Jaipur, the Pink City of joy and tourism daylights, was turned red on May 13 by serial bomb attacks. More than three score innocent lives were lost in a matter of seconds with fear writ large on the faces of men and women busy in their daily chores.
Unfortunately our police and intelligence agencies are yet clueless about the identity of the culprits and the conspirators behind them. Even one week was not enough for them to make some breakthrough. Intelligence agencies, on whom we spend large funds from hard earned money of common man, could not give us any prior warning of the impending danger of the deadly strikes.
What was the intention of the perpetrators of this heinous crime against humanity? Do they want to spread fear and hatred against a particular community? Do they want to disturb communal peace? Do they want to strike at the roots of India’s economic progress by targeting our big cities and thriving economy? Do they want, as in the case of Jaipur, to frighten away more than one million foreign tourists, who visit this beautiful city of pink palaces and havelis? Are some big powers involved in stoking the suspicion and hatred between India and its immediate neighbours – Pakistan and Bangladesh? Are powers like the USA and Israel, who want to sell arms and sophisticated military gadgets to India, using their agents for executing these blasts? Or is it a part of US conspiracy to give a bad name to Islam and Muslims by enacting such attacks and indirectly blaming the Islamists?
It is strange that intelligence agencies are groping in darkness and nobody knows how the perpetrators of these crimes melted in thin air without leaving any trace? Strangely they were not one or two but at least nine assisted by several others.
Newspapers have a field day and scribes are making all sorts of speculations. One feels that media should have played a more responsible role and not indulged in unnecessary insinuations and speculations.
It is alleged that more than 50,000 illegal Bangladeshis – who come to seek jobs and better pay – are in Rajasthan. Most of these may be from West Bengal and most of them are evidently Muslims. The axe may fall upon our own Indian citizens as all Bengali speaking people are being targeted.
People of Jaipur who have a good record of communal harmony must be congratulated for their tenacity. They have refused to be cowed down and life in Jaipur sprang back to normalcy within two days. They refused to play in the hands of hate-mongers, fear-promoters and terrorists. Same is the atmosphere in the whole country.
One unfortunate fallout of the blasts is the political mud-slinging between BJP and the Congress. BJP’s Arun Jaitely has gone to the extent of saying that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s bona fides in war against terror is suspect. This shows that BJP wants to indulge in blame game with eyes on coming elections. The usual communal pinch of salt of BJP quality is evident in Jaitely’s statement when he alleged that our Prime Minister’s softness on terror is because of vote bank politics, meaning he is soft to woo the Muslims, who, in the eyes of BJP, are the usual ‘suspects’ in all acts of terror.
The need of the hour is to fight terror from whichever source it may come, and defeat the hate-mongers whoever they may be, and not to fish in troubled waters. People of Jaipur require our solid support in their hour of trial.