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SCHOOLS OF HATEIndia TodayUday MahurkarFeb 24,

2003http://www.indiatoday.com/webexclusive/dispatch/20030224/web2.htmlThe fear

of Bhavnagar in Saurashtra turning into a nursery forradical Islamists grows as

the role of madarsas in the region comesunder a scanner. India Today's Uday

Mahurkar investigates.In January last year, Kashmiri terrorist Mohammed Ali

surrenderedto security forces in Sopore and admitted during interrogation

thathe had studied in the Deoband-Tableegh Jamaat madrasa at Bhavnagarbetween

1996 and 2,000.During the post-Godhra Gujarat riots, Bhavnagar was the only

cityin Saurashtra which witnessed continuous Hindu-Muslim rioting.

Theskirmishes are still going on.Recently, the police killed a native of

Bhavnagar and an underworldhand, Sadiq Mehtar, who had connections with the

Lashkar-e-Toibaand Jaish-e-Mohammed and was allegedly planning to kill

GujaratChief Minister Narendra Modi.So is Bhavnagar emerging as the nursery of

radical Islamists in anotherwise placid Saurashtra? If the available evidence

is anyindication, this could well be the case.Bhavnagar, a city of six lakh

people, of whom one lakh belong tothe Muslim community, is increasingly earning

notoriety thanksmainly to its madarsas and its Kashmiri students brought here

bythe Deobandis. Forty of the 400 students in the Akewada madarsa inBhavnagar

were found to be from Kashmir when the police conductedinquiries following

terrorist Mohammed Ali's admission that he hadstudied here from 1996 to

2000.Significantly, it was the first time that it came to be known thata

Kashmiri terrorist had studied in a madarsa outside Kashmir. Theincident blew

the cover off the repeated claim of the Deobandis inIndia that they had nothing

to do with their counterparts(Deoband-Tableegh network) in Kashmir. It also

raised questionsabout the Bhavnagar Muslims themselves. Followers of the

moderateIslamic school, Ahle Sunnat, the possibility of these Muslims

beinginfluenced by the Deobandi preachers was now being probed.The Deobandi

preachers who came from Bharuch district, their maincentre in Gujarat, as well

as from Un for their aggressive missionto stamp out local customs from their

personality in the name ofpuritanical Islam. Today 80 per cent of the 45-odd

mosques inBhavnagar are controlled by the Deobandis and over 60 per cent ofthe

city Muslims, amongst them the Ghanchi and Memon Muslims, havebecome

Deoband-Tableegh followers. They are now entrenched in everysphere of the

system including sensitive posts in the Bhavnagarpolice. The well-known Alang

Ship breaking yard in Bhavnagar, whereships come from all over the world, too

has business with peoplewho are Tableegh followers and donate handsomely to the

movement.The result is there for all to see. The Muslim ideology is

verypredominant in the city. Males are attired in the typicallyTableegh way

---- short pyjamas and long kurtas with a beard ---while the women sport

burkhas. In fact, it can be said thatBhavnagar is experiencing a slow process

of Arabisation itself.According to M.S. Kazi, a retired government official and

followerof the moderate Ahle Sunnat in Bhavnagar, the entire Muslimcommunity is

paying the price for the anti-national and radicalactivities of the

Deoband-Tableegh Jamaat school which haveresulted in the growth of the VHP in

reaction. Says Kazi in achoked voice: " Bhavnagar was a cradle of peace when

the Deobandisand the VHP were not there. The Deobandis adore Osama bin Laden

andthe Ghanchi Muslims who committed the Godhra carnage were alsoDeobandis.Ali

Sidatar, a follower of the Barelvi Islamic school, too holdsthe Tableeg Jamaat

as well as VHP responsible for the communalvirus in Bhavnagar. "We are

nationalists," he says. "They aren't."A board hanging inside a local Barelvi

mosque in which Sidatarprays reads: "Deobandis and Tableeghi hypocrites are

prohibitedfrom entering the mosque. If they do they will be insulted."The

charge that the entire Muslim community is paying the price forthe activities

