Pages

Saturday 27 April 2019

Make America White Again: Trump aide Miller (Sunday Guardian)

By M D Nalapat

Hopefully, Real Donald Trump will step forward and be the colour-blind unifier.


WASHINGTON: Consider an important difference between US and Indian history. In 1947, the Congress Party leadership troika of Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Nehru and Sardar Patel surprisingly accepted the breaking away of a third of the territory of the country on the grounds of religion, although the Mahatma subsequently maintained that the separation was not based on religion but on unspecified other factors. Less than a century previously, newly-sworn in President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln refused to accept the secession of 7 of the 34 states of the Union, and began a war against the secessionists that lasted four years and four weeks, beginning in April 1861. More US troops (from both sides) died during that war than have been lost in every other war waged by the US. If the Congress Party leadership troika put up substantive resistance to the operationalising of the toxic Churchill-Jinnah plan to partition India, the same remains a secret. Lord Louis Mountbatten secured the assent of the Congress troika to the hugely destructive partition of India in record time, with even the Mahatma keeping silent rather than undertaking a fast unto death in order to roll back assent to the plan to break the country up and thereby render naught his life’s mission of uniting Hindus and Muslims in the common cause of freedom from British rule. Instances are not rare where matters of grave consequence have been decided in a manner adverse to the overall interests of the population of our country. An example—one of several—took place at Simla in 1972, when even 93,000 Pakistan Army prisoners of war and their defeat were not sufficient to ensure that negotiators led by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi could force Z.A. Bhutto to agree that the Line of Control in Kashmir was the International Boundary. Jawaharlal Nehru refused to convert into reality Homi Bhabha’s plan to ensure that India joined the club of countries that detonated a nuclear device before China did. Soon afterwards, Bhabha died in an air crash. Of course, whatever scraps of information are there in official records about this and multiple other matters of great concern to the public remain sealed from them. Each political party promises transparency but lapses into amnesia once it assumes office. Strangely, historians write in glowing terms about the way in which events have been guided by the leaders who took office from 15 August 1947 onwards. Should any citizen express a view less rosy, some busybody is certain to get filed an FIR against such temerity, and a kindly magistrate is thereupon likely to convert this into a judicial proceeding that has the ability to drain the finances, the time and sometimes even the liberty of those less adulatory than the hero worshipping historians of India. Why, how and by whom the partition of India took place is an insufficiently discussed subject. Had those who led the newly independent country reversed through force the Churchill-Jinnah partition of the country that was almost effortlessly implemented through Mountbatten, the geopolitical consequences would have been immense. The undivided country would have immediately been among the top four players in global geopolitics, the way China became after Mao Zedong integrated Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang into the People’s Republic of China.
Had Abraham Lincoln been as unwilling to resort to a just war in 1861 as the Congress Party troika was in 1947, had he kept silent as the Confederacy was created by slaveholders in the southern states of the US, the country would not have been the global power it became soon after the trauma and losses suffered during the civil war. The price of war was high, but the future rewards of unity were much higher. “If” is an interesting term in history, and it is less than certain that the politicians who took office as President of the US after the passing away of Franklin Roosevelt would have had the will to go ahead with a bloody conflict, had there been a secessionist bid during their tenures in office. The question seems wholly academic now, but may not be a decade from now, given the less than subtle efforts of many within Team Trump to “Make America White Again”. Even a casual visitor to the US senses a growing divide within the country. A divide that is based on race, on income and opportunity and that is based on beliefs. It is a matter of disappointment that Donald Trump, who is as feisty in the White House as he was in Trump Tower fighting back challenges to his real estate empire, appoints office-holders who have the same mindset as Stephen Miller, a Trump White House luminary who would clearly be delighted were 40% of the present US population to sail away to Asia, Africa and South America permanently. Sadly for Miller and others who owe fealty to such views, he was born about 90 years too late. The US that Miller and his clones are seeking to change is very different from what was the country then. Today, African-Americans (to take an example) are represented in newsrooms and on television in a manner that is far more pronounced than is the case with those of select historically disadvantaged societal groups in India, who in India remain substantially under-represented even in the “liberal” professions. In US boardrooms, in faculty clubs, as well as in several other institutions, the many of those present look very different from what a Stephen Miller wants a US citizen to look like. Whether through seeking to reduce the recorded population of states such as Texas, California and New York through changing census classifications or trying to push many whose ethnicity is not European into leaving the country, the present Republican Party leadership is battling a tide that is too swollen to hold back. Even with the help of a Senate majority guided by a Stephen Miller cast of mind, and a Supreme Court that is looking more like a Miller court with each new appointment, at most two more US Presidential elections can be won by such tactics. After that, the Republican Party will become too toxic to win back the White House in a generation. It is surprising why a US President at home in the liberal traditions of New York has allowed his administration to increasingly resemble that of Governor George Wallace of Alabama in the 1960s. Hopefully, the Real Donald Trump will step forward and be the colour-blind unifier that the times demand.

