INTERNAL INSECURITY

Forwarded message from Ashok Chowgule

Internal insecurity

In Hindutvavadi circles the article by Shekar Gupta is
considered to be a breath of fresh wind that is supposed to
be blowing in the nation. It would seem that the recent
bomb blasts have finally woken up the secularists and made
them realise of the real danger of Islamic jihad that is
facing the nation.

I would like to dispute the contention of waking up,
because the article lays the blame entirely on the
politicians. There is no analysis of what the secularists
themselves have been writing in the past. It is my
contention that the politicians are behaving the way they
do because of the perverted analysis of the secularists.
While the secularists are supposed to be unbiased, that is
without any agenda, an analysis of the secularist writings
shows that their agenda is really no different form that of
the politicians.

Let me quote from the article itself to establish a point I
have been making for quite some time -- that is the
secularists have failed in highlighting the problems
properly.

"It is a spectacular four and a half years of mayhem when
not one terrorist has been caught, not one major case
solved."

(Why did it take Gupta four and a half years of mayhem to
wake up? Because he was pretending to sleep.)

"Last week, Somini Sengupta of The New York Times quoted a
stunning fact from a report of the Washington-based
National Counter-Terrorism Centre. It said, between January
2004 and March 2007, India had lost 3,674 lives to
terrorism, second only to Iraq."

(Does it take for facts to come out in a foreign
publication for the secularist to sit up and take notice?)

"So far the UPA government has had one standard response:
compare this with the record under the NDA: Kandahar
hijack, Parliament attack, Akshardham. But there is a short
use-by date on these arguments."

(Every time the secularists interact with Narendra Modi,
their conversation revolves around the post-Godhra riots.
They do not mention the buring of the Hindus in Godhra, nor
about the track record of governance of Modi. Is there a
very long use-by date on these issues? When will the
secularist stop quoting the lie that 2000 people, mostly
Muslims, were killed in the post-Godhra riots?)

"Most amazing is the sense of cool with which this
government, particularly its home ministry, has responded
to these losses."

(One sees the same sense of cool amongst the secularist
every time there is a bomb blast performed by the Islamic
terrorist. There is the usual editorial DEMANDING that the
Hindus remain calm, etc. And you will get some supposedly
moderate Muslim being quoted that the terrorist are
perverting Islam, and that actually Islam commands these
terrorists to act peacefully.)

"The two most striking things here have been the equanimity
-- frankly, cynical and sometimes sanctimonious
indifference -- with which this security establishment has
treated it."

(See the comment above.)

"The odds are steeper because that issue was communalised
first. It began with the last election campaign and the
composition of this alliance. There may have been a sound
case against POTA because it was misused, but both in
public discourse and political action its repeal was made
to look like a favour to the Muslims. Then, the same
"communalised" politics interfered in police investigations
following the serial blasts in Mumbai trains and Hyderabad.
Ask senior police officers there -- even Congress chief
ministers if they'd dare to speak the truth -- and they
will tell you how they pulled away in fright, under
pressure from the Centre for targeting and upsetting
Muslims (voters) in their investigations. This proceeded
neatly alongside the utterly communalised discourse on the
Afzal Guru hanging issue. Each time this government and its
intellectual storm-troopers proffered the minority argument
in support of this soft policy, it emboldened the
terrorists. They figured they were dealing with a political
leadership which had already committed a self-goal by
equating counter-terror with Muslim alienation and which
had, in the process, totally demoralised its intelligence
agencies and police forces. And if it is not guilty of
communalising our internal security policy, how does it
explain sitting on special anti-terror laws in all BJP-run
states when exactly similar ones have been passed for the
Congress states? Now you can say special laws are good or
bad, but they must be equally so for all citizens in all
states. If these laws are good, or necessary, then citizens
in BJP-run states have as much need -- and right -- to get
their protection as those in the Congress states. Unless
the message is: you want protection, you better vote for
us. You vote for others, you are on your own."

(This paragraph really takes the cake. It manifests a
syndrome that the Germans call vorbeireden, talking past
the point. It is a verbose device to circumvent the truth.
In each of the instances of communalisation that Gupta
rightly accuses the secular political parties indulging in,
the secularists themselves are equally guilty. The police
officers pulled away in fright also because the way the
secularists attacked the police about their alleged
communalism. The secularists go in delegations to the chief
ministers demanding that Muslims should not be targeted in
the investigation after the blasts. What they are
effectively saying is that for every Muslim arrested, the
police must arrest five Hindus to maintain the communal
balance.)

I do not think that we will have enduring solutions to our
problems unless the problems are analysed in a
dispassionate manner. The secularists must learn how to be
intellectually honest and present the issues without
communalising them. I do not know if they do have the
courage to do it, because they will then have to face the
uncomfortable question as to why they did not tell the
truth all these years.

In economic arena, I say to my friends that we muddle
through to a solution. Perhaps the same thing will happen
in the socio-political arena. The problem is that in the
meantime a lot of avoidable harm is created to the fabric
of the society.

Namaste.
Ashok Chowgule


Internal insecurity

By Shekhar Gupta
THE INDIAN EXPRESS
August 2, 2008.

The use-by date on the Kandahar excuse is over. It won't
work when UPA faces the voters

For nearly five years now the world media had been
celebrating India's rise. From the state of its stock
market to its demographic advantage, from the strength and
depth of its democracy to the vast reservoir of talent that
flourished in its diversity, it was as if the world could
see nothing wrong with India. There are now signs that some
of that is changing.

