A View Point
K.N. Pandita
The tone and tenor of the debate on adjournment motion on Monday last was most disgusting. It dealt with the hanging of Afzal Guru.
Should legislative assemblies initiate a debate on the verdict of the Apex Court of the country? This question was raised by one of the members. The house was not prepared to react to the constitutional propriety of a debate on SC verdict; it rushed on to the debate itself.
Is the assembly a place where elected representatives come to ventilate their pent up anger and angst or to speak about the problems of the people and suggest ways and means of solving these?
Should an assembly and its elected members consider themselves above the nation and fundamental national interests? Do they enjoy the freedom of denigrating prestigious national institutions in assembly debates just to cater to regional or sub-regional, narrow and parochial interests?
The debate was on the hanging of a person who belonged to Kashmir valley. He was indicted for conspiring attack on the parliament which took the precious lives of at least nine guards. The criminal case was established by going through the full judicial process over a period of eleven years. Death penalty was announced by the Apex Court which had given Guru all facilities and time to defend himself before the law of the land.
Any debate on the adjournment motion had to remain confined to the subject of execution of a criminal. There was no need to dabble in extraneous issues and arouse the sentiments of the legislators.
The opposition had the freedom granted by the Speaker to react on the event. They misused it by stepping out of the limits of this debate. Ordinarily, it was a matter of point of order which the house including the Speaker should have resorted to.
Most unfortunately, the opposition tried to deal with it from myopic communal prism and went to the extent of saying that the Indian government was targeting a particular community. Democratic governments do not and cannot target any one community but more often than not according to political scientists minorities are generally made to bear the brunt of the tyranny of majoritarianism. 1990 events testify to this statement.
Bringing imagined allegation against the judicial pyramid of the state is tantamount to the contempt of Supreme Court, and deliberate attempt of violating the Constitution of the country.
The opposition and those who joined their voice with it cast subtle if not tacit aspersions on the central government, the judiciary, the judges of the Supreme Court and the entire structure of the Union Home Ministry. In the process, they targeted the Chief Minister accusing him of not intervening for “saving the life of a Kashmiri”-a curious and most irrational accusation. These are seditionist trends because there is not any reflection of an iota of national interests in these utterances. A political party that has become so parochial does not at all qualify to be called the real voice of the people.
Here is a Kashmiri proved through sustained prosecution by a court of law to have worked as the key person in a conspiracy aimed at blowing up the Parliament and killing the MPs. If 20 or 25 opposition MLAs in the assembly feel it their right to question why a key conspirator was hanged, the 540 members of the Parliament, including 4 from J&K whose life was attempted at, have the right to ask why the culprit should survive.
The opposition has denigrated the Parliament that has constitutionally accorded special status to Jammu and Kashmir. It is the same parliament that is protecting Article 370 against erosion. It is the same parliament that sanctions enormous grants in the shape of annual budgets and plans for the development of the State of Jammu and Kashmir. It is the same parliament that has helped J&K raise its income per capita as the highest in the country.
And it was a terrorist who wanted to blow up the same parliament, and decimate the parliamentarians. And now it is the opposition in J&K Assembly that wants to project the assailant as a hero and freedom fighter. That, in short, is the content of the assertions of the opposition in the assembly.
Not a single word was uttered against terror unleashed by Afzal Guru and his terrorist background. Not a word was said about the killing of nine guards of the parliament’s protective force by the terrorists. Not a word of sympathy was uttered for the families of those victims. But yes, there was hard breast beating for Guru and his family.
We know that these antics are all fake and nothing more than a mask. There is no sincerity at the root. It is only to whip up the sentiments of the people and to win political mileage by sensitizing electoral constituencies to communal, parochial, and sub-national sensitivities. For six long years as the PDP remained out of power, it did not rake up the issue of parliamentary attack. It could not because it knew it would be standing on very slippery ground.
Now that the event has happened, the opposition finds a pretext to nail down the ruling coalition. This is called politics on the dead bodies. Kashmir medieval history is replete with such accounts of sycophancy and blackmail. The opposition demands the resignation of the Chief Minister. There is no reason for the CM to resign but there is every reason for the opposition to resign en mass from the assembly.
Prosecution of Afzal Guru stretched over nearly eleven years. During all these years, J&K assembly never raised the issue, never asked for a debate on the subject and left it to the natural course of law.
Why this hullaballoo now? Where were these supporters all these eleven years? Obviously, sections of political class had been waiting for an opportunity that would be handy to stir public commotion. This is the repeat of past experience, the 2009 Amarnath yatra and the 2010 stone pelting incident.
How long will be Kashmiri masses misled and duped by half-baked politicians? How long will they allow these ambivalent politicians play with their sentiments?
The case of execution of Afzal Guru is a case of law and order. The law comes down with a heavy hand when and where it must. In political parlance, its precise name is the might of the state. The State cannot allow unreasoned commotion to happen by projecting a criminal as a martyr.
J&K is an integral part of the Indian Union, and it shall remain so till eternity. Yes, we have internal issues and problems. These have to be resolved through rational and logical debates by stakeholders in the assembly and the parliament where opinions are to be expressed not anger.
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