A is for Allah, B for bandook

Balbir K Punj 

Abu Jundal’s arrest is a reminder that Pakistan remains in the grip of terror outfits. India must bear this is mind while working with its neighbour. 

The arrest of Abu Jundal, the alleged handler of the 26/11 attacks, has served as a pat on the back for the Union Government that has otherwise been battered by the consequences of its own inaction on a whole range of issues in the country. Jundal’s arrest is certainly a big achievement for India’s investigating agencies. But wait before you give an encore to the Government. Are we sure that the secular gang led by Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh has not already provided for Jundal’s safe passage to his native Beed in Maharashtra so that this Indian Mujahideen and Lashkar-e-Tayyeba operative may commiserate with his family and throw doubts on the authenticity of the charges against him?

The CV of this man, who has multiple aliases, puts a question mark on the alertness and competence of our intelligence agencies. That a person involved in so many terrorist acts since 2006 should be able to escape to Pakistan and then, from his safe haven in Karachi, direct the most heinous carnage in Mumbai, raises several issues. These need to be addressed if we are to secure the country from such merchants of murder. Interestingly, Jundal’s CV shows that he does not consider India as his country.

What about the others in his company, like the Bhatkal brothers, who are absconding and are also masterminds of several terrorist attacks? What about all those who are overtly and covertly members of the Indian Mujahideen?

Since 2004, SIMI — the organisation that was banned by the NDA Government — took on a shape that was different from the Indian Mujahideen. It made inroads in several areas, recruited young Muslims and sent them to Pakistan for training. It even held training camps right in this country. In fact, one of its leaders, Thadiyantavide Naseer, was able to (it is suspected that he was allowed to) escape from police custody in Kerala when the Marxists were in power and flee to Bangladesh. It was the Government of Bangladesh that detained him and handed him back to India.

Another preacher of extremism from Kerala, Abdul Nasir Madani, who was tried for plotting to bomb the meeting sites of BJP leader LK Advani in 1999, was feted by all parties of Kerala including the Congress when he was released from jail. Now Madani is once again facing trial for other crimes because of Karnataka police had the courage to arrest him despite threats from the Indian Mujahideen.

The gyrations of Mr Singh and other Congress leaders on the Batla House incident and the 26/11 Mumbai attacks are well known.  They have all sympathies for those whom the investigating agencies consider as a threat to the country’s security, and they all question the brave police officers who died in the process of protecting the country. No wonder the Indian Mujahideen is spreading like wildfire in the country.

Why is it that the Congress leadership, which at one level is pursuing counter-terror policies, is unable (or unwilling) to end this open display of sympathy by its own leaders to those very same terror merchants? In addition, the Congress led Union Government ignores the incendiary speeches of some avowed anti-India baiters like Kashmiri separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani. It is the soft state that creates the right environment for some born in this country to turn into its sworn enemies.

Despite piling evidence that the Pakistani state is involved in promoting an anti-India sentiment in that country, the Congress-led Government has bend backward to strengthen the civilian Government in Islamabad. New Delhi believes that this would curb the military-mullah complex that weilds tremendous power. But now that the same civilian Government has been shown by the Supreme Court in Pakistan as illegitimate, the entire basis of New Delhi’s approach comes under a cloud.

What a tragicomedy has played out in Islamabad where, according to the apex court, the President should be tried for corruption, a democractically elected Prime Minister has been found to be unconstitutional and even the replacement Prime Minister is liable to be arrested! How could such a Government, whose legal base has now crumbled, successfully contain the massive terror army that has kept the population under its grip?

A recent report from London goes to the heart of the tragedy that is Pakistan. The report says: “Citing examples from school curriculum, a prominent Islamabad-based scholar has said that extreme religious and anti-India views fed to children in schools reinforced the cycle of extremism that has showed no signs of receding in Pakistan.”

The scholar quoted is Mr Pervez Hoodbhoy, nuclear physicist and a prominent commentator on current affairs. Speaking at King’s College he quoted how, right from the childhood, the litany of hatred, the elevation of violence as a religious need and the projection of India as the eternal enemy, are injected into the psyche of the Pakistanis.

Alphabets are taught thus: ‘A’ for Allah, ‘B’ for bandook, ‘Te’ for takrao, ‘J’ for jihad, ‘H’ for hijab, ‘Kh’ for khanjar and ‘Ze’ for zunoob. In Class V textbooks there are lessons telling students the need to understand Hindu-Muslim differences and the resultant need for Pakistan. “The poison put into education by Gen Zia-ul-Haq was not changed by subsequent regimes”, Mr Hoodbhoy said.

In fact, why should any regime seek to change it? India and Pakistan’s cultural ties and history are so entwined that unless hatred is injected right from the beginning the next generation of Pakistan would wonder why Partition happened at all?

They would be even more surprised when they would come to know that in India, Muslims are treated as equal citizens under the Constitution. And even if some regime finds it necessary to tone down such poison, the country’s orthodox  elements would not allow it to do so.

That is Pakistan. Its Army has rejected all calls from its financier, America, to shift focus from an anti-India stance. That is because the anti-India mindset is what gives legitimacy to the military’s decades- long stranglehold on the national affairs of Pakistan.
Under our electoral laws, even an appeal in the name of religion or attempts to create animosity among religious groups invoke the disqualification of candidates. In Pakistan such animosity is an essential part of the state structure.

The most important lesson for India, especially after the 26/11 attacks and Pakistan’s consequent attempts to shield the perpetrators of that attack, is that bilateral relations have to be understood in the context of the fact that Pakistan is largely under the grip of a fascist, terrorist structure. After 9/11 the world has become aware of Pakistan as a threat to global peace. It would be counter-productive to believe that a civilian regime in Islamabad could change that state’s character any more than military-mullah combine.

Source : The Pioneer