satya pal malik narendra modi

PM Modi, NSA Doval Should Take Responsibility for Pulwama Attack: Former Indian Army Chief

General Shankar Roychowdhury said that large convoys moving along the national highway are always vulnerable to attack, adding that the area where the Pulwama terror attack had occurred had always been a very “vulnerable sector”.

New Delhi: General (Retired) Shankar Roychowdhury, a former chief of the Indian Army, said that the primary responsibility for the deaths of CRPF jawans in the Pulwama terror attack rests “on the government headed by the Prime Minister, who is advised by the national security adviser”.

The 18th Chief of Army Staff, speaking to The Telegraph, was reacting to former Jammu and Kashmir governor Satya Pal Malik’s revelations in an interview with The Wire. Malik said that the 2019 Pulwama attack – in which 40 jawans were killed after a car laden with explosives rammed into a CRPF convoy – was the outcome of government incompetence and negligence.

“The primary responsibility behind the loss of lives in Pulwama rests on the government headed by the Prime Minister, who is advised by the national security adviser [NSA}. This was a setback,” General Roychowdhury told The Telegraph. He said that NSA Ajit Doval should “also get his share of the blame” for the intelligence failure behind the ambush.

A convoy of 78 vehicles carrying over 2,500 personnel should not have taken a highway that is so close to the Pakistan border, General Roychowdhury told the newspaper.

Malik told The Wire that both the CRPF had requested to be flown instead of travelling by road from Jammu to Srinagar, but the Union home ministry – then headed by Rajnath Singh – did not provide them with aircraft. If their request was granted, the deaths could have been prevented, the BJP leader said.

General Roychowdhury agreed. He said, according to The Telegraph, “A CRPF convoy moving along the interstate highway between Jammu and Srinagar was ambushed by a group of Mujahideen in Pulwama. If the troops had travelled by air, the loss of lives could have been avoided.”

Also Read: Pulwama, Modi, Corruption: Full Explosive Transcript of Satya Pal Malik’s Viral Interview

Malik also claimed that when he told Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the failures that led to the attack, the latter told him to “stay quiet”. He said that NSA Doval also told him to remain silent.

The former Army chief said that all large bodies of vehicles and convoys moving along the national highway are always vulnerable to attack. He said that the area where the Pulwama terror attack had occurred had always been a very “vulnerable sector”.

“The road that goes along Samba (31km from Satwari airport) in Jammu is always vulnerable owing to infiltration that happens by tunnelling,” he told The Telegraph. “The more traffic you pump along the interstate highway, you expose them to risks because the border is not very far away from Pakistan all throughout,” said the general, who commanded the 16 Corps in Jammu and Kashmir between 1991 and 1992.

General Roychowdhury also agreed with Malik’s statement that the terror attack was the result of an intelligence failure. Malik said that while the RDX, an explosive substance, which was used in the attack came from Pakistan, the fact that a car that was “roaming around” in Kashmir for days before the attack and could not be located was an intelligence and security system failure.

“It’s a slip-up that the government is trying to wash its hands of. I strongly believe that the troops should have been ferried across by aircraft, which are available with the civil aviation department, Air Force or BSF,” the former army chief told Telegraph, adding, “Failure has no claimants.”

Watch | Satya Pal Malik Calls Modi a ‘Megalomaniac’; Will Continue to Support Farmers

In an interview with The Wire, the Meghalaya governor – whose term ends later this month – says he wants to lead farmers in their fight to ensure MSP is a right.

In a free-wheeling interview with The Wire, Satya Pal Malik, the Meghalaya governor whose term comes to an end this month, spoke about his criticism of the Narendra Modi government, his support for farmers and his plans after the governorship ends.

On the fact that he continues to remain a strident critic of Modi, Malik said the prime minister doesn’t tolerate criticism of any kind and is quick to sideline critics like Nitin Gadkari. “Gadkari enjoys enormous goodwill across the country and when he speaks, people listen. He has done a great job in making roads and doesn’t differentiate against opposition-ruled states.”

