Politics is all about perceptions – public perceptions. Shivraj Patil was removed as Home Minister after the 26/11 atrocity in Mumbai because he was not articulate enough to paper over the holes in the nation’s security systems. Besides, he was a PR disaster, changing his attire amidst crises every other hour.
Patil’s successor P. Chidambaram promised much. And promised it in the language of the image-makers: English. Besides, he could rely on the slavish loyalty of a couple of editors who had courted him when he was the country’s finance minister.
But has anything changed on the ground? If you leave aside all the new-fangled systems and organizational structures created at considerable expense, post-26/11, in terms of actual delivery the security set-up continues to be as lame, as flat-footed, as before. However, Chidambaram, unlike his predecessor Patil, is a better guardian of his public image. So, nothing really negative gets written about him. And here we are not even talking of the terror attacks on the Delhi High Court. Or the ceaseless Maoist carnage in the Red Corridor.
No. Let us take the specific case of the bomb attack a few yards away from the official residence of the Prime Minister of India. Without dispute there could be no higher security zone in all of India.
Look how the security system has been sensitized to any threat from any quarter. For a very long time after the attempt to kill the Israeli diplomat right across the Prime Minister’s house, the local police continued to maintain that it was a case of fire in the vehicle’s gas-cylinder. This despite the fact that scores of personnel from the Delhi Police, IB, the elite anti-terror squad were on the scene of the blast when it happened since they were guarding the nation’s prime minister. Besides, the car being diesel-run.
In this context, it is worthwhile to recall an earlier incident which too had laid bare the thorough-going incompetence of the security services. On the 1984 Gandhi Jayanti Day, visiting the Raj Ghat for the mandatory tributes at the Samadhi of the Mahatma, President Giani Zail Singh and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi came under attack. Someone had lobbed a grenade or two at them but missed the target by a wide margin. And what do you think the initial reaction of the police was: That it was the noise from the backfire of old Harley-Davidson motorcycle-rickshawas that plied on the road in front of Raj Ghat. Until a few hours later the police found a young Sikh hiding high on a tree in the complex they were all set to dismiss the abortive attack as a case of motorcycle backfire.
In the case of the attempt to assassinate the Israeli diplomat last Monday not until the embassy protested that it was an Iranian plot and that one of their consular staff was the target did the security agencies take the matter seriously. In all probability, they would have dismissed it as a case of a fire in the car’s gas-cylinder and closed the matter.
If in spite spending thousands of crores on acquiring new toys for the so-called elite commandos and ace anti-terror squads the first reaction of the security services continues to be the ‘backfire of a motorcycle’, as in 1984, and ‘a fire in the CNG cylinder’ in 2012, you may well ask, “So, what has changed?”
This is not all. The stupidity does not clearly end here. Delhi Police Commissioner B.K. Gupta came up with his own dud a good twenty-four hours after the attempt on the life of the Israeli diplomat. Sounding like Archimedes, Gupta claimed he had spent hours researching on the internet the kind of bomb that was used in the attack. And his finding: it was a sticky bomb.
The head of the police in the nation’s capital distributed photocopies of the end result of his hours-long research. Inter alia, Gupta’s discovery led him to declare: “Sticky bombs are a type of explosives crafted from one Bomb and 5 Gel. At point blank range, it can cause a total of 100 damage to mobs and 200 to the player.” Even other stats of the bomb were mentioned in the hand-out released by Gupta: “Damage 100, Max Stack 50, Shoot Speed 5, Use Time 24, Sell 1.”
But soon the painstaking research of the police chief was found to be plain nonsense. It seems he had hit the site of a video gaming website and unsuspectingly copied it to reach his Eureka moment. A sticky bomb is one of the several weapons players in this video game use to win the virtual war. But Gupta did not know he was up against a real enemy and had to be adept at realistic solutions to neutralize him before it swamped him and the entire security apparatus with his better-funded, better-planned and better-motivated assault on the city.
Nor for that matter, did his boss, Chidambaram know much about the best way to tone up the security bandobast except to make high-pitched noises about coordinated responses, real-time intelligence, a single chain of command, et al. Small wonder, you have not heard the great man hold forth on the small box how his anti-terror squad had worked wonderfully well to ensure that the assassination attempt against the Israeli diplomat did not succeed.
