The Great Renunciation

In response to Keshava's post 'School Textbooks: India's no-spin zone' (01/19/2009)

I could not agree more with Keshava when he criticizes the governments decision to set up the salwa judum movement and arm unemployed young men in an attempt to fight the naxalite threat. When any government, any where sets up vigilante groups to deal with security threats, it indulges in the ultimate abdication from responsibility. The people of naxalite affected districts defy boycott calls and an unimaginably high risk of violence to come out and vote not for a government that gives them arms and ammunition to fight their own battles, but one that can, among things, allow them to go into their fields without fear of being shot, allow their children to go to school without fear of being kidnapped. When a government decides to abdicate responsibility in this regard it is not just wrong, it is criminal.

What is tragic is that the Indian government is guilty of this sort of abdication not just in Chhatisgarh but in wide swathes of the country. In Kashmir the government armed those with any sort of grudge against the militants and made 'renegades' of them. Popularly known as Ikhwani's, these renegades were largely responsible for widespread human rights violations and for losing India's battle for the hearts and minds of thousands of Kashmiris. In large tracts of the cow belt, thugs like Raja Bhaiyya and Mohammad Shahbuddin controlled, till very recently, almost the entire administration. This was not because the government couldn't move in. It is because the government was quite happy letting other people do its job.

In some form or the other, all across India, authorities elected or appointed to perform a particular task simply don't do it. With elections coming up, those who lustily sing the Indian democracy's praises while ignoring its many flaws would do well to remember this fact.