No Excuses

Rediff.com has reported as follows: 

"The long-pending investigations into the three-year-old Mecca Masjid blast case on Thursday (June 17, 2010) moved forward with the Central Bureau of Investigation producing two suspects RSS pracharak Devender Gupta and his accomplice Lokesh Sharma in a special CBI court in Hyderabad. 14th additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate remanded the two to the judicial custody till June 30. A CBI team brought the two from Ajmer jail on a prisoner transit warrant......Devender Gupta and Lokesh Sharma, prime accused in bomb blast in Ajmer Dargah, were in Ajmer jail for the last one and a half months. CBI sources said that they will seek the custody of Gupta and Sharma to question them about their role in the bomb blast in Mecca Masjid on May 18, 2007. 15 people were killed in the blast during Friday congregation and subsequent police firing. CBI says that it was on the look out for two more suspects Sandeep Dange and Ramachandra Kalasangar alias Ramji. "

The investigation is still on-going and the final charge-sheet against the accused--all members of the Hindu community-- is still to be filed. The investigation made so far points in the direction of suspected targeted attacks on Muslims and their places of worship by some individual elements in the Hindu community as acts of retaliation for jihadi terrorism in different parts of India.

The fact that some of the arrested Hindu suspects had alleged links with the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) and other allied organisations has given rise to fresh allegations regarding Hindu terrorism. Prominent office-bearers of the RSS have done well to dissociate their organisation from the alleged acts of terrorism of the arrested individuals and express their support for the investigation against them to move forward vigorously.

Retaliation by a state against a state sponsoring acts of terrorism through surrogate terrorist organisations and against terrorist organisations which let themselves be used by a state are permitted under many UN resolutions against state-sponsorship of terrorism against another state. Such acts by a state are categorised as amounting to indirect aggression. There are instances of states retaliating against another state or in the territory of another state in order to make the sponsorship of terrorism by a state or acts of terrorism by an organisation from the territory of another state prohibitively costly.

The US air strikes in Libya in 1986 were an act of state retaliation for the terrorist attack on some US soldiers in a West Berlin discotheque by suspected terrorists allegedly sponsored by Libya. The US Cruise missile attacks on suspected Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and the Sudan in 1998 were acts of state retaliation against a terrorist organisation for its suspected involvement in the explosions of August 1998 outside the US Embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam. There have been such acts of retaliation by Israel too.

While such acts of selective retaliation against another state and terrorist organisations in their foreign hide-outs can be justified depending on the circumstances which led to the retaliation, no law--domestic or international--permits an act of retaliation by a state or organisation or individuals in one's own territory against one's own co-citizens.

There has been no universally accepted definition of terrorism, but it is agreed by terrorism analysts that the indiscriminate killing of civilians by using an explosive device in a public place is an act of terrorism. Thus, the members of the Hindu community who have been arrested and are presently under investigation have indulged in acts of terrorism against Muslims if the facts alleged against them are proved in a court of law.

Calculations of what we call vote bank politics -- electoral dividend or the lack of it-- should not be allowed to come in the way of the thorough investigation of the charges against the arrested persons There are two kinds of violence under the law-- violence in the heat of the moment in exercise of the right of self-defence and pre-meditated and pre-planned acts of violence. There is no excuse under the law for pre-meditated and pre-planned acts of violence--whether they amount to terrorism or not.

Any perception that the investigation against the arrested Hindus is not being done as vigorously as the investigation against Muslims suspected of terrorism would weaken our case against Pakistan-sponsored terrorism and provide an excuse to organisations such as the Indian Mujahideen (IM) for indulging in more acts of terrorism. The statement disseminated by the IM before its blasts in Uttar Pradesh in November 2007, alleged that the Indian criminal justice system is unfair to the Muslims. Any perception of a lack of thoroughness in the investigation against the arrested Hindus would add substance to this allegation of the IM.

It is in the interest of the RSS and allied organisations to strongly support such a thorough investigation and make it abundantly clear that they do not support acts of retaliation in our territory against our co-citizens.

B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies