[Reader-list] Fwd: Mumbai under assault: Arundhati Roy, P. Hoodbhoy, A. Patwardhan, Hari Sharma

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: SANSAD <sansad at sansad.org>
Date: 17 Dec 2008 08:22
Subject: Mumbai under assault: Arundhati Roy, P. Hoodbhoy, A. Patwardhan,
Hari Sharma
To: List Suppressed <Recipient>

 Dear friends:


The Mumbai dust has not settled yet. National jingoism and war cries are
keeping it afloat and churning. Sonia Gandhi has promised tougher
anti-terrorism laws, as if that would eliminate the underlying causes of
terrorism. The RSS Chief is calling for nuking Pakistan; and maybe, a Third
World War, to "cleanse the world of evil".


But other voices are also coming in large measures, from around the world
and from both sides of the India-Pakistan divide.


We forward to you, first, a piece by Arundhati Roy, "The Monster in the
Mirror". There are phrases and labels in it I disagree with, but it is, once
again, a charateristic Arundhati Roy piece. Profoundly perceptive,
passionate, concerned and alarmed. Its poetry gives body to its prose. Thank
you, Arundhati.


The second piece is from the other side of the border. the noted Nuclear
Physicist, the peace activist, the never-tiring good voice of the people of
Pakistan, Parvez Hoodbhoy.


Then, there is a piece by the celebrated film-maker Anand Patwardhan. Times
of India refused to publish this excellent article; that's all the more
reason for us to disseminate it.


And finally, there is a link for a podcast of a radio interview I had
locally in Vancouver, on December 6, the anniversary of the Babri Masjid
demolition.


hari sharma
for SANSAD












1/4
*The monster in the mirror*

                                *The Mumbai attacks have been dubbed
'India's 9/11', and there are calls for a 9/11-style response, including an
attack on Pakistan. Instead, the country must fight terrorism with justice,
or face civil war*.







   -                         [image: static.guim.co.uk/7F9E2D96.jpg]
   <http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/arundhati-roy>


   -
                                           Arundhati
Roy<http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/arundhati-roy>

   - guardian.co.uk <http://www.guardian.co.uk/>, Saturday 13 December 2008
   00.01 GMT
   - Article history<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/12/mumbai-arundhati-roy#history-byline>


                                                        [image:
static.guim.co.uk/1216CB21.jpg]



Azam Amir Kasab, the face of the Mumbai attacks. Photograph: Reuters






We've forfeited the rights to our own tragedies. As the carnage in Mumbai
raged on, day after horrible day, our 24-hour news channels informed us that
we were watching "India's 9/11". Like actors in a Bollywood rip-off of an
old Hollywood film, we're expected to play our parts and say our lines, even
though we know it's all been said and done before.


As tension in the region builds, US Senator John McCain has warned Pakistan
that if it didn't act fast to arrest the "Bad Guys" he had personal
information that India would launch air strikes on "terrorist camps" in
Pakistan and that Washington could do nothing because Mumbai was India's
9/11.


But November isn't September, 2008 isn't 2001, Pakistan isn't Afghanistan
and India isn't America. So perhaps we should reclaim our tragedy and pick
through the debris with our own brains and our own broken hearts so that we
can arrive at our own conclusions.


It's odd how in the last week of November thousands of people in Kashmir
supervised by thousands of Indian troops lined up to cast their vote, while
the richest quarters of India's richest city ended up looking like war-torn
Kupwara - one of Kashmir's most ravaged districts.


The Mumbai attacks are only the most recent of a spate of terrorist attacks
on Indian towns and cities this year. Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Guwahati,
Jaipur and Malegaon have all seen serial bomb blasts in which hundreds of
ordinary people have been killed and wounded. If the police are right about
the people they have arrested as suspects, both Hindu and Muslim, all Indian
nationals, it obviously indicates that something's going very badly wrong in
this country.


If you were watching television you may not have heard that ordinary people
too died in Mumbai. They were mowed down in a busy railway station and a
public hospital. The terrorists did not distinguish between poor and rich.
They killed both with equal cold-bloodedness. The Indian media, however, was
transfixed by the rising tide of horror that breached the glittering
barricades of India Shining and spread its stench in the marbled lobbies and
crystal ballrooms of two incredibly luxurious hotels and a small Jewish
centre.


We're told one of these hotels is an icon of the city of Mumbai. That's
absolutely true. It's an icon of the easy, obscene injustice that ordinary
Indians endure every day. On a day when the newspapers were full of moving
obituaries by beautiful people about the hotel rooms they had stayed in, the
gourmet restaurants they loved (ironically one was called Kandahar), and the
staff who served them, a small box on the top left-hand corner in the inner
pages of a national newspaper (sponsored by a pizza company I think) said
"Hungry,* kya*?" (Hungry eh?). It then, with the best of intentions I'm
sure, informed its readers that on the international hunger index, India
ranked below Sudan and Somalia. But of course this isn't* that* war. That
one's still being fought in the Dalit bastis of our villages, on the banks
of the Narmada and the Koel Karo rivers; in the rubber estate in Chengara;
in the villages of Nandigram, Singur, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa,
Lalgarh in West Bengal and the slums and shantytowns of our gigantic cities.


That war isn't on TV. Yet. So maybe, like everyone else, we should deal with
the one that is.


There is a fierce, unforgiving fault-line that runs through the contemporary
discourse on terrorism. On one side (let's call it Side A) are those who see
terrorism, especially "Islamist" terrorism, as a hateful, insane scourge
that spins on its own axis, in its own orbit and has nothing to do with the
world around it, nothing to do with history, geography or economics.
Therefore, Side A says, to try and place it in a political context, or even
try to understand it, amounts to justifying it and is a crime in itself.


Side B believes that though nothing can ever excuse or justify terrorism, it
exists in a particular time, place and political context, and to refuse to
see that will only aggravate the problem and put more and more people in
harm's way. Which is a crime in itself.


The sayings of Hafiz Saeed, who founded the Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the
Pure) in 1990 and who belongs to the hardline Salafi tradition of Islam,
certainly bolsters the case of Side A. Hafiz Saeed approves of suicide
bombing, hates Jews, Shias and Democracy and believes that jihad should be
waged until Islam,* his* Islam, rules the world. Among the things he said
are: "There cannot be any peace while India remains intact. Cut them, cut
them so much that they kneel before you and ask for mercy."


And: "India has shown us this path. We would like to give India a
tit-for-tat response and reciprocate in the same way by killing the Hindus,
just like it is killing the Muslims in Kashmir."


