Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Jan 24: Long before Gen VK Singh retired and came on the forefront of Anna Hazare’s campaign against corruption, a part of the establishment in New Delhi did not look comfortable with his functioning as the chief of the Indian Army. For over a year, he remained embroiled in a controversy related to his date of birth.
Within months of his surrender in court and subsequent retirement, Gen Singh blew the bugle of ‘corruption’ in procurement of infrastructure in Army. It was quickly followed by his participation in the street demonstrations led by Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal. It was around this time that his gestures began ruffling a many feathers in New Delhi.
The enough-is-enough message flashed to Gen Singh when he squatted at a protest demonstration, clamouring over “insecurity” to women in the union capital. People directly and indirectly associated with the top corridors of power were publicly critical of Gen Singh’s behaviour. They included Ministers and Chairperson of the Minorities Commission, Wajahat Habibullah. Mr Habibullah questioned Gen Singh’s locus standi, raising questions over the “rapes” allegedly committed by the armed forces in Kashmir and left uninvestigated by the Army chief during his tenure.
The Indian intellectual opinion seemed to be divided on this occasion. A section of it believed that Gen Singh should not have been caught on the wrong foot when he was part of the national outrage over the gang rape of a 23-year-old woman who later died at a hospital in Singapore. Others insisted that the retired General was simply ‘fishing in the troubled waters’.
In next few days, Government of India withdrew Gen Singh’s Z-Plus security status with the plea that the man sitting on dharnas with the common people had not the threat perception that warranted an elite police protection. Downgrading of his security status led to a Major walking into Gen Singh’s house in his absence and beginning to remove a telephone exchange from the premises.
This sequence of developments raised far serious questions related to security. Does a security cover make a protected person in a democratic country like India disentitled to freedom of expression, movement and demonstration? Is the security a privilege and luxury subservient to the sweet will of the powers that be? Who could judge the threat perception— an individual protected person or a professional set up in place in the Government?
Even if Gen Singh gives it in writing or swears an affidavit that there no threat to his life, the Government can not lose sight of the growing incidents of crime, particularly in the union capital, domestic and foreign terror groups’ passion for executing news-making attacks and assassinations besides the rank rivalries in Police and armed forces of most of the Asian countries.
One would also need to have a look on recent history of the conflict-riddled India. In a little over two years of his Operation Blue Star of June 1984 and just six months of his retirement on January 31, 1986, motorcycle-borne terrorists gunned down Gen Arun Shridhar Vaidya when he was driving back to his home in Pune on August 10, 1986. Ranking fourth in a hit list, the retired Army chief was one of the several people, including Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who were eliminated for one or the other role in ordering, planning, facilitating or executing the Operation Blue Star.
By Mr Habibullah’s admission, Gen VK Singh is perceived to be responsible for “hundreds of rapes”, and obviously killings, in Jammu and Kashmir.
Parallel to Gen Singh losing his Z-Plus security cover, the issue of individual security surfaced with a killing spree in Kashmir. While several of the Panchs and Sarpanchs began dying like the lame ducks at the hands of the forces they had sought to politically neutralize with the participation of 90% people in the Panchayat elections in 2011, the establishment maintained that providing Police protection to 33,500 men and women was not possible for the Government.
Close on the heels of the Indian VIP security being trivialized into a privilege and luxury, the issue of national security came to the surface with the brutal beheading of two soldiers on the LoC in Poonch. It, indeed, was not the first of its kind episode. None other than the Army chief Gen Bikram Singh admitted in his widely telecast news conference last week that some soldiers had been previously decapitated on the LoC in Kupwara district. This significant admission came after the authorities completely ignored or disputed media reports of beheading in that area of the Valley. For years nobody spoke of any beheading other than that of Captain Sorabh Kalia in Kargil in May 1999.
