Author: Editorial
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: April 23, 2007
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/story/29071.html
Introduction: Water minister's UP poll remark
is almost typical of him and of a larger political malady
When a Union minister, in the course of an
election campaign, tells a section of voters that they would be committing
a "crime" if they vote for a contending party in the fray, it is
quite frankly a scandal. Saifuddin Soz, made such a statement last weekend
in Uttar Pradesh asking the Muslim community not to vote for the Samajwadi
Party. He needs to be told that his party is fighting an election in UP, not
a war. As a senior politician and Union minister, Soz should have been mindful
of the limits and boundaries of acceptable political rhetoric. You don't need
to consult the Election Commission's Code of Conduct to know that he was transgressing.
Of course, when it comes to political propriety,
Soz has an unhappy record to live down. There he was last year, playing to
the gallery again. Then, in the middle of a polarised debate over the raising
of the height of the Narmada dam, the Union water resources minister publicly
recommended that work on the Narmada dam be stopped - even as Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh was still seized of the issue. The principle of collective
responsibility was cast aside then. Healthy conventions of political competition
are trampled over now.
But unfortunately, Soz's remark may be part
of a larger syndrome that all too often overtakes other politicians and parties
as well. Political antagonisms take on an unhealthy pallor as politicians
pit one community against another during elections and hope to reap the rewards
of the ensuing polarisation. This is bad news for a democracy that had set
for itself the ambition of not just accommodating diversity but also nurturing
it. The founding idea of India, it has been said, was not to banish conflict
but to construct a safe house for it. Statements like the one Soz made in
UP betray an us-and-them mindset that does grave violence to the spacious
large-hearted political project that is India.