Saffron Terror

By Praful Bidwai          15 November, 2008                          Muslim India

Sadhvi Pragya Thakur’s arrest and the questioning of Hindutva extremists for the Malegaon blasts point to the need for action against majoritarian extremism.

When this column (Frontline, October 6, 2006) raised doubts about the police account of the terrorist bombings, which killed more than 30, in Malegaon in northern Maharashtra, many readers questioned this writer’s motives and the validity of his argument that the attacks were in all probability executed by Hindutva fanatics.

Two years on, the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) has arrested Sadhvi Pragya Thakur. In Madhya Pradesh, Mahashtra and Gujarat, a number of other Hindutva extremists have been detained for interrogation. They have reportedly found solid evidence of the existence of an elaborate, well-ramified terrorist network, which they suspect was involved in several recent bombings in different States, including the blasts in Malegaon and in Modasa in Gujarat in September.

A relook at terror

If the police succeed in substantiating their allegations, the government will have to radically revise its view of terrorism, which it sees primarily, if not solely, as the work of extremist organisations such as the Indian Mujahideen, the Students Islamic Movement of India, the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami, many of them linked to Pakistan/Bangladesh.

The government will also have to go after or ban Hindutva groups such as the Bajrang Dal, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Sri Ram Sena and, above all, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), which mentors them and to which they are affiliated. At the centre of the recently discovered Hindutva extremist network are, allegedly, Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, her accomplices Shyam Banwarilal Sahu and Shivnarayan Singh Kalsangar and others such as Sameer Kulkarni and Ramesh Upadhyay, a former Army officer.

Even more important are the organisations to which they belong, including the Hindu Janajagaran Manch and the Sanatana Ashram in Panvel and the Bhonsala Military School in Nashik run by the Central Hindu Military Education Society, established in 1935 by B.S. Moonje – a Hindutva zealot and former Hindu Mahasabha president – who was close to RSS founder K.B. Hedgewar but well to his right.

The terrorist involvement of some of these organisations was detected in 2006 when the ATS of the Maharashtra Police investigated an accidental bomb explosion on April 6 in the house of RSS member L.G. Rajkondwar in Nanded, not far from Malegaon. Bajrang Dal activists Naresh Rajkondwar and Himanshu Panse were killed while attempting to fabricate a bomb along with fellow-extremists.

The ATS filed a charge sheet in August 2006 in which it established the existence of a Bajrang Dal-centred terrorist network. This network was responsible for terrorist bombings in November 2003 at a mosque in Parbhani in Maharashtra’s Marathwada region and in August 2004 at mosques in Jalna and Purna in the same region. The bomb that went off accidentally at Nanded was apparently meant to be used at a mosque in Aurangabad.

The Marathwada-based extremists were trained in bomb-making near Pune, in Goa and at the Bhonsala Military School, where an RSS camp coached more than 100 participants in the use of firearms and in martial arts.

According to the ATS, this operation was part of a large conspiracy to target Muslims and create an impression that Muslim extremists would kill other Muslims to provoke disaffection, widen the communal divide and stoke extremism. This would play straight into the hands of the Hindutva forces, which would attribute all acts of terrorism, including diabolical ones directed at Muslims, solely to Muslims.

The September 2006 bombings in Malegaon outside a crowded mosque after the Friday prayers fit this pattern to a T. Ironically, the police held Muslims responsible, ignoring all material evidence and important clues: the victims were exclusively Muslims observing Shab-e-Barat, or remembrance of the dead, in an adjoining graveyard; the bicycles in which the bombs were planted had Hindu names painted on them.

The police overplayed the “telltale” use of RDX explosive although only one of the three forensic laboratories detected its presence. The Union Home Secretary, no less, had ruled RDX out. But RDX is no Muslim monopoly. It can be procured by any determined group.

