Dr. Subramanian Swamy's public lecture on Black Money and Corruption menace in India organized by India Awareness Foundation (IAF) on August 6 (Saturday), 2011 in Atlanta, GA, USA.
PRESS RELEASE
In recent months political activism has increased dramatically with many making nationalist demands and challenging the Corruption issues in India. In the forefront have been Baba Ramdev, Anna Hazare, Professor Subramanian Swamy (a visiting professor at Harvard University and President of Janta Party in India), and many others individually or collectively.
Atlanta was fortunate to witness Professor Swamy reiterate the menace of widespread corruption in India at the Roundtable Luncheon attended by over 200 members of the Diaspora and hosted meticulously by the India Awareness Foundation (IAF), a national advocacy organization and think tank based in Atlanta, on Saturday, August 6, 2011 at Ashiana Banquet Hall, Global Mall, Norcross, GA., USA.
Dhiru Shah, President of IAF led the Atlanta gathering in a rousing welcome with gratitude for Dr. Swamy for his whirlwind visit to Atlanta despite of his overwhelmingly busy schedule of speaking engagements in the USA. Shah said we all are eagerly waiting for a delightful treat and insightful analysis covering the much neglected aspect of Indian politics, namely Corruption and Black Money. Shah briefly presented an overview of the India Awareness Foundation (IAF) since it’s founding in 1999. Shah added that IAF had strived very hard to create awareness and positive reinforcement on various issues related to India including India’s history, culture, traditions and its social, economic and political affairs.
Subash Razdan, a well-known national leader introduced Dr. Swamy in his characteristic manner with anecdotes from his association as a student of Dr. Swamy at IIT, Delhi in 1969. Subash humorously described Dr. Swamy as a handsome and articulate intellectual with a tendency to take on the powerful women politicians from India starting from Indira Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and of course Jayalalita of Tamil Nadu..
Following his brief introduction, Dr. Swamy took the center stage and for the next hour he captivated his audience with his stagecraft and his spell binding analysis of black money and corruption in India.
He emphasized that overseas Indians must participate and take active interest in India even though they may be staying thousands of miles away from India. He pointed out that during the independence movement of India; overseas Indians played a very constructive and helpful role. He said that if India is strong, no country can undermine the cause of the Diaspora. He gave the example of the Chinese living abroad who never face the types of human rights abuses that the Indians have to face in their day to day life. He cited the suffering of Hindus as minorities in many foreign countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Fiji, Malaysia, and many other places.
Moving on the subject of corruption, Dr. Swamy said that as per the prevention of Corruption Act in India, corruption is defined as making personal gains using the political and government office. He elaborated the recent corruption scandals including 2G scam in which billions of dollars bribes were taken by some of the current central and state ministers while allocating the 2G spectrum. Dr. Swamy said that he has filed several legal cases in the Supreme Court of India against the corrupt ministers, businessmen and officials. Some of them have already been sent to the prison and many more will follow them in a short period of time.
Dr. Swamy then explained the impact of black money on the country. A part of black money generated by such massive corruption scams is siphoned off to foreign countries by way of ‘Hawala’ transactions involving sometimes terrorists and criminal elements. The money stashed away in foreign banks could then be brought back to India via a financial instrument called ‘Participatory Notes’ (PN), which are issued by the international financial organizations like Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch etc. The holder of the PN can buy stocks in the Indian stock market legally and when the market goes up he sells these shares and converts the entire proceeds into foreign currency of his choice approved by Reserve Bank of India. He added that it is mind boggling that a tiny tax-haven island, Mauritius has become the biggest investor in India, three times more than USA. Thus, black money held in foreign country is used to manipulate the Indian stock market. He stated that once about $61 billion came into India just in one week alone. He said as per some estimates the amount of such black money stashed away in foreign bank runs between 1/2 to 1.3 trillion dollars. If this money is brought back to India, the country could solve many of its economic problems like infra-structure and build several universities and which will make India as one of the most powerful countries in the world.
He further stated that black money is also used to buy food grains direct from farmers and then hoarded in warehouses and thereby creating food shortages. Such speculative practices have resulted in 16% inflation in India while India’s GDP growth rate is only 8-9%. Black money is also used to buy luxury goods on a massive scale resulting in a boom in luxury producing industry. He pointed out that today in India 70% of investment is made in production of luxury goods when 300 million people live in poverty. Another use of black money according to him is to buy real estate. This has driven up its prices very high. Dr. Swamy emphasized that therefore it is necessary to remove this corruption; otherwise the country will be ruined.
Dr. Swamy also mentioned that the German government has recently shown willingness to give the names of the Indians who are holding black money in the Swiss banks. But the present UPA government has been dragging its feet. In spite of the intervention by the Supreme Court, the government is dodging from disclosing the names of the Indians having foreign bank accounts on one ground or another. Swamy added that he had even written to the Prime Minister of India in this regard but the PM has yet to respond.
Dwelling on the cause of such high level corruption in India, Dr. Swamy said that historically Indian people were basically honest because of the high standard of ethical and moral values based on Sanatan Dharma. While making money was considered completely legitimate, it was clearly understood that it has to be done in an ethical manner which will help the entire society. Such society was known to have very high standards of ethical values in the past wherein all classes of people lived in harmony following the values based on Dharma. However, unfortunately now due to westernization and globalization, the Indian people have forgotten the Dharmic values wherein making money by hook or by crook has become their main goal and objective. This has resulted into massive corruption on a monumental scale which is likely to ruin India if the menace of Corruption remains unchecked. He asked the NRIs to follow the Dharmic duties based on Sanatan Dharma and report corruption issues and money laundering by corrupt politicians to benefit the entire society of their land of origin.
During the Q & A session, he answered that India’s military is powerful enough to fight back the Chinese and defend the nation effectively. In his opinion, India is likely to overtake China economically in the near future. He felt that the time has come to remove the corrupt and criminal government and bring in a new government which looks after the needs of all sections of the society and which fights the terrorism effectively and forcefully.
Dr. Swamy received a standing ovation for his lucid articulation.
IAF then recognized three out of many outstanding leaders of Atlanta community by awards presentation by Dr. Swamy. Aswin Patel of Shakti Mandir for his leadership and philanthropy in creating positive image of India and Indian American in USA; Journalism; Ravi Ponangi of India Tribune for Journalism and for his homage to truth by sharing news and information accurately and objectively with Indian American and mainstream audiences; and Ram Sidhaye for advocacy and for his initiative in creating positive image of India through his populist campaigns against distortion of Hindu history, culture and traditions in Western academia.
Echoing the sentiments of Dr. Swamy for the need of a Federation, the gathering was quick to heed and launch a new umbrella organization called The Federation of Hindu Association of America (FHAA) with the blessings of Dr. Swamy. In an auspicious Hindu tradition, Sneha Mehta, interim Chairperson, and Indu Dey, interim President, lighted the lamp for its successful launch. The national FHAA plans to endeavor and federate under its umbrella various Hindu organizations, Hindu Temple associations, and Hindu Advocacy groups of the Continent of America with the specific purpose of helping its member organizations to conduct, coordinate, network, and promote activities directed to preserve the Hindu faith, heritage, culture, traditions and language.
The vote of thanks was given by Swadesh Katoch, a budding young leader of ‘Seva’ organization. Swadesh thanked Mr. Shiv Aggarwal, Ashiana restaurant, audio/video professionals, representatives of Media and numerous volunteers who helped making the event a great success.
The Master of Ceremony, Amitabh Sharma, an active member of IAF, ensured that the entire program proceeded in a timely and presentable fashion...
Swamy was in Atlanta, “A City too busy to hate” for less than 24 hours. Yet he displayed the energy and humility to attend and oblige numerous community requests. On Friday, Aug. 5th Dr. Swamy interacted with prominent community leaders on various issues of NRI community interest over Dinner. Next morning, he inaugurated the GOPIO Atlanta office in the Global Mall, which was then followed by the Press Conference with the Indo-Georgia media.
All those who were present and interested in the well being and future of India found Dr. Swamy’s mesmerizing keynote address especially valuable.
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Saturday, August 13, 2011
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Fodder Scam India , big leaders never get jailed
Fodder Scam
The Fodder Scam (Hindi: चारा घोटाला, chārā ghoṭālā) was a corruption scandal that involved the alleged embezzlement of about Rs. 950 crore (US$ 195.7 million) from the government treasury of the Indian state of Bihar.[1] The alleged theft spanned many years, was engaged in by many Bihar state government administrative and elected officials across multiple administrations (run by opposing political parties), and involved the fabrication of "vast herds of fictitious livestock" for which fodder, medicines and animal husbandry equipment was supposedly procured.[1][2] Although the scandal broke in 1996, the theft had been in progress, and increasing in size, for over two decades.[3] Besides its magnitude and the duration for which it was said to have existed, the scam was and continues to be covered in Indian media due to the extensive nexus between tenured bureaucrats, elected politicians and businesspeople that it revealed,[4] and as an example of the mafia raj that has penetrated several state-run economic sectors in the country.
The scam
The scam was said to have its origins in small-scale embezzlement by some government employees submitting false expense reports, which grew in magnitude and drew additional elements, such as politicians and businesses, over time, until a full-fledged mafia had formed.[4] Jagannath Mishra, who served his first stint as the chief minister of Bihar in the mid-1970s, was the earliest chief minister to be accused of knowing involvement in the scam.[5]
In February 1985, the then Comptroller and Auditor General of India, T.N. Chaturvedi, took notice of delayed monthly account submissions by the Bihar state treasury and departments and wrote to the then Bihar chief minister, Chandrashekhar Singh, warning him that this could be indicative of temporary embezzlement.[6] This initiated a continuous chain of closer scrutiny and warnings by Principal Accountant Generals (PAGs) and CAGs to the Bihar government across the tenures of multiple chief ministers (cutting across party affiliations), but the warnings were ignored in a manner that was suggestive of a pattern by extremely senior political and bureaucratic officials in the Bihar government.[7] In 1992, Bidhu Bhushan Dvivedi, a police inspector with the state's anti-corruption vigilance unit submitted a report outlining the fodder scam and likely involvement at the chief ministerial level to the director general of the same vigilance unit, G. Narayan.[8][9] In alleged reprisal, Dvivedi was transferred out of the vigilance unit to a different branch of the administration, and then suspended from his position. He was later to be a witness as corruption cases relating to the scam went to trial, and reinstated by order of the Jharkhand High Court.
