The lead article in the Organiser by retired IFS officer O.P. Gupta says India should stop negotiations with the US because the Hyde Act is a “charter of slavery.” He says it is not in the interest of either the US or India to continue the talks, and claims that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been misled by his advisors on the deal. The article argues that India should look at “other legitimate routes” to import nuclear reactors and materials. “The real objectives of the Hyde Act are to cap, contain, and roll back India’s nuclear programme and to cripple nuclear autonomy. Thus, the Hyde Act, like food aid, is going to be another instrument in the hands of anti-US forces in India to whip up anti-Americanism.”

The writer is also furious that the US continues treat Pakistan favourably. “Pakistan has been referred to thrice in the Hyde Act showing that US law makers have yet to give up their age old fascination to hyphenate India with Pakistan though, to be honest, President Bush had repeatedly said that records of India and Pakistan in nuclear matters are not similar,” he says.

Special protests

The Organiser reports in detail about a seminar on SEZs where erstwhile BJP stalwarts Uma Bharati and Govindacharya were the main speakers. Both were highly critical of the SEZ policy and the Sangh approvingly reports the speeches. “The result of making India like the US will be disastrous. The ground realities of both countries are different… We need to frame polices as per the needs of our farmers and not according to America or China,” Govindacharya says.

Secular Taliban

The editorial of the Organiser exhorts the Indian government — “the secular Taliban” — to learn from Pakistan’s action against Lal Masjid. “The peculiar thesis the UPA has advanced, that Muslims should not be harassed in the name of investigation, has tied the hands of the security forces at all levels, letting the culprits go scot free… appeasement of the terrorists has become a state policy with this government,” it says.

Indian Islam

The Organiser has more than one reference to the Indian connection to global terror, saying the claim that Indian Muslims have not taken to transnational fundamentalist groupings is a myth. Shyam Khosla writes that “Manmohan Singh’s proud claim, that not one out of crores of Indian Muslims had been found to have links with global terrorist networks like al-Qaeda and Taliban, has been belied by the involvement of engineers and doctors from Bangalore in the failed terrorist attacks on the Glasgow airport and a London nightclub… the secularists repeatedly tell us that terrorists have no religion, yet there is overwhelming evidence to show that deep religiosity is the basis of political extremism.”