It's 63 and counting. That's the number of bomb blasts that have happened in India over the last six months. This works out to an average of one every three days! Of course, blasts usually don't happen singly. Most of the time, they are serial in nature for jihadis have perfected the art of creating a cascade of terror, be it in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi or Guwahati.

The Government will not admit this, but the jihadis have succeeded in their diabolical aim of creating an atmosphere of insecurity and fear across the country. No city, no State is immune to this. Even if explosions haven't happened in Kerala yet, it doesn't mean that terror merchants don't have the State on their radar.

Some 300 persons are believed to have been indoctrinated there already. Intelligence agencies, as usual in the dark, stumbled upon this startling fact only when two Kerala-born militants were gunned down in an encounter in Jammu and Kashmir.

From Idduki to Imphal, Kargil to Kanniya Kumari, India lives in trepidation. It is already being compared to jihadi-infested Iraq, Afghanistan and even Pakistan. With nearly 1,000 innocent civilians lost so far this year, and 18,360 total deaths from terrorist depredations in the country (excluding J&K) over the last decade, India has probably overtaken the tally of deaths in those countries.

But why India? There is no convincing answer to this question because nobody knows what the jihadis want. In Iraq, they are fighting foreign invasion and a puppet regime; in Afghanistan they are battling to overthrow Hamid Karzai's NATO-backed Government; in Pakistan they want to seize power from the incumbent Establishment. But that certainly cannot be their goal in this country. Despite the steady decline in their numerical predominance, Hindus constitute 80 per cent of India's population, Muslims accounting for a meagre 14 per cent. So, the establishment of Dar-ul-Islam here is about as much a possibility as finding intelligent life on the Moon. Anyway, from Mohammad-bin-Kasim to Aurangzeb, Muslim conquerors pursued this ambition with resounding lack of success. Jinnah, too, knew its futility very well, which is why he bargained for a Muslim homeland to be carved out of India.

So, 300 years after the death of Aurangzeb, the dream of Islamising India would appear a lunatic idea. But do the jihadis really understand this? Judging by interrogation reports of arrested SIMI operatives as well as the elaborate e-mails sent by it and its surrogate Indian Mujahideen, it seems that the goal of establishing Nizam-e-Mustafa in Hindustan is something that actually drives several thousand Muslim youth into the waiting arms of jihadi outfits.

The terrorists' strategy is two-pronged. First, they wish to destabilise the economy and cripple visible symbols of India's success -- the Bombay Stock Exchange building, Indian Institute of Science and offices of IT giants in Bangalore, to name just two. Alongside, they seek to knock the bottom out of Narendra Modi's Vibrant Gujarat, paralyse Rajasthan's tourism-driven economy, and spread panic through Delhi since events in the national Capital have a multiplier effect on publicity.

Their second, but parallel, strategy is to create pockets of Muslim dominance to serve as recruiting grounds through exploitation of the community's perceived sense of victimhood. That explains the concerted manner in which liberal and "secular" opinion was mobilised in defence of the Batla House terrorists in Delhi and the selective targeting of Bodo people in the Assam blasts -- a transparent bid to coerce indigenous populations of the North-Eastern States into submission.

The Assam blasts are, therefore, particularly ominous. They clearly reveal the operational co-ordination between local insurgent groups and jihadi organisations, with Bangladesh playing cupid. Although ULFA began as a terrorist outfit seeking Independence for Assam and expulsion of illegal Bangladeshi migrants, circumstances forced its leaders to seek refuge in Dhaka where Pakistan's ISI had a field day indoctrinating them. Meanwhile, the rise of Harkat-ul-Jihadi-i-Islam (HuJI) was fostered by anti-India elements there and pushed to making common cause with ULFA and other insurgents in the North-East.

Finding recruits to carry out terrorist acts was no problem because millions of Bangladeshis live illegally all over India. In Assam, the migrants have caused an explosion in the State's Muslim population in recent decades. In fact, demographers are certain that within the next two Censuses, Assam's Muslim population will overtake Hindus, courtesy unchecked illegal infiltration from across the porous border and the alarming rate of their reproduction.

