You don`t say!
Darius Nakhoonwala
In all the years that I have been reading editorials, the one thing that has always left me flummoxed is the attitude of leader writers to Pakistan. Since I have been doing so for 40 years, it clearly has nothing to do with the individual leader writer. The confusion is an institutional thing, borne possibly out of the mistaken impression that the Indian government while being attacked must also be protected.
The week of October 2-7 provided yet another example of this. The issue was the revelation by the Mumbai police that they had found a Pakistani-ISI link in the suburban train blasts of July 11. The chorus was immediate and completely predictable.
The Pioneer, which has a strong pro-BJP proclivity, said " Pakistan, especially the ISI which reports to Gen Pervez Musharraf, continues to indulge in aiding and abetting jihadi attacks on India… and yet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has chosen to describe Pakistan , the aggressor and exporter of terror, as a "victim of terrorism".
The Hindu wrote two edits. In the first, at the outset, it took more-or-less the same line as the Pioneer. "…the search for India-Pakistan peace faces a stern test. Mumbai Police Commissioner A.N. Roy`s nationally televised assertion that the July 11 terror bombings in Mumbai were carried out "on behalf of the ISI through the Lashkar-e-Taiba" leaves little room for imagination… If Mr. Roy and his investigators are correct, the bombings were virtually an act of war..."
Then something happened in its brain and it also said this. "However, while investigators have been able to show that several of the Lashkar terrorists arrested trained at Lashkar facilities in Pakistan, it is unclear just what evidence is available to support the charge that their operation was state-sponsored... the police publicly identified the Pakistani nationals they say participated in carrying out the bombings" And this immediately after the sentence, "If Mr. Roy and his investigators are correct, the bombings were virtually an act of war." What crap is this?
A couple of days later it responded to the BJP demand that India should put the peace talks on hold. "To use the Mumbai police claims to discredit the India-Pakistan joint mechanism against terrorism is irrational… The evidence New Delhi marshals must be verifiable and solid — and not based solely on custodial interrogations and pseudo-scientific procedures such as narco-analysis and brain-mapping." Really? Then it put `ISI involvement` in quotes. What can one say?
The Indian Express defended itself asking how does this "square with the recently announced Indo-Pak joint monitoring mechanism on terrorism? This newspaper has argued that the plan deserves to be given a chance. We have also said that for India to make Pakistan act it must improve its own act. The 7/11 probe therefore should be the test case for the joint mechanism."
The Deccan Herald also said exactly the same thing. " The 7/11 Mumbai blasts will be a true test for the viability of the Indo-Pak joint terror mechanism agreed to by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Pervez Musharraf just a fortnight ago in Havana."
Since the prime minister said exactly the same thing a couple of days later, I suspect some prior briefing on the line to take. Blame the police but defend the external policy makers.
I don`t want to bore you with what the rest of the papers said. Suffice it to say they all took the same line, namely, that it was to up India to prove its case in a watertight way and not up to Pakistan to be answerable until then. If only things were that simple.