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Children of state terrorism

By Humayun Gauhar November 29, 2008

My dear Muhammad Ali:
I felt so humiliated when I heard that the government had decided to send the three-star chief of our fabled Inter Services Intelligence to India on Manmohan Singh's demand that I nearly didn't write about the Mumbai Mayhem. I thought it best to leave it for a time. No point in writing in anger. Passion, yes; anger, no. Pakistanis interpreted it as an abject admission of guilt - CNN said it was a "sign of weakness." What's the point of saying anything, I thought, when our own government meekly dispatches its ISI chief to appease India under the excuse of 'sharing information?' They don't need our help. They know exactly what's going on. How many cheeks do we have to turn, anyway?
Did we ask for their intelligence chief to come to Pakistan when Hindu terrorists in conjunction with a Hindu extremist political party and some serving Indian army officials planned and deliberately massacred so many Pakistanis in the so-called 'Friendship Express' train on February 18, 2007?
Blaming Pakistan is scripted. The moment some outrage happens out comes the Standard Operating Statement or SOS. They can hardly admit that their terrorism is homegrown, some involving their own senior rogue serving and retired military officers. What price then their 'legendary' security apparatus? They have to blame Pakistan. So many of us felt that this wasn't the time to stay silent and spoke up. Sure we should help them to get to the bottom of the crime and catch the culprits behind it. We even have an agreement to do so. But we shouldn't provide their government symbolic succour by making a spectacle of our ISI chief. It worked, and they decided not to send him but some ISI experts, which makes sense.
Our problem is that we are always trying to be goody-goody, always trying to please everyone except our own people. Don't we know that Indian fascists persistently try to frame Pakistan by perpetrating terrorist acts and pointing the finger at us so as to increase hatred against Indian Muslims? Don't we know that Hindu extremists want a 'United India' ('Akhand Bharat') cleansed of all non-Hindus, especially Muslims?
Look goody-goody we are. When on December 6, 1992, L K Advani, leader of the Hindu fundamentalist-extremist BJP, riding a mock Shiva chariot, led a crowd of crazed Hindu fanatics and razed the historic Babri Mosque, did we put them on the international mat? He was actively assisted by Gujarat's Muslim-hating chief minister and his police.

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