Opinion Soft states canot be superpowers

India is obviously a soft state. This is why what could not be done in Tbilisi could be done in Delhi. With impunity and almost certainty of immunity from any likely punishment. After 26/11,there was to be a new broom. The list for Z security was to be curtailed and resources concentrated on fighting terrorism. How many years it has taken for the Home Minister to get his favourite National Terrorism Strategy to clear all the ministries and its files and finally on the road? India is the largest democracy but that should not mean that governments only act when voting is around the corner and then too only to offer unsustainable populist sops.

Perhaps the worst aspect of India’s counter-terrorism strategy is that it lacks full-hearted political support from the top. Even now,during the UP elections,the Batla House issue is reopened firstly by a general secretary of the Congress party and then by a Cabinet minister. But what is said in Azamgarh cannot be unsaid outside and howsoever many votes it may garner for the Congress,it undermines India’s image as being serious about fighting terrorism. Taking the name of the Congress president to lend credence to the attack on Delhi Police for its effort in Batla House was rightly corrected but the damage has been done. I just hope no one in the ruling coalition starts impugning the Israeli government about its policy of blockading Gaza and insinuating that the bombing was justly deserved. I hope so but with UP elections still going on,one never knows what new levels of madness will be scaled.

Who will say clearly and passionately that terrorism has no religion and no race and no conceivable justification despite whatever injustices it claims to protest against? Be it saffron or Islamist,Naxalite or irredentist,it is still an attack on the fundamental rights of citizens to go about their daily business peaceably. A terrorist attack is not an occasion for point scoring.

Britain had forty years of fighting terrorism from Nationalist and Unionist paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland. The mainland was bombed as was Northern Ireland along sectarian lines. Yet religion was never an issue. Catholics and Protestants were victims even as some of the perpetrators shared the religion. Though the Church of England is the established church,there never was an anti-Catholic point made. Terrorism threatened us all and we all learned to be vigilant about it,even as we disagreed on details of the policy regarding Northern Ireland. And when the Northern Irish terrorist threat subsided,it was 9/11 and 7/7 in London. So the vigilance stays but the consensus also stays that the attacks by terrorist have no basis in religion or natural justice.

The mark of a mature polity is to know when to treat some threats as national and dismiss others as merely political. Maybe India will get there; may be after the UP elections,we could make a start.