Catching up with the SIT chief
Published in Milligazette
By Firdaus Ahmed[1]
Mr. RK Raghavan,
a former director of CBI, is known better for his fortnightly column in the
reputed journal Frontline, a flagship publication advertised as India’s
National Magazine from the publishers of the equally formidable for its
erudition, The Hindu. It is therefore with some respect that readers have been
accessing his views to inform and shape their own. This regard for his post
retirement output on security and policing is perhaps what prompted the Supreme
Court to appoint him as the head of the Special Investigation Team that went
into the Gujarat carnage to assess the veracity of the more significant crimes
committed post Godhra there. The report of the SIT having been submitted it is
now clear that the exercise was one of exonerating the political figures
involved not only in inciting but later in covering up the crimes. That the
report has gone on to even absolve the political leadership of Gujarat then of
acts of omission, leave alone of acts of commission, has left the readers of RK
Raghavan’s columns in a state of confusion. Was their faith in the credibility
of Mr. Raghavan as a guide into the internal security realm misplaced?
Raghavan’s
latest column in the Frontline, ‘Tepid on Terror’, (http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/20120601291009700.htm,
May 19-June 1, 2012) should dispel any doubts of Mr. Raghavan’s political
inclination. In effect, Mr. Raghavan is no professional writing dispassionately
about his craft. He is instead a political person and his work reflects his
politics. Mistaking him is the fault of his readers, not his. If the Supreme
Court was likewise misled by his seemingly secular credentials, then it is at
the institution’s cost. Mr. Raghavan cannot be blamed for being himself.
Clarity on the working of his mind is easily obtainable from his column in
which he attempts to advocate the NCTC.
The argument he
makes, that comes out clearly in his concluding paragraph, is that the NCTC
would be able to network foreign intelligence agencies better and with its
policing powers (that has proven its Achilles heel) be able to act autonomously
to good effect. His article brings out the ‘threat’ of terror as he sees it in
the surviving of Al Qaeda post 2014, and its affiliation to the Lashkar e
Taiba. This, given the latter’s penetration of India (in Mr. Raghavan’s
estimate) is an existential threat that requires an appropriate response in the
form of an NCTC. While the first and last paragraphs have a mention of NCTC on
an article purportedly on NCTC, the remainder of the article is scaremongering
with which the liberal minority is by now already more than familiar with.
The problem is
that this has now become the ‘common sense’, with ‘authorities’, who ought to
know better, also purveying it. With Mr. Raghavan’s ‘clean chit’ to the
political leadership in Gujarat, it is apparent that the future may well be a
repeat of the past. Mr. Raghavan’s is a
self-fulfilling prophecy in that with the judicial system sabotaged by his
report, it would incentivise hotheads to draw their own conclusions. This will
then make Mr. Raghavan take the position, ‘See, I told you so, didn’t I?’;
thereby buttressing his ‘expert’ credentials. That his article does not carry a
mention of Hindutva inspired terror that has masqueraded as minority
perpetrated suggests a blind spot. This blind spot is incidentally what reveals
Mr. Raghavan’s politics best. These elements have been lying low of late, given
the manner they have been exposed as behind many if not most terror incident’s
earlier attributed by default as minority perpetrated.
This brings one
to the point that Mr. Raghavan yet again misleads by attempts to rely on the
‘common sense’ to make a case for NCTC. This popular, if erroneous, notion has
been manufactured by closet cultural nationalists, both in the strategic
community and media; the ranks of which now have a distinguished denizen, Mr.
Raghavan, now unmasked. The case for NCTC if at all is not that it is required
for coping with minority perpetrated terror and its external linkages, but for
taming Hindutva inspired terror. The terror that has passed for minority
perpetrated terror has been doubly effective. Firstly it has put the minority
in the dock and also, secondly, when there, on the backfoot, in getting those
so accused to first their prove innocence and then prove the other side guilty.
This is what in intelligence circles are called ‘black operations’. This is
suggestive of intelligence tutelage of those so engaged. Given the
predilections of the well regarded Mr. Raghavan now exposed, it is worth a
ponder if there are subterranean linkages between state agencies, well known to
be without parliamentary supervision and nefarious groups of a certain
political persuasion. Analogy can be drawn from the notorious ISI linkages
allegedly with certain grou, brought out copiously in Mr. Raghavan’s article.
Given that the state, both at the Union level and provincial, has acted with
alacrity against the latter, there is little need then to also have an NCTC
based on this logic. Instead, an NCTC with teeth is required for the Union to
act against Hindutva inspired terror groups, since there is great reluctance,
perhaps due to the possible complicity mentioned here, against Hindutva
inspired groups. Given that this argument is not marshalled makes Mr.
Raghavan’s critique of those holding up the NCTC somewhat ‘tepid on terror’.
While there are
good reasons to go slow on the NCTC with teeth as envisaged, one reason why it
is needed is to cope with those that form the blind spot of the state.
Admitting to this is perhaps too much to expect of the home ministry, but this
is the more pertinent reason why the UPA has perhaps wanted the NCTC in its
current form. However, there is a problem area that needs reckoning with. This
is that in equipping itself with such powers, in case the Union is captured,
democratically or otherwise by forces inimical to the Constitution, then it
would be too late to rue them such powers. So although there is good reason to
have an NCTC that can take action, there are reservations that can lend the
exercise pause.
In enabling
these observations on the NCTC and the dominant security discourse, Mr.
Raghavan’s column has served a purpose, but not as he
imagined. It is time the editors of the Hindu group read their very own
columnists since such writings excite dissonance in their readers, being
inconsistent with the otherwise credible and creditably liberal line of the
publications of the group.
