A town seething with rage

A town seething with rage

After Delhi blast 13/09/08 and its link with Azamgarh ?

Haidar Naqvi  HT

In the heart of small town India, there is a madrasa where students can walk in wearing T-shirts and denim jeans — rather than the traditional kurta-pyjama and skull caps. 


It is a sign of changing aspirations and outlook among Islamic youth over the past decade in Azamgarh, a town in eastern Uttar Pradesh now being labelled as one of the capitals of terror in India.

That is the town from where Atif Amin — named by Mumbai Police on Wednesday as one of the chief conspirators of recent terror attacks — came from.

Cricket-crazy Amin dreamt of playing professionally in Mumbai. He and his close friend Mohammed Saif, now under arrest, were learning English and computers to chase their careers in the metropolis, or in the Gulf countries where thousands from Azamgarh have already gone.

“(Saif) was a gifted player, he was our best,” said Rizwan Ahmed, his neighbour in his village. “He would hit the ball so hard it would disappear in seconds. Bowlers feared Saif and Atif.” He added: “They were implicated by the police.”

“(Saif) thought that English was a must if he wanted to learn computers, which in turn might have gotten him a job in an MNC or a job in the Gulf,” said his father Shadab Khan, who had spoken to Saif a day before the shootout at Batla House.

Police say somewhere along the way, Amin and the others joined the Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), attended a training session in Vadodara, and began to build a network of angry youth.

Amin quickly became a leader: he used to point out the shortcomings of the young men during namaz, focussed on religious justifications for fighting wrongs, and showed the youth CDs depicting the Gujarat riots, American soldiers fighting in Iraq and local people opposing US actions, and speeches of Osama bin Laden. “Eye for an eye,” announced the e-mail from the Indian Mujahideen group, which police say Amin was a key member of. There is no way to independently corroborate the allegation.

But religious learning ran very deep in Azamgarh, a tradition of more than a century. Different sects of Islam flourished here. There is no college — but more than 300 madrasas across villages in the region, mostly flush with worldwide expatriate funds and not dependent on the government.

The new generation has access to English medium schools — but they go wearing skull caps and hijabs. “They were already religious minded, and working in countries like Saudi Arabia where hard-line Islam is practised made them even more religious,” said an Islamic theologian, declining to be quoted on the sensitive subject.

Religious congregations bring hundreds of thousands of people every year.

The Jamat-e-Islami group, which believes in Nizam-e-Ilahi (rule of God) and not in elected governments — has a large following in the district. A large number of its followers did not vote in any election until 1989 - when they first joined the political mainstream with a common rage after the Ram Janmabhoomi movement.

In a story that community watchers say resonates in other parts of India as well, the same rage seeped into the young men of Sarjanpur. Many saw a tenuous link between the theology of institutions like Madarsa Salafia of Ahle Hadis — and terror groups like the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, connections disputed by Islamic theologians.

After the deaths and arrests of the terror suspects, that rage has spiralled — and residents say it will have an even deadlier impact. Angry villagers huddle together facing an onslaught of media attention, in a town seething with rage — and a threat.

“Let me tell you, the entire country will repent, they have started a very dangerous game,” said village elder Mohammed Haroon.

“If they continue to persecute us like this, then it is a time for … a show down,” he says.

Azamgarh, the terror nursery in eastern UP

Sat-Sep 20, 2008

Azamgarh / Press Trust of India

Azamgarh, the small town in eastern Uttar Pradesh, which is in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons and has earned a notoriety as a nursery of terror, is said to be home to a dozen activists of the banned SIMI.

Once known for Hindu-Muslim synergy and high intellect, Azamgarh is has come to be known as terror's breeding ground, because it has provided a very fertile land for the SIMI (Students Islamic Movement of India) and other such outfits to flourish.

Top intelligence and police officials now say that the arrest of Abu Bashir, a top SIMI activist, from the Saraimir area here, was not merely a coincidence but may the first of many such arrests.

"There are many SIMI operatives in eastern UP but about two dozen of them are quite active. They are very active at certain times but mostly they are dormant. About a dozen of them belong to Azamgarh," the officials said.

"We cannot pick them up without direct evidence of their involvement in the anti national activities," they added.

They feel It is not surprising that the two terrorists, Atif and Sajid, who were killed and Mohammad Saif, who was apprehended in the Delhi encounter on Friday, belonged to Azamgarh district, said a top police official of Uttar Pradesh, who did not not want to be identified.

There are a number of sleeper cells of SIMI which can be activated at any time and they are the real problem, they said.

