Hindus, Muslims United In Grief, Against Terror

This is a sheer example of Hyderabadi (Deccani) Ganga-Jamuni culture (tehzeeb), where the citizens forget all communal rivalry and become united in the moment of crisis.

The twin blasts coming soon after hate speeches by Muslim and Hindu leaders may have got the cops mulling a communal line in their investigations also, but leaders from both the communities said they were united in grief, and were one in fight against terrorism. Four Muslims and 12 Hindus lost their lives in the recent blasts and scores have died in five separate bomb attacks since 2007, but it has failed to ignite a communal flare-up, leaders said. 
    
On the day of blast, the Hindu leaders were seen distributing food, medicines and water among patients at Osmania and Omni hospitals, where scores of Hindu and Muslim patients were cringing in pain. 

“When it comes to terrorism, we stand together and we will fight terror together,” said Bhagwant Rao, head of Hyderabad’s Temple Protection Committee.

 “If any Muslim youth is orphaned by the blast or needs any help, we will be the first to help him and provide him job and all sorts of help,” Rao said. 
   
Communal tension was palpable in Hyderabad following hate speeches delivered by MIM legislator Akbaruddin Owaisi and VHP president Praveen Togadia, but both communities were quick to denounce their acts and doused possible chances of a flare-up. 
    
Thursday’s blast and subsequent calm in the city proved politicians playing the religious card or terrorists trying to cash in on such sentiments could not divide people, many Hindu and Muslim leaders said. “We believe that terrorism and its perpetrators have no religion. Terrorists are terrorists and they follow the diktat of senseless violence. I am sure Indians will always remain united against terrorism,” Khaja Arifuddin, chief of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind in AP and Orissa told HNN. 
    

Condemning the ‘despicable’ terrorist attack at Dilsukhnagar, he said that Indians are against all forms of terrorism, whichever quarter they come from. “We know for sure that terrorists and their sponsors are against India. Therefore, we appeal to all Indians—Hindus, Muslims Christians, Sikhs and others—to remain united in this fight,” Hafiz Peer Shabbir Ahmed, President of the state chapter of Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind said. He said there are two reasons for the terrorist attacks— one to trigger communal riots and two, to make India weak. “We can defeat these forces only through our unity,” Hafiz Ahmed who is also a member of the legislative council said.

FOUR YEARS LEARNT US FORTY YEARS EXPERIENCE

By M H Ahssan

This Blog is four now! And this year it has grown further in its humble steps of offering a perspective on India News that is unique in the internet space. After 663 posts and 11,129 comments, it has significantly grown in its readership through direct visitors as well as email subscribers. It has also succeeded in adding many new authors. Many more people have recognized its presence and many more have appreciated its coverage.

It is a challenge for a blog like HNN, which tries to give space to different voices through posts and comments, to satisfy all of its readers. While most people have praised the blog many others have questioned many posts that appear on it. It is the very nature that each of us want to see more of the particular view to which we subscribe. But if we cannot have the openness to read and hear the alternate viewpoint and have a sensible dialog on that then it is turning away from the presence of that alternate viewpoint which anyway exists. And this applies to all of us on both side of the viewpoint.

We often disagree with the alternate viewpoint and sometimes in a very strong way. But not agreeing to see it in print or hear it - unless it is bigotry or an invocation to violence - would be a non-readiness to really go beyond the obvious understandings that may have been developed by our own life expereinces. This may include posts which are critical of HNN and we hope we find space for those critical voices too in the coming year which this Blog has been doing till now by allowing the most critical of the commenters to put their point.

But every criticism also comes with a responsibility. Many of the authors have felt that many critical commenters often miss out on the main point of the article and pick up on a single line or even just a phrase in a whole post and comment on that and get stuck with it. Some authors have even felt discouraged at times by getting stuck in a fight over some side issue on which they did not base thier post upon. We hope the commenters understand this subtle relationship.

HNN is not intended to be a website like some of the most visited sites in the Indian internet space. Some of these sites are notorious for allowing comments which display the worst kind of bigotry, particularly against the Muslims, to keep the visitor numbers high. We aim to have the comments posted so that there is a conversation possible rather than achieving any commercial end.

Some readers have raised a valid point that the positive stories do not come out that often. The blog is most open to give most space to such stories but struggles with having enough writers to do this. The site continues to be a voluntary work and hence it has limited resources under which we are trying to do our best. Any help from any of you to expand the reach and aims of the blog is most welcome.

The past year has been tough for many in India and across the globe. A year in which some deadly terrorist attacks rocked India multiple times with Mumbai being the last straw on the collective psyche of the nation, the Indian stocks tumbling to one of the worst performances globally with the economy slowing down towards 6% growth and Amarnath fiasco almost turning into another national controversy splitted on religious lines.

But it was not all that gloomy. Perhaps the most important one was the collective HNN leadership coming out in a strong way against terrorism. Right from the Deoband conference, to the Fatwa against terrorism, the Ramlila ground anti-terrorism rally in Delhi, the Ulema meet in Hyderabad denouncing terrorism, to many rallies across the nation denouncing the Mumbai terror attacks has put to rest any doubt, for the fair mind, of where the HNN stand on terrorism.

The strong turnout in Kashmir elections, touching 60% turnout, was a great achievement. And so was the signing-off on the Indo-US nuclear deal.

As we enter the fourth year of operations, we hope that we are able to widen the perspective of the blog and for that there are some initiatives being thought over which may be rolled out in the coming days. We thank you all for the continued support and wish all of you all the best for the coming year.

On behalf of the HNN Team, I thank each of you for keeping this blog relevant and running now into its fourth year.

Opinion: ‘Terrorists want to destroy Pakistan, too’

By Asif Ali Zardari

The recent death and destruction in Mumbai, India, brought to my mind the death and destruction in Karachi on October 18, 2007, when terrorists attacked a festive homecoming rally for my wife, Benazir Bhutto. Nearly 150 Pakistanis were killed and more than 450 were injured. The terrorist attacks in Mumbai may be a news story for most of the world. For me it is a painful reality of shared experience. Having seen my wife escape death by a hairbreadth on that day in Karachi, I lost her in a second, unfortunately successful, attempt two months later.

The Mumbai attacks were directed not only at India but also at Pakistan’s new democratic government and the peace process with India that we have initiated. Supporters of authoritarianism in Pakistan and non-state actors with a vested interest in perpetuating conflict do not want change in Pakistan to take root. To foil the designs of the terrorists, the two great nations of Pakistan and India, born together from the same revolution and mandate in 1947, must continue to move forward with the peace process. Pakistan is shocked at the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. We can identify with India’s pain. I am especially empathetic. I feel this pain every time I look into the eyes of my children.

Pakistan is committed to the pursuit, arrest, trial and punishment of anyone involved in these heinous attacks. But we caution against hasty judgments and inflammatory statements. As was demonstrated in Sunday’s raids, which resulted in the arrest of militants, Pakistan will take action against the non-state actors found within our territory, treating them as criminals, terrorists and murderers. Not only are the terrorists not linked to the government of Pakistan in any way, we are their targets and we continue to be their victims. India is a mature nation and a stable democracy. Pakistanis appreciate India’s democratic contributions. But as rage fueled by the Mumbai attacks catches on, Indians must pause and take a breath. India and Pakistan and the rest of the world must work together to track down the terrorists who caused mayhem in Mumbai, attacked New York, London and Madrid in the past, and destroyed the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad in September. The terrorists who killed my wife are connected by ideology to these enemies of civilization. These militants didn’t arise from whole cloth. Pakistan was an ally of the West throughout the Cold War. The world worked to exploit religion against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan by empowering the most fanatic extremists as an instrument of destruction of a superpower. Strategy worked, but its legacy was the creation of an extremist militia with its own dynamic.

