The Lashkar-e-Tayyaba has denied its links with the triple blasts in Delhi although it found few takers for its disavowal. Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf not only condemned the attacks and feigned innocence about the blasts (like he did during the attack on Indian Parliament and London explosions), but offered cooperation in investigation.

One is reminded that a month ago the visiting Bangladesh Rifle chief Major General Jahangir Alam Chowdhury had charged that the 400 serial blasts that rocked Bangladesh on August 17 last were the handiwork of India. Immediately on returning to Dhaka he sought to clarify that he meant that some criminal elements in India, rather than the establishment, were responsible for those blasts.

But fortuitously, on the same day Bangladesh's fundamentalist outfit Jamatul Mujahideen warned Prime Minister Khaleda Zia of orchestrating more severe blasts if Sharia laws were not implemented in Bangladesh before the SAARC summit in Dhaka scheduled for November 12 and 13 (Terror cloud on SAARC meet, Statesman, October 3, 2005).

The fundamentalist group advised Begum Zia not to make light of this threat as the August 17 bombings were ample demonstration of its capability. But an interesting twist in that warning letter pulled the cat out of its bag. Jamatul Mujahideen claimed that Begum Zia and her son Tarek, who is the senior secretary general of the ruling BNP, were "one of our very own" and endorsed Jamat-e-Islami ministers like Matiur Rehman Nizami.

But a fortnight before the SAARC summit in Dhaka the terrorists decided to call the shots in New Delhi. An obscure Kashmir based fundamentalist outfit - Islami Inquilabi Mahaz - has claimed responsibility for the blasts. But former RAW-hand and noted security expert B. Raman informs that only Sikh terrorists, Al Qaeda and the International Islamic Front (IIF), of which Al Qaeda, the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) and the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) are members, have the capability of organising the three well-coordinated blasts which struck Delhi on the evening of October 29, 2005 (Delhi blast: The Message, SAAG.org, paper no. 1591).

For commoners it's inconsequential which radical organisation had conducted these blasts, LeT, the Hizbul Mujahideen, or JeM. They could act under a hundred different names; compete or cooperate. Recently the Hyderabad police arrested a man named Ghulam Rabbani, alias Naveed, in connection with a blast that had taken place in front of the police task force office in October. He was trained in Bangladesh. Those who perpetrated the blasts were not guided by partisan or national interests, but jihadi ideology that upholds the killing of non-Muslims as legitimate.

Thus we will be mistaken in thinking that Al Qaeda (literally meaning the base or path) is merely a global organisation; it is a movement. Its ideology is that of re-establishment of the Islamic Caliphate and the subordination of the global order to Islam. In its message after the Madrid bomb blasts, it claimed that the present world order based on the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) that upholds the concept of nation-states and secularism, will collapse.

The contention over Kashmir has often been cited as the cause of Islamic terrorism in India. But in its pamphlet "Why We are Waging Jihad" the LeT calls for the restoration of Islamic rule in all parts of India as in the Mughal era. Most Indians, actually Hindus, will not be able to appreciate this claim and dismiss it with a hearty laughter. The Muslim terrorists might be accused of living in a time-warp.

But it certainly spells disaster if too many people live in a time warp and trot guns to take others into it. Why most Indians cannot understand the phenomenon is because the history of "secular" India itself is based on its negation for the sake of "communal harmony." Under Nehruvian establishment, with Maulana Abul Kalam Azad as its first education minister, the process of sanitising history began. The history of Islamic ages recorded by Muslim chroniclers themselves and translated by the British (like Elliot and Dawson's eight-volume History of India According to its Own Historians) went out of discourse. However, the contemporary history of Pakistan and Bangladesh could serve as an antidote to our negationist disbelief.

"LeT has eight objectives. The top seven objectives relate to the creation of (an) Islamic order in the world. Even though as of now, LeT is mainly active in Kashmir, its stated objective is to challenge the West and to establish (a) universal Islamic community. It projects the United States to be its primary enemy, Israel and India as American stooges that need to be dismembered, and Kashmir as a mere irritant" (p. 13-15 Final Settlement: Restructuring India-Pakistan Relations, Sundeep Waslekar, Strategic Foresight Group). The story is true about eight other major terrorist organisations in Pakistan.

India's fight against the jihadi menace is impaired by its amorphousness. The jihadis are waging a battle against India which they identify with Hindu infidelity and idolatry. However, the Indian establishment has always underplayed India's Hinduness. To Indian governments, protecting Hindu interests is merely a law and order issue. Thus the call for an open debate on jihad appears out of place. A debate on jihad, as prescribed, practised and perceived is the need of the hour. But due to the tyranny of an intellectually amorphous notion, secularism, it can't be undertaken. It is linked with communalism, anti-Islamism and what not. But from Mau to Delhi, people are realising that there is something rotten about the state of secularism.

The Delhi police, at the time of writing this piece, was zeroing in on some illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in Delhi. Not that Bangladeshi infiltrators feature high on the crime list in Delhi and its satellite towns, but they are active facilitators of jihadi terrorism. It might be for money or ideology or both. They are often found involved in the module through which the ISI works in India. Actually, pushing more Bangladeshi infiltrators into India is part of a sinister Islamist design of which ISI is a part. But what is more glaring is that shopkeepers in Delhi, to save a few hundred rupees, often employ Bangladeshis who are ready to work for less. But seldom do they realise that they are risking, forget money, their own lives and others'. Such Bangladeshis can act as sleeper cells for a future offensive by an Islamist group.

The fortitude demonstrated by Delhiites after the triple blasts has earned them high praise from the media. But is this fortitude enough to combat the danger of jihad that is lying in wait? After the 7/7 serial explosions in London, Londoners put up a brave face. At the Victoria Embankment Park rally they fluttered banners saying "We are not afraid." But after the "moderate" blasts of 21/7 they became depressed and adopted a "stoic" attitude. God forbid, terror revisits Delhi. The fortitude of Delhiites is only a Don Quixotic negation of jihadi danger.

It cannot be wished away by closing one's eyes. The LeT-JeM operatives had in the recent past, unsuccessfully, tried to blow up the Indian Military Academy, the BJP Central Office, start-up firms in the IT-capital of Bangalore, Bombay Stock Exchange, apart from attacking Parliament, Akshardham temple, Raghunath temple etc. The Delhi blasts were neither the first terrorist strikes, nor probably the last in India. We are seemingly destined to bleed periodically through a "thousand cuts" thanks to our ostrich like attitude.

Courtesy: The Asian Age, November 08, 2005