Monday, January 10, 2011

India’s own politics of denial By Pratap Bhanu Mehta - The Indian Express, Mumbai

Wronged Indian Muslims will not get justice and rehabilitation by tamely submitting memorenda to government authorities.
They must come out on the streets all across the country, like all other sections of civil society do, in the time-honored Indian tradition, demanding time-bound action by all levels of Indian administration to immediately release all illegal Muslim detenues on bail and win the hearts and minds of Indian Muslims by declaring the arbitrary and communlised scandal of phony arrests of Muslims on trumped up charges of involvement in series of bomb blasts as one of the blackest chapter of India's communal hate regime; while declaring ex-Gratia compensations to all those wrongly incarcerated for years on end and tortured and maimed in their very existence.
Indian Government, especially the Indian National Congress bears the worst of the blame in doggedly following the policy of demonizing and victimizing of India's Muslim citizens.
Saffron had at best helped the Congress all through 63 years of India's history as a free nation. The mastermind behind Muslim degradation and demonization has always been Indian National Congress.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
<ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>
<http://ghulammuhammed.blogspot.com>

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http://www.indianexpress.com/news/indias-own-politics-of-denial/735946/0

Tue, 11 Jan 2011

India’s own politics of denial

Pratap Bhanu Mehta

Tags : Pratap Bhanu Mehta, indian express columnists, indian express columns


Posted:
Tue Jan 11 2011, 04:07 hrs


Swami Aseemanand’s “confession”, detailing the activities of Hindu terror groups, has produced a deep moral vertigo. There is, to be sure, much more that needs to be investigated and explained. This evidence needs to be squared with other sources, particularly on the Samjhauta Express blast. The timing of the “leak” of the confession will certainly raise political eyebrows. The confession, without corroborating evidence, may not prove to be decisive.
 
But, as strategic expert B. Raman has rightly said, the circumstances make it difficult to dismiss this confession out of hand. This much is crystal clear. First, that terror groups inspired by Hindutva exist. It is not much of a comfort to say that these are fringe elements. The significance of these elements is often revealed only in long hindsight; they can trigger fears and anxieties far in excess of their numbers. Who knows what sort of subterranean counter-politics these revelations will generate? Even if they are only a few drops, they are a poison that can vitiate the whole. Pious homilies about their marginality cannot disguise this possibility.



Second, these are groups that, even within their own paradigm, have created a new moral abyss. They have cloaked themselves in the garb of victims seeking retaliation. They are not only tempted by violence, they have no compunctions about striking the holiest places of worship like the Dargah at Ajmer, the deepest manifestations of our civilisation’s connection to the sacred. What kind of sickness has allowed the appellations “swami” and “sadhvi” to be colonised by a tissue of violent resentments?


Third, our response to this challenge has been, at best, an embarrassed denial. In the process we have put on display our double standards. We could not even get ourselves to admit that anyone claiming the appellation Hindu could be terrorists. This is more a symptom of our prejudice than a fact. This also seemed to blindside investigative agencies enough that they kept on pursuing the wrong leads and targeting the wrong groups.


But there is also a national security challenge posed by this episode. The BJP, perhaps instinctively, but true to form, is not handling these revelations well. The leaks may well be politically motivated. But in the larger scheme of things the motivation behind the leaks is a small sideshow. Whichever way you look at it, India’s credibility is seriously dented. We all understand that the CBI can be used politically, and no one puts it past this government to use law enforcement agencies selectively. Yet, if the BJP attacks the credibility of the state lock stock and barrel, think of the consequences. The one thing about credibility is that you either have it or you don’t: you cannot cherry-pick. If we legitimise the argument that there is nothing to law enforcement agencies but politics, where does it leave any action of the state? After all, it is the very same state that prosecutes Afzal Guru and Ajmal Kasab.


God knows, there are serious miscarriages of justice and abuses of power in our system. But to simply dismiss the state on partisan grounds would be to say exactly the same thing states like Pakistan say about India: that this state cannot be trusted with any investigation and any evidence. Instead of attacking the state, the BJP needs to help examine the case on the merits. The only way to deal with possible miscarriages is to examine the veracity of a charge, not change the subject by impugning the source.

Besides, the BJP needs to learn a political lesson. Nothing diminished L.K. Advani before the last election more than his artless, passionate and entirely a priori defence of Sadhvi Pragya. Their attack on Hemant Karkare haunts them to this day; it suggested a level of pre-commitment, small-mindedness and a lack of institutional judgment not befitting a leader. Nitin Gadkari’s equivocations and Ravi Shankar Prasad’s defensiveness are in the same vein.

The BJP has to recognise that a strong and credible state is incompatible with any form of community partisanship. It could have turned this crisis on the head by at least being consistent on the issue of possible miscarriages of justice. It could have shown equal concern for Muslim youths falsely arrested.
The RSS will, on the surface, make all the right noises distancing itself from terrorism. But the revelations are so damaging that if it has any semblance of genuine nationalism left, it will have to do more than verbal distancing. It will have to actively cooperate to root out this menace, and find a way of atoning as an organisation that is unprecedented. This is highly unlikely. But it is the only way of answering the question as to why the organisation should be tolerated at all.

Let us, for a moment, even suppose that the Congress is playing cheap politics with the timing of these revelations. But even cheaper politics, in return, will do more damage. In some ways, for us as citizens, the charge that the investigation is politicised is also a psychologically easy let-off. It prevents us from fully confronting the significance of all that is being revealed.

