Vasundhara Raje’s Moment of Truth

Perhaps the untold success story of the BJP’s next-gen leadership is Vasundhara Raje. While she has had to take a bit of flak over the Gujjar-Meena politics of affirmative entitlement, very little has been said of her Governance. Bibek Debroy writing in the Indian Express in January earlier this year had this to about Police Reforms in Rajasthan

Disgusted with this Delhi dilemma, one should travel to more salubrious climes. One doesn?t have to travel far, Jaipur and Rajasthan will do. But one shouldn?t go there for usual tourist trips. Home Ministry?s active interest would have amounted to open heart surgery. Rajasthan shows what bypass can achieve

He then goes on to relate some little known facts

?Out of 450 global police stations, did you know that Jaipur?s Shipra Path was rated the best? (There is also Palakkad in Kerala with a high rating.) I will not even attempt to describe what you see in Vidhayakpuri police station in Jaipur. Take the trip or check out the website, especially sections on community involvement. Have you heard of police stations with ISO certification? There are 711 police stations in Rajasthan ? 42 already have ISO certificates and 164 are in the process of getting them. MIT and the Poverty Action Lab are working with Rajasthan police to improve public perception and performance.

Debroy closes his piece with this comment?

The BJP should win in Rajasthan only for this…And there will be endless debates about secularism vis-?-vis fundamentalism, forgetting that for poor, livelihood matters the most

(This presentation by the Rajasthan Police has more on this initiative)

For someone who has defied conventional wisdom on police reforms, this weeks serial blasts in Jaipur predictably must have posed a challenge but Vasundhara Raje did not disappoint showing that her Government was up to it.

In less than 48 hours after the blast, witnesses had been identified, the bicycle trail leading up to the blasts was charted out, sketches of the suspects put out with early corroboration.

The terror trail leading upto the cyber cafe in Ghaziabad may have turned cold, but Vasundhara Raje has demonstrated rare mettle in charting a course that seldom any elected Indian Politician has to date. She has taken an uncomprimising stand on illegal immigration with deportations for Bangladeshis without papers on the cards.

All of that while necessary may not be sufficient to deal with the Terror challenge thrown by the so called Indian Mujahideen and Guru Al-Hindi, that elusive alias under which its chief perpetrator operates.

This perhaps is where Vasundhara Raje shines in her moment of truth, when she rightly calls that Terror Challenge an acknowledgement of the War we find ourselves in while calling upon Sonia Gandhi to rise to the occasion with the “No Politics, Give us our Law” challenge.

Praveen Swami writing in the Hindu qutoes extensively from the poorly drafted e-mail sent by the Indian Mujahideen which almost reads like a manifesto. Coming from The Hindu, one has to forgive him for throwing in the usual political correctness in what was otherwise a very good piece.

While Swami talks about what was in the e-mail, it is what was not in the e-mail that caught Offstumped’s attention. The e-mail mentions Mumbai 7-11 it mentions other attacks, it criticizes the Deoband Non-Fatwa but it makes no mention of Malegaon, Mecca Masjid, Samjhauta Express, Ajmer Sharif all of which saw mostly Muslim victims. It offers a detailed Islamic rationalization for mass terror but it offers none at all for the almost exclusive targetting of Muslims.

It is this deliberate omission that makes the extensive rationalization offered in the e-mail rather disingenuous. Offstumped writing earlier in 2007 why muslim victims of mass terror had posed this question to speculate what agenda lies behind these attacks. Offstumped had then raised the spectre of this becoming the Hunt for the Unknown Radical Rd-X.

Vasundhara Raje in her reaction to the e-mail and the video from this radical bunch showed an instinctive distrust of their ostensible agenda. ?

While she may have expressed her distrust for different reasons she may be onto something here.? It is hard to imagine that even the most bigoted radical would be so carried away by indoctrination to believe that this is about “wiping out” the infidels from India as stated in the e-mail. In fact the odds of success for any such all out Jihad in this nation of close to 150 million Muslims are so slim and would end up with so much collateral damage on the Muslim Community that it makes no sense as a long term strategy.

So if this cannot be about waging all out Jihad in India, then what exactly is this about ?

One must look for clues in the e-mail to glean the real intention. It should strike as odd to that of all the Islamist icons and symbols referred to in that e-mail, there is only one contemporary symbol – Al-Zarqawi. There in lies a hint to what this is likely about.

A secular nation of? around 150 million Muslims?has its uses in Global Jihad beyond being merely reduced to a battleground of killing fields. Its demographic dividend has the potential to offer Messrs Bin Laden and Co. a dream supply chain?of radicals to sustain their war elsewhere. This supply chain has many inherent advantages to it, not the least of which is the availability of a large pool of educated professionals who can pass International borders without drawing the usual suspicions that a Pakistani or an Arab might.

Offstumped Bottomline: As Vasundhara Raje picks up the gauntlet to deliver justice to the over 60 odd victims of the Jaipur Blasts, she will have to rely on more than her instincts to understand the true nature and intentions of this anonymous enemy. If she can match the grit and determination she has demonstrated in the last few days with an effective strategy and actions, she could very well become the BJP’s most sellable Anti-Terrorism mascot with a universal appeal that goes beyond the party faithful.

Filed under: War on Terror