Bid to poison madrassa shows even children won’t be spared by hate-mongers
Reports of a particularly sinister kind have been doing the rounds since Monday morning. They pertain to an attempt, mercifully foiled, to "mix rat poison" in the water of two water coolers at a madrassa in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, a charitable institution called Chacha Nehru. The Times of India has a detailed story on how miscreants tried mixing tablets of rat poison into the water of two tanks frequented by almost 4,000 students at the madrasaa, which incidentally is run by a charitable organisation headed by Salma Ansari, the wife of former vice-president, Hamid Ansari.
Although a FIR has been filed against two unidentified persons under Sections 328 (causing hurt by means of poison) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code, this seems to be a narrow escape for the children at Chacha Nehru madrassa, run by Aligarh's Al Noor Charitable Society, run by Mrs Ansari. Fortunately, one of the "miscreants" was spotted mixing the poison by a student, who was asked to keep quiet after a display of a country pistol by the criminals.
The water cooler has been sealed, and samples sent to forensic laboratory for testing. Salma Ansari has told TOI that she's "shocked", and had asked the madrassa warden to install CCTV cameras for heightened security of the students.
Incidents involving children have been making national headlines for over a month now. After the terrifying (and still ongoing) deaths of children at the BRD hospital in Gorakhpur, that too because the oxygen supply was allegedly cut off after non-payment of dues, we had the murder of a seven-year-old in Gurugram's Ryan International School.
In the light of such miserable developments related to our children, we need to ask how safe are our kids now and whether "miscreants" are willing to play with children's lives for petty profits and politics, or for sexual perversion and other forms of moral sickness, and whether we will allow all that to happen without demanding accountability.
In the case of Aligarh madrassa poisoning bid, of course, a demand for thorough investigation must be made, and the criminals, one of whom was even spotted by Afzal, the kid who saw two men mixing strange tablets in the coolers, must be brought to book. However, we need to ask why would a madrassa be targeted for such a crime targeting children of a particular community.
As the reports on this crime story have also touched upon, former vice-president, in his last interviews, cautioned about the "unease" the Muslims feel in present-day India, the climate of constant persecution and suspicion that they have to battle and that weighs them down, seeing targeted attacks against Muslims in various walks of life, the invoking of ultranationalism and Hindu nationalism to question the patriotism of those who belong to minority religions and communities, and the various other forms of daily paranoia gripping the nation like a disease. Former vice-president, Hamid Ansari, had politely and civilly underlined all these, not breaching the decorum of his just vacated office, while not cowering under political pressure to stay mum either.
Ansari was slyly criticised by none other than PM Narendra Modi, who had said that Ansari would now feel better among "his kind of people, doing his kind of politics".
Ansari was trolled day in and day out for his comments and was also defended by liberal and secular commentators, journalists while prime time debates were dedicated to questioning what he meant when he said what he said.
Some observers alerted us to the fact that Ansari was merely discharging his duties as the outgoing V-P, underlining the tear in the fabric of secular India, something he had done in the past as well, and that he wasn't taking any advantage of vacating his official post. It was a folly to take him as a Muslim when he was talking as the former V-P, some said, rightly.
We can only speculate why, within a month of Ansari being subjected to such a nationwide hate campaign, would a madrassa run by his wife in Aligarh be targeted by "miscreants", who don't seem to mind playing with children's lives. In fact, if poisoning children is someone's idea of targeted attack - they were armed with country-made pistols, indicating the "organised" nature of the foiled plot - we need to ask who such people could be.
It is unbelievable that even children are fair game in this all-out war between those who believe only a certain kind of nationalism is acceptable, and those who are still fighting for the pluralist, secular, tolerant idea of India. It's a shame that these criminals are not being labelled "terrorists", and only being called "miscreants" in reports, because if they had been successful at poisoning the water coolers leading to children getting sick or dying, this would have been a clear case of bio-terrorism. In fact, as of now, this seems to be a failed attempt at mass poisoning, and that should count as bio-terrorism.
How we frame our questions while we report and analyse such terrifying instances criminalising our everyday, endangering our children, making the innocents pay for our petty, self-serving politics - is extremely significant in framing the narrative. We need to ask who gains from making children at a madrassa very, very sick? Why would someone want to poison madrassa-going kids? What kind of organised crime is this, and at whose behest is it functioning?
Finally, we need to ask what Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath has to say about this incident. He still hasn't issued a statement as we write this editorial. But then CM Adityanath has a history of denying official culpability when kids die choking, denied oxygen to breathe.
Can we expect better behaviour from him this time, and a tough diktat to bring the criminals to book as soon as possible?
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