When is a good time to ask questions?

Seriously -- asking for a friend

A friend -- okay, a close acquaintance -- came home earlier this week, and conversation turned at one point to Pahalgam, Operation Sindhoor, and the aftermath.

"You've been writing a lot," he told me. "Has it occurred to you that this may not be the right time to raise questions?"

So when is the right time?, I asked. How many days, weeks or months have to elapse before we can question authority on their sins of omission and commission?

"What is your rush anyway? It is a conflict — review and analysis takes time, surely you can understand that? You can wait six months, no?"

I found that risible. Why is it okay to ask questions after six months, but not after five, say? Or four? What hat had he pulled that arbitrary go/no-go point from?

So then, I asked, can I ask questions about the Pathankot attack (2 January 2016) now? Or has the statute of limitations expired on that one?

(How about Pampore in June of that same year, I thought, but did not ask. Or Uri, also 2016, in September? Baramulla and Handwara, October 2016? Nagrota, November 2016? The attack on the Amarnath yatra, July 2017? Pulwama, February 2019? Poonch/Rajouri, April 2023? Reasi, June 2024?

How about Kathua, in March this year? And this is a short list -- this longer list is a scary reminder of how short our memories are.

His answer was, you won't understand, let's just agree to disagree, then. (Disagree about what was unclear, but I let it lie.)

They say timing is everything. When it comes to questioning the government after a terrorist attack, the clock seems to be perpetually stuck at "not now".

Actually, it is not only terrorism -- asking questions about anything that affects us is verboten. Remember Covid? Questioning our broken healthcare system, the lack of oxygen, the mismatch between the official death toll and what we could see for ourselves in the mortuaries and crematoriums, was deemed anti-national. 'The nation is going through a crisis -- we should all stand together', they said.

A little over three years later, the government has quietly released a report that shows the massive undercounting of Covid deaths. Did the report, which indicates that the government did not account for over 17 lakh deaths, create the tiniest ripple? No, because we have "moved on" — and that is precisely what the government counts on.

Wait six months. Wait a year. Wait until the dust settles, the bodies are buried, and the headlines fade. Wait until you’ve forgotten the names of the soldiers, the civilians, even the places where blood stained the earth. Wait, because questioning the state in a crisis is unpatriotic, divisive or, if you are telling the truth, inconvenient.

The government routinely wraps itself in the tricolor and demands our silence, while its minions within and outside the media gaslight any questioning as "anti-national".

Here’s the thing: the “right time” never comes. It’s a deliberate stall, a calculated bet that you will move on, distracted by the next outrage or the next IPL match. And while you wait, the failures that let terrorists slip through remain unaddressed, the mistakes we made remain un-learned-from.

Pathankot is nine years old now, Uri is just as old, Pulwama is six years in the past. Can we ask about the systemic failures, the intelligence lapses, the botched responses, now?

Pathankot, January 2016: a high-security airbase in Punjab, infiltrated by Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists who waltzed in despite prior intelligence warnings. Six soldiers dead, seven injured -- and a four-day siege that exposed gaping holes in perimeter security and inter-agency coordination.

The National Investigation Agency poked around, filed a report, and what did we get? A vague shrug. We even generously invited Pakistan’s ISI onto our air base for a joint investigation. Pakistan duly submitted a report which said na na, wasn’t us, lalalala.

No public inquiry, just platitudes about “strengthening protocols.” The BSF officer who sounded the alarm? Transferred. The intelligence inputs that came days earlier? Ignored or mismanaged. We’re still waiting for answers -- but maybe this is not the right time?

Then there’s Uri, September 2016. Four terrorists, again linked to Jaish, stormed an army camp near the Line of Control, killing 19 soldiers in their sleep. The camp’s layout was a tactical disaster—tents too close, no fortified perimeter, no night patrols despite being in a war zone.

