Restrain the war mongers

The much touted Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance (Poto) failed to avert December 13. But the vigilance and professionalism shown by the police succeeded in averting what could have been a national catastrophe. While a young member of Parliament from Orissa was honest enough to admit that his first impulse on hearing the gunshots was to run for cover, a lady constable did not think about herself or her tiny tots as she challenged the terrorists. She and six others laid down their lives so that those abominable characters could not enter the sacred precincts of Parliament.

Come to think of it, the terrorists could not have accomplished what they have if the person who sold the car had shared his suspicion with the police, instead of taking a photograph of the buyer, only to compare it with the pictures of the slain terrorists. In that case, the police could have hunted them down even before they strapped their bodies and the vehicle with the incendiary stuff. It is a grim reminder that no law, however harsh it may be, is a deterrent for the criminals, particularly when they harbour notions of heavenly bliss in the company of nubile virgins after their ‘‘martyrdom’’. Only an enlightened citizenry who act in concert with a vigilant law and order machinery can meet their challenge.

It is incidental that the terrorists who struck at Parliament and their alleged collaborators are Muslims, whose beliefs are at variance with that of the devout, who find no contradiction between modernity and Islam and between Islam and secularism. Without going into the reasons that compel them to become terrorists, is it not strange that little effort is being made to fathom the Muslim mind and use their goodwill to counter terrorism? Do our intelligence organisations like the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) have enough Muslims on their payrolls who will be in a better position to gather such intelligence? Or are we like the British who trusted only their own people or the Anglo-Indians for intelligence jobs and to run railway engines? It took several years for the Delhi police to lift the unofficial ban on recruitment of policemen from a particular community after two of its members took the law into their own hands to avenge the desecration of their holiest of shrines at Amritsar.

Needless to say, the ultimate weapon against terrorism is not Poto but the unity of the people. But do we foster unity when we allow political forces to preach hatred against fellow citizens whose only fault is the accident of their birth in a particular religion? When the Bajrang Dal is allowed to distribute lakhs of trishuls among its cadres, when VHP leaders are allowed to violate the prohibitory orders in force in Ayodhya and when those who ransack cinema theatres showing films they do not approve of, like Fire, are treated leniently, it does not foster unity. No such leniency is showed to those who campaigned against US multinationals in Malegaon, the students who distributed anti-US pamphlets on the university campus and the maverick Delhi Municipal Councillor who pasted his walls with Osama bin Laden’s pictures at a time when the US had not produced any evidence against the Al-Qaeda chief and he was not a wanted criminal in India.

Unity cannot be achieved when, post-September 11, the government publishes an advertisement that carries pictures of only instances of ‘‘Islamic’’ terrorism, overlooking worse instances of ‘‘Hindu’’ and ‘‘Sikh’’ terrorism, if at all terrorism can be described in such religious terms. And to make matters worse, no step is taken against those who threaten to start construction at Ayodhya on a particular date no matter what the court decides or does not decide. It is this failure of the state to apply the law universally and impartially that raises doubts about the bona fides of the government. Think of it, Poto would not have faced the problems it faces now if its forerunner, Tada, was used against terrorists and not to incarcerate a large number of Muslims in Gujarat for minor violat- ions of law. When those in power claim that no matter what happens to Poto, the ruling party already stands to gain from the ordinance in the coming UP elections, they do not have national unity in mind.

Home Minister L.K. Advani has in the wake of December 13 made a comparison of the patriotism of Indians with that of Americans. He compared the manner in which the relatives of the passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines aircraft brought pressure on the government that ultimately resulted in the release of three terrorists with the resoluteness, unity and determination the Americans showed in facing the challenge September 11 posed. Whatever be the justification of such comparison, one must not overlook the point that the US is the most multicultural society. Does this not expose the hollowness of the Sangh Parivar’s one-nation-one-law-one-language argument in support of patriotism?

The day Advani’s interview appeared, newspapers carried reports of a 54-year-old American woman being sentenced for 30 days in prison for shouting racial slurs at two Sikhs and trying to pull a turban from the head of one of them. The full might of the law is now being used against the xenophobic American who stabbed a Sikh to death. It will not be long before justice will be done in this case too. But what about our own record? The number of people who took part in the pogrom of the Sikhs in Delhi in 1984 must be several times more than the 3,000 or so who were killed in two days. Those who have the blood of innocent Sikhs on them are all leading normal lives in the Capital, some of them as legislators, political leaders and government officials. Similarly, thousands of Muslims were killed in Mumbai and elsewhere following the frenzy created by the demolition at Ayodhya. Commissions like Sri Krishna have gone into these mayhems but there is no possibility of the state ever laying its hands on the killers.

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has rightly deprecated the practice of indoctrinating young minds while delivering the convocation address at Shantiniketan. The extent of such Talibanisation can be gauged from the report that in Afghan school textbooks, the alphabet ‘A’ stood for AK-47 and not apples, ‘B’ for bombs, ‘T’ for Talibs and ‘I’ for infidels. While condemning the method, can we gloss over the teachings in Shishu Bharati schools where even arithmetic is taught using Hindutva terminology?

In the competitive patriotism spawned by December 13, even leaders who have been sensible are dropping their guard and advocating strong arm methods against Pakistan. They claim to represent public opinion. But if leaders are merely articulators of public opinion, what about their role as moulders of public opinion? It is on occasions like these that leaders should show statesmanship by decrying those who argue for hot pursuits and precision bombings. Now over to Vajpayee.

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