Fairness of the investigations into the Malegaon blasts will decide
whether the Indian state can re-establish its secular credentials and
win Muslim hearts.

THE Malegaon bomb attacks have triggered a peculiar contest within
the Indian security establishment, which is centred on how to deny
the obvious. The obvious in this case is the specific and successful
targeting of Muslims in significant-scale violence for the first time
in India, which raises uncomfortable questions about the dominant
official view or paradigm of terrorism and counter-terrorism. This
paradigm holds that terrorism in this country is essentially inspired
by Islamic fundamentalism and usually assisted by Pakistani secret
agencies.

The dominant view cannot countenance the possibility that Hindutva
militants belonging to extremist outfits like the Bajrang Dal or
Vishwa Hindu Parishad might be the culprits in Malegaon. So it
minimises, as it must, vital clues and pointers - including the
timing of the explosions after Friday prayers in a crowded mosque,
during the Shab-e-Barat observances, which draw huge numbers of
pilgrims and beggars into Malegaon; the discovery of bicycles with
Hindu names painted on them, on which the bombs were planted; a local
history of Hindu-Muslim tension and intense communal polarisation;
and, above all, the involvement of Bajrang Dal extremists in bomb
fabrication efforts in the Marathwada region, which is adjacent to
Malegaon and in many ways similar to the North Maharashtra area in
which the town is itself located.

Equally, the dominant paradigm must resort to increasingly convoluted
explanations: Islamists executed the Malegaon attacks to provoke a
violent reaction and widen the communal divide so as to destabilise
India; their general motive is always to spread randomly "mayhem,
confusion and fear"; Islamist terrorists have never had any
compunctions about killing large numbers of other Muslims, however
devout, especially if they do not follow rigid Wahhabi Islam; jehadi
terrorists need have no location-specific motive; they are forever
willing to kill, even commit suicide, to advance their fanatical
cause; they are profoundly irrational, or downright mad, and blinded
by hatred; they commit violence, because, well, they are terrorists...

None of this is very convincing. Indeed, the more convoluted the
explanation, the less plausible it sounds. Evidence from the world
over suggests that jehadi violence as a rule is not “mad” or random.
It follows a certain (perverse) rationality. It aims to send a
“message” about the vulnerability of a powerful adversary (as
happened on 9/11) or register a protest (against the Spanish
government’s pro-U.S. Iraq policy, as with the 2004 Madrid bombings)
or avenge an injustice (Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay), etc.

Even suicide bombers do not act mindlessly or randomly. Chicago
University researcher Robert Pape recently looked for analysed
patterns in 462 cases of “successful” suicide attacks in his book
Dying to Win. He found that about 95 per cent of the attacks were
“demand-driven” and not driven by the “supply” of religious fanatics.
Most were aimed at foreign occupation forces. Southern Lebanon
witnessed a spate of suicide attacks during the post-1982 Israeli
occupation, but these stopped after Israel withdrew. Iraq had no
suicide attacks until the U.S. invasion of 2003. Since then, fidayeen
attacks have become routine. There is no organic link between suicide
bombings and Islam. The non-Islamic LTTE is the undisputed global
leader in suicide bombings.

The only piece of evidence that favours the dominant view on Malegaon
is the alleged discovery of RDX high explosive at the site. This too
is a weak piece of evidence and one contested by the Union Home
Secretary, no less. Only one of the three forensic laboratories that
examined the explosives detected in Malegaon says they contain RDX.
But even assuming that RDX was used, it hardly proves that the
blasts’ executors were jehadis aided by a Pakistani agency. Going by
several reports quoting Intelligence Bureau sources, RDX is no longer
all that rare or hard to procure domestically.

Hindutva fanaticism

In any case, we should know better than to rely on purely
technology-based evidence, when all the material circumstances and
facts point in the opposite direction. Sound political judgment must
supplement forensic evidence. And that judgment tells us that
Hindutva fanatics can be as capable of causing terrorist violence and
mayhem as jehadis.

