Rise and fight
A group of terrorists aboard a boat, get dropped into India's most famous entry point through sea, walk into its heritage mile and show up our nation as a totally unguarded, porous entity with not an iota of preventive preservation. Get used to it, we are a nation held shamefully to ransom -- by nothing more than a slim group of Mumbai attackers.
What more -- or how less - does it take to show the shocking vulnerability of India's much-touted sovereignty and integrity? Do we now live with the belief that the fabled might of the Indian State is handmaiden to a bunch of armed crooks whenever they choose to play with her? Do we now treat ourselves as subjects of anytime-anywhere terror? As a people, is it not really time to do a coup on our politicians, if not for anything else then to cure them of their genetic impotence to action?
How can the nation ever overcome the ignominies heaped on a one billion plus population by some crazed Islamic terrorists -- we are told from Pakistan -- and much as every single Indian would have liked to deny it -- the Government's soft on terror approach?
Imagine, just imagine, in a matter of a few hours, some faceless, could-be-counted-on-fingers Pakistani men walk into India and liquidate the nation's symbols of power -- the ATS chief, the top encounter specialist, an additional commissioner -- all the good men who were terror for terrorists. A few terrorists are allowed to show us that they can just flick their demonic finger and all of India's security forces will go into a confused tizzy. Think of it, even after three days, Mumbai's pride and the symbol of Indian heritage -- the Taj Mahal hotel -- was under the thumb of terrorists, mostly in their 20s.
The elite National Commando Force, the Indian Army, the Air Force and the Navy, not to mention the Mumbai Police, the RAF, the CRPF and all related security agencies were battling a fullscale war -- not against any rogue nation but against just a few rogues! More than 150 dead and innumerable injured -- the terror figures are alarming. But what is killing is the blatant attack on our collective psyche and the worrying revelation -- that we the Indians have a strange clinical aberration to overcome continuous acts of terror.
Fact is that the Government has been over-indulged by us into daring to show up as one of us -- confused, uninformed and totally out of its depth to fight terror. How can an entity of ultimate power, meant to guard the nation from all quarters, have the audacity to look non-plussed? How can you vote any combination which can allow itself to be under the thumb of terrorists? Sounds awful but there is no softer way of saying or realising this -- if our Government is so compromised as to be held ransom to a few terrorists, not once not twice but every other day -- it has no business to be alive.
How dare, a Home Minister look distraught instead of angry? How dare, the Government say "it seems" for everything that was unfolding to a terrorised nation on live television? How dare the Government not know who the terrorists are, where they came from and what was in store?
For three long days, they blatantly blasted various portions of the Taj, the Oberoi, the Nariman House and the CST as the Government became well, just a common man -- watching on TV what was happening, not knowing like the man next door what's coming next!
If this does not spur us into a revolution, nothing will. If we do not act now, sorry to say, we deserve every inch of ignominy that is being heaped on us. A sleeping people like us do not deserve a decent life or a respectable burial. The latest terror strike tells us that we are a dead people, a comatose entity, a compromised population, people in need of an immediate correction facility.
Don't you dare say this is not a religious war, don't you dare say Pakistan is a friend. Don't you dare look as stunned and as beaten as that hostage who was just carried out in the arms of a commando. You are the Government, the power centre from where the nation draws its strength. Stop making excuses. Just shut up and bounce!
What more -- or how less - does it take to show the shocking vulnerability of India's much-touted sovereignty and integrity? Do we now live with the belief that the fabled might of the Indian State is handmaiden to a bunch of armed crooks whenever they choose to play with her? Do we now treat ourselves as subjects of anytime-anywhere terror? As a people, is it not really time to do a coup on our politicians, if not for anything else then to cure them of their genetic impotence to action?
How can the nation ever overcome the ignominies heaped on a one billion plus population by some crazed Islamic terrorists -- we are told from Pakistan -- and much as every single Indian would have liked to deny it -- the Government's soft on terror approach?
Imagine, just imagine, in a matter of a few hours, some faceless, could-be-counted-on-fingers Pakistani men walk into India and liquidate the nation's symbols of power -- the ATS chief, the top encounter specialist, an additional commissioner -- all the good men who were terror for terrorists. A few terrorists are allowed to show us that they can just flick their demonic finger and all of India's security forces will go into a confused tizzy. Think of it, even after three days, Mumbai's pride and the symbol of Indian heritage -- the Taj Mahal hotel -- was under the thumb of terrorists, mostly in their 20s.
The elite National Commando Force, the Indian Army, the Air Force and the Navy, not to mention the Mumbai Police, the RAF, the CRPF and all related security agencies were battling a fullscale war -- not against any rogue nation but against just a few rogues! More than 150 dead and innumerable injured -- the terror figures are alarming. But what is killing is the blatant attack on our collective psyche and the worrying revelation -- that we the Indians have a strange clinical aberration to overcome continuous acts of terror.
Fact is that the Government has been over-indulged by us into daring to show up as one of us -- confused, uninformed and totally out of its depth to fight terror. How can an entity of ultimate power, meant to guard the nation from all quarters, have the audacity to look non-plussed? How can you vote any combination which can allow itself to be under the thumb of terrorists? Sounds awful but there is no softer way of saying or realising this -- if our Government is so compromised as to be held ransom to a few terrorists, not once not twice but every other day -- it has no business to be alive.
How dare, a Home Minister look distraught instead of angry? How dare, the Government say "it seems" for everything that was unfolding to a terrorised nation on live television? How dare the Government not know who the terrorists are, where they came from and what was in store?
For three long days, they blatantly blasted various portions of the Taj, the Oberoi, the Nariman House and the CST as the Government became well, just a common man -- watching on TV what was happening, not knowing like the man next door what's coming next!
If this does not spur us into a revolution, nothing will. If we do not act now, sorry to say, we deserve every inch of ignominy that is being heaped on us. A sleeping people like us do not deserve a decent life or a respectable burial. The latest terror strike tells us that we are a dead people, a comatose entity, a compromised population, people in need of an immediate correction facility.
Don't you dare say this is not a religious war, don't you dare say Pakistan is a friend. Don't you dare look as stunned and as beaten as that hostage who was just carried out in the arms of a commando. You are the Government, the power centre from where the nation draws its strength. Stop making excuses. Just shut up and bounce!
Published November 30, 2008; http://www.dailypioneer.com/137735/Rise-and-fight.html
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