Indian liberals find their holy grail: Hindu terrorist discovered?

July 26, 2008: Islamic Jihadis bomb a hospital in Ahmedabad.

August 31, 2008: Islamic Jihadis take seven people hostage in Jammu, including four children aged between 2 and 9.

Sept 27, 2008: Islamic Jihadis hand over a live bomb to a nine year old boy, killing him.

As Islamic Jihad proceeded to break one humanitarian barrier after another, Indian liberals were feeling the heat. As people lay in the streets of Delhi, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Agartala and Guwahati, writhing in agony, the tide seemed to be turning against them. The liberals needed a game changer; and they got one.

Somewhat ironically, it was the Madhya Pradesh police, one of the several "communal police forces" in the country that gave them their deliverance. The boyish looking "Sadhvi" Pragya Singh was everything they wanted; a Hindu religious leader, an extremist with connections to the BJP. The extra icing on the cake was that she brought an Army man Lt. Col. Purohit in tow; since the liberal crowd has never taken too kindly to the Indian Army either, there was little reason not to celebrate. The outcome: the Malegaon attack, in which the Sadhvi was apparently involved, has now been reported on more than any other terrorist attack in India's history.

Since the national debate has now been pushed towards the issue of "Hindu terrorism", the Oracle has no choice but to say a word or two. Of course, I would much rather discuss building an advanced anti-meteorite defence system, because, quite frankly, an Indian stands a far greater chance of being killed by a meteorite than by a "Hindu terrorist".

The Sadhvi may be guilty, and it is quite likely she is. The larger question is whether the thesis : "Not every Muslim is a terrorist, but every terrorist in a Muslim" has been disproved. Mathematically, yes! Statistically, no! With the Sadhvi's arrest, the possibility of a randomly chosen Indian terrorist being a Muslim has just fallen from 100% to 99.9% and, in all fairness, this little change should not be alowed to reflect on state policy. If anything, her arrest proves that Hindus in India are just beginning to lose faith in the protection of the state; which is all the more reason that Islamic terrorism needs to be dealt with convincingly. Since we in India spend a lot of time trying to understand the Muslim grievance, perhaps it is time we spared a thought for the Hindus.

It is harsh to say so, but the so called "Muslim grievance" seems to be a global phenomenon. Some Muslims, clerics in particular, seem to have taken it upon themselves to stay offended as a profession. The business of finding grievances seems to live rather well even on the most humble of provocations: such as a Muslim cabbie in New York being "offended" by a passenger carrying alcohol. The provocation could be a cartoon published in an innocuous Danish newspaper; a transgression in distant Denmark is used as an opportunity to typecast white persons, Western nations, Christians, Jews and indeed any other non believer as part of the same vast conspiracy against Islam. And then the logic is turned on its head to complain about Muslims not being greeted in the streets with a big smile the day after 9/11. The same sense of fairness that is used to demand more civil rights for the people of Kashmir (by ending special powers of the armed forces) is then debauched to justify ethnic cleansing of the valley by purging it of 500,000 pandits; a call for tolerance accompanied by a demand for holocaust, all rolled into one in the guise of Islam.

Even so, India has to face this monster of "Muslim grievance". This fire breathing monster runs riot in our streets, killing and maiming people every day. As pointed out in the previous paragraph, the monster has a global face and thus it is too much to expect of India to come up with a solution all on its own. India can do its part by making the nation as democratic as possible, but it is nevertheless important to keep the nation together. The Constitution won't stand if there is no nation left. The need of the hour is, therefore, to build respect for the law. A good way to start would be an act of Parliament that actually outlaws terrorist activities expressly.

The political consequences of the arrest of the Sadhvi are actually rather small. The people of India are too preoccupied with mourning their dead to actually wonder about the spectre of "Hindu terrorism" or what perils a handful of youth calling themselves "Abhinav Bharat" may bring to bear. The theme that will play out in rallies across the country is that of the very real threat of Islamic Jihad. The theme that will play out in the media is rather different. One could well say that the debate over terrorism has now been pegged back in favour of Islamic Jihad for at least a generation. In talk show after talk show and debate after debate, you will hear the cheerleaders of terrorism say: "A Hindu terrorist has also been captured. So anyone who thinks that Islamic Jihad is a problem should back off!". Unfortunately, more often than not, the way these debates go are reflected in the laws Parliament makes, which means that our fight against Jihad has suffered a setback.

