Hyderbad bombings:a national tragedy

The two bombing incidents of May 18, 2007 and August 25, 2007 in Hyderabad show the fury with which the city has been subjected to suffering. In the case of the Mecca mosque the young boy lying on his side with left hand folded under head seems to be sleeping innocently except the gory hole in the head and pool of blood under head instead of a pillow. The young well dressed gentleman lying between the rows of plastic chairs in Lumbini amusement park is seemingly oversleeping after having slid from the chair when everyone left the stadium except the blood soaked debris. Death and destruction is common to both. What is not common is the violent protest against the police of the first incident leading to police firing and more casualties. Moreover the first attack was specifically clear in targeting a community exclusively on the basis of religion. Friday mid day prayer was more tempting time than other times of prayer on the same or other days of the week. But in the second the target is obviously not of the same clear focus. A chat bhandar or eatery and an amusement park are familiar places for all communities. This is all the more convincing since that Saturday was not a religious festival day. Saturday evening and night are also more relaxed times for educated and employed to go out and eat and enjoy with family. The weekend and Friday midday prayer are occasions of crowding and rush time.

However a look at the dead reveals that the recent bombing is sweeping in target. It is more or less all-India in its comprehension. Could that be a signal? From Saki Naka Mumbai to Tamil Nadu in the south, Haryana in the north and Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand in the east, to Rajkot in the north west, you have the whole country metaphorically bombed. This must lead to a resurgence of nationalist feeling of the pre independent India of Gandhi, Nehru and Azad rather than of today that is exclusionary, polarizing, and self seeking. There is a cacophony and chorus of responses and analyses that hardly contribute to strength and unity.

The suffering of the mother of Baja Srilekha (18) for the death of her daughter or grief etched contours of the face of the father of Irshad Ahmed Abdul Gani (19) is Indian. This calls for a nationalist response that among other things sets the house in order first and then helps us to know where we have come and why and the remedy.

Given this commonality as well as disparity of situation what could be the common or otherwise motive, hidden agenda and who the perpetrators of the heinous crime?

There is hardly any terror strike in India which does not come with the immediate blame on the ISI in tandem. It is has become so quotidian that the foreign spokesperson of a neighbouring country has acquired the chic in asking us to investigate and not speculate! And another neighbour has the cheek to show boredom of denying over and over again the same accusation from our side. Such denials of every accusation have changed into standard formal automatic responses. Of course, on both the sides.

Next we need to introspect about formulating what could be the aim of the perpetrators. Equally true is ubiquity of the same aim of explosion: dividing the people on communal lines. However we have reached a point when religion must cease to make us look at the ghastly tragedy taking place around us from this angle. If at all there are religious factors we must take them purely in terms of rationality and humanity. If it is political Islam it is just realpolitik and not Islam. If it is Hindutuva then it is not Hinduism. In the tragedy of Hyderabad as well as around the country there have been practically no communal riots as an outcome of the explosions. Sometimes protesters have damaged shops and suspected people of a community. But by and large there has been no communal riot or carnage following on the heels of terror strikes. Therefore there is need to not upfront the communal divide as the primary motivating factor. Other reasons must be probed. India has 10 % growth rate and the US is wooing it for reasons not fully spelled including as a checkmate against China. An unknown factor can come up.

Terror itself does not discriminate its victims, between Irshad Ahmed Abdul Gani from Saki naka of Mumbai or Sachin Dattatrya Bhinor from Ahmednager.

The victims were from diverse fields of disciplines with which their youthful hearts were filled to make a name in the world and serve the country. Among them were the seven students from Mahrashtra, several of them from Nashik itself and three professors. A boy called Milind Mandage was the son of a school teacher from Pimpri Gawali village in Parner in Maharashtra and wanted to sail in the world on ambition powered by mathematics in which he excelled. Sujeet Kumar Jha (19) from Laheriasarai in Bihar’s Darbhanga was pursuing his ambition in electronics which his father supported from a loan. There were 18 engineers from Jabalpur, Kota and Bhopal sent to Hyderabad. From this group M K Jain and Ibrahim Khan died in the park. Both were under training in driving train engines using microprocessor-based speedometers for diesel locomotives. Another victim was from Orissa’s Berhampur Dr K V Ananda Rao who was pursuing super-specialisation in medical oncology at the NIMS in Hyderabad. Irshad was a student of engineering and was hopeful of doing MBA to rise in the world. Kiran Choudhary is of course the young gentleman man we have pictured in the first paragraph as oversleeping. He was also an engineer; a Maharashtrian from Kalyan. Saurabh Kumar of Samsatipur in Bihar was studying computer science in Symbiosis of Poona. Vallabh Fefar was a dealer in mattresses and was prospering in business when the mattress company sent him on Hyderbad tour as incentive. He took his family with him. He died and his son seriously injured. He was from Rajkot, Gujarat. Terrorism could not have been so selective in its target!

While the victims were from all the corners of the country, the perpetrators though not identified as yet remain a miniscule non representative entity. Even so the make of the bombs of May and August show clear differences. That may even help in identification, mode of assembly, motive and the brain behind. At the face of it we may think of
Harkat-ul-Jehadi Islami (HuJI) or the JeM but the difficulty is to prove that Abdul Sahil Mohammad based in Karachi or Hamza could use RDX in the mosque and then shift to ordinary Neogel 90 and ammonium nitrate manufactured in Nagpur. Such far fetched argument that the people hang posters of Musharraf and Osama bin Laden in their houses in Hyderbad therefore they are suspect is ridiculous. Because between these two men stands the Lal masjid. Or should we do Sherlock Holmes detection of the portrait of martyred imam of the red mosque taking the place of Musharraf? (Don’t be surprised by the syllogism, it is from an additional secretary of the central government who was also with the RAW, the Kaoboy.) Howsoever ridiculous any argument, it must also be examined. Even the vicinity of Hyderabad to Nanded where crackers exploded worse than bombs should not be far fetched.

Events have a strange way of unfolding and much stranger way of being reported. On February 27, 1933 the German paratroopers under Nazi leader Herman Goring had helped a man from Holland Marinus van der Lubbe burn the Reichstag (the German parliament). Adolf Hitler became angry and went to the office of the newspaper Volkischer Beobachter and worked the whole night with editor Goebbels They concocted a story blaming the communists. As a result 4000 communists lost their lives. What followed was the very holocaust. We in India have had enough of our own and must establish the truth to save the nation.