A few self-selected crazies on the net notwithstanding, there is little reason to believe that the activities of the terror groups being identified has wide political support. If anything, there is likely to be revulsion. But there is a danger that this revulsion will be overshadowed by embarrassment, producing a silence that smacks of complicity. This silence can only add to the political damage we have already inflicted on ourselves.

We also need to understand that India has been diminished by these revelations. We can go on all we want about the difference between India and Pakistan. We can say that the Pakistani state has supported terrorism, but the Indian state has not. But to most of the world this will appear to be more a matter of degree than of kind. It will once again relate the issue of terrorism, not to a particular state, pursuing its objectives through violence, but to the general history of Hindu-Muslim violence and counter-violence.

The only way this damage can be repaired is if the Indian state credibly and relentlessly pursues its investigations, without us impugning its credibility from the start. Perhaps this serious crisis can be turned on its head. By admitting our mistakes, blind spots and omissions, we can at least send a signal that we have the resilience and courage to correct our mistakes. Otherwise, we will be exactly in the same boat that we place Pakistan: a society that practises the politics of denial.


The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi express@expressindia.com

When the Americans go home - By Gautam Adhikari - The Times of India, Mumbai

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/When-the-Americans-go-home/articleshow/7254494.cms

The Times of India

TOP ARTICLE

When the Americans go home

Gautam Adhikari,

Jan 11, 2011, 12.00am IST

WASHINGTON: Change may be afoot in the US-Pakistan relationship. If carried out as recently reported, a new US approach may prove to be a turning point in the nine-year-old Afghan conflict. It may even bring a semblance of peace and stability to the region in the medium term. But New Delhi must watch the developments closely.

The Washington Post reported last week that the Obama administration would give Pakistan more military, intelligence and economic support after assessing that the US could not afford to alienate Pakistan, a precariously perched nuclear armed state and an indispensible ally in the Afghan conflict. In arriving at that assessment, the White House rejected proposals made by military commanders who, after losing patience with Pakistan's refusal to go after the Afghan Taliban, recommended that the US deploy ground forces to raid the insurgents' safe havens inside Pakistan.

The idea is to forge a regional peace with Pakistan's cooperation. Joe Biden, the US vice president, will be in Islamabad soon to explain the new approach, which aims for a political solution to the Afghan conflict. The US has realised that the war cannot be won without the Pakistani army wiping out the shelter and support the ISI provides the Taliban insurgents. Since that won't happen, why not buy peace?

The Obama administration faces mounting domestic pressure somehow to bring about a conclusion to its involvement in Afghanistan. Public opinion is now clearly against the war. A presidential election is due in 2012. President Barack Obama would like to show visible progress in Afghanistan by then.

If General Ashfaq Kayani agrees to cooperate with the new US approach after extracting all the goodies he can from the deal, the AfPak region might in fact witness some stability and apparent peace in the medium term. The Pashtun regions of Afghanistan will be effectively under Taliban control with the ISI promising to keep its wards on a leash; Kabul can have a token Afghan government while various warlords continue to manage the rest of the country.

The remaining al-Qaida biggies, who are all inside Pakistan and not in Afghanistan, can be quietly shipped off to Yemen or whichever sanctuary money can buy. The Pakistani army, in perennial search of 'strategic depth' against India, will have got what it wanted and the region's war-weary face might acquire a patina of peace.

In other words, Pakistan's army has the US over a barrel. General Kayani and his cohorts know well that the Americans want to leave the region without appearing to lose face. And he is aware that Washington is acutely nervous about an unstable Pakistan that has a nuclear capability within possible reach of terrorists.

Attempts at democratising and de-radicalising Pakistan have so far failed. The recent assassination of a liberal governor of Punjab merely underscores that reality. As India knows well and as the Americans have apparently accepted, the only source of stability in Pakistan is the military. Or, to put it another way, there can be no peace within Pakistan or in the region unless the Pakistani army agrees to ensure it.

But where does the new US approach, if implemented and successful over the next couple of years, leave the region as a whole? And where does it place India?

The AfPak region, for better or for worse, will somewhat resemble a status quo ante bellum. In other words, it won't be all that different from what prevailed in the decade preceding the outbreak of war in 2001. This time, the ISI-backed Taliban will effectively control a large part of Afghanistan while a weak Kabul will go along with the arrangement as long as it can persuade the Taliban not to take over the whole country. Pakistan will once again obtain space outside its borders to shelter radical Taliban as well as other potential insurgents. An international force will continue to guard Kabul while the Americans can see it all in the driving mirror as they depart.

Such a scenario, if it indeed comes about, will not be very different from what Robert Blackwill, a former US ambassador to India, has been suggesting for a while, his latest articulation coming in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. Which is that Afghanistan be partitioned de facto; the US gets out of a mess; al-Qaida goes away somewhere; Pakistan is left to its devices; and AfPak moves out of prime time TV.

As for India, there's little to do but wait and watch while weighing our options. We must keep looking over our shoulder at the looming presence of China, with which we can't see eye to eye in many matters, from unsettled borders to its unsettling camaraderie with our hostile neighbour. And we have to watch every move by a Pakistani military that we know needs an India bogey to justify its hold on power.

In a disturbed neighbourhood, we probably have to fend for ourselves. In case there is trouble, can we rely on support from newfound partners like the US when their national interest and domestic pressure call for a quick exit from the region? Who knows. Maybe it's time to put together a few wise heads to rethink policy options.


( The writer is a FICCI-EWC fellow at East West Centre in Washington DC.)