New Delhi, Sept. 19: Congress leaders are apparently uneasy that a section of the government is trying to project recurring serial blasts as a product of “home-grown”, not cross-border, terror.

Sources quoted the leaders as saying such a distinction would help Pakistan — known to instigate cross-border terror — put on a face of injured innocence if there was another major strike and fingers were pointed at it. The classification would also foster greater communal stereotyping and make every other Muslim seem like a potential terrorist, the sources said.

National security adviser M.K. Narayanan dwelt on the concept of “home-grown” terror when he briefed the Union cabinet on Wednesday at a special sitting on terror.

He said the arrest of Simi general secretary Safdar Nagori — from Indore in March 2008 — had helped establish the primacy of the outfit’s role in blasts and its links with the Laskhar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad and the Harkat ul-Jihad-e-Islami. Simi appeared to have picked up the terror baton from the Lashkar and the Jaish, he said.

The sources said Narayanan’s message was that counter-terror strategy ought to revolve around the “home-grown” factor.

But Congress leaders felt it was “too early and premature” to come to such a conclusion. They said if terror had struck deep roots among India’s 150 million Muslims, the impact would have been far more grievous. Very few Muslims were influenced by “fundamentalist thinking”, they said.

The sources quoted the leaders as saying individuals or operators could be “home-grown” but the “motivation”, “resources” and “impetus” to strike came from outside.

Imran Kidwai, who heads the Congress minorities department, questioned the definitions of “terror” and “violence”. He asked why a blast in Kanpur, allegedly set off by a stockpile of arsenal gathered by the Bajrang Dal as part of a larger bombing plan, was termed “violence”, not “terror”.

“This talk of home-grown terror makes me uneasy. I was born and raised in India but what will stop people from lumping me with home-grown terrorists?” Kidwai said.