https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/opinion/make-america-white-trump-aide-miller

Sunday 21 April 2019

‘Hindu assertion’ is the effect of governance bias (Sunday Guardian)

By M D Nalapat

The continuing disconnect from ancient tradition of the three holy sites is creating an invisible sense of victimhood in the minds of hundreds of millions of Hindus.


Since the 1980s, there has been a growing consolidation of what may be described as “Hindu-ness” in India. This ought not to be a surprise. Since 1947, political parties seemed to forget what the majority community was in their incessant focus on the minorities, principally the Muslims. Unfortunately, in a trait that is shared by policymakers across the globe, those involved in policymaking identified the interests of the Muslim community with those espoused by a fringe of religious fundamentalists. As a consequence, even a Prime Minister as modern and well-travelled in his outlook and ways as Rajiv Gandhi panicked at a few less-than-spontaneous demonstrations and statements into getting passed the Muslim Women’s Bill, an action that further entrenched the fringe at the heart of decisions involving the community. Rajiv Gandhi heeded the counsel of those in awe of hardliners, and refused to back his minister Arif Mohammad Khan in the latter›s support to the Shah Bano judgment of the Supreme Court. Not that such a choice was an unusual event in the politics of the country. Since Mahatma Gandhi›s backing for the quixotic Khilafat movement and the refusal by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to seek to reform Muslim personal law in the manner he did in the 1950s with certain outdated traditions of the Hindu faiths, ending in the effort by the Manmohan Singh government to get passed a «communal violence» bill that in effect made it mandatory on the part of the authorities to act as though only the Hindus were guilty of communal violence, the direction of state policy was to take for granted the acceptance of the Hindu population to being treated as though they in fact were the minority. Another UPA gem was the Right to Education Act, in which only schools begun by Hindus have to set aside a quarter of their seats for students who are in effect chosen by local officials and politicians. In a country where the Christian community in particular has distinguished itself by setting up a plethora of educational and other institutions, such an exclusion must be galling for the many Muslims and Christians who wish to join their Hindu brethren and be part of the solution to the problem the RTE was intended to assist in solving. Similarly, there will be more than a few within the Muslim community who are less than joyful at the fact that those in their community who seek more than a single wife are even after 1947 given the freedom to do so, a freedom not enjoyed by them in any other country where the community is in a minority. Even traditions as violative of gender justice as the practice of triple talaq have been allowed to continue without any hindrance.
When India became free in 1947, it was expected that the policy introduced during the British era of taking over temples would get reversed. Both in 1998 as well as in 2014, with the coming to office of two BJP-led governments, it was taken as imminent that temples would be rendered as free of state control as churches and mosques are. Instead, even the few large temples still outside the clutches of the government are by one means or the other entering the clutches of the administration of the day. Much of the donations that flow liberally to such seized property get spent in ways that are very different from the intent of the donors. These are but of a few of the ways in which in India, the majority community suffers from several of the disabilities that the minorities endure in countries where Religious Dominance reigns. Among the most consequential is the fact that what are acknowledged as the three most holy sites of the Hindu faith remain cut away from the tradition that they had been nurtured in for millennia. These are the Ram Janmabhumi, the Krishna Janmasthan and Gyan Vapi in Varanasi, the latter being as precious to Hindus as the Vatican is to Catholics. Both the Ram Janmabhumi as well as the Krishna Janmasthan are akin to what Bethlehem is to the Christian faith. Given that India was partitioned on the basis of religion, and given that Hindus are over a billion in number out of the total population of the country, it may have been expected that these three holiest of holy sites would revert back to their ancient traditions, but as yet this has not only not happened, there seems very little prospect of it taking place at all. In the case of many Hindus, not overtly but subliminally, the continuing disconnect from ancient tradition of the three holy sites is creating an invisible sense of victimhood in the minds of hundreds of millions. Just as the creation of a firebreak stops a much larger fire from spreading, the return to ancient traditions of just these three sites would damp the feelings of victimhood that are the fuel for what is termed as “Hindu assertion”. That such a trend is taking place is obvious, but it needs to be understood that it has not been created by the BJP or its affiliates. Instead, several of the slogans of the BJP and its affiliates is the effect of this self-assertion of the majority community. Slogans that have repeatedly failed to get transformed into fact during periods of BJP rule.
Allow it to be mentioned with pride and love that the mother of this columnist belonged to the Muslim faith in the final decades of her life. Barring the fringe (that others continue to mistake for the whole), the Muslim community would overwhelmingly welcome rather than oppose the return to ancient traditions of the three sites at Ayodhya, Mathura and Varanasi. There will be a few Hindus who would say that the process of reclaiming ancient tradition should not stop at three, but go further. However, such individuals can be isolated and exposed as a fringe in the climate of hope and trust that would follow the peaceful return of the three sites. Even a politician as active in Hindu causes as Subramanian Swamy has several times stated that only the three sites mentioned above are needed to calm the waves of disquiet that have slowly built up strength across Hindu society. These three and not a single one more would be enough to create the firebreak needed to ensure that our country proceeds in the direction of brotherhood of all faiths.

