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Publication: Sify News
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URL: http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14611728
Maloy Krishna Dhar started life off as a junior
reporter for Amrita Bazaar Patrika in Calcutta and a part-time lecturer. He
joined the Indian Police Service in 1964 and was permanently seconded to the
Intelligence Bureau.
During his long stint in the Bureau, Dhar
saw action in almost all Northeastern states, Sikkim, Punjab and Kashmir.
He also handled delicate internal political and several counterintelligence
assignments. After retiring in 1996 as joint director, he took to freelance
journalism and writing books. Titles credited to him are Open Secrets-India's
Intelligence Unveiled, Fulcrum of Evil - ISI, CIA, al-Qaeda Nexus, and Mission
to Pakistan. Maloy is considered a top security analyst and a social scientist
who tries to portray Indian society through his writings.
Soon after the Mecca Masjid bomb blast (May
2007) and twin blasts in Hyderabad (August 25), several TV and print media
friends grilled me: why should there be Jihadist attacks in the South?
Kashmir and parts of North and West India
have been in the hairpin of jihadist trigger finger, but the South was a Shanthi
Nilayam. Their questions took on a sharper tinge after the reported detection
of jihadist training camps in Hubli and Dharwar forests, and the training
undergone by some of the jihadists in Pakistan.
The naiveté of the inquirers is pardonable.
Knowledge comes with the pains of suffering.
India, and this means entire India- North,
South, East and West -- has always been a battleground. Nestled in the peninsula,
the southern part of the country could not escape the advances of Islam. Those
aeons old Hindu-Muslim battles need not be recounted.
Some believers in perpetual jihad (external)
against Dar-ul Harb (a land ruled by infidels that might, through war, become
the "Abode of Islam," or Dar-ul-Islam) still exist in India. These
minuscule fundamentalists are exploited by the jihadi military regimes in
Pakistan and Bangladesh through their tanzeems and intelligence agencies-
the ISI and the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence.
The Southern Peninsula has been the traditional
home of several Islamist groups, who continue to believe in the concept of
Dar-ul-Harb.
Decades ago, in 1921, when India was basking
in the Hindu-Muslim bonhomie of the Khilafat movement, the Moplas of Kerala
indulged in a barbaric communal carnage under the leadership of Mohammad Haji,
who had declared the end of British raj and proclaimed himself a Khalifa.
Annie Besant had commented on that sordid
development, They (Moplas) murdered and plundered abundantly, and killed or
drove away all Hindus who would not apostatise. Somewhere about a lakh (100,000)
of people were driven from their homes with nothing but their clothes they
had on, stripped of everything...Malabar has taught us what Islamic rule still
means, and we do not want to see another specimen of the Khilafat Raj in India.
(The Future Of Indian Politics: A Contribution
To The Understanding Of Present-Day Problems P252. )
Volumes have been written on this sordid chapter
which foreshadowed the holocausts in Jinnah's Direct Action killings in Kolkata
and the Noakahli genocide. Larger genocides were committed on the eve of escape
of the British from India and the truncated Transfer of Power; now pedalled
as independence.
The Southern Peninsula has a been treated
as a Dar-ul-Harb or land of war, inhabited by the kafir, just like other parts
of India were during the Muslim forays, after British occupation and during
the process of Partition on the basis of two religion and two nation theory.
It was much later, on December 8-11, 1989,
a debate was initiated in the Second Fiqh Seminar in Delhi for determining
the status of India according to the Shariah. Whether India is Dar-ul-harb
or not; whether the republic of India, if treated as Dar-ul-kufr, (non-Muslim
land) falls in the category of those countries in which properties do not
bear the character of protected property (Amwal-e-masoom), these and other
related issues came under consideration at the Seminar from various angles.
The Seminar called upon the Islamic Fiqh Academy
to set up a committee consisting of Ulama and Jurists, and those well versed
in contemporary political science, constitutional law and laws relating to
International relations, to decide the status of India. Till now the debate
has not been settled. It is presumed India continues to be a Dar-ul-Harb,
a country which is an active battleground.
The best interpretation of Dar-ul-Harb can
be found in Ghiyasu 'l-Lughat dictionary, Qumas and Fatawa Alamgiri, vol.
ii. Pp. 854 etc. We need not enter into a debate here.
While Kashmir and several other parts of India
have been under the hairpin triggers of the jihadis from Pakistan, Bangladesh
and other Salafi, Wahhabi and Deobandi fanatics, the southern part of the
country often broke the veil of stoic placidity with bomb blasts and attacks
at regular intervals. Several explosions and attacks were made at Coimbatore
(1998), Indian Institute of Science and the RSS office in Tamil Nadu (1993).
Starting from February 26, 2001 intermittent blasts have taken place on November
21, 2002; October 28, 2004, November 4, 2004, October 12, 2005, May 7, 2006,
May 18, 2007 and August 25, 2007 in Andhra Pradesh.
