Beyond Coimbatore

The White Paper presented by the Tamil Nadu government on the blasts that shook Coimbatore on the eve of the Lok Sabha elections has elicite...

The White Paper presented by the Tamil Nadu government on the blasts that shook Coimbatore on the eve of the Lok Sabha elections has elicited predictable reactions from the contending political camps. None of these, however, reveals the necessary recognition of the main political point that needs to be made. Which is the common responsibility of the entire spectrum of the state8217;s mainstream political forces for the creation of the situation that found a tragic expression in the textile city. Jayaram Jayalalitha, of course, holds M. Karunanidhi and his DMK regime entirely responsible for it.

The quot;black paper,quot; as she calls it, traces the tragedy back to the Babri Masjid demolition specifically. While the AIADMK-led Opposition finds this an untruth aimed at abetting terrorists and fundamentalists, the Bharatiya Janata Party harps on the history of it all dating back to the Eighties, with party leader Madan Lal Khurana denouncing the quot;half-truthsquot; of the report as quot;dangerousquot;.

What all of them gloss over isthe truth of grave import that the threat of violent communalism was allowed to grow unresisted and almost unnoticed through a decade and a half. None of them would appear sufficiently alive, either, to the grimly prospect of a further growth of the threat in the politically uncertain period ahead.

Ever since the controversy over the Meenakshipuram conversions, which too few saw at the time as a turning-point, there has been no scarcity of alarm signals. But none of them has been loud and clear enough to shake out of complacency those who took Tamil Nadu8217;s till then traditional communal peace as an unalterable condition. The rival campaigns of increasing rabidity by unabashedly communal outfits were allowed to continue unhindered. And, no serious note of their activities was taken even when these led to bomb blasts and murders. The state woke up only when the process culminated in a crime of Coimbatore8217;s proportions.

The unstated assumption all through was that the danger could not acquire in the statethe dimensions it did elsewhere. Because issues commonly categorised as communal did not figure in the manifestos of the main poll contestants and their campaigns, the state was considered safe from the virus of violent communalism. The social tensions, generated and aggravated so systematically, however, could not have remained subterranean for ever.The larger issue cannot be lost sight of, even as the immediate tasks dictated by the tragedy cannot be ignored.

The Karunanidhi government can only technically claim to have undertaken any of these tasks by acting on the demand for the document presented. Or, by its promise for new anti-terrorist legislation, and not for more expedient action. It lays itself open to wider criticism in the White Paper by trying to blame the Centre by implication for its own ineffectiveness against terrorism. What should cause greater concern is the absence of signs on either side of the state8217;s political divide of the danger that Coimbatore has demonstrated. Politicalindifference has created the problem of communal extremism in Tamil Nadu. Politicisation of the communal problem, a process that may have begun, can well make matters worse.