Economic and Political Weekly
November 15, 2008

Editorial

HINDUTVA?S TERRORISM LINKS
What has long been suspected is now in the open. How will mainstream
politics deal with Hindutva terror?

Terror strikes, which randomly kill people who just happen to be in
the wrong place at the wrong time, unhinge all reason. They breed
intolerance and create conditions under which ordinary people are
willing to abandon common sense.  Part of the intent of terrorism is
that it creates the conditions in which ?quack? remedies gain
legitimacy. This comes in part from the seeming simplicity of these
remedies, as also from their conformity with an existing template on
terrorism.  That template was created in India soon after the 11
September 2001 attacks in the United States. Though various authors
have contributed to the master-narrative, none has left as distinct
an imprint as Narendra Modi, then the principal spokesman of the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Yet to become chief minister of Gujarat
and with the horrors of February 2002 still a distant glimmer, Modi
pronounced the mantra that has seemingly become the catechism for all
official investigations: even if all Muslims are not terrorists, all
terrorists are Muslims.  This is the template that was broken late in
October by the discovery of an elaborate network of terrorism
involving the faithful of the Hindutva flock. The plot began to
unravel with the arrest of a retired army officer in Pune and a woman
from Bhind in Madhya Pradesh, who was once active in the students?
wing of the BJP before she assumed the title of sadhvi. To great
consternation all around, the investigations soon identified a
lieutenant- colonel working with military intelligence and stationed
in  Jammu as a key player in the network. And as the investigations
progressed into the bombings on 29 September, in Malegaon  in
Maharashtra and Modasa in Gujarat, another saffron-robed religious
preacher, normally based in Jammu, was arrested from a village of
Kanpur district in Uttar Pradesh.

The Hindutva political fraternity, stung to the quick, reacted with
allegations of a frame-up. Modi joined the fray with dark
imprecations about a plot to undermine military morale. Propagandists
for Hindutva in the media in turn have sought to draw a distinction
between ?terrorism? and ?vigilantism? ? the one born in the stated
desire to destroy the nation state, the other spawned by the growing
sense of frustration among the righteous majority at the State?s
failure to safeguard lives and liberties.

What all the sophistry fails to cover up is that the reflexive belief
? those of the Islamic faith alone are responsible for terrorism ?
has created a cloak of impunity under which every manner of atrocity
has flourished. It is conveniently overlooked that places of Islamic
reverence have often been targeted in lethal bomb attacks  -- as with
the cemetery adjacent to a mosque in Malegaon in September 2006 and
the Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad in May 2007.  These incidents have been
easily subsumed within the master- narrative of jihadi terror by
invoking the visceral animosity that adherents of Wahhabi Islam
supposedly harbour towards the syncretism of subcontinental religious
practice. Police investigations, guided by this quack diagnosis, have
targeted innocent Muslims by the scores. As recently as 4 November,
four suspects held for varying lengths of time for supposed
involvement in the Mecca Masjid bombings were acquitted by a
Hyderabad court of all charges. They narrated sordid stories of
torture, forced confessions and finally, of trials that were they not
so tragic, could only be described as farcical. Similar stories of
arbitrary arrest and torture have emerged from Jaipur, Ahmedabad,
Malegaon, M umbai, Varanasi and Delhi, to name only a few cities that
have witnessed terrorist atrocities in recent years.

In few cases have the investigations into jihadi terrorism  managed
to produce credible evidence that will stand judicial scrutiny. In
virtually all of them, the police have brought charges and pressed
for conviction almost solely on the basis of confessions obtained in
highly questionable circumstances. This includes the many charges
brought against the alleged perpetrators of the acts of terror
organised by the ?Indian Mujahiddin?.  These new expediencies in
investigation need to be read in the light of the growing clamour
from Hindutva political forces that a law specific to the menace of
terrorism needs to be brought in, which would make confessions in
police custody admissible as evidence in court. They need to be seen
in conjunction with the weak-kneed and amoral response of the
editorialists and the liberal fringe in politics: that the Indian
people should be prepared for an abridgement of their rights to
defeat terrorism.  Few have so far paused to question why the Indian
people should surrender the freedom of which they have so little. But
with the discovery of Hindutva?s terrorism link, there is a
possibility, though still remote, of a paradigm shift in perceptions
? a shift of potentially far-reaching benefits for all. Needless to
say, this is a possibility that will only be realised if the
political apologists  for Hindutva are subjected to the processes of
accountability demanded by the rule of law.

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