Silent Emergence of Hindu Terrorism By Subhash Gatade General Secretary of Congress Party Mr Digvijay Singh has attacked Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan and RSS about recovery of arms in Shyampur District Sihore.
While releasing a letter to the press which he has written to the Chief Minister Mr Singh categorically stated that members of RSS themselves are engaged in sending swords and knifes to instigate communal violence.
The two miscreants from Shyampur who were found to be in possession of arms and were duly apprehended belong to RSS only.
The letter specifically mentions that since the accused belong to RSS the chief minister would not take any action in this matter.
You are under pressure from RSS also.
Mentioning his earlier letter Mr Singh said that Mangilal and Phool Singh were arrested for delivering 24 swords and four knifes at Satyanarayan Bhati's house on 16 th March.
These two persons belong to RSS.
Within a few days of the recovery of the arms, minorities in Narsinhgarh and Talen (Rajgarh) came under attack and five people from both the sides lost lives.
The Congress leader mentioned a letter written by Sihore S.P.
which says that despite attempts by the police the two accused have refused to divulge the information about the source of these arms.
To conclude, the point one would like to emphasise that whether it is possible to link Tenkasi with Vardha or Nanded with Ahmedabad or for that matter Sihore or in our own atomised world view or not ? ('Sangh Sends Swords and Knifes' Bhaskar, Hindi Daily ( 19 July 2007) ) The arrests by Hindu terrorists from Thane and Panvel was followed by a controversial editorial in Saamna - edited by Bal Thackeray - in which he praised Hindu organisations involved in the blast, but asked them to make better "hindu" bombs instead of the low intensity bombs to match those made by "Islamic Terrorists" and explode them in "mini-Pakistans" in India.
It also added that to save Hindus, Hindutva organisations need to form suicide squads much on the lines of Islamic terror organisations.
According to the editorial, "Islamic terrorism" was "flourishing" in the country and to counter it, "Hindu terrorism" of the same power should be created.
It was quite natural that the provocative utterances received condemnation from a broad spectrum of political opinion - with many parties demanding prosecution of Bal Thackre - but inadvertently or deliberately so it served a dual purpose.
On the one hand it helped temporarily deflect the attention of the concerned people from the silent emergence of hindu terrorism and on the other hand it was a tacit acknowledgement of its existence and growth.
Of course looking at the danger it presents before the situation of communal harmony in our country it is high time that apart from strategising against what is known us Jihadi terrorism, we also focus our attention on terrorism which is being unleashed by the majority community namely Hindu terrorism.
It is high time that security establishment decides to make a radical rupture from the prevalent understanding vis-a-vis terrorism., polity gathers enough courage to admit its past mistakes and make a fresh beginning and the civil society at large breaks itself free from its community specific prejudices, then only it would be possible to rein in the scourge of of terrorism.
Perhaps few words of advice from a senior journalist like Prem Shankar Jha would be opportune at this moment.
In a writeup for Outlook (May 26, 2008) immediately after the Jaipur blasts he said : ..An effective anti-terrorist strategy requires us to look even more deeply into ourselves.
The police and security agencies only mirror the prejudices of the majority community and these have become more pronounced in the past two decades.
Why has no one in office ever formally expressed regret for the terrible pogroms that have scarred the face of our society-from the '93 Mumbai killings to the '02 Gujarat massacres.
Why are Indian courts suddenly handing out death penalties by the dozen, with a predisposition to singling out minorities? Indeed, so great has been the bias and so quixotic the rulings that it has provoked Amnesty International into making a scathing criticism of the Indian judiciary.
India's war against terror has just begun.
But security forces cannot fight on their own.
If our political leaders and the public don't do their part, we will find ourselves losing.
A balanced approach would enable us to look at facts with an open mind and would also help us look at minor details or minor clues to reach the perpetrators of such acts.
Is not it a disturbing thing that while India is witnessing terrorist actions in different parts of the country but most of the cases the security people have not been able to make any headway in the investigations.
Forget cathching the real perpetrators of such acts they are being blamed for the manner in which they have targetted specific community en masse.
There have been countless stories of violations of human rights of very many people documented by different people/formations.
Take the case of Jaipur blasts, One still remembers the story of one Vijay who was immediately spotted after the Jaipur blasts, who told the police the name of his other (lady) accomplice, who were supposedly responsible for the blasts.
Nobody has heard about Vijay after that incident.
Take the case of Malegaon blast.
A few victims told the police that a body with a fake beard was recovered from among the dead bodies.
Looking at the fact that in Nanded bomb blasts the issue of fake beard had been raised prominently, the security agencies could have finetuned direction of their investigation, but they persisted in the old manner only.
And they did not bother to question the hospital people when they flatly denied that any such body was recovered.
It has been around one and half month that the tragic Jaipur blast took place but police does not seem have become any more wiser.According to Times of India ( 27 th June 2008) "..But as days have passed, suspect sketches, clues and leads once touted as vital have proved worthless and loudly proclaimed theories proved thin.
Rajasthan police went on a manhunt in the city's shanties where Bangladeshi immigrants are holed up.
They came back empty handed.
" It also adds "Investigators are not ready to name HuJI as a definite suspect any more and only say its role and that of some Pakistan based terror outfits have not been ruled out." Similar is the case of other bomb explosions.
The Hyderabad Mecca Masjid blast is being probed by CBI.
It is almost a year now and nothing concrete has emerged.
Would it be proper to assume that the police or the security establishment have finally decided that after any such incident they would keep moving in circles, leave the issue unresolved and would move to a new issue/incident.
