9 is not 11: [4 of 5]

Key BJP, RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal activists speak openly of how Narendra Modi blessed the anti-Muslim pogrom.

A Shadowy History of Suspicious

Terror Attacks

by Arundhati Roy

Though one chapter of horror in Mumbai has ended, another might have just begun. Day after day, a powerful, vociferous section of the Indian elite, goaded by marauding TV anchors who make Fox News look almost radical and left-wing, have taken to mindlessly attacking politicians, all politicians, glorifying the police and the army, and virtually asking for a police state. It isn't surprising that those who have grown plump on the pickings of democracy (such as it is) should now be calling for a police state. The era of 'pickings' is long gone. We're now in the era of Grabbing by Force, and democracy has a terrible habit of getting in the way.


Dangerous, stupid television flash cards like the Police are Good, Politicians are Bad/ Chief Executives are Good, Chief Ministers are Bad/ Army is Good, Government is Bad/ India is Good, Pakistan is Bad are being bandied about by TV channels that have already whipped their viewers into a state of almost uncontrollable hysteria.


Tragically, this regression into intellectual infancy comes at a time when people in India were beginning to see that the business of terrorism is a hall of mirrors in which victims and perpetrators sometimes exchange roles. It's an understanding that the people of Kashmir, given their dreadful experiences of the last 20 years, have honed to an exquisite art. On the mainland we're still learning. (If Kashmir won't willingly integrate into India, it's beginning to look as though India will integrate/disintegrate into Kashmir.)


It was after the 2001 Parliament attack that the first serious questions began to be raised. A campaign by a group of lawyers and activists exposed how innocent people had been framed by the police and the press, how evidence was fabricated, how witnesses lied, how due process had been criminally violated at every stage of the investigation. Eventually the courts acquitted two out of the four accused, including S.A.R. Geelani, the man whom the police claimed was the mastermind of the operation. A third, Shaukat Guru, was acquitted of all the charges brought against him but was then convicted for a fresh, comparatively minor offence. The Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of another of the accused, Mohammad Afzal. In its judgement, the court acknowledged that there was no proof that Mohammad Afzal belonged to any terrorist group, but went on to say, quite shockingly, "The collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender. " Even today we don't really know who the terrorists that attacked Indian Parliament were and who they worked for.

More recently, on September 19 this year, we had the controversial 'encounter' at Batla House in Jamia Nagar, Delhi, where the Special Cell of the Delhi police gunned down two Muslim students in their rented flat under seriously questionable circumstances, claiming that they were responsible for serial bombings in Delhi, Jaipur and Ahmedabad in 2008.

The ‘Bravehearts’ of the Indian law enforcing agencies

An Assistant Commissioner of Police, Mohan Chand Sharma, who played a key role in the Parliament attack investigation, lost his life as well. He was one of India's many 'encounter specialists', known and rewarded for having summarily executed several 'terrorists'. There was an outcry against the Special Cell from a spectrum of people, ranging from eyewitnesses in the local community to senior Congress Party leaders, students, journalists, lawyers, academics and activists, all of whom demanded a judicial inquiry into the incident. In response, the BJP and L.K. Advani lauded Mohan Chand Sharma as a 'Braveheart' and launched a concerted campaign in which they targeted those who had dared to question the integrity of the police, saying it was 'suicidal' and calling them 'anti-national'. Of course, there has been no inquiry.

The Police Justice!

(Left) Hemant Karkare, The ATS Chief who was killed in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. Karkare digged out the possible role of Sangh Privar behind the Malegaon tragedy.


Only days after the Batla House event, another story about 'terrorists' surfaced in the news. In a report submitted to the court, the CBI said that a team from Delhi's Special Cell (the same team that led the Batla House encounter, including Mohan Chand Sharma) had abducted two innocent men, Irshad Ali and Moarif Qamar, in December 2005, planted 2 kg of RDX and two pistols on them, and then arrested them as 'terrorists' who belonged to Al Badr (which operates out of Kashmir). Ali and Qamar, who have spent years in jail, are only two examples out of hundreds of Muslims who have been similarly jailed, tortured and even killed on false charges.

