Book smashes India's "Islamic terrorism" myth
A former IG of Maharashtra police lays bare a massive plot to destabilise India
By M Zeyaul Haque
New Delhi, October 22 (The Milli Gazette): A new book curiously titled Who Killed Karkare? says a nationwide network of Hindutva terror that has its tentacles spread up to Nepal and Israel is out to destroy the India most Indians have known for ages and to remould it into some kind of Afghanistan under the Taliban.
The writer, a former IG Police of Maharashtra, SM Mushrif, has reconstructed a fearsome picture out of former Maharashtra ATS chief Hemant Karkare’s chargesheet against alleged Hindutva terrorists like Lt. Col. Purohit, Sadhvi Pragyasingh Thakur and others.
The chargesheet pointed towards a mind-boggling nationwide conspiracy with international support to destabilise the constitutional order and the secular democratic Indian state that upholds it, to be replaced by a Hindutva state run according to a new Constitution. For that the conspirators were prepared for a massive bloodbath, using bomb attacks on religious places to trigger that anti-Muslim holocaust.
Mushrif, who has over three decades of diligent policing behind him and whose feats include exposing the Telgi scam, has made an elaborate case out of nearly a dozen blasts over a large area of the country conducted by Hindutva terror groups of different stripes. His case: a section of India’s intelligence services, a miniscule group in the armed forces and a section of different state police forces have been compromised and infiltrated by these elements, a development that bodes ill for the future of the country.
In Hemant Karkare’s net (of investigations, of course) many big and small fishes of VHP, RSS, Bajrang Dal and Sanatan Sanstha (which has been found to be involved in Diwali-eve blasts in Goa last week) had been trapped. Serving and retired army officers, academics, serving and retired officials of India’s premier intelligence service were ensnared in Karkare’s fishing net. The menacing power of the latter groups, inspired by sustained anti-Muslim hate campaigns of the last six decades, gave the plot a sinister and highly destructive character.
Among the plans unearthed by Karkare was a blueprint for the assassination of 70 prominent Indians who could by a hindrance to the project of Hindutva. Interestingly, most of the persons marked for elimination would, naturally, be Hindus because it is they who primarily run the dispensation. The conspirators were also unhappy with organisations whose Hindutva they suspected to be less virulent than desired.
Mushrif, who very well knows the power of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) to make or mar lives and careers, says he is prepared to face the consequences of hostility of this power hub. He musters “evidence” to show that the IB has regularly been interfering with regular police investigations to let Hindutva terrorists slip out of the net and replace them with random Muslim youth. To fudge the issues further obliging police officers in the states would not mind exterminating a few Muslim youth to be branded posthumously as “terrorists”.
There are quite a few number of such cases where such extra-judicial killing of Muslim youth has turned out to be false police encounters. All this is done to cover tracks of Hindutva terror. Mushrif says a “Brahminist” network that has its origins in Maharashtra, and is closely knit across political parties, government services, including IB, and other vital sectors of life is behind the terror that seeks to destroy the secular, democratic state. He hastens to clarify that very few Brahminists are Brahmins. Many are from other high Hindu castes, some from middle and lower castes.
Most Brahmins are fair-minded and would not like to associate themselves with hate ideologies. Hemant Karkare, too, was a Brahmin, Mushrif says. So is Mushrif’s son-in-law.
It is pertinent to note that “Brahminism” and “Brahminical order” first appeared in Dalit protest vocabulary in the Dalit uprising movement in Maharashtra towards the turn of the 20th century. Mushrif, who appropriates part of this vocabulary for the present discourse, says that Maharashtra still remains the centre of this ideology that, among other things, has the dubious distinction of killing the Father of the Nation.
The power establishment that really runs the affairs of this country (Mushrif says it is not Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh or Rahul Gandhi) does not want to expose the Hindutva terrorists. One example is the blasts in Samjhauta Express, which the IB said was carried out by Pakistan’s ISI. Mushrif quotes a report in The Times of India that said, “the Centre had blamed the ISI on the basis of the IB’s findings.” However, during a narco-analysis test under Karkare, Lt. Col. Purohit had admitted having supplied the RDX used in the blast. The IB, which draws its power from its proximity to the Prime Minister (its director briefs the PM every morning for half an hour), did not want Karkare’s investigation that blew the cover off the IB’s shenanigans, to continue.
