INDIA, LEARN HOW TO GET PAKISTAN TO WALK

Shashi Tharoor may have said that it was just a piece of paper and not a legal document. Shiv Shankar Menon may have said that it was a case of bad drafting. Many analysts and all opposition parties may have accused Dr Manmohan Singh of selling out mindlessly. The Congress party may have been stunned into silence. The Pakistanis may have been gloating that they had defeated Indians on the negotiating table once again, with such ease. General Kiyani may have been emboldened to ask India to stop messing around in Baluchistan.

Whatever may have been the noise, was there any way that Dr Manmohan Singh was going to admit to the world that he had indeed blundered at Sharm-el-Sheikh? Or that the famous Baluch Blunder that everybody is talking about actually is much bigger because it covers the whole of Pakistan?

The Congress party, Shashi Tharoor included, is now singing a different tune and is backing the Prime Minister for the Joint Statement that he and Pakistan Prime Minister Gilani issued after the recent NAM summit. That stance is born out of a compulsion to prevent those who are leading this nation from looking like amateur fools who have learnt nothing from history and who have in 62 years not been able to formulate well defined foreign policy and security objectives for their country.

Does India know what is the minimum it expects from Pakistan or its other neighbours who fall in its sphere of influence? Are their any "Lakshman Rekhas" demarcated by it that it will not allow Pakistan, Bangladesh or other nations to cross without reacting with punitive force? Has any thought been given to how India expects its neighbours, including China, to interact with it 25 years from now, when India will undoubtedly be a super power? Is their any implementable integrated plan that visualises the active deployment of all instruments available to the state, if required, to make India secure against terrorism ? Has the option of recourse to use of force up to and including war been completely ruled out no matter what the provocation by any country as long as it is short of a full fledged military attack or invasion, at which point there is no real decision left to be made?

Clearly, there are no real answers available to the aforementioned questions and a few more. In fact it is evident that a serious thought has not been given to them structurally and in a professional manner. Had that been done, then there would have been by now visible efforts to develop strategies, capabilities and professional structures to ensure that the country's expectations are known to all concerned along with the fact it has the ability and, above all, the indomitable will to ensure that India's concerns are not ignored humiliatingly by some nations as they have been till now.

When the US says that India is an "absent" power or that it needs to start behaving like the big power that it is, you should know that they know that India is almost ashamed of becoming the power that its size dictates it must become. When analysts and those guys in the government who have made sure that India still does not know what it wants to be and where it wants to go as a nation, say that India is a "status quo" power, be in no doubt that this is not a carefully thought out positioning; it is the manifestation of the confused and directionless mess that India has got into, thanks to a strategy blind political leadership and a stifling generalist bureaucracy for whom status quo is the oxygen without which it will be found to be as useful for formulating national objectives, and strategies to achieve them, as a poisonous fly is in a critical ointment.

Such fundamental proactive preparations are vital for this soon-to-be super power that wants to influence world affairs by becoming a permanent member of the UN Security Council. It is bewildering that this elementary fact continues to escape our leaders who seem to have perfected the art of getting caught petrified on the back foot all the time. They want that seat in the UNSC out of goodwill of the big powers already there. Sucking up to them comes easily without embarrassment; standing up manfully to be counted as a big power and claim that seat by right is what they find embarrassing. Is that the way to get India ready to assume its global responsibility? Can a nation that has consistently displayed a disturbing paralysis in exerting its influence even in its immediate neighborhood be considered fit to assume the global role that it asking for, that is there for the asking the moment it is ready?

This mindset is not of recent origin. It has marked almost all our dealings with our neighbours since 1947, to India's great detriment. Starting from Nehru, India's leaders have been more than willing to walk more than half the distance unilaterally, without even bothering to look that the one they are walking towards is not only not stationery but is reacting by walking backwards to increase the gap, not reduce it, so that eventually he can get a settlement that initially even he did not believe was possible. Here are some glaring examples:

• In 1948, Nehru stopped the Indian Army from marching to Muzaffarabad when it was poised to, rejecting professional advise, and rushed to the United Nations to internationalise Kashmir. He was more keen to show to the whole world how reasonable India was and how clean its hands were rather than allow its military to consolidate its victory in a manner that would have, at the very least, made it immensely more difficult for Pakistan to create the mess that it has in Kashmir since then.
• In the fifties, Nehru kept walking gullibly into the arms of the deceitful Chinese even after there was little doubt left about their intentions about Tibet, Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh. To compound that blunder, he ignored the advise of General Thimmaya to raise the strength of the Army and increase the defence budget so that Indian troops would be in a position to take on the Chinese Army in the event of a war that looked very much on. Nehru showed greater faith in Chou En Lai and Panchsheel and blindly walked more than half the way. As a result, he was given a knock out "Punch-sheel" in 1962, from which neither he nor India recovered.
• In 1965, General Ayub Khan launched a war on India with the boast that he would have his evening tea in Delhi. India almost won the war. But in Tashkent, it was Lal Bahadur Shastri who walked more than half way and handed back to Pakistan the strategic Haji Pir pass that Indian troops had captured. Pakistan was not made to pay any price whatsoever for its misadventure that could have had an even more damaging result for India than the 1962 blunder.
• In 1971, India's armed forces created Bangladesh. Within four months, Indian troops were out of that country and Indira Gandhi walked almost all the way to trustingly leave the course of relations between the two countries solely in the hands of Mujibur Rehman who was grateful to India for helping him become the first President of Bangladesh. When everything changed dramatically after he was assassinated in 1975, India was found helplessly watching that country become increasingly anti-Indian. Today Bangladesh fearlessly shows India the middle finger, openly harbours Indian militants and blatantly allows the ISI to export terror to India from its soil.
• In 1972, Indira Gandhi returned 97,000 Pakistani soldiers who had been taken prisoner by the Indian Army without getting anything in return out of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. She decided again that it was more important to walk more than half the distance even as he was deviously outsmarting her to keep Kashmir and other outstanding issues alive to be exploited at an appropriate time.
• In 1999, Atal Bihari Vajpayee bussed more than half the distance to Pakistan and got Kargil in return within a few months. But he still did not learn the right lesson. When the architect of Kargil took over Pakistan after a coup, Vajpayee embraced him and got the attack on Parliament in return. Even that did not dissuade him from taking another long and disastrous walk in which he is reported to have trustingly made unprecedented concessions on Kashmir. That "bold gesture" has now been more than trashed with a resounding slap by the Kargil commando. In a recent interview to Karan Thapar, Musharraf has openly said that India was forced to start talking about Kashmir only because of the war he launched in Kargil which, therefore, was a great victory for Pakistan. Vajpayee's statesmanlike move to befriend Pakistan has, in one deathly stroke, been reduced to a "majboori", a helpless reaction forced out by the panic and fear created by the Kargil war. That is also what the Kashmir Deal that Manmohan Singh nearly got trapped into agreeing by walking more than half the distance has been reduced to by that statement.
• In 2008, Pakistan launched another Kargil, an urban one, in Mumbai. Eight months after that, a resigned Dr Manmohan Singh told the world that India had no choice but to talk to Pakistan (aur koi chara nahin hai), and walked more than half the distance yet again to sign another disastrous joint statement with a country that has never taken a single friendly step forward willingly and, as everyone except perhaps those in the Indian establishment knows, never will. What do you think Pakistanis are going to say some years down the line? They will claim a la Musharraf that 26/11 was a great success, just like Kargil was, because it got the India to start admitting its role in promoting terror not just in Baluchistan but in all other parts of Pakistan too, and also scared them into de-linking terror from talk.
  

Let us face the truth: Indian leaders are scared to death by even the thought of war. And they have somehow concluded that the only way to avoid it is by taking that famous long walk. Pakistan knows all this better than all of us do. Look at the irony. It actually should be Pakistan that should be scared of war but it is India that publicly admits that it is even more scared. Pakistan is very scared too, because after 1971 debacle, its generals know that they cannot win the next war. But you will never catch any of them ever say anything that even remotely gives their fear away.

