When two former occupants of India’s highest offices casually redefine terrorism, it is not merely a difference of opinion—it is an indictment of a political culture that blurred the line between dissent and destruction for far too long.
A recent video featuring Kapil Sibal and Hamid Ansari has reignited a deeply uncomfortable debate. Both men, long associated with the Congress ecosystem and beneficiaries of its patronage, appear to suggest that governments have been “mischievous” in branding certain individuals—particularly from minority communities—as terrorists. The implication is as startling as it is dangerous: that the State, rather than terror networks, is the primary offender.
Let’s be clear. India’s Constitution guarantees dissent, not destruction. The right to disagree is sacrosanct; the right to bomb, maim, or conspire with hostile forces is not. To conflate the two is either intellectual laziness or deliberate obfuscation.
The public record of Kapil Sibal is not without controversy. During the prolonged litigation over Ram Janmabhoomi, Sibal famously urged the Supreme Court to defer hearings until after the 2019 general elections—an argument widely seen as political rather than legal. The eventual verdict, delivered unanimously, put to rest decades of dispute. But the attempt to delay justice remains a matter of public record and legitimate scrutiny.
Similarly, the tenure of Hamid Ansari has not escaped criticism. Reports and political allegations—never fully adjudicated in court but widely discussed—have questioned his engagements with Pakistani diplomats even while in office. In a country repeatedly scarred by cross-border terrorism, such optics are not trivial. They strike at the heart of public trust.
More troubling, however, is the broader ecosystem these statements reflect. For years, sections of the political class and legal fraternity were seen defending or downplaying cases involving accused individuals in terror investigations—from the horrors of the 2008 Mumbai attacks to the assault on India’s Parliament in 2001. Legal defense is a right; romanticizing or selectively questioning the very basis of terror investigations is something else entirely.
The consequences of such thinking were not abstract. Between 2004 and 2014, India witnessed a series of devastating attacks across cities—Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Pune—leaving hundreds dead. Intelligence failures, policy hesitations, and what critics described as “soft-pedalling” of terror networks became recurring themes in national discourse. While causality is complex and cannot be reduced to partisan blame alone, the perception of a diffident State was undeniable.
Contrast this with the post-2014 security posture under Narendra Modi. Surgical strikes, the Balakot airstrikes, stricter counter-terror frameworks, and a visibly more assertive stance against cross-border infiltration have altered the narrative. Stone-pelting incidents in Jammu and Kashmir have declined, and intelligence coordination has improved. One may debate methods, but the shift in intent and messaging is unmistakable.
This is why the remarks in that viral video matter. They are not stray comments; they are a window into a mindset that once shaped policy at the highest levels. A mindset that, critics argue, privileged vote-bank sensitivities over national security clarity. A mindset that hesitated to call terror by its name when doing so risked political discomfort.
None of this absolves the present or future governments from scrutiny. Democracies thrive on questioning authority. But questioning must be anchored in facts, not ideological reflex. To suggest that terrorism is merely a label misused by governments is to trivialize the sacrifices of soldiers, intelligence officers, and innocent civilians who have paid with their lives.
India has evolved. Its citizens are more informed, less tolerant of ambiguity on national security, and increasingly impatient with narratives that appear to rationalize the irrational. The backlash to this video—even from those once sympathetic to “secular” politics—signals that shift.
The real issue, then, is not what Kapil Sibal or Hamid Ansari said. It is why such a worldview was allowed to influence governance for so long—and whether remnants of it still linger in India’s political discourse.
Because when terrorism is blurred into dissent, the first casualty is truth—and the next is national security.
