Ayodhya Verdict 2010: Whither Indian Constitution!
Ram Puniyani
The verdict given by Lucknow bench of Allahabad high court (Sept 2010) has been a landmark of sorts. On one hand it is culmination of the process of demolition of Babri Masjid, now that illegal act of demolition has got a legal sanction. On the other this judgment is the one based on every other consideration than the legal one. It has no rooting in the values of Indian Constitution, no guidance from the directive principles of the Constitution and no grounding in the law of the land.
Despite this glaring fact a large section of the popular opinion went on to keep quiet about it, or criticize it in a muted way. The atmosphere has been created that it is a balanced judgment pleasing all; it has been the best option in the present circumstances etc. We do need to recall that there was heaviness in the atmosphere before the judgment. The Hindus were apprehensive that if by chance there is violence and they or their near and dear ones are caught in the melee, it will be a disaster. Muslim minority on the other hand feared the destruction of their properties or loss of their lives in case the violence breaks out. Fortunately those who orchestrate the violence, as shown by the inquiry committee reports time and over again, chose not to unleash ‘celebratory violence’, as they had done in the aftermath of Babri demolition on 6th December 1992. This time while probably the RSS combine and communalized sections of society felt more jubilant then before, still they had restrained themselves from creating a situation where the violence takes place.
Muslims on surface felt a bit relieved that they do not have to suffer another cycle of violence and its aftermath. But they also felt let down by the court. They did feel that this judgment is a symptom of Hindu Rashtra in the offing. While there is a spectrum of opinion amongst Muslim community, now there is a feeling that even the law cannot protect their just rights. Deep frustration, anger and dejection are the response from large section of the Muslims who dared to speak. The atmosphere created by communal propaganda has pushed them to the wall and ‘we should move on’ is the thinking of a section of Muslim community. The unevenness, the contrasting situations of ‘two sides’ of the dispute is very obvious, one side which is dominant got more than it could dream of and the other side feels betrayed once again..
While RSS combine is joyous that a path has been paved for the national sentiment of Bhavya (grand) Ram Temple, and has asked Muslims to contribute in the ‘national’ agenda. One knows that we are dealing with the contrasting notions of nationalism. The Nationalism RSS is talking is the anti thesis of secular democratic nation, the aspiration of freedom movement, the nation enshrined in the Indian Constitution. What else can one expect from this political outfit, RSS, which aims to transform our democratic polity into a Hindu nation, with all past political-social ideologies presented in newer language? RSS combine is already feeling that their agenda has gone one step up, as the illegal act of installation in 1949 and the criminal act of Babri demolition has been legitimized and has also ‘quietly’ become part of social common sense.
The reaction of Congress has been very pathetic. One knows that so far in the communal violence which has stalked the streets it has kept quiet, and many a times a section of its Chief Ministers and other top leaders have presided over the carnage. When communalists have been on their ’job’ of massacring and maiming the innocent populace, the Congress has been looking the other way around. Congress reaction has been no different in the aftermath of this judgment. Congress is happy that ‘peace’ is prevailing; it is immaterial for them that this is not the peace of harmony but the peace based on injustice. In their electoral calculations to speak as per the Constitutional values and adherence to law has been dispensed with long ago. Sticking to principles does not suit Congress opportunistic communalism. There are still some voices of protest and introspection which are deeply disturbed by this judgment. This section does feel that the judgment is a big jolt to the values of pluralism, democratic law and all that the idea for which India stands.
The bureaucracy and the other arms of state apparatus are satisfied as what matters for them is the apparent calm. The preservation of the law of the land is not their deeper concern. As such a large part of this machine called Indian state has been heavily coated with the paint of divisive ideology and it has imbibed the propaganda of the Hindutva, masquerading itself as the representative of all Hindus. In the steel frame of Indian state a section swears by Hindu nation openly and still larger section is the quiet accomplice in the process of erosion of democratic norms due to multiple factors. These factors are the ceaseless communal propaganda, adverse effects of globalization and the accompanying cultural changes. So the question is, in this situation who is the guardian of Indian Constitution? If the political leadership is happy with the apparent clam and unconcerned about justice, the future of values of Indian Constitution and principles of justice seem to be threatened as never before.
The judgment and the reaction to it is a matter of serious and severe concern for all those who want to adhere to Indian Constitution and abhor the concept of Hindu nation. It is the communal common sense which is dominating the day. The legitimacy being conferred on bypassing of legal foundations of India is a matter of much more serious concern then the previous assaults on the Indian Republic, the murder of the Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi, the anti Sikh pogrom, the Babri demolition, the burning of Pastor Graham Stains, the Gujarat pogrom, and the Kandhamal violence. One sees barring in the anti Sikh program, the common link in all these attacks on the idea of secular democratic India, is the ideology of Hindu nation, the political agenda of RSS. In this phenomenon, assault on Indian Constitution by RSS combine, the Congress plays an opportunist role of an accomplice, letting the things take place. In that sense it plays a supporting role in the violation of all whatever the founding fathers of Indian nation stood for. One is reminded of an analogy from the world of cricket. In this analogy Indian Constitutional values are batsmen, RSS-Hindutva politics is the bowler, Congress the fielder, communalized social common sense is the Umpire raising his finger at every appeal by the bowler and the section of state apparatus is the one deliberately overlooking the mischief of those preparing the pitch suitable for this bowler.
It is also reminiscent of the Nazi Germany where the demonization of Jews, Communist, Trade unionists, the erosion of popular culture and its impact on all the wings of state got seeped by the fascist values, values of suppression of minorities and other weaker sections of society. One knows the painful fact that every episode of violence takes the communal politics one notch up. The disturbing point is not just that the judgment has by passed the law of the land, but also that this has got such a welcome reception from all those powers which matter.
The progressive forces and secular movement has a lot of thinking to do. If secularism is being attacked by RSS combine, if secularism is not being honestly protected by the party in power, Indian National Congress, then what is to be done to protect it? How will idea of India, Indian Constitution be saved and by whom? The progressive liberal and democratic forces have to wake up that. It is a ‘do or die’ situation for Indian democracy. The prevalent social common sense, the erosion of democratic norms, the bypassing of Indian law by the Courts, is a matter of serious concern.
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October 30, 2010
October 28, 2010
RSS’ threat to agitate betrays its scorn for law (Mail Today Comment)
Editorial, Mail Today, 28 October 2010
RSS’ threat to agitate betrays its scorn for law
THE Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) threat of undertaking ‘ mass action’ across the country against the investigation of some of its cadre in terror attacks is a blatant attempt to subvert the due legal process.
The claims of the organisation’s chief executive Suresh Joshi that “ the RSS is a Constitution- abiding organisation, with full faith in the process of law,” rings hollow. If the RSS does have any respect for the law, it should defend its tainted personnel in the court, rather than threaten to take to the streets.
The RSS’ combativeness seems to be more a product of the panic and desperation in the organisation with elements of its top brass under the scanner for their involvement in the Ajmer, Mecca Masjid, Malegaon and Samjhauta Express blasts.
Less than six months back, when the Rajasthan Anti- Terror Squad had arrested a RSS vibhag pracharak Devendra Gupta, the organisation had promised to extend cooperation in the investigation sans any allegations of the case being politically driven. It is only when the terror footprints led to top leader Indresh Kumar that it has begun to cry foul.
For long the RSS has been using patriotism to hide its violent and fascist character. The involvement of its activists in carrying out terror attacks on Indian citizens strips the organisation of its nationalist garb, making it no different from ‘ jihadi’ terror outfits. Deprived of its nationalist credentials, the RSS seems to be trying its best to deflect attention by using the ‘ Hindu card’ as was evident in Mohanrao Bhagwat’s statement on Vijay Dashmi that “ Hinduism and terror are oxymoronic”. Rather than use Hinduism as a fig leaf and threaten mass agitations, the RSS should suspend its tainted personnel pending inquiry and cooperate with the investigative agencies.
RSS’ threat to agitate betrays its scorn for law
THE Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) threat of undertaking ‘ mass action’ across the country against the investigation of some of its cadre in terror attacks is a blatant attempt to subvert the due legal process.
The claims of the organisation’s chief executive Suresh Joshi that “ the RSS is a Constitution- abiding organisation, with full faith in the process of law,” rings hollow. If the RSS does have any respect for the law, it should defend its tainted personnel in the court, rather than threaten to take to the streets.
The RSS’ combativeness seems to be more a product of the panic and desperation in the organisation with elements of its top brass under the scanner for their involvement in the Ajmer, Mecca Masjid, Malegaon and Samjhauta Express blasts.
Less than six months back, when the Rajasthan Anti- Terror Squad had arrested a RSS vibhag pracharak Devendra Gupta, the organisation had promised to extend cooperation in the investigation sans any allegations of the case being politically driven. It is only when the terror footprints led to top leader Indresh Kumar that it has begun to cry foul.
For long the RSS has been using patriotism to hide its violent and fascist character. The involvement of its activists in carrying out terror attacks on Indian citizens strips the organisation of its nationalist garb, making it no different from ‘ jihadi’ terror outfits. Deprived of its nationalist credentials, the RSS seems to be trying its best to deflect attention by using the ‘ Hindu card’ as was evident in Mohanrao Bhagwat’s statement on Vijay Dashmi that “ Hinduism and terror are oxymoronic”. Rather than use Hinduism as a fig leaf and threaten mass agitations, the RSS should suspend its tainted personnel pending inquiry and cooperate with the investigative agencies.
On The Allahabad High Court Verdict [by Prabhat Patnaik]
(Peoples Democracy, Oct 10, 2010)
On The Allahabad High Court Verdict
by Prabhat Patnaik
There are three obvious problems with the Allahabad High Court judgement on the Babri Masjid issue. Each of them in isolation is potentially damaging for the constitutional fabric of the country; together they can cause irreparable harm. The first is the obliteration of the distinction between "fact" and "faith", which represents a serious retrogression to pre-modernity. In medieval times, witches were burned because people believed that they engaged in evil deeds. A premise of modernity is that this and other such "beliefs" cannot be accepted as "facts", that there has to be independent and credible evidence on the basis of which alone a "fact" can be established. Hence the verdict of the Lucknow bench that Ram was born at the very spot which was the sanctum sanctorum of the Babri Masjid, because "people" believed this to be the case, is as mystifying as it is retrograde. There are, to start with, the obvious, but weighty, questions of who these "people" are, how many such "people" must be there to qualify being called "the people", and what evidence the Lucknow bench had, even regarding the views of the "people", other than what it might have gathered as a result of the activities, claims and mobilisations of a few Hindu organisations which professed to speak in the name of the "people". To take the word of organisations that claim to speak in the name of the "people" as the voice of the "people" is dangerous enough. But to take the "beliefs" of the "people", even assuming these are indeed the well-established "beliefs" of a very large number of people, as synonymous with "facts" strikes at the very root of rationality that must underlie a modern society.
