Band-aid state

29 Aug 2007, 1130 hrs IST ,
Tarun Vijay
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-2319094,prtpage-1.cms

Bombs are deadly. They suddenly blast and even before you could know what has hit you, your body would be scattered all around in a hundred pieces. You may be having fun at a local food joint or preparing to solemnise marriage the next morning. Everything goes off in a second. Marriages turn into mourning and the enquiries are ordered. That's the system requirement. A democratic state needs enquiry reports. But bombs do not arrive uninvited. They are invited and sheltered and facilitated. The biggest facilitation comes from the state apparatus through the creation of an atmosphere where blasts become a routine affair so much so that people stop counting or reacting to them. The blasts, the condemnations, the expressions of deep sorrows and the steel resolves –'not to be cowed down by such dastardly acts' become so standardised like the cyclostyled copies of the municipal payment receipts we used to see in childhood days, that nobody read. Yet they are kept as sacred documents, readily producible in future if asked –did you pay your bills? Yes, sir. So if someone would ask our worthy leaders what did you do when your people were killed, they would smartly produce the newspaper cuttings – we condemned the incident in strongest words. Band-aid solutions. Never eliminating the cause of the hurt, never finding the permanent solutions. Just a first-aid and the matter ends like an ill-equipped public hospital treating a wounded pedestrian. Do we remember how many of them have occurred so far? Jammu, Gandhi Nagar, Varanasi, Bangalore, Delhi, again Delhi and yet again....Hyderabad, Kolkata, Imphal, Guwahati, Coimbatore... The one who did it in Delhi was condemned to death penalty by the Supreme Court but secular politicians wanted him to be set free. The other, a rogue politician himself, caught for the Coimbatore blasts was felicitated in a public function by the entire cabinet of a state government run by the Leftists, with the home minister in the lead, when the accused was freed on technical grounds, mainly because the state apparatus that was supposed to present proof of his involvement in the bloody incident 'failed' to do so. Have you ever heard a state cabinet felicitating a soldier's family who gave his life for defending India? A Taslima is attacked and the victim herself is booked for the 'instigation' like a rape victim in Pakistan being accused of 'instigating' rapists to commit the act! A party in power, which takes decisions calculating an electoral win and safety of political power rather than the lives of people it is supposed to rule and protect, would even go to the extent of hobnobbing with the anti-nationals to secure their support for staying afloat in governance. The Muslim League (ML), under Jinnah's leadership, was responsible for India's division and the subsequent massacres. Post-Independence, ML survived, though it was a political pariah like the Communist party and Lenin's memory had become in Russia. It was helped revive by the Left parties in Kerala to get Muslim votes and the first district based on a religious group's majority, a Muslim one, was created and named Mallapuram in the late fifties. Now, for the first time in our post-Independence history, the UPA invited ML to join the central government. Parties which would show no qualms in hating any group with a Hindu tag or inclination, go an extra mile to accommodate a communal Muslim party which didn't think to change its name after its condemnable role in the nation's partition. Suppose the Hindu Mahasabha, which was against Partition, was revived by Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh, saying it's a different party now, would any of them be allowed to join the mainstream?