[edit] Exposure and investigation
On January 27, 1996, the deputy commissioner of West Singhbhum district, Amit Khare, acted on information to conduct a raid on the offices of the animal husbandry department in the town of Chaibasa in the district under his authority. The documents his team seized, and went public with, conclusively indicated large-scale embezzlement by an organized mafia of officials and businesspeople.[7] Laloo ordered the constitution of a committee to probe the irregularities.[10] There were fears that state police, which is accountable to the state administration, and the probe committee would not investigate the case vigorously, and demands were raised to transfer the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is under federal rather than state jurisdiction. Allegations were also made that several of the probe committee members were themselves complicit in the scam.[10] A public interest litigation was filed with the Supreme Court of India, which led to the court's involvement,[10] and based on the ultimate directions issued by the supreme court, on March 1996, the Bihar High Court ordered that the case be handed over to the CBI.[11]
An inquiry by the CBI began and, within days, the CBI filed a submission to the High Court that Bihar officials and legislators were blocking access to documents that could reveal the existence of a politician-official-business mafia nexus at work.[12] Some legislators of the Bihar Legislative Council responded by claiming the court had been misinformed by the CBI and initiating a privilege motion to discuss possible action against senior figures in the regional headquarters of the CBI, which could proceed similar to a contempt of court proceeding and result in stalling the investigation or even prosecution of the named CBI officials.[12] However, U N Biswas, the regional CBI director, and the other officials tendered an unqualified apology to the Legislative Council, the privilege motion was dropped, and the CBI probe continued.[12] As the investigation proceeded, the CBI unearthed linkages to the serving chief minister of Bihar, Laloo Prasad Yadav and, on May 10, 1997, made a formal request to the federally-appointed governor of Bihar to prosecute Laloo (who is often referred by his first name in Indian media).[13] On the same day, a businessman, Harish Khandelwal, who was one of the accused was found dead on train tracks with a note that stated that he was being coerced by the CBI to turn witness for the prosecution.[13] The CBI rejected the charge and its local director, U N Biswas, kept the appeal to the governor in place.[9][13]
Path to prosecution
A few days of uncertainty followed the CBI's request to the state governor to prosecute the chief minister. The governor, A. R. Kidwai, was accountable to the federal government, and had already stated that he would need to be satisfied that strong evidence against Laloo existed before he would permit a formal indictment to proceed.[14] The federal government, led by newly appointed prime minister Inder Kumar Gujral who had just succeeded the short-lived government of the previous prime minister HD Deve Gowda, consisted of a coalition that depended on support from federal legislators affiliated with Laloo for its survival.[9][15] It was also unclear why the CBI had sought the governor's consent in the first place and, when the High Court demanded to know why it was being sought, the CBI stated that it was a "precautionary measure."[16] The High Court, questioning the tactic, warned that it would allow some time for the permission to transpire, but if it sensed a delay, it would force a prosecution on its own authority.[16]
On June 17, the governor gave permission for Laloo and others to be prosecuted.[17] Five senior Bihar government officials (Mahesh Prasad, science and technology secretary; K. Arumugam, labour secretary; Beck Julius, animal husbandry department secretary; Phoolchand Singh, former finance secretary; Ramraj Ram, former AHD director), the first 4 of whom were IAS officers, were taken into judicial custody on the same day.[18][19] The CBI also began preparing a chargesheet against Laloo to be filed in a special court. Expecting to be accused and imprisoned, Laloo filed an anticipatory bail petition, which the CBI opposed in a deposition to the court, listing the evidence against Laloo.[20] Also, on June 21, fearing that evidence and documentation that might prove essential in further exposing the scam were being destroyed, the CBI conducted raids on Laloo's residence and those of some relatives suspected of complicity.[21]
On June 23, the CBI filed chargesheets against Laloo and 55 other co-accused[22], including Chandradeo Prasad Verma (a former union minister), Jagannath Mishra (former Bihar chief minister), two members of Laloo's cabinet (Bhola Ram Toofani and Vidya Sagar Nishad), three Bihar state assembly legislators (RK Rana of the Janata Dal, Jagdish Sharma of the Congress party, and Dhruv Bhagat of the Bharatiya Janata Party) and some current and former IAS officers (including the 4 who were already in custody).[19] Mishra was granted anticipatory bail by the Bihar state High Court.[23] Laloo's anticipatory bail petition, however, was rejected by the same court, and he appealed to the Supreme Court, which resulted in a final denial of bail on July 29.[22] On the same day, Bihar state police were ordered to arrest him.[24] The next day, he was jailed.[25] Later, the Bihar Director General of Police, SK Saxena, justified the one-delay delay in arresting Laloo by stating in court that "any precipitate action would have led to police firing and killing of a large number of people."[26]
End of Laloo's chief ministership
As it became evident that Laloo would be engulfed in the scandal and its prosecution, demands for him to be removed from the chief ministership had gained momentum both from other parties,[27][28] as well as within Laloo's own party, the Janata Dal.[29] On July 5, Laloo formally parted ways with the Janata Dal and formed his own party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (or RJD), taking with him virtually all the Janata Dal legislators in the Bihar state assembly,[30] and winning a vote of confidence in the state assembly a few days later.[31] The RJD continued to support the coalition federal government, however.[30] With demands for his resignation continuing to mount, on July 25, Laloo resigned from his position, but was able to install his wife, Rabri Devi as the new chief minister on the same day. On July 28, Rabri's new government successfully won another trust vote in the Bihar legislature by a 194-110 vote, thanks to the Congress and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha parties voting in alignment with the RJD.[32]
Laloo claimed he had been instrumental in helping HD Deve Gowda become the prime minister.[33] However, there was press speculation that Gowda held a grudge against Laloo for insisting that Gowda step down when Gowda's fledgling government ran into internal coalition squabbles, and this motivated him to push CBI Director Joginder Singh for Laloo's prosecution.[18][34] Much later, in 2008, Laloo also claimed that Deve Gowda confessed, and "wept and fainted," when Laloo confronted him on inciting the CBI to pursue the prosecution.[33] Looking retrospectively, Laloo has said that the scam had a lasting negative impact on his political career, and may have ended his prospects to one day be prime minister of India.[35]
There were reports that Joginder Singh had violated norms in keeping the new prime minister, IK Gujral, in the dark as he pursued the prosecution.[34] Gujral's own new government also depended on Laloo for support in parliament,[36] and Joginder Singh later alleged that Gujral had attempted to block the scam investigation from proceeding.[37][38] On June 30, the federal government issued orders to transfer Singh out of the CBI and into the Home Ministry as a Special Secretary,[36] which was technically a promotion but also had the effect of removing him from the investigation.[39] There was also an alleged follow-on move to transfer UN Biswas, the regional CBI director, which led to the High Court warning that it would act to disallow any such transfer.[40]
Prosecution
As the CBI discovered further evidence over the following years, it filed additional cases related to fraud and criminal conspiracy based on specific criminal acts of illegal withdrawals from the Bihar treasury. Most new cases filed after the division of Bihar state (into the new Bihar and Jharkhand states) in November 2000 were filed in the new Jharkhand High Court located in Ranchi, and several cases previously filed in the Bihar High Court in Patna were also transferred to Ranchi. Of the 63 cases that the agency had filed by May 2007, the majority were being litigated in the Ranchi High Court.[41][42]
Laloo's initial chargesheet, filed by the CBI on 27 April 1996, was against case RC 20-A/96, relating to fraudulent withdrawals of Rs. 37 crore (US$ 7.62 million) from the Chaibasa treasury of the (then) Bihar government,[19] and was based on statutes including Indian Penal Code sections 420 (cheating) and 120(B) (criminal conspiracy), as well as section 13(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988.[43] Even though he had been jailed, he was kept in relative comfort at the Bihar Military Police guest house.[44] After 135 days in judicial custody, Laloo was released on bail on December 12, 1997.[45] The next year, on 28 October 1998, he was rearrested on a different conspiracy case relating to the fodder scam, at first being kept in the same guest house, but then being moved to Patna's Beur jail when the Supreme Court objected.[44][46] After being granted bail, he was rearrested yet again in a disproportionate assets case on 5 April 2000. His wife and then Chief Minister Rabri Devi was also asked to surrender on that date, but then immediately granted bail.[44] This stint in prison lasted 11 days for Laloo, followed by a one-day imprisonment in another fodder scam case on 28 November 2000.[44]
Jagannath Mishra had been permitted bail in June 1997, and avoided judicial remand when Laloo was first detained in July 1997. However, he was taken into custody on 16 September of the same year. He was freed on bail on 13 October but then remanded again, at the same time as Laloo, on October 28, 1998, when he was kept at the same guest house as Laloo, and later shifted to Beur jail along with him.[46][47] Mishra was freed on bail on December 18,[46] but then rearrested in a different fodder scam case on 7 June 2000.[48]
Due to the multiplicity of cases, Laloo Yadav, Jagannath Mishra, and the other accused have been remanded several times in the years since 2000. In 2007, 58 former officials and suppliers were convicted, and given terms of 5 to 6 years each.[46] As of May 2007, about 200 people had been punished with jail terms of between 2 and 7 years.[41] A 2005 litigation of one of the cases (RC 68-A/96) in the Ranchi High Court involved over 20 truckloads of documents.[49]
[edit] Impact
Since it broke into public light, the fodder scam has become symbolic of bureaucratic corruption and the criminalization of politics in India generally, and in Bihar in particular. It has been called a symptom of the "deep and chronic malady afflicting the Bihar government and quite a few other state governments as well."[50] In the Indian parliament, it was cited as an important indicator of the deep inroads made by mafia raj in the politics and economics of the country.[51] Reference has also been made to the anarchic nature of governance (the "withering away of the state") that occurs when a mafia develops in a state-controlled sector of the economy.[52]
Laloo Prasad Yadav is the only person on whom the Lok Sabha debated for a complete session as the official agendaHow to save INDIA from corruption by using RTI Act?
