Author: Swapan Dasgupta
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: September 21, 2008
Consider the social environment of Friday
afternoon's raid that culminated in bloodshed. It was pretty apparent that
the terrorists chose this part of Jamia Nagar as a safe hideout because it
offered two layers of protection: The logistical security of an over-congested
locality and, equally important, community protection. The sight of a police
force conducting a major anti-terrorist operation while being abused by a
local community chanting religious war cries is disturbing. Though the organised
obstruction of counter-terrorism operations has become a feature of Hyderabad,
its spread to Delhi has ominous implications.
It has become drearily predictable for every
terrorist or terrorist facilitator to use the political clout of a community
as an additional protective cover. On Friday, the slain Mohammed Atif was
given generous character certificates by friends and neighbours. In his native
Azamgarh, a media team was held hostage by angry villagers who insisted that
the Indian Establishment was out to vilify educated Muslims. A few days back,
the mother of Abdus Subhan Qureshi alias Tauqeer, said to be the Master Terrorist,
berated the media and the police for painting her son as India's Osama bin
Laden. Her Press conference was organised by organisations such as the Muslim
Personal Law Board and those who claim to control the Muslim mind (and, by
implication, their voting behaviour). In 2006, it was a similar outcry from
Muslim organisations that led to the State Government more or less abandoning
the search for those responsible for the train blasts that killed 209 people
on July 11 that year. Among those who got away as a result was the same Tauqeer.
This contrived victimhood is pernicious and
plays into the hands of those who feed on the self-serving theory that Muslims
can expect no justice in "Hindu" India. It enables Islamist radicals
to link the Indian experience with other Muslim battles against an unjust
world and posit an alternative centred on the fantasies of a Nizam-e-Mustafa.
The Indian Mujahideen emails testify to the garbage that passes for nutritious
thought in a ghetto built on theological certitudes. The weirdos who believe
that 9/11 was a Jewish conspiracy to target Muslims are capable of committing
themselves to the transformation of India into a Dar-ul-Islam. Bad ideas,
it would seem, have a remarkable habit of taking hold of "educated"
minds.
This is not to suggest that the police forces
have an exemplary record. There is certainly something peculiar about the
posthumous transformation of Atif from just another suspect who needed to
be questioned into the "mastermind" of all the blasts, thereby overshadowing
the elusive Tauqeer. It is understandable that there is a lot of public and
political pressure on the Government and the Union Home Minister to "crack"
the Delhi blasts case. However, is it necessary to prey on the willingness
of crime reporters to swallow every police handout uncritically? More important,
is the Centre playing a game of one-upmanship with the Gujarat Government
and trying to tell Narendra Modi that what you can do in 25 days we can do
in just six? Public faith in the UPA's ability to handle internal security
isn't enhanced by the police making claims that may become impossible to substantiate?
Nor do the death of the alleged mastermind and the arrest of two accomplices
convince people that there is more to Shivraj Patil than an elaborate wardrobe.
India faces a serious threat that cannot be
handled with the same casualness that was evident in the Arushi murder case.
With growing evidence that the SIMI is still active and has a measure of vocal
support in Muslim ghettos, it has become necessary to add a social and political
dimension to counter-terrorism. If the community support that manifested itself
in Jamia Nagar last Friday afternoon persists, the danger of stealth bombers
being replaced by a supply of suicide bombers becomes very real.
These are issues that the Muslim community
and its leadership can no longer run away from. If younger sons of small-time
Samajwadi Party politicians have ended up as bomb planters, it implies that
the Muslim elders are losing their grip on the younger hotheads in the community.
If madarsa teachers like the notorious Abu Basher and small-time maulvis like
Waliullah Qazmi (convicted of the Varanasi blasts) end up as the new mujahideen,
it obviously means that there is something about Deoband's anti-terrorism
pledges that has escaped the eye. Banking on Mulayam Singh Yadav, Amar Singh,
Lalu Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan to defend the indefensible will work up to
a point but will become useless if an alternative common sense takes over
the Indian mind.
If Muslim community leaders are serious about
their proclamation that Islam is a religion of peace, they will have to walk
the talk. India still awaits the unambiguous theological denunciation of not
merely terrorism but specific terrorist groups like SIMI, HUJI, JEM and IM
and specific terrorists such as the convicted Varanasi bomber and the man
on death row who conspired to attack the Indian Parliament. Anything else
is tantamount to short-changing India.
