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Muslims have long argued that biased investigations have resulted in harassment of Muslims. The latest bomb blasts in Jaipur are a proof of that.
The popular Indian tourist city Jaipur was hit with a series of bomb blasts last month resulting in over 80 people dead. Outside of the troubled regions of Jammu and Kashmir and the North-East, this is the tenth terror bombing in India targeting civilians since 2005. In what is now all too familiar, blame game and finger pointing have started after these blasts as well. While the law enforcements promise to deliver, Indians have increasingly becoming more insecure at the moment when they are poised to play a bigger role internationally.
After each of these blasts, Indian authorities have blamed Pakistan or Bangladesh based terrorists for these attacks. While accusing ‘Islamic’ terror groups for these attacks, law enforcement agencies start arresting Muslim youth of the area, in many instances torturing them. None of those arrested have ever proven guilty for any of these terrorist acts.
Indian Muslims were once proudly showcased intern-ationally by the Indian Prime Minister for the fact that they were free from terrorist activities. In 2006 when visiting India, President Bush remarked to his wife that “Not one Indian Muslim has joined Al Qaeda.” Since 2005 a new wave of terrorist attacks in India was blamed on Islamic groups originating in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Slowly the blame shifted to Muslims of India because they were thought to be providing local support to these terrorists. Indian Muslims have increasingly come under pressure from the media, law enforcement agencies and right wing Hindu groups.
Indian madrasas became a special focus of attention of these groups. In response, the Darul Uloom at Deoband, one of the oldest and largest seminaries of Islamic learning in the country, recently organised an anti-terrorism conference attended by a large number of Muslim scholars. This gathering issued a fatwa against terrorism, declaring it to be against Islamic teachings.
Many Muslims find it difficult to believe that some among them may have resorted to terrorism. Given that several series of raids and detentions by the state authorities have never resulted in any conviction, Muslims of India have reasons to suspect that they are being unfairly targeted.
For their part, the Indian intelligence agencies seem to have failed miserably to prevent or solve these terror strikes, a large number of them designed tocreate tensions between Hindus and Muslims by targeting their places of worship.
In three years, terrorists have struck India in the East, West, South and North.
The intensity or frequency of bombings shows no sign of slowing down pointing to the miserable failure of Indian security agencies.
Muslim and some secular organizations say that these investigations have failed because investigators have been looking for leads in all the wrong places. In April 2006, a bomb blast in Nanded, Maharashtra in the houseof a Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS, parent body of all Hindutva groups) activist, first alerted secular groups to the possibility of their involvement in terror bombings. Two Bajrang Dal members died in that blasts reportedly during making of the bombs.
Just last month, Home Minister of India, Shivraj Patel informed the Parliament that Maharashtra police, anti-terrorist squad, and India’s premierinvestigating agency Central Bureau of Investigations have come to the same conclusion that some Bajrang Dal members were involved in the Nanded blasts. In June 2007, a low intensity blast in a Muslim majority area of Assam that killed one and wounded 40 persons was initially blamed on Assam militants United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), but in a very unusual statement, ULFA denied the responsibility and blamed the RSS for the bombing.
In July last year, former chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, Digvijay Singh, issued a statement that bombs and explosive materials were recovered from RSS sympathizers in that state. He has repeated his statement since and has demanded a ban on Hindutva organisations.
Of all these blasts linked to Hindutva groups, the investigating agencies have not tried to work their way up to the organisation to find out the masterminds or the conspiracy.
All this and the continued incidents of terrorist bombings in India have increased the demand for an impartial and effective investigation that looks at all clues and leads.
(The writer is editor of the news website www.twocircles.net and can be reached at kaaashif@gmail.com)
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