Balbir Punj By

An incident in political violence ridden north Malabar’s Tirur town of some CPM workers being attacked by an extremist Islamist group on public, should have been the object of a local police enquiry. But within a day the anti-terrorist agency NIA took over the probe. Obviously, the attack was not an isolated local incident. There seems to be a clear indication that the Islamist attackers might be linked to Pakistan directed terrorist groups like LET. The attackers were from the SDPI, a student wing of the NDFI (National Democratic Front of India), an extremist Islamist organisation that seeks to impose Sharia law on the country. It has several cases against it forcing ordinary Muslims to its diktat under the threat of violence.

NDF, SDFI, People’s Democratic Party (PDP, whose leader Abdul Naseer Madhani is detained in a Bangalore jail for alleged terrorist attack there) are the various manifestations of jehadi organisations in Kerala that have taken strong hold among the Muslim masses in recent years. Earlier it was SIMI which now stands banned. The same elements of SIMI have metamorphed into newer organisations but with the same objective. The surprising part is not that violence either of the Marxists (their leaders in Kozhikode district are among those who have been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a rebel party man) or of the Jihadi leader. The surprising part is the attitude of those politicians who claim to profess faith in “secular and democratic values”.

Ironically, the day the Tirur incident occurred, the Kerala Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala was telling public that the Congress- led UDF state government was putting pressure on the Karnataka government regarding “inadequate” treatment for the terror accused Madhani. The Congress has competed with CPM in spreading the red carpet for this jihadi leader when he got acquitted in a case of planning physical elimination of senior BJP leader L K Advani in 1998, through planting serial bombs in Coimbatore where he was to address a public rally.

Subsequently police in several states have traced many other terrorist activities to this leader. However, the Congress government in Kerala or its predecessor, the Marxist-led state government, have been reluctant to act. It was only the rule of law insisted upon by the previous BJP government in Karnataka that the jihadi leader was arrested for planning serial bomb blasts in Bangalore in 2008. He has also allegedly admitted his role in the 2010 Bangalore stadium bombing.

CPM even had a state-level electoral alliance with the PDP in 2009 Lok Sabha elections. The public demonstration of the surrender of the successive Kerala governments before the jihadi elements has only encouraged Islamists to penetrate further into the Muslim society. Of interest in this context is the allegation of the Marxist state Secretary Pinaray Vijayan that the Tirur incident actually was a League conspiracy.

The League leaders who are now part of the UDF Government in Kerala may be quite right in denying any part in jihadi broadcast of terror in the state. But they, along with other “secularists” have done nothing to disabuse the local Muslim community of its continuing victim hood mentality. It is the careful nurturing of the victim hood mentality that provides the mass support for both the league and the jihadis.

Of course, this phenomenon is not confined to Kerala. Muslim orthodox leaders in other parts are foremost in fostering this attitude. The MIM leaders in Hyderabad, for instance, have been making provocative speeches. The so-called secular parties like JD (U) in Bihar and its leader and Bihar CM, Nitish Kumar, used the communal angle to justify his break with the BJP hoping to cash in on a Muslim vote bank.

It may be politically reassuring to believe that the Muslim masses are not with the jihadi movement despite the evidence to the contrary from several sources. Why are the Islamist forces of various description on the ascendant everywhere? In Egypt they won power in democratic contest and were about to turn the constitution into a jihadi force, but for the strong opposition from liberals backed by the army. The Islamists have been targeting the communal harmony regime in Lebanon. Ditto in Iraq. Also in several countries like Male, Nigeria, Liberia, Kenya, Somalia, etc. Their attempts to overthrow the government in Germany, France, Spain and the UK also surface every now and then.

In Russia, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, the governments have to keep a lynx-eyed vigil against the mass bombings organised by underground Islamist movements. In Afghanistan the possibility of the Islamist Taliban taking over once the international forces leave is self-evident. And in Pakistan, the mother of all jihadi movements, the newly elected prime minister Nawaz Sharif, after promising to contain terrorism, is seeking peace with the Pakistan Taliban!

Look what is happening in Bangladesh where resurged Islamists have sought to block the Awami League government’s attempts to return to secularism as the country’s creed and liberal environment in keeping with the cultural traditions of the dominant Bengali language and its extremely rich literature.

The pluralism that formed the dynamic of Bangladesh liberation had been sought to be extinguished by the regime of General Zia. The Islamists in Bangladesh, despite the strong determination of prime minister and Awami League leader to resist them, have partially succeeded in wrecking the recent elections. They have kept the reelected secular regime on tenterhooks despite its legislative majority.

The attempts of the Islamist movements in the country in incidents like the one we saw in Tirur and against the Christian college lecturer is to use terrorism as a weapon to force the issue on the Muslim masses and break the Indian democracy’s pluralist armour. But with the so-called secular political forces genuflecting before the known terror movement leaders, as we see across the country in key events, it would not require much effort for the Islamists to threaten their own masses into a submission to the diktat to usurp power through terror.

Is it not possible that this same identity paradox would make them good target for the jihadis?

Balbir Punj is National Vice President, BJP.

E-mail: punjbalbir@gmail.com