[Reader-list] BJP and the challenge of terrorism (The Hindu)

[Pawan Durani]

Dear Kshmendra,

I wish that 'experts' in SARAI ,who immediately jumped into sharing their
opinion after Batla House encounter are just not writing anything about ATS
and the investigations.

Are the 'experts' in concurrence with the ATS ?

I would love to read some views on the subject , maybe some views in favor
of ATS and some opposing it .

It would be worth reading.....


Any 'expert' ...ehh ....'writer'

Pawan

On 11/19/08, Kshmendra Kaul <kshmendra2005 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Taraprakash
>
> It is shameful how the BJP is public-posturing over this investigation into
> Malegaon Blasts / Kulkarni / Dayanand / Sadhvi etc.
>
> Absolutely disgusting hypocrisy and double-standards displayed by the BJP
> in how they have reacted to investigation reports (leaks) in two different
> "terror" linkages, one suggested as involving Hindus and the other suggested
> as involving Muslims.
>
> Those who constantly doubt the existence of and/or make  making apologies
> for and/or try to find justifications for "Hindu terrorists" are no better
> than those who do the same for "Muslim terrorists".
>
> Additionally, as Vidya Subhramaniam has aptly written:
>
> """"" For the challenge of terrorism to be squarely met we need
> investigators who brag less and concentrate more on finding clinching
> evidence. We need a more responsible media, and finally we need political
> parties that preach less and have the courage to turn the mirror
> inward.""""""
>
> Kshmendra
>
>
>
> --- On Wed, 11/19/08, taraprakash <taraprakash at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> From: taraprakash <taraprakash at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Reader-list] BJP and the challenge of terrorism (The Hindu)
> To: "Sarai" <reader-list at sarai.net>
> Date: Wednesday, November 19, 2008, 9:40 AM
>
> BJP and the challenge of terrorism
>
> Vidya Subrahmaniam
>
> Instead of acknowledging the possibility that some Hindutva elements could
> be
> involved in terrorism, the BJP and the sangh have gone on the offensive.
>
> At a press conference held some weeks ago in Delhi, Ravi Shankar Prasad,
> the
> amiable spokesperson for the Bharatiya Janata Party, seemed strangely out
> of
> form. If this was unusual, so too was the subject under discussion -
> Hindutva's terror connection. A veteran of countless television studio
> debates, Mr.
> Prasad is well schooled in the art of repartee and rejoinder. Yet here he
> was,
> stumbling and stuttering, unable to face the volley of questions on the
> revelations linking a handful of Hindutva followers to terror attacks in
> Malegaon and other places.
>
> Asked the hacks: What happened to the BJP's stand that terrorism brooked no
> leniency? The BJP had no qualms about labelling every Muslim terror suspect
> a terrorist; it campaigned for the return of the draconian Prevention of
> Terrorism Act, which placed the burden of proof on the accused. Yet it now
> wanted
> the presumption of innocence applied to terror suspects from its own fold.
> Why?
> The party wanted the maximum freedom granted to terror investigators so
> that they felt no pressure. Yet it now complained of police excesses. Why?
>
> That was then, in the early days of some Hindutva warriors' newly
> discovered terror links. As the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad set off on
> the
> saffron
> terror trail and arrested a gaggle of activists, among them Sadhvi Pragnya
> Singh and a serving army officer, the BJP seemed in shock. At a loss for a
> strategy
> to deal with this unexpected twist in the terror plot, the party lurched
> from
> one unclear position to another - from the tried and tested "let the law
> take its course" through outrightly denying the terror link to urging a
> fair trial for the accused. Party strategists worried that they had lost
> the
> terrorism
> plank, and wondered how the new revelations would play out in the electoral
> arena.
>
> Judging by the BJP-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's current aggression, the
> moment of self-doubt has passed. Evidently, the Hindutva terror angle,
> which
> formerly
> discomfited the parivar, has since become an opportunity to deepen the
> communal
> divide. BJP chief Rajnath Singh, who has been photographed with Pragnya
> Singh, earlier claimed that he was embarrassed to have been found in the
> same
> frame with her. Today he is out on a limb to defend her and others caught
> in the ATS terror ring, going so far as to call their arrests a " huge
> conspiracy," and offering them the full protection of his party.
>
> Calculated belligerence
>
> The RSS' initial restraint has similarly given way to a belligerence
> calculated to incite divisive passions. The crackdown on Pragnya Singh and
> others has
> sent the Vishwa Hindu Parishad's Praveen Togadia into a torrent of abuse
> and anger. Warning of reprisals against the ATS and the United Progressive
> Alliance
> government, he fumed: "They are committing the sin of describing a sadhvi
> as a terrorist. I promise a political backlash against this."
>
> This is dangerous talk. Mr. Togadia's threats aside, Mr. Singh is virtually
> saying he will not allow the police to do their job in a serious terror
> case.
> The BJP and the sangh would have gone ballistic had one of their
> ideological
> adversaries or a Muslim cleric used similar language.
>
> The BJP's other point, that arrests should be based on hard evidence, is
> unexceptional, though this is an unprecedented first from a party which
> never
> before
> attached any importance to evidence: "The Congress must realise that
> terrorist investigations can be solved not through propaganda but only
> through
> hard
> evidence and non-politicised investigation."
>
> A word of caution here for the BJP's opponents. This is not a moment for
