Terrorism/Propaganda/Cultural Hegemony/Communalism
As 9/11 turned out to be the familiar hunting cry of going after Muslim groups in the ‘war’ on terrorism in which India also jumped on the bandwagon, 29/11 is proving a mockery of all the endeavours that investigation agencies, the police and the media have made to create hoopla over terror.
There is a chemistry of change in dealing with terrorism. The media and the police and the investigating agencies have balked from going full steam in their disclosures and presentation of terrorism in India in the aftermath of the startling revelation that sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur of Hindu Jagran Manch of Indore and Surat owned the motor cycle that carried the bomb that exploded in Malegaon. She along with her three accomplices (Sham Sahu, Dilip Nahar and Shivnarayan Singh from Indore and Dharmendra Bairagi from Dewas) are arrested and sent to custody till November 3. this has dismayed some who are still harping on jihad terrorism despite the fact that terrorism unleashed by LTTE in SriLanka and India was the precursor of the suicide bombing of the Palestinians. Such is the vainglory of some that they do not want to accept that Hindus can be terrorists, even the extremist among them. This is strange for the proverbial tolerance of the Hindus got a jolt with the demolition of the Babri mosque at Ayodhya and violence subsequent to it and the pogroms of Muslims in Gujarat 2002.
It would be wrong to assert that pre 29/11 was in its entirety the handiwork of Jihad terrorism. Malegan blasts of September 8, 2006 militate against the biased perception and twisted theories of terrorism juggernaut of 9/11. This is true even when the accused are all Muslims. Those accused are languishing in jail with hardly any credible evidence found against them because they were not involved. The affidavits they have submitted shows that they were either in prison (Shabeer Masiullah) or at home and mosque (Noorulhoda) or leading Friday prayer more than five hundred miles away.
The former chief of ATS Raghuvanshi had remarked that the bombs that the Bajrang Dal activists of Nanded were making were not for pooja. They had been already used three different times at mosques in Purna, Jalna, Parbhani. One of the ones meant for Aurangabad railway station mosque accidentally exploded 1.30 am Thursday night rather than 1.30 pm Friday group prayer time like all the other mosques including Mecca mosque of Hyderabad and Jama masjid of Delhi. The home made bombs manufactured with the help of retired army officers had also been used at the mosque in Panvel by activists of Hindu Janjagran Samiti and Sanatan Sanstha. These of course preceded September 29, 2008 Modasa and Malegaon blasts. In the sophistry of the right wing Hindu organizations everything is okay and can be connived at by sweeping them under the carpet of safeguarding religion. Moreover they are sophisticated(?) enough not to blare out in their manifesto that their intent is like that of the intrepid Al Qaeda.
Till the time of the Delhi high court special tribunal hearing there was no evidence whatsoever which the government could put before the tribunal in its appeal for continuing the ban on SIMI(Students Islamic Movement of India). People even on suspicion of being connected to it have been arrested and are languishing in jail day in and day out. On the other hand, Bajrang Dal was conceived and created as the the sword arm of Hindutva to carry out its violent campaign aginst the minorities, quintessentially Muslim minority. Who but they were the youths with saffron bands tied to their foreheads scaling and systematically tearing down the walls and domes of the mosque at Ayodhya.
If Muslims are caught for any trivial crime and also for not having any criminal background their profiling includes if they had any link to SIMI. Let alone that their beard and long tunic and skullcap lands them into trouble as it happened, among other places, the north east. After 29/11 there is no attempt to standardize the profiling of terrorism of the sangh privar in terms of their cultural symbols although the RSS boasts of being just a cultural organization.
Hindu Janjagrun Manch of Indore, Bajrang Dal, VHP, Hindu Janjagran Samiti, Shiv Sena, Sanatan Sanstha, Durga Vahini, Akhil Bharti Vidyarthi Parishad are different organizations whose members have now been found to be making bombs and exploding them in mosques or in Muslim ghettoes. It makes no sense that extremist Hindus who are caught should be tried as miscreants irrespective of their organizational affiliation. Many but not the masses of Hindus are members of one or more of such organizations. They receive training in arms and ammunition and explosives periodically in a highly organized manner. Former members of armed forces train them. How can it be that Hindus who are caught in terror crime should be tried as individuals and not as members of the numerous affiliates of the sangh parivar. Nathu Ram Godse and Dr Parchure of Indore were members of the RSS and were sworn enemies of Mahatma Gandhi. The prevailing ethos of these organizations is characterized by proneness to violence, secrecy, and conspiracy. Their patriarch Moonje wanted to find out means where by many people can be killed in one go, his obvious target were Muslims, though it is also relevant to note that the Christians too have come under the attack of the extremist Hindu organizations. Therefore the nature of the organizations and their exhibited practice and material in possession must also be considered as causes of terrorism today. On October 19, 2008 RSS cadres displayed guns, swords and other weapons in a public during their parade through the Ashok nager of Indore city. This was done in flagrant violation of the code of conduct in force in Madhya Pradesh for the coming election. Some of them had allegedly used guns to kill Muslims during the agitation for grant of land for the Anant nag yatra. Therefore organizations and the nature of their known activities give enough proof of how such organizations are involved in terrorist acts.
There are statements that political leaders make and they give enough clues for what is the critical mass. The police of course record but conveniently do not act or provide correct feedback. VHP leader Parveen Togadia had made a speech to the lusty cheering of his audience that Hanuman had come to Godhra, Ravana had set his tail on fire and Hanuman had visited Naroda Patia, etc. Those who had ignited fire in Gujarat were causing terror as well as those who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi. Their affiliation to organizations supplies the ideological motivation. They are the variant versions of Sheikh Yasin. For example this is what Bal Thackeray told Shekhar Gupta : “To understand me, you have to go back to 1948, or even before that. Have you ever thought of Godse’s action, why he decided to kill? He got annoyed, upset, very upset. Even after giving a chunk of our land to Muslims, you were giving Rs 55 crore to them. Godse thought that if this old man lives any longer then he will ruin the country.” Or Narendra Modi hectoring his audience that Hindus can’t be terrorists and if they take to terrorism they would finish off Pakistan. Such is the plosive stuff that can set the ball rolling.
Howsoever we may question the premise that all terrorists are Muslims, what is unquestionable is that all terrorism is propaganda. Exploding bombs in theatres showing Aamhe Pachpute or Jodha Akbar, burning train to Pakistan, or exploding bombs on shabebarat or around shabeqader propagates a message. This could be that there are organizations that are devoted to establish a narrow kind of nationhood and/or maintain cultural hegemony.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Why queasy about Raj Thackeray being a terrorist
Why only the nephew? Call a rose by any other name; it will give the same smell. Howsoever you anglicize your name your essence of sub continental origin stinks to the outsider. This complexity rebounds on you when you are terribly obsessed by provincialism.