This pattern changed in October 2008 when Maharashtra's Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), which was investigating the September 2008 Malegaon blasts, arrested a Hindu preacher, Sadhvi Pragya; a self-styled godman, Swami Dayanand Pande; and Lt Col Prasad Purohit, a serving officer of the Indian army. All the arrested belong to Hindu Nationalist organisations, including a Hindu supremacist group called Abhinav Bharat. The Shiv Sena, the BJP and the RSS condemned the Maharashtra ATS, and vilified its chief, Hemant Karkare, claiming he was part of a political conspiracy and declaring that "Hindus could not be terrorists". L.K. Advani changed his mind about his policy on the police and made rabble-rousing speeches to huge gatherings, in which he denounced the ATS for daring to cast aspersions on holy men and women.

(Left) Hands in Glove Nirendra Modi & Praveen Togadiya

THE MALEGAON BLASTS

On November 25, newspapers reported that the ATS was investigating the high-profile VHP chief Praveen Togadia's possible role in the Malegaon blasts. The next day, in an extraordinary twist of fate, Hemant Karkare was killed in the Mumbai attacks. The chances are that the new chief, whoever he is, will find it hard to withstand the political pressure that is bound to be brought on him over the Malegaon investigation.

While the Sangh parivar does not seem to have come to a final decision over whether or not it is anti-national and suicidal to question the police, Arnab Goswami, anchorperson of Times Now television channel, has stepped up to the plate.

Source: He has taken to naming, demonising and openly heckling people who have dared to question the integrity of the police and armed forces. My name and the name of the well-known lawyer Prashant Bhushan have come up several times. At one point, while interviewing a former police officer, Arnab Goswami turned to the camera; "Arundhati Roy and Prashant Bhushan," he said, "I hope you are watching this. We think you are disgusting." For a TV anchor to do this in an atmosphere as charged and as frenzied as the one that prevails today amounts to incitement as well as threat, and would probably in different circumstances have cost a journalist his or her job.

So according to a man aspiring to be India's next prime minister, and another who is the public face of a mainstream TV channel, citizens have no right to raise questions about the police. This in a country with a shadowy history of suspicious terror attacks, murky investigations, and fake 'encounters'. This in a country that boasts of the highest number of custodial deaths in the world and yet refuses to ratify the International Covenant on Torture. A country where the ones who make it to torture chambers are the lucky ones because at least they've escaped being 'encountered' by our encounter specialists. A country where the line between the Underworld and the Encounter Specialists virtually does not exist.

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9 is not 11 [3 of 5]

Releasing Frankensteins

by Arundhati Roy

TERRORISM HAS GLOBAL DIMENSIONS, ITS AS MUCH IN PAKISTAN AS ITS ELSEWHERE

Almost always, when these stories unspool, they reveal a complicated global network of foot-soldiers, trainers, recruiters, middlemen and undercover intelligence and counter-intelligence operatives, working not just on both sides of the India-Pakistan border, but in several countries simultaneously. In today's world, trying to pin down the provenance of a terrorist strike and isolate it within the borders of a single nation-state is very much like trying to pin down the provenance of corporate money. It's almost impossible.

WORLD'S MOST DEADLY TERRORIST GROUP LTTE WAS TRAINED BY INDIA

In circumstances like these, air strikes to 'take out' terrorist camps may take out the camps, but certainly will not 'take out' the terrorists. And neither will war. (Also, in our bid for the moral high ground, let's try not to forget that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the LTTE of neighbouring Sri Lanka, one of the world's most deadly terrorist groups, were trained by the Indian army.)

Thanks largely to the part it was forced to play as America's ally, first in its war in support of the Afghan Islamists and then in its war against them, Pakistan, whose territory is reeling under these contradictions, is careening towards civil war. As recruiting agents for America's jehad against the Soviet Union, it was the job of the Pakistan army and the ISI to nurture and channel funds to Islamic fundamentalist organisations. Having wired up these Frankenstein's monsters and released them into the world, the US expected it could rein them in like pet mastiffs whenever it wanted to. Certainly it did not expect them to come calling in the heart of the Homeland on September 11. So once again, Afghanistan had to be violently re-made.

A SUPER POWER NEVER HAS ALLIES, IT ONLY HAS AGENTS

Now the debris of a re-ravaged Afghanistan has washed up on Pakistan's borders. Nobody, least of all the Pakistan government, denies that it is presiding over a country that is threatening to implode. The terrorist training camps, the fire-breathing mullahs and the maniacs who believe that Islam will, or should, rule the world is mostly the detritus of two Afghan wars. Their ire rains down on the Pakistan government and Pakistani civilians as much, if not more, than it does on India. If at this point India decides to go to war, perhaps the descent of the whole region into chaos will be complete. The debris of a bankrupt, destroyed Pakistan will wash up on India's shores, endangering us as never before. If Pakistan collapses, we can look forward to having millions of 'non-state actors' with an arsenal of nuclear weapons at their disposal as neighbours. It's hard to understand why those who steer India's ship are so keen to replicate Pakistan's mistakes and call damnation upon this country by inviting the United States to further meddle clumsily and dangerously in our extremely complicated affairs. A superpower never has allies. It only has agents.