Saturday 13 April 2019

India’s CEC becomes Censor-in-Chief (Sunday Guardian)

By M D Nalapat

Biopic on Modi has been banned by CEC until 2019 Lok Sabha elections get over.


The present Election Commission of India (ECI) , had it been around in the 1980s, may have stopped the screening of Attenborough’s Gandhi on the grounds that exhibiting the movie gave an electoral advantage to the party in which the Mahatma served for much of his life. Similarly, it may have advised US authorities to block the screening of Spielberg’s Lincoln during the period when a Presidential election was taking place, so that Lincoln’s Republican Party did not derive (what in the Commission’s view would be) an unmerited advantage caused by such a screening. The Chief Election Commissioner and his colleagues have banned Vivek Oberoi’s biopic on Narendra Modi from being screened until the lengthy 6-week period deemed necessary by the Election Commission for conducting the 2019 Lok Sabha elections gets over. Producer Vivek Oberoi ought to sue the EC for punitive damages, as the ban means that the very period when overflow audiences may be expected for the movie will end without it having been screened. The propensity of colonial-minded institutions and officials in India to pass order upon order that restricts the lifestyle, liberty and property of India’s 1.27 billion non-official citizens has only multiplied over the years rather than get scaled back, as ought to have been the case. In an order that has a scope apparently going beyond even the renowned Pyongyang Model of Free Speech, the ECI has ordained that any “material that subserves the purposes of any political entity or individual connected to it” needs to be blocked until examined by a committee headed by a retired Supreme Court judge or a former Chief Justice of a High Court. Given the pace at which the machinery of justice functions in India, it is a near certainty that a verdict on such a stoppage of free expression is unlikely to come before an election (or the next) get over. Should the committee finally rule against such orders, the EC could go on appeal to the higher courts, so that serving judges get the opportunity to deliberate and decide on the decisions of retired brethren. To those unschooled in the arcane mindset so beloved of officials steeped in the colonial processes lovingly retained by that admirer of officialdom, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, it seems odd to expect that political parties, candidates and their supporters would seek not to do what the Election Commission regards as anathema, which is to be in support of actions that have the effect of “furthering electoral gains” and “advancing the electoral prospects of a candidate or party”. Without specifying what it means, the Election Commission of India, which has been hand-picked by the Modi government, seeks to enforce a “level playing field” amongst all candidates and parties. Would the ECI clarify in operational terms what this vague phrase means? Will it start by enforcing the limits on expenses mandated by law, and disqualifying those candidates who exceed even by a rupee the unrealistically low election expenditure limits set by law.