Of late Raj Thackeray has been in the news for attempting to wear the saffron garb of his uncle and thereby trespassing his domain. That has raised alarm because of the elections round the corner. Fighting election in the name of fighting terrorism is not every body’s cup of tea, though you can fool some for sometimes or others for all the time, as Narendra Modi has at succeeded in doing. But the truth will have to emerge as Chanderyaan emerged in the clear sky over Sriharikotla after leaving the cloud of smoke behind on September 22 2008.
The virtual shut down of Mumbai on October 21 2008 on account of the nephew is of the vintage of the hay day of the uncle in 2000. After all he is the chip of the old block. Hold the metropolis to ransom by the awesome muscle power is terrorism localized. What Maharashtra Navnerman Sena is doing now is the repetition of what Shiv Sena did before and is doing on the sly to keep it afloat. Shopkeepers, commuters, students, drivers are too terrified to stir out. It is not a civil boycott but enforced quarantine where you risk your limb and life if you go against the dictates of the shakha pramukhs. Their collecting of fund for the party and other programmes smacks of involuntary submission to their fiefdom where the satraps hold their sway and of course it extends to the neighbouring police station. There you negotiate through them to strike a deal.
Where is civic sense and fair play in such a set up?
The skimpy youths from north India appearing for exams of railway are from the most wretched families without much hope of a future eager to go out wherever they are posted to eke out existence. They are ready to jettison everything much like the south Indians of the bygone time. The MNS activists entered 13 centers of examination and physically assaulted them leading to death and injury. That is terrorizing.
Primarily the question of the north Indians seeking job is a constitutionally justifiable matter. This, irrespective of the fact of how much corruption is in any state for no state is without it. No need to say who is holier than the other. Nor is the amount of bribe and kick back available for the public good. Since Mumbai is the financial capital of the country it is inevitable that people would strive for their share of what they earn by the sweat of their brows. The police at the instance of the government maintain law and order. When both of them look the other way what happens is what has been happening for quite sometimes in Mumbai as elsewhere in the country. One kind of terrorism cannot innately preclude other acts of terrorism.
Raj or Swaraj himself sough a definition of a terrorist. Or was he asking for it with tongue in cheek? Anyone who uses brutal force for a political cause by creating fear in others should know what it is. Force means violence and bloodshed, he did it once only recently and wants to perpetuate it at will whenever he wants to appropriate the sovereignty of the state.
Raj Thackeray has opened the bottle and let the genii out and now it is not within his control to call the genii back. The burning of railway stations across Bihar and other parts of north India threatens to derail the country itself.
Of late Raj Thackeray has been in the news for attempting to wear the saffron garb of his uncle and thereby trespassing his domain. That has raised alarm because of the elections round the corner. Fighting election in the name of fighting terrorism is not every body’s cup of tea, though you can fool some for sometimes or others for all the time, as Narendra Modi has at succeeded in doing. But the truth will have to emerge as Chanderyaan emerged in the clear sky over Sriharikotla after leaving the cloud of smoke behind on September 22 2008.
The virtual shut down of Mumbai on October 21 2008 on account of the nephew is of the vintage of the hay day of the uncle in 2000. After all he is the chip of the old block. Hold the metropolis to ransom by the awesome muscle power is terrorism localized. What Maharashtra Navnerman Sena is doing now is the repetition of what Shiv Sena did before and is doing on the sly to keep it afloat. Shopkeepers, commuters, students, drivers are too terrified to stir out. It is not a civil boycott but enforced quarantine where you risk your limb and life if you go against the dictates of the shakha pramukhs. Their collecting of fund for the party and other programmes smacks of involuntary submission to their fiefdom where the satraps hold their sway and of course it extends to the neighbouring police station. There you negotiate through them to strike a deal.
Where is civic sense and fair play in such a set up?
The skimpy youths from north India appearing for exams of railway are from the most wretched families without much hope of a future eager to go out wherever they are posted to eke out existence. They are ready to jettison everything much like the south Indians of the bygone time. The MNS activists entered 13 centers of examination and physically assaulted them leading to death and injury. That is terrorizing.
Primarily the question of the north Indians seeking job is a constitutionally justifiable matter. This, irrespective of the fact of how much corruption is in any state for no state is without it. No need to say who is holier than the other. Nor is the amount of bribe and kick back available for the public good. Since Mumbai is the financial capital of the country it is inevitable that people would strive for their share of what they earn by the sweat of their brows. The police at the instance of the government maintain law and order. When both of them look the other way what happens is what has been happening for quite sometimes in Mumbai as elsewhere in the country. One kind of terrorism cannot innately preclude other acts of terrorism.
Raj or Swaraj himself sough a definition of a terrorist. Or was he asking for it with tongue in cheek? Anyone who uses brutal force for a political cause by creating fear in others should know what it is. Force means violence and bloodshed, he did it once only recently and wants to perpetuate it at will whenever he wants to appropriate the sovereignty of the state.
Raj Thackeray has opened the bottle and let the genii out and now it is not within his control to call the genii back. The burning of railway stations across Bihar and other parts of north India threatens to derail the country itself.
Malegaon shows the way:On the right track fighting terror
Though the police might have fought shy of going formally public but initial report that Hindu extremists were behind Modasa and Malegaon bomb blasts of September 29 2008 is a welcome albeit belated acceptance of truth. Someone higher up with RSS link must have been maneuvering to mislead investigation or else how come the police could not register crimes against Hindu extremists for so long when accusing finger was pointing at them all the while. As Nathu Ram Godse was reportedly circumcised before the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi so that Muslims would bear the brunt of the backlash of national anger and violence so were all the blasts blamed on Muslims. The right wing Jan Sang and its new avatar BJP are par excellent in this game of camouflaging because of their ideological indoctrination.
The truth was an open secret accepted at all hands that the bomb blasts were benefiting exclusively BJP politically and were fitting in the scheme of things of the ideology of its right wing paternal body. The most ironical was the crying wolf by the BJP leaders like the prime ministerial candidate LK Advani who never introspected as to what havoc the harsher laws would produce when the present laws were themselves so grossly misused. The victims of the Batla house of Jamia nager encounter had gun wounds on the skull as if shot from above like fake encounter victims of Gujarat. This is one of the many facts which point to a heinous design insidiously adopted to fight terror. It could be one of the reasons why most of the investigations into terrorism ended up in a blind alley. If the present laws allow shooting and killing two or three, the more stringent laws would lead to wiping out the whole Jamia nager! Perhaps that is what the BJP would like to see.
