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5 Days, 55 bombs, 3 cities, 53
Dead, Life Is On Edge
India's Tryst With Terror Is On; Will the country go for real
causes?
Sach Kanwal Singh
 AHMEDABAD/SURAT:
India is
terror struck, and being bombed. With terrorizing frequency. Swanky
IT capital Bangalore had serial blasts on July 26, next day
Ahmedabad saw 17 bomb blasts killing nearly 50 people within 17
minutes. Gujarat anyway has been on a short fuse ever since the
communal riots in 2002 that saw virtually state-backed killings of
Muslims, and had then re-elected Narendra Modi as Chief Minister.
Before the
country could recuperate from the shock and even as some were still
to find their missing ones from hospital mortuaries, the trail of
terror struck again. On July 30, the country went numb as 18 live
bombs were recovered from the diamond city of
Surat. As this
WSN edition went to the press,
Surat
was shut down. Schools, colleges, shopping malls were closed, and
people were asked not to crowd anywhere.
 Across urban
India,
life remained on tenterhooks. TV showed little else but scenes of
the injured, of always-in-short-supply bomb-disposal squads running
from one spot to another, experts diffusing bombs on live national
TV. Hyper active TV news anchors talked about India being resilient
in the face of terror so many times that words seemed to be losing
their meaning and anxiety was the only underlined feeling.
Both Karnataka
and
Gujarat
are ruled by right wing Hindu nationalist BJP.
India is living
on edge now. Diamond shops and factories in
Surat
shut down as bomb squads defused bombs and Police Commissioner R M S
Brar asked citizens not to panic. On his orders, malls, multiplexes,
municipal gardens remained closed on Wednesday.
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BJP finds
peculiar politics in blasts
BJP leader
Sushma Swaraj has said the recent blasts in Ahmedabad and
Bangalore were “a conspiracy to divert attention from the
‘cash-for-votes scandal’ in Parliament.”
“I see a
conspiracy to divert attention from the cash-for-votes scam,”
said Swaraj at a press conference after an NDA meeting here.
“The Muslim votes got scattered from them (the UPA) because of
friendship with the US. They are raising the bogey of the BJP to
bring them back into their camp.”
Asked if she
was alleging that the UPA had a role in the blasts, she said: “I
have said what I wanted, it is for all of you to interpret the
rest.”
Remarks have
angered the BJP’s allies.
Akali Dal's
S S Dhindsa: “Without any probe, there’s no point in making
these kinds of allegations.” '
Janata
Dal-United’s (JD-U) Prabhunath Singh: “I don’t quite agree with
this assertion. There’s no co-relation between the trust vote
and the blasts.”
Sushma,
however, stood by her statement. “This was not part of the NDA
briefing. This was my personal remark and I stand by it,” she
was quoted by Indian Express as saying. |
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As if all of
this was not enough to spell fear, police discovered two cars loaded
with explosives. These bombs were of high intensity and could impact
anything or anyone within 10 feet.
Surat bomb
discoveries came a day after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and
Congress president Sonia Gandhi visited the injured of Ahmedabad
blasts. Some 150 were injured. But Narendra Modi's presence hardly
instilled any confidence.
Sonia had once
called him Maut Ka Saudagar and the
United States
had denied him the visa, thanks to his communalism and prejudice
towards minorities. And the Indian media, repeatedly pointing to the
Muslim community and explicit mails from Islamic jihadis taking
responsibility, forgot to even mention that just a few days ago,
Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray had exhorted Hindu fanatics to make
better and powerful bombs and explode them in Muslim dominated
areas. Thackeray had written all this trash in his newspaper Saamna
which he edits.
Ahmedabad bombs
were crude, mostly strapped to cycles.
Surat bombs were
placed almost anywhere, one even dangling from a tree. More live
bombs were recovered during combing operations later.
Earlier,
India had
witnessed bombings in Jaipur in May this year, in four cities of
Uttar Pradesh in May and November last year, and Malegaon in
September 2006.
A terror outfit
calling itself the Indian Mujahideen sent emails to some authorities
and television channels claiming responsibility for the acts, and
even dared the authorities to try and prevent the blasts.
29
July, 2008
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