Public Enquiry Needed in the Tell-tale Marks of a Conspiracy

This is an appeal to all lovers of democracy alarmed by recent trends in our political and social life, culminating in the horrific riots that have taken the lives of more than 40 people and caused serious injury to more than 200, most of them not involved in these crimes.

We have heard of leaders holding out threats to the police to act to crack down on anti-nationals, armed gangs congregating near places where people were sitting in a familiar form of peaceful and non-violent protests and provoking them aggressively with hostile slogans and acts. We have heard of hordes of total strangers pouring into neighbourhoods going about the ordinary business of life and attacking people and setting shops and houses, at times after putting a lock on the doors. This viciousness went along with bizarre shouts presumed to signal pure patriotism. Reactions of panic and blind rage following such losses were inevitable.

We have seen on TV the police either as bystanders or as accomplices in scenes of such crime, arousing the conscience and anguished cry of outrage of a distinguished High Court judge but leaving eminent government advocates unmoved. We have seen senior ministers of the government blithely hurling at critics of the government's incredible apathy the cheapest of possible jibes and attributing to innocents wild motives of being agents of the country's enemies. The pogrom is turned into either a clash between two communities or a vile conspiracy by ‘known agents of Pakistan’.

Conscious citizens see in the events a pattern and design with tell-tale marks of a conspiracy. This cannot be dismissed as a cranky whimsy any more. But what are we going to do about it?

It will be a forlorn hope to expect the government to uncover it. So I suggest that civil society should without delay form a panel of eminent people to conduct a public enquiry with appropriate technical assistance in a most rigorous and systematic manner. I feel sure victims will cooperate willingly and unravel facts that have so far escaped public notice. But if the trail gets cold and people lose their voice in terror, and vested interests piles of lies and concoctions to cover up the traces, a great opportunity will be lost.
 

The author is a socio-political commentator and cultural critic. The views are personal.