But where would Side A accommodate the sayings of Babu Bajrangi of
Ahmedabad, India, who sees himself as a democrat, not a terrorist? He was
one of the major lynchpins of the 2002 Gujarat genocide and has said (on
camera): "We didn't spare a single Muslim shop, we set everything on fire Š
we hacked, burned, set on fire Š we believe in setting them on fire because
these bastards don't want to be cremated, they're afraid of it Š I have just
one last wish Š let me be sentenced to death Š I don't care if I'm hanged
... just give me two days before my hanging and I will go and have a field
day in Juhapura where seven or eight lakhs [seven or eight hundred thousand]
of these people stay ... I will finish them off Š let a few more of them die
... at least 25,000 to 50,000 should die."


And where, in Side A's scheme of things, would we place the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh bible, We, or, Our Nationhood Defined by MS Golwalkar, who
became head of the RSS in 1944. It says: "Ever since that evil day, when
Moslems first landed in Hindustan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu
Nation has been gallantly fighting on to take on these despoilers. The Race
Spirit has been awakening."
Or: "To keep up the purity of its race and culture, Germany shocked the
world by her purging the country of the Semitic races - the Jews. Race pride
at its highest has been manifested here ... a good lesson for us in
Hindustan to learn and profit by."


(Of course Muslims are not the only people in the gun sights of the Hindu
right. Dalits have been consistently targeted. Recently in Kandhamal in
Orissa, Christians were the target of two and a half months of violence
which left more than 40 dead. Forty thousand people have been driven from
their homes, half of who now live in refugee camps.)


All these years Hafiz Saeed has lived the life of a respectable man in
Lahore as the head of the Jamaat-ud Daawa, which many believe is a front
organization for the Lashkar-e-Taiba. He continues to recruit young boys for
his own bigoted jehad with his twisted, fiery sermons. On December 11 the UN
imposed sanctions on the Jammat-ud-Daawa. The Pakistani government succumbed
to international pressure and put Hafiz Saeed under house arrest. Babu
Bajrangi, however, is out on bail and lives the life of a respectable man in
Gujarat. A couple of years after the genocide he left the VHP to join the
Shiv Sena. Narendra Modi, Bajrangi's former mentor, is still the chief
minister of Gujarat. So the man who presided over the Gujarat genocide was
re-elected twice, and is deeply respected by India's biggest corporate
houses, Reliance and Tata.


Suhel Seth, a TV impresario and corporate spokesperson, recently said: "Modi
is God." The policemen who supervised and sometimes even assisted the
rampaging Hindu mobs in Gujarat have been rewarded and promoted. The RSS has
45,000 branches, its own range of charities and 7 million volunteers
preaching its doctrine of hate across India. They include Narendra Modi, but
also former prime minister AB Vajpayee, current leader of the opposition LK
Advani, and a host of other senior politicians, bureaucrats and police and
intelligence officers.


If that's not enough to complicate our picture of secular democracy, we
should place on record that there are plenty of Muslim organisations within
India preaching their own narrow bigotry.


So, on balance, if I had to choose between Side A and Side B, I'd pick Side
B. We need context. Always.


In this nuclear subcontinent that context is partition. The Radcliffe Line,
which separated India and Pakistan and tore through states, districts,
villages, fields, communities, water systems, homes and families, was drawn
virtually overnight. It was Britain's final, parting kick to us. Partition
triggered the massacre of more than a million people and the largest
migration of a human population in contemporary history. Eight million
people, Hindus fleeing the new Pakistan, Muslims fleeing the new* kind* of
India left their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs.


Each of those people carries and passes down a story of unimaginable pain,
hate, horror but yearning too. That wound, those torn but still unsevered
muscles, that blood and those splintered bones still lock us together in a
close embrace of hatred, terrifying familiarity but also love. It has left
Kashmir trapped in a nightmare from which it can't seem to emerge, a
nightmare that has claimed more than 60,000 lives. Pakistan, the Land of the
Pure, became an Islamic Republic, and then, very quickly a corrupt, violent
military state, openly intolerant of other faiths. India on the other hand
declared herself an inclusive, secular democracy. It was a magnificent
undertaking, but Babu Bajrangi's predecessors had been hard at work since
the 1920s, dripping poison into India's bloodstream, undermining that idea
of India even before it was born.


By 1990 they were ready to make a bid for power. In 1992 Hindu mobs exhorted
by LK Advani stormed the Babri Masjid and demolished it. By 1998 the BJP was
in power at the centre. The US war on terror put the wind in their sails. It
allowed them to do exactly as they pleased, even to commit genocide and then
present their fascism as a legitimate form of chaotic democracy. This
happened at a time when India had opened its huge market to international
finance and it was in the interests of international corporations and the
media houses they owned to project it as a country that could do no wrong.
That gave Hindu nationalists all the impetus and the impunity they needed.


This, then, is the larger historical context of terrorism in the
subcontinent and of the Mumbai attacks. It shouldn't surprise us that Hafiz
Saeed of the Lashkar-e-Taiba is from Shimla (India) and LK Advani of the
Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh is from Sindh (Pakistan).


In much the same way as it did after the 2001 parliament attack, the 2002
burning of the Sabarmati Express and the 2007 bombing of the Samjhauta
Express, the government of India announced that it has "incontrovertible"
evidence that the Lashkar-e-Taiba backed by Pakistan's ISI was behind the
Mumbai strikes. The Lashkar has denied involvement, but remains the prime
accused. According to the police and intelligence agencies the Lashkar
operates in India through an organisation called the Indian Mujahideen. Two
Indian nationals, Sheikh Mukhtar Ahmed, a Special Police Officer working for
the Jammu and Kashmir police, and Tausif Rehman, a resident of Kolkata in
West Bengal, have been arrested in connection with the Mumbai attacks.


So already the neat accusation against Pakistan is getting a little messy.
Almost always, when these stories unspool, they reveal a complicated global
network of foot soldiers, trainers, recruiters, middlemen and undercover
intelligence and counter-intelligence operatives working not just on both
sides of the India-Pakistan border, but in several countries simultaneously.
In today's world, trying to pin down the provenance of a terrorist strike
and isolate it within the borders of a single nation state is very much like
trying to pin down the provenance of corporate money. It's almost
impossible.


In circumstances like these, air strikes to "take out" terrorist camps may
take out the camps, but certainly will not "take out" the terrorists.
Neither will war. (Also, in our bid for the moral high ground, let's try not
to forget that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the LTTE of
neighbouring Sri Lanka, one of the world's most deadly terrorist groups,
were trained by the Indian army.)


