Be Political, Not Violent

Editorial:-
Political violence had abated in the past few months and then the West Sikkim incident happened on Sunday night and reared again on Monday. But when one says abated, one is speaking only of direct physical violence because as far as vicious verbal duels go, the hostilities had only escalated as politicking grew more frenetic and desperate.
It goes without saying that violence should not be condoned, and every time anyone oversteps civilized limits of exchange, there should be immediate and unequivocal censure from all sides. One must bear in mind that political violence should find no place in any society because it strikes at the very core of the democratic process sabotaging the possibility for the coexistence of different political ideologies. The moment violence is resorted to to ‘settle’ differences of opinion, dialogue is abandoned and the people suffer. Political violence invariably engages party workers and hardcore supporters, and that makes the whole exercise futile because political support cannot be beaten out of party workers; if anything, assaults will only make established positions stronger. What political violence then ends up achieving is denying people access to voices other than the ones which have muscled into their vicinity. Political differences should not lead to violent confrontations, that no one can have an issue with, but that is also, sadly, how politics plays out in the country. But Sikkim can try and be different and one way of achieving this would be for the lay people to find a collective voice of condemnation of all political violence. At present, only political parties, and that too only the ones involved in the skirmish, comment on such incidents. When everyone else withholds comment, it suggests that either the incident was minor or the assault justified. It’s never so when it comes to political violence because beyond the physical injuries sustained, the acts are more about outshouting opponents and denying people access to choice. People and their social organizations need to hence step up and speak out against violence, demanding all aspirants to behave better and ensure peace. It should not be about deciding who drew first blood or who instigated individual incidents because that will only draw new lines of confrontation. The law should take its own proverbial course, but as far as the people are concerned they should demand that politics become more civil.
People tend to look at political violence as individual incidents, and while it is true that individual lapses of reason lead to conflict, it is the nature of political debate which set supporters up for violence. Political speeches are rarely anymore about vision and ideology and increasing about allegations of how debased and immoral the other side is. This sets supporters up for conflict because it shoulders them with the task of saving the people. Convinced of their own righteousness, they will not tolerate counter arguments and see “oppressors and detractors” in everyone signed up for the ‘other side’ and when such convictions rule, teaching a lesson to the other camp and challenges become automatic responses and violence follows. The process for more civilized forms of disagreement and debate will have to begin with people conveying clearly to leaders and aspirants to speak about themselves and their political ideologies instead of running down others and thereby painting targets on opponents. This engaged in the politicking, which only become more passionate as elections draw closer, need to be told that political violence is not only unacceptable, but also abhorrent not just to democracy but to the idea of human rights itself.