On The Spot
Tavleen Singh
Why was the Government so defensive about the recent meeting between a relatively unknown journalist and India’s most wanted terrorist? The journalist, who till yesterday, most Indians had never heard of went to Pakistan as a member of a Congress Party delegation led by two senior Congress leaders, Salman Khurshid and Mani Shankar Aiyer. So for Rahul Gandhi to declare him a member of the RSS is too bizarre to need contradiction. Yet that is what many ministers of the new government tried to do. Why? Was it not more important to ask some real questions instead? How did this journalist manage to stay on in Pakistan for a month? How did he get to meet Hafiz Saeed? Why was he interviewed on Pakistani television as if he were an important emissary of the new government?
These are still questions that need to be asked. As someone who has reported from Pakistan many times I can confirm that it is not at all easy for Indian journalists to do even legitimate reporting from this country. No sooner do you land than you begin to be followed around by people who report directly to the omniscient ISI and if you try to cross uncertain red lines you get into immediate trouble. When I was last in Lahore to cover the general election in May I was invited to dinner in the cantonment area of this city but friends advised me not to go because as an Indian I did not have a visa to go there.
On this visit I tried to meet Hafiz Saeed. I drove to Muridke on the edge of Lahore and managed to get into the sprawling high security premises from which he runs his so-called educational and charitable institutions. There was so much Islamism in the air it was scary. He was not in Lahore that day but when I tried to go to his house I was warned off by some ominous looking Islamist types and so I pursued the matter no further. But, I assure you that when I am next in Lahore I will do my best to try and meet this man again so that I can look straight at him and ask him why he felt the need to do what he did in Mumbai on that terrible night four years ago. As someone who spends a lot of time in this city I still find it hard to go past the Leopold Café or VT station without a shiver of horror running down my spine. And, I cannot remember entering the Oberoi or the Taj without paying silent remembrance to those who were killed here on that night we call 26/11. The man I hold personally responsible is Hafiz Saeed and I would like to see him tried and hanged but yes if I get a chance I will meet him.
It is legitimate for journalists to meet some of the worst people in the world. I have personally met Pirabhakharan in the Ashoka Hotel in Delhi where he stayed as a guest of the Government of India when Rajiv Gandhi was prime minister. I have personally interviewed Gulbedin Hekmetyar and in those days when we traveled often to Peshawer to meet the leaders of the Afghan mujahideen I may even have run into Osama himself. I never got to speak to him but I vaguely remember a very tall Arab leaning against a table in one of the mujahideen offices. If I had been introduced I would have tried to interview him but he was not famous then.
It is legitimate journalism to interview not just terrorists and mass murderers but Maoist rebels, Kashmiri militants and the late Sant Jarnail Singh. What, is not legitimate is for journalists to cross the line and pretend to be doing government work and this is what Ved Pratap Vaidik appears to have been doing in Pakistan. Did he get away with this sham because he does government work for the ISI as well? Did he have access to Saeed because of his closeness to the ISI? These are questions he needs to answer before he fades back into the obscurity from whence he came for his fifteen minutes of fame.
Since we are talking about Hafiz Saeed other questions come to mind. When our Prime Minister next has a conversation with his new best friend, Nawaz Sharif, he must ask him why he has done so little to control a man who has such close links to his political party. Hafiz Saeed’s connections to people in high places do not stop with the military but extend fully to the Sharif brothers. It is said that his ‘charitable organizations’ lend support to their campaign at election time. This is why despite Nawaz Sharif having given an interview to Karan Thapar before he became prime minister again last year in which he vowed to ensure that Pakistan would not be used for jihadi terrorism against India he has never tried to reel in Saeed. Not even after the Americans put him on their list of most wanted terrorists has the Pakistani government tried in any way to curb his hate speeches or his activities.
He lives openly in his fortified premises in Muridke and has no hesitation in appearing on public platforms to vomit out hatred against India. Just the other day when Ramzan began he conducted prayers in Karachi and made a political speech in which Americans, Jews and Hindus were targeted as usual. And, it was Americans, Jews and Hindus that he sent his boy terrorists to kill at random when they came to Mumbai. On a personal level this man sickens me to the core of my being because he represents the most irredeemable type of vicious, fanatical jihadist. But, would I try and meet him if I had the chance? Of course.
It is not this that should worry us about Ved Pratap Vaidik’s travels in Pakistan but the ease with which he seems to have been able to spend a month there. What should worry us most is the ease with which he managed to meet India’s most wanted terrorist because there is no possibility of his having been able to do this without the consent of his handlers. His handlers are the same men who control the Pakistani Army and if they allowed Vaidik to meet Hafiz Saeed they must be trying to send India’s new Government a message. It cannot possibly be a message of friendship.
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