In this article we have talked about the RTI (Right to Information) act. This act, has given the people, the power to CHANGE the country. The RTI act has made the inner working of the Govt. transparent! If YOU, the average citizen learns to use this act, YOU can change the country.
In this article, we have told you everything that you need to know about the RTI Act, how you can use it, how it affects you etc! Even if you know nothing about “politics” or “laws” do not worry. This article is written in a very simple and easy to understand way keeping the lay man in mind.
If you think that the RTI Act does not affect you, "YOU ARE WRONG!"
If you are a citizen of Indian, the RTI Act has given you a lot of power that you can and must use.
For example, next time you ask for a “phone line” or a “water connection”, if you use the RTI Act, you can get your work done quickly. You will not have to make 15 trips to the Govt. offices and bribe and beg the officials to get your work done. RTI has changed all that. Though this article we will show you how to use RTI, to get your work done!
Are the roads outside your house terrible, RTI will help you solve the problem. Is there a problem of un-hygiene in your area, RTI will help you solve your problem.
If you are young and cannot appreciate all the above points, then believe us that sooner or later you will have to go and get some of your work done though Govt. offices. When you do, you will appreciate the power RTI. But, by then it will be too late.
Why? Because there is talk about RTI being changed so that the power is taken away from the people. In this article we have showed you how you can fight this and support RTI.
Basically, if you are an Indian, YOU MUST read this! Not only that, do tell as many people as you can to also read this. Do this for your country!
Now, in the next section we shall try to understand what the RTI Act is all about...
In this article, we have told you everything that you need to know about the RTI Act, how you can use it, how it affects you etc! Even if you know nothing about “politics” or “laws” do not worry. This article is written in a very simple and easy to understand way keeping the lay man in mind.
If you think that the RTI Act does not affect you, "YOU ARE WRONG!"
If you are a citizen of Indian, the RTI Act has given you a lot of power that you can and must use.
For example, next time you ask for a “phone line” or a “water connection”, if you use the RTI Act, you can get your work done quickly. You will not have to make 15 trips to the Govt. offices and bribe and beg the officials to get your work done. RTI has changed all that. Though this article we will show you how to use RTI, to get your work done!
Are the roads outside your house terrible, RTI will help you solve the problem. Is there a problem of un-hygiene in your area, RTI will help you solve your problem.
If you are young and cannot appreciate all the above points, then believe us that sooner or later you will have to go and get some of your work done though Govt. offices. When you do, you will appreciate the power RTI. But, by then it will be too late.
Why? Because there is talk about RTI being changed so that the power is taken away from the people. In this article we have showed you how you can fight this and support RTI.
Basically, if you are an Indian, YOU MUST read this! Not only that, do tell as many people as you can to also read this. Do this for your country!
Now, in the next section we shall try to understand what the RTI Act is all about...
Arundhati Roy: Mumbai was not India'a 9/11
We've forfeited the rights to our own tragedies. As the carnage in Mumbai raged on, day after horrible day, our 24-hour news channels informed us that we were watching "India's 9/11". Like actors in a Bollywood rip-off of an old Hollywood film, we're expected to play our parts and say our lines, even though we know it's all been said and done before.
As tension in the region builds, US Senator John McCain has warned Pakistan that if it didn't act fast to arrest the "Bad Guys" he had personal information that India would launch air strikes on "terrorist camps" in Pakistan and that Washington could do nothing because Mumbai was India's 9/11.
But November isn't September, 2008 isn't 2001, Pakistan isn't Afghanistan and India isn't America. So perhaps we should reclaim our tragedy and pick through the debris with our own brains and our own broken hearts so that we can arrive at our own conclusions.
It's odd how in the last week of November thousands of people in Kashmir supervised by thousands of Indian troops lined up to cast their vote, while the richest quarters of India's richest city ended up looking like war-torn Kupwara – one of Kashmir's most ravaged districts.
The Mumbai attacks are only the most recent of a spate of terrorist attacks on Indian towns and cities this year. Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Guwahati, Jaipur and Malegaon have all seen serial bomb blasts in which hundreds of ordinary people have been killed and wounded. If the police are right about the people they have arrested as suspects, both Hindu and Muslim, all Indian nationals, it obviously indicates that something's going very badly wrong in this country.
If you were watching television you may not have heard that ordinary people too died in Mumbai. They were mowed down in a busy railway station and a public hospital. The terrorists did not distinguish between poor and rich. They killed both with equal cold-bloodedness. The Indian media, however, was transfixed by the rising tide of horror that breached the glittering barricades of India Shining and spread its stench in the marbled lobbies and crystal ballrooms of two incredibly luxurious hotels and a small Jewish centre.
We're told one of these hotels is an icon of the city of Mumbai. That's absolutely true. It's an icon of the easy, obscene injustice that ordinary Indians endure every day. On a day when the newspapers were full of moving obituaries by beautiful people about the hotel rooms they had stayed in, the gourmet restaurants they loved (ironically one was called Kandahar), and the staff who served them, a small box on the top left-hand corner in the inner pages of a national newspaper (sponsored by a pizza company I think) said "Hungry, kya?" (Hungry eh?). It then, with the best of intentions I'm sure, informed its readers that on the international hunger index, India ranked below Sudan and Somalia. But of course this isn't that war. That one's still being fought in the Dalit bastis of our villages, on the banks of the Narmada and the Koel Karo rivers; in the rubber estate in Chengara; in the villages of Nandigram, Singur, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Lalgarh in West Bengal and the slums and shantytowns of our gigantic cities.
That war isn't on TV. Yet. So maybe, like everyone else, we should deal with the one that is.
There is a fierce, unforgiving fault-line that runs through the contemporary discourse on terrorism. On one side (let's call it Side A) are those who see terrorism, especially "Islamist" terrorism, as a hateful, insane scourge that spins on its own axis, in its own orbit and has nothing to do with the world around it, nothing to do with history, geography or economics. Therefore, Side A says, to try and place it in a political context, or even try to understand it, amounts to justifying it and is a crime in itself.
Side B believes that though nothing can ever excuse or justify terrorism, it exists in a particular time, place and political context, and to refuse to see that will only aggravate the problem and put more and more people in harm's way. Which is a crime in itself.
The sayings of Hafiz Saeed, who founded the Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure) in 1990 and who belongs to the hardline Salafi tradition of Islam, certainly bolsters the case of Side A. Hafiz Saeed approves of suicide bombing, hates Jews, Shias and Democracy and believes that jihad should be waged until Islam, his Islam, rules the world. Among the things he said are: "There cannot be any peace while India remains intact. Cut them, cut them so much that they kneel before you and ask for mercy."
And: "India has shown us this path. We would like to give India a tit-for-tat response and reciprocate in the same way by killing the Hindus, just like it is killing the Muslims in Kashmir."
But where would Side A accommodate the sayings of Babu Bajrangi of Ahmedabad, India, who sees himself as a democrat, not a terrorist? He was one of the major lynchpins of the 2002 Gujarat genocide and has said (on camera): "We didn't spare a single Muslim shop, we set everything on fire … we hacked, burned, set on fire … we believe in setting them on fire because these bastards don't want to be cremated, they're afraid of it … I have just one last wish … let me be sentenced to death … I don't care if I'm hanged ... just give me two days before my hanging and I will go and have a field day in Juhapura where seven or eight lakhs [seven or eight hundred thousand] of these people stay ... I will finish them off … let a few more of them die ... at least 25,000 to 50,000 should die."
And where, in Side A's scheme of things, would we place the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh bible, We, or, Our Nationhood Defined by MS Golwalkar, who became head of the RSS in 1944. It says: "Ever since that evil day, when Moslems first landed in Hindustan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu Nation has been gallantly fighting on to take on these despoilers. The Race Spirit has been awakening."
Or: "To keep up the purity of its race and culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races – the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here ... a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by."
(Of course Muslims are not the only people in the gun sights of the Hindu right. Dalits have been consistently targeted. Recently in Kandhamal in Orissa, Christians were the target of two and a half months of violence which left more than 40 dead. Forty thousand people have been driven from their homes, half of who now live in refugee camps.)
All these years Hafiz Saeed has lived the life of a respectable man in Lahore as the head of the Jamaat-ud Daawa, which many believe is a front organization for the Lashkar-e-Taiba. He continues to recruit young boys for his own bigoted jehad with his twisted, fiery sermons. On December 11 the UN imposed sanctions on the Jammat-ud-Daawa. The Pakistani government succumbed to international pressure and put Hafiz Saeed under house arrest. Babu Bajrangi, however, is out on bail and lives the life of a respectable man in Gujarat. A couple of years after the genocide he left the VHP to join the Shiv Sena. Narendra Modi, Bajrangi's former mentor, is still the chief minister of Gujarat. So the man who presided over the Gujarat genocide was re-elected twice, and is deeply respected by India's biggest corporate houses, Reliance and Tata.
Suhel Seth, a TV impresario and corporate spokesperson, recently said: "Modi is God." The policemen who supervised and sometimes even assisted the rampaging Hindu mobs in Gujarat have been rewarded and promoted. The RSS has 45,000 branches, its own range of charities and 7 million volunteers preaching its doctrine of hate across India. They include Narendra Modi, but also former prime minister AB Vajpayee, current leader of the opposition LK Advani, and a host of other senior politicians, bureaucrats and police and intelligence officers.
If that's not enough to complicate our picture of secular democracy, we should place on record that there are plenty of Muslim organisations within India preaching their own narrow bigotry.
So, on balance, if I had to choose between Side A and Side B, I'd pick Side B. We need context. Always.
In this nuclear subcontinent that context is partition. The Radcliffe Line, which separated India and Pakistan and tore through states, districts, villages, fields, communities, water systems, homes and families, was drawn virtually overnight. It was Britain's final, parting kick to us. Partition triggered the massacre of more than a million people and the largest migration of a human population in contemporary history. Eight million people, Hindus fleeing the new Pakistan, Muslims fleeing the new kind of India left their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
Each of those people carries and passes down a story of unimaginable pain, hate, horror but yearning too. That wound, those torn but still unsevered muscles, that blood and those splintered bones still lock us together in a close embrace of hatred, terrifying familiarity but also love. It has left Kashmir trapped in a nightmare from which it can't seem to emerge, a nightmare that has claimed more than 60,000 lives. Pakistan, the Land of the Pure, became an Islamic Republic, and then, very quickly a corrupt, violent military state, openly intolerant of other faiths. India on the other hand declared herself an inclusive, secular democracy. It was a magnificent undertaking, but Babu Bajrangi's predecessors had been hard at work since the 1920s, dripping poison into India's bloodstream, undermining that idea of India even before it was born.
