Most of the Jews in the world are the wealthiest of the populace of the earth. According to the Bible they are the pampered lot for whom manna was sent as food. The rest of mankind has always been languishing in starvation, poverty and in searching jobs to eke out existence. What an enviable position! But it all ends there. The Jews have been the richest diamond traders and arms dealers who would make others fight so that the arms prices they charge would go skyrocketing. They also charge famine prices for the most needful. For their own war on Palestinians they get arms and ammunition including cluster bombs and dreadful bombers gratis from the US. About that steady supply they have been assured time and again and would continue the same, witness President Barack Hussein Obama asseverations. You pay with your blood and sweat and they fatten on it. This is no inane anti-Semitism. This is ostentatious revelation of truth be it Gaza or Malegaon or Mumbai, circa 2008. But the truth is hard to come by because the Jews also own media that matters for the West. The biggest investment fraud is also credited to them. Bernard Madoff has swallowed 50 b dollars and has reduced even a millionaire Maureen Ebel, 60, to the status of a cleaner. Funding terrorist attack in Malegaon would be very easy for them.
The six months which the Israelis allegedly had given to Lt Col Srikant Purohit produced two terrific results of which one certainly was the bomb blast in Malegaon on September 29, 2008 and the other could be the Samjhauta express explosions of February 2007. Perhaps there are other attacks which have still not been fully fathomed. The training and equipment that the Israelis had promised Purohit have played havoc.
Many children have died in Israeli attacks on Gaza and equally true is the fact that children have fallen victims of bombs blown by Muslim terrorists occasionally. But in the case of Fareen, 12, of Malegaon there are notable features of situation of her life. She had fasted the whole day of September 29, 2008. After sunset she went out to buy some foodstuff when the bomb planted by Ramji Kalsangara and others killed her. She was one of the seven killed. All this was done to show to Israel that the Abhinav Bharat renovated by Purohit, Major Ramesh Upadhya and Himani Savarkar could do it! Therefore it deserved the four things Purohit demanded of Israelis. (1)Safe houses in Tel Aviv from where “the conspirators could operate once their ideology took root and their numbers increased.” (2) They would fly their red coloured flag with anchor and plough and also get diplomatic immunity in case criminals like the bomb planters want to seek asylum. It is no wonder that Ramji is still not traced out. (3) Arms and equipment and training in arms. (4) Recognition of Hindu rashtra in the UN and world wide.
Malegaon has been most unjustly treated by the ignominious epithet it had to wear down the years: mini Pakistan. No other than Bal Thackeray has time and again referred it. He left no doubt of that while provokingly remarking that there are mini Pakistans and they should be the targets of terrorist attacks, he had Maleagon as one of them in mind. In everyday life I have heard the phrase bandied often in my earthly existence of sixty two years here. But the facts belie this tarnishing of the place. The bulk of the people are more preoccupied with their daily struggle for their livelihood than anything else. All the students in the city sing the national anthem and salute the tricolour with full respect and owe allegiance to their nation, India, as part of their curriculum. The people carry on their work in accordance with the Indian laws. Among the mammoth crowd at the public ground on camp road there are sizable civilians wearing Islamic round white caps and sporting beards and women clad in veil saluting the national flag on national days like 15 August and 26 January every year. Around the public ground is also the Idgah where Muslims weep and cry to Allah for rains for all, including the animals and trees which suffer mutely when the rains play truant. All this did not bother Abhinav Bharat. What really mattered was the concentration of Muslims in the city. As their population is thick in the town much thicker was the Muslim crowd in Bhiku chowk on the eve of Eid. Now the people would remember that Israel which played so much havoc in Gaza had also ‘visited’ the heart of Malegaon with hellfire.
Israel in Malegaon is the conclusion based on a conjecture. The ATS has to prove in the court of law many of the allegations against Purohit and others. However, a recurring part of the argument is that Purohit wanted to establish Hindu rashtra that would displace the secular democratic structure of India and our Constitution. This distant threat legitimizes speculation as to what the threat is and how best to fight before it is realized into concrete shape if it has not already.
In the aftermath of the India and Pakistan testing their atomic devices at the end of the last century I was put through a refresher course of defence and strategic studies of the University of Poona where Prof and Head of the university department Dr Pranjpay compared and contrasted the relative strength of the two countries but gave more credit to Pakistan because despite lack of scientific infrastructure it had produced the bomb. He did not wish to downplay India but caution euphoric nation that there is real danger it faces. Similarly in the wake of the 26/11 the magazine Covert carried out a survey and pointed out that our oil installation in Mumbai were prime vulnerable targets that could cripple our economy. Again the aim was to caution the nation. Should we not caution ourselves through speculative medium of the journalism as to what could threaten to subvert the democratic and secular foundations of the country?
Monday, January 26, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
Malegaon: the Israeli connection
It is grim reading how Lt Col Srikant Purohit and others wanted to establish a Hindu Rashtra with the help of Israel. The RSS and Jan Sangh did not whole heartedly join the national juggernaut that Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had started for the foundation of a democratic liberal state of India in which all could live. The same could be said of the neighbouring Pakistan whose founder Jinnah had created his country for all the people irrespective of their religion but this was systematically undermined and then President Ziaul Haq hijacked it in the name of Sharia. The grudge of Purohit and his ilk was that the British did not leave India as a Hindu Rashtra while they took Pakistan as a theocratic state based on Islam. The only state established on theocracy was, of course, Israel. The recent Gaza incursion of the Israeli army is the most recent and vivid murderous effort in the long history of establishing a theocratic state of Israel. Its birth in 1948 was catastrophic for the native Palestinians of the erstwhile Palestine. Such a visualized state has been the cherished dream of the right wing groups of the RSS and its offshoots who have never been content with the democratic, secular republic of India.
There have been many occasions when extreme Hindutva leaders like Bal Thackeray and the leaders of the sangh parivar have expressed their desire for a Hindu Rashtra, nay they have de facto lived and worked as though India is already one. Their angst is that there are many in India, overwhelmingly Hindus, who do not want India to be just that. The right wing organizations have used every opportunity to divide the people on religious lines and have craftily created situations which could virtually subvert the whole system of governance into what their cherished dream has been.