Is a citizen of India so simple-minded that he or she would change voting behaviour simply by watching a movie, even assuming that such a change is not the fundamental right of every citizen? Is it not the right of every citizen to watch whatever movie he or she wishes, provided that it does not deal with noxious themes such as child pornography? Congress President Rahul Gandhi has refreshingly spoken several times about doing away with colonial-era laws such as those relating to criminal defamation, laws whose existence he was clearly unaware of during the ten years before his party lost the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Rather than seek to block a clearly adulatory movie about Modi, what admirers of the Nehru family should have done was to produce a film about Rahul Gandhi, showcasing him as the ideal 21st century leader that India needs. It needs to be added that while several may view either or both the Rahul and Modi biopics, few of them are likely to vote simply on the basis of such a viewing. Only the Election Commission of India believes that our citizens are too simple minded to be trusted with the products of cinematic licence. In the past, thousands of years ago, some in society were judged not deserving enough to be taught to read and write, and were forced to remain illiterate. Ekalavya had his thumb amputated for bettering a so-called “higher born” youth in archery. A similar complex, that most of us in India just do not merit the rights and freedoms enjoyed by citizens of countries such as the US or the UK, seems to be at play within the governance structure in India, where decisions that block information and restrict freedoms rain down by the hour upon a populace that believed it had been freed from colonial rule 72 years ago.
Fortunately, the Supreme Court of India seems to be listening to the need for transparency. The absurd proposition by a law officer that documents should be treated as non-existent because they were photocopied and published in a newspaper was just dismissed by the SC. A Law officer has now argued before the Apex Court that the ordinary citizen has no right to know just who is donating vast amounts of money to political parties, when almost nobody gives such a payment unless he or she is paying for past services or is giving an advance on future favours. Surely a citizen needs to know if individuals such Dawood Ibrahim, a sometimes resident of Karachi, are among those who through associates in India have given funds to any political party. Secrecy about sources will only protect the Dawood Ibrahims from discovery. Why should any law-abiding individual be “shy” of admitting that he or she has funded a political party? Surely that is not a crime in a democracy. Fortunately, the SC has dismissed such a colonial-era argument as well although as yet only the ECI and not the citizenry is to be given information on donors. Given that the colonial mindset of so many officials prevent them from regarding ordinary citizens of India as deserving of freedoms and rights denied them through a maze of laws and regulations based on the British era, hopefully the Supreme Court of India will move further in the direction it is now taking, much as the US Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren did in the 1960s to expand the boundaries of freedom in that country and create the foundations for strong growth. India needs a similar era of judicial activism in defence of rights and freedoms not of the state but of the citizen. Rights and freedoms that are essential for double digit economic takeoff in the era of the Knowledge Economy.

Sunday 7 April 2019

Money, muscle, media fail Turkey’s ‘Caliph’ Erdogan (Sunday Guardian)

By M D Nalapat


His stifling control over governance has not saved him from electoral disaster. 


