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Communalism Is Terrorism:
Shiv Sena At 45 Does Not Know Terrorism!

By Mustafa Khan

26 June, 2010
Countercurrents.org

Malegaon bomb blasts of 2006 and 2008 have created an upheaval in the country and sharply crystallized the political parties. Never before was the town mentioned so often as since when ATS chief Hemant Karkare started arresting Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit of the army, Sadhvi Pragyasingh Thakur and others and facts of extremist Hindus responsible for the terrorist attacks of September 29, 2008 started making headlines.

The earliest straw in the wind was the complete silence over who did it. Nobody had claimed responsibility for either of the two terrorist incidents of 2006 and 2008. Both of them took place in September and initially were sought out to be explained away as sequel to September 11, 2001 attack on World Trade Centre twin towers and the Pentagon, jihadist attacks. Immediately, Lashkare-toiba or al Badre were blamed and even al Qaida. In the aftermath of 2006 explosions some twenty Hindus were interrogated by the police and a well known yarn trader Mahesh Patodiya was called by the police for questioning. In the latter case a huge Hindu crowd encircled the killa police station. The police released him soon. But from the third week of the October they started arresting Muslim youths on suspicion. Many of them are still behind the bars with hardly any evidence against them than their own confession under duress. But then happened 2008 and as most of the arrested in 2006 were accused to be members of SIMI who else was left to be arrested now?

But more than the residual situation was the coming of the new ATS chief Hemant Kakare on the scene. He began investigation objectively from ground zero and came upon the motor cycle of Pragyasingh Thakur.

When Purohit and Pragya were brought to the court in Nasik a mammoth gathering that included Shiv Sainks showered petals on the Hindu accused. They made it into a gala event of celebration and jubilation. Never before had this happened in India. Bal Thackeray and his party assured tickets for the accused to fight the election that was round the corner.

LK Advani was swept away by the overwhelming revelations that these times round the terrorists were Hindus. He like Thackeray was so much inveterate that his reaction was also schizophrenic. He wanted to change the composition of the investigation team altogether. Thackeray thundered that the names of the investigation officers would be directly revealed to the public who would naturally mete out justice or punishment to the investigators as they deemed necessary. List of lawyers who would defend grew in three digits. All these left no doubt to the public that the Hindus could not take to terrorism and they were superior to their fellow countrymen from the Islamic faith. It was much like the Hasidim Lubavitch orthodox Jews.

This creation of reality of the situation of bombing is reminiscent of the Godhra train burning. It did not stop there even nationalism was ascribed to those who accepted the created reality.

That is the persistent problem with terrorism. Those who have appropriated nationalism in this way create the reality which they enforce on others. Inadvertently it is deepening the gulf between communities and that might become unbridgeable. Within a week of September 2008 bombing neighbouring town Dhulia had its first ever wide spread communal riot. Eerie and fraught with dangerous consequences, the Hindu Raksha Samiti wanted to protect Hindus from the fall out of the bomb blast in Malegaon! Their pamphlet makes it clear. The occasion was well chosen. Shabbir Bhangarwala was returning from haj and notice boards were set up announcing a welcome programme. There was another board of the Samiti. Who damaged one such board is difficult to say but the riots ensued. Bhangarwala was detained and the police made an appeal for his remand in which the superintendent of the police said that it was an established fact that Muslims are the masterminds behind all terrorist attacks in India. Hindu Rakshak Samiti only retaliated. Here also the created reality is made out to be even the police version! Later the DGP AN Roy ordered an inquiry into the affair.

The created reality and the appropriation of nationalism based on this skewed perception have gone so deep into the psyche of the Hindu right and in the case of many others that 45th anniversary of Shiv Sena is illustrative of it. In its editorial of Saturday June19, 2010 Saamna says that “such is the vote bank politics of the Congress party that when bombs are exploded by Islamic extremists, Hindus are blamed for the bombs and the explosions. That is how the Hindus have been blamed in the Malegaon bomb blasts. Now that the police have no lead on Pune German bakery bomb blast (of February 19, 2010) they want to hide their impotence by blaming the Hindus only.” The editorial shows how schizophrenia has seized Hindu extremist political outfits like Shiv Sena and BJP.

Many especially in the minority see no scope or hope for justice or fair play for Muslims who are often not only themselves killed in terrorist attacks but also their youths are falsely implicated into such crimes and languish decades of their life in prison. That is what has happened in Delhi, Hyderabad and is true of the Malegaon 2006.

The party mouthpiece says: “We are brave macho Marathas. But when there is danger to the country we are primarily and foremost Hindus who would descend to the battlefield with our weapons.”

Thus full four years after the first bomb incidents in Malegaon and two years after the second attack Shiv Sena refuses to accept that Hindus could plant bombs. Their enemy within the homeland is the Muslim.

As there is no perceptible dissidence against this one feels amazed whether the Marathi speaking Hindus fully comprehend and understand ‘”aata islami atirekyani phodlele bomb aani sfotanche gunhe hindun chya nawawar dakhan kele jat aahet malegaon sfotantasech hinduvana badnam kele.” (Now the bombs exploded by Muslim extremists and explosion crimes are blamed on the Hindus. In Malegaon bomb explosions Hindus have been blamed.)?

This is clear insinuation that only Muslims are terrorists for which Hindus have to wear the cross. What is worse the party and its mouthpiece have sworn to inspire and instigate the Hindus. History is replete with innumerable instances of how the Shiv Sena and its supreme leader have incited violence. Again, what is cocking a snook at the authorities and the government: “teyana petvineyanche kaam aamhi karat rahu” (We will continue to fire or instigate them,” the Hindus. ) Does not this aim at creating hatred between communities? In other words the Malegaon blasts have come to be tools in the hands of the Hindu parties to continue their fight against the Muslims for just being Muslims. Terrorism has fully succeeded superseding communalism. Communal violence of yore is terrorist violence, murder and mayhem of today.

Why there is no hope for justice under the right wing Hindu parties coming to power is again enshrined in the editorial as the Shiv Sena does not publish a manifesto its manifesto is what Thackeray says and writes in the editorials. Look at a seminal thought of Thackeray. “I want in Mumbai goondas, hooch distillers, smugglers and all Marathi people.” His nephew followed him. They unleashed violence on the North Indians which was pure terror. They went further and declared if this makes them terrorists they are proud to declare that they are terrorists! This part of history is caught on camera by the electronic media and there is no need to look into the archives for evidence. The situation boils down to this: the Muslim youths must perish in prison but the Hindus (not all certainly but even the extremists among them) cannot be terrorists. Malegaon blasts have gone into history proving this.

Why have we reached this stage? Communalism, that too aggressive one, played havoc. Its first casualty is not the unsuspecting knifed in the street. But what is within us, our power of discerning right and wrong and doing the right. Terrorism must not be allowed to atrophy introspection. Even those who fight for human rights must introspect as well as those who indulge in violating the human rights. Did the Shiv Sena activists and the Bajrang Dal musclemen introspect how small children in the Malegaon graveyard mosque had their limbs blown up by explosion? Many had their necks pierced and broken by deadly missiles of small balls and nails of the bombs. Most were either beggars or children. Shiv Sena and Uma Bharti who offered tickets to fight election to the Sadhvi and Purohit or the fake encounter cop Sachin Vaze had no introspection.
Given the communal polarization it will become perhaps inevitable that communities like their leaders will very soon come to justify terrorism. Bal Thackeray had occasionally remarked that he wished Tamil Tigers or the Naxalites would help Hindus retaliate what Himani Savarkar (true to her name, sharp edge weapon) calls bomb for bomb revenge against the Muslims whom they view as just terrorists. Will the claiming of responsibility be far behind? Or, has it begun. Shiv Sena and MNS activists who unleashed terror on North Indians have made no bones of it. When it comes to sons of the soil ideology they would use force call what you may, if this is terrorism they are happy to be terrorists.

Mustafa Khan
Malegaon, Maharashtra
http://commonalty.blogspot.com/