| Published on 19-07-2007 In National |
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Written by
Cho Ramaswamy |
A series of unsavoury incidents and its aftermath – in the form of Tamil Nadu government's condemnable attempts to gloss over it, to say the least, are worrying.
Villagers stumbled upon a group of youths armed to the teeth, overpowered and handed them over to the police in Murugan Hills in Theni district's Periakulam region. Subsequent investigations established the presence of Naxalites (numbering between 100 and 600) all set to stage a rebellion with the help of deadly weapons including bombs using the place as a base.
The discovery also marks the start of a startling approach of the state's police. One of them went on record to say, "poverty had turned the young men into extreme left desperadoes," as if these were the only poor in Tamil Nadu.
Give me a break!
These boys are students and not stone masons.
Surprisingly, another bureaucrat proclaimed, "these boys certainly aren't Tamil extremists with a terrorist bent of mind."
What is the hasty necessity to foreclose such a possibility – especially after the emergence of the fact that these "boys" have a fierce affinity to the Tamil Tiger terrorists from across the sea?
At least, to me it seems that such a pronouncement is only because the term "Naxalites" has an all India connotation, steering public scrutiny away from the Tamil Tiger Terrorism angle.
When dealing with extremists, doling out certificates saying that some of them belong to the "safe category" is a diabolically dangerous trend in itself. That is because the whole exercise is aimed at the shortness of public memory and in turn would result in the incidents' being interred mentally by the masses.
Juxtapose this development with another terrifying event not far from this scene.
In Sivaganga, the head of a civic entity was turned into dead body with the help of an improvised explosive device that went off under his car. This person once belonged to the DMK and was, at the time of his murder, opposed to the ruling clique in that area.
I had warned long ago that the day when cycle-chains and soda-water bottles will cease to be "popular" weapons of the political scum and may be replaced by firearms, bombs and IEDs. Sadly the prediction has turned out to be true.
Even in this episode, instead investigating as to how the technology that rendered the explosion of an IED possible in the heart of Tamil Nadu, its chain of suppliers, other logistical issues that led to its production and availability, officials are publicly planting stories about a "cable-television business rivalry!"
While the Tamil Nadu government is diverting public attention from vital matters concerning the imported Tiger terrorism, at a national level, the UPA regime is glossing over an equally worrying aspect of a different manifestation to don the mantle of "secularism.
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This became evident from the way the central government reacted to the news that three Indian doctors tried to commit mass murder in Britain. Simply because they happen to be Muslims, our Prime Minister went on record saying that terrorism has no religion, nationality and that he lost sleep by seeing the interview of one of their mothers on television.
If this adage is true, on what grounds did Dr Manmohan Singh have the "feel good factor" that not a single Indian was part of the Al Qaeda terrorist cells in the past? Can he justify the two anomalies now?
The PM, who was petrified by seeing a terrorist's mother's tale of woe, wasn't equally concerned about the number of innocent people who could have lost their lives in an alien land. Why? All because of the subscription to a single religion called "secularism!"
Is the description of Islamic terror mongers by naming their religion such a sacrilege?
When describing members of Shiv Sena and Bajrang Dal as "Hindu communalists" doesn't imply that all Hindus are terrorists, so also, a mere mention of other terrorists' religious denominations can't mean that one is tarring all of them with an international stigma.
When our government says that agent provocateurs from Pakistan are indulging in sabotage, it naturally does not claim that all Pakistanis are terrorists. By the same line argument, naming a few desperadoes as Tamil terrorists doesn't mean all Tamils are terrorists either.
Why should the Prime Minister be worried about referring to the terrorists by their nationality?
Let us stop using the fig leaves recklessly.
If central and state governments betray hesitation in exposing terrorists, the general public will be scared of those whom they dared to hand over to the law.
It is high time that the regimes at the centre and Tamil Nadu must realise that exposure of terror-merchants has a good cause.
On the contrary, trying to overlook them as "youths who have merely strayed from propriety due to poverty" is even more dangerous than the terrorists themselves.
(Translated from Thuglak by TSV Hari) |
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