Since ministers have been kept on a tight leash in the Modi government — with the Prime Minister being pretty much the sole centre of attention through a plethora of calibrated and much-publicised official pronouncements — it appears that his Cabinet ministers are loath to miss an opportunity to grandstand. Defence minister Manohar Parrikar would seem to have done just that with a volley of remarks concerning terrorists and border management that are apt to be regarded as controversial.
In a chat with a television station on Thursday, ahead of a trip to Kashmir and the Siachen glacier, Mr Parrikar yielded to the temptation of enunciating the doctrine that terrorists should be killed with the help of other terrorists, exploiting disunity and competition in their ranks. The defence minister is possibly unaware that the trick is as old as the hills, and has been ruthlessly exploited by intelligence agencies around the world. In that sense the defence minister has spoken in the currency of a lance corporal in public, and that cannot but cause unease.
It is a canon of civilised society and of civilised governance that a duly constituted authority cannot operate in an illegal and unlawful way. If it becomes official policy to encourage a group of civilians, no matter if they agree to operate as mercenaries, to murder another group of civilians (terrorists manipulated to kill terrorists), such a pronouncement needs to be denounced, although it cannot be gainsaid that combating terrorism needs to be uppermost in the minds of India’s policy planners.
It cannot be emphasised enough that catching those committing illegal acts is the job of a responsible state, and not to itself engage in illegal activity. Speaking of a different context, it is precisely for this reason that the idea of “salwa judum” in dealing with the Naxalite problem is patently illegal. Mr Parrikar has evidently got carried away. But if India is not to become the laughing stock of the world, the observations of the defence minister must be retracted. Else, we could draw very unwholesome attention of the international system.
The top order in this government always seem to want to emphasise that they are “tough” on terrorism, suggesting — without an ounce of evidence, of course — that their predecessors were weak. Mr Parrikar’s exuberance — akin to sheer propaganda — seems to derive from a defensive complex. The minister speaks of a 30 per cent drop in ceasefire violations and infiltration bids on the Line of Control with Pakistan, attributing this to no-nonsense action taken under him of “targeted killings” following on strong intelligence inputs. For the data to stand up, the comparative data — if this exists — for other factors must also be given out and defended in Parliament.
