Author: George Iype
Publication: Rediff
on Net
Date: July 21, 2000
Early in May, the central
government asked the home departments of all states to submit details of
Inter-Services Intelligence operations. The first responses were
from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
Except for the serial
bomb blasts that left 60 people dead and hundreds injured in Tamil Nadu's
Coimbatore in 1998, there has not been any major disturbance in these two
states. But intelligence sleuths say the ISI has devious designs
for the communally sensitive areas there.
And so, special squads
of the Karnataka police routinely check the Muslim population in Bangalore,
Gulbarga and Hubli. Police officials say the recent blasts in churches
in Gulbarga and Hubli were the ISI's handiwork. Two years ago, the
Union home ministry identified Gulbarga as an important ISI hideout.
It was there that six agents took shelter in 1994 after the explosions
aboard the AP Express and Madina Education Centre.
Since 1995, the Karnataka
police have arrested a dozen Bangalore-based Muslim youths, who were trained
in Islamabad for disruptive activities.
"We are always on the
lookout for ISI agents. They appear and disappear regularly," says
a senior police officer in Bangalore.
Officials believe the
recurrence of communal clashes in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka are indicators
of the ISI's growing influence in southern states. What particularly
worries the Tamil Nadu government is that the ISI operations are taking
place mainly in coastal areas, where militant Tamil groups like the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam are also active.
THE police say the ISI
is very active in Madras, Coimbatore, Keelakarai in Ramanathapuram district,
and Nagapattinam. They have arrested more than 70 people for terrorism,
and recovered a huge quantity of explosives in the last few years.
The police are now looking
at whether certain public sector undertakings in the state, dealing in
explosives for the quarrying industry, have been unknowingly supplying
the material to terrorists.
K P Padmanabhan, who
worked for the Research and Analysis Wing before his retirement, says the
ISI and the Tamil Tigers are a deadly combination. He recalls that
before the serial blasts rocked Coimbatore, intelligence agencies had warned
the government of the ISI menace in the state.
"But the state government
refused to take prompt action," he says.
Security experts like
Padmanabhan point out that competitive communalism has led to fundamentalist
terrorism in the South. "The police forces in a state like Tamil
Nadu are increasingly getting communalised, leading to an increase in ISI
activities," he holds.
The special investigation
report, the army intelligence report and the Justice Gokulakrishan Inquiry
Commission conclusively say the Coimbatore blasts were planned by the ISI,
and that Hindu and Muslim fundamentalists acted as catalysts to the tragedy.
ONE charge politicians
make is that ISI activities considerably increased in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka
after the Bharatiya Janata Party began winning elections from the states.
"The ISI became active after the BJP started to become a politically potent
force in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka," claims political analyst K V K Ramesh.
For over a decade now,
Ramesh adds, militant Hindu outfits like the Hindu Munnani have unleashed
a systematic campaign to promote communalism as a political mobilisation
strategy. In response, hardcore Muslim fundamentalist forces with
funds and assistance from Pakistan entered the fray.
The most dreaded among
these are the Al-Umma, founded by S A Basha to co-ordinate the different
Muslim terrorist groups in Tamil Nadu. The police say the Al-Umma
grew in Tamil Nadu under the ISI's patronage, to resist the BJP's growth
in the state.
The Justice Gokulakrishnan
Commission points out that the propaganda of Hindu and Muslim fundamentalists
was one of the primary reasons for the vicious communal atmosphere in Coimbatore
that ultimately led to the explosions. No wonder, then, that within
hours of the blasts, scores of militant Hindus set fire to shops and establishments
owned by Muslims in Coimbatore.
In fact, as in the case
of the 1993 Bombay serial blasts, those in Coimbatore were also the result
of a major communal crisis. In November-December 1997, 18 Muslim
youths died in police firing in Coimbatore. During the riots that
followed, the police are said to have aided the Hindu fundamentalists after
a Tamil Nadu constable, R Selvaraj, was stabbed to death allegedly by three
Muslim youths.
"The ISI has exploited
this fight between fundamentalist Hindu and Muslim groups in Tamil Nadu.
The sad thing is that the government failed to notice this," said Krishnan
Mahadevan, a member of the non-governmental organisation People's Union
for Civil Liberties.
A fact-finding report
from PUCL after the Coimbatore blasts said a section of the police, ganging
up with Hindu militants, went on a destructive rampage that left 18 dead,
several injured and a large number traumatised and alienated.
"Successive governments
have failed to differentiate between innocent Muslims and fundamentalists,"
says Mahadevan. He adds the ISI has grown in the state, thanks to
government inaction and communal politics.
Activists like Mahadevan
assert that politicians, instead of containing communal politics, have
encouraged it in Tamil Nadu. All these years, All India Anna Dravida
Munnetra Kazhagam general secretary J Jayalalitha has been accusing the
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government of anti-national activities: aiding
and abetting fundamentalists, particularly ISI terrorists.
"The ISI activities have
increased in the state because Chief Minister M Karunanidhi has wilfully
ignored the Pakistani agency in Tamil Nadu," alleges AIADMK member K V
Selvaraj. Top DMK leaders are "hobnobbing" with extremists, fundamentalists
and ISI militants, he adds.
Thus, with the ISI acting
as a spark to communal passions, the South is no longer peaceful.
