Malegaon bomb blasts 2006 and 2008, a reflection (2)

Denominational discrimination

There is bound to be suspicion raised when you smell a rat somewhere in the event of a terrorist event taking place. In the case of Malegaon blasts of 2006 there is need to understand where exactly lies the conspiracy—with the Muslim youths arrested or somewhere else?

The clue to understand lies in the denominational discrimination insidiously inserted into the whole system of investigation. Someone in the investigation agencies scripted a theory that one group of Muslim is more organized or prone to produce terror than the other groups. They evoked the eighteenth century purist movement Wahabism to be behind the attacks. Similarly the doctrine of Maulana Maududi that Muslims must live under their own dispensation or Nizam-e-Mustafa or Khilafat appeared viable to them. That such a doctrine is far from truth does not cut any ice, did not matter. Muslims in India live in varying numbers all over the country. There are whole states where their population is thin and sparsely scattered. Only in the case of Kashmir valley and northern Kerala they have sizable number. The Muslims themselves do not have a coherent understanding how they could ever establish their ‘house of Allah’ here. But the agencies do.

Hence the hunt for SIMI and Ahle Hadish or Wahabis. How many Ahle Hadish adherents seriously believe that they could establish the divine dispensation anywhere in India in practical terms? Within twenty four hours of the explosion of bombs the media had such a heinous theory planted against one section of Muslims opposing other sections. They cooked up that the attack targeted the Sunnis who visit the graveyard on Shab-e-barat. The MLA of Congress party Sheikh Rashid fell a victim of this delusion and went public with numbers showing that mostly Sunnis died! Nobody but mainstream media bought the argument. The crowd did not let him or his son visit the graveyard and severely roughed them up.

Why did the mainstream papers carry this denominational discrimination on the heels of the attack? It is as if it was readily made available for circulation when the bombs would go off. If there is conspiracy in the first blasts of Malegaon it is this and hence you can trace it to the corridors of power in New Delhi. The police under SP Rajwardhan did not have their own take on this. The proof lies in the efficacy of spreading the lies so soon after the blasts.

Even the main accused in the second blast of 2008 Lt Col Shrikant Purohit remarked that he and his Abhinav Bharat had used non Wahabis in the earlier incidents. That would surely mean to be first attack of 2006, the Samjhauta express 2007.