Indian political theatre offers spectators an uninterrupted succession of sensation and scandal, so much so that the earlier controversy pales before the latest one. So has it been this summer. Attention was glued to the endless Bofors saga as the Delhi High Court quashed the case against the arms merchants, the Hinduja brothers, because the Central Bureau of Investigation failed to bring the original certified documents, and instead produced copies. The Hindujas predictably felt vindicated.

But the strangest response came from the Congress. Its spokespersons, Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Jayanti Natarajan, demanded that all those political rivals who had attacked Rajiv Gandhi all these years owed a public apology. It was a piquant situation because the Communists were part of the Opposition grouping that had flayed the Rajiv Gandhi government for the alleged Rs 64-crore bribes for the 155 mm Bofors howitzer deal.

The Communists refused to be cowed down, and demanded that the investigation be pursued. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had, of course, described it as a judicial burial. Former prime minister V P Singh, who had led the Opposition over the Bofors issue, said that he had never attacked Rajiv Gandhi personally on the issue, and no apology was necessary.

But the irony is that the Communists, the BJP and Singh were united in heart and mind over the issue. Although the secular communists hated the Hindu communalism of the BJP, they had no hesitation in joining hands for the greater cause of attacking the common enemy, the Congress. Singh, who did not want to share a common dais with the BJP during the general election of 1989, had no hesitation in joining hands with it to attack the Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress government.

Before one could sort out these strange responses, the Advani–Jinnah issue dominated the public stage, as the BJP, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad clashed in the open, much to the delight of the secularists. Although the Bofors case has disappeared from the public consciousness, it is time to ask some basic questions about the epic saga of a scandal that has not been nailed. It goes to show that scandals are merely sensational events, and that not many people are interested either in the truth and the moral questions implied in it.

But politics could be too dull without its share of scandals, and the media would feel deprived if it did not have one to hold on to. The Bofors case has remained a mere scandal all these years. And it is time to ask why it has not become a proper case of political corruption.

The basic fact that is often overlooked is that the Bofors deal was uncovered neither by the Opposition nor by the Indian media: it is a gift of the Swedish Radio report of April 1987. And in that report, too, the Indian deal was not the main issue. The focus of the story was on how arms were being supplied to Iran surreptitiously. In this case, it was the supply of Bofors missiles to Iran through Singapore. There were other instances of illegal supply of arms to Bahrain, Jordan and Libya as well.

The then Nobel Industries-owned AB Bofors was the arms manufacturer at the heart of this skein. Investigations into the Bofors affairs have been underway from the early 1980s, and it became apparent that the Swedish ruling Social Democratic Party was in the know of it — it has even, through the proactive

The Indian reader also does not know that Olof Palme played an active role in selling the RBS70 missiles to Iran during the Iran–Iraq Gulf war of the 1980s, and that he was willing to buy oil from Iran to even out the trade imbalance between the two countries.

measures of the late prime minister Olof Palme, encouraged it. The scandal broke because, at that very time, the Irangate scandal was rocking the Reagan White House.

It seems now that the Indian media caught the thin edge of the Bofors scandal flaring in Sweden, and tried to turn it into a Watergate expose. The Indian journalists smelt blood — they did not yet have anything to taste it — and felt that it was a good cause to chase Rajiv Gandhi to his political doom. The Opposition provided the cacophonous chorus inside and outside Parliament. The Opposition and the media made it a Rajiv Gandhi-centric scandal, and the Congress walked into the trap. In the din and dust of it all, Rajiv Gandhi lost power, and V P Singh fulfilled his ambition of becoming the prime minister, much to the chagrin of that old warhorse, Chandra Shekhar. Once Rajiv Gandhi was unseated from power, the other political parties lost interest in the issue.

It is the India media that had failed to make anything of the story. The N Ram-Chitra Subramaniam team worked assiduously through Swedish documents and diaries of Martin Ardbo, the Bofors chief. They gave clues about the chain of fake accounts through which the bribe money had passed. But the picture remained as hazy as ever. Other Indian journalist even travelled to Sweden to get information from their Swedish counterparts, but to no avail. The alleged culprit was within reach, but he was wrapped in a cloak.

But there was one common presumption in all the media stories: it was that Rajiv Gandhi was somehow involved in it. It would not have been an exciting story if only Win Chadha, the Hindujas and Quattrocchi were involved. They were too unimportant. So, Rajiv Gandhi became the lynchpin of the Bofors scandal. The Indian media was not really keen to unearth the shady underworld of the arms bazaar and how it operated. It was focused on Rajiv Gandhi alone. That is why the Bofors issue remains the most obscure "public" scandal, where the general reader has little comprehension of the global network of financial sleaze, political and diplomatic intrigue, and the naked power games of international relations.

Not many people in India know that Sweden is a neutral country — it is not part of NATO, unlike its neighbours Norway and Denmark — and that its arms manufacturers deal with foreign governments in the sale of arms though they have to get a clearance, in the form of an export licence, at the end of it all. The Indian reader also does not know that Olof Palme played an active role in selling the RBS70 missiles to Iran during the Iran–Iraq Gulf war of the 1980s, and that he was willing to buy oil from Iran to even out the trade imbalance between the two countries. Bofors sold weapons to the Shah regime, as well, in the 1970s. And that the trade unions in Sweden were supportive of the deals because it involved saving jobs.

How is this bigger picture of any relevance to India? It is of great importance because we must know that in the big bad world of the global economy, arms sales is a keystone of creating wealth and jobs. It should come as no surprise that of the US$ 50 billion debt write-off, US$ one billion was of arms procurements. Instead of informing the public so that it can make an informed choice, the Indian media chases Rajiv Gandhi baying for his political blood. And some of them were amply rewarded by the V P Singh government.

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