The merchants of darkness have stuck yet again. They have targeted the city of Hyderabad again within three months of the blasts at Makkah Masjid.
At least 34 people have been killed in two blasts, minutes apart, in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, officials say.
One explosion rocked an amusement park, killing at least nine people, while another blast hit a popular eating place miles away.
Some 50 people were injured in the incidents, in Andhra Pradesh state. [BBC News]
Meanwhile, the Congress government led by Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, apparently caught unaware, was left mouthing platitudes.
Chief Minister YSR Reddy after visiting Lumbini Park said the blasts were an act of terror. “I request everyone to maintain calm. This is definitely an act of terror,” he said.
The blasts “appear to be the handy work of anti-national elements. Our police is fully alert and the culprits shall be brought to book at the earliest,” he said. [IBN Live]
Indians would like to know who are these anti-national elements? Did the government knew about them? Does the government knows about them now? Was anything done to prevent this attack? Is the lack of progress in persecuting the culprits of previous blasts a reason why the terrorists have stuck again? Indians deserve to know answers to these questions.
During these 21 months we have been writing at this blog, major blasts have occurred at Mumbai, Samjhauta Express, Malegaon, Hyderabad and Varanasi. Not even one of them have been solved conclusively. Mirza Faisal writing at this blog sometime ago bemoans:
The government needs to answer that why till date there has been no solution to the various terrorist attacks. Why is it that while there have been one attack after the other throughout the country there has been no conclusion to any of these terror acts? While at the social level India has responded in an excellent way without a single act of violence as a response to these terrorists’ acts the government has somehow failed. [Indian Muslims]
The extreme ineptitude of the government in solving these cases gives ammunition to some that somehow the members of Indian Muslim community are complicit in these acts and the government is deliberately going slow on the investigations. Shekhar Gupta, a well-respected columnist and editor of Indian Express, wrote some months back:
While profiling of any community is bad, it should equally be imprudent to profile one for being a permanent victim. In the business of democratic, secular, one-law-for-all system of governance, all citizens and communities must be equal and innocent unless proven otherwise. Or let me put it even more simply: just because you cannot simply presume a person to be a terrorist because he belongs to a particular community, you cannot presume a suspect to be innocent just because he happens to come from ‘a’ particular community. [Indian Express]
The fact that there were equally gruesome acts of terror during the previous NDA government and the fact that none of them have been solved either is lost on the critics. Why wouldn’t the NDA government pursue the cases aggesively and punish the guilty? Already the BJP is calling these blasts a failure of UPA. Their own record in tackling terror is there for everyone to see. This is not the time to play politics. Indians need honest answers and they need them now.
We can’t afford to live in the shadow of fear.
Anis, what matters is whatever tradition or part of culture works for a person. For someone, it could be saying “ji” to all elders, for others, it could be not automatically giving respect to all elders. One custom is not superior over the other – it’s simply a matter of what works. All cultures change. I have seen lots of good things in the Western culture and I’ve seen many negatives in Indian culture. The key is to combine the best of the two. Rejecting everything Western because it is Western is something I would not condone.
Girish, Sharique, Mohib,
It is true that I have, obviously, not taken a sampling of all Indian Muslims, and determined their political views. I can only base my viewpoint on my personal experience, which is that educated, fairly affluent Indian Muslims almost inevitably support and justify the creation of Islamic states throughout the Muslim world. Several comments seem to indicate that this is an opinion specific to the educated middle and upper classes, not rooted in India; and that the poorer lot, which comprises most of Indian Muslims, may have a different view on this. Perhaps this is true, I cannot comment on this because I have not had any serious interaction with the poorer sections of Indian Muslims, particularly not any political or religious discussion of any sort.
But I would note that political Islam is the rising force within the Muslim world today, and that Indian Muslims are part of the Islamic world, not something unique or isolated within it. Political Islam has marginalized and persecuted non-Muslims in Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and, increasingly, Indonesia, and, within non-Muslim countries, has created havoc in Kashmir, South Thailand, and the South Phillipines. Imagine Gujurat, but spread over a much wider geographic area, and a greater level of persecution. And this is only within India’s immediate neighborhood, not even mentioning the more global situation.
One would have to be quite blind not to be concerned that Muslim-majority areas will not be transformed into places where those who do not believe will find themselves out of luck. Given time, these things can happen, in fact, have happened in other parts of the world, and, in fact, in other parts of what used to be India.
1947 should have ended it. Instead, India is once again caught in its historical struggle/process of Islamic conquest. We should have known better, we should have stopped this before it could start again. I don’t blame Muslims for this fact, because Islam is Islam, it has its own beauty, which I respect, but I also view it as an imperialistic and expansive force. To be clear, I know that there are other such forces in the world, too, like Zionism, and others. And this does not make me hate – in fact I like Jewish people, just as I like Muslims; but still, I understand that certain ideologies can have devastating consequences for those who find themselves on the wrong side of the tracks.
Girish, I’m looking forward to your response when you get a chance. I feel we have the same general information, and type of outlook; and surely personal experience cannot explain the entire difference in our opinions on this. What is that you see, that reassures you, that I’m not seeing? To me, in 50 years, I see Northeast India, and perhaps other parts, becoming Bangladesh – and that doesn’t mean all Bengali-speakers- that means an Islamic state within which non-Muslims have been marginalized and persecuted out of existence. Terror is a tool that will hasten the process, and that’s what we’re seeing now.
Mohib,
I guess overall the point I would make is that I think that nation-states and political entities are temporary and shifting. Other cultural trends tend to be more long-lasting. And I guess that’s why these trends have me more worried then some others here, and why I’ve spent some time posting about trends in places like Bangladesh or Pakistan. It is not a matter of holding Indian Muslims “responsible” for what happens in Bangladesh or Saudi Arabia or other parts of the Muslim world. These are matters of relevance to India, Islam, and terrorism, in my opinion, and in that context that I raise the discussion.
Look at the period following the British colonization of India, particularly in the late 1800s, and also specifically after 1906, when the British began delineating Indians very specifically along religious lines. Muslims responded to a decline in power, their minority status, and Western influence and domination, by becoming less ‘Indianized’, and more religiously strident – many of them essentially abandoning the composite Indo-Persian Islam for a more austere form of the religion. Remember that one of the biggest boosts for the Wahabbism that everyone complains about came from within India itself. And this process of cultural change (or “hardening”) coincided with a demographic jump in the number of Muslims (maybe on this last one – numbers back then were probably less precise).
Nationalism did not suffice to paper over the differences before, and partition and its aftermath have been a disaster. Of course, India is stronger now, and no longer colonized, and that’s a positive, so maybe things will, hopefully, turn out different this time, and regardless of demographic numbers, people’s rights and freedoms would be protected. But with the Indian state showing itself a real softie when it comes to security, law and order, that’s not a given.
As far as why I think that the “majority” of Indian Muslims support the role of Islam as an official religion, and the creation of an “Islamic” state, that opinion is based on my conversations with Indian Muslims. It’s not some extensive scientific survey, actually probably just based on 15-20 people or so, I admit that in context, that is a very small number. Most of them argue for secular India, but at the same time defend the right of Muslim-majority lands to be officially Islamic. I find it extremely hypocritical of them, and I interpret this to mean that for them, secularism is just a waiting game, even if otherwise they seem decent folks. Even on this specifically Indian Muslim blog, I’d estimate it’s been 50-50 with regards to a real committment to a secular order. Some folks have the attitude, don’t discriminate against me; but I’ll justify those who discriminate against you.