Pakistan continues to pay the price: the legacy of dictatorship, the fatigue of fanaticism, the dismemberment of civil society and the destruction of our democratic infrastructure. The resulting poverty continues to fuel the extremists and has created a culture of grievance and victimhood.

The challenge of confronting terrorists who have a vast support network is huge; Pakistan’s fledgling democracy needs help from the rest of the world. We are on the frontlines of the war on terrorism. We have 150,000 soldiers fighting al-Qaida, the Taliban and their extremist allies along the border with Afghanistan far more troops than Nato has in Afghanistan.

Nearly 2,000 Pakistanis have lost their lives to terrorism in this year alone, including 1,400 civilians and 600 security personnel ranging in rank from ordinary soldier to threestar general. There have been more than 600 terrorism-related incidents in Pakistan this year. The terrorists have been set back by our aggressive war against them in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the Pashtun-majority areas bordering Afghanistan. Six hundred militants have been killed in recent attacks, hundreds by Pakistani F-16 jet strikes in the last two months. Terrorism is a regional as well as a global threat, and it needs to be battled collectively. We understand the domestic political considerations in India in the aftermath of Mumbai. Nevertheless, accusations of complicity on Pakistan’s part only complicate the already complex situation. For India, Pakistan and the US, the best response to the Mumbai carnage is to coordinate in counteracting the scourge of terrorism.

Benazir Bhutto once said that democracy is the best revenge against the abuses of dictatorship. In the current environment, reconciliation and rapprochement is the best revenge against the dark forces that are trying to provoke a confrontation between Pakistan and India, and ultimately a clash of civilizations.

Absurd Provocation, Uncalled For Reaction

The road towards political gain through fomenting religious categorisation can only lead to disaster and death. Anyone would have thought that India would have learned that lesson with Partition, but evidently not as subsequent riots have shown us. But the current climate of outrage and acrimony over the Union Home Minister’s remarks are a cynical attempt to create something out of nothing. The onus for first strike has to lie with Sushil Kumar Shinde’s whose gratuitous jibe about the RSS and BJP running terror camps enraged the main opposition party. The remark was unnecessary at this point in time – nothing new has happened on this front.

The BJP’s reactions, however, are equally unnecessary. For all their huffing and puffing, there is little doubt that people inspired by the Sangh Parivar version of Hinduism have been involved in planting bombs in trains and mosques and that some of their members have rushed to the defence of the accused. The BJP has to decide whether it is against all forms of terrorism or not and whether it is fair to call Muslims terrorists and start foaming at the mouth when someone else calls Hindus terrorists. If terrorism cannot be related to religion A then it cannot be related to religion B either.

Having said that, it is also true that terrorists get inspired by someone or something and very often it is religion. The jihadis of the Al-Qaeda and similar groups have been promised some kind of religious reward to motivate (or fool) them. Similarly, members of groups like Abhinav Bharat are made to believe that their acts of terrorism will somehow help Hinduism. The argument cannot be that investigators and prosecutors are prejudiced when it comes to one community when your supporters are involved and are free and fair when others are caught. In fact all evidence points to the fact that investigators in India are usually biased against Muslims.

Unfortunately, the media, especially television news, is playing a perilous game here by egging on this apparent Hindu terrorism versus Muslim terrorism war of words. As it happens, there is no event around which this rage is based. By fanning flames of religion-based anger, there is a possibility of enflaming religious-based anger. This is a similar irresponsibility shown by television just recently over border skirmishes between India and Pakistan: an attempt to create news rather than report it.

For the political parties, words of outrage over religion and terror are blatant and deliberate moves to manipulate political discourse in the country and deflect attention from real issues. The UPA and the Congress are struggling with their falling trust deficit with the electorate. The BJP has just come through a presidential battle with palpable wounds.

The lack of maturity by our political class is self-evident. Fomenting religious is evil and short-sighted – whoever does it and whichever religion is targeted. At some point in our history we have to let go off religion as a vote-catcher and move on to more worthwhile issues. The misuse of the secular nature of our 

Constitution by our political parties has only led to problems for the people of India and indeed of the subcontinent. Surely, we cannot afford another conflagration?

Opinion: ‘Terrorists want to destroy Pakistan, too’

By Asif Ali Zardari

The recent death and destruction in Mumbai, India, brought to my mind the death and destruction in Karachi on October 18, 2007, when terrorists attacked a festive homecoming rally for my wife, Benazir Bhutto. Nearly 150 Pakistanis were killed and more than 450 were injured. The terrorist attacks in Mumbai may be a news story for most of the world. For me it is a painful reality of shared experience. Having seen my wife escape death by a hairbreadth on that day in Karachi, I lost her in a second, unfortunately successful, attempt two months later.

The Mumbai attacks were directed not only at India but also at Pakistan’s new democratic government and the peace process with India that we have initiated. Supporters of authoritarianism in Pakistan and non-state actors with a vested interest in perpetuating conflict do not want change in Pakistan to take root. To foil the designs of the terrorists, the two great nations of Pakistan and India, born together from the same revolution and mandate in 1947, must continue to move forward with the peace process. Pakistan is shocked at the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. We can identify with India’s pain. I am especially empathetic. I feel this pain every time I look into the eyes of my children.

Pakistan is committed to the pursuit, arrest, trial and punishment of anyone involved in these heinous attacks. But we caution against hasty judgments and inflammatory statements. As was demonstrated in Sunday’s raids, which resulted in the arrest of militants, Pakistan will take action against the non-state actors found within our territory, treating them as criminals, terrorists and murderers. Not only are the terrorists not linked to the government of Pakistan in any way, we are their targets and we continue to be their victims. India is a mature nation and a stable democracy. Pakistanis appreciate India’s democratic contributions. But as rage fueled by the Mumbai attacks catches on, Indians must pause and take a breath. India and Pakistan and the rest of the world must work together to track down the terrorists who caused mayhem in Mumbai, attacked New York, London and Madrid in the past, and destroyed the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad in September. The terrorists who killed my wife are connected by ideology to these enemies of civilization. These militants didn’t arise from whole cloth. Pakistan was an ally of the West throughout the Cold War. The world worked to exploit religion against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan by empowering the most fanatic extremists as an instrument of destruction of a superpower. Strategy worked, but its legacy was the creation of an extremist militia with its own dynamic.

Pakistan continues to pay the price: the legacy of dictatorship, the fatigue of fanaticism, the dismemberment of civil society and the destruction of our democratic infrastructure. The resulting poverty continues to fuel the extremists and has created a culture of grievance and victimhood.

The challenge of confronting terrorists who have a vast support network is huge; Pakistan’s fledgling democracy needs help from the rest of the world. We are on the frontlines of the war on terrorism. We have 150,000 soldiers fighting al-Qaida, the Taliban and their extremist allies along the border with Afghanistan far more troops than Nato has in Afghanistan.