It is in this context that Purohit made the bold attempt albeit with a difference after 9/11, camouflaging his plan by joining what the British Foreign Secretary David Miliband calls “the mistaken war on terror”. Believing all acts of terrorism in the country as Islamic terrorism he designed his own terrorism to fight terrorism. The Samjhauta express attack and the attacks in Mecca mosque of Hyderabad and the one in Ajmer shrine fall in line with this design. He picked up the thread where VD Savarkar had left it and so revived the organization that Savarkar had disbanded and took the name of the newspaper which Nathuram had started, “Hindu Rashtra”. The Jewish connection cannot be stretched any further although Aston David was principal of Wadia college where the two professors taught their subjects and also taught making bombs to Rakesh Dhawde and others. Aston’s being a Jew cannot be taken to mean that he too is involved as are two of his professors. But that does not dispel suspicion that “the safe houses in Israel” Purohit had arranged for could not be there waiting for any eventuality that he had in mind. Inquiry is still on...
There have been many occasions when extreme Hindutva leaders like Bal Thackeray and the leaders of the sangh parivar have expressed their desire for a Hindu Rashtra, nay they have de facto lived and worked as though India is already one. Their angst is that there are many in India, overwhelmingly Hindus, who do not want India to be just that. The right wing organizations have used every opportunity to divide the people on religious lines and have craftily created situations which could virtually subvert the whole system of governance into what their cherished dream has been.
It is in this context that Purohit made the bold attempt albeit with a difference after 9/11, camouflaging his plan by joining what the British Foreign Secretary David Miliband calls “the mistaken war on terror”. Believing all acts of terrorism in the country as Islamic terrorism he designed his own terrorism to fight terrorism. The Samjhauta express attack and the attacks in Mecca mosque of Hyderabad and the one in Ajmer shrine fall in line with this design. He picked up the thread where VD Savarkar had left it and so revived the organization that Savarkar had disbanded and took the name of the newspaper which Nathuram had started, “Hindu Rashtra”. The Jewish connection cannot be stretched any further although Aston David was principal of Wadia college where the two professors taught their subjects and also taught making bombs to Rakesh Dhawde and others. Aston’s being a Jew cannot be taken to mean that he too is involved as are two of his professors. But that does not dispel suspicion that “the safe houses in Israel” Purohit had arranged for could not be there waiting for any eventuality that he had in mind. Inquiry is still on...
Friday, January 16, 2009
Mind moving mountain: choosing the perceptive mind in fighting communalism/terrorism
MJ Akbar misquoted Shakespeare to criticize AR Antulay. They represent two opposing tendencies of mind, one cynical and the other sycophantic. Thus there is need to find out a more perceptive way of tackling the menace of communalism and terrorism.
A French girl visited Malegaon for a research topic on communalism in the town. Sarah Chauvin and I met an experienced member of the National Integration Council of Malegaon. Prakash Patil gave an example how he prevented a riot taking place in the town in 1983. A lawyer called Yeshwant K Gunjad found that someone had hung a garland of bones on the idol of the female goddess of Matamath Hindu temple in Muslim dominated area. The temple and the Ahle Hadish mosque share a common wall. It was midnight of a Saturday. He raised a hue and cry over the defilement. People gathered outside and tension spread like a wildfire. Patil tried to pacify and reason with the people but had to rush to the nearby police station to seek help. Inspector Deshpande made a phone call to additional superintendent of police Mr Mushriff who was in a meeting at Nasik with district superintendent Mr Ankola. Mushriff rushed enough strength of police to deploy in the town.
By the time Mushriff reached the hotspot it was Sunday morning. The Hindutva leaders of the time Bhima Gawli and Puntambekar were with the crowd. The restive crowd was getting out of control when Mushriff had to act fast. To contact the district collector he wanted to use phone. The only phone available was there in the Maharashtra Bank opposite the temple. When he saw the bank open on a Sunday he felt it strange and inquired about it and found that the bank was opened because the house of Gunjad was to be auctioned since he could not pay back loan he had taken. One event connected to another, Gunjad had seen the garland, he hollered the people to gather there, he had filed complaint and he as in the forefront of the agitation. Mushriff detained him for questioning and within no time he confessed his guilt that he had garlanded in order to create a riot and save the auctioning of his house. Nothing came out of the incident because lawyer Puntambekar fought the case of Gunjad and got him acquitted!
But it was not so easy for the Good Samaritan, Patil, who was at his wit’s end reasoning with the crowd. He told them that the garland was not exactly around the neck of the goddess, that it was hung from the trishul. That it was made of the common cord used in sewing gunny sack in storing sugar and grains available mostly with the Hindu traders in the nearby Gudbazaar. That the pieces of bones were of chicken or mutton that the Muslim then were not accustomed to consume as they were beef eaters. In this way he bought precious time to reason and pacify the irate mob and successfully prevented the mounting tension exploding into a communal riot.
Patil and Mushriff used their minds to solve a very difficult problem. A mind that could be the proverbial mind that Swami Vivekananda was searching, a vedic mind in an Islamic body. Neither was either a sycophantic or a cynic. Akbar and Antulay have a sermon in stone here: grow old along with me, the best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was created. Tackling communalism is also tackling terrorism today.
Antulay spoke out of turn. The death of Hemant Karkare is still a matter of heavy consequences. Who is fighting terror and how, is still shrouded in mystery. The disappearance of Anita Uddaiya and her reported return from the US raises more questions than the government or the police can answer. She had seen the six[and where were the other four] terrorists land off Cuffe Parade beach in Mumbai on November 26. She should have been given police protection. She was called to confirm the identity of the bodies at JJ Hospital. But she was whisked away from the toilet. Is it a cloak and dagger type of Conan Doyle? On her return to Mumbai the police took her to the Cuffe Parade police station to take down her statement. If she was taken out of the country by the Americans why this charade, then? If it was kidnapping then somebody else should have been called at the police station. If it was cleared at the highest level of the government there is still the problem that a citizen of a free democratic country disappears and even her daughter or niece does not know and has to register a case of missing person. Why is Anita so queasy about identifying the copses of the slain terrorists when she was so forthcoming on the night of the attack in asseverating that she had confronted them and would have fittingly replied if she knew their identity and motivation? Are we also following our big brother in the While House in learning extraordinary rendition and outsourcing of torture, etc? Antulay’s raising question about who sent Karkare is equally relevant here. But with a catch: the people and not ministers should ask or introspect why the things happen the way they happen.
