The three explosions at Varnasi on March 7, 2006, which killed 21 persons and injured many more, would be universally categorised as acts of terrorism, whatever be the motive, since the targets were innocent civilians in a Hindu temple and a railway station.
The police and other investigating agencies would need time to determine the kind of improvised explosive devices (IED) used, the nature of the explosives and the persons and organisations responsible. Their immediate priority is to prevent a disturbance of law and order not only in Uttar Pradesh, but also in the rest of the country as a sequel to the explosions. It is important to prevent the public from taking the law into their own hands. Unwise actions like the call of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for observing a day of protest would only play into the hands of the terrorists by adding to inter-communal tensions and keeping large numbers of the police preoccupied with crowd control duties at a time which is best required to focus on investigation, arrest of those responsible and prevention of more acts of copy-cat terrorism.
The unfortunate tendency--more pronounced in India than elsewhere--on the part of political parties to exploit acts of terrorism to highlight or promote their own political agenda with an eye on the elections adds to the already formidable difficulties of the Police and other counter-terrorism agencies and provides unintended encouragement to the terrorists. Our response to terrorism should be tactically professional--leaving it to the police and counter-terrorism agencies to deal with it as best as they can--and strategically political to prevent the flow of new volunteers for acts of terrorism.
In our country, unfortunately, the response is political from the moment an act of terrorism takes place--with political parties vying with each other to draw electoral advantage out of it. It is not as if this does not take place in other democracies. It does. But, ours is still a fragile society despite 60 years of independence, a great democracy and a booming economy. Politicisation of terrorism will add to the fragility.
While the terrorists have succeeded in killing a large number of civilians, it would seem from the media reports that the temple itself has not suffered any major damage. This fact should be given wide publicity. This is not the first time the terrorists have attacked or tried to attack a place of worship--they did so in September, 2003 in Ahmedabad and again in July last year in Ayodhya. They will continue doing so till we are able to root out the activities of jihadi terrorists--the externally-sponsored as well as the indigenous ones.
Details available so far do not indicate the involvement of suicide or suicidal terrorists in Varnasi. Their success underlines once again the difficulties faced by the police and other counter-terrorism agencies in protecting soft targets.
There are three kinds of soft targets: