9/11: A year passes but no lessons learnt

Take just the fact that our Home Minister, now deputy Prime Minister, has in the many years he has been in charge of internal security done nothing at all to either set up a special anti-terrorism force or improve our intelligence services.

Surely, by now, it should have occurred to Shri Advani that there is something amoral, not to mention inadequate, about devoting all our special forces to the protection only of our political leaders. I speak of the Special Protection Group SPG and the National Security Agency NSA 8212; those men in grey safari suits and black fatigues 8212; whose sole task so far has been to look after high officials and their progeny.

Clearly, the average Indian8217;s life is not worth protecting so, while a small army of ex-prime ministers and ministers and their kith and kin get special protection, 8216;8216;cross-border terrorism8217;8217; kills ordinary citizens in Jammu and Kashmir on a daily basis.

And, when those cross-border terrorists choose to launch an attack in Delhi or Mumbai they do so with impunity because our ordinary policemen are too over-worked and under-trained to do much to stop them.

Impunity is the appropriate word in more ways than one when you consider that despite Arun Jaitley8217;s efforts at 8216;8216;fast-track8217;8217; justice our justice system trundles along at such a criminally slow pace that Omar Sheikh remained a guest of the government of India for five years. Pakistan took less than six months to sentence him to death for the murder of Daniel Pearl while we treated him with such care that no sooner did we trade him for the passengers of IC-814 than he was able to go right back to violently serving what he perceives as the cause of Islam.

Maulana Masood Azhar, widely acknowledged as masterminding most acts of terrorist violence in India in recent years, was also in our prisons for five years and also won his freedom as a result of the hijacking of IC-814. How seriously will anyone take our complaints against cross-border terrorism if terrorists can remain under trial for five years?

In its wider sense, our war against terrorism involves taking an uncompromising stand against those who believe their religion is best served by killing those of other faiths.

Until Gujarat happened, the Indian government would have been within its rights if it had cracked down on the institutions that breed the kind of Islamic fundamentalism that resulted in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

There is no question that there are a disturbingly large number of Muslim educational and religious organisations in India that see Osama bin Laden and his ilk as Islamic warriors of the highest order. They need to be warned that India is not a country in which the killing of innocent people can ever be viewed as an act of valour even if it is done in the name of religion.

But, after the terrible pogroms of Gujarat with what face can the Vajpayee government do anything to stop Islamic fundamentalism?

What right does a BJP Prime Minister have to arrest Muslim fanatics when Hindu fanatics make trouble with the full protection of the Indian state? I happened recently to be on the same flight as Ashok Singhal from Mumbai to Delhi and was amazed to see him drive off from Delhi airport in an armed convoy that would have been adequate security for the Prime Minister.

A few days later this newspaper reported that Singhal made a speech at the Shivala Bhaian temple in Amritsar in which he described what happened in Gujarat as a 8216;8216;successful experiment8217;8217;. He said, 8216;8216;Godhra happened on February 27 and the next day, 50 lakh Hindus were on the streets. We were successful in our experiment of raising Hindu consciousness, which will be repeated all over the country now.8217;8217; He described as a 8216;8216;victory8217;8217; for Hindu society that whole villages in Gujarat hadbeen 8216;8216;emptied of Islam8217;8217;.

If he said these things should he not be in jail on charges of inciting communal violence? Speaking of which if Narendra Modi questioned the Chief Election Commissioner8217;s patriotism on the ground that he was Christian and thereby suspect, should he not also be in jail?

The Americans have made it clear that India is only a bit player in their 8216;8216;global8217;8217; war against terrorism and, in any case, we cannot possibly go along with their 8216;8216;regime change axis of evil8217;8217; foreign policy so we need to fight our own war. It involves improving our security forces and justice system.

Equally important, though, is a governmental commitment to deal ruthlessly with anyone who incites or resorts to violence in the name of religion. But, our local war against terrorism is doomed to fail as long as we lack the courage to lock Hindu terrorists up. Do our Hindu nationalist Prime Minister and his even more Hindu nationalist Deputy have the stomach for it?

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