Author: Dr Jay Dubashi
Publication: The Organiser
Date: April 11, 2010
URL: http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=339&page=6
The trouble with men like Chidambaram and
Manmohan Singh is that they are pen-pushers, taking hours to draft letters
in Oxford English, which even the Britishers have forgotten. They can prepare
wonderful drafts, as Nehru used to do, while addressing his ambassadors. But
there the whole thing ends. Nehru could have written a wonderful note on how
to defend our northern borders from the Chinese. But the Chinese, like the
Americans, do not read notes. John Kennedy could not write even a short sentence
correctly. They read guns and missiles, and they know how to differentiate
a phoney world you read about in the books from the real world.
IT is time Prime Minister Manmohan Singh got
himself a new home minister. The current HM, P. Chidambaram, is a disaster,
a man who is long on talk and short on action, like most Congressmen. He has
no idea what is happening in the country, or, for that matter, outside the
country, and though he makes great play that he is close to the United States-maybe
because he spent a few years there-the fact remains that the US government
has little use for him. Of what use is such a home minister?
Take the latest case of David Coleman Headley,
apparently a double agent who has worked and probably still works for both
the US and Pakistan, and takes money from both. He has confessed his part
in the Mumbai bombings of 26/11 and received what amounts to a pardon from
both his masters. The Americans have agreed to Headley's condition-mark you,
it is a condition, not plea-that he will not be extradited to India, which
means he will be out of bounds for Chidambaram & Co from now onwards.
On paper, Indians can question him through
video conferencing and similar gimmicks. Anyway, that is what Chidambaram
says, but Chidambaram's credibility in this matter is zero. After all, Headley
has come to terms with US authorities without Chidambaram & Co knowing
about it, let alone being consulted. They may be able to question him on the
screen, but they will not be able to touch him or see even his toe-nail. David
Coleman Headley has vanished without trace and there is nothing Chidambaram
& Co can do about it, though his crime was committed in India, and Chidambaram
happens to be India's home minister. As far as Indians are concerned, David
Coleman, or whatever his real name is, is just a shadow on the screen which
Indians will not even be able to touch.
All this has been arranged by the Americans
directly with Headley, who is their man and also their employee, without a
word leaking to Indians in Delhi. Chidambaram, for all his torrent of verbiage
after the deal was signed, did not have the faintest idea of what was happening
behind his back far away in Washington, or maybe in Langley, the CIA headquarters.
For, as far as the Americans are concerned, Chidambaram simply did not count.
The deal is simply between the US government and their spy, and men like Chidambaram
have no place in it.
Remember that Headley is a double agent -
a CIA man as well as a spy for Pakistan. Whatever he did in Mumbai and elsewhere,
he must have done with the tacit understanding, if not permission or consent,
of either the Americans or the Pakistanis, or both. If the Americans knew
it, why didn't they alert Delhi? They are not telling now either, nor handing
over Headley to us, because if Headley talks, he will tell us much more than
is good for the Americans as well as Pakistanis. So, he has to keep his mouth
shut, and the only way to do so in put him in jail, see that he does not fall
into the hands of Indians, and finally probably get rid of him for all time
to come.
Chidambaram says that, under the agreement,
Headley is supposed to tell us everything. If Chidambaram can believe that,
he can believe anything. Headley will be in jail, serving a so-called life
sentence, US jail, not Indian jail, and when he is brought into the hall before
the video screen, nobody will be able to tell whether he is the red Headley
or his double. We won't be able to touch him, even see him in flesh and blood.
We won't know whether the man we are talking to is indeed Headley. But Chidambaram
will be able to tell the Parliament that we were able to question the spook.
What a story!
Five or six years from now, Headley will receive
a fresh passport, a new ID, maybe a new face through plastic surgery, and
the crook will be back in Colaba roaming through the smelly alleys behind
the Taj which he so loves. And there will be a news item in an obscure Virginia
newspaper that a man called Headley, or David, or Coleman, died in prison
this morning and God have mercy on his soul. And Chidambaram will adjust his
snow-white mundu, and fell the channels in Delhi that Headley is dead. Case
solved!
Assume, for the sake of argument, that the
boot was on the other foot, and that Headley was an Indian spy and was involved
in the 9/11 attack in New York city. What would Americans have done? Would
they have written scores of letters to New Delhi - The kind of begging letters
Chidambaram has written to Washington - asking to hand over Headley to them?
Would they have sent emissaries to Delhi every few days to pray for more information
on Headley? They would have done nothing of the kind. Remember these are the
people who sent a whole army to Afghanistan and reduced Kabul to rubble just
because the terrorists who brought down the twin towers came from Afghanistan's
Al Qaida.
The Americans would have taken the first plane
to Delhi, ask Chidambaram to receive them at Palam, and walk straight into
his or Manmohan Singh's office and ask them to hand over Headely to them,
or else. They would have come with a contingent of Marines - not a whole army
as in the case of Afghanistan - parked them on the lawns of the Home Ministry,
and rattled their guns along the Rajpath. They know that Indians shiver, particularly
Indians who have gone to Harvard or Cambridge, when they see guns, real guns,
in the hands of a white man. And with the Marines marching up and down the
Rajpath, Chidambaram would have meekly handed over Headely to them on a platter
and asked the Americans, "Mere Liye Kuch Sewa?"
The trouble with men like Chidambaram and
Manmohan Singh is that they are pen-pushers, taking hours to draft letters
in Oxford English, which even the Britishers have forgotten. They can prepare
wonderful drafts, as Nehru used to do, while addressing his ambassadors. But
there the whole thing ends. Nehru could have written a wonderful note on how
to defend our northern borders from the Chinese. But the Chinese, like the
Americans, do not read notes. John Kennedy could not write even a short sentence
correctly. They read guns and missiles, and they know how to differentiate
a phoney world you read about in the books from the real world. This is why
America is a powerful country with armies in almost every corner of the world,
and that is also why we are not. Our world is confined only to dusty files
and now, to the inanities on the TV. When Chidambaram appears on the TV channels
and makes faces, he thinks he is addressing the world. Actually nobody is
interested in him, except the men who adjust their cameras and take shots.
The real world has better things to do.
It is not only the Mumbai attacks of 26/11.
it is now nearly two months since the bombs went off near German Bakery in
Pune and the state home minister, like the union home minister, says that
investigations are going on. Chidambaram says that the state authorities were
duly told about a likely attack on German bakery but the state Home Minister,
not a particularly bright chap, says that they never heard anything from Delhi.
And Headley, who seems to have been everywhere, was in Pune too, and stayed
a whole day in a hotel near the bakery and whose fingers can be seen all over
the place.
The Westerners treat us like nobodies, because
we ourselves think we are nobodies. When you bend and cringe before foreigners,
like well-behaved dogs, the foreigners think we are another canine species-and
treat us accordingly. Here is a double agent who murders two hundred Indians
and others in the heart of Mumbai and quietly walks away and all our home
minister can do is twiddle his thumbs and talk about video conferences. Can
anything be more shameful?
- (The writer can be contacted at 301, Mani
Kanchan Apts, Kanchan Galli, Law College Road, Pune-411004)
