Terrorism is there. But terrorism has many roots and causes. In our own country when people start talking about roping terror and when people start talking about Al Qaeda, people forget that we had terrorism in our country for decades. We had internal problems.

Islamic terrorism?

I refuse to call terrorist violence in Jammu and Kashmir Islamic terrorism because we had terrorists groups in the Northeast. They are not Islamic.

In Tripura, where we have our (CPI-M) government, we had terrorism for 20 years. Now, everybody acknowledges that we have checked it to a large extent. That terrorism was from the Northeast's ethnic group whose identity was at stake. Their youth took to arms and started attacking other groups.

In India terrorism contains the basket of many extremists. In India a dangerous thing is the majority communalism and in reaction minority extremists. They feed each other. This is the most dangerous form of terrorism.

Majority communalism uses terrorist violence against the minority. Within the minority extremists groups rise saying we will avenge this. This vicious circle started after 1992-1993, particularly after the Babri Masjid demolition. You talk to people who are arrested they talk about the Mumbai riots of 1993. This vicious cycle of hatred and violence has to be eliminated. That is a difficult task.

In the meantime you have to tackle terrorists groups. The Jaipur blasts and a series of blasts in Hyderabad, Mumbai and Ajmer show that we have failed to uncover the actual network of perpetrators. This is the failure. This is something the government should look into -- how it is organised and who are the people behind it.

Part I of the interview: 'We don't say make so and so minister'

Why has your party not taken this up very actively?

You seem to give us some superpower. We don't have any such power. We say what we want to say. We claim that our idea of national unity, communal harmony, of overcoming the alienation of both ends of India that is, Jammu & Kashmir and the Northeast is that you have to deal with it at a political level.

After all, these years there is a lot of alienation in these areas. You cannot just pump in money. We think a political and democratic set-up is required here. We are saying from the beginning that you can't run India from New Delhi. It has to be decentralised. You have to give autonomy in certain respects. I also believe, India has done something, otherwise how can such a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic society be kept as a united entity?

Image: National Security Guard commandos collect evidence from a crime site in Jaipur, May 14, 2008. A series of bombings the previous night killed 80 people and left about 200 injured. Photograph: Prakash Singh/AFP/Getty Images

Also see: Taking jihad to the rest of India

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