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After a few months of relative calm the terrorists have struck again, this time targeting Pink City Jaipur in a series of bomb blasts killing at least 60 Indians and injuring many more. These blasts come on the tenth anniversary of Pokhran nuclear tests and days before Pranab Mukherjee and Shiv Shankar Menon were due to visit Islamabad to hold discussions with the new Pakistani government. Also, it has been just around seven months since the dargah of Hazrat Moinuddin Chishti at Ajmer was bloodied with bomb blasts in October 2007 killing two and wounding dozens.
It seems that the blasts were specifically targeted towards causing casualities to Hanuman devotees on a Tuesday. To no one’s surprise, the terrorists are strategically targeting Hindu and Muslim devotees on religiously significant days to disrupt communal harmony.
* Sankat Mochan Temple, Varanasi March 7, 2006: Twin blasts in city left 28 dead, injured over 100. Blasts took place on Tuesday when the temple is packed with devotees.
* Jama Masjid, Delhi April 14, 2006: Low intensity blasts at India’s most famous mosque left 14 injured. First blast took place as the faithful prepared for Friday prayers.
* Noorani Masjid, Malegaon September 8, 2006: Blasts on Friday coincided with the Shab-e-Barat. First bomb went off outside Masjid. Blasts at Mushaira Chowk and graveyard too. The toll: 38 killed, over 200 injured.
* Mecca Masjid, Hyderabad May 18, 2007: 14 persons killed, more than 50 injured in blasts and subsequent police firing in adjoining areas. Blasts took place during Friday prayers.
* Ajmer Sharif Dargah October 11, 2007: Terror struck the revered Sufi shrine of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti as thousands were breaking their Ramzan fast, a day before the Friday prayers. The bomb inside the complex killed two persons and injured another 28. [Indian Express]
Meanwhile Rediff.com Message Boards, never a sane place for discussions even in normal circumstances, are brimming with anti-Muslim vile after this particular tragedy. This message by one Gaurang Patel stands out for its viciousness:
To make Muslims understand that terrorism can’t be tolerated lets do Gandhigiri against them in the following way:
i) Don’t give them jobs in your company if you have other Hindu person available for the job. Stop all public relations with them. Don’t speak to them unless absolutely necessary.
ii) If you are in partnership with Muslim then slowly by slowly scrap him of partnership or do business of your own or engage other partner which is Hindu or of other religion other than that of Muslim.
iii) Don’t buy any product from Muslims. If they come to purchase at your shop charge them one rupee more as our country is suffering more from some of their members indulging in terrorists attack indirectly by giving shelter to Pakistani Terrorists.
iv) from the beginning of your girl child make her understand that she could do any intercaste marriage other then Muslims.
v) The shepherd community of India should not sell their old cows & buffaloes to Muslims. Hindus should unite together & form some institutions to buy old cattle from shepherd community so that Muslims didn’t get meat to eat atleast from our side.
vi) Never wear any clothing ( shoes,belts, vollets etc etc) made from leadher.
If Muslims had taken path of terrorism then we must make them understand they we can also take actions in our own way….& i think this is the best practice
to show our feelings against them.
thx.
gaurang patel [Rediff.com]
On the positive side, many others are seeing the method in this madness and realizing that the aim of terrorists is to create divisions and mistrust between communities.
The government’s response has been inept and callous with Minister of State for Home Affairs mouthing inanities like “foreign hand”, “Centre stands like a chattan (rock)”.
One of the reasons the government is so ill-prepared to either prevent or solve such terrorist attacks is that there is no follow-up on the previous such attacks. Case in point: Mecca Masjid Blasts. Andhra Pradesh government constituted an inquiry commission under Justice Bhaskara Rao in June 2007 to submit its report on the incident within three months. It has been more than 11 months since then and we didn’t hear anything. I even shot an email to Y Rajashekar Reddy a few months back inquiring him about the status. Nothing.
Nitin Pai summarizes the situation well.
Here’s what it means: that we will just have to ‘live’ with this new threat to life. Or that we will take the battle to the terrorists. [The Acorn]
All this talk of India being the next super-power and demands for UN Security Council seat is mere hogwash if the state can’t protect its citizens who are killed by terrorists at will, at the time and place of their choosing.
