CRIMINAL AND TAINTED CANDIDATES
This week’s shoe-chucking incident has, albeit in an unseemly fashion, highlighted the issue of political parties fielding candidates linked to communal riots, as well as the inability to deliver justice to the victims of such riots.
In this case, it was sheer political cynicism on the part of the Congress to renominate Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar, accused of involvement in the anti-Sikh riots of 1984, as Lok Sabha candidates in Delhi. The party should, legal technicalities notwithstanding, drop the duo. Such a move would help in defining the necessary exclusion of communally-tainted persons from mainstream political life.
By the time of writing this article, both Tytler and Sajjan Kumar have been removed by Madame Sonia Gandhi, out of sheer vote bank compulsion but not out of sincerity to give punishment to the above guilty. Both will still remain unpunished for ever.
But then, the nomination itself underscores the ritualised acceptance of communalisation in India. And indeed, for some, the very means of political mobilisation. Communal riots, thus, are often seen as periodic, and expected, consequences of such a polity, and consequently, despite extant pertinent laws, the perpetrators almost always manage to go scot free. And it is this political acceptance, even encouragement, of such violence that has translated into official apathy towards punishing the guilty. The dismal record of our investigative and legal apparatus on that count is, therefore, hardly a surprise.
This institutional failure can hardly be remedied except by envisioning law-enforcement agencies as truly independent of political influence, which in turn can only be firmly established if political practice moves away from competitive identity management. Given some form of such independence, as the Supreme Court appointed Special Investigative Team probing the Gujarat riots of 2002 is displaying, the law can catch up with even high-level leaders behind such massacres.
In fact, the arrest of Maya Kodnani, BJP leader and former minister in Narendra Modi’s regime, for her role in a riot, is the first time a minister-level person has been arrested for communal violence. And perhaps of even greater import was the remark of Justice D H Waghela of the Gujarat High Court on the case, who compared religious fanatics involved in mass murders to terrorists. That, given the horrors of a communal riot, is a description that should define the legal consequences, and be a step towards prevention and justice.
In this case, it was sheer political cynicism on the part of the Congress to renominate Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar, accused of involvement in the anti-Sikh riots of 1984, as Lok Sabha candidates in Delhi. The party should, legal technicalities notwithstanding, drop the duo. Such a move would help in defining the necessary exclusion of communally-tainted persons from mainstream political life.
By the time of writing this article, both Tytler and Sajjan Kumar have been removed by Madame Sonia Gandhi, out of sheer vote bank compulsion but not out of sincerity to give punishment to the above guilty. Both will still remain unpunished for ever.
But then, the nomination itself underscores the ritualised acceptance of communalisation in India. And indeed, for some, the very means of political mobilisation. Communal riots, thus, are often seen as periodic, and expected, consequences of such a polity, and consequently, despite extant pertinent laws, the perpetrators almost always manage to go scot free. And it is this political acceptance, even encouragement, of such violence that has translated into official apathy towards punishing the guilty. The dismal record of our investigative and legal apparatus on that count is, therefore, hardly a surprise.
This institutional failure can hardly be remedied except by envisioning law-enforcement agencies as truly independent of political influence, which in turn can only be firmly established if political practice moves away from competitive identity management. Given some form of such independence, as the Supreme Court appointed Special Investigative Team probing the Gujarat riots of 2002 is displaying, the law can catch up with even high-level leaders behind such massacres.
In fact, the arrest of Maya Kodnani, BJP leader and former minister in Narendra Modi’s regime, for her role in a riot, is the first time a minister-level person has been arrested for communal violence. And perhaps of even greater import was the remark of Justice D H Waghela of the Gujarat High Court on the case, who compared religious fanatics involved in mass murders to terrorists. That, given the horrors of a communal riot, is a description that should define the legal consequences, and be a step towards prevention and justice.
posted by vaneet kundra at
Thursday, April 09, 2009
2 Comments:
Mr. Kundra, I hold no brief for the accused in Delhi killings, but if you are such a staunch believer in propriety that the accused should not be nominated, how come you do not apply the same yardstick to the Butcher of Gujarat? In fact you have been promoting him as the next PM. Any comments?
First of all, i wd not like to discuss with someone Annonymous.. Hv the courage to reveal ur identity, if u have one..
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