(The following article is from the November 16-30, 2008, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

By B. Prasant, PV correspondent in India

The stench of violent death hung heavy on October 31 over the busiest part of Guwahati, the bustling state capital and commercial hub of the eastern Indian province of Assam as we entered the sprawling urban centre. Bodies lay everywhere. Blood was splattered on the walls that had happily advertised visual entertainment and sports events.

     Above all, there was a constant, unbearably deafening silence, only punctured very, very occasionally by the barely audible cry or the muffled despairing wail for help emanating out of the chapped and dry lips of the dying and the injured.

     The police came first. Then there appeared the army officers. Then materialized, too late, too few, the para-medical staff in a smattering of siren-silent ambulances. The sound of stretchers being unfolded was not heard. There were no stretchers. People - living, dead, no matter - were just lifted by their hands and arms. Their heads hung and lolled in an eerie fashion as they were lobbed inside the floor of the vehicles, landing with a sickeningly audible thud.

     The injured men, women, boys and girls whimpered in rending piteous tones. The scene was enough to bring tears welling up in my eyes, battle-hardened in such killing fields as Kampuchea, sub-Saharan Africa, especially Sierra Leone, and more recently Abkhazia and south Ossetia.

     The communal divide is now edging towards a dangerous bent as tribal-nontribal conflicts sweep Assam. Before going off, the bombs had remained casually heaped in a canvas tote bag on a motorcycle for more than two days. The local meatshop owner, Mohammad Gafur, a Muslim, told us in a voice trembling with raw fear that his complaints about the anonymous bag to the traffic constable nearby directing vehicles went unheeded. The policeman, a tribal, had laughed derisively and shoved him away: "mad old Muslim so-and-so, mind your own such-and-such business, you bloodsucker."

     The bombs burst with a deafening roar - a combination of RDX and dynamite. Among those killed was the old man's seven-year-old great-grand-daughter, looking after the shop while Gafur went to the nearby Masjid to do his afternoon namaaz. Not a single part of her could be found. Gafur still searches the area every afternoon for the colourful faux glass bangles she wore when the shrapnel tore into her little body.

     "The extremists have done it again!" "Down with Muslim extremism!" "A New terrorist Muslim group has claimed responsibility for the blasts!" scream the corporate newspaper headlines. The TV channels follow suit, all supporting in various degrees the Hindu fundamentalists. Parliamentary elections are just around the bend, in January, you must understand, and the Congress party is getting weaker around the knobbly political knees every month, perhaps every week.

     Has anybody questioned the role of the Indian intelligence service in the din of blaming Pakistan? We are not absolving any "foreign hand" - after all, "baby" Bush is still a lame-duck President.

     US imperialism and its lackeys want a fragmented India. It is the smallness of the easily-swamped market that they want anywhere. Look at what happened in Tibet, and what is being done to Russia, Turkey, and Iran. Iraq and Afghanistan are beyond redemption, for the US is going to abandon them. "Bring the boys home" remains a popular slogan, and they will do it, sooner rather than later, unsuccessful in their original bid to extract oil from these subjugated nations.

     A fragmented India, one must historically understand, which would not dare to squirm under the intense exploiting pressure of the criminals called the US ruling classes, is good news for the transnational corporations. The weakening US economy hopes to get a market here for its surplus stock of out-of-fashion, out-of-the utility-loop goods and second rate services.

     Funding, training, and motivating intensely fundamentalist groups - religious, regional, and ethnically divisive - is a well-honed time-tested instrument. Guwahati had to pay the price. We shall ask the same question again: what was the US-trained Indian intelligence service doing? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.