Author: Sandhya Jain
Publication: Vijayvaani.com
Date: November 28, 2008
URL: http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=260
Commando operations to free hostages and capture
or kill the remaining terrorists are still going on in Mumbai at the time
of writing this piece, hence it would be difficult to comment upon the terror
attack with accuracy.
What we do know is that 14 police officers,
including ATS chief Hemant Karkare, Mumbai's Additional Commissioner of Police
(East) Ashok Kamte, and encounter specialist Vijay Salaskar, sacrificed their
lives unhesitatingly at the first hint of trouble in the coastal city.
This was in the finest tradition of Indian
men in uniform. The police is the citizen's first line of defence when things
go wrong, and Mumbai's force acquitted itself with honour.
All the unhappy events of the immediate past
are forgiven, but sadly cannot be forgotten as they continue to cast a shadow
over the present. Mumbai's police might have caught the terrorists moving
into high-profile hotels with gruesome equipment, doing a recce of the city's
hot spots before the midnight terrorism of 26-27 November burst upon a sleeping
city, had they been allowed to do their job professionally.
Instead, in a cynical exercise to garner minority
votes which have taken to shopping for political bargains in other markets,
the ruling NCP-Congress, backed by the UPA at the Centre, cooked up a story
of Hindu terror and tried to equate it with the monstrous international jihad
that is tearing the nation to bits. Had there been even a whit of truth in
the allegations, the truly effective method of unveiling the Hindu (sic) conspiracy
would have been to alert the Army and ask it to undertake a thorough investigation,
instead of going around arresting, and trying to arrest, all officers known
to have links with leading Hindu families like the Savarkars.
A real conspiracy involving the Army should
have been investigated quietly and handled discretely by court-martial, instead
of scandalizing the reputation of the one institution that citizens respect.
Only a cynical alignment of sleazy politicians and ingratiating bureaucrats
could have cooked up this puerile story, which fell apart with every narco-analysis,
brain mapping, lie detector test, computer data, and endless list of bizarre
suspects!
This is the time to speak loudly for the men
in uniform. To his credit, one television anchor late Thursday evening did
recall the Batla House encounter in Delhi, in which a gallant police officer
sacrificed his life and another battled for his in hospital for several weeks.
Yet, without a minute's thought for the grieving family - whose son had to
come from hospital to light the funeral pyre and return the same day - two
ugly human rights viragos sat on a dharna and called it a fake encounter!
They received instant support from all secular quarters, and this leads to
the suspicion that the "fake encounter story" was envisaged elsewhere
and peddled as part of a larger conspiracy to destabilize India.
As funds for these shrill jholawallahs invariably
come from the West or Saudi Arabia, it is time to have a national law stringently
monitoring the ingress of foreign funds, their end-use, and relationship with
anti-national activities.
An urgent imperative is to give the men in
uniform their due. The Sixth Pay Commission has hurt citizens across the country
- with its needless gratification of the IAS lobby which is widely perceived
as the root of all corruption in the country, especially political corruption,
which is not possible without a sleazy bureaucrat's brainy inputs. It is time
to give a higher ranking to the Defence Forces, the Police, the Para-military
forces, fire fighters, coast guards etc - in short, the men who defend and
rescue us in every unfortunate crisis, and who we are encouraged to forget
in time of peace. File pushers don't deserve the status they have wrested
in independent India; they got it because Jawaharlal Nehru needed a civilian
force to suppress all political and intellectual dissent in the country. As
the nation struggles to remember its erased history, a beginning should be
made by putting these parasites in place.
As Mumbai comes to terms with its current
grief, some things need to be done fast. The ATS case against Sadhvi Pragya,
Lt. Col. Purohit and others, has neither credibility nor credible evidence
- indeed, there is no case at all. Citizens should demand the government and
the courts immediately drop all charges against the accused and close this
sordid chapter for once and for all.
On our part, we who have always believed that
the ATS was misused by political masters to shatter the inter-State police
cooperation that was giving the jihadis a run for their money - a sinister
plot doubtless conceived in a foreign capital - will do our best to ensure
that the accused accept closure and do not file defamation cases against the
ATS and the State Government. In fact, we favour a "Pardon Clause"
in the law, whereby police officers who detain and interrogate persons for
terror crimes in good faith, are not made culpable if those arrested turn
out to be innocent. The war against terror cannot be won by shooting at our
own side, and politicians who indulge in such antics should be immediately
denied the luxury of Category Z security.
