Just one word should describe the bomb attack at the temple of ISKCON on Krishna Janmashtami on August 16-terrorism. Just one word is enough to club the people responsible for the dastardly attack-terrorists.
Was the bomb attack an offensive on a particular faith or was it resorted to, to settle a score or two with the authorities of ISKCON ?
Whatever may be the reason, there is absolutely no ground to justify the dastardly attack for the fact stands that the bomb was deliberately lobbed at a time when the temple was teeming with thousands of devotees who had turned out to offer their prayers to Lord Krishna and this was terrorism.
This cannot be contested on any ground.
We do agree that this was not the first time that bomb attacks or bomb explosions have occurred in crowded places, but this was the the first time that a bomb was deliberately lobbed into a crowded place of worship teeming with devotees.
We have taken note of the condemnations that have been pouring in from different organisations but surely this is not enough. Protests were held but it was confined to the Sangaiprou area and a few other odd places.
In other words we had expected a mass agitation, not bandhs and blockades, but people coming out on the streets and staging protest rallies and holding public meetings.
Unfortunately no such mass scale protest was observed.
In fact life seemed to be very normal. This is where we would like to question the conscience of the civil society organisations.
It was an attack on a group of devotees and a mass scale movement, something along the line of the agitation after the death of The Manorama, is what we had expected, if we may add.
But the reality tells a different story and hence the question, should agitation be launched on a massive scale only when it is against the State and its agencies ?
The bomb blast was as an attack on the people of Manipur and rather than be cowed down by such terror tactics, the time has come to make it clear that such demented minds have no place in a State like Manipur.
We are apt to believe that the bomb attack could not have been the handiwork of some rag tag army of goons or anti-social elements.
Detailed planning must have preceded the attack and we are also more than sure that the attack was launched to co-incide with the time when the temple would be teeming with the maximum number of devotees.
The area around the temple and the roads leading to it and the escape route must have all been worked out earlier in great detail. The onus is now on the people as a whole to fight terror.
Fear is the operative word for any terrorist organisation. This operative word should be taken by the horn and challenged fearlessly.
Already some underground organisations have clarified that they were not responsible for the attack.
However if any armed organisation was behind the attack, it should not be any reason for the people to simply forget the incident and move ahead with their lives.
Remember the armed organisations have been waging a war against the Indian Govt under a set of principle and ideology and if such an attack was launched by any armed outfit, then the time has come for the people to tell such an outfit to pack up and stop masquerading as revolutionaries.
Lobbing a bomb at a temple and causing the death of innocent devotees cannot be called a revolutionary act by any standard.
|