By Kavita A Chhibber
He is among the youngest members of the Indian Parliament, but Milind Deora seems to have caught the fancy of many Mumbaikars, old and young who think he is the answer to many of their woes. In the aftermath of the terrorist attack, people talk of his sincerity, integrity and commitment towards his constituency of South Mumbai that was affected the most in the Mumbai attacks. He is intelligent, forthright and thoughtful and is working on several issues related to combating terror, foreign policy, national security measures and more.
An avid musician, Milind Deora isn’t afraid of facing other kinds of music when grilled in this exclusive interview about corrupt politicians, the messed up infrastructure, the role of the media, high hopes pinned on his young shoulders and much much more-and yes he was literally in the middle of the mayhem.
I read your post in the Hindustan Times after the Mumbai attacks. But for those who haven’t, can you recall the moments before and during the attack? Where exactly were you?
I was at the Oberoi at 6.30 pm on the day of the attack. I had a friend from Delhi come over and we were having coffee in the new Oberoi lobby. Then I went for some political function and he went off to Delhi. I came home around 8.45 p.m. and around 9.30 or so I got a call from one of my best friends. He had gone to Regal Cinema to pick up his girl friend. Regal Cinema is very close to the Taj and that whole area. He said- Milind I hear some kind of gun fire. I don’t know what it is. Around 10 pm or so, I put on my TV and saw that in the TV reporting there was some kind of gang fight between two rival gangs that seemed to be happening. Around that time I got a call from the local municipal council of the Colaba area who told me what had happened and I just got into my car. I met this Corporateur near the Taj and we went via Chowpatty. There was him, me and a person who’s the district president, in charge of the Congress Party for South Mumbai. The three of us and my driver went in my car; around 10.40 pm at night we got to the site at Nariman House. There was a huge crowd that had gathered around there and instinctively what we tried to do was to get people to move away from there. Those people (the terrorists) had got themselves holed in by then. They had probably been there for 40 minutes and were throwing grenades-we could see from a distance what the range of those grenades was, so we instantly got people off that area and helped the police in cordoning it off, called our political workers and got them to help. By that time, the army had also arrived.
From there we went to the Taj. Taj was extremely dangerous. We got stopped by the Police because they (the terrorists) were throwing grenades from the top. So we turned around. We were driving around the Regal Cinema area, going towards the Oberoi and we saw the Deputy Chief Minister, the Home Minister and Police Commissioner going towards their office and we followed them. We sat with them in the meeting. This was around 11.30-12 midnight. By then they had realized that there had been a bomb blast in Ville Parle and Wadibundar. Then we got in to the car again and went towards the new Oberoi and there was firing there. One of the local policemen recognized me and said Mr. Deora, you should not be here-you are an MP-Please turn around and go back-you don’t have any security. He then told us that this guy has hijacked a police car and is roaming around in this area. By then my friends who were in the Oberoi were calling me-the manager and some other people and I was worried about them because the General manager and his wife Swapan couldn’t find their kids (they were found later) But they had got their guests, the staff and other people away from the Oberoi and were waiting near the Inox Theater. I remember I gave a message to the policemen to try and secure that theater because there were about 50 people there. But before the police came I told them to go behind the theater and hide there- I said to them-don’t hide in the theater but behind the parking area and keep quiet and stay there as long as you have to. Just then the car which was hijacked came towards us, hurled two grenades towards my car and it was moving as if someone who was drunk was driving it as the back wheels had burst.
We moved from there and went towards Napean Sea Road because we had heard another blast had happened there. From there we went to the Chief Minister’s residence. Once he arrived we went back to Mantralaya where his office is- maybe around 2-3 in the morning. We saw the car which had been shot by then. It was the same car that had been chasing us for a bit which is a police vehicle. They(terrorists) had ditched the car somewhere and got into the Skoda. We basically saw the Skoda right there-it had been shot at-hat’s where Kasab had been taken and the other person(accomplice) had been shot dead. Then I was with the CM, where they had a series of briefings. Then there was a press conference at 4.30 a.m. Around 5.30 a.m. the Union Home Minister came down and they had a meeting with the NSG. I was with them till about 7 am, when the mission was operationalized. Then I was visiting various hospitals and sites. That was my first 24 hours when the attack happened.
