Pakistan boat explosion: Little evidence of ‘terror’ link, may have been petty smugglers, Coast Guard, Pakistani vessel, fishing vessel, fishing boat, terror, porbandar, pakistani boat, indian coast guard, Pakistani terrorist, An aerial view of the fishing boat carrying explosives before being intercepted by Indian Coast Guard approximately 365 km off Porbander in Gujarat, on Wednesday. The boat eventually drowned after being set on fire by crew members. Less than 48 hours after Coast Guard destroyed a boat it suspected was ferrying explosives and terrorists from Pakistan into Indian waters, new evidence Tricks to create hostility - Modi must grasp some elementary truths about the Opposition: Swapan Dasgupta There have been 3 occasions when BJP or its earlier incarnations have been in power at the Centre. First time was in the government of Morarji Desai between 1977 and 1979 when it was an important, but minority, partner with Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani holding important portfolios. The second occasion was the Vajpayee govt of 1998-2004 when it was sr partner of NDA. Govt led by Modi that assumed charge in May 2014 was also nominally an NDA gov but this time the BJP has a majority on its own in the Lok Sabha. Thread that binds these three regimes separated by more than three decades is a curious one. On all three occasions the nature of the opposition to it has been remarkably similar. More important, the offensive has been mounted by the same gharana. Janata Party govt came into being after countrys bitter experience with Indira Gandhis 21-month experiment with full-scale authoritarianism. However, it wasnt merely the political opposition that was stifled. The Emergency was also the culmination of the experiments with progressive politics by the Indira-dominated Congress, ably assisted by its ideological mentors in the communist Left. The brazen and unapologetic misuse of the State media for partisan ends, for example, began in 1969 during Indiras battle with the Syndicate. Likewise, the thrust towards ensuring Marxist control of higher education was initiated - with the battle against Right reaction and Jayaprakash Narayans fascist movement providing an ideological cover. The project of rewriting history was also taken up with gusto by the then education minister, S. Nurul Hasan. It is hardly surprising that when the Indira Gandhi regime collapsed after the 1977 election, the new government would initiate corrective measures. The erstwhile Jana Sangh didnt control the education ministry: Pratap Chandra Chunder, an old-school Congress leader from West Bengal, headed it. Chunder was horrified by attempted Left takeover, particularly of the social science departments, and tried to correct the imbalance. In a similar vein, as information and broadcasting minister, Advani initiated the first moves to take State-run radio and TV - there was no private sector involvement in the electronic media then - out of the day-to-day control of govnt. Both these initiatives provided the ammunition to the dejected Left and the defeated Congress to mount an offensive against the Janata Party govt. A shrill campaign against communalization of history text-books and the infiltration of All India Radio and Doordarshan by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh was initiated. In 1978, after Om Prakash Tyagi introduced a private members bill seeking regulations to monitor religious conversions, the cry of minority rights in danger was raised. Even Mother Teresa was persuaded to lend her voice to the campaign. Left being particularly skilled in the art of warfare inside campuses and seminar halls, the counter-offensive proved remarkably feeble. Consequently, those very intellectuals who were responsible for putting a progressive gloss on authoritarian politics re-invented themselves as the champions of pluralism and the scientific temper. They created the broader ideological climate that enabled the issue of dual membership (and the personal ambitions of Charan Singh) to destroy the internal coherence and unity of the Desai govt. When the Vajpayee govt assumed charge in 1998, Murli Manohar Joshi was entrusted with the human resource development portfolio. Joshi made the battle against the intellectual Left one of his main priorities. By then, however, Left that had become more entrenched and, more important - in the aftermath of the Ayodhya dispute - had entered into an unspoken strategic alliance with the liberals who had a profound aesthetic disdain for what they saw as crude Hindu religiosity. Joshi took on the eminent historians - Arun Shouries telling description of the individuals that set the tone for determining what is now referred to as the Idea of India - without inhibition. Unfortunately for him, the BJP lacked the intellectual capital to complement his endeavours. And once again the same lot that had helped unsettle the Desai government two decades earlier led the charge against saffronization. This time the creation of a mood hostile to the government was actively aided and abetted by a media that had imbibed the advantages of being hostile to the BJP. Janata story was repeated in another respect too, murder of Graham Staines, an Australian missionary actively engaged in saving lost souls in the deep interiors of Odisha, by the leader of a fringe Hindu militant outfit, set the tone for a renewed bout of scare mongering. This campaign gained a fillip with reports of attacks on Christian churches in the adivasi-dominated Dang district of Gujarat. Together with the Gujarat riots of 2002, the stage was set for a sustained attack on the Vajpayee government. Once again the efforts paid off. One of principal reasons for NDAs unexpected defeat in 2004 was near-total consolidation of Indias minorities - particularly Muslim and Christian - against it. The 2004 election campaign, particularly in Bihar, UP and WB, saw inflammatory videos of 2002 riots being played in Muslim clusters. Nor was this an initiative of local mosques: entire scare propaganda also saw the organizational involvement of the Left. Remarkable extent to which the old themes are being reproduced in todays India to undermine Modi doesnt need reiteration. Many of the older players are no longer there but their ideological progenies have picked up from where they left off. Ghar wapsi movement has been blown up to such an extent that many Christians feel that there is a national campaign of targeted persecution; in a pre-emptive strike, Left has secured endorsement of the Indian History Congress against any attempt to address the biases in history text-books. There is a temptation in some