Blood in Pink City

A blast site in Jaipur on May 13. At least 60 people were killed and 200 injured in the citys first "terror attack".-AP

The response of Jaipur to the devastating serial explosions of May 13 has been remarkably mature.

AT least 60 people were killed and 200 injured when a series of eight bomb explosions ripped through the heart of Jaipur in Rajasthan on May 13. The bombs, placed at several sites in the Walled City area of Jaipur, including the prominent Hanuman temple, were timed to detonate within minutes of each other.

As the city struggled to cope with its first ever terror attack, the police and the local administration imposed a curfew for the first two days after the blasts to prevent the possibility of communal violence. While community leaders and political parties use various platforms to remind the residents of Jaipur of their history of communal harmony, those with keener memories spoke in hushed tones about the clashes in Kota in 1989, Jodhpur and Jaipur in October 1990, Ajmer in 1998, Beawar in 2001, and Tonk and Chittorgarh earlier this year.

For the time being, any thoughts of communal violence in the city seemed to have been squashed by the imposition of a curfew and by hectic parleys between leaders of Hindu and Muslim communities. Two days after the blasts, at least a hundred people from both faiths converged on the main square in the Walled City for an inter-communal affirmation of peace and fraternity. While the threat of riots seems to have receded, the horrific bombings have raised a number of questions.

Perhaps the most interesting, though somewhat perverse, question that crossed many minds was why riots did not occur. Given that the Chittorgarh riots reportedly broke out after members of one community saw offensive slogans painted on the walls of shops owned by members of another community, the explosion at the Hanuman temple seemed to suggest that riots were a foregone conclusion. Further, the presence of a Bharatiya Janata Party-Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh government well schooled in the Gujarat model of electoral politics only added to an already volatile mix.

In her appeal for calm, Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia appeared to be aware of her partys communal record when she sought to defuse the tension by vowing not to let Rajasthan become another Gujarat. In fact, the scene at the Sawai Man Singh Hospital, where most of the injured were rushed, appeared to underline the facade of a caring, well-run administration that the Vasundhara Raje Scindia government seeks to project.

It is a well-known secret that no large-scale riot is spontaneous, says Kavita Srivastava, State president of the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) in Rajasthan. The relative calm in Jaipur can be contrasted with the widespread communalisation of the Rajasthan countryside.

Kavita Srivastava points out that allowing anarchy in Jaipur would prove detrimental to the image of Jaipur as a fast-modernising, investment-friendly hub. But a PUCL report of 2003 points out that trishul distribution ceremonies in rural Rajasthan are on the rise. Nishat Hussein, of the National Muslim Welfare Society, offers a more prosaic explanation: The citizens of Jaipur have finally realised that politicians are the only ones who benefit from riots; everyone else suffers.

While local politicians and the media refrained from blaming any particular community openly and Muslim leaders were quick to condemn the blasts, the national media coverage was by and large not very helpful.

It took the media less than a day to decide that the attacks were perpetrated by a Muslim group, said Salim Engineer, State president of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH). Some newspapers carried brooding images of what appeared to be Afghan tribesmen alongside articles describing the progress in the case. Reporters were also quick to play up largely unsubstantiated links between the Jaipur carnage and other blasts across the country and zeroed in on the Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami (HUJI) and the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).

While it is no ones case that these organisations are innocent, the evidence used to establish links to so-called jehadi groups has been decidedly sketchy. At present it appears as if there are as many terror groups involved as there are television channels, remarked a senior police officer wryly. Every media organisation has its own conspiracy theory.

Initial reports suggested a similarity between the Hyderabad blasts in August 2007 and the Jaipur explosions on the grounds that the explosive Neogel 90 and clock timers were used in both cases. However, other reports, such as an article in the Times of India, drew a link between the Jaipur blasts and the bombing of the Sankat Mochan temple in Varanasi in 2006, the bombing of court complexes in Lucknow, Faizabad and Varanasi in November 2007, and the Malegaon blasts in 2007 on the grounds of similar time frames and the use of bicycles in more than one case.

In another series of articles including one in Indian Express titled Bangla Terror groups fingerprints were handed over to Dhaka but no word yet on August 30, 2006 the authors claim that the same group was responsible for the 2005 serial blasts in Delhi, the 2006 serial train blasts in Mumbai and the Sankat Mochan blasts in 2006 on the grounds that in all these cases, the explosives were placed inside pressure cookers. Thus, if the hysterical outpourings of the press are to be believed, the same group is responsible for practically every single bombing in Delhi, Mumbai, Varanasi, Hyderabad, Lucknow and Jaipur.

In an interview with Frontline, a senior police officer pointed out that statistically bomb blasts are more likely to be caused by Islamic fundamentalists, but as investigations in Nanded in Maharashtra and Tenkasi in Tamil Nadu have shown, Hindu fundamentalist groups are not averse to building their own bombs either.

The Jaipur bombings have given rise to a renewed demand for more rigid laws to allow for preventive action against terrorists.

Speaking to reporters at her residence, Vasundhara Raje Scindia called for a law that would frighten people into understanding that there is a strong law against terrorism. One of the provisions of such a law, according to the Chief Minister, would be to fix the onus of proof of innocence on the accused. Police personnel claim that they have insufficient powers to ensure convictions, but Abdul Hafiz Shameems story suggests otherwise. Abdul Hafiz Shameem was picked up by the Special Investigation Team set up to investigate the Ajmer dargah bombing in 2007.

As reported in The Hindu, the 29-year-old imam of a mosque in Khandela village in Sikar district of Rajasthan was kept in illegal custody for 18 days on the suspicion of being a HUJI commander. According to The Hindu, Shameem said that he was tortured in police custody, threatened with dire consequences if he did not admit to links to the blast, and ridiculed on the subject of his faith. He was eventually released, with no explanations, after sustained pressure from Muslim groups. Shameems is not an isolated case. Muslim groups such as the JIH claim that dozens of Muslim young men are routinely harassed in the aftermath of such incidents.

At a recent press conference, Vasundhara Raje Scindia called for tougher measures on the grounds that the Jaipur blasts were not a crime but war. Five years after the invasion of Iraq, it is hoped that the methods used to wage this battle are those of peace rather than coercion.