And no, it is not just because of those thousand-rupee
bundles displayed in the Lok Sabha. It is because of
something much more serious, in fact a failure so serious
it could, by itself, lose the UPA the next election. These
four and half years are the worst in India's history of
fighting terrorism. Surely somebody in the UPA will bring
out statistics to show that overall deaths were more in
some other regime's five years. But this is not just about
numbers. It is a spectacular four and a half years of
mayhem when not one terrorist has been caught, not one
major case solved. Even by the modest standards that
Shivraj Patil's home ministry may have set for itself, this
is a spectacularly disastrous record.

The world press, if anything, has been late in catching
this. Last week, Somini Sengupta of The New York Times
quoted a stunning fact from a report of the Washington-
based National Counter-Terrorism Centre. It said, between
January 2004 and March 2007, India had lost 3,674 lives to
terrorism, second only to Iraq. And we can't even claim
that this is happening because some imperialist occupation
army is running amok here.

In fact that number, by now, must have crossed 5,000. If
this notion spreads globally, it would do more to damage
India's image as an oasis of democratic stability, pacifism
and economic growth than any twists in its politics, or
even a half-decade reform holiday. So far the UPA
government has had one standard response: compare this with
the record under the NDA: Kandahar hijack, Parliament
attack, Akshardham. But there is a short use-by date on
these arguments. You cannot take them into your next
election campaign. Soon enough, the memory of those
incidents would have faded, been replaced by new ones:
Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Kabul, Mumbai
trains, Samjhauta Express and so on. And then the unchecked
Naxalite attacks. Most amazing is the sense of cool with
which this government, particularly its home ministry, has
responded to these losses. While they can pretend that
Naxalite strikes are some sinister happenings in places
that are out of sight, out of mind, somebody -- most likely
the voter -- will soon remind them that, while those
managing internal security may not care for the lives of
policemen in faraway states, never in the history of
insurgencies have we suffered casualties like these. In
fact, if you go over our five-decade history of
insurgencies, the 38 lives lost in the Naxalite attack on
the police boat were perhaps the second-largest loss of
life by security forces in a day in internal security
operations after only the army's casualties on the night of
Operation Bluestar. It is rare for security forces to
suffer double-digit casualties in insurgencies. Even during
the Kargil conflict it was a rare day's fighting on which
the army lost so many lives, against an entrenched foreign
army. The two most striking things here have been the
equanimity -- frankly, cynical and sometimes sanctimonious
indifference -- with which this security establishment has
treated it.

The talk of Naxalism in a week when two of our most
important cities saw serial-bombings and a third had 23
unexploded bombs recovered, is not a digression. It
underlines the unmoving, thick-skinned, incompetent and
pusillanimous response to terror from this government. What
is worse, it is even politically loaded. And while,
ultimately, the UPA may be made to pay for it electorally,
too many lives are being lost meanwhile, and too much
damage is being done to India's image. The government
cannot ride out an entire five years claiming that their
predecessors' record was worse.

Soon enough people will also start reminding them that the
NDA's six years coincided with a state of near-war with
Pakistan, when ISI support to terror in India was unabashed
and comprehensive and when an active proxy war was on in
Kashmir. It is the four years of relative peace with
Pakistan that make the UPA's failure even more striking.
Over the past year or so we have all got focussed on what
we saw as the communalisation of our foreign policy: don't
vote against Iran at the IAEA because our own Shias would
get upset, don't sign the nuclear deal with Bush as that
will irritate all our own Muslims, conduct your relations
with Israel by stealth for the same reason, even stop the
two missile development projects with them, no matter how
badly your armies may need them. Last week we saw the prime
minister fight back on this, and successfully too. But can
he do the same with internal security?

The odds are steeper because that issue was communalised
first. It began with the last election campaign and the
composition of this alliance. There may have been a sound
case against POTA because it was misused, but both in
public discourse and political action its repeal was made
to look like a favour to the Muslims. Then, the same
"communalised" politics interfered in police investigations
following the serial blasts in Mumbai trains and Hyderabad.
Ask senior police officers there -- even Congress chief
ministers if they'd dare to speak the truth -- and they
will tell you how they pulled away in fright, under
pressure from the Centre for targeting and upsetting
Muslims (voters) in their investigations. This proceeded
neatly alongside the utterly communalised discourse on the
Afzal Guru hanging issue. Each time this government and its
intellectual storm-troopers proffered the minority argument
in support of this soft policy, it emboldened the
terrorists. They figured they were dealing with a political
leadership which had already committed a self-goal by
equating counter-terror with Muslim alienation and which
had, in the process, totally demoralised its intelligence
agencies and police forces. And if it is not guilty of
communalising our internal security policy, how does it
explain sitting on special anti-terror laws in all BJP-run
states when exactly similar ones have been passed for the
Congress states? Now you can say special laws are good or
bad, but they must be equally so for all citizens in all
states.

If these laws are good, or necessary, then citizens in BJP-
run states have as much need -- and right -- to get their
protection as those in the Congress states. Unless the
message is: you want protection, you better vote for us.
You vote for others, you are on your own. It is not going
to work. It is morally wrong and politically suicidal.

Protecting the citizens' life is the first responsibility
of any government. Surely no government can ensure no
terror attack would ever happen. But it has to be seen to
be trying, fighting, and being even-handed. This government
fails on all three counts so far, no matter how nicely
ironed its chief-spokesman's bandh-galas, how neatly combed
his hair. If the prime minister does not fix this in time,
his party will be asked really tough questions in the next
election.

End of forwarded message from Ashok Chowgule

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