Politics of fecklessness

India may certifiably be a land of a million mutinies, as VS Naipaul noted in his travelogue of the same name. However, the discourse in the political and media mainstream today — from Kashmir to Thoothukudi, given the recent flashpoints in those two geographies — seems intended to fan those mutinous flames rather than to contribute to a meaningful debate or to encourage sober reflection on the underlying issues. In Kashmir, for instance, the narrative around the death of a young man who was run over by a CRPF vehicle last week has acquired a Kafka-esque edge, with the Jammu and Kashmir police registering a case against the driver for rash driving. However, video recordings of the incident establish that the convoy, of which the CRPF vehicle was a part, had been set upon by a violent mob that was pelting stones — and even bicycles — at it. And the man who died was, from all accounts, not an innocent bystander but a wilful participant in the mob frenzy. And yet, tragic as any death is, the manner in which politicians, including former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, have imparted a political spin to the incident is disquieting to anyone who looks for nuance in public articulations on such matters.

Similarly, in far-away Thoothukudi, where 13 people were killed in police firing when a protest against environmental pollution by Sterlite’s copper plant turned violent, the political rhetoric has been rendered incendiary: one blustery regional politician has even threatened to raze the shuttered unit to the ground to pre-empt any attempts to reopen it.

Both the Kashmir and the Thoothukudi incidents make for teachable moments. The grim task of reconciling Kashmir’s tragic history, or the campaign against the Sterlite plant’s environmental record, is ill-served by the fecklessness of politicians who spin one-sided narratives. It is possible to condemn the excesses of security forces in Kashmir, and to hold Sterlite to account on its environmental record, without condoning mob violence.

Venky Vembu Associate Editor

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