Our difficult and dangerous times

With Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad brazenly extending support to the mobs agitating against the death sentence awarded to Mohammed Afzal Guru, the prime accused in the December 13, 2001, Parliament attack case, it is clear that the Congress under Ms Sonia Gandhi has walked a long way from the ethos of Mahatma Gandhi.

Gandhi had refused to intercede to save Bhagat Singh from the gallows. Turning down all pleas seeking his intervention on Bhagat Singh’s behalf, the Mahatma had pointed out that there could not be any compromise with violence as a means, even for a lofty end. Isn’t it ironical that a party that refused to stand by a patriot of sterling qualities has no compunction in supporting a traitor convicted of the most heinous crime in the history of independent India?

Today’s Congress is not only different from the Mahatma’s, but also of Indira Gandhi’s. Under similar circumstances, Mrs Gandhi ensured that JKLF leader Maqbool Bhatt was sent to the gallows. The terrorist outfit had claimed that India would not dare to hang him for fear of retribution. But Mrs Gandhi ensured that the separatists’ bluff was called.

The Congress, however, is not alone in this loathsome drama. The ‘Save-Afzal-Guru’ campaign is being orchestrated by ‘secularists’ of different hues, with the Communists in the lead. The people taking part in this campaign are no different from those who vigorously campaign against Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, the singing of Vande Mataram and ban on fraudulent conversions and cow slaughter. While the Congress’s stance on Mohammed Afzal Guru is a complete departure from its past, the stand of the Communists is perfectly in line with their track record.

In the last century, in the 1930s, the Communists actively worked with Mohammed Ali Jinnah for the creation of Pakistan. When the erstwhile Soviet Union joined hands with the British during World War II, the Communists spied on freedom fighters for the alien masters, besides talking ill about them – from Mahatma Gandhi to Subhas Chandra Bose. After the country become independent, they waged a war against the "Capitalist Indian state". In the 1962 India-China war in 1962, their sympathies were with Beijing. When Indira Gandhi promulgated Emergency in 1975, the Communists stood by her against the masses. Their fellow travellers, active in media and the NGOs, usually side with all those who work against Indian interests and run campaigns to demoralise the security forces and demean the nationalist elements. No wonder they are today campaigning in favour of Mohammed Afzal Guru, a self-declared enemy of the Indian state.

India-baiters of all hues, including the terrorists in Jammu & Kashmir, know that the current UPA dispensation is vulnerable to pressures. In the three years of its rule, the Congress-led UPA Government has shown itself to be unduly vulnerable. First, it was the Congress’s unwritten pact with the Maoists during the 2004 Andhra Pradesh election. The Maoists took advantage of this agreement and strengthened themselves, while pretending to hold talks on giving up their arms. When it suited them, they broke of all negotiations and now the country is paying the price.

The same thing was repeated in Assam when the UPA Government decided to hold talks with ULFA. The Centre did not even take the normal precaution of checking the credentials of the so-called People’s Group that was set up to create the impression that ULFA has popular support. The Government has walked into this trap and it is hardly surprising that one hears ULFA leader Paresh Barua saying that the negotiations are all about granting Assam "independence".

The weakness has been evident in other ways as well. When US President George W Bush visited India in March this year, the Communist parties that support the UPA Government joined hands with Islamists in protest. The Government allowed these rallies to continue despite its communal overtone. Vote-bank politics prevailed later as well when the powers-that-be preferred to ignore the call made by a Minister in the Uttar Pradesh Government to kill those behind the objectionable cartoons of Prophet Mohammed that were published in a Danish newspaper. The Congress spokesperson then asked the country to ignore such communal outbursts.

With the Government seen to be kow-towing to jihadis, the dormant terrorism on this side of the border has got a shot in the arm. With the Congress and the Communists in Kerala demanding the release of Abdul Nasser Madani, mastermind behind the Coimbatore bombings in 1999, the fundamentalist know that their time has come. As a result, terrorism has sprung up all over the country, with the misguided local Muslims in the lead.

The Mohammed Afzal Guru case should not be seen in isolation. There is widespread apprehension in the country that the UPA Government will not hesitate in buying peace with jihadis for short-term gains. This uneasiness is well founded because Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is yet to tell us the reason that made him change his tactics vis-�-vis Pakistan. After all, soon after the July 11 Mumbai bombings, he blamed Islamabad for these acts of terrorism, thus questioning the premise of all confidence-building measures between the two nations. Ironically, the Prime Minister took a U-turn in Havana and termed Pakistan a victim of terrorism, rather than its perpetrator.

The Congress-led UPA Government seems to be a divided house as far as the issue of terrorism is concerned. It does not have any idea regarding Pakistan-sponsored jihad. No wonder, it has promoted the idea after the Mumbai train blasts that neither Pakistani nor a particular community should be targeted without evidence. Now that the evidence of Pakistan’s collusion has been unearthed by Mumbai Police, what will the UPA Government say? Only a feeble statement that the evidence will be presented to Pakistani authorities when the Foreign Secretaries of the two nations meet each other!

The people cannot afford to ignore the message from these protests in Jammu & Kashmir. There was no agitation when the Mumbai bombings took place in July, even though 187 lives were lost. But the moment the Supreme Court gave its verdict against the mastermind of the December 13, 2001, Parliament House attack, there has been so much hue and cry in the Valley manipulated to influence further judgement. Are there double standards in the Islamic and ‘secular’ issues? The answer is obvious.

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