After 17 years in power, during which his Justice & Development (AK) Party won every electoral contest it entered, President R.T. Erdogan of Turkey has just witnessed a defeat. That too, of proportions so substantial that it will give confidence to numerous foes of Erdogan and his policies who have long been silent, biding their time till the leader, whose followers consider him the new Caliph, loses enough support. Even cities such as Hatay and Adana, which were long considered as much an AK Party bastion as Amethi and Rae Bareli have been of the Congress Party, have switched to the opposition this time around. Given the heft that mayoral posts carry in the Turkish political system, the loss of Ankara and Istanbul to the Opposition will impact the next Presidential elections, opening the possibility that Erdogan will lose. Which is why attempts are being made by the AK Party, through use of pliant agencies, to try and overturn the popular verdict through tampering, a situation not unknown in India.
In Tamil Nadu’s Sivangaga constituency, for instance, the Electoral Officer decided in 2009 in an opaque fashion to declare P. Chidambaram the winner by around 3,000 votes. As has been the norm in the NDA government, whose score is unimpressive where actual VVIP accountability for financial crimes is concerned, the BJP-led government has shown no interest in investigating why the Sivaganga electoral officer in question took the decision he did during the 2009 Lok Sabha polls. Perhaps this is another case of officials protecting other officials, an outcome that is rampant within the government. Worse, till now the array of legal talent available to Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been unable to convince the courts to not give order upon order to ensure that Chidambaram not be subjected to custodial interrogation. Son Karti, although briefly incarcerated, has been permitted to travel abroad almost at will because the government failed to convince the courts that the 2019 Lok Sabha candidate of the Congress Party from Sivaganga is influential enough and resourceful enough to ensure that records overseas be rendered harmless to the son of an individual whose many admirers claim that he is “100% certain” to be the next Finance Minister of India and “40% certain” to be the next Prime Minister, should the BJP be the loser on 23 May. Opacity is, of course, the preferred option in a governance system that has since 1947 followed with fealty British colonial practices.
To take a recent example, the Attorney General of India argued on 3 April before the nation’s apex court that the application of the Right to Information Act to the proceedings of the Supreme Court collegium (which selects judges) would “destroy judicial independence” and make both the judiciary as well as the government “shy”, whatever that means. Surely the AG has confidence in the integrity of the SC collegium. Given that the collegium functions in a manner optimum to the public interest, it would be to the credit of the apex court should its selection process be made transparent, the way they are in the United States. Those against whom false charges are made have the option to put the record straight in public. Unless such charges be shown to be accurate, there is scant cause for worry that the life of an individual subjected to the scrutiny of the public would be destroyed in the manner suggested by the principal law officer of the Government of India. And if the charges get substantiated, the candidate must be made to step aside from consideration. AG Venugopal needs to look at developments in technology, which are continuously making governance processes transparent that were otherwise cloaked in secrecy. Rather than be overtaken by technology and the rising hunger for information and accountability in the ultimate sovereign, the overwhelmingly youthful people of India, it would be best to accept the inevitable and be at the vanguard of the spread of transparency in the processes of governance, rather than seek to stymie the right of a free people to know how all those with immense power over their lives get chosen.
Returning to Turkey, with each year that he has been in power, Erdogan has sought to increase his powers and shorten the list of those opposing him. The media in Turkey resembles that in Cuba or in Vietnam, as does the judiciary and the election authorities. In effect, the law in Turkey is morphing into what President Erdogan wants it to be, much as the law in Pakistan is what the Chief of Army Staff regards as proper. During the elections just concluded, the stifling control that President Erdogan and his followers have over practically the entire spectrum of the governance mechanism in Turkey has not saved him or the party he leads from an electoral disaster. There are two reasons why. The first is that Erdogan deliberately sought to turn Turkish society away from modernisation by demonising such impulses as “anti-Turkish” (aka pro-Western) and boosting the heavily religious elements (mainly in rural society and in the small towns) as being the “genuine” Turks. This celebration of attitudes and lifestyles that the country has sought to leave behind since the time of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk has alienated Erdogan from much of the professional and student fraternity, although fear of jail is preventing most from openly expressing their disdain for the “Caliph”. The other reason for Erdogan’s fall in popularity is the fact that the Justice & Development Party is delivering neither. The country has become a quasi-religious autocracy (Turkey is the only country besides China that backs Pakistan on the Masood Azhar sanctions issue) that has jailed more journalists than any other country in the world. The judiciary trembles at the very mention of Erdogan’s name, and bends over backwards, forwards and sideways to carry out his wishes. As for development, Turkey has tipped into recession, the currency is in free fall, and unemployment is rising at an accelerating pace. Such facts on the ground have prevented the AK Party’s overwhelming superiority in money, muscle and media from ensuring a victory in the mayoral polls. Should President Erdogan try and gerrymander the results by using the election authorities and the judiciary, he is likely to witness a “Turkish Spring” similar to that just waged in Algiers against the dictator, Abdelaziz Bouteflika. The waves of popular support for gaining the freedoms that are commonplace in mature democracies will doom those who seek to run their countries the way Stalin did the USSR. 2019 is not 1929.

