Time for tough measures

India is being idealistic by expecting Pakistan to cooperate in the fight against terror

The live televised drama in Mumbai has tragically dramatised the country's wrenching failure to deal with terrorism. That the financial centre of any normal country, much less one aspiring for global status, should  have been left exposed despite repeated attacks is inexplicable.

India is singularly vulnerable to terrorism because of its population composition, internal communal fault lines and porous borders. Then there is a hostile neighbour determined to use the religious card against it, both bilaterally and at the international level, to claim Kashmir, impede India's ties with the Islamic world and weaken its secular democracy.

By clubbing the injustice done to Kashmiri Muslims with the cause of the Palestinians and Iraqis, Pakistan is trying to gain wider acceptability in the Ummah for recourse to terrorism against India.

Pakistan's Kashmir rhetoric has nurtured hostility of domestic extremist religious forces towards India. These forces have provided the infantry for terror operations in India. They represent the core force that sees Hindu India as the enemy.

The hinterland of terrorism targeting us includes Afghanistan. The US mobilisation of fundamentalist Islamic elements to oust the Soviets from Afghanisthan introduced, as a fallout, terrorism in Kashmir.

Our earlier support to Northern Alliance, our rising profile in Afghanistan, the haplessness of the Karzai government, the resurgence of the Taliban with Pakistani complicity, the growing lawlessness in Pakistan's tribal belt and the transformation of our relations with the US, have broadened the jihadi threat to us. The blasting of our Embassy in Kabul was a powerful warning.

National interest must prime over electoral considerations in addressing the rising challenge of religious extremists. We need to amend our laws, set up central mechanisms to tackle the threat and equip our agencies with improved material and human resources. We still talk in the future tense when we require concrete action in the present.

Political correctness does not mean an incorrect diagnosis of problems. Secularism does not require "even-handedness" between Muslim and non-Muslim sources of terrorism. There is a fundamental difference between externally-linked terrorism, sustained by interconnected international networks and interpretation of religious texts, and localised terrorist acts, motivated by economic or political grievances, without any global agenda.

We have done ourselves incalculable  harm by playing up, for political reasons, "Hindu" terrorism, which is now providing Pakistan a  handy argument to question the credibility of our accusations against it.

International politics has given Pakistan space to hurt India. The US and others want us to settle differences with Pakistan for their own strategic needs, and this pressure will grow after Mumbai. What we see as rational reasons for friendship with Pakistan are viewed differently in Islamabad.

We see solutions through a status quo, whereas Pakistan wants to change it. While we see a stable Pakistan as being in our interest, Pakistan wants India to break up. We are exhorted to make concessions to Pakistan as the more powerful country. If this argument has force, then a successful US foreign policy should be axed on  making concessions to all its adversaries!

The terrorist attack in Mumbai should be a final wake-up call for us.  This brazen attack was intended to humiliate India, retard its economic rise and drag it down to the level of disarray in Pakistan. An operation of this daring and professionalism, requiring meticulous preparation, could not have been mounted without agency knowledge in Pakistan.

To say its government may not be involved is immaterial, as such outsourcing to NGO terrorism can then continue indefinitely.

We made a cardinal error in equating ourselves with Pakistan as victims of terrorism.  Pakistan's government is using this alibi to deny any role in terrorist attacks. President Zardari's unusually friendly statements will have meaning only if the government closes down jihadi organisations targeting India, hands over key wanted persons and shares serious intelligence.

Our attempt to invite Pakistan's ISI chief suggests that we still believe in Pakistan's cooperation on terrorism. A country adept at deceiving friends will not be honest with its enemies. Pakistan's latest statements insisting on "evidence", shows it has no intention of changing course. The Mumbai attack should be a turning point.

We need to reshape our politics, do consensus building, undertake institutional reforms, toughen our laws, adapt our lifestyles to security requirements and improve border controls — an agenda of change that requires leadership. It cannot be business as usual with Pakistan, unless we wish to invite more terrorist mayhem.

The writer is a former foreign  secretary