Tehelka
September 30 , 2006
NELLIE REVISITED
THE HORROR’S NAGGING SHADOW
Twenty-three years after 3,300 men, women and children were massacred in Nellie, survivors want to bury memories that won’t go away. The State’s callous indifference to their continuing plight hasn’t helped
Teresa Rehman
Nellie, Assam
The noisy table fan provides relief from the sweltering heat as 25-year-old Babul Ahmed is bent over his sewing machine. His small tailoring shop in the nondescript town of Nellie in Morigaon district in Assam is situated right next to the mosque on the national highway. “Have I heard of the Nellie massacre?” he says with a half-smile.
He is a soft-spoken man. “Why won’t I know about it? I lost my parents and a younger brother that day. I was two years old. One of our maids ran away with me and saved my life.” His maternal grandfather raised him and he studied up to class nine. Now he pays Rs 300 as rent for his small tailoring shop. “I was too young then to realise what had happened. But I was orphaned on that day. I was scarred for life.”
Babul says there are many like him. “Every family in my village on the banks of river Dimal, has a horror story to narrate,” he says. Bugduba Habi, his village, is inaccessible by car. “You will have to walk a long way; I don’t think you will be able to make it though. It’s a harsh life for us here.”
The survivors of the Nellie massacre, possibly the worst pogrom in the history of independent India, live in difficult terrain which is submerged under floodwaters half the year. The mud-track that connects Bugduba Habi with the national highway breaks off midway at a nullah, which has to be crossed by a makeshift bridge consisting of a bamboo pole laid horizontally. Though situated just a few kilometres from the national highway, Bugduba Habi and the surrounding villages have no electricity. The dilapidated boundary wall of a graveyard built as a memorial to the massacre victims is an apt reflection on the state of things.
It has been 23 years now, but the marshy field near Dimal river still brings back memories of that fateful Friday — 18 February, 1983, when 3,300 people were killed in a six-hour-long attack. The massacre took place shortly after an election was held in Assam, an election opposed by the All-Assam Students’ Union (AASU), the student body leading the movement against “illegal migrants” from Bangladesh. More than 500 AASU volunteers had been killed around election time. Polling was held on February 14 and voter turnout had been low. On February 18, villages under the jurisdiction of the Nellie police outpost, inhabited by “illegal immigrants” of Bangladeshi origin, became the scene of a ghastly mass-murder.
Altogether 14 villages — Alisingha, Khulapathar, Basundhari, Bugduba Beel, Bugduba Habi, Borjola, Butuni, Indurmari, Mati Parbat, Muladhari, Mati Parbat no. 8, Silbheta, Borburi and Nellie — were devastated. Mohammad Muslimuddin, a 65-year-old farmer from Basundhari village, recalls the day, his eyes becoming wet. “It was around 8am in the morning when, attired in white dhotis and kurtas, they came from all directions with machetes, guns, bows and arrows. I hid myself at a linseed field till around 3pm when the crpf men came. I shudder when I think of that day, when I lost my sister and mother in the carnage.”
Ruhul Amin, who was eight years old at the time, had a narrow escape when a bullet grazed against his neck. His father Mohammad Akbar Ali, 55, says that his mother and three sisters died that day. “We are not Bangladeshis. We are very much Indians. We have been staying here since ages,” he says It seems that barring the victims’ families and the survivors, everyone, including the Assam government, wants to forget Nellie. “Why are you trying to flog a dead horse,” replies a senior bureaucrat when asked about Nellie. When the TD Tewari Commission submitted its 600-page report on the massacre to the Assam government in May 1984, the then Congress government headed by Hiteswar Saikia decided to keep it under wraps. The Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) government that came to power in December 1985 also kept it confidential.
In November 2004, the Assam government stopped the Japanese scholar Makiko Kimura from giving a talk titled “Memories of a Massacre: Competing narratives of the Nellie incident”. The lecture had to be called off 30 minutes before it was scheduled to start after the State Home Commissioner and Secretary faxed a letter to the okd Institute of Social Change in Guwahati, asking it not to hold the lecture “without consultation with the state government”.
The records at the Jagiroad police station say that while 688 cases had been filed in connection with the Nellie killings, the police submitted chargesheets only in 310. The remaining 378 cases were closed after a final report said there was no evidence. However the chargesheet cases did not go very far. All cases were dropped when the Asom Gana Parishad, the political party representing AASU, came to power under the chief ministership of Prafulla Kumar Mahanta. For government authorities now, the chapter is closed.
But for the survivors, even after 23 long years, coming to terms with reality is still a daily struggle. Reliving the memories has made the atmosphere at the Bugduba Habi village square, near the ramshackle lower primary school and the local mosque, surcharged.
Resentment surfaces as soon as there is talk of February 18, 1983. A young man from a corner says, “Don’t add salt to our wounds. Please go from here. It hurts to talk about our past.” In the blistering heat, other villagers in the square murmur in agreement.
Thirty-five-year-old Fatema Khatun’s anger and outrage reflects the mood among the survivors. Waving a handmade fan to beat the scorching heat, she says, “3,300 of us were killed on a single day and the rest of us are being made to die everyday — with no schools, no electricity, no roads, no infrastructure whatsoever. Look at this school here with 450 students and only two teachers who are invariably absent. Our blood boils when we think of what happened on that day and what we are made to endure everyday. Aren’t we human beings?”
She did get the survivor’s compensation — Rs 2,000 and three bundles of tin to build a new house. The compensation for every person who died was Rs 5,000 and every wounded person got Rs 1,500 (in many cases a percentage of the amount was palmed off by middlemen).
As curious young children gather around businessman Abdul Aziz, he shows the scars on his body left by numerous spear wounds. A sturdy youth of 18 then, his was a case of survival of the fittest. But the memories of the day when he lost 10 members of his family leave him stricken. “It has been 23 years now. Different people come and take reports and do nothing to improve our plight. It’s sad that we had to undergo such agony simply because we decided not to boycott the elections as rightful citizens of a democratic country. But we did not even get a hearing in the court of law,” says Aziz. He was among a group of 200 who tried to hide in some bushes. “We were attacked with spears. Somehow I managed to escape. We were killed like dogs and we were compensated with meagre amounts.”
These survivors do not know about the recent package of enhanced ex-gratia and relief and rehabilitation assistance to the victims of 1984 anti-Sikh riots granted by the Union Cabinet, amounting to Rs 715 crore. This enhanced ex-gratia for the victims of the anti-Sikh riots might set a precedent. Hafiz Rashid Ahmed Choudhury, working president of the Assam United Democratic Front (AUDF) formed recently to represent the interests of the minority says, “We have been demanding publication of the Tiwari Commission report as the culpability and responsibility of the horrific crime lies in it. Other things are undisputed but we need the commission report to fight their legal battle. We are planning to file a pil on behalf of the survivors to make the report public.”
In Nellie the survivors are tired of repeating their experiences. Taizul Haq’s mother, two sons, younger brother’s wife and daughter were hacked to death. “When Indira Gandhi came to visit us, we told her that we do not want to come back here. But she assured us that she would provide us with everything, right from a lamp to light our houses. But we have been waiting and are still waiting,” he says.
Mohammad Shahabuddin had gone to Naogaon on some official work that day and escaped the carnage. But his wife and son were not as lucky and he did not even get to see their bodies. “Nobody has cared for us and I don’t expect anything more,” he says. He points to Mohammad Nurjamal, who was only a year old then. For two days he remained in his dead mother’s lap. The 22-year-old young man never went to school and now earns his livelihood as a daily-wage labourer. He is known to behave peculiarly at times. He pounces on the photographer, “Let me see my photo. Let me see my photo.”