On the plus side, the advantage of going to war is that it's the best way for India to avoid facing up to the serious trouble building on our home front.

The Mumbai attacks were broadcast live (and exclusive!) on all or most of our 67 24-hour news channels and god knows how many international ones. TV anchors in their studios and journalists at 'ground zero' kept up an endless stream of excited commentary. Over three days and three nights, we watched in disbelief as a small group of very young men armed with guns and gadgets exposed the powerlessness of the police, the elite National Security Guard and the marine commandos of this supposedly mighty, nuclear-powered nation. While they did this, they indiscriminately massacred unarmed people, in railway stations, hospitals and luxury hotels, unmindful of their class, caste, religion or nationality.

    Thanks largely to the part it was forced to play as America's ally, first in its war in support of the Afghan Islamists and then in its war against them, Pakistan, whose territory is reeling under these contradictions, is careening toward civil war.

    As recruiting agents for America's jihad against the Soviet Union, it was the job of the Pakistani Army and the ISI to nurture and channel funds to Islamic fundamentalist organizations. Having wired up these Frankensteins and released them into the world, the U.S. expected it could rein them in like pet mastiffs whenever it wanted to. Certainly it did not expect them to come calling in the heart of the homeland on September 11. So once again, Afghanistan had to be violently remade.

Now the debris of a re-ravaged Afghanistan has washed up on Pakistan's borders.

Nobody, least of all the Pakistani government, denies that it is presiding over a country that is threatening to implode. The terrorist training camps, the fire-breathing mullahs, and the maniacs who believe that Islam will, or should, rule the world are mostly the detritus of two Afghan wars. Their ire rains down on the Pakistani government and Pakistani civilians as much, if not more, than it does on India.

If, at this point, India decides to go to war, perhaps the descent of the whole region into chaos will be complete. The debris of a bankrupt, destroyed Pakistan will wash up on India's shores, endangering us as never before.

If Pakistan collapses, we can look forward to having millions of "non-state actors" with an arsenal of nuclear weapons at their disposal as neighbors.

It's hard to understand why those who steer India's ship are so keen to replicate Pakistan's mistakes and call damnation upon this country by inviting the United States to further meddle clumsily and dangerously in our extremely complicated affairs. A superpower never has allies. It only has agents.

On the plus side, the advantage of going to war is that it's the best way for India to avoid facing up to the serious trouble building on our home front.

The Mumbai attacks were broadcast live (and exclusive!) on all or most of our 67 24-hour news channels and god knows how many international ones. TV anchors in their studios and journalists at "ground zero" kept up an endless stream of excited commentary.

Over three days and three nights we watched in disbelief as a small group of very young men, armed with guns and gadgets, exposed the powerlessness of the police, the elite National Security Guard, and the marine commandos of this supposedly mighty, nuclear-powered nation.

While they did this, they indiscriminately massacred unarmed people, in railway stations, hospitals, and luxury hotels, unmindful of their class, caste, religion, or nationality.

(Part of the helplessness of the security forces had to do with having to worry about hostages. In other situations, in Kashmir for example, their tactics are not so sensitive. Whole buildings are blown up. Human shields are used. The U.S. and Israeli armies don't hesitate to send cruise missiles into buildings and drop daisy cutters on wedding parties in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan.)

But this was different. And it was on TV.

The boy-terrorists' nonchalant willingness to kill - and be killed - mesmerized their international audience. They delivered something different from the usual diet of suicide bombings and missile attacks that people have grown inured to on the news.

Here was something new. Die Hard 25. The gruesome performance went on and on. TV ratings soared. Ask any television magnate or corporate advertiser who measures broadcast time in seconds, not minutes, what that's worth.

Eventually the killers died and died hard, all but one. (Perhaps, in the chaos, some escaped. We may never know.)

Throughout the standoff the terrorists made no demands and expressed no desire to negotiate. Their purpose was to kill people, and inflict as much damage as they could, before they were killed themselves. They left us completely bewildered.