By 1990 they were ready to make a bid for power. In 1992 Hindu mobs exhorted by LK Advani stormed the Babri Masjid and demolished it. By 1998 the BJP was in power at the centre. The US war on terror put the wind in their sails. It allowed them to do exactly as they pleased, even to commit genocide and then present their fascism as a legitimate form of chaotic democracy. This happened at a time when India had opened its huge market to international finance and it was in the interests of international corporations and the media houses they owned to project it as a country that could do no wrong. That gave Hindu nationalists all the impetus and the impunity they needed.
This, then, is the larger historical context of terrorism in the subcontinent and of the Mumbai attacks. It shouldn't surprise us that Hafiz Saeed of the Lashkar-e-Taiba is from Shimla (India) and LK Advani of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh is from Sindh (Pakistan).
In much the same way as it did after the 2001 parliament attack, the 2002 burning of the Sabarmati Express and the 2007 bombing of the Samjhauta Express, the government of India announced that it has "incontrovertible" evidence that the Lashkar-e-Taiba backed by Pakistan's ISI was behind the Mumbai strikes. The Lashkar has denied involvement, but remains the prime accused. According to the police and intelligence agencies the Lashkar operates in India through an organisation called the Indian Mujahideen. Two Indian nationals, Sheikh Mukhtar Ahmed, a Special Police Officer working for the Jammu and Kashmir police, and Tausif Rehman, a resident of Kolkata in West Bengal, have been arrested in connection with the Mumbai attacks.
So already the neat accusation against Pakistan is getting a little messy. Almost always, when these stories unspool, they reveal a complicated global network of foot soldiers, trainers, recruiters, middlemen and undercover intelligence and counter-intelligence operatives working not just on both sides of the India-Pakistan border, but in several countries simultaneously. In today's world, trying to pin down the provenance of a terrorist strike and isolate it within the borders of a single nation state is very much like trying to pin down the provenance of corporate money. It's almost impossible.
In circumstances like these, air strikes to "take out" terrorist camps may take out the camps, but certainly will not "take out" the terrorists. Neither will war. (Also, in our bid for the moral high ground, let's try not to forget that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the LTTE of neighbouring Sri Lanka, one of the world's most deadly terrorist groups, were trained by the Indian army.)
Thanks largely to the part it was forced to play as America's ally first in its war in support of the Afghan Islamists and then in its war against them, Pakistan, whose territory is reeling under these contradictions, is careening towards civil war. As recruiting agents for America's jihad against the Soviet Union, it was the job of the Pakistan army and the ISI to nurture and channel funds to Islamic fundamentalist organizations. Having wired up these Frankensteins and released them into the world, the US expected it could rein them in like pet mastiffs whenever it wanted to.
Certainly it did not expect them to come calling in heart of the Homeland on September 11. So once again, Afghanistan had to be violently remade. Now the debris of a re-ravaged Afghanistan has washed up on Pakistan's borders. Nobody, least of all the Pakistan government, denies that it is presiding over a country that is threatening to implode. The terrorist training camps, the fire-breathing mullahs and the maniacs who believe that Islam will, or should, rule the world is mostly the detritus of two Afghan wars. Their ire rains down on the Pakistan government and Pakistani civilians as much, if not more than it does on India.
If at this point India decides to go to war perhaps the descent of the whole region into chaos will be complete. The debris of a bankrupt, destroyed Pakistan will wash up on India's shores, endangering us as never before. If Pakistan collapses, we can look forward to having millions of "non-state actors" with an arsenal of nuclear weapons at their disposal as neighbours. It's hard to understand why those who steer India's ship are so keen to replicate Pakistan's mistakes and call damnation upon this country by inviting the United States to further meddle clumsily and dangerously in our extremely complicated affairs. A superpower never has allies. It only has agents.
On the plus side, the advantage of going to war is that it's the best way for India to avoid facing up to the serious trouble building on our home front. The Mumbai attacks were broadcast live (and exclusive!) on all or most of our 67 24-hour news channels and god knows how many international ones. TV anchors in their studios and journalists at "ground zero" kept up an endless stream of excited commentary. Over three days and three nights we watched in disbelief as a small group of very young men armed with guns and gadgets exposed the powerlessness of the police, the elite National Security Guard and the marine commandos of this supposedly mighty, nuclear-powered nation.
While they did this they indiscriminately massacred unarmed people, in railway stations, hospitals and luxury hotels, unmindful of their class, caste, religion or nationality. (Part of the helplessness of the security forces had to do with having to worry about hostages. In other situations, in Kashmir for example, their tactics are not so sensitive. Whole buildings are blown up. Human shields are used. The U.S and Israeli armies don't hesitate to send cruise missiles into buildings and drop daisy cutters on wedding parties in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan.) But this was different. And it was on TV.
The boy-terrorists' nonchalant willingness to kill – and be killed – mesmerised their international audience. They delivered something different from the usual diet of suicide bombings and missile attacks that people have grown inured to on the news. Here was something new. Die Hard 25. The gruesome performance went on and on. TV ratings soared. Ask any television magnate or corporate advertiser who measures broadcast time in seconds, not minutes, what that's worth.
Eventually the killers died and died hard, all but one. (Perhaps, in the chaos, some escaped. We may never know.) Throughout the standoff the terrorists made no demands and expressed no desire to negotiate. Their purpose was to kill people and inflict as much damage as they could before they were killed themselves. They left us completely bewildered. When we say "nothing can justify terrorism", what most of us mean is that nothing can justify the taking of human life. We say this because we respect life, because we think it's precious. So what are we to make of those who care nothing for life, not even their own? The truth is that we have no idea what to make of them, because we can sense that even before they've died, they've journeyed to another world where we cannot reach them.
One TV channel (India TV) broadcast a phone conversation with one of the attackers, who called himself Imran Babar. I cannot vouch for the veracity of the conversation, but the things he talked about were the things contained in the "terror emails" that were sent out before several other bomb attacks in India. Things we don't want to talk about any more: the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the genocidal slaughter of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, the brutal repression in Kashmir. "You're surrounded," the anchor told him. "You are definitely going to die. Why don't you surrender?"
"We die every day," he replied in a strange, mechanical way. "It's better to live one day as a lion and then die this way." He didn't seem to want to change the world. He just seemed to want to take it down with him.
If the men were indeed members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, why didn't it matter to them that a large number of their victims were Muslim, or that their action was likely to result in a severe backlash against the Muslim community in India whose rights they claim to be fighting for? Terrorism is a heartless ideology, and like most ideologies that have their eye on the Big Picture, individuals don't figure in their calculations except as collateral damage. It has always been a part of and often even the aim of terrorist strategy to exacerbate a bad situation in order to expose hidden faultlines. The blood of "martyrs" irrigates terrorism. Hindu terrorists need dead Hindus, Communist terrorists need dead proletarians, Islamist terrorists need dead Muslims. The dead become the demonstration, the proof of victimhood, which is central to the project. A single act of terrorism is not in itself meant to achieve military victory; at best it is meant to be a catalyst that triggers something else, something much larger than itself, a tectonic shift, a realignment. The act itself is theatre, spectacle and symbolism, and today, the stage on which it pirouettes and performs its acts of bestiality is Live TV. Even as the attack was being condemned by TV anchors, the effectiveness of the terror strikes were being magnified a thousandfold by TV broadcasts.
Through the endless hours of analysis and the endless op-ed essays, in India at least there has been very little mention of the elephants in the room: Kashmir, Gujarat and the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Instead we had retired diplomats and strategic experts debate the pros and cons of a war against Pakistan. We had the rich threatening not to pay their taxes unless their security was guaranteed (is it alright for the poor to remain unprotected?). We had people suggest that the government step down and each state in India be handed over to a separate corporation. We had the death of former prime minster VP Singh, the hero of Dalits and lower castes and villain of Upper caste Hindus pass without a mention.
We had Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City and co-writer of the Bollywood film Mission Kashmir, give us his version of George Bush's famous "Why they hate us" speech. His analysis of why religious bigots, both Hindu and Muslim hate Mumbai: "Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness." His prescription: "The best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever." Didn't George Bush ask Americans to go out and shop after 9/11? Ah yes. 9/11, the day we can't seem to get away from.
Though one chapter of horror in Mumbai has ended, another might have just begun. Day after day, a powerful, vociferous section of the Indian elite, goaded by marauding TV anchors who make Fox News look almost radical and leftwing, have taken to mindlessly attacking politicians, all politicians, glorifying the police and the army and virtually asking for a police state. It isn't surprising that those who have grown plump on the pickings of democracy (such as it is) should now be calling for a police state. The era of "pickings" is long gone. We're now in the era of Grabbing by Force, and democracy has a terrible habit of getting in the way.
Dangerous, stupid television flashcards like the Police are Good Politicians are Bad/Chief Executives are Good Chief Ministers are Bad/Army is Good Government is Bad/ India is Good Pakistan is Bad are being bandied about by TV channels that have already whipped their viewers into a state of almost uncontrollable hysteria.
Tragically, this regression into intellectual infancy comes at a time when people in India were beginning to see that in the business of terrorism, victims and perpetrators sometimes exchange roles. It's an understanding that the people of Kashmir, given their dreadful experiences of the last 20 years, have honed to an exquisite art. On the mainland we're still learning. (If Kashmir won't willingly integrate into India, it's beginning to look as though India will integrate/disintegrate into Kashmir.)
It was after the 2001 parliament attack that the first serious questions began to be raised. A campaign by a group of lawyers and activists exposed how innocent people had been framed by the police and the press, how evidence was fabricated, how witnesses lied, how due process had been criminally violated at every stage of the investigation. Eventually the courts acquitted two out of the four accused, including SAR Geelani, the man whom the police claimed was the mastermind of the operation. A third, Showkat Guru, was acquitted of all the charges brought against him but was then convicted for a fresh, comparatively minor offence. The supreme court upheld the death sentence of another of the accused, Mohammad Afzal. In its judgment the court acknowledged there was no proof that Mohammed Afzal belonged to any terrorist group, but went on to say, quite shockingly, "The collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender." Even today we don't really know who the terrorists that attacked the Indian parliament were and who they worked for.
More recently, on September 19 this year, we had the controversial "encounter" at Batla House in Jamia Nagar, Delhi, where the Special Cell of the Delhi police gunned down two Muslim students in their rented flat under seriously questionable circumstances, claiming that they were responsible for serial bombings in Delhi, Jaipur and Ahmedabad in 2008. An assistant commissioner of Police, Mohan Chand Sharma, who played a key role in the parliament attack investigation, lost his life as well. He was one of India's many "encounter specialists" known and rewarded for having summarily executed several "terrorists". There was an outcry against the Special Cell from a spectrum of people, ranging from eyewitnesses in the local community to senior Congress Party leaders, students, journalists, lawyers, academics and activists all of whom demanded a judicial inquiry into the incident. In response, the BJP and LK Advani lauded Mohan Chand Sharma as a "Braveheart" and launched a concerted campaign in which they targeted those who had dared to question the integrity of the police, saying it was "suicidal" and calling them "anti-national". Of course there has been no inquiry.
Only days after the Batla House event, another story about "terrorists" surfaced in the news. In a report submitted to a sessions court, the CBI said that a team from Delhi's Special Cell (the same team that led the Batla House encounter, including Mohan Chand Sharma) had abducted two innocent men, Irshad Ali and Moarif Qamar, in December 2005, planted 2kg of RDX and two pistols on them and then arrested them as "terrorists" who belonged to Al Badr (which operates out of Kashmir). Ali and Qamar who have spent years in jail, are only two examples out of hundreds of Muslims who have been similarly jailed, tortured and even killed on false charges.
This pattern changed in October 2008 when Maharashtra's Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) that was investigating the September 2008 Malegaon blasts arrested a Hindu preacher Sadhvi Pragya, a self-styled God man Swami Dayanand Pande and Lt Col Purohit, a serving officer of the Indian Army. All the arrested belong to Hindu Nationalist organizations including a Hindu Supremacist group called Abhinav Bharat. The Shiv Sena, the BJP and the RSS condemned the Maharashtra ATS, and vilified its chief, Hemant Karkare, claiming he was part of a political conspiracy and declaring that "Hindus could not be terrorists". LK Advani changed his mind about his policy on the police and made rabble rousing speeches to huge gatherings in which he denounced the ATS for daring to cast aspersions on holy men and women.
On the November 25 newspapers reported that the ATS was investigating the high profile VHP Chief Pravin Togadia's possible role in the Malegaon blasts. The next day, in an extraordinary twist of fate, Hemant Karkare was killed in the Mumbai Attacks. The chances are that the new chief whoever he is, will find it hard to withstand the political pressure that is bound to be brought on him over the Malegaon investigation.
While the Sangh Parivar does not seem to have come to a final decision over whether or not it is anti-national and suicidal to question the police, Arnab Goswami, anchorperson of Times Now television, has stepped up to the plate. He has taken to naming, demonising and openly heckling people who have dared to question the integrity of the police and armed forces. My name and the name of the well-known lawyer Prashant Bhushan have come up several times. At one point, while interviewing a former police officer, Arnab Goswami turned to camera: "Arundhati Roy and Prashant Bhushan," he said, "I hope you are watching this. We think you are disgusting." For a TV anchor to do this in an atmosphere as charged and as frenzied as the one that prevails today, amounts to incitement as well as threat, and would probably in different circumstances have cost a journalist his or her job.
So according to a man aspiring to be the next prime minister of India, and another who is the public face of a mainstream TV channel, citizens have no right to raise questions about the police. This in a country with a shadowy history of suspicious terror attacks, murky investigations, and fake "encounters". This in a country that boasts of the highest number of custodial deaths in the world and yet refuses to ratify the International Covenant on Torture. A country where the ones who make it to torture chambers are the lucky ones because at least they've escaped being "encountered" by our Encounter Specialists. A country where the line between the Underworld and the Encounter Specialists virtually does not exist.
How should those of us whose hearts have been sickened by the knowledge of all of this view the Mumbai attacks, and what are we to do about them? There are those who point out that US strategy has been successful inasmuch as the United States has not suffered a major attack on its home ground since 9/11. However, some would say that what America is suffering now is far worse. If the idea behind the 9/11 terror attacks was to goad America into showing its true colors, what greater success could the terrorists have asked for? The US army is bogged down in two unwinnable wars, which have made the United States the most hated country in the world. Those wars have contributed greatly to the unraveling of the American economy and who knows, perhaps eventually the American empire. (Could it be that battered, bombed Afghanistan, the graveyard of the Soviet Union, will be the undoing of this one too?) Hundreds of thousands people including thousands of American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The frequency of terrorist strikes on U.S allies/agents (including India) and U.S interests in the rest of the world has increased dramatically since 9/11. George Bush, the man who led the US response to 9/11 is a despised figure not just internationally, but also by his own people. Who can possibly claim that the United States is winning the war on terror?
Homeland Security has cost the US government billions of dollars. Few countries, certainly not India, can afford that sort of price tag. But even if we could, the fact is that this vast homeland of ours cannot be secured or policed in the way the United States has been. It's not that kind of homeland. We have a hostile nuclear weapons state that is slowly spinning out of control as a neighbour, we have a military occupation in Kashmir and a shamefully persecuted, impoverished minority of more than 150 million Muslims who are being targeted as a community and pushed to the wall, whose young see no justice on the horizon, and who, were they to totally lose hope and radicalise, end up as a threat not just to India, but to the whole world. If ten men can hold off the NSG commandos, and the police for three days, and if it takes half a million soldiers to hold down the Kashmir valley, do the math. What kind of Homeland Security can secure India?
Nor for that matter will any other quick fix. Anti-terrorism laws are not meant for terrorists; they're for people that governments don't like. That's why they have a conviction rate of less than 2%. They're just a means of putting inconvenient people away without bail for a long time and eventually letting them go. Terrorists like those who attacked Mumbai are hardly likely to be deterred by the prospect of being refused bail or being sentenced to death. It's what they want.
What we're experiencing now is blowback, the cumulative result of decades of quick fixes and dirty deeds. The carpet's squelching under our feet.
The only way to contain (it would be naïve to say end) terrorism is to look at the monster in the mirror. We're standing at a fork in the road. One sign says Justice, the other Civil War. There's no third sign and there's no going back. Choose.
As tension in the region builds, US Senator John McCain has warned Pakistan that if it didn't act fast to arrest the "Bad Guys" he had personal information that India would launch air strikes on "terrorist camps" in Pakistan and that Washington could do nothing because Mumbai was India's 9/11.
But November isn't September, 2008 isn't 2001, Pakistan isn't Afghanistan and India isn't America. So perhaps we should reclaim our tragedy and pick through the debris with our own brains and our own broken hearts so that we can arrive at our own conclusions.
It's odd how in the last week of November thousands of people in Kashmir supervised by thousands of Indian troops lined up to cast their vote, while the richest quarters of India's richest city ended up looking like war-torn Kupwara – one of Kashmir's most ravaged districts.
The Mumbai attacks are only the most recent of a spate of terrorist attacks on Indian towns and cities this year. Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Guwahati, Jaipur and Malegaon have all seen serial bomb blasts in which hundreds of ordinary people have been killed and wounded. If the police are right about the people they have arrested as suspects, both Hindu and Muslim, all Indian nationals, it obviously indicates that something's going very badly wrong in this country.
If you were watching television you may not have heard that ordinary people too died in Mumbai. They were mowed down in a busy railway station and a public hospital. The terrorists did not distinguish between poor and rich. They killed both with equal cold-bloodedness. The Indian media, however, was transfixed by the rising tide of horror that breached the glittering barricades of India Shining and spread its stench in the marbled lobbies and crystal ballrooms of two incredibly luxurious hotels and a small Jewish centre.
We're told one of these hotels is an icon of the city of Mumbai. That's absolutely true. It's an icon of the easy, obscene injustice that ordinary Indians endure every day. On a day when the newspapers were full of moving obituaries by beautiful people about the hotel rooms they had stayed in, the gourmet restaurants they loved (ironically one was called Kandahar), and the staff who served them, a small box on the top left-hand corner in the inner pages of a national newspaper (sponsored by a pizza company I think) said "Hungry, kya?" (Hungry eh?). It then, with the best of intentions I'm sure, informed its readers that on the international hunger index, India ranked below Sudan and Somalia. But of course this isn't that war. That one's still being fought in the Dalit bastis of our villages, on the banks of the Narmada and the Koel Karo rivers; in the rubber estate in Chengara; in the villages of Nandigram, Singur, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Lalgarh in West Bengal and the slums and shantytowns of our gigantic cities.
That war isn't on TV. Yet. So maybe, like everyone else, we should deal with the one that is.
There is a fierce, unforgiving fault-line that runs through the contemporary discourse on terrorism. On one side (let's call it Side A) are those who see terrorism, especially "Islamist" terrorism, as a hateful, insane scourge that spins on its own axis, in its own orbit and has nothing to do with the world around it, nothing to do with history, geography or economics. Therefore, Side A says, to try and place it in a political context, or even try to understand it, amounts to justifying it and is a crime in itself.
Side B believes that though nothing can ever excuse or justify terrorism, it exists in a particular time, place and political context, and to refuse to see that will only aggravate the problem and put more and more people in harm's way. Which is a crime in itself.
The sayings of Hafiz Saeed, who founded the Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure) in 1990 and who belongs to the hardline Salafi tradition of Islam, certainly bolsters the case of Side A. Hafiz Saeed approves of suicide bombing, hates Jews, Shias and Democracy and believes that jihad should be waged until Islam, his Islam, rules the world. Among the things he said are: "There cannot be any peace while India remains intact. Cut them, cut them so much that they kneel before you and ask for mercy."