of the Deobandis has many takers. Following theGodhra carnage, Bhavnagar is the

only place which has witnessedcontin rioting have been registered since Godhra

carnage, the lastone just a fortnight ago. Although deaths as a result of

therioting have been only eight, the toll doesn't depict the precisepicture of

the Hindu-Muslim divide.According to police records, 90,000 people have

participated in therioting in less than a year-this is almost a sixth of the

city'spopulation. Property worth Rs 22 crore has been destroyed,including 438

homes, 236 shops and 120 vehicles. The vast majorityof the sufferers were

Muslims, thanks to the giant strides that theVHP has made in Bhavnagar

capitalising on the radicalisationbrought about amongst the local Muslims by

the Deoband-TableeghJamaat ideology.The VHP has skillfully used the spread of

radical Deobandi-Tableeghpreachings to increase its strength. In 1995, the VHP

had just onecity unit. Today it has six. From 500 workers in 1995 the number

ofVHP workers in Bhavnagar stands at a staggering 8,000. A majorityof Hindu

youths in the city are VHP sympathisers. Says local VHPleader Narendra Vyas: "

We are spreading awareness amongst theHindu youths about the poison that the

Deoband-Tableegh Jamaatideologues are spreading in Bhavnagar. If we don't do

that theHindus will be in trouble in the time to come."The riots in Bhavnagar

began immediately after the Godhra carnagewhen a mob of 15,000 Hindus tried to

attack the Akwada madarsa. Thepolice had to keep the Hindus mobs at bay for

almost two days. TheHindu ire against Akwada was a result of the report of

Ali'sadmission that he had studied there. The report had appeared in

thenewspapers only a fortnight before the Godhra carnage.The fear of the

Bhavnagar Muslims going radical was also borne outof the change in their

dressing habits and behaviour. This wassomething that sections of moderate

Muslims in Bhavnagar alsoadmit. Thus when the Hindu mobs started attacking the

madarsa withfull force, as many as 450 students and teachers were

trappedinside. In an attempt to save them the police opened fire on Hindumobs

forced forced the mobs to disperse but it resulted in violentreaction from the

Muslim-dominated areas.Significantly, during the riots the police recovered 375

petrolbombs and 230 acid bombs and arrested 17 Muslims, most of them

ofsuspicious Bengali origin, from the house of a prominent Tableeghworker and a

lawyer, Asif Bordiwala, who died of a heart attack afew days later.The Akwada

madarsa's role in promoting the Deobandi's "vested"interests has become

increasingly suspect. And nothing seems to beallaying such fears. Not even a

slogan saying, "The world is grand,beautiful and thrilling but we love India"

which it displayed onthe return of the students who had been moved out during

therioting.The reasons are not far to see. A good part of the

literaturebelonging to the Deobandis clearly shuns the concept of nationhoodand

unequivocally promotes pan-Islamism. Even a credible book by aTableegh follower

cites the last speech of the second head ofTableegh Jamaat, Maulana Mohammed

Yusuf , three days before he diedin Rawalpindi in Pakistan on March 30, 1965,

as saying, "The words,my nation, my region and my people lead to disunity

(amongstMuslims) and Allah disapproves of it more than anything else."Islamic

hardliners like Mohammed Ghaznavi and Aurangzeb areconsidered true heroes while

Akbar, the symbol of pluralisticculture, is deemed a villain.The

Deoband-Tableegh leaders of Bhavnagar vehemently deny thecharges of spreading

radicalism amongst the Muslims and adherenceto anti-national ideology though.

According to Arif Kalva, aprominent businessman and Tableegh Jamaat leader of

Bhavnagar, thecharges are motivated and are aimed at defaming the followers

ofDeoband-Tableegh. He says the allegation that the Tableegh Jamaatdoesn't

believe in the concept of nationhood is utterly baseless.But clearly as the

recent developments in Bhavnagar have shown,such words aren't very convincing.

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