In 1948 and 1965, Pakistanis thought they could win, so they did not think twice about thrusting war on India. In 1971, Pakistan knew it was going to be mauled in East Pakistan, and indeed was - and much faster than it had even dreamt - but was left with no choice but to fight. It is the fear generated by that humiliating and confidence-breaking defeat that forced Pakistan start a covert proxy war in 1989 to wrest Kashmir; it is that fear that made Musharraf do Kargil and save himself and Pakistan from a full fledged war by pretending that it was the mujahideen and not Pakistani troops who were responsible for it. It is that fear that made its Army and the ISI do Mumbai 26/11 and pretend that it was the work of "non-state actors" and say that no one in the mainstream establishment was involved. It is that very fear that makes Pakistan resort to nuclear blackmail whenever there is even a whisper of war for the Indian side.

Pakistan's generals are mortally scared of facing Indians forces on the battle field. The fear of defeat has got deep into their bones. They know better than anyone else that any future defeat will destroy the vast military empire that they have carefully built in Pakistan. That is why they do not want a war under any circumstances. This is a chink that an alert India should have exploited to the hilt. But what we have done is exactly the opposite. Our political leaders have brainlessly allowed Pakistan to exploit the fact that they are even more scared of war than the Pakistanis.

An Indian leadership that refuses to do anything that leaves Pakistan with no choice but to behave, that hugs Pakistan tighter after every attack on India, that keeps saying one way or another that war or anything even resembling it is simply not an option available to India, no matter what Pakistan does or allows to be done on its soil, is just the tonic that Pakistan needs to fire up its jehadi and other elements that have been deployed to bleed India to death through a thousand cuts, by telling them and the world that India is cracking under the relentless pressure that they have generated.

There is another malaise that has afflicted Indian Prime Ministers starting from Nehru: the desire to create history and leave behind indelible imprints of greatness grounded in "peace" and magnanimity. Atal Bihari Vajpayee too was driven by visions of being remembered as a great Indian leader who "solved" the long standing Kashmir problem with Pakistan. That is what drove him almost unthinkingly into the arms of commando Musharraf who was more than overjoyed at being naively given the opportunity of entering history books too as the only Pakistani leader who inflicted a humiliating defeat on India on the negotiating table by making it agree to start the irreversible process of handing over control of Indian Kashmir to Pakistan, all thanks to what he believes was a masterstroke in Kargil, and the follow up pressure generated by subsequent terror attacks.

The mild Dr Manmohan Singh is also, despite his erudition, manifestly driven by a strong desire to be remembered as a great PM, quite in the mould of Nehru, minus his Himalayan blunders. When he signed the Nuclear Agreement with George Bush in 2005, the first words that he spoke after coming out from that meeting were: "We have made history today". Regionally, he has nostalgically spoken of his dream to have breakfast in Amritsar, lunch in Lahore and dinner in Kabul, just like his ancestors used to in the good old times.

In some ways, therefore, he is even more motivated than Vajpayee was to strike a deal with Pakistan. Like Vajpayee he also unrealistically believes that Pakistan is also being driven, or can be, by the same noble motivation. On that belief alone rests his dream of a new and durable era of peace, friendship and brotherhood in the sub continent. Like Nehru, he too is mindlessly hurrying towards the creation of a new mess in Kashmir for which India will, in future, wind up paying with much more of the same blood that he is scared of shedding today.

The latest joint statement at Sharm-el-Sheikh is, thus, the fundamentally flawed outcome of Dr Manmohan Singh's total aversion to the idea of responding with force to repeated overt and covert acts of war by Pakistan, coupled with use of the repeatedly failed Indian tactic of unilaterally walking much more than half way and showing India's clean hands to get Pakistan to give up a policy that has become almost central to the existence, orientation and enormous power of its military establishment.

Getting into a political deal of "peace and friendship" with Pakistan is not like getting a straight forward nuclear deal from the US. That exception was made by the US for India only because it began to realise that a strong strategic relationship with India was in its supreme national interest. George Bush, for all his faults, was not clouded by a desire to create history.

There is not even an iota of evidence to suggest that there has been any similar change in the aggressive and offensive military mindset that runs Pakistan. A few tactical changes have been forced on it only due to the presence of US troops in Afghanistan. The admission about 26/11 has also been reluctantly made only because of the capture of Ajmal Kasab and the irrefutable evidence picked up by the US and given to it.

Look at the irony. It is the much weaker Pakistan that should be saying what our PM is: there is no alternative to talks (aur koi chara nahin hai). But what do we have? Musharraf threatening India, in New Delhi, with more Kargils if Kashmir is not settled, and other Pakistani leaders repeating ad nauseum that terrorism will not stop unless that is done, obviously in Pakistan's favour. This unending blackmail is the result of the inexplicable fear and guilt, and the resultant inability, of India's leaders to even think of making Pakistan pay back in the only currency that its military leadership understands, has used and threatens to keep using, to bring India's leaders literally to their knees.

Mulayam Singh Yadav spoke a buried and forgotten harsh truth the other day in Parliament when he said that "We always win in a war with Pakistan but always lose on the negotiating table". Why does that happen? Pakistan loses in war because on those battlefields it is dealing with superior minds that are on the same page. But when it comes to the wars fought on tables, it scores easy victories all the time because on those battlefields, it confronts totally different and hopelessly foggy minds that are unforgivably ill equipped to understand and defeat offensive military minds that are completely focused on achieving clearly laid down and understood national objectives.

The near capitulation on Kashmir that Vajpayee was negotiating with Pakistan through back channels was willingly taken forward by the Manmohan Singh government in its first tenure. In fact, had Musharraf not been forced to quit, we might have seen the face of that sell out deal by now. To top it, Dr Manmohan Singh has further accelerated that process, despite 26/11, by caving in even more, manifestly because he is desperate to strike that mirage of a historic deal before his term ends.

The sudden and unprecedented giveaway to Pakistan at Sharm-el Sheikh is the result of that personal urgency. And it is going to prove hugely costly to India in the long run. The only saving grace is that, unlike at the time of Nehru when decisions taken by the PM were barely questioned, the India of today is not going to let any PM sell away the interests of the country easily.

Dr Manmohan Singh needs to hit the pause button and consider, at great length once again, all developments post 1947, in consultation with guys who know who India is dealing with. Once he does that, the disastrous consequences for India as a result of any "magnanimous" deal that he strikes with Pakistan, will dawn on him and prevent him from proceeding further downhill on the slippery slope that looks invitingly smooth today.

Dr Manmohan Singh will also do well to remember that it actually is time for India to get Pakistan to walk more than half the distance towards India to prove that it has honestly metamorphosed and is ready to embrace with an open heart his Amritsar to Kabul dream. There is absolutely no evidence yet to suggest that it is willing to consider even a lunch in Lahore because for that it will have to shed the very basis on which it rejected India as its country, the hate-filled mindset that is based wholly on that position, and the theocratic angle that is integral to it.

There is, therefore, near zero possibility that, in its present form, Pakistan's establishment, particularly the military one that runs the country, will ever even consider turning its foundational fundamentals on their heads. Given that harsh reality, any amount of one way walking towards Pakistan is not going to yield the dividend that the PM sincerely wants to get for India.

The mentality of readily and repeatedly giving away vital ground during negotiations primarily on the basis of small promises dishonestly made, has to be discarded firmly once and for all. To be able to do that, Dr Manmohan Singh and India's other political leaders have to learn how to get inside the military mind that represents Pakistan. Till they do that, they are going to keep facing defeat after defeat in negotiations. It may not matter much to them. But India cannot afford such defeats.