Collateral Damage

When we say, "Nothing can justify terrorism," what most of us mean is that nothing can justify the taking of human life. We say this because we respect life, because we think it's precious.

So what are we to make of those who care nothing for life, not even their own? The truth is that we have no idea what to make of them, because we can sense that even before they've died, they've journeyed to another world where we cannot reach them.

One TV channel (India TV) broadcast a phone conversation with one of the attackers, who called himself "Imran Babar." I cannot vouch for the veracity of the conversation, but the things he talked about were the things contained in the "terror emails" that were sent out before several other bomb attacks in India. Things we don't want to talk about any more: the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the genocidal slaughter of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, the brutal repression in Kashmir.

"You're surrounded," the anchor told him. "You are definitely going to die. Why don't you surrender?"

 "We die every day," he replied in a strange, mechanical way. "It's better to live one day as a lion and then die this way." He didn't seem to want to change the world. He just seemed to want to take it down with him.

If the men were indeed members of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, why didn't it matter to them that a large number of their victims were Muslim, or that their action was likely to result in a severe backlash against the Muslim community in India whose rights they claim to be fighting for?

Terrorism is a heartless ideology, and like most ideologies that have their eye on the Big Picture, individuals don't figure in their calculations except as collateral damage.

It has always been a part of, and often even the aim of, terrorist strategy to exacerbate a bad situation in order to expose hidden fault lines. The blood of "martyrs" irrigates terrorism. Hindu terrorists need dead Hindus, Communist terrorists need dead proletarians, Islamist terrorists need dead Muslims. The dead become the demonstration, the proof of victimhood, which is central to the project.

A single act of terrorism is not in itself meant to achieve military victory; at best it is meant to be a catalyst that triggers something else, something much larger than itself, a tectonic shift, a realignment. The act itself is theater, spectacle, and symbolism, and today the stage on which it pirouettes and performs its acts of bestiality is Live TV. Even as TV anchors were being condemned by other TV anchors, the effectiveness of the terror strikes was being magnified a thousand-fold by the TV broadcasts.

[Right]Former PM V.P. Singh: His death passed without a mention


Through the endless hours of analysis and the endless op-ed essays, in India at least, there has been very little mention of the elephants in the room: Kashmir, Gujarat, and the demolition of the Babri Masjid.

Instead, we had retired diplomats and strategic experts debate the pros and cons of a war against Pakistan. We had the rich threatening not to pay their taxes unless their security was guaranteed. (Is it alright for the poor to remain unprotected?) We had people suggest that the government step down and each state in India be handed over to a separate corporation.

We had the death of former Prime Minster V. P. Singh, the hero of Dalits and lower castes, and the villain of upper caste Hindus pass without a mention.

We had Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City and co-writer of the Bollywood film Mission Kashmir give us his version of George Bush's famous "Why They Hate Us" speech. His analysis of why religious bigots, both Hindu and Muslim, hate Mumbai: "Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness."

His prescription: "The best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever."

Didn't George Bush ask Americans to go out and shop after 9/11? Ah yes. 9/11, the day we can't seem to get away from.

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FREE OF ZEALOTS

                                                 

                                         by Anand Patwardhan

My young friend, Sidhusaaheb has sent me an article by Anad Patwardhan, which is the third post now of our series on Mumbai Attacks. I understand the portion of political essays in this blog is getting heavier than normal these days, yet this has been necessitated in view of the very serious situation created out of the tragedy in Mumbai (on 26^th Nov. last year). Since this blog is chartered to promote friendship between India and Pakistan, therefore, whenever a step which helps to support this objective or a factor / s that might come on its way, I find it relevant to put up on WOP pages.

"Having completed my essay", says Anand, I sent this to the Times of India daily but the paper expressed its regrets to publish. Only Hindustan Times after lengthy deliberations within the paper’s editorial management decided to publish this". I haven’t seen that issue of the daily where it actually was printed, nevertheless I do thank my young friend Sidhusaaheb (who likewise edits a blog titled I, Me, Myself) to have sent this excellent piece of reportage on Mumbai Attacks.

Terror: The Aftermath

The attack on Mumbai is over. More than 170 dead. And now, after heart-rending stories of bereavement, come the repercussions, the blame game and the "solutions". Loud voices, amplified by saturation TV demanding:

Why don't we amend our Constitution and create new anti-terror laws? Why don't we arm our police with AK 47s? Why don't we do what Israel did after Munich or the USA did after 9/11 and hit terror camps across the border? Solutions that can only lead us further into the abyss. For terror is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It thrives on reaction, polarization and militarization. The only thing that can undermine it is that which least occurs to those thirsting for revenge.

