Train day

That the network of amateurish but deadly terrorists who called themselves the Indian Mujahideen mostly came from a single town should not,in the end,be that surprising. For thousands of less lethal enterprises across the country,started by thousands of bright-eyed young migrants to Indias metropolises,the first source of expertise,capital and labour is the small town from which they came,and back to which the web of their social networks stretch. There is nothing that is,thus,inherently odd about the police case that the tightly-knit set of jihadist militants had multiple connections to the town in UP called Azamgarh. It is,however,deeply unfortunate for Azamgarh. Its exceptional contributions to Indian cultural achievement apart,the town is otherwise unexceptional: the Muslim residents of the town are,apparently,not particularly more radical than anywhere else in the country; societys support structures do not seem to be more broken there than elsewhere. Yet some from the town,understandably,feel stigmatised. But the response to that feeling co-ordinated by parts of their local leadership is deeply,sadly,incoherent.

The response is encapsulated in the train that delivered about four thousand of those residents to the national capital yesterday. The train called itself the Ulema Express already a PR stumble,as the name shares the untenable assumption that there is something monolithic about Muslims in Azamgarh. Let this be clear: the right of the four thousand to protest is unquestionable. And the fears that underly their protest,that their young people will find integrating into the urban mainstream tougher,are real and must be allayed. Yet the itinerary,Azamgarh to L/18 Batla House,shows why they might fail.

Highlighting victims of wrongful arrest because of lazy police work is useful but awarding a place of honour to the parents of those whom more than reasonable amounts of evidence connect to terrorism undermines that effort. The demand for a judicial probe into what happened in Batla House ignores that we should trust the courts to ferret out the truth of the encounter but is also beside the point. Those protesting want to lift the supposed stigma that attaches to their young men: they can aid that not by attacking the supposed reasons for that stigma but the actual misunderstandings that may have caused it. And thats something that can be done by showcasing the number of migrants from that town who,like countless others from similar small towns,have contributed to the great,bottom-up transformation pervading Indian society.