This way, the so-called “war on terror” has become a series of vote-getting and stirring exercises. This could be by provoking what is seen as the “other side” – Muslims for some and Hindus for others or undermining whatever confidence measures we have built up or even seriously hindering much-needed makeovers for old and tired systems.
It cannot have escaped anyone’s attention that the bogey of wounded federalism is brought up every now and then by Indian states, especially those ruled by parties in opposition to the Central government. Yet whenever a terror attack happens, there is an outcry for Central intervention or Central coordination. Strangely, all efforts to bring about coordination are stymied by those same voices.
At the core of our problems is a reluctance to upgrade our police forces and this reluctance cuts across all party lines. Too many politicians have spent too much time and money manipulating and demoralising the police to suit their own petty and personal purposes. They cannot therefore allow the police to slip out of their grasp. This is why no matter how much public breast-beating takes place over police reforms no one actually does anything about it.
The number of public embarrassments over our terror “intelligence” only prove how lost we are. We have self-righteously sent lists of wanted terrorists to Pakistan only to find that some had died and others were in Indian jails and still others out on bail. We have found courts acquitting “dreaded” terrorists because of lack of evidence. We have blamed one set of terrorists for attacks and only found out years later that some other group was involved.
Certainly, there is a Hindu-Muslim divide in all this and it is more to do with the communalism in the political forces than it has to do with communalism in society. Our political factions are so obsessed with scoring cheap brownie points over which religion was involved in which attack that they fail to put together a comprehensive policy to tackle terrorism itself. In all cases, however, regardless of whether religion or ideology or ethnicity is the motivating factor, the methodology of a terrorist group does not vary.
Even in the current Hyderabad case, half the political discussion is about whether Narendra Modi will benefit or the Congress has lost the advantage of the Ajzal Guru hanging or the Union Budget will shift focus away in a few days or whether speeches by the Owaisis of MIM were responsible… In all this, the fact that human lives have been lost and this pettiness is deeply counter-productive is forgotten or ignored.
India is “soft” on terror is a common refrain. And the only reason for that is because, across all party formulations, we do not take policing seriously. The criminal justice system is still lost in a colonial maze and our intelligence-gathering system has not kept pace with global advances. Apparently, since our “tendering” process are also still stuck in pre-Independence red tape, progress can only be painfully slow and many more lives will have to be lost before we move forward.
Politics is essential for the progress of this country. But when it comes to fighting terrorism, politics is our greatest hindrance.
Those that forget history are condemned to repeat it
The dangers of mixing religion and politics should have been clear to the subcontinent in the aftermath of Partition, which forever mars our celebration of Independence from colonial rule. Yet it is evident that even after almost 70 years, we have not learnt anything. An act of terrorism, one way or another, brings us back to that sticking point.
Our politics has been so coloured by religion, even more so since LK Advani’s Rath Yatra and the Ram Janmabhoomi movement of the late 1980s culminating in the destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992, that we are trapped in that Hindu-Muslim riddle. Hyderabad has its own history of communal violence and yet it has also managed to survive its syncretic and conjoined life of Hindus and Muslims as well. How much of the earlier conflagrations were helped along by communal politics is a question that Hyderabadis need to ask themselves as well as how many of those conflicts have been productive and helpful.
The average Indian, one would guess, falls in the centre. But India’s political parties rarely respect that centre or find it interesting. Our politics apparently feels most fulfilled when it pits one against the other. It is a matter of some fascination that our early leaders gave us a magnificent Constitution which laid the foundation for a progressive, liberal India. Look around at our politicians today and you know immediately that not one of them has the vision or the intellectual clarity to produce such a document again.
If that statement sounds harsh, look back on the un-statesman-like attitude of all our politicians of all hues in a time of national crisis. They make the right sounds initially but it does not take long for the petty sniping to begin. It is as if some of them cannot see the world beyond a Hindu-Muslim prism – to give the most obvious example. Yes, politicians must try to win votes and play to the gallery and score points over the opposition. Unfortunately for India, they have chosen to do all that at our expense.
Some politicians are obsessed with the idea of victimhood – of whichever religious identity. Others are over-enthusiastic with the idea of revenge. It is unclear what percentage of the Indian population actually wants to live in an atmosphere of perpetual fear and animosity. There are fringe elements which thrive on unease, hatred and anger and we greatly mistake the matter if we give them the upper hand.
From Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde’s unfortunate throwaway remark about the BJP running terror camps to the BJP’s own defence of those accused of acts of terrorism in the name of Hinduism, you have in a nutshell so much that is wrong with India. Equally disappointing is the hatred spewed against Hindus by the Owaisi brothers as well as the immediate assumption that every terrorist act has to have a Muslim hand behind it.
In all these little ways, we forget our Indian-ness and become willing victims of the worst of our politics. Even at close to 70 as a nation and a little less as a republic (not to mention thousands of years as a civilisation), adulthood seems to elude us.As ever the wise words of philosopher George Santayana echo in our ears – that those that forget their history are condemned to repeat it.
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