Of Political Crisis and the ‘loss’

It is in matter of days that the edifice of normalcy that we were all celebrating in this state has collapsed. It is a hurricane that seems to have overtaken us. The screaming headlines of the newspapers are making the statement that it is a situation like that of 1990. With thousands of people thronging the streets and demonstrating in valley on everyday basis; the incapacity of the government to control the fury of the mob; the spontaneity in the response of the people and the inability of any political party or organisation to control the situation – all these are the basis of comparison with 1990. But actually it is worse than 1990.
It is worse than 1990 because the mob fury is not confined to the Valley, it is gone beyond Valley to Jammu. Virtually, the whole state is burning.
In itself it is a matter of great concern that the situation in Kashmir seems to have gone out of hand. But what is a matter of greater concern is that the state appears to be afflicted by one of the most severe attacks of regionally and communally polarised politics. The political space in the process has not only become volatile but has lost its capacity to accommodate different voices. Marginalising the moderate voices, it has been taken over by the hardliners.
What brought us to this impasse – is a question that needs detailed probe and I would like to address it at a later point of time. Right now I want to focus on the loss. There is lot that has been messed up, impaired and gone astray in few days’ time only.
The first most important thing that has been lost is the bigger vision about the State, its problems and its future. Whatever else may have been the implications of the two-decade old conflict, it had resulted in familiarising the political actors operating at different levels and in different streams of politics with the broader realities of the state – its plurality, its political divergence and multiple political voices. Even the most radical political actors had come to realise the limitations of narrow parochialism and had adopted a politics that was more accommodative in nature. Over last nineteen years, the political organisations and leaders had come to accept the limitations of the exclusivity of their identity politics and therefore had emphasised on the need for a dialogical approach to resolve the seemingly contradictory political positions. Almost every political actor in the state, at one time or the other, had talked about the need of ‘Intra-State’ dialogue. Almost every one was ready to acknowledge the presence of the ‘other’ and was sensitive to the ‘difference’ that the other represented. What was aimed at therefore was the consensus.
It was a very difficult to achieve such a feat but the way we had proceeded in the state, any outsider would have been impressed by the manner in which the plural culture and political divergence had been handled. Without any formal process of negotiation between communities and groups, a sensibility had been evolved that politics of the state has to go beyond the limits of narrow and chauvinistic lines of sharply articulated identity politics.
But look at where we are now – there is neither the vision of the whole state nor even the remote presence of the dialogical approach, nor the urge for consensus. On the contrary, there is this feeling of deep crisis – a crisis marked by the fear of acute danger that the identity is facing. It is like going back to the shells – the shells of narrow, self-obsessive and parochial identity politics where there is no possibility to rise above and think of accommodating the ‘other’, least of all to develop a consensus. The politics, in fact, has taken a U-turn – from an accommodative politics to a confrontationist one.
I would not say that the state has lost its plural culture and its secular ethos. Even in the extreme political situation marked by regional and communally polarised politics, there is enough to feel satisfied that the inter-community relationship remains untouched and at the ground level there is no reflection of the political polarisation. Even at the political level, the political actors are ‘affirming’ their ‘own’ secular character while blaming everyone else for communalisation of politics. Communalisation of politics, though beneficial to many political actors, is formally eschewed by one and all.
However, despite such formal disowning of communal politics, the fact of matter remains that political actors are bringing communal sensitivities to the centre space of politics of the state. This in itself is a matter of concern, because the communal sensitivities not only perpetuate the politics based upon suspicion, distrust and crisis but also burn the very much required bridges between regions and communities.
This is a loss that we need to focus upon. This state has had the distinction of defeating all tendencies of communally divisive politics and marginalising all forces of extremes. It is not that attempts, and that too, systematic ones have not been made to give a communal direction to the diversity and political divergence within the state. However, never earlier the communally directed politics has been allowed to take the centre space.
On the whole, it is the loss of moderation that is most worrisome. When politics  is taken over by the extreme elements, the moderates not only lose their voice but also their relevance.
[Responses are welcome at rekchowdhary@gmail.com]