'Credulity and negligence'- that is how Dr.S.Radhakrishnan, the President of India, commented after the Chinese Invasion of India in 1962 on the attitude and the response of the Nehru government. The same can be said of the response of the UPA government to the most daring attack on Mumbai's most famous landmarks – Taj Mahal Hotel, Oberoi Hotel and the Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus, apart from the Nariman House where the Jews were killed in a country which has never persecuted them. No wonder that 43% of the people who participated in the poll conducted by the Times of India (11/12) felt that Prime Minister should be penalised as well. I wish the Prime Minister had owned up his responsibility, moral as well as policy-wise and principle-wise. He had said Pakistan was also victim of the terrorists along with India when the whole world knew that it is the nursery of terrorism and that is why it is hit by terrorism. He invited Pakistan to share information about terrorists when it is the breeding ground of terrorism.
The Prime Minister never asked the Union Home Minister, who was always impeccably dressed but incapable of dealing with terrorism, to act on the various reports submitted by the committees on tackling terrorism. The newspapers have published a list of 13 terrorist attacks since UPA came to power and people have seen some action only on the Malegoan blast. It is said that the police spent most of the time on Malegoan blast than on others due to political reasons. At least the seven blasts in Mumbai trains in 2006 when 188 innocent people died should have woken the UPA but unfortunately it did not. Most of the dead were poor and the middle class. Now, it is the death of the elite that has stirred the government into action. If the Prime Minister had taken the same interest in meeting the threat of terror that he took in Indo-US nuclear deal, things would have been different – so many people would not have died in the various part of the country.
Nehru sacrificed V.K.Menon though both of them were responsible. But people now want to hold not just the Home Minister responsible for what happened but the Prime Minister as well. His responsibility is more.
December 14,2008.
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