Pinch of saffron

UPA’s record of fighting terror is pathetic, but Advani should ask himself how much better NDA was

The first anniversary of the Mumbai blasts, coming as it did just after the failed strike at Glasgow airport, has brought the terror narrative right back on centre stage. But the serious introspection the moment demands is more than conspicuous in its absence despite the river of words it has occasioned.

It is this precise lack of pause that makes Leader of the Opposition L.K. Advani’s recent observations so disappointing. With some justification, Advani has lit into the UPA government’s performance on the security front. However, a more systematic assessment of the gaps in the country’s security policymaking would necessarily have to

take in the NDA legacy. The late security analyst, J.N. Dixit, had argued that the fact that the NDA had no structured negotiating stance with Pakistan had ended up significantly undermining the country’s security. There are many markers of the NDA era that Advani would rather forget. The Raghunath temple attack of March 2002 saw the BJP lose its base in Jammu in the assembly election later that year. The Parliament attack could perhaps have been anticipated. And there was, of course, that craven surrender at Kandahar. Advani was not just home minister but a deputy prime minister during much of this period, and was certainly in a more powerful position than the present home minister to have effected lasting and credible change. But apart from enacting Pota, it was largely a saga of missed opportunities.

This does not, of course, exonerate the UPA for its shabby and episodic response to an ever-present challenge. The three years of UPA rule, which began symbolically enough with the dismantling of Pota, have been punctuated with sickening regularity by strikes that have extracted a great deal in terms of human life, suffering and uncertainty. Ayodhya, Bangalore, Varanasi, Delhi, Mumbai, Malegaon, Samjhauta Express, how many more instances does this government need to prove that its anti-terror policy, if it has one, is not working? Given this recent history, it is unfortunate that an issue which should have united political parties in a common purpose, continues to divide them.