Parties blast through with their agendas

MUMBAI: Politicians can pursue a blinkered view in advancing the agenda of parties they belong to. Take the Mumbai serial blasts — a tragedy that should have brought all parties together, cutting across ideologies. The reality, however, is different.

The Left, for example, blames the economic policies and globalisation for the recent violence. According to Gurudas Dasgupta, a CPI veteran and party ideologue who has chaired many parliamentary committees on finance and markets, the widening disparity between the rich and the poor stokes the simmering tension, which often boils over into violence.Mr Dasgupta thinks it’s an ongoing conflict between ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’.

He was in Mumbai on Sunday, trying to explain terrorism the way the Left views it. The Marxists think India should stop aping the west and refrain from flowing with the tide of globalisation. He, as per the Left’s political position, didn’t blame any community or religion for the recent terror strikes.

Diametrically opposite to the Left’s view is the BJP’s. Right from day one, the BJP has been blaming Muslim fundamentalism as the root cause of terror. The party thinks that the Congress and the UPA government’s kid-glove handling of Muslim terrorists has only helped the perpetrators. It even wants the defamed anti-terrorist law Pota (Prevention of Terrorism Act), which was repealed by the Congress regime, to be brought back.

It’s alliance partner, the Shiv Sena, went a step further in raising the pitch against violence. Sena chief Bal Thackeray publicly castigated certain organisations and political parties for being soft on terrorism. Carrying on his party’s agenda, the Sena supremo revived the almost forgotten term, ‘minority appeasement’ to blame the Congress.

He was countered by the Samajwadi Party that likes to project itself as a saviour of Muslims. The SP city chief, Abu Azmi, went to the extent of indicating a conspiracy hatched by ‘Hindu militants’ to defame Muslims. His boss, Amar Singh, held the national security advisor MK Narayanan responsible for, what he calls, intelligence failure and sought his resignation.

The only party which so far doesn’t seem to have any stand on the issue is Congress. Facing pulls and pressures from its 12 alliance partners, the Congress appears to be trying to be accommodate every partner’s view on the issue. The Congress Government in the state, where the home ministry is handled by the NCP, wants to use its dreaded law, MCOCA (Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act); however. at the Centre, it is opposing a similar legislation.

As one senior home ministry official noted, political parties are not ready to rise above their individual constituencies and treat the disaster as a serious internal security issue. “Each political party is looking at the Mumbai bomb blasts from its own political perspective,” he said.