Shortly after the explosion at Nanded on April 6, the Secular Citizens’ Forum and the People’s Union for Civil Liberties in Nagpur and the Movement for Peace and Justice in Nanded collected photographs that, according to them, showed a bomb-fabrication operation run by the Bajrang Dal. The pictures proved that the local police tried to cover up Bajrang Dal-VHP involvement by planting firecrackers to suggest that the blast was not caused by bombs. They also ignored the planting of false beards to suggest that the perpetrators were Muslims. They played down the fact that a second bomb was recovered from the same place.

Diluted charges

The activists specifically warned of an imminent attack by Hindutva militants but were ignored. Soon thereafter, Malegaon happened. The Nanded case was transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation.

According to anti-communalism activist Teesta Setalvad, who moved a Right to Information application to get hold of the CBI’s charge sheet, the CBI considerably diluted the terrorism-related charges and presented the Nanded explosion as an isolated incident unconnected with the Sangh Parivar and delinked from a larger conspiracy. It then pleaded its “inability” to proceed with the investigation.

Since then, Sangh Parivar activists have been implicated in other explosions that took place while bombs were being fabricated in places as varied as Kanpur and Tenkasi, besides Nanded again. There have been any number of instances of Bajrang Dal activists distributing trishuls – four million in Rajasthan alone, according to former Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot – forming anti-Muslim suicide squads, and training members in the use of firearms. They have brazenly owned up to the recent ethnic cleansing operation against Christians in Orissa and to intimidating other minorities.

The Indian state’s response to these manifestly illegal and obnoxiously communal activities has been soft, if not supine. This has encouraged the most vicious and aggressive Hindutva forces to step up their offensive, thus further alienating our already threatened and beleaguered minorities.

Patriotic extremists?

The government’s reluctance to bring Sangh Parivar fanatics to book is premised on the belief that Hindu extremists are somehow more “patriotic” and, therefore, less evil than Islamist extremists. This is a Hindu-majoritarian, anti-secular view. It presumes that Hindus, by virtue of being the majority, are quintessentially more committed to the Indian nation than Muslims or Christians, and hence deserving of sympathy.

This repugnant presumption profoundly misrepresents and seriously violates India’s civic nationalism, which is based on the modern concept of equality of all citizens irrespective of their religion or ethnicity. It is incompatible with our Constitution’s foundational values. In reality, the Sangh Parivar is not committed to the Indian nation but to the “Hindu nation”, in which the minorities must accept a subordinate, second-class status.

Powerful refutation of this presumption was offered by the barbaric burning alive of Graham Staines and his two children in Orissa by Bajrang Dal activist Dara Singh; the Gujarat pogrom; and other gory episodes of violence against Indian citizens and offences against India’s plural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious foundations.

BJP’s responsibility

Militant majoritarianism has held sway in India over the past 20 years and created great fear and insecurity among Muslims. Hindutva’s rise has deeply affected official thinking and given India’s counter-terrorism strategy an Islamophobic edge. A significant number of police and intelligence officials, both serving and retired, have embraced hard or soft Hindutva. Muslim alienation from the government has never been greater. This is especially so where Muslims have been harassed or treated with suspicion, as after the Batla House episode.

The lion’s share of the responsibility for this unacceptably deplorable state of affairs rests with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), many of whose members seamlessly walk in and out of the front organisations of the RSS, and whom the RSS uses at will. Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, for instance, was a leader of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) for nearly a decade and campaigned for the BJP during the last Assembly elections in Gujarat. Her associates have a similar relationship with Sangh Parivar organisations.

It simply will not do for the BJP to pretend that it is unconnected to these organisations and individuals or, more egregiously, that there can be no “Hindu terrorist” because Hinduism is inherently tolerant and incapable of a fundamentalist interpretation. Indeed, Hindutva embodies intolerance in its most malignant form.