Recently, several thousand Bangladeshi Muslim infiltrators were caught by the Arunachal Pradesh government and thrown out of the state. Immediately, the All-Assam Minorities Students Union, Assam, issued a warning that unless they are 'accommodated', they will push out all Assamese (read Hindus) from three Muslim-dominated districts of Assam – Dhubri, Goalpara and Barpeta. In no time Assam's Chief Minister issued a statement that all of these Muslims, ousted by the Arunachal government, belong to Barpeta and so shall be accommodated there. There was no enquiry that on what basis the Arunachal government has declared these people as Bangladeshis and unless the matter is settled between two Indian provinces, nothing decisive should be spoken for those declared aliens. The central government maintained a studied silence. In Assam the prevailing perception is that any Bangladeshi can claim his or her citizenship to Barpeta, because it's a city run and controlled by Bangladeshi illegal infiltrators. Assam is the only place on this earth where a native government enacted a foreigners' registration act which put the onus of proving a person's nationality on the police or the complainant rather than on the suspect! It was known as the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act 1983 applicable to one state only so that Bangladeshi illegal infiltrators are facilitated to sneak in. The irony was that on a highway, on the left side, Assam, had one foreigners' registration act and on the right side, Meghalaya had a different one. It was struck down by the Supreme Court (SC), which admonished the government in harsh words. But with state elections nearing, a shameless government, through an executive order, amended the act, which had become uniformly applicable all over India after SC's orders, to keep the same discarded IMDT Act in vogue through backdoor. It was against the spirit of Supreme Court's orders, against the national interest, against the people of Assam. Yet it was created to get Bangladeshi infiltrators' votes. Thanks to judiciary, that amendment too was struck down by the court. But by that time the damage had already been done. Like the central government, Assam's Congress government depends on Muslim voters to stay in power. Hence the Bangladeshi infiltrators might be aliens, but till they vote an Indian political party to stay in power, they are most welcome to grab land, take fake identity cards, and increase their population so much that now a Bangladeshi Muslim majority pocket in Assam has demanded a separate autonomous status for it so that they can run their affairs according to their wishes. If the political parties, responsible for safeguarding the nation from aliens, act this way, who is going to stop the terrorists in an effective manner? Just before the state elections were held in Andhra Pradesh, Naxals and Maoists were given lavish dinners by the party in power and made to stay in government guest houses in Hyderabad. Their help was also sought in winning the elections. Can a Chief Minister take action against those bandits now? What worth are his words that assure action against terror outfits when his connections and his bowing before the lawbreakers who control his vote bank, is public knowledge?
A nation living on a self-denial mode can never defeat gun runners. A polity that declares Ishrat Jahan innocent even before a police enquiry begins, which allows secessionists in Nagaland to open and run their 'free republic' headquarters and celebrate 'Independence Day' separately, which turns aliens into voters, thrives on a self-obsessed people who remain as engrossed in their routine of earning and dying as they were in the East India Company's babudom. Strong nations move on their heritage and civilisation, whether it's Russia, China or the United States. They know who they are and who the enemy to their existence is. But here, we have a state which tries to de-recognise its civilisational moors, rather demoralises the patriotic forces ( from Kashmir to Kohima) and sleeps with the foes of our ancestral past so much so that we love to honour the memory of a bigot like Aurangzeb, the ideological 'great grand pa' of today's Taliban, by naming a major road in the Capital after him, but fear to honour Dara Shikoh, the learned scholar of Upanishads and a bridge of love between Muslims and Hindus( Japanese PM Abe quoted him in his address to Indian Parliament recently). Dara Shikoh was jailed and killed by his brother Aurangzeb and his grave lies unheard, uncared for in the precincts of Jama Masjid, New Delhi, where even the fashionable heritage-walkers of the NDMC-Habitat variety do not visit. The state finds it fulfilling to guard the remnants of those who assaulted Indian civilisational state, romanticise the memories of conquistadors-who razed temples and build mosques over it like the one called Quwwat-ul-Islam Mosque popularly known a Qutub Minar, where an introduction by the Archaeological Survey of India tells all, but fails to reinstate temples destroyed by jihadis in the Valley or protect a shrine and a bridge connected with the memories of Ram. So, after every blast, band-aid prescriptions and similar analyses are of no use unless the real spirit of the nation is recognised and nourished. Huntington wrote 'Who are We ? and answered the character of the American nationhood without apologies. Do we know who we are and the destiny of the nation that we are entrusted to realise? Then alone the state can fulfil its commitment to eliminate the hands that turn marriages into mourning. And this can be achieved with a united front of all- no matter which religion or province one belongs to. Because the battle is between Indians and India-haters.