The multiple blasts that failed to deter the teeming masses from attending the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Hunkar Rally in totality last Sunday have left gaping holes in India’s political culture, which no denial or spin-doctoring will ever be able to wash or wish away. At least five persons – Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi – were expected, in a political capacity, to telephone the Gujarat Chief Minister and tell him they were happy that he was safe and well.
In conformity with Indian culture, they were expected to ask if they could be of any service and promise to ensure a thorough investigation and bring the culprits to book, before politely disengaging.
The Bihar Chief Minister, additionally, was expected to apologise for the scandalous security lapse in his capital’s most high security zone, that too, at the political rally of the Prime Ministerial contender of a major political party. Not only could Narendra Modi have been assassinated, or injured grievously enough to be taken out of the equation, but a major chunk of the BJP’s political leadership could have been wiped out à la the Congress party unit in Chhattisgarh. Nitish Kumar’s silence is typical of his underhand style of doing politics.
Indeed, similar phone calls should have been made to BJP president Rajnath Singh, who has mentored the most credible political challenge to the Congress since 1977. His insistence on catapulting Narendra Modi to the position of Prime Ministerial candidate early enough to build a ground swell in favour of the party has earned kudos with the people even as it has excited the rage of the parasitic classes that expect to be orphaned as a new India rises under leaders who have pulled themselves up by their own boot straps and do not rely on the crutches of ‘entitlement’.
Two days after the high voltage rally – where stupendous public self-control ensured that one culprit was caught trying to trigger a blast and handed over to the police, and no tragedy occurred due to panic and stampede – a live bomb has been recovered near the Gandhi Maidan police station. With initial reports suggesting that it is of similar make to the devices that exploded on October 27, it seems obvious that Nitish Kumar’s politics of appeasement has given the Indian Mujahideen a high comfort factor in the State, and the confidence to move about planting bombs in the most sensitive locality of the State capital, in the most heavy duty political gathering in recent history.
Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, who came under considerable flak after rushing to a Mumbai film industry function even after learning of the Patna blasts, smartly pushed the media focus to Nitish Kumar by pointedly stating that the Bihar Government was given intelligence inputs prior to Narendra Modi’s rally. On October 23, Vivek Shrivastava, Joint Director, Intelligence Bureau, Bihar, sent a letter warning “Narendra Modi, being perceived as a leader of Hindus, invokes a fair degree of dissent from a number of radical Muslim groups and may be targeted by rabid groups”. Indeed, after Modi was named as the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate last month, Central intelligence agencies had warned all State Governments that different groups were making plans to target him and hence all States visited by him for election rallies or other meetings should remain on high alert and ensure he was given maximum security.
Bihar, however, was on zero security that day. It now transpires that the Indian Mujahideen (IM) had planned to target Modi via human bombs, Imtiaz Ansari and Ainul, but a fault in the timer battery caused the blast to occur at the Patna junction toilet; Ainul was seriously injured and died later. Imtiaz Ansari tried to flee from the scene, but was caught by the police. Ansari told the police about IM’s Ranchi module and its plan to trigger terror strikes during the Hunkar Rally. In all, 16 bombs were prepared, of which six exploded in Gandhi Maidan while four were recovered live; one blew at the railway station while two were found live; one live bomb was recovered on Tuesday October 29, and two are still missing.
The blasts were masterminded by the new operational head of IM, Tehsin Akhtar alias Monu, a close relation of senior Janata Dal (United) leader and Samastipur district general secretary Taki Akhtar. Monu, according to the police, engaged three teams; one arranged the explosives from Pushkar, Rajasthan, and assembled them in Ranchi before bringing them to Patna. Akhtar reportedly planned the Bodh Gaya blasts in July this year, and is wanted for the 2011 Mumbai and 2013 Hyderabad blasts. He has so far evaded arrest.
Nitish Kumar has to explain why standard procedures like bomb-sniffing dogs, metal detectors, and heightened security, including plain clothes policemen mingling with the crowds and ensuring that no unauthorised person got near or under the dais, were not followed. Above all, there were no ambulances at the venue in case something happened to any dignitary on the dais, which lacuna became apparent when injured members of the public were carried (lugged around) to hospitals. Hopefully Nitish Kumar will have some answers when he comes to Delhi on Wednesday; the nation is anxious to hear his version of what went wrong, and how.
Meanwhile, the after effects of the blasts are beginning to be felt. Senior JDU leader Shivanand Tiwari fired the first salvo at the party convention in Rajgir on Tuesday, praising Narendra Modi and attacking Nitish Kumar for breaking the alliance with the BJP when it was “working fine”, on account of personal jealousy. Tiwari added that the idea for a special package for Bihar was his (Tiwari’s) idea.
Sadly, the most scandalous behaviour so far has been that of Delhi’s Lutyens brigade, the freeloading beneficiaries of the anti-Hindu Nehruvian State system, including its cronies in the media, which has felt no sense of outrage and horror at what transpired in Patna. The dimensions of the tragedy that could have unfolded if the dais had been attacked, if the BJP leadership had announced that bombs were exploding around the Maidan, if a stampede had indeed taken place, have left the chattering elites unmoved.
It was a surreal experience to surf through some television channels on Sunday and discover that they had managed to find ‘thinkers’ who could criticise the ‘divisive politics’ of Narendra Modi, when he is in fact the only major leader today who is urging unity across caste and communal lines, thereby jinxing the Congress strategy of divide and rule. Perhaps that is the reason for the angst.
Niticentral.com, 30 October 2013
http://www.niticentral.com/2013/10/30/nitish-owes-modi-an-apology-152349.html