> gloating or finding satisfaction over the involvement of Hindutva elements
> in
> terrorism.
> Terrorism is serious, whether of the Islamist or Hindutva variety, which is
> all
> the more reason to ensure that it does not become a tool for settling
> political
> scores or to target the innocent. It can be no rational person's case that
> investigation into Islamist terrorism must be meticulous, impartial and
> transparent
> but that a wild goose chase is permissible when the suspects are of
> Hindutva
> persuasion.
>
> The BJP is fully within its rights to question the ATS on the veracity of
> its
> findings. Yet this right by no means extends to threatening the ATS or
> warning
> of a backlash. There is also the party's blatant double standard. When the
> Delhi police killed two Muslim terror suspects in an encounter at Batla
> House
> on September 19, following this up with more arrests from the
> neighbourhood,
> the BJP did not wait a second to call all of them terrorists and angrily
> swung
> at human rights activists who picked holes in the police version. The party
> called Mushirul Hasan, Vice-Chancellor of the Jamia Millia Islamia
> University,
> anti-national for his offer to provide legal assistance to the terror
> suspects
> at Jamia Nagar. It stuck to this position despite a clarification from him
> that the funds were being privately arranged by the students and teachers
> of
> the university. It said this knowing that lawyers in many courts had been
> physically prevented from representing the Muslim terror accused.
>
> An irony
>
> Today, the BJP has promised to arrange the best legal help in the country
> for
> Pragnya Singh and others. If this is an irony, so is the fact that every
> terrorism-related
> charge the party hurled at its political opponents is now recoiling on it.
> Terrorism had been the BJP's biggest plank, topping the agenda at every
> party
> meet and providing the basis for its political resolutions. The party
> contended
> that it alone had the will and inner strength to counter terrorism, which
> posed the single most potent threat to the unity and integrity of the
> country.
>
> From this vantage nationalist position, the BJP attacked its opponents: The
> Congress and its allies in the UPA were soft on terror because they coveted
> the Muslim vote-bank. Rights activists and even some within the UPA were
> openly
> sympathetic to Muslim terror suspects, offering them legal help, countering
> the police claims and so on because they looked at terrorism from an
> anti-national perspective, because they refused to accept that the
> imperatives
> of
> pursuing terror overrode human rights considerations.
>
> Addressing a seminar in the capital as recently as October 4, Lal Krishna
> Advani, the BJP's prime ministerial candidate, summed up his party's
> position
> on terrorism thus: "As far as the BJP is concerned, let me make it
> absolutely clear that we shall never conduct ourselves in such a
> short-sighted
> way that
> history would hold us guilty of not doing our duty at the right time and in
> the
> right manner . Our vision is not limited by the considerations of where
> our party will be after the next elections. Rather, it extends to caring
> about
> where India will be after a hundred years, after a thousand years."
>
> Has the BJP passed the test of the "right time" and "right
> manner" set by its shadow Prime Minister? Clearly not. The "right
> manner" at this "right time"
> would have been for the BJP to openly and categorically acknowledge the
> possibility of some extremist Hindutva elements being involved in terrorism
> while
> simultaneously stressing the importance of transparency in all
> investigations.
> Such a stand would not have tainted the Hindu community. Far from it, it
> would have strengthened Hindu society and underscored its celebrated
> openness.
> Instead, the BJP and the sangh have clung to a single defence: That as
> nationalist
> forces they were above board, indeed that Hindus could never be terrorists,
> much less Hindus who subscribed to cultural nationalism.
>
> This is an absurd claim. Gandhi's assassin, Nathuram Godse, was a product
> of cultural nationalism. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the
> National
> Democratic Front of Boroland (suspected to be involved in the serial Assam
> blasts), are not religious extremists but they would loosely fall in the
> Hindu
> category.
>
> For long the BJP and the sangh have lamented the absence of moderate,
> outspoken
> voices among Muslims, voices that would frontally confront the reality of
> terrorism. It is true that Muslims have largely been in denial about
> Islamist
> terrorism. But that situation is slowly but surely changing, and the
> evidence
> is in the unequivocal condemnation of terrorism by over 6000 clerics at a
> meeting of Muslim clergy in Hyderabad on November 8. The BJP must follow
> this
> bold lead rather than bury its head in the sand and believe in the pristine
> purity of Hindutva.
>
> There is much that is wrong with our approach to terrorism. Investigative
> agencies have tended to talk loose and fast, leading to too many quick-fix
> arrests.
> Last week, the Andhra Pradesh government announced compensation to at least
> 15
> innocent Muslims who were wrongly arrested by the Hyderabad police and
> tortured
> in custody. Cops on the Hindutva terror trail have made many contradictory
> claims. Television channels that ran defamatory stories about "Muslim
> terrorists"
> are now flooding the screens with salacious details of the "sadhvi and the
> sant."
>
> For the challenge of terrorism to be squarely met we need investigators who
> brag less and concentrate more on finding clinching evidence. We need a
> more
> responsible media, and finally we need political parties that preach less
> and
> have the courage to turn the mirror inward.
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