The Praful Bidwai Column
Wake-up call for India
THE Maharashtra police have unearthed something with all the makings of an organised, well-ramified Hindutva terrorist network. They've arrested key individuals -- "Sadhvi" Pragya Thakur, Sameer Kulkarni and former major Ramesh Upadhye -- for blasts outside a mosque in Malegaon this past September. They may have been involved in other bombings outside mosques too. The police are questioning a serving army officer for his links with the network -- the first such instance ever.
This marks a turning point. It shows that the sangh parivar will stoop to the basest criminality. It disproves the assumption that terrorism in India is solely the work of jehadi-extremist Muslims. Fanatical Hindus, driven by intensely anti-secular ethno-nationalist politics, are equally capable of terrorism.
The sangh parivar, especially the Bharatiya Janata Party, has much to answer for. Its advocacy of intolerance, hatred and Islamophobia for over 20 years has brought India to the present pass. The Indian state, too, must radically revise its understanding of terrorism in the light of this.
Police from three states are investigating the suspects. Apparently, they have weighty evidence of their role in bombings not just in Malegaon, this year and in 2006, but also elsewhere, in particular in Maharashtra's Marathwada region. All the targets were mosques.
Given the suspects' connections with sangh parivar organisations, it's extremely improbable that the police would have acted without hard, unimpeachable evidence.
According to sources, the police are also looking into the network's role in other attacks, like the May 2007 Hyderabad Mecca masjid bombings, the October 2007 Ajmer blasts, and the February 2007 Samjhauta Express bombings.
The network's members are inspired by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ideology. They have all been members of the BJP or of well-known parivar organisations like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal, Durga Vahini and Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad. Even more interesting is the role of less-known groups like Thakur's Rashtriya Jagaran Manch, Kulkarni's Abhinav Bharat, and Bhonsala Military School at Nashik, where Upadhye taught.
These groups' genealogy is instructive. Abhinav Bharat was created by RSS hardliners wanting "real" anti-Muslim action. Its original avatar was established in 1904 by V.D. Savarkar, the first ideologue of Hindutva. Bhonsala Military School was started in 1937 by one-time Hindu Mahasabha president BS Moonje. Moonje was a major extreme-right influence on RSS founder KB Hedgewar.
Moonje was a firm admirer of European fascism. He met Mussolini in 1931. The school's stated aim is "to inculcate military virtues" in the pupils. Clearly, there's only a thin line between "military virtue" and militant Hindutva.
These organisations' involvement in terrorism was first discovered in 2006, when Maharashtra's Anti-Terrorism Squad investigated a bomb explosion in the home of an RSS member in Nanded, in Marathwada. Two Bajrang Dal activists were killed while fabricating a bomb to be used at an Aurangabad mosque.
The ATS charge-sheet filed in 2006 established the existence of a Bajrang Dal-centred network responsible for serial bombings -- November 2003 in Parbhani, and August 2004 in Jalna and Purna. The bombers underwent training at Bhonsala Military School.
According to the ATS, the bomb-making operation was part of a large-scale devilishly devious conspiracy to allege that Muslim extremists wouldn't hesitate to kill other Muslims. This would widen the communal divide and help Hindutva forces to blame Muslims for all acts of terrorism, including diabolical attacks directed at Muslims.
Other parivar activists' involvement in bomb-making, revealed through recent accidental explosions in Tenkasi in Tamil Nadu, Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh and again in Nanded, reinforces this conclusion.
As this column noted, the September 2006 Malegaon bombings were part of this pattern. Ironically, the police arrested only Muslims for them -- although the victims were all Muslims observing Shab-e-Barat, or remembrance of the dead. The bomb-carrying bicycles bore Hindu names.
The police ignored vital clues in Malegaon. Worse, they tried to cover up Bajrang Dal-VHP involvement in the Nanded operation by planting fire-crackers in the house -- to suggest the explosion wasn't caused by bombs. They also ignored the planting of false beards to suggest that the bomb-makers were Muslims.
After the Nanded April 2006 explosion, civil society groups -- including People's Union of Civil Liberties -- produced a scathing critique of the police version with photographic evidence exposing the Bajrang Dal's bomb-fabrication operation. They warned of an imminent attack by Hindutva militants, but were ignored.
The Nanded case was soon transferred from the ATS to the Central Bureau of Investigation, which indulged in some sordid manipulation.
The CBI's new charge sheet, procured through a Right-to-Information-Act application, shows that it greatly diluted terrorism-related charges and presented the Nanded explosion as an isolated incident unconnected with the parivar or a larger conspiracy. It soon dropped the investigation altogether.
It is imperative that the police get to the bottom of the saffron terror operation and investigate it impartially and thoroughly. The time has come to name names and punish the guilty.
The BJP either brazenly denies that the Malegaon suspects are linked to the sangh parivar, or says they're innocent. This won't wash. The artificial firewalls the BJP always creates between itself and its more extremist parivar organisations have collapsed in the present case.
There are just too many connections between the BJP, Bajrang Dal, VHP and other parivar outfits in the conspiracy for the denial to stand. These include photographs showing a cosy relationship between BJP President Rajnath Singh, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan, and "Sadhvi" Thakur. A former ABVP-Durga Vahini office-bearer, Thakur campaigned for the BJP in the Gujarat elections.
Even more contemptible is the argument that "Hindutva terrorism" is a contradiction in terms because Hinduism is tolerant. It is indeed tolerant, but Hindutva is the opposite -- a divisive ideology of extreme intolerance of diversity, pluralism and secularism.
The Centre must pursue the Malegaon case seriously. It must ban the Bajrang Dal and the RSS and prosecute BJP members connected with these organisations. Nothing less can reaffirm the secular spirit of Indian society and the Constitution at a point when the minorities' alienation has peaked.
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