What Dungar Singh and Babu Lal faced was an extreme situation but it is a situation that increasingly has become the norm for the constable on his beat. Today he has become a convenient lightning rod that attracts the charged fury of our so-called civil society not merely for the real and perceived grievances against the police but also for the wider sense of injustice and indignities, again both real and perceived, against the Indian state. The police constable is no longer a symbol of state authority and the rule of law, rather he is the scapegoat for all the failures of the Indian state. There is no water, let us destroy the beat box; there is no electricity let us set fire to the police outpost and destroy their vehicles; there is no reservation, let us lynch the constables. If nothing else it will create a few vacancies in the police department.

I don’t claim that the police in this country are innocent lambs led to the slaughter. In many cases the violent situations they face are a direct creation of their failures by way of their commission and omission. But ultimately to blame the police for the deaths in Rajasthan and in other such instances would be to mistake the symptoms for the disease of irresponsible political discourse and mindless mobilisation of public resentment that afflict the body politic of India in its diamond jubilee of Independence.

The writer is SSP, Haridwar