While profiling of any community is bad, it should equally be imprudent to profile one for being a permanent victim. In the business of democratic, secular, one-law-for-all system of governance, all citizens and communities must be equal and innocent unless proven otherwise. Or let me put it even more simply: just because you cannot simply presume a person to be a terrorist because he belongs to a particular community, you cannot presume a suspect to be innocent just because he happens to come from ‘a’ particular community. The question the prime minister needs to ask/answer is, has his government — and, even more precisely, the political formulation that keeps it in power — been true to this test?

IT is a cruel question to ask a government which has a record of complete, total, ‘spotless’ failure in cracking any of the major terrorist attacks that have taken place on its watch in three full years. Not in one single case — most significant of which, of course, is the Mumbai train bombings — has this government been able to catch any suspects and charge them. Even by the usually dismal standards of Indian policing, this record is remarkable. Terror attacks in Malegaon, Jama Masjid in Delhi, Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad, Ayodhya, Samjhauta Express, Sankat Mochan Mandir in Varanasi, the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Sarojini Nagar in New Delhi have all gone fully unresolved. And these were no minor attacks, these have claimed nearly 300 lives in what is generally considered a phase of

India-Pakistan thaw.

The issue here is not of comparisons with its predecessor, who the UPA accuses of communalising the phenomenon of terrorism, of tarring one community and victimising citizens belonging to it. But has the UPA itself been guilty of the same charge, though in reverse? Has it served itself, and India, well by communalising the very approach to the fight against terrorism? Ask the police forces in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Hyderabad, the counter-terror veterans in the intelligence agencies and even the army, and the answer will stare you in the face. After the attacks they faced in the first flush of the Mumbai rail attacks for ‘targeting’ Muslims and the hurry in which they were forced to call off the searches and interrogations have put the fear of God in the minds of securitymen. Politics is much too complicated for them to figure, and fighting this kind of terror is an unconventional and risky business at the best of times. They have simply concluded that this is not the time to take those risks. This is reverse-communalisation of the fight against terror and the responsibility for this lies not so much with the security machinery, or the Union home ministry which controls it, as it does with this peculiar minority-ist politics the Congress has fallen prey to. So the question to ask the prime minister is, if it is wrong and unfair to profile any community as terrorist, must you always consider a suspect innocent just because he belongs to a community, and if so, is the motive just fair, constitutional secularism, or a misplaced quest for vote banks?

You ask experienced Congress ministers and they are both embarrassed and concerned. They know they have allowed their allies, particularly the Left, to ‘secularise’ the agenda of governance so aggressively, it has now become communalism in reverse and both the Congress and India will be made to pay for it. Nobody today even claims any of these attacks were the handiwork of anybody but ultra-Islamic groups, howsoever small and minuscule. A few more such attacks, God forbid, a soft, this kind of politically loaded approach towards them, along with issues like Afzal’s hanging, will be seen to be a repeat of the old “biryani for terrorists” story.

THE harsh political reality is that this will only harm the Congress. As popular insecurity grows, with unsolved terror attacks — for three years already — and increasing Naxal mayhem, the mainstream (as different from majority community) Indian voter will blame the Congress for incompetence. And the traditional Muslim vote, already taken by Mulayam, Mayawati, the Left and now even Nitish, will remain where it is. Senior Congressmen also know this. But so stifling is the compulsion to sustain this government for two more years, come what may, and so compelling still the nostalgia for the Muslim vote bank, that nobody is willing to question this even at the party’s top forums.

This presidential election is a good example of how the Congress has handed over to the Left the authority to certify any of its leaders and actions as secular or non-secular. So its home minister is not qualified for presidency not because his police and spooks failed to catch any terrorist in three years, but because he is a devotee of Sathya Sai Baba and was ‘soft’ (fair?) with the BJP when speaker of the Lok Sabha. As if this country has banned religion, or God, or godmen! Which party allows its senior-most leaders to be humiliated in public like that? And why? And finally, if the man’s secular commitment is so suspect, how can he continue to be the presiding deity of law and order in the entire country?

The fact is, the Congress knows there is no problem with Patil’s secularism. It is just that it has now painted itself into a corner where the secular commitment of anybody is now to be certified by the Left. And what applies to individuals applies to policies as well. Those of us who had stuck our necks out and underlined the dangers of communalising our foreign policy can now draw some perverse I-told-you-so joy. Unfortunately, the same communalisation that distorted our foreign policy is now beginning to damage our internal security policy. It is a matter of time before it begins to blight our economic policy as well. The prime minister is much too wise not to figure that. But even someone as patient and skilful as he is may find it tough to cut through this ideological fog shrouding his party and government now. This continuing failure on internal security and reverse-communalisation of the entire UPA political discourse will strengthen Hindu communal forces, and any gain in Muslim votes, if at all, won’t come to the Congress, which now faces the old predicament of na khuda hi mila, na visal-e sanam.

sg@expressindia.com