Author: Tarun Vijay
Publication: The Times of India
Date: October 31, 2007
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Columnists/Tarun_Vijay/The_Right_View/Who_wins_if_India_loses/articleshow/msid-2504424,curpg-1.cms
"When an American leader goes down a
certain road, he stakes his prestige on the ability to get it executed. So
in that sense, it [failure of the nuke deal with India] would undoubtedly
be a setback," Henry Kissinger.
Americans are patriotic people and their leaders
know the address where they have to reach. Hence there's an all-out effort
to save the deal, and save American stakes. Americans are meeting every one
who could salvage a dying deal at the last moment. Even Democrats, dead enemies
of the Republicans and hopeful for bagging the next Presidency, voted in favour
of the nuke deal in US Senate for 'national interest'. For their national
interest of course, two warring camps of the political scene unitedly pursued
one agenda.
Try to replace American in the above lines
with Indian and see what scene emerges?
Here we are, refusing to talk to the other
Indian and perpetually shackled to dead ends as far as common national interest
are concerned. When the nation should be furiously debating its long-term
security goals and options, we get nauseatingly revolting sting operations
just to influence a state's elections by digging pits and broadening divides
amongst people.
The security and stability of a nation never
depends on the military warehouses but on the people's will and solidarity
in times of crises. Can a nation like ours, surrounded by serious threats
from East to far West and bleeding internally from wounds inflicted by Maoist
and jihadi terror strikes, afford to waste time in trivial ego clashes and
nurturing personal political ambitions, as if India is not a one billion people's
civilisational idea but a shopping mall to be used for comfort and conveniences?
For once, I would appreciate the way L K Advani
and Rajnath Singh stood politely firm on their stand when an octogenarian
US 'warship' Henry Kissinger met them. He came as a nationalist American working
to help his country; remember his role during Nixon years and 1971.So we need
not go gaga over his gesture to see our leaders. For us, our interest should
come first and that should be decided rising above political laxman rekhas
.
If they can stand united for an American stand,
we must have a better solidarity and look at Indira (who stood firm against
Kissinger's tactics and Nixon's repellent attitude) or Manmohan as Indian
Prime Ministers and not as Congress leaders. And it applies on both sides.
I must quote historian and writer Margaret MacMillan, whose book Nixon and
Mao' has just been released. She says," The mark of a great leader is
to know when to pocket your pride and risk your reputation". This is
the time when Indian leaders showed that mettle in the real national interest.
Prof. Rajendra Singh was a scientist of repute
and head of the Physics department of Allahabad University in early fifties,
before he became third Sarsanghchalak (Chief) of the RSS. He used to say,
those who want to reach Thiruvananthapuram, don't get into skirmishes at Bhopal,
meaning the long range traveller avoids mid-way distractions. What we see
on the Indian political scene is a complete lack of long-term goals and an
ambitious, grand vision for the nation.
The best that could have happened in today's
battle-torn nation is a strategic partnership between the only two parties
today that have a pan-national vision.
Issues affecting the nation should weigh heavier
than those influencing the private fortunes of political parties. We can't
allow regional and parochial parties with narrow outlooks to govern the destiny
of the nation. National goals should override local interests and that demands
maturity and sacrifice from leaders who love their nation more than they love
their popularity. Think, if on the nuke deal, Treasury Benches and the Opposition,
like the Congress and the BJP, decide to talk without prejudice and take a
consensual line in the nation's long-term interest defeating Leftist blackmailing,
or help devise a strategy about China and Pakistan and the security ring around
the Indian waters and an approach that builds a channel without hurting heritage
and security issues, will that be a loss to the nation and gain to the parties
or gain to everyone and loss to the foes of a united people's republic ? If
we can talk to the butcher of Kargil and praise Communist Beijing even while
negotiating the bitterest border issues, why can't we talk in a congenial
atmosphere to our own Indians, belonging to different political set-ups but
sharing the dreams for India and swearing to work for the nation's progress,
unambiguously ?
But instead we get stuck elsewhere. The way
Gujarat riots were re-lived on TV screens, should it be replied in a 'bounden
act of duty' of the opposite camp to show as many ghastly events to embarrass
their political foes?
If politicians are settled in their widely
accepted image of being self-centric, media barons too fall for the TRP traps
and, increasingly, considerations other than journalistic seem to be driving
their 'exposes' causing serious concerns amongst well meaning warriors of
pen.
Our Prime Minister was killed at nine am this
day on October 31, 1984, by her body guards, putting the entire nation in
a shell-shocked state. Prophetically her last words in a rally were, "I
don't mind if my life goes in the service of the nation. If I die today, every
drop of my blood will invigorate the nation." Immediately, as the news
spread like wildfire, Sikhs were targeted every where, but mostly in Delhi.
