Hostage to terror, always

When Dr Manmohan Singh8217;s colleagues and Cabinet ministers stop wasting time raising silly issues perhaps he will think of formulating a...

When Dr Manmohan Singh8217;s colleagues and Cabinet ministers stop wasting time raising silly issues perhaps he will think of formulating a coherent, comprehensible policy on terrorism. Even as the world exploded in a sudden upsurge in Islamic terror and even while three Indians were still in the custody of one of Iraq8217;s murderous terrorist groups we, in India, spent our time arguing over Veer Savarkar8217;s credentials as a freedom fighter and patriot.

Does it matter? Only in the coming elections in Maharashtra where questioning Savarkar8217;s patriotism will help the BJP and Shiv Sena which makes you wonder if Mani Shankar Aiyar, like his colleague Arjun Singh, is not a BJP fifth columnist in the new government. These two gentlemen have done more to revive that party than L K Advani and Venkaiah Naidu could have dreamed of. As if the Savarkar and 8216;8216;toxic8217;8217; history-books controversies were not enough, we then had the drama over Uma Bharati and the national flag and because the BJP8217;s senior leaders are even stupider than Dr Manmohan Singh8217;s colleagues we are now due to see yet another rath yatra. This time over the national flag. As a Hindutva party should they not be drawing attention to the violent upsurge in Islamic terrorism and our government8217;s inability to come up with either comment or policy?

Our hostages may have been released but Islamic terrorism reached new heights of barbarism last week. There was the sickening, senseless beheading of twelve Nepalese workers in Iraq, posted in horrific, visual detail on a website for the world to see. Then came the kidnapping of two French journalists by another Iraqi terrorist group who tried to use the hostages to influence the policies of the French government. Lift the ban on Muslim girls wearing headscarves in French schools or the hostages will be killed, they warned. Russia suffered more than any other country with the mysterious plane crashes that killed ninety people, followed by the woman suicide bomber in Moscow and then the terrible hostage crisis in that provincial school which has not been resolved even as I write.

India has been a victim of Islamic terrorism long before 9/11 but we have no policy yet to deal with it. The Vajpayee Government8217;s most disgraceful moment was when our Minister of External Affairs graciously escorted two of the world8217;s most evil killers to Kandahar in his private plane. One went on to kill Daniel Pearl and the other to organise several acts of terrorism against India including the attack on Parliament. You would have thought that this would have made our policymakers recognise the need for a clear policy on terrorism. But no, we have carried on in the same bumbling fashion reacting to every new horror with a surprised, ad hoc response. When Shri Advani was Home Minister he had a standard explanation: ISI, Pakistani trained terrorists.

What we should know is why he did not set up, at the very least, a counter-terrorist unit to deal with the problem? What we should also know is what he did by way of pre-emptive measures so that you and I and our children could walk safely in the streets of our cities? What measures were taken after the attack on the Akshardham temple to ensure that other temples were not similarly attacked? The short answer is: nothing. If special measures were taken, they were only to ensure that Parliament was made safer than before because all that our politicians seem to worry about is their own safety. So the small number of anti-terrorism forces we have are restricted to VIP duty.

The Vajpayee government, so proud of its Hindutva, did not even show what Dick Cheney described at the Republican Party8217;s convention last week as the 8216;8216;moral seriousness that calls evil by its name8217;8217;. It hesitated to describe the problem as Islamic and so we have not begun a dialogue with our own Muslims to establish if the pan-Islamic sense of grievance we see all over the world affects them. A Pakistani friend recently identified for me Palestine as the main source of grievance in Pakistan but Indian Muslims, as a community, seem largely indifferent to what happens in Palestine and think of Gujarat and the demolition of the Babri Masjid as more potent sources of grievance.

Whatever the reasons, if we had a counter-terrorism plan there would be serious efforts not just to deal with the grievances but to close down the safe houses and conduits used by organisations like the Lashkar-e-Toiba. Intelligence gathering systems would have been improved as well. Ironically, the General across the border seems to be doing more to fight terrorism than we are and now we have a government bursting with liberals and lefties who speak of Islamic fundamentalism in the same breath as Hindu fundamentalism, as if they were two sides of the same coin.

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They are not and it is dangerous to propagate this view. There are no Hindu suicide bombers, no Hindu Al Qaeda and not the remotest possibility of the Bajrang Dal or some other lunatic fringe Hindu organisation stealing nuclear weapons to use against America or even some Islamic country. Yet, we have members of the new government and many of the liberals who have climbed on its bandwagon blathering on in every public forum about Hindu fundamentalism being the reason for Islamic fundamentalism. It is to make Muslims feel safe that POTA has been dumped and in Uttar Pradesh we have Mulayam Singh Yadav going out of his way to support madrasa education in the name of 8216;8216;succularism8217;8217;. This is lunacy but cannot be dealt with until the Prime Minister recognises the need for a policy on terrorism. Should we not know at least if we do business with terrorist groups or not? Did we make a deal in Iraq as we did in Kandahar and if we did is this our policy?

Write to tavleensinghexpressindia.com.