Thanks largely to the part it was forced to play as America's ally first in
its war in* support* of the Afghan Islamists and then in its war*
against*them, Pakistan, whose territory is reeling under these
contradictions, is
careening towards civil war. As recruiting agents for America's jihad
against the Soviet Union, it was the job of the Pakistan army and the ISI to
nurture and channel funds to Islamic fundamentalist organizations. Having
wired up these Frankensteins and released them into the world, the US
expected it could rein them in like pet mastiffs whenever it wanted to.


Certainly it did not expect them to come calling in heart of the Homeland on
September 11. So once again, Afghanistan had to be violently remade. Now the
debris of a re-ravaged Afghanistan has washed up on Pakistan's borders.
Nobody, least of all the Pakistan government, denies that it is presiding
over a country that is threatening to implode. The terrorist training camps,
the fire-breathing mullahs and the maniacs who believe that Islam will, or
should, rule the world is mostly the detritus of two Afghan wars. Their ire
rains down on the Pakistan government and Pakistani civilians as much, if
not more than it does on India.


If at this point India decides to go to war perhaps the descent of the whole
region into chaos will be complete. The debris of a bankrupt, destroyed
Pakistan will wash up on India's shores, endangering us as never before. If
Pakistan collapses, we can look forward to having millions of "non-state
actors" with an arsenal of nuclear weapons at their disposal as neighbours.
It's hard to understand why those who steer India's ship are so keen to
replicate Pakistan's mistakes and call damnation upon this country by*inviting
* the United States to further meddle clumsily and dangerously in our
extremely complicated affairs. A superpower never has allies. It only has
agents.


On the plus side, the advantage of going to war is that it's the best way
for India to avoid facing up to the serious trouble building on our home
front. The Mumbai attacks were broadcast live (and exclusive!) on all or
most of our 67 24-hour news channels and god knows how many international
ones. TV anchors in their studios and journalists at "ground zero" kept up
an endless stream of excited commentary. Over three days and three nights we
watched in disbelief as a small group of very young men armed with guns and
gadgets exposed the powerlessness of the police, the elite National Security
Guard and the marine commandos of this supposedly mighty, nuclear-powered
nation.


While they did this they indiscriminately massacred unarmed people, in
railway stations, hospitals and luxury hotels, unmindful of their class,
caste, religion or nationality. (Part of the helplessness of the security
forces had to do with having to worry about hostages. In other situations,
in Kashmir for example, their tactics are not so sensitive. Whole buildings
are blown up. Human shields are used. The U.S and Israeli armies don't
hesitate to send cruise missiles into buildings and drop daisy cutters on
wedding parties in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan.) But this was different.
And it was on TV.


The boy-terrorists' nonchalant willingness to kill - and be killed -
mesmerised their international audience. They delivered something different
from the usual diet of suicide bombings and missile attacks that people have
grown inured to on the news. Here was something new. Die Hard 25. The
gruesome performance went on and on. TV ratings soared. Ask any television
magnate or corporate advertiser who measures broadcast time in seconds, not
minutes, what that's worth.


Eventually the killers died and died hard, all but one. (Perhaps, in the
chaos, some escaped. We may never know.) Throughout the standoff the
terrorists made no demands and expressed no desire to negotiate. Their
purpose was to kill people and inflict as much damage as they could before
they were killed themselves. They left us completely bewildered. When we say
"nothing can justify terrorism", what most of us mean is that nothing can
justify the taking of human life. We say this because we respect life,
because we think it's precious. So what are we to make of those who care
nothing for life, not even their own? The truth is that we have no idea what
to make of them, because we can sense that even before they've died, they've
journeyed to another world where we cannot reach them.


One TV channel (India TV) broadcast a phone conversation with one of the
attackers, who called himself Imran Babar. I cannot vouch for the veracity
of the conversation, but the things he talked about were the things
contained in the "terror emails" that were sent out before several other
bomb attacks in India. Things we don't want to talk about any more: the
demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the genocidal slaughter of Muslims
in Gujarat in 2002, the brutal repression in Kashmir. "You're surrounded,"
the anchor told him. "You are definitely going to die. Why don't you
surrender?"


"We die every day," he replied in a strange, mechanical way. "It's better to
live one day as a lion and then die this way." He didn't seem to want to
change the world. He just seemed to want to take it down with him.


If the men were indeed members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, why didn't it matter
to them that a large number of their victims were Muslim, or that their
action was likely to result in a severe backlash against the Muslim
community in India whose rights they claim to be fighting for? Terrorism is
a heartless ideology, and like most ideologies that have their eye on the
Big Picture, individuals don't figure in their calculations except as
collateral damage. It has always been a part of and often even the* aim* of
terrorist strategy to exacerbate a bad situation in order to expose hidden
faultlines. The blood of "martyrs" irrigates terrorism. Hindu terrorists
need dead Hindus, Communist terrorists need dead proletarians, Islamist
terrorists need dead Muslims. The dead become the demonstration, the proof
of victimhood, which is central to the project. A single act of terrorism is
not in itself meant to achieve military victory; at best it is meant to be a
catalyst that triggers something else, something much larger than itself, a
tectonic shift, a realignment. The act itself is theatre, spectacle and
symbolism, and today, the stage on which it pirouettes and performs its acts
of bestiality is Live TV. Even as the attack was being condemned by TV
anchors, the effectiveness of the terror strikes were being magnified a
thousandfold by TV broadcasts.


Through the endless hours of analysis and the endless op-ed essays, in India
at least there has been very little mention of the elephants in the room:
Kashmir, Gujarat and the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Instead we had
retired diplomats and strategic experts debate the pros and cons of a war
against Pakistan. We had the rich threatening not to pay their taxes unless
their security was guaranteed (is it alright for the poor to remain
unprotected?). We had people suggest that the government step down and each
state in India be handed over to a separate corporation. We had the death of
former prime minster VP Singh, the hero of Dalits and lower castes and
villain of Upper caste Hindus pass without a mention.


We had Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City and co-writer of the Bollywood
film Mission Kashmir, give us his version of George Bush's famous "Why they
hate us" speech. His analysis of why religious bigots, both Hindu and Muslim
hate Mumbai: "Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an
indiscriminate openness." His prescription: "The best answer to the
terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more
than ever." Didn't George Bush ask Americans to go out and shop after 9/11?
Ah yes. 9/11, the day we can't seem to get away from.