BJP circles to view the minuscule Left as modern-day Don Quixotes tilting at windmills. They would rather let the proverbial dogs bark while the caravan moves on. To my mind, this approach underestimates the ability of the Left and cosmopolitan liberals to punch above their weight. Winter session of the Rajya Sabha was disrupted and attempts to pass important economic legislation thwarted. Ostensible issue was religious conversions but the real reasons lay elsewhere. Budget session may witness a repetition of disruption with yet more economic legislation in pipeline awaiting parliamentary approval. Once again conversions will take the ostensible centre stage, with other examples of saffron high-handedness acting as fillers. Opposition will naturally be players but so will many media houses with their own axe to grind. Modi and his political managers must grasp some elementary truths. There is a method behind creating the image of the prime minister as a bigoted juju man. In the short term, it lies in derailing economic agenda, shifting focus elsewhere and then attacking govt for under-performance and perverted priorities. Larger design is to create conditions that will make it impossible for Modi to function effectively. Congress, as of now, doesnt pose any challenge to BJP, preoccupied as it is with unresolved questions of dynastic leadership. Its place is being taken - as a purely interim measure - by an emerging extra-Parliamentary alliance of the Left, the liberals, the media and the minorities. Previous experience has taught the critics of Modi that the BJP is constricted from generating a countervailing response when it is in power. For the sake of his political efficacy Modi had better prove them wrong.as begun to emerge that the victims of the operation might have been small-time liquor and diesel smugglers, ferrying bootleg cargo from the port of Gwadar to other fishing boats which were to have carried it into Karachi’s Keti Bandar harbour. There is also a suggestion of use of disproportionate force since the fishing boat did not have an engine capable of outrunning Indian interceptors. In a press release, Ministry of Defence said that “as per intelligence inputs received on 31st Decr, a fishing boat from Keti Bunder near Karachi was planning illicit transaction in Arabian Sea”. Highly-placed govt sources, however, said the intelligence had no link to terrorism, and made no reference to any threat to India. Instead, National Technical Research Organisation had intercepted mobile phone traffic involving small-time smugglers operating out of the fishing port of Keti Bandar, near Karachi. Report was issued directly to the Coast Guard and Navy by a mid-level NTRO official in violation of systems which mandate that any possible threat must be shared with all relevant services, incl Intelligence Bureau, Research and Analysis Wing & Border Security Force. Naval headquarters, chose not to deploy ships in response to the intelligence, noting that it did not involve any threat to national security. However, Coast Guard scrambled at least one interceptor from Porbandar, which was seen leaving dock by local fishermen late on the night of New Year’s Eve. Sr Gujarat Police official said that the Coast Guard did not share the information with state police which also has interceptor boats and coastal police stations meant to interdict coastal trafficking. Maharashtra Police officials also said they were given no information on a maritime operation underway on Dec 31, expressed surprise since the state has several landing points and jetties that could be used by a boat carrying explosives to India’s western seaboard. “You don’t need to be a genius to figure out we should have been told,” the official said, “because if the fishing boat was actually carrying explosives and managed to evade patrols on the seas, we should have been in position waiting for it.” There is little clarity, so far, on the circumstances under which lethal force was used. In its press release, the Ministry said that a “hot pursuit continued for nearly one hour and the Coast Guard ship managed to stop the fishing boat after firing warning shots”. “Four persons were seen on the boat who disregarded all warnings by the Coast Guard ship to stop and cooperate with investigation. Soon thereafter, crew hid themselves in below-deck compartment and set the boat on fire, which resulted in explosion and major fire on the boat,” the release stated. But three naval officers it was inconceivable that Pakistani fishing boats — typically four-crew vessels, with an average length of less than 25 metres and equipped with 80-220 HP diesel engines, or smaller mechanised sailboats with 30 horsepower engines — could outrun Coast Guard’s state-of-the-art ships. Photographs released to media showed only fire damage to ship’s hull, which would have blown apart had incendiary munitions, such as grenades or ammunition, been on board. Plastic explosive does not ordinarily explode in fires, and only chemical analysis can detect if it was on board. Ministry sources said the Coast Guard has not retrieved debris from the area for forensic analysis. Ministry’s press release also said that “due to darkness, bad weather and strong winds, the boat and persons on board could not be saved or recovered”. However, open-source meteorological data for Porbandar coast for the year-end shows conditions were almost ideal right through the second fortnight of Dec 15, 2014 to Jan 1, with cloudless skies and, on Dec 31-Jan 1. There were no bad-weather warnings for Indian fishermen in region through this period. Local fishermen said they had not seen the fire on December 31— raising the prospect incident may have occurred in international waters, some distance from thousands of Indian and Pak fishing boats in area. “I’ve been talking to our people in the area” Narsibhai Jungi Jadeja, head of Porbandar fishing boat owners’ association, “and everyone insists they didn’t see a thing. That surprises me, because a fire at night would be visible many nautical miles away”. “I just hope govt clears up the mystery over this, because if any Pakistani fishermen have been killed, Pak navy will take vengeance on us,” Saeed Baloch, head of the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, said he was investigating identity of the destroyed boat, but had no immediate details. “Hundreds of people go out to sea every day, and it is impossible for us to keep track of all of them. I just hope some poor people trying to make a living have not been killed,”
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 02:30:00 +0000
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