Promises to keep
Promises matter in elections because voters lack rationality. As election history shows, freebies do get votes. Hitherto, it was a time tested method of electoral success for a desperate opposition.
While calling upon the irate agitators blocking roads and setting fire to public transport in the aftermath of Parliament passing the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill (CAB) to see reason, some of the leading personalities of the state laid the blame for the violence at the door of the saffron camp. Requesting restraint, they felt that those invoking the name of Swami Vivekananda are actually “Vivedanandas”, a group of those who are bent on spreading difference and dissension in the name of religion.
“I would like to join the ongoing agitation,” noted author, Sirshendu Muokhopadhaya said today. “But I would certainly stay away from the present mode of protest,” he added. The Bill which has been enacted seems to be the fruition of Golwalkar’s dream of dividing the country between Hindus and Muslims who have lived side by side and shared each other’s joys and sorrows, singer Pratul Mukherjee said. A political party I would not like to name often drops Swami Vivekananda’s name but act like “Vivedananda”, bent on spreading differences among friends and neighbours, he felt.
But stone pelting and setting fire to public transport is not the right way to vent anger in a democratic system, Mukherjee said. Not only is restraint needed, no opportunity should be given to widen differences between two communities, he said. The CAB have been drafted in a manner which is aimed at segregation of a community even though the Constitution promises equality for all, noted scholar Nrisingha Prasad Bhaduri said.
Advertisement
The outfit to whom the people who have drawn up CAB belong was not associated with the freedom struggle or Partition, he said. Small wonder, it cannot realise the sentiment of the people who seek asylum from other lands where their lives and honour are endangered, Bhaduri said. But the fact remains a violent outburst will not in any way solve the situation and would rather aggravate it, he added.
Advertisement
