If the smugly liberal section of the chattering classes is to be believed - and, mind you, they don't inhabit the world of media alone - Sheila Dikshit's conclusive electoral victory in Delhi has demonstrated to everyone's satisfaction that the "anti-terror card" doesn't work and that the country should revert to its pre-26/11 complacency. In other words, the Indian Establishment should facilitate more junketeering traffic along the Radcliffe Line; it should felicitate every Pakistani who knows English, has written an angst-filled novel and can't play their music at home; and it must live up to the Mahatma's more ridiculous suggestion of winning enemies over with exemplary loftiness.

Reassuringly, India's politicians, including those who were guilty of criminal dereliction of duty by keeping Shivraj Patil as the Home Minister for more than four years, also know the art of self-preservation. The sheer scale of public outrage over the Mumbai carnage has forced the UPA Government to come out of the shell of denial and begin talking and acting purposefully. The tough words External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee had for Pakistan and those who pretend that "non-State" terrorists come from heaven was music to most Indian ears. Ever since Prime Minister Manmohan Singh gifted the victimhood equivalence to Pakistan at the NAM summit in Havana, the Indian people had become accustomed to a Government that wasn't quite sure who it was batting for.

The Mumbai attack has, hopefully, put all that behind India. On the diplomatic front, India has moved with determination and piggy-backed on the Anglo-American distrust of Pakistan for nurturing the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. It has also played along with the global outrage at the targeting of Jews by the fidayeen squad in Mumbai. Although Pakistan's implicit nuclear blackmail and the fear that Islamists will use "national honour" to provoke adventurism has been a deterrent to military action, the sustained diplomatic pressure has at least succeeded in forcing the ISI-sponsored jihadis to go deeper underground. The foot soldiers of jihad haven't been put out of business but their activities have been made doubly covert.

Whether this is a tangible gain for India's national security or just a momentary respite will depend on whether there are more fidayeen operations in India. Diplomacy works only up to a point and it is important that the Indian Government identifies the Lakshman rekha. Buoyed by the UN Security Council's global ban on the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the parent body of the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, it would be a colossal blunder for India to allow its national security to become a multilateral concern. Pranab Mukherjee half admitted as much when he responded to L K Advani's cautionary note about any over-reliance on the UNSC. The Minister needs to be fully mindful that any over-activism by India in the UN will bring Kashmir back into global focus and win Pakistan an unimaginable diplomatic triumph.

The problem is not that South Block doesn't recognise the pitfalls but the fear that diplomatic hyper-activity may become the substitute for the UPA's lack of political will on the issue of homeland security. An alert and dynamic central body to thwart terrorism is the least of the problem. After Mumbai there will be little resistance from the regional parties to such an institution. Of course it is a different matter that the effectiveness of such a body will depend on its leadership and professionalism. Indira Gandhi's motives behind establishing the Research and Analysis Wing were commendable. However, the transformation of India's external Intelligence wing into another haven for slothful babus is an experience the country can ill afford to repeat. Nor should official secrecy facilitate Himalayan blunders like the United Front Government's astonishing decision in 1997 to wind up R&AW networks in Pakistan as a gesture of sadbhavna.

The larger question which any central counter-terrorism bureau will have to confront is the political willingness to act against jihadi groups and ISI-sponsored networks within the country. It was relatively easy to forge a national consensus against terror after 26/11 because all the evidence pointed to a commando operation organised in Pakistan. There may have been a dozen or so local facilitators but there was nothing to show that the 10 terrorists had a reserve army inside India for this operation.

It was, however, different for the Mumbai train blasts of 2006, the fidayeen attack in Rampur and explosions in various cities. In all these terrorist incidents, the Centre showed a lamentable lack of political will. It is possible that the sheer imperatives of survival may force the Government to act with a greater sense of mission. But we can't be sure that those who didn't want SIMI to be banned, pleaded for the gunmen inside Batla House and imagined that the Mumbai attack was the handiwork of Hindu Zionists are going to refrain from divisive politics.

Will the Government remain steadfast or will it wilt in the face of electoral blackmail? This is not an academic question. Unless it is determined to provoke an Indo-Pakistan war, a beleaguered ISI establishment will be extremely careful to see to it that there are no obvious Pakistani fingerprints in the next attack on India. Common sense dictates that the ISI will use its assets within India to prove to the world that terrorism in India is a domestic problem created by the majority's unwillingness to provide a dignified existence to the minorities.

Our national security demands that the Government doesn't wait for an attack to happen before reacting. It has to act pre-emptively against all potential threats. This includes the lunatic Hindu activists who imagine they can speak on behalf of all Hindus. If terrorism does, indeed, have no religion, it is time to clobber all deviants indiscriminately. That is the real test for the Government and that is the mission for which the country stands united.

Courtesy: www.dailypioneer.com, December 14, 2008