Why So Mum, Mr PM?

If the Congress has an ‘‘emotional attachment’’ to Arunachal Pradesh and ‘‘its beautiful people’’ and if the party is ‘‘always concerned for (sic) its well-being and development’’ as Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh said in Pasighat last Saturday, things should have been very different by now. A narrative laden with romanticism and invented for the expedient of elections is one thing, a humble admission of past blunders and pragmatism quite another. So what if ‘‘it was Indiraji who had provided the Union Territory status to Arunachal, while former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was instrumental in granting it Statehood in 1987’’? The people of Arunachal Pradesh, whose patriotism and sense of Indianness are unquestionable, deserved all that; New Delhi was doing nothing extraordinary. In fact today’s tall talk of infrastructure development, especially on the transport front, in the State bordering China should have been translated to reality at least 20 years ago. Nothing happened then, despite the requirements of the State and its geo-strategic significance. And now when China has begun to eye the whole of the State, not just Tawang, and claim the entire territory as its own, New Delhi has suddenly woken up to the threat. But the question remains: If the ruling Congress is so emotionally attached to Arunachal Pradesh, why was the Prime Minister so very silent on the Chinese claim this time? A ‘strategic’ silence? Or the inevitable silence of a namby-pamby, confused regime? THE SENTINEL