Sharif must deliver on promise
Hope burns bright eternally in human hearts. And not just India but the world would hope that Nawaz Sharif, poised to become prime minister of Pakistan again after a jail term and a long exile, would restart the peace process with India and initiate the process to dismantle the terror machine which has been playing havoc in the region for decades now.
In his hour of electoral victory, Sharif is claiming that the army will no longer dictate terms, as it did in his previous stint in office. The eternal hopefuls in India are taking his words at face value and many of them have come to believe that things are bound to take a turn for the better and India must seize the initiative.
Fight Islamic fundamentalism
While New Delhi is mired in the fallout of the coal scam and repeated incursions by China deep into the Indian territory, the threat posed by Islamic fundamentalists looms large on the rest of the country.
Ironically, the threat is most pronounced in those parts of India which are under the sway of so-called “secular” parties; and BJP in such places is virtually non-existent. This dubious line-up is headed by the Kashmir Valley, followed by Kerala and West Bengal.
Boston attacks and Islamic jehad
Terror strikes in Bangalore on Wednesday last and a more lethal one in Boston a day earlier, have ironically come when our “secularists” are pleading for mercy for other terrorists in India whose mercy petition has been rejected or who has been convicted for terror-related activities.
At the time of writing, the investigators, both in Boston and Bangalore have not zeroed in on the perpetrators of the bomb blasts. What ,however, would have encouraged a “shell-shocked” American nation is its President’s declaration that the “full weight” of the US justice system will bear down on them. Back home, we would hear pontification about the “resilience of our people” to carry on with their lives in a normal manner in spite of repeated terror attacks.
Katju is selective on pardon plea
The obvious obsession of several “secularists” led by jurist Markandey Katju, Chairman of the Press Council of India and a former judge of the Supreme Court, to get film star Sanjay Dutt a pardon from the President/Governor has raised several questions. In his petition to the President and numerous articles in dailies, Katju wants the government to look at the “facts of the case and then consider whether he should be granted pardon.” From this premise comes the next proposition: “if he (Dutt) deserves pardon, he should not be denied it just because he is celebrity.” What are the “facts” as the retired judge sees them?
“He has already undergone 18 months of imprisonment”. “It took him five to six years to restore his damaged career.” “He has often been ostracised by the people as he had the brand of a terrorist on himself.” “Dutt did not get film offers, could not get bank loans, and (suffered) various other tribulations and indignities during the 20-year period.”
The current controversy over the Italian Marines who have effectively escaped from the Indian government’s custody is not the only one where the Congress-led government has invariably come a cropper in bringing to book foreign offenders on Indian soil though latest media reports say that Italian government has changed its stand and will allow the Marines to return to India. The same media reports also quote Italian officials have received “ample assurances” from Indian authorities “on the treatment that the marines will receive and the defence of their fundamental rights.” This gives rise to doubts as to whether the change in the stance of the Italian government is a victory for India’s diplomacy, as the UPA leaders claim, or the result of a behind-the-scenes deal.
An ill-advised Bangla visit
The UPA government should take full responsibility for the wrong timing of President Mukherjee’s visit to Bangladesh. Like many other instances of incompetence of this government, the Presidential visit might also go on record as ill-timed, ill-prepared and causing grave embarrassment both for India and Bangladesh. For the last one month the protests in Dhaka were going on in what is known as the Shahbag event. In the first few weeks it was a massive demonstration of the Bangladesh people’s anger at the collaborators and conspirators of the 1971 ravaging of the country when it was seeking to assert its own cultural nationalism from subjugation to Pakistan’s irredentism, going scot free for forty years after the liberation.
While the liberation of 1971 brought a secular and liberal constitution, within five years the Islamists provoked a coup that decimated the liberation’s father figure and most of his family members in a display of barbarism typical of extremist Islamist violence. Only Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s daughter Hasina who happened to be then in India hence escaped.
The UPA-II has created a record of sorts. Its nine-year rule has not only bequeathed the country an uncontrollable inflation of prices but also an inflation of scams. Going by their number and the amount involved, the scam inflation seems to overtake the price inflation. Counting their number and the timing, it is possible to predict that the helicopter scam, the latest in the series beginning with the 2G scam, the scam graph would keep going northward.
The most significant aspect of the AgustaWestland scam is that increasingly the so-called honest-to-god ministers in this government are getting drawn into the vortex of these incidents of loot of public funds. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh barely escaped being arraigned in the 2G corruption case. Though he was aware of how the then telecom minister, from coalition partner DMK, was distributing the 2G licences, he did not act proactively to stop this loot.
Failure of the state in Bihar
Who is responsible for what happened in the BJP’s Patna rally? Were the serial blasts merely the display of incompetence at the Union home minister’s level? The entire self-styled secular gang should share the blame for it. That as many as 18 bombs could be planted in and around Gandhi Maidan just before the rally exposes more than Sushilkumar Shinde’s incompetence.
Owaisi is the speaking Kasab
The Akbaruddin Owaisi’s hate speech in Hyderabad and decapitating of an Indian Army jawan at the Indo-Pak border in J&K are the result of a common mindset. Both the actions are borne out of centuries of abhorrence of timeless Catholic and pluralistic culture and traditions of this ancient land.
Akbaruddin in his relentless tirade threatened Hindus, insulted their gods and beliefs. Worse is that his vitriolic statements were endorsed by a huge crowd, running into thousands. The helpful administration and ‘secular’ politicians turned a deaf ear to this case of rabid communalism and most of the players of the media entered into a conspiracy of silence.
India needs a bold government
Within days of his re-election, President Barack Obama was out to meet Asian leaders at the East Asia Summit in the Cambodian capital of Pnom Penh. That underscored the importance the region has begun to acquire as a playground of global forces in a rapidly changing world power balance. By some coincidence the other major power in the world, China, also underwent a change in leadership within its one-party regime. At the other end, in Myanmar change is occurring with a slow movement from military autocracy to democracy.