Photo Courtesy: Times Of India
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A terrorist may have had a religion , before he / she became a terrorist but not after. No religion preaches hate and killing fellow citizens or human beings. Hatred towards anyone from a particular community is wrong. HATE THE SIN NOT THE SINNER. But the muslim community also needs to come out against these terrible acts along with hindu’s and demand a comprehensive enquiry and take the govt. to task, for failing in protecting life and property. Govt. is help less, cause it hasn’t got a clue, and opposition is taking cheap shots at the Govt. for petty gains. Any one born in India is an Indian. Hindu or muslim, or any other religion , we need to respect each other. But , certainly name and shame families found guilt of harbouring terrorists against the mother nation. Most often, as it turns it out, these families and these perpetrators are muslims. All these terrorits kill in the name of Islam and religion.
Between 01/10/2001 and14/05/2008, there had been 16 (sixteen) major bomb blasts in India.Further, between 07/03/ 2006 and 13/05/2008, (2 years 2months and 9 days),places of worship ( 2 of Hindus and 4 of Muslims) had been targetted!
Temples were attacked on Tuesdays and mosques on Fridays!
It is regrettable that in most of the cases the real culprits have not been apprehended yet! Even the Supreme court has declared that “anti-minority bias is hampering real probe!”
Who are these terrorists? Why our intelligence agencies are not in a position to spot them?Why earlier warnings are not heeded and subsequently the police gives preponderant importance to guess work?
It is high time the centre evolves a special commando groups to nab the terrorists at the earliest.
Citizens also should cooperate with the Govt. to eradicate this menace early.
It may be a good practice not to show the blast sites displaying the casualties and the wounded. It is disrespectful to the victims and can fan communal passions. Its time we at least hold on to our sense of dignity.
Life in India comes cheap and let’s not place our hopes on governments that have time and again indicated that it does not care. For the Congress, acting tough against terrorists implies they need to act tough against some of the rabid minority religious leaders. Congress feels that this will cut into its vote bank – the misguided and poor minority who is fed on a diet of the evil BJP. On the other hand blasts such as this help Hindutva forces raise the specter of Islamic terrorism. Jihadists gain both ways as they want to fan communal riots as well as want a weak government that cannot act.
Every one gains apart from the common man. Is it a matter of wonder that we have yet to solve so many of the previous blast cases?
Terrorism, riots, and mob hatred are not simply random events. They are not the result of a few imbalanced people. They are directly the result of the growth various ideological groups.
This blog has been willing to identify Hindu groups like the RSS as a “root cause” behind anti-Muslim riots, and perhaps they are correct in doing so. After all, even when there is nobody specifically from the RSS involved in a particular riot, it may have been their propoganda that helped incite or inflame it.
However, this blog continually goes soft on the Muslim and Islamic ideologies that lay the groundwork for terrorism and Muslim on non-Muslim violence; in fact, even taking them completely at their word when they say they are against it. It often publishes favorable articles on groups that laid the intellectual groundwork for all the violence in the name of Islam that we are seeing today in India.
I have yet to see a single posting by any blogger, here, that is critical of Islamic groups promoting an “Islamic state.” Deoband, Jamaat-E-Islami, Tabligue Jamaat – they created the ideologies, on the subcontinent, that resulted in the situation we have now. It may be that things have now spiraled out of even their control, but the fact is, they are the ideological fountainhead. Tabligue Jamaat was founded directly as a result of the threat from Arya Samaj, and just as there never would have been a VHP without Arya Samaj, there never would have been so many Jihadi groups without the growing appeal of Tabligue Jamaat’s severe, auster, and generally intolerant vision of Islam. Deoband does not direct terrorism, and may not approve but it is Deoband’s vision of India that the terrorists are trying to impose. It is Jamaat-E-Islami’s vision of the Islamic state that they want to achieve. It is Tablighue Jamaat’s so-called purification of a dirty society that they aim for.
If the RSS issued a statement or had a symposium on stopping riots, but at the same time did not change one iota of its idelogy, I seriously doubt you would feel comforted by this.
When Deoband, Jaamat-E-Islami, and their rebel child groups like Laskhar or Jaish, lose their influence and power, terror in South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) will start to fade. Until that time, it will keep getting worse; let’s not deceive ourselves, what we’ve seen this last few years may only be the beginning.
we should not blame..each other n just hold meetings ..but we shud come f/w ourselves to offer any kind of help..we can..by being cautious and by donating blood like jaipurites are doing now…hats off to them!
Chirag,
As a Hindu I am very unaware of what Tablighe jamaat, deoband etc. are or are not doing, but what if anything were they thru their ideology trying to cleanse Mecca Masjid, Malegaon Masjid and the Ajmer Dargah of?
regards,
Jai
Chirag has a good point. these people are humble in language but supremacist in belief and people simply ignore it because of bias.
What i’d like to see is some posters here challenge the religious organizations based on the principles of equality and individual rights and not on correct – incorrect interpretation of islam. we are here because we are indians – citizens of a secular state – not because we want to be ruled by the correct version of islam that will treat me well.
