26/11 The Siege - All Pain, Nothing Gained

Many may have seen disaster movies like ‘The Poseidon’ ( a remake of ‘The Poseidon adventure’) or ‘The towering inferno’ or the Indian disaster movie ‘The burning train’. The common theme in these and similar disaster movies is people from different backgrounds with different stories coming together at a party or a journey. Newlyweds, old parents visiting, honeymooners, rich men and women come to throw their money around, politicians, criminals, long lost friends, relatives meeting up again and, of course, the staff. Then disaster strikes by accident or design and then the story is about how each of the characters react, cling to life, make up for their sins, value relationships again. Some die, some are saved. There are heroes and there are bums.

One of my least read posts is “Indian media’s top 5 prayers”. Although the prayers-list is not exhaustive it serves as a guide for me on the behavioural patterns of our media celebs and reporters. Their biggest excitement seems to come from the answer to one of these prayers. Anchors rush to courts like the Aarushi-verdict or to the Phailin cyclone spots in Orissa. They rush to terror-incident spots like on 26/11. Once the event or tragedy is over they return to the studios and blabber with assorted morons but don’t dig deeper into the incidents and tragedies. The Uttarakhand story was forgotten in just a few days. They don’t like that part of the job (The only story they seem to remember in the last 1786 years is Gujarat 2002). And then Rajdeep Sardesai asks the dumb question why it takes an outsider. I had to rap Numero Uno with the reply that Indian media celebs warm their bottoms in studios. Researching and writing requires getting out and doing some honest journalism. It requires patience and the urge to seek the truth. It requires waiting outside offices and standing in lines; something people like Rajdeep and his ‘Hammam’ aren’t used to. This is why foreigners with an obsession do that job.

Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark released their book “The Siege” about 26/11  a month back and it was discussed widely in the media. The authors have traced the people, their backgrounds, their deaths and their lives. The book is written through a timeline of those who became victims of the terrorist attack at multiple spots but particularly The Taj hotel. As in the disaster movies I mentioned, the authors bring in the characters from different backgrounds and different purposes and how they lived through hell for 3 nights and 3 days. 166 of them did not make it. It is not a ring-side view of the tragedy. It is a view from ‘inside’ the ring from those who shared the suffering. These include people who were acting to counter the attack; the Police and the NSG. There is no happy ending.

We’re all gonna die someday. Death is a certain uncertainty or an uncertain certainty. Most of us would like to choose how we die. It is impossible for those who weren’t inside the ring to feel what they felt or experience it. We may try but not even be able to understand their experience. We can empathise or sympathise with their suffering and their loss. Here’s a clip that might help understanding what it feels to be inside (Video 35 seconds):

There are two guys waving some shirt or garment as a distress flag in the clip above; one jumps off the building. There’s a woman feeling the heat of being burned. The book by Levy and Scott-Clark is written like a script to one of those disaster movies. There aren’t too many great revelations but it is more of a human story rather than a terror and intrigue story. Here are some selective passages from the book that I thought make important reading on what happened. The references in brackets at the end of each quote are from the paperback edition.

Quote:

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26/11 - About thoughts and actions of Rakesh Maria (JC) who had handled the 1993 blasts case:

Fidayeen rules were in play. They learn and adapt. We stagnate, squabble and steal from one another. Maria wondered if this force of 40,000, protecting a city of 13 million – well below the UN recommended minimum – was even capable of getting a grip on the crisis… At 22.40 he made an entry in the Control Room diary: “I have spoken to the Chief Secretary. We need the National Security Guard or the army to help us deal with this. This was the state’s call and it was still dithering. Then Maria had a 1993 moment. This felt like a nation waging war against Mumbai and in Maria’s opinion Pakistan was the obvious candidate. (Ch.3, Pg. 85)

27/11 - About thoughts of  JC Rajvardhan, one of the first to be at the site at Taj:

The JC made himself a wager: there would no inquiry worth its salt. This was not UK or the US, where a powerful commission would bear down on every institution. The establishment would thwart any such investigation. No one would put their head above the parapet and afterwards the old, inefficient, corrupt regime would continue to rule the roost. (Ch.7, Pg. 195)