Monday 1 April 2019

Apprehend the ‘Hindu Terror’ mythmakers (Organiser)

By M D Nalapat

On February 19, 2007 powerful blasts killed nearly six dozen passengers and guards travelling from India to Pakistan on the Samjhauta Express. The blasts occured near Panipat without any prior warning. The only India-Pakistan train service had been launched on July 22, 1976 in the glow of the 1971 victory of the combined Indian Army and the Mukti Bahini over the genocidal troops of the Pakistan army stationed in that territory. Although the former had inflicted a comprehensive defeat on the latter, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi heeded the entreaties of Prime Minister ZA Bhutto of Pakistan (who had repeatedly called for a thousand year war with India, besides other unflattering epithets describing this country and its people) and allowed each of the 93,000 Pakistan army Prisoners of War to return to their stations in Pakistan without any of them having to face charges of genocide before a court comprising of Indian and Bangladeshi military personnel assisted by human rights activists.

Neither was there any serious effort from the Indian side to ensure that Prime Minister Bhutto agree to the ceasefire along the Line of Control in Jammu & Kashmir as the recognised boundary, together with the return of Haji Pir to India after it had been given away to Pakistan at Tashkent in 1965. Nor was any effort made to free the many prisoners (including members of the armed forces) who had been incarcerated and tortured in jails in Pakistan for long periods of time, some of whom may still have survived to the present even under such atrocious conditions. India lost at the negotiating table all that had been won by this country’s army, navy and air force on the battlefield, and got in exchange nothing except a whiff of Shalimar perfume from Prime Minister Bhutto. Once he was deposed and executed by Chief of Army Staff Zia-ul-Haq, who made frequent use of the Samjhauta Express for ferrying operatives and communications gear across the border to ISI elements in India who were in the process of launching the Khalistan Movement that would create mayhem in the Punjab for more than a decade. As has been the case in India with several events involving national security, an enquiry was launched that meandered along on a lazy course, despite evidence that the blast had been carried out on the instructions of GHQ Rawalpindi, using local recruits and material. After a comprehensive enquiry conducted on its own, the United States Department of the Treasury sanctioned a Pakistan national, Arif Qasmani, for inter alia being among the perpetrators of the blasts that took place on the Samjhauta Express two years back.

As a consequence of briefings received from international sources disturbed at the speed with which Pakistan was becoming an endemic focus of terror on the globe, The Sunday Guardian has over the years carried multiple reports on a plan developed and carried out by GHQ Rawalpindi. In order to divert global attention away from itself, GHQ Rawalpindi put into operation a plan to create a perception that India too had become a terror hub. In particular, that the terror gangs were from the majority community. This plan is in operation even at the present time, with the worldwide network of ISI agents of influence (including select NGOs) busy planting the myth that India is a country where Hindu gangs murder and kill the same way as Wahabbi groups do in Pakistan and Afghanistan. More than a few of the attacks on Christian churches and the killings of Muslims accused of keeping or trading in beef have been carried out by what was termed by Vladimir Lenin as “useful idiots”. These are individuals who carry out the wishes of the ISI without knowing that this is the organisation pulling the strings. Several in fact believe that they are acting against the ISI when they carry out acts of violence. The reality is that they have been motivated by “false flag” recruiters who conceal the fact that they are acting on behalf of GHQ Rawalpindi. Trackers of Pakistan-based terror masterminds say that around a sixth of the recruitments made by the ISI in India are from Hindu or other non-Muslim communities, while another fifth consist of “useful idiots” from the same social group. These perform in the manner demanded by the ISI without most of them being aware of the involvement of that organisation in the planning of their activities. Some of the agents and superiors of the ISI occupy positions of responsibility within cities in India, and are in a position to influence policymakers to commit actions that in effect assist the ISI in its operations in India. These may be divided into two broad streams:
 
(a) Standard terror operations across the country
 
(b) False flag terror operations (such as some cases involving the murder of those suspected of transporting or storing beef) designed to assist the global campaign of the ISI to spread the myth that India is in the grip of a wave of “Hindu terror” and ought to be placed in the same category as Pakistan
 
