Not All Tragedies Are Equal, Honorable CM

I was at Cubbon Road the morning after the stampede — not as a reporter, not as a political observer, but simply as a citizen trying to make sense of the chaos and the silence that follows sudden loss. Eleven lives were snatched away in what should have been a festive celebration for cricket lovers. Most of them were young, some had travelled miles to see their favourite team. Now, they were names on a list, and faces on banners that flickered for a few seconds on the news.

So when I read Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s lengthy statement on X, comparing this incident to the 2002 Gujarat riots, the Pahalgam terror attack, and the Morbi bridge collapse, I found myself feeling not reassured — but deeply unsettled.

Let me be clear: I’m not blind to politics. I understand that the BJP, too, has a record that raises difficult questions about accountability. I’ve covered enough election rallies to know that hypocrisy is not the monopoly of any one party. But there’s a difference between holding the opposition accountable and evading your own.

The scale and nature of the events Siddaramaiah referred to are vastly different. The Gujarat riots were a national trauma, a communal bloodbath whose wounds still fester. Pahalgam was the work of terrorists who infiltrated the country with the sole aim of killing innocents. The Morbi tragedy was the result of long-standing negligence in infrastructure oversight.

What happened at the gates of Chinnaswamy Stadium was, above all, a preventable tragedy. A failure of crowd management. A failure of the local police. A failure of communication. And yes, a failure of governance.

Unlike terrorism or inter-communal violence — where blame can be complex and diffuse — this was a case where the chain of responsibility leads directly to the state’s doorstep. It’s the Chief Minister’s team, his Home Ministry, his police force. It’s his event, his city, his government.

Instead of owning that with humility, Siddaramaiah chose to reach back across two decades and 2,000 km to find moral cover. And in doing so, he invoked some of the country’s darkest moments — as if tragedy were a competitive sport, and the scoreboard could somehow justify today’s grief.

I’m not writing this to say who should or shouldn’t resign. That’s for the political class and the courts to decide. But I do believe this: grief deserves better than political one-upmanship. As someone who walked past the blood-streaked pavement outside Gate 2 of the stadium, I can say this — the families of those who died don’t care whether Modi resigned in 2002 or whether Biren Singh held on for 20 months. They just want to know why their son or daughter didn’t come home. And who will answer for it.

When leaders lose the ability to separate empathy from electoral strategy, it’s not just bad politics — it’s bad humanity.

I hope Siddaramaiah reflects on this. Not as a Chief Minister. But as a father. As a citizen. As someone who once walked the same streets where people now gather to mourn.

Let this not be another case where politics drowns out the silence of the dead.