What a state of mind

By M J Akbar

One of life's minor pleasures is listening to Hindi film songs, even if the newer ones prefer an uncomplicated thud to a fine beat. A new song is screaming its way through the music channels, sung onscreen by two Punjabi brothers, Sunny and Bobby, sons of the ageless Dharmendra. The song has words to accompany the thud; I cannot quite call them lyrics. But they open something like this:

Bobby (younger brother) to Sunny: Parahji, tusi top ho! (Brother, you are a cannon!)

Sunny (in immediate response): Paape! Tusi India da hope ho! (Loved one, you are the hope of India!)

I have, over the years, heard more learned definitions of Indian nationalism, but could there be anything more earthy and forthright than this? The adoring younger brother finds the ultimate Punjabi accolade for his elder, and calls him a veritable cannon. (The song uses the soft and it is top as in cannon, not as in the toy.) And what is the best that the elder brother can wish for his beloved sibling? That he becomes the hope of India.

When Sunny and Bobby were in their short pants (actually, they still are, but you know what I mean) they would not have sung this song. The Punjabi might have been forgiven by those who wanted Khalistan, but not the sentiment. Twenty years ago, the Sikh was becoming the symbol of insurrection, and an Asiad in Delhi during the autumn of 1982 accelerated that process as the State, determined to enforce security, used counterproductive methods to impose it. Puss formed around the would; India was in danger of getting septic. In the summer of 1984, the country looked septic. A darkness of fire, cloud, death, assassination and mass murder spread across the skies of India. Who dared to dream that Punjab would be at peace once more?

That was the biggest challenge before Rajiv Gandhi as he inherited power over an India on the edge. It goes without saying that the challenge had a personal, tragic dimensions. For fifteen years now it has been fashionable to dismiss Rajiv Gandhi as a failure: worse, a corrupt and immature failure. There were enough mistakes made by them to earn the censure of a historian - one need to think no further than Shah Bano, the mishandling of Bofors and the misjudgement in the 1987 Kashmir elections.

I must declare a personal bias in his favour; and a decade after his death it is possible to be objective. Rajiv Gandhi was a wonderful human being and a much better Prime Minister than his contemporaries or his Bofors - stained reputation will allow. There are at least three outstanding achievements to his credit: the introduction of the computer and the upgradation of telecommunication infrastructure; the Assam accord and the Punjab accord. Peace in Punjab was his greatest legacy to his country. It took time and was extraordinarily difficult. He had to hold his nerve during periods of despondence, inertia and crisis, not the least of them being the second siege of the Golden Temple which he ended by taking personal charge of the counteroffensive, and which he neutralized without the loss of a single life in an atmosphere of relentless violence. His fellow architect of the Punjab accord, Sant Longowal, paid with his life not too long after the accord. India has been combating terrorism on a continuing basis far longer than any other country.

The key to Rajiv Gandhi's strategy in Punjab was the Akali Dal. The Akalis, inevitably, occupied the space between Delhi and the secessionists. Historically, they had led the demand for the formation of a Sikh-majority State. The secessionists wanted to extend this to a Sikh-majority country. The Akalis could have gone either way. Indifference, or simple brutality (always a prerogative of the State) could have as easily pushed them away in the festering climate on the 1980s. Rajiv Gandhi's method was simple: he drew the Akalis in by giving them power, and thereby a vested interest in the Indian Union. You did not need to be an Albert Einstein to understand the dynamics of this barter, but you did need imagination and a commitment to India that was greater than commitment to your limited partisan interest. Rajiv Gandhi worked within the framework of a vision for India. One consequence was the cynicism of those Congress leaders who thought that sharing power, or, worse, conceding it, in the national interest was nothing but naivete. Naturally, they dressed up their greed in appropriate phrases, the favourite being the exclusive right of the Congress to uphold the national interest. In their hands history would have traveled in a different direction.