Though one chapter of horror in Mumbai has ended, another might have just
begun. Day after day, a powerful, vociferous section of the Indian elite,
goaded by marauding TV anchors who make Fox News look almost radical and
leftwing, have taken to mindlessly attacking politicians,* all* politicians,
glorifying the police and the army and virtually asking for a police state.
It isn't surprising that those who have grown plump on the pickings of
democracy (such as it is) should now be calling for a police state. The era
of "pickings" is long gone. We're now in the era of Grabbing by Force, and
democracy has a terrible habit of getting in the way.


Dangerous, stupid television flashcards like the Police are Good Politicians
are Bad/Chief Executives are Good Chief Ministers are Bad/Army is Good
Government is Bad/ India is Good Pakistan is Bad are being bandied about by
TV channels that have already whipped their viewers into a state of almost
uncontrollable hysteria.


Tragically, this regression into intellectual infancy comes at a time when
people in India were beginning to see that in the business of terrorism,
victims and perpetrators sometimes exchange roles. It's an understanding
that the people of Kashmir, given their dreadful experiences of the last 20
years, have honed to an exquisite art. On the mainland we're still learning.
(If Kashmir won't willingly integrate into India, it's beginning to look as
though India will integrate/disintegrate into Kashmir.)


It was after the 2001 parliament attack that the first serious questions
began to be raised. A campaign by a group of lawyers and activists exposed
how innocent people had been framed by the police and the press, how
evidence was fabricated, how witnesses lied, how due process had been
criminally violated at every stage of the investigation. Eventually the
courts acquitted two out of the four accused, including SAR Geelani, the man
whom the police claimed was the mastermind of the operation. A third,
Showkat Guru, was acquitted of all the charges brought against him but was
then convicted for a fresh, comparatively minor offence. The supreme court
upheld the death sentence of another of the accused, Mohammad Afzal. In its
judgment the court acknowledged there was no proof that Mohammed Afzal
belonged to any terrorist group, but went on to say, quite shockingly, "The
collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital
punishment is awarded to the offender." Even today we don't really know who
the terrorists that attacked the Indian parliament were and who they worked
for.


More recently, on September 19 this year, we had the controversial
"encounter" at Batla House in Jamia Nagar, Delhi, where the Special Cell of
the Delhi police gunned down two Muslim students in their rented flat under
seriously questionable circumstances, claiming that they were responsible
for serial bombings in Delhi, Jaipur and Ahmedabad in 2008. An assistant
commissioner of Police, Mohan Chand Sharma, who played a key role in the
parliament attack investigation, lost his life as well. He was one of
India's many "encounter specialists" known and rewarded for having summarily
executed several "terrorists". There was an outcry against the Special Cell
from a spectrum of people, ranging from eyewitnesses in the local community
to senior Congress Party leaders, students, journalists, lawyers, academics
and activists all of whom demanded a judicial inquiry into the incident. In
response, the BJP and LK Advani lauded Mohan Chand Sharma as a "Braveheart"
and launched a concerted campaign in which they targeted those who had dared
to question the integrity of the police, saying it was "suicidal" and
calling them "anti-national". Of course there has been no inquiry.


Only days after the Batla House event, another story about "terrorists"
surfaced in the news. In a report submitted to a sessions court, the CBI
said that a team from Delhi's Special Cell (the same team that led the Batla
House encounter, including Mohan Chand Sharma) had abducted two innocent
men, Irshad Ali and Moarif Qamar, in December 2005, planted 2kg of RDX and
two pistols on them and then arrested them as "terrorists" who belonged to
Al Badr (which operates out of Kashmir). Ali and Qamar who have spent years
in jail, are only two examples out of hundreds of Muslims who have been
similarly jailed, tortured and even killed on false charges.


This pattern changed in October 2008 when Maharashtra's Anti-Terrorism Squad
(ATS) that was investigating the September 2008 Malegaon blasts arrested a
Hindu preacher Sadhvi Pragya, a self-styled God man Swami Dayanand Pande and
Lt Col Purohit, a serving officer of the Indian Army. All the arrested
belong to Hindu Nationalist organizations including a Hindu Supremacist
group called Abhinav Bharat. The Shiv Sena, the BJP and the RSS condemned
the Maharashtra ATS, and vilified its chief, Hemant Karkare, claiming he was
part of a political conspiracy and declaring that "Hindus could not be
terrorists". LK Advani changed his mind about his policy on the police and
made rabble rousing speeches to huge gatherings in which he denounced the
ATS for daring to cast aspersions on holy men and women.


On the November 25 newspapers reported that the ATS was investigating the
high profile VHP Chief Pravin Togadia's possible role in the Malegaon
blasts. The next day, in an extraordinary twist of fate, Hemant Karkare was
killed in the Mumbai Attacks. The chances are that the new chief whoever he
is, will find it hard to withstand the political pressure that is bound to
be brought on him over the Malegaon investigation.


While the Sangh Parivar does not seem to have come to a final decision over
whether or not it is anti-national and suicidal to question the police,
Arnab Goswami, anchorperson of Times Now television, has stepped up to the
plate. He has taken to naming, demonising and openly heckling people who
have dared to question the integrity of the police and armed forces. My name
and the name of the well-known lawyer Prashant Bhushan have come up several
times. At one point, while interviewing a former police officer, Arnab
Goswami turned to camera: "Arundhati
Roy<http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/arundhatiroy>and Prashant
Bhushan," he said, "I hope you are watching this. We think you
are disgusting." For a TV anchor to do this in an atmosphere as charged and
as frenzied as the one that prevails today, amounts to incitement as well as
threat, and would probably in different circumstances have cost a journalist
his or her job.


So according to a man aspiring to be the next prime minister of India, and
another who is the public face of a mainstream TV channel, citizens have no
right to raise questions about the police. This in a country with a shadowy
history of suspicious terror attacks, murky investigations, and fake
"encounters". This in a country that boasts of the highest number of
custodial deaths in the world and yet refuses to ratify the International
Covenant on Torture. A country where the ones who make it to torture
chambers are the lucky ones because at least they've escaped being
"encountered" by our Encounter Specialists. A country where the line between
the Underworld and the Encounter Specialists virtually does not exist.


How should those of us whose hearts have been sickened by the knowledge of
all of this view the Mumbai attacks, and what are we to do about them? There
are those who point out that US strategy has been successful inasmuch as the
United States has not suffered a major attack on its home ground since 9/11.
However, some would say that what America is suffering now is far worse. If
the idea behind the 9/11 terror attacks was to goad America into showing its
true colors, what greater success could the terrorists have asked for? The
US army is bogged down in two unwinnable wars, which have made the United
States the most hated country in the world. Those wars have contributed
greatly to the unraveling of the American economy and who knows, perhaps
eventually the American empire. (Could it be that battered, bombed
Afghanistan, the graveyard of the Soviet Union, will be the undoing of this
one too?) Hundreds of thousands people including thousands of American
soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The frequency of
terrorist strikes on U.S allies/agents (including India) and U.S interests
in the rest of the world has increased dramatically since 9/11. George Bush,
the man who led the US response to 9/11 is a despised figure not just
internationally, but also by his own people. Who can possibly claim that the
United States is winning the war on terror?


