Editor,
Indeed the country has reached such a crossroads in national life that, far from eagerly voting in favour of any political party which can be found as ideal, progressive, honest, efficient and beneficial for the society, the sane brigade are left with no option but to search which party can be treated as a lesser evil in their lives, or can at least take on the greater/greatest evil’, so as to receive a bit of relief.
While searching for the lesser evil, one often has to vote for a party which is not to their liking, yet get compelled to cast their franchise in favour of it, however painful it might be in terms of conscience.
So, if one famous journalist has to vote for a particular candidate in New Delhi constituency (though the writer had condemned that very leader a decade ago for his xenophobic stance against a few African women by taking the law in his own hands), innumerable erstwhile voters of the Congress and the Left had been morally compelled to vote collectively in favour of the TMC regime (despite no love or respect for the party) during the 2021 West Bengal Assembly polls, just to keep away a particular party from the seat of power in the state, whose secular, all-embracing culture is diametrically opposite to the parochial, communal, divisive, and hate-mongering mindset of that particular camp.
In this context, surely the nomadic Bakarwal community of Udhampur region is most unfortunate. It must have been heart-shattering for them to vote in favour of a person who had marched on the streets of the region with the tricolour in hand, demanding the release of the alleged culprits involved in the spine-chilling murder of an 8-year-old girl of the Bakarwal community who had been confined within a temple, violently tortured and gangraped for days before her tragic end. After all that, the defender of the alleged culprits (then in the self-declared nationalist’ camp and playing the role of a minister in the coalition government of Jammu & Kashmir) has now taken refuge in the Congress’ fold and is contesting the 2024 Lok Sabha polls from Udhampur Lok Sabha seat. So, what option is left for the Bakarwals but to vote in favour of this highly nauseating man, so as to defeat the force which is a ‘specialist’ of sorts in blatant Islamophobia.
However, despite being compelled to vote for the lesser evil (by temporarily forgetting its sins and failure), still a satisfaction indeed emerge for at least taking a strong stance against the greater/greatest evil creating havoc in all sectors of governance and the society.
Just to remind the future generation what mayhem rampant communalism can gift to the nation, and also to keep the merchants of hatred in check, relentless opposition against the greater/greatest evil camp needs to be maintained in a consistent basis by religiously voting in favour of the ‘lesser evil’ in the constituencies concerned around the nation, irrespective of success or failure, by keeping aloft the flag of diversity and multicultural ethos of the country.
Kajal Chatterjee,
D-2/403,
Peerless Nagar,
Kolkata