A large number of "people", far more than those believing that Ram's actual birthplace was below the central dome of the Babri Masjid, used to believe till recently (and many perhaps do even now) that being touched by a dalit or sharing food with a dalit brings great misfortune; but to take this belief as a fact and to justify the practice of untouchability on the basis of it defies reason. For a court of law, no less, to wipe off the distinction between "belief" and "fact" therefore sets a dangerous precedent. The BJP had been demanding precisely this, namely that whether Ram was actually born there or not as a matter of "fact" is irrelevant; since "people" believe that he was born there, that alone is adequate ground for building a temple there on the ruins of a mosque. The verdict has implicitly accepted the BJP's patently irrational and communal-fascist argument. The fact that the court has taken such a position is hardly surprising, given the fact that one of the judges gives expression to his own "faith" by claiming that "He (ie, Lord Ram) is everywhere" and treats it as a "fact". What justice Sharma may hold as his private belief is his own business. His choosing to parade his own religious belief in a judgement that should be based on "facts" shows the dangerous extent to which even the senior judiciary in our country has become unmindful of constitutional demands. The second disturbing aspect of the judgement is the obliteration of the distinction between "negotiation" and adjudication. The outcome of negotiations always depends upon the relative strengths of the protagonists. Hence in any situation of conflict, especially of the "either-or" sort, where the relatively stronger protagonist is absolutely intransigent over its claim, negotiations necessarily work to the detriment of the relatively weaker protagonist. In the present context, where the Hindu organisations were intransigent, any process of settlement through negotiations would necessarily have worked against the organisations belonging to the minority community. Since the latter considered this unfair, it went to the court of law. The basic reason for of its going to the court therefore, or even for the matter being referred to the court, is that the outcome arrived at on the basis of relative strengths is not universally accepted as "fair". The court is supposed to be fair because it does not settle issues on the basis of relative strengths but entirely on the basis of evidence, facts and legal provisions. The picture of justice, depicted as a maiden, typically has her eyes covered for this very reason, namely that justice is blind to the relative strengths, positions, powers, and pulls of the protagonists. The rationale of adjudication lies in the fact that its outcome is decided on principles entirely different from those underlying negotiations.
This is why the judiciary is different from societal (as opposed to State) institutions like khap panchayats. The latter are pre-modern, and hence anti-democratic, for two distinct reasons: first, the attitudes of such panchayats are pre-modern, based, as mentioned earlier, on "faith", "beliefs", "customs" and practices rather than "facts"; second, the decisions of these societal organisations necessarily and directly reflect the relative strengths of the protagonists and the power relations existing among them. The "beliefs" and power relations no doubt are themselves correlated, but they are not identical. The judiciary, by contrast, being a part of the State, and hence based on a constitution that guarantees equality before law for everyone, is supposed to function with its eyes closed, uninfluenced by the relative strengths of the protagonists. True, in a class society, this is never the case; but that is because a class society constitutes in essence a betrayal of a democratic constitution. The fact of relative strengths and power relations affecting the process of adjudication, even within the framework of a democratic constitution that guarantees juridical equality, is a de facto rather than a de jure outcome of a class society. But when the outcome of adjudication itself becomes de jure dependent upon the relative strengths of the protagonists, then that represents a dangerous trend, a retrogression from modernity and democracy. And this is exactly what the judgement has done: it has based itself not on "facts" and law but on considerations of what might be acceptable. Since what might be acceptable depends upon the relative strengths of the protagonists, adjudication in this case has ceased to remain adjudication; it has got influenced by the relative strengths of the protagonists.
It is not surprising that after the verdict the BJP is talking about rapprochement, about peaceful settlement, about negotiated solutions. This is because its "reservation outcome", ie, the "worst case scenario" possible from its point of view, as expressed by the Allahabad High Court verdict, is already favourable enough for it; it can only improve upon its position, by buying up the one-third share that the High Court has given to the Waqf Board, and hence getting exclusive rights over the entire disputed land. The third problem with the judgement is that it has accepted the demolition of the Babri Masjid, an act that was a direct violation of the law of the land, as a fait accompli; and by remaining silent on this fait accompli while giving a verdict that echoes in essence what those who undertook the demolition were claiming, it has implicitly rationalised post facto that horrendous and unlawful act of demolition. L K Advani has quickly seized upon the opportunity to claim that his "Rath Yatra" has been validated post facto. And since the slogan "Mandir Wahin Banayenge" has now been given a legal clearance, even while the demolition of the mosque that prepared the ground for the implementation of this slogan has gone un-condemned, the BJP and other Hindu outfits feel vindicated and absolved of any blame for their misdeeds.
True, this court was not supposed to pronounce any verdict on the demolition; it was concerned with a property dispute. But, the obvious question arises: would it have given the land under the central dome of the Babri Masjid to "the Hindus" if the mosque was still standing? If it had done so, then it would have had to implicitly condone an act of demolition since the Hindu outfits then would have been legally entitled to do what they wish, with the land over which they had been given legal rights. And if it had not done so, then it means that the demolition has affected their verdict, ie, that the legal outcome of a property dispute has been affected by an act of illegal demolition: the Hindu outfits have benefited from their illegal action of demolishing a five hundred year old mosque. The fact that the High Court verdict has been taken in a calm manner by the people of the country is a matter of great gratification. It is symptomatic of the maturity of the people and also of the fact that communal issues are being pushed into the background as more basic issues of material life are becoming the focus of the people's attention. This is a very welcome development, and in this context many have welcomed the Allahabad High Court judgement as putting an end to the long-standing controversy, so that the country can move on. Many therefore feel that keeping the issue alive by going to the Supreme Court should be avoided; and because of this they are also unhappy with criticisms of the High Court judgement.
Source URL: http://pd.cpim.org/2010/1010_pd/10102010_5.html
On The Allahabad High Court Verdict
by Prabhat Patnaik
There are three obvious problems with the Allahabad High Court judgement on the Babri Masjid issue. Each of them in isolation is potentially damaging for the constitutional fabric of the country; together they can cause irreparable harm. The first is the obliteration of the distinction between "fact" and "faith", which represents a serious retrogression to pre-modernity. In medieval times, witches were burned because people believed that they engaged in evil deeds. A premise of modernity is that this and other such "beliefs" cannot be accepted as "facts", that there has to be independent and credible evidence on the basis of which alone a "fact" can be established. Hence the verdict of the Lucknow bench that Ram was born at the very spot which was the sanctum sanctorum of the Babri Masjid, because "people" believed this to be the case, is as mystifying as it is retrograde. There are, to start with, the obvious, but weighty, questions of who these "people" are, how many such "people" must be there to qualify being called "the people", and what evidence the Lucknow bench had, even regarding the views of the "people", other than what it might have gathered as a result of the activities, claims and mobilisations of a few Hindu organisations which professed to speak in the name of the "people". To take the word of organisations that claim to speak in the name of the "people" as the voice of the "people" is dangerous enough. But to take the "beliefs" of the "people", even assuming these are indeed the well-established "beliefs" of a very large number of people, as synonymous with "facts" strikes at the very root of rationality that must underlie a modern society.
A large number of "people", far more than those believing that Ram's actual birthplace was below the central dome of the Babri Masjid, used to believe till recently (and many perhaps do even now) that being touched by a dalit or sharing food with a dalit brings great misfortune; but to take this belief as a fact and to justify the practice of untouchability on the basis of it defies reason. For a court of law, no less, to wipe off the distinction between "belief" and "fact" therefore sets a dangerous precedent. The BJP had been demanding precisely this, namely that whether Ram was actually born there or not as a matter of "fact" is irrelevant; since "people" believe that he was born there, that alone is adequate ground for building a temple there on the ruins of a mosque. The verdict has implicitly accepted the BJP's patently irrational and communal-fascist argument. The fact that the court has taken such a position is hardly surprising, given the fact that one of the judges gives expression to his own "faith" by claiming that "He (ie, Lord Ram) is everywhere" and treats it as a "fact". What justice Sharma may hold as his private belief is his own business. His choosing to parade his own religious belief in a judgement that should be based on "facts" shows the dangerous extent to which even the senior judiciary in our country has become unmindful of constitutional demands. The second disturbing aspect of the judgement is the obliteration of the distinction between "negotiation" and adjudication. The outcome of negotiations always depends upon the relative strengths of the protagonists. Hence in any situation of conflict, especially of the "either-or" sort, where the relatively stronger protagonist is absolutely intransigent over its claim, negotiations necessarily work to the detriment of the relatively weaker protagonist. In the present context, where the Hindu organisations were intransigent, any process of settlement through negotiations would necessarily have worked against the organisations belonging to the minority community. Since the latter considered this unfair, it went to the court of law. The basic reason for of its going to the court therefore, or even for the matter being referred to the court, is that the outcome arrived at on the basis of relative strengths is not universally accepted as "fair". The court is supposed to be fair because it does not settle issues on the basis of relative strengths but entirely on the basis of evidence, facts and legal provisions. The picture of justice, depicted as a maiden, typically has her eyes covered for this very reason, namely that justice is blind to the relative strengths, positions, powers, and pulls of the protagonists. The rationale of adjudication lies in the fact that its outcome is decided on principles entirely different from those underlying negotiations.
This is why the judiciary is different from societal (as opposed to State) institutions like khap panchayats. The latter are pre-modern, and hence anti-democratic, for two distinct reasons: first, the attitudes of such panchayats are pre-modern, based, as mentioned earlier, on "faith", "beliefs", "customs" and practices rather than "facts"; second, the decisions of these societal organisations necessarily and directly reflect the relative strengths of the protagonists and the power relations existing among them. The "beliefs" and power relations no doubt are themselves correlated, but they are not identical. The judiciary, by contrast, being a part of the State, and hence based on a constitution that guarantees equality before law for everyone, is supposed to function with its eyes closed, uninfluenced by the relative strengths of the protagonists. True, in a class society, this is never the case; but that is because a class society constitutes in essence a betrayal of a democratic constitution. The fact of relative strengths and power relations affecting the process of adjudication, even within the framework of a democratic constitution that guarantees juridical equality, is a de facto rather than a de jure outcome of a class society. But when the outcome of adjudication itself becomes de jure dependent upon the relative strengths of the protagonists, then that represents a dangerous trend, a retrogression from modernity and democracy. And this is exactly what the judgement has done: it has based itself not on "facts" and law but on considerations of what might be acceptable. Since what might be acceptable depends upon the relative strengths of the protagonists, adjudication in this case has ceased to remain adjudication; it has got influenced by the relative strengths of the protagonists.
It is not surprising that after the verdict the BJP is talking about rapprochement, about peaceful settlement, about negotiated solutions. This is because its "reservation outcome", ie, the "worst case scenario" possible from its point of view, as expressed by the Allahabad High Court verdict, is already favourable enough for it; it can only improve upon its position, by buying up the one-third share that the High Court has given to the Waqf Board, and hence getting exclusive rights over the entire disputed land. The third problem with the judgement is that it has accepted the demolition of the Babri Masjid, an act that was a direct violation of the law of the land, as a fait accompli; and by remaining silent on this fait accompli while giving a verdict that echoes in essence what those who undertook the demolition were claiming, it has implicitly rationalised post facto that horrendous and unlawful act of demolition. L K Advani has quickly seized upon the opportunity to claim that his "Rath Yatra" has been validated post facto. And since the slogan "Mandir Wahin Banayenge" has now been given a legal clearance, even while the demolition of the mosque that prepared the ground for the implementation of this slogan has gone un-condemned, the BJP and other Hindu outfits feel vindicated and absolved of any blame for their misdeeds.
