People's Democracy

COMMENT

Defeat Attempts To Deepen Communal Divide

AT the all-party meeting convened by the prime minister, after the completion of the operations against the terrorist attack on Mumbai on November 30, the BJP, instead of joining everybody else present at the meeting, in condemning this attack and resolving to unitedly defeat terrorism, chose not to be part of a unanimous resolution to this effect. It has, thus, once again, displayed its true colours of seeking to utilise terrorist attacks to deepen the communal divide hoping for an electoral dividend. It is precisely such a deepening of a communal divide through which terrorism attacks to destabilise India�s social fabric. Thus, once again, communalism and terrorism feed each other at the expense of the country and our people.

L K Advani�s statement that terrorism has no religion is now exposed as mere public posturing. Rattled as they were by the investigations being conducted by Maharashtra�s Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) into the involvement of Hindutva organisations and personalities in bomb blasts in various parts of the country, these terrorist strikes in Mumbai have provided them a fresh lease of life to deflect the country�s attention and sharpen communal polarisation.

The BJP leaders at the all-party meeting (both Advani and BJP president Rajnath Singh chose not to attend) had, in fact, leveled the charge that the preoccupation of the ATS in pursuing the Malegaon blast case and the involvement of Hindutva outfits (allegedly at the behest of the Congress-led UPA) was, in fact, responsible for these attacks in Mumbai! Following the unfortunate and the most condemnable killing of ATS chief and his lieutenants, the Saffron Brigade removed from its websites the calumny they were heaping on the ATS and its chief, the valiant officer Hemant Karkare, for pursuing the investigations against the involvement of Hindutva outfits in terrorist activities. They now seek to cash in on the popular resentment built up over the Mumbai attacks for their electoral benefits.

Their effort at sharpening communal polarisation is buttressed by the fact that all ten terrorists that came by sea had come from Karachi in Pakistan and were all Muslims. The lone survivor of these has admitted to belong to the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT). However, they conveniently forget that among those killed, many were Muslims. Further, the attacks took place on properties belonging to a pioneering Parsi industrialist family, a pioneering Sikh hotelier, and a home owned by the Jews. This was an attack on India's celebrated diversity. Terrorism can only be fought and defeated by India united in this diversity. Any effort to the contrary, like the deepening of the Hindu-Muslim divide that the BJP seeks, will only help the terrorists in destabilising our country, as noted above. This cannot be allowed to succeed in the interests of both the unity and integrity of India and its endeavours in defeating these terrorist attacks.