Treason of the learned

Gautam Mukherjee

The Left-liberal intelligentsia in our country is more than happy to see the UPA regime compromise national security: For both, this means keeping Muslims at home and abroad in good humour. The bloodbath in Mumbai shows how horribly wrong they are

In the outpouring of anguish and anger, now that Islamic terrorists have struck at iconic and internationally renowned five-star hotels, restaurants, lounges and a Jewish outreach programme’s headquarters in India, a significant Left-liberal dogma has 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 years of UPA rule.

When Osama bin Laden, the global grandmaster 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 attacks.

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 the US. 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 madarsa-fed shibboleths and their supporters as well as the much-deprived community they belong to, are assuaged.

Thus, implies this particular Left-liberal 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 omission and commission.

And, say this dogma’s adherents, similar wrongdoings 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 Israeli, British, American, Japanese, Australian citizens have been 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 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 its ruling alliance seen to be largely dependant on the Muslim votes, including those created by the infusion of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants, and a country that allows Indian Muslims to live outside the embrace of a common civil law, 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 of 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 Left-liberal intelligentsia, which supports the UPA, expects, quite without basis, the new African-American President-elect of the US, born to a Muslim father, to take a soft line on the ‘root cause 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 apologia is what the French call “la trahison des clercs”, or the treason of the learned. It is a dangerous conceit that has pushed this country to 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 young men on the ground and their handlers in Karachi.

In the aftermath, scapegoats in the form of the Union Home Minister, the Maharashtra Chief Minister and his deputy are being sacrificed with an eye to the ongoing Assembly polls and the coming general election. Their successors 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.

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 was formed to secure independence, but of a unified, multi-ethnic, multi-religious country. The formation of Islamist Pakistan was its first failure, acknowledged by no less a personality than Mahatma Gandhi. Later, the gratuitous liberation of Bangladesh also went badly. And now, the Congress is deliberately soft on terrorism.

It is time to end this cannon fodder raj that uses up our heroes to no purpose. It is time to hit back hard with the requisite political will. And if the UPA does not have the stomach for this fight, it will have to be replaced by those who do.
The Pioneer