True, this court was not supposed to pronounce any verdict on the demolition; it was concerned with a property dispute. But, the obvious question arises: would it have given the land under the central dome of the Babri Masjid to "the Hindus" if the mosque was still standing? If it had done so, then it would have had to implicitly condone an act of demolition since the Hindu outfits then would have been legally entitled to do what they wish, with the land over which they had been given legal rights. And if it had not done so, then it means that the demolition has affected their verdict, ie, that the legal outcome of a property dispute has been affected by an act of illegal demolition: the Hindu outfits have benefited from their illegal action of demolishing a five hundred year old mosque. The fact that the High Court verdict has been taken in a calm manner by the people of the country is a matter of great gratification. It is symptomatic of the maturity of the people and also of the fact that communal issues are being pushed into the background as more basic issues of material life are becoming the focus of the people's attention. This is a very welcome development, and in this context many have welcomed the Allahabad High Court judgement as putting an end to the long-standing controversy, so that the country can move on. Many therefore feel that keeping the issue alive by going to the Supreme Court should be avoided; and because of this they are also unhappy with criticisms of the High Court judgement.
Source URL: http://pd.cpim.org/2010/1010_pd/10102010_5.html
The Ayodhya Verdict: Fact Vs Faith - A panel discussion (New Delhi, 4 November 2010)
Dear All,
Anveshan has been planning to organise a panel discussion on the nuances of the Ayodhya verdict which has left all of us shocked, to say the least. Details of the programme are as follows:
The Ayodhya Verdict: Fact Vs Faith
A brief description: The Allahabad high Court on the Ayodhya title dispute and the events that preceded it, amount to a systematic undermining of the Indian constitution. The judgment has been delivered after casting aside both law and science. This judgment which is an endorsement of majoritarian (not majority) communalism embodied primarily but not exclusively by the RSS-BJP. It is also in line with trends that are at the heart of "mainstream" India in particular the Congress party. The Congress party's pragmatic communal stance has prevented it from adopting any explicit position on the issue which in the present circumstances amounts to an endorsement of the majoritarian communal position.
All Indian citizens who wish to defend the Indian constitution therefore have to come forward to comprehend the full implications of the judgment. On this basis a concerted response needs to be framed that will form the starting point for beating back this reactionary offensive and unleashing the democratic potential of the Indian constitution.
Speakers:
Prabhat Patnaik, JNU
Anil Nauriya, Senior Supreme Court Lawyer
Nivedita Menon, JNU
Mukul Kesavan, Jamia Milia Islamia
Date: Nov. 4, 2010
Venue: Muktdhara Conference Hall (Basement)
[Muktadhara Hall is on Bhai Bir Singh Marg near Gole market, in New Delhi]
Time: 5 p.m.
Thanks and we look forward to seeing you on the 4th. Please circulate as widely as possible.
Best Wishes
Rohit
On behalf of Anveshan
Anveshan has been planning to organise a panel discussion on the nuances of the Ayodhya verdict which has left all of us shocked, to say the least. Details of the programme are as follows:
The Ayodhya Verdict: Fact Vs Faith
A brief description: The Allahabad high Court on the Ayodhya title dispute and the events that preceded it, amount to a systematic undermining of the Indian constitution. The judgment has been delivered after casting aside both law and science. This judgment which is an endorsement of majoritarian (not majority) communalism embodied primarily but not exclusively by the RSS-BJP. It is also in line with trends that are at the heart of "mainstream" India in particular the Congress party. The Congress party's pragmatic communal stance has prevented it from adopting any explicit position on the issue which in the present circumstances amounts to an endorsement of the majoritarian communal position.
All Indian citizens who wish to defend the Indian constitution therefore have to come forward to comprehend the full implications of the judgment. On this basis a concerted response needs to be framed that will form the starting point for beating back this reactionary offensive and unleashing the democratic potential of the Indian constitution.
Speakers:
Prabhat Patnaik, JNU
Anil Nauriya, Senior Supreme Court Lawyer
Nivedita Menon, JNU
Mukul Kesavan, Jamia Milia Islamia
Date: Nov. 4, 2010
Venue: Muktdhara Conference Hall (Basement)
[Muktadhara Hall is on Bhai Bir Singh Marg near Gole market, in New Delhi]
Time: 5 p.m.
Thanks and we look forward to seeing you on the 4th. Please circulate as widely as possible.
Best Wishes
Rohit
On behalf of Anveshan
Gujarat was the hub for all the Hindutva terror attacks in Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh
Indian Express, Oct 27 2010
The Gujarat connection
by Kamaal Saiyed
While the blasts to “avenge the killings of Hindus” happened in (Ajmer) Rajasthan, (Malegaon) Maharashtra, and (Mecca Masjid) Andhra Pradesh, it is Gujarat — more specifically South Gujarat — that has emerged as a hub for the conspirators. It is from and to Gujarat that they kept flitting, while planning and plotting the conspiracy. Malegaon’s copycat blast, leading to a death near a mosque in Modasa, a North Gujarat town, had the Gujarat Police reportedly stonewalling the leads. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has since taken over the probe.
The chargesheet filed by the Rajasthan ATS in the Ajmer 2007 blast case names two people linked to Gujarat: Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, now in jail for her alleged role in the Malegaon blast, and Swami Aseemanand, now on the run. While Pragya’s family is based in Surat, it was Aseemanand who cultivated South Gujarat’s tribal region, stationing himself inThe Dangs in the 1990s to take on the Christian missionaries there.
A Bengali by birth, after a brief stint with the Ramakrishan Mission, Aseemanand entered Gujarat with a Sangh Parivar affiliate, Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram. He started work at Waghai in The Dangs, which became the hotbed of the anti-missionary movement. He was one of those who organised the Shabarikumbh Mela in 2006. It is at the mela, at Subir in The Dangs, that the key organisers, including Aseemanand, allegedly gave concrete shape to the plans to “avenge Hindu killings”, while reportedly networking with the Sangh Parivar affiliates in the state.
For Aseemanand, the location of the district was perfect for the execution of the plan: it borders Maharashtra, with a direct road link to Malegaon. It was in The Dangs that he had reportedly vowed that the “threat” from Islamic jehad and Christian conversion were the two challenges to the Hindu samaj and both need to be confronted. After Pragya’s arrest, he disappeared from the area.
The police say nobody has approached them in the case. Surat Range IG A K Singh, who is spearheading the Naxal-linked arrests in the state, particularly in South Gujarat, said, “We know that many investigating agencies are looking for Aseemanand for his involvement in the Ajmer and Malegaon blasts. He developed his base at the Shabari Mata temple in The Dangs. We have done our homework, he has not been spotted in the area for a long time. Nobody has sought our help to locate him.”
Aseemanand, fluent in Hindi, English, Gujarati, and the Dangi dialect, wooed the tribals arduously. According to sources, he is still in touch with his aides in Subir, and visited the area twice. But he no longer remains the trustee of the Shabari Sewa Samit Trust. The Trust, earlier presided over by Jayanti Kewat, a known saffron affiliate in the region, went in for a complete change a few months ago. Kewat, a resident of Navsari district, resigned, with new faces like the district’s first BJP MLA, Vijay Patel, Aseemanand’s close associate Kishor Gavit’s wife Nirmala taking up the office-bearers’ posts. Kishore had introduced Aseemanand to Vijay and other BJP leaders of the area. Now all of them plead ignorance regarding his whereabouts in South Gujarat and in Maharashtra’s Dhulia and Navapur — places he frequented. However, all of them speak of him with respect.
Said Kishor Gavit, “He came to Subir village. He is a genuine man, down to earth and polite. He addressed public meetings at different villages. It’s been a long time since I saw him in the Dangs.”
Cross over to Maharashtra, and in Navapur, a border town seven kilometres from Gujarat and 140 km from Malegaon, Aseemanand is a known name. “He was in Navapur only once, during Dussehra,” said Ganesh Wadnere, a Shiv Sena councillor of Navapur Nagar Parishad who heads the Rashtra Jagruti Seva Manch that hosted Dussehra celebrations in September 2008.
Nilam Pathak, a Navapur-based journalist, recalled that the Swami had told them how Pragya travelled “from Indore to the Shabarikumbh Mela on a motorbike, reaching in the dead of the night”. In Chitpada village in Dhulia, Maharashtra, Aseemanand was the chief speaker at the Hindu Adivasi Hit Raksha Morcha way back in May 2000.
The police, in The Dangs and Modasa, have no leads in the case, nor know of his whereabouts. In the Modasa blast case, the police have filed a summary, while the NIA has taken over material evidence for further testing in Delhi’s Forensic Science Laboratory.
The Gujarat connection
by Kamaal Saiyed
While the blasts to “avenge the killings of Hindus” happened in (Ajmer) Rajasthan, (Malegaon) Maharashtra, and (Mecca Masjid) Andhra Pradesh, it is Gujarat — more specifically South Gujarat — that has emerged as a hub for the conspirators. It is from and to Gujarat that they kept flitting, while planning and plotting the conspiracy. Malegaon’s copycat blast, leading to a death near a mosque in Modasa, a North Gujarat town, had the Gujarat Police reportedly stonewalling the leads. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has since taken over the probe.
The chargesheet filed by the Rajasthan ATS in the Ajmer 2007 blast case names two people linked to Gujarat: Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, now in jail for her alleged role in the Malegaon blast, and Swami Aseemanand, now on the run. While Pragya’s family is based in Surat, it was Aseemanand who cultivated South Gujarat’s tribal region, stationing himself inThe Dangs in the 1990s to take on the Christian missionaries there.
A Bengali by birth, after a brief stint with the Ramakrishan Mission, Aseemanand entered Gujarat with a Sangh Parivar affiliate, Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram. He started work at Waghai in The Dangs, which became the hotbed of the anti-missionary movement. He was one of those who organised the Shabarikumbh Mela in 2006. It is at the mela, at Subir in The Dangs, that the key organisers, including Aseemanand, allegedly gave concrete shape to the plans to “avenge Hindu killings”, while reportedly networking with the Sangh Parivar affiliates in the state.
For Aseemanand, the location of the district was perfect for the execution of the plan: it borders Maharashtra, with a direct road link to Malegaon. It was in The Dangs that he had reportedly vowed that the “threat” from Islamic jehad and Christian conversion were the two challenges to the Hindu samaj and both need to be confronted. After Pragya’s arrest, he disappeared from the area.
The police say nobody has approached them in the case. Surat Range IG A K Singh, who is spearheading the Naxal-linked arrests in the state, particularly in South Gujarat, said, “We know that many investigating agencies are looking for Aseemanand for his involvement in the Ajmer and Malegaon blasts. He developed his base at the Shabari Mata temple in The Dangs. We have done our homework, he has not been spotted in the area for a long time. Nobody has sought our help to locate him.”
Aseemanand, fluent in Hindi, English, Gujarati, and the Dangi dialect, wooed the tribals arduously. According to sources, he is still in touch with his aides in Subir, and visited the area twice. But he no longer remains the trustee of the Shabari Sewa Samit Trust. The Trust, earlier presided over by Jayanti Kewat, a known saffron affiliate in the region, went in for a complete change a few months ago. Kewat, a resident of Navsari district, resigned, with new faces like the district’s first BJP MLA, Vijay Patel, Aseemanand’s close associate Kishor Gavit’s wife Nirmala taking up the office-bearers’ posts. Kishore had introduced Aseemanand to Vijay and other BJP leaders of the area. Now all of them plead ignorance regarding his whereabouts in South Gujarat and in Maharashtra’s Dhulia and Navapur — places he frequented. However, all of them speak of him with respect.
Said Kishor Gavit, “He came to Subir village. He is a genuine man, down to earth and polite. He addressed public meetings at different villages. It’s been a long time since I saw him in the Dangs.”
