Media and Terrorism (Indolink.Com, 06/03/2004)

-- By Dasu Krishnamoorty

Terrorism has new defenders. New apologists. This is not about the People’s War Group that unsuccessfully tried to kill Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu after they had killed Home Minister Madhava Reddy, Inspector-General of Police Vyas and hundreds of Andhra Pradesh police personnel. Everybody, including the Congress and the Communist parties, condemned those acts though the PWG men protested that they were only seeking to avenge perceived injustice. Alas, they are not as privileged as the other group of terrorists that has a large constituency of sympathizers in the Indian and foreign media. The media have done painstaking research to rationalize the bomb blasts in Mumbai, the Godhra arson and the Akshardham killings as acts of revenge for perceived injustices. This is a thesis that exonerates, ahead of happening, future violence also and unwittingly classifies an entire community as terrorism-prone.

Let us begin with theIndian Expresseditor Shekhar Gupta, who recently won the IPI-India Award for   his newspaper’s Gujarat reporting. Writing in IE (16/09/03) he warns us kindly of highly educated and rich Muslims joining the ranks of terrorists. Referring to the Gateway of India blasts, he says, “The key suspects include an MD, an MBA, one with Masters in Computer Science, another defending his Ph D from jail, a former captain of the cricket team of Mumbai’s Wilson College. These are not the usual flotsam of a poor, ghettoised, leaderless and largely jobless community. These are people who did rather well in our system, getting the best of education and in areas where jobs are easy to find. They had comfortable, upper-middle class careers awaiting them. Yet they gave it all up for the lure of revenge .”

 “What has brought this change about? A Muslim could surely be angry. But he could vent his anger by shouting slogans, voting against the party he hated (as he has done against the Congress since Babri) or exercising a degree of political power through tactical voting. Much of that has changed in the aftermath of Gujarat. He has seen not only the government acquiesce, if not actively help, the rioters but also the leading lights of the dominant political party even hyphenating their embarrassment over the riots by always putting forward Godhra as some kind of a justification.” If an enlightened editor like Shekhar Gupta can hyphenate Gateway of India blasts with Gujarat mayhem, how can he deny that privilege to uneducated mobs who hyphenate Gujarat with Godhra?

One of India’s most respected editors, B.G.Verghese, wrote a week later in theTimes of India(23 Sept. 03): “It is at this juncture that the Mumbai blasts occurred. Many theories have been spun, one among them being that these could be terrorist acts to avenge Gujarat. The possibility cannot be ruled out. Even sane elements of a deeply-wounded community denied redress can be moved to desperation.” In theHindu(7 Oct. 03), Iqbal Ansari wrote a fortnight later: “The latest as well as earlier acts of terrorism committed in Mumbai seem to be the handiwork of those seeking revenge against perceived injustices to their community since the 1980s; of which the Best Bakery case is the most glaring and recent example. The Coimbatore bomb blasts at L.K.Advani’s meeting on February 14, 1998 can again be traced to the partisan brutal police action against Muslims during the Coimbatore riots of November-December 1997. There was a large amorphous body of angry, frustrated and desperate Muslims keen to seek revenge for the perceived injustice done to and atrocities perpetrated on them or to the others of their community and it is this sense of revenge which spawned the conspiracy of serial (Bombay) blasts.”

Shortly before India’s Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee met with President Bush, articles appeared in the US media that tried to shift the blame for terrorism in India from terrorists to their victims. Both Pankaj Mishra, writing in theNew York Times,and John Lancaster in theWashington Post,offered unique insights into why educated Indian Muslims are embracing violence. Pankaj Mishra  (17 Sept 03, theNew York Times) is happy that the Indian Muslims had stayed away from the anti-India insurgency of their
culturally distinct co-religionists in Kashmir. However, explaining why educated Muslims, are taking to violence this time, he cites Gujarat, the Best Bakery case as also the history of Babri demolition and the Mumbai blasts. Then in pain, he wonders, “So the surprising thing, perhaps, is not that militant groups like the Gujarat Muslim Revenge Force are now emerging in India, but that it has taken so long.” Pankaj, are you disappointed?

