Terrorism
And The Quest
For A Colour Blind Cat
By Jawed Naqvi
27 February, 2007
The Dawn
First
of all, it was not the Samjhota Express that was bombed on the night
of 18/19th February but another train from Delhi, which connects with
the actual cross-border train at the Indian border post of Attari that
got hit. Had the Samjhota Express been the target of the suspected terrorists
its implications would be far more sinister and, in the context of India-Pakistan
mistrust, extremely ominous.
The actual Samjhota Express
is the train agreed by the two governments in 1976, which spends time
ferrying and loading passengers in both countries. We can't even begin
to imagine the implications of that train being bombed. There wouldn't
be a moment's delay from either Islamabad or New Delhi in telling us
with rock sure determination where the bombs were loaded and who exploded
them? So let's be very clear about our sacred facts as opposed to casual
description by which the Delhi-Attari train has come to be called in
the media.
Second, and more importantly:
who carried out the bombings that killed 68 innocent men women and children,
and why? It seems unlikely that the answers to any of these questions
would be known by March 6, when officials of the two countries assemble
in Islamabad to discuss this and similar issues under the joint anti-terror
mechanism. The last report on the probe said Indian police had twice
changed the identikits of the suspects, arresting people fitting both
the pictures, plus the madam of a brothel in Bikaner! The suspects so
far all seem to be Muslim. However, when Pakistan's foreign minister
said in Delhi that it was time to catch the culprits and not to begin
guessing whether they were Hindu or Muslim, he was giving a kind of
tall order. In its spirit Mr. Kasuri's plea for a fair probe came like
a departure from the famous aphorism of Deng Xiaoping who proclaimed
that "It doesn't matter what colour the cat is as long as it catches
the mice." We guess Mr Kasuri's version was: "Any cat would
do be fine as long as it doesn't discriminate on the colour of the mice."
In any case there are many
in India who too have expressed a well-founded fear on many occasions
that the colour of the mice does unfortunately seem to blind the issue
when it comes to catching or naming perpetrators of terrorism. Former
judge of the Bombay High Court, Justice B.G. Kolse-Patil, was in Delhi
last week to share with the media some of his findings in cases where
prima facie Hindu terrorists, as he called them, were allowed to go
scot-free in incidents in which they were caught red-handed. Two of
these cases pertained to accidental explosions that took place in the
Maharashtra town of Nanded, where rightwing Hindu groups such as the
RSS and the Bajrang Dal were believed to be assembling bombs. The blasts
happened in April last year and again on February 10. Justice Kolse-Patil
and his team, including the tireless rights acivists Teesta Setalvad
and Arvind Deshmukh, have raised disturbing questions over both.
Since the Hindu right dismisses
the exhaustive research and scrupulous eye for detail as some kind of
prejudice displayed by pseudo secularists of dubious intent, let's first
take the report in The Hindu newspaper about the April blasts. This
analysis clearly points to the compulsions of India's domestic politics
and how that deters a fair investigation into acts of terror by the
resurgent Hindu right.
The Maharashtra government,
the newspaper says in its report on September 9 of last year, "has
been reluctant to take on the Bajrang Dal for fear of providing political
capital to organisations such as the Shiv Sena". The Shiv Sena,
as we know is the neo-fascist arm of the Hindu right in Maharashtra
and it actually managed to trounce two supposedly secular adversaries
in recent municipal polls, something that was not even remotely expected
by the Congress party and the splinter Nationalist Congress Party. The
two parties have a shaky alliance in the state government and also at
the centre. Why did the state government refuse to consider proscribing
the Bajrang Dal? The answer is attempted by the newspaper itself.
"Politics underpins
this paralysis. Both the Congress and the NCP have run a successful
campaign of poaching directed at middle level Shiv Sena leaders, and
believe that action which might be considered 'anti-Hindu' would give
the religious right a new lease of life. At the same time, the decaying
Hindu far right sees Islamist terrorism, and the widespread anxieties
it has generated through India, as a means of stemming the secular tide."
In other words, "each
mosque bombing is, in this vision, an act through which the frayed political
legitimacy of groups such as the Bajrang Dal will be restored. Just
how capable Hindu fundamentalist groups are of executing such a project
is unclear, for already stretched police forces have paid little attention
to the emerging threat. If a Hindu fundamentalist group did carry out
the Malegaon attack (a separate incident to the Nanded blasts), it would
demonstrate a significant increase in their capabilities."
In their report on the April
blasts in Nanded, an independent fact-finding committee comprising Secular
Citizen's Forum and the People's Union of Civil Liberties of Nagpur,
shows how "a bomb blast has unearthed a bomb-manufacturing centre
at the home of a prominent RSS activist in
Nanded".
Two youth died on the spot
and three were badly injured in the April incident. The body of one
of the deceased, Himanshu Panse, was blown into pieces while another,
Naresh Rajkondwar, had a massive hole in his chest. Only the concrete
structure of the house was left intact, everything else in the house
was destroyed.
But, says the fact-finding
committee's report: "To the utter disbelief of residents, the police
said that one of those killed in the blast used to sell 'crackers' during
Diwali, he had stored them in his bedroom, and since he was alone at
home he had invited his friends overŠ One of them threw a cigarette,
the 'crackers' caught fire and blasted in a single explosion without
leaving a single piece of paper or other remnants of the 'crackers'
at the site!"
In the meantime, according
to the report, it became clear beyond any doubt that the killed and
injured youth were activists of RSS-affiliated groups. "Leaders
of these outfits visited the hospitals to see the injured and issued
condolence statements; they said that the men were active workers of
their organisations and their deaths were a great loss to them."
The next day when along with
senior police officials, journalists, a few politicians and many from
the general public, the police was searching the house, it found a live
IED. "The same day, special inspector general of police, Suryapratap
Gupta called a press conference and declared that it was really a bomb
blast. The youth were trying to fabricate the pipe bomb and due to erroneous
handling of a remote control device the explosion took place."
The inquiry recommends: "The
central government should keep a close watch and monitor the increasing
low intensity terror generating activities being conducted by political
outfits that are misusing Hindu religion."
It also recommends "stringent
action so that the accused in the earlier Nanded blasts -- including
those never arrested despite evidence -- are arrested or not released
on bail, as the case may be. Proceedings of these investigations must
be conducted in full public glare."
In the final analysis, however,
the quest for a colour blind cat would be essentially incomplete if
Pakistan doesn't heed its own call to pursue mice of all hues. In that
case, there is this pending issue of terror camps which even the most
neutral observers say do exist in the territory under Pakistan's control.
It must now quickly unleash the cat there to make the March 6 meeting
purposeful.