This is no matter of exaggeration for what happened in Dhule after the visit of the home minister and the patron minister in the first week of October is fraught with such dangerous possibility. Dhule was burnt in the name of terrorism.
Malegaon was seized with the apprehension of dread and insecurity on September 29 2008 because of the Delhi blasts of September 13. How could the people forget September 8 2006-blasts that came on the heels of 7/11 local train blasts in Mumbai? But such is the wont of the police and the investigative agencies that they would go according to the worldview, weltanschauung, on jihad terrorism. The Hindu Jagran Manch of Indore is believed to be behind last month’s bombing. Their fellow accomplices were from the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad. It is a telltale that the former owner of the LML Freedom, the death carrier, is a lab assistant of a college in Nashik. However the police found out that the vehicle had many assembled parts of different two wheelers for hiding identity of the vehicle and ownership. It was also part of camouflage that it was parked under the first floor office of SIMI rather than in front of the police chowki across the road much like the SIMI sticker found on the two-wheeler in Modasa.
The disclosure is breath of fresh air after all these suffocating years of chasing the HUJi and IM.
The truth was an open secret accepted at all hands that the bomb blasts were benefiting exclusively BJP politically and were fitting in the scheme of things of the ideology of its right wing paternal body. The most ironical was the crying wolf by the BJP leaders like the prime ministerial candidate LK Advani who never introspected as to what havoc the harsher laws would produce when the present laws were themselves so grossly misused. The victims of the Batla house of Jamia nager encounter had gun wounds on the skull as if shot from above like fake encounter victims of Gujarat. This is one of the many facts which point to a heinous design insidiously adopted to fight terror. It could be one of the reasons why most of the investigations into terrorism ended up in a blind alley. If the present laws allow shooting and killing two or three, the more stringent laws would lead to wiping out the whole Jamia nager! Perhaps that is what the BJP would like to see.
This is no matter of exaggeration for what happened in Dhule after the visit of the home minister and the patron minister in the first week of October is fraught with such dangerous possibility. Dhule was burnt in the name of terrorism.
Malegaon was seized with the apprehension of dread and insecurity on September 29 2008 because of the Delhi blasts of September 13. How could the people forget September 8 2006-blasts that came on the heels of 7/11 local train blasts in Mumbai? But such is the wont of the police and the investigative agencies that they would go according to the worldview, weltanschauung, on jihad terrorism. The Hindu Jagran Manch of Indore is believed to be behind last month’s bombing. Their fellow accomplices were from the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad. It is a telltale that the former owner of the LML Freedom, the death carrier, is a lab assistant of a college in Nashik. However the police found out that the vehicle had many assembled parts of different two wheelers for hiding identity of the vehicle and ownership. It was also part of camouflage that it was parked under the first floor office of SIMI rather than in front of the police chowki across the road much like the SIMI sticker found on the two-wheeler in Modasa.
The disclosure is breath of fresh air after all these suffocating years of chasing the HUJi and IM.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Cause of Communal Violence: Exterminate the Brutes
Unlike the robust belief that the 21st century would herald in better governance what we are witnessing is the very opposite of it. We seem to be slipping into the dark ages over again. What with six of a family (mostly children and women) in Bhainsla in Andhra Pradesh burnt to death and 120 of 140 houses of the same community torched in Nardana in Dhule over inter religious marriage, we are in for another spectre of violence visiting us after the partition of the country. Dhule riots are not a watershed. The town is not in a backwater state of India where the law of the jungle generally prevails. It is an old town of a state that has seen reformation movement of the society, Maharashtra.
The communal riots of Dhule resemble what had happened in Gujarat in 2002. There was some resistance on the part of the Muslims but it quickly melted away against the prolonged onslaught of attacks and police bias. There were gory scenes in which young children and adolescents were teeming in crowds with abusive words in their mouth against the “other” and brandishing lethal weapons of all size and make. They were baying for blood of their neighbours with whom they had shared civil life till the morning of the fateful day of October 5.
In the marauding crowd powered by swelling destructive frenzy and egged on by chants of killing the victims were boys from well to do families who had enjoyed better housing and education facilities denied to most of their victims. Moving from this scene in Dhule to another town, Jalgaon, the crowd is thinner, about two hundred but the ferocity is the same and so is the murderous intent. In front of Bhoitegde the crowd tried to burn the houses of Bhiken Sheikh Karim Shikalgar and Gani Khan Mohammad. Similarly on the bank of the Lendi canal in the Chamhar wada the house of Sheikh Javed Sheikh Majid was ransacked and looted. But this time the police swung into action and arrested some 25 attackers. The events in Dhule went beyond recall because of poor or no governance. In Jalgaon there was semblance of governance. The Maharashtra police on October 13 arrested Lalit Kolhe, the Corporator from Maharashtra Nava Nirman Sena (MNS) reportedly with 16 swords.
In Dhule the provocative handbill declares that the Hindu heartland of Shindu river and the Ganges is in the grip of threat given by fanatics (dharm vediani ladleleya sankatani grast). The storm of fanaticism is menacingly approaching the country from all sides of the world. Such is the belief of the fanatics that they value only their religion and god and consider others false and kafir. They want to eliminate all others; this is the aim of their jihad.
The handbill then addresses the jihadis and calls them pushuvano, brutes, and exclaims how could such brutes teach bhakti, archana and dharm to the Hindus who are their great great grandfathers. Then the handbill warns the Hindus of the human blood-drunk-fanatic-jihadi wolves (mansacha raktala chataole hinst dharmvede landge) who would not spare them irrespective of whatever caste or class groups the Hindus belong to. When confronted with such brutes you don’t have to parley with them but stab them to death. In the main part of the handbill the word terrorist is avoided and the fanatics (read Muslims) are called brutes or beasts.
Enough! What more would the superintendent of police Mr Kolhe want to read to deny permission for the rally and the banners? JG Khairnar of the local Marathi daily Aapla Maharashtra had the experience and knowledge of what constitutes provocation and what instigates violence and what antagonizes the people besides making the situation explosive. He was part of a fact-finding team headed by Medha Patkar who visited the town. He had read the bill and had urged in an appeal he wrote to the district administration of Dhule to take immediate steps to defuse the situation. They did not heed him.
