The so-called historic joint session of Parliament passed the POTO bill. Good news after so much paranoia and politically simulated fear about the endangered citizen. Though the ordinance on terrorism was not, to the knowledge of the keepers of the national conscience, misused by the BJP Government, POTO was liberally misread by a large section of the desperate political class. The desperation, so aggressively matched by prime ministerial defence, was an eloquent audio-visual show when the debate was telecast on March 26. For leader of the Opposition Sonia Gandhi, POTO provided an opportunity to make her ongoing training in political elocution a display of desperation and opportunism. An instrument of suppression and persecution, this POTO moment is the prime minister’s moment of reckoning, she argued, and asked A.B. Vajpayee to choose between the Sangh Parivar and the people of India. And Vajpayee, suddenly the old Vajpayee of vigorous rhetoric, chose to prove that Sonia has no political credibility or experience to take on an honourable veteran like him. The POTO-debate, at the end of the day, was more about political oneupmanship, and the whole thing about national security in the age of the terrorist lay outside the debate, orphaned and largely unattended.

POTO was not born in a vacuum. It has a stark national context. As terrorism for India is no longer an abstraction, or something associated with Kashmir alone. It is the most defining—and destabilising—force in the lives of the nations today. After 9/11, it has become an immediate fear for everyone who has a stake in the civilisational order of the world. The suicide attack on the Indian Parliament was a reminder: someone is out there determined to strike at the heart of the republic and India can’t afford to relax. Extraordinary situations call for extraordinary measures. India today lives in nation-threatening times and that is why POTO is inevitable. No Indian politician can honestly deny this. And Sonia was remarkably dishonest in her POTO/PM bashing. Now it is for the Government to prove wrong the Congress president and others who find POTO a draconian piece of law. Any law is only as good as the intention of its user. POTO should never become a political weapon to intimidate. Its sole purpose should be national security, which in India now cannot be taken for granted.