Khudeja Bano, a grandmother now, says she saw the Dimal and Basundhari Beel (pond) turn red. She did get a compensation of Rs 5,000 for her dead child after staying in the relief camp for nearly a year. “My two-year-old son was in somebody’s hand and fell down and died in the melee that followed. Houses were burning and people were being hacked to death.
I don’t know why and where they killed us,” she says.
Things look peaceful now. The area has many people from the Tiwa tribe and falls under the jurisdiction of the Tiwa Autonomous Council. Komal Chandra Pator is the former executive member of the autonomous council. “It was like a storm which had swept everyone. People came from all sides, and most of them were outsiders. Many children had died and 80 percent of them cultivated in my land. I had seen them since my childhood and they are not Bangladeshis,” he says. “A lot of these bodies were buried near my field. Sometimes I see women coming and shedding tears in remembrance near these mass graves. But now everything is calm.”
However, that old tensions and divides still exist is clear from what Rama Deuri, an executive member of the council says: “These people, who are mostly from the Muslim community do not fall under our jurisdiction. We are not responsible for development of their area.”
With everyone passing the buck, life for the survivors of the massacre is still difficult. There are only four lower primary schools in this region — in Basundhari, Alisingha, Muladhari and Mati Parbat villages. For further education, children have to traverse to Nellie or Dharamtul on foot during the dry season and by country boats during floods.
Sixty-five-year-old Nurjahan Begum’s husband Mohammad Mumtazuddin died in her arms of a neck wound inflicted by a machete. “Even today, when we think of the incident, my body starts shaking and legs start to tremble. I did receive Rs 5,000 as compensation for my dead husband, but it seems like a brutal joke.” Her son, Abdul Jalil, a rice merchant, says, “On that day, I felt that even the life of a fish was worth more than that of a human being. My father was hacked to death. I touched his neck but not a drop of tear fell. I felt numb.”
The Nellie survivors wage a daily fight to numb their senses and their pain — a fight they will perhaps have to wage every day of their lives. And the grim reality that is their present does not offer much succour as they grapple with the demons of the past — no infrastructure, no development, a meagre compensation and no justice. They all ask the same thing: “As human beings, don’t we deserve a fair hearing in the court of law and a compensation that is adequate given the magnitude and enormity of our suffering?”
Writer’s e-mail: rteresa@rediffmail.com
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September 25, 2006
September 24, 2006
Malegaon: Reaping The Harvest - Images of Terror
People's Democracy
September 24, 2006
REAPING THE HARVEST: IMAGES OF TERROR
by Nalini Taneja
The recent bomb blasts in Malegaon should force us to reflect on the constructed images of terror prevalent in our media and among the intelligentsia and the political leadership of this country. The RSS and its affiliated organizations have achieved such unprecedented success on this score—with a little help from the right wing western political leadership of course—as they would never have imagined. The gradual rise to dominance of right-wing, ‘embedded’ journalists, and kar-sevaks in the name of journalists, in India has ensured this for them.
Most people look on and react to bomb blasts in the way that the RSS would like them to. Bomb blasts are no longer perceived as just violent, abhorrent, and unacceptable forms of action/intervention, which they are; they are in the main identified in the minds of most people with Muslim fanatics. And the pictures of Muslim fanatics they evoke could as well be of any poor, bearded, lungi-clad or pajama-wearing Muslim, such as one sees anywhere on the sub-continent; and increasingly now, also, of burqa-clad women, who, simply by virtue of hiding their faces are seen as having much more to hide.
The images of AK-47 rifles have been replaced by the mention of RDX, and bombs now equal Muslims, be it in any part of the world. It would seem that bombs are special weapons made by and for Muslims, unheard of by others and certainly never used by anyone else, if we are to go by what our media tells us. This of course then provides justifications for humiliating searches, and much more. They dull us to sights of Muslims being specially searched—whether at airports, railway stations or simply anywhere—of having their mobile phones cross checked, and of having the little pleasures of life denied and many human rights trampled on, simply because they are Muslims.
From descriptions of bomb blasts there it is an automatic slide into their identification with the highly potent and destructive cocktail of anti-nationalism and separatism, which finds its expression through a very ‘legitimate’ anger against Pakistan. Pakistan then represents everything we abhor and have a right to act against in the spirit of ‘all-is-fair-in-love-and-war’, and anything that reminds us of Pakistan justifiably deserves our anger and resentment. And who reminds us of Pakistan, if not Muslims, identified in popular mind with the creation of Pakistan in the first place? And so it goes on, from one stage to another, until we are ready to accept any atrocity on Muslims, by seeing it as brought on them by their own actions.
The Malegaon blasts had barely happened when headlines screamed “Terror hits Malegaon”, supremely confident of providing the cue for what was to follow. Few readers of newspapers in this country would have imagined these terrorists to be other than Muslim terrorists. Even perfectly secular people refer only to Muslim militants as terrorists, and have a different vocabulary to account for the terror and violence perpetrated by Hindutva forces, even if they are equally critical of them.
Therefore, apart from a few secular activists who have been talking of the use of bombs by the Hindutva forces in the recent past, and an initial report in The Hindu, which recalled the Bajrang Dal’s role in the recent bomb blasts at Nanded and then several mosques in Maharashtra, there would be little doubt in the minds of readers and listeners of news on TV channels, that other Muslims could be involved in the Malegaon killings via bombs. The CPI(M) Polit Bureau statement (September 13, 2006), asking for an enquiry in the context of the earlier Nanded bomb blasts has simply been ignored.
This is not to argue that those who planted those bombs in the mosques and in the kabristan in Malegaon, killing and wounding several people, could not have been Muslims simply because the place chosen was mosques and the targets were Muslims (just as the RSS could well get it own people killed for political gain). They could be Muslim groups, but what one needs to ask is: why was the Indian, and most western, media so anxious to pin it on Muslims, without proof, and without using elementary reasoning? It seemed from media discussions and news reports that there simply could be no one involved except Islamic terrorists. ‘Indian Express’ actually went so far (in its front page coverage a few days later) as to argue that the presence of RDX pointed to Muslim terrorists, and that the material used in the house of the Bajrang Dal activist was different and of a cruder variety.
So now, when evidence of bombs used by Hindutva forces is beginning to emerge, we will have ‘Muslim’ bomb material and ‘Hindu’ bomb material being dissected—with no prizes for guessing whose bombs are more deadly, and whose bombs are ‘benign’(?)! And no questions asked of course, that if one set of bombers wanted the blame put on the other side, could they not choose their targets and bomb material accordingly. Does it not achieve the same purpose, and are they all so dumb, and so foolish as not to think of this? What is being implied, and gently suggested to us instead, subtly, and through poignant pictures of victims is that Muslims are heinous enough to kill their own. The same may not apply to the Hindutva forces. Muslims are the killer agents when bombs explode in mosques, and of course they are the killer agents when bombs explode in/near temples. It could not be otherwise in the former case, and more certainly not in the latter case!
It is amazing how, despite the activism of Hindutva forces in Maharashtra, and the long legacy of violence by the Shiv Sena in the state, the possibility even, of other leads is not being considered, by the police or in the media. That this should be so tells us something about the state of politics of this country today, the rightward shift that the entire polity has taken, and the complicity and acquiescence of most mainstream bourgeois politics in communalism, and a concern with the Hindu vote bank, particularly, the middle class Hindu vote bank, and is explainable if not understandable or justifiable in the context of the twin assaults from imperialism and fundamentalism (of all kinds). What needs to be noted and is a matter of grave concern is the naturalness with which people in this country accept the equation of terror and Muslims, and the success of the carefully constructed and nurtured images authored by the right wing western media and our own home grown fascist forces. They have successfully utilized religion and fractured historical memory to demonise an entire community. We need to be alert that we do not imbibe some of these images within ourselves.
