IN INDIA

THIS is something we Indians don't like to be told, don't want to hear, that India is a 'soft' state when it comes to dealing with terrorism.

But a senior state official in West Bengal did exactly that — threw it on our face, so to say, to our utter embarrassment last week.

Of course, the official, Home Secretary Ardhendu Sen, said it to justify the state government's action and probably to save his own skin.

It was Sen's unpleasant task to carry out the communist government's decision to release over 20 Maoists in exchange for a police officer abducted by the rebels.

"Release or ..." was the threat by the Maoists, who hold sway in a large swathe of the country – over 200 administrative districts out of over 600.

The threat had to be taken seriously because only days before they had beheaded an abducted police officer in the neighbouring Jharkhand state after the central government refused to give into their demand for the release of three top rebel leaders in police custody.

The West Bengal government lumped its own decision not to talk to the Maoists "unless they eschewed violence" and released the Maoist suspects, many of them tribal women from one of the most impoverished regions of the state, in exchange for Atindranath Dutta, officer in-charge of a police station, who had been abducted by the rebels in an attack on his police station on Oct 20.

Armed rebels had raided the police station, shot dead two other police officers and looted the armoury and a nearby bank before taking Dutta away.

While the government quietly released the Maoists in custody by not opposing their bail applications when it came up before the court, the rebels made it a point to gain maximum publicity to show how they successfully arm-twisted the government to concede their demand.

The Maoists took a large group of media personnel, TV cameras et all, to a hideout in their jungle stronghold ringed by heavily armed rebels to witness the release of the police officer.

After keeping the journalists waiting for about three hours, a group of gun-totting Maoists brought the police officer with a large prisoner-of-war tag hung round his neck before them.

After warning the state and central government of dire consequences if they continued their clamp down against the rebels, a Maoist leader removed the tag from the officer's neck with a flourish and declared him free.

"The decision of not talking to the Maoists unless they eschewed violence is a long-term process but when you are placed in such a situation you have to make a compromise," Home Secretary Sen told reporters later.

Did it not amount to meekly giving into the rebels' demand and demonstrate the weakness of the government, he was asked.

"We had to make a choice between getting the officer alive and freeing some Maoists."

Then, he went on to say that India had behaved liked this always in such situations.

He referred to the release of three Pakistan-based terrorists in a exchange for 176 passengers of an Indian airliner after it was hijacked to Kandahar in Afghanistan in December 1999 and that of five Kashmiri militants in exchange for the release of the daughter of then federal home minister in 1989, an incident that observers say marked the escalation of separatist violence in the Himalayan state.

"India is a soft state. We have seen these instances earlier in the 60 years since independence," Mr. Sen said.

And, he drove home the point, saying India is not Israel.

"There is a difference between the Indian government and the Government of Israel. We cannot do what they can do."

Is that good or bad, to be not able to do what the Israelis would do in similar circumstances?

Bomb the hell out of the rebels, no matter whether innocent civilians get annihilated and their properties destroyed or not?

These are difficult questions to answer.

Like the state Chief Minister, Mr. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, under fire for the swap not only from the media and the central government but even from his own party colleagues, said: "This was an exceptional decision taken on humanitarian grounds."

He also said that the government would not repeat the mistake.

Until next time, he should have added, perhaps, going by his home secretary's pronouncements.

While the debate about the right or wrong of the swap will continue, the picture of the released police officer's reunion with his smiling wife, relief writ large on her face, their infant child in her hands made one realise the importance of human lives and that the Maoists cannot be the role model.

Maybe for all the bluster, we Indians think with our hearts even at the risk of being dubbed "darpok", Hindi for "cowards."