A few lines from a Times of India report will put the date in context -,'
India is ablaze with hate and anger. In city after city from one corner of
the country to the other enraged mobs have gone and are going about systematically
burning and looting Sikh properties and assaulting Sikhs without discrimination."
Showing all that on TV screens by the socially-motivated,
passionate and angry anchors with that famous statement in the background,
'When a giant tree falls, the earth below shakes," would certainly increase
their TRP ratings but also revive unsavoury questions. Should we welcome all
that for political gain -- in the name of some kind of campaign -- journalism
and coloured myopic view points? Where will all this lead us to?
Ironically, the present political masters
and media consider only the religious side of such carnages significant and
refuse to look at it from the human perspective. Whether people killed in
Godhra train, 58 of them, suffocated and burnt alive in a locked-up compartment
made of steel and wood and foam, or brutally assaulted thereafter in the rest
of Gujarat, or roasted alive with burning tyres hung on their necks in 1984
- were they all not children of Mother India? But taking up one religious
segment and insultingly humiliating the other creates unpardonable fissures.
Those who accepted and created India's division
are now dividing the Indian people, even their dead, on religious lines. What
greater sin can be imagined now?
In fact such massacres and killings and riots
become a good business opportunity for the secular journalists and filmmakers.
They write books for international publishing houses, make films, documentaries,
exhibitions, present victims in widely publicised conferences on peace and
harmony, like the famous Muslim tailor with folded hands and a butcher-looking
Hindu with a saffron headband. The setting is perfect to bag awards internationally
by depicting Hindus as savages, new avatars of Hitler and Idi Amin. A network
helps to have rave reviews and their 'courage' is well appreciated. The number
of NGOs working against the Hindus in Hindustan must be quite larger than
those who are working to help victims of Kashmir's Jihad and Maoist 'revolution'.
One such 'revolutionary 'act has hogged the
headlines when I am writing this column. The 'friends of the proletariat'
and uncompromising adherents of Mao-Tse-Tung, Lenin and Stalin, the Naxals
and Maoists have killed eighteen people in Jharkhand on 26 th October in their
attempt to bring their kind of 'revolutionary rule of the proletariat' closer.
One of the victims was a young son of BJP's former chief minister Babu Lal
Marandi.
I am sure nobody shall do a sting operation
on the brutal killers or their supporters controlling the state power, the
central government and the secular network of 'soldiers against communalism'.
A little information about our gun-toting
'revolutionaries', cowards like their jihadi butcher friends who strike at
midnight and show their boneless manhood on children and women, would be enlightening
at this point.
The Communist Party Marxist Leninist-Peoples'
War( CPML-PW) and the Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCCI) have continued
to spearhead the Naxal violence in the country, accounting for about 91 per
cent of the country-wide violence and 89 per cent of the resultant deaths.
( Source:-Ministry of Home Affairs-MHA )
Of the total 12,476 police stations in the
country, Naxal violence has been reported from 395 police stations (2006).
It's bleeding India both physically and economically. Just read these lines
from the latest report of the MHA, " A Standing Committee was constituted
under the chairmanship of the Union Home Minister with the Chief Ministers
of 13 Naxal-affected States as its members. In order to enhance the capabilities
of the Naxal-affected States ....the Central Government had included 55 Naxal-affected
districts in 9 States under the Backward Districts Initiative (BDI) component
of the Rashtriya Sam Vikas Yojana (RSVY) and had provided financial assistance
of Rs.2, 475 crores. ..under the Police Modernisation Scheme to modernise
their police forces... the Central Government have released an amount of Rs.3,677.67
crores to the Naxal-affected States."
Incidents of Communist-Naxal terrorism
| |
2003 |
2004 |
2005* |
2006 |
| No. of incidents |
1597 |
1533 |
1608 |
1509 |
| No. of civilians killed |
410 |
466 |
524 |
521 |
| No. of policemen killed |
105 |
100 |
153 |
157 |
| No. of Naxalites killed |
216 |
87 |
25 |
272 |
(* Reconciled figures for 2005 (source MHA
2006-07 report)
Isn't it something that should attract the
attention of all our efforts to combat and eliminate the menace decisively?
Where is the will and the inclination to do that? Isn't it because of a certain
influential section in media and politics has sympathies with the killers
of the red hue, and they not only scuttle any attempt to defeat the red terrorists
but also romanticise their barbarities in the name of a 'red revolution'?
The present government is more inclined to target the patriotic forces of
Hindutva than take a firm stand against Naxals and jihadis . For them pardoning
Afzal, sheltering Maoists, facilitating Bangladeshi infiltrators and Church-supported
separatist terrorists of NSCN(IM) is a secular dharma .
In the end India loses. But who wins?
The author is the editor of Panchjanya, a Hindi weekly brought out by the
RSS. The views expressed are his personal.