KARGIL AND POLITICAL DEBATES: NAUSEATING INDEED

More than 62 years after Independence, a former Chief of the Army Staff has had the courage to publicly voice what the whole nation has been feeling for a long time and what a lot of citizens and lower ranked soldiers have been saying for years. Taking part in a debate on CNN-IBN on July 24, 2009, on the issue of the present government having forgotten the martyrs of the Kargil War of 1999, General Shankar Roy Choudhary, who is not known for using strong words in a debate, took everyone by surprise by saying something that politicians across parties should be ashamed of.

After listening to a third-rate political spat between Jayanthi Natarajan of the Congress and Rajiv Pratap Rudy of the BJP in which both tried to score cheap political points on Kargil, the General was compelled to say what the whole nation feels: "It is a political debate which must be buried along with political parties...These nauseating, disgusting, shrill, vituperative debates have no meaning for the Indian Defence Services." Ever the officer and gentleman, he later apologised to Natarajan since she took his criticism to heart, but maintained that he stood by what he had said.

It may be recalled that it was Congress MP Rashid Alvi who first gave a sickening political twist to the Kargil victory by saying that it was only the NDA which may celebrate it, not the nation. Minister of State for Home Sri Prakash Jaiswal fuelled the outrage further: he could not even remember when this war was fought and won. Little wonder, then, that for the first five years that it was in power, the UPA government chose not to commemorate the heroes of this war.

This year it has decided to commemorate 10 years of the victory only after intense opposition pressure. That it is a very reluctant honour being given to those brave sons of India who fought for their motherland is evident from the fact that the President, who is the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, has refused to travel to Kargil to pay her homage. The Defence Minister too has backed out. That is why General Choudhary was forced to utter the bitter truth that "The soldiers do not think about what the politicians think about their acts. They have been serving their country bravely since 1947". That is possibly why he also called Natarjan's bluff that there were no political reasons for not commemorating Kargil by pointing out that while all heroic acts of the soldiers from 1947 onwards need to be celebrated by the nation, the only day being commemorated is when India's military created Bangladesh.

Something is indeed seriously wrong with India's politicians. And it is getting worse. The amount of energy they spend in trying to run political opponents down and the level that they sink to, to do so, is disgusting and nauseating indeed. They will readily embrace the architect of Kargil, Musharraf, fall into his military commando trap like ignorant fools and nearly get tricked into a shocking deal with him to all but sell Kashmir to Pakistan. But when it comes to political opponents who are Indians, they will behave as if they are dealing with arch enemies who have to be defeated by all means, even if Pakistan benefits in the process. What else can one make of a garrulous politician and security-blind former career diplomat like Mani Shankar Aiyar getting into the gutter to dishonestly defend "his" government's Baluchistan Blunder at Sharm-el-Sheikh by saying that that it would not put it in the dock "unless Mr. Jaitley's government was doing funny business in Baluchistan"?

Politics has now become big business, an easy path to undreamt of pelf for many. It is for this reason alone - forget that deceitful talk of ideology, secularism etc - that political fights have become more and more unscrupulous, vicious and petty. No one wants to yield even an inch to another party out of fear of losing power.

That is why we have this disgraceful response to remembering the heroic deeds of soldiers who died for their country and not for a political party. That is why the only concern about the Baluchistan Blunder is not India's mindless surrender to a focused and aggressive Pakistan, or its serious long term impact, but the possibility that it will give a political advantage to the BJP, however small. That is why the BJP opposed the Indo-US Nuclear Deal, knowing fully well that it would have grabbed it with glee had it been in power. That is why the latest surrender to potentially useful politicians on the issue of the obscene amount of security that they have been given at the tax payers' expense.

Jayanthi Natarajan may arrogantly not want a General Choudhary who, as per her, believes that "every party comes from the gutters", even though he did not say so. Sure some politicians may individually not like the manner in which the political class is collectively bringing more and more disgrace upon itself. But it will be hard to find someone who can place his hand on his heart and say that the General's words were misplaced.

General Shankar Roy Choudhary needs to be complimented for speaking a truth that would have given great comfort to lakhs of serving and retired soldiers who have for long felt that their military leaders have been letting them down since 1947 because of their inability to find their voices when handling politicians and bureaucrats. He has now shown the way with remarkable candour.

The Indian Army is no longer a colonial fighting machine. It is now a people's army. It is also apolitical. That, however, does not mean that its leaders, past and present, should keep looking only inward within the organisation.

In an increasingly vitiated political atmosphere where politicians are behaving the way they are, India's top military leaders who are no longer in service must realise that still they have another big national responsibility. When and where the political leadership errs or fails in matters related to defence, strategy and national security, including aspects of foreign policy that impacts them, they must speak up, educate all Indians and bring pressure to bear upon the government of the day. They owe it to the country. There is simply too much at stake to be lost foolishly on negotiating tables time and again.

The blood of India's sons must not flow in vain.
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A nation forgets? A must read for every Indian. The most powerful words ever written about Kargil and the sons of India whose blood has given us our tomorrow.
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BATLA HOUSE: HYSTERICAL REACTIONS, DIFFICULT QUESTIONS

The NHRC has, at last, confirmed what almost everyone has known from the very beginning: the famous Batla House encounter in Delhi in which Inspector MC Sharma fell to the bullets of Indian Mujahideen terrorists, two of whom were also killed by the police, was genuine. Refuting the allegation that the police had fired on unarmed persons and that Inspector Sharma was killed as a result of rivalry within the police, the NHRC has also said that there was no violation of human rights.

It may be recalled that immediately after the encounter took place, Muslims across the spectrum had gone more than overboard with their reactions. Not willing to accept that the encounter was genuine, some so called liberal intellectuals like Shabnam Hashmi had gone to the absurd and incendiary extent of charging on TV that the condition of Muslims in India was like that of Jews in Nazi Germany. The theme of alienation of Muslims was also echoed by other Muslim leaders, including the liberal Mushirul Hasan who went to the extent of getting Jamia Milia Islamia University, whose students the terrorists were, to pay for their legal expenses.

There were also calls by an influential lot of Muslims for instituting almost separate and exclusive criminal laws for Muslims with one of the demands being that at least one third of the raiding police force in Muslim dominated areas must be of Muslim officers. But the cake was taken by the Shahi Imam of the Jama Masjid who attended the burial of the two terrorists shot by the police, even though their parents had chosen to stay away. Then itself, I had questioned the dangerous message that the Imam of India's biggest mosque was trying to convey to Indian Muslims and the rest of India because he would most probably have known then through his links that they were indeed terrorists who were involved in the blasts in Delhi, Jaipur and Ahmedabad.

Those days, tempers were running high and there were endless debates in TV studios with many linking the terror attacks - justifying them too obliquely - to the alienation of Muslims. There were only a few voices then who spoke up against this unacceptable hyphenating of terror with grievance. Many individuals and groups feel alienated or aggrieved or discriminated against in not just India but all over the world. Is that justification for them to go around killing innocent people?

I had then written a post which partially captured the energy that had thoroughly vitiated the atmosphere those days. All seems to have been forgotten now. But at a time when the NHRC has given Delhi Police a clean chit, it is important to recall the very strong undercurrent of resistance to action against terrorists who were waging war against the state and killing innocent Indians in cold blood.

There is little doubt that it is because of this synchronised cacophony that the Delhi government capitulated and decided not to invoke MCOCA against the terrorists of the Indian Mujahideen, despite the evidence that they had carried out bomb blasts in three Indian cities. This will strike you in the face when you learn that the same govt later used MCOCA to book five men held for the murders of journalist Soumya Vishwanathan and IT executive Jigisha Ghosh.