Of course, no matter how disproportionate it is to the magnitude of Islamic terrorism, any signs of extremism in the Hindu majority are worrying signs for a nation that is looking to take off. It could get out of hand if the problems are not addressed. The correct approach to take would be to treat Islamic Jihad as a sordid disease such as malaria or smallpox that needs to be eliminated. Any effort to brand Islamic terrorism as India's fault is approximately on the same level as the medieval belief that leprosy is a form of divine retribution. Those such as Teesta Seetalvad, Arundhati Roy, Shabana Azmi or Shabnam Hashmi who preach this dangerous superstition should be treated as enemies of the people and of the democratic state.

BJP adopts revolving door policy: Can they make it?

For a while now, I have been itching to write about the upcoming elections in the Hindi heartland; but have suffered because the two major parties have offered nothing to write about. From the manner in which the BJP and the Congress have been conducting themselves, you could hardly say that a major round of elections is just a few weeks away. Even when the Election Commission announced poll dates, the reality of the upcoming trials did not seem to register with either high command in New Delhi. However, the malaise in both political formations finally shows signs of abating; and some progress is being made.

The BJP, for its part, has finally managed to get off the mark and announced some candidates, mostly in Chhattisgarh and furnished the media with some vague pointers as to the overall nature of the party's preparations, expectations and candidates for the polls. The Oracle analyzes the BJP's state as follows:

1) The muted BJP campaign is in stark contrast to the euphoria of 2003. The party has realized that there is a difference between the campaigning as the incumbent and campaigning as the opposition. In 2003, Vasundhara Raje and Uma Bharati braved the heat and dust of the road in a brutal summer. This time, the BJP leaders have mostly stayed indoors; realizing that it was the Congress' turn to slog on the streets. The Congress, of course, was closeted in the even more comfortable environs of New Delhi and made no such effort. Besides, the BJP has been "lucky" in the sense that the Central Government has been pushed to the wall over rising prices and terrorism. A lot of the focus has been taken off the performance of its own state government. Going by the nature of the Indian electorate, incumbency is always a heavy cross to bear, even if the government has performed well; and the jury is still out on whether the BJP rule has resulted in a net gain for the states.

2) The BJP has also paid more attention to the views of its local units in the states in which it is the incumbent. This is also a departure from 2003, when Vasundhara Raje was handpicked by Mahajan to secure Rajasthan for the party while Uma Bharati was persuaded to go down to Bhopal and take charge. Once again, we see the BJP adopting a different tactic when it is the Opposition: in Delhi, the party has thrust V K Malhotra's candidature upon the organization, when the most deserving man for the job would have been the hard working and understated Dr. Harshvardhan.

In the heartland states, the party high command has also stayed away from the direct campaigning and left the state units to figure out their agenda on their own. In particular, the post of prabhari, to be occupied a calculating man sent by the BJP from New Delhi to micromanage the campaign, is conspicuous by its absence in all 3 heartland states.

3) A lot of media attention has been drawn to the BJP's new revolving door policy; the so called "Gujarat model". Assured of the still enduring appeal of its Chief Ministers, the party has commissioned internal surveys to obtain assessments of all MLAs from their constituents. The party promises to drop a third of its sitting MLAs to negate anti-incumbency at the grassroots level. By keeping these assessments secret, the BJP has managed to keep the MLAs on their toes and members of local party units enthused about their prospects of earning a party ticket. By announcing candidates only at the last moment, they have staved off the possibility of denied ticket seekers or unseated MLAs surfacing as rebel candidates, a phenomenon that hurts an incumbent party a lot more than it hurts the opposition.

