It is ridiculous to ask the police and the bureaucracy to be community and class blind in a time of crisis when in routine functioning they are selected and expected to function on exactly that basis. This is why sundry Chief Ministers’ instructions to officials to act impartially in response to ‘communal’ riots are little more than farcical. The leopard cannot change his spots; certainly not overnight!
The entire purpose behind having a separate entity such as the bureaucracy, particularly in the Indian context, is for it to be ideologically neutral in every way. Trained to make the distinction between legitimate political directives and illegal ones, they are expected to serve the nation-state instead of the parties in power. The entire point of providing safeguards and privileges is to make them capable not only of standing up to the politicians but also correcting them when they are going astray. How far the present bureaucratic set-up has gone from this position is evident in the present-day nexus between these two wings of governance and the way particular castes or communities are provided above the law status by the party in power. In Bengal, for instance, almost everything is decided on whether a person is TMC oriented or not.
To make things worse, the system has not evolved beyond the British Imperialistic way of dealing with communal riots. Apart from the fact that little investment is done in normal times to reduce caste and community differences, there is an active divide and rule policy in operation. This is reflected even in basic law and order management. Instead of acting effectively against individuals actually responsible for violence, the emphasis is on a balancing act. So, cases are imposed, or withdrawn, on how many are from each community.
The result of each communal riot and the government response is increased ghettoisation instead of integration. A political party (and its supporters) should be able to distinguish between ideology and the imperatives of governance.
It may be argued that having extensive support of criminals and communal elements, certain parties have little interest in enforcing the rule of law. This ugly truth becomes all the more evident when the contradictions explode in the government’s face. Even in the present situation, say in Murshidabad, the effort will be underway by various political formations to provide ‘advantages’ to some, and to ‘weaken’ the others. Unfortunately, in all of this, India and its people will be the long-term losers.
