Speed up investigation on Hindutva terror and compensate innocents (edit. Times of India)

The Times of India, 12 January 2011

Editorial

Keep Politics Out

Malegaon in Maharashtra, the Samjhauta Express, Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad, Ajmer Sharif in Rajasthan - belatedly but with gathering momentum, evidence is emerging of a network of fundamentalist Hindutva organisations behind them. Swami Aseemanand's December confession providing many of those details may now be disputed by his lawyer as having been made under duress, but it is not the only source of information. The National Investigation Agency has ferreted out a number of operational details related to the Samjhauta Express blast as well. Taken together - and added to information gleaned from the arrests of Lt Col Srikant Purohit and Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur - we have an emerging picture of a threat serious enough that there can be no political gamesmanship over the issue as we are witnessing now.

The hopeful sign, however, is that if the emerging picture is correct, Malegaon, Mecca Masjid et al have been traced to a small group of extremists, and rolling them up at this point should stop the contagion from spreading. That is what we need to focus on. The BJP should no longer be in denial about saffron terror, but instead purge its ranks of those inclined to follow violent methods in pursuit of religious goals. To some extent the RSS has gone further than the BJP has. RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat's admission that some members of the Sangh had shown extremist tendencies and were consequently asked to leave is a step away from the Sangh Parivar's policy of absolute denial.

But the continuing political battle over semantics and vote banks misses the point entirely. Terrorism is terrorism; there is nothing to choose between the Islamist variety, greater in scope, and the Hindutva variety, more insidious in its effect on the country's socio-cultural fabric. As there has been a public outcry over laxity in dealing with cross-border terrorism - and subsequent attempts by the government to address the lacunae - so there must be an effort to close down the network of operatives from groups like Abhinav Bharat, Jai Vande Matram and Hindu Janajagruti Samiti.

While the BJP continues to be in denial on saffron terror the initial wrong turn taken by investigative agencies, which had started out by blaming Muslim extremist groups for the blasts, is an embarrassment for them as well. A good deal of time has elapsed since the blasts happened, and shoddy investigations risk losing vital evidence while pursuing innocent people. Investigative agencies should speed up their gathering of evidence and prosecution of the guilty, while innocents who were harassed deserve to be compensated.