This would save us time and embarrassment of another minister, the British foreign secretary David Miliband that "war on terror" was and is "misleading and mistaken" and the motivations and identities of terrorists are disparate.
A French girl visited Malegaon for a research topic on communalism in the town. Sarah Chauvin and I met an experienced member of the National Integration Council of Malegaon. Prakash Patil gave an example how he prevented a riot taking place in the town in 1983. A lawyer called Yeshwant K Gunjad found that someone had hung a garland of bones on the idol of the female goddess of Matamath Hindu temple in Muslim dominated area. The temple and the Ahle Hadish mosque share a common wall. It was midnight of a Saturday. He raised a hue and cry over the defilement. People gathered outside and tension spread like a wildfire. Patil tried to pacify and reason with the people but had to rush to the nearby police station to seek help. Inspector Deshpande made a phone call to additional superintendent of police Mr Mushriff who was in a meeting at Nasik with district superintendent Mr Ankola. Mushriff rushed enough strength of police to deploy in the town.
By the time Mushriff reached the hotspot it was Sunday morning. The Hindutva leaders of the time Bhima Gawli and Puntambekar were with the crowd. The restive crowd was getting out of control when Mushriff had to act fast. To contact the district collector he wanted to use phone. The only phone available was there in the Maharashtra Bank opposite the temple. When he saw the bank open on a Sunday he felt it strange and inquired about it and found that the bank was opened because the house of Gunjad was to be auctioned since he could not pay back loan he had taken. One event connected to another, Gunjad had seen the garland, he hollered the people to gather there, he had filed complaint and he as in the forefront of the agitation. Mushriff detained him for questioning and within no time he confessed his guilt that he had garlanded in order to create a riot and save the auctioning of his house. Nothing came out of the incident because lawyer Puntambekar fought the case of Gunjad and got him acquitted!
But it was not so easy for the Good Samaritan, Patil, who was at his wit’s end reasoning with the crowd. He told them that the garland was not exactly around the neck of the goddess, that it was hung from the trishul. That it was made of the common cord used in sewing gunny sack in storing sugar and grains available mostly with the Hindu traders in the nearby Gudbazaar. That the pieces of bones were of chicken or mutton that the Muslim then were not accustomed to consume as they were beef eaters. In this way he bought precious time to reason and pacify the irate mob and successfully prevented the mounting tension exploding into a communal riot.
Patil and Mushriff used their minds to solve a very difficult problem. A mind that could be the proverbial mind that Swami Vivekananda was searching, a vedic mind in an Islamic body. Neither was either a sycophantic or a cynic. Akbar and Antulay have a sermon in stone here: grow old along with me, the best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was created. Tackling communalism is also tackling terrorism today.
Antulay spoke out of turn. The death of Hemant Karkare is still a matter of heavy consequences. Who is fighting terror and how, is still shrouded in mystery. The disappearance of Anita Uddaiya and her reported return from the US raises more questions than the government or the police can answer. She had seen the six[and where were the other four] terrorists land off Cuffe Parade beach in Mumbai on November 26. She should have been given police protection. She was called to confirm the identity of the bodies at JJ Hospital. But she was whisked away from the toilet. Is it a cloak and dagger type of Conan Doyle? On her return to Mumbai the police took her to the Cuffe Parade police station to take down her statement. If she was taken out of the country by the Americans why this charade, then? If it was kidnapping then somebody else should have been called at the police station. If it was cleared at the highest level of the government there is still the problem that a citizen of a free democratic country disappears and even her daughter or niece does not know and has to register a case of missing person. Why is Anita so queasy about identifying the copses of the slain terrorists when she was so forthcoming on the night of the attack in asseverating that she had confronted them and would have fittingly replied if she knew their identity and motivation? Are we also following our big brother in the While House in learning extraordinary rendition and outsourcing of torture, etc? Antulay’s raising question about who sent Karkare is equally relevant here. But with a catch: the people and not ministers should ask or introspect why the things happen the way they happen.
This would save us time and embarrassment of another minister, the British foreign secretary David Miliband that "war on terror" was and is "misleading and mistaken" and the motivations and identities of terrorists are disparate.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
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…”
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…”
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Ascent of communalism in Malegaon
Malegaon was wonderfully free from communalism and its tension in the halcyon days after the Independence. Bigotry against the minority Muslim community appeared on the scene thanks to the growth of aggressive Hindutva. In later times this would became the defining characteristic of communalism in and around the city. The eighties was the turbulent decade of Indian social life. BJP was the new avatar of the communalist party Jan Sangh. While there was some degree of communalism intermittently, it was during this era that Congress leaders left their secular commitment in a brazen manner. Indira Gandhi started visiting temples from January 1, 1984. Later her son opened the doors of the historic Babri mosque for Hindus to pray. Thus the Pandora’s Box lay opened. Unfortunately for the country these were also the years of Sikh militancy and the backlash against the Sikh community all over the land.
A local event symbolizing the national chaos was how on September 10, 1984 RSS leader GM Puntambekar and five of his close associates had halted the Ganesh procession at the central mosque in the bazaar at 11 and dancing to the tune of the drum beat went on when the midday prayer inside the mosque began. Vermillion powder was thrown on the walls. The police took two more days to file a case against the six on September 13 for creating enmity between the two communities. In the first place they had not taken any precaution although Puntamberkar was indicted by Justice Madan Commission inquiring into the Bhiwandi riots of 1980. He was blamed by the Commission for making inflammatory speeches against the Muslims in Bhiwandi prior to the riots. In the second place nothing came out of the police action.
Aggressive insistent Hindutva communalism had manifested first in the late sixties when Puntamberkar took out a protest march to the lane in a Muslim locality where a butcher had slaughtered a cow. Marching into the Muslim area produced tension, something new to the people. It was the police who would enforce ban on cow slaughter during festival or other days. Now it was RSS and its cadres who had taken the law in their hands in such a daring manner in a thickly populated area. The butcher claimed that he was sold the cow in order to be trapped.