September 24, 2006
REAPING THE HARVEST: IMAGES OF TERROR
by Nalini Taneja
The recent bomb blasts in Malegaon should force us to reflect on the constructed images of terror prevalent in our media and among the intelligentsia and the political leadership of this country. The RSS and its affiliated organizations have achieved such unprecedented success on this score—with a little help from the right wing western political leadership of course—as they would never have imagined. The gradual rise to dominance of right-wing, ‘embedded’ journalists, and kar-sevaks in the name of journalists, in India has ensured this for them.
Most people look on and react to bomb blasts in the way that the RSS would like them to. Bomb blasts are no longer perceived as just violent, abhorrent, and unacceptable forms of action/intervention, which they are; they are in the main identified in the minds of most people with Muslim fanatics. And the pictures of Muslim fanatics they evoke could as well be of any poor, bearded, lungi-clad or pajama-wearing Muslim, such as one sees anywhere on the sub-continent; and increasingly now, also, of burqa-clad women, who, simply by virtue of hiding their faces are seen as having much more to hide.
The images of AK-47 rifles have been replaced by the mention of RDX, and bombs now equal Muslims, be it in any part of the world. It would seem that bombs are special weapons made by and for Muslims, unheard of by others and certainly never used by anyone else, if we are to go by what our media tells us. This of course then provides justifications for humiliating searches, and much more. They dull us to sights of Muslims being specially searched—whether at airports, railway stations or simply anywhere—of having their mobile phones cross checked, and of having the little pleasures of life denied and many human rights trampled on, simply because they are Muslims.
From descriptions of bomb blasts there it is an automatic slide into their identification with the highly potent and destructive cocktail of anti-nationalism and separatism, which finds its expression through a very ‘legitimate’ anger against Pakistan. Pakistan then represents everything we abhor and have a right to act against in the spirit of ‘all-is-fair-in-love-and-war’, and anything that reminds us of Pakistan justifiably deserves our anger and resentment. And who reminds us of Pakistan, if not Muslims, identified in popular mind with the creation of Pakistan in the first place? And so it goes on, from one stage to another, until we are ready to accept any atrocity on Muslims, by seeing it as brought on them by their own actions.
The Malegaon blasts had barely happened when headlines screamed “Terror hits Malegaon”, supremely confident of providing the cue for what was to follow. Few readers of newspapers in this country would have imagined these terrorists to be other than Muslim terrorists. Even perfectly secular people refer only to Muslim militants as terrorists, and have a different vocabulary to account for the terror and violence perpetrated by Hindutva forces, even if they are equally critical of them.
Therefore, apart from a few secular activists who have been talking of the use of bombs by the Hindutva forces in the recent past, and an initial report in The Hindu, which recalled the Bajrang Dal’s role in the recent bomb blasts at Nanded and then several mosques in Maharashtra, there would be little doubt in the minds of readers and listeners of news on TV channels, that other Muslims could be involved in the Malegaon killings via bombs. The CPI(M) Polit Bureau statement (September 13, 2006), asking for an enquiry in the context of the earlier Nanded bomb blasts has simply been ignored.
This is not to argue that those who planted those bombs in the mosques and in the kabristan in Malegaon, killing and wounding several people, could not have been Muslims simply because the place chosen was mosques and the targets were Muslims (just as the RSS could well get it own people killed for political gain). They could be Muslim groups, but what one needs to ask is: why was the Indian, and most western, media so anxious to pin it on Muslims, without proof, and without using elementary reasoning? It seemed from media discussions and news reports that there simply could be no one involved except Islamic terrorists. ‘Indian Express’ actually went so far (in its front page coverage a few days later) as to argue that the presence of RDX pointed to Muslim terrorists, and that the material used in the house of the Bajrang Dal activist was different and of a cruder variety.
So now, when evidence of bombs used by Hindutva forces is beginning to emerge, we will have ‘Muslim’ bomb material and ‘Hindu’ bomb material being dissected—with no prizes for guessing whose bombs are more deadly, and whose bombs are ‘benign’(?)! And no questions asked of course, that if one set of bombers wanted the blame put on the other side, could they not choose their targets and bomb material accordingly. Does it not achieve the same purpose, and are they all so dumb, and so foolish as not to think of this? What is being implied, and gently suggested to us instead, subtly, and through poignant pictures of victims is that Muslims are heinous enough to kill their own. The same may not apply to the Hindutva forces. Muslims are the killer agents when bombs explode in mosques, and of course they are the killer agents when bombs explode in/near temples. It could not be otherwise in the former case, and more certainly not in the latter case!
It is amazing how, despite the activism of Hindutva forces in Maharashtra, and the long legacy of violence by the Shiv Sena in the state, the possibility even, of other leads is not being considered, by the police or in the media. That this should be so tells us something about the state of politics of this country today, the rightward shift that the entire polity has taken, and the complicity and acquiescence of most mainstream bourgeois politics in communalism, and a concern with the Hindu vote bank, particularly, the middle class Hindu vote bank, and is explainable if not understandable or justifiable in the context of the twin assaults from imperialism and fundamentalism (of all kinds). What needs to be noted and is a matter of grave concern is the naturalness with which people in this country accept the equation of terror and Muslims, and the success of the carefully constructed and nurtured images authored by the right wing western media and our own home grown fascist forces. They have successfully utilized religion and fractured historical memory to demonise an entire community. We need to be alert that we do not imbibe some of these images within ourselves.
Are we Indians truly secular?
(Asian Age
24 September 2006)
Are we Indians truly secular?
by Kuldip Nayar
I have no doubt that Al Qaeda had a hand in the Malegaon bomb blasts. The Mumbai police’s charge that the cat’s paw of Pakistan was Lashkar-e-Tayyaba is also correct. The authorities can probably claim that they have sorted out the mystery of 7/11 Mumbai blasts. My question is a larger one. How do such elements find in India people who are ready to give them all the assistance — shelter, guidance and money — in the name of religion?
The fact is that even after 60 years of independence, we have not been able to establish a secular polity which we thought we would after getting rid of the British rulers and parting company with those who wanted to establish a separate, religious polity. Our freedom struggle projected pluralism as its ethos. The Congress and the Left have been working towards it. Where did we go wrong? This was the question I raised in my maiden speech at the Rajya Sabha in 1997. I still have no firm answer.
Either the seed of separatism has been sown so deep that we have not been able to uproot it, or we have left things as they were because we did not care. Our main interest was independence, and once we got it, we were hardly bothered to establish a secular society. True, we have adopted a Constitution which has given all communities equality before law. But to make this meaningful, we have done little, neither in the field of education nor in employment. The effort to blot out old prejudices or rectify communal thinking has seldom gone beyond paper. We have stayed more as Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Sikhs than Indians.
I do not know why after every bomb blast, whether at Mumbai in a Hindu locality or at Malegaon outside a mosque, or elsewhere, we, particularly the media, resoundingly say that there was no communal riot. One leader after another repeats in more or less the same words that terrorists have failed in their nefarious purpose to disrupt Hindu-Muslim unity. So far the refrain has been that terrorists have no religion. But after the Malegaon blasts, most Urdu newspapers said that the bomb blasts were the handiwork of Hindu fundamentalists. Probably so, but if in the past the comment has been that terrorists have no religion, why change the stand now? It does reflect anger, but also smacks of parochialism. The Urdu press is increasingly going in that direction.
