SIMI and the Delusion of Khilafat

The modus operandi in blaming SIMI is catching an ordinary Muslim for a petty offence like breach of traffic regulation. Then the regular questioning and demand for bribe and a queer turn to blaming the victim for what he could not defend as he is already overawed by the situation of landing in the hands of the police. This surely fits in the arrest of Nawaz Sheikh from Kundapur north Karnataka. He had gone to marriage of a relative but was caught for breaking traffic regulation. The cop demanded money, 500 rupees. He couldn’t give it. Taken into custody and his house searched is what happened next. Among the things taken away from the house search: a laptop, CDs, etc. There was not even a remote connection between Sheikh and terror. The police somehow believe that every electronic savvy Muslim has something to do with terror. So they accused him to be involved in Bangalore blasts of July 25 2008. And the vibes that he in Karnataka of post blasts must belong to SIMI. This is carried in a report in an Urdu paper Aalmi Sahara. The report ends with the need to track such arrests and keep an eye as the police are highly prejudiced against the Muslims. The paper carries an editorial on SIMI where the writer says that there is a strategy of repeating a lie so many times that people come to believe in it, nay even those who know SIMI from close proximity also begin to suspect it.

There is nothing here that reveals any jubilation over the temporary lifting of the ban on SIMI by the high court in Delhi and there is no excoriation of either the government or the country itself. There is an air of caution rather. Therefore, it is time to obviate the generalization that the Urdu press does this or that. In fact if the English national dailies allow space, which of course, they do not, for Muslims, there would be a deluge of protest against canards so easily mouth and bandied these days. Among what they would write would be how the Police Commissioner PC Pandey of Ahemdabad in 2002 was in touch with Hindutva leaders engaged in the post Godhra violence against the Muslims. Not only that he even ordered his cops to disperse the dead bodies of hapless Muslims all over the city so that it should not appear that so many of them were killed at Nardoa Patia. DGP B.K Sreekumar had given a CD containing all the phone calls made to police during the massacre. But what the callers and their contacts talked is not available; the mobile company has purportedly destroyed that vital evidence.

The same PC Pandey, now DGP, called a press conference on August 16, 2008 and said that the police have solved the case of the serial bomb blasts of July 26 2008 in Ahmedabad. Mufti Bashir Islahi and his accomplices used mobile phones which only received calls from public booths till July 26 and then fell silent. Unless what actually transpired between the callers and the supposed mastermind Islahi is established by circumstantial proof and hard evidence this would fall into the pattern of DGP Pasricha’s press conference in Mumbai where he said the police had cracked the serial bomb blasts of September 8 2006 in Malegaon. In both the cases the accused are said to be members of SIMI.

Although the English national dailies carried the report on Pandy and Pasrisha there is no perceptible change in the manner of the investigative agencies as to how they go about hunting SIMI. But there is a difference. The English dailies are repeating the facts and figures of SIMI ad absurdum while Urdu papers are circumspect. This cannot be called shielding SIMI as no hard evidence is forthcoming except by way of confession under duress. But blaming the Urdu press in the same breath as SIMI is driving a wedge that has potential to become a gulf between sections of population.

Excesses committed in the name of fighting terror include the witch hunt going on now in the name of SIMI. Whoever of that organization is guilty of crime should no doubt be punished severely. The Urdu press also avers that. But the record so far does not support that qua terror is at the heart of the matter with the organization. As to establishing Islamic dispensation known otherwise as khilafat is a fool’s paradise in which no ordinary Muslim would like to live. However, there are signs that things might change for the better. On August 16 2008 the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh assured the All India Milli Council that he would address the issue soon. Addressing the issue in a right perspective would include recognizing the ring of truth in the letters written by the accused languishing in jails. Many of them (though not each one of them) are innocent. Such a one is Noorul Hoda Samsouz Zoha currently lodged in Arthur road prison of Mumbai. His letter translated from Urdu in The Milli Gazette ( August 1-15 2008) would surely awaken the conscience of the nation as to how the youths of this great democratic country are perishing because of having born to one faith rather than to the other.

How much could the PM address? He also expressed his concern much earlier to the Home Secretary of Maharashtra when the police did not probe the Nanded blasts which were linked to the blasts at mosques in Marathwada as well as Malegaon. The Urdu press unlike that of English or any regional language is sensitive to what happens that bears on the community. For example Inquilab headline of August 3, 2008 was Nanded bomb dhamaka mulzim ko clean chit diye jaane par jasn ka mahol kyon? But that news item was not covered by non Urdu print media.

The intelligence agencies, and the mother of them is IB, have always played into the hands of the ruling echelon for a political cause of which they have no locus standi per se as intelligence gathering organization. Once upon a time IB Chief BN Mallik played havoc from which we have still not recovered in Kashmir. Prime Minister Nehru used him and his agency through him for a political cause. He wanted to put Sheikh Abdullah in prison that would last almost eleven years from 1953. The game plan was that the intelligence agency would accuse Abdullah of going to Tanmarg to a Pakistan contact man and take Jammu and Kashmir into Pakistan. This was absolutely rubbish. IB chief prepared the in-put in which he remarked that the Sheikh suddenly decided to go to Tanmarg when actually the leader from the valley had well advertised his visit to Tanmarg weeks ahead of it. Moreover he was arrested at Gulmarg. Thus was the Sheikh betrayed by his friend Nehru. Not only the intelligence agency, Nehru used even the army to bring about his political coup as he passed word through Brigadier BM Kaul to the military commander of Srignager General Atal that there should be no problem cropping up in the event of the arrest of Abdullah. It was made to appear a local affair nothing to do with the centre.

The unfounded blame on Abdullah of perfidy is paralleled by the blame on SIMI, namely that with its supposed link to ISI it is hell bent on creating an international Islamic order or khilafat. But the crux of the matter is that the Muslims of India are better informed than what is thought of them. They would scoff at such an eventuality in any organization’s manifesto. You can build the character of youth, which is okay in the Constitutional frame of the country. We all have a place under the umbrella of the republic. But taking this humongous republic of India into Pakistan!!! Jumping into the fire from the frying pan!!!