And: "India has shown us this path. We would like to give India a tit-for-tat response and reciprocate in the same way by killing the Hindus, just like it is killing the Muslims in Kashmir."
But where would Side A accommodate the sayings of Babu Bajrangi of Ahmedabad, India, who sees himself as a democrat, not a terrorist? He was one of the major lynchpins of the 2002 Gujarat genocide and has said (on camera): "We didn't spare a single Muslim shop, we set everything on fire … we hacked, burned, set on fire … we believe in setting them on fire because these bastards don't want to be cremated, they're afraid of it … I have just one last wish … let me be sentenced to death … I don't care if I'm hanged ... just give me two days before my hanging and I will go and have a field day in Juhapura where seven or eight lakhs [seven or eight hundred thousand] of these people stay ... I will finish them off … let a few more of them die ... at least 25,000 to 50,000 should die."
And where, in Side A's scheme of things, would we place the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh bible, We, or, Our Nationhood Defined by MS Golwalkar, who became head of the RSS in 1944. It says: "Ever since that evil day, when Moslems first landed in Hindustan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu Nation has been gallantly fighting on to take on these despoilers. The Race Spirit has been awakening."
Or: "To keep up the purity of its race and culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races – the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here ... a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by."
(Of course Muslims are not the only people in the gun sights of the Hindu right. Dalits have been consistently targeted. Recently in Kandhamal in Orissa, Christians were the target of two and a half months of violence which left more than 40 dead. Forty thousand people have been driven from their homes, half of who now live in refugee camps.)
All these years Hafiz Saeed has lived the life of a respectable man in Lahore as the head of the Jamaat-ud Daawa, which many believe is a front organization for the Lashkar-e-Taiba. He continues to recruit young boys for his own bigoted jehad with his twisted, fiery sermons. On December 11 the UN imposed sanctions on the Jammat-ud-Daawa. The Pakistani government succumbed to international pressure and put Hafiz Saeed under house arrest. Babu Bajrangi, however, is out on bail and lives the life of a respectable man in Gujarat. A couple of years after the genocide he left the VHP to join the Shiv Sena. Narendra Modi, Bajrangi's former mentor, is still the chief minister of Gujarat. So the man who presided over the Gujarat genocide was re-elected twice, and is deeply respected by India's biggest corporate houses, Reliance and Tata.
Suhel Seth, a TV impresario and corporate spokesperson, recently said: "Modi is God." The policemen who supervised and sometimes even assisted the rampaging Hindu mobs in Gujarat have been rewarded and promoted. The RSS has 45,000 branches, its own range of charities and 7 million volunteers preaching its doctrine of hate across India. They include Narendra Modi, but also former prime minister AB Vajpayee, current leader of the opposition LK Advani, and a host of other senior politicians, bureaucrats and police and intelligence officers.
If that's not enough to complicate our picture of secular democracy, we should place on record that there are plenty of Muslim organisations within India preaching their own narrow bigotry.
So, on balance, if I had to choose between Side A and Side B, I'd pick Side B. We need context. Always.
In this nuclear subcontinent that context is partition. The Radcliffe Line, which separated India and Pakistan and tore through states, districts, villages, fields, communities, water systems, homes and families, was drawn virtually overnight. It was Britain's final, parting kick to us. Partition triggered the massacre of more than a million people and the largest migration of a human population in contemporary history. Eight million people, Hindus fleeing the new Pakistan, Muslims fleeing the new kind of India left their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
Each of those people carries and passes down a story of unimaginable pain, hate, horror but yearning too. That wound, those torn but still unsevered muscles, that blood and those splintered bones still lock us together in a close embrace of hatred, terrifying familiarity but also love. It has left Kashmir trapped in a nightmare from which it can't seem to emerge, a nightmare that has claimed more than 60,000 lives. Pakistan, the Land of the Pure, became an Islamic Republic, and then, very quickly a corrupt, violent military state, openly intolerant of other faiths. India on the other hand declared herself an inclusive, secular democracy. It was a magnificent undertaking, but Babu Bajrangi's predecessors had been hard at work since the 1920s, dripping poison into India's bloodstream, undermining that idea of India even before it was born.
By 1990 they were ready to make a bid for power. In 1992 Hindu mobs exhorted by LK Advani stormed the Babri Masjid and demolished it. By 1998 the BJP was in power at the centre. The US war on terror put the wind in their sails. It allowed them to do exactly as they pleased, even to commit genocide and then present their fascism as a legitimate form of chaotic democracy. This happened at a time when India had opened its huge market to international finance and it was in the interests of international corporations and the media houses they owned to project it as a country that could do no wrong. That gave Hindu nationalists all the impetus and the impunity they needed.
This, then, is the larger historical context of terrorism in the subcontinent and of the Mumbai attacks. It shouldn't surprise us that Hafiz Saeed of the Lashkar-e-Taiba is from Shimla (India) and LK Advani of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh is from Sindh (Pakistan).
In much the same way as it did after the 2001 parliament attack, the 2002 burning of the Sabarmati Express and the 2007 bombing of the Samjhauta Express, the government of India announced that it has "incontrovertible" evidence that the Lashkar-e-Taiba backed by Pakistan's ISI was behind the Mumbai strikes. The Lashkar has denied involvement, but remains the prime accused. According to the police and intelligence agencies the Lashkar operates in India through an organisation called the Indian Mujahideen. Two Indian nationals, Sheikh Mukhtar Ahmed, a Special Police Officer working for the Jammu and Kashmir police, and Tausif Rehman, a resident of Kolkata in West Bengal, have been arrested in connection with the Mumbai attacks.
So already the neat accusation against Pakistan is getting a little messy. Almost always, when these stories unspool, they reveal a complicated global network of foot soldiers, trainers, recruiters, middlemen and undercover intelligence and counter-intelligence operatives working not just on both sides of the India-Pakistan border, but in several countries simultaneously. In today's world, trying to pin down the provenance of a terrorist strike and isolate it within the borders of a single nation state is very much like trying to pin down the provenance of corporate money. It's almost impossible.
In circumstances like these, air strikes to "take out" terrorist camps may take out the camps, but certainly will not "take out" the terrorists. Neither will war. (Also, in our bid for the moral high ground, let's try not to forget that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the LTTE of neighbouring Sri Lanka, one of the world's most deadly terrorist groups, were trained by the Indian army.)
Thanks largely to the part it was forced to play as America's ally first in its war in support of the Afghan Islamists and then in its war against them, Pakistan, whose territory is reeling under these contradictions, is careening towards civil war. As recruiting agents for America's jihad against the Soviet Union, it was the job of the Pakistan army and the ISI to nurture and channel funds to Islamic fundamentalist organizations. Having wired up these Frankensteins and released them into the world, the US expected it could rein them in like pet mastiffs whenever it wanted to.
Certainly it did not expect them to come calling in heart of the Homeland on September 11. So once again, Afghanistan had to be violently remade. Now the debris of a re-ravaged Afghanistan has washed up on Pakistan's borders. Nobody, least of all the Pakistan government, denies that it is presiding over a country that is threatening to implode. The terrorist training camps, the fire-breathing mullahs and the maniacs who believe that Islam will, or should, rule the world is mostly the detritus of two Afghan wars. Their ire rains down on the Pakistan government and Pakistani civilians as much, if not more than it does on India.
If at this point India decides to go to war perhaps the descent of the whole region into chaos will be complete. The debris of a bankrupt, destroyed Pakistan will wash up on India's shores, endangering us as never before. If Pakistan collapses, we can look forward to having millions of "non-state actors" with an arsenal of nuclear weapons at their disposal as neighbours. It's hard to understand why those who steer India's ship are so keen to replicate Pakistan's mistakes and call damnation upon this country by inviting the United States to further meddle clumsily and dangerously in our extremely complicated affairs. A superpower never has allies. It only has agents.
On the plus side, the advantage of going to war is that it's the best way for India to avoid facing up to the serious trouble building on our home front. The Mumbai attacks were broadcast live (and exclusive!) on all or most of our 67 24-hour news channels and god knows how many international ones. TV anchors in their studios and journalists at "ground zero" kept up an endless stream of excited commentary. Over three days and three nights we watched in disbelief as a small group of very young men armed with guns and gadgets exposed the powerlessness of the police, the elite National Security Guard and the marine commandos of this supposedly mighty, nuclear-powered nation.
While they did this they indiscriminately massacred unarmed people, in railway stations, hospitals and luxury hotels, unmindful of their class, caste, religion or nationality. (Part of the helplessness of the security forces had to do with having to worry about hostages. In other situations, in Kashmir for example, their tactics are not so sensitive. Whole buildings are blown up. Human shields are used. The U.S and Israeli armies don't hesitate to send cruise missiles into buildings and drop daisy cutters on wedding parties in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan.) But this was different. And it was on TV.
The boy-terrorists' nonchalant willingness to kill – and be killed – mesmerised their international audience. They delivered something different from the usual diet of suicide bombings and missile attacks that people have grown inured to on the news. Here was something new. Die Hard 25. The gruesome performance went on and on. TV ratings soared. Ask any television magnate or corporate advertiser who measures broadcast time in seconds, not minutes, what that's worth.
Eventually the killers died and died hard, all but one. (Perhaps, in the chaos, some escaped. We may never know.) Throughout the standoff the terrorists made no demands and expressed no desire to negotiate. Their purpose was to kill people and inflict as much damage as they could before they were killed themselves. They left us completely bewildered. When we say "nothing can justify terrorism", what most of us mean is that nothing can justify the taking of human life. We say this because we respect life, because we think it's precious. So what are we to make of those who care nothing for life, not even their own? The truth is that we have no idea what to make of them, because we can sense that even before they've died, they've journeyed to another world where we cannot reach them.
One TV channel (India TV) broadcast a phone conversation with one of the attackers, who called himself Imran Babar. I cannot vouch for the veracity of the conversation, but the things he talked about were the things contained in the "terror emails" that were sent out before several other bomb attacks in India. Things we don't want to talk about any more: the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the genocidal slaughter of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, the brutal repression in Kashmir. "You're surrounded," the anchor told him. "You are definitely going to die. Why don't you surrender?"
