Britain is not helping India's fight against terror

The 9/11 attacks were a turning point in the fight against terror. Many countries joined hands with the George W Bush administration to fight this scourge. The general consensus, which holds true even now, was that terror recognises no national boundaries and nations should come together to fight this evil, whatever else their differences may be. Britain is an active member in the United States’ ‘War against Terror’ coalition — it didn’t think twice before invading Afghanistan and Iraq. Given this the October 13 Hindustan Times news report that London has denied New Delhi evidence on operatives of the terror outfit Babbar Khalsa International until India repealed the death penalty is baffling.

Kuldeep Singh Brar

The Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) is a terrorist organisation that is fighting for Sikh separatism. While it was active during the eighties and well into the nineties, it has since been on the decline. Of the many murders carried out by the group over the decades, the most notorious was the 1995 suicide attack on the Chandigarh secretariat in which then chief minister Beant Singh was assassinated. The BKI was back in the news in 2012, when four men associated with the group in London attempted to kill Lt Gen Kuldeep Singh Brar, who commanded Operation Blue Star in 1984.
India had, under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT), requested Britain to provide information on the BKI’s fund-raising activities. Britain refused to share the details about the operatives. This move by London is illogical and defeats the efforts to fight terror. The war against terror is a concerted effort in which data and expertise must be shared for effective results. The irony here is that the BKI is a group proscribed by Britain since March 2001. The debate on the death penalty should not hinder this effort and help terror groups exploit these differences. Britain’s reluctance poses tough questions: Does this mean that Britain would not share information with a nation that is yet to abolish the death penalty? Would Britain refuse to share information with the US, in which 32 of the 50 states still have the death penalty? If ISIS or al Qaeda operatives were to work out of Britain against India, would London not cooperate with New Delhi? Britain, which has been a victim of terror itself, surely knows better than to be so obdurate on this issue.

Beautiful Soldiers, Brave Daughters

‘Do you have it in you’ is a tagline the Indian Army uses for its recruitment drive. They say you walk in as a boy into the armed forces and come out as an officer and gentleman. All these, one thought, was enough to the get the blood rushing through the veins and jump the queue to get recruited into the army. And how wrong a notion that was is evident in a rather novel way a local recruiter for the army chose to advertise. A billboard in Shillong with the photographs of Priyanka Chopra, Anuskha Sharma, Preity Zinta, Gul Panag and Celina Jaitley had the caption: If you want to have Beautiful and Successful Daughters JOIN INDIAN ARMY’. What is common among the Bollywood actors mentioned is that they all belong to army families.
There are many examples of successful women who can be associated with the army — the billboard advertisement being an example. It’s robs reason as to why it was not thought motivating enough to feature testimonies of women officers in the force? Another point that gets us pondering is how do the recruiters vouch for ‘beautiful’ daughters? To find answers we plan to approach the Armed Forces Medical College in Pune and maybe even call on at the DRDO Bhavan in New Delhi to check if they have come up with a secret formula that will bring the cosmetic industry to a grinding halt.
What about the ‘sons’ of those who join the Indian Army? It’s hard to recollect if any of them lost their way into Bollywood or stardom. Then again, in the great skewed Indian patriarchal society, isn’t it a sine qua non that ‘sons’ are successful. We guess it was this paucity of successful and handsome sons that got the local recruiters to focus on daughters. In all likelihood womens’ organisation will not see red over this — after all it is showing women as successful. We’re also not getting critical about the idea and have come up with a suggestion: rather than putting up such an advertisement in Shillong, Meghalaya, which is way up on the sex ratio table in India, the agencies should think about such moves in Chandigarh, Delhi and Haryana — that sit comfortably numb at the bottom of the table. This might help improve the sex ratio and increase the applicants to the Indian Army. Two birds with one stone they say.
(An edited version of this appeared in the Hindustan Times on April 22)

The discomfort of importance: India's love for the lal batti

It might be more than 60 years since the first Battalion of the Somerset Light Infantry left India signalling the end of British colonial rule. However, many people refuse to abandon colonial vestiges, like an extended retinue that goes against the basic tenets of a democratic republic. It was this colonial hangover and feudal mindset that the Supreme Court was chastising while observing that red beacons used by politicians and government officials on vehicles have become a “fashion and status symbol”. The apex court’s observation, on Thursday, that state governments should drastically cut down on the number of red beacons used on VIP vehicles concurs with the sentiments of many people who are victims of the traffic violations these vehicles create. The SC Bench has suggested that if necessary the Motor Vehicle Act should be amended to restrict the number of officials entitled to use red beacons.
While it is a positive sign that in the recent few months the court has taken note of this grotesque display of ‘importance’, experience suggest that it is too much to expect our politicians to see reason. In the past efforts have been taken to reduce the number of politicians enjoying a security cover but these have had a temporal effect. In many countries except for the president and a few others the rest are not provided with security cover. In India, unfortunately, in some states even panchayat heads are given a security detail.
While in 2009 Prime Minister Manmohan Singh apologised to the family of a person who could not access the emergency area of PGIMER, in Chandigarh, because the PM was attending a function at the hospital, on a daily basis there might be many patients who are caught in traffic snarls because of roads being blocked for VIP movement. Such attitudes and practises need to change. Imposing a greater fine, as suggested by the SC, might be one option. Politicians and government officials need to shed the skewed logic that red beacons and security cover reflect a high status and level of importance, and be more accessible to the people who they are duty-bound to serve.
(An edited version of this appeared in the Hindustan Times on Monday, April 8)