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Masters behind masterminds
 Who stands to
gain the most if the entire focus in
India's body
polity turns towards terrorism? Who tends to gain if attacks on
Christians are in the headlines? There is much speculation about the
real masterminds behind the recent blasts and the attacks on
Christians.
Culprits are
being defined community wise. Hindus attacking Christians, Muslims
attacking Hindus. It is possible that some of these monsters could
indeed be disgruntled Muslims or Islamist terrorists for many Hindus
or Hindutva militants according to many Muslims.
But how have we
reached the conclusion that this indeed is the case? With ample help
from Indian establishment. The leaking cops who hold a press
conference within minutes of blasts, the intelligence agencies which
have perfected the art of planting stories.
Perhaps the real
story of what does it take to get into a trap lies in the lanes of
Azamgarh. As security agencies in
India pile on
statements and leaked evidence in newspapers, anger and suspicion
meet at crossroads in Azamgarh where people gather and disown the
town’s recently acquired Terror tag.
The Indian
Express recently had an anecdote to report from Azamgarh. Its
reporter met one Abul Kalam, a retired lecturer of the
BIC Inter
College at Beenapara, who can switch from Urdu to English, and back,
with ease. The articulate Kalam narrated an incident he heard
somewhere to make the larger point about Azamgarh’s predicament. “In
Gonda, a teacher asked a child: ‘If you meet a snake and an
Azamgarhi, who will you kill?’ The boy replied ‘snake’ and the
teacher failed him,” says Kalam. "The story may sound dubious but
the sense of persecution that informs it is real," said the report.
The WSN believes
it.
There is nothing
that the Indian nation state is doing to tackle the sense of
persecution. Instead, it is only adding to this predicament.
Meet Zaid here.
His brother was arrested for masterminding
Gujarat blasts.
Zaid suffered an attack of paralysis over a year ago, sits in a
corner of the run-down courtyard, mumbling occasionally. “Now they
say he masterminded the Gujarat blasts. But he is in custody, so who
masterminded the
Delhi
blasts?” he asks. These are the questions that the Indian media does
not ask, and few in civil society are raising their voices.
Everyone knows
that Zaid was picked up from Azamgarh. “I faxed a letter to the DM
and the SP the same day. About two days later, we saw a newsclip on
TV said that my brother had been arrested. We want to know why the
police said they arrested him in
Lucknow when
they picked him up from here,” says Zaid, who is now agitated enough
to forget his initial reluctance to talk to the “biased” media.
“He was picked
up because he was a religious figure—so that the poor and the
uneducated get terrorised after seeing that this can happen even to
someone who is educated. Now whoever will be arrested will be an
alimdeen (religious scholar) and a topiwala,” says Zaid.
People in
Punjab
remember when Sikh youth used to be picked up because they wore a
kesri patka or raised a few slogans in the college. Next you would
hear about their deaths in fake encounters.
In this edition
of the WSN, we have tried to revisit the experiences of the Muslims
and the Christians with a mind tempered by the experience that the
Sikhs gained in the 80s and the 90s.
Going by what
SIMI preaches, it does not represent a majority of Muslims in
India. But for
some strange reasons, Indian establishment is stereotyping the
entire Muslim community. This can only push many youth to dangerous
turfs. The only other guess is that New Delhi knows what it is
doing, and wants to take that route. That is a route that will suit
the brahamanical project that has been on for decades now.
Reinforcing
anti-Muslim hatred, triggering a collective terror psychosis among
Hindus, then presenting itself as saviours and capturing a vote
bank. Why should we not think about it?
24 September 2008
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