Punjab terror attack wake-up call
The recent jihadi terror attack in the Gurdaspur district of Punjab, a mere 10 miles from the Pakistan border, and directly accessible from neighbouring Jammu and Kashmir, were the presumed entry points into Punjab. The analysis of the Global Positioning System on the persons of the dead men should help reveal the truth. This, however, is a technicality in the general scheme of things. More important by far the shadow the event casts on India-Pakistan relations. The Indian government’s earlier brouhaha on renewed talks between the two countries at the national security advisors’ level followed by a Modi-Sharif summit was clearly a case of unseemly haste flowed by repentance at leisure. The proposal was not thought through well, otherwise there would have been greater cogitation over the fiascos of earlier summits on the watch of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh, both honourable men desirous of going down in history as wise and generous peacemakers. Alas, it takes two to tango; such ill-starred exercises in summitry have been derailed in the past because Pakistan is not a normal state, nor a genuine democracy; neither is it a conventional military dictatorship. It is a jihadi entity controlled by a military-intelligence nexus, with client politicians and a political class in tow, each driven by the inebriating, messianic vision of a global or regional caliphate built on the ruins of ‘Hindu’ India. A respected American academic’s meticulously researched work on the subject, to which specific reference was made in an earlier issue in this column, will repay the reader for his/her time. Indian politicians as a species have no time for serious reading nor, it would appear, to their advisers in the bureaucracy. A cursory perusal of Christine Fair’s admirable work on the Pakistan army would have put them on guard, but long accustomed to the comforts of clichés and shibboleths, they were caught badly off guard by the Gurdaspur incident. Any Pakistan summit requires careful calibration, with each step choreographed minutely. There has to be a Plan A, B and C plus room for failure If these plans go awry
Hopefully, realization will take hold in the corridors of power in New Delhi. The Punjab anti-terrorist commandos, benefited from their training with Israel’s famed intelligence service, Mossad, according to a Times of India report. On standby were Indian Army special services units and kindred elements from the National Investigation Agency. The Punjab police, however, performed admirably on their own. Only a prize lotus-eater can believe the peace has been, or will be, secured in our time. There are likely to be more serious challenges now and in the future. The legendary KPS Gill, who masterminded the successful counter-insurgency operation against Khalistani terrorism (Pakistani-based, and allied to jihadi groups there)in Punjab in the 1990s, has issued a public warning to the powers that be: stop thinking only of the Pakistan’s ISI, the greater looming threat is the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) operating out of Syria and Iraq and its spreading tentacles across South Asia.
The American Media Institute and America Today newspaper last week reported that a 32-page Urdu document recovered from a Pakistani citizen - member of the Tehreek-i-Taliban – focused on building a new terrorist army in Afghanistan and Pakistan with an eye to launching operations in India. The Urdu document, translated by the Pakistani Harvard University researcher, Mustafa Samdani, tells of intended targeted attacks in India itself. American Media Institute’s Sara Carter told the Hindu newspaper that an assault against India was “imminent,” that recruitment for the venture was under way. To this must be added news of Afghan Taliban leader, the fearsome Mullah Omar’s death in a Karachi hospital two years ago. Like his close friend Osama bin Laden, he had enjoyed the protection of the Pakistan authorities. Without his charisma, sections of the Afghan Taliban might veer off to ISIS, giving it a more formidable reach. The Afghan Taliban, tribally and ethically rooted among the Pashtuns, might be reluctant to cast their lot with Arab jihadis working to an Arab Islamist agenda. Meanwhile, drugs smuggled in from Pakistan are leading to a pandemic of drug abuse in Punjab, a jihadi war by other means.
Mamata dazzled by London
West Bengal Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee, had long been enamoured of London from afar. The sights and sounds of Britain’s great capital city held her in thrall during her recent visit to the UK. She went on walkabouts with members of her staff, soaking in its ambience; only the Thames, it appears, failed to impress. Be that as it may, the purpose of her visit was to attract British investment to her investment-starved State. Bengal suffers from an image problem. Three decades and more of Communist-led Left Front rule had throttled industry, led to the flight of capital and to the slow demise of the economy. Strikes and demonstrations were endemic, labour indiscipline was chronic and management had become a life-threatening occupation. Calcutta, the State metropolis, hovered on the brink of the 20th century’s greatest urban disaster. The 2011 State Assembly elections, against all the odds, and defying every pollster, won Ms Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress a landslide victory and reduced the Communists to an ungainly rump. Ms Banerjee, once the feisty street fighter, she confesses, has been slow in learning the ropes of economic restoration. Her message in London was that Bengal was ready for business. Urban renewal is work in process, and there has been considerable rural uplift; however, only manufacturing can guarantee a significant reduction in the high unemployment that blights West Bengal’s future advance. The reputable businessmen from Bengal who were part of her delegation made an eloquent pitch for her government and their message will have been surely heard with interest by their British peers. The German Consul Rainer Schmedchen gave high marks to the State Government for its restorative efforts, singling out Finance Minister Amit Mitra for special praise in his handling of State finances and the overall economy.
In London, Ms Banerjee was accorded a warm welcome by Prince Andrew, Patricia Hewitt, former Trade and Investment supremo, present Minister Priti Patel and Labour peer and industrialist Lord Swraj Paul, whose family has deep roots in Kolkata as does he himself. Prime Minister David Cameron was in Singapore recently pitching for British business in South East Asia. Perhaps Bengal’s time has come at last. Better late than never.
Popinjay Tharoor’s Raj bashing
Dr Samuel Johnson, the eighteenth century Panjandrum of English letters, pronounced that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” The profession of the super patriot, the false one, that is, has long been discredited, yet it stubbornly resists its internment in Madame Tussauds waxworks of horrors. India, it would appear, has more its fair share of the species. The popinjay, Shashi Tharoor, went on a binge of Raj bashing at the Oxford Union in the manner of the famed Pied Piper of Hamelin. One doesn’t have to romanticize the Raj, but neither was their need of such indecent exposure of chronic intellectual indigestion at this ancient seat of learning. Modern India’s greatest minds – Rammohun Roy, Swami Vivekenanda, Bankim Chatterjee. M.G. Ranade, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Rabindranath Tagore and Sri Aurobindo, well understood that, following the breakdown of the Mughal Empire and the murderous internecine strife and foreign invasions, had so debilitated and traumatized the people that, only a foreign agency would have the strength and energy to put the Indian Humpty Dumpty together again. They preferred the Pax Britannica to, say, an Ottoman or Persian peace, or that of a similar caliphate to be the instrument of India’s revival explored by the magisterial histories of Jadunath Sarkar and Ramesh Majumdar, to go no further. The present Constitution of India owes much to the Government of India Act of 1935. The present Indian judicial system has as its core the principle that a man or woman is innocent until proven guilty beyond all reasonable doubt. Were this not so, and had the Mughal sharia prevailed, Mr Tharoor’s career as a public entertainer and politician might have ended before its time.
PS. Witnessing the rise of Singapore as a global centre of excellence, one cannot but meditate on its origins as an offshoot of the Raj, that its founder, Stamford Raffles, set on his venture to South East from Bengal.