Moreover, the BJP understands that Uma Bharti's BJSP has been waiting in the wings to snap up rebel BJP MLAs. The party has tried to contend with this situation by offering unseated MLAs tickets at the local level, or even berths in the "Zila Sarkars". Whether the party manages to keep from ripping at the seams once all candidates are announced remains to be seen.

4) Even with the best of strategies, the BJP will have a hard time defending three major states at once. For now, the party is putting up a brave face and even a hint of a swagger. This is partly due to the fact that major media organizations have not carried out their own opinion polls. For now, all projections in the media seem to come from anecdotal evidence. The BJP, for its part claims to have carried out its own meticulous surveys; itemized its strengths and weaknesses and analyzed its chances of victory. Though one could hasten to dismiss the BJP's talk of its own surveys as mere propaganda, we must remember that it was the BJP's own projections that came closest to the real picture the last time these states went to elections.

The BJP's biggest friend seems to be the utter disarray in the Congress camp. The Congress has been in two minds about its leadership in both Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. In Rajasthan, conflict continues between party chief C.P. Joshi and Ashok Gehlot. Although Gehlot seems to enjoy an advantage over Joshi, probably due to the former's proximity to Sonia Gandhi, he does not quite seem to be in control of the campaign. Also, in an election where anti-incumbency is the Congress' main plank, it does not make a lot of sense to bring back a leader that has already been set aside by the people. The people of Rajasthan unseated Gehlot five years ago; it is more likely that they would want to see a new leader as the agent of change, rather than a throwback to the past. A wildcard such as Sachin Pilot could have done a lot more to energize the party workers and the electorate. The Congress party's apathetic and ambiguous stand on the Gujjar issue that rocked the state a few months ago also hasn't helped. In fact, Bhaisla has all but called upon his supporters to vote for the Rani. Besides, Vasundhara Raje does seem to be capable of holding on to her grassroots appeal and still manages to hold huge rallies at a moment's notice.

In Madhya Pradesh, the Congress is, once again at a loss for leaders. And disunity does not help. When Sonia Gandhi rallied her party workers in Kamal Nath's constituency earlier this year, she repeatedly called on them to make common cause with each other. At one point there was a broad consensus that Suresh Pachauri should be projected as CM. But as Pachauri locked horns with the Chief Minister in a prestige contest ... and then lost a bypoll in the summer, he seemed to have shed some of his sheen.

The game in Chhattisgarh is being played out much more subtly. In the early years of BJP rule, the party's star had begun to fade rapidly. But in the last two years it seemed to be making large gains, even wresting seats from the Congress and BSP in tribal areas of the interior. In Chhattisgarh, the two parties have often found themselves in the same boat; defending against the ever present threat of Naxal violence. Even though tribals account for close to 50% of the state's population, the BJP has installed a non tribal Raman Singh as CM and the surprise is that this has not become a huge issue. This is made even more strange by the fact that the BJP swept the tribal regions in 2003, taking as many as 25 of 34 reserved constituencies; which therefore account for about half its tally of 51. As the election draws near, the BJP has been reminded of the influence of the disgraced Judeo in the crucial Jashpur region and the party has offered a ticket to Judeo's son Yudhvir Singh. Sonia Gandhi has also deployed one of her favourites, the wily Ajit Jogi to retake the state. This time, however, the contest is entirely bipolar, with leaders such as Vidhya Charan Shukla having faded into oblivion.


A lot of heat remains to be generated in this round of state elections. Of late the country has had too much talk of nuclear deals, uranium, inflation, credit crisis and too little of genuine electoral politics. The Oracle's heart yearns for the flavour of the older brand of non elitist, scorched earth campaigning. As the Hindi heartland steps up to vote, can we see some more of this?

Raj Thackeray breaks the sanity barrier

The other day Laloo Yadav observed: "Raj Thackeray to full mental case ban gaye hain" (Raj Thackeray has a mental health condition) . One can't agree more. Now, politics watchers in India are a hardened lot; we have seen so much of nonsense and rabble rousing, even the worst kind of violence, that one does not expect to be taken completely by surprise. Remember when George Fernandes said cynically in Parliament, referring to the Gujarat riots: "Is this the first time in India that a daughter has been raped in front of her mother"? Even so, Raj Thackeray's achievement of pulling out a riot out of nowhere is truly remarkable.