A pusillanimous Government in Dispur and Delhi has persistently ignored alarm bells sounded by the Army, indigenous Assamese leaders and Governors like Gen S K Sinha. Having secured the benign patronage of practitioners of votebank politics, Muslims in Assam have become emboldened to form their own political party -- AUDF, headed by perfume baron Badruddin Ajmal. Soon, it will be impossible to run a Government there without the participation of AUDF and sometime later, so called mainstream parties may even be compelled to become Ajmal's junior partners.

In other words, we are probably witnessing the rise of a new version of the pre-Independence Muslim League which, eventually, will legitimise the demand for Assam's separation. The current effort of the jihadi forces there is to assist the process of Muslim consolidation so that the goal of India's dismemberment comes that much closer.

If we are serious about reversing this trend, gloves will have to come off. Sadly, there is intense hesitation among India's middle class to call a spade a spade when it comes to something as sensitive as a communal classification of realities.

While it is nobody's case that every Muslim is a potential jihadi, the fact is that millions of madarsas all over the country have become terror factories. It is not enough to glibly talk about reforming their curricula by introducing computer training and so on. Let us not forget that al-Qaeda is for all practical purposes a "virtual" organisation that exists largely on the net. So, imparting computer skills can cut both ways. What is needed is the introduction of a stern licensing system for all madarsas so that unregistered jihad factories can be shut down by force if necessary.

Second, and more immediately, the process of identifying and deporting illegal Bangladeshi immigrants from Assam and the rest of India must be seriously expedited.

A Times of India report that over 62,000 Bangladeshis have gone "missing" after entering India with valid documents is absolutely stunning. Just imagine what must be the number of illegal Bangladeshis if so many "legal" visitors have disappeared!

It is well known that HuJI acts as the executor of jihadi terror in most parts of India, working through legal and illegal Bangladeshi migrants. The time has come to serve a firm Quit India notice on them. If they don't leave voluntarily within a given deadline, they must be forcibly deported and if necessary simply rounded up in hordes and dumped into detention camps.

Shades of Gulag, did somebody say? But then, better a Gulag than the impending dismember-ment of India.comment come alive.

After the Second Treaty of Lahore was signed on March 29, 1849, and Punjab fully annexed by the British, Duleep Singh was entrusted to the care of a God-fearing, honest English soldier John Login, who was to be the young Maharaja's mentor thereafter. Login, a caring but disciplinarian teacher, was entrusted by Lord Dalhousie to look after the king, train him in European manners and customs and, most importantly, move him out of Punjab lest he become a rallying point for Sikh soldiers still smarting from defeat. Accordingly, Duleep was moved to an estate in Futtehgarh on the banks of the Ganga where, apart from a Brahmin teacher of scriptures, the young Maharaja was bestowed two English companions of his age. They were expected to help in ensuring an English upbringing for the king of Punjab.

Soon the English-speaking Bhajan Lal began to read passages from the Bible each night to the adolescent Duleep. Progressively, the Maharaja developed a disdain for Hindu scripture and rituals, many of which were common to his ancestral faith - Sikhism. Noticing that Duleep's attraction for Christian tenets was growing, alarmed household staff penned an urzee (petition) to the British officers saying that a tragedy greater than the loss of the kingdom would befall if their Maharaja were perchance persuaded to adopt the colonisers' faith. Most signatories to the petition were summarily dismissed from service even before Duleep got an inkling of their concern.

Being a stickler for rules and appropriate paperwork, the British went out of their way to ensure that the Maharaja's conversion appeared entirely voluntary and not regarded as forced proselytisation. So the baptism took some time while official clearances were obtained. When it happened, water from the Ganga was used to convert the scion of the greatest Sikh ruling family to Christianity.

By then the lonely king, just 16 years of age, had developed an irresistible urge to adopt the lifestyle of his captors. He tried to imitate his English companions, took to playing cricket, learnt Western table manners, and insisted on going to Church every Sunday even before he was baptised. Only while sojourning at Hardwar en route to the summer retreat of Mussoorie did he suddenly come alive to his legacy when he was recognised by pilgrims on the riverbank who cheered him as word spread that the great Ranjit Singh's son was in their midst. Upon hearing the news, Mangla Mai addressed a plaintive petition to John Login seeking a brief audience with her beloved Dula Ji, whom she had nurtured from birth. Sternly, Login dismissed the request. The British were extraordinarily careful that nothing of Duleep's regal past should revisit him, lest subversive ideas get implanted in his mind.