At this point, I think it is only fit that I reproduce what I had written then so that readers get a fair idea of the charged atmosphere that prevailed after that encounter on September 19, 2008. If that is an indication of things to come, the state is not going to find it easy to carry out raids and encounters against terrorists, particularly in areas dominated by the minority community, no matter how many innocent Indians may have been killed by them. If that happens, not only is it going to make eradication of terrorism very difficult, it is also going to create deep divides between communities. Will that development bring good news to anybody?
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Of all the ugly charges and abuses being hurled at the Indian state, this one is the most horrific. And it has not been made by a demented cleric. It has been made by Shabnam Hashmi, the toast of India's English media. In a program on NDTV on September 22, 2008, she actually alleged that the condition of Muslims in India today was like that of Jews in Nazi Germany! Can anything be more incendiary and more blatantly untruthful?

As terror attacks on innocent Indians get bigger and more inhuman, bigger get the charges by educated, liberal Muslims against India, as if this country has consciously unleashed a pogrom to marginalise and demonise Muslims who really are the last word in peace, tolerance and inclusiveness. When the whole world knows that India is a ‘soft state’ unable to take even basic steps to tackle and defeat terrorism, Hashmi and the like want to make Indian Islamic terrorists look like heroic ’freedom fighters’ and jehadis, just as Pakistan does, by comparing the Indian state with Nazi Germany.

Suddenly, after the police managed to kill and nab young, educated members of the Indian Mujahideen(IM) who had been claiming responsibility for the blasts in Delhi, Jaipur and Ahmedabad, the tone of even liberal Muslims has changed. It is almost as if their gloves are finally off, now that it is no longer possible for them to keep pretending that Indian Muslims are not involved in terror attacks on innocent Indians across the country.

But for a cursory and slippery condemnation of the terror attacks, the focus is being sought to be shifted by Muslim intelligentsia to the alienation that Muslims are feeling in India. Hashmi, Owaisi, Mushirul Hasan and others are all now dexterously deflecting all discussions on terrorism to this alienation along various parameters like education, employment etc while at the same time saying that for the ‘yet unproven’ activities of a few individuals, the whole community should not be demonised.

No doubt the vast majority of Indian Muslims are silently against terrorism that clearly has Pakistani roots. But what is the direction being shown to them by their religious and community leaders? There is no honest introspection whatsoever, to truly educate the community which has got increasingly ghettoised in India and is now facing a similar situation globally. On the contrary, all their actions and statements show a peculiarly aggressive response which not only obliquely justifies terror attacks but also threatens that if the alienation is not reduced, even more innocent Indians will be blown to smithereens.

Is it not significant that the Shahi Imam of Delhi’s Jama Masjid attended the burial of the two terrorists killed by Delhi police in Batla House, Jamia Nagar, even though their families stayed away? What message is that going to convey to Muslims? Of course, to the cameras he will say that till proved guilty, they are innocent. That is something that everybody knows. But where was the need for the Imam of India’s biggest mosque to give such high profile respect to those who might be really be killers of scores of Indians? And if, as some suspect, he actually does know through his subterranean links that they were indeed responsible for the blasts, what dangerous message is he trying to ram into his country and the relatives of those whom these guys killed?

There is more. Some Muslim organisations coming together under the auspices of the ‘Coordination Committee of India Muslims’ have issued a press statement rejecting the Batla House operation carried out by Delhi police as fake, notwithstanding clinching evidence to the contrary and the death of Inspector Sharma to the bullets of terrorists. They have not stopped there and have demanded virtually separate and exclusive criminal laws and procedures for Muslims.

This is what they want: “We demand that whenever police undertakes a combing or search operation in any Muslim locality, at least one third of the raiding force must consist of officers belonging to the minority community, and minority elders of the affected area should be taken into confidence and made part of the enquiry and interrogation teams.” The separation that influential Muslim leaders want from the Indian state and other ordinary Indians is no longer limited to personal laws and a civil code. They now want a separate criminal code too. The sub text is that if the state does not give in, they will wave the alienation flag and justify all future killings of innocents by Islamic terrorists.

All this is really explosive stuff. This is just the perfect recipe to ensure increasing separation of Muslims from rest of the nation. This is just what is needed to ring alarm bells in the minds of people of other communities and destroy any possibility of mutual trust being built. Integration of any community or sect in the mainstream, essentially a matter of trust, is simply not possible when such statements and demands are made, not by religious extremists but by responsible community leaders.

It must be said that the process of eroding trust and fanning doubt is being helped no end by an irresponsible media obsessed with TRPs and brought up on theoretical secularism totally disconnected from the real world out there. Sections of the media are also responsible for inadvertently ‘justifying’ Islamic terrorism by myopically and dangerously linking it with ‘alienation’. Islamic terrorism has very different ideological roots and the Pakistan factor simply cannot be wished away.

It needs to be remembered that no other ‘alienated’ section of India’s population – there are many of them - goes around planting bombs to kill innocent people and taking pleasure in counting the ‘kills’.

Islamic terrorism has to be faced squarely without flinching and fought by all Indians, including Muslims, till it is decimated. It is time for the country’s many truly secular but silent Muslims and India’s media to recognise this fact which is staring them in the face, and contribute responsibly to the achievement of this sacred national objective.
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Readers may also read: 1. Tackling Islamic terrorism: what India needs to understand 2. Rushdie and Jinnah: whither Indian Muslims?

MUSHARRAF'S SHOCKERS ON TERROR, KASHMIR AND INDIAN MUSLIMS

President Pervez Musharraf has not lost any of the sting that made him stage the Kargil fiasco in 1999. Nor has he lost sight of what many believe is the long term objective of Pakistan with respect to India. This is something that emerges as clear as light at noon from the recent interview that he gave to Karan Thapar for CNN-IBN, despite the cleverest efforts of the latter to paint him in a light that even he can never see himself in.

The interview was long and covered extensive ground, with Musharraf making quite a few very significant statements, some of which should have seriously disturbed India and Indians. But the headlines said something else entirely. To cap it, writing in the Hindustan Times, Thapar spoke glowingly of Musharraf as someone whose "toughness and belligerence has yielded to a smiling and, surprisingly, soft spoken manner...commando recklessness..replaced by a more considered approach...a new truthfulness...he sounds more acceptable than offensive, more analytical than polemic".

Watch the interview on CNN-IBN and see if you can spot the new and improved Musharraf and even faintly deduce that the "partisan passion of the former President is spent", as Karan Thapar would like readers of HT to believe. I have no doubt that at the end of it, you will be alarmed by what Musharraf said and appalled, even horrified, at Thapar's inability to hear it and respond to it.

The dangerous Kashmir deal that never was

The transcript of the Musharraf interview on CNN-IBN carries the headline: "India, Pak were close to Kashmir Deal". Were they really anywhere close to it? Was the clever deal which Musharraf was aggressively pushing for really in India's interest and would it actually have been accepted by the Indian government and its people?

As per Musharraf, there were three main components of the proposed deal: demilitarisation, self governance and joint mechanism.

• Demilitarisation. Demilitarisation along the LOC and within Kashmir on both sides was proposed. Musharraf also wanted the Indian Army to move out of two or three cities like Srinagar, Baramulla etc. As to India's response to this proposal, this is what Musharraf told Thapar: I wouldn't say that it was hundred per cent positive or that they had given assurances or understanding. We did not move forward on that. We did not have any schedules. We had an agreement in principle on general demilitarisation.
• Self governance. This involved giving "maximum governance" to people on both sides of the LOC. But there was no common understanding about what it meant. Well, we had to work out those nitty-gritty, the details. This was what the General had to say about the real progress made on this principle.
• Joint Mechanism. A body comprising Kashmiris on both sides and Indians and Pakistanis was proposed by Musharraf to oversee self-governance and other related issues. On being queried whether there was any agreement or understanding on whether this body would have been appointed or elected, Musharraf was forced to admit: Frankly, again, we did not go into such details of what exactly that body would be.