Homeland Security has cost the US government billions of dollars. Few
countries, certainly not India, can afford that sort of price tag. But even
if we could, the fact is that this vast homeland of ours* cannot* be secured
or policed in the way the United States has been. It's not that kind of
homeland. We have a hostile nuclear weapons state that is slowly spinning
out of control as a neighbour, we have a military occupation in Kashmir and
a shamefully persecuted, impoverished minority of more than 150 million
Muslims who are being targeted as a community and pushed to the wall, whose
young see no justice on the horizon, and who, were they to totally lose hope
and radicalise, end up as a threat not just to India, but to the whole
world. If ten men can hold off the NSG commandos, and the police for three
days, and if it takes half a million soldiers to hold down the Kashmir
valley, do the math. What kind of Homeland Security can secure India?


Nor for that matter will any other quick fix. Anti-terrorism laws are not
meant for terrorists; they're for people that governments don't like. That's
why they have a conviction rate of less than 2%. They're just a means of
putting inconvenient people away without bail for a long time and eventually
letting them go. Terrorists like those who attacked Mumbai are hardly likely
to be deterred by the prospect of being refused bail or being sentenced to
death. It's what they* want*.


What we're experiencing now is blowback, the cumulative result of decades of
quick fixes and dirty deeds. The carpet's squelching under our feet.


The only way to contain (it would be naïve to say end) terrorism is to look
at the monster in the mirror. We're standing at a fork in the road. One sign
says Justice, the other Civil War. There's no third sign and there's no
going back. Choose.
******************
2/4


(This interview of Pervez Hoodbhoy was conducted by Cristina Otten for
FOCUS. It may be found on-line in German at:
http://www.focus.de/politik/ausland/tid-12856/pakistan-die-menschen-s
ind-blind-vor-hass_aid_355157.html
A more readable pdf version is also attached.)


THE MUMBAI MASSACRE AND PAKISTAN'S NEW NIGHTMARES

CO: Tensions between Pakistan and India have been growing after the Mumbai
attacks. Are we close to a military escalation?

PH: In spite of vociferous demands by the Indian public, Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh's government has withstood the pressure to conduct
cross-border strikes into Pakistan. Correspondingly, in spite of the
bitter criticism by Islamic parties, Pakistan's government has moved
against the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT), the jihadist organization that is
almost certainly behind the attacks. ÝFor now, the tension has eased
somewhat but another attack could push India over the fence.

CO: What makes the LeT so different from other militant groups? Is
Pakistan really moving against it?

PH: LeT, one of the largest militant groups in Pakistan, was established
over 15 years ago. It had the full support of the Pakistani military and
Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) for over a decade because it focussed
upon fighting Indian rule in Muslim Kashmir. Today it is one of the very
few extremist groups left that does not attack the Pakistani army and
state; in contrast almost all others have turned into fierce enemies. We
now hear that a few members of LeT, who were named by India, have been
arrested. Time will tell whether this was a serious move, or if this was a
ruse to ease the enormous pressure against Pakistan. If serious, then the
Army and ISI will have earned the bitter enmity of yet another former
ally. They are afraid of a repeat of their experience with
Jaish-e-Muhammad, a formerly supported Islamic militant group that now is
responsible for extreme brutalities against of Pakistani soldiers captured
in FATA, including torture and decapitations. It's a nightmarish situation
for the Pakistan Army. Ý

CO: How have Pakistanis reacted to the Mumbai massacre?

PH: The initial reaction was of sympathy. I did not see any celebrations,
contrary to those that I saw after 911. But then, as the Indian TV

channels started accusing Pakistan and demanding that it be bombed in
retaliation, the reaction turned to that of anger and flat denial -
Pakistanis did not want to accept that this attack was done by Pakistanis
or had been launched from Pakistani soil. Subsequently one saw amazing
mental gymnastics. Popular TV anchors, and their guests, invoked far-out
conspiracy theories. Years ago, some of the same anchors had confidently
claimed that Kathmandu-Delhi Indian Airlines Flight 814 (IC814) had been
hijacked by RAW to malign Pakistan. They had also ridiculed the notion
that Pakistan was involved in the Kargil invasion. Now, pointing to the
RSS hand in the Samjhota Express bombing, they are alternately ascribing
the Mumbai attacks to radical Hindus, or to Jews and Americans. It is sad
to see intelligent persons losing their marbles. Ý

CO: Pakistan has always stressed that it will deliver the first nuclear
strike if it feels threatened by India? Do you see any signs on the

Pakistani sign to carry out its threat?

PH: About a week before the Mumbai massacre, President Asif Ali Zardari
had given the assurance that Pakistan would not use nuclear weapons first.
India had announced a no first use policy almost ten years ago. But
Zardari is not taken seriously by the Pakistani generals who actually
control the Bomb, and the Indian NFU declaration is frankly of no
consequence. Cross-border raids by India could well ignite a conventional
war. If that happens, all bets are off and it could escalate without
warning into a nuclear conflict. For many years US defence strategists,
belonging to various think tanks and war colleges, have been simulating
conflicts between Pakistan and India. They say that a conventional war
will almost certainly lead to a nuclear conclusion. Fear of nuclear
weapons has made deterrence work. More accurately, deterrence has worked
only thus far.ÝNo guarantees can be given for the future.

CO: Why did the assassins choose India instead of committing attacks
against Western allies in Afghanistan?

PH: LeT is based around Lahore, which is on the Pakistan-India border, in
a town called Muridke. This has a huge militant training and charity
complex. LeT's membership is mostly Punjabi, which makes it linguistically
and culturally quite unsuited for fighting in Afghanistan. You could say
that LeT is an India-specific, Kashmir-specific group. Indeed, over the
years it has had many military successes in Kashmir against Indian forces.
But LeT, like other militant groups in Pakistan, sees a nexus between
Indians, Americans, and Israelis. Hence they are all seen as enemies and
fair game. Ý

CO: What did the Mumbai terrorists want?