Once Karkare was removed from the scene, the IB moved in to fill his position with KP Raghuvanshi, a pliant police officer with extremely low credibility among Muslims for his record of letting off known Hindutva terrorirsts and implicating innocent Muslim youth even in bomb attack cases on mosques.
There are quite a few interesting vignettes here, like Raghuvanshi and Col. Purohit’s association with Abhinav Bharat in Maharashtra, whose hand was evident in a series of blasts across the country. It has old connections with men like Veer Damodar Savarkar (whose relative Himani Savarkar leads the Abhinav Bharat movement), Dr Munje, who led the Hindu Mahasabha, and other Hindutva luminaries. It is at the Bhonsala Military Academy run by these groups that Purohit trained police officers, including Raghuvanshi. Mushrif asks a pertinent question: Will Raghuvanshi pursue the investigation against Purohit, his guru? A plausible answer is, perhaps no. Already charges have been dropped by a special court under MCOCA against 11 accused, including Purohit, on the grounds of insufficient evidence produced in the court by the prosecution.
This was just the beginning of the undoing of Karkare’s painstaking investigation. Mushrif says slowly the system is working to undo all of Karkare’s work and let off the terrorists who over the years destroyed scores of lives and wreaked irreparable economic damage. The ATS team under Karkare had pointed out VHP leader Praveen Togadia’s role in the blasts. The ATS under Raghuvanshi dropped the investigation against him saying (please hold your laughter) they do not know who Togadia is!
A number of investigations have been thus sabotaged by the powers that be and the tracks of the Hinduta terrorists duly covered. The 319-page book is crammed with such information.
But what about who killed Karkare? Mushrif says two teams were at work on 26/11 – one which did the maximum damage, and was from outside. The smaller team took advantage of the confusion of the moment and acted only on the relatively small CST-CAMA-Rangbhavan stretch that killed Karkare. It was a desi unit that wanted Karkare and his men out of the way.
Book: Who Killed Karkare? The Real Face of Terrorism in India
Author: SM Mushrif
Price: Rs 300
Pages: 319
Publisher: Pharos Media (www.pharosmedia.com), New Delhi
Showing posts with label Terrorism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Terrorism. Show all posts
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Book Review: On Pakistani Madrasas and Terrorism
From: Yogi Sikand
Date: 2009/6/8
Subject: Book Review: On Pakistani Madrasas and Terrorism
To: japhets@nls.ac.in
Book Review
Name of the Book: Islam and Education—Conflict and Conformity in Pakistan ’s Madrassahs
Author: Saleem H. Ali
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Karachi
Year: 2009
Pages: 214
Price: Rs.495 (Pakistani)
ISBN: 978-0-19-547672-9
Reviewed by: Yoginder Sikand
Much has been written about the role of madrasas, or Islamic schools, in fomenting sectarian violence and terrorism in Pakistan . Today, large parts of Pakistan are faced with the alarming rise of armed vigilante groups, often led and manned by madrasa-trained maulvis, some of which are presently involved in warring against their own government. The link that numerous commentators have made between madrasas and violence in Pakistan is what this book is all about. Based on investigations and comparisons drawn from two selected areas in Pakistan , Ahmedpur East, in the southern Punjab, and Islamabad , the country’s capital, the author seeks to explore if and how madrasas are involved in promoting terrorism, which today threatens to drown Pakistan in the throes of a bloody and seemingly never-ending civil war.
Ahmedpur East is a largely rural area, where landholdings are extremely skewed. Much of the land in the area is owned by ‘high’ caste Shia landlords, while the bulk of the peasantry are from the rival Sunni sect. As in much of rural Pakistan , state services are sorely lacking in the area. The public education system is in a shambles, and in many places landlords do not even allow government schools to function for fear that education will make their peasants restive. This particular context, Ali argues, has provided fertile ground for a rapid rise in the number of madrasas in the area, most of which provide free boarding, lodging and education and so attract students mainly from poor and lower-middle class families. In other words, the pathetic failure of the Pakistani state to provide decent education to the country’s poor is one of the most salient reasons for the mushrooming of madrasas all over the country, including in Ahmedpur East, in recent years.
