US daily finds fault with Indian leaders over terror attacks

Press Trust of India
Friday, November 28, 2008 10:52 PM (New York)
A leading US daily has blamed "squabbling" Indian political leaders' failure to put national security above partisan politics for a series of terrorist attacks that the country has witnessed, saying its approach to terrorism has consistently been "haphazard and weak-kneed."

"When faced with fundamentalist demands, India's democratically elected leaders have regularly preferred caving to confrontation on a point of principle. The country's institutions and culture have abetted a widespread sense of Muslim separateness from the national mainstream," the Wall Street Journal said in a stinging commentary.

"The country's anti-terrorism effort is reactive and episodic rather than proactive and sustained. Its public discourse on Islam oscillates between crude, anti-Muslim bigotry and mindless sympathy for largely unjustified Muslim grievance-mongering. Its failure to either charm or cow its Islamist-friendly neighbours -- Pakistan and Bangladesh -- reveals a limited grasp of statecraft," the Journal said. The country's diplomats and soldiers have failed to stabilize the neighborhood, it said, adding that the ongoing attacks in Mumbai underscores the price both Indians and non-Indians caught unawares must now pay.

India's leaders "who invariably swan around with armed guards paid for by the taxpayer" - can't even agree on a legal framework to keep the country safe, it says, adding that on taking office in 2004, one of the first acts of the ruling Congress Party was to scrap a federal antiterrorism law that strengthened witness protection and enhanced police powers. The Congress, it says, has stalled state-level legislation in Gujarat, which is ruled by the opposition BJP.

And it was a Congress government that kowtowed to fundamentalist pressure and made India the first country to ban Mumbai-born Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses in 1988.

Stating that the BJP hasn't "exactly distinguished itself either", it says in 1999, the hijacking of an Indian aircraft led a BJP government to release three hardened militants, including Omar Sheikh Saeed, the former London School of Economics student, who would go on to murder Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

"More recently, the BJP, driven by tribal religious solidarity and a penchant for conspiracy theories, has failed to demand the same tough treatment for alleged Hindu terrorists as it does for Muslims. Minor parties, especially those dependent on the Muslim vote, compete to earn fundamentalists' favour," it said, adding the attacks highlight India's particular vulnerability to terrorist violence.

"But they are also a warning to any country that values what Mumbai symbolizes for Indians: pluralism, enterprise and an open society. Put simply, India's failure to protect its premier city offers a textbook example for fellow democracies on how not to deal with militant," it added.

Besides, India's inability to modernize its 150-million strong Muslim population, the second largest after Indonesia's, has spawned a community that is ill-equipped to seize new economic opportunities and susceptible to militant Islam's faith-based appeal, it added.

Admitting that not all of India's problems are of its own making, the Journal says in Pakistan, it has a neighbour founded on the basis of religion, whose government -- along with those of Iran and Saudi Arabia - has long been one of the world's principal exporters of militant Islamic fervor.

Bangladesh, it notes, also hosts a panoply of jihadist groups.

"As in Pakistan, public sympathy with the militant Islamic worldview forestalls any meaningful effort against those who regularly use the country as a sanctuary to plan mayhem in India. America's unsuccessful Pakistan policy -- too many carrots and too few sticks -- has also contributed to a fundamentally unstable neighbourhood," it added.
US daily finds fault with Indian leaders over terror attacks