What is unmistakably acerbic in the bill is the profiling of the Muslims as fanatics and demonizing of them as brutes. The difference between jihadis and ordinary Muslim is deliberated b(s)lurred. The invisible jihadi is made visible Muslim who lives next door. Moreover, the terrorists are identified with the Muslim community as a whole. But the most ominous is the final solution: exterminate the brutes. Is this not what VD Savarkar had advocated? In his Itihasachi saha soneri pane he says:
“It can be seen from history that those nation-states, who did not demolish Muslim political and religious power were completely Islamised. Only those few 5-10 nation states who not only demolished the Muslim state but also got rid of Muslim religious power could be successful in getting rid of Muslims altogether. One such nation was Spain. The state administration of liberated Spain specified a time period within which all Muslim men and women were either converted to Christianity or leave the country altogether. It was also said that those who would not abide by either would be killed. After the given period was over all the men and women, young and old Muslims were killed in Spain. The church got purified in their blood. Spain had exterminated Muslims and that is why Spain remained Spain and did not become Morocco.”
The sangh parivar and essentially RSS has indoctrinated its followers towards this end of what is otherwise called the final solution. The most moving example illustrating this comes from Shirud where a BSF soldier
Arif Hussain Khati had to beg for his life as the marauding crowd of Hindus burnt down Muslim houses from early evening to 12 o’clock in the night of October 6 2008. As he bent down before the crowd identifying himself as a soldier on duty in Kashmir, the crowd yelled: “You are a Muslim first then a soldier and we can’t spare you.” The mob pulled his brother and threw him into the fire but Khati saved him and ran for life. His uniform, identity card and gallantry certificates were burnt first and then the house was set on fire. He along with others ran to a police station but was told to wait outside whole night. They refused to lodge FIR. He had to leave his ancestral land for good. Like another hapless victim of violence now of universal fame, Ansari Quttubudin, Arif Hussain Khati with his family sought refuge in Malegaon.
The strategic implication of this BSF soldier’s plight is grave and calls for serious thinking and sanity in saving the country from destruction. His worrisome but truthful story is making rounds in the websites of/on Kashmir on both sides of the border. We have had the consequences of VHP and Bajrang Dal achieving in the Kashmir valley what twenty years of terrorism had failed to do and perhaps would respectfully remember Shaheed Hameed and his heroic deeds for which Dhule has a memorable corner in his memory and eschew violence.
The communal riots of Dhule resemble what had happened in Gujarat in 2002. There was some resistance on the part of the Muslims but it quickly melted away against the prolonged onslaught of attacks and police bias. There were gory scenes in which young children and adolescents were teeming in crowds with abusive words in their mouth against the “other” and brandishing lethal weapons of all size and make. They were baying for blood of their neighbours with whom they had shared civil life till the morning of the fateful day of October 5.
In the marauding crowd powered by swelling destructive frenzy and egged on by chants of killing the victims were boys from well to do families who had enjoyed better housing and education facilities denied to most of their victims. Moving from this scene in Dhule to another town, Jalgaon, the crowd is thinner, about two hundred but the ferocity is the same and so is the murderous intent. In front of Bhoitegde the crowd tried to burn the houses of Bhiken Sheikh Karim Shikalgar and Gani Khan Mohammad. Similarly on the bank of the Lendi canal in the Chamhar wada the house of Sheikh Javed Sheikh Majid was ransacked and looted. But this time the police swung into action and arrested some 25 attackers. The events in Dhule went beyond recall because of poor or no governance. In Jalgaon there was semblance of governance. The Maharashtra police on October 13 arrested Lalit Kolhe, the Corporator from Maharashtra Nava Nirman Sena (MNS) reportedly with 16 swords.
In Dhule the provocative handbill declares that the Hindu heartland of Shindu river and the Ganges is in the grip of threat given by fanatics (dharm vediani ladleleya sankatani grast). The storm of fanaticism is menacingly approaching the country from all sides of the world. Such is the belief of the fanatics that they value only their religion and god and consider others false and kafir. They want to eliminate all others; this is the aim of their jihad.
The handbill then addresses the jihadis and calls them pushuvano, brutes, and exclaims how could such brutes teach bhakti, archana and dharm to the Hindus who are their great great grandfathers. Then the handbill warns the Hindus of the human blood-drunk-fanatic-jihadi wolves (mansacha raktala chataole hinst dharmvede landge) who would not spare them irrespective of whatever caste or class groups the Hindus belong to. When confronted with such brutes you don’t have to parley with them but stab them to death. In the main part of the handbill the word terrorist is avoided and the fanatics (read Muslims) are called brutes or beasts.
Enough! What more would the superintendent of police Mr Kolhe want to read to deny permission for the rally and the banners? JG Khairnar of the local Marathi daily Aapla Maharashtra had the experience and knowledge of what constitutes provocation and what instigates violence and what antagonizes the people besides making the situation explosive. He was part of a fact-finding team headed by Medha Patkar who visited the town. He had read the bill and had urged in an appeal he wrote to the district administration of Dhule to take immediate steps to defuse the situation. They did not heed him.
What is unmistakably acerbic in the bill is the profiling of the Muslims as fanatics and demonizing of them as brutes. The difference between jihadis and ordinary Muslim is deliberated b(s)lurred. The invisible jihadi is made visible Muslim who lives next door. Moreover, the terrorists are identified with the Muslim community as a whole. But the most ominous is the final solution: exterminate the brutes. Is this not what VD Savarkar had advocated? In his Itihasachi saha soneri pane he says:
“It can be seen from history that those nation-states, who did not demolish Muslim political and religious power were completely Islamised. Only those few 5-10 nation states who not only demolished the Muslim state but also got rid of Muslim religious power could be successful in getting rid of Muslims altogether. One such nation was Spain. The state administration of liberated Spain specified a time period within which all Muslim men and women were either converted to Christianity or leave the country altogether. It was also said that those who would not abide by either would be killed. After the given period was over all the men and women, young and old Muslims were killed in Spain. The church got purified in their blood. Spain had exterminated Muslims and that is why Spain remained Spain and did not become Morocco.”
The sangh parivar and essentially RSS has indoctrinated its followers towards this end of what is otherwise called the final solution. The most moving example illustrating this comes from Shirud where a BSF soldier
Arif Hussain Khati had to beg for his life as the marauding crowd of Hindus burnt down Muslim houses from early evening to 12 o’clock in the night of October 6 2008. As he bent down before the crowd identifying himself as a soldier on duty in Kashmir, the crowd yelled: “You are a Muslim first then a soldier and we can’t spare you.” The mob pulled his brother and threw him into the fire but Khati saved him and ran for life. His uniform, identity card and gallantry certificates were burnt first and then the house was set on fire. He along with others ran to a police station but was told to wait outside whole night. They refused to lodge FIR. He had to leave his ancestral land for good. Like another hapless victim of violence now of universal fame, Ansari Quttubudin, Arif Hussain Khati with his family sought refuge in Malegaon.