PH: No demands were made and all hostages were killed. So the purpose of
the attack was never formally declared. On the other hand, the stated
goals of LeT and similar organizations based in Pakistan leave little
doubt. The attack clearly sought to hurt India's economy and its newly
acquired reputation as an economic powerhouse, and to create a climate of
war between India and Pakistan. If Pakistan moves its troops towards the
eastern border the pressure on the Pakistani Taliban in FATA, which is
close to the western border, would be lessened.  Still another reason
would be to encourage pogroms against Muslims in India. This would swell
the ranks of the extremists,Ýand also have the added benefit of
destabilizing both the Pakistani and Indian states. Finally, the attack
was a means of releasing hatred against non-Muslims. Ý

CO: What differences and parallels do you see between the Mumbai attacks
and the attack in the in Marriott Hotel in Islamabad?

PH: They were quite dissimilar in how they were executed. The Mumbai
attacks were extremely intricate, used GPS and voice-over-internet
protocols for communication purposes, involved extensive military
training, and probably required planning over a period of a year. The goal
was to kill foreigners, particularly Jews and Americans, although Muslims
were also collateral casualties. On the other hand, the Marriot bombing in
Islamabad was a relatively simple affair involving a single dump-truck

with a suicide bomber, and its victims were principally Muslims. The basic
purpose, however, was similar - to destabilize the Pakistani state, take
revenge on the US (2 of the 58 killed were US marines), and raise the cost
of war in Afghanistan and FATA.

CO: In the West experts talk about a new dimension of terror in India. Do
you also see tight connections between Lashkar-e-TaibaÝ and al-Qaida?

PH:  One is naturally tempted to guess a nexus between LeT and Al-Qaida.
Of course, they do share similar goals. But in the world that extremists
inhabit, mere similarity is insufficient - it has to be much closer than
that because small ideological differences are amplified out of
proportion. As yet there is no proof of joint operations or cooperation.
So presently this is no more than a plausible hypothesis.

CO: What role does Kashmir play in the current conflict?

PH: Since 1987, Kashmir has been in a state of upheaval. Fraudulent

elections conducted by India led to widespread resentment, followed by a
horrifically bloody crackdown by Indian security forces. Pakistan's army
saw opportunity in this, and waged a covert war in Kashmir using jihadists
to "bleed India with a thousand cuts". The United Jihad Council, which
oversees the activities of an estimated 22 Pakistan-based organizations,
acts outside of the domain of the Pakistani state but it has had active
support from the countryís army and intelligence agencies. The Kargil
conflict in 1999 brought matters to a head when General Musharraf
initiated a war with the assistance of jihadist forces. This inflicted
severe damage on Indian forces but Pakistan was ultimately forced to
withdraw. Jihadists subsequently celebrated General Musharraf as a hero,
and vilified Nawaz Sharif for a cowardly surrender.

CO: In January 2002, General Musharraf had declared that no groups on
Pakistani territory would be permitted to launch cross-border attacks. Was
this promise fulfilled?

PH: Subsequently there indeed was a decline in cross-border infiltrations,
and some lessening of the covert support given by Pakistani agencies. But
this was far from zero and they maintained a strong presence. On a
personal note: soon after the terrible October 8, 2005 earthquake, I had
gone to various areas of Azad Kashmir for relief work. There I found the
Lashkar-i-Tayyaba, Jaish-e-Muhammad, Sipah-i-Sahaba, and other banned
jihadist organizations operating openly and freely using military-style
six-wheeled vehicles, as well as displaying their weapons. Their relief
efforts were far better organized than that of the Pakistan army and, in
fact, they were pulling injured soldiers out of the rubble. When I
mentioned this fact to General Musharraf a few months later at a Kashmir
peace conference, he was very angry at me for discussing a tabooed
subject.

CO: On the one hand, we have radical extremists in Pakistan who want to
bring strict Islamic law into force and demonize the West. On the other
hand, however, the government presents itself as a friend and ally of the
United States. Could you please describe this antagonism and explain where
it originates from? What does this tell us about the growth of extremism
in Pakistan?

PH: Radical extremism is the illegitimate offspring of a union between the
United States under Ronald Reagan, and Pakistan under General Zia-ul-Haq.
Twenty five years ago, the two countries had joined up to harness Islamic
fighters for expelling the Soviets from Afghanistan. The US was quite
happy to see radical Islam spreading because it served its goal at the
time. Simultaneously, Pakistan saw a major social transformation under
General Zia. Prayers in government departments were deemed compulsory,
floggings were carried out publicly, punishments were meted out to those
who did not fast in Ramadan, selection for university academic posts
required that the candidate demonstrate knowledge of Islamic teachings,
and jihad was declared essential for every Muslim. But today the
government is in open conflict with the radicals. It has to deal with a
spontaneous groundswell of Islamic zeal. The notion of an Islamic state -

as yet in some amorphous and diffuse form - is more popular today than
ever before as people look desperately for miracles to rescue a failing
state. Even though the government and military in Pakistan are allied
formally to the US, the people are strongly against the US.

CO: What parts of the Pakistani society support al-Qaida and Osama bin
Laden?

PH: Baluchistan and Sind are far less supportive than Punjab or the NWFP.
The amazing fact is that parts of Pakistan's upper class - which is very
Westernized but also very anti-Western - also support the Islamists. I
find it tragic that there is no uproar in the country when Taliban suicide
bombers target mosques, funerals, hospitals, girls schools, and slaughter
policemen and soldiers. People have become so anti-American that it has
blinded them to these atrocities. Even the Pakistani left is thoroughly
confused and mistakes the Taliban as anti-imperialist fighters.


CO: And where do you stand on this matter? Do you see anything that the
Islamists have to offer?

PH: The people of Pakistan need and deserve everything that people
everywhere else want. This means food, jobs, houses to live in, a system
of justice and governance, and protection of life and property. Equally,
people need freedom of worship and thought, education for both males and
females, and protection of their freedom as summarized in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. These are everybody's primary needs. After
this - a distinct second - come matters that deal with national
sovereignty, foreign policy, various global issues, etc. Frankly, I cannot
see Pakistanís Islamists offering anything positive. They are against
population planning, educating females, tolerating other sects or
religions, etc. They neither know the outside world, nor want to know it.
All they know - and know well - is how to make war. Fortunately, as their
rout in the recent elections showed, most Pakistanis do not want to live
under their narrow doctrines and belief system.

CO: President Asif AliÝ Zardari promised to hunt terrorists and to destroy
terror camps in Pakistan? But his affirmations seem to be halfhearted.
Can't he do more or doesn't he want do more?