This was the precursor of what was to come with greater force. One such was creating different identities for the natives who were quite harmoniously one till then dealing with each other in daily life. If there was beating of drum before the main mosque and red powder thrown on the walls of it, it was construed to be the work of stray miscreants. Determined and deliberate attempts surface in the eighties to chalk out a new identity chipping off the national unified existence. Thus the Hindu Ekta Sammetar [sammelan?] made a loud appearance on January 26, 1986 on the road leading to the public/college ground where Independence Day and Republic Day are celebrated. Loudspeakers blared how there would be a separate celebration in which Hindus would be invited. The camp/ MG road was ringing with this discordant sound as students, police, and government servants and the public were hurrying through to reach the public ground. Unknown till then, there splashed in the consciousness the phenomenon of separate identity. In the second week of the next month many towns were marred by communal tension, there was firing at Jama masjid in Delhi, Calcutta, Jammu, Sehoro near Bhopal, etc. This continued in the third week. And what was novel, extremists started beating Kashmiri Muslims passing through Jammu on February 22. Much like what happened in 2008 agitation over the allotment of land to Amarnath pilgrimage. In a way communalism in Malegaon was microcosmic manifestation of the macrocosmic upheaval.
Meerut riots erupted on March 7. Next day Jammu Kashmir Chief Minister GM Shaw had to leave office for not controlling communal violence in the state. Writing in the Onlooker March 16-31, 1986 Maneka Gandhi said that never before did the Muslims feel so much besieged as now. RSS functionary Mr Mate was in Malegaon during this period. He trained Hindus how to defend their culture. In the district town of Nasik on April 21 Hindu leaders wanted to take out victory procession through Muslim areas on the occasion of the opening of Babri mosque door. They were detained and later released. They blamed the police for being impartial here while in Punjab the police colluded with the Sikh militants in attacks on Hindus.
On May 15th in Umapur, Beed district, Hindu extremists killed several Muslims. Reports of such incidents naturally made Muslims apprehensive as would the Jagannath yatra . Subsequently many fell victim to the communal violence in Ahmedabad and in one gory incident Muslim patients were thrown down from the fourth floor of a hospital to be killed by the mob waiting on the ground.
On May 6th the parliament passed Muslim women (protection of rights in divorce) bill by 372 to 54 in favour. This was as disastrous as opening of the doors of Babri mosque as it was an ill conceived way of playing with communal politics for electoral gains. The Hindutva groups used the opening of the door for making even more strident demand for rebuilding a Ram temple on the site of the mosque. Parallel to this they also took the parliament bill as a stick to beat the ruling party and also launch anti Muslim movement in the name of so called “appeasement” of the minority.
1986 would be remembered for a very histrionic brinkmanship as much condemnable as that of the RSS leader of what he did in 1967. The local ‘Janta’ leader Nihal Ahmad stomped the Ganesh mandal decorative structure in order to clear the way for the procession of tazia. On the occasion of Moharram Muslims had always taken out procession and it went through the fixed government approved routes which included the Parsi sodawalla dooryard where Hindus and Muslims lived together. But on this occasion the Ganesh festival coincided with the Moharram. The Hindus raised structures made of clay and grass for ten day festivity. The police did not act in time and solve the complex situation. Taking advantage of it Ahmad stepped in and did what was caught on camera and Xerox copies of the photo were pasted all over the town and the newspapers carried the same. An intense communal ill feeling against the leader led almost to a riot. For a whole week Hindutva leaders would address mammoth gathering of Hindus in Tilak square in protest. Thankfully the town was sparred a real riot.
But the harm was already done. The present home minister of Maharashtra was then leader of Shiv Sena. Chaggan Bhujbal used most abusive language against Ahmad in the assembly and outside he was even more vitriolic. He squarely blamed him and so did Anna Patil of Maratha Mahasangh. The latter targeted him for the recent parliament bill and ridiculed his community which enjoyed the provision of four wives. Bhujbal held out a threat that Muslims would be taught a lesson at the appropriate time. All this kept the communal tension palpable. These demarcated the Muslim with an identity that made them look as ‘the other.’
However the terms on which Hindus agreed to call off their boycott and immerse Ganesh idols would create more hurdles in the future. The government conceded to the demands and allowed 93 groups of people from the town and nearby villages to immerse the idols in Malegaon taking their own time during the procession. There was the caveat: that would happen only when the idols from Dattnager would be taken through Muslim areas and would reach the remaining. Such an arrangement would enable them to stop at mosque fronts and dance and play loud music for hours together. Many people saw this as scoring off points over not Ahmad but the Muslim community and the minority people also felt that imitation reservoir which Ahmad had kicked was a ploy to gain ultimately these terms of agreement. Later years would see tension generated on account of the passing of the Dattnager procession though the thickly populated lanes of Muslim locality. The clear beneficiaries were the Hindutva groups. But on September 23 1986 when Duttnager procession passed through Muslim areas the tension rose in a crescendo as vermillion powder was thrown on mosques. It is reported that the cost of the powder alone was fifteen thousand rupees. A look back in the history as here may help us to evolve better mechanism to achieve lasting peace and maintain communal harmony.
One of the most problematic objectives of the Ganesh committees was their desire for untrammeled right to have as much time as they liked and no interference of the administration and the police so far as their conduct on the road during the procession was concerned. This is true as of 2008. On September 8, the chairperson of the central committee of the Ganesh festivity, Sandeep Abhonkar had threatened to halt immersion unless the police cancelled the extradition notice against his committee members. The police had acted on the past conduct of the members ho had created law and order problem. He asserted that Hindus were capable of defending themselves and did not want the police; they were powerful enough to handle any eventuality. This was an insinuation.
In the aftermath of the Mumbai attack of 26/11 the public anger against the police and the administration must also make us know the past and prepare for a better future where there is no riot. In Shashi Tharoor’s novel “Riot” the parents of the American girl come to India to understand what led to her death in the riots of the eighties. That is how one comes to terms with the past to live a better life hereafter. But with a proviso in the pithy words from EM Forster’s novel “Howard’s End”: only connect[heart to heart].
A local event symbolizing the national chaos was how on September 10, 1984 RSS leader GM Puntambekar and five of his close associates had halted the Ganesh procession at the central mosque in the bazaar at 11 and dancing to the tune of the drum beat went on when the midday prayer inside the mosque began. Vermillion powder was thrown on the walls. The police took two more days to file a case against the six on September 13 for creating enmity between the two communities. In the first place they had not taken any precaution although Puntamberkar was indicted by Justice Madan Commission inquiring into the Bhiwandi riots of 1980. He was blamed by the Commission for making inflammatory speeches against the Muslims in Bhiwandi prior to the riots. In the second place nothing came out of the police action.