The Indian state will further damage its already frayed secular credentials unless it stops being pusillanimous and musters the courage to take on the Sangh Parivar while protecting the minorities. It must ban the RSS, the Bajrang Dal, the VHP and other extremist groups; prosecute BJP and ABVP members who have links with them; and cleanse its police, security and intelligence apparatuses of communally inclined personnel. No less important, it must set up a high-level commission on the Gujarat pogrom and other recent communal atrocities to punish the guilty.

The ruling coalition has failed to reaffirm a secular agenda in a credible way. Unless it acts with determination and despatch, Hindutva hatred and prejudices will undermine interreligious harmony and tear this society asunder.

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Frontline

Trouble at Om !

Sagarika Ghose Wednesday, November 12, 2008 at 03 : 31    Muslim India
IBNLive » Blogs

Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur is a woman representing "Hinduism". Yet she is accused of killing innocents in bomb blasts at Malegaon in September. On tape, she utters the chilling words, "Why did more people not die?". The alleged mastermind of the Malegaon blasts is a serving army officer Lt. Colonel Shrikant Purohit.

The Bhonsla Military Academy in Nashik, it is claimed, trained as many as 54 men in military and bomb making technology in 2001.The Malegaon blast investigation is yielding astounding results: there have been 9 arrests so far from Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. The network is extensive, well funded, welded by sheer hatred.

Hindu samitis and sanghs are proliferating. Their membership is made up mostly of young men. These young men feel constantly insulted, constantly outraged by plays, articles and minorities. Their method of protest is always violence.

A group called the Hindu Janjagran Samiti exploded bombs outside a Thane auditorium that was presenting a play that was supposed to be "anti Hindu". A group called the Shiv Sangram Samiti attacked the home of newspaper editor Kumar Ketkar because he wrote an article asking why the Maharashtra government was constructing a Shivaji statue. At a seminar in Delhi University, an ABVP activist spat in the face of SAR Geelani, once an accused in the parliament attack case. At MS University in Baroda, VHP activists attacked an artist during an art exhibition for hurting "Hindu sentiments." MF Husein still cannot return to India as several cases against him for hurting "Hindu sentiment".

In Delhi University ABVP activists created an uproar over an academic text on the Ramayan that was causing hurt to "Hindu sentiments". Young men who should be working at their careers or studies, are busy feeling insulted about their gods and goddesses.

"Hindu rage" was supposed to have subsided after the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Under the soothing influence of AB Vajpayee, as the NDA was tempered by governance, Hindu anger seemed to be becoming slowly irrelevant. In 2006 when BJP leaders sought to undertake "national integration" rath yatras to mobilize "Hindu rage" about the "blatant minority appeasement policies" of the UPA, these yatras failed to strike a public chord.

A globalizing forward looking economy seemed to have little time for calls to aggressive identity politics. Yet today, an exponentially increasing aggression characterises the "Hindu". The Hindu is angry about Muslims, angry at Christians, angry that young women are not wearing traditional clothes, angry at "anti-Hindu Euro-Indians" or "pseudo-seculars" who supposedly defend Muslims.

How are we to understand this Hindu rage? Why do young so-called "Hindu" men want to bash, bomb, destroy, use abusive language and spit? Islamist terrorism, with its roots in the conflagrations of West Asia, its ideology, its preachers, its enemy in the Great Satan posits itself as the nemesis of industrialized West.

The global jihad is the result of a lethal combination of weapons and ideological brainwashing. Islamist terror has its recognizable motivations and goals. But what is making the Hindu angry? And why is he/she trying to create a copycat terrorism to compete with the Muslim, when the global jihad has hardly got India as uppermost on its radar?

The first reason could be frustration. In the years that Islamist groups either from Pakistan or Bangladesh recruited Muslims to their cause, the Indian state resoundingly failed in many cases to apprehend the real culprits. The failure to win the war against the Islamist terrorist, the manner in which militants were freed after the Kandahar hijacking, created the fear that the government, of whichever party, was weak and powerless. "Reprisal terrorism" may well be the reason why an army officer starts making bombs.