Intelligence chatter about infiltrators had been floating around for days before the strike, but nobody connected the dots and, in the aftermath, nobody was held accountable. The government’s response? A “surgical strike” across the LoC, hyped to the heavens, turning grief and loss into jingoistic chest-thumping. What about the failures that let those terrorists through? The inquiry was internal, classified, conveniently opaque. Nine years later, we’re still waiting for a public accounting of why our soldiers were sitting ducks.

And Pulwama, February 2019. A suicide bomber, radicalized locally, rammed an explosive-laden car into a CRPF convoy, killing 40 jawans. The intelligence failure was glaring: agencies had specific inputs about a vehicle-borne attack, yet the convoy was on a predictable route; the route was unsecured, the convoy under-protected, with no aerial surveillance. The CRPF had specifically asked to be air-lifted rather than go by road; the request was denied.

The aftermath? Airstrikes on Balakot, a media circus, and elections where the ruling party rode the wave of national fury to a win. But the hard questions -- why the convoy wasn’t rerouted, why intelligence wasn’t acted on, why local radicalization was ignored -- were buried under the noise.

Satya Pal Malik, Modi's hand-pick to govern Kashmir, later said that Pulwama was a massive intelligence failure and that Modi and NSA Ajit Doval had told him not to speak about it. No one from government has denied the claim (though they did send the Enforcement Directorate to raid Malik's home).

The NIA’s 13,500-page chargesheet named the usual suspects (Masood Azhar, etc.), but systemic fixes? Nix. Six years on, the “right time” to ask why 40 families lost their sons is apparently still in the future.

This is the playbook. A terrorist attack happens, the government dons its armor of outrage, promises swift action, and urges unity. Questioning is branded as disloyalty. Wait, they say. Wait for the inquiry, the report, the “appropriate moment.” But the moment never arrives. The reports are classified, the inquiries fizzle out, and the public moves on, distracted by the next crisis or the next Bollywood scandal.

Governments know that time dulls the edge of anger, that time has an impairing effect on the collective memory -- in fact, they bank on it. I can't off the top of my head recall where I read this, but I do recall coming across a study noting that post-attack accountability often gets drowned out by nationalistic rhetoric or new crises, leaving systemic flaws untouched.)

It wasn't always this way. In the wake of the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai, for instance, the Maharashtra government appointed the Pradhan Commission to probe the circumstances around the terrorist strikes. The two-member committee, led by former Union Home Secretary Ram Pradhan, found among other things that

• Relevant intelligence inputs were ignored or not acted upon seriously.

• The police force was incapable of handling the attackers, who were well trained by the Pakistan Army and armed with assault rifles. The police personnel who were fighting the terrorists were equipped with antiquated World War II era weapons.

• Errors were committed by the top officers of Mumbai Police in terms of taking charge while dealing with the situation.

• Coastal Security was neglected despite patrolling by the Indian Navy, which allowed the terrorists to enter undetected.

The report, which went beyond criticism and made concrete recommendations, was tabled in Parliament and placed in the public domain, unlike reports of the more recent terror attacks listed above. No one claimed that releasing the reports would adversely affect national security.

The report in turn led to some action at the time -- as for instance the creation of NSG hubs across the country. (It is a different matter that some 15 years later, an IDSA analysis found that 40% of the hubs are understaffed, and coastal security is a joke.)

This was in large part because the Opposition of the time ferociously held the government of the day to account. (I am old enough to remember that even while while the attacks were still on Narendra Modi, then chief minister of Gujarat, flew to Mumbai and held a press conference excoriating the government for its perceived failures. No one said it wasn't the right time.) The media asked questions; there was a full-fledged special session of Parliament where hard questions were asked of the government.

Pathankot, Uri, Pulwama etc show the same old cracks as 26/11: poor intelligence-sharing, lax security, and no real consequences for those asleep at the wheel. The difference is, "this is not the right time" to ask the questions that need asking.

