Why risk the nation for dacoits and butchers?

It is time we resolve to overcome one nasty hunch, a feeling or guess based on intuition rather than known or knowable facts, and resolve to become and remain sane responsible citizens of our country. That hunch is pillorying the whole group from which a few misguided or hard core criminals come to perpetrate a crime. True, the few often want to appropriate the whole community on their behalf and justify a crime.

The arrest of the dacoit Nagaraj Jambagi and his eight accomplices from Bagalkot district of Karnataka on New Year’s Eve for murdering a businessman on December 29 is set to again disabuse many of us coming on the heels of the arrest of Sadhvi Pragyasingh Thankur, Swami Dayanand Pande and serving army officer Lt Col Srikant Prasad Purohit and the attacks in Mumbai. A misconception still persists, a persistence problem, that followers of any one faith can be holier than the others. That would deny human nature and would mean that there is no venality in human nature. We humans are far from that immaculate position.

Nagaraj Jambagi is reportedly a member of the dreaded Sri Rama Sena reputed for being sworn and dedicated to carry out suicidal attacks waiting only for the nod. However he jumped the gun on May 10, 2008 when he blew up a bomb in the court where Safdar Nagori and others of SIMI were scheduled to appear. In fact the date was fixed for two days later. It could be that it was not possible to change the positioning of the explosive device or readjust it. The aim was to “eliminate terrorists and antinationals” so that the crimes of the dacoits would be covered up and they would earn sympathy of the people. The two fold motivation is a mixture of the worldly and the other worldly. This took place during the height of the electioneering in Karnataka as it went to polls. The ubiquitous criminal phenomenon of who benefits from the crime was here, too. The real beneficiary was BJP. Jambagi, Ramesh Pawar, and Lingraj Jalagar, and the remaining were hard core criminals trying to wear the garb of the saviour. Pramod Muttalik of Bajrang Dal had started Sri Rama Sena and as is the fashion of disowning these days he also disowned any link with Jambagi.

There is more to it than meets the eye. The bomb they used was similar to the bombs planted in Mecca mosque of Hyderabad on May 18, 2007. If this were so it is bound to be quite as sinister as the involvement of the army (through Lt Col Purohit and Major Ramesh Upadhay) in the Malegaon blast of September 29, 2008. Fair is foul and foul is fair!!!!

The nine were involved in four murders, a kidnapping for ransom and dacoity. With the arms supplier Hanuman Arjun Sainsakali they were the ten awesome involved in terrorism in Hubli court. They were balanced by the nine in Mumbai attacks dispatched to heaven while one Kasab is left out for the time being.

Ajmal Amir Kasab [butcher] was a small time thief who wanted to commit burglary but fell in the company of the ‘holy warriors’ of his land. A fourth standard dropout and a ‘disowned’ of his father came to believe that the straits of this world would be straightened as well as future in heaven secured if he attacked CST railway station and killed innocent people. Can the enlightened citizenry of any country allow itself to be duped by such wretched of the earth in search of the indeterminate heaven?

How could we salvage the nation from such incorrigible rogues? One way would be what Prof Kavita Karkare is touching upon in her meetings with the people after the death of her husband. She says that we have accepted secularism as a nation. “We have to nurture it. We are not imbued with those values in our childhood itself. We are not doing it right from school. In adulthood, suddenly we are confronted with secularism. Everyone should introspect where we went wrong. We lack patriotism…we don’t do anything constructive for our country. Our social commitment has slackened over the years…”