Aggressive insistent Hindutva communalism had manifested first in the late sixties when Puntamberkar took out a protest march to the lane in a Muslim locality where a butcher had slaughtered a cow. Marching into the Muslim area produced tension, something new to the people. It was the police who would enforce ban on cow slaughter during festival or other days. Now it was RSS and its cadres who had taken the law in their hands in such a daring manner in a thickly populated area. The butcher claimed that he was sold the cow in order to be trapped.
This was the precursor of what was to come with greater force. One such was creating different identities for the natives who were quite harmoniously one till then dealing with each other in daily life. If there was beating of drum before the main mosque and red powder thrown on the walls of it, it was construed to be the work of stray miscreants. Determined and deliberate attempts surface in the eighties to chalk out a new identity chipping off the national unified existence. Thus the Hindu Ekta Sammetar [sammelan?] made a loud appearance on January 26, 1986 on the road leading to the public/college ground where Independence Day and Republic Day are celebrated. Loudspeakers blared how there would be a separate celebration in which Hindus would be invited. The camp/ MG road was ringing with this discordant sound as students, police, and government servants and the public were hurrying through to reach the public ground. Unknown till then, there splashed in the consciousness the phenomenon of separate identity. In the second week of the next month many towns were marred by communal tension, there was firing at Jama masjid in Delhi, Calcutta, Jammu, Sehoro near Bhopal, etc. This continued in the third week. And what was novel, extremists started beating Kashmiri Muslims passing through Jammu on February 22. Much like what happened in 2008 agitation over the allotment of land to Amarnath pilgrimage. In a way communalism in Malegaon was microcosmic manifestation of the macrocosmic upheaval.
Meerut riots erupted on March 7. Next day Jammu Kashmir Chief Minister GM Shaw had to leave office for not controlling communal violence in the state. Writing in the Onlooker March 16-31, 1986 Maneka Gandhi said that never before did the Muslims feel so much besieged as now. RSS functionary Mr Mate was in Malegaon during this period. He trained Hindus how to defend their culture. In the district town of Nasik on April 21 Hindu leaders wanted to take out victory procession through Muslim areas on the occasion of the opening of Babri mosque door. They were detained and later released. They blamed the police for being impartial here while in Punjab the police colluded with the Sikh militants in attacks on Hindus.
On May 15th in Umapur, Beed district, Hindu extremists killed several Muslims. Reports of such incidents naturally made Muslims apprehensive as would the Jagannath yatra . Subsequently many fell victim to the communal violence in Ahmedabad and in one gory incident Muslim patients were thrown down from the fourth floor of a hospital to be killed by the mob waiting on the ground.
On May 6th the parliament passed Muslim women (protection of rights in divorce) bill by 372 to 54 in favour. This was as disastrous as opening of the doors of Babri mosque as it was an ill conceived way of playing with communal politics for electoral gains. The Hindutva groups used the opening of the door for making even more strident demand for rebuilding a Ram temple on the site of the mosque. Parallel to this they also took the parliament bill as a stick to beat the ruling party and also launch anti Muslim movement in the name of so called “appeasement” of the minority.
1986 would be remembered for a very histrionic brinkmanship as much condemnable as that of the RSS leader of what he did in 1967. The local ‘Janta’ leader Nihal Ahmad stomped the Ganesh mandal decorative structure in order to clear the way for the procession of tazia. On the occasion of Moharram Muslims had always taken out procession and it went through the fixed government approved routes which included the Parsi sodawalla dooryard where Hindus and Muslims lived together. But on this occasion the Ganesh festival coincided with the Moharram. The Hindus raised structures made of clay and grass for ten day festivity. The police did not act in time and solve the complex situation. Taking advantage of it Ahmad stepped in and did what was caught on camera and Xerox copies of the photo were pasted all over the town and the newspapers carried the same. An intense communal ill feeling against the leader led almost to a riot. For a whole week Hindutva leaders would address mammoth gathering of Hindus in Tilak square in protest. Thankfully the town was sparred a real riot.
But the harm was already done. The present home minister of Maharashtra was then leader of Shiv Sena. Chaggan Bhujbal used most abusive language against Ahmad in the assembly and outside he was even more vitriolic. He squarely blamed him and so did Anna Patil of Maratha Mahasangh. The latter targeted him for the recent parliament bill and ridiculed his community which enjoyed the provision of four wives. Bhujbal held out a threat that Muslims would be taught a lesson at the appropriate time. All this kept the communal tension palpable. These demarcated the Muslim with an identity that made them look as ‘the other.’
However the terms on which Hindus agreed to call off their boycott and immerse Ganesh idols would create more hurdles in the future. The government conceded to the demands and allowed 93 groups of people from the town and nearby villages to immerse the idols in Malegaon taking their own time during the procession. There was the caveat: that would happen only when the idols from Dattnager would be taken through Muslim areas and would reach the remaining. Such an arrangement would enable them to stop at mosque fronts and dance and play loud music for hours together. Many people saw this as scoring off points over not Ahmad but the Muslim community and the minority people also felt that imitation reservoir which Ahmad had kicked was a ploy to gain ultimately these terms of agreement. Later years would see tension generated on account of the passing of the Dattnager procession though the thickly populated lanes of Muslim locality. The clear beneficiaries were the Hindutva groups. But on September 23 1986 when Duttnager procession passed through Muslim areas the tension rose in a crescendo as vermillion powder was thrown on mosques. It is reported that the cost of the powder alone was fifteen thousand rupees. A look back in the history as here may help us to evolve better mechanism to achieve lasting peace and maintain communal harmony.
One of the most problematic objectives of the Ganesh committees was their desire for untrammeled right to have as much time as they liked and no interference of the administration and the police so far as their conduct on the road during the procession was concerned. This is true as of 2008. On September 8, the chairperson of the central committee of the Ganesh festivity, Sandeep Abhonkar had threatened to halt immersion unless the police cancelled the extradition notice against his committee members. The police had acted on the past conduct of the members ho had created law and order problem. He asserted that Hindus were capable of defending themselves and did not want the police; they were powerful enough to handle any eventuality. This was an insinuation.
In the aftermath of the Mumbai attack of 26/11 the public anger against the police and the administration must also make us know the past and prepare for a better future where there is no riot. In Shashi Tharoor’s novel “Riot” the parents of the American girl come to India to understand what led to her death in the riots of the eighties. That is how one comes to terms with the past to live a better life hereafter. But with a proviso in the pithy words from EM Forster’s novel “Howard’s End”: only connect[heart to heart].
