Outfits Of Terror Have No Religion

As citizens of India committed strongly committed to peaceful and fruitfulrelations between India and Pakistan as also unequivocally to lasting justiceand peace between all communities within India, our heart goes out to all thevictims of the recent terror attack on board the Samjhauta Express. The attackreveals above all, that terror and terrorism has no religion and victims of allcommunities, Muslim and Hindu, rich and poor can easily become the victims ofsuch an attack. We offer our deepest condolences to all the affected families inthis moment of grief.

We unequivocally condemn this attack that is an attempt not only to de-railpeace talks but also to create schisms and rifts between communities. We thankthe political leadership of both countries for using sombre and sensitivelanguage at such a time and urge them -- specifically the intelligence andinvestigative authorities of India -- to go further and rigorously investigateand get to the bottom of such an attack.

Outfits of terror have no religion and should never be equated as such. Thelanguage and acts of terror can be perpetrated by fanatic outfits within any andall social, political and religious sections. Similarly victims of terror astoday's brutal incident shows, can hail and do hail from all sections. Terrorand terrorism can be home grown as well as imported; both equally are not justanti-national, they strike at the fabric of our nation because they createschisms between communities.

Vijay Tendulkar, President CJP
Dr Prabhat Patnaik, noted economist
Teesta Setalvad, Secretary, CJP and co-editor Communalism Combat
Arvind Krishnaswamy, Treasurer, CJP,
Javed Akhtar, CJP and Muslims for Secular Democracy (MSD),
CP Chandraskehar, economist, JNU,
Javed Anand, CJP and MSD,
Nandan Maluste, CJP,
Anil Dharker, CJP,
Rajendra Prasad, SAHMAT
Ram Rehman, SAHMAT,
MK Raina, SAHMAT,
Hasan Kamal, MSD,
Rahul Bose, CJP