It is almost as if he took a page out of the ISI/LeT disinformation manual by trying to imbue the Mumbai terror attacks of the night of 26/11 and the killing of ATS Chief Hemant Karkare with a domestic/Hindu terror tinge.
This neatly segues in with the anti-India fiction brigade across the border (led by Zaid Hamid) who have been, since the first moments of 26/11, characterising it as a carefully stage-managed "drama" by the right wing forces in India to defame Pakistan, and to terrorise and eliminate officers who are investigating Hindu terror connections.
How come, they asked, that within the first few hours of the Mumbai attack, the head of the ATS Hemant Karkare (who was also heading the inquiry into the Malegaon blast, where it was alleged that some radical Hindu groups were involved) was shot dead?
Mere coincidence, you would say. But not for the India baiters from across the border. The killing of Karkare, along with two other senior officers, within hours of the attack; plus the "saffron band" worn by Kasab - indicating that he was an Hindu/non-Muslim(?); and that they "did not look at all like Pakistanis", were enough to convince the rabid elements across the border that it was an "Indian drama". And, believe me I am not making this up.
These are the same elements who questioned the 9/11 attack, which, according to them, was also an event stage-managed by the "Jews" and the right wing in America to malign the Muslims and use it as a pretext to invade Muslim lands and control its resources. Read: Oil.
However, since David Headley's (the LeT operative) arrest the chatter had died down among the conspiracy theorists, but now Digvijay Singh's statement that Karkare had called him only hours before the Mumbai attack to tell him that he feared for his own life from Hindu extremists, only lends fuel for a fresh bout of conspiracy cries from the anti-India elements in our neighbourhood. (This claim of Singh's has been contested by a leading daily in India which said that a perusal of the phone records show that no such call was made; this corroborates Karkare's wife's claims that indeed no such call was made; see related stories).
The Congress party has distanced itself from Singh's statement saying that the party "had nothing to do with as it was a conversation between two individuals". That is neither here nor there. That one of the seniormost party leaders was insinuating a domestic angle to what has widely been accepted as cross border terrorism should have elicited a more unambiguous response from the Congress.
If the party believes that there was some credence to the Singh statement it should have gone on record to say that Singh's insinuations should be probed to unravel the facts; or if it believed that Singh was off course, it should have at the least issued a strong reprimand, especially there is not an iota of evidence to show that an internal hand was at play in Karkare's tragic death.
Is Singh's allegation unwitting or off the cuff? Strangely it is the former American Ambassador to India at the time who seems to have clued-in on to the plausible explanation.
In his cables to Washington from New Delhi, since revealed by WikiLeaks, the Ambasador was on the Karkare issue but was responding to an earlier avatar of Singh, namely A R Antulay, then the Union Minority Affairs minister. The senior Congress leader Antulay claimed that there were "Hindutva forces" involved in the 26/11 attacks. Given the public uproar that the remark caused coming so close to the events, Home Minister P Chidambaram ticked-off his party colleague saying that there was no evidence for such a conclusion and said he "regretted" Antulay's comments.
These are the relevant portions of what Mulford wrote to Washington, days after the attack, as revealed by WikiLeaks:
"While the killing of three high level law enforcement officers during the Mumbai attacks is a remarkable coincidence, the Congress Party's initial reaction to Antulay's outrageous comments was correct. But as support seemed to swell among Muslims for Antulay's unsubstantiated claims, crass political opportunism swayed the thinking of some Congress Party leaders."
What's more, the party made the cynical political calculation to subtly support the conspiracy theory even after its recent emboldening state elections victories. The party chose to pander to Muslims' fears, providing an impetus for those in the Muslim community who will continue to play up the conspiracy theory.
While cooler heads eventually prevailed within the Congress leadership, the idea that the party would entertain such outlandish claims proved once again that many party leaders are still wedded to the old identity politics. The seventy-nine year old Antulay was probably bewildered to find that his remarks, similar in vain to what he would have routinely made in the past to attack the BJP, created such a furor this time.
Considering that the Ambassador would not have ever imagined that his cables would be public one day, his treatise can be taken as a reasonably objective take on the Congress' penchant for identity politics.
Now that Digvijay has taken the Antulay route on the 26/11 attacks, is it anybody's guess that Digvijay has once again given precedence to the lure of the vote bank over facts and sagacity?
Source: E Jayakrishnan, India Syndicate