Geopolitical Analysis

By K.N. Pandita

A stage comes in the life of our political leaders when they begin to think the party as their private estate. Congress remained in power after the colonialists left India. Except for very short span of time political power for almost entire post-independence period remained exclusive domain of Congress.

Parties in opposition could not make much headway. Reasons are that Congress brought the entire nation under obligation of having won freedom for it. Moreover association of the stalwarts of freedom struggle remained closely associated with Congress.  

This close association became a shield for most of the Congress leaders under which their Himalayan blunders and unpardonable idiosyncrasies went unnoticed by over-responsive nation.

Among other abominable traits, Congress began to believe that Indian Muslims were unsafe under any government in the centre other than Congress. Charlatans among Congress maximally exploited this obsession as a mechanism of remaining stay put in power.

When the generation of leaders associated with freedom struggle and particularly with Gandhi ji quit the stage, those who walked in their footprints were men of straw with no motivation other than self aggrandizement. They became blind to the rules of democratic governance and functioned as managers of a private estate. Sycophancy and communal intonation aimed at deriding cultural pare-eminence of traditional India were the tools they had inherited from predecessors of myopic vision and now used them with impunity.

It is for the first time in the history of independent India that power has passed into the hands of the right wing against which the Congress had been pursuing unrelenting propaganda. Unsuspecting masses of people in our country could never imagine that Congress, the virtual other side of the Muslim League, had been all these years consolidating its rule by demonizing not only the right wing but the very cultural construct of civilizational India.

Return of Modi with a massive mandate is the trauma from which most of the Congress minions could not come out. Their rout in the parliamentary elections created deep fissures in the party that are becoming deeper and wider with the passing of each day.

The first victim of lost elections is the coterie of the Congress High Command as each one among them is trying to reiterate allegiance to the throne while looking at the other way as well. Soz meandered his way into the coterie elbowing out Azad. Now with both shown the door, Azad wants public demonstration of his anti-NDA penchant. In doing so he has lost the balance because he is shrouded by political darkness not only in his foster constituency but also in the close circuit coterie. While Soz was made to eat the humble pie, Azad uses some Congress platforms to ventilate his choler not to serve the party but to sychophansize the high command.

Loss of balance of mind is evident in his Pune speech where he brazenly said to his party men that escalation of border tension along International Border in RS Pora sector was related to the coming to power of NDA government. If we dismiss the theory that he has lost the balance of mind and that his word has to be accepted then we should also accept that the beheading of two of our soldier in Mendhar by Pakistani murderers was also connected to UPA rule. Who does not know that Congress had developed an understanding with our adversary against which the army resented more than once something that was at the root of General V.K. Singh-Antony spat? If the army belongs to the country and UPA was catapulted into the seat of power by the country, then that government should not have meted out shabby rather shameful treatment to the former Chief of the Armed Forces or the Navy Chief. Both events remain a blot on the name of Congress. Azad knows that his rival Soz has been dumped for all times, and cannot wriggle out of the hallucination it has created for him. Hence the trash he speaks at odd and even places naturally stinks.

Apart from Congress, there are others also who have become senile and refuse to accept that they are outdated clogs in political machine. Take the case of PDP Chief Mufti Saeed. On the event of border clash, he has pontificated like a Solomon to both India and Pakistan assuming that non in the two countries can have the flash that “magnanimity” should be shown. He still believes he can run with the hare and hunt with the hound. Turning blind eye to facts on the ground and going on pontificating on a subject the contours of which are as vivid as the bright day, the Mufti has been making a laughing stock of himself. His dreams are fantastic like Kashmir to become a bridge between the two countries, or ointment to the wounds, or aspirations of Kashmiris etc. He can roll out a litany of aspirations of Kashmiris but he cannot enlist a single duty for Kashmiris.

Mufti did not come out with his party’s package for the flood sufferers of Srinagar and Pulwama. Like all political leaders of Kashmir who join the dissidents in their azaadi chant are looking with open eyes to New Delhi to sanction billion rupees worth relief package to sufferers and non-sufferers in the valley. This is the level of their “self rule” and “non integration”.

The greatest damage done to Kashmiris is by the double-speak of her leaders. As long as this double speaks goes on, Kashmiris will go on with split personality.

Politicians of older school like Mufti Sahib are sill thinking of Pakistan as a country of their wishes and hopes; they refuse to understand the harsh ground realities in that country. They refuse to accept that it is a lawless masses of people each law unto him. What does it mean to tell Pakistan to be “magnanimous”? Who is magnanimous to whom in Pakistan? Is army magnanimous to Nawaz Sharif? Is the Punjabi ruling clique magnanimous to Baluchis, Sindhis, Shias, Ahmadis, Gilgitis and Baltistanis? Is Pakistani Islamic Republic magnanimous to Afghans? Is it magnanimous to Pakistani women?

For more than two weeks India had been entreating Pakistani Rangers to stop firing on innocent people. Were they magnanimous in sparing the lives of these innocent people? Has Mufti sahib shown any magnanimity by telling Kashmir terrorists to lay down the gun? Yes Mufti Sahib did show magnanimity to the kidnappers of his daughter in 1990. That is a personal matter; a state is not a personal fief and is not run out of compassion for the enemy.

In conclusion it is time for outdated politicians to proceed on long sabbatical leave and leave the affairs of the state and the nation to the care of younger generation.