Another thing i’d like to point out in the attack on religious shrines is that the intencity has been different for different faiths. may be its two different groups.
Dear Sudie and Chirag,
Both of you raised some very valid points, I couldn’t agree more with you. Unless the preachers sit across the table the common man has little to do other than vent his carefully nourished hatred at the drop of a hat.
As for now lets pray and do our bit for the victims of this terrible blast. May peace be with all of them and their families!
Inam
I diagree. Preachers unfortunately do not practice. Hindu society in Indian at one point of time decided that “Pandits” are best left inside the table. Rational, secular laws need to define public life and then only can we get on with doing our individual pursuits. This can happen only through better education and finding other identities apart from religion. The sad state of affairs of the muslims in the country is because they lag behind in education – whatever be the reason. That’s why they tend to imagine discrimination even where there is an issue of competence. It is easy to fall prey to fear mongering in such situations.
On the other hand I think we need more leadership like Omar Abdullah – urbane, suave and articulate – who can command some credibility outside the community. Indian muslim leaderhip requires to come out of the “muslim” boundaries and represent themselves as national and secular leaders. This will only happen when the educated, middle class segments show greater involvement. Thats a problem with India as a whole that the middle class seems to have abandoned political life, but this will lead to our own peril.
And please for once, lets stop discussing terrorism and Islam. Why not speak about issues of development, education, literature, movies where there is a far higher presence of Indian muslims.
Omar Abdullah may be a digression but I cant help endorsing Sudie on this. Here’s his quote:
http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/may/15jk1.htm
“…so easy to say that we will lay down our lives to bring Kashmiri Pandits back to the Valley and I appreciate the sentiment as I am sure the Kashmiri Pandits reading it will. Pity that sentiment was missing when our mosques were being used to drive these people out…”
An active politician who needs K.M votes said this! This has surpassed Shabana Azmi “we should airdrop Shahi Imam in Kandahar”. Wow. I hope we can have more such forthright M. politicans, and that they can get elected from their target constituencies.
Maybe the Tablighi Jamaat etc. reduces the space for such politicans to operate within the M commmunity and this is part of what Chirag was driving at with his comment. I may have misread it or taken its scope too narrowly.
regards,
Jai
Jaiupur blast is an example of Terrorists getting bolder and bolder as they have known from past blasts that guilt haven’t been punished so far.
India is proving to be a soft target due to weak political system and lack of people in government who have vision and passion to work for future of India.
Strict terrot laws must be put in place so that suspected terrorists could be tried and punished quickly than usual never ending legal system which has been India’s greatest failure in providing timely and effective justice.
Democracy can’t survive under weak judicial system.
Let’s unite to bring together committed , passionate and fearless Indians to save this great nation.
Well i think chiraag is trying to blame everything on the islam and its teaching. i think this is the individual who interpret the teachings in a voilent ways and do just kind of non sense. I request you not to blame 13 crore muslims for doing blast when it is done by a handful of terrorist. i think this kind of issue arises when the government failed on all fronts to protect its citizens. its the failure at the end of government both stae as well as central government. why dont do frequent checking on highways and in trains in order to nap the bombing materials and the individual carrying out such inhuman and henious crimes. just blaming muslim and islam teaching wont be effective in order to stop such kind of crimes
Regards,
Aayan
Last year there were around 500 extra judicial killings by Police, interestingly:
1. All those who were killed before their trial to court were Muslims.
2. Not even a single Hindu or Sikh.
What the hell is that ?
Indian society is already derived towards violence, its only change its direction and magnitude.
Its ugly and sad episode once again, The innocent people have been targeted, In process children lost their father, wife lost husband , mother lost her children, family lost bread winner, lot of families orphaned and destroyed. Why ? No religion teaches this.
Is this a madness , result of the poisonous preaching of doctrine of death , or some sort of net work who are paid for ,to carry the such kind activities to defame Muslim. In politics and power everything is the possibility . Who ever involved in this crime must be punished.
Can one of my Muslim friends comment on what Koran says about a non Muslim going to heaven? Is it possible to go to heaven or be one with God without following Islam?
If the answer is NO then obviously we will not agree with Koran as it holds people who do not believe in the prophets teachings as inferior.
AND if the answer is YES, then what’s all the fuss about? Why don’t Muslim countries allow other religious practices in their country? Why do Muslims in India will never go to a temple (when Hindus don’t mind worshipping at HajiAli dargha OR any of the Churches. I myself have been to HajiAli many times). Why do Muslims consider there’s is the only right way and everything else is myth.
