The series of bomb blasts beginning in Bangalore in July and the latest in Delhi in September and Agartala on October 1 have shaken the country. The series of explosions in Ahmedabad city that took place the next day after the Bangalore blasts killed 56 people and injured 200.

The vicious nature of the attack can be seen by the two blasts in hospitals where the victims of the earlier blasts were taken to. A large number of bombs placed in Surat did not explode. The four bomb explosions in Delhi on September 13 killed 25 people. This was followed by another blast in Mehrauli, a suburb of Delhi, two weeks later, in which two people died.

In the four explosions in Agartala town on October 1, 73 people were injured. These were not in the same category as the other attacks. The police have identified the culprits as those belonging to a tribal extremist outfit and arrested some of them.

There have been more than a dozen bomb blasts since the October 2005 blasts in Delhi. A feature of the current terrorist attacks is the involvement of a network of groups drawn from Muslim youth. The motivation for these attacks seems to be retaliation for the continuing attacks on the Muslim community like the Gujarat pogroms and the earlier killing of Muslims in Mumbai.

Failure of the State to ensure justice to the minorities and punishing those guilty of serious crimes against the minorities is attracting a few elements of the Muslim youth to the extremist cause.

The other aspect is that such attacks are followed by police round up of Muslim youth in various localities and harassment of their families. Many innocent people are caught in the police net and kept in custody, tortured and released after some time. This has happened on a large scale after the terrorist bomb blasts in various places in Maharashtra, Hyderabad and Delhi.

There is widespread anger in the Muslim community against the police and the UPA government for the targeting of Muslims in general and portraying them as terrorists. Recently, six Muslim organizations including the Jamaat Ulema e Hind and the Jamaat e Islami came together to protest against such harassment.

The terrorist attacks have provided grist to the mill of the BJP and the Hindu communalists. They have been campaigning against the UPA government’s “soft” policy towards the terrorists and attributing it to “minority appeasement”.

The Congress and the UPA government is caught between the growing concern of the people about terrorist violence and the increasing insecurity to the lives and the anger of the minority community which is facing harassment because of the terrorist activities of a few elements.

While the police and the administration is prompt in moving against terrorist attacks attributed to the Muslim extremists, it shows a singular lack of will to take on the Hindu extremist forces which resort to terrorist violence.

In July, two Bajrang Dal activists were killed in Kanpur while making bombs. Evidence showed that they had plans to target Muslim populated areas. In 2006, in Nanded, Maharashtra, a similar explosion had killed two Bajrang Dal workers in a RSS man’s house.

In the light of the vicious attacks and killings of Christians in Orissa and Mangalore by the Bajrang Dal strong action should be taken against it under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. One should take a clear cut stand against the terrorist activities of certain extremist forces.

The central government should be criticized for failing to strengthen the intelligence and security set up to cope up with the terrorist challenge. At the same time, one should oppose the indiscriminate police action against innocent people belonging to the minority community.