elevated from the diaries

Agonistas,

I hope it's not too late to share my thoughts on the bomb blasts in suburban trains in Bombay on Tuesday July 11.

As a Bombayite who travels in the first class compartments [there are four categories among 12 compartments in every local suburban train in Bombay -- Gents Second Class which occupies 7.5 compartments (62%), Ladies First Class with 2.5 compartments (20%), Gents First Class with 1.5 (12%), Ladies First Class with 0.5 (4%), and these are not in a sequence, they are intermingled with each other, for instance, Gents First Class is located in three different compartments--half of each] and residing in the western suburbs and commuting in the trains of the western suburban railway (there are two other branches of suburban railways called 'central' and 'harbour' which caters to eastern and east-central suburbs of Bombay), I can say that I could very well have in any of those seven trains. Except that the bombs were placed in the trains leaving Churchgate station (the starting station in south Bombay from where the train heads north and in which direction commuters head back home in the evening) between 5 pm and 6 pm, and I rarely leave my office in south Bombay before 7-10 pm.

My first impressions on what could have been the reasons behind the blasts:
- the trains were headed to borivli and virar and the suburbs around these are mostly populated by Gujaratis, the bombs were placed in first class in which affluent Gujaratis (stockbrokers, businessmen, diamond traders, cloth market traders etc) are predominant and many of whom not only morally support Hindu extremist organisations but also fund them financially.

So there is a hint from the bombsters that this could be retaliation for the ugly and violent mass murder of Muslims in Gujarat in Feb-Mar 2002. (by the way, i reside in Kandivli suburb, one station before borivli, and my suburb also has a significant population of gujaratis... i am not a gujarati though)
- one news report suggests that planning was going on since 2003 when two blasts had already occurred in bombay.
- there is a possibility of the international angle too in addition to the gujarat one...sort of trying to kill two birds with one stone...the international angle being that of india's complete bowing to US diktats on geopolitical matters as well as the recent hypocritical nuclear deal between the two countries at a time when US is considered dangerous by many due to their illegal invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and targeting Iran now.

Do I like what I see? Of course, not. The blood, the hurt, the anguish, is painful to watch and must be 10 times worse for those directly or indirectly involved with the injured and dead.

Violence breeds violence. It's all happening due to thoughts of revenge -- "you hurt my people, i will hurt yours". But like "Which came first? Chicken or Egg?" each time a violence is committed by one against another it is attributed to something the other did recently or historically. Everyone justifies his or her violence—sometimes cunningly (like the Americans), sometimes openly (like the Al-Qeida) and sometimes secretly (like my countrymen—Indians).

So, historically, we have, in this part of our planet:
- the atrocities committed on Hindus by Turks/Arabs/Mughal invaders of India from 12th Century till the onset of the British Empire in India This has been used as a handle by Hindu extremists to kill, butcher and rape present generation Muslims in India. Strangely though, the same Hindus who desire revenge for the historical crimes of Muslims do not hold the same desire against the English people..
- the atrocities committed on present-generation Muslims by the Hindu extremists – Bombay and Surat (1992-93), Gujarat (2002) and other scattered incidents of violence. This is, in turn, is used by Islamic incendiaries to carry out ugly bomb blasts in Bombay, Delhi and other places.
- the police atrocities involved in crushing the desire of some Sikhs to take the state of Punjab out of India and declare an independent country during the 1970s and 1980s. This led to the assassination of India's prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1984 by Sikh extremists. This, in turn, led to large-scale killings of Sikhs in Delhi by Hindu extremists (elements from the Congress party) in the same year.

During the partition of India into India and Pakistan in 1947, Muslims killed Hindus and Sikhs in the areas that went to Pakistan on the grounds that Muslims in the areas which went to India were being massacred. Similarly, Hindus and Sikhs killed Muslims in the India part because they thought their brothers were being butchered on the other side of the partitioned country.

I haven't include the Kashmir equation in the above analysis but it roughly falls in the same pattern of a vicious cycle of violence.

Will share more thoughts as we go along and if I get the time to do so.