Serial blasts rocked Bangalore and Ahmedabad on consecutive days, weeks ago, claiming over fifty lives. Even before the dust settled, the high-pitched Sushma Swaraj of the BJP chose to lob into the political arena an entirely different kind of explosive, with a lethal intensity that is bound to have severe repercussions. It also leads one to suspect that citizens will become sitting ducks in the increasingly volatility of daily politics.
The blasts, Ms.Swaraj claimed, were “a conspiracy to divert attention from the ‘cash-for-votes’ scandal”. She further elaborated that the blasts were “an attempt to win over the Muslim votes which got divided in the wake of the pro-American deal pursued by the government,” and claimed there was enough “circumstantial evidence” to support her charge. Asked by reporters if she was indirectly alleging that the Congress-led UPA government had a role in the blasts, she snapped back imperiously, “I have said what I wanted. It is for you all to interpret the rest.”
While one is familiar with many vile methods that politicians and parties use to defame their opponents, Ms.Swaraj’s fulminations must rank among the most vicious in recent times. Perhaps, it’s as vile as another wild conjecture, being openly discussed in public discussions, on the possibility of the BJP or its affiliates like the RSS or VHP themselves having masterminded the blasts. Even a canard can have a theory, and the theory goes, that since the blasts occurred in capitals of BJP-ruled states, its executors could have planted the bombs with impunity under the protective umbrella of the state-controlled law and order system, even as they showcased their competence by ‘discovering’ and ‘defusing’ the very same explosive devices they planted.
Those floating such a counter-canard would argue that within minutes of the Ahmedabad blasts, Opposition Leader L K Advani was orchestrating a focussed demand for the re-introduction of draconian laws like POTA and the implementation of the Gujarat Bill. The BJP leadership, including Karnataka CM Yediyurappa and Gujarat CM Modi, kept up this sustained clamour over the next several days, in turn influencing many media editorials. Every ‘expert’ worth his or her salt floated the proposition that only “tough laws” could shield us against terrorism and even repeated the old demand for setting up a ‘federal agency’ on the lines of the CBI to tackle terrorism.
But whom do they plan to track down and nab with all this? Despite all the identity-sketches released after all the previous blasts, no genuine suspect has been nabbed. It is a foregone conclusion that the real culprits will remain shadows. Only some poor, defenceless sods, most probably some hapless migrant Muslim, will be magically produced as the ‘mastermind’ behind all this blood and gore. And the case itself will never get resolved and will be allowed to slowly fade out from public memory.
The point is, as Shubh Mathur pointed out in a recent article, these blasts are part of a chain that began some 40 months ago with the one at Sankat Mochan Temple, Varanasi, on March 7, 2006; the Jama Masjid, Delhi, on April 14, 2006; the Noorani Masjid, Malegaon, on September 8, 2006; the Mecca Masjid, Hyderabad, on May 18, 2007 and the Ajmer Sharif Dargah, on October 11, 2007.
The police investigation too, in each instance, has followed a pattern. Working with a definition of ‘terrorist’ as ‘Muslim’, even where targets were Muslim areas and places of worship, police have carried out sweeping arrests of Muslim ‘suspects’. The arrests and speculations about possible connection to international terrorist groups are highly publicised; the dismal fate of those arrested and the lack of success in finding the actual perpetrators are rarely mentioned, as borne out by Kavita Srivastava’s recent report for PUCL, Rajasthan, on the arrests of Bengali-speaking Muslims in Jaipur following the mid-May blasts there. The report graphically documents the consequences on this community. Within three days, police had made hundreds of arrests of impoverished Bangladeshi immigrants. The detainees were held under Section 109 of the CrPC, so that the legal process could be controlled by the local administration and police, rather than the judiciary. Lawyers from human rights organisations were not allowed to file papers on their behalf. The Jaipur Bar Association, according to press reports, informally agreed not to represent ‘terrorism’ suspects.
Obviously, these are dangerous times, as much as they are cynical times. But Ms. Swaraj, through her irresponsible and provocative innuendos, has released a powerful genie from the bottle. She has finally launched the desperate fascist tactic, so much a part of the internal control mechanisms of the Nazi party, of ‘universal public distrust’. Its motto is “Suspect your neighbour and your friend; why, even suspect your parents’.
It’s a kind of doublespeak which is bound to raise the quantum of violence already there in the body politic, with little concern for consequences.