As is evident, India and Pakistan were far, far away from reaching any deal that would have solved Kashmir. Translating broad principles into a comprehensive agreement is a daunting task even in much simpler cases. In this almost intractable imbroglio, the specifics had not even been touched by both sides in any concrete manner.

What has emerged from the interview is that Musharraf was trying the classic camel-in-the-tent trick to get India to shed its exclusive control over its part of Kashmir and give Pakistan an entry that could then be enlarged gradually by it subsequently through "popular support", terrorism etc till it wrested complete control.

As anyone who understands the demographic dynamics of Kashmir knows, any joint control/demilitarisation/maximum governance in POK would not have resulted in India getting any stake there whatsoever. It would have effectively been a completely one sided deal in Pakistan's favour. The parallels with Europe were totally misplaced and illogical. I shudder to think that India's leaders were even open to such an idea. At any rate, the deal was nowhere close to being finalised, and I suspect that it was due to the efforts of a small minority in the Indian establishment that does not wear magic glasses that transform reality into fantasy. Given a chance, there are a number of rootless 'stars' who would have surely sold India a number of times over by now.

To resolve terror, India must talk Indian Muslims with Pak.

It is simply shocking that no one in India has picked up and highlighted the very dangerous and paradigm changing statements made by Musharraf regarding Pakistan's interest and stake not just in Kashmir because it is a Muslim majority state being fought over since 1947, but in the rest of India too. As many as four times during the interview, the General openly linked terror and its eradication with the state of Muslims in India. Not once did Thapar respond. On the contrary, he stuck to Kashmir and pretended as if these words had not even been uttered, so fixated was he on projecting Musharraf in good light and pretending that the long term danger that India faces from Pakistani sponsored or, if you like, encouraged terrorism is needlessly exaggerated.

Thapar asked Musharraf about Obama's Af-Pak policy. That was enough for the latter to talk of tackling terror holistically to include Kashmir and, yes, India's alienated Muslim minority, particularly the youth. These were his words in response to four separate Thapar questions:

"I don't agree with this Af-Pak solution at all... I may add that there is an Indian connection there too in terrorism and extremism. There is extremism within India in the Muslim youth and it is developing linkages with others - the Kashmir issue too. Therefore if we want to finally deal with terrorism and extremism and solve it in its short-term and long-term perspective, we have to look at events in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan."

"Now if we were to only resolve Pakistan, Afghanistan and the borders and frontiers then it makes no sense because what you are talking about, these Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, they are all there because of Kashmir. And now they have sympathies with the Muslim youth because they think they are being alienated, they are under-privileged etc. So how does this get solved? As far as Pakistan is concerned, the same extremist organisations will have a lot to continue on the path that they are following. Therefore India has to be brought in. I am sorry to be saying this to you, but India has to be brought into the fold."

"Why do organisations like the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammad exist? How can we pull the carpet from under their feet? Basically they are there because of Kashmir and now also because of the situation with the Muslim minority in India. These things need to be resolved".

"...we have to bring India into the focus, what is happening to India and how is it creating negative effects in Pakistan. Now that happens to be Kashmir and also what is happening with the Muslim minorities."

Did you not notice how openly Musharraf articulated that the state of Muslims in India is a bilateral issue, in which Pakistan has a stake and that India has to resolve with it? Did you not realise how blatantly he appropriated for Pakistan the role of spokesman of and arbiter for Indian Muslims? Did you not sit up alarmed at the manner in which he all but threatened India that Pakistani terrorist organisations like the LeT and JeM "will have a lot to continue on the path they are following", even if Kashmir is resolved, for and on behalf of Indian Muslims?

Conspiratorial silence?

In December 2007, Karan Thapar had virtually given a call for the elimination of Modi, so righteously wronged he had then felt about the latter's victory in the Gujarat Assembly elections, because of his alleged involvement in the riots of 2002: "Only the sudden removal of Narendra Modi can change this. For he is the agent forcing this change. And whilst he is with us, he will do just that. I have no doubts Indian politics after Sunday the 23rd is another country".

This is the tragedy of India. There are many Indians like Thapar who readily lose their pen and balance, and expose their disturbing aggression when it comes to Indian political leaders who do not belong to their political camp. But when it comes to Pakistani leaders, they turn blindly believing and readily forgiving. Musharraf, for example, has not only been totally forgiven for Kargil but is now even being exalted as a truthful man who honestly wants peace with India.

That Kashmir deal which has been used by Thapar to sell Musharraf to Indians was going to be nothing short of a sell out for India. In addition, is Pakistan or Musharraf ever going to be satisfied with Kashmir alone? To those who have been following real events and not fake cross-border friendships, there has never been any doubt that Pakistan has at no stage given up its fundamental objective of bleeding India to death through a thousand cuts. Musharraf reiterated that as plainly as an ex-President can to Thapar by giving it a contemporary and communal twist. But the latter was not listening then and is not speaking now.

Why have Musharraf's efforts to speak on behalf of Indian Muslims and his threat that terrorist organisations will continue to flourish in Pakistan, unless India discusses and resolves the issue of alienation of its Muslim citizens with Pakistan, gone completely unchallenged? While Thapar's silence can be attributed to his limited personal agenda and a weakness that flows from personal equations, praise and more, what has happened to the rest of the media and other analysts? Does India's unexpected and needless capitulation at Sharm el-Sheikh have something to do with it? Should Indians be prepared for more shocks and a big time sellout in the garb of "peace" soon?

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2. Understanding and defeating the psychology of terror
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4. Kashmir and Afghanistan are two sides of the same coin
5. Secular Indian Mujahideen

INDIA TO PAK: YOU KEEP SHOOTING, WE'LL KEEP TALKING

A month and a half back, India's new Foreign Minister SM Krishna had given as clear an indication as he could that Mumbai 26/11 had been placed in the archives, like numerous previous terror attacks had been, and that India was ready yet again to offer the other cheek to Pakistan, even though it was still bleeding as a result of the many slaps given by the latter earlier. "Never negotiate out of fear, but never fear to negotiate". These were the little understood words of John Kennedy that Krishna used to justify what was clearly going to be a climb down of humiliating proportions.

Anticipating where Krishna and the officials at the Foreign Office were preparing to take India, this is what I had written then: We are getting back to square one, tail between legs, the empty bark beginning to sound like a pleading yelp. And all this without even the dignity of a face-saving concession by Pakistan, however tiny. Kiyani and gang must be laughing their guts out, after spitting contemptuously in India's face, yet again. The "buzdili", cowardice, that defines India's response to Pakistan's open and unrelenting efforts to hurt it through covert use of force, and spotted long back by former ISI chief Hamid Gul, is only getting worse.

I must admit that I was wrong. The capitulation Krishna and the officials in his office were planning for India was actually far worse and far more damaging. I can only imagine that they were able to sell their dumb and defeatist ideas to Dr Manmohan Singh by covering them with the lofty but empty and divorced-from-reality Nehruvian idealism and magnanimity that has repeatedly seen India give but not get. That failed and disastrous mindset was clearly responsible for making the PM say that India will not be a great country without engaging Pakistan.

A country does not become great by engaging other countries on their terms, particularly when those countries are waging war against it. By doing so, quite the reverse happens, and over time a great country is weakened and then defeated by a determined enemy. But who will teach that to our career diplomats and politicians?

During his visit to Pakistan in 1999, Atal Bihari Vajpayee tried to illuminate Pakistanis by saying, "One can change friends, not geography, not neighbours". He was greeted with Kargil a few months later. Ten years later, Manmohan Singh, after the terror attack in Mumbai, still said: "we cannot choose our neighbours...an alert and pluralist society like ours is the best defence against terrorist onslaughts". He was greeted in Sharm el-Sheikh by an even more aggressive Pakistan that got him to agree to a joint statement that has shocked and angered a lot of Indians.

