30 killed as Muslims, tribals clash in India [10000 displaced]

Indian police battled with rampaging mobs on Sunday (local time), killing four people, in a bid to contain clashes between Muslims and tribal groups in the north-east that have claimed 30 lives, officials said.

Despite a curfew and shoot-on-sight orders, police struggled to quash the violence that erupted on Friday after Muslims allegedly attacked guards from the Bodo tribal group in an area of Assam state bordering Bhutan.

At least 30 people have been killed since then, including 14 in police firing, and more than 100 injured, the state's home ministry said Sunday, as villagers attacked each other with machetes, spears and homemade guns.

"We have asked security forces to take all possible steps to stop the violence and help restore calm in the area," Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi said as the violence spread.

On Sunday, police shot dead four armed rioters trying to torch a village in the Udalguri region, about 120 kilometres north of Assam's main city Guwahati.

Police and paramilitary troops opened fire in at least three separate locations in an attempt to stave off arson attacks, officials said.

More than 400 homes have been burnt and at least 30,000 people have fled their villages in an area partially controlled by the Bodos under a deal that saw the majority of the tribal people abandon claims for a separate homeland.

Authorities suspect an extremist Bodo group of being behind the attacks on Muslims, but other groups in the insurgency-hit state also appear to have joined the fighting.

Officials have been surprised by the clashes between the Muslims and the Bodos, who have coexisted peacefully for decades until fighting broke out between them in August, leaving 10 people dead.

More than 10,000 people have lost their lives to insurgency in Assam during the past two decades.

South Asia Analysis Group
Indians Killing Indians
http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers29/paper2869.html
10/6/08

B. Raman

1. There is no other way of describing the wave of jihadi terrorist strikes spreading death and destruction across India since July, 2006, and the wave of anti-Christian violence being seen in Orissa and Karnataka since August, 2008.

2. The wave of jihadi terrorist strikes has affected many States-— ruled by the Congress (I), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and others.

3. Anger against certain aggressive groups of evangelists indulging in a scurrilous campaign against the Hindu religion and converting the impoverished tribals of Central India into Christianty through the allurement of money has been widespread in many States of India, but this anger has been expressed in a civilized manner in most States. Only in the BJP ruled Karnataka and in Orissa ruled by an electoral ally of the BJP has this anger taken an ugly, uncivilized turn in the form of orchestrated attacks on Christians and their places of worship and even the alleged rape of a helpless nun. Large sections of public opinion in India and abroad cannot be blamed if they attribute this to the inaction of the local Governments in the face of the violence and view this as amounting to culpable complicity.

4. These two waves have given rise to antagonistic reflexes which should be of concern to any Indian interested in the unity, prosperity and strength of this nation. There is a disturbing denial mode in sections of both the Muslim and the Hindu communities. Sections of the Muslim community are not prepared to accept that their co-religionists are behind this wave of jihadi terrorism. An attempt is being made by these sections, supported by sections of the so-called secular community, either to deny the involvement of some Muslims in jihadi terrorism or to rationalise their involvement through various arguments. There is a simultaneous attempt to denigrate and demonise the police and other law-enforcing agencies by debunking their version of the terrorist strikes and by coming in the way of their investigation.

5. Sections of the Hindu community owing allegiance to the so-called Hindutva groups are not prepared to accept any blame on their community and tend to project the anti-Christian violence as an outcome of spontaneous tribal anger against Christian missionaries with which, according to them, the Hindutva organizations have nothing to do. The perceived inaction of the law-enforcing agencies in the face of the anti-Christian violence is sought to be rationalized and explained through various arguments such as the lack of road and other means of communications in the affected areas which rendered prompt police action difficult.

6. The history of Islam is replete with thousands of instances of destruction of places of worship of other religions. The Hindus used to be proud of the fact that their religion respected the places of worship of other religions and did not damage or destroy them. But, this is no longer so since 1992 when some Hindutva elements carried out a wanton destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya.

7. Hopes entertained by many that this was a one-time aberration caused by historic anger over the alleged demolition of a Ram temple in the same place for the erection of a masjid have been belied by reports of wanton destruction of Christian places of worship in Karnataka and Orissa. India has already been paying a heavy price for the Hindu anger caused by perceptions of the appeasement policies of the so-called secular elements towards the religious minorities and the Muslim anger due to perceptions of the failure of the State to protect them and to be fair to them.

8. To this will now be added pockets of Christian anger over the death, destruction and humiliation inflicted on their community by the Hindutva elements, with the State allegedly remaining a silent spectator. The Christians will be rendered even more angry by the attempts being made by some intellectuals and others close to the Hindutva groups to play down the enormous gravity of the anti-Christian violence.

9. Do the orchestrated acts of violence against the Christians and their places of worship amount to acts of terrorism similar to the ruthless killing of innocent civilians of various communities by the jihadi terrorists of the indigenous as well Pakistani and Bangladeshi kinds? Is the Hindutva Bajrang Dal, which is allegedly behind the attacks on Christians, a terrorist organization similar to the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and the so-called Indian Mujahideen? These questions are increasingly occupying the centre of the debate. Instead of maintaining a laser-sharp focus on our fight against jihadi terrorism, we find ourselves spending more and more time in countering and removing suspicions of acts of terrorism against the Christians.

10. There is no universally accepted definition of terrorism and what is a terrorist organization, but most definitions in common currency accept that there are some important components of terrorism-— repeated attacks of a pre-meditated nature on innocent civilians and their property to achieve an objective, which may be political, economic, social or religious. Spontaneous and isolated attacks in the heat of the moment, which are not repeated in an orchestrated manner, are crimes not amounting to terrorism.

11. The anti-Christian violence started as spontaneous, isolated attacks in the heat of the moment following the murder of a respected Hindu leader and some of his disciples in Orissa and the circulation of scurilous pamphlets denigrating the Hindu religion by a Christian organization in Karnataka. Law does not excuse even such isolated attacks in the heat of the moment, but views the heat of the moment argument as a mitigating circumstance while deciding the quantum of punishment. But repeated pre-meditated attacks of an orchestrated nature long after the heat of the moment has passed dangerously degenerate into the zone of terrorism.

12. If the Hindutva forces are not able to control the Frankenstein’s Monsters created by them in the form of the Bajrang Dal, it is only a question of time before it comes under the scanner of the terrorism experts of the Western countries. In the early 1990s, a US-based organization called the Jammat-ul-Fuqra, headed by a Pakistani cleric and with a large number of Afro-American Muslims as members, carried out a wave of arson attacks on Hindu and Jewish places of worship in the US and Canada and there were some attacks on the members of these religions too.

13. The Counter-Terrorism Division of the US State Department placed it in the list of terrorist organizations to be watched and included a brief note on its activities in its annual reports to the US Congress. This cleric has since returned to Pakistan and its activities in the US have ceased. It no longer figures in the list of terrorist organizations.

14. If repeated and pre-meditated attacks on Hindu and Jewish places of worship and on Hindus and Jews in the US can be viewed as amounting to terrorism, how can we argue that similar attacks on Christians and their places of worship in India do not amount to terrorism?

15. The Hindutva organizations should read the writing on the wall and mend themselves lest they come to be viewed by the international community as organizations of concern. If the Bajrang Dal comes to be viewed as a suspected terrorist organization, the first to feel the pressure and adverse effect will be the supporters of the organization in the Hindu diaspora abroad. It is in their interest to exercise pressure on the Bajrang Dal and drive some sense into it.

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com)

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