Chief Minister Krishna makes a good beginning

The cradle of information technology is in the news again. But this time for the wrong reason. Within the last month or so, there have been three incidents of churches being attacked to disrupt peace and communal amity. In June, it was in the North Karnataka district of Gulbarga where two blasts damaged windowpanes at the Roman Catholic Church of Wadi. More recently, the main door of St John’s Lutheran Church in Hubli bore the brunt of another bomb attack followed closely by yet another crude bomb missive at a church in Bangalore. One thing that is remarkable in all this is the sagacity with which the State Government handled the situation. Going by recent trends, the immediate political reaction could well have been to blame the affiliates of the Sangh Parivar for perpetrating these acts of violence to destabilise the only Congress citadel in the South. Chief Minister S M Krishna might also have blamed the BJP government at the Centre to score brownie points with his party leadership. Instead, withoutindulging in a blame-game, he took administrative action; Home Minister Mallikarjun Kharge was dispatched to Hubli, while he himself surprised everyone by attending Sunday mass at St Mary’s Basilica in Bangalore. Not only did Krishna stay on for the entire service, he later addressed the gathering from the pulpit, assuring Christians that those responsible for these attacks would be brought to book. Most importantly, he took care not to name names, reiterating that the police should be allowed to investigate the matter and bring the real culprits to book.

As is expected of a pragmatic politician — one of the few in the Congress now — Krishna is well aware of the dangers of baseless allegations, especially in a matter that reflects directly on the image of the Silicon Valley of India. Yet, his actions have put the onus back on the Sangh Parivar. It will now have to deal with Karnataka more responsibly. Govindacharya-like sabre-rattling will do its cause no good. For when the BJP general secretary talks of the church colluding with terrorist outfits that indulge in ethnic cleansing in Tripura, he is doing exactly what the Parivar accuses its opponents of. The socio-political reality of a Northeastern state is quite different from Karnataka. By needlessly attacking Christian missionaries, he is giving a boost to the likes of George Fernandes and other allies to speak out against the Vajpayee government and encourage the very name-dropping it wishes to condemn.

Krishna has acted like a mature politician. A Corps of Detectives inquiry into the church blasts has been ordered, the police have been told to give special protection to places of worship and generally see to it that the law and order situation does not get out of hand the way it did in Hubli and Gulbarga when buses and cars were damaged in a spontaneous outpouring of public anger. These are welcome moves, but need to be followed up with concrete action. Initial findings point to an ISI hand, but it’s early days. It is imperative for the Krishna government to ensure that the guilty are brought to book. Only then will he prove that he is a politician of a different mettle.