A Saffron Terror Network Surfaces

WAKE-UP CALL FOR INDIA

by Praful Bidwai

With the arrest of "Sadhvi" Pragya Thakur, Sameer Kulkarni and former
Major Ramesh Upadhye for the bomb blasts of this past September in
Malegaon in Maharashtra and Modasa in Gujarat, the police seem to
have unearthed what has all the makings of an organised, well-
ramified Hindutva terrorist network. The network may have been
involved in numerous other recent bombings outside mosques, whose
victims were primarily Muslims. The police are now questioning a
serving army officer too for his links with the network?the first
such instance ever.

The surfacing of the network marks a turning point. Not only does it
show that the sangh parivar will stoop to the meanest level of
criminality by targeting innocent civilians to advance its communal
agenda. It disproves the widely held assumption that terrorism in
India is solely the work of Muslims driven by jehadi extremism and
bigotry. Fanatical Hindus, inspired by intense hatred of secularism
and pluralism, and by ethno-nationalist politics, are equally capable
of and implicated in terrorist activities.

Clearly, the entire sangh parivar, in particular the Bharatiya Janata
Party leadership, has much to answer for. Its Hindutva-based campaign
of intolerance, hatred and Islamophobia since the mid-1980s has
contributed greatly to bringing India to this present pass. In the
light of this development, the Indian state too must radically revise
its understanding of terrorism.

Police from three different states are investigating the suspects,
their contacts and activities. Apparently, they have weighty evidence
of the network?s role in executing terrorist bombings not just in
Malegaon, both this year and in September 2006, but also elsewhere,
in particular in Maharashtra?s Marathwada region near which Malegaon
is situated. In all these cases, the targets were mosques, and the
victims mainly or wholly Muslims visiting them for prayers.

Given the suspects? strong connections with various sangh parivar
organisations including the BJP, and the sensitive nature of the
case, it?s extremely improbable that the police would have acted
without abundant caution and a good deal of unimpeachable evidence.
According to highly placed sources, the police and Central agencies
also looking into the network?s role in other terrorist attacks, such
as the May 2007 Mecca masjid bombings in Hyderabad, the October 2007
Ajmer blasts, and possibly, the February 2007 Samjhauta Express
bombings.

The suspects under interrogation are inspired by the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh?s toxic ideology. They have all been members of the
BJP or of well-known sangh parivar organisations such as the Vishwa
Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal, Durga Vahini and Akhil Bharatiya
Vidyarthi Parishad, fired by anti-Muslim hatred. However, even more
interesting is the role of less-known groups like the "Sadhvi?s"
Rashtriya Jagaran Manch, Kulkarni?s Abhinav Bharat, and the Bhonsala
Military School at Nashik and Nagpur, where Upadhye has been an
instructor.

The genealogy of these groups is highly instructive. Abhinav Bharat
was recently created by RSS hardliners who wanted "real action"
against Muslims. Its agenda was to resuscitate an organisation with
an identical name, set up in 1904 by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar to
fight British rule by violent means, including individual
assassination. Savarkar, it hardly needs recalling, was the original
ideologue of Hindutva, and coined that term for the title of a book
published in 1923, which first espoused the Hindu Rashtra idea.

The Bhonsala Military School (BMS) was started in 1937 by the Central
Hindu Military Education Society at Nashik, itself set up by
Balkrishna Shivramji Moonje. Moonje, an important Hindutva figure in
Central Indian politics and one-time president of the Hindu
Mahasabha, was a major influence on RSS founder KB Hedgewar and well
to his Right.

Moonje was given the title "Dharamaveer" by his followers, and was a
firm admirer of contemporary European fascism. He personally met
Mussolini in Rome in 1931. The school?s stated aim is "to inculcate
military virtues in the Bhartiya Youth". Clearly, there?s only a thin
line of demarcation between "military virtue" and rabid, militant
Hindutva.

These organisations? involvement in terrorist activities was first
discovered in 2006 when the Maharashtra police?s Anti-Terrorism Squad
investigated an accidental bomb explosion on April 6 in the home of
RSS member LG Rajkondwar in Nanded, in Marathwada. Two Bajrang Dal
activists, Naresh Rajkondwar and Himanshu Panse, were killed in the
incident while attempting to fabricate a bomb along with fellow-
extremists.

