Bhindranwale was a Sikh cleric, who became notorious in the 1980s.Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister, and Zail Singh, her Home Minister, allegedly tried to use him to create a split in the terrorist movement, which started a fight against thegovernment of India in 1981 for the creation of an independent state for the Sikhs to be calledKhalistan.
After some months of seeming co-operation with the government of India, he went out of control, joined the terrorists and took over the leadership of their so-called Khalistan movement. He and his terrorist followers took shelter inside the Golden Temple in Amritsar in Punjab and, from there, spread havoc across Punjab and Delhi. Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) tried to take advantage of the movement in order to destabilise Punjab.
After showing patience for some months, Indira Gandhi was forced to send the Indian Army inside the Golden Temple in June,1984, in an operation code-named Blue Star to neutralise Bhindranwale and his supporters. They put up a fierce fight and many of them, including Bhindranwale himself, were killed during the operation. A part of the Golden Temple was damaged.
This caused widespread anger in the Sikh community, culminating in the assassination of Indira Gandhi by two of her Sikh body-guards onOctober 31,1984.
Maulana Mohammad Abdul Aziz is a Deobandi cleric, who was not very well-known in Pakistan. Nobody had heard of him outside Pakistan. He is the head of the LalMasjid [Red Mosque] in Islamabad, where many of the civilian bureaucrats and military officers of the Pakistani capital used to go for the prayers.
Since seizing power in October,1999, Musharraf and the ISI were using him to discredit Ms. Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, former Prime Ministers, and other political opponents. Since last year, he has gone out of control. He has assumed the leadership of the pro-Taliban elements in the non-tribal areas of Pakistan and has started a jihad against Musharraf for his co-operation with the US.
The Lal Masjid has two madrasas (religious schools) attached to it--one for boys and the other for girls. The madrasa for girls is called Jamia Hafsa. Many of the madrasa students are the children of the pro-Taliban tribals of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). They project themselves as the future wives and mothers of suicide bombers. The daughters of many persons of Pakistani origin from the UK and the US are also studying there.
Since January this year, the madrasa students--boys and girls, the girls of Jamia Hafsa more ferociously than theboys--have been on the warpath against Musharraf. The trouble started initially when the ISI ordered the Islamabad municipal authorities to demolish some mosques, which were located on routes generally used by Musharraf while moving between Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Thegovernment claimed that these mosques were demolished because they were unauthorised constructions. The real reason was that the ISI feared that the terrorists targeting Musharraf could use these mosques as a hide-out.