The Haryana Assembly’s nod for providing job and education quotas to the Jat community has demonstrated that when faced with a situation where the choice is between political opportunism and national interest, parties will always select the former (“Haryana passes Bill to provide Jat reservation”, Mar.30). Apart from the fact that mindless expansion of the reservation pie strikes at the root of meritocracy and creates social discord by pitting communities against one another, the moral hazard of governments genuflecting before organised violence will have serious consequences for the nation’s unity and stability.
It is ironical that a nation that successfully used the tool of non-violence as a weapon to gain freedom from colonial rule has tacitly accepted violence as a legitimate form of social protest. Peaceful protests rarely catch the attention of the rulers and the media whereas violence makes it to the front pages of newspapers and forces governments to rush to buy peace with the arsonists and destroyers of public property. We as a nation have failed to realise the fact that democracy in its true spirit cannot function and survive if violence is treated as the normal.
V.N. Mukundarajan,
Thiruvananthapuram
