June 19, 2008
MUMBAI, India: A radical right-wing Indian politician called on Hindus to form suicide bomber squads and attack Muslim neighborhoods to combat Islamic terrorism — a threat promptly condemned by political friends and foes alike.
Bal Thackeray, a Hindu extremist linked to past waves of mob violence in the western state of Maharashtra, has long advocated attacks against Muslims. He said suicide bombers, along with bombs planted in Muslim neighborhoods, were needed "to protect the nation and all Hindus."
"Islamic terrorism is on the rise. To combat this, Hindu terrorism must be created of similar strength," Thackeray wrote in an editorial published Wednesday in Saamna, the newspaper of his Shiv Sena party. The editorial was unsigned, but his party said Thackerary wrote it.
"Hindu suicide squads must be built," he wrote. "Only then will Hindus survive."
Whether Thackerary was sincere or just trying to grab attention was impossible to tell.
His influence in Mumbai, his longtime power base, has been waning for years, but he still commands hordes of violent followers. He has been arrested twice for inflammatory speeches and writing, and officials said Thursday they were considering arresting him for a third time.
The Shiv Sena — which means Shiva's Army — is among the most extreme of India's Hindu political parties and held power in Mumbai from 1995 to 2000. Traditionally, the party's main aim has been to keep people who are not from Maharashtra out of the state and to stem the spread of Islam.
Thackeray's editorial was in response to the arrest last week of two men accused of planting a crude bomb in a theater near Mumbai to protest a perceived insult to Hindu deities. The bombing last month injured four people.
Police said the men were linked to two Hindu fundamentalist groups, but were not members of Shiv Sena.
Thackeray said he was "happy" that Hindus were behind the attack, but displeased that innocent Hindus were injured — and that the bomb itself was so weak.
"No one but a Hindu could be responsible for a bomb that caused such little injury and was such a wasteful enterprise," he wrote. "Instead of planting faulty bombs, they should have planted a stronger bomb in these mini-Pakistans" — an apparent reference to Muslim neighborhoods.
Indian authorities have blamed Islamic extremists for a spate of bombings that have killed hundreds of people in the predominantly Hindu country of 1.1 billion people in the past three years, including an attack on Mumbai's commuter rail network that killed nearly 200 people in 2006.
Thackeray's editorial came ahead of Shiv Sena's 42nd anniversary Thursday. It was promptly condemned by politicians from across the political spectrum, including India's leading Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which has long-standing ties with Shiv Sena.
"People should not take law into their hands," BJP Vice President Venkaiah Naidu was quoted as saying by the Hindustan Times newspaper. "There are democratic methods to address the problem of terrorism."
The Associated PressPublished
Subject: Hindu suicide bombers to target Muslims 
Fri Jun 20, 2008 11:46 am