The “not the time” excuse is infuriating, yes, but more than that, it is dangerous. Every delayed question, every dodged inquiry, is a green light for the next failure. Intelligence agencies still don’t talk to each other properly. RAW, IB, and state police operate in silos, as reports from the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses have pointed out. Security protocols at vulnerable bases haven’t been overhauled. Local radicalization, like in Pulwama, is still a blind spot. Kashmir’s youth are more alienated than ever, yet counter-radicalization programs are half-baked. Waiting six months, or six years, doesn’t fix this. It just lets the rot spread.

There is, to be fair, a case to be made for restraint in the immediate aftermath of an attack, when operations are active. It might even tip off adversaries about our weaknesses. But once the immediacy is past, what is wrong with demanding transparency on intelligence failures?

For instance, what intelligence report led to the cancellation of the prime minister's visit to the exact place where, a week later, the Pahalgam tragedy unfolded? That the trip was cancelled due to adverse weather is a ridiculous excuse authorities have pushed into the public domain -- the weather was good enough for dozens of tourists to be frolicking in the area. So what was the intelligence? Why was it not acted upon? Why was security in the region not beefed up? (It is startling that in highly militarized Kashmir, there was no local police, no CRPF personnel, no army personnel, in the area when the attack happened -- a news report from the time pointed out that it took an hour after the first alarm for security forces to reach Baisaran valley.)

Oh, and where are the four perpetrators anyway? How could they simply disappear after the atrocity? Where are the gaps -- in intelligence, in security -- that let them slip away unscathed?

These questions, and more, demand to be asked, and answered. Why not push for public parliamentary hearings, like other democracies have? The UK held open inquiries after the 7/7 bombings; the US had the 9/11 Commission. And India? We get press releases and promises, but the government ignores requests for a special sitting of Parliament. The RTI Act, which could pry open these black boxes, is routinely stonewalled on “national security” grounds.

"Not the right time" is a handy tool for governments and their gatekeepers -- a broad carpet under which you can hide a multitude of sins.

A few days earlier, when a Supreme Court judge was appraised of allegations that the Indian government had thrown 40-odd Rohingaya refugees into the sea, his response was "When the country is going through a difficult time, you come out with such fanciful ideas."

More recently the same judge -- who is scheduled to be the next Chief Justice, by the way -- while hearing a plea by Professor Mahmudabad who was arrested for an innocuous Facebook post, says: "Mr Sibal offcourse everyone has right to express....is it time to talk to of this much communal ? the country has faced a big challenge, civilians were attack and at that time....why are they trying to gain popularity on this occasion?" And this is what he thinks about citizens’ rights, by the way. Apropos, this Caravan profile of the judge is worth reading.

But to return to the main theme — see how the "right time" concept works as a cover-all?

This isn’t about politics. It’s not about BJP, or the Congress. It is about a system that thrives on our forgetfulness. Every time we buy the “not now” line, we’re complicit in letting the next Pathankot, Uri, or Pulwama happen.

It's simple, really: accountability deferred is preparedness denied.

Pathankot’s ghosts, Uri’s martyrs, Pulwama’s fallen -- they deserve answers, not excuses. And this is the right time.

PostScript: For such shameless use of a tragedy, a crisis, for propaganda, though, any time is the right time.

Don’t politicize terror, the BJP quickly says after every fresh attack to forestall questions. And the same BJP puts up such tasteless posters. As if this were not enough, the prime minister is already on the campaign trail; earlier today, he came up with this cringe-inducing line (watch and listen):

It is not blood but hot sindhoor that flows through Modi’s veins

The man is a biological marvel, among other things.

And this nonsense has created a class of citizens with adrenalin in their veins, hate in their hearts, and a resounding emptiness in their heads — as this instance, of a sweet shop changing the name of aam paak, gond paak and mysore paak to aam shri, gond shri and mysore shri exemplifies.

PPS: Sufficient unto the day; will read and respond to your comments tomorrow.