THE UNIQUE POLITICAL CRISIS IN KARNATAKA

The war of words within and between parties in Karnataka is showing no sign of abating. Even the silence of a few seems to signal ambition kept in check

- SUGATA SRINIVASARAJU

This has nothing to do with the diminished shine of the sun, but with the horrible degradation of words that one has been witness to. The ordinary citizen has had to endure a certain violent language in recent times. That has dimmed the mood.

If it is not a politically incorrect phrase to use, one may say that the multiple 'gang wars' that seem to have suddenly broken out between politicians threaten to disturb the clever composure that politics had hitherto manufactured. Each is competing to undo the other. Politicians usually create a sense of normality to ensure their transactions continue seamlessly. There is a code beyond which they do not disturb each other. But when that code is broken, when they themselves disturb that carefully poised normality, then we know something serious is churning. If one invited Shakespeare to this situation, he would say, "something is rotten in the state of Denmark."

To understand what is being argued here, one has to listen to the volley of exchanges Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has at regular intervals with Union minister HD Kumaraswamy. Every other day, they threaten to prosecute each other and send the other to jail. They invoke their past disloyalties to cancel out each other's claims of cleanliness. They both literally walk into the trap of local television channels, a khedda of microphones, whose staple technique of news generation is to broadcast abuse and chase raw reaction.