Nearly 2,000 Pakistanis have lost their lives to terrorism in this year alone, including 1,400 civilians and 600 security personnel ranging in rank from ordinary soldier to threestar general. There have been more than 600 terrorism-related incidents in Pakistan this year. The terrorists have been set back by our aggressive war against them in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the Pashtun-majority areas bordering Afghanistan. Six hundred militants have been killed in recent attacks, hundreds by Pakistani F-16 jet strikes in the last two months. Terrorism is a regional as well as a global threat, and it needs to be battled collectively. We understand the domestic political considerations in India in the aftermath of Mumbai. Nevertheless, accusations of complicity on Pakistan’s part only complicate the already complex situation. For India, Pakistan and the US, the best response to the Mumbai carnage is to coordinate in counteracting the scourge of terrorism.

Benazir Bhutto once said that democracy is the best revenge against the abuses of dictatorship. In the current environment, reconciliation and rapprochement is the best revenge against the dark forces that are trying to provoke a confrontation between Pakistan and India, and ultimately a clash of civilizations.

Insurance: The Most Misunderstood Industry

In a new book titled, Insurance and Behavioral Economics: Improving Decisions in the Most Misunderstood Industry, authors Howard Kunreuther and Mark Pauly, both professors at Wharton, and Urban Institute researcher Stacey McMorrow analyze the behavior of individuals, insurance industry leaders and policy makers, all of whom bring certain behavioral biases to their understanding of the insurance industry. The result, say the authors, is an overall failure to grasp how insurance can fulfill the roles it is designed to play: reducing future losses and financially protecting those at risk.

In the following essay, Kunreuther and Pauly elaborate on some of the key findings presented in their book.

Insurance is an extraordinarily useful tool to manage risk. When it works as intended, it provides financial protection to individuals and firms who pay insurers a relatively small premium to protect themselves against a large loss. But insurance is broadly misunderstood by consumers, insurance executives and regulators.

Many consumers do not voluntarily buy coverage against potentially risky and serious losses. Case in point: Fewer than half the residents in flood and hurricane-prone areas were insured against water damage from Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy. And a significant fraction of the population does not have health insurance today, despite the large premium subsidies currently offered in the form of Medicare and Medicaid and tax breaks for employment-based health insurance. A principal reason for this is that many people tend to view insurance as an investment rather than a protective measure. If, after several years, one doesn’t make a claim, there is a feeling that one’s premium has been wasted.

Insurance firms also behave strangely. After they suffer a severe loss, they may decide that a risk is completely uninsurable rather than determining whether they should increase their premium. For example, prior to 9/11, insurers did not price terrorism risk when providing coverage against damage to commercial property. After 9/11, most carriers refused to offer terrorism insurance because they feared catastrophic losses from future attacks.

State regulators often constrain insurance premiums because they are concerned that insurance will not be “affordable,” especially to those who are at higher risk. In Florida, the state set up its own insurance company called “Citizens” that offers highly subsidized premiums to residents in hurricane-prone areas. Private insurers could not compete against these prices, and Citizens became the largest insurer of homeowners’ coverage in the state. All taxpayers in Florida will be required to help pay for Citizens’ losses, should the state be hit by a devastating hurricane.

Similarly, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) health reform legislation requires sellers of individual and small group insurance to sell coverage to all comers at premiums that do not take into account the buyer’s medical risk, given age and local prices for health services. These policies assist those in the high risk category but impose additional costs on lower risks in the form of higher medical premiums.

Why do consumers, insurance firms and regulators behave as they do?

There is a tendency for those at risk to assume that disaster losses or major health related expenses will not happen to them. Given this view, they feel no need to purchase insurance protection. Only after suffering a loss will consumers voluntarily buy insurance. After a disaster, insurers may decide to restrict coverage, and state regulators are likely to prevent private insurers from charging premiums that reflect the actual risk.

Behavior of this kind defeats the three principal purposes of insurance: to provide information via premiums as to how serious your risk is; to provide motivation for undertaking financial protection against an event that could produce a significant loss but has a low probability of occurrence; and to offer incentives in the form of premium reductions to reward people who invest in risk-reducing measures.

Incentives, rules and institutions that encourage a constructive role for insurance will ultimately improve individual and social welfare. Several recent pieces of legislation have set the tone for appropriately dealing with risk.

In light of the private insurance industry’s refusal to provide sufficient amounts of terrorism coverage following 9/11, Congress passed the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA) in 2002. It provided taxpayer-backed protection to insurers against catastrophic losses from future terrorist attacks if they agreed to make coverage widely available. As a result, businesses are now able to purchase reasonably priced terrorism coverage. To date, there has been no need to call on taxpayers to fund the guarantee. TRIA is up for renewal in 2014, and there is an opportunity to re-examine the appropriate roles of the private sector and the federal government in providing coverage.

The Biggert-Waters Act, passed in July 2012, proposed major reforms to the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) over the next five years. Future premiums will reflect risk (tied both to specific location and expected climate change) so individuals are aware of the hazard they face. They can also be rewarded with lower insurance rates if they undertake protective measures. FEMA is in the process of developing more accurate flood maps to set these rates. The Act authorizes $400 billion per year for this purpose over fiscal years 2013 – 2017.

The ACA requires insurers to offer insurance to all residents in the United States who do not currently have coverage through either their job or a public plan. It also levees a tax penalty on those who choose to be uninsured. To deal with the affordability issue, premiums are to be subsidized for some low- and middle-income households. However, with the exception of offering premium discounts for those who engage in a limited set of less risky behaviors (such as not smoking), premiums after 2014 no longer reflect individual medical risk factors. There is thus some concern that the penalties specified by the ACA may not be enough to encourage low risk individuals to buy insurance because of the high premiums they will have to pay.

What can be done to make insurance a better policy tool and to avoid adverse side effects of the well-intentioned programs already in place?

One way to convince people of the long-term benefits of insurance is to stretch the time horizon over which the event can occur. Studies have shown that people are much more likely to buy insurance or invest in protective measures if an event, such as a hurricane, that has a one in 100 chance of occurring next year is presented as having a greater than one in five chance of happening at least once in the next 25 years. And if the disaster does not happen – well, the truth is that the best return on an insurance policy is no return at all. One should celebrate not having a major loss!

Insurers should construct worst-case scenarios for rare events. They can then determine a premium that reflects their best estimate of their expected future risks, factoring in the uncertainty of the event’s happening. Insurers could also consider offering multi-year policies if state regulators allow them to price coverage that reflects risk over that period. A multi-year insurance policy with risk-based premiums coupled with a multi-year home-improvement loan to pay for risk-reducing measures may enable policyholders to reduce their overall costs.

State insurance regulators should be appointed rather than elected so they are less prone to being influenced by special interest groups and lobbyists. Regulatory decisions should make transparent who stands to benefit from a subsidized insurance program, and who will be paying part of that cost to protect others. State insurance programs, such as Citizens in Florida, should indicate to all residents in the state that property insurance on homes near the ocean (including second homes) is likely to be highly subsidized, and those living elsewhere may bear the expenses of the clean-up following the next severe hurricane.

These concepts, if followed, will increase the chances that insurance is better understood so it can fulfill the roles it is designed to play: reducing future losses and financially protecting those at risk.

Zakir Naik's IRF's Alleged ISIS Connection Makes A Strong Case For Action Against Preacher

By M H AHSSAN | INNLIVE

Radical religious preachers who do sermons never begin their discourse saying thus. "Here I'm going to start my indoctrination session to prove that my religion is better than yours. In the next few hours, I'll do my best to convince you of my idea and ultimately convert you to my religion."

Instead, they typically play mind games with the enchanted listeners, often selectively quoting (rather twisting) the lines from sacred scriptures, to impose the ultimate idea of religious supremacy in the audience's psyche and ultimately establish why one should embrace that particular religion. This is arguably the trade technique of televangelists such as Zakir Naik.

