Author: Kanchan Gupta
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: November 29, 2011
URL: http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/item/50559-timorous-nation-spineless-pm.html
Three years after 26/11, Pakistan is still
smirking Three years is a short time in the life of a nation. But it's long
enough for cynical, self-serving, scheming and sly politicians who love themselves
far more than they care for the nation and pursue an agenda which is inimical
to the national interest to conveniently forget the past. While doing so,
they believe that others too have no recollection of events, which is true
to an extent because public memory is notoriously short in this wondrous land
of ours where vacuous patriotic fervour is often confused with national pride
and bogus guilt is allowed to overwhelm national hurt.
Hence, it is not surprising that Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh should have chosen the third anniversary of the horrific bloodbath
in Mumbai on November 26, 2008, to describe Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousuf
Raza Gilani as "a man of peace" while announcing the full-fledged
resumption of the composite dialogue. He stunningly claimed the Pakistani
Army was "on board" the peace bus which in the past has inevitably
careened off the road to disaster into a deep abyss of gloom and despair.
Forgotten is the carnage, the shocking senseless
massacre of 166 people in the attacks on multiple high-profile targets by
10 Pakistani terrorists affiliated to the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba trained for their
kill-and-destroy mission by the ISI with the full knowledge of the military
establishment in Rawalpindi and the political establishment in Islamabad.
Forgotten is the grief of those who lost their husbands, wives, children in
that assault on our nation. Forgotten is the stupefying cussedness of Pakistanis
who still refuse to admit the role of their terror-sponsoring state, and the
terrorist state within that state, in planning and executing a horror that
lasted all of 60 hours. Forgotten is the mocking assertion, loathsomely stated
again and again and as recently as this past week, "Where is the evidence?
There is no credible evidence." Forgotten is Pakistan's dogged refusal
to punish the men who masterminded the mass killing, including Hafiz Mohammed
Saeed, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi and six other Lashkar-e-Tayyeba operatives, notionally
charged with planning, financing and facilitating the terrorist attack. Forgotten
is the astounding decision of the "man of peace" to remove the ban
on Jamaat-ud-Dawa'h/Lashkar-e-Tayyeba in defiance of the UN Security Council
as his pious deed on Eid-ul-Adha.
Few would remember what our cunning though
effete Prime Minister said three years ago today when he addressed a nation
shaken by the siege of Mumbai by Pakistani fidayeen in his by-now-familiar
whining, cringing tone. So here's a brief recount. Predictably, Manmohan Singh
began by expressing his "shock" at "the dastardly terror attacks".
He was not angry, he was not incandescent with rage. He was merely 'shocked'.
"I strongly condemn these acts of senseless violence," he added.
He might as well have asked his staff to replay similar faux sentiments of
'shock' expressed by him on previous occasions when terrorists had killed
Indians with wanton delight. "I share the shock and distress of all those
affected by these blasts," the Prime Minister had said on October 29,
2005, after the bombings in Delhi on Dhanteras. He was "shocked"
on March 7, 2006, after the Sankat Mochan temple bombing. On July 12, 2006,
he did not quite say that he was 'shocked' by the Mumbai commuter train bombings,
but he did say, "No one can make India kneel" and promised that
his "Government will do whatever is required" to deal with terrorism.
On hearing about the serial bombings in Jaipur on May 13, 2008, the Prime
Minister was again "shocked" and condemned "this dastardly
attack". On July 28, 2008, after visiting Ahmedabad following the serial
bombings, he took care to mention that he had accompanied his leader and patron
Sonia Gandhi before expressing "solidarity with the people of Gujarat".
On September 13, 2008, he "condemned the serial blasts in Delhi";
a month-and-a-half later, on October 30, 2008, he "strongly condemned"
the Assam bombings. It was the same "shock" that he expressed after
the Jhaveri Bazar bombing on July 13 this year.
But let's get back to November 27, 2008 when
Manmohan Singh sought to fool the people of this country by declaring, "We
are not prepared to countenance a situation in which the safety and security
of our citizens can be violated with impunity by terrorists... We will take
the strongest possible measures to ensure that there is no repetition of such
terrorist attacks." Three years later, we are still waiting for the "strongest
possible measures" which the Prime Minister promised the nation to ensure
the "safety and security" of its citizens. We are yet to get a glimpse
of what he has done so that there is "no repetition of such terrorist
attacks". Instead, what we have seen is Manmohan Singh bending over backwards
to appease the Pakistani establishment, delinking talks with Pakistan from
Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, waving aside, ever so brusquely, the concerns
of the nation to promote the interests of America whose Government's wish
- no matter what Pakistan does, no matter how many Indians are killed, India
must persist with its peace initiative - is his command, and insisting on
going down in history as the person who made love to India's enemy. There
is a pattern to Manmohan Singh's craven capitulation. There is a method to
his shameless pandering. Both can be discerned in the devious manner in which
he has repeatedly sought to cut corners with India's national interest. At
Havana, he accorded Pakistan the status of a victim, as opposed to the perpetrator,
of terrorism. At Sharm el-Sheikh, he agreed to de-link terrorism and talks.
At Addu, he offered peace at any cost.
Meanwhile, sitting in his cell at Arthur
Road Jail, Ajmal Kasab, the Butcher of Mumbai, living in far greater comfort
than he would in an ISI-managed Lashkar-e-Tayyeba camp, sniggers at us, a
nation of more than a billion people who don't tire of recalling their brave
and glorious past. It's laughable that we aspire to be a global power!
--- Follow the writer on: http://twitter.com/KanchanGupta.
Blog on this and other issues at http://kanchangupta.blogspot.com. Write to
him at kanchangupta@rocketmail.com
