Author: Tavleen Singh
Publication: Afternoon Dispatch & Courier
Date: July 28, 2011
URL: http://www.afternoondc.in/editorial/the-enemies-within/article_30998
A Television show may seem like an odd place
to make a profound political discovery but this is what happened to me last
week. I agreed to appear on Nidhi Razdan's show, left, right and centre, in
which she discusses the hot topics of the day. She invites journalists, political
analysts and politicians to express themselves on subjects she considers important
on that day.
So on Monday of last week she decided that
the two most compelling subjects were the corruption charges that currently
surround the chief minister of Karnataka and, more puzzlingly, the lessons
India can learn from the massacre in Norway. Her guests in the NDTV studio
in Delhi included Nirmala Sitaraman, the Bharatiya Janata Party's spokeswoman,
Shoma Chaudhury, editor of Tehelka and a British journalist of bleeding hearted
liberal disposition. I was in a studio in Mumbai listening to the discussion
on an earphone and participating when Nidhi gave me the chance to intervene.
Swamp of corruption
On the swamp of corruption that the Karnataka
chief minister finds himself mired in, there was general agreement that if
the BJP did not ask him to resign its campaign against corruption in the central
government would fall apart. Nirmala assured everyone that if the Lokayukta's
report on illegal mining personally indicted the chief minister he would be
ordered to resign. It was when we got to the second topic of the day that
I found myself horrified by the discussion that went on in the NDTV studio
in Delhi. Nidhi led it by saying that Anders Behring Breivik represented right
wing terrorism and that this was something we needed to deal with in India
as well. By this she meant Hindutva terrorism and within minutes she had everyone,
including the spokesperson of the BJP, agreeing that all terrorism was bad
and that it should not be linked to any religion.
Shoma of Tehelka then went into a passionate
dirge about 'innocent' Muslim boys rotting in Indian jails and about how only
when it came to jihadi acts of violence was an act of terror linked to religion.
The consensus among Nidhi's panelists was that Hindutva terrorism was more
of a threat to India than Islamist terrorism with the British journalist pointed
out that someone as clever and informed as Rahul Gandhi had informed the American
ambassador,
as reported by Wikileaks, that he was more worried about majority communalism
in India than about any threats from across the border.
In vain did I try pointing out that the reason
why jihadi terrorism was linked to Islam was because it was the terrorists
who called themselves holy warriors for Islam. In vain did I try reminding
my fellow panelists that the jihadi groups committing acts of violence in
India were created by the ISI and that this meant that they had the might
of the Pakistani army behind them. Nidhi's panelists, led by the very verbose
Shoma, were convinced that 'saffron' terror as it has come to be known was
the biggest threat to India. While listening to them I realized, more than
ever before, that India's biggest enemies are Indian opinion makers and our
leftist intellectuals.
To compare Hindutva terrorism with jihadi
terrorism is to diminish Pakistan's undeclared war against India that is being
fought by the jihadi groups it created with the specific purpose of destroying
India. Even before David Headley confirmed it, Indian intelligence services
have known that the 10 killers who came to Mumbai on November 26, 2008 were
mere pawns in a game played by powerful men sitting in Pakistan. On cellphones
they guided every move the 10 terrorists made right down to when they should
eat and drink and when they should resign themselves to martyrdom. Before
the last terrorist, Fahadullah, died in the Oberoi Hotel his master in Islamabad
told him to tell the Indian media that what happened on 26/11 was only a trailer
and that they should be prepared to see the full movie soon. Even the Pakistani
government has found it hard to deny that the Pakistani army has been responsible
for creating groups like Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. And, there
is evidence that it was the ISI that helped create indigenous jihadi groups
like the Indian Mujahideen.
In the cause of the jihad against India these
groups have killed hundreds of innocent Indians in temples, bazaars, hotels
and even hospitals. Does this compare with the two or three terrorist incidents
we have seen that involved Hindu terrorists?
Yet, not only do our leftist intellectuals
make this comparison but so do important politicians. The Home Minister said
last week that he thought the BJP was targeting him in the 2G spectrum scam
only because he was investigating acts of terrorism that involved leading
members of the RSS.
As for Rahul Gandhi's mentor, Digvijay Singh, he has hinted on more than one
occasion that he believes that it was the RSS who organized the attack on
Mumbai. He went so far, not long ago, to go on a book tour with an author
who wrote a book called 26/11: an RSS plot.
Ultimate achievement
The ultimate achievement of these Indian
spokesmen of jihadi terrorism is that most Pakistanis that I have met express
serious doubts about whether Pakistanis were in fact involved in the Mumbai
attack. I have spoken to Pakistani taxi drivers in Dubai who have said they
believe that 26/11 was the work of Indian intelligence agencies and I have
spoken to educated Pakistanis who share this view. To strengthen their case
they invariably quote Indian politicians or Indian journalists.
Tehelka is possibly more popular in Pakistan
than it is in India and why should it not be since its major claim to fame
was a sting operation (more entrapment than sting) that put defence purchases
by India's armed forces on hold for more than five years. It routinely promotes
the cause of jihadis and Maoists and nearly always has something bad to say
about anything that has the word Hindu in it. After I appeared on Nidhi's
show I received a small floodgate of tweets from twitterers who had seen the
show asking if I knew where Tehelka got its funding from. I do not and nor
do I care to speculate but what I will say is that most of Tehelka's investigative
journalism seems designed to prove that India is as failed a state as Pakistan
and that Indian democracy is mostly a sham. It is a viewpoint that is beginning
to get on my last nerve.