As elsewhere in the Muslim world, the madrasas of Ahmedpur East are not simply Islamic institutions pure and simple. Rather, each of them represents a particular sectarian brand or version of Islam. One of the many tasks of a madrasa is precisely to articulate and champion the version of Islam that the sect it is affiliated to adheres to, in the face of competing versions. In seeking to do this, madrasas routinely denounce other sectarian versions of Islam as ‘un-Islamic’ and even ‘anti-Islamic’. Sectarianism, therefore, Ali indicates, is endemic, indeed central, to the madrasa system as it presently exists. Not surprisingly, the sectarian hatred actively taught by many madrasas often gets translated into sectarian violence in Pakistan . Ali notes the involvement of various madrasas, belonging to different Muslim sects, particularly the Deobandis, the Barelvis and Shias, in instigating sectarian conflict in Ahmedpur East, which sometimes takes overtly physical forms. Sectarian rivalries in the region are compounded by complex class factors. Since most of the large landlords belong to the Shia minority, Sunni-Shia conflict, instigated by radical Sunni groups that are led by madrasa graduates and leaders, can also be seen as an expression of severe class antagonisms.
It is, however, not simply poverty that has led to the mushrooming of madrasas in Pakistan , Ali notes. Nor is it true that material deprivation necessarily leads to radicalism and violence. Ali compares the madrasas of Ahmedpur East to those in Pakistan ’s capital, Islamabad , a city with modern amenities and services, and finds that there, too, sectarianism is endemic to the madrasas in terms of their self-representation. He also notes that the growth of madrasas in Islamabad has actually been facilitated by the state, rather than fuelled by local demand. Almost all the city’s madrasas have been built on state-owned land, many of them illegally, and the vast majority of their students are not from the city, but, rather, from impoverished parts of the North-West Frontier Province , who live, Ali writes, like aliens in the city. Ali mentions various measures taken by successive Pakistani rulers, starting with the military dictator General Zia ul-Haq, to curry favour with the ulema or clerics of the madrasas, which must be taken into account in seeking to understand the enormous growth in the number of madrasas all over Pakistan, including in Islamabad, where, he says, demand for madrasa education now far outstrips supply. In Islamabad , as in Ahmedpur East, Ali notes, numerous cases have been reported of madrasa teachers and students being actively involved in violent political demonstrations, sectarian clashes, bombings and providing refuge to suspected terrorists.
It is not Ali’s case that madrasas are necessarily, and by definition, hubs of terror. Indeed, he argues, relatively few madrasas in Pakistan are actually involved in violent activities or in providing armed training to their students. Yet, he says, this should not cause us to overlook the fact that stern opposition to, or even hatred of, rival Muslim sects and other religions and their adherents is actively instilled in most madrasas, along with a pervasive sense of supremacy of the particular sectarian version of Islam that each madrasa is associated with. This is further reinforced by so-called jihadist literature, websites and mosque sermons that many Pakistani madrasa students are exposed to. It is thus not surprising, Ali tells us, that the majority of the students and teachers in the madrasas that he surveyed favoured violent revolution as an instrument for political change in Pakistan, supported war as a means for resolving Pakistan’s disputes with India, considered women as inferior to men, had extremely negative views about other religions and their adherents, and, in the case of Deobandi madrasas, favoured the Taliban as their role model for what they called the ‘Islamization’ of Pakistan.
This leads Ali to argue that, ‘It is high time that we become more aware of the perils of extremist educational institutions, which have a far broader base in Pakistan than we care to admit. The only way to address the problem is by […] ensuring curricular development in partnership with the reformist ulema’ (176). In this regard, he advocates the inclusion of ‘peace education’ in the madrasa curriculum and the promotion of inter-sectarian and inter-religious dialogue, in which the ulema should be actively involved. That, however, is easier said than done. Ali offers no practical suggestions as to precisely how this should be attempted and how the ulema of the madrasas can be convinced to get involved in these benign activities.