But there is a more important reason for Hindu rage. And this lies, in what social scientists describe as the commonality between the ascetic and the terrorist. Both the ascetic and the terrorist feel that they are not part of society.

They feel they are left out of economic progress and left out of the political mainstream. There are millions of individuals who even at age 35 get nowhere in life. Their small business packs up or their promotions are denied. In an earlier time these bitter men would have become sadhus. Now, they get recruited to the cause of Hindu rage. The persistent perception of failure in a success-oriented society, the daily humiliation of being the loser when everyone around seems to be winning, the factory of glossy cultural products like ads and movies that scream "I have it and you don't," is creating armies of recruits to Hindu "rage".

The thousands of underemployed or semi-employed youths who are perpetually available to be part of screaming "nationalist" mob against "minorities", are not just protesting about Muslims: they are screaming out their own economic and cultural deprivation. Thus, the fashion show, St Valentine's Day, the English-speaking "pseudo secularists" all the demonstrable symbols of the economy that are new and which appear successful, must be met with hatred and violence because "success" is the enemy.

The sad truth is that as political parties become family businesses and as the education available in small town schools collapses, the successful are now a miniscule minority. The benefits of the English language is showered on a few but totally denied to the many. Sadhvi Pragya Singh holds a Masters degree in History and likes riding motorbikes. In a society which provides equal opportunity, making bombs (allegedly) need not have been this fiery woman's only method to express her individuality.

The BJP has made an important contribution to public life. It has showed that so called "secular" governments were flirting with zealots, encouraging Muslims not to follow the laws of independent India and making apology the duty of every Hindu. Yet the sophisticated arguments made by the BJP leaders in Delhi have become blunt weapons by the time they have trickled down to the alleys of Jammu and Kandhamal. Hindu "rage" is fast slipping out of control of the sangh leadership.

When parties are powerless, society must act. We Hindus, (like Muslims must as well) must reclaim our religion from the angry "terrorists". We are lovers of earth, trees and mountains; blind hatred is not our creed. We must draw our children away from the malign "religion" of "Sadhvi" Pragya Thakur and lead them instead to the magnificent river which is our ancestor. A river that reminds every child of the dignified spirituality of the world's oldest living faith.
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Photo: Sagarika Ghose

Trouble At Om !

Sagarika Ghose is an Indian journalist, author and television personality. A recipient of the Rhodes Scholarship, she gained a bachelor's in modern history from Magdalen College and an M.Phil from St Antony's College at Oxford.

She has been a journalist in India since 1991 and has worked at the The Times Of India, Outlook magazine and The Indian Express. She is currently a (2006) senior editor and prime time anchor on the news network CNN-IBN. In 2004 she became the first woman to anchor the popular BBC programme Question Time India.

Anatomy Of Sangh Parivar

By Ram Puniyani                               Muslim India

The arrest of Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur in the context of Malegaon blasts of September 29, 2008 has been an important step in the investigation of bomb blasts which have been blowing the social peace and communal amity. Along with her the arrest of army officers, retired and serving, has unfolded the whole new dimension about investigation of acts of terror. The involvement of Bhonsala Military School has also come under the scanner of investigating agencies.

The Sadhvi has been the member of Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad and Durga Vahini, which are the parts of Sangh parivar, before she adorned the saffron robe. Sangh parivar is the word coined by the RSS and its progeny for the whole combine, all of them put together. RSS acts as the central controller and its trained volunteers, swayamsevaks, set up and manage different organizations to pursue the goals of RSS.

