Can Rival Militants Provoke India-Pakistan War?
By Riaz Haq
CA
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently warned while in New Delhi that Al-Qaeda is trying to destabilize the whole of South Asia hoping to provoke a deadly war between India and Pakistan, according to the BBC. In addition to Al-Qaeda, he had pointed the finger at the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba as groups seeking to spark conflict between India and Pakistan, or to provoke instability in Pakistan.
Mr. Gates is only partially correct. Conspicuously absent from his list of the region's "bad guys" are the Hindutva terrorist outfits who are implicated in a series of bombings designed to fan the flames of hatred between Hindus and Muslims and then blame Pakistan for their handiwork.
In a new book titled " Who Killed Karkare?"(published by Pharos Media), the author and former Maharashtra police chief S.M. Mushrif says a nationwide network of Hindutva terrorists that had its tentacles spread up to Nepal and Israel is out to destroy India's secularism and to reshape it into a theocratic state like Afghanistan under the Taliban.
Mushrif has constructed an alarming picture out of former Maharashtra ATS chief Hemant Karkare’s indictment of alleged Hindutva terrorists like Lt. Col. Purohit, Sadhvi Pragyasingh Thakur and others. It showed a major nationwide conspiracy with international support to destabilize the secular democratic Indian state to be replaced by a Hindutva state run according to a new Constitution. For that the conspirators were prepared for a massive bloodbath, using bomb attacks on religious places to trigger an anti-Muslim holocaust.
These Hindutva terror groups, and their affiliates, have carried out a number of bomb blasts across India in the last few years, and tried to pin the blame on Indian Muslims or the Pakistan's intelligence service ISI. Mushrif describes nearly a dozen blasts conducted by Hindutva terror groups of different stripes. He argues that a section of India’s intelligence services, a small group in the armed forces and parts of different state police forces, have been compromised and infiltrated by these elements, a development that bodes ill for the future of the country, and the region. Some of the blasts, such as the bombing of Samjhota Express, had been falsely blamed on Pakistan's ISI to try and heighten tensions in South Asia. The circumstances around the assassination of Mumbai anti-terror squad (ATS) chief Hemant Karakare, who was pursuing some of the major Hindutva figures involved in the bombing campaigns in India, have not been investigated. Demands by Karakare's wife for independent investigation and transparency have been ignored.
Mushrif believes that it is not Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh or Rahul Gandhi who actually run India on a day-to-day basis. Rather, it is a "power establishment" that is in charge of India, and it does not want to expose the Hindutva terrorists. One example is the blasts in Samjhauta Express, which the IB said was carried out by Pakistan’s ISI. Mushrif quotes a report in The Times of India that climed “the Center had blamed the ISI on the basis of the IB’s findings.” However, during a narco-analysis test under Karkare, Lt. Col. Purohit had admitted having supplied the RDX used in the blast. The IB, which draws its power from its proximity to the Prime Minister (its director briefs the PM every morning for half an hour), did not want Karkare’s investigation that blew the cover off the IB’s shenanigans, to continue.
A recent article titled " Procrastinating on Hindutva Terror", Subash Gatade describes a number of bomb blasts carried out by Hindutva groups in India, and talks about how the investigators have been dragging their feet on such incidents where the perpetrators attempted to frame innocent Muslims. Among others, the author describes Goa and Malegaon blasts which were blamed on Muslim youths. Here is what it says:
In a writeup in Indian Express ( 8 Nov, 2009)"Goa Bombers Tried To Leave Muslim Imprint" the reporter even quotes another police officer on the condition of anonymity: "The material was enough to spark communal trouble in Margao and extremist elements from outside would have found it easy to aggravate it." A close look at the plan to 'leave Muslim imprint' had echoes of earlier attempts by Hindutva terrorists of different hues to spark communal tension. The Malegaon bomb blast in 2008 which saw the exposure of the wide Hindutva terrorist network - thanks to the efforts of a committed officer like Hemant Karkare - had also seen similar actions by the fanatics. In fact the members of Abhinav Bharat had parked their explosive laden motorcycle below the defunct office of the SIMI in Bhikhu Chowk, Malegaon. The Nanded bomb blast in 2006 had also seen fake beards and dresses normally worn by Muslims at the house of the terrorists who had died in the bomb blasts.
Another Indian writer, Yoginder Sikand, has been following the story of Muslims framed by India's police and intelligence agencies in various incidents of violence. Here is what he wrote:
For several months now, almost no week passes without the media reporting about 'dreaded Muslim fundamentalists' being picked up by the police and allegedly confessing to being involved in bomb blasts or plots to engineer violence across India. It is not my argument that all of these reports are cooked-up and dished-out propaganda. Some of these stories must be true, and those behind such acts must be caught and punished. But, the fact remains, many of these stories circulating in the media are wholly fabricated, and these are being manufactured and highlighted for a particular motive: to fuel anti-Muslim passions and, thereby, justify various forms of discrimination and oppression—even murder—of hapless Muslim citizens who, far from having anything to do with terrorism, are victims of terror—of agencies of the state, especially the police and Hindutva terror outfits.
Earlier this month, Indian Occupied Kashmir's People's Democratic Party leader Mehbooba Mufti alleged that the recent Srinagar hotel attack was an attempt by "some government agency" to sabotage the efforts to withdraw troops from the state. “Maybe some militant groups don’t want the troop withdrawal, maybe somebody in the agencies don’t want the troop withdrawal. So I think for their interests, they become one at this point of time. But I would say that the withdrawal of troops is the best compliment that you can pay to the people of Jammu and Kashmir, who have voted in huge numbers,” she added.
Recently, India's Vice President Hamid Ansari has called for greater "oversight and accountability" of the operations of the nation's intelligence agencies by the Indian parliament. Ansari also said that, just like in other democracies like the US and the UK, the “concerned agencies should make public their mission statement, outlining periodically their strategic intent, vision, mission, core values and their goals”.
As India constantly highlights the terror of the green variety, it must not ignore its own homegrown terror dressed in saffron. The terror of both of these hues have the potential to spark a deadly conflict in South Asia that can easily spin out of control, and completely devastate the region.
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