As Raj's version of the Sena threw Mumbai into disarray, several points came to fore. On the question of whether people of Bihar, or any other part of the country, have an inalienable right to live and work in Mumbai, and on whether the people of Maharashtra enjoy reciprocal rights anywhere else in India, there is only one reasonable side in the debate. We will not go into this; rather we shall try to understand what hit Mumbai and why it did.

1) Raj Thackeray's lack of a support base is rather appalling. As I have observed so many times before on this blog, regional identities in India are on the wane; an appeal to regionalism just doesn't work any more. The dream of a common glorious future, apart from the hardships we face, and even the terrorism we suffer as a nation have brought the people together. When Balasaheb founded the Shiv Sena in 1966, there was still room for a middle class Marathi Manoos that wanted to live a sheltered life and enjoy the benefits of being in proximity to India's premier city. There are no sleepy classes in India any more. The mobilized masses of today have little patience for narrow minded struggles over linguistic and regional identity; most are energized by global dreams. As such, Raj's gambit is a mere throwback to the past; he himself is only a shadow of his illustrious uncle and as such, he is doomed to failure.

2) Given that Raj's party is a fringe player in Maharashtra politics, one may well ask how he manages to hold the entire state to ransom. In this both the Congress and the Shiv Sena are at fault. When Raj Thackeray broke away from the Shiv Sena, the Congress was understandably delighted. Raj's dissociation from what some may call his "ancestral party" and his very public spat with cousin Uddhav; coming on the heels of other high profile desertions from the Sena (from Bhaskar Jadhav to Sanjay Nirupam and even Narayan Rane) was supposed to bring the Shiv Sena to its knees.

That didn't happen. The Congress tried harder. When Raj Thackeray first embarked on his militant campaign to oust North Indians from Mumbai, the Congress kept mum. They expected that his foul mouthed utterances would wean away chunks of Sena support in Mumbai and the rest of the state. Each time Raj broke another law, the Congress stepped back a little more. And Raj's confidence kept growing.

Now that Raj has broken the sanity barrier, the Congress led government has finally put its act together and set the wheels of justice in motion. The Congress had tried to maintain a lackasaidal attitude this time around as well. When MNS goons attacked Bihari students in Mumbai, the Chief Minister cheekily told the media that the Railway should have asked for protection in advance if it had needed any. Should Mumbai be attacked tomorrow by terrorists, one wonders whether the Chief Minister will say "If the public needed any protection, they should have asked for it".

3) The Shiv Sena's role in this entire episode has been quite mysterious. Although the Left Parties have tried to play fast and loose with facts and accused the Sena itself and by extension, even the BJP, of being in cahoots with the MNS (one wonders how the Left feels about about the political culture of its own allies like RJD and BSP) the Sena has, in fact, stayed away from the MNS' campaign. In fact the only reaction from the Sena has been an article in Saamna by Balasaheb who has accused Raj of not being the "real" defender of the Marathi Manoos; fairly routine... no fireworks there.

What is surprising here is the restraint with which the Sena has attacked Raj Thackeray, especially if one compares it to the violent condemnation with which the party has treated other renegades. "Lakhobha" (Chhagan Bhujbal) and "Narya" (Narayan Rane) are still swear words in Shiv Sena rhetoric. At one time, Balasaheb used to greet dissenters with a defiant "Jao, chale jao!" (go, get lost!) When Bhaskar Jadhav deserted right before the 2004 Assembly Elections, the normally suave Uddhav called on his party workers : "Nestanabood kara" (destroy him!). In contrast Raj Thackeray has faced little vitriol from his party. Despite his departure, Raj refuses to criticize Balasaheb directly to this day and reserves his venom for cousin Uddhav. Neither does the Sena supremo respond in his familiar tone of voice. Is it because a section of the party itself, and even a part of their leader, is sympathetic to Raj and his Marathi rhetoric? One will never know unless the Sena says something.