The ATS chargesheet filed in August 2006 established the existence of
a Bajrang Dal-centred network, which was responsible for a series of
terrorist bombings?beginning with blasts in November 2003 at a mosque
in Parbhani in Marathwada, and including explosions in August 2004 at
two mosques at Jalna and Purna, also in the same region. The bomb
which went off accidentally at Nanded was reportedly meant to be used
at a mosque in Aurangabad. The parivar extremists, said the ATS, were
trained in bomb-making near Pune, Goa and at the Bhonsala Military
School, where an RSS camp coached more than 100 participants in the
martial arts and in using firearms.

According to the ATS, the Nanded bomb-making operation was part of a
larger criminal conspiracy to target Muslims and create the
impression that Muslim extremists would not hesitate to kill other
Muslims. The motive was to sow disaffection, widen the communal
divide and help the Hindutva forces to blame Muslims for all acts of
terrorism, including diabolical ones directed at Muslims themselves.

The involvement of parivar activists in other bomb-fabrication
operations, revealed through recent accidental explosions in Tenkasi
in Tamil Nadu, Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh and again in Nanded in
February 2007, reinforces the same conclusion. Evidently, the parivar
has been part of a devilishly devious criminal conspiracy, aimed at
discrediting Muslims and diverting attention from its own nefarious
activities.

As this Column noted in October 2006, the September 2006 bombings in
Malegaon outside a crowded mosque after the Friday prayers were part
of this pattern. Ironically, the police arrested Muslims alone for
the blasts?although the victims were all Muslims observing Shab-e-
Barat, or remembrance of the dead, in an adjoining graveyard. The
bicycles on which the bombs were placed bore Hindu names and symbols.

The local police not only ignored material evidence and vital clues
concerning the Malegaon blasts. They tried to cover up Bajrang Dal-
VHP involvement in the earlier Nanded operation by planting fire-
crackers in the house?to suggest that the explosion wasn?t caused by
bombs. They also ignored the fact that the conspirators had planted
false beards to suggest that the bomb-makers were Muslims. They
played down the recovery of a second bomb in the house.

The police alleged that the explosive used in Malegaon was RDX? this
"proved" the terrorists? link to Pakistani agencies. However, the
Union Home Secretary, no less, contradicted the police claim about
RDX. As did two forensic laboratories.

After Nanded April 6 explosion, civil society groups?including
Secular Citizens? Forum and People?s Union of Civil Liberties, Nagpur?
produced a scathing critique of the police version with photographic
evidence to expose the Bajrang Dal?s bomb-fabrication operation. They
specifically warned of an imminent attack by Hindutva militants, but
were ignored.

The Nanded case was soon transferred from the ATS to the CBI, which
indulged in some sordid manipulation. Anti-communal activist Teesta
Setalvad procured the CBI?s chargesheet through an RTI application.
This shows that the CBI greatly diluted terrorism-related charges and
presented the Nanded explosion as an isolated incident unconnected
with the sangh parivar or a larger conspiracy. It soon dropped the
investigation altogether, pleading its "inability".

It is imperative that the state police, and the concerned Central
agencies, get to the bottom of the saffron terror operation and
investigate it impartially and with thorough professionalism. The
time has come to name names and prosecute 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 broken down in the present
case.

There are just too many connections between the BJP, the Bajrang Dal,
the VHP and other parivar outfits involved in the conspiracy for the
denial to stand. And these aren?t limited to photographs showing a
cosy relationship between BJP president Rajnath Singh, Madhya Pradesh
Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan, and "Sadhvi" Thakur. Thakur is
a former ABVP-Durga Vahini leader. She campaigned for the BJP in the
Assembly elections in Gujarat. Besides, bodies like the Bhonsala
School and Abhinav Bharat are implicated, as are BJP-RSS members.

Even more contemptible is the argument that "Hindutva terrorism" is a
contradiction in terms because Hinduism is a tolerant faith. It is
indeed tolerant, but Hindutva is the very opposite?an ideology of
divisiveness and extreme intolerance of diversity, pluralism and
secularism.

The Centre must pursue the Malegaon case seriously and urgently act
to ban the Bajrang Dal and the RSS, and to prosecute BJP members
connected with these organisations. Nothing less can reaffirm the
secular spirit of this society and the Indian Constitution at a time
when the minorities? alienation has peaked after the Batla House
episode.