Cross over to Maharashtra, and in Navapur, a border town seven kilometres from Gujarat and 140 km from Malegaon, Aseemanand is a known name. “He was in Navapur only once, during Dussehra,” said Ganesh Wadnere, a Shiv Sena councillor of Navapur Nagar Parishad who heads the Rashtra Jagruti Seva Manch that hosted Dussehra celebrations in September 2008.
Nilam Pathak, a Navapur-based journalist, recalled that the Swami had told them how Pragya travelled “from Indore to the Shabarikumbh Mela on a motorbike, reaching in the dead of the night”. In Chitpada village in Dhulia, Maharashtra, Aseemanand was the chief speaker at the Hindu Adivasi Hit Raksha Morcha way back in May 2000.
The police, in The Dangs and Modasa, have no leads in the case, nor know of his whereabouts. In the Modasa blast case, the police have filed a summary, while the NIA has taken over material evidence for further testing in Delhi’s Forensic Science Laboratory.
October 26, 2010
'Sedition' versus free speech: Editorial in The Hindu
Ediroial, The Hindu, October 26, 2010
It is deplorable that three sentences uttered at a seminar relating to the status of Kashmir within India should have evoked such zealous hyper-patriotic anger and resulted in demands for invoking harsh sedition laws. Writer and social activist Arundhati Roy has strong views on the strife-torn and troubled Valley, which many may disagree with, or regard as extremely contentious. But what possible justification can there be — as the Bharatiya Janata Party has outrageously demanded — for slapping a case against her under Section 124 (A) of the Indian Penal Code, for exciting “disaffection” towards or bringing “hatred or contempt” against the government? Do we lock up or threaten to silence our writers and thinkers with an archaic section of the law that carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment, merely because they speak their minds? Why is it criminal to suggest that Kashmir's status in India is not settled despite the accession? Aren't so many others in Jammu and Kashmir saying as much? Didn't Chief Minister Omar Abdullah recently remark that the State had only acceded to, and not merged with, the Indian Union? The central government would do well publicly to make a stand and deny reports that it is considering pressing sedition charges against Ms Roy and Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who addressed the same seminar. Courts too must apply their mind and refuse to entertain frivolous and vexatious petitions that make such outrageous allegations.
In his classic defence of free speech, On Liberty, John Stuart Mill laid down what is known as the ‘harm principle.' It postulates that the only justification for silencing a person against his will is to prevent him from causing harm to others. It is to this powerful libertarian mid-19th century principle that we owe the idea that free speech cannot be proscribed merely because we find it disagreeable, and that curbs may be imposed only if such expression constitutes a direct, explicit, and unequivocal incitement to violence. There is no such nexus in Ms Roy's statements on Kashmir, which are shaped around the theme of gross human rights violations and (as she points out in a statement published on the opposite page) “fundamentally a call for justice.” It is tragi-comic that there is talk of ‘sedition' at a time when it is regarded as obsolete in many countries. Courts have ruled that laws that aim to punish people for bringing a government into hatred or contempt are frighteningly broad and risk being used to suppress radical political views. In Britain, the last completed trial in a sedition case dates back to 1947. In the United States, Supreme Court rulings have rendered toothless the most recent sedition law, the Smith Act enacted in 1940. The controversy over Ms Roy's remarks is essentially much ado about nothing.
It is deplorable that three sentences uttered at a seminar relating to the status of Kashmir within India should have evoked such zealous hyper-patriotic anger and resulted in demands for invoking harsh sedition laws. Writer and social activist Arundhati Roy has strong views on the strife-torn and troubled Valley, which many may disagree with, or regard as extremely contentious. But what possible justification can there be — as the Bharatiya Janata Party has outrageously demanded — for slapping a case against her under Section 124 (A) of the Indian Penal Code, for exciting “disaffection” towards or bringing “hatred or contempt” against the government? Do we lock up or threaten to silence our writers and thinkers with an archaic section of the law that carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment, merely because they speak their minds? Why is it criminal to suggest that Kashmir's status in India is not settled despite the accession? Aren't so many others in Jammu and Kashmir saying as much? Didn't Chief Minister Omar Abdullah recently remark that the State had only acceded to, and not merged with, the Indian Union? The central government would do well publicly to make a stand and deny reports that it is considering pressing sedition charges against Ms Roy and Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who addressed the same seminar. Courts too must apply their mind and refuse to entertain frivolous and vexatious petitions that make such outrageous allegations.
In his classic defence of free speech, On Liberty, John Stuart Mill laid down what is known as the ‘harm principle.' It postulates that the only justification for silencing a person against his will is to prevent him from causing harm to others. It is to this powerful libertarian mid-19th century principle that we owe the idea that free speech cannot be proscribed merely because we find it disagreeable, and that curbs may be imposed only if such expression constitutes a direct, explicit, and unequivocal incitement to violence. There is no such nexus in Ms Roy's statements on Kashmir, which are shaped around the theme of gross human rights violations and (as she points out in a statement published on the opposite page) “fundamentally a call for justice.” It is tragi-comic that there is talk of ‘sedition' at a time when it is regarded as obsolete in many countries. Courts have ruled that laws that aim to punish people for bringing a government into hatred or contempt are frighteningly broad and risk being used to suppress radical political views. In Britain, the last completed trial in a sedition case dates back to 1947. In the United States, Supreme Court rulings have rendered toothless the most recent sedition law, the Smith Act enacted in 1940. The controversy over Ms Roy's remarks is essentially much ado about nothing.
A Semitised Hinduism with Ayodhya as Vatican
(Published earlier in The Times of India, Oct 3, 2010)
Vatican dreams
by Shobhan Saxena
On the night of November 16, 1993, just two days before the UP elections, a car pulled into Faizabad district hospital and a profusely bleeding Baba Lal Das was rushed inside. Before the doctors could get to work, he was dead. News of the mahant's murder spread like wildfire – from Faizabad to Ayodhya to Lucknow to Delhi. He was no ordinary mahant. Appointed by the court in 1981, Lal Das was formerly head priest of the Ramjanmbhoomi Mandir inside the Babri Masjid. He was the Central Bureau of Investigation's main witness, with "concrete evidence of conspiracy to demolish the mosque" in 1992.
The police arrested two of Lal Das's neighbours in his village for murder over a land dispute. But the bylanes of Ayodhya are still abuzz with conspiracy theories. Far from the neon-lit main street that cuts the town into two halves, the old quarter of Ayodhya is a time warp. Here, ancient-looking sadhus share space with barefoot pilgrims; on the steps of crumbling temples, young women anoint their foreheads with holy water; the alleyways freeze when portly men in white and saffron robes arrive in SUVs surrounded by armed men. Here, a mahant's importance is measured in the number of gunmen around him.
Till the late 1980s, Ayodhya was just another north Indian temple town. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad's agitation brought politicians and money here. Since then there have been bloody battles between the mahants for control of the movement and wealth of their temples. "Before he was killed, Lal Das had accused Nritya Gopal Das, president of Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas, of collecting huge amount of money for the Ram mandir. Some people believe the figure is as high as Rs 700 crore. This town is all about money and power," says a mahant of a small temple.
Nritya Gopal Das dismisses these allegations with scorn. He is more concerned about building a "grand temple for Sri Ram". He remains unsatisfied now that the court verdict has boosted his plans. "Ram lalla ek bata teen hisse mein kaise rahenge (how can Lord Ram live in 1/3rd part of the land). We want to make such a huge temple here that attracts Indians from all over the world," he says. The mahant echoes RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, who immediately after the verdict, appealed to "all communities to build a temple of Lord Ram, who is a symbol of our national identity."
From 1986, when the locks on the temple inside the mosque were opened, Ayodhya has undergone a metamorphosis.
Politicians of all hues have come here to pay obeisance and the local mahants have gone to Delhi as members of parliament. Modern-day Ayodhya is arguably as glorious as the one in Tulsidas's magnum opus. "Just like the Christians have their Vatican and Muslims have their Mecca, it's time for Hindus to have their own holy place and that place is Ayodhya," says Rahul Easwar, spokesman for the Sabarimala Trust and author of The Philosophy of Vedanta.
There is nothing the mahants would like better. Before Ayodhya became a focal point of Indian politics, they were just the heads of medieval, obscure akharas with limited resources. When the Ayodhya movement brought money and TV cameras into the town, the mahants began to create new myths with a pan-Indian appeal. "In the lanes of Ayodhya, you find on sale these cheap, badly-printed booklets that tell you the story of Ramjanmbhoomi. These booklets provide a founding myth of ownership, of identity, and even of nationhood," says Amitava Kumar, professor of English at Vassar College and author of Evidence of Suspicion. He says, "The idea is to make Ayodhya the centre of Hindu imagination. This will probably make the mahants the popes of India's biggest religion."
This possibility has caused a mini war to break out among the mahants. Interestingly, they have been able to use the infighting to enhance their stature. In 2001, when Nritya Gopal Das was attacked near the Saryu, he blamed Pakistan's ISI. Police investigated and arrested one of his disciples, Mahant Devram Das Vedanti who had been removed by Nritya Gopal from control of the prosperous Radhaballabh Kunj temple. "Sometime back, he claimed that al Qaeda had sent him a threatening letter. The letter had been posted from Haridwar. It was all a gimmick," says a local police official, who doesn't want to be named. "...these mahants have become too powerful for this small place."
Medieval Ayodhya was important when Faizabad was capital of the nawabs of Awadh. They patronized the local mahants and gave huge tracts of land to various akharas. Land for the Hanuman Garhi temple, Ayodhya's second holiest spot, was donated by the nawab; the temple was built by one of his courtiers. Today, this mammoth temple is controlled by Mahant Gyan Das, who also heads the Akhil Bhartiya Akhara Parishad. At loggerheads with other mahants, Gyan Das keeps everyone guessing about his next move. In 2003, he invited local Muslims to the temple for roza iftaar. But last year at the Kumbh in Haridwar, he declared that the Ram mandir will be built in Ayodhya and Hanumangarhi would be the new centre for the movement that would accomplish this.
Writer William Dalrymple says the movement has caused "mythical Ayodhya" and "modern Ayodhya" to merge. Dalrymple, whose most recent book Nine Lives searches for the sacred in modern India, says it's a "bit premature" to speculate that Ayodhya may become the Vatican of Hinduism. But he admits there are signs the town is becoming the main centre of the faith. "In the 19th century, Ram was one of the many deities worshipped by people at Ayodhya. Now Ram is the only one. In 200 years, his status has changed completely. The Ram temple has become a pan-Indian issue," says Dalrymple.
This may not be a good news for a religion with a pantheon of 330 million gods and goddesses, but for the mahants of Ayodhya it's one step closer to creating their own Vatican.
Vatican dreams
by Shobhan Saxena
On the night of November 16, 1993, just two days before the UP elections, a car pulled into Faizabad district hospital and a profusely bleeding Baba Lal Das was rushed inside. Before the doctors could get to work, he was dead. News of the mahant's murder spread like wildfire – from Faizabad to Ayodhya to Lucknow to Delhi. He was no ordinary mahant. Appointed by the court in 1981, Lal Das was formerly head priest of the Ramjanmbhoomi Mandir inside the Babri Masjid. He was the Central Bureau of Investigation's main witness, with "concrete evidence of conspiracy to demolish the mosque" in 1992.
