Bombs rock India's
foundations By Siddharth
Srivastava
NEW DELHI - The nature of the
serial bomb blasts in the holy city of Varanasi is
a strategy that has been followed by terror groups
for some time.
The aim is to ignite social
tensions by polarizing society along communal
lines. Crude bombs that can be easily assembled
without being detected by security agencies are
planted at crowded places, more often religious
sites, to inflict maximum damage within a short
area as well as creating the symbolic
impact
of attacking the beliefs of a population.
At least 20 people have been killed and
over 60 injured in the Tuesday evening attacks.
The most lethal of the blasts occurred at one of
the oldest temples, Sankat Mochan, dedicated to
Lord Hanuman, an important deity of the Hindus.
Tuesday (Mangal) is the day that is
dedicated to Hanuman, when millions of Hindus keep
a fast that is broken in the evening after paying
obeisance to the god.
The blast occurred
at 6.30pm, the time when the temple is teeming
with activity. A marriage was also being held at
the venue. Two more near-simultaneous blasts went
off at the railway station, harking back to
similar attacks in the past. According to reports,
the police recovered another live bomb at the
famous Gangaghat (alongside the river Ganga,
considered holy by Hindus), where many devotees
assemble for the traditional dip in the river.
Fearing a communal backlash, the country
has been put on high alert, with Congress Party
chief Sonia Gandhi and Home Minister Shivraj Patil
already at Varanasi. Paramilitary forces have been
deployed at all major religious sites in the
country, with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
calling for calm.
The attack at Varanasi
follows a pattern. Last October witnessed the
worst terrorist attack on the Indian capital, New
Delhi, when similar serial bomb blasts, including
one in a busy market, left 62 dead and over four
times the number injured, with more than 30 in a
critical condition. The attacks took place at the
height of the festival season.
In
December, a shootout at the prestigious Indian
Institute of Science in Bangalore (considered
India's Silicon Valley) killed a well-known Delhi
professor and injured several more. The attack hit
at India's technological might and economic
success.
Again, last July, a
fidayeen (suicide) attack on one of the
holiest shrines of the Hindus at Ayodhya in the
state of Uttar Pradesh was thwarted by the
security forces. It could have been worse. Had the
terrorists managed to damage the shrine at the Ram
Janambhoomi (birthplace of Lord Ram, one of the
most revered gods) there was the possibility of
communal riots being unleashed across the country.
The makeshift temple of Ram stands at the
spot where the Babri Mosque once stood. The mosque
was destroyed by Hindu fanatics in December 1992.
A number of the bold attacks in India have
been orchestrated by the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and
its affiliate, Jaish-e-Mohammed. These include
attacks on the Indian parliament (December 13,
2001), the Akshardham temple in Gujarat (September
2002 that left 40 dead), the Jammu and Kashmir
assembly (October 1, 2001, 50 dead) as well as the
Raghunath temple (November 2002, 12 killed, 45
injured) in the same state. The modus
operandi of the terrorists, including at
Ayodhya, has been similar.
The politics
of terror The attacks at Varanasi have
happened while there is simmering discontent among
Hindus and Muslims in the country, making for an
incendiary situation. Some observers attribute
this to a Hindu backlash against the Congress-led
government due to what is perceived as a policy of
appeasement of Muslims, who number close to 150
million.
These include an attempt to
reserve seats in educational institutions and the
recent findings of a government report that
exonerated Muslims from leading an attack on Hindu
pilgrims traveling in a train in Gujarat that led
to communal carnage costing over 2,000 lives,
mostly Muslims.
Even if the report is
correct, there is immense dissatisfaction with the
appointment of the committee by the regional
leader in Bihar state, Lalu Yadav, (whose party is
allied to the Congress). He is also the federal
railway minister, but relies on the support of
Muslims in his state. The timing of the report has
also raised several eyebrows, as assembly
elections are soon due in Kerala, Tamil Nadu,
Assam and West Bengal, where Muslims form a
sizeable electorate.
The Congress has been
under pressure to keep Muslims happy following the
immensely successful visit of US President George
W Bush last week. The Gujarat report coincided
with Bush's visit. Manmohan has had to deal with
querulous left allies, without whose support his
government cannot survive, for quite some time
now.
Given their anti-US postures,
leftists' protests were expected during the Bush
visit. However, it was the massive anti-Bush
rallies in which Muslims participated that caught
New Delhi unawares. It is perhaps the first
instance of pan-Islamic sentiments so strongly
expressed by Muslims in India, the largest
population in one country after Indonesia.
Regional parties such as the Samajwadi Party,
which relies on Muslim support and has a powerful
presence in the largest state, Uttar Pradesh,
joined the fray.
India's stand against
Iran has been a factor. New Delhi has also been
unhappy with Tehran repeatedly dragging India into
its problems with Washington. On Sunday, Iran
trashed the US for its "double standards" in
signing a civilian nuclear deal with India.
Muslims came out in such large numbers to
protest against US policies in Iran, Iraq and
Afghanistan, that Manmohan has invited Muslim
leaders to meetings to convince them that the
nuclear deal should not be seen as India's
ratification of other decisions by Washington,
including the invasion of Iraq.
It is
often said that foreign policy does not impinge on
the way Muslims in India vote, as demonstrated by
the defeat of former prime minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who
initiated the peace process with Pakistan in
January 2004. The dictum could stand challenged.
Ironically, over the past couple of years,
Bush has repeatedly praised Indian Muslims for not
being lured by al-Qaeda, despite Muslim youth
across the world falling prey to radical
Islamists. The reason, as Bush has said in several
forums, is the success of India as a democracy
that empowers the Muslim population to vote for
leaders of their choice, as well as being
recipients of political favors.
Such a
system does not exist in any of the hotbeds of
Islamic terrorism, whether it be Pakistan,
Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia or Iraq under Saddam
Hussein. One of the reasons ascribed to Bush's
Hyderabad visit last week was to send a message to
the large Muslim population in the state that the
US was not anti-Islam.
One consequence of
attacks such as those at Varanasi, New Delhi and
Ayodhya is the provision of grist to the
opposition BJP and its affiliates in the Sangh
Parivar who have been squabbling with each other,
in the absence of an incendiary subject to unite
the Hindu electorate.
The BJP as well as
the more strident Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the
Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh have found a common
cause and have been desperately trying to revive
the Hindutva genie once again. BJP leader L K
Advani said on television that he held Pakistan
responsible for the attack at Varanasi.
The fact that Bush chose not to agree with
Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf on
Kashmir, refused a nuclear deal with Islamabad and
lectured the general on the virtues of democracy,
only makes the situation more ripe for terror
groups, some of which derive their cadres from
Pakistan, to be unleashed.
(Siddharth
Srivastava is a New Delhi-based journalist)
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