Sadhvi?s connections with BJP/RSS top leadership came to the surface and the BJP leadership in particular, distanced itself from her, initially. The ideological and political association was attempted to be played down to a mere acquaintance. Disowning the member of its outfits, after they do the crime is nothing new for Sangh organizations. The first such disowning was done when RSS prachark Nathuram Godse murdered the father of the nation, Mahatma Gandhi. Since RSS was not keeping records of its members etc. Nathuram claimed in the court that he had nothing to do with RSS, despite the fact that he was a trained RSS volunteer (swayamsevak). In an interview given to ?The Times of India? (25 Jan 98), his brother Gopal Godse, who was also an accomplice in the murder, elaborated the apparent reasons for hiding their affiliation with RSS. ?Technically and theoretically he (Nathuram) was a member (of RSS), but he stopped workings for it later. His statement in the court that he had left the RSS was to protect the RSS workers who would be imprisoned following the murder, on the understanding that they (RSS workers) would benefit from his dissociating himself??

The second major disassociation has been that from Rajendra Pal, alias, Dara Singh who murdered Pastor Graham Steward Stains. His case in the courts was fought by BJP ex Minister Dilip Singh Judeo's brother. Dara Singh himself was an active worker of VHP, Bajrang Dal and other Sangh organizations. All this was denied shamelessly by RSS combine. And now come the one related to the Sadhvi.

After initial quiet on the issue, now the Hindutva parties (BJP, Shiv Sena) are raising the army of lawyers to fight the case for her. Now their plea is that every accused has a right to be defended. So far they have kept quiet when the lawyers of the accused in the acts of terror have been beaten up and many lawyers associations have resolved not to fight the cases of accused in cases of acts of terror.

It was also stated by BJP spokesperson that there is no evidence, proof of involvement of the Sadhvi. The technicalities of this proof in this case apart one will like to know how many times, in how many cases of arrest of ?alleged Muslim terrorists? this question is raised. Their being a Muslim is a good enough proof of being a terrorist in this scheme of things propagated by RSS combine, and even the encounters, fake most of them, are welcomed by a section of these.

Then came the argument that since Sadhvi is a follower of ?cultural nationalism?, she can?t be a terrorist! Here the partisan attitude of those involved in this politics is clear. What they are referring to by cultural nationalism is Hindu nationalism. As such cultural nationalism has been promoted by the practitioners of politics in the name of religion. Be it Muslim terrorists taught in the US promoted Madrassas in Pakistan in yesteryears or the fundamentalists, doing politics in the name of any religion. In case of Hindutva, this cultural nationalism is the opposite of democratic nationalism, where diversity and equality of all is the foundation of the political ethos.

In case of RSS, cultural nationalism, is based on the some religious texts and the culture of elite Hindus, which gives priority to the Brahminical values, the values of caste and gender based inequality. Democratic nationalism has its focus on respecting and approving all cultures and religions, while in RSS scheme of cultural nationalism the Brahminical culture is the base of political nationalism. So what label does one put to the acts of Godse and Dara Singh? Both of them were steeped in the Cultural nationalism propagated by RSS combine. The formula that terrorism done by Muslims is anti national and the acts done by the ilk of Sadhvi are nationalism defies all the logic. Any act of violation of the Indian law is anti national, there can?t be separate set of laws for those indulging in violence and heinous crimes in the name of religion.

After initial hesitation, it started being said that she was pained by the terrorism committed by Muslims, so this revenge terrorism was meant to protect the Hindu society, and so subtle justification and approval for this variety of crime as being the answer to the terrorism done by Muslims. Some commentators are openly glorifying this and some others are quietly going by this logic. One can say that the Bajrang Dal and Sadhvi?s ilk is not into terrorism because of so called Islamic terrorism, it is in this more due to the indoctrination which they have received through RSS indoctrination module. This indoctrination reduces all the political-social issues to the religious ones.

RSS indoctrination is carried out through its Shakha Baudhiks (Branch intellectual sessions) and camps. It says that this is nation belongs to Hindus alone. Here, the Muslims and Christians are foreigners, the secular people are trying to say that this country belongs to all the people, which is wrong. We need to ensure that these threats to Hindu nation are dealt with properly.