27/11 - Mike Pollack, a foreigner, observes:

All around him mobile phone screens glowed in the darkness. Some of the conversations made him feel like his teeth were getting drilled, including that of an Indian MP, who seemed to be giving a live TV interview. ‘We are in a special part of the hotel on the first floor called the Chambers. There are more than 200 important people: business leaders and foreigners’. Pollack whispered to Anjali: ‘Can you believe it? This f*****g idiot MP is blabbering our exact locations to CNN or something’. Friends in the US began texting to say that the Indian MP’s interview already being reported. A siege had just become something far more deadly. (Ch. 7, Pg. 209)

Authors: Afterword on examining police records in Mumbai:

But once we had begun trawling through the evidence the opposite seemed true. While the 9/11 commission of inquiry in the United States enlisted a ten-man bi-partisan board of politicians to probe every facet of the attacks, and the 7/7 inquiries in London spent six months recording every detail and witness statement, 26/11 received only a cursory grilling from the Pradhan Commission, a two-man panel formed in Mumbai on 30 December 2008 to explore the ‘war-like’ attacks on the city… Pradhan exonerated Mumbai’s police force, although it did accuse Police Commissioner Hassan Gafoor of failing to be visible. Even these weak words were rejected by the state legislature. Gafoor, who responded by blaming other senior officers for the mistakes of 26/11, died of a heart attack in Breach Candy hospital in 2012, by which time the majority of the Pradhan Commission’s recommendations to better detect future attacks (and thwart them) had still not been implemented. (Pg. 278)

Authors: Afterword on the govt delays:

The Black Cats created a forensic account of every minute wasted and submitted it to the Home Ministry. It is an astonishing document that still makes soldiers angry and details how a combined task force was unofficially mobilized at 10.05pm on Wednesday, 26 November 2008, just twenty two minutes after the first shots were fired in Leopold’s. By 10.30 pm , the Black Cats were ready to deploy to the technical area of Palam airstrip, but it would take another seventy minutes for the Cabinet Secretary, the highest civil servant in the land, to contact the NSG chief, Jyoti Dutt, warning of a mobilization without giving the go-ahead or revealing transport arrangements. (Pg. 284)

Authors: Afterword on Black Cats (NSG):

From Delhi it took more than two and a half flying hours to reach most other cities. The NSG proposed creating four regional hubs, but the proposals went unanswered. So did a second report advising the ministry that the Black Cats were ‘limping along’ because of corruption and lethargy in procurement. Presently the men were ‘woefully ill-equipped’. Applications for lightweight boots, Kevlar helmets and modern body armour, as well as hands-free communications sets, were in limbo. They were short of high-powered thermal-imaging units; their lightweight ladders dated from 1985; and they had no useable night vision devices, with one ministry official conceding that the NSG was ‘as good as blind’ and ‘could only work efficiently during daylight’. When the Black Cats flew into Mumbai it was a triumph of men over machinery, chief Dutt reflected to us. (Pg. 286)

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Unquote.

  

Quoting any more would be a dis-service to the authors. Do remember there was someone in Delhi in the corridors of govt who is reported to have fed information to the ISI and who has been given the codename “Honeybee” by the authors. This Honeybee had probably relayed all the holes and weaknesses in our defences that the authors cite to the handlers of the terrorists. The authors mention the Indian media’s poor reportage and feeding terrorists only mildly. It doesn’t take a wizard to know the ISI and Pakistan were behind the attacks. Even the ‘Dehati Aurat’ knows that. The govt’s response and subsequent measures to counter terrorism doesn’t demand much to applaud. The terrorists are not only from across the border but also within our land; in sleeper cells, various govts and, particularly, in the media. Even our counter-terror policies are dictated by religion and “Sickularism” and not by security concerns for the people and the country. Nothing has been learned.

