The belief that going after criminals behind bomb blasts is in conflict with being “secular” is perhaps the most “communal” thought to have. It is understandable if the BJP says it, they have been shrewd and true to their politics with their projection and soundbites on security. But for the Centre to meet that politics with silence is like walking into their parlour. 

Several sketches and names have been released of possible suspects and plenty has also been said on the home minister’s sartorial sense. All of this converges to give an impression that, somehow, the opposition is all about “tough” stuff and that this government (like the Saatchi & Saatchi line for the opposition Labour party in the days of the coal miners’ strike in the UK) “ain’t working”.

This is not about the absence of a committee or commission, but of leadership. It may be banal but nevertheless relevant to hark back to some examples of leadership. Like the other Congress home minister, Sardar Patel, who negotiated with about 500 princely states (in about 500 ways) to stitch together the idea of India, at the time the developed world was laughing at us. Then there was the first prime minister, who is said to have stood at the gates of Birla House, with car floodlights, to try and calm the crowds in the crisis that the Mahatma’s assassination had threatened to usher in. Or even the heroic act of Indira Gandhi refusing to take off two Sikh security officers guarding her on grounds of a “threat” to her life, just months before her assassination.

... contd.