For decades, India's leadership has floundered in a miasma of sentimentality, of a false, confused and disastrous rhetoric that has enormously empowered the enemies of the law, of the state, and of civilisation. Worse, it has yielded policies that have directly undermined the capacities of enforcement agencies to effectively confront a wide range of extremely violent political actors who have persistently employed the methods of terrorism - repeatedly targeting innocent civilians and non-combatants, including women, children and the poorest of the poor. Vast areas of the country have, consequently and progressively, been surrendered to lawlessness and disorder.
Finally, however, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spoke out with exemplary clarity on the issue of terrorism at the Chief Minister's Conference at New Delhi on April 15, 2005, raising hopes - indeed, creating a measure of conviction - that the confusion and vacillation of the past was finally to be expelled from the national policy-framework.
Within ten days, however, the Prime Minister's perspective and position came under challenge from his ownminister of home affairs, exposing the incoherence of the present regime and making a mockery of the idea of collectivecabinet responsibility. It is useful to analyse the conflicting positions that are presently being projected from these two sources at the highest level of thegovernment.
Leaving no room for ambiguity, the Prime Minister had stated,