Rajdeep’s tweet was ignorant hypocrisy but he means well. He sometimes thinks better when he is off TV. He is not entirely accurate, though, when he says there are no Indian writers and researchers who write “our” story. There are some who wrote some articles claiming “revelations” about 26/11 (Like a Scumbagini from Tehelka who wrote a grand conspiracy which the rag quietly deleted later because it was as spurious as Tarun Tejpal) and there is at least one who researched very deep and came up with an answer to who was behind the whole attack on Mumbai and India. You see, the Hindus are upset that India has progressed far ahead of Pakistan. They are upset that we are still a democracy. They are upset that the Taj Hotel, an architectural beauty, is still standing. The Hindus want to destroy it all. That is what one moron called Aziz Burney tried to imply in the very Indian book “26/11 – An RSS Conspiracy”. And there is the Congress “Liar-in-Chief” Digvijaya Singh, of the Congress party, approving and releasing the book at a function. Alongside him are scumbags like Mahesh Bhatt whose son, Rahul Bhatt, was one of the bimbos exploited by David Headley.

In “The Siege” the authors narrate how Uncle Zaki (of LeT) tells the terror recruits who were to attack Mumbai how India has progressed at the cost of Muslims. How Muslims in India and Pakistan are suffering and their condition must be avenged to please Allah. That when the recruits die their faces will glow, they will have made Allah happy and they will go to paradise. Welcome to hell, this IS paradise! There have been many terror attacks since 26/11 and the Indian govt has shown no inclination whatsoever to hound and clean up terrorist sleeper cells. The Home Minister writes to CMs not to arrest Muslims. Of course, the morons will keep telling you terror has no religion. And when leaders and ordinary people withstand these terror attacks they call it a conspiracy too (Miracle at Gandhi Maidan). As long as terror sympathisers are within our land there will be a bigger 26/11 attempted. There’s nothing learned; all pain and no gain.

Desperate Measures - Part 5

Removing Modi:

They had problems before him. Racism and segregation still existed in some parts of southern US but life was one of working hard, living a dream, buying a second car and patriotism. This month, 50 years ago, Americans came to learn the expressions “The end of innocence” and “The end of optimism”. These phrases were born after their popular President John F Kennedy was shot dead on November 22, 1963. JFK promised to put man on the moon by the end of the 60s. If he hadn’t been shot he would have lived to see it. Open-car rides for Presidents ended, Americans became more wary of each other and then followed some terrible wars, civil protests and times of upheaval. More assassinations followed; those of Robert Kennedy, of Martin Luther King Jr and attempted killing of Ronald Reagan. India’s young democracy too had the moment when it lost its innocence.

India had leaders who were worshipped. Their pictures adorned schools and offices. We had people like Shastriji who were known to use public transport like everyone else. India lost her innocence on June 26, 1975 the day Indira Gandhi imposed Emergency. The Constitution was subverted, fundamental rights were suspended, political leaders were jailed, many deaths were unreported, localities were wantonly demolished and Kleptocracy took roots. Indira Gandhi was killed violently by her own guards on October 31, 1984. We now frequently hear this line: “Today we were unlucky, but remember we only have to be lucky once – you will have to be lucky always”. That chilling line was delivered by the IRA after their failed attempt to kill Margaret Thatcher at the Brighton Hotel on October 12, 1984. Narendra Modi was lucky on October 27, 2013 (Hunkaar rally, Patna) when no bombs got him. The terrorists and their political sympathisers are probably saying what the IRA said “...we only have to be lucky once… you will have to be lucky always”.

Michael Collins of Ireland is often called the “Father” of modern day terrorism but he is also revered as a patriot. Collins was true Irish blood who was killed by his own, the IRA, from the North at a young age of 31. He was somewhat of a Bhagat Singh who fought the British. Later in the 20th century it was Yasser Arafat who became the father of terrorism. India has a history of romancing terrorists. We even had politicians parading Osama look-alikes for votes in Bihar. These pics should show how our PMs since IndiraG have romanced Arafat:

