Cannon-Fodder Raj

Cannon-Fodder Raj: The Treason of the Learned

In the outpouring of anguish and anger, now that Islamic terrorists have struck at the iconic and internationally interesting five-star restaurants, lounges and bedrooms of the powerful; a significant dogma of the Liberal and the Left has still been left intact.

This is not surprising, because the same dogma has been promoted relentlessly, and been taken advantage of, by, among others, Pakistani and Bangladeshi terrorist organisations and their local supporters over nearly five bloody years of UPA rule.

When Osama Bin Laden, the global Grand Master of terrorism, declared that America and its NATO Allies, Israel and India were the principal enemies of the Islamic World, it was perhaps inevitable that only India, with its innate callousness, would not take the threat seriously and stay vulnerable, even in the face of near continuous attack.

But the key reason for this disgraceful vulnerability is not gross intelligence failure, sluggish response, logistical inadequacy, ill-equipped constabulary or a less than high-tech armed force, but that same debilitating dogma that saps our political will. And in a functioning democracy, political will is of paramount importance. It is political will and firm direction that has kept terrorist strikes in the singular-and-never-again category in the UK and America. And it is the lack of this self-same political will that is responsible for the frequent gouging of India’s soft underbelly.

That dogma is the notion that the porous national security situation is a fair consequence of a bungled “heart and minds” matter at the root. Therefore, Islamic terror is, understandably, its natural consequence. Ergo, Islamic terror cannot rightfully end until the hearts and minds of brazen and perverse killers, ignorant, near illiterate adherents of medieval madrassa-fed shibboleths, and their supporters, as well as the much-deprived community they belong to; is assuaged.

Thus, implies this particular Lib-Left dogma, if we, the rest of the Indian people, want to live in peace, we must appease and satisfy our tormentors. And the preferences shown and affirmative actions taken are no more than reparations for the original stack of sins of design, omission and commission.

And, say this dogma’s adherents, similar wrong-doings need to be made good by the international community too. That is why they have been specifically targeted in this latest instance. That is why Israelis, British, Americans, other Europeans, the Japanese, Australians were killed and maimed for drawing closer to India.

But the West is not sentimental at the expense of its security. For it, one attack is more than enough. It is not confused about the difference between ordinary, law-abiding Muslims and the Islamic Jihadi, who must, of course, be neutralised. And to make this distinction between wheat and chaff, it does not hesitate to suspend certain civil liberties, including very strong preventive detention and interrogation practices. It does not consider aggressive monitoring of all affairs Islamic intrusive, and swiftly applies the fullest penal rigours of its laws where necessary.

But India, particularly a ruling alliance seen to be largely dependant on Muslim vote banks, including those created by the infusion of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants, and a country that allows the Indian Muslim to live outside the embrace of a uniform civil code, clearly is confused when it comes to the imperatives of national security.

Nevertheless, this must be why Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced with ringing clarity that India’s largest minority had the first right to the nation’s developmental resources. He did not see the irony or the unfairness in his pronouncement even if most Indian Muslims are both poor and uneducated, because, naturally, there are others too. And that must also be why the Lib-Left intelligentsia that supports the UPA alliance, conveniently expects, quite without basis, the new African-American president-elect of the United States, born to a Muslim father, to take a soft line on the “root causes of terror”.

The UPA version of twisted reality demands all Indians to shoulder their responsibility towards this permanently aggrieved minority community, even as it harbours, aids, abets and cheers terrorism in mosque, chaupal and home alike. We should simply mop up the blood of innocents, bury and cremate the dead, mouth platitudes for those martyred in our defence, used up like so much cannon-fodder, and then return to normality without demur. And wait for the next round of retribution from justifiably angry Jihadis.

This kind of apologist thinking is what the French call “la trahison des clercs” or the treason of the learned. It is a dangerous conceit that has positioned this country on the edge of the precipice. It threatens to destroy the morale of the bureaucracy and a unified military, para-military and police force. It divides us with its injustices and political calculations. We are so ill-governed that we can be roiled by less than a score of well indoctrinated and trained teenagers on the ground and their controllers in Karachi..

In the aftermath, scapegoats in the form of the Home Minister, the National Security Adviser and the Maharashtra Chief Minister are in the process of being offered up in this current season of ongoing Assembly and forthcoming General Elections. Their successors, such as they are, can hardly do worse.

But as for getting tough with Pakistan, nothing the UPA does is likely to be even remotely retaliatory. Because short of conventional warfare, despite the mayhem routinely caused here by the ISI and its cohorts, India simply has no covert strike capabilities extant.

But we may have to lose our innocence after all. The oft quoted “secular” narrative, said to be at the core of the very idea of India, needs to be updated. The Congress Party was formed to secure Indian independence, but as a unified, multi-ethnic, multi-religious country. The formation of Islamist Pakistan simultaneously was its first failure, acknowledged by no less a personality than Mahatma Gandhi. Later, the gratuitous liberation of Islamist Bangladesh also went badly. And now, self-serving dogma or not, it is clearly futile to fly in the face of a Jihadi menace. Being deliberately soft on terrorism makes no sense.

It is time to end this Cannon-fodder Raj that uses up its heroes to no purpose. It is time to hit back hard with the requisite political will. And if the UPA does not have a stomach for this fight, it might have to be replaced by those who do.

(1,050 words)

30^th November 2008

Gautam Mukherjee

Published in The Pioneer as "Treason of the learned" on the OP-ED Page on Tuesday, December 2,2008 and online at www.dailypioneer.com. Also archived at www.dailypioneer.com under Columnists.