"We die every day," he replied in a strange, mechanical way. "It's better to live one day as a lion and then die this way." He didn't seem to want to change the world. He just seemed to want to take it down with him.
If the men were indeed members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, why didn't it matter to them that a large number of their victims were Muslim, or that their action was likely to result in a severe backlash against the Muslim community in India whose rights they claim to be fighting for? Terrorism is a heartless ideology, and like most ideologies that have their eye on the Big Picture, individuals don't figure in their calculations except as collateral damage. It has always been a part of and often even the aim of terrorist strategy to exacerbate a bad situation in order to expose hidden faultlines. The blood of "martyrs" irrigates terrorism. Hindu terrorists need dead Hindus, Communist terrorists need dead proletarians, Islamist terrorists need dead Muslims. The dead become the demonstration, the proof of victimhood, which is central to the project. A single act of terrorism is not in itself meant to achieve military victory; at best it is meant to be a catalyst that triggers something else, something much larger than itself, a tectonic shift, a realignment. The act itself is theatre, spectacle and symbolism, and today, the stage on which it pirouettes and performs its acts of bestiality is Live TV. Even as the attack was being condemned by TV anchors, the effectiveness of the terror strikes were being magnified a thousandfold by TV broadcasts.
Through the endless hours of analysis and the endless op-ed essays, in India at least there has been very little mention of the elephants in the room: Kashmir, Gujarat and the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Instead we had retired diplomats and strategic experts debate the pros and cons of a war against Pakistan. We had the rich threatening not to pay their taxes unless their security was guaranteed (is it alright for the poor to remain unprotected?). We had people suggest that the government step down and each state in India be handed over to a separate corporation. We had the death of former prime minster VP Singh, the hero of Dalits and lower castes and villain of Upper caste Hindus pass without a mention.
We had Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City and co-writer of the Bollywood film Mission Kashmir, give us his version of George Bush's famous "Why they hate us" speech. His analysis of why religious bigots, both Hindu and Muslim hate Mumbai: "Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness." His prescription: "The best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever." Didn't George Bush ask Americans to go out and shop after 9/11? Ah yes. 9/11, the day we can't seem to get away from.
Though one chapter of horror in Mumbai has ended, another might have just begun. Day after day, a powerful, vociferous section of the Indian elite, goaded by marauding TV anchors who make Fox News look almost radical and leftwing, have taken to mindlessly attacking politicians, all politicians, glorifying the police and the army and virtually asking for a police state. It isn't surprising that those who have grown plump on the pickings of democracy (such as it is) should now be calling for a police state. The era of "pickings" is long gone. We're now in the era of Grabbing by Force, and democracy has a terrible habit of getting in the way.
Dangerous, stupid television flashcards like the Police are Good Politicians are Bad/Chief Executives are Good Chief Ministers are Bad/Army is Good Government is Bad/ India is Good Pakistan is Bad are being bandied about by TV channels that have already whipped their viewers into a state of almost uncontrollable hysteria.
Tragically, this regression into intellectual infancy comes at a time when people in India were beginning to see that in the business of terrorism, victims and perpetrators sometimes exchange roles. It's an understanding that the people of Kashmir, given their dreadful experiences of the last 20 years, have honed to an exquisite art. On the mainland we're still learning. (If Kashmir won't willingly integrate into India, it's beginning to look as though India will integrate/disintegrate into Kashmir.)
It was after the 2001 parliament attack that the first serious questions began to be raised. A campaign by a group of lawyers and activists exposed how innocent people had been framed by the police and the press, how evidence was fabricated, how witnesses lied, how due process had been criminally violated at every stage of the investigation. Eventually the courts acquitted two out of the four accused, including SAR Geelani, the man whom the police claimed was the mastermind of the operation. A third, Showkat Guru, was acquitted of all the charges brought against him but was then convicted for a fresh, comparatively minor offence. The supreme court upheld the death sentence of another of the accused, Mohammad Afzal. In its judgment the court acknowledged there was no proof that Mohammed Afzal belonged to any terrorist group, but went on to say, quite shockingly, "The collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender." Even today we don't really know who the terrorists that attacked the Indian parliament were and who they worked for.
More recently, on September 19 this year, we had the controversial "encounter" at Batla House in Jamia Nagar, Delhi, where the Special Cell of the Delhi police gunned down two Muslim students in their rented flat under seriously questionable circumstances, claiming that they were responsible for serial bombings in Delhi, Jaipur and Ahmedabad in 2008. An assistant commissioner of Police, Mohan Chand Sharma, who played a key role in the parliament attack investigation, lost his life as well. He was one of India's many "encounter specialists" known and rewarded for having summarily executed several "terrorists". There was an outcry against the Special Cell from a spectrum of people, ranging from eyewitnesses in the local community to senior Congress Party leaders, students, journalists, lawyers, academics and activists all of whom demanded a judicial inquiry into the incident. In response, the BJP and LK Advani lauded Mohan Chand Sharma as a "Braveheart" and launched a concerted campaign in which they targeted those who had dared to question the integrity of the police, saying it was "suicidal" and calling them "anti-national". Of course there has been no inquiry.
Only days after the Batla House event, another story about "terrorists" surfaced in the news. In a report submitted to a sessions court, the CBI said that a team from Delhi's Special Cell (the same team that led the Batla House encounter, including Mohan Chand Sharma) had abducted two innocent men, Irshad Ali and Moarif Qamar, in December 2005, planted 2kg of RDX and two pistols on them and then arrested them as "terrorists" who belonged to Al Badr (which operates out of Kashmir). Ali and Qamar who have spent years in jail, are only two examples out of hundreds of Muslims who have been similarly jailed, tortured and even killed on false charges.
This pattern changed in October 2008 when Maharashtra's Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) that was investigating the September 2008 Malegaon blasts arrested a Hindu preacher Sadhvi Pragya, a self-styled God man Swami Dayanand Pande and Lt Col Purohit, a serving officer of the Indian Army. All the arrested belong to Hindu Nationalist organizations including a Hindu Supremacist group called Abhinav Bharat. The Shiv Sena, the BJP and the RSS condemned the Maharashtra ATS, and vilified its chief, Hemant Karkare, claiming he was part of a political conspiracy and declaring that "Hindus could not be terrorists". LK Advani changed his mind about his policy on the police and made rabble rousing speeches to huge gatherings in which he denounced the ATS for daring to cast aspersions on holy men and women.
On the November 25 newspapers reported that the ATS was investigating the high profile VHP Chief Pravin Togadia's possible role in the Malegaon blasts. The next day, in an extraordinary twist of fate, Hemant Karkare was killed in the Mumbai Attacks. The chances are that the new chief whoever he is, will find it hard to withstand the political pressure that is bound to be brought on him over the Malegaon investigation.
While the Sangh Parivar does not seem to have come to a final decision over whether or not it is anti-national and suicidal to question the police, Arnab Goswami, anchorperson of Times Now television, has stepped up to the plate. He has taken to naming, demonising and openly heckling people who have dared to question the integrity of the police and armed forces. My name and the name of the well-known lawyer Prashant Bhushan have come up several times. At one point, while interviewing a former police officer, Arnab Goswami turned to camera: "Arundhati Roy and Prashant Bhushan," he said, "I hope you are watching this. We think you are disgusting." For a TV anchor to do this in an atmosphere as charged and as frenzied as the one that prevails today, amounts to incitement as well as threat, and would probably in different circumstances have cost a journalist his or her job.
So according to a man aspiring to be the next prime minister of India, and another who is the public face of a mainstream TV channel, citizens have no right to raise questions about the police. This in a country with a shadowy history of suspicious terror attacks, murky investigations, and fake "encounters". This in a country that boasts of the highest number of custodial deaths in the world and yet refuses to ratify the International Covenant on Torture. A country where the ones who make it to torture chambers are the lucky ones because at least they've escaped being "encountered" by our Encounter Specialists. A country where the line between the Underworld and the Encounter Specialists virtually does not exist.
How should those of us whose hearts have been sickened by the knowledge of all of this view the Mumbai attacks, and what are we to do about them? There are those who point out that US strategy has been successful inasmuch as the United States has not suffered a major attack on its home ground since 9/11. However, some would say that what America is suffering now is far worse. If the idea behind the 9/11 terror attacks was to goad America into showing its true colors, what greater success could the terrorists have asked for? The US army is bogged down in two unwinnable wars, which have made the United States the most hated country in the world. Those wars have contributed greatly to the unraveling of the American economy and who knows, perhaps eventually the American empire. (Could it be that battered, bombed Afghanistan, the graveyard of the Soviet Union, will be the undoing of this one too?) Hundreds of thousands people including thousands of American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The frequency of terrorist strikes on U.S allies/agents (including India) and U.S interests in the rest of the world has increased dramatically since 9/11. George Bush, the man who led the US response to 9/11 is a despised figure not just internationally, but also by his own people. Who can possibly claim that the United States is winning the war on terror?
Homeland Security has cost the US government billions of dollars. Few countries, certainly not India, can afford that sort of price tag. But even if we could, the fact is that this vast homeland of ours cannot be secured or policed in the way the United States has been. It's not that kind of homeland. We have a hostile nuclear weapons state that is slowly spinning out of control as a neighbour, we have a military occupation in Kashmir and a shamefully persecuted, impoverished minority of more than 150 million Muslims who are being targeted as a community and pushed to the wall, whose young see no justice on the horizon, and who, were they to totally lose hope and radicalise, end up as a threat not just to India, but to the whole world. If ten men can hold off the NSG commandos, and the police for three days, and if it takes half a million soldiers to hold down the Kashmir valley, do the math. What kind of Homeland Security can secure India?
Nor for that matter will any other quick fix. Anti-terrorism laws are not meant for terrorists; they're for people that governments don't like. That's why they have a conviction rate of less than 2%. They're just a means of putting inconvenient people away without bail for a long time and eventually letting them go. Terrorists like those who attacked Mumbai are hardly likely to be deterred by the prospect of being refused bail or being sentenced to death. It's what they want.
What we're experiencing now is blowback, the cumulative result of decades of quick fixes and dirty deeds. The carpet's squelching under our feet.