For the Palestinians Arafat was a hero and to the Muslim world too. Reality, though, is Arafat wasn’t even a real Palestinian, he was Egyptian. India neither had stakes in Palestine nor any influence, yet our PMs have regularly entertained the man. Arafat was particularly close to the Gandhis. The only reason for that is our desire to stay cool with Arabs and appease the Muslim population at home. In their quest to tweak out some peace accord the West even awarded Arafat a Nobel Peace Prize. But in all of this, Arafat never laid down weapons. There are stories that he was a stooge of the Russians and funded by the KGB (read here). And now there are reports that he was poisoned to death but not clear by whom. The Russians were close to the Nehru-Gandhis too, weren’t they? Arafat’s legacy would be carried forward even more dangerously by none other than Osama Bin Laden. Collins fought for Ireland. Let us even concede Arafat was a patriot where Palestine is concerned. Even the Khalistanis wanted a separate State. The question now is what do the terrorists who want to kill Narendra Modi want? And why do they want to kill him?

All along the ISI and Pak-sponsored terrorists were about Kashmir. The local terrorists in Kashmir and the imported ones together cleansed Hindus from Kashmir. The Hindus can now never hope to return. What would they get by killing Narendra Modi? So the reason being consistently advanced is revenge for 2002. Is that so? Surely, there have been hundreds of communal riots before where more Muslims have been killed so why Modi alone? This takes us back to the extraordinary lies and propaganda about 2002 delivered by the Congress, their alliance partners and NGO/media cronies  like Rajdeep Sardesai, Barkha Dutt, Vir Sanghvi, Suzy Roy, Teesta Setalvad, Sanjiv Bhatt, RB Sreekumar, Mallika Sarabhai, Shabnam Hashmi, Javed Akhtar, Harsh Mandar, Salma & Sabrina of Tehelka, The Hindu, M Katju and the list is just too long. Teesta Setalvad was even funded by the Congress and CPM for election campaigns for them. The original objective of this entire cottage industry was to use 2002 to win the 2004 election by tarring Modi and the BJP. So much that it forced AB Vajpayee to start appeasement of Muslims. Maybe the plan to exploit 2002 electorally worked and Congress won in 2004.

But this gruesome gang just didn’t realise they made a mistake. They ended up making Modi a larger than life figure. They turned him into a huge monster challenge. He became known throughout the country and even the world. The bachelor Modi became the spouse to all these nags. The more they nagged, the more the public started suspecting their motives and started questioning them. The ones in the media are equally responsible for making Modi a terrorist-target owing to their constant hate-mongering against him.

Since the 1990s terrorism was spreading to many parts of the country. We had the Bombay blasts of 1993 (supposedly revenge for Babri). Okay, I don’t know what the Coimbatore blasts of 1998 targeting LK Advani were for. Then there was the attack on Parliament in 2001 I don’t know what that revenge was for. Mumbai train attacks in 2006; I don’t know what revenge that was for. There were blasts in Gujarat in 2008. Revenge? Delhi, Hyderabad, Malegaon, Varanasi. Shashi Tharoor is the best person to tell us all what “advertisement” caused these attacks because the English Laloo tweeted Gujarat was an “advertisement” for some terror attack. Finally, there was 26/11 in 2008 and I don’t know what revenge that was for. Do you?  

After the Brighton Hotel bombing Margaret Thatcher was taken to safety at the nearest police station and she proclaimed that her party’s conference will go on as scheduled the next day and terrorists will not be allowed to threaten democracy. This after 5 of her party members were killed in the blast. We have known people like Manmohan Singh routinely condemn blasts, claim they won’t bow to terrorism and even some stupid statements like “terrorists had advantage of surprise”. Here’s what Sonia Gandhi said after 26/11: "We will never bow before terrorism. We will give a befitting reply”. Can anyone tell us what our “befitting reply” was? We simply had more attacks, more LOC killings and more Biryani diplomacy. And we will not bow before terrorism she says as do many other cowards. Let’s see! How serious is Sonia Gandhi about terrorism? In the past she brought down a United Front govt because the DMK was a component of it. She objected to DMK because the party was supposedly supportive of LTTE which killed Rajiv Gandhi. Good choice! But the Congress, under Sonia Gandhi, has been hugging and kissing the same DMK for the last decade under UPA, including being partners in major scams like 2G. And Congress claims to fight terror? Laugh yourself to death! And the guy blamed by Congi MS Aiyar for mishandling the RajivG assassination is the keeper of the nation’s jewels.

