By Ayub Khan
K.P.S.Gill’s ruinous 15-year stint as the head of the Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) has finally come to an end. The former super cop’s unceremonious sacking has sparked hopes of a revival in the national sport’s fortunes in India. His exit comes in the light of corruption allegations, nepotism, and over all non-performance. To add insult to injury the Indian hockey team failed to qualify for the Olympics for the first time in history.
One wonder’s how Gill, the man credited with ending terrorism in Punjab, has been such a monumental failure. To begin with his strong armed tactics didn’t work in the sport. Even more importantly he was spending his time chasing phantoms through his articles and event appearances. He once gloated of receiving a sum of Rs.2000/- per article.
For such princely sums he was churning out highly speculative articles on the specter of terrorism and communalism. Instead of offering real analysis he was chasing the ghosts in all the wrong places. Muslim clerics and madrassas have been a special target of his fictional ‘security’ analysis.
When Maulana Badruddin Ajmal’s Assam United Democratic Front (AUDF) registered a spectacular entry in the assembly elections Gill was quick to cast aspersions. “Running a political party requires enormous support. Who is standing behind the scenes to provide this support?,” he wrote belying his ignorance of Maulana Ajmal and his family’s decades of social service in the state.
He displayed even more timidity when he described Maulana Ajmal, a perfume magnate with international presence, as an “unknown trader.”
In another glaring display of either ignorance or deep rooted bias against Muslim he targeted Indian madrassas at a recent book release event. Presiding over the function to release former Zee News’s reporter Naveen Kumar’s controversial book “Islamic Madrasey Bey Naqaab” he declared, without proof, that intelligence agencies had information about the presence of terrorists in madrasas for decades. “I don’t see any government or the organisation that has will-power or the courage to send them back today and the madrasas are just a part of the worldwide conspiracies against India,” he reportedly said according to the report published in RSS mouthpiece the Organiser. This allegation came despite the fact that no Indian Madrassas have been found to be knowingly harboring or supporting any terrorist. No terrorists have been found in the madrassas despite continuing raids by the police and intelligence agencies throughout the country.
While the super cop was chasing phantoms and hobnobbing with the Hindutva brigade the sport suffered. Now that he has been relieved of his duties one hopes that he will have more time on his hands to offer more thoughtful and non-speculative version of security analysis of the country.
[Photo of Girls in Madrasa in Fatehpur Sikri by Roberto Zolli]