This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.
Consider Prem Shankar Jha’s op-ed in Outlook— that India must reward Gen Musharraf for ‘sticking his neck out for peace’ and promptly withdraw its security forces from Kashmir (so what if terrorists will have a field day?).
Jha is completely bowled over by the General. So B Raman is not wrong in asking, on the online edition of the same magazine, if Indian politicians and opinion-shapers have come down with the Stockholm syndrome.
While thus noting the positive features of the statement, one would be failing in one’s duty if one did not point out that the over-all impression of the statement is that the accommodation has been unequal–more by India than by Pakistan. For the sake of Pakistran’s acceptance of some CBMs, the enduring benign effect of which is still to be tested and proved, we have chosen to award an as yet unwarranted certificate of good conduct to Musharraf.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. We have started praising the pudding in glorious terms even before tasting it…
Have the Indian political leadership and policy-makers been infected with a national Stockholm Syndrome as a result of nearly 25 years of relentless acts of terrorism sponsored by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which have killed thousands of innocent civilians all over the country and continue to kill many more? Has terrorism fatigue induced us to start viewing the sponsor of terrorism, responsible for so many deaths, as our objective ally in the march on the road to peace and progress?
These are disturbing questions gnawing at one’s mind as one read the joint statement and as one heard over the TV the kind of glowing expressions which our Prime Minister is reported to have used while describing Musharraf during a briefing for our senior Editors after the departure of Musharraf.
God forbid, but these words may come to haunt us one day. [Outlook]
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