Did you not think about the danger to your own life?
I don’t look back and think it was something heroic or foolish. I think my being there helped in some ways. It helped us inform the police, it helped us prevent may be 50 more people dying from a grenade attack near the Nariman House. It helped others-we helped people with the post mortem, panchanamas of the bodies of their relatives in the hospital. So there was value in doing these things, in moving around to help in coordinating the things and stuff like that.
The attack was seen as a failure in the infrastructure, the security.
I think what happened is beyond Mumbai and a much as I’d like to look at it from a Mumbai perspective because I’m a Mumbai MP, it’s much beyond Mumbai being safe or unsafe. It was a very different attack. It was not a terror attack in a traditional way that you plant a bomb in a train, you get out, a faceless person who no body knows about. It was more a proxy war- the kind of pressure we are seeing on Pakistan-we are telling them that you can’t distance yourself from what’s happening. If you do, then we’ll take action. Then don’t blame us later. It’s a war by someone moving from a boat to land on Indian shores and waging a war for three days.
It’s beyond Mumbai infrastructure, beyond Mumbai resources, beyond Mumbai police. No city in India can respond to such an incident with the kind of police force they have, the kind of equipment they have. Even in a city like New York they can’t respond to an attack like that because its Army trained, Fidaideen trained people. It’s not a crazy man who has possession of a gun, his father’s gun –something that happens in, say a school in America. That’s very different . The Police or SWAT teams can combat that.
This is urban warfare-for this you have to take different measures. This is reality and I think it has woken up the world and not just Indian cities to this new kind of terror that countries could potentially face. The way to prepare for it is that you have to have a different kind of rapid reaction and rapid reaction isn’t controlling mobs and riots. You have to be able to respond to an attack of this nature which is almost what an army will be trained to respond to.
People are also sick and tired of the invoking of the Mumbai spirit every time a catastrophe happens in Mumbai.
My thinking is, let’s not localize it to a Mumbai incident and the Mumbai spirit as it is much beyond that as I said. Calling it an attack on Mumbai and that Mumbai has had enough I think is a very wrong attitude to have and its going to get us nowhere. This is an attack that involved a neighbor that we’ve had problems with. It involved various dimensions in terms of foreign policy, in terms of national intelligence, in terns of how we use our relationship with the United States and the West and the United Nations to put pressure on Pakistan. It involves how we strengthen the civilian government, weaken that of the army ISI and all of that. It’s much beyond Mumbai. It’s an attack on India and the civilized world. I definitely see it as that. I don’t see it as just an attack on Mumbai.
I’d like to disconnect it personally from the spirit of the city but I do think in all parts of the country there are movements, there are emotions and people want to use those emotions to achieve tangible results.
Do we have politicians reacting to that? As cynical as Ia m my answer. is yes .We have removed the Union Home minister, the Chief Minister, the state Home Minister which is not very often. These are big things to do but much more than that the government is doing certain things that will bring change, turn the entire security establishment in this country 180 degrees and those are steps that are going to need to be taken, steps which will require the people’s support, because they are difficult steps-it will require political will; they may not be things that will fetch you political dividends in the short term but people have to use that emotion and that anger where they want to do something.
I think the time is now to tell the government we are here to support you, tell us what you need from us. If you think we should have an anti terrorist agency. We will help you and support you and make sure this happens. If you feel having a stronger law is important we will back you and make sure it happens. If you feel we should be going to the United Nations with a case to may be send troops to Pakistan, we will support you and make sure that happens. I think now it has to be much more collaboration than confrontation. That’s the main thing-as people of this country we have to move forward.
Many people in India also forget that this is the arm of global terrorism extending its tentacles. And the fact that foreign nationals were also involved reminds us again of the fact that it can happen anywhere.