Even normal sensibilities to terror attacks were turned into comic episodes. Shivraj Patil was reportedly changing clothes thrice a day to talk to the media. RR Patil said incidents like 26/11 happen in all major cities. Dr. RahulG who yesterday lamented the Chattisgarh Maoist killing of Congis and the killings of his Daddy and Daadi earlier was reported partying after 26/11. Shinde went to a Bollywood party after the recent Patna blasts. We are serious about terrorism indeed!

The post “Miracle at Gandhi Maidan” on the terrorist attacks at Patna during BJP’s Hunkaar rally has now become the most read post on this blog. It connected with people because it said what the cowards in our media and parties opposed to BJP did not say. The BJP, Modi and the people in Patna and Gandhi Maidan DID NOT bow to terrorism. They did not allow the terrorists to win or disrupt the rally or force a cancellation. I call it courage under fire. And many politicians and political parties, including Asad Owaisi, who threatens a 3rd wave of radicalisation in parliament, wanted (on Timesnow) that BJP should have cancelled the rally. Isn’t that exactly what the Congress, JDU and similar parties wanted? That the Modi rally shouldn’t happen because it was a strong political expression? Which is why things look very fishy?

Many have called 26/11 India’s 9/11. Alright! After 9/11 the US took to war but they also made some internal corrections. They created the Homeland Security and made entry for potential terrorists difficult. A new set of procedures and practices were put in place. What exactly did the Congress govt do? Practically nothing! A few months later our stupid morons at TOI were running an “Aman ki Asha” campaign. Money talks! After such a major attack the security forces should have been hounding and hunting down sleeper cells across the country. Did they? Everyone knows major terror fountains are in UP and Bihar. Our “secular” folks don’t want to annoy them. What exactly was Digvijaya Singh doing? He was concocting stories just like AR Antulay and even releasing books about RSS being behind 26/11 (the author of that stupid book has since apologised). He was and probably still is a mentor to RahulG. Typically, RahulG also parroted Diggy lines like “Hindu extremists are more dangerous than LeT” and “SIMI = RSS”. And as if politicians and media folks aren’t enough to muddy the waters there are jokers like Mahesh Bhatt and Javed Akhtar from Bollywood who inspire hatred against Modi.

The same Digvijaya still maintains, despite court ruling, that the Batla House encounter was fake. He has sympathy for the terrorists who were killed. Johny-come-lately Arvind Kejriwal’s colleagues file a petition in SC wanting Batla be declared a witch-hunt of Muslims. The SC soundly slapped them on being communal. Lately, to appease Muslims, this Kejriwal meets a Mullah who issues ‘death-fatwas’ to further his election campaign. Looks like the corruption-fighting Superman Kejriwal does wear a "Red" underwear. Home Minister Sushil Shinde writes to all CMs not to arrest Muslim youth on terror suspicion. These are the signs that the GOI and the ‘sickulars’ are serious about terrorism. Terror-accused Afzal Usmani escapes from a Mumbai court even under police watch and is re-arrested in Bihar after the Patna blasts. Here’s more:

Two foreign writers, Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark, recently released a book about 26/11 titled “The Siege”. In the book they claim there were 26 alerts given by the US to India about such an attack. More importantly, they claim there was/is a mole in the Indian security establishment who leaks files to ISI/Pakistan which helped plan 26/11. This mole has been codenamed “Honeybee”. How nice! It is no secret there are many terror sympathisers in our establishment, including our media. Did the GOI take the slightest action against those media folks and activists named as “friendly” to ISI operative Ghulam Nabi Fai? Did they even investigate the links? We don’t know. But these guys parade as “intellectuals” on our TV channels. Rajdeep Sardesai wonders why it takes outsiders to write our story. Well, my answer to Rajdeep was you sit all day in your studios and abuse Modi. Investigating and writing verifiable facts requires some serious work and getting out of the studio. The comfort of the “Hammam” has never brought out any truth. It’s true for CNN-IBN and it’s true for NDTV, TimesNow and all the channels who are parading as “news” channels.

