Hyderabad In the blood

Will politics of terror policing change?

So do we add Hyderabad to the list now? The list of major terrorist outrages that may remain unsolved when the UPA, its term-time dependant on how the strange politics at the Centre plays out, demits office. The May 18 terrorist incident at Hyderabad’s Mecca Masjid has still not been traced to its perpetrators. This is part of a pattern that, of course, is explained partly by local factors.

The underlying common explanation is however to be found at the Centre. The message to security agencies everywhere is that between erring on the side of investigative zeal and politically correct ineffectual policing the former is by far the worse offence. No one is suggesting that the police and other agencies be not held accountable or that some form of community profiling does not sometimes bias investigators.

But the solution is surely not the home ministry signaling that it is far more important for security agencies to be nice than effective.Hyderabad’s local factor deserves a separate mention. YSR Reddy, otherwise among the better Congress chief ministers, was instrumental in giving violent outlaws who claim to be political radicals, aka Naxalites, a state welcome out of police encirclement. This touchy feely approach to internal security is linked to the kind of politics that doesn’t allow penalising political allies who overtly attack civil liberties in the name of religion.

The Congress has had a good time accusing the BJP of helplessness and/or complicity in the context of antics by its political fellow travelers. The Congress can be accused of the same thing. Witness the confidence with which UPA allies who targeted Taslima Nasreen in Hyderabad move about.The Hyderabad attack is also another sharp reminder of terror’s Southern dimension. There are two elements, surely not wholly disconnected: militant Muslim politicians, often encouraged by mainstream parties, gaining ground and the South becoming a recruitment hub for terror.

Many mainstream politicians welcomed the recent acquittal of the main accused in the Coimbatore blasts despite the fact that the person in question isn’t exactly a votary of secular, reasonable politics. The Congress reckons there are votes in what can be bluntly called communalisation of internal security. That assumes ordinary people will always remain indifferent to the prospect of getting slaughtered by terrorists.

Written by M H Ahsan