The Hindu Business Line : Who can tackle terror?

The Muslims by themselves cannot solve the problem of terrorism; the larger Muslim community is as much a victim as any other community of such acts of terror. Where the majority community can help is by withdrawing support to politicians who spawn communal hatred, says RASHEEDA BHAGAT.

Patience is running thin across the country as more innocent lives are lost to terror attacks, and only concerted and firm action can get results.

One more dastardly attack in Delhi has claimed two lives, one of an innocent 11-year-old child, whose parents had obviously taught him that if he finds anything he should try and return it to its owner. The child saw two motorcyclists drop a black polythene bag on the road at the flower market in Mehrauli and picked it up in an attempt to return it to the owners, little knowing they were murderers. There was a huge blast and yet another innocent life had been lost.

Hardly anybody in the country, including most Muslims, has any doubt that the perpetrators of this act of terror too hail from the lunatic fringes of the Indian Muslim community. Call them the Indian Mujahideen, Bangladeshi infiltrators or one among the various hues of militants entrenched in the Kashmir Valley with the blessings of our neighbour’s ISI, the fact remains that behind the majority of bomb blasts in this country there is a lurking Muslim hand.

That, however, does not mean that all acts of terrorism unleashed on the people of India are carried out by Muslims, as is being claimed by the BJP and its allies such as the VHP or the Bajrang Dal.

Now that more and more sensible Muslims have started endorsing the ban on SIMI — undoubtedly, it has to be banned because those who dominate this “student” body are involved in activities that can hardly be described as academic — there are rising voices from within the Muslim leadership, as well as the Indian secular community, that the Bajrang Dal should be banned too. But the problem, as seen in most TV channel debates, is that the BJP leaders are not willing to concede that the Bajrang Dal can be termed a “terrorist organisation” and hence be banned.

For them, the acts of vandalism in churches around the country, following the assassination of Swami Lakshmananda, do not constitute terrorism. Granted that more innocent lives are lost when bomb blasts go off in crowded places, but it cannot be denied that mob violence also strikes terror in the hearts of victims and makes reconciliation and peaceful co-existence of two communities within a village or neighbourhood very difficult. Ask the Muslims of Gujarat and they can shed light on what it means to live in an atmosphere of mistrust, suspicion, polarisation and communal acrimony.

Only Muslims can help?

On another note, a chat with a close friend in Delhi, a noted academician, on yet another blast in Delhi, got this in response: “The terror problem cannot be solved either by the Hindus or by the government but only by Muslims.” Do you agree, he asked. This indicates that patience is running thin across the country as almost each passing week we wake up to yet another bomb blast and loss of innocent lives.

I told him I agreed with the statement, but only partially. I’m also sure that this is not his view, but one that is being discussed among the intellectual classes in Delhi. And, mind you, these are not communal people. They have no sympathy with the ideology of the BJP or the RSS, just as they would find no common cause with the views of the Muslim fanatics.

But no human being, whatever his/her credentials — orthodox, fanatic or secular — can continue to be sympathetic or patient with such an atmosphere of insecurity and uncertainty. At this rate, nobody can feel safe… you don’t know at which corner, in which locality, in which city some crazy idiot whose brain has been poisoned with nonsensical fare on his “religious duty”, is going to set off a bomb that can endanger your life, and worse still, kill a loved one. And, when a bomb goes off, it does not select its victims on the basis of religion.

Undoubtedly it’s a grim scenario that stares us in the face; bomb blasts are no longer isolated events in our country, as happened in the US on 9/11, or in the London Underground or at the Madrid railway station. Every other week we are waking up to the painful screams and heartrending wailing of people who have lost loved ones to terror.

Double whammy

But it would be foolhardy to think that only the Muslims of India can solve this problem. As noted poet Javed Akhtar said on a recent television show, in the general atmosphere of fear, Indian Muslims are doubly afraid. One, because they themselves could be victims of such bomb attacks. And two, they are more afraid than the majority community because they know that the investigations and the finger-pointing that will follow will certainly target a section of their community.

So, no, the Muslims by themselves cannot solve this problem; the larger Muslim community is as much a victim as any other community of such acts of terror. Where they can help, as has been repeatedly pointed out in this column, is in remaining vigilant about suspicious goings-on among the Muslims they know in their neighbourhood, or even families, and reporting it.

But where the majority community can help is by withdrawing support to politicians who spawn communal hatred and at whose instigation communal pogroms, as happened in Gujarat in 2002, take place. If such politicians lose favour, and the establishment of the day makes a sincere attempt to help victims and punish the perpetrators of terror, irrespective of the religion or political ideology they belong to, then there is hope.

In such an atmosphere the larger Indian Muslim community can ensure that among its own members there is not an iota of support for the terrorists, something that is unfortunately not happening now.

The more you isolate or alienate a group of people, the more success the fanatics within that community will reap in brainwashing vulnerable minds that the root cause of all their misery — be it poverty, illiteracy or unemployment — can be traced to a system where everything is loaded in favour of the majority community. And it becomes that much easier to weave sermons around how when a Hindu and a Muslim candidate apply for a job or a housing unit, the former will get it and not the latter. And so on… goes the poisoning.

As I told my Delhi friend, “the larger community will have to reach out to reassure a section of Muslims that this country belongs as much to them, as the Hindus. That they have a future in this country as it marches ahead towards the goal of development, and that a Gujarat 2002 will not happen again. There will always be sporadic incidents with a communal tinge, but state-sponsored terrorism will not target them ever again as has unfortunately happened in the past.”

Meanwhile, the government has to show that it means business in tackling terrorism. By all means, remain firm in banning SIMI, give the severest punishment, and speedily, to those involved in terror. Get your intelligence gathering mechanism in order so that such heinous plots can be unravelled before there is loss of human life and property.

Comic relief

Amidst such grim news at home, a bit of comedy, though of an embarrassing variety, unfolded in Washington DC last week when the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin went calling on the Pakistan President, Mr Asif Ali Zardari.

Our TV channels were full of footage of how Mr Zardari told the former beauty queen that she was “even more gorgeous” than he had imagined and how he now understood why “the whole of America is crazy about you.” Ms Palin, we are told, was made to do the rounds in order to learn a bit of foreign policy.

Apparently, nobody at home had given the Pakistan President lessons in decorum and decent public behaviour. By the time he told Ms Palin, while shaking her hand once again at the bidding of an aide, that “I might even hug (you), if he insists”, one was extremely grateful that, thank god, it was not an Indian politician who was indulging in such atrocious behaviour.

Well, the inevitable has happened; we’re told a Pakistani cleric has issued a fatwa against Mr Zardari for “flirting” with Ms Palin. According to a media report Maulana Abdul Ghafar of Islamabad’s Lal Masjid (which was stormed during Presdient Musharraf’s time) said the Pakistan President’s behaviour was un-Islamic and he had “shamed the entire nation”.

The Maulana said that President Zardari’s “filthy remarks and repeated praise of a non-Muslim lady wearing a short skirt” was not only un-Islamic but also unbecoming of a head of a Muslim country.

Ah, the short skirt had to come in, of course.

(Response may be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in)

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