If the blasts are engineered by a particular community, it is bad enough. But when it conveys the message that the Hindu-Muslim unity is superficial, it should make us think. The two communities, leave the elite apart, live in their own localities. They have practically no social contact and very limited economic dealings. Why should we feel that the blasts were used to disturb communal harmony? The absence of conflict is not unity. We are confusing it with co-existence. Our approach has been sectarian and it has remained in the same form, in one way or the other. There were always terrorists in our midst. Otherwise, how do we explain the Gujarat pogrom, the 1984 killings of Sikhs or even the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948?
We have not imbibed the spirit of togetherness which a secular society demands. That is the reason why most of us do not feel revolted against blatant acts of communalism. Some of us even give shelter to terrorists, foreign or Indian. We lack commitment to secularism. Take for example Vande Mataram. It is a song which has stirred national feelings for years. To use it for political purpose is fatal. Union minister Arjun Singh, a top Congress leader, was the first to hurl the brick, making the singing of the song compulsory at government-aided schools when Vande Mataram is supposed to be 100 years old. Congress president Sonia Gandhi would have done the country proud if she had said that she was not compelled to sing it. The party’s explanation that a particular date was not historically correct damaged the Congress still further. The message that a person does not become less patriotic if he does not sing the song went awry.
The BJP, which has no other programme except to communalise every facet of India, feels happy that it has embarrassed the Congress. This may well be true, but by communalising the issue, the BJP has pulled Vande Mataram down from its national pedestal. The question is not whether the Congress has lost or the BJP has won. The question is whether the Indian nation has won. It has not. The BJP may have scored a point, but at the expense of Vande Mataram.
On this I was amused to read the statements made by the Muslim Personal Law Board and some Islamic organisations. They do not have to teach the nation that Islam does not worship anyone else expect Allah. After living together for centuries, all Indians know that. Yet, nearly 70 years ago, a committee comprising Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Subhas Chandra Bose decided in favour of singing Vande Mataram’s first two stanzas. Why didn’t these organisations leave the matter at that? They made it a religious issue and played into the hands of the BJP.
I think former Union minister Arif Mohammed Khan wrote a commendable article in support of Vande Mataram and stood by the side of former Prime Minister Inder Gujral in public to sing the song. But some "custodians of Islam" have run him down and compared him with the late Union minister M.C. Chagla, a Muslim who joined politics from the judiciary. It has become a fashion with the urbanite Muslims to look down upon liberals in the community. The mullahs, maulvis and their ilk used to call Abul Kalam Azad "a Hindu show boy" before partition because he was the leader of the Congress, then paraded as a Hindu organisation. They are indeed fundamentalists, but go on swearing by secularism to hide their real colour.
A society does not become secular by enunciating that it is secular. It requires commitment to the principle of tolerance and accommodation. Above all, it needs conviction that one’s religion is not superior to others’. All people, belonging to different religions, should realise that their separate entities merge into one entity, that of India. See America where there is only one civil code, no personal law for any community.
What is disconcerting is that the Congress is politicising issues and institutions and the BJP is communalising them. Both parties have only election and power in view and they care a hang about the country. The BJP never had any secular traditions. The Congress has. But the latter’s behaviour shows that it does not know how to retrieve society from parochialism.
24 September 2006)
Are we Indians truly secular?
by Kuldip Nayar
I have no doubt that Al Qaeda had a hand in the Malegaon bomb blasts. The Mumbai police’s charge that the cat’s paw of Pakistan was Lashkar-e-Tayyaba is also correct. The authorities can probably claim that they have sorted out the mystery of 7/11 Mumbai blasts. My question is a larger one. How do such elements find in India people who are ready to give them all the assistance — shelter, guidance and money — in the name of religion?
The fact is that even after 60 years of independence, we have not been able to establish a secular polity which we thought we would after getting rid of the British rulers and parting company with those who wanted to establish a separate, religious polity. Our freedom struggle projected pluralism as its ethos. The Congress and the Left have been working towards it. Where did we go wrong? This was the question I raised in my maiden speech at the Rajya Sabha in 1997. I still have no firm answer.
Either the seed of separatism has been sown so deep that we have not been able to uproot it, or we have left things as they were because we did not care. Our main interest was independence, and once we got it, we were hardly bothered to establish a secular society. True, we have adopted a Constitution which has given all communities equality before law. But to make this meaningful, we have done little, neither in the field of education nor in employment. The effort to blot out old prejudices or rectify communal thinking has seldom gone beyond paper. We have stayed more as Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Sikhs than Indians.
I do not know why after every bomb blast, whether at Mumbai in a Hindu locality or at Malegaon outside a mosque, or elsewhere, we, particularly the media, resoundingly say that there was no communal riot. One leader after another repeats in more or less the same words that terrorists have failed in their nefarious purpose to disrupt Hindu-Muslim unity. So far the refrain has been that terrorists have no religion. But after the Malegaon blasts, most Urdu newspapers said that the bomb blasts were the handiwork of Hindu fundamentalists. Probably so, but if in the past the comment has been that terrorists have no religion, why change the stand now? It does reflect anger, but also smacks of parochialism. The Urdu press is increasingly going in that direction.
If the blasts are engineered by a particular community, it is bad enough. But when it conveys the message that the Hindu-Muslim unity is superficial, it should make us think. The two communities, leave the elite apart, live in their own localities. They have practically no social contact and very limited economic dealings. Why should we feel that the blasts were used to disturb communal harmony? The absence of conflict is not unity. We are confusing it with co-existence. Our approach has been sectarian and it has remained in the same form, in one way or the other. There were always terrorists in our midst. Otherwise, how do we explain the Gujarat pogrom, the 1984 killings of Sikhs or even the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948?
We have not imbibed the spirit of togetherness which a secular society demands. That is the reason why most of us do not feel revolted against blatant acts of communalism. Some of us even give shelter to terrorists, foreign or Indian. We lack commitment to secularism. Take for example Vande Mataram. It is a song which has stirred national feelings for years. To use it for political purpose is fatal. Union minister Arjun Singh, a top Congress leader, was the first to hurl the brick, making the singing of the song compulsory at government-aided schools when Vande Mataram is supposed to be 100 years old. Congress president Sonia Gandhi would have done the country proud if she had said that she was not compelled to sing it. The party’s explanation that a particular date was not historically correct damaged the Congress still further. The message that a person does not become less patriotic if he does not sing the song went awry.
The BJP, which has no other programme except to communalise every facet of India, feels happy that it has embarrassed the Congress. This may well be true, but by communalising the issue, the BJP has pulled Vande Mataram down from its national pedestal. The question is not whether the Congress has lost or the BJP has won. The question is whether the Indian nation has won. It has not. The BJP may have scored a point, but at the expense of Vande Mataram.
On this I was amused to read the statements made by the Muslim Personal Law Board and some Islamic organisations. They do not have to teach the nation that Islam does not worship anyone else expect Allah. After living together for centuries, all Indians know that. Yet, nearly 70 years ago, a committee comprising Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Subhas Chandra Bose decided in favour of singing Vande Mataram’s first two stanzas. Why didn’t these organisations leave the matter at that? They made it a religious issue and played into the hands of the BJP.
I think former Union minister Arif Mohammed Khan wrote a commendable article in support of Vande Mataram and stood by the side of former Prime Minister Inder Gujral in public to sing the song. But some "custodians of Islam" have run him down and compared him with the late Union minister M.C. Chagla, a Muslim who joined politics from the judiciary. It has become a fashion with the urbanite Muslims to look down upon liberals in the community. The mullahs, maulvis and their ilk used to call Abul Kalam Azad "a Hindu show boy" before partition because he was the leader of the Congress, then paraded as a Hindu organisation. They are indeed fundamentalists, but go on swearing by secularism to hide their real colour.
