It's business as usual!

Terror has struck again and this time it’s the turn of Delhi to face the trauma. This latest attack comes less than two months after the July Mumbai bombings. The nature of terror remains the same and only the scene of the crime changes. By looking at the TV footages, you rather numbly see the same images of innocents having to go through a bloody ordeal. The citizens of India are just helplessly left to fend for themselves over and over again. The post blast script is so terribly predictable that you can easily guess the reactions of our politicians and the total lack of any new anti terror initiative is what makes me angry.

The 26/11 Mumbai attacks were unprecedented and quite logically the people concluded that it will act as the game changer as far as India-Pakistan relations were concerned. Our politicians as usual made the right noises and since it was so conclusively proved that there was a Pakistani hand in the attacks, the world put tremendous pressure on Pakistan to come clean. Since we were the victims of Pakistan sponsored attacks, we were supposed to apply the pressure relentlessly till something concrete was achieved. But we loosened our grip as a result of a combination of American pressure and benevolence of our Prime Minister who declared that we share a common destiny with Pakistan. We started talking to Pakistan again while our enemy number one, Lashkar-e-Tayebas’s chief Hafiz Saeed, was roaming freely in Pakistan. When we should have gone for the jugular, we actually let Pakistan off the hook! The result was that the terrorist attacks started again and this time none of those attacks were traced to Pakistan. The amazing fact is that none of the post 26/11 attacks have been solved by the investigating agencies. The Pune blast at the German bakery, the July Mumbai bombings, blast in Bangalore outside the cricket stadium, blast at a ghat in Varanasi etc are all unsolved. All these blasts were masterminded in Pakistan but were never traced because of the “Karachi Project” of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). This Karachi Project envisages that the terror attacks in India would be carried out by Indian citizens themselves and Pakistan would escape the blame. The terror outfit named Indian Mujahideen claimed responsibility for various attacks and Pakistan claimed that the disgruntled Indian Muslims were carrying out the attacks. Moreover since the PM had initiated the dialogue process with Pakistan, it was imperative that no finger pointing be done towards Pakistan lest the talks may fail. Therefore people were getting killed and it was business as usual for our government vis a vis Pakistan.

Yesterday’s Delhi attack has been claimed by Pakistan based terror outfit HuJI. Although the veracity of the claim is being verified but none the less it will be very difficult for the government to remain soft on Pakistan anymore. There also has been a concerted effort on the part of the present government to politicize the terror attacks. It is widely believed that the government is not actively pursuing the local terror modules for fear of antagonizing the minority vote bank. There has also been an effort to project the alleged threat from the right wing Hindu terrorists even when there has not been a single conviction of so called Saffron terrorists in a court of law. The utterances of some Congress leaders clearly point to the fact that the party is playing cheap politics on terror. Wikileaks had some time back revealed Rahul Gandhi telling US Ambassador that Hindu terror was a greater threat to India than Jihadi terror! Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh has been spewing venom on RSS, repeatedly blaming it for terror activities. This dangerous vote bank politics on the colour of terror has only strengthened the hands of the enemies of our nation.

There is absolutely no doubt that the terrorists are having enough time to plan and execute attacks. They seem to be under no pressure from the security agencies. Terrorists who are vigorously pursued would never have the time to plan anything. Osama bin Laden was a classic case in point. The Americans put so much pressure on Osama that after 9/11, he was just trying to somehow survive and he was in no position to plan another attack. On the other hand we have tons of evidence against Pakistan but instead of taking hard measures we are actually talking everything but terror with them. I must before concluding make it very clear that I am not a war monger. Adopting hard measures could include suspending of dialogue process, suspending various cultural exchanges including people to people contact and if needed breaking diplomatic relations. We must have clear anti terror goals and relentlessly pursue our national interests. Since nothing of that has happened in the past, little wonder that Pakistanis call us a “Buzdil Kaum”.