Ali makes a brief survey of the various measures that the Pakistani Government claims to have adopted, particularly after 9/11 and under American pressure, to ‘reform’ the country’s madrasas. He concludes that these measures have been half-hearted and not seriously pursued, and that, consequently, they have miserably failed. That very few madrasas have chosen to register themselves with the government authorities is a sign of the considerable resistance on the part of those who control the madrasas to what they see as unwarranted American and Pakistani Government interference in the realm of Islamic education. Likewise, the few ‘model’ madrasas that the Pakistani Government recently set up, combining secular and religious education, have also had few takers. Matters have been made worse by bureaucratic wrangling and gross mismanagement in the Government-appointed Madrasa Board, which was meant to oversee the process of madrasa ‘reforms’. Ali writes that the Board’s very rationale has been seriously undermined with the Government’s announcement that curricular reform is not part of its mandate. Ironically, Ali adds, Lt. Gen. (retd.) Javed Ashraf Qazi, the person appointed as the head of the Board, whose task is to de-radicalise the militant madrasas, is the former head of Pakistan ’s notorious secret services agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), who had himself supervised the recruitment of students from Pakistani madrasas for the radical Taliban in Afghanistan . So much, then, for the Pakistani Government’s ostensible commitment to madrasa ‘reform’ and to clamping down on terrorism in the name of Islam.
Ali wisely remarks that it is not simply religious bigotry that has led to a mounting sense of anti-Americanism and radicalism among large numbers of madrasa students and teachers (besides many other Muslims). Rather, a host of unresolved regional conflicts involving Muslim groups, particularly Palestine , but including other trouble-spots, such as Kashmir, southern Thailand , Chechenya , Iraq and Afghanistan , continue to cause deep resentment among many Muslims. He rightly remarks that solving these conflicts is inextricably linked to countering radicalism in Pakistan ’s madrasas.
At the same time, and very lamentably, Ali displays a pathetic optimism in American Government efforts to ‘reform’ the madrasas. He cites, with uncritical approval, the instance of American state funding of Islamic educational institutions in countries such as Indonesia and Uganda , holding these out as examples of positive collaboration for the production and dissemination of ‘moderate’ Islam. Given the fact that Ali’s study was funded by the United States Institute of Peace, known for its close links with the American establishment, it is perhaps not surprising that Ali should laud such cosmetic efforts while ignoring both the politics of this funding and the earlier American funding and support for Islamist radicalism in Pakistan and elsewhere against the erstwhile Soviet Union. Likewise, his argument that American intentions must not be suspected or questioned, even in the face of the record of American support to dictatorial regimes in the Muslim world and elsewhere and the nefarious role of the CIA, is quite unforgivable. So, too, is his claim that ‘The United States has probably learned from its past mistakes and is willing to change’ (142).
As a basic introductory text to some aspects of madrasa education in contemporary Pakistan , this book makes interesting reading, although it fails to provide any new information or arguments. The author claims to have done intensive fieldwork, but the perspective from the field is almost wholly absent—all we have are long tables with cold statistics. The book lacks a central focus and many of its various sections seem hopelessly disjointed. These many lacunae may, however, be forgiven when considered in the light of the pathetic state of social science research in Pakistan ,
--
Sukhia Sab Sansar Khaye Aur Soye
Dukhia Sahib Kabir Jagey Aur Roye
The world is 'happy', eating and sleeping
The forlorn Kabir Sahib is awake and weeping
Check out my blogs: www.madrasareforms.blogspot.com
www.islampeaceandjustice.blogspot.com
Date: 2009/6/8
Subject: Book Review: On Pakistani Madrasas and Terrorism
To: japhets@nls.ac.in
Book Review
Name of the Book: Islam and Education—Conflict and Conformity in Pakistan ’s Madrassahs
Author: Saleem H. Ali
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Karachi
Year: 2009
Pages: 214
Price: Rs.495 (Pakistani)
ISBN: 978-0-19-547672-9
Reviewed by: Yoginder Sikand
Much has been written about the role of madrasas, or Islamic schools, in fomenting sectarian violence and terrorism in Pakistan . Today, large parts of Pakistan are faced with the alarming rise of armed vigilante groups, often led and manned by madrasa-trained maulvis, some of which are presently involved in warring against their own government. The link that numerous commentators have made between madrasas and violence in Pakistan is what this book is all about. Based on investigations and comparisons drawn from two selected areas in Pakistan , Ahmedpur East, in the southern Punjab, and Islamabad , the country’s capital, the author seeks to explore if and how madrasas are involved in promoting terrorism, which today threatens to drown Pakistan in the throes of a bloody and seemingly never-ending civil war.
