How to use a terrorist

There is something deeply reprehensible about a state assembly passing a resolution calling for the release of a person accused of terrorism. The Kerala assembly?s call for the release of Abdul Nasser Madani on ?humanitarian grounds? falls in this category.

There is something deeply reprehensible about a state assembly passing a resolution calling for the release of a person accused of terrorism. The Kerala assembly’s call for the release of Abdul Nasser Madani on ‘humanitarian grounds’ falls in this category. The charges against Madani are serious enough for the Supreme Court to have rejected his bail plea last year. He is a major accused in the February 1998 serial blasts in Coimbatore that killed close to 60 people. Madani’s reputation as an extremist preceded this case and he has been known for inflammatory speeches and communal statements.

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Had the assembly claimed that Madani was innocent and wrongly incarcerated, it would have been understandable. But calling for the parole of a person charged with terrorism is nothing but crass opportunism and amounts to — however leery we may be about the term — ‘minority appeasement’. The reason for the uncommon unanimity in the Kerala assembly is the approaching assembly elections. In the state’s sharply polarised constituencies, a thousand or so votes here and there can make all the difference. The Congress, otherwise a house divided, is looking to undo the massive setback it suffered in the 2004 general elections. The CPI(M), that great defender of secularism, on the other hand, is hoping that it will retain the votes of a significant segment of the north Kerala Muslim community. In the 2004 elections, the party wrested the Manjeri seat from the Indian Union Muslim League with the help of a section of Sunni Muslim leaders, including unsavoury elements like Madani’s PDP, the Indian National League (INL) of former Muslim League president Ibrahim Sulaiman Sait and the National Democratic Front (NDF). Having failed to get relief from the Supreme Court, Madani and his supporters are now using the humanitarian argument.

The Kerala assembly would have been better advised to sidestep the temptation of electoral calculations in a case like this. Their intervention makes a mockery of India’s resolve to crush terrorism and amounts to rubbing salt into the wounds of the relatives of those who have been victims of terrorist violence. The experience of the Babri masjid episode should by now have educated the Congress and the CPI(M) that opportunism does not come without a price.