The Southern Peninsula is described by the
Islamic revivalists as a part of Hyderistan; a Muslim land with Hyderabad
as nucleus. Maulana Kifayet Ali floated this theory in early thirties in his
Silsila-I-Jamait-I-Vahdat Umam Islam. (Quoted by S. A. Latif in The cultural
Future of India, Pp 1-18. Inquisitive readers may refer to my book: Fulcrum
of Evil-ISI, CIA Al Qaeda Nexus).
Besides the Jamait-e-Islami, Jamait al Salafiya,
Tablighi Jammat, Ahl-e-Hadith and SIMI, several regional militant organisations
had sprouted in the States of Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil
Nadu. The prominent militant organisations are:
* Muslim Defence Force: formed in Saudi Arabia
by Abu Hamza of Hyderabad, it has units in Andhra, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
Intelligence reports link this organisation with Lashkar-e-Toiba and Harkat-ul-Jihad-
al Islami.
* Indian Muslim Mohammedia Mujahideen: Formed
by Azam Ghori. The organisation has several units in Andhra, Karnataka and
Tamil Nadu.
* Al Ummah: Formed by S A Basha, is the most
active jihadist force is active in Tamil Nadu, Andhra, Kerala, Karnataka.
It has connectivity with the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence of
Bangladesh (DGFI) and the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), Lashkar-e-Toiba,
HuJI, Jaish-e-Mohammad and SIMI.
* Deendar Anjuman: Formed by Hazrat Maulana
Sayed Siddique Kibla. The Andhra based organisation had earned notoriety with
the suspected participation of Mohammad Mohiuddin in serial bombings. It has
expanded activities in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. The Government of India banned
the Deendar Anjuman in April 2001, after it was linked to the serial blasts
at places of worship, including churches, a temple and a mosque, in Andhra,
Karnataka and Goa. The Andhra Pradesh government too banned the organisation
and sealed its offices at Hyderabad, Vijayawada and other places. About 40
Deendar activists were involved in criminal cases in Andhra Pradesh.
Kerala and Tamil Nadu also boast of several
fundamentalist and pro-jihadist organisations, which are engaged in acts of
subversive and communal violence. Most important outfits are: Islamic Service
Society, National Development Front, Muslim National Development Front, People's
Democratic Party, All India Jihad Committee, and Tamil Muslim Munnetra Kazagham
and the outfit floated by Palani Baba. The Manitha Neethi Paasarai (MNP),
another militant outfit surfaced after Al Umma was banned for its execution
of Coimbatore serial blasts. The MNP is involved in conversion of low-caste
Hindus and training them in Jihadist activities. It is active in Theni and
Coimbatore districts, which are close to Kerala borders. Its linkages with
the NDF of Kerala have been substantiated.
The Popular Front of India (PFI), a coordinated
efforts between three organizations - Karnataka For Dignity (KFD), Karnataka,
Manitha Neethi Pasarai (MNP), Tamil Nadu, and National Development Front (NDF),
Kerala was launched on February 16 last year in Bangalore. A majority of the
leaders of this new front belong to the banned SIMI. The decision to launch
Popular Front of India (PFI) was taken at a conference of KFD, MNP & NDF
held on 22nd November 2006 at Calicut. The leaders of PFI include, K.M.Shareef,
President of KFD, Gulam Muhammed, leader of MNP and Abdur Rahman Baqari of
NDF had decided to confine their activities to South India. The PFI was suspected
of involvement in communal violence in Mangalore and several places in Kerala.
It is the first umbrella organisation of the SIMI related Wahhabi and Salafi
Islamists in Southern India. In the coming years, it might replicate the roles
of the Pakistani-brand militarised Deobandism in the peninsular states.
Several dissertations are required to analyse
and explain the working mechanism of these pro-jihadist and separatist organisations
in the South.
In the north, west and east, the main militant
bodies are the SIMI, Ahl-e-Hadith, units of HuJI, and active modules of Lashkar-e-Toiba,
Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (Sunni), Jundullah, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen
and Al Badr. Assam and Manipur have over a dozen indigenous militant bodies
patronised by the ISI and the DGFI. The Southern Peninsula has always looked
towards the north, like they did during initial Muslim invasions, for discovering
the footprints of HuJI, Lashkar, SIMI and other Pakistan related outfits.
Over three-dozen youths from the south had undergone training in Pakistan
and Bangladesh. The respective state intelligence units have not paid adequate
attention to the home-grown militant bodies, which have been infiltrated by
the ISI and the DGFI (through Bangladeshi infiltrators in the mega cities).
They have overlooked ISI infiltration from Sri Lanka and Maldives and from
the Middle East, through expatriate workers. Along with dollars and dinars,
they bring in ideological baggage and brainwashed Islamism and jihadist ideology.
It is time for the state governments (irrespective
of prism or other ism) and intelligence units to evaluate the extant jihadist
groups, which aim at establishing 'liberated' pockets and link up with the
jihadists in Gujarat, Maharashtra and other parts of India beyond the Vindhyas.
This is not an alarmist's war cry. It is high
time for the South to know the enemies within.
The author is a former Joint Director, IB,
with vast experience in handling Pakistani and Bangladeshi Jihadi thrust in
India. He can be reached at maloy_d@hotmail.com.
