Black September of Malegaon

Modasa (Gujarat) and Malegaon (Maharashtra) blasts are first interstate simultaneous terrorist attacks coming as they did at 9.30 p.m. on Monday September 29, 2008 when Muslim crowds were milling out of the nearby mosques and by lanes for shopping and for refreshment. There is more to it than meets the eye. Both the towns have sizable concentration of Muslims. Modasa has the dubious distinction of being a safe haven for the banned SIMI activists and the blast in Malegaon took place in the leeward of the first floor SIMI office in Bhiku chowk adjoining the sprawling Noorani mosque. The epicenters were the nonvegeterian eateries bristling with usual fasting crowds. The timing was also like what happened two years back in Malegaon, floodgate of worshippers pouring into the lanes and streets after special prayers.

But Malegaon’s cup of misery and painful suffering has already been brimming. The town has a lacerating tryst with September. This September was the second anniversary of the first ever bomb blasts. Now the town would be marred by two anniversaries every year henceforward. The much-flaunted emporium known as the Manchester of India is reeling under the scourge of bombings. The wounds of the September 8, 2006 were not healed when another bloodbath had a fiery visitation. [Is it a reminder or reprisal of the Indian Mujahideen email?]

First report put out by the inefficient police had it that literal fire was caused by a gas cylinder blast. Certainly a ploy to downplay the gravity of the situation. However, it backfired as the inferno set off by low intensity bomb sparked off protest by the incensed mob that could not brook the presence of police on the scene. There is, in fact, a police chowki duly staffed with regular police and along with special reservists hardly fifty feet away from the blast spot.

Most eerie is the coincidence of timing that obviates the immediacy of the police in space. In 2006 the bombs exploded puzzlingly sans police on the scene but this time their presence with their vehicle and chowki was a chilly reminder of the state power. What more could be the visible symbol of the ineffectiveness of the government organ?

Proverbially a communally sensitive town, the people of Malegaon eye the police with suspicion and so the resultant clashes between 20, 000-strong humanity with the men in uniform. The obvious cause of anger was the negligence of the police to take notice of an abandoned motor cycle, Passion Hero Honda, just under the eyes of the cops in the chowki. Five policemen including Viresh Prabhu under training superintendent of police were injured in the melee.

Despite claim to the contrary it is sending shivers of apprehension down the spinal cord that there is the muted but irrepressible fear of communally syllogized retaliation. In Modesa the Pulsar Hero Honda had license plate number 786, in Malegaon it was Passion Hero Honda. In both the places the targets were exclusively people from one community. Was September 8, 2006 a retaliation of Mumbai July 11, 2006? Is September 29, 2008 in tandem with Ahemdabad August 26 2008 and Delhi September 13, 2008 and Mehrauli September 27?

India's home secretary, VK Duggal had said that the motivation behind the shabebarat explosion was to sow the seeds of communal disharmony. Past subebarat we are now in Ramadan and on the eve of the Ed. Can we say the same now? Or have gone far past that and cannot return?

So sensitive and sensitizing is Malegaon that hours later Thane saw a communal riot in which one person lost his life and fifty were injured though obviously due to local causes over Navratri celebrtion. Back home in the town there is electricity without power cut for all 24 housrs so that there would be no crowds on the streets as the powerloom workers would be tied to their weaving. Seven had died and about 100 injured in blast and police firing and curfew was imposed in the east of the river Mosom which divides the town into two segments of the society.

The police have a mixed blessing in the ulema whom they called out to quell the mob. This is bizzare that the theologians of Islam can be relied on to prevent the crowd from violence when elsewhere they are blamed for their teachig of jihad. Not only this they also have to bear the stigma of the poet like Iqbal who wondered what do these imams of two rounds of genuflection know about qaum, nation, and the esssence of nationality? But perhaps the IG of Nasik had not read the poet when he brough the ulema to control the mobs. The passions subsided and the crowds dispered as the Passion lay badly mangled and the celestial Pulsar bloodied and begrimed.