Dear Mr Prime Minister...

Dear Mr Prime Minister, 

I write to you as the term terrorism takes on a whole new meaning for theIndians. In some ways, terrorism has shaped the collective consciousness of usall since as long as we can remember. But in the hurly-burly of India’semergence as a major economic power, the fact that India remains a patentlyinsecure nation somehow got relegated to the background. The middle-classesstarted believing in their own invincibility as if all they needed was 8 percentrates of economic growth and the future of the country would take care ofitself. Even when bombs after bombs were being exploded in city after city, wecontinued to live in the fantasy-world of our own making, first blaming theoutside forces and then training guns at ourselves. It became a Hindu versusMuslim debate: whose terrorists were better, mine or yours? 

And today when our soldiers and security personnel had to wage a war in theirown homeland, we look askance, unable to comprehend how we could have been so naïve,how we could not have realised that when we don’t take the fight to theenemies, they bring the fight to us. It was Trotsky who said: "You may not beinterested in war but war is interested in you." After all, India has beenfacing a sustained terror offensive of unprecedented lethality for some timenow. And unlike the West that has the luxury of fighting the wars of choice, weare now fighting a war of national survival. And Mr Prime Minister, with duerespect, you are to be blamed for this. The buck stops with you, not with yourhome minister, not with your party leader, but with you. 

In your addressto the nation, you are now suggesting that you "will go after theseindividuals and organisations and make sure that every perpetrator, organiserand supporter of terror, whatever his affiliation or religion may be, pays aheavy price." Where were you these past four and a half years? Where was yourgovernment when incident after incident pointed to a larger, much biggeroperation to come? Now you tell us that you will "take up strongly with ourneighbours that the use of their territory for launching attacks" will not betolerated and that "there will be a cost if suitable measures are not taken bythem." Why did it take you the very end of your government’s tenure to cometo this conclusion? Shouldn’t it have been your government’s first prioritygiven that the parlous state of India’s neighbourhood? Did it have to be sucha nightmare in Mumbai for your government to set up a Federal InvestigationAgency and strengthen the National Security Act? The way your government hasoperated in the last four years verges on the criminal, in so far as the neglectof the safety and security of its citizens is concerned, a task that ought to bethe first priority of any government. 

To be fair, the issue does go beyond you. National security issues shouldtranscend politics but the lack of civil dialogue among political parties inIndia is an abomination. As a result, Indians are stuck between the graveincompetence of your government and the cynical political opportunism of the BJP.An issue that should have united political parties across the political spectrumin a common purpose continues to divide them. But again, it was yourresponsibility as the Prime Minister to at least try to evolve a consensus. Youdidn’t and you now seem to have landed yourself in a situation where you arenow trusted neither by the minority communities nor by the majority community.The simple task of enforcing the rule of law has often seemed to be beyond thecompetence of your government, allowing extremists to take over the broaderdiscourse on national security.  

The nation’s security forces are facing a new unconventional enemy and theyare tying their best. You have rightly saluted the courage and patriotism of thepolice officers who are relentlessly fighting these terrorists, exemplified bythe ultimate sacrifice of people like Hemant Karkare. However, yourgovernment’s inability and/or unwillingness to face up to the security threatand counter it firmly might end up making such sacrifices meaningless.Throughout your tenure, it was never clear if internal security was ever apriority. Your former home minister Shivraj Patil’s incompetence is nowlegendary and he will surely go down in history as the worst of his kind. Butyour decision to firmly stand behind him for so long remains incomprehensibleeven to your staunch admirers. It merely reinforced a perception that youdon’t care about accountability, that even if ordinary Indian were gettingkilled in attacks after attacks what you cared was more about the politics ofkeeping Shivraj Patil in office than about his effectiveness in providingsecurity to your countrymen and women. It may sound a very harsh assessment butMr. Prime Minister it seemed thus from the outside. 

Your anti-terror stance, for you don’t seem to have a policy worth thename, has been repeatedly shown to be ineffective. Not only do the terroristscontinue to attack the nation at regular intervals with impunity, not a singlemajor terrorist case has been solved under your stewardship. At a time whenIndia needs effective institutional capacity to fight the ever-moresophisticated terror networks, Indian police and intelligence services aredemoralized to an unprecedented extent. The blatant communalising of the processunder which the security forces were forced to call off searches andinterrogations for fear of offending this or that community has led to asituation where the security services have become risk-averse. 

The people of India need to feel that their security is in more competenthands. The trouble with your government is that not only is it not actuallyfighting terrorism, it is not even seen to be trying to fight. The nation needsa political environment where political parties can see beyond their immediateelectoral gains and losses. True, this is easier said than done but you of allpoliticians were uniquely placed to usher in such an environment. The fact thatyou did not even try makes one wholly despondent about the future of Indianpolity. Your government’s inability to stand up to those who question thelegitimacy of the Indian state will cost the nation dear. Today, the legitimacyof the Indian state is being questioned not merely by groups on the margins ofIndian society and polity but by the mainstream political parties. Severalmembers of your party launched a whisper campaign questioning the veracity ofthe police claims in the Jamia Nagar encounter with terrorists. You should havetaken the lead in burying the conspiracy theories surrounding it. You didn’tand when the BJP is now questioning the arrests of Sadhvi Pragya and SrikantPurohit, you have little moral capital left to take the Hindu extremistshead-on. 

So long as India’s response to terrorism will be characterised by ashameless appeal along religious lines with political parties trying toconsolidate their vote-banks as opposed to coming together to fight the menace,we will continue to be viewed as a soft target by our adversaries and we willcontinue to fight terrorists in our streets. You will be ending your tenure in afew months from now but the damage that your government has done to the Indianinternal security will remain with us forever. The fact that yourpredecessor’s record was equally pathetic is no excuse. One can only hope thatthe next government will learn right lessons from your failure. Otherwise, thevery idea of India is in danger of becoming just a fond memory. 

One of your constituents