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Inside India: Graver than the news

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Nov 27, 2008

My brave friend Javed Anand is secretary-general of the Mumbai-based Muslims for Secular Democracy. Over the past year, he and I have been strategizing about how to spread the message of religious reform throughout India. When I say “religious reform,” I’m not speaking strictly of Islam. Hindu militants are wreaking havoc, too. Javed and his Hindu wife Teesta Setalvad, a noted human rights activist, ardently challenge fundamentalists on both sides.

Recently, though, Javed has been sending me fewer emails. On November 14, I finally received the message below. Goes to show that yesterday’s terrorist attacks aren’t exactly new, even if they’re news.

Dear Irshad,

Here’s a brief dateline from India that might partly explain what’s kept me from responding properly to you in the last two months or so:

Jan 1, 08: Terrorist attack in UP state kills 7.

Feb 28, 08: Bomb blasts inside Hindu right-wing RSS office and a bus stand in Tenkasi, Tamil Nadu. RSS blames Muslims, but the police suspect the RSS itself responsible for both.

May 13, 08: 80 persons are killed in serial bomb blasts in Jaipur city, Rajasthan.

June 4, 08: 7 persons injured in a bomb blast in Thane city, adjacent to Mumbai.

July 25, 08: Eight low intensity bombs explode in Bangalore city, Karnataka. One person is killed.

July 26, 08: 17 bomb blasts in Ahmedabad city (Gujarat) that kills 53 and injures many more. An even larger number of bombs placed throughout Surat city (Gujarat) fail to blast and are defused.

Aug 28, 08: Two Bajrang Dal activists (Hindu extremist outfit) killed in an accidental blast in one of their homes.

Sept 13, 08: Five blasts in Delhi kill 24 persons.

Sept 27, 08: A single blast in Delhi kills 3 persons.

Sept 29, 08: 3 persons killed and several injured in bomb blasts in a Muslim locality in Malegaon in Maharashtra. On the same day, a single blast in Modasa, Gujara kills 2 persons.

Oct 14, 08: 7 persons injured in bomb blasts in Kanpur, in Upstate.

Oct 30, 08: Serial bomb blasts across several cities of Assam, within minutes of each other, kills 67.

If that is not bad enough, for five weeks running, Christians were targeted once again in the states of Orissa, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, prompting international outrage and statements of concern from the Pope, Archbishop of Canterbury and the French President (during his meeting with the Indian Prime Minister, among others).

In this carnival of violence, a nun (sworn to life-long celibacy) was raped while the police watched, churches were desecrated or destroyed, over 40 persons killed. In Orissa at one point, over 50,000 Christians fled their homes to seek shelter in refugee camps.

In-between, 8 members of a Muslim family, including a 3-year-old child, were burnt alive in Adilabad, Andhra Pradesh, not to mention communal violence targeting Muslims in five different parts of Maharashtra during the year.

In the midst of all this, a breakaway group of the Hindu right-wing Shiv Sena in Maharashtra went on a rampage targeting north Indians living and working in the state. Tens of thousands of north Indians fled the cities in Maharashtra in fear of their lives. Even as I write this message, ministers from north India and Maharashta in the Union government are at daggers drawn, speaking up for their respective constituencies. The PM does not quite know what to do.

Until the Thane and Malegaon blast on Sept 29, it was widely assumed by the investigation agencies and the media that Muslim extremists within India, with support from terrorist outfits in Pakistan and Bangladesh, were behind all the targeting of innocents.

But in the last few months, investigations by the anti-terrorism squad (ATS) of the Maharashtra police have unearthed the existence of “Hindu bombs” and “Hindu terrorists.” In the last two weeks, the country has been agog as the ATS officials have gone around arresting serving and retired military men, along with a Hindu god-man (sadhu) and a god-woman (sadhvi), for their role in the Malegaon, Thane and other blast incidents in Maharashtra.

In fact, there is convincing evidence of extremist Hindu outfits being involved in terrorist acts since 2003. The investigating agencies are now working backwards and nobody is sure of whether it was a Muslim or a Hindu extremist group in this or that bomb blast in different parts of the country during 2008, as also in earlier years.

The only thing that is certain for now is that we have both brands of terror groups in India today: Muslim and Hindu. Talk of democracy, tolerance, rule of law!

May Javed and his family stay safe. We need them more than ever.