The real enemies

As Shri Abdur Rehman Antulay unintentionally reminded us last week, India has enemies within her borders that are more treacherous than those who come in boats from the sea. If we had a real Prime Minister, instead of one by appointment to Her Majesty the Queen, not only would the Minister for Minority Affairs be sacked, he would be tried for sedition. How dare he suggest that in the middle of the worst terrorist attack India has ever faced, our police officers are so evil that instead of fighting the terrorists they plotted to kill one of their own officers? If Antulay had any sense he would stop trying to explain why he, as a former Chief Minister of Maharashtra, made such baseless charges. He makes it worse every time he goes on television and says that he is only speaking out against those he believes sent Hemant Karkare deliberately to his death and not against the entire police force.

In Pakistan, he is the newest hero. Did they not always tell us there was no proof that those responsible for the horrors in Mumbai were Pakistani? Did Pakistan's alleged security experts not point at 'Hindu Zionists'? And, now incontrovertible proof that they were right. A Minister in the Government of India has confirmed on national television that he has doubts about who killed Karkare and that "lakhs of Indians" share his doubts. He seems not to notice that in saying this he is really saying that the Indian state is too venal to be trusted.

At least he stops there. A famous Indian novelist—whose name I will not take because it would defile this column—goes further. In the latest of her series of hysterical diatribes against India and all things Indian, she justifies the attacks on Mumbai. There is a context to everything, she says, and so we must understand that the jihadis who want to destroy India have good reason to do so. The novelist is not alone in her hatred of all things Indian. Nearly every Indian writer who has written in the Western media since the attack on Mumbai has found reasons why the jihad against India is justified. Look at our 'atrocities' in Kashmir and look at what happened in Gujarat and what about the Babri Masjid. One British newspaper went so far as to say that India used 9/11 to treat its Muslims even worse than we did before. This editorial was used by a Pakistani journalist to explain what happened in Mumbai.

Well, you know what, I am sick of it. I am sick of India being blamed all the time for everything by people who would not dare open their mouths in a country that did not offer them the freedom that India does. This freedom has not come easily. We have fought impossible odds to create a country whose fundamental principles are democracy, secularism and universal human rights. To say that we have succeeded fully would be foolish. There are flaws, failures of all kind, especially when it comes to giving everyone access to the fruits of democracy, but at least we continue trying. The country that has become the epicentre of the global jihad is still struggling to rid itself of the effects of decades of military rule. Yet, if you were to read the views of our refugee writers who make their money and win their prizes in New York and London, you would think that there was no difference between India and Pakistan.

Anyone with basic knowledge of the Indian sub-continent should know that it is not possible for groups like the Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Lashkar-e-Toiba to survive in India. Yet, our enemies within persist in spreading the canard that these violent Islamist groups are no different from the Bajrang Dal. You would have to be a real fool to believe this but because the message is spread by credible 'intellectuals' of leftist persuasion, it is believed by gullible Western journalists. It appalled me to read an editorial in the Financial Times while Mumbai was still under siege that said the terrorists could be Hindu because one of them (Kasab) wore sacred Hindu threads on his wrist.

The Indian state is corrupt, weak and incompetent but anyone who believes that it is capable of organising the attack we saw on Mumbai has to be mad. If anyone needs proof, they only need to look at the effete, namby-pamby manner in which the Indian state has dealt with the aftermath of the attack on Mumbai. Not only has it been unable to force Pakistan to act against the jihadis who fight their war against India from its soil, it has not even been able to act against the enemies within. In any other country there would be sedition trials.

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