had piled up, the apex court accepted the report from CBI, the government's premier investigation agency, that requested closure for want of evidence to continue with the prosecution. 

The case of bribery allegations into the 1986 deal of the Indian Army for the 155 mm field gun from Bofors, a Swedish firm, pertained to the Rajiv Gandhi Government. The other two, on the allocation of telecom contracts to develop and distribute 2G spectrum and on allocation of coal mining contracts, pertained to the previous Indian government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. 

All three became 'scams' and were hotly debated in and outside Parliament and by the media. Curiously, the closures have elicited little reporting and almost no debate. 

There was a time when the word “Bofors” needed no explanation. It was not merely the name of a Swedish gun. It was a political weapon, an election slogan and, for a generation, almost a byword for political corruption.

The Bofors deal was signed in 1986. When it became controversial and was debated in and outside Indian Parliament, at home and abroad, Rajiv Gandhi's government acquired a political label from which it never recovered. The Rs 650 million (6.8 milllion USD at current rates) kickback allegation became bigger than the gun itself. That amount would be peanuts today.

In the 1989 election, the Bofors scandal, and the negative public perception it created, brought down a Congress government with a formidable majority and brought in a multiparty coalition in power in India for the first time. 

 During debates in parliament then, which the media reported at the risk of attracting parliamentary privilege, it was alleged that material attacking the Bofors gun deal came from those who lost the then lucrative bid. They included companies from the US, France, Spain and Italy. 

The Swedish Connection 

The murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme, who had worked out the deal with Gandhi, even whittling down the howitzer price, added to the fears and concerns that were common in that era of Cold War. 

The gun was the best India could buy and the cheapest flor that price. But a few weeks later, a report by a Swedish radio network escalated into a major scandal. Rajiv Gandhi, the elder son of Indira Gandhi who was assassinated in 1984, though well-meaning, was politically inexperienced as he was a former airline pilot. His government, rather than dealing with the allegations by promising a probe, initially termed it as "an attempt to destabilise the government." The 'destabilisation' came, nevertheless, when people from his own party that enjoyed a formidable majority in parliament, either distanced themselves or worked against him. 

They included V P Singh, a minister he shifted from finance to defence, who ordered another inquiry into the purchase of Scorpene submarines from Germany. Singh became the prime  minister after Gandhi was defeated in elections. 

The Final Denouement

Forty years later, on July 29, the Supreme Court finally ended the protracted legal saga. The mainstream Indian media, which has lost its earlier zest and vibrance, virtually ignored the news on a matter it had earlier pursued with great vigour.

No explanation, no editorial comment. Not ‘news’ anymore, it is treated almost as an administrative obituary. One might have expected fireworks. There is, instead, deafening silence.

That is curious. For decades, Bofors was treated as a national scandal of almost Biblical proportions, with international ramifications. All guns ablaze. Yet when its judicial afterlife finally reaches a dead end, the story seems to have lost its political ammunition.

Not even a recall that the much-maligned gun, which was accused of backfiring at those who fired, not at the target, had vindicated its purchase during the 1999 Kargil conflict with Pakistan. Another government was in office then. There is not even a lament about how the scam delayed India’s military preparedness, for which it still suffers.

The reason is simple. Those who once shouted “Bofors!” from the opposition benches, or their political successors, are in power today.  

And the Congress, then in power and the principal accused, now in opposition, is too squeamish to claim a we-said-so high moral ground.  Politics, like history, has a remarkable capacity to change sides. And the politician, its principal player, is merely a product of the time.

Bofors, however, is not alone.

The Telecom Scandal

There was what was commonly known as the 2G scandal. The allocation of much sought after telecom spectrum - frequency bands - licences under the UPA government (2004-2014) of PM Manmohan Singh became one of the great scandals of the time as the government sought to upgrade India's outdated communication technology as part of its reform programme.

The Comptroller and Auditor General's much-publicised estimate of “a possible presumptive loss” of Rs 1.76 lakh crore became a figure too large for the collective imagination. The Supreme Court subsequently cancelled the licences, finding the allocation process "arbitrary and unconstitutional". That was a serious judicial indictment of the telecom policy.