The police arrested two of Lal Das's neighbours in his village for murder over a land dispute. But the bylanes of Ayodhya are still abuzz with conspiracy theories. Far from the neon-lit main street that cuts the town into two halves, the old quarter of Ayodhya is a time warp. Here, ancient-looking sadhus share space with barefoot pilgrims; on the steps of crumbling temples, young women anoint their foreheads with holy water; the alleyways freeze when portly men in white and saffron robes arrive in SUVs surrounded by armed men. Here, a mahant's importance is measured in the number of gunmen around him.
Till the late 1980s, Ayodhya was just another north Indian temple town. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad's agitation brought politicians and money here. Since then there have been bloody battles between the mahants for control of the movement and wealth of their temples. "Before he was killed, Lal Das had accused Nritya Gopal Das, president of Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas, of collecting huge amount of money for the Ram mandir. Some people believe the figure is as high as Rs 700 crore. This town is all about money and power," says a mahant of a small temple.
Nritya Gopal Das dismisses these allegations with scorn. He is more concerned about building a "grand temple for Sri Ram". He remains unsatisfied now that the court verdict has boosted his plans. "Ram lalla ek bata teen hisse mein kaise rahenge (how can Lord Ram live in 1/3rd part of the land). We want to make such a huge temple here that attracts Indians from all over the world," he says. The mahant echoes RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, who immediately after the verdict, appealed to "all communities to build a temple of Lord Ram, who is a symbol of our national identity."
From 1986, when the locks on the temple inside the mosque were opened, Ayodhya has undergone a metamorphosis.
Politicians of all hues have come here to pay obeisance and the local mahants have gone to Delhi as members of parliament. Modern-day Ayodhya is arguably as glorious as the one in Tulsidas's magnum opus. "Just like the Christians have their Vatican and Muslims have their Mecca, it's time for Hindus to have their own holy place and that place is Ayodhya," says Rahul Easwar, spokesman for the Sabarimala Trust and author of The Philosophy of Vedanta.
There is nothing the mahants would like better. Before Ayodhya became a focal point of Indian politics, they were just the heads of medieval, obscure akharas with limited resources. When the Ayodhya movement brought money and TV cameras into the town, the mahants began to create new myths with a pan-Indian appeal. "In the lanes of Ayodhya, you find on sale these cheap, badly-printed booklets that tell you the story of Ramjanmbhoomi. These booklets provide a founding myth of ownership, of identity, and even of nationhood," says Amitava Kumar, professor of English at Vassar College and author of Evidence of Suspicion. He says, "The idea is to make Ayodhya the centre of Hindu imagination. This will probably make the mahants the popes of India's biggest religion."
This possibility has caused a mini war to break out among the mahants. Interestingly, they have been able to use the infighting to enhance their stature. In 2001, when Nritya Gopal Das was attacked near the Saryu, he blamed Pakistan's ISI. Police investigated and arrested one of his disciples, Mahant Devram Das Vedanti who had been removed by Nritya Gopal from control of the prosperous Radhaballabh Kunj temple. "Sometime back, he claimed that al Qaeda had sent him a threatening letter. The letter had been posted from Haridwar. It was all a gimmick," says a local police official, who doesn't want to be named. "...these mahants have become too powerful for this small place."
Medieval Ayodhya was important when Faizabad was capital of the nawabs of Awadh. They patronized the local mahants and gave huge tracts of land to various akharas. Land for the Hanuman Garhi temple, Ayodhya's second holiest spot, was donated by the nawab; the temple was built by one of his courtiers. Today, this mammoth temple is controlled by Mahant Gyan Das, who also heads the Akhil Bhartiya Akhara Parishad. At loggerheads with other mahants, Gyan Das keeps everyone guessing about his next move. In 2003, he invited local Muslims to the temple for roza iftaar. But last year at the Kumbh in Haridwar, he declared that the Ram mandir will be built in Ayodhya and Hanumangarhi would be the new centre for the movement that would accomplish this.
Writer William Dalrymple says the movement has caused "mythical Ayodhya" and "modern Ayodhya" to merge. Dalrymple, whose most recent book Nine Lives searches for the sacred in modern India, says it's a "bit premature" to speculate that Ayodhya may become the Vatican of Hinduism. But he admits there are signs the town is becoming the main centre of the faith. "In the 19th century, Ram was one of the many deities worshipped by people at Ayodhya. Now Ram is the only one. In 200 years, his status has changed completely. The Ram temple has become a pan-Indian issue," says Dalrymple.
This may not be a good news for a religion with a pantheon of 330 million gods and goddesses, but for the mahants of Ayodhya it's one step closer to creating their own Vatican.
My reading list is longer than your hit list
(published earlier in: Mail Today, 26 October 2010)
by Jyotirmaya Sharma
ONE thing is certain, and it is that the Thackerays and Ashok Chavan share something in common.
In fact, there could be striking family resemblances between the Shiv Sena and the Congress as well. The people who inhabit these parties are no readers of books. In the case of Bal Thackeray, his hit list, invariably, is longer than his reading list. In the case of Chavan, one wonders whether he reads anything beyond newspapers and bank statements.
In goading Bombay University to remove Rohinton Mistry’s novel from its literature courses, both parties have once again proved that we are condemned to be ruled by uneducated literates.
On the other hand, the liberal space, if there is any left, is hijacked by cranially challenged writers of potboilers, who are telegenic and have an opinion on everything under the sun. Not too long ago, the Sambhaji Brigade, an offshoot of the NCP, had vandalised the Bhandarkar Institute for allowing James Laine to use their library. Laine’s crime was that he was supposed to have written a book that was uncharitable to Shivaji.
Politicians
Despite the Supreme Court judgement on lifting the ban on the book, the Maharashtra government has been hesitant in lifting the ban on the book. Of course, no one has really read the book.
Laine’s argument is the same as that of the people who are baying for his blood: that the Brahmins of Maharashtra conspired to float derogatory stories about Shivaji’s legitimacy because he was not from the upper castes. Politicians who matter also choose to remain quiet on issues of cultural policing and the shameful spectacle of banning books, films and pieces of art.
In another world, Obama shows courage in going against the conservative opinion and expressing support for building an Islamic cultural centre near the 9/ 11 site. But to expect support from Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi and Kapil Sibal on the Rohinton Mistry controversy is to expect stature from people who have none other than the ephemerality of power.
Let us consider for a moment a book and its eleventh chapter. The author calls Jainism and Buddhism ‘ a most dreadful religion’, where he does not make any distinction even between the two, thinking of them to be the same.
He goes on to name two sects of the ‘ Jain or Buddha religion called the Charavaks and Abhanaka’. The chapter declares that the Adi Shankara’s belief in the identity of God with the soul and the unreality of the external world was ‘ altogether wrong’. The author conflates the vama marg tantriks and the Shaivites and calls them ‘ unblushing wretches’ for worshipping male and female reproductive organs.
Bile
He further elaborates the origins of the Vaishnava sect, which he says was founded by Shathakopa, ‘ the son of a professional prostitute’, who was followed by Munivahana, ‘ the son of a scavenger’, followed by Yavanacharya, ‘ who was born in a Muhammadan family’. Commenting on the Devi Bhagawat, he discusses the story of creation of Brahma, Vishnu and Mahadeva, and says that the three, the moment they were born of the goddess Shri, demanded that they be married to her, but ‘ the fellows did not marry their mother but married their own sisters!!!’ The idols of Vaishnava gods, he further comments, had goddesses by their side, ‘ who were dressed out in fine style and excited lascivious thoughts by their lewd charms and licentious looks’. He goes on to wonder why these formidable gods of the Vaishnava and Shaivite sects, who killed fearsome demons if the puranas are to be believed, ‘ could not annihilate the Mohammedan invaders’. On the story that the city of Ayodhya had been to heaven three times, he says: ‘ It is impossible to believe that the town of Ayodhya along with all that was to be found in it — dogs, donkeys, street sweepers, workers in skin privies, etc. — has been to heaven three times. It never went to heaven, on the other hand, it is where it was…’ According to this author, the writer of the Bhagvata Purana was ‘ senseless’ and ‘ idiotic’ who did not feel ‘ a bit of shame or hesitation in writing such falsehoods’; here the reference is to the story of creation in the Bhagvata Purana . He says: ‘ Why did not the writers of Bhagvat and other Puranas die in their mother’s wombs or as soon as they were born?’ He has a recipe for those who hear the Bhagvat recited or those who read it: ‘ Let a man who recites Bhagvat or hears it read be thrown down a hill; if this story [ of Prahalad] be true, he should reach the bottom unhurt. But we know what will actually happen. No Narayana will come to his help, the poor man will simply be hacked to pieces’. For him, Kabir was a poet who composed hymns in incorrect and unidiomatic language, Nanak ‘ did not possess any learning’ and was ‘ a little vain’. The excerpts from the book cited above is not written by a Muslim or a Christian, not even by a secularist. It is freely available in inexpensive editions and is considered by many part of the neo- Hindu canon. It is abusive and carries its invective to a completely different level of extremism. One has not even mentioned here what it says about Prophet Muhammed and Jesus Christ, since the level of abuse and slander in these two cases reaches an unprecedented mixture of bile and spleen.
Consistency
The book justifies the fourfold varna system in its totality and also endorses many regressive elements of the Manusmriti . If Bal Thackeray and Ashok Chavan find Such a long Journey abusive and its language objectionable, then, surely they must also consider the language of this book and recommend a ban on it. This writer is not for banning books at all, but since Thackeray and Chavan are happy book- banners, it would be a challenge to their ‘ honesty’ and ‘ integrity’ if they were to show a degree of fairness and consistency and recommend a ban on this book.
Clearly, they will do no such thing.
They have little to do with knowledge, learning and books, but everything to do with political expediency and cynicism. They are petty street bullies, who can only threaten vulnerable targets like Rohinton Mistry, Salman Rushdie, James Laine and M. F. Hussain.
Will Thackeray show his true courage and Chavan be man enough to challenge the author of the text mentioned above? The name of the author whose invective this article cites is Dayananda Saraswati, and the book is Satyarthaprakash.
The writer teaches politics at the University of Hyderabad
by Jyotirmaya Sharma
ONE thing is certain, and it is that the Thackerays and Ashok Chavan share something in common.
In fact, there could be striking family resemblances between the Shiv Sena and the Congress as well. The people who inhabit these parties are no readers of books. In the case of Bal Thackeray, his hit list, invariably, is longer than his reading list. In the case of Chavan, one wonders whether he reads anything beyond newspapers and bank statements.
In goading Bombay University to remove Rohinton Mistry’s novel from its literature courses, both parties have once again proved that we are condemned to be ruled by uneducated literates.
On the other hand, the liberal space, if there is any left, is hijacked by cranially challenged writers of potboilers, who are telegenic and have an opinion on everything under the sun. Not too long ago, the Sambhaji Brigade, an offshoot of the NCP, had vandalised the Bhandarkar Institute for allowing James Laine to use their library. Laine’s crime was that he was supposed to have written a book that was uncharitable to Shivaji.
Politicians
Despite the Supreme Court judgement on lifting the ban on the book, the Maharashtra government has been hesitant in lifting the ban on the book. Of course, no one has really read the book.
Laine’s argument is the same as that of the people who are baying for his blood: that the Brahmins of Maharashtra conspired to float derogatory stories about Shivaji’s legitimacy because he was not from the upper castes. Politicians who matter also choose to remain quiet on issues of cultural policing and the shameful spectacle of banning books, films and pieces of art.
In another world, Obama shows courage in going against the conservative opinion and expressing support for building an Islamic cultural centre near the 9/ 11 site. But to expect support from Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi and Kapil Sibal on the Rohinton Mistry controversy is to expect stature from people who have none other than the ephemerality of power.
Let us consider for a moment a book and its eleventh chapter. The author calls Jainism and Buddhism ‘ a most dreadful religion’, where he does not make any distinction even between the two, thinking of them to be the same.
He goes on to name two sects of the ‘ Jain or Buddha religion called the Charavaks and Abhanaka’. The chapter declares that the Adi Shankara’s belief in the identity of God with the soul and the unreality of the external world was ‘ altogether wrong’. The author conflates the vama marg tantriks and the Shaivites and calls them ‘ unblushing wretches’ for worshipping male and female reproductive organs.
Bile
He further elaborates the origins of the Vaishnava sect, which he says was founded by Shathakopa, ‘ the son of a professional prostitute’, who was followed by Munivahana, ‘ the son of a scavenger’, followed by Yavanacharya, ‘ who was born in a Muhammadan family’. Commenting on the Devi Bhagawat, he discusses the story of creation of Brahma, Vishnu and Mahadeva, and says that the three, the moment they were born of the goddess Shri, demanded that they be married to her, but ‘ the fellows did not marry their mother but married their own sisters!!!’ The idols of Vaishnava gods, he further comments, had goddesses by their side, ‘ who were dressed out in fine style and excited lascivious thoughts by their lewd charms and licentious looks’. He goes on to wonder why these formidable gods of the Vaishnava and Shaivite sects, who killed fearsome demons if the puranas are to be believed, ‘ could not annihilate the Mohammedan invaders’. On the story that the city of Ayodhya had been to heaven three times, he says: ‘ It is impossible to believe that the town of Ayodhya along with all that was to be found in it — dogs, donkeys, street sweepers, workers in skin privies, etc. — has been to heaven three times. It never went to heaven, on the other hand, it is where it was…’ According to this author, the writer of the Bhagvata Purana was ‘ senseless’ and ‘ idiotic’ who did not feel ‘ a bit of shame or hesitation in writing such falsehoods’; here the reference is to the story of creation in the Bhagvata Purana . He says: ‘ Why did not the writers of Bhagvat and other Puranas die in their mother’s wombs or as soon as they were born?’ He has a recipe for those who hear the Bhagvat recited or those who read it: ‘ Let a man who recites Bhagvat or hears it read be thrown down a hill; if this story [ of Prahalad] be true, he should reach the bottom unhurt. But we know what will actually happen. No Narayana will come to his help, the poor man will simply be hacked to pieces’. For him, Kabir was a poet who composed hymns in incorrect and unidiomatic language, Nanak ‘ did not possess any learning’ and was ‘ a little vain’. The excerpts from the book cited above is not written by a Muslim or a Christian, not even by a secularist. It is freely available in inexpensive editions and is considered by many part of the neo- Hindu canon. It is abusive and carries its invective to a completely different level of extremism. One has not even mentioned here what it says about Prophet Muhammed and Jesus Christ, since the level of abuse and slander in these two cases reaches an unprecedented mixture of bile and spleen.
Consistency
The book justifies the fourfold varna system in its totality and also endorses many regressive elements of the Manusmriti . If Bal Thackeray and Ashok Chavan find Such a long Journey abusive and its language objectionable, then, surely they must also consider the language of this book and recommend a ban on it. This writer is not for banning books at all, but since Thackeray and Chavan are happy book- banners, it would be a challenge to their ‘ honesty’ and ‘ integrity’ if they were to show a degree of fairness and consistency and recommend a ban on this book.
Clearly, they will do no such thing.
They have little to do with knowledge, learning and books, but everything to do with political expediency and cynicism. They are petty street bullies, who can only threaten vulnerable targets like Rohinton Mistry, Salman Rushdie, James Laine and M. F. Hussain.
Will Thackeray show his true courage and Chavan be man enough to challenge the author of the text mentioned above? The name of the author whose invective this article cites is Dayananda Saraswati, and the book is Satyarthaprakash.
The writer teaches politics at the University of Hyderabad
October 25, 2010
Rajasthan ATS chargesheet uncovers who was behind the 2007 Ajmer Bombing
Expressindia
A blast and a conspiracy
by Smita Nair
Posted: Oct 25, 2010 at 0305 hrs IST
The Rajasthan anti-terrorist squad’s 806- page chargesheet against six accused in the 2007 blast at Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti’s Dargah in Ajmer throws up some interesting facts, and alleges a well-thought out conspiracy to “avenge the attacks on Hindus”.
An unexploded bomb and a long trail
The first lead in the investigation was a live bomb inside an unclaimed bag found at the gate of the Ajmer Dargah — the investigation would later reveal that the second bomb was timed to explode a minute later from the first when the crowd would try to escape. The probe started with two SIM cards— one in the live bomb and the other in the exploded bomb — and the two mobile handsets used to trigger the explosion. The scope of the probe changed after the investigators matched similarities with another attack — two similar handsets and SIM cards were used as timers in the Mecca Masjid blast in Hyderabad on May 18, 2007. The first step was to locate the current locations of the people who purchased the cards and the handsets. The forensic report pointed that the screen saver on the unexploded handset at Ajmer had the words ‘Vande Mataram’ written on it.
The number of the exploded SIM card was tracked down to Airtel’s Bihar-Jharkhand range and was activated on June 2, 2006. The purchase details were tracked to a name called Babulal Yadav from Mihijam and the card was shown to be sold from a shop, Mobile Care in Jharkhand. The SIM of the unexploded bomb was purchased from the West Bengal network of Hutch/Vodafone. The owner of this SIM was Babulal Yadav’s son Manohar Yadav, who belonged to Asansol. He produced a driving licence (WB 28 289892) at Sargam Audio in Chitranjan, West Bengal, to buy the SIM.
These two identities eventually led investigators to a yoga columnist named Taraknath Pramanik, whose identity the blast accused used to procure forged driving licences to buy 11 SIM cards and eight handsets to carry out explosions. The probe found that 11 SIM cards were procured with the same details — voter identity card and the same driving licence — from areas around Jamtara, Mihijam, and Asansol between May 24, 2006 and November 26, 2006. It came to light that two SIM cards used in the Mecca Masjid blast were from this same set of 11 cards. Ajmer blast accused Devendra Gupta was Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Zilla Pracharak during this period and all three places came under him.
While four mobile phones were used in the Ajmer and Mecca Masjid blasts — four other phones, that had at some point used one or many of the 11 SIM cards, were found to be in the possession of Madhya Pradesh residents Chandrashekar Leve, Ravindra Patidar and Santosh Patidar. When the team reached one Vishnu Patidar, a relative of the Patidars, it was found that Chandrashekar had told him to put the blame on one Pankaj Patidar, who had died.
Chandrashekar later confessed three handsets were given to him by another blast accused Sandeep Dange, who is also wanted for the 2008 Malegaon blast. It has now been found that when the Maharashtra ATS began their search for Dange in 2008, he was believed to have given the remaining four mobile sets (of the entire bunch of eight used for the blast operations — with four already used in Ajmer and Mecca Masjid) in a suitcase to RSS functionary Govardhan Singh, a resident of Shajapur, with instructions to hand them to Chandrashekar Leve, before Dange went underground. Chandrashekar Leve then, along with another RSS functionary Bhanu Thakur, left to meet Govardhan Singh.
Chandrashekar gifted three mobiles to his relative Vishnu Patidar and started using one for himself, which investigators say was his first mistake as it helped them track them down. One of the these three phones was eventually destroyed by Vishnu Patidar after it failed to work. With these forensic leads and confession of Chandrashekar (arrested on May 1, 2010), the investigating team made their first arrest, Devendra Gupta (April 29, 2010), followed by the others.
RSS links, 3 blasts and an ‘organised terror group’
During interrogation, Malegaon 2008 blast accused Col Shrikanth Purohit allegedly admitted before the Jaipur police that, among other things, he was acquainted with Swami Aseemanand, a resident of Dangs, Gujarat. Aseemanand had then informed Purohit that Malegaon 2008 blast accused Sadhvi Pragya Singh and Sunil Joshi had formed the ‘Jai Vande Mataram’ outfit and it should merge with Purohit’s ‘Abhinav Bharat’ as it would prove “beneficial to their cause”. Pragya and Joshi’s outfit’s name first appeared as the screen saver on the unexploded handset at the Ajmer blast site.
Purohit informed the cops that on the night of December 29, 2007, Aseemanand called to say that one of their “kaas admi” (important person) was murdered in Dewas, Madhya Pradesh. He is then alleged to have said that “Sunil Joshi is the person behind the Ajmer blast and it thus becomes important for us to probe who murdered him”.
Joshi’s phonebook and daily expenses diary had revealed much about his history, workplace, movements and other sources. The material revealed that Joshi was a “radical Hindu extremist” and that he had, a year prior to his death, assumed a different identity, Manoj, living in Dewas Bypass in a rented house. Four others — with assumed names of Raj, Mehul, Ghanshyam and Ustad — had lived with him for a year and a half before his killing, and had disappeared soon after his death, never to be located thereafter.
Agencies are still trying to ascertain the identities and the role of these four people — it was Joshi who had given them assumed names and they always tracked his movements.
The probe into Joshi’s death brought out some interesting relationships. Ajmer blast accused and Ajmer native Devendra Gupta was first introduced to Joshi when the latter was Zilla Pracharak of RSS in Mhow, Madhya Pradesh. Gupta, who was a low-level functionary with the RSS, slowly rose in the cadre through his association with Joshi and was eventually given a respectable posting in RSS sister body ‘Seva Bharati’ in 1999. In 2001, he slowly rose to the post of RSS Tehsil Pracharak.
Under Joshi’s guidance, he continued to work as an RSS functionary in Indore and Mhow region between 1998 and 2003. The association bloomed into a very “thick friendship” and the both met over a period, with Gupta shifting to Jharkhand and taking over the post of Zilla Pracharak till September 2008. Nine years of association saw the two meeting each other in the company of common friends at various places in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and
Jharkhand — this bond was later to become the framework for flow of ideas over secret meetings with extremists ideas.
Malegaon blast accused Sandeep Dange, who is now shown wanted in this probe too, was Zilla Pracharak in Shajapur, Madhya Pradesh. Another Ajmer blast accused Chandrashekar Leve worked very closely with him in the same region and their association goes back to 10 years.
RSS senior functionary and blast accused Devendra Gupta has confessed that the Ajmer blast was a conspiracy planned and executed by Sunil Joshi along with Sandeep Dange, Ramji Kalsangra, Lokesh Sharma. He confessed to making driving licences specifically for this operation for himself (WB38178780) and Sunil Joshi’s new identity Manoj (WB 38178781) on September 30, 2005 so that these forged documents could be used to buy SIM cards and mobile phones that will be eventually used in the blasts. So organised was their plot that Gupta exchanged the driving licence with Joshi at a railway station in Kolkata.
Gupta showed the Jamtara RSS office at Mihijam — the Bhupat Maheswari Sadan — when Gupta was a Zilla Pracharak between 2003 and 2008 and where “secret conspiracy meetings for exploding bombs in Ajmer and many other places were discussed”. This office was where many secret meetings were held since May 2005 after the decision to carry out blasts was taken in Ujjain during the Kumbh of 2004. Though this office is in Jamtara, Jharkhand, it is just 50 metres from the West Bengal border. The entire operation was run from Mihijam — right from the forged documents to the conspiracy.
First to be arrested, Gupta spilled the beans on Indore resident and RSS functionary Lokesh Sharma who was part of the conspiracy and who, along with Sunil Joshi, was responsible in procuring explosives for the blast. He and Joshi had procured the explosives from a certain Krishnadutt Pandey’s goshala in Depalpur.
The detonators were first procured by Sandeep Dange and later shifted to Ramji’s house along with pipes for making the bomb. While further probe is in progress, it is based on this confession that Sharma was arrested on May 15, 2010. He later confessed that the “secret meetings” continued at Malegaon blast accused Ramji Kalsangra’s Shantivihar Colony flat in Indore where the group eventually met to make the bombs used in the blast.
The explosives first exchanged hands at Dewas bypass in Indore where eventually Sunil Joshi would be murdered some day. Sharma also showed the shop in Faridabad where the handsets (the exploded handset in Ajmer and an unexploded one in Mecca Masjid) were purchased. Based on these links, Sharma and Gupta were arrested for their role in the Hyderabad blast by the CBI.
The chargesheet looks at the role of Swami Aseemanand, who emerged as a key figure in the planning and execution of the plot after he first led a group comprising Pragya Singh, Sunil Joshi, Sandeep Dange, Ramji Kalsangra, Lokesh Sharma, Devendra Gupta, Samandar and Shivam Dhakad during a secret meet, on the sidelines of the Kumbh in Ujjain in April-May 2004. This meeting, the confessions have disclosed, had discussed “the attacks by Muslim terrorists across 2001 and 2002 on places such as Amarnath yatra, Akshardham Mandir, Ahmedabad and Raghunath Mandir, Jammu,” says the chargesheet. “Critical of the government and police’s inability to handle the situation, this meeting vowed to avenge the attacks with the same vengeance.”
“Not only was Aseemanand found to be leading this group, but he had also offered his support and sanctuary to those like Sunil Joshi after the Ajmer blasts,” the chargesheet reads. Aseemanand was active with the work of Hindu Dharm Jagran at tribal-majority Ahawa in Dang districts in Gujarat in 1995 to stop Hindu conversions and to take on Christian missionaries. It also emerged that Aseemanand was known to have “close links” with Malegaon blasts co-accused Pragya, Purohit, Dayanand Pandey and Sameer Kulkarni, besides being responsible for bringing together Jai Vande Mataram and Abhinav Bharat, both of which had played an active role in the Malegaon blasts.
Joshi and six others — Lokesh Sharma, Ramji Kalsangra, Shivam Dhakad, Samandar, Sandeep Dange and Pragya Singh Thakur — reached Jaipur on October 31, 2005 and stayed at the C-Scheme Gujarati Samaj Room No 26 under assumed identities. It was here that a secret meeting was allegedly addressed by RSS leader Indresh Kumar in which he advised Joshi to align with some religious grouping while working to facilitate travel through cities under the pretext of some religious duties to avoid raising suspicion, the chargesheet says.
The action begins
The main plot was shaped in Jaipur and responsibilities delegated. Targets and their recce and explosive procurement and making the bombs was Sharma and Kalsangra’s responsibility. Gupta was made in charge of procuring forged documents to get SIM and mobile handsets, Pragya was given the role of media relations while the funding was entirely the responsibility of RSS Zilla Pracharaks Sandeep Dange and Sunil Joshi. Further probe is still in progress on the Jaipur secret meetings. It is from here that the Rajasthan ATS chooses to identify these people collectively as a “terrorist group” under the guidance of Swami Aseemand.
Another interesting aspect is that all these people were co-organisers at the Shabrikumbh organised in February 2006 by Aseemanand at Shabridham, Dang, where many people with extreme Hindu fundamental views participated. Another secret meeting took place here — the reference agenda was the Varanasi Sankat Mochan temple blast and how Hindus had been tolerant. Locations for targeting Muslims were discussed, which included Jama Masjid, New Delhi, Dargah Sharif, Ajmer, Mecca Masjid Hyderabad, Malegaon’s Muslim population and the Samjhauta Express. These locations were then to be vetoed and accepted by Swami Aseemanand. The group then left for Indore, after taking instructions from Aseemanand.
Joshi, Dange, Sharma, and Kalsangra then conducted another secret meeting at Kalsangra’s home in Indore in March 2006. While these remained the main players, they also were joined by Pragya in specific meetings in various locations. Bomb-making was primarily under the supervision of Dange and Kalsangra as they both were tech-savvy and Kalsangra was a qualified electrician, the chargesheet says.
Interestingly, after the Ajmer blast, Joshi called an associate of Aseemanand, Bharat Rateshwar, asking him to switch on the television and watch the Ajmer blast coverage and to inform Aseemanand that the blast was a success. Dang turned to be a safe haven for the accused after the two blasts of Ajmer and Mecca Masjid. After “successfully carrying out the blasts”, Sadhvi Pragya, Joshi, Dange, Kalsangra, Gupta, Sharma, Dhakad and Samandar visited Ujjain and performed last rite ceremonies of blast victims killed in attacks by “Muslim terrorists”.
A blast and a conspiracy
by Smita Nair
Posted: Oct 25, 2010 at 0305 hrs IST
The Rajasthan anti-terrorist squad’s 806- page chargesheet against six accused in the 2007 blast at Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti’s Dargah in Ajmer throws up some interesting facts, and alleges a well-thought out conspiracy to “avenge the attacks on Hindus”.
An unexploded bomb and a long trail
The first lead in the investigation was a live bomb inside an unclaimed bag found at the gate of the Ajmer Dargah — the investigation would later reveal that the second bomb was timed to explode a minute later from the first when the crowd would try to escape. The probe started with two SIM cards— one in the live bomb and the other in the exploded bomb — and the two mobile handsets used to trigger the explosion. The scope of the probe changed after the investigators matched similarities with another attack — two similar handsets and SIM cards were used as timers in the Mecca Masjid blast in Hyderabad on May 18, 2007. The first step was to locate the current locations of the people who purchased the cards and the handsets. The forensic report pointed that the screen saver on the unexploded handset at Ajmer had the words ‘Vande Mataram’ written on it.
The number of the exploded SIM card was tracked down to Airtel’s Bihar-Jharkhand range and was activated on June 2, 2006. The purchase details were tracked to a name called Babulal Yadav from Mihijam and the card was shown to be sold from a shop, Mobile Care in Jharkhand. The SIM of the unexploded bomb was purchased from the West Bengal network of Hutch/Vodafone. The owner of this SIM was Babulal Yadav’s son Manohar Yadav, who belonged to Asansol. He produced a driving licence (WB 28 289892) at Sargam Audio in Chitranjan, West Bengal, to buy the SIM.
These two identities eventually led investigators to a yoga columnist named Taraknath Pramanik, whose identity the blast accused used to procure forged driving licences to buy 11 SIM cards and eight handsets to carry out explosions. The probe found that 11 SIM cards were procured with the same details — voter identity card and the same driving licence — from areas around Jamtara, Mihijam, and Asansol between May 24, 2006 and November 26, 2006. It came to light that two SIM cards used in the Mecca Masjid blast were from this same set of 11 cards. Ajmer blast accused Devendra Gupta was Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Zilla Pracharak during this period and all three places came under him.
While four mobile phones were used in the Ajmer and Mecca Masjid blasts — four other phones, that had at some point used one or many of the 11 SIM cards, were found to be in the possession of Madhya Pradesh residents Chandrashekar Leve, Ravindra Patidar and Santosh Patidar. When the team reached one Vishnu Patidar, a relative of the Patidars, it was found that Chandrashekar had told him to put the blame on one Pankaj Patidar, who had died.
Chandrashekar later confessed three handsets were given to him by another blast accused Sandeep Dange, who is also wanted for the 2008 Malegaon blast. It has now been found that when the Maharashtra ATS began their search for Dange in 2008, he was believed to have given the remaining four mobile sets (of the entire bunch of eight used for the blast operations — with four already used in Ajmer and Mecca Masjid) in a suitcase to RSS functionary Govardhan Singh, a resident of Shajapur, with instructions to hand them to Chandrashekar Leve, before Dange went underground. Chandrashekar Leve then, along with another RSS functionary Bhanu Thakur, left to meet Govardhan Singh.
Chandrashekar gifted three mobiles to his relative Vishnu Patidar and started using one for himself, which investigators say was his first mistake as it helped them track them down. One of the these three phones was eventually destroyed by Vishnu Patidar after it failed to work. With these forensic leads and confession of Chandrashekar (arrested on May 1, 2010), the investigating team made their first arrest, Devendra Gupta (April 29, 2010), followed by the others.
RSS links, 3 blasts and an ‘organised terror group’
During interrogation, Malegaon 2008 blast accused Col Shrikanth Purohit allegedly admitted before the Jaipur police that, among other things, he was acquainted with Swami Aseemanand, a resident of Dangs, Gujarat. Aseemanand had then informed Purohit that Malegaon 2008 blast accused Sadhvi Pragya Singh and Sunil Joshi had formed the ‘Jai Vande Mataram’ outfit and it should merge with Purohit’s ‘Abhinav Bharat’ as it would prove “beneficial to their cause”. Pragya and Joshi’s outfit’s name first appeared as the screen saver on the unexploded handset at the Ajmer blast site.
Purohit informed the cops that on the night of December 29, 2007, Aseemanand called to say that one of their “kaas admi” (important person) was murdered in Dewas, Madhya Pradesh. He is then alleged to have said that “Sunil Joshi is the person behind the Ajmer blast and it thus becomes important for us to probe who murdered him”.
Joshi’s phonebook and daily expenses diary had revealed much about his history, workplace, movements and other sources. The material revealed that Joshi was a “radical Hindu extremist” and that he had, a year prior to his death, assumed a different identity, Manoj, living in Dewas Bypass in a rented house. Four others — with assumed names of Raj, Mehul, Ghanshyam and Ustad — had lived with him for a year and a half before his killing, and had disappeared soon after his death, never to be located thereafter.
Agencies are still trying to ascertain the identities and the role of these four people — it was Joshi who had given them assumed names and they always tracked his movements.
The probe into Joshi’s death brought out some interesting relationships. Ajmer blast accused and Ajmer native Devendra Gupta was first introduced to Joshi when the latter was Zilla Pracharak of RSS in Mhow, Madhya Pradesh. Gupta, who was a low-level functionary with the RSS, slowly rose in the cadre through his association with Joshi and was eventually given a respectable posting in RSS sister body ‘Seva Bharati’ in 1999. In 2001, he slowly rose to the post of RSS Tehsil Pracharak.
Under Joshi’s guidance, he continued to work as an RSS functionary in Indore and Mhow region between 1998 and 2003. The association bloomed into a very “thick friendship” and the both met over a period, with Gupta shifting to Jharkhand and taking over the post of Zilla Pracharak till September 2008. Nine years of association saw the two meeting each other in the company of common friends at various places in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and
Jharkhand — this bond was later to become the framework for flow of ideas over secret meetings with extremists ideas.