Two countries track events and personalities in Pakistan far more in detail than do agencies based in India. These are China and the United States. Individuals in both became aware of the plan developed by GHQ Rawalpindi at the start of 2007 to damage the reputation of India by portraying the Majority Community as a collection of violent fanatics. This from a country whose minority population has declined from 38% of the population in 1947 to less than 2% now, while in India, those within the citizenry who are not Hindu by faith have crossed 200 million, three times what they were on the day Jawaharlal Nehru correctly said that he and his associates had redeemed their pledge to the people, but “not wholly or in full measure”, a characterisation that has remained accurate through the decades since that remark was made on August 15,1947. Based on inputs provided by trackers of GHQ-inspired terrorism who are based outside the country, The Sunday Guardian warned repeatedly in its columns that the ISI was in the process of implementing an operation designed to portray India’s majority community as having almost as many terrorists within their midst as Wahabbi groups in Pakistan.
 
It is likely that the Samjhauta blast was carried out by the ISI precisely because most of the victims would be Pakistani nationals, and hence it would be credible were Islamabad to deny that its agencies had any hand in the outrage. In tandem, networks in India were tasked with launching “False Flag” operations, so that members of the Hindu community could get blamed for carrying out acts of terror. It needs to be emphasised that a few such actions (though not the Samjhauta blasts) may have been carried out by “useful idiots” of the ISI recruited by those who camouflaged themselves as being patriots. However, these would have been insignificant in number when compared to the mayhem unleashed by Wahabbi groups Investigations into the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai were marked by the reluctance of elements in the higher levels of the Home Department of the State of Maharashtra to acknowledge that there were local elements who had assisted the death squads that had come ashore from Pakistan to carry out the attacks. Information about each of the locations that were attacked was provided by members of the networks supporting ISI activities in Mumbai. Despite denials from Islamabad, it was soon obvious to trackers based in New York that the operation was carried out by the ISI. However, even the capture of Ajmal Kasab was not sufficient to convince some high profile individuals in Delhi and Mumbai that the military in Pakistan was behind the attack. Some even blamed Indian agencies on the grounds that “the attacks were carried out by Indian agencies to defame Pakistan”. Such individuals are clearly the “useful idiots” of the ISI.
 
However, the manner in which a clutch of officials and politicians concocted the nursery tale of “Hindu Terror” gives rise to the supposition that at least some within this group of creators of the fantasy of “Hindu Terror” could have been willing agents (as distinct from dupes) of the ISI. It is astonishing that the BJP-led government that took office on May 26, 2014 has not so far done any enquiry into the cabal of officials and politicians who spun the web of deceit that there was a gargantuan and growing “Hindu Terror” network in India.
 
Despite some officials revealing that they were tortured for refusing to hop onto the bandwagon of the mythmakers, despite affidavits having been forged or destroyed, despite records having been tampered with concerning Operation Hindu Terror, not a single official or politician (including the two Union Home Ministers and their yes-men within the official machinery) who worked 24/7 to concoct the fantasy that there was a “Hindu Terror” network in the country) has been investigated and made accountable by the present government. It is these individuals who sought to divert attention away from the ISI in the case of the Samjhauta blasts by blaming innocent people belonging to the majority community. Such a looking away from the need to bring to book the guilty brings back memories of the Cryogenic Engine Sabotage Operation, when innocent scientists were falsely accused of espionage by officials working (as either frank agents or as useful idiots) of a foreign intelligence agency seeking to sabotage India's cryogenic engine program. None of those who participated in the torture of innocent scientists have been disturbed, although some justice has been given to Nambinarayanan, who was among the victims of the operation carried out by local dupes and associates of a foreign intelligence agency.
 
Mahatma Gandhi forgave even Adolf Hitler, so saintly was the Father of the Nation. This government has adopted the saintly attitudes of the Mahatma by refusing to take action against the higher ups who carried out GHQ Rawalpindi's plan to defame a country and a community. Unless this group be exposed and punished, more such sabotage of the national interest as took place in the Cryogenic Engine Sabotage Operation or the Hindu Terror Operation will take place, weakening the country and damaging its reputation.