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Violence and its victims
Mumbai and Malegaon have many things in common. Bomb blasts and communal riots make them almost unique in India. There is so much of violence and tension that the people genuinely wonder how to overcome it after the initial daze and fury of it are over.
The passengers who survived the attacks at the CST railway station as well as the widower manager of the Taj are at a loss to understand how swiftly they have been bereaved. Kavita Karkare’s anguish boils down to logic of her academic pursuit of a PhD degree in sociology which would help her search for the sociology of crime and suffering. The heart may not agree with the mind in her for sometimes to come. But this is at least a solace.
On the other spectrum of the same are the victims of frequent bouts of violence in Malegaon who try to grapple with communal violence and blasts. They have what is called hilarious imitation of the Bollywood films, the spoofs. Such imitation films in the town are simply overwhelmingly popular. They not only caricature the politicians, the communalists but also the officers involved in violence.
Says the pioneering film maker Shaikh Nasir: "There is no other entertainment in our town. We are mad about movies. After 14 hours of backbreaking work in power looms daily, the workers want to wear wings and fly. My parodies help them escape." One such film is a burlesque of Sholay and is dubbed Malegaon ke Sholay. The famous heroine Basanti rides a tonga and her paramour rides a bicycle. Malegaon spoof producers cannot hire horses as that is very costly, they prefer bicycles which are easy to come by. Heroes and villains alike ride the bike because that also is the mode of their own transportation to the site of the shooting and back. The bike may make many laugh at the cheap make-do-with imitation of the costly cars that Bollywood actors drive. But that also is a way to overcome the angst surrounding the bicycles which carried the bombs that killed 37 people in a grave yard mosque and a public square on September 8 2006 or the motorbike of Sadhvi Pragyasingh Thakur’s which killed seven in Bhiku chowk on September 29 2008. Most of the people are so poor that they never think how they have been deprived of a city public bus service that should have been given to the town because of the sheer size of population. Encroachment is so obtrusive that even if the bus service is sanctioned the drivers would go crazy how to pick their routes through the intractable meandering maze of the town.
That was what the parents of the bomb blast victim complained to Sonia Gandhi and the home minister of India: lack of infrastructure and absence of public facilities. Rupees one hundred and sixty seven crores allotted to the state for Minorities Development Department have remained unused till the end of 2008. As a result the roads are crowded and impassable what with potholes and encroachments. A frequent source of communal tension is cyclist bumping into a pedestrian from the other community. Temperature is so frayed that it leads to outright brawl. Let alone buses in Sankli streets of Madanpura of Mumbai or Mohammad Ali road of Malegaon even a two wheeler is difficult to negotiate through the thick slow moving casual crowd. Unlike Kavita anyone doing a PhD will have to forego his philosophical bent of mind to first overcome the traffic hurdle.
The dingy lane now named as Shaheed Hemant Karkare street is simply impassable for a pedestrian during the festival days as it is impossible for straight riding for even cycle on other days. Sadhvi Pragyasingh was naturally wondering why so few were felled by the bomb her Ramji had planted.
Mukkaram Pasha’s dare deviltry in wheeling riding or drag riding proved fatal in Bangalore. He raised the front wheel and rode on the rear that made the police whistle and then chase. He allegedly entered a brigadier’s residence and climbed up on the terrace. The sentry shot him for what he told afterward that the boy was speaking in Urdu and he thought him to be a terrorist. As other such violent cases the bullet passed through
his heart. Even then he climbed over the fence wall and escaped to die in hospital later. The most mentionable feature is the fear of the police what would they do when they catch a victim that too from the minority community. Equally notable is the language in which he spoke. It is strange that Urdu the most mellifluent language in the subcontinent should produce such misfortune in violence.
The Mumbai attacks of November 26 had shifted the focus of attention of the world from the worst scenario in the Middle East. But the Israelis attack on Gaza has again moved the attention back to where it usually has been for decades. But this time the death toll of Palestinians has gone to nearly 400 for 4 Israelis killed.
There is a notable difference between India and the rest of the world including the Middle East in terms of the nature of violence. The suicide bomber has still not arrived here. For example a suicide bomber blew himself up in Afghanistan on December 28, 2008 at a place where American soldiers were present but among the eight killed there were five school children. On the same day another suicide bomber blew himself up as he rode his bicycle in a protest march in Mosul, Iraq, against the Israeli attack on Gaza. In the most pictorial and moving demonstration of violence a car driver pretending that his car broke down in Buner around the Swat valley, Pakistan. He asked the people gathered at the polling station to help. As they pushed the car the driver blew himself up killing 26 others. Also on the same day a Tamil suicide bomber killed seven Sinhalese.
Among the reasons why violence is very horrifying are disastrously powerful weapons and destructive designing of the mind. Kavita Karkare wonders whether there was any action plan in place as were the helmets and bullet proof vests so tawdry in quality. Her basic question is who made her a widow. The Israelis as also Kasab and company use far superior weaponry, freely given by the US to the former and sourced internationally by the latter. The Qassim rockets and mortars of the Palestinians are improvised by themselves thanks to the long neglect of their plight by the world.
Revenge, hate, and retaliation are balanced by the failure of the civilized society and its organizations including the governments and the UNO which are accountable for the slide into barbarism. In the Buner car incident Pakistan says it has moved its soldiers from Swat valley to the borders with India in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks and cannot hold elections peacefully. The UN has miserably failed to control Israeli aggression and hence the rise in violence. Indeed the remedy of both the eyes for one and the whole jaw for a tooth is not only worse than the disease but whining of an insane bigot.
The passengers who survived the attacks at the CST railway station as well as the widower manager of the Taj are at a loss to understand how swiftly they have been bereaved. Kavita Karkare’s anguish boils down to logic of her academic pursuit of a PhD degree in sociology which would help her search for the sociology of crime and suffering. The heart may not agree with the mind in her for sometimes to come. But this is at least a solace.
On the other spectrum of the same are the victims of frequent bouts of violence in Malegaon who try to grapple with communal violence and blasts. They have what is called hilarious imitation of the Bollywood films, the spoofs. Such imitation films in the town are simply overwhelmingly popular. They not only caricature the politicians, the communalists but also the officers involved in violence.
