DR. S. AUSAF SAIED VASFI raises some pertinent questions to the State machinery, comments on the single-pattern Friday attacks, and urges the Muslim leadership to rise to the occasion.
Has our Intelligence apparatus, as a whole, developed a habit to succumb to parochial pressures? Or, only occasionally it fails to resist baser temptations? Or it deliberately turns the proverbial Nelsonian eye towards the Saffron sharks? How is it that, in the recent past, it has, more than once, failed to read bolder writings on the wall? The 160-million strong Muslim segment of over a billion-strong plural Bharat wants a cogent, to-the-point response to these pointed questions.
LEADERSHIP CONCERNED
The Muslim leadership is seriously concerned about shifting – almost as a rule – the focus of investigation from the real or probable culprits to foreign terrorist outfits. It amounts to shielding the local trouble-shooters, which, we feel, is not in the national interest. What we have made bold to say has already happened in Nanded, Jalna, Purna, Parbhani, Mangalore, Malegaon and Mumbai.
Now after the May 18 blast in Hyderabad, which, besides causing injuries to 50, claimed 14 Muslim lives – nine in bomb explosion and five in the avoidable police firing – the nation is being asked to believe it could be the handiwork either of Lashkar-e-Taiba or Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami or Jaish-e-Mohammad.
The attackers usually choose Friday whenever they attack a mosque. The 313-year old Makkah Masjid of Hyderabad had 10,000 worshippers at the time of the outrage. In this backdrop, when the Muslim leadership asks the motivated focus-shifters for the rationale of Muslim terrorists targeting Muslims, who already happen to be in an unenviable condition, they are brazenly told this foreign-funded strategy, which seeks to pass off as Hindu fundamentalists, is, in fact, meant to create or increase Hindu-Muslim distrust, resulting in communal conflagrations, leading to division of Bharat, which may benefit Pakistan.
FAR-FETCHED LOGIC
This too far-fetched, cock and bull story, we feel, could be the product either of a morbid mind or a too-perverse imagination.
In the wake of Havana Summit, Pakistan has committed to curtail this sort of terror operations. And currently, Islamabad is too-occupied with its internal convulsions.
As far as the foreign terrorists’ strategy aspect is concerned, is it not possible that the self-assured Hindu fundamentalists feel their incessant anti-minority actions could pass off as foreign machination?
There are reasons to believe that the blast was aimed at the congregation of the Tableeghi Jamaat, which attracting about 15 lakh Faithfuls, had to start on the “black Friday” at Hamidipalli, a few kms from Makkah Masjid.
The May 18 blast was the third one which occurred around the time of Tableeghi congregation. Recall a low-intensity blast that took place in Guntur in May 2000 on the eve of, again a Tableeghi Jammat congregation.
What brings our reading under sharper focus is the letter that the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) had sent to the office of Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind after the Malegaon blasts. The letter had asked the Jamiat to rein in the Tableeghi Jamaat or else face the consequences.
TABLEEGH TARGET
Jamiat Ulema, Andhra Pradesh president, Hafiz Peer Shabbir Ahmed told the media persons on May 18 that those who do not want the Jamiat to hold such huge congregations are behind the blasts. We will not stop the conference, said Mr. Ata Hussain Anjum, the organiser of the meet.
Maulana Hameeduddin Aaquil Hussami, one of the most revered Muslim scholars in Andhra Pradesh, pointed at the VHP and the RSS. “Similar blasts took place in mosques in Malegaon and Nanded in Maharashtra last year. The police, instead of launching a free and fair investigation, blamed the banned Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). The police have been rounding up so-called SIMI activists after every violent incident without proper investigation,” he said.
JUST RECALL
Here it seems worthwhile to recall that in the April 6, 2006 blast at Nanded, two Bajrang Dal activists had been killed while making bombs in a house. One of them was named Himanshu Venkatesh Panse and the other Naresh Lakshman Rajkondawar.
Besides fake beards and Pathan or Pakistani Muslim dresses, timers, switches, detonators and 1.5 kg gun-powder were recovered from the place of occurrence.
Two other accused had succumbed to their injuries in the hospital. The narco-analysis report too had been submitted to the police. But no concrete action was taken against the accused.