Shortly thereafter Duleep sailed for England where he was warmly received by Queen Victoria. An embittered Duleep later recalled he privately called her Mrs Fagin, "the biggest pickpocket of them all, the receiver of stolen goods, stolen kingdoms, stolen jewels." In an audacious act of chicanery, his British masters enacted a traumatic farce by handing over the Koh-i-noor (which they had already seized from the Lahore Durbar) to Duleep, asking him to formally present it to the Queen as if he were voluntarily gifting it by way of tribute!

In later years, Duleep was shattered to find out what his captors really thought about him, beneath the veneer of flattery and respectful deference. Lord Dalhousie wrote in his dispatches that Duleep was "a child notoriously surreptitious, a brat begotten of a bhishti and no more a son of Ranjit Singh than Queen Victoria is"! This was the unkindest cut of all, for it brought back memories of the rumours that often floated in Lahore's bazaars that the Lion of Punjab was too old and infirm to have sired a child from the young Rani Jindan and a palace bhishti (water-carrier) was Duleep's real father.

But in his first years in England, Duleep was still mesmerised by the life of the English nobility and desperately tried to clone them, often not realising that the canny British were actually making him pay for his extravagant lifestyle, complete with a gigantic country estate, fine steeds, hunting excursions and lavish parties where expensive gifts were presented by him in a bid to live up to his Maharaja tag.

Following the Uprising of 1857 and in the aftermath of the brutal "pacification" of Hindostan, the British relaxed their stranglehold somewhat, allowing Duleep to communicate with his mother living in self-exile in Nepal and, eventually, permitted him to undertake a visit to India on condition he stayed far away from Punjab. Rani Jindan was allowed to come to Calcutta and stay with her son at the Spence's Hotel where Duleep was lodged. She was finally permitted to travel to England to be with her son.

By then the British had decided that the back of Indian rebels had been broken and the Sikhs, distraught and defeated only a few years ago, had stayed loyal to the Empire during the Mutiny. Rani Jindan, however, did not live long in the alien environment. On August 1, 1863 she breathed her last, happy that she could be with her only child in her final days. The Rani was cremated at the Kensal Green cemetery near London and her remains retained for eventual immersion in the Ganga. Soon thereafter, John Login too died leaving the 25-year-old Duleep with no anchors in his life.

In the course of a stop-over at Cairo en route to India to immerse his mother's ashes, Duleep fell in love with Bamba, illegitimate daughter of an Abyssinian mother and German father. Although an interpreter was needed to convey mutual feelings since Bamba spoke only Arabic, the two were seriously in love for many years and she bore him most of his children. Incidentally, one of her daughters, also named Bamba, last grandchild of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, died as recently as 1957, unknown and unsung. None of Duleep's progeny bore children and the line of the greatest family of the Sukerchakia misl came to a tragic end.

Increasingly, Duleep started getting frustrated with his diminishing fortunes, steady rejection of appeals for restoration of his private estates in India and the dismissal with which he was being treated. On his death bed, Duleep recalled, "I had not just lost a kingdom, but also a religion, a people, a way of life. Everything that could be home." It was at that time, with the unfairness of his treatment uppermost in his mind, Duleep began nursing dreams of returning to Punjab to lead largely imaginary Sikh armies in a final effort to regain his lost kingdom.

He was led to believe that Russians would be eager to help him against the British, even sending their armies across the Hindu Kush were he able to rally the princes of Hindostan. These delusions of an ageing and ailing man led Duleep to vent his angst on his adopted religion: "I had seen enough of the Christian world, of their hypocrisies and cant. I had seen that when it really mattered they were like any other men, selfish, petty, scheming. Then what was there in that religion for me?"