The External Terror

Those who invoke America need only to analyse whether their actions after 9/11 increased or decreased global terror. The neo-cons invaded oil-rich Iraq knowing fully well that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. The war on Iraq killed over 200,000 Iraqis and several thousand Americans and allowed a cornered Bin Laden to escape. It also recruited global support for Islamic militancy, which began to be seen as a just resistance against American mass murder. Which begs the question of who created Bin Laden in the first place, armed the madrassas of Pakistan and rejuvenated the concept of Islamic jehad? Remember that at the height of the Cold War it was Communism that was the enemy and Islamic jehad, the friend.

Israel's historic role in stoking the fires of jehad is equally great. The very creation of Israel in 1948 robbed Palestinians of their land, an act that Mahatma Gandhi to his credit deplored at the time as an unjust way to redress the wrongs done to Jews during the Holocaust. What followed has been a slow and continuing genocide of the Palestinian nation.

At first Palestinian resistance was led by secular forces represented by Yasser Arafat but as Israel / America successfully undermined Arafat and secular Palestinians, Islamic forces took over the mantle. When the first largely non-violent Intifada was crushed, a second more violent one replaced it and when all else failed, human bombs appeared. 


Thirty years ago when I first went abroad there were two countries my passport forbade me to visit. One was racist South Africa. The other was Israel. We were a non-aligned nation that stood for disarmament and world peace. Today Israel and America are our biggest allies and military partners. Is it surprising that we are on the jehadi hit list? Israel, America and other prosperous countries can to an extent protect themselves against the determined jehadi, but can India put an impenetrable shield over itself? Remember that when attackers are on a suicide mission, the strongest shields have crumbled. New York was laid low not with nuclear weapons but with a pair of box cutters. Yet those who perhaps first infected the world with the virus are also ready with the anti-virus. So Mossad, the FBI and Scotland Yard have arrived in Mumbai to investigate terror and suggest the remedy.

The Terror Within

India is for many reasons a quintessentially soft target. Our huge population and vast landmass and coastline are impossible to protect. The rich may build new barricades. The Taj and the Oberoi can be made safer. So can our airports and planes. Can our railway stations and trains, bus stops, busses, markets and lanes do the same? 


The threat of terror in India does not come exclusively from the outside, no matter how quickly the finger is pointed outwards. For apart from being enormously populated by the poor, India is also a country divided, not just between rich and poor, but by religion, caste and language. This internal divide is as potent a breeding ground for terror as jehadi camps abroad. Nor is jehad the copyright of one religion alone. It can be argued that international causes apart, India has jehadis that are fully home grown. Perhaps the earliest famous one was Nathuram Godse who acting at the behest of his mentor Vinayak Savarkar (still considered to be "Veer" or "brave" although he refused to own up to his role in the conspiracy) murdered Mahatma Gandhi for having championed the cause of Muslims.

Let us jump to 6 December, 1992; the day Hindu fanatics demolished the Babri Mosque setting into motion a chain of events that still wreaks havoc. From the Bombay riots of 1992 to the bomb blasts of 1993, the Gujarat pogroms of 2002 to the present massacre in Mumbai, not to mention hundreds of smaller but nevertheless deadly events in between, the last 16 years have been the bloodiest since Partition. Action has been followed by reaction in an endless cycle of escalating retribution. At the core on the Hindu side of terror are organizations like the RSS and the Shiv Sena, both open admirers of Adolph Hitler, nursing the hate of historic wrongs inflicted by Muslims of the medeival past. A small irony here is that these votaries of Hitler are friends and admirers of Israel.
On the Muslim side of terror are scores of disaffected youth, many of whom have seen their families tortured and killed in more recent pogroms. Christians too have fallen victim to recent Hindu terror but as yet have not formed the mechanisms for revenge. Dalits too have not yet retaliated in violence despite centuries of caste oppression, although a small fraction may be drawn into the armed struggle waged by Naxalites.

It is clear that no amount of spending on defense, no amount of patrolling the high seas, no amount of increasing the military and police and equipping them with the latest weaponry will end the cycle of violence or place India under a bubble of safety. Just as nuclear India did not lead to more safety, but only to Pakistan becoming nuclear and both countries becoming that much poorer, no amount of homeland security can save us. And inviting Israel and America to the security table will only make us more of a target for the next determined terrorist attack.