But then came the other half of the story. In 2017, the special CBI court acquitted all the accused in the criminal case, holding that the prosecution had failed to establish the charges.

But “2G scam” entered the political vocabulary and has stayed there.

So, what exactly was 2G? An illegal allocation policy? Yes, according to the Supreme Court.

A criminal conspiracy established against those prosecuted? The trial court said no.

A political scandal? Undoubtedly.

A shorthand for corruption? Absolutely. But law has an inconvenient habit of asking questions that slogans do not.

Delayed Exoneration of PM Singh

Then came the coal scandal.

The allocation of coal blocks became “Coalgate”, another jewel in the expanding vocabulary of Indian political corruption. Dr Manmohan Singh, whose reputation for personal integrity was rarely questioned even by many of his political opponents, found himself drawn into the controversy because he had been in charge of the coal ministry for part of the period.

Exploiting the negative public perception created in the media, the opposition BJP, led by Narendra Modi rode to power in 2014 with the promise to clean out political corruption and bring the guilty to book. 

In March 2015, a trial court summoned him in the Talabira-II allocation despite the CBI having filed a closure report. The Supreme Court stayed the trial court's summoning order on April 1, 2015, before he was required to appear.

Last month, the Supreme Court accepted the CBI's closure report and set aside the summoning order. Again, the legal conclusion is more precise than the political slogan.

Of course, the Court did not declare that everything about coal allocation under the UPA was exemplary. Nor did it conduct a grand posthumous trial of Manmohan Singh. It only dealt with the specific case before it.

Months before this verdict, Singh had passed away. He had left office in 2014 with the hope: "I honestly believe that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media or, for that matter, the parties in Parliament."  

The political verdict on Singh had been delivered long before the judicial process had finished.

And here lies the larger Indian paradox.

An allegation requires a headline.

A political scandal requires a slogan.

A criminal case requires evidence.

But a court requires proof.

The first three can be completed remarkably quickly. The fourth may take decades, especially in India where over 56 million cases (lawsuits) are pending in Indian courts.

When a trial finally reaches its logical conclusion, governments may have changed, parties change their line, political careers rise and fall, many accusers and the accused die —and yesterday's critics may be today's rulers.

Yesterday, the question was: Why has justice taken so long? Today, the answer sometimes seems to be: Why are you still talking about it? The more interesting phenomenon is to stay quiet. The volume changes, if and when needed.

Bofors made headlines for years. Its eventual judicial closure is now largely an archival event.

2G once seemed capable of swallowing the entire political system. The later acquittals are remembered much less loudly than the original allegation. That is the name of the political game.

Coal once threatened to bury the credibility of an entire government. Perhaps this is how political scandals acquire immortality.

Congress a Deeper Irony

There is an even deeper irony. The Congress cannot claim the moral high ground merely because some of these cases ended differently than the political narrative would suggest. Governments are certainly liable to be criticised for bad policy, poor judgment, and administrative failure, even when criminal charges do not succeed. Same for any other party or government.

But neither should a political allegation acquire the status of a judicial fact merely because it proved electorally useful and brings “people’s verdict.”

There is something deliciously contradictory in the transformation: Yesterday, the opposition demanded that every allegation be treated as a matter of national importance. Today, the government concludes that some judicial conclusions are best consigned to the archives. And media, talking a cue from the government, lets it pass.

India has often mixed three different things: a bad decision, an unlawful decision and a criminal conspiracy. Sometimes they overlap. Sometimes they do not.

India Needs a New Compact

Perhaps India needs a new political compact. Here is a modest proposal for the future.

Whenever a government changes, let the new government deal with the files of its predecessor, but not its slogans. Let “Bofors”, “2G” and “Coalgate” be placed in the same cupboard as the old election posters.

And firmly close that cupboard. Open it if and when history requires it. Otherwise, let the courts have the last word.

But that doesn’t happen. With an Indian’s argumentative nature, and unending thirst for litigation, this plea would seem Utopian. 

(The writer is a veteran journalist and current affairs commentator who covered these political controversies. The views expressed are personal. The article was first published in Lokmarg)