A Dangerous Edge to Our Politics

A Dangerous Edge to Our Politics Romesh Thapar THERE is a new and persistent flavouring in our present-day politics of which we had better begin to take serious note. In the language of official spokesmen, only too anxious to resort to cliche, it is dressed up in the word 'extremist'. "What it covers is some terrible amalgam of unemployed, educated lumpen, motivated criminal and dacoit, armed terrorist, paid hireling, mouthing all manner of half-baked ideology to dress his acts as 'political', gathering incendiary experience to offer to 'hit squads' now mushrooming everywhere with official, semiofficial and private patronage, and briefed with 'hit lists'.