Sangh Parivar

To say that the nine blasts in 15 minutes that killed 64 and maimed over 150 persons in Jaipur shocked the nation is an editorial hyperbole. The common refrain is India has learnt to live with terror. There is no nation-wide outrage and this act of satanic treachery will also add to the cold statistics of the national crime bureau like all the previous terror attacks.

It is a tragedy. It is a sad commentary on the state of the nation after four years of Manmohan Singh regime. The Prime Minister could have at least thought of a better cliché—this is an act of cowardice. Sadly, he has failed to display any degree of courage in combating it.

We are deeply pained, saddened more by the national inertia to this grave challenge and provocation to our very existence as a nation. We salute the brave men and women who bore the brunt and we join them in their grief. We also have to take a pledge on the pyre of the departed from among us.

The loss of every life in terror attack, the innocent unsuspecting victim of a savage barbarian idea of jehad is a martyr in the fight for our nationhood. For, the terrorists strike with planning and calculation. They attempt to cripple the country economically. They kill in selected, crowded places of Hindu worship, tourist destinations, pilgrim centres, middle class Gujarati commuters and financial and scientific nerve centres. They are attacking not only Indians, in particular Hindus but the arteries of this nation to bleed and cripple it. Yet we remain mute, not in the hope that sanity will ever dawn on the demented brains of these mad monsters. But we have come to take it in the stride. We don’t feel it as long as it is not one from among us. How long can a nation live in denial? Can we secure our future with such indifferent inaction and the pusillanimous ineptitude of a government interrupted?

The terrorists are targeting new areas. The stock response of Manmohan Singh government is that it is the handiwork of terrorist outfits ensconced in Pakistan or Bangladesh. If there is any grain of truth in this allegation then no other government in history has done so much to facilitate their arrival, comfortable stay and safe passage as Dr Manmohan Singh government. It has not only vitiated and communalised the national life by pandering to vote banks with public money but its every action helps, encourages and entices jehadi elements.

In these columns we have repeatedly warned against allowing cross-border traffic through bus and rail routes from Pakistan and Bangladesh. Last month the UPA restarted the rail link between India and Bangladesh. There are any number of trains and buses now plying between India and Pakistan which have become safe transportation for jehadis and ISI agents. For decades now the nationalist forces in the country have been clamouring against Bangladeshi infiltration. Some estimate it over a 100 million, we have lost count; but under the UPA the ambitious fencing of the border has been abandoned and reports say that already more than two-third of the fence erected earlier has been willfully damaged. Every modern state has a fool-proof mechanism to check illegal migration. Because it becomes an economic burden, demographic subversion and cultural invasion. The UK recently strengthened and reinforced its migration laws. The US has shooting guards in its borders porous to illegal migration. But this country provides separate banks, ration cards and health care and solid political backing as fixed deposit vote banks. The other day a newspaper carried a story about the Social Welfare Ministry asking the Finance Ministry whether illegal migrants are eligible for NREGA benefits. The report said the Finance Ministry has not so far replied to the query. What could be the answer from a government led by Congress whose chief Sonia Gandhi says that the Centre will soon set up 370 new colleges in Muslim concentration districts?

This government has identified 98 districts for separate promotion of Muslims. The security forces have to work with both hands tied behind because of the appeasement politics of the UPA. They cannot search terror suspect hideouts or arrest and interrogate possible culprits. All the culprits have gone scot-free after the UPA came to power. There have been more than ten dastardly incidents of terror in different parts of the country since October 2005 Delhi Deepawali blasts. All these cases still remain unsolved. And the Jaipur is the latest. That is why in the beginning we said words have lost their meaning. The nation has to resolve and act. This far and no further.