Policing, Justice and the Media

As for draconian anti-terror laws, they too can only breed more terror as for the most part they are implemented by a State machinery that has imbibed the assumption that Muslims are the prime source of all terror. So in Narendra Modi's Gujarat after the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in 2002, despite scores of confessions about rape and murder being captured on hidden camera, virtually no Hindu militants were punished by the State while thousands of Muslims rotted in jail under draconian laws. The same happened in Bombay despite the Shiv Sena being found guilty by the Justice Shrikrishna Commission. Under pressure a few such cases were finally brought to trial but everyone escaped with the lightest of knuckle raps. In stark contrast many Muslims accused in the 1993 bomb blasts were given death sentences.

The bulk of our media, policing and judicial systems swallows the canard that Muslims are by nature more prone to violence. Removing democratic safeguards guaranteed by the Constitution can only make this worse. Every act of wrongful imprisonment and torture that follows is likely then to turn innocents into material for future terrorists to draw upon. Already the double standards are visible for all to see. The Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) was banned on grounds that could not stand up to legal scrutiny. With far more evidence against them, predominantly Hindu outfits like the RSS, the VHP, the Bajrang Dal, the Shiv Sena and the MNS remain legal entities. The leader of the latter, Raj Thackeray openly spread such hatred that many north Indians were recently killed by lynch mobs. Amongst these were the Dubey brothers, doctors from Kalyan who treated the poor for a grand fee of Rs.10 per patient. Raj Thackeray like his uncle Bal before him, remains free after issuing public threats that Bombay would burn if anyone had the guts to arrest him. Narendra Modi remains free despite the pogroms of Gujarat. Congress party murderers of Sikhs in 1984 remain free. Justice in India is clearly not there for all. Increasing the powers of the police cannot solve this problem. Only the honest and unbiased implementation of laws that exist, can.

It is a tragedy of the highest proportions that one such honest policeman, ATS chief Hemant Karkare, who had begun to unravel the thread of Hindutva terror, was himself gunned down, perhaps by Muslim terror. I say perhaps because I cannot automatically believe every story that emerges from the police or from the media, however convincing it may first sound. All I will say at the moment is that the evidence on record points to another historic irony. The people who had the most to gain from Hemant Karkare's death were the Hindutva bomb makers, sponsors and planters, from Col. Purohit to Sadhvi Pragya. It is reported that these elements now in judicial custody actually celebrated the news of Karkare's death. Until Karkare took charge, the Malegaon bomb blasts in which Muslims were killed and the Samjhauta Express blasts in which Pakistanis were killed were being blamed on Muslim terror. Karkare exposed a hitherto unknown Hindu outfit as masterminding a series of killer blasts across the country. For his pains Karkare came under attack not just from militant Hindus but from the mainstream BJP. Such was the viciousness of the attack that Karkare was under pressure to prove his patriotism. Was it this that led this senior officer to don helmet and ill-fitting bullet proof vest and rush into battle with a pistol? Or was it just his natural instinct, the same courage that had led him to expose Hindutva terror when popular sentiment was stacked against him?

Whatever it was, if indeed he was killed by Muslim terrorists, it only underlines the fact that jehadis of all kinds are actually allies of each other. So Bin Laden served George Bush and his neo-cons and vice-versa. So Islamic and Hindutva jehadis have served each other for years. Do they care who dies? Of the 200 people killed in the last few days by Islamic jehadis, a high number, specially at Shivaji Terminus, were Muslims. Many were waiting to board trains to celebrate Eid in their hometowns in UP and Bihar, when co-religionists gunned them down. Shockingly the media has not commented on this, nor for that matter has it focused at all on the tragedy at the railway station, choosing to concentrate almost entirely on tragedies that befell the more well-to-do. And shockingly it is the media that is leading the charge to turn us into a police state where we may lead lives with an illusion of safety, but with the certainty of joylessness.

I am not arguing that we do not need basic security at public places and at vulnerable sites. But real security will only come when it is accompanied by real justice, when the principles of democracy are extended to every part of the country, when the legitimate grievances of people are not crushed with an iron heel, when the arms race is replaced by a race for decency and humanity, when our children grow up in an atmosphere where religious faith is put to the test of reason. Until such time we will remain at the mercy of "patriots" and zealots.

        Anand Patwardhan is a Mumbai-based documentary film-maker.