Black Fridays and Moral Responsibility by Mustaf Khan

The fateful day in 1993 that saw the horrendous serial bomb blasts was a Friday. The murky bloody deed of the D gang was an act of terror. But the motivation was communalism. Can we not then say that the subsequent Fridays of April 2005 in Delhi, September 8, 2006 in Malegaon and May 18, 2007in Hyderabad were also days of terror caused by communalism? True, rationality points in that direction. What causes enmity between communities of people of two religions is communalism. But the intelligence agencies right from the Intelligence Bureau to the local police and CID do not want to countenance even that suggestive hint. The slide into the chaos continues with the mounting death of the innocent victims.
Friday 18th May 2007 was to see a protest against the fake encounter death of Sohrabuddin and wife Kauser in which the Andhra Pradesh police had colluded with the Gujarat police under Vanzara. It was also the day when Judge P.D.Kode was to begin pronouncing punishment on the guilty of the ’93 serial blasts. But those who hatched the conspiracy of the blast in Mecca mosque did not want the protest to take place. They succeeded despite the warning that the central government home ministry had given about possible disturbance there. A local TV channel was there covering a cultural event as one such was there at the cemetery mosque in Malegaon on the auspicious occasion of the festival of prayer of Shabb-e-barat. In both the attacks those who plotted had taken note of the significance of the days and occasion and the wide publicity their evil design would receive. For that is the calculated aim of all the terrorists: public attention and propaganda of a cause. Which group carried out the bombings can be correctly guessed by its unwillingness to spell out on written page with banner head or through the word of mouth its terrific design. The other aspect is to give message to the victim that they have it coming to them. In other words intimidating them into submission.
The police were altogether absent from the Malegaon mosque and at the Mecca mosque there was dereliction of duty, unprepared ness. Then disproportionate use of force, Police chief of AP Basith said that the police were using rubber bullets which would not kill but only injure. It turned out that several people were killed and in one incident a boy was mowed down by the bullets. When his relatives and neighbours tried to lift the bleeding boy another bullet found home in the injured body. There is no definite body count but more died in police firing than in the blast.
An emerging situation of serious concern is the sensationalistic focus of issues. Either you highlight an issue or prevent it from surfacing. Why has the intelligence agency failed to look from this angle? It will require hard thinking. To begin with, those who wanted to highlight the fake encounter death through protest could themselves cause gruesome murder and mayhem to court sympathy. Or, those who attempted to snip it in the bud wanted to warn others from going on with the protest. Or, they aimed to divert attention from the events in Gujarat. Or, is it an act of retaliation, or what Pritish Nany calls tit-for-tat terrorism? Speaking about hidden agenda will lead invariably to the same polarization of Indian society which cannot augur well for the nation. However, the larger interest of the nation requires that we go to the root of the malaise and root it out.
To do that, doing away with stereotyping and finding scapegoat can help. The Chief Minister of AP Rajashekhar Reddy was still in Delhi at the time of the blast and from there he said that it was an international sabotage. In other words, the ISI is again at it. In the same vein is another chorus of LeT, HUJI, SIMI. These are ready made excuses the intelligence agencies are indoctrinated to repeat, to hide their failure since their failure is total and abysmal. There is also no whistle blower in them, either. They look at all the events from one colour! Either we revamp them or create a super rainbow intelligence agency.
The government agencies and departments are working at cross purposes. Home Minister S Patil says it was an improvised explosive device while reports indicate that it was quite sophisticated one using mobile phone as a detonating device. In the case of Malegaon blasts Home Secretary of the Union Government, Mr Duggal, said RDX was used but the superintendent of police of Malegon, Rajwardhan Mishra, denied it.
In the incidents of mosque bombing in Parbhani, Nanded, Delhi, Malegaon, and Hyderabad no one has been caught except the SIMI activists. Some Bajrang Dal activists were arrested for the Marathwada region bombings but no further inquiry was conducted. The police do not favour that angle of investigation.

Apropos to this, the American poet Robert Frost said
Some say the world will in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great And would suffic