Chen K’ang, called usually Tzu Ch’in. When his brother died, the wife and steward proposed to immolate some living persons to serve him in the shades. Tzu K’ang suggested none were better fitted than the wife and steward. No more was heard of the matter. Confucius (The Analects)
Sacrifice can never be impersonal. If you haven’t felt the pain, you haven’t sacrificed at all. Putting a lamb under knife for some ‘sense of higher purpose’ and then dining on it may feed ego but it seldom serves any purpose. Ironically the two mainstream political parties of J&K, National Conference and People’s Democratic Party, are readying a lamb for a manifestly impersonal sacrifice. Here the lamb is ‘panchayat’ and the ‘sense of higher purpose’ is the so called concern for ‘the autonomy of the state’. It is hardly lost on anyone that their decision to boycott panchayati elections is based on an ingenious cost-benefit analysis. Yet what escapes the popular imagination is the collateral damage inflicted on politics and the philosophy of devolution of power which panchayats embody.
It could be argued that if the ‘sense of higher purpose’ was so important why the stewards of these parties didn’t think of the sacrifice earlier. No one can forget the ignoble manner in which BJP ditched PDP while it tried to hold on the reins of power to the very end. No one can forget the day parliamentary by-election was conducted for Srinagar constituency when panic gripped the valley and many lives were lost due to ebullient political aspirations. Why no boycott back then? Clearly because the stakes were high and the cost personal! Unvarnished truth can strike straight inn the face: what these parties are doing now betrays the age old gimmick by which the party troubleshooters and spin doctors try to bamboozle masses with prosaic and colorless phraseology of politics. Beneath all that, everyone knows, it is merely about power and power alone.
Politicians would never like to share power and it is because of this propensity that a kind of conspiracy has been hatched to keep power centralised in India. Foucauldian or Arendtian notions of power are literally unknown to masses for time and again democracy has been sold as a highly elitist, dictated and exclusive exercise. It was in Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) that an attempt was made to cure this politico-pathological condition, but over the time the country has been witness to the deliberate enfeeblement and emasculation of PRIs. In J&K these institutions have been a victim of a different type of power dynamics resonating between government’s apathy and militants’ ire (It should be noted that the election to panchayats in J&K is conducted under its own constitution, so there is no question of sellout or betrayal). This has in turn bred serious misconceptions over their utility and relevance. The tragedy of PRIs has been that these have existed as self-governing institutions merely for namesake, more as constitutional appendages rather than as institutions for exercising power responsibly. PRIs could have served as centres for accountability, transparency and correspondence in politics but sadly these have proven to be collective punching bag for conflict politics in J&K.
So here we are today: one party in a damage-control mode trying to save its face and the other trying to fish in the troubled waters. We see experience and maturity in politics but unfortunately no morality around. As usual there is a breakneck speed of events and the same rigmarole of deceits, theatrics and melodrama gets repeated. The gods of politics would be marveling at the legerdemain of Kashmiri politicians. Amidst all this, the panchayats are heading towards the slaughterhouse.
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