Bajrang Dal activists brandishing tridents on March 3

By IOL South Asia Correspondent

NEW DELHI, March 5 (IslamOnline.net)— An Indian minister speaking in Parliament here said there are 35 terrorist groups active on the Indian soil. These include outfits of all kinds, Maoist, communist, ethnic, regionalist as well as religion-based.

The minister made the surprising claim that even Al-Qaeda is active in India. Last year India had claimed that Al-Qaeda is active in its part of Kashmir but it withdrew the claim quickly lest it gave the U.S. a handle to dabble there.

This was published by the Asian Age newspaper based on minister of state for home in the BJP-led Indian federal government Hari Pathak's statement in the parliament.

But the minister failed to mention the name of any fascist Hindu outfit out of many active on national and regional levels in open militant and terror activities within the country.

“As many as 35 militant organizations, including Al-Qaeda, are engaged in terrorist activities in various parts of India and most of these organizations have base links in other countries too,” Pathak said.

Some of these organizations have a sizeable number of foreign mercenaries as members, he claimed.

Apart from other names, the minister's list mentioned Lashker-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Harkat-ul-Muhahideen, United Liberation Front of Assam, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), the People’s War and its various front outfits, Maoist Communist Center, Al-Badr and Al-Qaeda.

A letter in one of the leading Indian dailies, the Indian Express, on March 5 said, “…Our home minister harks to Pakistan terrorism, but the danger from within in completely ignored. This nation may be torn asunder from within and this unraveling may be much faster than what Pakistan may be able to achieve.”

Bajrang Dal activists taking arms training openly

Minister Pathak's list failed to list many terrorist and fascist outfits belonging to the same family to which the ruling BJP belongs like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP - World Hindu Council), Bajrang Dal, Durga Vahini, Hindu Sewak Sangh, Hindu Munnani, Shiv Sena and many other fascist, terrorist outfits which are active in various parts of the country.

These are the organizations which take pride in demolishing the Babri mosque, burnt Muslims and Christians alive and perpetrated ethnic cleansing of the Muslim community in Gujarat, to mention a few of their exploits.

In order to eliminate the scourge of terrorism, according to Pathak, the Indian government has adopted a "well-coordinated" and "multi-pronged approach" which includes “strengthening border management and coastal security, galvanizing intelligence machinery, neutralizing plans of the ISI (Pakistan military intelligence) by well-coordinated intelligence and upgradation of state police and central security forces”.

Apart from this, the government is to take some "diplomatic initiatives" in order to curb cross-border terrorism, the minister announced.

Pathak announced that as a result of coordinated action by the federal and state security agencies, a number of "Pakistan-backed" terrorist and espionage modules have been detected and neutralized but he did not offer more details.

The minister also informed the parliament that the federal government had asked the provincial governments to constitute inter-state intelligence support team to be provided suitable training by the intelligence bureau (IB) so their operational capabilities to deal with terrorism may be upgraded.