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.