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Sixteen people were injured Wednesday when an improvised explosive device went off in Bangalore near the office of India’s biggest opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party. The blast is still under investigation, but based on what we know so far, it could indicate a shift by India’s main indigenous Islamist militant group as it looks for alternative ways to rile up Hindu-Muslim tensions.
The explosion took place in northwest Bangalore, a fair distance from the city’s main high-tech business areas. At around 10:30 a.m., when offices would likely be filled with people, an improvised explosive device suspected of containing an ammonium nitrate-based main charge ripped through a motorcycle less than 50 meters away from the BJP office. The device bears similarities to previous attacks by Indian Mujahideen, which has been India’s most active indigenous militant group over the past decade.
The last suspected attack by Indian Mujahideen took place on Feb. 21, when two low-grade explosives detonated near a crowded market and a theater in Hyderabad. Most of Indian Mujahideen’s attacks over the past several years have resembled the Hyderabad attack, where crude devices hidden in bags or tiffin lunch boxes are placed on bicycles, motorbikes or trash cans and are generally detonated through timed devices. The group generally goes for soft targets in crowded places and has also experimented in targeting sensitive religious sites, both Hindu and Muslim, in previous attacks.
The strategic intent of Indian Mujahideen is to create the conditions for communal riots between Hindus and Muslims that would help to radicalize segments of India’s Muslim community and bolster the group overall. But Indian Mujahideen has yet to claim success in this agenda. Not only has the group remained limited in its bombmaking capabilities, but Indians have become largely desensitized to these types of attacks and are not rallying behind these communally driven provocations.
This is why the targeting of the BJP office, which strays from the Indian Mujahideen’s usual target set, is so interesting. The BJP is India’s main opposition Hindu nationalist party and is the ruling party of the state government in Karnataka, where the latest Bangalore blast occurred. Karnataka state, which has long been a BJP stronghold and is a major driver of economic growth, is a big prize in the upcoming state assembly election on May 5. The BJP has been racked by a number of recent corruption scandals in the state and is trying to avoid a major election upset to its rivals in the ruling Congress party.
Amid this very tense election environment, Indian Mujahideen recently sent a threatening letter to Indian business tycoon Mukesh Ambani warning him to not invest in Gujarat state and to stay away from Gujarat’s chief minister, Narendra Modi. Modi is a prominent leader of the BJP, most famous for his alleged abetting of the 2002 deadly riots between Hindus and Muslims in Gujarat. The threat to Ambani is being viewed in connection to the Bangalore blast against the BJP office and could indicate a shift by the Indian Mujahideen to rile up Hindu nationalist sentiment by targeting the party directly. Given the group’s lack of success so far, the biggest thing to watch moving forward is how targeted Hindu nationalist politicians actually react to these provocations and whether any resulting crackdowns succeed in stoking communal tensions, especially in India’s major economic hubs.
The Strategic Motive Behind the Bangalore Bombing reproduced.
Courtesy Stratfor (www.startfor.com)