A decade after Rajiv Gandhi's death, however they are in charge of the Congress party. This is all the more surprising, perhaps even shocking, since the Congress is under the leadership of Rajiv Gandhi's widow, Sonia. A combination of circumstances gave her the opportunity to play a positive part in the process that could - could is the only word that is possible to use; anything more optimistic would be misleading - lead to a resolution of the complex dilemmas in Jammu and Kashmir. From the evidence of the first few days after the results were declared, Mrs Sonia Gandhi has opted for short-range partistanship that will hurt the country of course but could also leave her own party's credibility severely mauled. It is as if she is concerned only with the interests of the party that has made her its leader. She will choose to bother about India only if India chooses to make her its leader.

The Congress is not the largest single party in the newly elected Jammu and Kashmir Assembly. That status remains with the National Conference. Dr Farooq Abdulalh has shown more wisdom after defeat than he did when in power. But that too is common. Power is a drug that induces various forms of hallucination; defeat is a slap that opens your eyes with a start. Farooq Abdullah was right in all he said, including a post-office wish to play golf till he died and then beyond into Paradise. More crucially, he realized that credibility is more essential in public life than numbers, and for the moment he had lost credibility. He refused to buy or bait MLAs to cobble a majority. He was perfectly within his rights as well to demit office on the date on which the life of the last Assembly expired. He was not obliged to give time to his opponents to settle contentious differences.

The Congress is the single largest party in the Opposition, but that achievement is not totally what it seems Jammu and Kashmir is a clearly divided State with three parts representing different ethnic majorities. In a similar sense the political culture of Punjab too was divided till Haryana was separated. The largest single party in the Opposition to have emerged from the Muslim-majority valley of Kashmir is not the Congress, but Mufti Mohammad Sayeed's People's Democratic Party. The Chief Minister of the State has always, and understandably, come from the Valley. If the Congress cannot understand this much then it has lost all sense of responsibility.

The manner in which the declared leader of the Congress Ghulam Nabi Azad, with full approval from Sonia Gandhi, has behaved since winning 20 seats out of 87, is extraordinarily foolish and even malevolent. All he has concentrated on doing really is trying to purchase MLAs with money today and the offer of more to come once they become ministers or ministers' henchmen. The stench of corruption now and loot later trails the Congress even before it has come to power in Srinagar. A party with 20 MLAs has been trying over more than its own number to get a majority. Each day a sort of tally is announced. A horse auction was never more garish.

To do this in any State would have been unethical enough. To do this in Kashmir at this moment is unforgiveable. Sonia Gandhi has lost more credibility in the last seven days than she gained in the last seven months.

It is not unreasonable for any political party to ask for support. But that support is sought on the basis of a programme, or a policy line. No one is the Congress has offered any construct of what it hopes to do in power, apart from the standard offer of good governance. A leader of the Congress in Kashmir should have announced a course of political action, and a policy framework for regional economic development, talks with Delhi and its approach to negotiations with extremists and with Pakistan. We have not heard a word on issues. Instead all we hear is special pleading, and see thin honey - laden smiles, as the Congress tries to add Jammu and Kashmir to its national body count. Making it her fifteenth State is more important to Sonia Gandhi than forming a coalition Government that can help calm the crisis in Kashmir.

The Indian political class could lose, by its selfishness, what the Kashmiri people gained with their courage.

Unambiguous hints of more intrusions into J&K

By B L Kak

Steps are afoot on the other side of the frontier with Pakistan to push more intruders into Jammu and Kashmir. If the latest intelligence inputs were any guide, the well-knit anti-India lobby across the Line of Control (LoC) and International Border (IB) has hundreds of trained ‘mujahideen’, all readied for the ‘battle’ on the Indian soil.

Pakistan occupied Kashmir-based Hizbul Mujahideen operators are said to be working overtime, particularly after the unambiguous reports emanatinbg from the power corridors in Islamabad vis-a-vis the military leadership’s renewed interest in J&K-bound ultras.

Apart from the Hizbul Mujahideen, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Toiba have also been found by the intelligence community as having strengthened the feeling that Pakistan Government has, without any fanfare, allowed Islamic guerrillas to resume "small-scale" infiltration across the LOC in Jammu and Kashmir.

These groups have also been found giving currency to the reports that while Islamabad had halted all infiltration in May this year, it had, recently, signalled that "small-scale" infiltration into Jammu and Kashmir could resume. These groups, significantly, haven’t denied that Pakistan continued to finance India-bound ultras and allowed them to buy weapons.