A society does not become secular by enunciating that it is secular. It requires commitment to the principle of tolerance and accommodation. Above all, it needs conviction that one’s religion is not superior to others’. All people, belonging to different religions, should realise that their separate entities merge into one entity, that of India. See America where there is only one civil code, no personal law for any community.
What is disconcerting is that the Congress is politicising issues and institutions and the BJP is communalising them. Both parties have only election and power in view and they care a hang about the country. The BJP never had any secular traditions. The Congress has. But the latter’s behaviour shows that it does not know how to retrieve society from parochialism.
September 19, 2006
1993 Bombay Blasts Court Case: Judgement Takes Effect, But The Cause?
(Outlook Magazine
Magazine | Sep 25, 2006)
File
'93 BOMBAY BLASTS
The Judgement Takes Effect, But The Cause?
Of course, Mumbai should welcome the verdict for the guilty in the blasts. But must it overlook the mob and police violence leading to it?
| e-mail | one page format | feedback: send - read |
In all the euphoria of "getting the guilty" in each of the staggered verdicts in the '93 Bombay blasts case, the city's overlooked one thing: that the judgement, however just and overdue, addresses only one side of the violence attending the Babri Masjid demolition and leading to the blasts.
Even as the CBI, Mumbai police and governments pat themselves on the back, and citizens demand death penalty for all the Memons—four of the family have been convicted,
Forgotten Crimes
three acquitted—there has been no conviction in any of the thousands of cases registered during and after the post-Babri riots from December 7, 1992, to January 21, 1993.
Ironically, some riot victims are fighting cases fabricated against them by the police while perpetrators of the violence, whether men in uniform or in saffron, are walking free. Why, Sena chief Bal Thackeray, the 'mastermind of the riots', hasn't even been touched. "Mumbai is recalling the suffering of blast victims and feeling happy over the judgement. But it's not sparing a single thought for victims of mob or police violence. Both demand equal attention. In fact, close to 1,000 people were killed in riots and 1,00,000 displaced," rues Justice (retd) Hosbet Suresh who, along with Justice (retd) S.M. Daud, conducted a Citizens' Inquiry into the '92-93 violence. Their report was vindicated years later by the Justice B.N. Srikrishna Commission report, which too gathers dust.
While top investigators cracked the blasts case and filed a 10,000-page chargesheet in eight months, riot cases filed in police stations across the city were hastily closed or not brought to trial. firs are still being filed—13-and-a-half years later! While the blasts trial happened in a designated court, the few riot cases that went to court are being tried at a snail's pace. The Shiv Sena-BJP dispensation was forced to accept the Srikrishna Commission report, but did little, for obvious political reasons. The Congress-ncp government that assumed power in 1999 and again in 2004 on the explicit promise of implementing the report has done nothing except set up the Special Task Force (STF) in 2000.
The STF was to re-examine cases closed unlawfully and file fresh ones as suggested by the commission. Of the 1,370 Summary 'A' cases—marked as true but undetected—it took up only a 100, re-investigated 15 and filed about eight fresh cases. Now, the STF office is a ghost office; its chief K.P. Raghuvanshi is now head of the much-in-demand Anti-Terrorist Squad. For those who wonder why parallels must be drawn between the blasts case and the riots cases, this is what Justice Srikrishna said in his report: "One common link (between the riots and the bomb blasts) appears to be that the former appear to have been a causative factor for the latter. The serial bomb blasts were a reaction to the totality of events at Ayodhya and Bombay in December 1992 and January 1993. The resentment against the government and police among a large body of Muslim youth was exploited by Pakistan-aided anti-national elements. They were brainwashed into taking revenge and a conspiracy was hatched and implemented at the instance of Dawood Ibrahim."
One constable, accused of indulging in riots with a naked sword, was dismissed from service in 2003; another compulsorily retired. But there's still the R.D. Tyagi case. The Srikrishna report found the then joint commissioner of police "guilty of excessive and unnecessary firing" leading to the death of nine Muslims in the Suleiman Bakery incident. Not only did Tyagi go on to become Mumbai's police commissioner, he was discharged in the case in April 2003. The state has not yet filed an appeal. In the Wadala Hari Masjid case, SI Nikhil Kapse was found "guilty of unjustified firing, inhuman and brutal behaviour" that killed seven Muslims, but was exonerated in a departmental inquiry.The STF hasn't pursued it. None of the 32 police officers listed in the report have been convicted. For many, the cases pending in the apex court are the sole hope.
Magazine | Sep 25, 2006)
File
'93 BOMBAY BLASTS
The Judgement Takes Effect, But The Cause?
Of course, Mumbai should welcome the verdict for the guilty in the blasts. But must it overlook the mob and police violence leading to it?
| e-mail | one page format | feedback: send - read |
In all the euphoria of "getting the guilty" in each of the staggered verdicts in the '93 Bombay blasts case, the city's overlooked one thing: that the judgement, however just and overdue, addresses only one side of the violence attending the Babri Masjid demolition and leading to the blasts.
Even as the CBI, Mumbai police and governments pat themselves on the back, and citizens demand death penalty for all the Memons—four of the family have been convicted,
Forgotten Crimes
three acquitted—there has been no conviction in any of the thousands of cases registered during and after the post-Babri riots from December 7, 1992, to January 21, 1993.
Ironically, some riot victims are fighting cases fabricated against them by the police while perpetrators of the violence, whether men in uniform or in saffron, are walking free. Why, Sena chief Bal Thackeray, the 'mastermind of the riots', hasn't even been touched. "Mumbai is recalling the suffering of blast victims and feeling happy over the judgement. But it's not sparing a single thought for victims of mob or police violence. Both demand equal attention. In fact, close to 1,000 people were killed in riots and 1,00,000 displaced," rues Justice (retd) Hosbet Suresh who, along with Justice (retd) S.M. Daud, conducted a Citizens' Inquiry into the '92-93 violence. Their report was vindicated years later by the Justice B.N. Srikrishna Commission report, which too gathers dust.
While top investigators cracked the blasts case and filed a 10,000-page chargesheet in eight months, riot cases filed in police stations across the city were hastily closed or not brought to trial. firs are still being filed—13-and-a-half years later! While the blasts trial happened in a designated court, the few riot cases that went to court are being tried at a snail's pace. The Shiv Sena-BJP dispensation was forced to accept the Srikrishna Commission report, but did little, for obvious political reasons. The Congress-ncp government that assumed power in 1999 and again in 2004 on the explicit promise of implementing the report has done nothing except set up the Special Task Force (STF) in 2000.
The STF was to re-examine cases closed unlawfully and file fresh ones as suggested by the commission. Of the 1,370 Summary 'A' cases—marked as true but undetected—it took up only a 100, re-investigated 15 and filed about eight fresh cases. Now, the STF office is a ghost office; its chief K.P. Raghuvanshi is now head of the much-in-demand Anti-Terrorist Squad. For those who wonder why parallels must be drawn between the blasts case and the riots cases, this is what Justice Srikrishna said in his report: "One common link (between the riots and the bomb blasts) appears to be that the former appear to have been a causative factor for the latter. The serial bomb blasts were a reaction to the totality of events at Ayodhya and Bombay in December 1992 and January 1993. The resentment against the government and police among a large body of Muslim youth was exploited by Pakistan-aided anti-national elements. They were brainwashed into taking revenge and a conspiracy was hatched and implemented at the instance of Dawood Ibrahim."
