Divide and misrule

Indecision, dithering, and deliberate exploitation of age-old caste divides characterised the Haryana Government and state BJP's approach during the two weeks leading up to the final conflagration of the Jat agitation. Even as certain non-Jat leaders in the BJP were brazen enough to literally dare the Jats to get what they sought, no one in the government had the conviction and courage to tell the most dominant community of the state it could not be given reservation under the OBC category owing to the upper limit on total reservation. They could not expect a slice of the pie meant for the existing backward beneficiaries. Yet, the Jat leaders in the BJP proactively raised their hopes. All this while, the Chief Minister fiddled clueless and helpless.

It is important to go over this sequence of developments, as the same indecision and stoking of communal passions continue in the entire gamut of efforts to provide post-violence “justice”, initiate reconciliation and address what was the root cause of the entire fiasco — the reservation demand. With the Jat-dominated police coming under fire for inaction, and ministers demanding action against the state machinery’s failure, it seems like the beginning of a witch hunt within the police and the bureaucracy. The Cabinet is speaking in multiple voices, with ministers disagreeing on the Rs 10 lakh compensation for “innocent” Jats killed. Party leaders are still divided on letting Jats into the 27 per cent OBC quota. The reservation promise made arbitrarily in Delhi was done in a negotiation that bypassed the Chief Minister altogether, indicating a disconnect between the state and the Centre.

All these divisions can only feed into the existing fault lines. What would explain the unbelievable raging fury with which the Jat protesters engaged in violence and destruction? A strong sense of entitlement among the Jats, provoked by an equally deep-seated sense of resentment among the rest. If the schisms in the establishment continue any longer, the three days of arson may only prove to be the beginning, and not the end, of an all-engulfing fire.