Bane of vote bank politics

By Allabaksh - Syndicate Features

Vote bank politics is the ugly side of Indian democracy. It surfaces with more prominence around election time, which means practically round the year since polls are becoming an almost annual feature in India. That has made most people accept, perhaps grudgingly, vote bank politics as a necessary evil.

Recently, the issue erupted with some force when the Samajwadi Party leader, Amar Singh, tried to do an almost impossible balancing act. He rushed to express sympathy for a slain and a much acclaimed police inspector, M.C. Sharma, who was killed when the police raided a ‘hideout’ of terrorists in Jamia Nagar in south Delhi while investigating the case of September 13 serial blasts in the capital. Two suspected terrorists were also killed in the encounter. Amar Singh presented a cheque of Rs 10 lakh to the family of late Sharma. That gesture could not be construed as anything other than a mark of honour for the slain police officer and recognition of his devotion to duty.

Curiously, the cheque had a discrepancy—the amount written in figures and words did not match. According to Amar Singh’s aides, it was not a serious matter and was just an oversight. But with the benefit of hindsight many would question if the portly leader was really serious in honouring the police officer.

Because in the past few days, Amar Singh has turned his attention to the reaction among the Muslim community in Jamia Nagar which had debunked the entire ‘encounter’ story and alleged that Sharma was not ‘martyred’ but was shot from close range by one of his colleagues. If their version is to be believed the Delhi Police had—once again—gone after ‘innocent’ people, made tall claims about ‘busting’ a terror network and tried to find an undeserving ‘martyr’ from among its rank.

Amar Singh gauged the extent of ‘anger’ in the Muslim community and realised that he must speak in support of their stand on the ‘encounter’. With its fortunes in apparent decline in its home state (UP), the Samajwadi Party leader was desperate to do something to please its supposedly large Muslim ‘vote bank’. In doing so he perhaps overstepped by questioning the ‘martyrdom’ of Sharma and by raising suspicions about the ‘encounter’.

The Sharma family is furious and decided not to accept Amar Singh’s cheque even if he is prepared to correct the discrepancy on it. The BJP jumped into the fray and denounced Amar Singh for touching a new low in ‘vote bank politics’. Amar Singh’s initial gesture towards the Sharma family got him enemies, not friends.

Since the Samajwadi Party has always claimed to watch and protect the interests of Muslims it is hardly surprising to find Amar Singh echoing the views of Jamia Nagar, a predominantly Muslim cluster near Okhla. But he would have escaped some wrath of his political opponents if he had refrained from raising a controversy about the manner of inspector Sharma’s death. The political class with its own problem of credibility still has a lot to do to catch up with the new trend of scoffing at every police claim in solving a terror.

While it may be impossible to eliminate ‘vote bank politics’ public figures like Amar Singh will be doing a great favour to our democracy if they realise that extending this kind of politics beyond a point harms the very community they are trying to support. Muslims in the country are very upset because of what they perceive as a ‘campaign’ to malign the entire community in the name of fighting terrorism. True, the community needs to purge itself of elements who have brought a bad name to them, more since unquestionably the majority Muslims abhor terrorism and whatever it stands for.

Acts of terrorism need investigation, which in turn means questioning a lot of people, often a whole group. If these people live in a community enclave it will be wrong to presume that the investigators are after all of them. Questioning neighbours is one of the first things the police do when investigating any crime. Of course, our police force is still stuck in the colonial mindset and its methods of questioning people remain as antiquated as they are offensive, even dehumanised. It is a pity that nothing much has been done to ‘reform’ the police despite a plethora of sensible suggestions made in numerous reports that are gathering dust in the Home Ministry’s North Block basement.

The inadequacies in running the police force are compounded by rampant partisan and communal politics in the country. No debate on enacting or repealing laws to curb terrorism can begin and end without the charge that the aim is to either ‘appease’ a section or ‘target’ another with the idea of seeing the voters polarised.

The politicians and members of the civil society have the right to question the methods applied by the police in carrying out investigations. At the same time, it might also be necessary for them not to induce a section of the people to believe that they are deliberate targets of the police. People may question the manner in which the police investigate the Delhi blast case, but to lend support to the charge that the police or the administration is biased against a particular community is doing a disservice to the nation.

Shoddy police investigation methods may enrage a community; that cannot be sufficient reason for abandoning the probe or bringing in absurd charges like policemen killing their own colleagues to give a band name to a community.

Muslims not only in India but also all over the world are unhappy and worried about the bad name their community has received after 9/11. But questioning investigations and describing every suspect arrested after an act of terrorism as innocent cannot correct this unfortunate situation. Terrorism is largely an ‘invisible’ enemy; looking for ‘invisible’ people may sometimes entail, unfortunate though it is, reaching the wrong address.

- Asian Tribune -