On the national security front, India continues to enjoy the dubious distinction of being the only SAARC country that has been hurt not only by the potentially strong military neighbours but also by the weakest ones that ironically are its own creations. A few years back, jihadist groups like Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami set up a strong anti-Indian base in Bangladesh. Around the same time, the Bangladeshi border guards not only facilitated infiltration of thousands of people into the north-east States of India but also killed as many as 13 jawans of BSF in one go by hanging them against trees on the border. But for a diplomatic outcry, there was no material response from India.
Even on the Western front, it became clear last fortnight that the Pakistani commandos and militants of the Lashkar-e-Toiba struck on the Indian military patrol a few days after the LeT supremo Hafiz Sayeed visited Kotli, across Poonch, and also had a meeting with the visiting Hurriyat delegation. Even in absence of material evidence, it is a wide public perception across the border that the Hurriyat leadership encouraged the LeT ideologue to keep the Kashmir pot boiling with high profile strikes like the one in Mendhar.
Now the irony: While as the retired Indian Army chief has been taught a lesson in Delhi and hundreds of Panchs and Sarpanchs are helplessly begging for their life before the militants—lately, through advertisements and press conferences in Srinagar and Jammu—Hafiz Sayeed’s Indian guests enjoy the protocol of being in the prestigious Z-Plus everywhere from Srinagar to New Delhi to Islamabad to Muzaffarabad.
Crores of Rupees collected from the Indian taxpayers have been already spent over the luxuries the Kashmiri separatist leaders in the last 20 years. Unchanged in their tone and tenor, they all, without exception, have continued to spread venom against the Indian systems, individuals and institutions, calling India as a “terror state” and holding it responsible for “thousands of rapes and killings” in Valley.
In an atmosphere of competitive secessionism, they all call Pakistan as a friend and benefactor (Mohsin) of Kashmir and the Kashmiris, denigrate the Indian politicians as the “killers of the Kashmiris”, troops as “rapists” and the country as “occupying”. Remarkably, the leaders of so-called moderate faction of the Hurriyat and JKLF are fare more virulent in their anti-Indian diatribe than the so-called hardliners like Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Shabir Shah.
At the same time, all of them with the exception of Geelani and Shah are enjoying the ultimate freedom of traveling to any country in the world, marrying any woman of their liking at any land of their choosing, and building fortunes—so brazenly in violation of all rules and norms—in Srinagar. All of them are believed to have grown into multi-millionaires and owners of palatial houses, shopping malls and fleets of luxury cars.
But has the Kashmiri separatist leadership’s love and weakness for the worldly luxuries dampened their spirit of “freedom from the occupying India” is a big question that needs to be answered by their Indian masters with facts and figures rather than verbiage and philosophy.
According to the answers provided by the current Government’s Ministers to MLAs and MLCs on the floor of the two Houses in the last three years, over two hundred Police personnel are deployed with the same rabidly anti-Indian leaders who have been continuously challenging the sovereignty and integrity of India and now provoking Hafiz Sayeed for “more”. For the first time, Government has provided to them bullet-proof cars and escort vehicles, platoons of personal security guards and static house-guards, door metal detectors and CCTV cameras. Calculated at the rate of an average of Rs 20,000 a month, not less than Rs 40 lakh of the Indian taxpayers’ money is spent on salary of their security and escort personnel. One of them has secured the Union Home Ministry’s permission to acquire a private bullet-proof car.
Fresh reports indicate that even the family members and distant relatives, friends and acquaintances, domestic helps and privately engaged drivers have also been provided Government vehicles and Police guards and drivers inspite of the fact that they have no threat perception. They have been spotted traveling in Government and private vehicles fitted with flags and beacon lights, allowed by law only to Ministers and legislators, High Court Judges, senior bureaucrats and Police officers.
Whosoever has taken these decisions or protected these people with one or the other argument needs to be made accountable, more so in the wake of credible reports that a part of the Hawala money is being shared with senior and middle ranking Police officers and mainstream politicians in lieu of the privileges of VIP security and protocol. This alone could prevent a whole young generation’s loss of faith in the Indian system.
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel