Author: Uday Mahurkar
Publication: India Today
Date: February 24, 2003
URL: http://www.indiatoday.com/webexclusive/dispatch/20030224/web2.html
The fear of Bhavnagar in Saurashtra
turning into a nursery for radical Islamists grows as the role of madarsas
in the region comes under a scanner.
In January last year, Kashmiri terrorist
Mohammed Ali surrendered to security forces in Sopore and admitted during
interrogation that he had studied in the Deoband-Tableegh Jamaat madrasa
at Bhavnagar between 1996 and 2,000.
During the post-Godhra Gujarat riots,
Bhavnagar was the only city in Saurashtra which witnessed continuous Hindu-Muslim
rioting. The skirmishes are still going on.
Recently, the police killed a native
of Bhavnagar and an underworld hand, Sadiq Mehtar, who had connections
with the Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed and was allegedly planning
to kill Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
So is Bhavnagar emerging as the
nursery of radical Islamists in an otherwise placid Saurashtra? If the
available evidence is any indication, this could well be the case.
Bhavnagar, a city of six lakh people,
of whom one lakh belong to the Muslim community, is increasingly earning
notoriety thanks mainly to its madarsas and its Kashmiri students brought
here by the Deobandis. Forty of the 400 students in the Akewada madarsa
in Bhavnagar were found to be from Kashmir when the police conducted inquiries
following terrorist Mohammed Ali's admission that he had studied here from
1996 to 2000.
Significantly, it was the first
time that it came to be known that a Kashmiri terrorist had studied in
a madarsa outside Kashmir. The incident blew the cover off the repeated
claim of the Deobandis in India that they had nothing to do with their
counterparts (Deoband-Tableegh network) in Kashmir. It also raised questions
about the Bhavnagar Muslims themselves. Followers of the moderate Islamic
school, Ahle Sunnat, the possibility of these Muslims being influenced
by the Deobandi preachers was now being probed.
The Deobandi preachers who came
from Bharuch district, their main centre in Gujarat, as well as from Un
for their aggressive mission to stamp out local customs from their personality
in the name of puritanical Islam. Today 80 per cent of the 45-odd mosques
in Bhavnagar are controlled by the Deobandis and over 60 per cent of the
city Muslims, amongst them the Ghanchi and Memon Muslims, have become Deoband-Tableegh
followers. They are now entrenched in every sphere of the system including
sensitive posts in the Bhavnagar police. The well-known Alang Ship breaking
yard in Bhavnagar, where ships come from all over the world, too has business
with people who are Tableegh followers and donate handsomely to the movement.
The result is there for all to see.
The Muslim ideology is very predominant in the city. Males are attired
in the typically Tableegh way ---- short pyjamas and long kurtas with a
beard -- - while the women sport burkhas. In fact, it can be said that
Bhavnagar is experiencing a slow process of Arabisation itself.
According to M.S. Kazi, a retired
government official and follower of the moderate Ahle Sunnat in Bhavnagar,
the entire Muslim community is paying the price for the anti-national and
radical activities of the Deoband-Tableegh Jamaat school which have resulted
in the growth of the VHP in reaction. Says Kazi in a choked voice: " Bhavnagar
was a cradle of peace when the Deobandis and the VHP were not there. The
Deobandis adore Osama bin Laden and the Ghanchi Muslims who committed the
Godhra carnage were also Deobandis.
Ali Sidatar, a follower of the Barelvi
Islamic school, too holds the Tableeg Jamaat as well as VHP responsible
for the communal virus in Bhavnagar. "We are nationalists," he says. "They
aren't." A board hanging inside a local Barelvi mosque in which Sidatar
prays reads: "Deobandis and Tableeghi hypocrites are prohibited from entering
the mosque. If they do they will be insulted."
The charge that the entire Muslim
community is paying the price for the activities of the Deobandis has many
takers. Following the Godhra carnage, Bhavnagar is the only place which
has witnessed contin rioting have been registered since Godhra carnage,
the last one just a fortnight ago. Although deaths as a result of the rioting
have been only eight, the toll doesn't depict the precise picture of the
Hindu-Muslim divide.
According to police records, 90,000
people have participated in the rioting in less than a year-this is almost
a sixth of the city's population. Property worth Rs 22 crore has been destroyed,
including 438 homes, 236 shops and 120 vehicles. The vast majority of the
sufferers were Muslims, thanks to the giant strides that the VHP has made
in Bhavnagar capitalising on the radicalisation brought about amongst the
local Muslims by the Deoband-Tableegh Jamaat ideology.
The VHP has skillfully used the
spread of radical Deobandi- Tableegh preachings to increase its strength.
In 1995, the VHP had just one city unit. Today it has six. From 500 workers
in 1995 the number of VHP workers in Bhavnagar stands at a staggering 8,000.
A majority of Hindu youths in the city are VHP sympathisers. Says local
VHP leader Narendra Vyas: " We are spreading awareness amongst the Hindu
youths about the poison that the Deoband-Tableegh Jamaat ideologues are
spreading in Bhavnagar. If we don't do that the Hindus will be in trouble
in the time to come."
The riots in Bhavnagar began immediately
after the Godhra carnage when a mob of 15,000 Hindus tried to attack the
Akwada madarsa. The police had to keep the Hindus mobs at bay for almost
two days. The Hindu ire against Akwada was a result of the report of Ali's
admission that he had studied there. The report had appeared in the newspapers
only a fortnight before the Godhra carnage.
The fear of the Bhavnagar Muslims
going radical was also borne out of the change in their dressing habits
and behaviour. This was something that sections of moderate Muslims in
Bhavnagar also admit. Thus when the Hindu mobs started attacking the madarsa
with full force, as many as 450 students and teachers were trapped inside.
In an attempt to save them the police opened fire on Hindu mobs forced
forced the mobs to disperse but it resulted in violent reaction from the
Muslim-dominated areas.
Significantly, during the riots
the police recovered 375 petrol bombs and 230 acid bombs and arrested 17
Muslims, most of them of suspicious Bengali origin, from the house of a
prominent Tableegh worker and a lawyer, Asif Bordiwala, who died of a heart
attack a few days later.
The Akwada madarsa's role in promoting
the Deobandi's "vested" interests has become increasingly suspect. And
nothing seems to be allaying such fears. Not even a slogan saying, "The
world is grand, beautiful and thrilling but we love India" which it displayed
on the return of the students who had been moved out during the rioting.
The reasons are not far to see.
A good part of the literature belonging to the Deobandis clearly shuns
the concept of nationhood and unequivocally promotes pan-Islamism. Even
a credible book by a Tableegh follower cites the last speech of the second
head of Tableegh Jamaat, Maulana Mohammed Yusuf , three days before he
died in Rawalpindi in Pakistan on March 30, 1965, as saying, "The words,
my nation, my region and my people lead to disunity (amongst Muslims) and
Allah disapproves of it more than anything else." Islamic hardliners like
Mohammed Ghaznavi and Aurangzeb are considered true heroes while Akbar,
the symbol of pluralistic culture, is deemed a villain.
The Deoband-Tableegh leaders of
Bhavnagar vehemently deny the charges of spreading radicalism amongst the
Muslims and adherence to anti-national ideology though. According to Arif
Kalva, a prominent businessman and Tableegh Jamaat leader of Bhavnagar,
the charges are motivated and are aimed at defaming the followers of Deoband-Tableegh.
He says the allegation that the Tableegh Jamaat doesn't believe in the
concept of nationhood is utterly baseless. But clearly as the recent developments
in Bhavnagar have shown, such words aren't very convincing.