Sunday Profile - Terror: Can This Man Win The Battle?

General Raheel Sharif has dealt well with military and political tensions so far. But the Pak army chief's real test will be how he deals with terror groups dotting the frontier regions.

In Friday, when General Raheel Sharif signed the execution warrant for Dr Usman (aka Mohammed Aqeel), he crossed an invisible line. Usman, who had led a 10man assault team which attacked the Pakistan army headquarters in 2009, taking 42 hostages and killing 14 troops, should have been executed a long time ago. He was spared because the Punjab Taliban led by Usman threatened dire revenge if he was executed. This time, the general had his way.

Hyderabad Blasts: Why India Is So Poor At Handling Terror

The Hyderabad twin-blasts yesterday illustrate once again why we are never going to be any good at handling terror.
 
We have a blunderbuss like Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde claiming that he had information about the possibility of a terror strike, but no answers on why something pre-emptive – even getting police forces ready to deal with the consequences – was not done.
 
Even if there had been no intelligence, any one with reasonable mental intelligence could have surmised after the hanging of Afzal Guru that something was round the corner.
 
But, instead, we had the Home Minister talking foolishly about the BJP and RSS running terror camps – exactly what Pakistan would have wanted to hear. Shinde merely confirmed to eager Pakistani ears that there are enough home-grown terror groups in India. So when the ISI unleashes its own dogs of terror, we can’t easily point a finger at them.
 
But this is not just about Shinde’s failures either. If reports that the BJP has called a bandh in Andhra to protest against the terror strike are true, that is even more irresponsible. A bandh serves no purpose at a moment of tragedy.
 
Point 1: You cannot fight terror if the country’s principal political parties are at war or trying to score political points against one another. Even assuming Shinde was right about the Sangh running terror camps, all he had to do was build the evidence, arrest and prosecute the guilty. Can you fight terror by seeking to make political capital out of it and making mindless remarks about Saffron terror, and then apologising for it?
 
The second issue where India is failing is in the area of centre-state cooperation. As Firstpost has already argued today, there is a strong case for setting up a National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC) so that we can bring our combined resources together to fight terror.
 
But this can’t happen in our federal system where law and order is a state subject. To fight terror, you need to get the states on board since it is also manifestly in their interest to cooperate. No state in India is actually immune to terror.
 
Here, once again, the finger of accusation must point more towards the centre. States are deeply suspicious about the centre ability to be evenhanded when it comes to dealing with non-Congress-ruled states. This is the prime reason why they won’t cooperate on NCTC.
 
Consider the centre’s poor record on cooperation with states.
 
First, it will send former intelligence officials and Congress time-servers to be governors of opposition-ruled states. People like HR Bhardwaj in Karnataka and Kamla Beniwal in Gujarat have had daggers drawn with state governments. A former National Security Advisor in Governor of Bengal. How are states supposed to work in cooperation with the centre when governors cannot be trusted by elected governments?
 
Second, if the states appear to have blocked the NCTC, the centre is not exactly playing honest broker in the game. Many bills legislated by opposition-ruled states for dealing with organised crime and terrorism have been blocked by the centre.
 
A report in The Indian Express last February noted that “more than 20 bills have been kept hanging in states where the BJP is in power, some for more than two years now. These have been kept pending either by the governor, who actually cannot withhold consent, or by the President, whose approval is necessary for the Bill to become law.”
 
Among the bills were at least two to counter terrorism. One is GUJCOC (Gujarat Control of Organised Crime) in Gujarat and the other is MPTDACOC (MP Terrorism and Disruptive Activities and Control of Organised Crimes) in Madhya Pradesh. Both are bills these states consider vital to deal with terror groups.
 
The centre claims there is no need for these laws since its own Unlawful Activities Prevention Act is good enough. But do we have great faith in UAPA? There have been 11 terror strikes since 26/11 in India, and UAPA has been a miserable failure. In any case, why deny states their own stronger laws? It is worth noting that the existence of UAPA did not stop the centre from allowing Maharashtra to have its own MCOCA (the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act). GUJCOC is almost a replica of MCOCA, but it’s no-go just because Gujarat is run by the BJP’s Narendra Modi. Ditto for Madhya Pradesh.
 
Point 2: By playing politics with laws legally passed by state legislatures, especially BJP-ruled ones, the centre has essentially defeated itself on NCTC. It is largely up to the Centre to allay this mistrust by ensuring that state initiatives are not bottled up either by lackey governors or by the central government. How can the states buy into NCTC, if this law is used as another instrument to target the political opposition? The centre routinely uses the Intelligence Bureau (IB) to spy on its political rivals; the CBI is often used for targeting opposition parties. Which state CM in his right mind will then expect the NCTC to be used any better?
 
The third issue is one of playing politics with terror. And here, the Congress, the BJP and the other opposition parties are all guilty. The net result is a complete demoralisation of the police force, which then learns to live with politics and does not do its job.
 
When a police official is killed by terrorists in Batla House, Congress General Secretary Digvijaya Singh goes around telling Muslims that it may have been a fake encounter. It is one thing to assure a fair investigation, quite another to pretend that nobody in the police force was killed by militants.
 
In the run-up to 26/11, the BJP and the Shiv Sena were targeting Anti-Terrorism Squad Hemant Karkare for unearthing one Hindu terror module in connection with the Malegaon blasts. Karkare was reinstated as a hero only when he was martyred during 26/11. This, in fact, led other communal elements to throw another red herring in our paths by claiming that since the BJP and Sena had targeted Karkare, it was not Pakistan-trained terrorists, but someone else who may have been behind 26/11.
 
The situation is not any different with the other opposition parties that depend on vote-banks of various kinds. Politicians in Punjab and Tamil Nadu have tried to stall the executions of Balwant Singh Rajaona and Rajiv Gandhi’s killers a vote-bank issue.
 
A member of Mulayam Singh’s party offered a multi-crore reward for any Muslim who would bump off the Danish cartoonists who allegedly defamed the Prophet. Congress and Left politicians routinely deny there is any infiltration in Assam from Bangladesh – primarily to guard their Muslim vote bank. BJP politicians want to pretend that the infiltration is excessive (which it might be, but no one can stop demography).
 
Point 3: If political parties are going to adjust their positions on security issues based on vote-bank considerations, how is it possible to have any sensible approach to terrorism measures?
 
The bottomline: India’s politicians have made it impossible to deal with terror. The UPA government at the centre is more guilty than most in politicising terror and alienating rival politicians and states from coming together to tackle terror from a common platform.
 
Right now, India needs a unifier as Home Minister, and a Congress party that will not play politics with opposition-ruled states.
 
A crass political player like Sushil Kumar Shinde is not helping matters.

Too Many Cooks Spoil the Food

By M H Ahssan

Creating new security agencies is not the answer to our problems

The government has at last — after the country and its people have paid a heavy price — come up with a proposal to constitute a National Investigation Agency (NIA) and given more teeth to anti-terror laws. The NIA is “to investigate and prosecute offences affecting the sovereignty, security and integrity of India, security of state, friendly relations with foreign states and offences under Acts enacted to implement international treaties, agreements, conventions and resolutions of the United Nations.”

The NIA is to be entrusted with the investigation and prosecution of offences falling under the Anti-Hijacking Act, Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Civil Aviation Act, the SAARC Convention on Suppression of Terrorism Act, Weapons of Mass Destruction Act, Atomic Energy Act, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and offences against the state mentioned in Chapter VI of the Indian Penal Code.