Says the pioneering film maker Shaikh Nasir: "There is no other entertainment in our town. We are mad about movies. After 14 hours of backbreaking work in power looms daily, the workers want to wear wings and fly. My parodies help them escape." One such film is a burlesque of Sholay and is dubbed Malegaon ke Sholay. The famous heroine Basanti rides a tonga and her paramour rides a bicycle. Malegaon spoof producers cannot hire horses as that is very costly, they prefer bicycles which are easy to come by. Heroes and villains alike ride the bike because that also is the mode of their own transportation to the site of the shooting and back. The bike may make many laugh at the cheap make-do-with imitation of the costly cars that Bollywood actors drive. But that also is a way to overcome the angst surrounding the bicycles which carried the bombs that killed 37 people in a grave yard mosque and a public square on September 8 2006 or the motorbike of Sadhvi Pragyasingh Thakur’s which killed seven in Bhiku chowk on September 29 2008. Most of the people are so poor that they never think how they have been deprived of a city public bus service that should have been given to the town because of the sheer size of population. Encroachment is so obtrusive that even if the bus service is sanctioned the drivers would go crazy how to pick their routes through the intractable meandering maze of the town.
That was what the parents of the bomb blast victim complained to Sonia Gandhi and the home minister of India: lack of infrastructure and absence of public facilities. Rupees one hundred and sixty seven crores allotted to the state for Minorities Development Department have remained unused till the end of 2008. As a result the roads are crowded and impassable what with potholes and encroachments. A frequent source of communal tension is cyclist bumping into a pedestrian from the other community. Temperature is so frayed that it leads to outright brawl. Let alone buses in Sankli streets of Madanpura of Mumbai or Mohammad Ali road of Malegaon even a two wheeler is difficult to negotiate through the thick slow moving casual crowd. Unlike Kavita anyone doing a PhD will have to forego his philosophical bent of mind to first overcome the traffic hurdle.
The dingy lane now named as Shaheed Hemant Karkare street is simply impassable for a pedestrian during the festival days as it is impossible for straight riding for even cycle on other days. Sadhvi Pragyasingh was naturally wondering why so few were felled by the bomb her Ramji had planted.
Mukkaram Pasha’s dare deviltry in wheeling riding or drag riding proved fatal in Bangalore. He raised the front wheel and rode on the rear that made the police whistle and then chase. He allegedly entered a brigadier’s residence and climbed up on the terrace. The sentry shot him for what he told afterward that the boy was speaking in Urdu and he thought him to be a terrorist. As other such violent cases the bullet passed through
his heart. Even then he climbed over the fence wall and escaped to die in hospital later. The most mentionable feature is the fear of the police what would they do when they catch a victim that too from the minority community. Equally notable is the language in which he spoke. It is strange that Urdu the most mellifluent language in the subcontinent should produce such misfortune in violence.
The Mumbai attacks of November 26 had shifted the focus of attention of the world from the worst scenario in the Middle East. But the Israelis attack on Gaza has again moved the attention back to where it usually has been for decades. But this time the death toll of Palestinians has gone to nearly 400 for 4 Israelis killed.
There is a notable difference between India and the rest of the world including the Middle East in terms of the nature of violence. The suicide bomber has still not arrived here. For example a suicide bomber blew himself up in Afghanistan on December 28, 2008 at a place where American soldiers were present but among the eight killed there were five school children. On the same day another suicide bomber blew himself up as he rode his bicycle in a protest march in Mosul, Iraq, against the Israeli attack on Gaza. In the most pictorial and moving demonstration of violence a car driver pretending that his car broke down in Buner around the Swat valley, Pakistan. He asked the people gathered at the polling station to help. As they pushed the car the driver blew himself up killing 26 others. Also on the same day a Tamil suicide bomber killed seven Sinhalese.
Among the reasons why violence is very horrifying are disastrously powerful weapons and destructive designing of the mind. Kavita Karkare wonders whether there was any action plan in place as were the helmets and bullet proof vests so tawdry in quality. Her basic question is who made her a widow. The Israelis as also Kasab and company use far superior weaponry, freely given by the US to the former and sourced internationally by the latter. The Qassim rockets and mortars of the Palestinians are improvised by themselves thanks to the long neglect of their plight by the world.
Revenge, hate, and retaliation are balanced by the failure of the civilized society and its organizations including the governments and the UNO which are accountable for the slide into barbarism. In the Buner car incident Pakistan says it has moved its soldiers from Swat valley to the borders with India in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks and cannot hold elections peacefully. The UN has miserably failed to control Israeli aggression and hence the rise in violence. Indeed the remedy of both the eyes for one and the whole jaw for a tooth is not only worse than the disease but whining of an insane bigot.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Terrorism-plus-something politics
Though the newly appointed home minister P.Chidambarum has laid to rest any doubt anybody, let alone AR Antulay, might have had regarding the killing of ATS chief Hemant Karkare, there are still some loose ends that need to be tied. One is the minister’s conception of “terrorism-plus-something politics.” Can anyone claim honestly that our fight against terrorism is qua fighting terror and terror alone? If people impute oil as motive for the US fighting terror in Iraq, or hunting the big gun Saddam Hussein was supposed to be making, his so called WMD, or hunting down al Qaeda that was not there and fool the world for so long, can the questioning spirit be atrophied in the name of the national consensus?
There is need to acknowledge Antulay for a seminal contribution to Indian politics: his coinage of the epithet “terrorism plus something”. For that has been the case of the quintessence of politics in the country since the ascendancy of BJP. That is more or less true of the US since the ascendancy of George W Bush as BJP emulated the Americans par excellent. In the so-called war on terror we follow the US.
Better to quote him. On December 17 barrister Antulay had told: “Karkare was a very bold officer. I know his acumen was great. He had vision and was prepare[sic] to lay down life for country[sic] at any time. Now how come instead of going to the Taj (Hotel) or the Oberoi (Hotel) he went to such a place where there was nothing? He was also making an independent investigation.. (in which) he found that there were non-Muslims who were terrorists. Whether he was just a victim of terror or something (else), I don’t know. I knew him personally; I salute him.” Later in the Parliament he made a nuance in words but not in substance: "Who had sent them to Cama Hospital (where terrorists struck). What were they told that made them leave for the same spot in the same vehicle. I repeat what I had said. I had not said who had killed them but only questioned who had sent them there (Cama Hospital) in that direction," He also made a subtle hint when he qualified himself about the slain as to who had "sent them in the wrong direction."