Contemptuously defying dire warnings of the British Government ("I should laugh at you," Duleep told Sir Owen Burn, Secretary of the Political Department when he threatened to revoke his pension), the last king of Punjab set sail for India in pursuit of his doomed dream. He was arrested at Aden and lodged in the Residency by the British authorities determined to foil a mutineer's grandiose plans. With news of Duleep's likely return to India and confinement at Aden spreading fast, several Sikh emissaries reached the port city to brief him about preparations for his welcome. Their entreaties further agitated Duleep straining at the leash to return home and lead an epic rebellion.

The immediate effect of his interactions was his decision to renounce Christianity and embrace Sikhism once again. Five panj piaras were quickly assembled, including Duleep's trusted Man Friday, Arur, and a simple re-conversion ceremony took place in the British Residency itself. But realising that the British would never allow him to proceed to India, Duleep finally boarded a steamer back to Europe, after despatching Arur home to carry back his tale of woe.

Enraged by the British, Duleep chose Paris as his new abode, finding solace in the company of firebrand promoters of various lost causes at its famous Reynold's Bar, where exiled revolutionaries from all over the world assembled each evening to peddle their pet conspiracies. There he met the American General Carrol-Trevis, a double-dealing spy, whom in his naivete Duleep anointed Chief of Staff of an imaginary army, entrusting all correspondence to his untrustworthy hands. Convinced that Russia would help him, Duleep pleaded repeatedly with the Russian Ambassador in Paris to allow him passage to Moscow without a visa as the British would never permit him to travel there. Eventually a Pan-Slavist Jewish doctor, a regular at the Reynold's Bar, befriended the muddled king and arranged his visit to Moscow.

About his fruitless foray to Moscow, Carrol-Trevis says: "He was convinced it was all about him. Ah, the fatuousness of mon Prince! What he did not realise that he was only being used by us…" The American double-agent also pointedly noted Duleep's fatal flaws: "While he waited for the Russians to decide his future, he dreamt of shooting grouse in north Russia or woodcock, snipe and wild fowl in Crimea. I used to find it very strange, the way he would go from planning a rebellion to planning a hunting trip. Only a strange Oriental mind could think like that."

Meanwhile Bamba died but even before that the Maharaja was besotted with a chambermaid, Ada, ("…that young and superficial English girl who lived with him. She was the daughter of gas-fitter whom he wanted to make the Empress of India!" wrote Carrol-Trevis after his initial meetings). Duleep had begotten a child by her already and decided to formalise his second marriage even as Russia shut all its doors on the uninvited Oriental guest. Returning to Paris, the heartbroken Maharaja found that the sudden elevation of status whetted Ada's appetite for lavishness. ("His concubine was extravagant as only a chambermaid-turned-Maharani could have been," commented the ever-irreverent Carrol-Trevis). Soon she imposed her family too on Duleep's diminishing fortunes, adding to his pain and worries.

Arur Singh returned from India to his Maharaja's bedside, having raised one thousand pounds for his treatment from donations in India. Broken by the treachery and unconcern of his near and dear ones, including his spendthrift wife, Duleep made his final trip back to England. It turned out to be a short trip, as Duleep felt more unwanted there than even in his tiny hotel room in Paris, where he returned to die in neglect and dishonour.

"Alone, Mangla Mai, so alone. In a room in a small, cheap hotel in a narrow street of Paris. The King of Lahore died! He died alone. Even this unfortunate soul was not there to hold his hand, give him water, shut his eyes the day Waheguru called him home. We all reached too late," Sarna tells us in Arur Singh's words.

In her reply Mangla could only lament: "Let us pray that some day our Duleep's ashes will be brought home and scattered on the five rivers of Punjab. That is where he belongs."

That was not to be. In a moving epilogue Sarna writes:

"But there he lies, in a grave, besides his maharani and his son, in a cold wet land, far away from his people. Sometimes, there is a flower on his grave, or even a fading bouquet. But mostly there are only brown fallen leaves that rustle in the wind…Perhaps our Punjab was to be left only with the memory of a Maharaja-in-exile. Only with a story to be told around winter bonfires."

Courtesy: www.dailypioneer.com, November 02, 2008