Author: Swapan Dasgupta
Publication: Free Press Journal
Date: September 30, 2008
The redoubtable KPS Gill was perhaps speaking
too early when he suggested on a TV show that the death of Inspector Mohan
Chand Sharma saved the Delhi Police from being lumbered with shrill and politically
loaded accusations of having staged a false encounter in Jamia Nagar.
That a police force doesn't get its top daredevil
wilfully eliminated in a stage-managed show inside a hostile ghetto should
be apparent. Unfortunately, when it comes to the social environment of counterterrorism,
common sense is at a discount.
Consider the social environment of the September
19 raid that culminated in bloodshed. It was pretty apparent that the terrorists
chose this part of Jamia Nagar as a safe hideout because it offered two layers
of protection: the logistical security of an over-congested locality and,
equally important, community protection. The sight of a police force conducting
a major anti-terrorist operation while being abused by a local community chanting
religious war cries is disturbing. Though the organised obstruction of counterterrorism
operations has become a feature of Hyderabad, its spread to Delhi has ominous
implications.
It has become drearily predictable for every
terrorist or terrorist facilitator to use the political clout of a community
as an additional protective cover. On that Friday afternoon, the slain Mohammed
Atif was given generous character certificates by friends and neighbours-one
of those who vouched for him later turned out to be a suspected bomber. In
his native Azamgarh, a media team was held hostage by angry villagers who
insisted that the Indian Establishment was out to vilify educated Muslims.
Local Muslims also proudly claimed that their role models were the gangster
Abu Salem and the controversial Samajwadi Party MP Abu Azmi.
Earlier in September, the mother of Abdus
Subhan Qureshi alias Tauqeer, said to be the Master Terrorist, berated the
media and the police for painting her son as India's Osama bin Laden. Her
press conference was organised by organisations such as the Muslim Personal
Law Board and those who claim to control the Muslim mind (and, by implication,
their voting behaviour). In 2006, it was a similar outcry from Muslim organisations
that led to the State Government more or less abandoning the search for those
responsible for the train blasts that killed 209 people on July 11 that year.
Among those who got away as a result was the same Tauqeer.
This contrived victimhood is pernicious and
plays into the hands of those who feed on the self-serving theory that Muslims
can expect no justice in "Hindu" India. It enables Islamist radicals
to link the Indian experience with other Muslim battles against an unjust
world and posit an alternative centred on the fantasies of a Nizam-e-Mustafa.
The Indian Mujahedeen emails testify to the garbage that passes for nutritious
thought in a ghetto built on theological certitudes. The weirdos who believe
that 9/11 was a Jewish conspiracy to target Muslims are capable of committing
themselves to the transformation of India into a Dar-ul-Islam. Bad ideas,
it would seem, have the remarkable habit of taking hold of "educated"
minds.
This is not to suggest that the police forces
have an exemplary record. There is certainly something peculiar about the
posthumous transformation of Atif from just another suspect who needed to
be questioned into the "mastermind" of all the blasts, thereby overshadowing
the elusive Tauqeer. Equally, there is a note of incredulity that surrounds
the parallel claim of the Mumbai police that it has solved all the outstanding
cases.
It is understandable that there is a lot of
public and political pressure on the Government and the Union Home Minister
to "crack" all the blasts cases. However, is it necessary to prey
on the willingness of crime reporters to swallow every police handout uncritically?
More important, is the Centre playing a game of one-upmanship with the Gujarat
Government and trying to tell Narendra Modi that what you can do in 25 days
we can do in just six? Public faith in the UPA's ability to handle internal
security isn't enhanced by the police making claims that may become impossible
to substantiate? Nor do the death of the alleged mastermind and the arrest
of two accomplices convince people that there is more to Shivraj Patil than
an elaborate wardrobe..
India faces a various serious threat that
cannot be handled with the same casualness that was evident in the Arushi
murder case.
With growing evidence that the SIMI is still
active and has a measure of vocal support in the Muslim ghettos, it has become
necessary to add a social and political dimension to counter-terrorism. If
the community support that manifested itself in Jamia Nagar last Friday afternoon
persists, the dan ger of stealth bombers being replaced by a supply of suicide
bombers becomes very real.
These are issues that the Muslim community
and its leadership can no longer run away from. If younger sons of small-time
Samajwadi Party politicians have ended up as bomb planters, it implies that
the Muslim elders are losing their grip on the younger hotheads in the community.
If madrassah teachers like the notorious Abu Basher and small-time maulvis
like Waliullah Qazmi (convicted of the Varanasi blasts) end up as the new
mujahedeen, it obviously means that there is something about Deoband's anti-terrorism
pledges that have escaped the attention of the faithful. Banking on Mulayam
Singh Yadav, Amar Singh, Lalu Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan to defend the indefensible
will work up to a point but will become useless if an alternative common sense
takes over the Indian mind.
If Muslim community leaders are serious about
their proclamation that Islam is a religion of peace, they will have to walk
the talk. India still awaits the unambiguous theological denunciations of
not merely terrorism but specific terrorist groups like SIMI, HUJI, JEM and
IM and specific terrorists such as the convicted Varanasi bomber and the man
on death row who conspired to attack the Indian Parliament. Anything else
is tantamount to short-changing India.
