Opinion Recalling Karkare

It is tempting to dismiss the latest claim of Congress General Secretary Digvijaya Singh — that Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) chief Hemant Karkare had called him a few hours before he was killed on the night of November 26,2008 to talk about the threat to his life due to his discovery of alleged Hindu extremist links to the Malegaon bomb blast — as a cheap attempt to revive a surreal conspiracy theory and stoke another controversy in this season of scandals. It is also tempting to club the former chief minister of Madhya Pradesh with other “contrarians” such as his fellow Congressman A.R. Antulay or former Maharashtra IGP S.M. Mushrif who too steadfastly suspected that there was more to Karkare’s death than a group of senior police officers literally driving into a blind alley and being ambushed by two highly trained Pakistani terrorists.While Mushrif wrote a wildly speculative book titled Who Killed Karkare? (2009),Singh had first waded into the controversy in the aftermath of Antulay,then a Union minister,saying that Karkare’s death probably had something to do with the Malegaon probe. Antulay’s comments had come within less than a month of 26/11 and Singh had sought to subtly fuel that theory. Even then,Singh had claimed that Karkare had called him a few hours before he was killed but sought to nuance his argument by saying that while he did not buy the conspiracy theory,there were people who did,which meant that he was smartly amplifying their bizarre suspicions without owning them. It is for these reasons that neither can Singh’s claim be dismissed nor he bunched with the likes of Antulay and Mushrif: he continues to play around with a sinister story despite the passage of two years since 26/11,multiple arrests in India,Pakistan,Europe and the US,a treasure trove of evidence and global acceptance of Pakistan’s role. And Singh is no Antulay or Mushrif. As the self-appointed captain of the Congress party’s B team,he has styled himself as the party’s Faustian secular spokesman even if it has meant unnecessarily rubbing his own colleagues the wrong way. His attempt since to play the same hedging game on the controversy yet again (“I never said RSS was behind 26/11”),however,falls flat in the context in which he revived the controversy. He made the comments at the December 6 launch of a book,RSS Ki Saazish? 26/11? (26/11,an RSS conspi-racy?),by Aziz Burney,editor-in-chief of Urdu Sahara newspaper.Singh may probably not be aware but,besides Antulay and Mushrif and now Burney,there are scores in Pakistan who subscribe or want to subscribe to this conspiracy theory,one that the perpetrators of 26/11 themselves tried to push in the days after the attack. This writer had met Karkare a day before he was killed and filed a news report saying that he seemed to be rather tormented by the allegations being made against him and his team for unearthing an alleged Hindu extremist link to Malegaon,including by no less a leader than the BJP’s then prime ministerial candidate,L.K. Advani (IE,November 27,2008). Hours after the report was published,it was prominently displayed on the homepage of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa,the religious cover of the outlawed Lashkar-e-Toiba,and stayed there for days. There was no commentary or explanation,but the message could not be missed. Many months later,Pakistani American Lashkar operative David Headley reportedly told his interrogators that he had bought red holy threads from a Hindu temple in Mumbai while planning for the attack and the 10 gunmen who came by boat from Karachi had tied them around their wrists. Unfortunately for Lashkar,Ajmal Kasab did not get killed as planned and damaged the key obfuscation element of its strategy. Singh may have his motives for bringing back a ghost from 26/11 to perpetrate his streak of dangerous “secular politics”. It could be the shock and awe of the pathetic Congress performance in Bihar and the big test of assembly elections in less than two years in Uttar Pradesh,whose Muslim constituency Singh has been assiduously cultivating on behalf of the Congress. Or it could be yet another attempt to light small fires all over the place to deflect attention from the inferno of the spectrum scandal. But the motive does not matter. Singh’s cynical brand of politics could once again feed the fears of the Muslim community,stoking a sense of persecution and alienation. But it may not produce any electoral dividends for the Congress if the outcome of similar attempts the party made in the late ’80s is any indication. In fact,the party may actually be better off with a little more intellectual arrogance.

yp.rajesh@expressindia.com