The concept is excellent. That such an agency was urgently required goes without saying. But the framers of the Bill, passed by Parliament and awaiting presidential assent, have made two cardinal mistakes. They have created a new agency, adding to the plethora of law enforcement agencies. Besides, they forgot that any new institution takes a couple of years to grow and become operational. The country is on fire. Terrorist incidents are happening with distressing frequency. We need the institution to become operational within the shortest possible time — a few weeks, if possible. And it is possible.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) already has a Special Crimes Division and an Economic Offences Wing. It has been taking up complex cases having interstate linkages or even international ramifications so far. The infrastructure is there. All the government had to do was to enlarge its mandate and give it additional manpower. The Delhi Special Police Establishment Act had to be replaced by a new law. However, for inexplicable reasons, the government decided to create a new body, which would take time to grow and acquire cutting-edge capabilities. Till then, the country will have to suffer turf wars among the different law enforcement agencies and the police of different states working at cross purposes or at least without adequate coordination.

The National Investigation Agency Bill, 2008, is a classic case of good intentions being defeated by unimaginative and bureaucratic thinking. All the optimism generated by the creation of the body would evaporate before long.

The Supreme Court of India had, in its judgment in writ petition (civil) No. 310 of 1996, observed that the suggestion to entrust the CBI with the investigation of cases “emanating from international terrorism or organised
crimes like drug trafficking, money laundering, smuggling of weapons from across the borders, counterfeiting of currency or the activities of mafia groups with transnational links” appeared “quite useful”.

However, before issuing any directions on the subject, it sought the views of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), the Sorabjee committee and the Bureau of Police Research & Development. Interestingly, all three bodies endorsed the suggestion. The NHRC clearly said that the CBI should be “entrusted with the responsibility of investigating federal crimes”. It is strange that the government chose to ignore the observations of the Supreme Court and the considered views of three expert bodies.

The US administration found that the responsibilities for homeland security were dispersed among more than 100 different government organisations. It was felt that “America needs a single, unified, homeland security structure that will improve protection against today’s threats and be flexible enough to help meet the unknown threats of the future”. Accordingly, the Department of Homeland Security was created and the various security organisations were amalgamated under four divisions: Border and Transportation Security, Emergency Preparedness and Response, Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Countermeasures, and Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection. The emphasis was on unification. In India, on the other hand, we are pursuing diversification.

On the legislative front, the government has chosen the easier option of strengthening the provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA). It would have been better if a new anti-terror law had been enacted. However, considering its political compulsions, the additional clauses incorporated in the UAPA are quite satisfactory. An accused could now be kept in police custody for 30 days, the time limit for framing the chargesheet has been extended to 180 days, a foreigner involved in terrorism-related crime is not to be granted bail, and the government could attach, freeze or seize the financial assets of a person involved in terrorism.

The Bill also states that if a person is found in possession of arms or explosives and there is reason to believe that such arms or explosives were used in the commission of a terrorist crime, the court shall presume, unless the contrary is proved, that the accused committed the offence. The one significant provision, which was there in the Prevention of Terrorism Act but has not found place in the UAPA, concerns the admissibility of confession before a police officer as evidence. Perhaps the politicians would agree to incorporate that clause as well in due course of time, after some more terrorist incidents. Terrorists must already be preparing to hit their next target in India. Are we ready? A few halting steps in the right direction have been taken. But the government has to cover much more ground.

Faith in India's army shaken by blasts

By M H Ahssan

Investigations into recent bomb blasts in India have led to the arrest of several Hindus and for the first time ever, a serving officer of the Indian army.

The arrests have triggered heated debate on whether the arrests indicate the existence of "Hindu terrorism". More worryingly, the probes point to the possibility of the hitherto secular and apolitical Indian army being infected by the communal virus.

Six people were killed and over 80 injured in blasts on September 29 in the Muslim-dominated town of Malegaon, about 260 kilometers from Mumbai. A few hours later, a bomb went off near a mosque in Modasa town in Gujarat, where Muslims were offering special Ramadan prayers, killing two people.

Investigations have led to the arrest of about 10 people, including Ajay Rahirkar, Sameer Kulkarni, Rakesh Dhawade (all members of the Hindu extremist organization, the Abhinav Bharat), Dayanand Pandey (a self-styled Hindu "guru") Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur (an "ascetic" who is a member of the Durga Vahini - the women's wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad - and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad - the students' wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party - BJP).

These were not members of fringe, underground outfits but people with links to the BJP and its fraternal organizations. Thakur, for instance, is known to be close to BJP president Rajnath Singh and Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan. There are photographs of her with these BJP bigwigs. Investigations are revealing that their activities might have been funded by business houses as well.

Neither Hindu extremism nor the involvement of Sangh Parivar (a group of organizations that espouse Hindutva or Hindu supremacy) activists in acts of terrorism is news. Activists of Bajrang Dal and the VHP have engaged in attacks in the past that should have been described as terrorism. They were not. On several occasions in the past couple of years when bombs went off in mosques and Muslim-dominated areas, in shrines and trains, the needle of suspicion did point in the direction of Hindu terror outfits. But investigations into these blasts never led to the arrest of Hindus.

That has now changed with the investigations into the Malegaon blasts. The hand of Hindu right-wing organizations in terrorist attacks in India has now been laid bare.

But even as Indians are heatedly debating whether "Hindu terrorism" exists, another worrying issue has been thrown up by the investigations. Three men arrested in connection with the Malegaon blasts are from the armed forces. They include one serving officer, Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Shrikant Purohit, and two retired officers, Major Ramesh Upadhyay and Colonel Shailesh Raikar.

Thirty-eight-year-old Purohit has the dubious distinction of being the first serving officer of the Indian army to be arrested in connection with a terrorist attack. He has been described as the "mastermind" of the Malegaon blasts. He allegedly procured the explosives (he is said to have provided RDX from the army depot) and funding for the blasts, provided training and co-ordinated the blasts. He is said to have arranged for fake military ID cards providing access for Abhinav Bharat activists to army bases. Purohit is said to have worked several stints in military intelligence. His role in several other terrorist attacks over the past few years, including the February 2007 bombing of the Samjhauta Express or Friendship Train linking Delhi with Lahore in Pakistan, is now under the scanner.

Upadhyay, the head of the Abhinav Bharat's political wing, was Purohit's link with the organization. He is said to have provided training in bomb-making to the blast suspects. As for Raikar, he is said to have allowed the Abhinav Bharat and other Hindu extremist groups to hold training camps on the campus of the Bhonsala Military School in Nashik of which he was commandant.
Reports in the media suggest that more serving military officers could be detained in the coming days. A senior officer is believed to have had prior knowledge of the Malegaon blasts.

The arrest of serving and retired army officers in connection with terrorist attacks has triggered a spate of worrying questions. Have Hindu supremacist and extremist ideologies penetrated the hitherto secular Indian army? Are Purohit and others an aberration or do they point to a growing trend in the Indian armed forces?

Serving and retired army officers - irrespective of their religious backgrounds - fiercely defend the army's secular credentials. "There is no communalism in the army. In my 37 to 38 years of service, I came across just one or two odd individuals who had a communal mindset," retired Major General Afsir Karim recalled in a recent interview. He drew attention to the fact that Indian army regiments are organized along ethnic lines not based on religion and that in the army you are identified by the regiment to which you belong. "Who are you? I will say I am Kumaon. That's the ethos that prevails in army, even now," he said.

