What is sacred?

When terror is precision-timed for symbolism, careful scrutiny of the site and the situation is revealing. It reveals the terrorist8217;s agenda, and it also yields vital clues on how to beat that design. So it is with the synchronised blasts at Varanasi on Tuesday. Tuesday is the biggest evening of the week at Sankat Mochan temple, by all accounts the third most important temple in Varanasi. Varanasi itself is India in microcosm. Its chroniclers call it the living text of Hinduism, and various faiths and reform movements have been accommodated in its sacred geography. To strike violence in Varanasi is to put all of India on alert. It is such a blatant bid to invite backlash that any attempt to fuel communal passions would be tantamount to self-indictment.

The Varanasi strikes, however, gather in their crude provocation the reckless agendas of past weeks. Rage has been manufactured in Uttar Pradesh, and it has a dangerously sharp communal edge. That rage has been kept on the boil with a resounding silence from the political class to a state minister8217;s call to murder. It has been appended to an unprecedented move by Left and Third Front-inclined political parties to give sectarian colour to foreign policy. Look at the issues that are agitating them. A vote on Iran8217;s nuclear programme that sticks close to the provisions of a nonproliferation treaty signed by Tehran itself. A visit by the American president that dovetails with increased engagement between his country and India. One issue feeds on the other to bring communal rage in matters where identity politics do not belong, and put all together it keeps dry a restlessness that can be ignited by extremists of different hues.

Varanasi is first and foremost a security challenge. The discovery of live bombs around the city are a measure of the terrorists8217; reach and intent. But Varanasi must also be a sobering reminder of the perils of ingiting rage without reason, of placing emotion above domestic interest in policy-making. The calls for calm by the Centre and state governments after the blasts should serve as an acknowledgement that inchoate discontent can so easily escape into a chain reaction.