Ahmedpur East is a largely rural area, where landholdings are extremely skewed. Much of the land in the area is owned by ‘high’ caste Shia landlords, while the bulk of the peasantry are from the rival Sunni sect. As in much of rural Pakistan , state services are sorely lacking in the area. The public education system is in a shambles, and in many places landlords do not even allow government schools to function for fear that education will make their peasants restive. This particular context, Ali argues, has provided fertile ground for a rapid rise in the number of madrasas in the area, most of which provide free boarding, lodging and education and so attract students mainly from poor and lower-middle class families. In other words, the pathetic failure of the Pakistani state to provide decent education to the country’s poor is one of the most salient reasons for the mushrooming of madrasas all over the country, including in Ahmedpur East, in recent years.
As elsewhere in the Muslim world, the madrasas of Ahmedpur East are not simply Islamic institutions pure and simple. Rather, each of them represents a particular sectarian brand or version of Islam. One of the many tasks of a madrasa is precisely to articulate and champion the version of Islam that the sect it is affiliated to adheres to, in the face of competing versions. In seeking to do this, madrasas routinely denounce other sectarian versions of Islam as ‘un-Islamic’ and even ‘anti-Islamic’. Sectarianism, therefore, Ali indicates, is endemic, indeed central, to the madrasa system as it presently exists. Not surprisingly, the sectarian hatred actively taught by many madrasas often gets translated into sectarian violence in Pakistan . Ali notes the involvement of various madrasas, belonging to different Muslim sects, particularly the Deobandis, the Barelvis and Shias, in instigating sectarian conflict in Ahmedpur East, which sometimes takes overtly physical forms. Sectarian rivalries in the region are compounded by complex class factors. Since most of the large landlords belong to the Shia minority, Sunni-Shia conflict, instigated by radical Sunni groups that are led by madrasa graduates and leaders, can also be seen as an expression of severe class antagonisms.
It is, however, not simply poverty that has led to the mushrooming of madrasas in Pakistan , Ali notes. Nor is it true that material deprivation necessarily leads to radicalism and violence. Ali compares the madrasas of Ahmedpur East to those in Pakistan ’s capital, Islamabad , a city with modern amenities and services, and finds that there, too, sectarianism is endemic to the madrasas in terms of their self-representation. He also notes that the growth of madrasas in Islamabad has actually been facilitated by the state, rather than fuelled by local demand. Almost all the city’s madrasas have been built on state-owned land, many of them illegally, and the vast majority of their students are not from the city, but, rather, from impoverished parts of the North-West Frontier Province , who live, Ali writes, like aliens in the city. Ali mentions various measures taken by successive Pakistani rulers, starting with the military dictator General Zia ul-Haq, to curry favour with the ulema or clerics of the madrasas, which must be taken into account in seeking to understand the enormous growth in the number of madrasas all over Pakistan, including in Islamabad, where, he says, demand for madrasa education now far outstrips supply. In Islamabad , as in Ahmedpur East, Ali notes, numerous cases have been reported of madrasa teachers and students being actively involved in violent political demonstrations, sectarian clashes, bombings and providing refuge to suspected terrorists.
It is not Ali’s case that madrasas are necessarily, and by definition, hubs of terror. Indeed, he argues, relatively few madrasas in Pakistan are actually involved in violent activities or in providing armed training to their students. Yet, he says, this should not cause us to overlook the fact that stern opposition to, or even hatred of, rival Muslim sects and other religions and their adherents is actively instilled in most madrasas, along with a pervasive sense of supremacy of the particular sectarian version of Islam that each madrasa is associated with. This is further reinforced by so-called jihadist literature, websites and mosque sermons that many Pakistani madrasa students are exposed to. It is thus not surprising, Ali tells us, that the majority of the students and teachers in the madrasas that he surveyed favoured violent revolution as an instrument for political change in Pakistan, supported war as a means for resolving Pakistan’s disputes with India, considered women as inferior to men, had extremely negative views about other religions and their adherents, and, in the case of Deobandi madrasas, favoured the Taliban as their role model for what they called the ‘Islamization’ of Pakistan.
