A Strategy to Deter Terrorism continues....

But instead of revulsion against the LTTE that any Indian patriot in government, media or academia would feel, we find that there are political parties, which have no shame in stating that Rajiv Gandhi deserved to die. More surprisingly, the Congress Party finds nothing wrong with having political alliances with such parties. Furthermore, Ms. Sonia Gandhi, the widow of the martyred Rajiv Gandhi made an appeal to the President that the four LTTE criminals, to be hanged on the orders of the Supreme Court [delivered on 12 May 1999], should be given a lesser sentence of life imprisonment even though the four criminals did not ask for mercy! Is this their concept of zero tolerance for terrorism, or is there some mysterious hidden reason? And why is it that ever since the assassination, and till today, no single letter has been written to the President or no demand has been raised in Lok Sabha then for the immediate extradition of the LTTE supremo and Accused no. 1 in the Rajiv murder case, V. Prabhakaran, or even carpet bombing of his hideout in Mullaitheevu or wherever in Sri Lanka? Even the media and the academia did not write op-ed pages demanding action. Why did not the media raise this question of alliance of Congress with pro-LTTE parties? What is behind this conspiracy of silence? One thing is for sure—terrorists in India of all hues and background have their compromised moles in the India’s Establishment, and hence no anti-terrorist policy can succeed unless these fifth column elements are weeded out. The IB/RAW/MI/ CRPF all have files on them and so identifying them is no problem. But this would a major revamp of these agencies for them to become the cutting edge of our anti-terrorist policies.

A succinct overview on India’s response to terrorism to date has been provided by Tarun Vijay, Editor of Panchjanya Weekly. Writing in Times of India (26 August 2007) he stated:
Terror is sought to be countered with “band-aid fixes.” And he queries: “How to transform the “band-aid state” into a collective resolve to counter-terror?”

To be continued.. m