India- Finding Connections between Malegoan and Batla House

India- Finding Connections between Malegoan and Batla House

Syed Ali Mujtaba

Let me begin by saying looking for a connection between Malegoan and Batla House is a case of glass half full and half empty. One way to look at it is, since Maharastra and Delhi both are Congress ruled states, the ruling party did a balancing act by engineering the Batla House encounter in New Delhi to placate the Hindus first, then ordered some high profile arrests of Hindus involved in the Maleogoan blast case in Maharastra to placate the Muslims. The balancing act was done because the elections are round the corner. A very convincing argument, but I am sure not many like to buy it lock stock and barrel.

As far as I am concerned Batala house encounter was an act of cold blooded murder of two Muslim youth. My sources say that one of the boys who got killed had come from a small town in Uttar Pradesh to take admission in Jamia University after passing his high school exams.  He had no criminal records and became a victim of mistaken identity.

Now when we compare this boy with those like Dara Singh who had burnt alive the Graham Stains family in a sleeping in a car then many questions arises for which answers are hard to find. Why was life snuffed out of this school kid, could not there has been some restraint on the license to kill him.

To me the Batala house encounter was an act of ‘Bali’ to please the angry ‘Maa Kali’ whose was demanding blood as too much of it was smearing on streets due to the regular terror attack. That was the reason inspector Mohan Chand Sharma, did not wore the bulletproof jacket and climb up the stairs to pull the trigger. He was responding to the call from angry ‘Maa’ and by taking the blood of these young lads he toned down her anger. In reality this act of sacrifice cooled down the nerves of the entire nation that was agitated over terror attack that was occurring at regular intervals.   
 
The Batlaa House encounter also connotes an act of ‘Balidan’ in some other sense as well. The lying down of the life of a celebrated encounter specialist also gave a martyr to the nation. It is a matter of investigation whether he succumbed to the terrorists bullets or was killed in the crossfire. What ever maybe the case this ‘Balidaan’ gave a sigh of relief to the security force who had come under the fire as they were unable to check the terror attacks. This sacrifice covered their inefficiency well and now no one can raise a finger at them.  

Now we look at the Malegoan case, where certain people belonging to Hindu community were arrested on suspected link behind the terror act in Malegoan, a weavers’ town in north Maharashtra. Was the arrest an appeasement policy of the Congress towards Muslims as its being drummed or was it something else?  

If appeasement would have been the idea then Maharastra’s Anti-Terrorism Squad would not have arrested a serving Lieutenant Colonel Srikant Purohit that sullied the image of the entire Indian Army. It created a history that an army officer was arrested in connection of terror attacks in the country. The very fact that such arrest could not have taken place without the clearance from the Union Home Ministry, suggests that how really grave this matter was.  

Similarly the arrest of some prominent Hindu religious leaders, like Shadvi Payaga and Dayanand Pandey, in connection with September 29, 2008 Malegaon blast too speaks volumes about the gravity of the situation. In India where religion plays a significant role in the operational dynamics of its democracy and has the wherewithal to highjack the entire democratic space, the decision to arrest some prominent Hindu religious leaders must have been made after giving some thoughts.

So these arrests could not be summarily attributed to the appeasement policy of the Congress. All along some Hindu terrorists groups had been flourishing in this country because they had protection from the high and mighty in this land. They were also overlooked because they served some purposes. However, when the realization dawned upon that if they  are not put under leash, they could become a sure recipe of chaos and anarchy in the country and hence the crackdown was made.

The arrests made in connection with the Malegoan blasts was an attempt to be draw a line between religion and state in India. These arrests broke several myths that purportedly peddled since some time. One was a Hindu cannot be a terrorist. The Malegoan arrests took the wind out the sail who peddled such theories.

The second myth was; “not all the Muslims are terrorists but all the terrorists are Muslims.” The Malegoan arrest unmasked the diabolic designs behind this statement and for the first time asserted that a terrorist has no religion. Those who are shielding such characters under the cloak of their religion are also to be booked under anti-terror laws.  

The arrests has also un rattled the booming media industry that minutes after every blast started  lowing the trumpet of Lashkar e Tiayaba, Jaishe Mohmmad and HUJI fixing the responsibilities of the terrorist act. The Malegoan arrests for the first time silenced such trumpeters.  

Similarly, the terror specialists who have mushroomed in the country were foxed over these arrests. Touting themselves as an expert on Jehadis network they have made a living out of such writings.  Now they are forced to make a turn around to pen the stories of Hindu terrorism and equating them with the Jehadis network.   

Is all this happening because of the appeasement policy? I firmly believe this happened because of the conviction that it’s high time to put breaks on the obvious divisive force in the country. The realization that the saffron heat may soon force the forfeiting of the moderates space in country, necessitated calling “spade a spade.”  
So what’s the connection between Batla House and Malegoan?  Well while there was a pall of gloom after the Batala house encounter, there was a ray of hope after the Malegoan arrests. This especially if we see that in context of Ayodhya destruction, Gujarat carnage and numerous communal riots where hardly any Hindu was booked even on grounds of suspicion. The arrests in the Malegoan case have definitely lifted the morale of those who suspected the secular credentials of Indian state after the Batala House encounter.

It is in his context if we see the two episodes one can judge their true significance and find the connection between the two. However, as I have said it’s a story of a glass that’s half empty and half full, it’s up to you how look at it!

 —
Syed Ali Mujtaba is a working journalist based in Chennai. He can be contacted at syedalimujtaba@yahoo.com