Malik was upset that Modi did not appreciate his handling of affairs in Jammu and Kashmir after the dilution of Article 370. “Modi has never ever appreciated anyone. It’s not in his nature. In fact, I am governor thanks to Amit Shah. It was he who made me governor. PM has never given anyone a free hand, not even Amit Shah. If he does, he (Shah) can do wonders. He is a practical man and knows how to resolve problems,” Malik said.

Recounting the inauguration of the Statue of Unity, Malik said Modi had given clear instructions that no one will accompany him from the chopper to the statue and that he alone should be seen on camera. “Amit Shah and the Gujarat chief minister could have been asked to accompany him. Unka to hak banta hai.”

Asked if Modi is a megalomaniac, Malik said, “Lagta toh hai. Yeh ek bimari hai. (It does seem so. It is a sickness.) Rajnath (Singh, the defence minister) got a tunnel made. Modi was walking all alone and waving to an empty tunnel. There was no crowd. He could have taken Rajnath along but he didn’t. I kept looking for him and found him much later standing with the rest.”

Asked what was the defence minister’s reaction, Malik laughed. “He is without reaction. He has to remain in politics,” he said.

Asked what should the role of a governor be in the current context of horsetrading and the fact that the BJP has been bringing down elected governments in this manner, Malik said, “I will tell you what happened when I dissolved the Jammu and Kashmir assembly. Sajjad Lone who was the prime minister’s blue-eyed boy came to me. I asked him, ‘How many MLAs do you have?’ He said, ‘I have six but if you administer the oath of office to me, I will be able to prove my majority within a week.’ I refused. I said the Supreme Court will skin me alive. I told (Arun) Jaitley that if Mehbooba gives me a letter, then I will be left with no option but to call her. Had that happened, a government led by the minority community would have been formed and people from Jammu would not have been able to cross the Jawahar tunnel. Jaitley spoke to the prime minister. After that, I asked the PM. He gave me no clear-cut instructions. I did what I thought best and refused to allow horse trading.”

However, Malik refused to comment on the downfall of the Maha Vikas Aghadi government, simply saying, “The governor didn’t do too much wrong. Who kaali topi pehenta hai na. Sangh ka aadmi hai. Line se haath kar kaam nahi karta.”

Malik said politics had some idealism in the past. “That got reduced to a career, to a business and now it is unrecognisable,” he said.

He said it wouldn’t be fair to compare Indira Gandhi with Modi. “But I will tell you why Indira Gandhi called for elections after the Emergency. This was a story told to me over dinner in London by Sir Swaraj Paul. He said Indira was very upset that the western media was calling ‘Nehru’s daughter a dictator’. It pricked her conscience and she wanted to give legitimacy to her government. “

Malik remained silent on whether a parallel could be drawn with the current government since an Emergency had not been officially called.

Malik ruled out floating a political party or even joining active electoral politics once his tenure ends in the next two weeks. He, however, did not rule out “aligning” with a political party or a candidate but that’s something he will decide closer to the elections. Malik said he was not seeking another term as governor and “nor is it in [the Modi government’s] interest to give me a second term”.

Malik said the Jat community believes that he would have been the best choice for vice president – as opposed to another Jat leader and former West Bengal governor Jagdeep Dhankar. “After Charan Singh, there is Satya Pal Malik is what people say,” he claimed.

But he didn’t expect to be made VP, he said, as he would have been unable to raise his voice in favour of farmers, had he been appointed. He however clarified that offers that he would be made VP if he stopped criticising the government were made by “well-informed and well-meaning” people and not necessarily those directly at the top.

In response to questions that elections to the Rajasthan assembly are around the corner and the BJP feels that he can influence votes in Jat-dominated areas in Rajashtan, Haryana and Western UP, Malik said he has been attending at least six meetings a month and drumming up support for farmers and their grievances, including a guarantee on the minimum support price (MSP) which the government has promised. He said very soon, farmers will take to the streets once more and “erupt in anger”.

