Who cares for the nation?

K.N. Pandita
As the Independence Day draws near, our foes are getting activated to strike wherever they can. “Inflicting a thousand cuts” has become the gospel for them.
Recent weeks witnessed many gun battles between security forces and the terrorists in Sopore, Srinagar, Pulwama, Udhampur and some more places in Jammu and Kashmir.
Pakistani Rangers open unprovoked firing and shelling of border posts and villages along the LoC. Several attacks have been made across the international border like Gurdaspur and Kathua.
After the meeting of the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan on the sidelines of Ufa meets, the two countries in their joint press release said that they would cooperate in facing the menace of terrorism. On the ground, terrorism related activities from Pakistan have increased after Ufa. The latest is the attack on the BSF convoy on the Highway, 27 kms on Udhampur-Ramban section. Brave VDC youths nabbed one of the two Pakistani terrorists and handed him over to the police.  Named Naved, the captured terrorist is under interrogation. He is likely to make some disclosures about Pakistan’s Kashmir related terrorist activities.
In yet another development, the judge of the Supreme Court who had sentenced Yaqub Memon to death is threatened by the accomplices of the executed terrorist. This speaks of a chain of fundamentalist-terrorist network pro-active in the country.
In Kashmir, mobs are unfurling Pakistani and ISIS flags frequently. State Government brushes it aside as the anger of a “few disgruntled youth”. Terrorists are always a “handful of disgruntled youth” to Kashmir rulers, ever since the outbreak of insurgency in 1990. The Valley has become a living specimen of Wahahbi ideological colony and gloats over fundamentalist enslavement of Sunni Hanafi community.
Pakistani terrorist organizations like LeT, JeM, HuM and LeI etc. have vowed to wreck wholesale destruction of Kashmir; its people, its economy, its political-social order and its indigenous culture because of alleged façade of pre-Islamic and idolatrous civilization. Rejection of a proposal of rehabilitation of displaced community from the valley is part of this ideology and mindset.
The SIMI has established close liaison with the pro-Pak organizations and groups in and outside India. They are dispatching recruits, including girls, to join ISIS.
Sizeable Valley Diaspora in Saudi Arabia, Gulf States and the US, overtly as well as covertly contributes hefty cash doles to insurgent outfits in Kashmir. In the process, many state functionaries, who have mastered the art of hunting with the hound and running with the hare, become the beneficiaries of this largesse.
This is the contemporary security scenario in our country and our State. The question is this: Do our political stalwarts and icons realize the threats to the security of the country? Do they have the comprehension of the consequences of this grave situation?
In the face of the looming threat to our sovereignty, territorial integrity and the way of life, we ought to forge acute sense of need of solidarity and unity that would strengthen the hands of the Government of the people of India.
Unfortunately, our politicians and political parties have become blind to the gravely critical social-political situation through which the country is passing. The Parliament, which should have been discussing endlessly the measures needed for protecting the Indian Union from disintegration and disruption owing to external intimidation and internal subversion, is embroiled in mutual vendetta and mud-slinging. How shameless that while our jawans are fighting the terrorists and laying down their lives, the politicians  in Delhi are performing the drama of staging a strike, tying black bands around their arms and mouths and stonewalling the proceedings of the parliament for which the Indian tax payer pays 246 lakh rupees per minute. Not a single MP, gorgeously attired in symbolic khadi and making a tamasha of a strike under the portals of the Parliament House had the courtesy of asking the stage actors to interrupt their matinee show and observe two minutes silence in paying homage to the two brave soldiers of BSF who laid down their lives on the Udhampur – Ramban stretch of NH-A!. To them the issue of apology/ removal of a minister, right or wrong, was dearer than showing respect to the martyrs. What they would like is that our soldiers lay down their lives while they hurl abuses on one another.
Are these politicians and these political parties the ones who care for the nation? Are these the ones in whose hands our country is safe?
Is there an iota of patriotism in them? Who among them cares for the security of the nation?
The nation denounces their methodology of misusing their political position for power and revenge. The people expect them to play Dhronacharya, doling out words of wisdom that would steer the ship of the nation through rough seas. They are supposed to be the epitome of courage and fortitude. Alas! They have none of these high qualities; they are minions- a revengeful band of power seekers who want to rule and loot but not serve and defend.
It is the Indian nation that has to understand the grave threat looming large on our national sovereignty and territorial integrity. The nation must come forward to meet the challenge. Left to this class of leadership, the nation will be face to face with insecurity and instability.
Their lust for power and revenge will result in dividing and then weakening the nation.  This is precisely the strategy of our adversaries. External foes and internal subversive elements are exploiting the divisive forces. Pakistan knows when to strike and where.

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