NV Subramanian: Communalising terror, Congress style

The Congress party’s vote bank politics and the individual fears and ambitions of party and government heavyweights have led to the communalisation and compromising of India’s battle against terrorism. The post-26/11 terror attacks in Pune, Delhi, Varanasi and other places leading up to the triple Mumbai blasts on July 13 have remained unsolved. This is also the period of Congress decline — despite winning an unexpected victory in the 2009 elections — that has led to all-round desperation in the party and forced it to embrace unabashed vote bank politics. But for this the terror attack on Mumbai earlier this month could have been prevented.

The lead players in communalising the fight against terrorism are Union home minister P Chidambaram and Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh, although their motives could be construed as being different. On Monday, Chidambaram accused ‘right-wing terror groups’ (a euphemism for the RSS and its sister organisations) of bomb blasts on the heels of similar charges hurled by Digvijay Singh in a recent interview.

The provocation for Chidambaram, however, was different. Earlier in the day, the disgraced former telecom minister, A Raja, dragged Chidambaram and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh into the 2G scandal before a CBI special judge. The BJP was quick to demand their resignations. But while the Congress promptly defended the PM on grounds of his well-known personal integrity, Chidambaram was left high and dry.

Digvijay Singh’s motivations for communalising terrorism are a little more complex. Digvijay Singh is desperate for a political comeback after losing Madhya Pradesh for two terms to the BJP. He has sought to advise and tutor Rahul Gandhi on politics in the hope that when the dynast shies away again from whenever the prime ministership comes his way (2014 looks increasingly difficult for the Congress), Digvijay will get the job. He won’t, and neither will his competitor Chidambaram, because a political featherweight like Manmohan Singh suits the Gandhis.

At any rate, in his advice and tutorship of Rahul Gandhi, Digvijay Singh reckoned that a muscular dealing of the Muslim card would return the Congress to power in major states leading up to the 2014 general elections. The plan was a disaster in Nitish Kumar’s Bihar. In Kerala, the Congress coalition barely scraped through, with the CPI-M emerging as the single largest party. Assam was a fluke victory. And in West Bengal, the Muslim vote transferred to Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress from the CPI-M with the Congress having no role in it.

Digvijay’s project was to do a West Bengal in UP, and replicate that all the way up to 2014. Hence his diatribes against so-called ‘Hindu terrorism.’ He couldn’t desist from communalising terrorism even in the tragic aftermath of the July 13 Mumbai blasts, in which 24 people were killed. He followed his line during an Ujjain visit, where he allegedly slapped BJP workers who were waving black flags. The BJP’s riposte to Digvijay was to root his communal campaign to the Gandhis, which forced the Congress to disown his position. Smarting at this letdown, Digvijay has repeated what he said during the funeral preparations for Arjun Singh, his off/on mentor. Digvijay said he was neither an adviser nor a tutor to Rahul Gandhi.
The Gandhis and Digvijay Singh will make up. And while Chidambaram may not get the overt backing of the Congress for his 2G-related attempts to communalise terrorism, the mix-up and compact is complete. But all this has damaged India’s battle against terrorism. The Congress’s decline after 26/11 forced intelligence assets to be deployed for political spying, which indirectly aided SIMI and Indian Mujahideen. With desperate vote bank politics taking salience to shore up the sliding Congress, a hands-off approach was practised against terror groups with Pakistani connections.

And now that Lashkar-e-Taiba’s links have emerged in the July 13 Mumbai attack, Indian investigators are stuck. Indian requests to Pakistan to investigate those links provoked a tart response: Had the Indian government finished investigating the RSS role in the attack? The Manmohan Singh government was left red-faced and speechless. But it has not prevented the renewed communalisation of terrorism by some in the government and the ruling party.

— The writer is the Delhi-based editor of www.newsinsight.net and writes on politics and strategic affairs. envysub@gmail.com