Beware Secular Poseurs

WAS THE  MALEGAON motorcycle explosion which killed six Muslims near a mosque in September 2008 retaliation for the seven serial bomb blasts that killed 209 people on Mumbai’s suburban trains in 2006?

The history of retaliation and counter-retaliation goes back a long way. The demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992 led to Hindu-Muslim riots in January 1993 and the Mumbai serial blasts in March 1993 at 12 locations across the city that killed 257 people.

The acquittal by the NIA court of all seven accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast raises the question: Why did Judge AK Lahoti point an accusatory finger at the Mumbai Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) which handled the investigation till the NIA took over in 2011? Both investigations took place during UPA 1 and UPA 2. The Union home minister in 2011 was P Chidambaram.

This is what Judge Lahoti said about the ATS:
“It emerges from the evidence that certain witnesses filed complaints against ATS personnel, specifically alleging acts of torture, harassment, and illegal detention. In addition, several facts are admitted by the investigating officer of NIA in the cross-examination which also shows that during the course of the investigation ATS officers tortured and illegally detained some witnesses.”

Hemant Karkare was chief of the Mumbai ATS when the Malegaon blasts took place in September 2008. Param Bir Singh, Mumbai’s controversial former police commissioner, was additional commissioner of the ATS in 2008. Two months later on November 27, 2008, Karkare was killed during the 26/11 terror attack in Mumbai by Islamist terrorists from Pakistan.

One of the principal accused, Pragya Singh Thakur, called Param Bir Singh “wicked” after she was acquitted in the Malegaon case. Lt Colonel Prasad Shrikant Purohit backed her claim that they were tortured during their prison term and forced by the ATS to name prominent Sangh figures as part of the Malegaon conspiracy.

The Malegaon case throws up a larger question:
How the concept of secularism in India has been twisted out of shape to provide a shield for Islamist terrorism. In India, secularism is meant to be observed by Hindus. Muslims are allowed leeway: they have their own personal sharia laws and minority institutions. This has allowed secular poseurs to misuse secularism to nurture minority vote banks.

Under Congress-led UPA governments from 2004 to 2014, “saffron terror” became an accepted part of political vocabulary. In contrast, Pakistani Islamist groups Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Hizbul Mujahideen were treated as instruments of Pakistan’s state policy, not purveyors of Islamist terrorism. A false equivalence was drawn between Islamist terror groups and Hindutva ‘terror’.

During UPA 2, BBC said on December 17, 2010:
“Rahul Gandhi, widely tipped as a future Indian PM, believed Hindu radicals might be a greater threat than Islamist militants, diplomatic cables reveal.

Mr Gandhi told a US envoy last year there was some support among Indian Muslims for militants such as Lashkar-e-Taiba. But he told Ambassador Timothy Roemer the greater threat could come from the growth of radical Hindu groups.

“‘Mr Gandhi wasat alunch hosted by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in July 2009, ’ Ambassador Roemer wrote in a cable a month later. He recalls Mr Gandhi saying: ‘Although there was evidence of some support for Lashkar-e-Taiba among certain elements in India’s indigenous Muslim community, the bigger threat may be the growth of radicalised Hindu groups, which create religious tensions and political confrontations with the Muslim community.’”

Rahul’s belief that ‘Hindu terror’ is more dangerous than Islamist terror was widely backed by senior Congress leaders, including P Chidambaram and Digvijaya Singh.

The Malegaon case verdict has punctured a hole in this fraudulent narrative. But it has also created such deep resentment among moderate Hindus that the genuine interests of Muslims have been jeopardised. Secular poseurs in Congress, Samajwadi Party, Trinamool Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal among others have succeeded in ‘othering’ Muslims.

This was a charge levelled against rightwing Hindu groups. It is a charge that lies squarely on the heads of those who have distorted the real meaning of secularism to imply Muslim-first and Hindu-last secularism.

The resentment that this has built in an otherwise peaceful majority will harm India’s social fabric.

The villains are not those we normally vilify as communal but those who weaponise a fraudulent notion of secularism for political ends.

Hindu-terror narrativeHizbul MujahideenIslamist groupsJaishLashkarMalegaon verdictnational securitypolitical vocabularysaffron terror