A senior intelligence official told EXCELSIOR that hardly had the last phase of the Assembly polls concluded in J&K when messages poured in from the other side, directing hardened jihadis and militants not to abandon the gun "under any circumstances". For the dreaded terrorist outfits such as Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Al-Badr, besides the Hizbul Mujahideen,expanding the size and structure of the militant cadres, the official pointed out, had become a "holy mission".

The intelligence official had an interesting piece of information, which, he divulged, had already been confirmed by some captured Pakistani militants: When a militant was killed in any operation with Indian forces in Kashmir, there were elaborate funeral rites, complete with the burial of an empty coffin in his village in Pakistan. This tactic, obviously meant to whip up emotions, continued to be employed by the other side "even now", the official said.

One more significant intelligence input: The ISI-aided "terror merchant", Syed Salahuddin, has, of late, been a frequent visitor to Muzaffarabad and some other locations in PoK. And another visitor to PoK, in recent times, has been Ibrahim Abdul Razak Memon, widely known as ‘Tiger’ Memon.

‘Tiger’ Memon is said to have played a key role in bringing Syed Salahuddin closer to the ‘bigger terror merchant’, Dawood Ibrahim, also based in Pakistan and patronized by the Pak officialdom and intelligence machinery.

‘Tiger’ Memon is one among the 20 criminals New Delhi wants Pakistan to hand over to the Indian authorities. Considered as one of the main suspects in the Mumbai serial bombing in March 1993, ‘Tiger’ Memon was believed to have made foryas into POK to float a new outfit for anti-India militants.

Can he succeed, in view of the reports that he has virtually lost his contact-men in Kashmir? ‘Tiger’ Memon had, in the initial stages, sought to heavily depend on the trio—Usman Majid, Hilal Ahmed Baig and Sajjad Keno. However, his dependence on them became a thing of the past, after two significant developments,namely, the killing of Hilal and Sajjad and separation of Usman Majid from the pro-Pak lobby on eihter side of the LoC.

When ‘Tiger’ Memon was negotiating with Hilal Baig and Sajjad Keno setting up of the Jammu and Kashmir Islamic Front (JKIF), the man from Mumbai (‘Tiger’ Memon) had informed them that he was to provide the JKIF with safe houses and guides in Nepal and Gujarat through his network, enabling them to operate securely in northern and western India.

Things never really worked for the group. A document available with the Indian authorities contains a set of ‘confessions’ made by Usman Majid. Confession number one: After his release in 1992 in exchange for four civilian hostages that the J&K Students Liberation Front had taken, he built up a quiet relationship with some people in the Indian security forces, hoping that someday ‘we could find peaceful means to resolve our differences and stop the bloodshed’.

Confession number two: Responding to ‘oreders’ from across the border to meet Hilal Baig in Dhaka and then proceed to headquarters in Pakistan, Usman, who had by then joined the Ikhwan-ul-Muslimeen following serious differences with the J&K Students Liberation Front, reached Bangladesh and stayed with Hilal at the Zakaria Hotel in Dhaka. Both were arrested in Dhaka. Pakistan’s ISI ensured their release.

Confession number three: Hilal had first informed Usman about something terrible that was going to happen—to bomb eight cities in India simultaneously. ‘Tiger’ Memon had been put in contact with Hilal by the ISI in early 1993. Only the Mumbai hit could be carried out.

Usman’s confession number four: After his separation from the J&K Students Liberation Front, his main job was to raise funds for the Ikhwan-ul-Muslimeen and to liaise with senior politicians and bureaucrats in Pakistan who could help ‘our cause’. He used to receive Rs 7 lakh to Rs 8 lakhs from the ISI on the basis of ‘our performance’ in executing bombings and attacks on the Indian security forces.

Usman Majid had also confessed: He and his accomplices in Muzaffarabad, capital city of PoK, were used by the ISI to show that ‘Tiger’ Memon, who fled to Pakistan after the Mumbai bombing, was still in India. A mock press conference was videotaped in the Muzzaffarabad safe-house; it was sent to Srinagar and it (tape) was distributed; it was insisted that the meeting was held at Hazratbal...No one was fooled for very long, after the truth became known.