Denounce Violence, Disown the Violent

Editorial:-
A person, now universally accepted as an ‘antisocial element’ and whom everyone wants to disown, barged into a newspaper printing press early on Tuesday morning. He was obviously in an inebriated state, and apart from all the intoxicants that got him to such a state, was clearly also drunk on a perceived sense of power – that heady mix of ‘contacts’ and name-dropping which makes monsters out of nincompoops who would otherwise not make it to anything more than neighborhood  nuisances. But then, in a place as small as Sikkim, just about everyone is ‘connected’ or can claim to be connected thereby blurring the line dividing name-dropping from name-calling. A whole day of sobering up in the lock-up will probably now have the accused groping for excuses and even justifications for his indefensible attempt at ‘putting the media right’, but those are now his nightmares to deal with. Hopefully, the police will deliver more than just token policing in how they put together this case and even as that challenge is negotiated, it is time for the rest Sikkim, the political parties and media in particular, to learn some lessons from this episode and try and fashion a healthier environment for media and politics in Sikkim.
There is a lot of noise about ensuring that the media is allowed to work without the fear of such uncivilized repercussions. And while this is a valid aspiration, it is also one which cannot be guaranteed by more policing or heightened security. The only guarantee is for a more civil society, a people who can debate and disagree without resorting to even shouting, leave along degrading to fisticuffs. Violence in politics, something which is becoming distressingly common of late, is not born in a vacuum – it is a projection of how the society at large engages in discussions and negotiates differences. For a State which still prides itself for its low crime rate, there is no ignoring the fact that violence, and not just political violence at that, is undesirably commonplace now. A behavioural change at the individual level is what is required as a long-term measure for the environment to ease up for free criticism and freer speech. But as mentioned, this is a long-term and conscious undertaking – what about the immediate times? For that, deterrence will have to be more strongly conveyed. While this needs to essentially begin with proper police follow-up and unanimous social condemnation of the accused and his act, it needs to continue with a definite and complete casting away of the accused from access to places and people of influence [it is after all they who bear the brunt of condemnations]. The ‘contacts’, whether real or imagined, which embolden insanities like the Tuesday morning madness at the Sikkim Express printing press to transpire, need to genuinely cast the aberrant away. This does not always happen despite the public displays of regret. The media needs to ensure that the accused in the present case does not enjoy any undue leverage or relaxations. Sustained over a long enough time, such genuine abandonment, and a wide enough publicity of such cutting away, will work as a stronger deterrence against future repeats. It thus becomes important for the State and its people to also ensure that after they have delivered honest police investigation, they also guard against the other obstacle denying deterrence – compromise and the always present ‘pressure’ [born from Sikkim’s small size and fewer degrees of separation] to do so. Too many law-breakers refuse to learn a lesson because they are so rescued by ‘contacts’ which invariably manage to cut across party lines after the dust has settled. Almost all of them return to traumatize with increasing levels of depravity.
Thus far, no one is blaming any party [as an institution] for the attack, but coming so close to elections, it becomes important that the incident receives an institutional response so that foot soldiers wanting to get noticed don’t start picking on the media which offers itself up as a reasonably soft target. A clear and strong message needs to go down to party workers of all parties from their respective leaders that attacks on media will not only not be condoned, but will also be universally disowned along with the perpetrators. Political parties and its leaders and supporters are free to their opinions about the media and welcome to their distrust or even revulsions about/ for it, but in the public domain, they are also responsible for the delivery of the grander virtue of free speech which is more than a right which the media should enjoy – it is a privilege that every society deserves. To that end, everyone has a responsibility and it is when unfortunate attacks on media take place that every agency needs to contribute its bit to ensure that such uncouth digressions don’t repeat…