Bomb blast in Jaipur. What will we do now? Round up the
usual suspects. Abdul, Rahman, Rahim, Karim, Salim. All you ‘illegal’
Bangladeshi immigrants within our borders. Report to the newest detention
centres.
Remember, it’s not who you say you are, it’s what we say
you are.
Bangladesh has emerged as the all-purpose ‘Nondo Ghosh’
(scapegoat) for Indian intelligence agencies. Attack on train station?
Defused bombs? Bicycle bombs? Bag bombs? It must be the ultra-efficient,
tentacle-spreading, just in time, always there spectre of ‘terrorist
organisations based in Bangladesh’.
With meticulous efficiency we are informed that the ‘modus
operandi’ of the Jaipur blasts is similar to the UP court blasts (November
2007), Hyderabad Mecca Masjid blasts (May 2007) and Malegaon (2006). Every
bomb blast is similar to the one before. They are all connected except
when they aren’t. Working on these leads, police are raiding Bangladeshi
localities at Galta Gate, Baghrana, Ramganj, Subhash Chowk and Bhatta
Basti in Jaipur. It is also election season.
I remember (a little wistfully) the old days of media
hysteria about ‘Pakistani’ militants. Bullet-riddled bodies (dead don’t
talk) and Pakistani passports (always in their pockets!). But Pakistan has
become more complex with its role in the US axis of willing. Anyway, the
public wants new, fresh faces. New borders. New panic.
Some time in the last few years it has become easier and
acceptable to bring out the Bangladeshi ‘militant cell’ bogey. That there
is Islamist politics inside Bangladesh is not in question (many of us
spend a great deal of energy opposing it as a political force). That these
forces have more theatrical clout than a decade ago is also clear
(electoral strength is muddied by the vote splitting agreement of 2001 and
the cancelled elections of 2007). That some of them have fantasies of
armed intifada is not in question either. But that they have the capacity
to wage cross-border forays – this still needs to be proven (that is, are
the fantasy groups ten strong or one hundred thousand – no one has done
credible research on this inside or outside Bangladesh).
The proof after the blasts always seems to come from shaky
sources. That shadowy beast of Indian intel. Well, not just Indian intel,
also American intel. The US has listed HuJI (Harkat ul-Jihad al-Islami) as
a ‘global standard’ terrorist organisation. Does this listing reflect the
reality or is it wish-fulfilment, elevating a group of small-time
operators into the global big time? We don’t know and we won’t know as
long as the WOT (War on Terror) equation continues to profit from inflated
enemy strategy.
The Bangladesh government muddies the water further by
insisting that there are ‘no Bangladeshis’ inside India. Of course there
are many Bangladeshi immigrants inside India. There will always be. The
real question about Jaipur is – who are these people in the ‘Bangali para’
– what were they doing all this time? Working for middle-class Indian
families, of course. Everyone in India knows exactly why these people are
there – to work. As house help, cleaners, sweepers, cooks, maids,
taxi-drivers, tailors, weavers, jewellery makers, construction workers.
Keeping Shining India rolling along. Yesterday they were your convenient
and easy source of cheap labour. Why are they a problem today?
As India develops as a hypergrowth Asian tiger, with
Bangladesh next door, immigration is inevitable. Until Bangladesh becomes
a medium growth country (Goldman Sachs seems to believe it is possible),
we will be as a ‘Mexico’ to India’s ‘United States’. Bangladeshis, hungry
for work, with families to feed, will cross the borders.
Immigrants are ubiquitous in the daily lives of modern
cities. In a megapolis like New York, they are the ones who drive taxis,
sell newspapers and coffee, clean restaurant tables and work in kitchens.
They are intimately present in the physical space but absent from
consciousness. Only when they are detained do they become hypervisible as
‘sleeper cells’.
The desire to identify ‘traitors’ within borders has a
long lineage. In America (‘the immigrant nation’), the last century saw
detention of Italian immigrants after the anarchist bomb attack in 1919,
jailing of German Americans during WWI, internment of Japanese Americans
during WWII, execution of suspected Soviet spies, Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg, Joseph McCarthy’s ‘Red Scare’, the scapegoating of California
Mexicans and the rise of the border vigilante militia Minutemen. WEB Du
Bois’s question to African Americans, "How does it feel to be a problem?"
is now redirected and made freshly relevant for a new population.
When the Hyderabad blasts happened we heard intel was
tracking phone calls to Bangladesh. What happened to that trail? Did the
investigation go somewhere? If not, what about the public perception
created about ‘dangerous’ Bangladeshis? A few years ago there was another
Bangla ‘terror cell’ splashed across the Indian media. Again the story
died out. The similarities to the US media are eerie.
After Jaipur, Pankaj Singh, a senior Rajasthan police
officer, told the press, "The modus operandi, the way the bombs were
manufactured and concealed in bags, is very similar to the way HuJI
(Bangladesh) operates." I wonder what exactly made the trademark so easily
spotted. Were the bags made out of jute? Sealed with jackfruit juice?
Lined with Nilkhet Bangla book pages? Now I hear that bombs of medium
intensity planted on bicycles are a HuJI trademark. Really? It is an
original and never before tried idea? The Viet Cong were using bicycle
bombs against Americans in public spaces as far back as 1965. But oh dear,
that’s only history.
A previously unknown Islamic militant group, the Indian
Mujahideen, has actually claimed credit for the Jaipur bombing. But
internal enemies are suddenly not so convenient. Questions of internal
disenfranchisement and home-grown anger are so inconvenient. Naturally,
Indian intel says the ‘evidence’ provided by the Indian Mujahideen is not
credible, it has many holes. But apparently the Bangladesh HuJI link is
rock solid. The smoking gun points to over there, across the border.
Inevitably, tragically, the fallout is underway. Political, legal and
social. Arrest, round up, deport. Kick them out.
So hard to get good help these days. Now who will clean
little Siddharth’s bottom? I hear the Nepalis are rested and ready.