"The terrorism-related activities of three army men cannot be taken to be reflective of the entire armed forces or even of a sizeable section," a serving officer in the Northern Command told Asia Times Online. "Soldiers do practice their faith and visit places of worship but their faith is their personal business. The army allows practice of religion but discourages communal sentiments," he said.

This view is echoed by Maroof Raza, an ex-army officer. While the officers' corps has become more representative of the middle class and therefore more "easily influenced by hardline religious propagandists, right-wing sentiments are certainly never aired," he writes in the newsmagazine Outlook. "Those that fall prey to propaganda of the Sangh Parivar and its jingoistic outfits are still ... few and far between in our uniformed forces. ... To paint, therefore, the entire olive green force with a saffron [the color of the Hindu right-wing organizations] brush is rather unfair."

Indeed, the actions of a fringe should not be seen to be reflective of the institution itself. The army has a long and proud tradition of being a secular and apolitical force. Unlike other armed forces in the region, it has stayed away from assuming a political role and its soldiers are known for their professionalism. And unlike the country's police, who are known to have supported the majority Hindus in communal riot situations, the armed forces have always acted as a neutral force, especially in communally polarized situations. Could the presence of officers with links to Hindu extremist outfits - however few these might be - change this?

There have been instances in the past when soldiers reacted to issues as members of their religious community rather than as Indians. The army's storming of the Golden Temple in Amritsar in 1984 to flush the Sikh holy shrine of terrorists who had set up base there triggered an angry response from a section of Sikh soldiers in the army. Their religious sentiments hurt by the army's destruction of their shrine, some of them mutinied. Some are even said to have joined the ranks of the Sikh militants. But even that serious breakdown of discipline did not have long-term implications for the armed forces.

That seems to have changed in the 1990s. That was the decade which saw India plunged into serious communal polarization, riots and terrorist violence. That was also the decade that saw a spectacular rise in the political fortunes of the BJP. There are any number of examples from the 1998 to 2004 period (when the BJP led the coalition government) of the army being involved in the BJP's political/religious activity. A report in the Outlook points out that in 1999, for instance, the 3rd Division of the army "worked overtime to facilitate the Sindhu yatra, an event that was planned and executed by the Dharma Yatra Sangh, an arm of the VHP".

Not only did the BJP draw the armed forces into its politico-religious activities, but in the years since several retired officers have joined the BJP. The presence of ex-army officers in extremist outfits linked to this party was to be expected.

But what of serving army officers? Armed forces the world over are conservative institutions. Their personnel are drawn to right-wing ideas, however apolitical the army as an institution might be. In India, the BJP's "muscular approach" strikes a chord among a section of the soldiers. The communal and hate politics practiced by politicians in India was bound to have its impact on at least a few soldiers. To expect the armed forces to remain completely impervious to the virus of communal politics is rather unrealistic.

Investigations into the Malegaon blasts have revealed the involvement of a handful of serving and former army officers. But to brush this aside as an aberration would be a blunder.

Criticism of the armed forces' violation of human rights in insurgency-wridden areas and of their corruption has often been frowned on in the country. "It will weaken the morale of the armed forces," is a cry that is raised to silence criticism. In the process, rot has been allowed to set in.

The investigations into the Malegaon blasts reveal that the armed forces are vulnerable to communal and extremist ideologies. To ignore this would be disastrous not just for the armed forces but also for India as a secular democracy.

Wake-up call for Everybody

By M H Ahssan

Politicans need to rise above petty politics and put national interests at the forefront

What happened in Mumbai on the night of November 26 was not similar to the other terrorist attacks which this country has been subjected to often in the recent past. Some may see comparisons with the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, which exacted a toll of over 200 lives, or the multiple explosive attacks on the Mumbai suburban trains in 2006.

This, in fact, was a more diabolical attack which targeted foreign businessmen and tourists in India and a clear assertion, as it were, of the jihadi war on crusaders (Americans and Europeans), Zionists (Israelis) and the Hindus. It was targeted at damaging India’s relations with the US and UK and Israel and the commercial relations between India and the US, Western Europe and Israel. It was also aimed at demonstrating, on the eve of some state elections and a few months before the general elections, how vulnerable the Indian state is to terrorist threat and, in the process, cause deep fissures in our polity.

It also exposed the fact that while our anti-terror intelligence tended to focus on intelligence collection on our own people and that too in a fragmented way, statewise, the enemies of India can strike at it from the seas, perhaps from across the state and international boundaries. It thoroughly exposed the weaknesses in our security surveillance system.

We have to wait for a few more days to have a comprehensive assessment of the operation and the identity of those who masterminded this attack. Unlike the previous terrorist attacks in India, which were tended to be ignored by the West, this time foreigners have been killed and their commercial interests are affected. Therefore there is bound to be a lot more foreign interest in this terrorist outrage. One of the queries will be whether this is an operation by jihadis and rogue elements in the Pakistan-based ISI who are opposed to the policies of the newly established democratic government in Pakistan.

It is obvious that this meticulously planned and executed operation would have taken time, a lot of expertise in training the terrorists and elaborate logistics. Since some of the terrorists have been reported to have been captured it should be possible to get information on planners of this attack.

The Indian political parties will now be on trial over whether they will put national interests above their party interests. In the US, when the 9/11 attack took place, the leaders of the Democratic Party immediately rallied behind the Republican Administration and pledged their full support. The Patriot Act, with stringent anti-terrorist measures, passed with bipartisan support. The 9/11 attack was investigated by a bipartisan commission and the recommendations of the commission were implemented. While there may be criticisms in the US about the severity of the Patriot Act and follow-up actions of the Bush administration including the rendition procedures and torture allegations and Guantanamo Bay detention camps, the bipartisan cooperation on anti-terrorist operations have proved so effective that US has not suffered a second attack after 9/11.

Compare that with the behaviour of the Indian political parties. The leader of the much reviled Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), Hemant Karkare ,was the first among the fatal casualties in this attack as he led his men to fight back the terrorists without any bias, in the discharge of his duties. Do we expect our politicians to apologise to his memory at this stage for casting aspersions on him?

There has been a crying need for the country to have a federal integrated anti-terrorist organisation. Yet some of the chief ministers of the states have been opposing it on the grounds that under the Constitution, law and order is exclusively a state subject. They have no constructive alternative on how to carry out effectively intelligence collection, coordination and counter-terrorist activity across state borders on an all-India basis or how to coordinate the counter-terrorist intelligence within a state with activities of terrorists from across the international borders.

India is perhaps the only country in which a terrorist is not viewed as a terrorist but seen through a communal prism. Terrorism has to be fought effectively by curbing the activities of the terrorists. Law does not condone a crime like murder because there are extenuating circumstances. That may be taken into account in sentencing the convicted. While any group of people may have legitimate grievances and they have a right to agitate to get the grievance rectified in a democracy; no group has a right to resort to terrorist violence and kill innocent people. Instead of adopting such a democratic and humanitarian approach many of our political parties prefer to look at the problem of terrorism from the point of view of electoral politics.

Further there is a very well-known nexus between the politicians, organised crime and sections of bureaucracy which provides a shield behind which the enemies of India are able to operate their terrorist instrumentalities. Therefore fighting terrorism in Indian conditions has proved to be far more difficult than in the rest of the Democratic world.

