Farooq Abdullah is understandably apprehensive of the consequences of hanging Mohammed Afzal. Hang him but think of the consequences that will follow, he warns.
Abdullah is frightened that blood would flow in India as terrorists would destroy Hindu-Muslim relations. He also fears that terrorists might retaliate and kill the judges who awarded the death penalty to Afzal like, in the 1980s, they killed Justice Neelkanth Katju, who sentenced Maqbool Bhatt, a terrorist, to death. Something similar the present Chief Minister of J&K Gulam Nabhi Azad also said last week.
There are others who have echoed similar views. The QED of what these secular Indians say is this: hanging Afzal will provoke the terrorists to retaliate and that will lead to more bloodshed. So pardon him. It needs less than a few seconds to show how ridiculous this mercy plea is and how secular intellectualism not just impedes the battle against terror, but actually allies with terror.
See the unerring sequence of the impediments to the battle against terror in India. If a government attempts to prevent terror by anti-terror law, the secularists and the liberals will brand the law not an anti-terror law as anti-minority, anti-Muslim and destructive of civil liberties and get the law repealed if a law was in place as the fate of TADA and POTA demonstrates. This will make the minority feel that anything spoken or done against terror is actually against them! This is extremely dangerous as it creates a psychological camaraderie between innocent among the minorities and the terrorists! To make it worse, those arrested under anti-terror law even become heroes of secular India like Abdul Madhani who bombed Coimbatore and killed over 70 persons and still became the favourite of all secular forces.
The rulers would pass no law and still the Army and police will be their target if terror strikes. Next, if a suspected terrorist were killed in police or army shootout, then the human rights industry, which is among the most gainful avocations in the world, would raise a chorus and hang the police or the Army that did the operation. The entire secular brigade and media will join them and shame the whole nation. Third, if police investigate aggressively, like it did in recent Mumbai train blasts investigation, to get at the identity of the perpetrators of the terror, the secular brigade will set upon the whole investigation process as anti-Muslim. A Sonia Gandhi will counsel �don’t target a whole community� and a Manmohan Singh who is her echo will say �don’t suspect a whole community.� This will give credence to the propaganda the terrorists do to woo the community that the entire police, a.k.a. the Indian state, is anti-Muslim.
Despite all odds created by this secular and intellectual terrorism – with no law against terror, no secular party willing to support an aggressive investigation into terror, no witness willing to testify against terror, and fewer judges willing to face the fate of Katju – if the police accomplish a miracle of a successful investigation and prove a case and get a judgment and conviction, the whole chorus starts again: Pardon this Afzal, otherwise other Afzals will not pardon those who did not pardon him!
Ridiculous is the word, for want of a better one. Some intellectual pleaders of the terrorists go even further. They even fault the decision of the highest judiciary in language that approximates the terrorists’ logic. This actually rationalises the philosophy of the terrorists against law and lawful means! Here secular intellectual terrorism virtually joins hands with Islamic terrorism.
If there can be no law against terror, and if a law against terrorists is branded as a law against minorities, and if investigation against terrorists is labelled as a measure against minorities and if there are no willing witnesses against the terrorists and fewer judges who would dare the fate of Katjus – and despite all this, if prosecution proves terror and identifies the terrorists against all odds and the court convicts the guilty with death the secular intellectuals fault the highest court’s verdict as unworthy and warn that the blood would flow in the nation if the death penalty is carried out – will the secular intellectuals tell us how else to fight the terror? And whether they want terror fought at all? Secular India has never suggested a solution to fight the terror.
The sum total of all that the seculars have left unsaid, but clear in their mind about terror, is to surrender to terror. Otherwise they will not be conveying, as if on behalf of the terrorists, what the outlaws will do if Afzal is hung. If the terrorists say blood will flow when Afzal is hung it is a terror threat. But if the same threat is conveyed through the secular intellectuals and leaders it is counselling the nation and the government! That is all, it seems, the difference between the secular India and the terrorists.
http://www.newindpress.com/column/News.asp?