The strategic implication of this BSF soldier’s plight is grave and calls for serious thinking and sanity in saving the country from destruction. His worrisome but truthful story is making rounds in the websites of/on Kashmir on both sides of the border. We have had the consequences of VHP and Bajrang Dal achieving in the Kashmir valley what twenty years of terrorism had failed to do and perhaps would respectfully remember Shaheed Hameed and his heroic deeds for which Dhule has a memorable corner in his memory and eschew violence.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Republic Nonesuch: A Comedy in two parts
[You have already seen our first series, that is, Nanded (April 2006) and Nanded (February2007). Here we are back with Kanpur (August 2008) and Kanpur (October 2008), and what is more, Falstaff and the King and the Duke in new colours in familiar soliloquy mode. ]
[The scene opens on Ilol, Gujarat. Song: In Ilol did Vanzara a stately pleasure dome decree where Modi holds scepter and sway.]
Another blast and we look at Gujarat police, for it is they who rule the roost. If they say it is crackers, be it crackers then. Or, wait; are they saying another section of the Azamgarh brigade responsible? Then it is AB, once again.
Why do the police in the rest of the country look at the Gujarat police for hints to know how they should work? It may sound bizarre but it is true. The chief minister of the state has proved himself to take on not only the central government and Sonia Gandhi but also the SC. PC Pandey is now the DGP. Is it not the miracle of miracles that despite all allegations and phone records and Tehelka exposure no body can challenge the way Narendra Modi has managed the police and the judiciary. Akshay Mehta is the justice who saved Babu Bajrangi from possible conviction when other justices warned the marauder par excellent of the paterfamilias that he would face gallows. Modi had the temerity to repeat the full name of James Michael Lyngdoh, the chief Election Commissioner of 2002 to despise his origin and identity. He dared to evoke Mian Musharraf for his own election and when that worthy took the matter all the way to the podium of the General Assembly nothing happened to the chief minister of a state of India when the whole country was pulled up to account for what that chief minister had wrought. He does not wince a little for having been denied visa to visit the US but would take teleconferencing to make the point that it is the Congress which does not allow him harsher laws to fight terror, though the harsher laws already in force in the state have given him lever to try Godhra train accused as terrorists and those who perpetrated the pogroms against the Muslims of the state as ordinary criminals. And when it comes to the National Integration Council meet it is he who cries foul at vote bank as cause of terror although his own vote bank is also built on qua communal consideration of vote bank.
Most tangential is the most talked about fake encounter of Jamia nager in Delhi. After having crowded out of sight the infamous encounter death of Sohrabuddin from the scene with a hope to tackle it another day, after all DG Vanzara did it as deshbhakti, the state police is giving tips to the metropolitan police. Soon after the Delhi police bought the Ahmedabad police theory of the Azamgarh brigade they carried out the raid at the Jamia nager. Even LK Advani wants us not to malign the police. For, that would go against our fight against terrorism.
The whole country is waiting with bated breath for the word from Gandhinager. Until the definite words flash the cops and, of course, we all can take random guess at the possible cause of the blast in Kanpure today in the evening, that is, Tuesday October 14 2008. Early, hence unedited, report shows that a man was carrying crackers in a polythene bag on the carrier of his cycle when it blew up injuring seven to eight people. But then the city is Kanpure again, so soon after August 24 blast that killed two Bajrang Dal activists. How can it dent any body’s credibility, least of all that of the police and the investigative agencies? Haven’t we grown so cussed not to bother about particulars because of the on going juggernaut of fighting terror unleashed by the jihadis. Moreover with Diwali round the corner the man carrying the crackers was after all doing what is commemorative of the festival of the victorious return to Ayodhya. But how come the crackers burst by themselves! Well, wait, the meeting is going on.
Till the definite word is uttered we must remember that huge amount of money is involved in fake encounters. The cops who pocket the award money grow enormously rich and there is enough to go around. If the Gujarat police are doing so well who will not take a page from their book. [As the scene fades since no one appears at the parapet or at the window to utter the words.]
[The scene opens on Ilol, Gujarat. Song: In Ilol did Vanzara a stately pleasure dome decree where Modi holds scepter and sway.]
Another blast and we look at Gujarat police, for it is they who rule the roost. If they say it is crackers, be it crackers then. Or, wait; are they saying another section of the Azamgarh brigade responsible? Then it is AB, once again.
Why do the police in the rest of the country look at the Gujarat police for hints to know how they should work? It may sound bizarre but it is true. The chief minister of the state has proved himself to take on not only the central government and Sonia Gandhi but also the SC. PC Pandey is now the DGP. Is it not the miracle of miracles that despite all allegations and phone records and Tehelka exposure no body can challenge the way Narendra Modi has managed the police and the judiciary. Akshay Mehta is the justice who saved Babu Bajrangi from possible conviction when other justices warned the marauder par excellent of the paterfamilias that he would face gallows. Modi had the temerity to repeat the full name of James Michael Lyngdoh, the chief Election Commissioner of 2002 to despise his origin and identity. He dared to evoke Mian Musharraf for his own election and when that worthy took the matter all the way to the podium of the General Assembly nothing happened to the chief minister of a state of India when the whole country was pulled up to account for what that chief minister had wrought. He does not wince a little for having been denied visa to visit the US but would take teleconferencing to make the point that it is the Congress which does not allow him harsher laws to fight terror, though the harsher laws already in force in the state have given him lever to try Godhra train accused as terrorists and those who perpetrated the pogroms against the Muslims of the state as ordinary criminals. And when it comes to the National Integration Council meet it is he who cries foul at vote bank as cause of terror although his own vote bank is also built on qua communal consideration of vote bank.
Most tangential is the most talked about fake encounter of Jamia nager in Delhi. After having crowded out of sight the infamous encounter death of Sohrabuddin from the scene with a hope to tackle it another day, after all DG Vanzara did it as deshbhakti, the state police is giving tips to the metropolitan police. Soon after the Delhi police bought the Ahmedabad police theory of the Azamgarh brigade they carried out the raid at the Jamia nager. Even LK Advani wants us not to malign the police. For, that would go against our fight against terrorism.
The whole country is waiting with bated breath for the word from Gandhinager. Until the definite words flash the cops and, of course, we all can take random guess at the possible cause of the blast in Kanpure today in the evening, that is, Tuesday October 14 2008. Early, hence unedited, report shows that a man was carrying crackers in a polythene bag on the carrier of his cycle when it blew up injuring seven to eight people. But then the city is Kanpure again, so soon after August 24 blast that killed two Bajrang Dal activists. How can it dent any body’s credibility, least of all that of the police and the investigative agencies? Haven’t we grown so cussed not to bother about particulars because of the on going juggernaut of fighting terror unleashed by the jihadis. Moreover with Diwali round the corner the man carrying the crackers was after all doing what is commemorative of the festival of the victorious return to Ayodhya. But how come the crackers burst by themselves! Well, wait, the meeting is going on.
