Fighting terrorism is a national cause which should brook no politics. No individual or group should claim credit for anything done. But that is not so, at least, in India. That also explains why India despite her strength, manpower and will is feeling handicapped before the terrorist threat.
Our politicians have made the fight against terrorism as a political fight in which every political party wishes to grab credit and shift the discredit to its opponent.
The latest instance is the Ishrat Jahan story. LeT first claimed she was a fidayeen and a ‘martyr' for their cause. Later, they resiled and took an about turn. Which of their claim is true? Nobody knows. But the ‘secularists' jump at conclusions that suit their stand.
The Pakistani American terrorist David Coleman Headley recently told a team of the National Investigating Agency which interrogated him in USA that Ishrat was a LeT fidayeen. Yet our ‘secularists' and human rights organizations remain unconvinced. For them she remains an ‘innocent' girl. Because accepting it otherwise, does not make them realize their objectives.
More shocking is the perception of our ‘secularists' and human rights organizations about encounters. A stand-off between terrorists and security forces is as much an encounter as is the armed attack by terrorists on innocent men, women and children. But it is the first category of encounter that hurts and troubles our ‘secularists' and human rights organizations. The second type of ‘encounter' which during the last two decades has left more than 85,000 innocent dead does not prick the human conscience of these ‘secularists' and human rights organizations. For them the human rights of these individuals and groups indulging in inhuman activities are sacrosanct and those of the innocent people killed at their hands are as much worth ignoring as the death of a person after a prolonged illness. That is the hypocrisy of these organizations and their heartlessness.
The government admits that Isharat was accompanied by her husband and two Pakistan nationals who had no valid passports or visas. Nobody has, during the last over six years since she died in 2004, come out with an explanation as to who were these Pakistanis, for what had they come to India, for what purpose they were on their journey and why was Ishrat and her husband accompanying them. Without going into this background, no inquiry worth its name can come to any conclusion.
Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram admits that the Central intelligence agencies had briefed the State government about the likely threat to Gujarat chief ministers from these individuals but, for political and electoral reasons, he is not willing to justify the action. But had their plan succeeded, the same Mr. Chidambaram would have blamed the Gujarat government for laxity and dereliction of duty to act on the brief sent by the Central intelligence agencies.
As long as our politicians do not stop playing politics with fighting terror, India's efforts are winning this war are sure to come to naught and the country will continue to bleed, as it has been during the past over 20 years.
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