The Hindu : Front Page : Terror mail analysis supports claim of Lashkar authorship

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Terror mail analysis supports claim of Lashkar authorship

Praveen Swami

Spelling errors, style show author was not native Hindi-speaker

MUMBAI: Close textual analysis of a document issued by an until-now unknown terrorist group just after the recent massacre in Mumbai appears to vindicate claims by Indian intelligence experts that the document was generated by a non-Hindi speaker, using voice-recognition software.

For one, a series of spelling errors mar the Hindi-language text, typed in the Devnagari script, which was issued by a group calling itself the Mujahideen Hyderabad Deccan — a fictitious group, investigators now say, invented to distance the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba from the attacks.

Hindi-language voice-recognition software, though commercially available, is at a development stage and often registers incorrect spellings. In the document, the word silsila, or incidents, is spelled with the wrong matras, or vowel markings. The word chetaavani, or warnings, and zindagi, or life, are again spelt with incorrect matras.

Moreover, the name of the organisation Mujahideen Hyderabad Deccan. The phrase “Hyderabad Deccan” is frequently used in Pakistani comment to identify India’s southern plateau. It is, however, rarely used in this country.

Analysts at India’s Research and Analysis Wing have been able to establish that the e-mail account used to issue the document was set up from a Pakistan-based computer shortly before the attacks began.

Vicious language

In the document, its authors “warn the Indian government to stop atrocities against Muslims; that it return the states seized from Muslims; that it compensate, with interest, the cost of these atrocities”

“This attack” it states, “is a reaction to those actions which Hindus have taken since 1947 onwards. Now, there shall be no actions. There shall only be reactions, again and again. These shall continue until we have avenged each and every atrocity.”

It proceeds to assert that the violence “shall continue until Muslims have their own independent land where they may live their lives in accordance with the Quran and the Hadith. They shall continue until all our occupied states are returned to us. They shall continue until every death has been avenged.”

Lashkar leaders have often claimed that they intend to liberate Hyderabad and Junagadh, both of which they cast as Muslim-ruled states illegitimately seized by India.

Lashkar pamphlets and posters have long accorded Hyderabad, which they represent as a Muslim state illegitimately captured by India at independence, pride of place in the organisation’s military campaign. According to Lashkar literature, the organisation is committed to a war-unto-death with India.

Speaking at a three-day convention of the Lashkar-e-Taiba in Murdike, Pakistan, in February 2000, the organisation’s head, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, said that campaigns against Indian rule in Junagadh, and Hyderabad would be its top priorities.

Earlier, in a 1999 article, the Lashkar had asserted that “fighting is also obligatory until the disbelieving powers and states are subdued and they pay Jizya (capitulation tax) with willing submission.”

At a November 1999 congregation of the Markaz Dawa wal’Irshad — the Lashkar’s parent organisation, which in 2002 renamed itself the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, or Centre for Proselytisation, Saeed proclaimed: “Today I announce the break-up of India, god willing. We will not rest until the whole of India is dissolved into Pakistan.”

Ugly caste invective, common in Pakistan’s jihadist press, also litters the manifesto.

“We know that the Hindu genetic make-up is of the Bania [trader caste] which knows only how to take accounts of others, rather than giving of itself. However, we wish to tell the Hindu Bania that we are that race which does not forget its history, and reiterate it time and again — for example, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Somalia and Kashmir.”

Islamist commentators in Pakistan have frequently used abusive language against Banias, who in their literature are identified with Hindus generally. Writing in the newspaper Nawa-i-Waqt on November 6, 2004, for example, the journalist Shaukat Nawaz alleged that the “Hindu Bania has always followed a dual policy. They protect the Taj Mahal for financial gains while demolishing the mosques one by one. The Taj is a cow that gives milk, therefore the greedy Hindus would protect it.”

“It is our innings”

“It is our innings now,” the mail concludes, using a cricket metaphor. “We shall not,” the e-mail states, “allow this innings to go waste. We shall play this innings with that style which was taught to us by Allah. We know that the Government of India will not listen to our warnings seriously. Therefore, we have decided that this warning should remain not just a warning, but demonstrated through actions — actions of which you have seen a living example in Mumbai.”

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