Arrest them all

EVEN though an election platform permits considerable rhetorical latitude, yet when the Prime Minister chooses to allege a “foreign hand” in an ongoing state-level poll battle the matter acquires a serious dimension. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has accused the Congress, particularly its suspended leader Mani Shankar Aiyar, of colluding with Pakistan to affect the outcome of the Gujarat election. It must be presumed that the Prime Minister has sufficiently credible information to make the charge. National security interests demand that stern penal action be taken against Mr Aiyar for hosting a meeting at his residence for visiting Pakistani interlocutors; among those who attended the meeting include a former prime minister, a former vice-president, a former chief of the Indian Army and a number of retired distinguished diplomats. A message should go out that India is not a banana republic that foreigners can meddle in its internal affairs; nor is India a United States where the Russians could wantonly interfere in the presidential electoral process.

If there is even an iota of credibility in the Prime Minister’s fusillade  against Mani Shankar Aiyar, then it invites very serious questions about the management of our national security on Modi’s watch. Questions need to be asked as to when did the Prime Minister or his national security team come to a conclusion that Pakistan was becoming an active source of interference in our internal political affairs; and, why has the government so far failed in its duty to act against those who attended this “anti-national” gathering. To keep this serious breach of security under wraps and use it as a “smoking gun” in an assembly election, raises doubts about the competence and commitment of those entrusted with our national security. 

No keen observer of the Gujarat scene would be surprised that Pakistan has been weaved into the election rhetoric. Faced with the heavy baggage of a 22-year-old anti-incumbency, the BJP leadership feels desperate enough to invoke, once again, Pakistan, as an “election issue”.  The sub-text of this sales pitch, sadly enough, is introduction of the old Hindu-Muslim divide. The poor, old “Gujarat model of development” stands totally forgotten and abandoned.