Add to it the confession of one Sanjay Choudhary with regard to his involvement in the Mohammadi Masjid blast. It was through brain mapping and narco test that the police could reach to a definite conclusion. But it looks it all was for cosmetic reasons.
In Mangalore (Karnataka) three Imams are reported missing since the communal riots that erupted in the first week of October last. Mosques were the chief target of attack. The riot claimed three lives. The State Home Minister, Mr. M.P. Prakash expressed the suspicion of involvement of Shiv Sena, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Sri Ram Sena activists. But no action was reported.
BAJRANG DAL HAND?
In the disturbance at Jalna, Nanded, Purna and Parbhani, the hand of Bajrang Dal had been widely reported and commented upon. But the attitude of the State Government remained as insensate as ever. Through clever tactics, cunning manoeuvres and motivated manipulations an effort was, and is, unabashedly made to prove that any Muslim body, local or foreign, was or is responsible for the palpable anti-Muslim upheavals.
What Ms. Teesta Setalvad, co-editor Communalism Combat, said on the occasion is relevant even today: “Many questions need to be answered and one issue is that even the VHP, Bajrang Dal and RSS were making bombs and were responsible for bomb blasts in mosques in 2004 and 2005…. An investigating agency cannot close its eyes and ears to Hindu organisations, creating another kind of terror. We have a right to ask them.”
SPECIAL STAMP?
Lyricist and social activist Javed Akhtar said the police officers investigating the Malegaon blasts were quick to rule out the possibility that the bombs might have been the handiwork of the Bajrang Dal, which had been active in the Marathwada region. “Does RDX, have a special stamp establishing its link to Muslims?” Mr. Akhtar asked. Referring to the SMS circulating since 7/11 that said, “Every Muslim is not a terrorist but every terrorist is a Muslim,” he asked whether Naxalites, Maoists, ULFA and LTTE militants were all Muslims. “Are those responsible for the Gujarat riots just firemen then?” he asked.
UP CONTRAST
The UP Chief Minister, Ms Mayawati did not initially allow herself and her bureaucrats to indulge in irresponsible talk about who enacted the tandav niratya at Gorakhpur on May 23. Terming the incidents as part of a “big conspiracy” to foment trouble in UP, the chief minister said the Samajwadi Party and the BJP were “frustrated” after their recent defeat in the elections and were now trying to regain lost ground through “unfair” means. “We will not allow anyone to create any disturbance here,” she said, promising a “through probe” into the attacks.
SIU INVESTIGATION
Apparently, as a face-saving device, the Andhra Pradesh dispensation has entrusted the task of investigation to a specially created 12-member Special Investigation Unit (SIU).
The national Muslim leadership has however demanded a thorough CBI probe into the outrage, whose real target was the Tableeghi Jamaat congregation.
The Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind and United Muslim Action Committee, on May 20, demanded a CBI inquiry into the bomb blast at the Makkah Masjid and the subsequent police firing outside the mosque. The Jamiat’s All-India president, Maulana Syed Arshad Madani told the press that the police had resorted to firing indiscriminately on people who were protesting the blast. “The police should have restrained themselves. The government should order a probe by an impartial investigating agency into the blast and the police firing. Unless the guilty are punished, such incidents will recur,” he said.
“BLAME MUSLIMS”
He asserted that it had become a tendency of the police to blame everything on Muslims and Muslim groups without taking up proper investigation.
“The police should not take up investigation with a preconceived notion. They should keep all options open. Without investigation, the police are pointing accusing fingers. This will send wrong signals and will embolden the real culprits to repeat the crime,” he said. The Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind AP state unit also issued a statement alleging that if the inquiry was ordered to be made by the local police, “they are bound to suppress the facts to shield the real culprits and arrest innocent people”.
FILE A PIL
We strongly feel what is now needed is a Public Interest Litigation or PIL in the Supreme Court, questioning the now proverbial clean chit to the Saffron parties with regard to their suspect role in the terror blasts, killing Muslims chiefly.
A high-level Muslim leadership delegation should also meet the Prime Minister in the presence of the Union Home Minister.
The Muslim leadership should also present a cogent, well-argued Memorandum to the President.