It is a global issue. For some countries, it may be Pakistan related terrorism, in some other country it may be insurgency, a secessionist movement like in Spain. In Columbia it may be something else. What we have to understand is that people who want to spread terror in a civilized world are connected to one another. Their ideologies might differ but where they are united is that they want to see the civilized world break down and thy see links between the civilized world and that is something they don’t want to see.
You have to have hard and soft measures- in some cases a bullet for a bullet; that’s a hard measure of looking at it.
You need soft measures also. If in India for example, communalism and divisive politics is leading to more terrorism, its creating more polarization and more ghetto-ization, leading to a breeding ground for terrorists, you then have to use soft skills-how do you bring education into certain areas where a minority community lives and educate them. Uplift them from that problem and automatically you will see them move away from terrorism. They will shun terrorism, they will shun radical parts of their religion. There are different ways of dealing with terrorism. You can’t just have one approach.
The older generation of politicians has come in for a lot of flak, people have cited corruption and though an honest politician is seemingly an oxymoron in South Asian politics, many people seem to consider you to be just that. Your name and that of Priya Dutt Roncon., daughter of the late actor and politician Sunil Dutt, came up repeatedly on the lips of people who said they needed an Obama in India.
I’m flattered and I’m honored that people would consider me to be an agent of change but having said that I can’t fully agree with people’s views because I personally don’t believe there is a young versus the old, Obama versus someone else. Obama as of today is someone who has had a successful campaign. He hasn’t done anything else so we can’t judge Obama based on the fact that he’s had a campaign and he has mobilized the youth to vote for him. I think it’s a totally incorrect assumption to make , in comparing anyone to Obama because Obama has a lot to prove-and four years will demonstrate that.
There is this kind of anger against politicians and I will tell you why. I think people were looking for answers, people were looking for some kind of leadership, and they wanted to know that things were under control. The failure to reassure them led to vulnerability and a feeling of fear and that basically transformed into anger and that anger got directed at politicians because few politicians made far from compassionate, some really stupid remarks about different things.
But while on one hand, it was a good thing to see the middle class and affluent India coming out and protesting, it was also pretty negative in nature like people saying I want army rule. I mean, I was like what is that all about? It’s amazing how the elite in India are looking at army rule, while the elite in Pakistan-if you ask them- can’t get away from army rule.
This knee jerk reaction which in my opinion, on one hand, was a good sign that we are coming out on the streets, but it was a bad sign that our knee jerk reactions are going to dominate policies and decision making and that we almost said that parliamentary democracy is something we should shun and not respect. So those are things that are dangerous.
In Parliament also people are concerned.. Why are people ending up saying-we don’t want politicians. We are the reflection of the people whether they like it or not. In a representative democracy we are the representatives. Milind Deora might be an educated, English speaking person who can represent South Mumbai but the people will decide that. Just because xyz said I like Milind because he dresses in a shirt and pants and I don’t like that person because he doesn’t speak English and dresses in a kurta pajama-that’s not the attitude we should have. As much as I’d like to say I’m glad I’m not in that category(of shunned politicians) it still bothered me because it should not be the way I look, the way I speak, how articulate I am, how good I look on TV, to some people. These are not things that determine what I’m doing.
There are politicians who took the decision when the NSG commandos should go in, what should they do, when should the army be called, and what should the army’s role be? These were decisions taken by the politicians-okay the politicians weren’t there fighting with a gun-but these were things the politicians will decide, the government of the day will decide. I didn’t like the idea of endless criticism of the political system because it’s a dangerous thing to do.
I think to a large extent those who are very very angry towards the politicians and criticize and all of that, if you do a poll, a lot of them have not voted. Many of the celebrities you may have interviewed who said politicians are bad have probably never voted in their lives. Those who have voted are entitled to an opinion and they may have a totally different opinion.
I think the sad thing is that we tend to trivialize the debate a lot and now with the news media it’s become even more trivial. So an attack on India becomes an attack on Mumbai-an attack on Mumbai then becomes anger towards the politicians. The news media then instead of debating how do we deal with terrorists, how do we deal with Pakistan and the most complex issues, gets into page 3 debates, where someone who has no knowledge about foreign policy, or about intelligence encounters, about security will come and give this commentary that this politician said this, and that politician said that and so it becomes this one big feeding frenzy when all we are doing is wasting each other’s time in some sense.
