Bharatiya Pragna - Dr. Th Chowdary

which had disastrous consequences for India, for
both Hindus and Muslims. The ideology behind
the ongoing war of terrorism against India is a
continuation of the separatist ideology that created
Pakistan. Which is why, the anti-India forces
in Pakistan have sponsored cross-border terrorism
as a deliberate policy to achieve Kashmir’s
secession from India, and also to weaken India in
many different ways.
In recent years, an important new experiment
has been introduced into this policy of
cross-border terrorism. A section of Indian youth,
misguided and exploited by their mentors abroad
and radicalised by an interpretation of Islam that
is propagated by Al Qaeda, have been inveigled
into the vortex of terrorism. SIMI and Indian
Mujahideen have
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defend SIMI, which is banned as a terrorist
organisation, and the prime minister did not even
upbraid them!
This contrast is also evident in the manner
in which the two alliances have dealt with the
issue of a strong anti-terrorism law. In a country
that has suffered so much due to terrorism with
international operational and financial linkages, the
need for an effective anti-terrorism law ought to
be so self-evident as to preclude any divisive debate
over it. After all, the BJP supported the
TADA Bill when Rajiv Gandhi’s government introduced
it in Parliament. Without TADA, some
of the culprits in Rajiv Gandhi’s murder case could
not have been chargesheeted. When the NDA
government assumed office, TADA had already
ceased to exist. There-
emerged as the face
of indigenised terror.
Their literature
speaks volumes about
their aversion for the
very idea of a secular,
plural and democratic
India, and also
There is mushrooming of
sleeper cells and subversive modules of
terrorists, both indigenous and foreign,
in different parts of the country. As a
result, every citizen of the country from
Kashmir to Kanyakumari today feels insecure
about his safety.
fore, we legislated
POTA.
One of the
first acts of the UPA
government in 2004 was
to repeal POTA. As a
matter of fact, the war
against terror figured
about their resolve to
very low in UPA’s Com-
destroy India as we know it.
mon Minimum Programme. The CMP did not
Contrast between NDA and UPA govern-
mention a single step to check trans-border infilmentstration,
choking terror’s sources of funding, and
How did the NDA government deal
smuggling of weapons and explosives, etc. The
with SIMI? And how has the UPA government
government’s weak-kneed approach, as was in-
dealt with it? I shall not go into all the well-known evitable, proved fatal in course of time. It not only
details, except to say that the contrast is stark. emboldened the extremists groups, but also
The contrast is between one alliance that cares brought down the efficacy of country’s security
for India and the other that cares only for its vote- apparatus. The momentum generated by the sebank.
So much so that two Cabinet ministers in ries of initiatives taken by the NDA government
the UPA government had the audacity to publicly to strengthen national security, particularly the
November & December 2008 Bharatiya Pragna