RSS type indoctrination has also created the myth that all terrorists are Muslim, deliberately overlooking that terrorists come from all the religious communities, but not due to religious reasons. The reasons behind terrorism are social, economic and political. Be it LTTE, Khalistanis, ULFA, Irish Republican army all have indulged in terrorism, the reasons being anything but religious. In RSS scheme of things all the acts of terror have been projected to be due to Islam and Muslims. So the two modules merge and create the mind set of Sadhvi or Bajrang Dal members who have died while making bombs in Nanded and Kanpur or members of Hindu Jagran Samiti who planted bombs in Thane near Mumbai.

The current involvement of army officers, Bhonsla Military School and the members of different wings of Sangh privar should not be a surprise if one sees the structure and functioning of RSS. RSS founded to oppose democracy and to work for Hindu nation has been working, indoctrinating and creating more and more organizations to fulfill it objective of Hindu nation, which in essence means to restore the feudal hierarchical values of caste and gender in Indian context, to work for status quo around the modern version of Brahminical system. Its trained swayamsevaks, have been on one hand directly entering the political formations, Bhatiay Janata Party, Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarhti Parishad, Vanvasi Kalyan Ashrma, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Hindu Munnani, Bajrang Dal, Samajik Samrasta Manch on one hand, creating subordinate organizations amongst women, Rashtra Seviak Samiti, Durga Vahini etc on the other hand. Vast layers of Saints, the likes Asaram Bapu or Sri Sri Ravishakar, or Narnedra Maharaj are ideologically on same wave length as RSS and through their work they lay the ground for the politics of RSS to flourish in different sections of society.

Its second strategy has been that of infiltration in the different wings of state machinery, police, bureaucracy, Judiciary. On yet another layer its recruits have been working in the field of education and media by the mechanism of infiltration. Its hold and vicious grip on society cannot just be assessed by the electoral strength of BJP. That?s why Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the then Prime Minister, in Staten Island could assert that first he is the swayam sevak of RSS and then the prime minister. That?s why in 1977, when the Bharatiya Jansangh, previous avatar of BJP, who were part of Janata Party, were told to severe their links with RSS, they preferred to break the Janata party rather then severing their affiliation with RSS. Its strength comes from the earlier silent, by now violent, infiltration in all spheres of social and political activities. Its wing amongst retired military officers ensures that people like Retired army Officer Upadhyay is probably the part of the Malegaon and other such blasts.

Bhonsala military school has been managed by RSS in more ways than one, so not only it may be a place for hatching the conspiracies for blasts, but also for turning out recruits who can aid and assist this Sangh combine while serving in the army. Surprise is not that Bhonsla military school?s connection with this politics is coming to surface, surprise is not that Upadhyay and Purohits? links are coming to surface so late; surprise is that how they hid it so long and so well?

Various components of RSS family sometimes have some differences also, but these are sorted out by the patriarch RSS, through subtle control and ideological mechanisms so that their cohesion with the goal to destroy democracy, through all the means, including using democratic platforms for the same, remains intact. Sadhvi is involved in the blasts or not, army officers or involved in these acts or not should hopefully come out despite their ideological plants scattered all over. What it has brought to our notice is the dangers of this multi headed hydra, which is working in the democratic system with a goal to abolish democracy itself and bring in Hindu nation, another name of fascist formation, abusing the Hindu religion, the religion of Kabir and Gandhi!

In RSS scheme of things the organizational affiliation comes second, the primary thing which they instill is the ideological subordination. Most of those involved in these acts will not have any remorse for what they did, as like the Al Qaeda variety, they are indoctrinated to believe that it is nationalism (Hindu in this case, in Al Qaeda variety it is Islamic nation of course) so what you are doing while instigating anti minority violence or while planting the bombs is for the service of your religion!

While superficially at loggerheads the ideological wavelength of RSS indoctrination is similar to the one used in Pakistani Madrassas for training Al Qaeda. Here the religion is different paradigms are same. To deal with such ideologies leading to acts of terror, what is also needed is to combat their ideological foundations.

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Source: COUNTERCURRENTS.ORG