Mayhem at Bodhgaya dents the state's credibility

The ethnic disturbances in Rakhine State in Myanmar have had a devastating echo in Bodhgaya in Bihar. There is an element of pregnant symbolism in what, prima facie, appears to have been a terrorist strike in the world’s citadel of Buddhism, seemingly a reprisal for the relentless persecution of Rohingya Muslims – a stateless community on the Myanmar-Bangladesh border. Neither country can evade the charge of flagrant violation of international law.

The persecution of the Rohingya has been the handiwork of Myanmar’s Buddhist-dominated government, still heavily influenced by the military. The reprisal has been as tragic as it is shameful; the credibility of the cental government and Bihar, indeed their ability to protect the shrines, must be at stake in the perception of the Buddhist bloc of nations.

Days after the serial explosions in Bodhgaya’s Mahabodhi Temple – the bastion of Buddhism – the plot and scenario are still fogbound. The suspected involvement of the Indian Mujahideen is at best a tentative conclusion; the authorities are remarkably clueless. As the CCTV’s grainy images are splashed across the media, it is to be hoped that the truth will be unravelled in the course of the probe being conducted by the National Investigation Agency. The state, in this case has been caught with all defences down.

It would be redundant to harp on the very obvious – the failure of intelligence, the common strand that binds terrorist outrages. No less crucially, Bodhgaya showcases the pathetic response of the Bihar government, whose head has of late been more obsessed with politics in Delhi than with his home turf’s underbelly. The security lapse in Bodhgaya has been disastrous even at the mildest estimation, as governance lies rather thin on the ground across the state. A deceptive sense of smugness alone explains why the Home Ministry’s successive alerts about a possible Indian Mujahideen strike were ignored.

The timeline of the alerts is critical – October 2012, followed by two warnings in January and June. As it turns out, the mayhem follows the latest alert a only few weeks ago. Altogether, the incident signifies an appalling failure of Bihar’s security network, such as it is.

The putrid inter-party shadow-boxing is the worst development that could have happened. It is almost as if the Congress general secretary, Digvijay Singh, and the BJP (Indian People’s Party) are engaged in a competitive exercise to politicise the outrage. And Mamata Banerjee makes the waters murkier by pulling up a chair to insinuate that “the blasts are a gameplan of the Centre to finish the regional parties”. This isn’t the moment for sniper attacks. A responsible political class would have acted in concert to assist the security agencies.