PH: It is not up to him to do more. The real power lies with the Pakistan
Army, which is still undecided as to who the real enemy is. The Army has
lost nearly two thousand soldiers in battles with extremists. But it still
cannot convince itself that they constitute an existentialist threat to
Pakistan. One can understand this reluctance. Over the years, officers and
soldiers were recruited into the Army on the basis that they were
defenders of Islam and would always fight India. Instead they now have to
fight forces that claim to be even better defenders of Islam. Worse, they
are no longer being called upon to fight India, which is what they were
trained for. So there is confusion and demoralization, and practically
zero public understanding or support. Therefore, Pakistani soldiers are
not fighting well at all in FATA. Many have surrendered without a fight.

CO: Do you support the government's war against extremists?

PH: This is the first time in my life that I feel the Army should be
supported, but only to the extent that it fights the extremists without
killing innocents. Unfortunately, the Army's current tactic is to flatten
villages suspected of harbouring terrorists. The collateral damage is huge
and completely unacceptable.

CO: Pakistan has armed and financed the Taliban after the US invasion of
Afghanistan. The CIA pays Pakistan to arrest al-Qaeda operatives, but
Pakistan uses the money to fund the Taliban resurgence in northwest
Pakistan. Any changes under the new president?

PH: It will take time - and perhaps still more suffering - to kick an old
habit. Even though the Army is being literally slaughtered by the Taliban,
it continues to make a distinction between the "good" and "bad" Taliban.
The good ones are, by definition, those who attack only US/Nato or Indian
interests in Afghanistan, but do not attack the Pakistan Army. The good
ones are seen as essential for having a friendly Afghanistan when, as will

surely happen some day, the Americans withdraw. Among the good Taliban are
jihadist leaders such as Jalaludin Haqqani. On the other hand, Baitullah
Mehsud or Maulana Fazlullah, are considered bad Taliban because they
attack the Army and the state. Interestingly, Army inspired propaganda
paints the bad Taliban as Indian agents - which is quite ridiculous. This
false differentiation is the real reason for the Army's ambivalence and
inability to deal effectively with the Taliban menace.

CO: Pakistan is a nuclear state. Should we fear that one day the Taliban
or al-Qaida could get access to the nuclear arsenal?

PH: I am more worried about extremists having access to nuclear materials,
particularly highly enriched uranium, rather than a completed weapon.
Because of secrecy requirements, it is very difficult for outsiders to
monitor the output of uranium enrichment or plutonium reprocessing plants.

Interestingly, we are seeing a shift away from nuclear weapons in the
West. The unusability of nuclear weapons by national states is being
recognized even by mainstream politicians in the US and Europe because
nuclear weapons now no longer guarantee the monopoly of power. This makes
possible the ultimate de-legitimization of nuclear weapons, and hence
winding down of fissile material production globally. This may be our best
long-term hope of countering the nuclear terrorist threat, whether by
Al-Qaida or other terrorist groups. Meanwhile, in the short term, great
care must be given to watching over suspicious nuclear activities.

CO: What should India do and what is your forecast for the region?

PH: India should not attack Pakistan. This would be counter-productive in
every possible way. Even if it wins a war, it will be a pyrrhic victory.
On the other hand, a small attack can be no more than a pin-prick. This
would do more harm than good because it will unite the army and the
jihadists who, at this juncture in history, are in serious confrontation
with each other. Worse, even a small attack could lead to large response,
and then escalate out of control. Nuclear armed countries simply cannot
afford skirmishes. I think India's demand for action against jihadist
groups is entirely legitimate, but this must be done by Pakistan, which is
susceptible to international pressure. To get rid of militants and
extremists - whether Muslim or Hindu - is in the best interests of both
Pakistan and India.

CO: Will Pakistani extremists win or can the West still bring about a
rebound?

PH: It's a grim situation but not irreversible. The invasion of Iraq, and
US imperial policies over the last decades, created a hatred for Americans
that ultimately translated into support for all who fight them. Most
Pakistanis do not approve of the Taliban's fundamental and primitivist
social agenda. But, by virtue of fighting the Americans, popular sentiment
is still with them. So, reducing anti-Americanism is the key. One hopes
that Barack Obama will be able to undo some of the harm his country did to
Pakistan. Let's see. But basically it is for Pakistanis - not Indians or
anybody else - to fight it out. We Pakistanis have to realize that this is
a war for our very existence as a civilized nation. Western support for
Pakistan must be very judicious and not too overt. Similarly, isolating
Pakistan, or inflicting harsh punitive measures, could easily backfire.
The Taliban and allied extremists have a real chance of winning in
Pakistan.  The state is already crumbling in places and it could
disintegrate quite rapidly, leaving the fanatics in charge. One cannot
think of a bigger disaster for Pakistan.

-------------

****************
3/4
*An article written by Anand Patwardhan which was rejected by the Times of
India:*

*Terror: The Aftermath*
*Anand PAtwardhan.

*The attack on Mumbai is over. After the numbing sorrow comes the blame game
and the solutions. Loud voices amplified by saturation TV: Why don't we
amend our Constitution to create new anti-terror laws? Why don't we arm our
police with AK 47s? Why don't we do what Israel did after Munich or the USA
did after 9/11 and hot pursue the enemy? Solutions that will lead us further
into the abyss. For terror is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It thrives on
reaction, polarization, militarization and the thirst for revenge.

The External Terror
Those who invoke America need only to analyze if its actions after 9/11
increased or decreased global terror. It invaded oil-rich Iraq fully knowing
that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, killing over 200,000 Iraqis citizens
but allowing a cornered Bin Laden to escape from Afghanistan. It recruited
global support for Islamic militancy, which began to be seen as a just
resistance against American mass murder. Which begs the question of who
created Bin Laden in the first place, armed the madarsas of Pakistan and
rejuvenated the concept of Islamic jehad? Israel played its own role in
stoking the fires of jehad. The very creation of Israel in 1948 robbed
Palestinians of their land, an act that Mahatma Gandhi to his credit
deplored at the time as an unjust way to redress the wrongs done to Jews
during the Holocaust. What followed has been a slow and continuing attack on
the Palestinian nation. At first Palestinian resistance was led by secular
forces represented by Yasser Arafat but as these were successfully
undermined, Islamic forces took over the mantle. The first, largely
non-violent Intifada was crushed, a second more violent one replaced it and
when all else failed, human bombs appeared.