The whole world has known since the dawn of civilisation that you cannot change your neighbours. And ever since then, there has been a never ending struggle to ensure that your neighbour remains friendly to you and does not engage in acts that are hostile to your interest. Whenever that equilibrium is disturbed, the matter is more often than not settled through use of force or, better still, the threat of it. For the bigger nation, diplomacy is merely an instrument to convey to your neighbour the minimum that you expect of him, and to tell him that failing which he must be prepared to face unacceptable consequences. And to make such a warning credible, you have to consciously develop the means that can deliver that message effectively without him being able to respond and hurt you in turn beyond a point.

Unfortunately in India, diplomacy - mere words - has become an end in itself. Negotiations and talks based on fear and cowardly morality have become the prime vehicles by which a huge nation of more than a billion people wants to interact with and influence its neighbours who are in its strategic sphere of influence. This sorry state of affairs is partly because of politicians who have no understanding of national security and strategy and partly because career diplomats and other departments of the government work in water tight compartments and are busy building their own dysfunctional bureaucratic empires.

Pakistan also knows that it cannot change it neighbours. But it is not willing to accept the existence of its neighbour in the east in its present form and wants to change the dynamics to suit its own view of history based solely on religion. So, ever since its birth, it has unsuccessfully used various means to bring about that change. The present and ongoing zero cost, zero risk method of using terror or low intensity conflict is one that it has employed for over two decades now, with no reaction from India despite the heavy cost it has been paying to fight it. To those who have their eyes and minds open, it is evident that Pakistan is not going to give it up till it is forced to.

The only guys who manifestly cannot see fundamental fact this are politicians and officials making a career out of writing notes in the Foreign Office, NSA, MHA and MoD. That is why the PM says that India will only passively keep defending itself against this proxy war with the help of "an alert and pluralistic society". That is why a Foreign Minister misquotes JFK to begin talking with Pakistan once again to mask his helplessness. And that is why India agrees to a joint statement that no self-respecting country will even consider, just eight months after the worst ever terror attack on its soil and despite Pakistan having done nothing to show that it will not allow its territory to be used against India.

Who would have even dreamt that India would agree to a statement which says: "Action of terrorism should not be linked to the composite dialogue process and these should not be bracketed". Worse, how could India ever agree to the inclusion of "threats in Baluchistan and other areas" of Pakistan, because their very mention implies that Pakistan is accusing India of supporting terrorism in the whole of Pakistan? And that too after losing thousands of her sons in fighting terrorists in Kashmir and with Pakistan not only not accepting its active involvement in the war there, but also openly threatening that peace is not possible till Kashmir is resolved?

The PM may have said after the Joint Statement was issued that the composite dialogue process cannot resume till the perpetrators of 26/11 are brought to book. That means little given what has been accepted by India in writing. This virtual surrender that has also opened up endless future possibilities for Pakistan to accuse India of supporting terrorism in Pakistan, shows that Pakistanis remain, as always, one step ahead of India. That is simply because they know what their objective is and they know how to deny it too by lying through all their pores, without giving a damn whether India believes them or not.

Once again, India has let Pakistan get away with a blatant act of war. Once again, India has told Pakistan that it can keep shooting at India and keep killing its sons and daughters. India will not react; it cannot because its politico-bureaucratic set up is convinced that India can stop those bullets and beat Pakistan solely with the help of poorly drafted statements and an "alert pluralistic society", forgetting completely that it is this very pluralism that Pakistan cannot live with and wants to alter by all means at its disposal. The bullets from Pakistan will not stop if India does not change the way it thinks and responds. And that cannot happen till it keeps trying to mount the moral horse at the slightest pretext to claim a hollow 'victory', beyond which its bureaucrats do not want to see for obvious reasons.

When the Prime Minister of a country says in full glare of the international media at Sharm el-Sheikh "dialogue ke siwaye koi chaaraa nahin hai" he immediately makes one billion people of the country look like helpless cowards who have no choice but to surrender before someone who is holding a gun to their heads. And he all but legitimises the use of that gun by the enemy. Dr Manmohan Singh is an honourable man. But he is an economist by training, not a strategist. Unfortunately, it is evident that officials in the Foreign Office and in the NSA who have his ear are also equally ignorant and ill equipped to understand and deal with a mindset called Pakistan, a mindset honed and controlled by its generals.

Eloquence is no substitute for real understanding of an obdurate and offensive military mindset. Without that understanding, an appropriate response that Pakistan will understand and react to in a manner that we want, will not be forthcoming. And India will be forced to take hit after hit like a helpless duck. We have to force Pakistan to stop shooting. Talking like defensive dimwits is not going to make it put the gun down. It is time for India to get fresh, knowledgeable and focused minds into controlling positions in the security and diplomatic apparatus of the country. The sooner we do it the better. Till we do, the bullets will keep coming and all we will do is talk like zombies who have lost their way in a self-made labyrinth.
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Picture source: Gulf News

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4. Making India safe: cosmetic changes will not stem rot
5. Understanding and defeating the ideology of terror

COMPENSATION FOR RAPE VICTIMS: NONE FOR MOTHER INDIA

The no-holds barred battle for the dalits of Uttar Pradesh between Sonia Gandhi and Chief Minister Mayawati has, not surprisingly, descended to new lows. And this time it is yet another woman, UP Congress President Rita Bahuguna Joshi who, in a fit of anger, has ignited political passions by ridiculing Mayawati for the low compensation of Rs 25,000 being given to rape victims and offering her a crore if she gets raped.

This derogatory remark, made even worse because Mayawati is a dalit, has given just the opportunity that Mayawati was looking for to tell her dalit followers that she alone can empower them and that all the efforts of the Congress to woo them are nothing but natakbazi. Joshi has been put behind bars under the SC and ST(Prevention of Atrocities) Act, her house in Lucknow has been set on fire by goons and an apology has been sought by Mayawati from Sonia Gandhi. There has been the usual uproar in Parliament today and worn out blame games have begun along party lines. Maneka Gandhi, whose son Varun was locked up under the NSA by Mayawati, has, quite naturally, demanded that President's Rule should be imposed in UP.

It seems that Mayawati has clean forgotten what she herself had said about compensation to rape victims when Mulayam Yadav was Chief Monister. Then, she had spoken of the poor compensation of Rs 200,000 paid to some Muslim rape victims and had said that Muslims would happily pay Rs 400,000 if the daughter of Mulayam Yadav or his relatives was raped instead.

Rape has become a very serious issue in the country. Activists, many of them politicians, are stridently demanding death sentence for the heinous crime, in addition to enhanced monetary compensation for rape victims. Noble thoughts indeed.

But, seeing the same sickening, mind numbing, petty games being played by politicians over and over again, to protect or poach voters, one cannot but feel that they are all collectively raping Mother India. This gang rape has been going on for decades. And the shameless rapists are, tragically, those children of India who have been democratically chosen by her other children to protect her and them. They are the ones who need to be punished most severely for defiling their mother, for giving unbearable pain to her, for remorselessly exploiting her to satisfy their limitless lust for power and pelf.

But how can they punish each other for a crime they are all guilty of? So, they will all talk of giving more compensation than the next politician only for a rape victim who presses a button on a voting machine. And since Mother India suffers their assaults in silence and will not take sides in their political fights, they think they have every right to repeatedly do to her what they are doing, and sing Vande Matram with a straight face afterwords.

For Her, there is no compensation.
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Picture source: 1 Word A Day

NUCLEAR DEAL: MANMOHAN DID RIGHT

Last year, when Dr Manmohan Singh threatened to resign if the Indo-US Nuclear Deal did not go through and the communists withdrew support to the government on this issue, there was one question that was asked by a lot of people: what is the hurry to get the Deal through? That question has been more than satisfactorily answered. No one is in any doubt that Barack Obama would not have given such a Deal to India. He did support the Deal before he became President and says even now that he will honour it. But it is evident already that there is a fundamental mismatch between his views on proliferation of nuclear weapons and what the Deal promises to India.

