Indian polity has never been so polarised as it is today. The ruling party/ alliance cannot see eye to eye with the opposition. There does not seem to be any meeting ground between the two. The government and the opposition keep trying to undermining each other's credibility.
And when someone like Shashi Tharoor tries to take a pragmatic and non-partisan view of things, where it actually should be so, his own party starts having problems with him. Tharoor is probably the only exception in the current highly polarised polity in the country, where the government and the opposition treat each other as sworn enemies.
Latest is Tharoor’s comment on Kashmir where he suggested that normalcy was returning to the valley. Tharoor was leading the team of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs to Jammu and Kashmir. After meeting Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, he remarked that he had seen “encouraging progress towards normalcy”. This was obviously an anathema for his own party, for which acknowledging the return of normalcy in Kashmir is a cardinal sin that Tharoor had committed.
Chief spokesperson of the Jammu and Pradesh Congress Committee Ravinder Sharma contradicted Tharoor on it. Normally, no party spokesperson would contradict a senior leader from his own party, that too when he had not said anything against the party position. Tharoor had made quite a guarded and diplomatic remark of having seen “encouraging progress towards normalcy”. And Tharoor is not wrong. Sharma referred to the pending demand of restoration of statehood to Jammu and Kashmir, which was downgraded to union territory in 2019 when the Article 370 was repealed. Restoration of statehood and normalcy are two different things.
Kashmir is actually witnessing encouraging progress towards normalcy. It may certainly not be like pre-1990. That situation may never return. But the Kashmiris are actually trying to move forward and put the recent past behind. After all, it is the Kashmiris who have suffered the most during the three decades of militancy that started in 1989-90.
Also read: Congress risks losing ground over indecisiveness in Punjab
There were other victims also like the Kashmiri Pandits who were completely uprooted and exiled and their return remains a far-fetched dream. There are other parameters also for normalcy. The massive influx of tourists from the rest of the country is certainly an indication of encouraging progress towards normalcy.
The Congress also took exception to Tharoor’s remarks about the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump along the side-lines of the G-7 meet in France. Tharoor was quoted saying the Prime Minister forcefully made his point against the killing of three Indian seafarers by the US.
This was again strongly objected to by Congress spokesperson and chairman of the media and publicity department Pawan Khera. Taunting Tharoor as “devotee of Modi” (Modi-bhakt), he reacted on ‘X’, saying, “my senior colleague Dr Shashi Tharoor's admiration for PM Modi appears to have transcended the limitations of the physical world. He now seems capable of hearing what Modi doesn't even say. And yet, Tharoor ji somehow heard forceful assertions, robust pushback, and uncompromising diplomacy that never made it into the official record. Perhaps the rest of us are constrained by ordinary human senses. For devotees of the 'Maha-Maanav Modi', the less he says, the more they hear.”
Tharoor did not take it lying down and responded in his own characteristic way saying, “my remarks were about the safety of our citizens and the principle that civilian seafarers should never be targets of military action. If some people are more interested in scoring political points than addressing that concern, that says more about them than it does about me.”
The extremely polarised politics in India needs “Tharoorian” course correction. Everything the government does is not wrong or flawed. And everything the opposition says or points out, is not wrong either. Indian democracy needs the government and the opposition to complement each other rather than focusing on mutual criticism.
One must acknowledge that Kashmir is moving towards normalcy. It is also a fact that it is not an overnight progress but has happened gradually. Abrogation of Article 370, which many would try to claim to be the game changer, is not the only reason for return of peace and normalcy. Article 370 did indeed break the psychological barrier that existed for a long time, but to suggest that this alone led to return of normalcy would mean exaggerating its impact.
The opposition frustration is understandable for having lost three general elections back to back. People of India have given the current government the mandate to rule. The opposition should understand and respect the verdict. Finding faults in everything the government does will not lead it to anywhere. People are wise enough to make their choices.
The government on its part will also need to accept and acknowledge that the opposition is integral to and important for the functioning of the democracy. The two must find some meeting ground and there is abundance of it. Leaders like Tharoor must be supported and encouraged to identify such ground and work on it. Confrontation must give way to cooperation. Let the battles stop at the elections.
Follow us