At the time of Raj's last tirade, the Sena actually gave protection to some North Indian settlements in Mumbai. Apparently this has not happened this time around. Also, one wonders why the Sena, which is considerably stronger than Raj's ragtag army does not come out in the streets against the MNS. That the Sena refuses to engage Raj's men physically on the streets out of sheer respect for the law, is too much more than what one would logically expect from Shivsainiks.

4) Raj's activities have also sparked off a race in Bihar. The backward state is critically dependent on money sent home by manual labourers working in metros outside; its youth lives only to compete in nationwide examinations. The RJD and JDU are trying to outrun each other in condemning Raj Thackeray. Both are plagued by difficulties. While the RJD and its Congress allies have to accept blame for the loose handling of Raj Thackeray, the JDU and BJP will suffer from the perception that Raj is still very much toeing a core Shiv Sena line, albeit much more emphatically. Who will suffer the most is yet to be seen, but one would normally expect equal damage.

A final point that needs to be touched upon is the strange sentiment that seems to be sweeping Bihar that is not altogether different from Raj's. Although Laloo is the Railway minister and the former Chief Minister is wont to running things as though they were his personal fiefdom, the Indian Railway does not belong to Bihar or to Laloo in any sense. The mobs that torched trains at Barh station did seem to project a sense that Bihar has somehow more entitled to having its way with the Railways. Obviously the immediate guilt does not lie with them and they were responding to an extreme provocation. Rather, it is just another item in an aggravated behavioural pattern that has been observed in Bihar since 2004. Of course, such a sentiment is nothing new; the Railway in India is almost a state in itself and the sentiment of "our minister, our railway" has made its rounds around the country.


Mumbai did not become India's premier city in a day. The people of the city have steely resolve that has seen them through calamity and terror. And they have the people of India behind them. As I said before, we the people of India have been through a lot together. We have put a flag on the moon. Regional squabbles just do not register in our pschye any more. The Indian dream has begun; with the whiff of achievement, a thousand squabbles are forgotten.

Tamil Nadu seized by political storm

As blood flows freely in Sri Lanka, the Indian government finds itself in a struggle of political interests and Tamil Nadu finds itself in a tizzy. In this particular crisis, it is particularly difficult for the Indian government to separate emotion from calculation and pragmatism from pride. The Oracle examines all of these complex questions, almost exclusively from the point of view of Indian interests and finds that there are hardly any good choices to made.

First, India needs to understand the emotion of her Tamil constituents. For all other Indians, the Tamils are family and hence India should prioritize the Indian Tamils' point of view in determining state policy towards the LTTE situation in Sri Lanka. First the Tamils of Sri Lanka do have a very good case against their government; they have long been oppressed, denied civil rights and even citizenship. The Ceylon Citizenship Act of 1948 expressly prevented people of Indian and Pakistani origin from obtaining Sri Lankan citizenship. In fact, until 2002, people of Indian origin in Sri Lanka were not recognized as equal citizens even on paper. As such, the Tamil grievance towards the Sri Lankan government has a firm basis in fact. Not all militancy is equal; there is still such a thing as desperate people being forced to arms for self defence in a lawless land with a repressive government. The government of Sri Lanka should not be allowed to take advantage of the sweeping global sentiment against "terrorism" and masquerade its unjust, racist self as a legitimate government seeking to weed out enemies of peace; not when they denied civil rights on the basis of race a mere six years ago.

Revolutions tend to take on a life of their own. Although the LTTE was born out of legitimate grievances, it has spun itself into a hateful, murderous militant organization that holds down Indian Tamils in Sri Lanka with a iron hand. The LTTE turned against the IPKF many years ago and even went on to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi. The LTTE deals with dissenters such as Col. Karuna with a heavy hand and has a taste for extreme violence, blood and gore.

