Investigations will hopefully establish the identity of the criminals behind the weekend's serial blasts in Coimbatore and their objective. The country, meanwhile, cannot but heave a sigh of relief that it was spared the worse fate that would have followed, had a national leader of L.K. Advani's stature not had a narrow escape. The relief must be tempered with recognition that the political fallout of the blasts cannot be wished away.Poll pundits are, of course, busy measuring the likely impact of the crime - claiming a cruel toll of lives, limbs, and property - on the voting for the Lok Sabha in Tamil Nadu's textile centre, in the State and, to a lesser extent, on the all-India outcome. What matter more, however, are the possible consequences beyond the polling date. The incidents threaten to strengthen a trend in Tamil Nadu's politics that it could well have done without, and thus widen the political sphere of communal influence in the country as a whole. Investigations of the official kind, that won'tgo much deeper than the debris, won't suffice to meet the interests of democracy endangered by violence of such vicious intent.The Bharatiya Janata Party's demand for the resignation of the DMK government may be debatable, but the Karunanidhi regime can hardly shrug away its responsibility in the matter. The latest of its lapses on the law and order front is not only graver but has even less of an excuse than the earlier ones. Coimbatore itself had been one of the places to be rocked by blasts in Tamil Nadu and Kerala in December, which came in the wake of other extremist outrages of murder and mayhem. Clearly, it was a communally sensitive constituency, where the utmost poll-eve vigilance was called for. Either the intelligence or action based on it has been grossly inadequate. For all that, however, the issue is much larger than one of maintaining law and order. Suspicions about a foreign hand behind the blasts may be well-founded but the question is: who and what created the conditions favourable forthe successful enactment of such a conspiracy?Time was when Tamil Nadu was free from the virus of communalism. The flattering contrast with larger parts of the country fostered complacency for which a heavy price is now being paid. Those who ought to have known better have kept turning a blind eye to what they could have seen coming ever since the decades-old controversy over the Meenakshipuram conversions. It may be too much to expect the contending parties to rise above the passions of the moment and not take electoral advantage of the tragedy. It must be hoped against hope that at least after the dust of the battle has settled down, they will pause at some point and ponder over ways to encounter a common enemy - recklessly communal politics running counter to the ballot-based system. There may be a case for postponing the poll in Coimbatore. But, there can be none at all for putting off an enlightened response from the entire spectrum of parliamentary politics to the threat of fratricidal extremism.
