The enemy within

IF the Gujarat police failed to arrest VHP and Bajrang Dal activists named in FIRs for instigating mob violence against helpless Muslims, it is hardly surprising, considering that the authorities and the Hindu lumpen were inextricably linked.

A central government intelligence report notes that Prabhatsinh Chauhan, state tourism minister, was travelling in the Panchmahals region on February 28 inciting Hindus to take revenge for the Godhra massacre.

The role of three state ministers who were present at the Ahmedabad police control room during the riots is also suspect, considering the police’s shameful record in failing to come to the rescue of the victims of the carnage in the first two days.

Different strokes

PRIME Minister Vajpayee is not just up against a recalcitrant VHP — many in his own party do not see eye to eye with him on Ayodhya. Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi, for instance, kept issuing instructions to the UP state government, contradicting the central government’s order after the Godhra massacre that the 16,000 kar sevaks in Ayodhya had to leave the city.

Even Home Minister L K Advani, under pressure from the Sangh Parivar, at one stage telephoned UP Chief Minister Rajnath Singh instructing that officials relax the ban on the entry of the VHP followers into the temple town. After the UP authorities requested clear cut instructions, the prime minister had to clarify that the order to evacuate kar sevaks stood.

In the present crisis, Advani is caught in the middle. Hardliners in his own party find Joshi far more amenable to their bidding, while the Opposition has targeted Advani for the breakdown of law and
order in Gujarat.

Unwanted kudos

IT was praise Congress president Sonia Gandhi could have done without. Ramchandra Paramhans, the Ayodhya priest, was so furious with Vajpayee’s refusal to give the go ahead for the Ram temple construction that he dubbed him a new convert to Islam.

He protested angrily that the BJP’s record in helping build the temple was much worse than that of the Congress. At least the Congress had lifted the lock on the Babri masjid, permitted shilanyas and during Narasimha Rao’s time acquired the land around the disputed site.

The Congress was so anxious to distance itself from the Hindutva elements that when the Kanchi Shankaracharya sent word that he would like to speak to Sonia on the proposed formula for the temple she declined, to the embarrassment of self appointed intermediaries like Romesh Bhandari and Ranganath Mishra.

Computer unsavvy

THE MEA claims proudly that all its passport offices except Patna are computerised. Which makes one wonder why we are all still filling out five different copies of the same information along with seven photographs if the technology has been modernised.

Computerisation in most passport offices is still rather notional. Computers are used largely for providing receipts and entering the dates on which the forms are received. The actual passport files continue to move manually since the forms are not scanned and fed into the computer.

No wonder that though the MEA says that you can get a new passport made within 45 days you are lucky if you get it in three months. The passport office blames the police checks for delays. But in New Delhi, at any rate, it was ironically the Delhi Police’s Special Force, handicapped by a minimal number of computers, which initiated the procedure for computerising the dates for receiving and dispatching the files.

Necessary go-between

DEFENCE Minister George Fernandes was responsible for involving the Kanchi Shankacharya in the Ayodhya temple dispute. Relations between Vajpayee and the VHP leaders like Ashok Singhal had become so strained that it was difficult for them to talk directly to each other and it was felt that the best course was to bring in the Shankaracharya.

Compared to his predecessor Shankaracharya Chandrashekhar Saraswati, who was so austere that he never ate fried food and travelled only by foot, Jayendra Saraswati is a modern age guru who flies in planes, watches television, talks on cell phones and is extremely media savvy.

Jayendra Saraswati ticked off the VHP for its rigid posturing and sarcastically pointed out that there were enough disused temples in need of renovation which they could first focus their attention on. Incidentally, he was very annoyed with the airport authorities for putting his wooden staff through the security scanner.

Separate and unequal

ONE of the proposals of the S K Lambah committee is that the foreign secretary should have a fixed tenure of two years to ensure continuity in policy making.

While the MEA is likely to accept the recommendation, Foreign Secretary Chokila Iyer, who is slated to retire in June, will not be a beneficiary of the new rule.

But even before the MEA has cleared the proposal some in the IAS are beginning to quibble. If the foreign secretary is given a minimum two-year tenure then so should all secretaries to the GOI, is the fallacious argument.

Apparently the IAS does not want to equate the cabinet secretary’s post, which has a fixed tenure, with that of the post of the foreign secretary.

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