This leads Ali to argue that, ‘It is high time that we become more aware of the perils of extremist educational institutions, which have a far broader base in Pakistan than we care to admit. The only way to address the problem is by […] ensuring curricular development in partnership with the reformist ulema’ (176). In this regard, he advocates the inclusion of ‘peace education’ in the madrasa curriculum and the promotion of inter-sectarian and inter-religious dialogue, in which the ulema should be actively involved. That, however, is easier said than done. Ali offers no practical suggestions as to precisely how this should be attempted and how the ulema of the madrasas can be convinced to get involved in these benign activities.
Ali makes a brief survey of the various measures that the Pakistani Government claims to have adopted, particularly after 9/11 and under American pressure, to ‘reform’ the country’s madrasas. He concludes that these measures have been half-hearted and not seriously pursued, and that, consequently, they have miserably failed. That very few madrasas have chosen to register themselves with the government authorities is a sign of the considerable resistance on the part of those who control the madrasas to what they see as unwarranted American and Pakistani Government interference in the realm of Islamic education. Likewise, the few ‘model’ madrasas that the Pakistani Government recently set up, combining secular and religious education, have also had few takers. Matters have been made worse by bureaucratic wrangling and gross mismanagement in the Government-appointed Madrasa Board, which was meant to oversee the process of madrasa ‘reforms’. Ali writes that the Board’s very rationale has been seriously undermined with the Government’s announcement that curricular reform is not part of its mandate. Ironically, Ali adds, Lt. Gen. (retd.) Javed Ashraf Qazi, the person appointed as the head of the Board, whose task is to de-radicalise the militant madrasas, is the former head of Pakistan ’s notorious secret services agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), who had himself supervised the recruitment of students from Pakistani madrasas for the radical Taliban in Afghanistan . So much, then, for the Pakistani Government’s ostensible commitment to madrasa ‘reform’ and to clamping down on terrorism in the name of Islam.
Ali wisely remarks that it is not simply religious bigotry that has led to a mounting sense of anti-Americanism and radicalism among large numbers of madrasa students and teachers (besides many other Muslims). Rather, a host of unresolved regional conflicts involving Muslim groups, particularly Palestine , but including other trouble-spots, such as Kashmir, southern Thailand , Chechenya , Iraq and Afghanistan , continue to cause deep resentment among many Muslims. He rightly remarks that solving these conflicts is inextricably linked to countering radicalism in Pakistan ’s madrasas.
At the same time, and very lamentably, Ali displays a pathetic optimism in American Government efforts to ‘reform’ the madrasas. He cites, with uncritical approval, the instance of American state funding of Islamic educational institutions in countries such as Indonesia and Uganda , holding these out as examples of positive collaboration for the production and dissemination of ‘moderate’ Islam. Given the fact that Ali’s study was funded by the United States Institute of Peace, known for its close links with the American establishment, it is perhaps not surprising that Ali should laud such cosmetic efforts while ignoring both the politics of this funding and the earlier American funding and support for Islamist radicalism in Pakistan and elsewhere against the erstwhile Soviet Union. Likewise, his argument that American intentions must not be suspected or questioned, even in the face of the record of American support to dictatorial regimes in the Muslim world and elsewhere and the nefarious role of the CIA, is quite unforgivable. So, too, is his claim that ‘The United States has probably learned from its past mistakes and is willing to change’ (142).
As a basic introductory text to some aspects of madrasa education in contemporary Pakistan , this book makes interesting reading, although it fails to provide any new information or arguments. The author claims to have done intensive fieldwork, but the perspective from the field is almost wholly absent—all we have are long tables with cold statistics. The book lacks a central focus and many of its various sections seem hopelessly disjointed. These many lacunae may, however, be forgiven when considered in the light of the pathetic state of social science research in Pakistan ,
--
Sukhia Sab Sansar Khaye Aur Soye
Dukhia Sahib Kabir Jagey Aur Roye
The world is 'happy', eating and sleeping
The forlorn Kabir Sahib is awake and weeping
Check out my blogs: www.madrasareforms.blogspot.com
www.islampeaceandjustice.blogspot.com
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