I think as a society we have to ask important questions like, what am I doing about it? If I’m an average citizen am I securing my house? Am I securing my building? Am I voting for the right person and am I asking questions from a multiplex where I go to watch a movie? Am I asking questions from a hotel why don’t they have better security? If I’m a politician what can I do about it? If I’m a media person what should I be doing about tit? Should I take the lead and tell my fraternity we need to do more about regulating?
So these are things we all need to do. If I’m a page three person who wants to comment on this issue, should I, stay away instead, from this discussion because it involves domain expertise and shouldn’t I think it sounds arrogant for me to say I have the answers on how to deal with terrorism? So people have to ask these questions from within also.
What happens with these kinds of things is that people who continue with and sustain these campaigns are those who really are willing to do this in a selfless manner and who don’t have the arrogance, who aren’t naïve enough to think they have all the answers but are willing to create a forum, to allow those who do have the answers to debate but unfortunately those are the ones who fade away, and that kind of emotion and momentum loses stream, and those who remain are looking for quick, easy answers.
The role of the media has come in for a lot of criticism. What do you think is to be done from their end and should the government intervene?
The media’s reporting of the entire incident touched a new low and it was a very dangerous low if I may add, and partly of course the government is responsible for perhaps not giving them direction in what to do. But the government has repeatedly told them to regulate themselves or allow them to regulate them, and the media has repeatedly told the government that we don’t need you to regulate us-we will regulate ourselves.
There was no coordination among the media. None of them spoke to each other and said okay this is a live operation going on. It takes common sense to understand that. But no one wanted to take any responsibility. I knew people who were stuck in the Taj and were calling me and talking to me every 10 minutes. I could’ve gone and said that person’s name and which room that person was staying in and giving away that information to a terrorist who was talking on the phone to people who were in the buildings. But I instinctively knew that was the wrong thing to do and that there is a live operation going on, but the media didn’t see that.
The media just showed everything-they played it out like a movie and it was very dangerous because it was a live operation; and I don’t want to make a random assumption but I think it’s very fair to say that a lot of the damage that happened in India was in this incident because of the media showing this live. There is no denying that and today the discussion has come to the forefront. Today even the media is accepting their fault in this. The question is-are they willing to rectify things and regulate themselves now and I don’t see any sign of that happening. I don’t see the media coming out and speaking out and saying yes we are going to make sure we’ve got to get it together and do something and take stringent actions –and it’s a dangerous trend and that is why I said it’s reached a new low.
Where do you see Indo-Pak relations heading? Many Pakistanis feel very defensive and ostracized.
As a civilized world we know that saying all of Pakistan is to be blamed is a wrong approach. If we had that view does that mean that we bomb the country, kill civilians and honest people, innocent people? We understand it’s much beyond the people. People don’t want terrorism. Both people (Pakistanis and Indians) want to work together but there are elements in that country who are doing these things, who are training people, who are sending people to India and who have a vested interest in seeing these terror attacks happen in India. We can get into this whole debate about the army and ISI versus the civilian government because the civilian government is representative of the average people and the ISI and Army is not, so why should we target the civilian government? But it’s not India’s concern now any more to defend one government versus the other and to deal with one Pakistan versus the other.
We have evidence that there are terror camps operating in Pakistan so if they are unable to weed them out and we have resources to do it either they say-it’s up to us thank you and we are going to do it, but if you are not able to do it, we’ll come there and do it; but we are tired of hearing that we’ll do this, the army is doing this, the ISI is doing this.
We want answers, we want solutions and we want to see action taken against those outfits.
From a human perspective of course we don’t want to have war with Pakistan. We want peace with all countries. We want peace with the Pakistani people but we want their government to act and to take on those vested interests, the government has to show they are committed to ensuring the safety of the Indian people and if there is any such outfit working on their soil they will be taking action to weed it out.