The Bharatiya Janata Party ended a three-day meeting of its decision-making National Executive in Bhopal on Sunday. Its political resolution and the declaration on terror read like an election manifesto. The party says India has become the world’s new terror capital since May 2004, when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh took charge. It expects general elections to be held in the middle of next year. To ensure that its image as a party of strange purposes remains intact, BJP president Rajnath Singh thundered at a news conference that “the first thing we will do when voted to power is to hang Afzal…We won’t waste any time.”

The reference was to Afzal Guru, the convicted Kashmiri radical named in the attack on India’s parliament in December 2001 and whose execution has been withheld by the Indian president due to pending petitions. Scores of other convictions have been similarly awaiting clearance for years across the country, but Rajnath Singh has chosen to start with Afzal should his party win the next elections.

If he gets any newspaper in Delhi’s Tihar Jail where he is lodged in the death row, Afzal would be relieved to know that a raging intra-party squabble within the BJP may yet save the day for him. Former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and his home minister Lal Kishan Advani have also put their caps in the ring. At a public meeting in Bhopal, Advani somewhat isolated in his search for the top job, humoured the party president thus: “Rajnath Singhji has done tremendous work for the organisation as the president. He was also my colleague in the Vajpayee cabinet, as agricultural minister. There he had done excellent work for the farmers of the country.” Now anyone familiar with the humour of the late Urdu poet Majaaz Lucknawi, would know that Advani’s remarks were open to interpretation. Majaaz used to similarly introduce Salaam Machhlishehri as a “great poet of Machhlishehr”. Rajnath Singh may not survive Advani’s barb but then

Advani himself could not be feeling too secure. That’s because Vajpayee, though he did not attend the Bhopal meeting, made his candidature for premiership obvious.

Vajpayee’s open letter to party colleagues is being interpreted as a warning to his detractors. “I thank you for inquiring about my health. It’s due to your well wishes that I am getting better. I will soon be in your midst,” Vajpayee wrote. The half-page letter ended with a poem in arcane Hindi that referred to “obstacles” from within. “Aahuti baaki, yagna adhura; Apano ke vighno ne ghera; Antim jay ka vajra banane; Nav dadhichi haddiya galayen; Aao phir se diya jalayen,” he wrote. Afzal would do well to keep a translated copy of the poem under his pillow, because it offers hope that Rajnath Singh may never get India’s top job as long as Advani or Vajpayee remain in the fray.

For the rest of its preparation for the elections it expects any time soon, the BJP targeted terrorism, Pakistan and other favourite quarries. “Thanks to the ‘soft’ approach of the UPA government,” its resolution declared, “India has emerged the terror capital of the world in the last three years. Since the year 2004, India has suffered 3,674 deaths in terror related incidents, a number surpassed only by civil war torn Iraq. During the last 10 years, 53,000 innocent Indians have fallen victim to terrorism. In contrast, all the wars India has been engaged in since independence (including Kargil), has cost the country 8,023 lives. Terrorism is seriously affecting 156 districts across 13 states.”

And if it’s a BJP resolution on terrorism how can Pakistan go unmentioned? “Terror in India is a hydra-headed monster. The different states in northeast are in grip of violence in varying degrees on account of the activities of several groups working for their respective agendas. ULFA (Assam’s main rebel group) works in close co-operation with ISI inspired elements and is active in Assam, the largest state in the northeast. Congress had sought and obtained help from this terrorist organisation just before the last assembly elections. Close to 1,400 innocents have fallen victim to terrorists’ bullets in northeast during 2005 and 2006.

“Since January this year, the state has witnessed close to 50 explosions most of them at crowded places, mainly targeting the Hindi speaking migrant workers. Through this target specific violence, the terrorists are aiming to change the demographic profile of the state. While the infiltration from Bangladesh continues unabated, attempts are being made to drive out the Hindi speaking Indians. The state government has done nothing tangible to offer security and succour to the affected people. Instead there are serious allegation of mix-up between the ULFA and the politicians in power in the state. The BJP condemns the fact that the state government is soft towards the anti-nationals with a view to consolidate its vote bank.”

And since it’s election time, the Kashmir issue can’t be too far behind for the BJP. The latest formulation on the dispute is worth keeping in mind. It says: “Jammu and Kashmir has earned the dubious distinction of accounting for the maximum number of casualties in terror related violence in the country. The terrorist activities in the state, which are a part of the proxy war launched by Pakistan against India, account for over 40 per cent of the 4,000 odd terror-related casualties recorded in the country, since January 2004. In order to appease their vote bank, the so-called ‘secular’ parties have been seeking reduction in the strength of the army in the state and its withdrawal from many crucial areas. In the name of violations of human rights, false allegations are frequently made against the security forces with a view to demoralise them.”

India along with the rest of the world, says the BJP, is in the throes of “pan-Islamic terrorism”. There has been a spate of violent incidents spread across the country during the Manmohan Singh administration. “The tragedy is that the government refuses to recognise the role of the terror. It dismisses this enveloping threat to our polity, to our democracy and to genuine secularism, as no more than the silly behaviour of some misdirected boys or at worst prompted, planned and financed by Pakistani intelligence. The signs of this tragedy are everywhere. On Sept 11, the United States throughout that country observed the anniversary of the death of over 3,000 people in the jehadi destruction of the World Trade Centre. In India, the government did not even have a word on the anniversary of the jehadi killing of 187 people in the train blasts in Mumbai.”

The BJP’s prescription, though not new, offers hardline options. “Every country under the threat of these jehadis, has enacted tough laws to nip terrorism at the bud stage itself, giving no quarter to those who not only perpetrate terror but also those who propagate the jehadi extremist mentality. In liberal democracies in the West, even promoting the extremist cult has been made punishable; with some of them extending the punishment to a 30-year imprisonment as most European countries have no capital punishment. Following the tough provisions of the ‘Patriot Act’ in the United States several other democracies from Australia to Canada have similar deterrent legislations.”

The BJP said that the Indian government alone refuses to have any such law because the government sees it as “draconian”. The Left has not been spared the BJP’s barbs. The Left Front which shores up the Singh government “wants India’s foreign policy to be supportive of Islamic extremism whether in Iran or in Palestine. In its campaign to persuade the UPA government to shun Israel, the Left plays out to be more Islamic than the Palestianian authority itself where the Muslim president and Israel PM are trying to revive the peace process that was wrecked by extremists like Hamas.” And so India has to get ready for another roller-coaster ride. It’s election time once again. At least that’s what the BJP would have us believe.

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