Till the definite word is uttered we must remember that huge amount of money is involved in fake encounters. The cops who pocket the award money grow enormously rich and there is enough to go around. If the Gujarat police are doing so well who will not take a page from their book. [As the scene fades since no one appears at the parapet or at the window to utter the words.]
Friday, October 10, 2008
Skewed ‘war on terror’ and human rights on skewer
(Apropos Bangalore Public Discussion Human Rights in the context of Terrorism and Communalism, October 11, 2008)
What is transpiring in Dhule in Mahrashtra calls for serious thinking over how the ‘war on terror’ is going on. On September 29 2008 a bomb blast at a chowk in Malegaon killed five and injured more than a hundred. All the victims were Muslims. Fifty kilometers away in Dhulia Hindu raksha samiti put up digital banners on October 3 inviting Hindus to gather at Ram mandir on October 5 in protest against terrorism. The district police administration gave them permission for the banners as well as the rally even when the images on the banners and the writing were very offensive to Muslims as a community. Human rights activists like the local unit of Movement for Peace and Justice and some well meaning citizens were filled with dreadful premonition of things to come and hence they approached the district administration on October 4 to intervene in the affair to maintain peace and harmony.
It was distressing to see that a banner of Hindu rakshak samiti was found in the morning of October 5 to be torn but much more distressing was to see the trail of violence and arson and loot in the aftermath of it. The catastrophe that left two hundred and fifty people injured and nine dead and as many as fifteen thousand houses destroyed and the residents of many areas turned into internal refugees in their own town and innumerable commercial establishments looted and burnt. This is the saga of suffering of people when their human rights are deliberately and systematically trampled in the name of religion.
In Orissa this has been going on for quite sometimes on a larger scale.
The most fundamental right is right to life. Even if it is the bounden duty of the government to protect the life of the citizens irrespective of their caste and religion there is complete failure of governance all around. The premium on the life of the victims in riots is the government figure of compensation that is announced in a jejune manner by ministers of state and central governments. The government figures only in this regard after having abdicated its duty to stop riots from breaking or prevent riots from spreading. The religious outfits which do the murder and mayhem and the communal parties behind them never take the responsibility and the governments fail to prosecute them and the national election commission never bothers to derecognize the parties. This is how the erosion of the credibility of the state has played havoc with the country and resulted in the violation of the human rights of the minority mostly.
In a case study of Dhule we see how communalism and terrorism go in tandem in India today. The police and investigating agencies go public with every arrest of Muslim youths who are generally dubbed as terrorists without any judicial finding. This media trial and conviction creates the indelible impression in the minds of the people that Muslims are terrorists. While at the same time Bajrang Dal activists have blown up themselves in assembling or making bombs but no television channel focuses on them or calls them terrorists. As a result the fear psychosis created against the bearded and cap and tunic-wearing Muslims deepens in the minds of the unsuspecting ordinary citizens. The prejudice against the Muslims spreads like a poison.
It poisons the minds of the people against them in general. They are all perceived as terrorists even before they have a chance to have their case heard in the court of justice. In the last three months Muslims youths detained by police have been exposed to the camera wearing Palestinian scarf and thus terrorism is made out to be the outcome of their faith. In contrast the vermilion mark [tika] on the forehead of the Bajrang Dal activists, with their red headbands and trishul in hands are patently Hindu in implication and are loudly proclaiming just that but the media has not worked out for that nor has the police worked over any detained Hindu for that and hence they are not viewed as terrorists. Even the central government staves off the pressure to ban that outfit of RSS. Deliberately or inadvertently the media and the government have played in the hands of the right wing extremists who have hijacked the mammoth majority of the citizens of the country for their nefarious electoral end. A Muslim dubbed as terrorist even before trial starts in the court of law has no chance of redeeming himself or his community. Even when some Muslims youths were acquitted of charge of terrorism the media did not carry the report let alone apologize for maligning them. Thus right to live life of dignity is trampled as well. It finds expressions in well-qualified and decent people from Muslim community denied accommodation in the middle class housing societies.
Excepting the already decided cases of the bomb blasts of Bombay 1993 and Coimbatore 1998 no other case of terrorism has been adjudged so far. But thousands of Muslim youths have been incarcerated without trial. The only thing against them is their confession under duress. This self-incrimination of the so-called alleged terrorists is disturbing, excruciating as well as polarizing the society vertically. Their right to fair trial is denied to them as they are brutalized under detention for the confession extracted from them under torturous situation. Some of them like Khwaja Yunus were killed in fake encounter—a deadly weapon against the innocent Muslims. Scores of youths from Muslim ghettoes of Hyderabad as well as Malegaon were arrested. Some of them appear to have simply disappeared, either dead, killed or hiding because of fear of arrest for no fault of their own. Many of them were the sole breadwinners of their necessitous families. Where would the deprived families get the means to meet both the ends? Imagine their suffering if the young ones are ultimately proved innocent after a decade. Their youth as well as livelihood are lost to this so-called ‘war on terrorism’. Anti terrorism should not make self-incrimination as the fulcrum on which our judicial system should move or else it would perpetuate denial of right to justice.
Muslims, it seems, have no objection to even harsher laws then the dreaded Pota. But there should be a trade off between the rights they forgo and the security the state should give them in return. Instead of prevaricating LKAdvani should see that the life of the Muslims is most insecure whether there are bomb blasts or not, or whether they are involved or not in any such incident. And what is more much of their insecurity and threat to their life is on account of his rathyatra of yore. As a refugee from Pakistan he must take time to read partition literature like Praful Roy’s story “Where there is No Frontier.” Lajpat Singh’s an agnorisis or realization of past mistake is truly cathartic and can do for him [the prime ministerial candidate] good in this fight against terrorism and communalism.
What is transpiring in Dhule in Mahrashtra calls for serious thinking over how the ‘war on terror’ is going on. On September 29 2008 a bomb blast at a chowk in Malegaon killed five and injured more than a hundred. All the victims were Muslims. Fifty kilometers away in Dhulia Hindu raksha samiti put up digital banners on October 3 inviting Hindus to gather at Ram mandir on October 5 in protest against terrorism. The district police administration gave them permission for the banners as well as the rally even when the images on the banners and the writing were very offensive to Muslims as a community. Human rights activists like the local unit of Movement for Peace and Justice and some well meaning citizens were filled with dreadful premonition of things to come and hence they approached the district administration on October 4 to intervene in the affair to maintain peace and harmony.