One wonders whether in the aftermath of this terrible attack on Mumbai our major political parties will unite to create an integrated anti-terrorist organisation like the Department of Homeland Security set up in the US after 9/11. What is more likely is terrorism is likely to become a contentious electoral issue in the forthcoming general elections. Those out to hurt India through a thousand cuts can always take into account our disunity, lack of commitment to national interests on the part of many of our political parties and the politician-organised crime-bureaucracy nexus in planning their attacks on India. It is perhaps because of its manifest destiny India has survived and prospered this far in spite of our politicians who will not unite even under such terrible attacks.

Opinion: Enough Condolences! Terrorism Requires Global Solutions

By RUMAISA KHAN | INNLIVE

This is not the world I have known throughout my life. Warriors and soldiers have always put their lives on the line during armed conflicts, and innocents have always been caught in the crossfire.

However, nowadays we are all potential targets of perverted death cults - some covertly supported by states - that think nothing of bombing or mowing down children. You would be forgiven for thinking a new, vicious species has evolved, one that resembles human beings but without human emotion.

Hyderabad Shows Congress Isn’t Incapable, It’s Complicit

In pursuit of its crass vote-bank politics, ever since it came to power in 2004, the Congress has not only dismantled anti-terror instruments like Pota but also allowed jihadis a free run of India

It’s amazing how ‘sources’ in security and intelligence agencies rush to plant information in media, especially news television channels, within minutes after a terrorist attack in this country. As much was witnessed last Thursday when two bombs went off within minutes of each other on a crowded street of Dilsukhnagar of Hyderabad (a third bomb was later found and defused), killing at least 16 people and injuring scores of others. As is usually the case, the excited chatter of blabbering television anchors and reporters soon gave way to ‘exclusive’ stories quoting ‘sources’ in security and intelligence agencies on possible groups behind the attack, how there was prior knowledge of ‘something being planned’ but nothing was done by way of preventive action, and the need to ‘revamp’ our intelligence gathering system.

Much of what is said is as unintelligible as the commentary on and reportage of events. What is amazing is that these ‘sources’ do not feel the necessity to push the envelope and force their organisational and political bosses to take pre-emptive action. For instance, if there is adequate knowledge of sleeper cells of jihadi organisations, then why aren’t those cells busted before they can be activated to carry out a terrorist attack? And if these ‘sources’ have tried to force precipitate action but failed, and feel frustrated by the ‘system’, then they should boldly blow the whistle and expose their bosses who are no less than collaborators. That is unlikely to happen, for these ‘sources’ either do not exist or, if they do, they are just as thoroughly useless as the bosses to whom they report to in the organisational hierarchy and political leadership of the day.

That said, little or no purpose is served by getting distracted by the media’s obsession with grabbing eyeballs by needlessly sensationalising events that have a bearing on national security. It would be in order to point out the sharp contrast between the coverage of a terrorist attack in our media and that of, say, Israel. While our media, more so news channels, do not hesitate from indulging in what can be described, without fear of contradiction, as reckless kite-flying, the Israeli media would double check every word and weigh every utterance before putting it out in the public domain. 

An example would suffice. The Jerusalem Post had commissioned me to report on the terrorist bombing of a car in which the wife of the Defence Attache posted at the Embassy of Israel in New Delhi was travelling and the subsequent investigations and arrest of a key suspect in the crime. Each story was checked, edited, revised and played back to me for approval before being printed. On the first day I was slightly irritated by what to me appeared to be gratuitous changes made in the copy, but over the next few weeks I sensed a pattern to the fine but rigorous filtration process.

It so happened that I was in Israel a couple of months after the incident and mentioned my experience with the desk at The Jerusalem Post to some senior journalist friends. They said it was a standard practice, largely meant to keep speculation and crucial information out of the public domain. It made eminent sense. Speculation does not change facts or alter the reality. And crucial information if put out in the public domain, even in bits and pieces, can seriously compromise both investigations and the larger counter-terrorism strategy. 

Much as the media would want it that way, the state cannot combat terrorism, either by way of preventive strikes or reactive action, in the glare of television cameras or by taking the media into confidence. It does not work that way anywhere in the world; in India it is doubly undesirable because the integrity of many journalists is, to put it mildly, suspect. Public memory is notoriously short but let us not forget that a senior journalist on the rolls of Deccan Herald was arrested for plotting jihadi attacks not many months ago. There are others who would happily sleep with India’s enemies for either ideological reasons or to flaunt their ethical promiscuity.

What should instead worry us is the Congress-led UPA Government’s unwillingness to fight terrorism. It would be easy, and is indeed tempting, to describe the stunning failure of this regime to wage war on terror as incapacity and inability. But that would be patently untrue. Ever since the summer of 2004, the Congress has actively followed a policy of dismantling the counter-terror mechanism, including a legal framework, that had been put in place by the BJP-led NDA regime. 

This is because the Congress believes the best way to consolidate the Muslim vote in its favour is to go easy on terrorists. Crude as it may sound, that is the truth. Hence the speed with which Pota was rescinded; hence also the reason why senior Congress leaders known for their proximity to the party’s first family have visited Azamgarh to commiserate with the families of terrorists, cast aspersions on Delhi Police for its raid on Batla House (External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid wants us to believe Congress president Sonia Gandhi wept inconsolably when shown visuals of Indian Mujahideen terrorists responsible for bombings in Delhi who were killed in that raid), use the CBI to penalise upright police officers who take on jihadis (as was done with policemen involved in intercepting and killing LeT operative Irshad Jehan and her associates in Gujarat) and defame Hindus (as was done first by P Chidambaram who spoke of ‘saffron terrorism’ and then by his successor in the Home Ministry Sushil Kumar Shinde who luridly accused the BJP and RSS of training ‘Hindu terrorists’) in the hope that this will titillate the fanatics among Muslims. 

The Congress maligns Hindus, secure in the knowledge that Hindus are a fragmented community who place caste and community above self-dignity; the educated feel that it is imperative to demean Hindus and Hinduism to prove their secular credentials; and, whether we like it or not, abusing Hindus and Hinduism does have an appeal among non-Hindus.

If the ruling political elite, namely the Congress, is to blame for compromising national security in the interest of crass vote-bank politics, spineless bureaucrats are guilty of facilitating this dangerous pandering to minorityism. The Union Home Secretary seems to be more keen on sucking up to the Home Minister and seconding his absurd assertions about ‘Hindu terrorism’ than in going after the real terrorists. He is also the person who showered fulsome praise on Delhi Police after the terrible gang-rape and murder of a young woman, glossing over the serious lapses of the police that allowed the criminals to commit their hideous crime. 

He should now hold another media briefing and inform the nation as to why he, his fellow babus, the Intelligence Bureau and the Andhra Pradesh Police, all kept in clover by us tax-payers, did not act on the information that Indian Mujahideen activists arrested by Delhi Police in October 2012 had visited Dilsukhnagar and surveyed the same spot where the bombs went off last Thursday. Were they busy concocting tales about ‘Hindu terror’ to keep the Congress in good humour? We can be sure it was not incompetence that caused the failure.

Madrasa Reforms And Inter-Faith Dialogue

By M H Ahssan

Based in Hyderabad, Maulana Khalid Saifullah Rehmani is one of the leading present-day Indian ulema. Author of some 50 books, mainly on Islamic jurisprudence, he is a senior member of numerous important Islamic organizations, including the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board, the Islamic Fiqh Academy, the Bahrain-based Association of Islamic Banks and the Council for Inter-Sectarian Dialogue, Tehran, Iran. In this interview with HNN he talks about various issues related to madrasa education in India, particularly the question of madrasa reforms.

