As Haryana, Punjab and contiguous areas get roiled by violence instigated by supporters of a man convicted of rape, it is necessary to ask an essential question. Did elements of the state invested with the duty of ensuring this did not happen, of ensuring that the rule of law prevailed, do all that they could have to prevent violence that was so clearly on the cards?
A Public Interest Litigation seeking directions to the governments of the two states to ensure law and order was before the Punjab and Haryana High Court. A full bench heard it, and shared the apprehensions of the petitioner that matters had got hopelessly out of hand. It issued directions to the government which had ~ wilfully and callously ~ allowed the crisis to develop to take steps to contain it. It directed the Army to be on standby.
But it stopped short of taking one extraordinary step ~ directing the CBI court to defer pronouncement of its verdict until supporters of the Dera Sacha Sauda sect, present in violation of prohibitory orders in Panchkula, had been dispersed ~ either peacefully or through use of force.
While it is commendable that the Court has now acted with alacrity to attach properties of the sect responsible for Friday’s violence, the petition before it on Thursday was a plea for ensuring peace. Sadly despite the Court’s intervention, that could not be ensured.
Did the Court place too much reliance on the assurance given by counsel for the Dera chief who said that Gurmeet Ram Rahim would tell his followers to go home? Surely, the judges must have been aware that a quarter century ago, counsel for the state of Uttar Pradesh had similarly assured the apex court that no untoward incident would take place in Ayodhya on 6 December 1992. Mobs are potent. They are not amenable to reason. Not even Mahatma Gandhi with his powers of moral suasion could control the mob at Chauri Chaura in 1922.
With respect, the High Court could and ought to have done more especially when it had taken cognizance of the fact that the government wasn’t doing enough.
Did the Haryana government do all that was possible to prevent the violence on Friday? The administration of Mr. Manohar Lal Khattar already faces the charge of going soft on the Dera Sacha Sauda because it had sought and received support from the sect in its electoral essay of 2014. Was it enough to impose prohibitory orders and to then do nothing to enforce them? Does the government have so little respect for its own orders? Instead of ensuring there were no unlawful assemblies, the state government turned on the citizen ~ and not on supporters of a man who is today a convicted rapist ~ by shutting educational institutions, blocking internet access, stopping transport operations and, in the ultimate admission of its ineffectualness, directing health department officials to be prepared for emergencies.
Surely Mr Khattar, mindful of earlier criticism of being soft on members of the sect, ought to have taken extraordinary precautionary measures. He ought to have done so by making sure the sect’s followers did not congregate. If even on Friday morning, he had reason to believe that the administration would not be able to fulfil its most basic task ~ that of ensuring safety of life ~ he should have moved court to defer announcement of the verdict until he had matters in hand.
As matters spiral out of control, it is time to ask when pillars of the state will act to prevent predictable violence. Today, a renegade sect has turned on the police, on public property, on representatives of the media and on the people of India. Tomorrow, they or others could turn with equal or greater ferocity on those pillars of the state that allow them free run. As someone once said, it may be difficult to choose between right and wrong, but not between right and stupid. Let posterity judge the choices we made in the past few days.