Wages of politics of cynicism

THE PIONEER
EDITS | Friday, November 28, 2008

Wages of politics of cynicism
Balbir K Punj

For more than a month the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad was pre-occupied with chasing ‘Hindu terrorists’ and, it would appear, had little time for anything else. In fact, the ATS claimed that 90 per cent of the force was busy investigating the September 29 Malegaon bombing. All this while, India’s enemies were plotting a bloodbath in Mumbai. The myth of ‘Hindu terror’, built-up by sections of the UPA and the Maharashtra Government for short-term political gains, has had a macabre and grotesque fall-out. Negligence has proved deadly, and resulted in perhaps the most venomous terrorist attack in Indian history.

Today the State and Union Governments stand exposed. It is important to recognise the long-term damage that their dirty-tricks have caused. A new term — ‘Hindu terror’ — has been added to the security lexicon. The world so far recognised only ‘Islamic terror’, with Pakistan as its source. Now India is home to both Islamic and Hindu terror, if the Indian Government’s own agencies are to be believed. On the issue of terror, India and Pakistan have been placed at par.

All this must rank as the most destructive achievement by any Government anywhere. What Pakistan could not achieve after decades of labour — paint Hindu-dominated India as a factory of terror — the ‘secularists’ and their political leaders have done it in a matter of few weeks. Till recently, after every terrorist strike in India, the investigations invariably led to Pakistan and the infamous ISI. Gradually the rest of the world had come to believe the Indian charge that Islamic Pakistan was exporting terrorism to non-sectarian India. The participation of local Muslims in ISI-sponsored attacks in India used to be nominal. However, thanks to the UPA’s vote-bank politics, since 2005, nationalist Muslims stand marginalised and radicals within the community are setting the agenda. The periodic terror strikes in India are no longer an exclusive ISI enterprise. They have largely been indigenised — of course, under the supervision of a global terror machine.

Unwilling to face up to this, the ‘secularists’ sought to maintain a bogus balance. They ignored the fact that all participants in such terror strikes were Muslims, claiming inspiration from the holy Quran and arguing that they were killing ‘infidels’ as part of their religious duty. The faith-based motivations of the terrorists led to the term Islamic terror.

To counter-balance Islamic terror secularists had to discover — or invent — ‘Hindu terror’. The expected political gains were a welcome byproduct. While Muslim terrorists were responsible for popularising the term Islamic terror, the credit for coining the term ‘Hindu terror’ goes to the UPA. For no one else has attributed terrorist actions to the service of Hinduism.

Let us review the brief history of ‘Hindu terror’. Mr Sharad Pawar, a senior member of the Union Cabinet, alleged on October 5, 2008, that there were “double standards” in police action against terror: ‘Muslims were being targeted as terrorists but no action was being taken against ‘Hindu terror’ groups. Mr Pawar’s statement had come in the wake of the Malegaon bombing of September 29. How did Mr Pawar know the identity of those responsible for Malegaon terror strike even before the investigations had concluded is something that remains a mystery.

Obviously the investigations now followed the lead given by the Central Minister. The job of the ATS was easy. All it had to do was cook up ‘evidence’ on the lines indicated by the powers that be. The ‘evidence’ may not have been sufficient to stand court scrutiny but selective leaks to the media, on a daily basis, were enough to generate confusion and create the myth of ‘Hindu terror’. It was vindication for those who fervently desired the discovery of such a phenomenon for their own vested interests.

Mr Pawar was not being original in floating this devious theory. Prior to the 2007 Gujarat Assembly elections, Ms Sonia Gandhi had used the description “maut ka saudagar” for Mr Narendra Modi. Mr Digvijay Singh, the Congress general secretary, has frequently harped on the theme of ‘Hindu terror’.

In order to sustain the plot to demonise Hindus, the Maharashtra ATS improvised several sub-plots. In the process, the Indian Army was traduced as a rogue force, one in which a middle-level officer could pilfer 60 kg of RDX. Worse, it was made out as if the so-called ‘theft’ had remained undetected till the ‘ace investigators’ of the ATS had uncovered it. So the Army is not only infested with ‘terrorists’ but also totally unprofessional in its management of arms and ammunition. Could there be a worse indictment of the armed forces?

After the details of torture and inhuman treatment meted out to the so-called ‘Hindu terror’ suspects — that included a sadhvi and a serving Army officer — became public, there was mass outrage. The ATS was now forced to manufacture a new spin. Without an iota of evidence, it alleged that the accused were conspiring to kill top leaders of the RSS, since they found the Sangh “pro-Muslim” and non-violent in its approach to ideological opponents.

With this, the ATS hoped to drive a wedge within the Hindu political family. But the reverse happened and the RSS saw through the ATS’s game plan. One unintended consequence of this has been that the RSS has got the ATS’s endorsement as a law-abiding organisation, committed to peaceful activism, contrary to what ‘secularists’ have been trying to establish for decades.

The onus of convincing a sceptical public of this fantastic and outlandish ‘conspiracy’ to assassinate RSS leaders rests on the Maharashtra ATS, now deprived of its inspirational leader. All that it has produced so far is the laptop of Lt Col Purohit. The computer hard disk apparently has files containing recordings of the conspiracy. This sounds not just illogical but downright bizarre. Would an Army officer with several years of Military Intelligence experience store details of a conspiracy of this nature?

Rather than chase trivia, the Maharashtra Government and the ATS would have been better served enhancing intelligence gathering. The colossal attack on Mumbai over the past two days has made it clear that jihad — and not any ‘Hindu terror’ pipedream of the ruling political establishment — represents a threat to India. Let us focus on this enemy, and avenge the martyrdom of Hemant Karkare and his valiant colleagues.

punjbk@gmail.com

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