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It’s amazing how ‘sources’ in security and intelligence agencies rush to plant information in media, especially news television channels, within minutes after a terrorist attack in this country. As much was witnessed last Thursday when two bombs went off within minutes of each other on a crowded street of Dilsukhnagar of Hyderabad (a third bomb was later found and defused), killing at least 16 people and injuring scores of others. As is usually the case, the excited chatter of blabbering television anchors and reporters soon gave way to ‘exclusive’ stories quoting ‘sources’ in security and intelligence agencies on possible groups behind the attack, how there was prior knowledge of ‘something being planned’ but nothing was done by way of preventive action, and the need to ‘revamp’ our intelligence gathering system.
Much of what is said is as unintelligible as the commentary on and reportage of events. What is amazing is that these ‘sources’ do not feel the necessity to push the envelope and force their organisational and political bosses to take pre-emptive action. For instance, if there is adequate knowledge of sleeper cells of jihadi organisations, then why aren’t those cells busted before they can be activated to carry out a terrorist attack? And if these ‘sources’ have tried to force precipitate action but failed, and feel frustrated by the ‘system’, then they should boldly blow the whistle and expose their bosses who are no less than collaborators. That is unlikely to happen, for these ‘sources’ either do not exist or, if they do, they are just as thoroughly useless as the bosses to whom they report to in the organisational hierarchy and political leadership of the day.
That said, little or no purpose is served by getting distracted by the media’s obsession with grabbing eyeballs by needlessly sensationalising events that have a bearing on national security. It would be in order to point out the sharp contrast between the coverage of a terrorist attack in our media and that of, say, Israel. While our media, more so news channels, do not hesitate from indulging in what can be described, without fear of contradiction, as reckless kite-flying, the Israeli media would double check every word and weigh every utterance before putting it out in the public domain.
An example would suffice. The Jerusalem Post had commissioned me to report on the terrorist bombing of a car in which the wife of the Defence Attache posted at the Embassy of Israel in New Delhi was travelling and the subsequent investigations and arrest of a key suspect in the crime. Each story was checked, edited, revised and played back to me for approval before being printed. On the first day I was slightly irritated by what to me appeared to be gratuitous changes made in the copy, but over the next few weeks I sensed a pattern to the fine but rigorous filtration process.
It so happened that I was in Israel a couple of months after the incident and mentioned my experience with the desk at The Jerusalem Post to some senior journalist friends. They said it was a standard practice, largely meant to keep speculation and crucial information out of the public domain. It made eminent sense. Speculation does not change facts or alter the reality. And crucial information if put out in the public domain, even in bits and pieces, can seriously compromise both investigations and the larger counter-terrorism strategy.
Much as the media would want it that way, the state cannot combat terrorism, either by way of preventive strikes or reactive action, in the glare of television cameras or by taking the media into confidence. It does not work that way anywhere in the world; in India it is doubly undesirable because the integrity of many journalists is, to put it mildly, suspect. Public memory is notoriously short but let us not forget that a senior journalist on the rolls of Deccan Herald was arrested for plotting jihadi attacks not many months ago. There are others who would happily sleep with India’s enemies for either ideological reasons or to flaunt their ethical promiscuity.
What should instead worry us is the Congress-led UPA Government’s unwillingness to fight terrorism. It would be easy, and is indeed tempting, to describe the stunning failure of this regime to wage war on terror as incapacity and inability. But that would be patently untrue. Ever since the summer of 2004, the Congress has actively followed a policy of dismantling the counter-terror mechanism, including a legal framework, that had been put in place by the BJP-led NDA regime.
This is because the Congress believes the best way to consolidate the Muslim vote in its favour is to go easy on terrorists. Crude as it may sound, that is the truth. Hence the speed with which Pota was rescinded; hence also the reason why senior Congress leaders known for their proximity to the party’s first family have visited Azamgarh to commiserate with the families of terrorists, cast aspersions on Delhi Police for its raid on Batla House (External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid wants us to believe Congress president Sonia Gandhi wept inconsolably when shown visuals of Indian Mujahideen terrorists responsible for bombings in Delhi who were killed in that raid), use the CBI to penalise upright police officers who take on jihadis (as was done with policemen involved in intercepting and killing LeT operative Irshad Jehan and her associates in Gujarat) and defame Hindus (as was done first by P Chidambaram who spoke of ‘saffron terrorism’ and then by his successor in the Home Ministry Sushil Kumar Shinde who luridly accused the BJP and RSS of training ‘Hindu terrorists’) in the hope that this will titillate the fanatics among Muslims.
The Congress maligns Hindus, secure in the knowledge that Hindus are a fragmented community who place caste and community above self-dignity; the educated feel that it is imperative to demean Hindus and Hinduism to prove their secular credentials; and, whether we like it or not, abusing Hindus and Hinduism does have an appeal among non-Hindus.
If the ruling political elite, namely the Congress, is to blame for compromising national security in the interest of crass vote-bank politics, spineless bureaucrats are guilty of facilitating this dangerous pandering to minorityism. The Union Home Secretary seems to be more keen on sucking up to the Home Minister and seconding his absurd assertions about ‘Hindu terrorism’ than in going after the real terrorists. He is also the person who showered fulsome praise on Delhi Police after the terrible gang-rape and murder of a young woman, glossing over the serious lapses of the police that allowed the criminals to commit their hideous crime.
He should now hold another media briefing and inform the nation as to why he, his fellow babus, the Intelligence Bureau and the Andhra Pradesh Police, all kept in clover by us tax-payers, did not act on the information that Indian Mujahideen activists arrested by Delhi Police in October 2012 had visited Dilsukhnagar and surveyed the same spot where the bombs went off last Thursday. Were they busy concocting tales about ‘Hindu terror’ to keep the Congress in good humour? We can be sure it was not incompetence that caused the failure.
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