Q: Could you tell us something about your academic background?
A: I was born in Darbhanga in Bihar in 1957. I received my basic Islamic education at the renowned Jamia Rahmaniya in Munger, after which I went to the Dar ul-Ulum at Deoband for higher Islamic learning. Thereafter, I went to Phulwari Sharif where I completed the ifta course to become a qualified mufti under the well-known Islamic scholar Qazi Mujahidul Islam Qasmi. I was greatly influenced by Qazi Sahib’s approach and thinking. He was among the few enlightened and broadminded Indian ulema of his times, seriously committed to dialogue between the different Islamic sects and also open to adopting the benefits of modern knowledge for expressing and interpreting Islam.

From Phulwari Sharif I came to Hyderabad and taught Quran, Hadith, Islamic Jurisprudence (fiqh) and Quranic commentary (tafsir) at the Dar ul-Ulum Hyderabad and the Dar ul-Ulum Sabil us-Salaam, two leading Deobandi madrasas in the city. This I did for more than twenty years. Then, in 2000 I established the al-Mahad al-Ali al-Islami, a centre for higher Islamic learning in Hyderabad, which I still manage.

Q: What exactly are you trying to do through this centre?
A: The centre was conceived of as a means for promoting certain much-needed reforms in madrasas. As of now, it offers a two year course for senior graduates (fazils) of madrasas, where they study a host of disciplines that they might not ever have had to in their madrasas, such as English, Current Affairs, Comparative Religions and Computer Applications. Students are also made to engage in research work, something that is missing in almost all madrasas. Till now, over a hundred theses have been submitted by our students, many of them seeking to develop Islamically appropriate responses to various modern issues and concerns. The students are also taught the importance of working for communal harmony and how to properly relate to people of other faiths and to explain to them what Islam is actually about.

Q: Almost every madrasa is associated with a particular Islamic sect, and sectarian strife is rife among the ulema. What do you think is the way out?
A: I think the ulema have to realize, as indeed many already do, that these sectarian differences cannot be wished away. Each sect offers its own arguments and proofs for its position. God has given humans the capacity to think differently, and so obviously such differences will always exist. The point is to accept these differences and, despite them, to cooperate with them on common issues. This applies as much to intra-Muslim sectarian relations as it does to relations between Muslims and Hindus. We must learn to respect people of other sects and religions and to work together jointly with them on issues of common concern.

Q: What do you feel about the on-going debates on the question of madrasa reforms?
A: To properly understand the question, one has to keep the basic aim of the madrasas in mind: to produce good, learned, pious and committed Islamic scholars. It is not to produce graduates for the market whose main aim in life is to make money. So, naturally, moral training and Islamic subjects should remain the centre of the madrasa curriculum.

At the same time, we live in this world and so cannot afford to be ignorant of its issues, problems and concerns. This is why I strongly believe that madrasas need to familiarize their students with at least the basics of various forms of modern knowledge, such as English, Computer Applications, Indian History, the Indian Constitution, and natural and social sciences. Madrasas must conceive of ways to incorporate a basic modicum of these disciplines in their curriculum without this being allowed to harm its basic religious core.

Q: And how do you think this should happen? Perhaps through the Madrasa Boards?
A: I am opposed to the government interfering in the madrasas through government-appointed madrasa boards, which exist in some states. But I do admit the need for some sort of mechanism to bring about greater cooperation between the madrasas as well as to facilitate reforms. In this regard, some private madrasa boards, set up by the ulema themselves and totally independent of the government, have come up in some states. For instance, the Tahhafuz-e Madaris Committee in Gujarat and the Wafaq ul-Madaris in Bihar. In 2001 we set up the Andhra Pradesh Dini Madaris Board, of which Maulana Hamiduddin Aqil Husami of the Dar ul-Ulum Hyderabad is the President and I the General-Secretary. Through this board we are trying to bring about some changes in the madrasas in the state.

Q: What exactly are the activities of this Board?
A: The Board has basically two aims. Firstly, to preserve the autonomy of the madrasas. And secondly, to promote reforms and the moral and intellectual environment of madrasas. Around 150 madrasas in Andhra Pradesh are now affiliated with the Board. We organize teachers’ training workshops and also regular meetings where we impress upon the ulema to introduce a basic modicum of modern subjects in the curricula of their madrasas, to properly register themselves and maintain proper accounts and so on.

Q: A major part of the existing curriculum in almost all madrasas consists of the teaching of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh). Many of these detailed rules and laws were devised centuries ago and may have lost their relevance in today’s context. As someone who has written extensively on modern fiqh issues (jadid fiqhi masail) what do you have to say about reforms in this sphere?
A: I feel madrasas must give much more attention than they presently do to the principles of jurisprudence (usul-e fiqh), because while several minor fiqh details (juzuvi masail) can and do change over time, and hence require new interpretations, these basic principles are unchanging. Knowledge of these principles is essential for engaging in ijtihad or creative reflection with regard to a host of contemporary issues that were obviously unknown to the early Islamic scholars.

In addition to this, our students, as would-be ulema, also need to have a basic knowledge of modern subjects in order to provide adequate and appropriate fiqhi perspectives on them. For instance, we don’t want to make them doctors, but surely for them to engage in ijtihad in modern medical matters they must have at least some knowledge of the human anatomy and physiology. Or, to respond to modern economic developments, they must have a basic understanding of the way modern economies function.

Another way to promote awareness of the need for ijtihad and for reflection on new jurisprudential issues within the madrasas is by promoting cooperation between the ulema of the madrasas and ‘modern’, university-educated intellectuals who are experts in particular fields. Thus, in the conferences of the Islamic Fiqh Academy, with which I am associated, we invite modern experts and professionals to provide their views and share their knowledge with the ulema, and both learn from each other. This is a way for promoting ‘collective ijtihad’ that benefits from the different forms of knowledge that these two classes of scholars possess. A large number of books on new and more contextually-relevant fiqh issues and perspectives have been printed by the Islamic Fiqh Academy as a result of this sort of joint effort.

Q: Madrasas have been given a bad press in recent years, being branded as ‘dens of terrorism’. How do you respond to this charge?
A: I would say that almost all this propaganda about the Indian madrasas at least is completely false, and has not been proved in the courts. But if you look at parts of the world where terrorism is rife, no matter what the religion of its perpetrators, you will notice that very often it is denial of justice to vulnerable and victimized groups, often by the state itself, that breeds terrorism. Obviously, then, terrorism cannot be stamped out without also working to ensure justice to people who are pushed to the wall, who are oppressed by the police and agencies of the state and who do not get any justice from the courts. Of course, I do not at all mean to condone terrorism, even as a reaction to injustice, for the Quran itself says that the enmity of any community should not lead one to swerve from the path of justice. It also says that to kill a single innocent being—and here it does not specify the religion of that person—is such a heinous crime as to be akin to slaying the whole of humankind.

I think the time has come for people of all faiths—Muslims, Hindus, Dalits, Christians, Sikhs and others—who sincerely believe in peace and justice to join hands in a joint struggle against terrorism, which threatens to destroy our beloved country. I am glad that leading Indian ulema have realized the need for this, and are, accordingly, organizing huge public rallies to condemn all forms of terror, including that engaged in by self-styled ‘Islamic’ groups that are misusing and misinterpreting Islam for their sinister purposes.

Muslims in India face numerous challenges, including mounting Islamophobia. My advice is that we should not respond to hatred with counter-hatred, but, rather, with love and concern and through sincere efforts to reach out to people of other faiths.