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Journalism of Courage
UPA must maintain a sense of proportion in its response to the killing of Sarabjit Singh
In death,Sarabjit Singh has found national attention of a kind he never got while he was living. After he succumbed to injuries from a brutal attack inside a Lahore jail,where he had been imprisoned since 1990,there has been a rising clamour for retribution against Pakistan. While the anguished outburst of grieving relatives is understandable his sister Dalbir Kaur has called for a war and appealed to the home minister to cancel all visas to Pakistan what explains the lack of proportion in the response of Indias principal opposition party? Sushma Swaraj,Arun Jaitley,Rajnath Singh and Narendra Modi have all rightly condemned the attack on Sarabjit that led to his death. But they have also sought to ratchet it up into a foreign policy failure a weak Centres inability to stand up to Pakistans inhuman acts.
There are hundreds of Indian prisoners in Pakistani jails,many of them fishermen caught on the wrong side of the border,just as there are hundreds of Pakistani nationals in Indian jails. Both systems are marred by slow,often whimsical,delivery of justice. Both sides have a terrible record on prisoner safety. In both countries,jails are overcrowded and violent. Sarabjit Singhs death is a scandal and indicts the state whose custody he was in. But any attempt to pump up this sobering moment into a confrontation between two nations must be squarely and firmly resisted.