As such, the task of the Indian government is three fold:

a) To explain to the Tamils of India that the LTTE is a violent organization that has no respect for human rights and can only bring further poverty, despair and death to the Sri Lankan Tamils.

b) To make it clear to the Sri Lankan government that India will take any action necessary to ensure that Indian Tamils in Sri Lanka live are afforded with the fullest extent of civil, human and democratic rights once the LTTE has been wiped out.

c) To scare away the Chinese, who are looking at Sri Lanka to be another bead in the "string of pearls" they want India to wear. As such, India needs to step up its military presence in the region even further. As the United States increasingly looks to Colombo as the primary strategic station in South Asia, instead of Karachi in unstable Pakistan, India's task should not be too hard. Nevertheless, with the Chinese paying for a massive port in Sri Lanka, India needs to beware of the Chinese beachhead in the Indian Ocean.

President Rajapakse of Sri Lanka is a wily man; even as the United States, India and China eye his country for strategic goals, he is able to work with the major powers to his own advantage. Under the now universal bogey of fighting terrorism, he is flushing out the LTTE to make space for himself. He has repeatedly refused to mention what peace he would offer to Indian Tamils once the war is over. The war itself has been conducted with the bloody ruthlessness of an expansionist monarch, rather than with the cautious approach of a legitimate government that is conscious of human rights. The aims of his war have been, almost entirely territorial, rather than the enforcement of justice and law.

For India, this situation is simply unacceptable. Unless India is capable of mustering its huge military forces for power projection in its own backyard, India will remain a second class power. Unfortunately, India has sent no messages at all to this effect.

So much for the international situation. The flip side of this issue is in Tamil Nadu, where both the AIADMK and DMK are vying to project themselves as friends of Lankan Tamils. However, both sides lack the conviction to take concrete steps. When the DMK ministers and MPs at the Centre resigned, Jayalalitha dared Karunanidhi to step down from power in Chennai. This was an inane remark, since policy in India is decided at the national and not at the state government level. Similarly, Karunanidhi "expressed satisfaction" over the Centre's efforts to change the situation in Sri Lanka based on a mere statement made by Pranab Mukherjee to Parliament, when, in fact, the UPA Government had done nothing to make itself heard either in Colombo or in Kilinochchi. The country can have a sigh of relief over the fact that both sides are just lame ducks. It means that neither has the conviction, or even the lung power, to raise the bogey of "Tamil Nationalism", whatever that means. It shows that regionalism in India is a dying ideology, one that cannot win many followers even when the provocation is extremely strong. In all this confusion, blood and gore, that is the only piece of good news.

In the line of fire?

The outbreak of communal violence in Orissa could not have come at a worse time. After a spate of terrorist attacks across the length and breadth of the country; from Agartala to Ahmedabad and from Bangalore to New Delhi, it had seemed for a while that North and South Block would wilt under public pressure to act tough on terror. However, the events in Orissa relieved that pressure and gave the Congress and the liberal media an excuse to wiggle out of a tough corner. It sometimes feels as though in democratic India, it is only terrorists who can create pressure as and when they want, with the general public being only a seasonal player.

It seemed for a while that the force had turned against the Congress and its allies. The holy cow of political correctness had been tipped; as even left liberal heroes like Rajdeep Sardesai and Barkha Dutt goaded the Congress led government for its utter inaction. The press hailed the martyrdom of Mohan Chand Sharma, the police officer who died in the Jamia Nagar encounter. Amar Singh (no less!) promised the brave inspector's family a reward of Rs. 10 lakh and the media painted those who pulled out conspiracy theories to thwart the police action in a less than glowing light. The Vice Chancellor of Jamia-Millia Islamia was quizzed over his motives behind providing legal aid to those of his students accused of heinous crimes against the state. For the left leaning English language media that holds the middle class in thrall, it was a first. It was a far cry from June 2004, when the media gasped in horror over Modi's police shooting down an "innocent" 19 year old Ishrat Jehan Sheikh, who apparently lost her way while she was going for a job interview from her home in Mumbai and wandered as far as Ahmedabad to find herself in a car with three armed men. It was a far cry even from March 2007, when the secular press shed tears of blood over the death of Sohrabuddin, the man who happened to be on a wanted list in a mere four large states. Never have so many tears been shed on the death of an innocent child in terrorist attack.