It was distressing to see that a banner of Hindu rakshak samiti was found in the morning of October 5 to be torn but much more distressing was to see the trail of violence and arson and loot in the aftermath of it. The catastrophe that left two hundred and fifty people injured and nine dead and as many as fifteen thousand houses destroyed and the residents of many areas turned into internal refugees in their own town and innumerable commercial establishments looted and burnt. This is the saga of suffering of people when their human rights are deliberately and systematically trampled in the name of religion.
In Orissa this has been going on for quite sometimes on a larger scale.
The most fundamental right is right to life. Even if it is the bounden duty of the government to protect the life of the citizens irrespective of their caste and religion there is complete failure of governance all around. The premium on the life of the victims in riots is the government figure of compensation that is announced in a jejune manner by ministers of state and central governments. The government figures only in this regard after having abdicated its duty to stop riots from breaking or prevent riots from spreading. The religious outfits which do the murder and mayhem and the communal parties behind them never take the responsibility and the governments fail to prosecute them and the national election commission never bothers to derecognize the parties. This is how the erosion of the credibility of the state has played havoc with the country and resulted in the violation of the human rights of the minority mostly.
In a case study of Dhule we see how communalism and terrorism go in tandem in India today. The police and investigating agencies go public with every arrest of Muslim youths who are generally dubbed as terrorists without any judicial finding. This media trial and conviction creates the indelible impression in the minds of the people that Muslims are terrorists. While at the same time Bajrang Dal activists have blown up themselves in assembling or making bombs but no television channel focuses on them or calls them terrorists. As a result the fear psychosis created against the bearded and cap and tunic-wearing Muslims deepens in the minds of the unsuspecting ordinary citizens. The prejudice against the Muslims spreads like a poison.
It poisons the minds of the people against them in general. They are all perceived as terrorists even before they have a chance to have their case heard in the court of justice. In the last three months Muslims youths detained by police have been exposed to the camera wearing Palestinian scarf and thus terrorism is made out to be the outcome of their faith. In contrast the vermilion mark [tika] on the forehead of the Bajrang Dal activists, with their red headbands and trishul in hands are patently Hindu in implication and are loudly proclaiming just that but the media has not worked out for that nor has the police worked over any detained Hindu for that and hence they are not viewed as terrorists. Even the central government staves off the pressure to ban that outfit of RSS. Deliberately or inadvertently the media and the government have played in the hands of the right wing extremists who have hijacked the mammoth majority of the citizens of the country for their nefarious electoral end. A Muslim dubbed as terrorist even before trial starts in the court of law has no chance of redeeming himself or his community. Even when some Muslims youths were acquitted of charge of terrorism the media did not carry the report let alone apologize for maligning them. Thus right to live life of dignity is trampled as well. It finds expressions in well-qualified and decent people from Muslim community denied accommodation in the middle class housing societies.
Excepting the already decided cases of the bomb blasts of Bombay 1993 and Coimbatore 1998 no other case of terrorism has been adjudged so far. But thousands of Muslim youths have been incarcerated without trial. The only thing against them is their confession under duress. This self-incrimination of the so-called alleged terrorists is disturbing, excruciating as well as polarizing the society vertically. Their right to fair trial is denied to them as they are brutalized under detention for the confession extracted from them under torturous situation. Some of them like Khwaja Yunus were killed in fake encounter—a deadly weapon against the innocent Muslims. Scores of youths from Muslim ghettoes of Hyderabad as well as Malegaon were arrested. Some of them appear to have simply disappeared, either dead, killed or hiding because of fear of arrest for no fault of their own. Many of them were the sole breadwinners of their necessitous families. Where would the deprived families get the means to meet both the ends? Imagine their suffering if the young ones are ultimately proved innocent after a decade. Their youth as well as livelihood are lost to this so-called ‘war on terrorism’. Anti terrorism should not make self-incrimination as the fulcrum on which our judicial system should move or else it would perpetuate denial of right to justice.
Muslims, it seems, have no objection to even harsher laws then the dreaded Pota. But there should be a trade off between the rights they forgo and the security the state should give them in return. Instead of prevaricating LKAdvani should see that the life of the Muslims is most insecure whether there are bomb blasts or not, or whether they are involved or not in any such incident. And what is more much of their insecurity and threat to their life is on account of his rathyatra of yore. As a refugee from Pakistan he must take time to read partition literature like Praful Roy’s story “Where there is No Frontier.” Lajpat Singh’s an agnorisis or realization of past mistake is truly cathartic and can do for him [the prime ministerial candidate] good in this fight against terrorism and communalism.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Ah, sister-town of Malegaon: Dhulia!!!
Coming on the heels of the bomb blast of September 29 2008 in Malegaon, the communal flare up in Dhulia is the last straw that threatens to break the back of the camel that is the state of Maharashtra. Or is it the early straw in the wind? Will it spiral into full-blown pogrom as is underway in Orissa’s Kanthamal district? Or is it still a matter of time? However, what is truthfully most horrendous is that the severity of the systematic attacks and arson should have been ‘sky rocketed’ after the visit of the state home minister RR Patil and the Director General of Police AN Roy. The forbidding faces of these two men looked already quite grim when they had toured Malegaon only last week.
An image of how the organized marauding brigades have wrought havoc is the victim, Karimullah Lal Mohammad. He had got down at the crossing on the Agra road near the Gurduwara of Dhulia as he traveled from Malegaon. A group of youths on motorcycles swooped upon him and pulled him down and mercilessly beat him. This fifty-plus man of humble origin was caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was at a loss to understand how the fury had over taken him so swiftly and him so unaware! The travail and trauma of the unwary stranger is a saga of suffering that all human beings dread most. Karimullah was a stranger to the town as he had gone there to meet his truck-driver son who was passing Dhulia on his way to their town in north of India. The son had saved some money and wanted to give it to his lonely father staying in Malegaon. The Id festival was still fresh. The eyes of Karimullah were transfixed in shock, surprise and pain at the cops who stood nearby and did nothing to save him. Fortunately he survived, four others from his community lost their lives to the mobs and police bullet.
Hundreds of people from Malegaon travel to Dhulia daily for shopping, medical treatment, meeting relatives as well as students commuting to medical and engineering colleges. Dhulia is the biggest market for buffaloes in Maharashtra. Dealers in animals gather there Sunday to Tuesday from neighboring Malegaon and from as far as Kathiyawad.
