Issue White Paper on ‘Muslim Terrorists’

DR. S. AUSAF SAIED VASFI says that there should be an end to torture of Muslim youth and baseless allegations of their involvement in killer bomb blasts taking place regularly. He demands issuance of a White Paper on the subject by the Central Government.

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June 21, 2022

DR. S. AUSAF SAIED VASFI says that there should be an end to torture of Muslim youth and baseless allegations of their involvement in killer bomb blasts taking place regularly. He demands issuance of a White Paper on the subject by the Central Government.

If there is any substance in the sustained maligning of some sections of the second largest community, why doesn’t the Central Government think in terms of issuing a comprehensive White Paper on the question? It would serve the Government, the majority community as well as the much-demonised principal minority.

The ever continuing tarring of the fair image of Indian Muslims has created a “besieged” mentality among the younger Muslim generation. The elderly find themselves in the dock. After each and every terror strike, innocent Muslim youth are selectively picked up and aggressively interrogated. Men–in-khaki as well as a section of the media deems them guilty even before the youth are formally charged. It affects the young men’s psychology. They find unfairness and injustice everywhere. It will not augur well for our plural nation and democracy.

We made an earnest plea to this effect during the BJP-led NDA dispensation. But Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee and Mr Lal Krishna Advani wisely chose to ignore the request. Now we want the Congress-led administration to attentively listen to our grievance and do the needful. It is necessary not only to show the unalloyed truth about Muslims but to also redeem Bharat’s secular image.

In the meantime, our heart goes out to those whose precious lives, without any semblance of moral or legal justification, were snuffed out in the reprehensible serial explosions in Bangalore and Ahmedabad. Peace on the departed souls! We offer our heart-felt condolences to the next of the kin, and prayers for an early recovery of the injured.

QUESTIONS

Around 50 unsuspecting men, women and children fell prey to the most despicable act of terror and about 150 sustained grievous injuries. The difficult question whose answer is ever evasive is: Who could have been behind the gruesome slaughter of the innocent? Was it the handiwork of the spy agency of a neighbouring country or was it revenge by some disgruntled locals for a systematic pogrom of their near and dear ones recently? What would have been the real motive of the carnage?

Who should be blamed for not being able to prevent the disaster: the Centre or the state governments or the intelligence apparatus? The last thing first: As the matters stand, the truth is nobody is ready to take the responsibility for human tragedies. Go back in time a little: Had any chief minister or home minister resigned after planned massacres of a particular people in Nellie, Jamshedpur, Rourkela, Moradabad, Maliana, Meereut, Bhagalpur and Bhopal – to name a few? Had the high-ups demoted state chief secretaries or the IGs or DIGs or the intelligence big guns after the said or similar incidents? In fact, there is no such tradition in our country.

True, in the past we had conscientious souls like the OP Mathais or Lal Bahadur Shastris. Not long ago, we had upright and honest Madhavarao Scindia also who had relinquished his chair taking moral responsibility for a lapse in his aviation ministry. But today nobody is responsible or accountable, so blaming anybody is illogical and unjustified.

UNCOMFORTABLE

This uncomfortable fact can be explained by the latest example: Explosions occurred in Ahmedabad on July 25. On July 30, Mr Narendra Modi escaped death by the skin of his teeth when one of the hidden unexploded bombs was found barely 20 metres from where he had passed about an hour ago. Note that he enjoys Z category security like the prime minister.

As far as motive behind the latest manslaughter is concerned, the answer depends on “whoever you feel did it.” The Central Government has not, so far, officially pointed its finger at any particular group or agency, but state governments and “sources” in spy agencies are letting it out that it is either Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) or Harkat-ul-Jehad-e-Islami (HuJI).  Both groups, they allege, use the cadre of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). But simultaneously they do not rule out active initiative of the students’ body also.

EVIDENCE

To have a clear perspective, let us recall that during the last five years or so over 600 people have been killed in 13 major blasts. Arrests galore – particularly of Muslim youth, but no incriminating evidence against suspects has so far been presented by the prosecutions.

This is so, feels the Muslim leadership, because a blind eye has been deliberately turned towards the mass-killers and innocent Muslims have been arrested.

Our knowledge about the LeT and HuJI, we admit, is next to negligible. What the sensation-oriented media crows about is based upon woefully shoddy briefings of the intelligence apparatus, which fails to show any logical motive behind their allegedly subversive activities in a close neighbouring country. Can these aberrations really destabilise well-knit, sprawling Bharatvarsha? And what would they gain in that case? The Government contention leaves much to imagination.

SIMI

As for the SIMI’s alleged role in the blasts, on July 28 a Special Tribunal asked the Central Government if it had any “fresh material” to connect the SIMI to the heinous crime. “You say that SIMI is connected to bomb blasts, riots, destructive activities. Place specific material before me, you (Centre) cannot presume their involvement,” said Justice Gita Mittal, the presiding officer of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Tribunal. The Tribunal was specially constituted to adjudicate on the question of whether or not there was sufficient cause for declaring SIMI an unlawful association, which is now facing its fourth ban.

Justice Gita asked why specific reasons or activities were not set out in the February 2008 notification. These pointed observations of the learned judge, we think, show exactly where the Central Government stands on the issue. Hats off to him, it is judges like Mittal who restore people’s confidence in the rule of law when the sense of justice is at the weakest point.

Add to it the fact that the new ally of the UPA, the Samajwadi Party led by Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav, has a balanced view on the controversial issue.

PAINFUL PERIOD

About 30 post-partition years had been full of trials and tribulations for the Indian Muslims. It was during this painful period that the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, the ideological face of Muslims, saved them from falling into the pit, nay quagmire, of extremism. It inculcated accountability, values and principles into their agitated minds. It kept them off the confrontational approach and emphasised the need of character-building, the reconstruction of the Ummah through education and with patience.

It put up Muslim case in proper perspective before the powers-that-be, the majority community and the population at large. But it is sad to note the successive Congress and non-Congress governments cared a dime for this sane, moderate and constructive voice.

We demand the Muslim case be studied without glasses, without bias and prejudice and pre-conceived notions. That would, in ultimate analysis, make Bharat worth living in, free from fear and various gory apprehensions.