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Zero tolerance? The PM is joking!

Zero tolerance? The PM is joking!

Author: Kanchan Gupta
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: July 27, 2005

Those with a sense of humour will laugh at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for promoting a policy of "zero tolerance" towards terrorism. Others who are not given to looking for comic relief in these bad times will denounce him for duplicity and deceit, not to mention intellectual dishonesty.

The Prime Minister's comment on the need for "zero tolerance" towards terrorism came during the customary interaction with mediapersons in the White House Rose Garden after his summit-level talks with US President George Bush. Perhaps he chose to be correct in the company of the Commander-in-Chief leading the global war against terrorism.

Or, it is possible that Mr Singh's speechwriter borrowed the phrase from former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's inaugural address to the nation in 1999 and slipped it in for added effect. Such cut-and-paste sleight of hand is not unheard of among bureaucrats-turned-speech writers who believe public memory is too short for people to remember and recall.

Therefore, it would be in order to remind readers of this newspaper that not only did Mr Vajpayee talk of the need to adopt a policy of "zero tolerance" towards terrorism during his inaugural address to the nation in October 1999, but that he had to eat his words within two months when Indian Airlines flight IC 814 from Kathmandu to New Delhi was hijacked by jihadis.

If Mr Vajpayee and the NDA Government he led really believed in "zero tolerance" towards terrorism or, in the least, subscribed to the view that this was the correct approach to fighting jihadi terror, then they would have asked the hijackers to go fly the plane to kingdom come. But that is not how they responded.

Rather than meet the situation with resolve and fortitude, they crumbled before weeping relatives and slogan-shouting red activists - Ms Brinda Karat had not yet been elevated to the highest echelons of the CPI(M) - without so much as putting up an appearance of a Government that means business.

Instead of making it clear that the Government of India would not under any circumstances negotiate with the hijackers, a policy followed without any deviation by the US whom we seek to emulate, even if that meant rudely snubbing the families of the passengers on the hijacked plane, Mr Vajpayee and his team sought to charm the criminals who had commandeered the flight and killed one of the hostages in cold blood.

A helpless nation that had been promised a policy of "zero tolerance" towards terrorism watched in stupefied silence as Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh accompanied Maulana Masood Azhar, Sheikh Omar and Mushtaq Zargar to Kandahar, set them free, shook the blood-stained hands of the jihadis who ran Afghanistan's Taliban regime, and returned home with the passengers.

The freed terrorists deserved the fate of rabid dogs. But they had been kept in fine fettle in Indian prisons while the prosecution scratched its head trying to frame a case that would not be thrown out by a judge on the grounds that there was no evidence, never mind the fact that terrorism is not a crime whose perpetrators deserve no mercy.

Maulana Masood Azhar went on to set up Jaish-e-Mohammed, a terrorist organisation whose jihadis have since slaughtered scores of Indians. Sheikh Omar, back in Pakistan where he truly belongs, slit the throat of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in a flawless replication of halal rituals and ensured that his jihadi fervour was captured on video for both believers and non-believers. Mushtaq Zargar is out there somewhere, practising what he believes is his faith.

All of them and their keepers in Islamabad would have been denied the pleasure of furthering the cause of jihad had Mr Vajpayee stood firm and his Government had refused to be tolerant towards the hijackers or be swayed by the mawkish sentimentality of the family and friends of the hostages. But he and his Government chose to quietly bury on New Year's eve what had been publicly stated in mid-October.

The Congress, which was in the forefront of berating Mr Vajpayee and his Government for not acting expeditiously to secure the freedom of the passengers of IC 814 and actively mobilised crowds of chest-beating wailing women in front of the Prime Minister's residence every day, will of course claim that Mr Singh and his team are more courageous than their predecessors.

The nation is expected to believe that a party which, when in power, has feted terrorists at Hazratbal and fed them biryani, offered a craven apology for raiding Nadwatul Islam, an Islamic seminary that produces home-grown jihadis, set aside all norms that govern international travel to facilitate Kashmiri separatists' visit to Pakistan, and opened India's borders to fundamentalist Muslims from Bangladesh who want to expand the area of their criminal enterprise, will now follow a policy of "zero tolerance" towards terrorism.

Diplomatic nicety may have prevented Mr Bush from raising both his eyebrows when Mr Singh spoke of "zero tolerance" towards terrorism, but the Prime Minister needs to be reminded that the credit of disbanding India's anti-terrorism law - Prevention of Terrorism Act - goes to his UPA Government.

The UPA Government repealed POTA not because of alleged misuse of the Act, as has been claimed by Mr Singh and his colleagues, but to appease the charlatans who claim to be champions of Muslim rights in India - the Left, the clergy, human rights activists and politicians like Lalu Prasad Yadav who survive on fetid minority appeasement. Also included are "secularists" like Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh within the Congress who believe India's emancipation lies in the rebirth of the Caliphate in New Delhi.

Islamists, jihadis, terrorists, call them what you will, are deceitful, untrustworthy, cunning, devious and false-hearted. They are undeserving of any human emotion other than anger and fury; to spare a quarter to these marauders who wear the cloak of Islam but are a faithless lot is to become a partner in their crime against humanity.

This is justification enough to unleash the collective fury of the state against terrorists of all shades - be they members of Students Islamic Movement of India or Lashkar-e-Toyyeba or, for that matter, of any Islamist outfit with an exotic name - and exterminate the killers.

Yet, what we see does not bear the remotest resemblance to what should be. Mr Singh speaks of "zero tolerance" but his Home Minister refers to terrorists as "our brothers and sisters". The honest truth is that the Government of India lacks the courage to join the battle against jihad. Hence the Prime Minister's recourse to meaningless semantics borrowed from his predecessor's notebook.
 


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