Prakash Singh, the former DGP of Uttar Pradesh and a resident of the town, rues that Azamgarh, once the land of Hindi and Urdu litterateurs, Rahul Sankrityayan, Ayodhya Singh Upadhyaya 'Hariaudh', Prof Allama Shibli Nomani and Kafi Azami, and their soul-stirring verses and proses, is now better known for Haji Mastan, Abu Salem and Dawood Ibrahim. And the latest addition to the list, is the Ahmedabad blast master mind Abu Bashir.

"It is unfortunate but true that the long list of Abu Salem, the khadi clad musclemen Umakant Yadav, Ramakant Yadav and the likes have motivated an army of willing young converts waiting in the backwaters of Saraimir, Nizamabad, Khairabad, Mubarakpur, Mohammadabad, Atraulia and Bilariaganj to begin their career as arms peddler or drug supplier for Mumbai and Delhi Underworld," he says.

Historian and the Head of the Department of Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapeeth Dr Parmanand Singh says, "The transformation has taken about twenty five years or so of hawala or blood money."

All top criminals, including Dawood Ibrahim, have their close relatives living here and their success stories have a fairy tale quality that holds great appeal to the youth here, he says.

A known socialist Prabhu Narayan Singh says that Azamgarh has become a land of fundamentalism. The youth has been misguided.

"Nationalism in Azamgarh has been replaced by fundamentalism and this has given birth to Abu Salems and Abu Bashirs," he feels.

No one was surprised when Abu Salem Ansari filed his nomination on the Rashtriya Samajwadi Party ticket on December 28, 2006, he says.

The announcement evoked a mass hysteria in Sarai Mir, his birth place, says a local Musafir Dube. A local trader and Haj committee member, Salim Ahmad, is worried that the entire Muslim community is being painted as anti-national.

He emphasises that the local Muslim is against any type of terrorism.

The people of the area had participated in large numbers in the freedom struggle under the leadership of Gandhiji, adds Prof Parmanand Singh.

Praveen Singh, IG of Police, Varanasi Zone, says the list of the neo-cult products is comprehensive. Abu Hashim, the first criminal arrested under Tada, Shahid Badra, the first president of SIMI, and Khalid Mujahid and Tariq Kasmi, the Gorakhpur blast suspects were arrested from Azamgarh.

Local terror outfits are forging links with their international big leaguers, says Praveen Singh.

Babu Kanhaiya Singh, a renowned litterateur from here, traces the spiralling crime to the administrative neglect.

Though known to growing pulses, oil seeds, sugarcane, potato and mango, production has slipped over the years.

Other factors are failing market of traditional zari sari and the Nizamabad black pottery. No new industries are eager to set base here, he says.

To add to the misery, recurrent floods in the three rivers, Tons, Chhoti Saryu and Tamsa, take their own toll.

Away from classrooms, a terror harvest

Away from classrooms, a terror harvest

Haidar Naqvi Azamgarh, September 28, 2008

The maulanas had just one simple request. One child from every home.

It was 1982. In villages across Uttar Pradesh, Islamic clerics were walking door to door, urging people to send their children to the Shaheen Force, the children’s wing of the now-outlawed Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), to be taught the basic tenets of Islam.

The force inducted under-15 children from among the prosperous and poor who had chosen to sit at home or go to neighbourhood madrasas.

And in a chilling coincidence, most of the terror suspects blamed for the cascading bombings in India — including Atif Amin, Mohammad Saif and Shakeel Ahmed — were its members. It also included the children who sang praises of Osama bin Laden at SIMI events.

Coincidence or not, that tells the larger story of the how an overwhelming number of Muslims, especially in small towns and villages, have kept their children away from regular schools, with a far-reaching impact.

At least 25 per cent Muslims in the age group 6-14 years have either never attended school or have dropped out, according to the Sachar report on the community. That is exactly the same set of children targeted by the Shaheen Force.

Mufti Abul Bashar, 23, the alleged ideologue of Indian Mujahideen, was one of those children. He had the opportunity of going to a regular school when he was eight-year-old. But his father Abu Bakr decided otherwise.

Bashar joined a seminary at Sarai Meer, a neighbourhood outside Azamgarh town in eastern Uttar Pradesh.

“Nothing is bigger to me than serving Islam; I wanted Bashar to enlighten the Ummah (Islamic brotherhood) and bring it closer to the religion,” Bakr, 60, told the Hindustan Times in an interview at his one room house in Beenapar village.

"Look what is happening to Muslims world over, we need people who can guide them in face of adversity, a different style of education wouldn't do that," he said, standing next to a concrete shelf full of religious books.

But even as they learnt to be better Muslims — to respect elders, offer namaz the right way and understand their traditions better — Shaheen Force members, of an impressionable age, also soaked in the Muslim rage of their times over the Babri mosque demolition, riots and perceived oppression.

Shaheen Force became a rage across Uttar Pradesh. It had units everywhere from big towns to villages; from schools to madrasas—its acceptance was widespread.

