Burying national security in well of House

I like ‘‘bluster and infirmity’’ but to put it more bluntly the Indian government’s response has been typically namby-pamby so it is possible that next April 16 the Bangladeshis will kill a few more of our men. As it is they treat with disdain our complaints about Bangladeshi soil being used for terrorist activities against India and respond by building more and more madrasas along our border. These Islamic schools object to being called schools for terrorism but they produced the Taliban and continue to produce fanatics by the dozen. They may not teach their students how to use weapons but they teach religious exclusivity and hatred and that is a good enough recipe to produce fanatics and suicide bombers.

As the largest idol-worshipping Hindu country in the world we are an obvious target for Islamic fundamentalists but we have a government that is too ‘‘secular’’ to complain. More worryingly it is too weak, too strange a hybrid of a government, to make a stand. Who will speak on behalf of India, the Prime Minister or Sonia Gandhi? Who does the Minister of External Affairs take orders from? The Prime Minister or Sonia Gandhi? We need to know but we will never find out because if the government is weak, the Opposition is in even worse shape. It appears to be so incapable of debate, so oblivious to matters of national interest and security, that it has spent most of the past year walking out of Parliament instead of into it. So we have not heard a word in the Lok Sabha about Bangladesh’s appalling behaviour. We have not heard a debate about the Pakistani President’s recent visit. What specifically have we achieved from it? Can we hope that terrorism in Kashmir will now come to an end? Did he assure us that he no longer saw Kashmir’s terrorists as freedom fighters? It would be nice to hear a debate in the Lok Sabha but the Opposition prefers street-fighting to debate so you can be almost certain that the Finance bills will pass, as usual, without a hint of discussion. It is the view of this columnist that Shri Lal Krishna Advani was our worst Home Minister ever and he could now end up being our worst Opposition Leader as well. Sonia Gandhi is not my favorite politician but even I concede that when it came to matters of national security she supported the Vajpayee government. After the initial blunders over Kargil.

Mr Advani, the ultra-nationalist, seems to be unbothered by even serious matters of concern. I met a senior Army officer recently who said the questioning of defence deals that the Sonia-Manmohan government has ordered would leave the Indian Army dangerously short of modern equipment. ‘‘With all these inquiries going on, not a single babu in the government of India will clear a single file,’’ he said gloomily, ‘‘when it comes to matters of security the government and the Opposition should at least come to some sort of consensus not to politicise defense purchases.’’

Is this too much to ask? Is there no way in which the government and the Opposition could come to an agreement to behave like grown-ups when it comes to defence purchases and matters of national security? There have to be some things that are sacrosanct, above party politics, and national security has to be up there among them at the top.

Meanwhile, if for no other reason than respect for those who defend our borders the Bangladesh government needs to be given a severe, ‘‘secular’’ reprimand for what happened on April 16. As someone who does not believe secularism is more important than the country’s security I would also like to hear our Prime Minister tell the Bangladesh government that it needs to do something about those madrasas. The last thing India can afford is more Islamic fundamentalists. Please let us not forget that it was the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in the Kashmir Valley that changed the nature of the political problem in the eighties. Poor Farooq Abdullah, recently ousted from power by Indira Gandhi, went blue in the face trying to warn people in Delhi about this. If anyone listened the response was so namby-pamby it made no difference and those were the days of strong leaders and strong government.

Write to tavleensingh@expressindia.com