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FAR more disturbing than the horror and shock of watching your home town devastated by a series of bomb blasts, is frustration with the response of the politico-administrative establishment and significant sections of the media. Jaipur, or so many of us believed, was an unlikely candidate on the terrorist radar. The city had an enviable record of communal amity. Despite a substantial Muslim presence, much of it concentrated in the walled city and surrounding katchi-abadis, it had even escaped the Partition fallout, so common in many other North Indian towns.

True, its public life and civic culture was no model of secular syncretism, given the minuscule presence of a Muslim elite. Yet, cocooned in their respective worlds, the different communities went about their everyday lives without any overhang of insecurity or tension, helped in substantial measure both by the traditions of the erstwhile princely state as also the symbiotic relationships forged in traditional artisan activity.

It did appear that this fabric of peaceful cohabitation was under stress in recent years. The long campaign for the Ram temple in Ayodhya, with the usual accompaniment of anti-Muslim rhetoric could hardly leave the city untouched. Equally, the growth in Muslim prosperity following the opening out of new opportunities in the Gulf states meant that not only was the social equation between the communities changing but also that the erstwhile quiescent Muslim community, now more confident, began asserting itself in the public-civic space. Mosques became larger and Friday namaz started spilling over on the roads. All this, many of us feared, would feed into the paranoia of hardliners.

Fortunately, all of us were proved wrong. And though, Jaipur experienced its first Hindu-Muslim clashes following the Advani rath yatra, the city retained its sanity as normality was restored. Evidently, the BJP leadership in the state, in particular the then Chief Minister, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, was hostile to playing the ‘communal’ card. The traditions of civility and peace won over political expediency.

This time too, despite the shock of over 60 dead and many more wounded, the common citizens of the city have responded with admirable maturity – their focus fixed on helping the wounded and assisting people to get back to business. The decision to go ahead with an IPL match, just days after the blasts, is adequate proof that the city will not be cowed down, or live under a state of constant siege.

So why the unease? For a start, it was distressing to watch TV reporters, mostly young and breathless, so rapidly link the blasts to the elections scheduled for later in the year. The focus was less on reporting, on helping scotch rumours, than start a process of blame-game, of who might ‘politically’ gain from the events. Regrettably, even as veteran leaders like Shekhawat or the young MP from Dausa, Sachin Pilot, tried hard to bring the attention back on what needs to be done and the Governor immediately visited the affected sites and the injured in hospital, the less mature elements in the political class – across party divides – failed to resist taking advantage of the tragedy.

The junior minister of home affairs at the Centre, in his very first statement, sought to shift blame on the state administration even as sundry spokespersons of the BJP reverted to their old war cry of the Centre being weak in confronting terrorism, that the country needed tougher anti-terror laws such as POTA. And, of course, before the police had even started its investigations, experts had discerned the ubiquitous evil hand of the Pakistan ISI, the Bangladesh based HuJI, the Lashkar-e-Toiba and, of course, the banned outfit, SIMI.

Already we are hearing fresh demands to deport ‘illegal Bangladeshi’ immigrants, initiate a crackdown on mosques and madrasas, pick up Muslim youth for questioning and so on. The desire to somehow prove to the media that swift action is being taken seems to have overcome the need for circumspection when dealing with sensitive matters. We must appear to be tough on terror, whether or not what we do or propose to do will be effective.

Fighting terror demands that we take the problem seriously, marshal all our resources in a concerted manner, strengthen both the intelligence apparatus, and beat and community policing. As Prem Shankar Jha reminds us, we cannot hope to either gather intelligence or disrupt the support infrastructure of those involved in terrorist acts by injudiciously targeting a particular community – a sure recipe for increasing alienation. But this demands quiet, sustained action away from the arc lights. Hopefully our leadership will draw the right lessons as also act. Meanwhile, it is crucial that we learn from the common citizen and present a united, resolute front against those out to fracture our fabric.

Harsh Sethi