The organized and well planned attacks on the Muslim houses and commercial establishments threaten to destroy the extremely close relationship between the people of the two towns. They had nurtured it over more than a century. Moreover the town was free from the kind of communal tension and strife that has almost undone Malegaon. The two towns seem to have been joined as twins by the same umbilical cord. The Agra road connects them like artery supplying nourishment to thousands of people who depend on the road and live on both the sides of it. But there was something else in their fate. The garages and mechanical shops in auto industry and the uncountable hotels and motels and other satellite commercial establishments bore the brunt. Most among them were owned by Muslims and were systematically looted and burnt.
The Marathi Sakal news network editor Uttam Kamble saw a scene at 6 p.m. on October 5 in which a crowd of youths and young children (choteya poranche) was setting fire to a garage. What is disturbing here is the induction of the young children! Catch them young is the motto of the extremist right wing. What would happen whey this young generation comes to age! This is a frightening premonition of the future of our common destiny. Passersby were watching where this agitated mob would go and how much would they do. All this not far from the Memorial of Shaheed Hameed who had attacked Pakistani tanks and destroyed them in the most ferocious battle near Lahore. One such Pak tank is put up as a trophy in the traffic island of Hameed chowk.
If that is what was happening in the evening, in the night according to the reporter of Urdu Times Aziz Ejaz there were conflagrations all over the town!
As the casualties started coming in at the civil hospital the mobs intimidated and scared away the Muslims from seeking medical help or treatment. Some medical doctors wearing Muslim skullcaps had trouble helping the injured as the Shiv Sainiks objected their presence obviously for their look? But the collector intervened and assured the mob that it was their conventional dress and nothing more.
Strangely, the alibi the police offer that their Dhulia contingents were deployed in Malegaon and so the situation went out of control in Dhulia is anomalous since Dhulia has district headquarters of state reserve police force as well. It hardly takes an hour to move over to Dhulia from Malegaon. Trouble started with provocative banners and notice boards put up by Hindu Rakshak Sabha in the morning itself while curfew was declared after four in the evening. Much like Gujarat the violence was well planned and coordinated. At one time the mob attacked additional collector of Dhulia district Mustak Patel who has passed into coma since the attack. In one place the mob of the majority community attacked a ghetto and when people within the ghetto came out the police allegedly moved to the front of the mob of the majority and confronted the inmates of the ghetto with guns. This is obviously state complicity.
It is disturbing to note that the miniscule minority of Muslims scattered in pockets of ghettoes all over Dhulia town and overwhelmed by a huge majority of Hindus should be subjected to desecration of some two dozen mosques and burning of nearly two thousand houses! Even children of two to four year’s age group were brutalized. If this were the beginning of havoc in Maharashtra what would be the end!
An image of how the organized marauding brigades have wrought havoc is the victim, Karimullah Lal Mohammad. He had got down at the crossing on the Agra road near the Gurduwara of Dhulia as he traveled from Malegaon. A group of youths on motorcycles swooped upon him and pulled him down and mercilessly beat him. This fifty-plus man of humble origin was caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was at a loss to understand how the fury had over taken him so swiftly and him so unaware! The travail and trauma of the unwary stranger is a saga of suffering that all human beings dread most. Karimullah was a stranger to the town as he had gone there to meet his truck-driver son who was passing Dhulia on his way to their town in north of India. The son had saved some money and wanted to give it to his lonely father staying in Malegaon. The Id festival was still fresh. The eyes of Karimullah were transfixed in shock, surprise and pain at the cops who stood nearby and did nothing to save him. Fortunately he survived, four others from his community lost their lives to the mobs and police bullet.
Hundreds of people from Malegaon travel to Dhulia daily for shopping, medical treatment, meeting relatives as well as students commuting to medical and engineering colleges. Dhulia is the biggest market for buffaloes in Maharashtra. Dealers in animals gather there Sunday to Tuesday from neighboring Malegaon and from as far as Kathiyawad.
The organized and well planned attacks on the Muslim houses and commercial establishments threaten to destroy the extremely close relationship between the people of the two towns. They had nurtured it over more than a century. Moreover the town was free from the kind of communal tension and strife that has almost undone Malegaon. The two towns seem to have been joined as twins by the same umbilical cord. The Agra road connects them like artery supplying nourishment to thousands of people who depend on the road and live on both the sides of it. But there was something else in their fate. The garages and mechanical shops in auto industry and the uncountable hotels and motels and other satellite commercial establishments bore the brunt. Most among them were owned by Muslims and were systematically looted and burnt.
The Marathi Sakal news network editor Uttam Kamble saw a scene at 6 p.m. on October 5 in which a crowd of youths and young children (choteya poranche) was setting fire to a garage. What is disturbing here is the induction of the young children! Catch them young is the motto of the extremist right wing. What would happen whey this young generation comes to age! This is a frightening premonition of the future of our common destiny. Passersby were watching where this agitated mob would go and how much would they do. All this not far from the Memorial of Shaheed Hameed who had attacked Pakistani tanks and destroyed them in the most ferocious battle near Lahore. One such Pak tank is put up as a trophy in the traffic island of Hameed chowk.
If that is what was happening in the evening, in the night according to the reporter of Urdu Times Aziz Ejaz there were conflagrations all over the town!
As the casualties started coming in at the civil hospital the mobs intimidated and scared away the Muslims from seeking medical help or treatment. Some medical doctors wearing Muslim skullcaps had trouble helping the injured as the Shiv Sainiks objected their presence obviously for their look? But the collector intervened and assured the mob that it was their conventional dress and nothing more.
Strangely, the alibi the police offer that their Dhulia contingents were deployed in Malegaon and so the situation went out of control in Dhulia is anomalous since Dhulia has district headquarters of state reserve police force as well. It hardly takes an hour to move over to Dhulia from Malegaon. Trouble started with provocative banners and notice boards put up by Hindu Rakshak Sabha in the morning itself while curfew was declared after four in the evening. Much like Gujarat the violence was well planned and coordinated. At one time the mob attacked additional collector of Dhulia district Mustak Patel who has passed into coma since the attack. In one place the mob of the majority community attacked a ghetto and when people within the ghetto came out the police allegedly moved to the front of the mob of the majority and confronted the inmates of the ghetto with guns. This is obviously state complicity.
It is disturbing to note that the miniscule minority of Muslims scattered in pockets of ghettoes all over Dhulia town and overwhelmed by a huge majority of Hindus should be subjected to desecration of some two dozen mosques and burning of nearly two thousand houses! Even children of two to four year’s age group were brutalized. If this were the beginning of havoc in Maharashtra what would be the end!
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