Ever since the Ayodhya mobilisation in the mid-1980s, Hindutva
fanaticism has left a trail of blood through numerous States and
cities, Mumbai in 1992 and Gujarat in 2002 being the two ghastliest
episodes. The number of people killed in each of these, roughly 2000,
greatly exceeds the casualties in any terrorist bombing in this
country.

Close to Malegaon, both literally and figuratively, lie Nanded,
Parbhani, Purna and Jalna, all in Marathwada, which have over the
past three-and-a-half years witnessed bomb attacks (or preparations
for attacks) targeted at Muslims and specifically at mosques. The
culprits in each case appear to be Hindutva fanatics. There is
clinching evidence of this in Nanded, where two Bajrang Dal activists
Naresh Rajkondwar and Himanshu Panse were killed on April 6 while
attempting to fabricate a bomb along with fellow-extremists Rahul
Pande, Yogesh Deshpande, Maruti Wagh and Gururaj Tupttewar.

The incident occurred in the house of a known RSS activist and
Bajrang Dal-VHP member. It was investigated by the Secular Citizens’
Forum and People’s Union of Civil Liberties, Nagpur. There is
convincing photographic evidence to show that the Bajrang Dal was
indeed running a bomb-fabrication operation. Some of the pictures
also showed that the local police tried to cover up Bajrang Dal-VHP
involvement by planting fire-crackers - to suggest that the blast was
caused by crackers, not bombs - and false beards.

These findings were corroborated by K.P. Raghuvanshi, head of
Maharashtra’s Anti-Terrorism Squad. In an interview to Communalism
Combat (June 2006), he described the Nanded bomb-fabrication as a
“terrorist act” by “Hindus”: "It is clear that these bombs were not
being manufactured for a puja. They were being manufactured for
unlawful ends to wreak violence through terror."

Besides their targets - and a similar culture and history of communal
polarisation - Nanded has something in common with Malegaon: in both
cases, fake beards and skullcaps of the kind used by Muslims during
prayers had been planted. None of this conclusively proves that
Hindutva fanatics were responsible for Malegaon, but it does make a
powerful case for pursuing that line of investigation. The
Maharashtra government seems to be dragging its feet on this,
probably encouraged by a section of the security establishment whose
Islamophobic prejudices were discussed in this Column (September 8,
2006).

It is of the utmost importance that the police investigate the
Malegaon incident and the events leading up to it with scrupulous
objectivity and impartiality and make full public disclosure of all
relevant facts after completing the investigation. Any slip on their
part will generate suspicion that they are shielding a particular
group out of communal prejudice.

The Malegaon police force is a classic embodiment of
“institutionalised communalism”, which has repeatedly clashed with
and punished Muslims. Three days after the bombings, it gratuitously
got into a confrontation with a Muslim gathering and opened fire. It
must be restrained and its criminal investigations must be
supplemented with the very best expertise available in the country
from among officers with proven secular credentials.

The mood among Maharashtra’s Muslims is one of sullenness,
despondency and resentment at their harassment by the police. Their
pervasive alienation is evident through numerous reports (for
instance, Seema Chishti’s series in The Indian Express, September
3-7). The Pope’s offensive remarks about Islam have further inflamed
passions and increased this alienation. The rolling judgment on the
Mumbai 1993 bombings, now in progress, has also served as a cruel
reminder that the perpetrators of incidents that formed their
immediate backdrop - the pogrom of Muslims in December 1992-January
1993 in Mumbai - are yet to be prosecuted.

The People’s Tribunal on the Bombay Violence, headed by Justices Daud
and Suresh, estimated that 2,000 were killed during the pogrom. The
Srikrishna Commission inquired into the violence and recommended the
prosecution of numerous individuals. This has not happened.

This default, and many other injustices and iniquities reflected in
the exclusion of Muslims and the discrimination against them, will
have terrible consequences. Today, Malegaon has become an
all-important litmus test. The Indian state must begin to
decommunalise its counter-terrorism strategy and reaffirm secularism
and pluralism. It must win back the confidence of the Muslim
community by proving its secular credentials. Malegaon is the place
to do it.