Well, the victim indeed survived the deadly attack, but it was no thanks to the country’s security systems. It was in spite of it. For, in spite of the fact that there were police vans and ambulances parked yards away from the site of the attack, the victim was rushed to the hospital via the Israeli embassy in a privately-owned vehicle.
So much then for the change for the better from Shivraj Patil to P. Chidambaram!
One ‘liberal’ Muslim enough
Not unlike the wild forest bushes which dutifully bend when a fierce gale hits, only to stand erect when it blows away, the so-called liberal Muslims mouth all the right sentiments until faced with the pressure from the assorted Mullahs and Imams. For proof, check out on educated Muslim politicians, or, for that matter, intellectuals, for their take on the banning of Salman Rusdhie from the Jaipur Literature Festival.
The way Law and Minority Affairs Minister Salman Kurshid has behaved recently would make it hard for anyone to believe that he has had the benefit of a modern, liberal education and therefore can have little reason to do the bidding of the fundamentalists of the Muslim community. And here we are not even talking of his claim in Azamgarh that Sonia Gandhi had shed copious tears seeing the photographs of the boys killed in the Batla House police encounter.
No. The deliberate manner in which Khurshid defied the Election Commission is only partly accounted for by the fact that his wife, Louise Fernandes nee Louise Salman Khurshid, is locked in a rather difficult contest from one of the Assembly segments in his Farrukhabad parliamentary constituency. Desperate to ensure her success by hook or by crook, Khurshid challenged the Election Commission to hang him but he would not accept its order not to dangle the carrot of reservations for Muslims when the poll process was already underway.
For now the fight between the EC and the educated and allegedly liberal Khurshid has been set aside. But what may well have aggravated the confrontation is the fact that the EC is headed by a fellow-Muslim, S.Y.S. Qureshi. Khurshid seemed to find it hard to accept that the Qureshi-led EC would try and discipline him.
The problem stems from the fact that secularist parties for want of genuine grassroots leaders have come to rely on the token liberal elements to enlist the support of the large minority community. So, when someone like Khursid is catapulted in a high post, he is overly anxious not to allow anyone else who is well-educated and has distinguished himself in his profession, such as Qureshi, to become a threat.
Khurshid had behaved equally badly when Prof. Mushiral Hasan was the pro-vice-chancellor of the Jamia Millia University. Following the banning of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, a Kolkata magazine had quoted Hasan that instead of banning books it was always better to challenge questionable ideas with counter-ideas. At that time, Khurshid’s wife, Louise Fernandes, was a correspondent with the said weekly.
Using the innocuous remarks of Hasan, a violent protest was launched against him by a small group of Jamia students. Khurshid himself criticized Hasan for his interview to the magazine. Soon, matters were so manoeuvered that Hasan had to leave Jamia. Khurshid believed that Jamia was his home turf and saw in Hasan another rising star who could be embraced by a secular party as a showpiece Muslim to appeal to their community.
Could it be that he sees in Qureshi a possible threat since the latter would be retiring soon and has all the right educational and professional credentials to become the liberal Muslim face for any political party keen to exploit his appeal to the great unwashed Muslim masses?
Loyal to the Book
While still on Khurshid, it seems the quality of election propaganda can be so low that in Farrukhabad poor Louise Fernandes has had to answer the question as to whether she had converted to Islam after marriage. In a huff, she is supposed to have answered that being a Christian, she could not have converted since hers too is a religion of the book (like Islam).
Now, her response provided an opening to her Hindu rivals who asked whether she would have converted on marriage to Khurshid if she was a Hindu since Hinduism is not a religion of the book. Difficult to please voter-votaries of all religious faiths all the time, you see.
Think-tankers all
Even before the political class has had time to think about the coming presidential election, certain aspirants are already pulling strings to position themselves for getting the top job in the country.
Among them is a member of the minority community with close links to a powerful Bombay-based corporate house. The gentleman in question had been associated with the company when he was still in government. Even after leaving the key ministry, he had maintained contacts through a think tank which serves as a provider of sinecures to all favourites of the company. If he does not make it, the other contender - also from the minority community – can hope to get the nod from the UPA. He too, incidentally, was associated with the same think tank.
Heard in Press Club
“It is for Salman Khurshid and Digvijay Singh to decide whether after being shown photographs of the persons killed in the Batla House encounter whether Sonia Gandhi had actually cried or laughed…” Amen.