One constable, accused of indulging in riots with a naked sword, was dismissed from service in 2003; another compulsorily retired. But there's still the R.D. Tyagi case. The Srikrishna report found the then joint commissioner of police "guilty of excessive and unnecessary firing" leading to the death of nine Muslims in the Suleiman Bakery incident. Not only did Tyagi go on to become Mumbai's police commissioner, he was discharged in the case in April 2003. The state has not yet filed an appeal. In the Wadala Hari Masjid case, SI Nikhil Kapse was found "guilty of unjustified firing, inhuman and brutal behaviour" that killed seven Muslims, but was exonerated in a departmental inquiry.The STF hasn't pursued it. None of the 32 police officers listed in the report have been convicted. For many, the cases pending in the apex court are the sole hope.
Bombay: Tale of two crimes (riots of Dec 1992-Jan 1993, and the 1993 bomb blasts)
(The Times of India
19 September, 2006)
Tale of two crimes
by Jyoti Punwani
The two stories of crime and punishment that shook Mumbai in recent years could not have been more different.
The irony is that the second was a fall-out of the first, but those who committed the first crime roam free, while those who retaliated have been convicted.
What explains this contrasting response to the two crimes: The Mumbai riots of December 1992-January 1993, and the March 12, 1993 bomb blasts, which were described by police officers in charge of the investigations 'as retaliation to the riots'?
Special public prosecutor in the blasts case, Ujjwal Nikam, dismissed these comparisons, saying that convictions are difficult in riot cases because it's hard to trace the accused. His views are not borne out by facts.
In many cases, victims had told the police the names of the assailants, because the latter were long-time residents of their neighbourhoods.
Some had even supplied the addresses of the rioters. But the police ignored these clues and chose to close many of these cases as 'true but undetected'. More than 60 per cent of the riot cases were thus closed.
In the blasts case, on the other hand, the police could hardly be faulted for apathy. The Centre ordered a special investigation team, under the supervision of then joint commissioner of police M N Singh.
Some of the most respected officers traced down the accused systematically. The anti-terrorism TADA Act was applied to the case from the very beginning, and the police went after the suspects with determination.
Arresting entire families only because they were related to the main accused, stripping the men in front of their daughters and daughters-in-law, religious taunts, molestation and assault — all this became routine.
In one case, NHRC ordered the Maharashtra government to take action against 11 policemen, from senior SP to constable, and pending that, pay interim relief of Rs 5,00,000 to an Alibag family who had been wrongly picked up and tortured.
The NHRC based its order not on the findings of any human rights activist, but on a CID inquiry ordered by the sessions court.
All this was public knowledge, but Sharad Pawar's government (like all governments) put its weight behind its police force.
When these investigations were proceeding full scale, a large part of Mumbai's population was trying to pick up the pieces of lives shattered by the worst riots to have hit the city: 900 dead, 2,036 injured.
Again, it was public knowledge that Dawood Ibrahim had bombed Mumbai to avenge the unprecedented targeting of Muslims in these very riots, by mobs instigated by Bal Thackeray and the RSS, with the police playing no small role.
Pawar, always a grass-roots leader, did not need the Srikrishna Commission report to tell him this five years later.
Yet, no instructions were given to the police to investigate the riot offences thoroughly, no special team formed, no special PP appointed.
It was not as though Pawar and successive governments were not reminded of their duty by citizens who moved court in the belief that the law must apply equally to all.
Whether in Bombay high court or Supreme Court, successive state governments have defended the police's inaction during the riots, by claiming that Thackeray was not guilty at all, or by giving a similar clean chit to policemen and rioters indicted by an inquiry commission headed by a sitting high court judge.
A special task force, headed by the same man who now heads the state's anti-terrorist squad, spent three years reopening just five of 1,358 closed riot cases, and ensured that not a single serving policeman indicted by Justice B N Srikrishna spent even an hour in a lock-up.
Contrast this with the years in jail spent by the blast accused.Perhaps statistics can explain the contrasting ways in which the same state treated the two sets of crimes: 575 Muslims were killed in the riots, and 275 Hindus; in the blasts, all the 257 killed were Hindus.
In the few riot cases that were registered and tried, convictions were not just abysmally low, but only Muslims were convicted (these convictions were set aside by the Supreme Court). Though Hindus were charged, even under TADA, no Hindu has been convicted in any riots case.
The writer is a political commentator.
19 September, 2006)
Tale of two crimes
by Jyoti Punwani
The two stories of crime and punishment that shook Mumbai in recent years could not have been more different.
The irony is that the second was a fall-out of the first, but those who committed the first crime roam free, while those who retaliated have been convicted.
What explains this contrasting response to the two crimes: The Mumbai riots of December 1992-January 1993, and the March 12, 1993 bomb blasts, which were described by police officers in charge of the investigations 'as retaliation to the riots'?
Special public prosecutor in the blasts case, Ujjwal Nikam, dismissed these comparisons, saying that convictions are difficult in riot cases because it's hard to trace the accused. His views are not borne out by facts.
In many cases, victims had told the police the names of the assailants, because the latter were long-time residents of their neighbourhoods.
Some had even supplied the addresses of the rioters. But the police ignored these clues and chose to close many of these cases as 'true but undetected'. More than 60 per cent of the riot cases were thus closed.
In the blasts case, on the other hand, the police could hardly be faulted for apathy. The Centre ordered a special investigation team, under the supervision of then joint commissioner of police M N Singh.
Some of the most respected officers traced down the accused systematically. The anti-terrorism TADA Act was applied to the case from the very beginning, and the police went after the suspects with determination.
Arresting entire families only because they were related to the main accused, stripping the men in front of their daughters and daughters-in-law, religious taunts, molestation and assault — all this became routine.
In one case, NHRC ordered the Maharashtra government to take action against 11 policemen, from senior SP to constable, and pending that, pay interim relief of Rs 5,00,000 to an Alibag family who had been wrongly picked up and tortured.
The NHRC based its order not on the findings of any human rights activist, but on a CID inquiry ordered by the sessions court.
All this was public knowledge, but Sharad Pawar's government (like all governments) put its weight behind its police force.
When these investigations were proceeding full scale, a large part of Mumbai's population was trying to pick up the pieces of lives shattered by the worst riots to have hit the city: 900 dead, 2,036 injured.
Again, it was public knowledge that Dawood Ibrahim had bombed Mumbai to avenge the unprecedented targeting of Muslims in these very riots, by mobs instigated by Bal Thackeray and the RSS, with the police playing no small role.
Pawar, always a grass-roots leader, did not need the Srikrishna Commission report to tell him this five years later.
Yet, no instructions were given to the police to investigate the riot offences thoroughly, no special team formed, no special PP appointed.
It was not as though Pawar and successive governments were not reminded of their duty by citizens who moved court in the belief that the law must apply equally to all.
Whether in Bombay high court or Supreme Court, successive state governments have defended the police's inaction during the riots, by claiming that Thackeray was not guilty at all, or by giving a similar clean chit to policemen and rioters indicted by an inquiry commission headed by a sitting high court judge.
A special task force, headed by the same man who now heads the state's anti-terrorist squad, spent three years reopening just five of 1,358 closed riot cases, and ensured that not a single serving policeman indicted by Justice B N Srikrishna spent even an hour in a lock-up.
Contrast this with the years in jail spent by the blast accused.Perhaps statistics can explain the contrasting ways in which the same state treated the two sets of crimes: 575 Muslims were killed in the riots, and 275 Hindus; in the blasts, all the 257 killed were Hindus.