Why do Muslims always try to justify any terrorist attack as a reaction rather then an action ? In that case isn’t Hindu anger also justified considering how they suffered for last thousand years and still are?
I have many Muslim friends (from India and Pakistan) and have posed this question to them aswell and have not gotten a valid response.
And what exactly is the religion of the Naxals taken care of by the police? Shintoism?
Aayan,
I am not blaming every form of Islam or all of Islam. Very specifically, in the late 1800s, and early 1900s, perhaps as a result of the fall of Muslim power on the subcontinent, or perhaps in response to a growing Hindu revivalist movement, a severe, fundamentalist form of Islam began to take root. Organizations and Institutions like Tablighe Jamaat, and later, Jaamat-E-Islami, and the Deoband Semininary, began to grow. The ideologies they hatched then have created most of the violence, in the name of Islam, that we have all been subjected to for decades on end now.
Much of that violence has been against Hindus – the ethnic cleansing of Kashmir, Pakistan and Bangladesh was the result of these ideologies – but a great many Muslims have also sufferred, and are also suffering, as a result of their views, so I hope that Indian Muslims will start to wake up to this (and the Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims, too, for that matter, because our borders are hardly sealed).
The mushrooming of terrorist groups that we see now are the natural offspring of the ideologies these people have been preaching for more than a century now, and it is only getting worse, and their vision, practice, and view of Islam is now the dominant one on the subcontinent. Therefore, terrorism in the name of Islam will only continue to get worse, in India. These are the groups and the ideologies that have changed the dynamics of our culture; they are the ones that destroyed our composite culture, and they deserve censure for it. Instead, they seem to get nothing but praise for it, for the “social work” they do. Fundamentalist Hindus and Fundamentist Christians also do a tremendous amount of “social work,” but that does not excuse them from the larger, societal problems they create, and the same applies to fundamentalist interpretations of Islam.
I understand why sometimes, a moderate Muslim might feel, hey Jaamat-E-Islami is OK, these guys are on my side, and I and my religion need some protection, too. I understand this because many Hindus, including myself, can at times have a similar type of view of the RSS – I’m not really one of them, but perhaps it’s not so bad that they’re around; we need someone to stand up for us. Plus, they do charity, right? And if I oppose them, they have ways to make me pay.
But things are spinning out of control now. I’m starting to think it’s time for us all to wake up to this, and reclaim our India. And while better security, etc, is abosolutely necessary for that, in the end, this violence was created by ideas, and can only be defeated by other, more noble ideas.
I believe in one religion i.e humanity. Everyone knows that there is one GOD and we people call him by different names ALLAH, BHAGWAN, WAHE GURU, GOD etc. and we know that he is everywhere and he knows everything. He will never spare anyone who kills fellow human being in his name. I dont agree with those muslims who think that only Islam is the way of reaching GOD, that only creates hatred for other people. I know that majority of muslims in India love INDIA and there is very few who dont have that view, and I feel it is responsibility of these majority to make these few understand . Government is also very weak,as it can not protect its own citizens. We need some strict laws to tackle these terrorist acts and our leaders should rise above petty vote bank politics
Chirag,
This article touches on Tablighi Jamaat and also talks abt Deobandis:
http://indianmuslims.in/introduction-to-islam-in-contemporary-india/
and if this is how it actually is on the ground, is no cause for worry:
“…Now, the Tablighi movement offers a very unique version of Islam. It basically combines the immense importance of tawhid (oneness of God) with the Sufi concept of connecting to God at an individual level. Scholars like Yoginder Sikand have argued this in detail. For Tablighi Jamaat adherents, namaaz is but a means to connect to God (pray as if you are talking to Him) and also their overwhelming emphasis on islaah-e-nafs (cleansing of soul). Many of their leaders abhor the term Tablighi Jamaat as it gives an impression that they are preaching to others whereas the focus is in fact on one’s own self. The movement has borrowed heavily from the practices of traditional Sufism like individual azkaar (recitation of God’s name) and sometimes under the tutelage of a Sheikh (teacher). …”
That doesnt quite square with:
“… the growing appeal of Tabligue Jamaat’s severe, auster, and generally intolerant vision of Islam….”
though it could have gotten to that somehow from where it started out, I guess. Maybe RSS also has noble and elevating goals in its charter. I kind of remembered something from this article when I launched the first comment. But I know NIL abt this and Mohib and the others are ignoring your comments.
So we will likely not have any meaningful discussion on this and whether there is any divergence from stated goal to situation on the ground, or some error or overstatement on both sides, etc.
regards,
Jai
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