Can we extend the courtesy of the same logic to the victims of Godhra, Akshardham and Mumbai and justify reprisals? These researchers did not ask themselves why minorities in Kashmir do not seek to avenge in the same way the daily killings of Pandits by terrorists. Nor are they moved by the plight of minorities in Pakistan and Bangladesh and Christian minorities in Islamic Africa. These minorities know that if they emulate the example of terrorists in India, they would be targets of a ruthless backlash. That simple common sense held them back from terrorism. Several commissions that inquired into communal riots concluded that in most cases it was the minorities who took the initiative to start a riot. If the logic of Pankaj Mishra and his ilk were to operate, the majority community may seek to avenge not perceived injustice but real violence. This argument of revenge has no place in civilized societies and in a democracy like that of India where there are watchdogs of minority interests in the mainstream media and scores of NGOs, part of an international network of human rights activists.

Terrorists of both varieties claim that they are seeking to avenge perceived injustices. The similarity ends there because there is a difference in the targets they choose. The PWG killed high police and government officials and informers with a view to presumably destroy a system that is the source of injustice they perceived. They destroyed public property like police stations, telephone exchanges and deserted railway stations. The loss of civilian life was minimal. For example, instead of ambushing Chandrababu Naidu’s convoy a kilometer away from the Tirupati temple, they could have blasted the main temple milling with thousands of people gathered for the Brahmotsavam and thus killed a few hundred devotees. Unlike the PWG terrorism, the minority retribution claims the lives of innocent civilians who had no hand in any of the riots aimed at minorities.

Compare the status of beleaguered minorities elsewhere in the world to the condition of the Muslims in India. In more than two hundred years of the American republic, no Black has ever become its President. In its 56^thyear of independence India has a third Muslim as President. The Indian Constitution protects minority interests. There is the Supreme Court of India in the impartiality of which the minorities have very recently reiterated their faith. No injustice can happen to them because the mainstream media are the sentinels of their interests. Pro-Muslim sentiment in the media is so generous that they portrayed India’s relations with Israel as anti-Muslim. India’s Middle East policy had always remained hostage to Muslim sentiment.

The complaint that Muslims have not fully shared in the fruits of Indian independence should be directed at the Muslims themselves. Two eminent Muslims explain why. Sayeed Naqvi, one of India’s most respected columnists, writes (The Indian Express,June 27, 03): “Bereft of leadership. The community was invited to focus on Shah Bano, Salman Rushdie, Babri Masjid, Israel as issues of life and death. The result has been the total marginalization of the community from the mainstream.”

Moulana Wahiduddin Khan, founder of the Islamic Center, writing inAl Risalamonthly, says, “From 1947 till today, I have attended innumerable meetings without coming across any notable Muslim gathering which had been convened specifically to discuss the problems of the Indian nation. National issues simply do not figure on Muslim agendas. At Muslim meetings, communal issues, or more often, communal grudges are the favorite subjects of discussion. It would seem that national issues are of no concern to Muslims. I have often found, moreover, that Muslim speakers, invited to Hindu gatherings, give vent even there to the grudges of the Muslim community against the Hindus. This makes it abundantly obvious that Muslims have in no way identified themselves with the political mainstream of the country.”

The majority of Muslims in India does not know what its problems are. Their leaders who generally are clerics tell them that the main problem is their Islamic identity. The Indian National Congress, and other leftist parties too talk of a Muslim identity separate from their Indian identity. Verghese calls them Muslim Indians and not Indian Muslims. As a community, the Muslims are believed to nurse a feeling of insecurity. This is unfortunate because the Constitution the Indian leaders drafted soon after the partition massacres provided special status for minorities based on religion. This really created a “We” and “They” hiatus. Their own leaders and vote-hungry political parties cheated Muslims into placing religion above such pressing problems as poverty, illiteracy and obscurantism. They have played into the hands of wily politicians and clergy. That is the truth. Muslims, who have great respect for their faith, separated it from their daily interaction with the people of India and came up in life like Azim Premji, or M.J.Akbar or Abdul Kalam himself. They are the kings and queens of Indian music and the world of entertainment.

Mishra and others have not satisfactorily explained why Muslims were killed in Gujarat alone and not in other parts of India ruled by ‘saffron goons.’ ‘Muslims under siege’ is another fashionable slogan. If so, why has no Muslim left the country and why are thousands of Muslims from Bangladesh pouring into a country so unsafe for them? Read this BBC report (Urdu services): “Thousands of Muslims have fled the center of the free world, the United States, after 9/11. More are still leaving.” If Muslims have a sense of insecurity in India, how many of them have sought asylum abroad? All Muslims are Indians and have problems common to any other Indian. They must make a common cause with others and fight for their basic needs of life.