In the few riot cases that were registered and tried, convictions were not just abysmally low, but only Muslims were convicted (these convictions were set aside by the Supreme Court). Though Hindus were charged, even under TADA, no Hindu has been convicted in any riots case.
The writer is a political commentator.
September 18, 2006
Investigation Into Malegaon Blasts
South Asia Citizens Wire
19 September, 2006
Investigation Into Malegaon Blasts
by Ram Puniyani
Investigating the acts of terrorism and pinpointing the culprits is not an easy job. With the prejudiced mindset of the powers that be, it becomes more shrouded in mystery. At times it is purposely derailed as the goal of the authorities is to use it as a pretext for offensive to fulfill their own goals. There are numerous examples of each of these. When one is looking at the investigations into Malegaon blasts on 8th September 2006, on the day of Shab-e-Barat, the explosions near Masjid killing around 40 people, this point becomes more than obvious. While every other thing is being highlighted and the usual suspects are being further demonized through the hard work of communal organizations and media, there is only a small section of media and popular opinion which will bother to state that the organizations like Bajrang Dal also need to be probed and put on the scanner. Bajrang Dal, which has been making bombs, which has been indulging in training of its cadres in gun shooting may be involved in this, does not come out easily from the mouths of those who have memorized the list of organizations like Jaish-e-Mohammad, Al Qaeda and what have you. The large section of media and opinion makers dare not speak this. Even non BJP Governments and non BJP leaders refrain from referring to RSS affiliates' role in terrorism. By now the mass consciousness has been doctored in tune with the goals of US at global level and RSS at local level.
Is there sufficient ground to suspect Bajrang dal? Can this RSS progeny indulge in such acts? In the aftermath of Pastor Stains murder, the then Home Minister L.K. Advani, even in the face of hard evidence, stated that Bajrang dal people cannot be part of this murder. After investigations and long trial Bajrang Dal's Dara Singh is now in jail punished, with death sentence by the courts. Bajrang Dal and even Durga Vahini have been conducting the arms training on regular basis, many times even in the school premises in BJP ruled states. RSS has been keeping up with times; starting from lathis its progenies by now have upgraded their weaponry. On 7th April 2006 at midnight, a powerful bomb exploded in the house of RSS sympathizers, killing two Bajrang dal activists. ATS, chief Suryavanshi did confirm the same. Despite the report from ATS, and citizen's inquiry reports, the state Government neither banned nor touched all those who might have been involved and connected with the blasts. In our democracy some are criminals because they are born in a particular religion, and some can get away with crime because of the privilege of their birth and association with RSS progeny.
The popular opinion, the mass psychology has been so doctored that accepting and projecting Muslims as the culprits has become the norm., and they can rush to catch hold of hundreds of innocent Muslims, as being Muslims is good enough of an evidence of their involvement in crime. The same was witnessed when in the aftermath of burning of S 6 coach in Sabarmati in Godhra, Modi could 'find' within half an hour that International terrorism (read Osama bin Laden) ISI and local Muslims have burnt the train. The formulation fitted so well in the indoctrinated popular psyche that most people bought the version and the genocide could be launched with ease. By the time truth will come out, if at all, the goals of the Modi were well served.
After 9/11, 2001, George W. Bush could also locate that it is Osama bin Laden who has committed this act of terror. Osama, denied it, but the 'consent' which has been manufactured for the political goals of US, was good enough to give sanction to the World Emperor, to launch an attack in Afghanistan and kill thousands of innocents before it could install its puppet Govt in Afghanistan and its companies could lay their hands on the infinite oil wealth in the region.
It is difficult to explain the lethargic response of the police and the Govt in the face of the 7th April 2006 blasts in Nanded. Even now, while headlines galore about Malegaon, restraint is being exercised in spelling out Bajrang Dal's possible role. A large section of media is not daring to demand the arrest, interrogation of the RSS affiliates who are the guardians of Bajrang Dal. A lot is being talked about POTA being the solution to the problem of terrorism. One knows that it is just a ploy to strengthen the hands of machinery to arrest as many innocents as possible, without any answerability. The incidents of terror were no less when POTA was operative. And one knows there are enough laws which can be of help in prosecuting the criminals as is clear in the cases of murders of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, where guilty could be prosecuted, without any recourse to such laws.
Also what is sought to be addressed is the superficial symptom of terrorism; tighten the security, more checks, more arbitrary powers to the authorities etc. Most of the acts of terror have underlying agenda. There are multiple reasons for some taking the insane path of terror and terrorist groups can be classified in two broad categories. The first category is of those which are the outcome of the deeper dissatisfactions and injustices at social, economic and political level. The second category is of those which have been consciously indoctrinated. The Al Qaeda began as an indoctrinated group, by CIA to fight against the Afghan occupation by Soviet armies. Bajrang Dal also falls in the indoctrinated one, rooted in the RSS combine's ideology of Hindu Rashtra, which promotes hatred for minorities.
The origin of the one's like the some militants of Kashmir and the LTTE are rooted in injustices, and while the one's of North East are rooted in the ethnic turmoil's. While vociferous debaters talk about eradicating terrorism by wars, the basic issue is forgotten. The US war on terror is a decoy to attack the oil rich zones. The surprise is not that US is using this terminology, surprise is that this has been accepted. Can there be a war on terror? Terrorism by its nature is not a phenomenon which can be easily identified physically. War can be against physical entities not abstract phenomenon. The terrorist outfits are generally working underground, barring the ones which have state patronage or the one's which the state dare not ban due to other political reasons. One can see the heads of states shaking hands and vowing to join the war against terror, which is very much in line with what the US-UK axis wants. As such, terrorism is a symptom, while the imperialist lust for oil and the agenda of the religion based nation hood, are the major diseases which are at the root of problem of terrorism.
19 September, 2006
Investigation Into Malegaon Blasts
by Ram Puniyani
Investigating the acts of terrorism and pinpointing the culprits is not an easy job. With the prejudiced mindset of the powers that be, it becomes more shrouded in mystery. At times it is purposely derailed as the goal of the authorities is to use it as a pretext for offensive to fulfill their own goals. There are numerous examples of each of these. When one is looking at the investigations into Malegaon blasts on 8th September 2006, on the day of Shab-e-Barat, the explosions near Masjid killing around 40 people, this point becomes more than obvious. While every other thing is being highlighted and the usual suspects are being further demonized through the hard work of communal organizations and media, there is only a small section of media and popular opinion which will bother to state that the organizations like Bajrang Dal also need to be probed and put on the scanner. Bajrang Dal, which has been making bombs, which has been indulging in training of its cadres in gun shooting may be involved in this, does not come out easily from the mouths of those who have memorized the list of organizations like Jaish-e-Mohammad, Al Qaeda and what have you. The large section of media and opinion makers dare not speak this. Even non BJP Governments and non BJP leaders refrain from referring to RSS affiliates' role in terrorism. By now the mass consciousness has been doctored in tune with the goals of US at global level and RSS at local level.
Is there sufficient ground to suspect Bajrang dal? Can this RSS progeny indulge in such acts? In the aftermath of Pastor Stains murder, the then Home Minister L.K. Advani, even in the face of hard evidence, stated that Bajrang dal people cannot be part of this murder. After investigations and long trial Bajrang Dal's Dara Singh is now in jail punished, with death sentence by the courts. Bajrang Dal and even Durga Vahini have been conducting the arms training on regular basis, many times even in the school premises in BJP ruled states. RSS has been keeping up with times; starting from lathis its progenies by now have upgraded their weaponry. On 7th April 2006 at midnight, a powerful bomb exploded in the house of RSS sympathizers, killing two Bajrang dal activists. ATS, chief Suryavanshi did confirm the same. Despite the report from ATS, and citizen's inquiry reports, the state Government neither banned nor touched all those who might have been involved and connected with the blasts. In our democracy some are criminals because they are born in a particular religion, and some can get away with crime because of the privilege of their birth and association with RSS progeny.
