Click to play videoAurangabad: There has been no violence in the aftermath of the Malegaon blasts, but the communal divide in Maharashtra has widened. Marathwada is a region worst affected in this divide and a place that has seen the rise of terror and extremist groups.
A map of Marathwada tells all: its past was carved after a popular and bitter struggle to liberate Marathwada from the then Nizam of Hyderabad.
The people fought against the tyrannical onslaught of the Razaakaars, the dreaded soldiers of the Nizam under Qasim Rizvi. That past has come to haunt the present now, as Aurangabad has become the new flashpoint for communal polarisation and its spill over into terrorism.
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The Malegaon blasts have only intensified the divide and nowhere is this more visible than on the campus of Aurangabad's Maulana Azad College.
"Why have the Malegaon culprits not been arrested yet? Is it because they may be Hindus?" asks a student at the college.
"After the Mumbai blasts, many Muslim children from Aurangabad were caught. But after the bomb blast in Malegaon, who has been caught? Nothing is known," says another student.
"I don't want to grow a beard. I'm scared the police will pick me up. I can't leave the house without an Icard. Why? Why does this fear exist?"
The police have ruled out the involvement of Hindu extremist groups in the Malegaon blasts, but it’s difficult to convince Muslim youth that terrorist groups like the Lashkar could have targeted their own. Recent attacks on mosques have only reinforced their suspicions.
In the last three years, mosques have been attacked in the state. A mosque was attacked in Parbhani on 21 November 2003. On 27 August 2004, bombs were hurled at two mosques in the cities of Purna and Jalna.
On 6 April 2006, two suspected Bajrang Dal activists and the alleged masterminds of these attacks were killed while assembling a bomb in Nanded.
Then, on September 8, serial bomb blasts at a mosque and a cemetery in Malegaon killed 31 people and injured over a 100.
When the local police picked up several young men in the Marathwada region for interrogation after the Mumbai train blasts, it left the young generation among the minorities insecure and confused.
Muslim students allege that police is targeting them. Marathwada has over 4,000 Madrasas and the education system is polarised along the religious lines. This has led to a communication gap between the two communities.
The region is becoming divided, says Prof Majahar Mohiuddin, Secretary of Maulana Azaad College.
A majority of Muslims go to Urdu schools and most Hindus go to Marathi medium schools. Scholars, however, feel this is not the only reason for the divide between the communities.
"Majority of the Muslims go to Urdu medium schools and majority of the non-Muslims go to Marathi schools. This complete segregation is one of the reasons why we lack understanding of each other," says Prof H M Desarda.
"There has been a lot of politicking and the issues of the Muslims or the minorities have been used by certain political forces," says former justice Narendra Chapalgaonkar stress on communal unity.
The reasons youth get misguided can be partly traced in history and partly in prevailing social conditions of Marathwada, say scholars.
Unemployment in Marathwada is above the state average and the police insists that smaller towns in the region are being used by terror groups to set up sleeper cells.
This coupled with heightened religious feelings has ensured that Marathwada is now a communal tinderbox waiting to explode.
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