Thirty years ago when I first went abroad there were two countries my Indian
passport forbade me to visit. One was racist South Africa. The other was
Israel. We were non-aligned and stood for disarmament and world peace. Today
Israel and America are our biggest military allies. Is it surprising that we
are on the jehadi hit list? Israel, America and other prosperous countries
can to an extent protect themselves against the determined jehadi, but can
India put an impenetrable shield over itself? Remember that when attackers
are on a suicide mission, the strongest shields have crumbled. New York was
laid low not with nuclear weapons but with a pair of box cutters. India is
for many reasons a quintessentially soft target. Our huge population, vast
landmass and coastline are impossible to protect. The rich may build new
barricades. The Taj and the Oberoi can be made safer. So can our airports
and planes. Can our railway stations and trains, bus stops, busses, markets
and lanes do the same?

The Terror Within
The threat of terror in India does not come exclusively from the outside.
Apart from being hugely populated by the poor India is also a country
divided, not just between rich and poor, but by religion, caste and
language. This internal divide is as potent a breeding ground for terror as
jehadi camps abroad. Nor is jehad the copyright of one religion alone. It
can be argued that international causes apart, India has jehadis that are
fully home grown. Perhaps the earliest famous one was Nathuram Godse who
acting at the behest of his mentor Vinayak Savarkar (still referred to as
"Veer" or "brave" although he refused to own up to his role in the
conspiracy), murdered Mahatma Gandhi for the crime of championing Muslims.

Jump forward to 6th December, 1992, the day Hindu fanatics demolished the
Babri Mosque setting into motion a chain of events that still wreaks havoc
today. From the Bombay riots of 1992 to the bomb blasts of 1993, the Gujarat
pogroms of 2002 and hundreds of smaller deadly events, the last 16 years
have been the bloodiest since Partition. Action has been followed by
reaction in an endless cycle of escalating retribution. At the core on the
Hindu side of terror are organizations that openly admire Adolph Hitler,
nursing the hate of historic wrongs inflicted by Muslims. Ironically these
votaries of Hitler remain friends and admirers of Israel.

On the Muslim side of terror are scores of disaffected youth, many of whom
have seen their families tortured and killed in more recent pogroms.
Christians too have fallen victim to recent Hindutva terror but as yet not
formed the mechanisms for revenge. Dalits despite centuries of caste
oppression, have not yet retaliated in violence although a small fraction is
being drawn into an armed struggle waged by Naxalites.

It is clear that no amount of spending on defense, no amount of patrolling
the high seas, no amount of increasing the military and police and equipping
them with the latest weaponry can end the cycle of violence or place India
under a bubble of safety. Just as nuclear India did not lead to more safety,
but only to a nuclear Pakistan, no amount of homeland security can save us.
And inviting Israel's Mossad and America's CIA/FBI to the security table is
like giving the anti-virus contract to those who spread the virus in the
first place. It can only make us more of a target for the next determined
jehadi attack.

Policing, Justice and the Media
As for draconian anti-terror laws, they too only breed terror as for the
most part they are implemented by a State machinery that has imbibed
majoritarian values. So in Modi's Gujarat after the ethnic cleansing of
Muslims in 2002, despite scores of confessions to rape and murder captured
on hidden camera, virtually no Hindu extremists were punished while
thousands of Muslims rotted in jail under draconian laws. The same happened
in Bombay despite the Shiv Sena being found guilty by the Justice
Shrikrishna Commission. Under pressure a few cases were finally brought to
trial but all escaped with the lightest of knuckle raps. In stark contrast
many Muslims accused in the 1993 bomb blasts were given death sentences.

The bulk of our media, policing and judicial systems swallows the canard
that Muslims are by nature violent. Removing democratic safeguards
guaranteed by the Constitution can only make this worse. Every act of
wrongful imprisonment and torture that then follows is likely to turn
innocents into material for future terrorists to draw upon. Already the
double standards are visible. While the Students Islamic Movement of India
is banned, Hindutva outfits like the RSS, the VHP, the Bajrang Dal, and the
Shiv Sena remain legal entities. The leader of the MNS, Raj Thackeray
recently openly spread such hatred that several north Indians were killed by
lynch mobs. Amongst these were the Dube brothers, doctors from Kalyan who
treated the poor for a grand fee of Rs.10 per patient. Raj Thackeray like
his uncle Bal before him, remains free after issuing public threats that
Bombay would burn if anyone had the guts to arrest him. Modi remains free
despite the pogroms of Gujarat. Congress party murderers of Sikhs in 1984
remain free. Justice in India is clearly not there for all. Increasing the
powers of the police cannot solve this problem. Only honest and unbiased
implementation of laws that exist, can.

It is a tragedy of the highest proportions that one such honest policeman,
Anti-Terrorist Squad chief Hemant Karkare, who had begun to unravel the
thread of Hindutva terror was himself gunned down, perhaps by Muslim terror.
It is reported that Col. Purohit and fellow Hindutva conspirators now in
judicial custody, celebrated the news of Karkare's death. Until Karkare took
charge, the Malegaon bomb blasts in which Muslims were killed and the
Samjhauta Express blasts in which Pakistani visitors to India were killed
were being blamed on Muslims. Karkare exposed a hitherto unknown Hindutva
outfit as masterminding a series of killer blasts across the country. For
his pains Karkare came under vicious attack not just from militant Hindutva
but from the mainstream BJP. He was under tremendous pressure to prove his
patriotism. Was it this that led this senior officer to don helmet and
ill-fitting bullet proof vest and rush into battle with a pistol? Or was it
just his natural instinct, the same courage that had led him against all
odds, to expose Hindutva terror?

Whatever it was, it only underlines the fact that jehadis of all kinds are
actually allies of each other. So Bin Laden served George Bush and
vice-versa. So Islamic and Hindutva jehadis have served each other for
years. Do they care who dies? Of the 200 people killed in the last few days
by Islamic jehadis, a high number were Muslims. Many were waiting to board
trains to celebrate Eid in their hometowns in UP and Bihar, when their
co-religionists gunned them down. Shockingly the media has not commented on
this, nor focused on the tragedy at the railway station, choosing to
concentrate on tragedies that befell the well-to-do. And it is the media
that is leading the charge to turn us into a war-mongering police state
where we may lead lives with an illusion of safety, but with the certainty
of joylessness.

I am not arguing that we do not need efficient security at public places and
at vulnerable sites. But real security will only come when it is accompanied
by real justice, when the principles of democracy are implemented in every
part of the country, when the legitimate grievances of people are not
crushed, when the arms race is replaced by a race for decency and humanity,
when our children grow up in an atmosphere where religious faith is put to
the test of reason. Until such time we will remain at the mercy of
"patriots" and zealots.


*************
4/4
Mordecai Briemberg of Vancouver-based People's Radio talks with Hari Sharma


http://www.rabble.ca/podcasts/shows/redeye/understanding-assault-mumbai