The last clause is the most crucial instead the unnecessary focus on the faith of either the minister or the accused in Malegaon blast case. Antulay says that anyone familiar with the locality of south Mumbai would wonder at it. His statement would imply that Cama hospital and the streets around are deserted even on ordinary nights let alone at such a terrific time as the attacks of November 26. (Antulay like Salman Rushdie would like to believe that the tragedy overtook Bombay and not Mumbai, VT and not CST, locale that the two should be quite familiar with atavistically).
A leading newspaper described him “Gone rogue” and came out with a column called Geography challenges Antulay theory. Kasab and the other terrorist were fleeing from the CST and came across the car and shot the officers dead or as another version would have it, the two terrorists were hiding behind a hedge plant too skimpy to hide. Anyway they killed the policemen. But of all the people the wife of the slain officer Karkare raised doubts about the direction her husband was sent and what for since he was investigating officer and not in charge of direct action. Somebody else must have been handling the overall fighting against the terrorists that was taking place. A part of why the minister raised doubt must be this misgiving of the widow.
The other part was that on Tuesday December 16 the new anti terrorism laws were introduced in the parliament and the minister was seized of cases of how many innocent people were languishing in prisons across the country against whom no evidence was found even after months or years of imprisonment. Many of them incidentally happen to be Muslims. Another aspect is the extent of terror. Communal riots are also acts of terrorism and hence those who perpetrate them must be described terrorists and must come under the purview of the new laws. Though this might not have been discussed and codified into the new laws but the truth is undeniable. Insurgency, militancy and left wing extremism are not the whole gamut of terrorism. Finding no headway to make the legislators heed all these Antulay might have been frustrated with a portfolio that cannot function materially in a field which is its central concern. Therefore those who do not take the full import of all these can also be playing terrorism-plus-something politics. And so the need to keep the questioning spirit alive.
Fight terrorism we must. But it needs to be fought on all fronts. Those who are made to waste the youths in jails even when their guilt is far from proved are also victims of terrorism. Khwaja Yunus’s brutal murder at the hands of the police calls for restitution, for justice. The most vocal in fighting terrorism are also ready to give ticket to Sachin Vaze to fight election on their party ticket. Unfortunately there is no way to give ticket to the dead to fight election from their grave but Sadhvi Pragyasingh Thakur behind the bars has been offered ticket from a right wing party. We seem to be fighting all kinds of terror with all kinds of weapons, even extrajudicial murder! If anything the questioning spirit would help the people to know what constitutionally sanctioned and justified ways of fighting terror are. Once that becomes our habit terrorism would cease to exist.
There is need to acknowledge Antulay for a seminal contribution to Indian politics: his coinage of the epithet “terrorism plus something”. For that has been the case of the quintessence of politics in the country since the ascendancy of BJP. That is more or less true of the US since the ascendancy of George W Bush as BJP emulated the Americans par excellent. In the so-called war on terror we follow the US.
Better to quote him. On December 17 barrister Antulay had told: “Karkare was a very bold officer. I know his acumen was great. He had vision and was prepare[sic] to lay down life for country[sic] at any time. Now how come instead of going to the Taj (Hotel) or the Oberoi (Hotel) he went to such a place where there was nothing? He was also making an independent investigation.. (in which) he found that there were non-Muslims who were terrorists. Whether he was just a victim of terror or something (else), I don’t know. I knew him personally; I salute him.” Later in the Parliament he made a nuance in words but not in substance: "Who had sent them to Cama Hospital (where terrorists struck). What were they told that made them leave for the same spot in the same vehicle. I repeat what I had said. I had not said who had killed them but only questioned who had sent them there (Cama Hospital) in that direction," He also made a subtle hint when he qualified himself about the slain as to who had "sent them in the wrong direction."
The last clause is the most crucial instead the unnecessary focus on the faith of either the minister or the accused in Malegaon blast case. Antulay says that anyone familiar with the locality of south Mumbai would wonder at it. His statement would imply that Cama hospital and the streets around are deserted even on ordinary nights let alone at such a terrific time as the attacks of November 26. (Antulay like Salman Rushdie would like to believe that the tragedy overtook Bombay and not Mumbai, VT and not CST, locale that the two should be quite familiar with atavistically).
A leading newspaper described him “Gone rogue” and came out with a column called Geography challenges Antulay theory. Kasab and the other terrorist were fleeing from the CST and came across the car and shot the officers dead or as another version would have it, the two terrorists were hiding behind a hedge plant too skimpy to hide. Anyway they killed the policemen. But of all the people the wife of the slain officer Karkare raised doubts about the direction her husband was sent and what for since he was investigating officer and not in charge of direct action. Somebody else must have been handling the overall fighting against the terrorists that was taking place. A part of why the minister raised doubt must be this misgiving of the widow.
The other part was that on Tuesday December 16 the new anti terrorism laws were introduced in the parliament and the minister was seized of cases of how many innocent people were languishing in prisons across the country against whom no evidence was found even after months or years of imprisonment. Many of them incidentally happen to be Muslims. Another aspect is the extent of terror. Communal riots are also acts of terrorism and hence those who perpetrate them must be described terrorists and must come under the purview of the new laws. Though this might not have been discussed and codified into the new laws but the truth is undeniable. Insurgency, militancy and left wing extremism are not the whole gamut of terrorism. Finding no headway to make the legislators heed all these Antulay might have been frustrated with a portfolio that cannot function materially in a field which is its central concern. Therefore those who do not take the full import of all these can also be playing terrorism-plus-something politics. And so the need to keep the questioning spirit alive.
Fight terrorism we must. But it needs to be fought on all fronts. Those who are made to waste the youths in jails even when their guilt is far from proved are also victims of terrorism. Khwaja Yunus’s brutal murder at the hands of the police calls for restitution, for justice. The most vocal in fighting terrorism are also ready to give ticket to Sachin Vaze to fight election on their party ticket. Unfortunately there is no way to give ticket to the dead to fight election from their grave but Sadhvi Pragyasingh Thakur behind the bars has been offered ticket from a right wing party. We seem to be fighting all kinds of terror with all kinds of weapons, even extrajudicial murder! If anything the questioning spirit would help the people to know what constitutionally sanctioned and justified ways of fighting terror are. Once that becomes our habit terrorism would cease to exist.
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