Jaya flirts with fire

During the 1980s, then Union Home Minister Zail Singh was widely regarded as backing a fiery preacher, Jarnail Singh Bhinderanwale, in his daily attacks on individuals and institutions in the Punjab. The preacher of hatred was seen as Zail Singh’s counter to the Akali Dal, and for a time the strategy worked and the Akalis went on the back foot. However, very soon Bhindranwale came under the sway of the ISI, and from then onwards it was downhill for Punjab. Zail Singh witnessed the twisted fruits of communal tensions when an orgy of unpardonable violence erupted in Delhi just hours after Indira Gandhi was murdered by her bodyguards on 31 October 1984. By then, it was too late for even the President of India (as he was then) to do much to prevent crazed mobs from torching hundreds of innocent people in the streets of the national capital. The anti-Sikh riots of 1984 are a permanent blot on the reputation of India. Sadly, each horrible incident, each loss of a precious and innocent life, does nothing to prevent our leaders from choosing vile expediency over honourable adherence to the rules of the game in a democracy. Tamil Nadu is as peaceful now as Punjab was during the time when the reported liaison between the Congress Party and Bhindranwale was progressing. However, the unwise and unjustifiable decision of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa Jayaram to release three of the killers of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi is not just a slap on his memory but an incentive for those who seek to turn TN into as much of a killing field as Sri Lanka was not too long ago. Once the flames of violent separatism get fanned, there is no telling how far and how virulently they can spread. Rajiv Gandhi and Jayalalithaa were once allies and friends, and it is a disservice to his memory that those who were found guilty of the heinous crime of killing him in an act of terror can be pardoned by a responsible politician with ambitions of becoming the Prime Minister of India. By this single act, Jayalalithaa has made it impossible for any responsible party to offer her that crown, for fear that she may thereafter announce a general amnesty for all killers out of some populist instinct. That the LTTE was a terror outfit was no secret. That there are dements both in Tamil Nadu as well as in Sri Lanka who seek to revive the organisation is well known. The four killers (Santhan, Perivalan and Murugan) may, when free, become nodes around which misguided youth may cluster. In a brief period of time, especially given the avidity with which certain countries are backing terror groups in India, it may not be long before the flames of separatist violence flare up once again, this time not only in Sri Lanka but in Jayalalithaa’s own state as well. By her impulsive act of populist politics, Jayalalithaa is repeating the same error that then Home Minister Zail Singh was accused of in the beginning of the 1980s, pandering to terrorists for electoral gain.