In My View

Thousand Mutinies

The abiding television image of the 60-hour ordeal in Mumbai during the last week of November would be the one featuring BJP’s leader Gopinath Munde. Almost as soon as the siege at the city’s Nariman House ended by the commandos of the country’s elite National Security Guards (NSG), Munde was seen sauntering down the lane leading up to the House with a puffed up chest and his even more protruding gut.

This was while his BJP fellow travelers had already gathered at the entrance of the building – even before the NSG authorities had declared the official closure of the operation – and were seen cheering the NSG personnel in a style reminiscent of the cricket grounds. It seemed from their demeanour that the NSG men had not just completed a multi-hour, life-and-death contest, but had won a mere one-day cricket match. Such were the signs of the times.

A section of the Delhi intellectuals believe that India’s nation-building exercise is over; only its state-building project is continuing. Message from the events of the past week has been that project is actually regressing. Gopinath Munde and his BJP cohorts reflected on the nature of the dysfunctional Indian State.

This is the state that could not protect its own shorelines, even though they had been amply made aware of its lack of security. Indian Coast Guards failed to apprehend a rogue fishing trawler in its own territorial waters even as its elder cousin, the Indian Navy was thumping its chest after drowning a pirate boat in international waters off the coast of North Africa. They were declaring the Indian coming-of-age as a maritime power, albeit as an US surrogate. Clearly, they spoke out-of-turn.

Signs of a failing state were evident in each stage of the operation too. The terrorists who attacked the Taj Mahal hotel in the city had detailed floor plans of the building, but reportedly our NSG group did not have one in their possession.

Having a terrain map is the first maxim of any military operation in any ground.

Add to that the fact, that the country’s only quick reaction force could be inducted into the battle grounds before nine hours had elapsed after the first bullet was fired because it did not have a dedicated transport of its own. They did not have any clue about how many terrorists they were confronting or about their armaments.

The list goes on. On the first day of the three days and three nights of murder and mayhem, the central government could finally find an official spokesperson who could filter the information and present it credibly to the public. That man, a special secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs, looked natty in an expensive suit and jacket (following in the footsteps of his sartorially accomplished minister). But by the second day, he was at least two news cycles behind with his information. He read out a cable from the NSG about the death toll at the Oberoi hotel that had already been upstaged by briefers on the ground, two hours ago. All he could accomplish after his tenure in front of the cameras was to promise the correspondents that he would “SMSing” the relevant information after the press conference got over.

The prime minister of the country rent the air waves in the evening on 27 November, 2008 with what was hoped to be a stirring message of resoluteness in the face of adversity. What the nationally televised address by Manmohan Singh ended up doing was to show the world how uninspiring and barren a leader could be.

This piece is about the dysfunctional nature of the Indian state. It has to be said that when the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) had come to power four years ago, it did seem that they had got the message part right in the battle against terrorism and militancy. Possibly under the guidance of such gray eminences like MK Narayanan, the UPA had then said terrorism notches up successes when there was disaffection in the society. This was not just a subject of sharply focussed security policies but a function of social policies too. On many occasions in the past four years, they were able to stave off disaster from happening by better policing.

That UPA view had challenged the ruling American theology on the subject. The same held that Islam was antithetical to modern civilisational values, thus needs to be confronted as an enemy in every turn. This securocentric view created a notion of Us and Them that vitiated the global ideational milieu.

But somewhere down the line, the UPA government too lost the plot. Its current vilification of the Pakistan government might detract attention from its own omissions and commissions – besides creating a war-like, jaw-jaw confrontation with the neighbour which might serve the electoral prospects of the Congress party – but it would do little to deter future terror attacks.

The latter needs a far more wide-ranging plan of developing a well resourced and coordinated mechanism for anti-terror operations. It would also require diplomatic prowess of a very high order to create an international atmosphere of active cooperation between nations for information gathering and sharing. It would require jettisoning the current Indian notion of beating any competition in the money-making game; but instead generate common resources that could be shared for welfare of all.

Ultimately, when the society will be less monetised, the basic human values that Thomas Hobbes had ignored in his observations, would arise to confront bestiality.

Pinaki Bhattacharya, currently located in Kolkata, is a Special Correspondent with the Mathrubhumi, Kerala. He writes on Strategic Security issues. He can be contacted at pinaki63@dataone.in