As already stated, perhaps the need of the hour is get out of the stereotyped understanding vis-a-vis terrorism.
Perhaps it is necessary that we transcend the habit of stigmatising or criminalising a particular community for all ills of the society.
Perhaps it is necessary to ask those questions which were never asked earlier.
It has been quite some time that many Urdu papers have been raising a point about such terrorist acts which merits consideration.
It talks of involvement of Israeli-US agents in all such incidents.
Looking at the proximity of the Hindutva lobby with Israel, it is also being said that secret Hindu terror organisations are receiving training in Israel.
Apparently these Hindu organisations are sending groups of cadres to Israel for agriculture training.
But under the cover of this alibi the Israeli special forces are training the Hindutva cadres on bomb handling and fabrication techniques.
The correspondence between a terrorist action and its likely beneficiaries need also be matched.
One thing is sure that the more such terrorist actions take place in India, it would further increase communal polarisation ( although it is to the credit of the composite heritage of the country that there have been no communal flareups in any part of the country after such acts, despite provocations from the majoritarian elements) and would help keep India in US ambit.
US which has made a mess of itself in mid-east wants to build the US-Israel-India axis to maintain regional hegemony.
It frowns upon any regional cooperation of India with its neighbouring countries especially from the mid-east.
It is not for nothing that it has consistently opposed Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline.
Many commentators have written that Jaipur blasts definitely benefitted BJP in Karnatak elections.
Can it then be said that some stray Hindu terrorist group at its own level executed the plan so that another member of the Hindutva family reaps its benefits.
VI Any peace and justice loving person would admit that the question of (non-state) terrorism needs to be revisited urgently.
While our concern about the growing network of Jihadi terrorism is welcome and we should not slacken our struggle against its criminal, anti-people activities/ manifestations, it should be conceded that our approach towards the whole question of terrorism has remained imbalanced or at best partial.
One can cite incidents after incidents where the involvement of RSS, Shiv Sena or one of their affiliated organisations can be clearly demonstrated in acts which are considered 'terrorists actions' in todays parlance.
It is a different matter that 'Islamic Terrorists' or 'Maoists' seem to be the usual whipping boys for the media or the intelligence people.
Look at the mental image of terrorism which exists in the minds of the people.
Would it be possible to ask ourselves then what could be said to be the first act of terrorism in independent India ? Everybody would agree that killing of Mahatma Gandhi by a Hindu fanatic Nathuram Godse constitutes the first terrorist act in independent India.
Godse, a Maharashtrian Brahmin, was associated with Hindu Mahasabha at the time of Mahatma's assasination and had his initial forays in the world of politics with the RSS.
The world at large knows how the Hindu fanatics had planned the murder of the Mahatma and how the likes of Savarkar and Golwalkar were held responsible for creating the ambience of hate which culminated in the gruesome act.
If somebody poses before you another simple query relating to similar episodes in the sixty plus year trajectory of independent India - then what would be your response.
Perhaps you would like to add the death of Indira Gandhi - killed by her Sikh bodyguards , killing of Rajeev Gandhi - who fell to a suicide attack by a Tamil Hindu woman, or for that matter demolition of the 500 year old Babri mosque by the marauders of the RSS-VHP-BJP-Shiv Sena.
If one follows the debate further you would like to underline the 1984 riots ( actually genocide of Sikhs mainly perpetrated by Hindu lumpen elements instigated by the then ruling Congress Party), emergence of Khalistani terrorists movement or the five year old Gujarat genocide executed with military precision by the RSS and its affiliated organisations.
Compare all these major episodes in the history of Independent india - which encompassed many a terrorist acts within them - with the mental image which conjures up in your mind when one listens to any terrorist act in any part of the country.
Does it have any resembelance with the image of a member of the majority community or one of those minority communities ? You would agree that the mental image has features specific to one of the religious minorities in our country.
Question naturally arises why is it that despite their participation in many a gruesome incidents, the role played by them in instigating riots ( as noted by many a commissions of enquiry) or there admission before camera about the planning which went in making a genocide happen (courtesy Tehelka sting operation) the Hindu fanatic who doubles up as a terrorist has not become a part of our social common sense.
(To reemphasise one needs to underline that one is not being soft towards the likes of Lashkar-e-Toiba or Jaish-e-Mohammad, their activities are definitely condemnable but how is that every terrorist act in any part of the country is attributed to them and equally dangerours other outfits belonging to the majority community are allowed to go scotfree.) Perhaps there is no simple answer to this query.
One will have to delve deep into our past, take a dispassionate look at the anti-colonial struggle and also the tragic phase of partition riots.
Simultaneously we will have to discern the threads of our present, understand for ourselves the role of different actors as well as the role of ideologies to reach any tentative understanding.
It is for everyone to see that in a multireligious, multilingual country like ours the complexities of the situation are itself immense.
We find ourselves in a situation where while 'communalism' of the majority community could be construed as 'nationalism', every assertion by the minority community on genuine demands tends to be seen with a 'communal' colour.
And it follows from this that 'terrorism' unleashed by the majoritarians is easily disguised under the bursting of 'pent up anger' against the minorities.
Of course despite tremendous odds on our way to reach the kernel of truth, we should not feel disheartened in our journey.
It is true that forces of hate and exclusion appear more organised today, but we should not forget the fact that there have been n number of occasions when despite provocations the masses did not get carried away with their agenda.
We have on our side the glorious composite heritage of our country - which needs to be replenished - and the many silver linings in the otherwise bleak scenario.
(Concluded) Contact : subhash.gatade@gmail.com
