Swami's Thesis on the Jaipur Blasts

Praveen Swami's write-up today on the Jaipur blasts has a disturbing ending. He says that the much publicized email is more than just a claim to responsibility.

It would be misleading, though, to understand the e-mail only as a claim of responsibility. Like a similar document issued by the Indian Mujahideen after the bombings of three trial-court buildings in Uttar Pradesh last year, the e-mail is — despite its crude style and poor spelling — a political manifesto.

Perhaps he is right but if reading the rest of the article, I get the impression that this manifesto is no different from the dozens of others published by various jihadi outfits. The recital of all the muslim grievances, real and imagined is the hallmark of all of these 'manifestos'. The last paragraph was what set off this post because Swami's conclusions are erroneous and worrying.

Finding the author of the e-mail, though, is less important than addressing the issues it has raised — and ensuring the Islamist jihad does not gain legitimacy because of the Indian state’s failures.

Wrong. Finding the author is important because if it is authentic as he says it is likely to be, the investigating agencies are likely to obtain valuable clues to solve the crime. And it is utterly naive to think that these issues he has raised can be addressed to the satisfaction of him or others like him who are drawn to this pernicious ideology. The reason the author of the email raises them may well be that he believes that while being sufficiently inflammatory, the Indian state has no satisfactory answers to them. Let us look at the evidence first.

At its outset, the e-mail links the attacks in Jaipur to the broader global jihad, warning the “USA and [Great] Britain in particular that [that] we Muslims are one across the globe.”

...Citing from the Koran and the Hadith, or traditions of the Prophet, the Indian Mujahideen argues its actions have theological legitimacy. Scriptural calls for forgiveness relied on by the Deoband clerics, it says, are only relevant after a decisive military victory. Dialogue, it continues, is futile: “there is no existence of compromise between a believer and a non-believer.”

...Islamic law, the e-mail asserts, allows the use of collective retaliation against civilians if they are infidels. Given that “a single [Muslim] home is attacked by thousands of [Hindu] terrorists, [a] single woman is raped by hundreds of men,” it becomes legitimate for “the mujahideen to go to any extent or use anything to crush the dignity and power of the enemy.”

The email seeks to link this attack to the global Islamic jihad. It insists that there can be no dialogue or compromise with the non-believer. And it asserts that Islamic law allows collective retaliation against civilians if they are infidels. Are any of these issues that can be addressed? Does Swami seriously expect India to capitulate or even negotiate with the enemy in the face of such demands? What is he smoking? All the examples of outrages against muslims it cites are past events that cannot be undone which simply goes to show that these organizations believe in and are determined to carry out such attacks anyway and are simply using all these incidents of communal violence to support their thesis. Organizations like HuJI and LeT existed long before the Gujarat violence and if not for this episode, they and others like them will find some other incident to take its place. While a faithful fulfilment of the state's obligations to do justice to all sections may help stem recruitment to such organizations, to believe that it can actually address such self-justificatory nihilistic baloney solely or even primarily through that means is to engage in self-deception. A global problem today, jihadi terrorism requires an aggressive attempt to combat religious bigotry and to closely monitor such tendencies through an elaborate and comprehensive intelligence network. Read B.Raman's column following the Jaipur blasts that points out some of the problems with our current set-up.