Fortunately, the freaks in the Bajrang Dal were there and eager to help. They have started a despicable campaign of violence against tribal Christians. In doing so they have handed the Congress a perfect excuse to divert the national discourse from the issue of terrorism.

Some of the violence in the Kandhmahal District is perfectly ethnic and has nothing to do with religion. But the work that the VHP and Bajrang Dal have done to consolidate the tribal Hindus has ruffled feathers in the Roman Catholic camp. In the swathes of tribal territory in the heart of India, there are many potentates trying to prey on the simple minded poor people who inhabit these regions. The third main force, apart from the Church and the Saffron brigade, is the band of Naxal rebels, who claim responsibility for the killing of VHP preacher Lakshmanananda Saraswati, the event that started the violence. In the bitter struggle for the hearts and minds of the poorest of the poor, the well funded Church has a huge advantage, an edge that the VHP seeks to meet by going berserk with violence and intimidation. Both are equally condemnable.

Now that the Catholic Church is no longer the malevolent bully it once was, its vast campaign of mental abuse goes almost unnoticed. At a time when the people of India are yearning for progress like never before; the Church is injecting superstition and bigotry into the veins of the most downtrodden of India's people. This week itself, the Church announced that it had ascertained that some Sister Alfonsa of Kerala had performed two "miracles", and this long dead person was rewarded with the status of a "saint". Now, I believe we should all be progressive and bury the records of Catholic bigotry as long as those atrocities and ideologies remain a thing of the past. But promising to help the sick and the dying, or to feed the poor and starving in return for swearing allegiance to a vast potentate of no legal international status such as the Catholic Church is most despicable. We can and we should all forgive Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) for having been a member of the Hitler Youth; but when the Pope says that "condoms are more dangerous than HIV", the Church should be recognized as a force up to no good at all.

At the same time, one should not mince any words about the manner in which the Bajrang Dal brings shame to India. The most dangerous development of all is the fact that the Dal perceives that it can have a free run in any BJP ruled state. Since the reins of power in New Delhi may soon be assumed by the BJP, reining in the fanatical fringe is no small concern. The aggression of the Dal also makes life difficult for BJP allies, as the beleaguered Navin Patnaik has found out in no small measure. However, it cannot be stressed enough that the Bajrang Dal is still a bit player when it comes to the total amount of unconstitutional activity taking place in the country. Hindu fanaticism is fed almost completely by anger over Muslim appeasement and Christian guerilla warfare at the social level. For instance, the Andhra Pradesh government recently decided to award a subsidy to Christians seeking to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Though the drain on the exchequer resulting from this measure will be small indeed, it is these little day to day favours to minorities that rankle in the collective Hindu mind.

While the debate over who killed the VHP preacher rages in political and police circles, some of the rhetoric indicates a worrying trend. Most of the Congress and the UPA want us to believe to that the preacher was killed by Naxals and as such the violence of the Bajrang Dal is "unjustified". First, even if Lakshmanananda had been hacked to death by Christian priests, there would have been no excuse to ransack Christian homes or burn down churches. More importantly, death at hands of Naxals is NOT a "natural" death. The murdered VHP preacher deserves to have the Naxal rebels brought to justice. The fact that the Congress and the UPA never once mentioned the menace that the Naxal scum have become speaks volumes about their commitment to public security in this country.

In fact, the Congress party should have come to its senses and gotten busy with creating an anti-terror agency that could deal with Naxals, Islamic terrorists and secessionists in the Northeast. The prospect of the creation of such an agency seems to grow dimmer by the day. Some weeks ago, after an innocent 9 year old boy was killed in New Delhi, minister Kapil Sibal assured us that the government was working overtime to come up with a solid strategy to tackle terror. As of Oct 18, 2008, nothing has been done in this direction. Instead the paltry gains made initially, such as in the Jamia Nagar encounter or in the arrest of terror masterminds, are being whittled away in endless political squabbles. Instead of acting tough on terror, the Congress party decided to call a meeting of the National Integration Council. Perhaps they should remember that the time for peace is not during the war, but after it.