The popular opinion, the mass psychology has been so doctored that accepting and projecting Muslims as the culprits has become the norm., and they can rush to catch hold of hundreds of innocent Muslims, as being Muslims is good enough of an evidence of their involvement in crime. The same was witnessed when in the aftermath of burning of S 6 coach in Sabarmati in Godhra, Modi could 'find' within half an hour that International terrorism (read Osama bin Laden) ISI and local Muslims have burnt the train. The formulation fitted so well in the indoctrinated popular psyche that most people bought the version and the genocide could be launched with ease. By the time truth will come out, if at all, the goals of the Modi were well served.
After 9/11, 2001, George W. Bush could also locate that it is Osama bin Laden who has committed this act of terror. Osama, denied it, but the 'consent' which has been manufactured for the political goals of US, was good enough to give sanction to the World Emperor, to launch an attack in Afghanistan and kill thousands of innocents before it could install its puppet Govt in Afghanistan and its companies could lay their hands on the infinite oil wealth in the region.
It is difficult to explain the lethargic response of the police and the Govt in the face of the 7th April 2006 blasts in Nanded. Even now, while headlines galore about Malegaon, restraint is being exercised in spelling out Bajrang Dal's possible role. A large section of media is not daring to demand the arrest, interrogation of the RSS affiliates who are the guardians of Bajrang Dal. A lot is being talked about POTA being the solution to the problem of terrorism. One knows that it is just a ploy to strengthen the hands of machinery to arrest as many innocents as possible, without any answerability. The incidents of terror were no less when POTA was operative. And one knows there are enough laws which can be of help in prosecuting the criminals as is clear in the cases of murders of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, where guilty could be prosecuted, without any recourse to such laws.
Also what is sought to be addressed is the superficial symptom of terrorism; tighten the security, more checks, more arbitrary powers to the authorities etc. Most of the acts of terror have underlying agenda. There are multiple reasons for some taking the insane path of terror and terrorist groups can be classified in two broad categories. The first category is of those which are the outcome of the deeper dissatisfactions and injustices at social, economic and political level. The second category is of those which have been consciously indoctrinated. The Al Qaeda began as an indoctrinated group, by CIA to fight against the Afghan occupation by Soviet armies. Bajrang Dal also falls in the indoctrinated one, rooted in the RSS combine's ideology of Hindu Rashtra, which promotes hatred for minorities.
The origin of the one's like the some militants of Kashmir and the LTTE are rooted in injustices, and while the one's of North East are rooted in the ethnic turmoil's. While vociferous debaters talk about eradicating terrorism by wars, the basic issue is forgotten. The US war on terror is a decoy to attack the oil rich zones. The surprise is not that US is using this terminology, surprise is that this has been accepted. Can there be a war on terror? Terrorism by its nature is not a phenomenon which can be easily identified physically. War can be against physical entities not abstract phenomenon. The terrorist outfits are generally working underground, barring the ones which have state patronage or the one's which the state dare not ban due to other political reasons. One can see the heads of states shaking hands and vowing to join the war against terror, which is very much in line with what the US-UK axis wants. As such, terrorism is a symptom, while the imperialist lust for oil and the agenda of the religion based nation hood, are the major diseases which are at the root of problem of terrorism.
The militant face of Hindutva
(NDTV.com
September 18, 2006)
The militant face of Hindutva
Harsha Kumari Singh, Kamaal Khan
Monday, September 18, 2006 (Lucknow, Jaipur):
Groups like the Bajrang Dal have been seen as Hindutva storm troopers capable of rioting, communal propaganda and intimidation.
But not possessing the ability to plot and carry off a serial bomb attacks which if true would mark a new chapter in their troubled and violent history.
The Bajrang Dal's mini army receives its weapons of choice, trishuls: the short blades, in a ritual called trishul diksha, carried out in Rajasthan three years ago.
It is similar to rituals where the VHP hands out 1000's of axes, part of its proselytizing efforts across India, especially in the hinterland.
"In every district we will have this campaign, so that this andolan reaches every village," said D B Gupta, President, VHP, Rajasthan.
Though these tiny blades evoked more bemusement than menace, the Gujarat riots proved otherwise.
The riots brought into focus the extent of the ability of militant Hindutva groups to plan and carry out widespread communal attacks.
But even then it wasn't clear until the Nanded blasts whether groups like the Bajrang Dal were able to set off bombs like the ones in Malegaon.
Head full of hatred
Rioting, street violence and intimidation is one thing but planning and carrying out serial explosions like in Malegaon is another.
Even though the Dal's manifesto talks of arms training it normally translates into programmes like the one held in Lucknow almost five years ago.
Here college students, no more than 20 years old, gathered in a maidan to fire air pistols and learn martial arts.
"The ISI and Christian missionaries are responsible for the spread of instability and terror. We are training our youth in weapons so that they are fully equipped to face such situations," said Avadh Behari, Prant Sanyojak, Bajrang Dal.
"Each individual will train a 100 soldiers. They will learn to handle knifes, lathis and rifles and will prepare for any situation," Uday Agarwal, Prashikshak, Bajrang Dal.
Air pistols, trishuls, karate moves and a head full of hatred; these are the weapons of Hindutva extremists.
Whether they have graduated to setting off bombs is still not clear. They may have the motivation but do they have the capability.
September 18, 2006)
The militant face of Hindutva
Harsha Kumari Singh, Kamaal Khan
Monday, September 18, 2006 (Lucknow, Jaipur):
Groups like the Bajrang Dal have been seen as Hindutva storm troopers capable of rioting, communal propaganda and intimidation.
But not possessing the ability to plot and carry off a serial bomb attacks which if true would mark a new chapter in their troubled and violent history.
The Bajrang Dal's mini army receives its weapons of choice, trishuls: the short blades, in a ritual called trishul diksha, carried out in Rajasthan three years ago.
It is similar to rituals where the VHP hands out 1000's of axes, part of its proselytizing efforts across India, especially in the hinterland.
"In every district we will have this campaign, so that this andolan reaches every village," said D B Gupta, President, VHP, Rajasthan.
Though these tiny blades evoked more bemusement than menace, the Gujarat riots proved otherwise.
The riots brought into focus the extent of the ability of militant Hindutva groups to plan and carry out widespread communal attacks.
But even then it wasn't clear until the Nanded blasts whether groups like the Bajrang Dal were able to set off bombs like the ones in Malegaon.
Head full of hatred
Rioting, street violence and intimidation is one thing but planning and carrying out serial explosions like in Malegaon is another.
Even though the Dal's manifesto talks of arms training it normally translates into programmes like the one held in Lucknow almost five years ago.
Here college students, no more than 20 years old, gathered in a maidan to fire air pistols and learn martial arts.
"The ISI and Christian missionaries are responsible for the spread of instability and terror. We are training our youth in weapons so that they are fully equipped to face such situations," said Avadh Behari, Prant Sanyojak, Bajrang Dal.
"Each individual will train a 100 soldiers. They will learn to handle knifes, lathis and rifles and will prepare for any situation," Uday Agarwal, Prashikshak, Bajrang Dal.
Air pistols, trishuls, karate moves and a head full of hatred; these are the weapons of Hindutva extremists.
Whether they have graduated to setting off bombs is still not clear. They may have the motivation but do they have the capability.
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