SO Sagar is finally `embarrassed' at what is happened around in the city. (GK, June 24, 2020). At last he finds some plausible explanation to the killing of young boys. He ascribes the recent bloodshed to the `lack of training' on part of the police. Shooting the tear gas shells directly at the protestors is turning fatal. That in turn means, as he puts it, `embarrassment' to the state government. Let's hope police are properly trained so that shells don't hit them high. But tragically, how many have to fall more, before the police is properly trained only to shoot `below the belt'. One never knows. On the list of this week's embarrassments, this one figures first.

 The second and actually more embarrassing is the statement of Omar Abdullah who is in the habit of making promises. Every time there is a killing, Chief Minister `assures' that once proved guilty, the criminal will be brought to the book. It fattens the joke book of Kashmir politics. How many times you `assure' your own people to investigate when the very farce of investigation needs nothing more to explain itself. He says he will `deal sternly with those who make a brute use of force whoever they are'. Will he? Can he? He knows even if he wills, he can't. Amid this hopelessness, should one surely hope that even a single example of justice can be set. Moreover, in a bid to exonerate his law enforcing machinery, it is too kiddish to hurl accusations on the separatist camp by a man in the chair. Not admitting your failure as the head of a state to avoid life loss, you can't escape by shifting the whole blame to the other side. Of course, law of the land will have to prevail, but given the practice, can we really hope it will. In fact the very predictability of the events has made everything else equally predictable. As people are killed every week, so follow condemnations, probes, protests. There is nothing new to be thought of. Chief Minister too adds nothing more except promising every other day that the previous day's killing will be investigated which is forgotten the moment next bullet hits the next body. Throwing back the allegations and insinuations on the separatists, Omar is not behaving with the maturity his chair demands. Instead of focussing on his own apparatus and making his men accountable, he, like a typical rival in a domestic feud, is trying to outshout his opponents. This is not the time to shoot salvos at each other, but to show a sense of responsibility towards your own people. In this ping-pong of accusations and counter-accusations, what happens is too painful to stand.

 To complete this sequence of embarrassments is the statement from the separatist camp. `It's better to die at once, than to die one by one'. That is our incurable obsession with a phenomenon called death. Instead of exercising restraint and holding back the bit of provocation needed to throw the situation out of control, they are doing everything needed to worsen it. Their protest program may sound peaceful, but the way it moves on can't ensure peace. The mildest thing one can really expect from a surcharged mass of people is violence. Protest against one killing instantly and frequently results in more killings and thereby hangs a tale. Their mode of resistance they justify as the only option left for them. But by no law or reason can it be allowed to happen when you are sure about the outcome.

 If state machinery is really interested in meeting the crisis, they will have to do it only after ensuring the safety of all including the protestors. Punish just one and see the effect. If they fight protesters as combatants, killings are inevitable. At the same time, the rival camp has a duty to define the borders of their resistance. The moment it takes blood as feed is the moment to retract, revise and rethink your plan.

 Both are separately and independently responsible for what is happening. One creates the ground and other completes the rout. Ironically both mourn, but actually both kill. Who can stop this bloodshed? No one if they don't want. Each one if they do.

Lastupdate on : Sat, 26 Jun 2010 21:30:00 Mecca time
Lastupdate on : Sat, 26 Jun 2010 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Sun, 27 Jun 2010 00:00:00 IST