On the evening of the terror attack in Dina Nagar, Gurdaspur district, a Chandigarh-based Sikh lawyer was dispensing his expert views on the return of terror in the Punjab. “Forget the return of terror to Punjab. This time if anyone tries to play any mischief, the people are prepared to teach the culprits a lesson. That is the reason why the Punjab police did not allow the army to handle the operation. Our cops may not be physically fit, they not even have the most modern weaponry to match the AK-47s, but they are enough to gun down the attackers,” he was explaining. This was no official briefing of the Punjab home ministry. Just an alert well-off lawyer, who drives a Rs 1.50 crore Porsche Cayenne SUV for fun, letting be known that Punjab is not a happy-hunting ground for terrorists anymore. Now he also has a view on why Dina Nagar got targeted. “They were on their way to actually hit out at Amarnath yatra, but then by mistake they boarded the wrong bus and landed in Punjab,” he said as if he had all the knowledge about the plans of the attackers. Now never mind the home minister’s statement three days later that they had come via the river route. The Punjab of 2015 is simply not the place of the 1980s when terrorism could flourish. The lawyer was voicing the people’s confidence that terror is not returning to Punjab.
But this is not reason enough to stop worrying. The people would certainly not support any such terror or revival of militancy in Punjab. But that does not stop our neighbours from fishing in the waters of the five rivers and this possibility has to be fully challenged. It is really a surprise that Dina Nagar had working CCTVs cameras that captured the movement of the attackers. But the challenge is that no one was looking at these cameras in real time and there was no alert in any system of any unusual movement. This means that there was nothing in place to warn that some unusual activity has been noticed. The fact that the cops did not have any fast working weapons or bullet-proof gear has already been highlighted. If still the Punjab Police eliminated the attackers and did not need the help of the army that was in standby mode, the credit should largely belong to their personal courage and morale. However, it is a sad commentary on the state of affairs that a super-cop like the retired IPS officer KPS Gill who led the anti-terror operations in the late 80s feels that enough has not been done to prepare the state for such attacks. There is simply no option to let our guard down in Punjab and everything that has to be done should be accomplished without any delay to secure the state.
However, the larger question is the Modi sarkar’s handling of the entire security issue. It is fair to demand that on issues that concern the security of the nation, all of us should speak in one voice. But isn’t it the government’s responsibility to take the nation into confidence on such matters. Doesn’t it become obvious that Prime Minister Narendra Modi speak on such issues in Parliament and not leave these to be handled by his ministers, especially when one has a hands-on approach in dealing with such matters. So, if Pakistan keeps sending attackers despite India’s engagement with it at the highest level, then the next question is what happens at such talks about these critical issues?
There is no doubt that there is a dramatic change in Pakistan when it comes to handling the terror question or else Ishaq Malik, the chief of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, the man responsible for the killings in the sectarian strikes would not have been eliminated by Pakistan’s Punjab Police who in turn could not have achieved this success without the support of the Army. So, if the army has taken a position against sectarian terror, then isn’t it the right time for India to drive home the peace advantage with Sharif? There are indications that a Modi-Sharif meeting could be on the cards in the US in September, and only if there are concrete steps in terms of reducing cross border infiltration and firings would there be any room to claim some success in engaging with Islamabad.
There can be no military solution to the India-Pakistan conflict, and the only answer lies in dialogue. It is good that the despite the Gurdaspur attack, the government has not called off its engagement with Pakistan in a knee jerk reaction and as scheduled the first round of the NSA levels talks have been confirmed. These are likely to be held in the third week of August in New Delhi. Even if it is accepted that the dialogue process would be painfully slow and results would not flow in a jiffy, still the popular expectation that cross-border tension must come down and peace should prevail on the orders needs to be kept in mind while engaging the Pakistanis.
In fact, the NSA-level talks would do both the countries a big favour by resuming the cricketing relations between them and thus instead of fighting across the border they start contesting against each other in sporting battles on neutral grounds like UAE. The doors of the IPL should also be opened for the Pakistani cricketers, and the government should not give in to threats from any party that plans to prevent them from playing in their state. If at some stage the conditions improve, then of course the team can visit Pakistan, but then the onus for this lies solely with Islamabad and its masters of strategy and tactics against India. For the present, the good news is that if they wanted to open another front in Punjab, they have failed.