Well before he became President, Obama had spoken of his vision of a nuclear-weapon free world. That is something he has reiterated often since as a long term global goal which he admits will not be achieved in his life time.

But, there is no doubt whatsoever that he is serious about setting in motion measures that will lead to the achievement of that vision. Towards that end he has already taken some concrete steps. A few of these are:

• In the first week of July, he reached an outline agreement with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev. As per that "joint understanding" signed in Moscow, the strength of deployed nuclear warheads of both countries will be reduced to below 1,700 within seven years of signing a new treaty.
• He has also announced that he would seek ratification of the CTBT which the US has signed but not yet ratified.
• The US, along with other nuclear weapon states among the G8 members, has also decreed a moratorium on production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear devices and is working towards a treaty that bans it. G8 members have also called upon all states to declare and uphold a moratorium on production of such material.

This defining call made by the G8 to all states, undoubtedly under the leadership and urging of Obama, to declare a moratorium on production of fissile material, has gone largely unnoticed in India. This is a major step towards putting a lid on proliferation of nuclear weapons. From this flows logically the much talked about interim ban imposed by the G8 on enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) items and technology sales to the countries that have not signed the NPT. There are only three countries who have not done that yet: India, Pakistan and Israel.

The G8 Statement on Nonproliferation marks a shift in the position of the nuclear powers as far as India's ambitions and plans as a de facto nuclear power are concerned. The Indo-US Nuclear Deal concluded between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George Bush allows India to separate its military and civilian nuclear facilities with only the latter being placed under IAEA safeguards. India, thus, has became the only non-nuclear weapons power that is free to pursue its nuclear weapons program without attracting sanctions or facing a ban on import of dual use technology items, something that it had faced ever since it exploded its first nuclear device, stymieing its efforts to generate power through the use of nuclear energy.

The imposing of the ENR items and technology ban by the G8 effectively re-imposes the ban on some critical dual use items and dilutes the Deal to some extent. The government, possibly caught on the back foot by this development, should have seen this and more coming ever since Obama got into the White House. Russia and France have reportedly signed agreements with India that permit India to reprocess imported nuclear fuel on its soil. But that may mean little if these members of the G8 individually refuse to overlook the very ENR ban that they have collectively imposed a few days back. Will they do it?

The real picture is likely to emerge only after India starts talks with the US on a reprocessing deal to operationalise the Deal. Will it be possible for the US to say one thing at the G8 and do exactly the opposite with India thereafter? Or will it cite the 123 Agreement to make an exception in the case of India? After extracting it pound of flesh, of course! The decision that the US takes will set the tone for all other members of the NSG. A negative for India decision by the US will inadvertently see China achieve without effort what it failed to do surreptitiously at the NSG meeting in Vienna last year.

The G8 statement needs to be seen in the light of the nuclear test carried out by North Korea on May 25, 2009, the nuclear program being pursued by Iran and the real danger of nuclear weapons and/or technologies falling into the hands of terrorists. These immediate concerns coupled with the pacifist vision of Barack Obama have resulted in the statement which may impact India adversely and make it appear as if India has blundered in entering into the Deal with the US. But if you look more closely, it will become clear that is not so.

Would India have been better off today had it not signed the Deal? The answer is unambiguously in the negative. Without the Deal, its nuclear weapons program would have remained as illegitimate as that of, say, North Korea or Pakistan and it would not have been able to get the nuclear power plants that it is planning to now, from any country, to generate 20,000 MW of power by 2020. Even if the ENR ban stays, for whatever reason, for some time, the situation will still be better than it was before the Deal was signed. At least with the Deal and the NSG approval in place, India has a solid and exclusive platform to work on; it had nothing earlier. And if India continues to outgrow the rest of the world economically, soon it will even have much better bargaining power than it has ever had till now.

Barack Obama's views on nuclear proliferation may, at worst, see some temporary erosion in a few provisions of the Indo-US Nuclear Deal that Dr Manmohan Singh was astute enough to insist on pushing through when Bush was US President. It is now on the alertness of India's leaders and their negotiating skills to ensure that such erosion is minimal. It is also important that Obama's position on the subject is viewed holistically and not narrowly as anti-India.

India also needs to remember that Obama will have at best eight years as President. The Deal will outlast him. And who knows how the next US President will look at things and what the global security scenario will be then, particularly in the light of China's furious efforts to build a strategic military capability to rival that of the US? Let us give Manmohan due credit. He did right in pushing the Deal, as time will tell.

MUMBAI 26/11: WHY IS THE GOVT SHIELDING LOCALS?

First it was Mumbai Police Commissioner Hasan Gafoor who said it openly in a televised press conference, only to retract his statement a few hours later under pressure. Then it was the BBC that made that claim in a TV program. Now it is the FBI that has provided solid evidence that proves that the terrorists who attacked Mumbai on November 26, 2008 did get local support for their operation.

Ever since 26/11, there has been a lot of speculation about the extent of local help that was provided to the terrorists who carried out the biggest terror attack ever in India. The Congress led governments both in Maharashtra and the Centre have, however, been consistently maintaining that the attack was planned in Pakistan and executed by Pakistanis who had no local help at any stage from any Indian except Fahim Ansari and Sahabuddin, both of who have been arrested by the police.

When Gafoor first dropped a bombshell by telling the media that "fourteen to sixteen men, which includes Indians and Pakistanis, are are wanted in the attacks", the government got him to clumsily retract his statement within hours to say that the "wanted" list, yes, included all the nine dead terrorists and Ajmal Kasab who had already been captured alive, and that the only two Indians in the list were also already in custody.

It is worth recapitulating certain significant facts pointing to strong local support that had emerged immediately after the attacks but about which no follow up action has manifestly been taken:

• Naval commandos who were among the first to engage terrorists in Taj Hotel recovered a rucksack left behind by them. The contents of this rucksack were shown by many TV channels and included, among other things, cash and seven credit cards including those of top Indian banks like the ICICI, HSBC, HDFC, Axis and CITI bank. Fake Indian identity cards were also found on the person of all terrorists. Ajmal Kasab, the lone terrorist captured alive, was carrying a fake ID card of Arunodaya Degree College of Hyderabad, in the name of Naresh Verma. Who got these cards made in India for the terrorists?
• The terrorists were completely familiar with the layout of the hotels and moved around the buildings with practiced ease. Their knowledge of the layout was first brought out by the Naval commandos and later confirmed by Ratan Tata himself. "There seems to be no doubt that they knew their way around the hotel," he said, "They seemed to know it in the night, or in the daytime. They seemed to have planned their moves quite well, and there seem to have been a lot of pre-planning in terms of what they did and how they managed to carry on for three days and sustain themselves during that time." Was it possible for them to acquire such familiarity only on the basis of blueprints, as claimed by Gafoor?
• The way they were able to sustain themselves for three days without running out of ammunition and explosives suggests that much more of the lethal stuff than they carried in their rucksacks had been smuggled into the hotel prior to the attack and placed at locations precisely marked during previous reconnaissance missions. Who placed them there?
• The terrorists were supposed to sink the boat they used to land in Mumbai, but had planned to get away safely after completing their operations. It means that they would have known the safe location to where they were to go to they to go, before evetually making their way back to Pakistan by a different route. Could such a get away have been possible without serious logistic support on Indian soil?

For almost eight months now, Indians have been led to believe by their own government that ten young boys just landed up from Pakistan in Mumbai by sea and held the city to ransom for 60 hours, all on their own. When Narendra Modi first echoed the question that was in the minds of most Indians by saying that the "smallest of persons knows" that a terror attack of this scale could not have been launched without some local support, Home Minister Chidambaram responded by asking in turn whether Modi was in contact with Pakistan. The position that no locals were involved was reiterated by him just 10 days back. But now it seems that the truth that the government has been trying so hard to hide from its own people is beginning to surface uncomfortably for it.

