Going by the events of the previous few weeks in India, whosoever had coined the expression “secularism” must have turned in his/her grave many times over. In Uttar Pradesh, a nine-year-old functioning temple is razed to the ground by the administration. And there is not even a whimper of protest. A week later, in the same area the Uttar Pradesh administration demolishes just one of the walls (illegal) of a mosque under construction, all hell breaks loose. There is a war cry of “secularism in danger”. The ruling Samajwadi Party leads the charge. The UP government promptly suspends and charge sheets the IAS officer concerned, Durga Shakti Nagpal, to demonstrate its “secular” credentials. Not to be left behind, the “secular” government of Rajasthan, around the same time, orders the transfer of IPS officer Pankaj Choudhary, who had dared to take on Gazi Fakir, the 79-year-old father of Pokhran Congress MLA Saleh Mohammed. Fakir has been under the scanner of intelligence agencies for over four decades. The victimised police officer told the media, “My predecessors have made damning comments about Fakir in the files.” Fakir’s sins are no secret. His first history sheet was opened in a case of cross-border smuggling on July 31, 1965. The anti-national activities are detailed in a book, Pakistan’s ISI: Network of Terror in India, by Srikanta Ghosh. In fact in the early 60s, intelligence agencies had alerted the authorities regarding Fakir’s role in cross-border smuggling and in harbouring Pakistani agents and spies. The latest in the series is Union defence minister Antony’s flip-flop on the recent killing of five Indian soldiers by Pakistan, within 400 metres of Indian territory in the Poonch sector in J&K. The Indian Army’s version was that the soldiers lost their lives in an ambush by specialist troops of Pakistani Army. But the truth obviously hurt the political interests of the ruling dispensation in Delhi. So on Wednesday the defence minister of India contradicted his own army’s version of the chain of events, spoke like a spokesperson of the Pakistani establishment in Indian Parliament and sought to blame the “non-state actors” for the massacre of Indian soldiers and absolved the Pakistani army of its crime. It was only a united and aggressive opposition and massive public outrage over the dishonest statement that forced the defence minister to revise his stand and speak the truth. On Thursday, a subdued Antony told Parliament, “It is now clear those specialist troops of the Pakistan Army were involved in the attack when a group from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir crossed the LoC and killed our brave jawans… We all know that nothing happens from Pakistan side of LoC without support, assistance, facilitation and often, direct involvement of the Pakistan Army.” Under whose pressure did Antony mislead the country on Wednesday? In fact the line of distinction between “state and non-state actors” in case of anti-India activities by Pakistan is blurred. Recall the first invasion on Kashmir in October 1947. At that time J&K was a princely state. There was an invasion in the state and Pakistan claimed that it was a tribal revolt against the rule of Hindu Maharaja Hari Singh. It is now a settled fact that the attack was organised by the regular Pakistan Army and led by Akbar Khan. Kargil is still fresh in our minds. Units of Pak Army had infiltrated into the Indian territory. But Pakistan disowned the entire operation. Of course, subsequently the Pak army’s involvement was proved beyond doubt. 26/11 was financed, directed and executed by ISI. The Congress-led central government has been indulging in Pakistani placation for some years now with the shameful hand holding of the Islamabad regime in the meeting in Egypt some four years ago, feting of president Zardari when he came here for a private visit. Every time it buys the Pakistani official version that LoC violations were the work of people opposed to the Islamabad official policy, terrorist groups like LeT laugh up their sleeves and the Pakistan military that has the final say in its India policy, thinks its ploy is vindicated. It is a situation where the Congress-led government seems to disbelieve its own army in search of its much wider soft power policy towards Pakistan. The linkage between policy towards Pakistan and the appeasement of fundamentalist sections of Muslims by Congress and other self-styled secularists is daily becoming self-evident. Now back to Uttar Pradesh. The blowing up of the issue of demolition serves the purpose of reiterating the SP’s “commitment” to the Muslim votebank and retards the BSP-Congress inroads into the area. The letter that Congress president Sonia Gandhi wrote to the prime minister to ensure justice to Nagpal fits in perfectly with the SP’s strategy. The Congress-led UPA has fine-tuned this act earlier. When a Delhi police officer lost his life in the timely grab of a terror module at Batla House, the Congress did not curb its general secretary Digvijaya Singh from questioning the police version and insisting that the Batla House terrorists were innocent. Even today after the court judgment found the police version to be right, the Congress leader sides with the communal element on the Jamia campus that is trying to seek martyrdom to the Batla House terrorists. Add to it the same Mr Singh was right on the dot to defend 26/11 terrorists like Kasab and question the shooting down of the Mumbai police officers by the terrorists as an internal police feud. The Congress leader has also demoralised the IB by supporting the claim that IB officer Rajinder Kumar was falsely accusing Javed Sheikh, found to be involved in targeting the Gujarat chief minister. If the ruling party at the Centre whose reign depends much on a true-to-its-salt IB for the proper defence of the nation against terrorists demoralises it, how can the latter function? We don’t see tears in the eyes of Sonia Gandhi regarding the entire Pandit community thrown out of the Kashmir Valley even as she shed tears (according to Digvijaya Singh) over the Batla House deaths of two terrorists. Nor did she write a letter to her chosen PM over the demolition of the nine-year-old temple. How can a country infested with such myopic leaders win the battle against terror?