Bashar joined it at 10.

It had the support of powerful religious centres like Azamgarh’s Jamiat-ul-Falah madrasa, from where the first call for a Muslim armed struggle went out in 1994.

"Shaheen Force laid the groundwork for character development of the students. They were made to remember duas, naat, sooras (Quranic verses), they were taught how could they read the Quran so that it sounded good to the ears," says Dr Shahid Badr Falahi, former national president of SIMI.

"We wanted them to be loyal soldiers of Islam and I never heard any parent complaining, they were satisfied with our work," he said.

But others saw its transformation into quite something else.

"The whole concept had changed. It was meant to be progressive, it was meant to expose children to a blend of occidental and oriental education," said Dr Ishrat Siddiqi, who is on board of Kanpur's biggest and oldest seminary Jaam-e-Uloom. “But the Shaheen Force became an outgrowth of madrasas.”

Religion and political rage had long intertwined for these foot soldiers of the Shaheen Force.

Years later, as officers of the Anti-Terrorist Squad in Uttar Pradesh sifted through Bashar’s belongings after his August 16 arrest this year, they found some 150 newspaper clippings on the Gujarat riots alone at his home.

"We found all kind of literature about Osama bin Laden, Taliban, jihad but he maintained a record of sorts about Gujarat riots and Muslim persecution," said an ATS officer who declined to be named as he is barred from media interviews.

During his interrogation, the officer said he asked him a direct question about the blasts: “Why?”

Bashar looked up at the officer and said with a deadpan face: "I want to avenge Gujarat. One day if not me, someone will."

But in Azamgarh town, many want the community to step back from that path. After a century dominated by religious learning, many children are now going to regular schools.

"Though very late, people have realised the importance of modern education," said Mohammed Tariq, who has lived for years in the United Arab Emirates.

"My father was a madrasa product but he gave us quality education to survive in this modern society," said Tariq. “I hope others here follow that example.”

WHO IS A TERRORIST?- Jug Suraiya

WHO IS A TERRORIST?

TOI OCT12

Show a picture of a uniformed man battling a wild-looking civilian to a hundred people and ask them to identify the terrorist. Ninety-Osama bin Laden, seen as the face of global Islamist terror, advocates use of jihad to fight "injustices" done to Muslims. l point to the civilian; one might point to the man in uniform. 

It's a question of political or ideological optics: one man's terrorist can be another's perceived freedom fighter. These are the two, interlinked and often interchangeable, faces of terror. Which is why in international, or non-parochial media, the preferred word to describe an individual who resorts to indiscriminate violence against society and the state to further his own ideological or religious agenda is ‘militant' not 'terrorist'. Media professionals, no less than serious historians, are only too uncomfortably aware that today's 'terrorist' might become tomorrow's victorious champion of the downtrodden, or a martyr crucified for a noble cause. 

You are the local magistrate. Brought before you by the police is a scruffy individual, of no fixed address, who not only has a chargesheet of physical assaults on prominent members of the banking profession but has also been holding public rallies alarmingly subversive of the sovereignty of the state. You would classify the accused as a dangerous extremist, a proto-terrorist if not a full-fledged suicide bomber, and deal with him accordingly. Which is what Pontius Pilate did in the case of the State vs Jesus Christ. 

"What is truth?" jested Pilate, and did not wait for an answer. If he had, it might have perplexed him not a little. As it has done in the case of successive generations and governments. For Indians, Bhagat Singh was, and always will be, a tragic hero in our fight for freedom. To the British imperialists of the time he was a political criminal, a terrorist. Which is how the apartheid government of South Africa saw a guerrilla called Nelson Mandela, subsequently hailed as the African Mahatma. 

It's often said that history is a partisan narrative dictated by the winning side. But yesteryear's victors — from Pilate to the British Raj — become the villains of the present, and their mortal enemies are valorised by their victimhood. 

But can even the most tortuous turns and twists of history justify the killing of innocents, including women and children, as collateral sacrifices on the altar of a higher cause? In what we call India's First War of Independence - and which others still refer to as the Sepoy Mutiny - in what was then known as Cawnpore, and in other places, civilians, including women and children, were put to the sword and flame by the insurgents. Fighters for independence or mutinous terrorists? The Allies justified the atom-bombing of the civilian centres of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the grounds that the alternative to ending World War II - an infantry invasion of Japan - would have cost even more lives. Justifiable act of war, or a terrorist attack on an unprecedented - and still unsurpassed - scale? 

Take a look at that picture of a uniformed man combating an unkempt civilian. Imagine the uniform to be that of the Chinese army, and the civilian to be a Tibetan activist. Still sure which - invariably and unalterably - is the true face of terror?