Incidentally, the #65Traitors who wrote to Barack Obama to deny a visa to Modi have neither been investigated nor prosecuted. The reports now streaming in about the tragedy at Patna on October 27 make dangerous reading. Original plan was to eliminate Modi at hotel, says IM operative (read here). 90 bombs on hand- What was the IM planning? (Read here). Assassinating Modi abroad would be far less consequential than if it were to happen in India. Murdering unwelcome Third World leaders, like Belgian Congo’s Patrice Lumumba, is the customary practice of countries which espouse democracy and human rights with alacrity even as they commit genocide (read here). Will Pakistan decide the next Indian PM? (Read here).

Look at the Rainbow Alliance: Congress, SP, JDU, RJD, DMK, CPM, CPI, NCP, NC and some more, all heavily depend on the Muslim votebank. The fact that even Muslims are now beginning to accept Modi is frightening. Modi’s political opponents, which includes all the media celebs, didn’t even stop to ask why MoS RPN Singh and the media was repeatedly describing the Patna blasts as “low intensity”, as if the intensity is a measure of good and bad terrorism, when it killed 6 people and injured over 80. Not one TV channel recognised it as an attempt on Modi’s life at least on October 27 and the next 2 days. On the contrary they hurried to bury the story. Shinde went on to attend a Bollywood party in the evening on October 27. Salman Khurshid, who can’t string together one coherent sentence, came up with the gem “Shinde has a life beyond Patna”. PonyTail would have been proud: “Dare to think beyond Patna and bomb blasts”.

The threat to Modi is real and it’s not because of the 2002 riots. It is simply because the man threatens the regime of Congress and its “secular” alliance partners, in short the Communists. The growing crowds at his rallies and their responses are frightening them to say the least. After every speech of Modi some Congis and media folks (like Vinod Mehta) start concocting falsehoods by distorting his statements. Such is the fear.

The conduct of Bihar CM Nitish Kumar during and after the Patna blasts has raised quite a few eyebrows. Some are now wondering about the purpose of his visit to Pakistan. Bihar doesn’t have much to do with Pakistan, except maybe some Pakistani terrorists use the Nepal border to get into Bihar. When Yasin Bhatkal was arrested the Nitish govt didn’t even want to take custody or interrogate him. Hardly the behaviour of a govt of a State infested with terror havens, is it? Ex member of JDU, Shivraj Singh has accused of JDU of receiving “enemy funds”. Sunil Rajguru summarises various observations in his note “Something is rotten in the state of Bihar”. Former military intelligence officer RSN Singh writes “Indian Politicians:Pakistan's Proxy Soldiers”. It doesn’t seem very far-fetched anymore, we just heard of ‘Honeybee’.

For all you know if not for so much slandering and hate-mongering against Modi by the Congress & Co, media and NGOs he would have been probably only as well-known as Keshubhai Patel or Chimanbhai Patel (former Gujarat CMs). In some corner of their hearts Sonia Gandhi, Congress, Barkha, Rajdeep, Sagarika, Vir Sangvhi, Teesta, Aakar Patel, Manish Tewari, Nitish Kumar etc. must be regretting that they put Modi under a microscope for the whole country to dissect. The results have been damaging for them. People looked through that microscope and found the truth. The Modi they wanted to demonise has unwittingly become the hero of the masses who now fires the hopes and aspirations of millions. More bad news is that the nation adores him as a great political orator as well. Modi’s march to power currently seems unstoppable. Whether in collusion with some political party or by enemies alone it seems there is only one way to stop Modi. And no one described that better than Karan ‘The Tool’ Thapar when he wrote in the last para of his 2007 article: “Only the sudden removal of Narendra Modi can stop this”.

To be continued…