In a program telecast on June 29, the BBC made the startling claim that it was spotters on the ground who kept the handlers of the terrorists informed about the exact position of the security forces, enabling the former to direct events minute-by-minute, routing calls over the internet. BBC correspondent Richard Watson said that they knew every move that the police were making as the crisis unfolded, and that it was unlikely that this information was obtained by them from live TV coverage shots. This stance was, predictably, rejected by Mumbai police who maintain that the attack was carried out by a "totally independent module of ten terrorists" launched from Pakistan.

The most damning documentary evidence of all, however, has been made available by the FBI in its report to the Mumbai crime branch, as reported in the Hindustan Times of July 11, 2009. As per the FBI provided logs of the phone calls made by the handlers of the terrorists to "numerous phones in Mumbai, Pune and Nashik", they were in touch with local contacts between November 23 and 28. During this period, they made 91 calls to 23 mobile phones and 10 land line phones using 30 VOIP connections. The first call was made three days before the attack to a Delhi land line number. Details of calls made have since been published in HT and can be found here.

As per the HT report, none of the people who took these calls have been identified, let alone investigated. Why has no effort been made by the police to find out details, and more, about the 33 recipients of these calls? The handlers of the terrorists were surely not calling their relatives in India to just greet them during those few days.

It is becoming increasingly evident that investigation into the involvement of local LeT modules and/or individuals in the Mumbai terror attack has not been been stonewalled either accidentally or on the orders of local functionaries. A conscious decision seems to have been taken to do so by some very responsible people in the government. Mumbai's Police Commissioner would not have retracted his statement had he not received orders to do so from the highest echelons in the central government.

The question is: why is the government so adamantly shielding locals who have waged war against India? Is it because those involved are so politically powerful that they can damage the electoral prospects of the alliance in power in Maharashtra and Delhi?Are the lives of India's innocent citizens and the country's security less important than retention of political power?

Is this the unacceptable price that India will have to pay from now on for being a secular democracy?

ZARDARI'S ADMISSIONS: NEW DAWN OR POWER PLAY?

A stunning admission like this, made not long after victory has been achieved but when the danger is still potent and life-threatening, takes a lot of courage. That too by the President of a country that has for decades employed terror as a means of achieving "strategic" national objectives. This is not the first time that Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has spoken out against terrorists. But never before has any Pakistani head of government, or even senior politician, gone this far to admit the role of the state in actively promoting terrorism.

"Let us be truthful to ourselves and make a candid admission...militancy and extremism emerged on the national scene...because they were deliberately created and nurtured as a policy to achieve some short term tactical objectives." This is what Zardari openly said a couple of days ago.

These words would have undoubtedly created huge tremors in sections of the Pakistani establishment that still are on the old path, ongoing military operations against the Talban notwithstanding. At any rate, these words have raised hopes of a new dawn in Pakistan and indeed the whole of South Asia. But is such optimism justified? Or is there more to it than meets the eye in Zardari's continuing offensive against Islamic extremism and terrorism?

In an interview given to NBC on May 07, 2009, Zardari had said that the ISI and the CIA had together created the Taliban. In a similar vein, in his keynote address at the Socialist International Congress at Athens in Greece on July 01, 2009, he had blamed the US for exploiting Pakistan "as a tool of Cold War intrigue" and abandoning it after the Soviets were defeated in Afghanistan, "to the forces of extremism and fanaticism". It may be recalled that almost a year back, he had warned that the Taliban should be banned because Pakistan faced a grave danger from it, and had alleged that President Musharraf was taking their side while pretending to fight with the US against them. Then, in an interview to the Wall Street Journal in October 2008, he had gone to the extent of calling militant groups operating in Kashmir "terrorists" - something he later denied after there was a predictable uproar in Pakistan - and declared that India was not a threat to his country.

If we analyse all these statements together, it becomes clear that the wily Zardari is carefully laying the blame for all the fundamentalist mess that Pakistan finds itself in today at the feet of the military establishment without saying as much. And he is not resorting to any falsehoods to do that: it is the military that has been calling the shots always, even when civilian governments have been in power.

Examine the following facts:

• Zardari's latest and most startling admission was made in an address to senior bureaucrats where he made it clear that terrorists have challenged the state not "because the civil bureaucracy was weakened and demoralised" but because of the policy to use them to achieve short term tactical objectives. Who laid down the policy? General Zia-ul-Haq. And objectives? Other leaders, primarily military.
• What is the ISI that Zardari has blamed for creating the Taliban? It is a powerful intelligence outfit that is a part of the Pakistani military establishment. Army Chief Kiyani was, in fact, heading it before he took over his present assignment.
• Who first decided to send terrorists to Indian Kashmir to meet "tactical objectives"? The military again, under Zia-ul-Haq. That is why Zardari called them terrorists.
• The "heroes of yesteryears until 9/11" are the terrorists of today who have begun to haunt Pakistan, says Zardari. Evidently, as far as he is concerned, there are no "good" terrorists or "freedom fighters"; all of them, including those fighting the Indians in Kashmir, are now haunting Pakistan, and need to be eliminated.
• As far as the influential role of the army is concerned, Zardari says that he is in control of everything in the country, including the military, and that the Parliament has the final say. That is what Zardari wants. As everyone knows, it is the Army Chief who is the last word in Pakistan; he is the one every civilian President has to be wary of.

Had such encouraging statements which virtually echo what India has been saying for decades been made by a military ruler of Pakistan, one could have safely concluded that they reflect radically new thinking in that country and could well lead to a new dawn in the relations between India and Pakistan based on mutual self-respect and peaceful co-existence with zero tolerance for religious extremism and violence. But when a civilian President, and that too Zardari, once famous as Mr Ten Percent for the bribes he took when his wife Benazir Bhutto was PM, makes them, there has to be a sub-plot.

Zardari's admissions are best seen in the context of the power struggle that has been going on between the military and the civilian government that came to power last year. Initially, Nawaz Sharif and Zardari got together and got rid of President Musharraf. But after that, Zardari deviously made himself the President and left Sharif nursing his wounds. Sharif got one back later in forcing Zardari to reinstate the Supreme Court judges dismissed by Musharraf etc, and Zardari has not been able to recover lost ground since then. General Kiyani is keen to clip Zardari's wings even further and turn him into an irrelevant puppet while he pursues the military's agenda for Pakistan from behind the scenes. If he cannot be reigned in, Kiyani will want to replace him by a pliant individual or even himself, in keeping with the glorious traditions of some of his predecessors.

Zardari knows all this too well. So, what better insurance to safeguard his own position than speaking the anti-Taliban, anti-madrassa and anti-terror line that is soothing music to the ears of the the US and the rest of the moderate world, and putting Kiyani on the defensive by publicly all but blaming the dominance of the military for the mess that the country is in today?

May be Zardari is aiming even higher to ensure that the Army does not take over in future again and accepts the supremacy of the civilian leadership finally. He may even succeed, given the way things are beginning to shape, and the fact that Barack Obama is in the White House. But till he or any other civilian leader can fully demonstrate that it is his writ that runs in Pakistan and that the military has finally succumbed to the democratic will of the people, such admissions, no matter how dramatic, must be seen only in the context of the internal struggle that Pakistan is going through and not as a fundamental change in its basic outlook or attitudinal orientation towards its immediate neighbours.

A new dawn is not yet on the horizon.
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Readers may also read:
1. Zakaria's Afghanistan strategy: salvage or surrender?
2. Understanding and defeating the ideology of terror
3. Kashmir and Afghanistan are two sides of the same terror coin
4. India and Pakistan are not victims of the same terror
5. Swat is now Pakistan's flog valley