In a national crisis, parties might try to think beyond elections,

Islam and Politics

In a national crisis, parties might try to think beyond elections

Politics and Play: THE FRUIT OF TAKING SIDES

By Ramachandra Guha

The boycott of Vajpayee’s Srinagar speech was a shocking display of political partisanship. For the speaker was speaking as the prime minister of India, not as the representative of a particular political formation. In asking their legislators to behave as they did, the Congress bosses displayed a pettiness unworthy of the history of that once great party. The act also manifested a cavalier disregard of the national interest. From the early Nineties, the Kashmir Valley had been in the grip of a popular insurgency. After a decade of very intense protests, the tempers had cooled somewhat. The tourists had begun returning to Kashmir. An election had been held, with a voter turn-out of 44 per cent, commendably high in the circumstances. The prime minister’s visit was a further signal of, as it were, ‘normalcy’. Constitutional propriety demanded that when the head of the Union government came visiting, the elected functionaries of the state government turned out to hear him. Now, more than ever, the politicians of India needed unitedly, and across party lines, to reach out to the people of Kashmir. Sadly, perhaps even tragically, they could not.

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