Don’t Confuse, It’s a Political Move

The Congress led Indian government finally awoke of a slumber and decided, hastily, that it’s an appropriate time to execute Afzal Guru – held guilty for his role in the December 13, 2001 attack on parliament – and so even before the whole India woke up, he was hanged. Supreme Court confirmed the death penalty of Guru in 2005 and since then his clemency file ferried between the Rashtrapati Bhawan and the Home Ministry. Whenever the government was pressurized by the media and the opposition, it retorted the same line -- the issue is ‘highly contentious’ and law will take its own course. Even after the execution, Digvijay Singh, the General Secretary of the Congress party, returned with the old argument – law has taken its own course; it was a ‘legal and constitutional’ issue; please don’t ‘politicise’ it. Sushil Kumar Shinde, the Home Minister, added that when it was ‘politically suitable’ to hang him, he was hanged.

Democracies are based on law, and if I am not mistaken, India is a democracy. Its constitution asserts that the law must prevail, irrespective of the circumstances. The law took eleven years to finally execute Afzal Guru. No issues. But neither his hanging was a small incident nor the crime he was complicit in. And this is why the people of this country had the right to know the government’s stance, which the government explicitly snatched away from them; no information was disposed of.

While the secretness puzzles, the timing of the execution overtly indicates that Guru has been hanged according to a well-contemplated plan. The government has been in deep water in recent days; the Delhi rape case, the Home Minister’s remark on saffron terror and the slowing growth rate struck badly on the reputation and functioning of the government, already troubled with plethora of corruptions cases. It continuously receives a lot of flak for all its failures. Apart from that, it was persistently accused, both by the media and the opposition, of being soft on terror. Having executed Ajmal Kasab and Afzal Guru in less than three months, it has not only tackled but nullified that argument.

Further, all of a sudden, how an issue that was ‘highly contentious’ for the government simply became a ‘legal and constitutional’ one? And now when the government has got rid of Kasab and Guru, what about the pending hangings of Balwant Singh Rajona and those who killed Rajiv Gandhi? Can the government take a same stern action on them? Absolutely not! Rajona and the killers of Rajiv come from states – Punjab and Tamilnadu -- that are powerful, and if they are hanged, there would be a huge outcry. Instead of favouring the Congress party, it will dampen its prospects not only in Punjab and Tamilnadu, but in entire India.

In fact, the execution is a well-calculated electoral step. It is a desperate attempt by the Congress to reach out to the Hindu-hardliners who associate themselves with the BJP and blame the Congress of appeasing the minority community.

Auguries are coming from some states that people are more interested in development than the polarizing politics. The Congress’ strategists understand quite well that it is not in a position to defend its economic policies anymore, and it will be in the interest of the party if it can somehow divert the attention and shift the debate to other issues. And nothing can be more perfect than an emotive issue like the hanging of Guru. When elections are near, throwing Guru to gallows is like a decision taken in haste to shroud the failures of the government and once again indulge in cynical politics.