It had become a standard drill for all the investigating agencies in India to blame every terrorist act on the ever present “Foreign Hand”. However, the recent blasts in Ahemdabad which according to reports have been solved by the Gujarat Police put all the blame on the indigenous people without any foreign involvement. There are, however, certain inexplicable discrepancies. The bombs in Surat numbering almost 30 did not explode but were “discovered” and defused by Police in time. The whole operation seemed unnatural. Bombs were being discovered one by one in very odd locations as if someone was systematically giving out the locations to local Police.

Moreover, a number of agencies had been earlier making efforts to solve these serial bombings but it was only the Gujarat Police which smashed the entire ring and arrested the master mind and key players. Assuming that the Gujarat Police is one up on the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) and has cracked the whole mystery, one thing comes out squarely. All the bombings have been conceived as well as executed by Indian citizens. It is the “Domestic Hand” and not the “Foreign Hand” for a change. As per the investigations made public the main culprit is SIMI (Students Islamic Movement of India).

Planners as well as executors are Indian Muslims. As reported the bombers were trained in camps located in Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Maharashtra etc and the explosives were bought in Madhya Pradesh. The whole conspiracy and its execution is 100% indigenous. The impression given earlier at the time of different serial blasts was that these were the handiwork of the intelligence agency of the neighbouring country. It was the easiest escape to see the hand of this agency behind every occurrence.

In fact, some one had claimed that the weather disturbances had also been engineered by that agency. With every one blaming the agency it had become a larger than life invincible and omnipresent organisation behind every untoward incident. Now it is being given out that a majority of these incidents have been caused by the citizens of the country. If this is true then a thorough introspection of the reasons behind such behaviour is urgently called for. What forces the citizens of a country to target fellow citizens?

There must be something terribly wrong and that wrong needs to be identified and remedied. That wrong has already been identified by Justice Rajinder Sachar in his famous report. According to Justice Sachar the condition of the Muslims in India is worse than Dalits, the lowest Hindu caste. Dalits may even be trusted in some sensitive agencies and organisations but the Muslims are not trusted at all. In spite of constituting more than 15% of the population their representation in important state agencies of sensitive nature is nil.

Even the defence services have a very miniscule representation. People belonging to some other minority groups can head some very vital organisations but not Muslims. They are always suspect. This mistrust has been starkly visible after the demolition of Babri Masjid and the Mumbai riots. The suspicion has gone so far that even the most progressive Muslims are being discriminated. In a recent TV interview the famous actress Shabana Azmi stated that she and Saif Ali could not buy a flat in Mumbai simply because they are Muslims.

No one is prepared to take them in! The Hindutva organisations have mounted a systematic campaign for decimating Muslims economically. Governments both at the centre and states especially in the north have been virtually giving tacit approval for such campaigns. South did not have this infection but recently the Hindutva parties have succeeded in infecting some of the southern states also. Most of the riots in last few years have been at the places where the Muslims had been economically quite well off.

The Gujarat Pogrom was the proverbial last straw and the resistance by the Muslims started from that tragic event. For a pretty long time this community had been taking all the beating lying down but Kashmir showed them the way to resist oppression and take it head on. These people must have observed how Kashmiris in spite of unprecedented brutal oppression have risen off and on not only to resist the oppressor but to strike back. Resistance is infectious and it spreads like an epidemic. This extremist Hindutva attitude had traditionally been visible in northern states only.

This is because of the fact that the brunt of Muslim invasions of India has been faced by the north. South has more or less remained unmolested. One of the major factors for partition has been this attitude. The rightist Hindutva parties are still not reconciled to the creation of Pakistan. They still harbour the feeling that Muslims came from outside, plundered India, and finally ended up by taking half the country. They still dream about undoing the partition and restoring Akhand Bharat as the Hindu Rashtra! For them all Muslims are suspect.

The fault also lies with Pakistan leadership which instead of coming closer to the mainland left behind after the division of the sub-continent, preferred to align themselves with the West and the Middle East. They consider themselves as an extension of the Muslim belt of Middle East and Iran rather than a part of the sub-continent. No doubt partition created a sharp cleavage between the two major religions of the sub-continent, yet the mother country India now called Bharat tried to pursue a secular agenda through the stalwarts of the freedom movement. However, after the passing away of those leaders in both countries, it was the communal divide which came to the fore. Still the Hindutva proponents were hesitant in the face of the western democracies and remained subdued.

But the 9/11 episode which made USA start a global war on Muslims and Islam to contain terrorism completely changed Indian attitude. They could get away with anything by labelling it as “Islamic Terrorism”. No one from the west would question them and no Muslim country would dare challenge them for anti-Muslim activities fearing a backlash from Uncle Sam! This encouraged Hindutva brigade to take on Muslims and persecute them at their sweet will without fear of any outside interference. This treatment of minorities pushed them to a wall and they became desperate and started retaliating.

The same story is being repeated with Christian minority in Orissa. However, they have the Pope who has condemned this behaviour making the Indian Government go all out to take immediate remedial measures. The Muslims in that regard are orphans! Additionally there are two other sources of internal strife. These are the Dalits and the Naxalites. The poor and downtrodden waking up to take on the oppressive rich. Thus there are many “Domestic Hands” within the country ready to strike at the Indian State. No doubt foreign powers can exploit the situation to their advantage but the weakness is within and it has to be remedied.

If the sincere and really patriotic Indians want to safeguard the integrity of the country, they have to take two urgent measures. The first is to recognise the existence of the “Domestic Hand”. This has now been proven beyond any doubt and the usual refrain of “Foreign Hand” seems to have been given up at least for the present. The other is to remove the grievances which in the first instance force the citizens of a country to strike both at the State and its other citizens. Unless this is done, the very existence of the State is at stake. The foreigners do not have to disintegrate it, it will disintegrate itself! The Government of India has been worried about 600 odd militants in Kashmir but they seem to have forgotten that their attitude is going to make another 170 million militants all over the country! Will someone wake them up?