Picture worth a thousand queries

The Bharatiya Janata Party, now that it is in power, must realise that it cannot legitimise the system of different rules for different people. To run a diverse democracy like India successfully, it will have to follow some basic principles, howsoever alien, to ensure that there is some method in what passes for political madness.

The Ved Pratap Vaidik controversy is a case in point. Even BJP workers are probably wondering where the party’s strong positions against terror mastermind Hafiz Saeed have gone, particularly as the weak Manmohan Singh Government was not allowed to open a dialogue with Pakistan precisely on this issue. The Congress Party, always hesitant and directionless, allowed even a visit by then PM Singh to Pakistan to be held hostage to the BJP’s demand for convincing action against Saeed by Pakistan. A Mani Shankar Aiyar had to pay a price for lambasting Saeed on a television show in Pakistan, even though they were not in the same studio, but according to the protesters here, were on the same show, and that was reason enough for the strident attack on the Congress MP.

Now the same party is defending Vaidik, and it has taken days for it to agree to subject the journalist and yoga man Ramdev’s aide to some level of questioning. There are some stark pointers that effectively contradict Vaidik and the government’s claim of the meeting with Saeed being just a journalistic enterprise, that the government is now being forced to take note of.

The one-hour meeting between Saeed, the most wanted man in India and on top of the US list of terrorists, and Vaidik, took place on July 2. For almost two weeks, there was no word from Vaidik about this sensational meet, until a photograph of both smiling at each other in conversation, appeared over the social media. Vaidik now insists that he had ‘leaked’ the photograph, but the question that he needs to answer is: Where is the interview? Journalists meet terrorists, criminals and all kinds of unsavoury characters all the time, but always follow this up with detailed reports.

There has been nothing from Vaidik to confirm that this was a journalistic meeting. One, his initial observations were that he had tried to “reform” Saeed, which is certainly not a journalistic duty. Two, what did the two talk about, the details from Vaidik are too sketchy to merit comment. Three, how is it that a journalist who is meeting one of the most wanted terrorists in what amounts to a sensational coup did not tape the meeting? Four, and how is it that a ‘journalist’ committed to the profession sat on this story for two weeks until the disclosure was literally forced out of him.

The NDA government has also not really done itself proud. How can it so underestimate the intelligence of persons in and outside the establishment to actually insist that this was a journalistic encounter, and hence not for the government to enquire into?

It is impossible for even a Pakistan journalist today to meet Saeed for a one-on-one interview. Access to him is tightly controlled by the Pakistan government and the agencies there, so that it was actually relaxed for an Indian journalist has raised eyebrows there as well. Why is the million dollar question that both governments, Vaidik and of course, Saeed alone are in a position to answer.

Let’s take the government assertions at face value, which, of course, no good journalist would ever do. But in this case, let us accept that Vaidik ventured into Saeed’s den of his own volition; then the questions the government needs to answer are: a) when did it know that the meeting would take place? Here one expects that it would have been informed by its intelligence agencies. b) upon being informed, did it get in touch with Vaidik, after all he is a self-professed acolyte of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. c) if the response to both the above questions is in the negative, then the government needs to explain its sanguine approach to a meeting, the importance of which is staring India and now even Parliament in the face. d) why is the government, while defending Vaidik, so reluctant to speak with him about this meeting and what transpired there? Usually, journalists write such conversations down in black and white, but in the absence of a single write-up from Vaidik detailing the interview, surely the intelligence agencies here and the government should have had some sessions with the ‘journalist’ about the details.

The BJP is acting like the Congress Party, displaying the usual ostrich-like approach when it has been detected doing something it cannot explain. So now, its ministers and party managers are feigning complete ignorance and disinterest under the cloak of “respecting freedom.” The Congress Party perhaps has something in its accusation of a “massive cover-up” by the government. And until the beans are spilt in a more convincing fashion, this meeting will continue to create ripples, if not waves, in Pakistan-India relations.

Remember, the other person in the photograph is Hafiz Saeed, not a friend of India’s and certainly not a friend of Vaidik’s. And the facilitators at that end were Pakistan’s government and agencies.