Meanwhile, police suggest that one of the
captured gunmen was from Pakistan's Faridkot district, and that the phones
recovered from a boat containing the dead body of the leader of the terrorists
had foreign SIM cards. The murder of the commander just prior to the attack
is one of the great mysteries of the case.
The high quality coordination that went into
planning and executing the attack that has already killed 101 persons and
wounded over 300, in some of the toniest quarters of the metropolis, suggests
commando training. Foreign governments are the natural suspects, and India
is a notoriously soft state. For sheer inanity and mediocrity, I do not know
whether to rate Dr. Manmohan Singh higher than Mr. Rahul Gandhi, or vice versa.
The simultaneous attacks on the railway station
and domestic airport and other places frequented by foreigners (nine places
in all), strengthens conviction regarding the military precision behind the
selection of targets, and possible victims, mostly Americans or British. A
man in the Harbour Bar of the Taj Mahal hotel said the attackers were not
interested in French or German guests; this suggests they were after citizens
whose countries have armies in Iraq. The Jews at Nariman House were another
target, and this is interesting.
The attack may give America, Israel, and Britain
an excuse to go after another oil-rich nation in the Gulf (no prizes for guessing
which). It may also prevent amity between New Delhi and Islamabad, mooted
by President Asif Ali Zardari with his surprise declaration of no-first-use
of nuclear weapons against India. The remark is not as off-the-cuff as projected,
and follows a signal from President-elect Barack Obama that the US will be
shifting its attention from the failures in Baghdad to new vistas (and failures)
in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Observers believe there is an American objective
to occupy parts of Pakistan in order to face China in Tibet. Yesterday, Ms.
Radha Rajan, editor, www.vigilonline, suggested she would not be surprised
if Washington moves to create an East Timor-like situation in Tibet once the
Dalai Lama passes away. She pointed to the Westernisation, de-racination,
and covert conversion among the Tibetan youth.
To this I would add only that in Dharamsala,
many key persons in the so-called freedom movement have Western Christian
wives (and no doubt foreign passports), which suggests a heavy degree of penetration
of this exile community. And, as the Government of India slept, Israeli Jews
moved in and created the entire communication system of the township, and
connected it by satellite to the outside (read Western) world. We both believe
that Beijing's awareness of this reality (the CIA has been hand-in-glove with
the Dalai Lama for decades) is behind the methodical transfer of population
in Tibet - time will tell.
Of course, Islamabad can hardly view an American
ingress with equanimity; hence President Zardari's swift move to cover his
flanks with India. But diplomacy alone will not work unless Pakistan in turn
cracks down on the mercenary jihadi gangs that are funded either by the ISI
or other foreign governments, to keep the international jihad largely confined
to India. If he means business, he will have to wipe out the bases on his
territory to demonstrate good faith, as the Myanmar Generals did with Prime
Minister Vajpayee.
It may be pertinent to mention that in recent
weeks there has been a whispering campaign to the effect that fearful of losing
power, the ruling conglomerate at the Centre will use some pretext to impose
Emergency and perpetuate itself (and its imbecile offspring). This may not
be pie-in-the-sky because this evening one of the more idiotic television
studio regulars - with close emotional ties to the ruling combine - actually
said that elections should be cancelled and restoration of law and order be
made a national priority! How convenient.
To return to Mumbai, five terrorists and 14
police personnel, including officers, have died in the operations so far.
Army and Navy commandoes are in the city, along with NSG commandoes from Delhi.
Politicians and secularists who saw the action
on their television screens in the safety of their homes, should now tell
us where is the matching Hindu Artillery - the heavy machine guns, AK-47s,
grenades, et al? Where are the professional gunmen? If Army men were involved
in the Malegaon bomb blast, why were they not direct killers; why only peddlers
of RDX (an allegation withdrawn soon after it was made)?
Many questions remain with us. The fact that
the terrorist-commandos came in two unmarked motor boats, probably via Porbander,
with explosives and other weapons, smacks of a military operation. If it did
not have a foreign policy objective of an external power, what was its purpose?
Someone has declared war on the Indian State.
Else, a proxy war is being fought in the Indian State. Either way, we need
to protect our sovereignty with a fitting response. Those who do not have
the stomach for the fight should get out of the way.
- The author is Editor, www.vijayvaani.com