Already several states are witnessing this, he said. As a farmers’ leader, Malik said he would give them direction and help, though not necessarily lead them from the front. “If they get direction, they will fight.” On the fact that there are already farmer leaders like Rakesh Tikait who are guiding the farmers, Malik said when the farmers hit the streets once again, “There are unions in Punjab and Haryana and a leader would emerge from there to lead.”

Note: A longer description was added to this video after publication.

What Does Modi Have In Common With The Monarch Who Caused The French Revolution?

Modi’s remark on farmers who died during protests clearly seems to indicate that he conflates his persona with the majesty of the state, in a throwback to Louis XIV.

This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.

A full week has passed since Meghalaya governor Satya Pal Malik disclosed Narendra Modi’s infamous retort when he brought up the death of 500 farmers in a private meeting with the prime minister.

Malik also claimed that Amit Shah told him that Modi had taken leave of his senses. He has since sought to downplay those words, but the governor has refused to amend or dilute the beans he spilt about Modi. Given that neither Modi nor the Prime Minister’s Office have sought to deny the words Malik attributed to him – “Mere liye mare hain? (did [the farmers] die for me?)” – some analysis of their true meaning is surely in order.

Apart from the solipsistic curtness of the attributed remark that speaks poorly about the empathetic resource of someone who keeps reminding us of how he is the popular choice of the people (of whom farmers altogether comprise half the population), it is the embedded political text of Modi’s purported remark that must ring alarm bells.

What is the citizen – who draws her right to life and to a dignified death from provisions of the constitution rather than from any personal loyalty to the leader – to make of the idea that only those who embrace death at Modi’s call, or in a cause dear to him, may claim any right to his sympathetic consideration?

What else can these pithy words have meant, in the vernacular form in which Malik reported them spoken?

As the remark stands, Modi clearly seems to conflate his persona with the majesty of the state, in a throwback to Louis XIV who famously declared, “L’Etat, c’est moi (I am the State)”, inaugurating an era in world history which has come to be called absolutism. A form of governance in which all functions of the executive came to be subsumed into the ‘centre’, of which Louis was to be regarded the ‘epicentre’.

Even more worryingly, Modi’s remark to Malik recalls, albeit in proto-typical form, that time in modern German history when a new law was introduced (in 1934) requiring all soldiers and civil servants to swear an oath of loyalty not to the constitution but to the person of the leader (Führer) — a practice that continued till 1945.

We may recall that at the time of the surgical strike in the Nowshera sector of the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir state, Modi, off and on, tended to slip into referring to Indian soldiers as “mere jawan (my soldiers)” as he lauded their valour.

Freudian slips are often of great moment, as psychoanalysis has taught us.

File photo of Satya Pal Malik and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Photo: PTI

It is of course entirely possible that Modi may not have foreseen that Malik would make the details of their interaction public; or that Modi did not attend closely to what political import his remark — “Mere liye mare hain?” — could carry. Or perhaps he did, but is beyond caring. This is what marks him out as somewhat unique.

Also Read: Satya Pal Malik’s Real Crime is That He Revealed a State Secret About Narendra Modi

Why, for example, does one think that Jawaharlal Nehru, L.B. Shastri, Indira Gandhi, Morarji Desai, Gulzarilal Nanda, Chandra Shekhar, Charan Singh, Rajiv Gandhi, V.P. Singh, Narasimha Rao, I.K. Gujral, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Deve Gowda, Manmohan Singh – all previous prime ministers – would never have spoken about farmers in the way Modi is reported to have done with Malik.

It would be salutary if Modi were to take a minute out to shed some light on this troubling episode which, having been made public, requires either refutation or acknowledgement. The citizen needs to know who it is she is required to be loyal to, indeed to die for — the leader or the constitution.