The only way to contain (it would be naïve to say end) terrorism is to look at the monster in the mirror. We're standing at a fork in the road. One sign says Justice, the other Civil War. There's no third sign and there's no going back. Choose.
All terrorism roads lead to Pakistan, says Salman Rushdie
Describing Pakistan as the centre of world terrorism, renowned author Salman Rushdie has slammed Islamabad for its "cynical denial" that the terrorists involved in Mumbai attacks were not its nationals.
DNA
Salman Rushdie has slammed Islamabad for its "cynical denial" that the terrorists involved in Mumbai attacks were not its nationals.
Participating in a panel discussion at the Asia Society, Rushdie said that the terror attacks in Mumbai were marked by brutality by the attackers and incompetence of government and security agencies in responding to them.
During the discussion, panelists agreed that all terrorism roads lead to Pakistan and expressed skepticism that Islamabad would dismantle the terror groups.
They said the world should send clear message to Islamabad that terrorists are becoming a liability to Pakistan and it is in its own interest to dismantle them.
The (George W) Bush administration too came in for strong criticism for considering former President Pervez Musharraf as an "ally in fighting terrorism" and giving billions of dollars to it without any condition that the money should be used to fight terrorists.
The panelists recalled that Musharraf was responsible for aiding Lashkar-e-Toiba to fight in Kashmir during his years in army and Rushdie said he put up a western face to the Westerns but was mullah to extremists.
Rushdie as also other participants strongly attacked noted author Arundhiti Roy for linking the Mumbai terrorist attacks to Kashmir, Gujarat riots and demolition of Babri Masjid.
The terrorists, the participants said, are driven by a different philosophy and ideology and want to take the world back into the medieval ages.
But they agreed that terrorists failed in their apparent bid to split Hindus and Muslims and ignite communal riots as both the communities condemned the attacks and vowed to unitedly fight them.
They also warned against government responding to the attacks and criticism of its tardy response by adopting draconian measures. Instead, it should take measures to strengthen the areas in which weakness were found.
Besides Rushdie, the panelists included former Bernard Schwartz Fellow Mira Kamdar, who had lost her cousin and her cousin's husband in the Mumbai attacks, and author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found Suketu Mehta.
There was a lively discussion on the role of media which some had criticised but panelists generally defended the "aggressive coverage" though Rushdie at one stage criticised an Indian television channel for giving room number and floor of a guest from whom it had received a call.
They were also skeptical that the weak civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari would be able to control terrorist or their organisation especially when his own credibility is on the line for alleged corruption during the time his wife Benazir Bhutto was the prime minister.
"He was known as 10 per cent and then 20 per cent which showed his skills," Rushdie said amidst laughter.
In his brief remarks, Indian Consul-General in New York Prabhu Dayal called on all civilised nations to bring maximum pressure on Pakistan to stamp out the terrorist camps which give rise such attacks.
There is no place for terrorism in the civilised world," Dayal said, adding that the Mumbai attack was not just strike against the Indian people but against humanity.
"Therefore, all humanity must act together in this hour crisis to ensure that incidents like these do not occur in future," he added.
It is "amazing," he said, that Islamabad even refuses to accept the bodies of the attackers killed in the incident even though the only surviving assassin has identified them and he himself, in turn, has been identified by his father in Pakistan.
He agreed with panelists that the response did leave "something to be desired" but pointed out that the Indian home minister and Maharashtra Chief Minister had resigned taking the moral responsibility.
That brought a question from the audience as to why politicians in the US do not take moral responsibility and resign.
Dayal said the attacks were also against growing ties between India and West as was clear from the fact that Westerners were targeted.
Kamdar, who was seen fighting back her tears as she remembered her cousin, expressed the view that the terrorists attacked Taj as they wanted to do something spectacular and they did succeed in that.
The panelists said the terrorists chose soft targets where they could achieve maximum effect but Rushdie questioned as to why security in Taj hotel was relaxed even though it was known to be a target.
Another point made was that it would be impossible to stamp out terrorists unless Pakistan takes action to their roots. Otherwise, the banned organisation Jamaat-ud-Daawa would start functioning under some other name.
Source- http://www.dnaindia.com/world/report_all-terrorism-roads-lead-to-pakistan-says-salman-rushdie_1214992
DNA
Salman Rushdie has slammed Islamabad for its "cynical denial" that the terrorists involved in Mumbai attacks were not its nationals.
Participating in a panel discussion at the Asia Society, Rushdie said that the terror attacks in Mumbai were marked by brutality by the attackers and incompetence of government and security agencies in responding to them.
During the discussion, panelists agreed that all terrorism roads lead to Pakistan and expressed skepticism that Islamabad would dismantle the terror groups.
They said the world should send clear message to Islamabad that terrorists are becoming a liability to Pakistan and it is in its own interest to dismantle them.
The (George W) Bush administration too came in for strong criticism for considering former President Pervez Musharraf as an "ally in fighting terrorism" and giving billions of dollars to it without any condition that the money should be used to fight terrorists.
The panelists recalled that Musharraf was responsible for aiding Lashkar-e-Toiba to fight in Kashmir during his years in army and Rushdie said he put up a western face to the Westerns but was mullah to extremists.
Rushdie as also other participants strongly attacked noted author Arundhiti Roy for linking the Mumbai terrorist attacks to Kashmir, Gujarat riots and demolition of Babri Masjid.
The terrorists, the participants said, are driven by a different philosophy and ideology and want to take the world back into the medieval ages.
But they agreed that terrorists failed in their apparent bid to split Hindus and Muslims and ignite communal riots as both the communities condemned the attacks and vowed to unitedly fight them.
They also warned against government responding to the attacks and criticism of its tardy response by adopting draconian measures. Instead, it should take measures to strengthen the areas in which weakness were found.
Besides Rushdie, the panelists included former Bernard Schwartz Fellow Mira Kamdar, who had lost her cousin and her cousin's husband in the Mumbai attacks, and author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found Suketu Mehta.
There was a lively discussion on the role of media which some had criticised but panelists generally defended the "aggressive coverage" though Rushdie at one stage criticised an Indian television channel for giving room number and floor of a guest from whom it had received a call.
They were also skeptical that the weak civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari would be able to control terrorist or their organisation especially when his own credibility is on the line for alleged corruption during the time his wife Benazir Bhutto was the prime minister.
"He was known as 10 per cent and then 20 per cent which showed his skills," Rushdie said amidst laughter.
In his brief remarks, Indian Consul-General in New York Prabhu Dayal called on all civilised nations to bring maximum pressure on Pakistan to stamp out the terrorist camps which give rise such attacks.
There is no place for terrorism in the civilised world," Dayal said, adding that the Mumbai attack was not just strike against the Indian people but against humanity.
"Therefore, all humanity must act together in this hour crisis to ensure that incidents like these do not occur in future," he added.
It is "amazing," he said, that Islamabad even refuses to accept the bodies of the attackers killed in the incident even though the only surviving assassin has identified them and he himself, in turn, has been identified by his father in Pakistan.
He agreed with panelists that the response did leave "something to be desired" but pointed out that the Indian home minister and Maharashtra Chief Minister had resigned taking the moral responsibility.
That brought a question from the audience as to why politicians in the US do not take moral responsibility and resign.
Dayal said the attacks were also against growing ties between India and West as was clear from the fact that Westerners were targeted.
Kamdar, who was seen fighting back her tears as she remembered her cousin, expressed the view that the terrorists attacked Taj as they wanted to do something spectacular and they did succeed in that.
The panelists said the terrorists chose soft targets where they could achieve maximum effect but Rushdie questioned as to why security in Taj hotel was relaxed even though it was known to be a target.
Another point made was that it would be impossible to stamp out terrorists unless Pakistan takes action to their roots. Otherwise, the banned organisation Jamaat-ud-Daawa would start functioning under some other name.
Source- http://www.dnaindia.com/world/report_all-terrorism-roads-lead-to-pakistan-says-salman-rushdie_1214992
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Rahul Gandhi "Upcomer of the Week"
Please go to Shankee for full post. Click here
Before some doubted but after the elections it is clear that
Rahul Gandhi is the new youth icon. He is an idol for many of us , an inspiration for even more. Rahul has been taken as the next step in the face of Indian politics as he marks the beginning of youth involvement in Indian politics. It is very clear after the elections that Indians afre fed up of BJP's Hindu policy ond of over-aged illiterate politician. Congress came into power the second consecutive term with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh only next to Jawaharlal Nehru to be elected as the supremo more than once.
Myself being a part of the next-gen of voters wanted someone much more literate and who would come out of the blame-game and think of the development of the nation and with congress supporting young entrepreneurs such as Rahul Gandhi, Sachin Piltot and others was the ultimate choice. Indian public also see Rahul as the next PM and if he stands for that i am sure he will undoubtedly win but that would take a lot of time yet.I am partial to BJP, in fact my whole family has been so-called BJP minded but due to unfilled promises and useless issues by them led many other like us to switch sides.
So this post is further dedicated to highlighting what made Rahul Gandhi what he is today.
Source- http://www.shankee.com/2009/05/rahul-gandhi-upcomer-of-week.html
Before some doubted but after the elections it is clear that
Rahul Gandhi is the new youth icon. He is an idol for many of us , an inspiration for even more. Rahul has been taken as the next step in the face of Indian politics as he marks the beginning of youth involvement in Indian politics. It is very clear after the elections that Indians afre fed up of BJP's Hindu policy ond of over-aged illiterate politician. Congress came into power the second consecutive term with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh only next to Jawaharlal Nehru to be elected as the supremo more than once.Myself being a part of the next-gen of voters wanted someone much more literate and who would come out of the blame-game and think of the development of the nation and with congress supporting young entrepreneurs such as Rahul Gandhi, Sachin Piltot and others was the ultimate choice. Indian public also see Rahul as the next PM and if he stands for that i am sure he will undoubtedly win but that would take a lot of time yet.I am partial to BJP, in fact my whole family has been so-called BJP minded but due to unfilled promises and useless issues by them led many other like us to switch sides.
So this post is further dedicated to highlighting what made Rahul Gandhi what he is today.
Source- http://www.shankee.com/2009/05/rahul-gandhi-upcomer-of-week.html
Thursday, April 30, 2009
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