We deserve better leaders

The remarks of union home minister Sushilkumar Shinde, accusing the BJP and RSS of conducting terror training camps and promoting Hindu terror, are wrong, to say the least. The accusation, that has little evidence to back it, smacks of petty and votebank politics.

First, if what Shinde says is true, then what stops him as union home minister from acting against them? Why doesn’t he arrest the leaders who hold such camps? Does Shinde know something we don’t? Since he has not done that, nor shown the inclination to do so, it can only mean that Shinde’s statements were made for political purposes.

Second, terror has no religion. We in India have time and again said, and rightly so, that there is no such thing as Hindu or Islamic or Sikh terror; it is just terror. Every religion has thrown up terrorist elements; the religion is not to be blamed.

True, there are elements within different parties that may have supported certain terror activities. But can the entire organisation be blamed for an individual’s action? If that is the case, the entire Congress party is communal for the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. Extending that logic, surely Rajiv Gandhi is culpable.

No one has benefited more from these remarks than terrorist elements in Pakistan. Using these remarks, Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed is urging Pakistan to approach the UN to declare India a terrorist state.

Both Shinde and the Congress party would do well to be more careful in making their remarks. Because India deserves better from its leaders.