tiistai 16. syyskuuta 2008

About the blasts in Delhi

Bombings in India are all about communal violence, said Manoj, my Indian coworker in Finland. Communal violence means that Muslims/Hindus/Christians/Tamils take the streets and lynch some members of other ethnic groups. The primary aim of a bomb is to escalate communal violence and only the secondary aim is to kill people with blasts.

The blasts in Delhi killed exceptionally many people, but even then, the way newspapers report about the incident supports Manoj's claim. These are from Monday issue of Hindu Times.

1. The paper reports that Delhi investigators tracked the blasts to an organization namd SIMI, Student's Islamic Movement of India. Arrest orders were given for 3 suspects who live in Uttar Pradesh. However, "Fearing that police action against the three men might fuel tension in communally chaged Azamgarh, police sources said, Uttar Pradesh authorities refused to order their arrest or detention."

2. There's a very tolerance-minded letter to editor by a Muslim who refuses to acknowledge terror strikes as Islamic.

3. Ganesh is a Hindu elephant god, whose main celebration event just ended in Hyderabad. In the final event, lots of Ganesh idols were sunk to an artificial lake near Hyderabad. Among other events, there was an interfaith tolerance event: "Idols resembling common people from different religions were holding the Indian tricolour and placards saying 'we are Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, but we are Indians and we sill stand together.'"

These illustrate successfully suppressed threat of communal violence. However, actual communal violence unfortunately also happens. Christian prayer halls in Karnataka were recently bombed.

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