A Place And Its Negative

Nirala Tripathi How did we go wrong? Abu Bakr, father of alleged Gujarat blasts mastermind Abu Bashar, at his Azamgarh home

AZAMGARH: RADICAL TIES

A Place And Its Negative

Azamgarh's recent history shows it was primed to tip over. Is it the fate of our lost towns?

Saikat Datta

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The Azamgarh You Don't Know...

• The district owes its name to a Gautam Rajput prince who converted to Islam and became Azam Shah in 1665
  
• Azamgarh is famous for its handwoven Benarasi sari
  
• Home to many famous Urdu poets like Iqbal Suhail, Kaifi Azmi and Allahmah Shibli
  
• A seat of higher learning, the Shibli Academy, is located here. It possesses a wealth of authenticated documents dating back to the 16th century.
  
• The district is also the home of the renowned Madrassa-tul-Falah and Madrassa-tul-Islahi

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Azamgarh's Infamy...

• Out of 54 recent terror strikes, 44 are said to have links here
  
• Dawood's wife hails from Saraimir block. Haji Mastan's two daughters were married here. Abu Salem is a native.
  
• Since the '70s, it's witnessed an exodus to Gulf countries. This means huge foreign remittances, including terror funds.
  
• Contract killings in Mumbai, including that of music tycoon Gulshan Kumar, executed by Azamgarh shooters
  
• Bhamol block is known as an illegal firearms hub
  
• One of the poorest districts, 70% children malnourished

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Nearly 90 kilometres north of Varanasi lies Azamgarh, sitting on the same axis as Gorakhpur, Jaunpur and Mirzapur, a town founded by a Gautam Rajput prince who embraced Islam and took the name Azam Shah in 1665. Centuries later, Azamgarh once again faces a crisis of faith, in conflict with its past as well as the many identities that have sprung up over time. A town of poets, intellectuals, famed handloom weavers and merchants, it has now been branded by the "terror" tag—something reinforced with every shrill headline and soundbite.

In 1883, when the town's greatest intellectual and a noted poet, Allahmah Shibli Nomani, founded an educational institution here, he appended the title 'National' in defiance of the British, two years before the Indian National Congress was formed. Today, at the Shibli National College, which serves as an intellectual fountainhead for the region, professors and students express anguish over the terror tag. "How long will we have to produce the proof of loyalty before people accept us for what we are?" wonders Dr Shababuddin, head of the Urdu department.

Nearly 30 kilometres away, in Saraimir block, lies the village of Beenapara which shot to infamy when a Gujarat police team drove in on August 14 in a Maruti van and picked up Abu Bashar. They took him back to Gujarat and produced him as the "mastermind" behind the Ahmedabad and Surat bombs. Bashar, like his father Abu Bakr, had studied at the famous Madrassa-tul-Islahi and the Deoband School before shifting to Hyderabad to work under his father's teacher, the radical Maulana Abdul Alim Islahi. Maulana Abdul Alim had once authored a book with some rabid content, The Problems of the Defence Muslims, for which he was expelled from the Jamaat-e-Islami.

The Maulana's influence, though, left a lasting footprint in Azamgarh and has helped fan some radical thinking. The maulana, who now lives in Hyderabad, lost his son Mujahid in an encounter with the Gujarat police and has since been a cause of concern for the more liberal yet devout in the community. While Bashar was in Hyderabad, teaching at a madrassa there, he travelled to several Indian cities giving lectures on Islam.

In Beenapara, Bashar's partially paralysed father vehemently protests against the idea of his son being involved in any terror activity. His mother also speaks in his defence. Crippled after an accident in 1982, Shakira Bano laments that her dream of seeing her son become "a good Muslim" now lies shattered.

