THE SOUTHERN COMFORT NO LONGER THERE

Not long ago, North India was more affected by terrorism than the South. But a new religious landlordism’ has shattered the communal amity of the southern states

- KM CHANDRASEKHAR

DESPERATE for his evening stroll, my dog Sandy delayed my walk to Sarojini market in Delhi on October 29, 2005. Having deposited Sandy back at home, I was on my way to the market when I noticed a pall of smoke rising in the distance. A part of the market had been blown up by a bomb explosion, which I barely missed because of my dog's insistence.

Indeed, the high point of terrorism in India was witnessed in the last part of the previous century and the first decade of the present one. The earlier Parliament House was attacked in 2001, the American Centre in Kolkata and the Akshardham temple in Gujarat in 2002, train crashes took place in Jaunpur in 2002 and 2005, and the bomb explosions in Delhi in 2005. In 2008, when I was Cabinet Secretary, I had to deal with the horrific 26/11 incident, left-wing extremism across many forested states in the heart of India, and militancy in the Northeast and Kashmir. The North continues to simmer with growing communal and caste tension expressing itself in lynching, religious conflict, selective police action and intolerance.

The South was relatively unaffected. When I retired from the civil service and came back to distant Thiruvananthapuram, I thought I was coming into a zone of peace. But was I right? Not really.

There had been serial bomb blasts in Coimbatore in 1998, which killed 58 people.

The alleged kingpin, N P Noohu alias Mankavu Rasheed, was finally arrested twenty years later in Kozhikode in Kerala.