Calcutta Diary


Calcutta Diary A M ASSAM continues to be a dead end. Was February's great carnage, grisly beyond description, Act III, Scene II, or not even that, merely Act I, Scene III? Nobody really knows. Each day, fresh gory incidents continue to take place; there is a grim atmosphere of confrontation; personnel of the police and the army keep pouring in from outside the state; bombs burst, open clashes occur with mobs of young people, some young lives are lost; communal and ethnic riots have emerged as a regular pattern; public employees run great hazard in the performance of their duties; they, as much as those who belong to this or that end of the political spectrum, arc victims of stray attacks; not much is left for the final, total brutalisation of life. The elections last month perhaps provided a way out of the constitutional impasse and, as far as Shrimati Gandhi is concerned, provided her an opportunity of assuring herself that, never mind what has happened in the south, her mandate has not run its course. As the revelations of what went on in the office of the Election Commission now confirm, the elections were in the nature of a charade held for the benefit exclusively of her party; the ministry that has emerged can hardly be taken at its face value.