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Strange ways of the Secularists

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Strange are teh ways of our Secularists Scion of a well-regarded family which is also connected with the ruling party, Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt is not tainted by the ‘Hindutva terror’ tag. Thus, his links with the likes of Abu Salem are not communal enough At the time of writing, the secular brigade is shouting itself hoarse, demanding waiver of the punishment actor Sanjay Dutt has been handed down by the Supreme Court. While none, so far, has spelled out the grounds for the proposed special treatment for the high-profile convict, one can safely guess the reasons for this soft approach. One, he is the scion of a well regarded ‘secular’ family which has strong connections to the ruling dispensation. Two, his supposed terror links, mostly with the likes of Hanif Kadawala and Abu Salem, are deemed to be ‘secular’ (for want of a better word) as opposed to communal (such as one with a Hindutva tag). Hence, Dutt’s case should be treated differently from that of, say, Sadhvi Pragya, who is suffering from cancer and is fighting a prolonged court battle to get proper treatment while in custody. None of the self-proclaimed human rights groups or political parties has taken up her cause so that she may have access to treatment for the dreaded disease. But then again, this is not surprising at all. Dutt’s case is only the latest in a series of instances which have exposed the double standards of the ‘secularists’. What should one make of Ministers and top Congress leaders making a beeline so as to boost the ‘victim image’ of the extremist leader from Kerala, Abdul Nasser Madani? Head of the Peoples Democratic Party, Madani is currently being tried for his role in the 2010 Chinnaswamy stadium blasts in Bangalore. The Karnataka court had given him a five-day break so that he may attend his daughter’s wedding, but it had also issued express orders that he must not give speeches or engage in any political activities. Yet, Madani used his daughter’s wedding to promote his favourite theme: That the state had levelled terror charges against him to victimise him. The police officer accompanying him and overseeing his activities, as per the court order, first prevented him from making a speech at the function. But Madani said he was only announcing his blessings to the couple, so the officer allowed him to use the microphone. Madani then made full use of the occasion to make a long speech. He compared his so-called suffering to the manner in which the Palestinian children are treated (presumably in Israeli jails) and added that his plight was still tolerable. The comparison was obviously meant to bring in the religious angle, as he went on to refer to the suffering of many children and undertrials in the jails of the world. But ,given that Islamists routinely play up the worldwide victimhood theme to justify their activities, it was not entirely unexpected that the Peoples Democratic Party leader used the same tactic to milk the occasion and gain maximum sympathy from his supporters. However, what was surprising was that Madani’s daughter’s wedding was attended by top political leaders of Kerala, including CPI(M) State secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, Left Front convener Vaikkam Vishwan, Congress leader Kodikunnel Suresh (who is the Minister of State for Labour), his party colleague KC Venugopal (former Minister of State for Power) and Congress district committee president Pratapa Varma Thamban. Let us not forget that Madani, their host, is a man who has been accused of planning terrorist activities. He is also known to have recruited young people from Malabar and Hyderadad and then sent them to Kashmir and Bangladesh — and finally to Pakistan for terror training. During the 2009 parliamentary poll, when the Marxist State secretary openly supported Madani and his candidates, the then Marxist Chief Minister of Kerala VS Achuthanandan objected. Later, when PDP supported ‘independent’ candidates as well as the Marxists lost heavily in that election, Mr Achuthanandan even attributed the electoral setback partly to his own party’s decision to align with Madani and his PDP. And that is not all. The Congress, which returned to power in 2011 in Kerala, did not shy away from playing vote-bank politics. So, it refused to prosecute Madani even after his involvement in terror activities came to fore following an investigation by Kerala police. Moreover, when the BJP Government in Karnataka asked the Kerala Government to act, after investigators traced the Bangalore blasts back to Madani, Kerala politicians demurred and told the Karnataka Government that the arrest would lead to widespread riots.Yet, the fact remains that the people of Kerala have never responded to the PDP’s attempts to create disturbances. Why then are Kerala’s politicians, across the political spectrum, so concerned about this person who has never hidden his communalism, his Islamist beliefs and his involvement in terror activities including those in Kerala itself? Nonetheless, thankfully after the snub from Kerala, the prosecution in Karnataka did not give in, and instead obtained an arrest warrant for Madani and brought him in. But this refusal to hold the likes of Madani accountable for the words and crimes is not a one-off thing. When Madani was in Coimbatore jail, his supporters in Kerala organised an anti-Tamil Nadu agitation and burnt buses from that State. Subsequent prosecution against those who burnt the buses led straight to Madani’s wife but again the State Government demurred and let her go scot-free. Moreover, when Madani was lodged in Bangalore jail — having been denied bail by court after court on the basis of solid evidence collected by Karnataka police — Kerala politicians as well as that State’s Congress-led Government went out of their way to ensure that Madani received special treatment in jail. At the level of the Union Government, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh cannot realistically ask Pakistan to take action against its terror merchants when his own party men go out of their way to empathise with terror accused within the country. But then again, perhaps all this is in line with the Congress’s vote-bank politics that is soft on Islamist terror — recall how Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh expressed his solidarity with those who were killed in the Batla House encounter while questioning the courage of police officers who laid down their life to fight terror or the manner in which he had rushed to sympathise with the families of arrested terror suspects. The list goes on to include the manner in which the Congress has ignored the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in places like Hyderabad and Kozhikode and most recently, the pleas of Congress leaders seeking pardon for a man who has been convicted by the Supreme Court of India for the illegal possession of arms relating to the 1993 Mumbai blasts case.
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