Following the terrible bomb blasts of May 13, 2008, in which so many innocent people lost their lives or were grievously injured, the working people of Jaipur showed their concern and solidarity with the families of the victims in various ways. Doctors and nurses, students and teachers, rickshaw pullers and shopkeepers and other common people at large, tried in various ways to assist the victims.

The Indian ruling class and its political parties, the Central and state governments, have used the Jaipur terror strikes to advance their own cynical political agenda. They have unleashed a brutal reign of terror on a communal basis, targeting Muslims of Bengali origin. They have gone on a propaganda offensive on how the mechanisms and instruments of state terrorism need to be strengthened, through increased powers to police forces and new fascist laws, allegedly to protect people from terrorists. 

Nearly two weeks after the bomb blasts, top police officials in Jaipur have admitted to a PUCL team that they are clueless about who carried out the blasts. But this has not prevented the Indian state, the major parties in Parliament and the big capitalist media from declaring that a Bangladesh based terrorist organisation was behind the blasts. A vicious campaign has been launched against people who are alleged to be from Bangladesh, which in effect means all Bengali Muslims.  There are about 20,000-40,000 Bengalis in Jaipur, originally from East Bengal, now Bangladesh. 

Poor Muslim workers living in the slums of Jaipur have become the target of police terror. Over 120 Muslims including women and youth have been arrested for the crime of simply being Bengali, poor and Muslim. The state has treated them as criminals, without any rights, despite the fact that they have valid voter ID cards, ration cards, and many of them have lived in Jaipur for over 30 years.

The state government of Rajasthan has converted one of the slums into a detention camp on the lines of the notorious Guantanamo Bay camp operated by the American imperialists. This is reported to have been done in conjunction with the Union Home Ministry. This illegal act needs to be condemned outright by all parties and organizations that uphold human rights.

The working class must unreservedly condemn this targeted persecution. Just like we demand that those responsible for the terrorist attacks in Jaipur should be punished, we must demand that the state officials responsible for the persecution and torture of innocent people must also be punished. 

Shrill demands are being made for new fascist laws of preventive detention and torture to arm the police with more powers. This means more innocent people will be picked up, tortured and murdered. It is not aimed at ending terrorist crimes or punishing the actual perpetrators.

For the past few years, after nearly every terrorist attack, whether in a mosque, a dargah, a temple, a market place or in trains, the Indian intelligence agencies have immediately declared that some shadowy terrorist outfit in Pakistan or Bangladesh is responsible for it. Hundreds of innocent people have been picked up from different parts of the country and accused of these crimes, they have been incarcerated in jails and tortured in police custody. But till date, nobody has actually been convicted for these massacres. At the same time, the state has used the situation to terrorise the Muslim community in general, and to step up pressure against Pakistan or Bangladesh, depending on the geo-political situation and the interests of the Indian bourgeoisie at a particular time.

The working class and people must draw their own conclusions about who gains politically from terrorist bomb blasts such as the recent one in Jaipur. The political motive will show who is the perpetrator.

The Jaipur bomb blast has provided a justification for the state and central governments to step up state terrorism and fascist measures in the name of security. It has provided a pretext for the BJP, Congress and other parties to unleash communal propaganda against Muslims of Bengali national origin. Those who stand to gain are the classes and parties that want to divide people on the basis of religion and national origin, and to paralyze the class struggle of workers and peasants against the ruling bourgeoisie.