Bombing in India:RSS engineering ‘Islamic terrorism’?

Bombing in India:RSS engineering ‘Islamic terrorism’?
By Zoglul Husain
London 18 September 2008. Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh expressed new realism when he told a meeting of governors of states yesterday, "The role of Pakistan-based terrorist groups cannot be minimised but the involvement of local elements in recent blasts adds a new dimension to the terrorist threat," and he added, "We have reports that certain Pakistan-based terrorist outfits are constantly seeking to set up new terrorist modules within our country", according to report by bdnews24.com/Reuters today (18 September 2008).


The reporter remarked, ‘Singh's comment is an explicit, high-level acknowledgement home-grown groups were now carrying out bombings in India, which has traditionally blamed Pakistan for violent attacks on its soil.’

For many years now, in the wake of bombings by ‘suspected’ Islamic groups, India in the absence of concrete intelligence, has been pointing their fingers at external operatives such as ‘Pakistan-based terrorist group Lashkar-i-Tayeba’, ’Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami Bangladesh (HuJI-BD)’, etc. They dished out many make believe stories of bombing operations, which many observers suspected to be concocted in the research chambers of RAW. This kind of blame-mongering, and the desperate and reckless police actions by India in the aftermath of bombings, has been likened to "a flailing state" by Harvard economist Lant Pritchett, the word 'Flailing' meaning moving vigorously or erratically, such as arms flailing helplessly in the water while drowning, according to reports by Avijit Ghosh in the Times of India yesterday (17 September 2008). Another report of the Times of India yesterday highlighted Dr. Manmohan Singh’s despair about the gap in government intelligence as they reported: ‘Reflecting Government's concern over the recent serial bomb blasts in Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Delhi, Singh admitted that there were "still vast gaps in intelligence" that needed to be overcome’.

Thus, Dr. Singh’s new realism with his inward look is the right approach and it would be quite revealing to him, if only he seriously does a retrospective soul-searching about the conditions of the Muslims in India, who constitute 13 percent (16 percent according to other views) of the population, and if only he looks into the grievances of this repressed, downtrodden and marginalized community, who have been massacred, brutalised and terrorised by thousands of most callous riots perpetrated in front of the eyes of the world, over a decade more than half a century.

In the social fabric, ridden by caste system with unequal status and unequal rights by birth and for life, the other deprived communities in India fare no better, as the treatment of the Muslims by the 15 percent cast Hindus compares very well with similar treatments of the Dalits, the near Dalits, the Sikhs, Buddhists, Christians and other minority communities and minority nationalities, in this much vaunted hypocrisy touted as the so-called largest democracy.

It was indeed Dr. Manmohan Singh, who at the start of his premiership, appointed the Justice Rajinder Sachar Committee for preparation of a report on the social, economic and educational status of the Muslim community of India. The committee prepared a 403-page report that was tabled in Parliament on 30 November 2006 - 20 months after obtaining the terms of reference from the Prime Minister’s Office. Now, for the first time, it was shown with statistics, how marginalized the Muslim community have been in India. Even the ‘Ananda Bazar Patrika’ exclaimed that in many respects the conditions of the Muslims are worse than those of the Dalits. What choices do they have then, if they are relentlessly pushed against the wall only to be shot? Will they not launch any struggle to survive??

Peter Foster in his dispatch titled ‘India: how safe is it now?’ in the telegraph.co.uk on 15 September 2008 drew bold and correct conclusions: "In the longer term, .. , India will have to do more for its marginalized Muslim minority if it wants to choke off recruits to the Jihadi cause. If you look at the socio-economic statistics, the only category Muslims top is the number held in prison. On literacy, social welfare, government jobs etc, Muslims continuously languish in the lower reaches of pretty well every set of indicators you care to choose.”

Good and sound conclusion. But the big question is: Who is going to tame the Hindu fundamentalists? The Hindu fundamentalists not only whip up communal tensions and perpetrate thousands of riots, but according to reports, they have also been engaged in engineering ‘Islamic terrorism’.
On 15 September 2008, Shabnam Hashmi, Member, National Integration Council and Dr. Ram Puniyani, Social Activist and writer, jointly circulated ‘An Open Letter to the Prime Minister of India’, showing case by case that the RSS have been involved in making and blasting bombs in the guise of ‘Islamic terrorists’, so that communal tensions and violence can be whipped up and these can be used in order to mobilise votes for the BJP-RSS group. The letter was published in the 'Communalism Watch' on 15 September 2008 and posted to http://www.twocircles.net/ on 16 September 2008. The activists and writers of the letter asserted, ‘If we look at the timing of the terror attacks it is very clear that one and only one political outfit is gaining from it and that is Sangh. With their eyes on the central government their agenda of polarizing the voter is going ahead successfully’.

With the sinister and murderous scheme of things against them as they are, the Muslims in India are bound to respond, if they refuse to be silently bulldozed. Call it Jihad, call it struggle for physical survival, call it struggle for economic, social and cultural emancipation, the Muslims have been left with no other alternative except for uniting and politically fighting for their rights, and whether these fights for rights can be conducted peacefully will depend on the government and the powerful Hindu fundamentalists. The best thing for the Muslims in India would be to unite with all the other deprived sections and communities of India and launch a united great struggle for the great task of the economic, social and cultural emancipation of the people of India, the kind of struggle which are much needed throughout the under-developed world, including of course our beloved country Bangladesh.


Zoglul Husain
zoglul at hotmail dot co dot uk