"All our life we waited for him to grow up and earn a living and look after us... but look what we've got," she says. The family's story is reflective of the two sides of Azamgarh that have uneasily coexisted for decades—one supportive of the Muslim hardline and the other the Hindutva agenda. The Saraimir block has seen the best and worst of it. From the late '70s, the block saw an exodus of people to the Gulf in search of work. The place was transformed into a "mini Dubai" with imported electronic goods sharing space with other foreign goods unavailable in pre-liberalisation India, remembers Praveen Singh, once Azamgarh superintendent of police.
"How long will you cut our throats to test the sharpness of your blade?" — Iqbal Suhail, a popular Azamgarh poet	Predictably, the exodus facilitated easy transfer of money from the Gulf to Saraimir. As money transfers increased, so did the funding of small madrassas that managed to resist state intervention thanks to "friendly" politicians. Soon, Saraimir block figured prominently on the ISI radar. "Spotters hung around

looking for willing youth who could be coopted...they in turn would draw others into the terror network," a senior intelligence official told Outlook. He points out that the agencies had specifics about terror funds coming in as either remittances from the Gulf or through hawala operatives. Policing in Azamgarh has always been dismal. Since Independence, it has seen 63 SPs, most averaging less than a year in the district. This has led to the force being in constant disarray, which in turn has helped the cause of the underworld and terrorists. Praveen Singh has now returned to the region as IG, Varanasi range, which includes Azamgarh. He points out that the first person arrested under the lapsed anti-terror law tada, Abu Hashim, hailed from the area. But he hastens to add: "It's wrong to say Azamgarh is a den of terror...but yes, there are links with the Bombay underworld." And they are old links. To stress the point, Dawood Ibrahim's in-laws continue to stay in Saraimir, and Abu Salem left town when he was 18 years old. If the security agencies are to be believed, out of the 54 terror strikes in recent times (across the country), at least 44 are directly linked to Saraimir. Significantly, 17 of these took place in UP itself. According to additional DGP Brij Lal, who also heads the state's Special Task Force (STF), Azamgarh's baneful condition is "largely because of the poverty, illiteracy and ignorance...it's easier to indoctrinate the illiterate, ignorant, impoverished man". But in a ripple effect, concerns now go beyond economic ones. Professor Nishat is one of the few women who teach in Shibli College. She's worried about her two children and their education once they grow up. "The terror tag hurts us. It hurts our children more, who have no access to technical education here. For that, they'll have to go to Bombay, Bangalore, Pune or Delhi. But when you label our children terrorists and kill them, how will we send them?" she asks. Tag hurts: Prof Nishat with colleagues in front of Shibli National College Nishat has written several research papers tracking education in Azamgarh's Muslim society. "Education is a great leveller and the girls in burqa are actually leading the charge in this area. The first two rows of a class are always occupied by them and they score the highest marks," she says. Today Nishat fears the day her children will be exposed to rhetoric like that of the BJP's Yogi Adityanath and his men who recently trooped into town shouting "UP Gujarat banayenge, shuruwat Azamgarh se karenge...." Incidentally, it's a fear spreading across the country among Muslims. "Is it any different in Hyderabad?" asks Asaduddin Owaisi, MIM member of the Lok Sabha who blames the "lack of a credible Muslim leadership in existing political parties" for the mess."The mainstream political parties never bothered to promote Muslim leaders and today this vacuum has been taken over by radical elements spewing hatred. Can India live with that?" For today's generation, which has grown up in the post-Babri Masjid demolition period, there's a feeling of disbelief and helplessness after news came in of the recent Jamia Nagar encounter in Delhi. Dr Salman Sultan, a noted intellectual and a descendant of Allahmah Shibli, asks, "Why don't they mention that tons of ammonium nitrate was found in the houses of Bajrang Dal activists in Kanpur? Why is the media silent about them? Is it not terrorism when Bajrang Dal activists burn churches in Orissa?" A prolific writer, Sultan is worried about the effect such radical elements have on the youth. "I also protest the loud festivities during the holy month of Ramzan and people in my community hate me for it. But things have changed. While the madrassas were respected in our time, the small madrassas of today are uncontrolled. We don't know who is teaching what in there," the professor laments. For a district with some of the worst social indicators—malnutrition stands at an alarming 69 per cent and the infant mortality rate is 63 per 1,000—a crippled economy offers no succour. In Mubarakpur, where the famed Benarasi sari is handwoven, newborn babies can be seen sleeping naked on damp floors in cramped tenements. They have no future but malnourishment and possible early death. Little wonder then that when simi's Dr Shahid Badr Falahi talks ominously about bringing an "Islamic system" to India, it's just one side of the faultline that lies between Azamgarh's intellectual past and its present terror tag. By Saikat Datta In Azamgarh And Sharat Pradhan In Lucknow