Malegaon blast accused Sandeep Dange, who is now shown wanted in this probe too, was Zilla Pracharak in Shajapur, Madhya Pradesh. Another Ajmer blast accused Chandrashekar Leve worked very closely with him in the same region and their association goes back to 10 years.
RSS senior functionary and blast accused Devendra Gupta has confessed that the Ajmer blast was a conspiracy planned and executed by Sunil Joshi along with Sandeep Dange, Ramji Kalsangra, Lokesh Sharma. He confessed to making driving licences specifically for this operation for himself (WB38178780) and Sunil Joshi’s new identity Manoj (WB 38178781) on September 30, 2005 so that these forged documents could be used to buy SIM cards and mobile phones that will be eventually used in the blasts. So organised was their plot that Gupta exchanged the driving licence with Joshi at a railway station in Kolkata.
Gupta showed the Jamtara RSS office at Mihijam — the Bhupat Maheswari Sadan — when Gupta was a Zilla Pracharak between 2003 and 2008 and where “secret conspiracy meetings for exploding bombs in Ajmer and many other places were discussed”. This office was where many secret meetings were held since May 2005 after the decision to carry out blasts was taken in Ujjain during the Kumbh of 2004. Though this office is in Jamtara, Jharkhand, it is just 50 metres from the West Bengal border. The entire operation was run from Mihijam — right from the forged documents to the conspiracy.
First to be arrested, Gupta spilled the beans on Indore resident and RSS functionary Lokesh Sharma who was part of the conspiracy and who, along with Sunil Joshi, was responsible in procuring explosives for the blast. He and Joshi had procured the explosives from a certain Krishnadutt Pandey’s goshala in Depalpur.
The detonators were first procured by Sandeep Dange and later shifted to Ramji’s house along with pipes for making the bomb. While further probe is in progress, it is based on this confession that Sharma was arrested on May 15, 2010. He later confessed that the “secret meetings” continued at Malegaon blast accused Ramji Kalsangra’s Shantivihar Colony flat in Indore where the group eventually met to make the bombs used in the blast.
The explosives first exchanged hands at Dewas bypass in Indore where eventually Sunil Joshi would be murdered some day. Sharma also showed the shop in Faridabad where the handsets (the exploded handset in Ajmer and an unexploded one in Mecca Masjid) were purchased. Based on these links, Sharma and Gupta were arrested for their role in the Hyderabad blast by the CBI.
The chargesheet looks at the role of Swami Aseemanand, who emerged as a key figure in the planning and execution of the plot after he first led a group comprising Pragya Singh, Sunil Joshi, Sandeep Dange, Ramji Kalsangra, Lokesh Sharma, Devendra Gupta, Samandar and Shivam Dhakad during a secret meet, on the sidelines of the Kumbh in Ujjain in April-May 2004. This meeting, the confessions have disclosed, had discussed “the attacks by Muslim terrorists across 2001 and 2002 on places such as Amarnath yatra, Akshardham Mandir, Ahmedabad and Raghunath Mandir, Jammu,” says the chargesheet. “Critical of the government and police’s inability to handle the situation, this meeting vowed to avenge the attacks with the same vengeance.”
“Not only was Aseemanand found to be leading this group, but he had also offered his support and sanctuary to those like Sunil Joshi after the Ajmer blasts,” the chargesheet reads. Aseemanand was active with the work of Hindu Dharm Jagran at tribal-majority Ahawa in Dang districts in Gujarat in 1995 to stop Hindu conversions and to take on Christian missionaries. It also emerged that Aseemanand was known to have “close links” with Malegaon blasts co-accused Pragya, Purohit, Dayanand Pandey and Sameer Kulkarni, besides being responsible for bringing together Jai Vande Mataram and Abhinav Bharat, both of which had played an active role in the Malegaon blasts.
Joshi and six others — Lokesh Sharma, Ramji Kalsangra, Shivam Dhakad, Samandar, Sandeep Dange and Pragya Singh Thakur — reached Jaipur on October 31, 2005 and stayed at the C-Scheme Gujarati Samaj Room No 26 under assumed identities. It was here that a secret meeting was allegedly addressed by RSS leader Indresh Kumar in which he advised Joshi to align with some religious grouping while working to facilitate travel through cities under the pretext of some religious duties to avoid raising suspicion, the chargesheet says.
The action begins
The main plot was shaped in Jaipur and responsibilities delegated. Targets and their recce and explosive procurement and making the bombs was Sharma and Kalsangra’s responsibility. Gupta was made in charge of procuring forged documents to get SIM and mobile handsets, Pragya was given the role of media relations while the funding was entirely the responsibility of RSS Zilla Pracharaks Sandeep Dange and Sunil Joshi. Further probe is still in progress on the Jaipur secret meetings. It is from here that the Rajasthan ATS chooses to identify these people collectively as a “terrorist group” under the guidance of Swami Aseemand.
Another interesting aspect is that all these people were co-organisers at the Shabrikumbh organised in February 2006 by Aseemanand at Shabridham, Dang, where many people with extreme Hindu fundamental views participated. Another secret meeting took place here — the reference agenda was the Varanasi Sankat Mochan temple blast and how Hindus had been tolerant. Locations for targeting Muslims were discussed, which included Jama Masjid, New Delhi, Dargah Sharif, Ajmer, Mecca Masjid Hyderabad, Malegaon’s Muslim population and the Samjhauta Express. These locations were then to be vetoed and accepted by Swami Aseemanand. The group then left for Indore, after taking instructions from Aseemanand.
Joshi, Dange, Sharma, and Kalsangra then conducted another secret meeting at Kalsangra’s home in Indore in March 2006. While these remained the main players, they also were joined by Pragya in specific meetings in various locations. Bomb-making was primarily under the supervision of Dange and Kalsangra as they both were tech-savvy and Kalsangra was a qualified electrician, the chargesheet says.
Interestingly, after the Ajmer blast, Joshi called an associate of Aseemanand, Bharat Rateshwar, asking him to switch on the television and watch the Ajmer blast coverage and to inform Aseemanand that the blast was a success. Dang turned to be a safe haven for the accused after the two blasts of Ajmer and Mecca Masjid. After “successfully carrying out the blasts”, Sadhvi Pragya, Joshi, Dange, Kalsangra, Gupta, Sharma, Dhakad and Samandar visited Ujjain and performed last rite ceremonies of blast victims killed in attacks by “Muslim terrorists”.
Despite Proof Against RSS involvment in Terror, BJP ruled MP govt. Turns a Blind Eye
Mail Today, 25 October 2010
Glaring proof but MP’s eyes wide shut
By Anup Dutta in Bhopal
THE RAJASTHAN government has begun to tighten the noose on Hindutva terror, not sparing even right- wing bigwigs. Most of the names that have cropped up again and again in these cases are from the Malwa region of neighbouring Madhya Pradesh. Yet the BJP- ruled state has chosen to look the other way.
The saffron government just doesn’t appear to be interested in finding out how the accused in the blasts at the Ajmer Dargah, Hyderabad’s Mecca Masjid and at Malegaon in Maharashtra are linked to Madhya Pradesh.
While many of the accused belong to the Malwa belt in the western part of the state, others have been nabbed here. The entire region is a traditional RSS ( Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) stronghold.
While it has turned a blind eye in many incidents, the state has inexplicably decided to shut the Sunil Joshi murder case file. The RSS pracharak — thought to have been shot dead in Madhya Pradesh’s Dewas district by his own people in December 2007 — was the main accused in the three terror acts.
“ For us, it’s a closed file though the court has not accepted it. We are keeping our eyes open and will try to explore further whenever there is some new development,” inspectorgeneral of police, Ujjain range, Pawan Jain, said.
Interestingly, no one has ever dared to ask what made the government stop investigations into the murder case. In fact, the officers who decided to touch the file were not spared, an officer in Dewas said. Recently, the CBI has included the name of Joshi in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast case. Nine people died in the terror attack in Hyderabad.
Nobody in the state is really interested in explaining why it has failed to piece together the terror jigsaw, despite several key characters hailing from it. And when a team comprising the NIA ( National Investigation Agency), CBI, and Maharashtra and Rajasthan ATS officials crept into Madhya Pradesh in connection with the 2007 blasts, the state was a mute spectator. The message was clear: Madhya Pradesh would have nothing to do with the ongoing investigations.
In October 2008, the Maharashtra Police entered the state and detained four youths — Shyam Sahu ( of Tukoganj, Indore), Dilip Nahar and Shivnarayan Singh ( of Bangli Chowk, Indore) and Dharmendra Bairagi ( of Dewas) — in connection with the Malegaon and Modasa blasts.
The action followed the arrest of Pragya Singh Thakur, who is originally from Bhind district of Madhya Pradesh and is incarcerated as an accused in the Malegaon blast case. The daughter of an ayurvedic doctor, Thakur holds a masters degree. She became an activist of the Durga Vahini ( VHP’s women’s wing) and was a member of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad ( ABVP) from 1993- 2002. Thakur came into the limelight following her alleged involvement in the murder of Joshi.
Then there was the case of alleged chief strategist Sameer Kulkarni, a former member of the ABVP who got affiliated to another Hindutva organisation called Abhinav Bharat. He, too, was arrested by the Maharashtra ATS from Bhopal in October 2008. The same force detained Lt Col Srikant Prasad Purohit, who was serving at the Army Education Corps Training College and Centre in Pachmarhi — a hill station in Madhya Pradesh — in October 2008.
Two other conspirators who are natives of Madhya Pradesh are Shamlal Sahu and Ramji Kalsangra.
Kalsangra, believed to be the brain behind the September 29 Malegaon blast, is absconding.
Almost two years later, when fresh arrests took place in the state, its government kept mum again. This time, the Rajasthan ATS nabbed Chandra Shekhar Leve, a resident of Shajapur district, in April this year. He belongs to a landlord family of the district.
Leve, an active RSS member for years, has been involved with several other Hindutva groups as well.
A month after this incident, the Rajasthan ATS reached Mhow district and arrested Lokesh Sharma, who runs an engineering unit in the Pithampur industrial area of Dhar district. Now, with the name of Leve and Sharma figuring prominently in the chargesheet in the 2007 Ajmer blast case, the Madhya Pradesh government seems to be tongue- tied yet again.
“ I have read about the news in today’s newspaper. I’m not in Madhya Pradesh, so I won’t be able to comment on how we are going to act,” state home minister Uma Shankar Gupta said. “ I’ll go through all the details upon coming back and will then decide the future course of action,” he added.
Glaring proof but MP’s eyes wide shut
By Anup Dutta in Bhopal
THE RAJASTHAN government has begun to tighten the noose on Hindutva terror, not sparing even right- wing bigwigs. Most of the names that have cropped up again and again in these cases are from the Malwa region of neighbouring Madhya Pradesh. Yet the BJP- ruled state has chosen to look the other way.
The saffron government just doesn’t appear to be interested in finding out how the accused in the blasts at the Ajmer Dargah, Hyderabad’s Mecca Masjid and at Malegaon in Maharashtra are linked to Madhya Pradesh.
While many of the accused belong to the Malwa belt in the western part of the state, others have been nabbed here. The entire region is a traditional RSS ( Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) stronghold.
While it has turned a blind eye in many incidents, the state has inexplicably decided to shut the Sunil Joshi murder case file. The RSS pracharak — thought to have been shot dead in Madhya Pradesh’s Dewas district by his own people in December 2007 — was the main accused in the three terror acts.
“ For us, it’s a closed file though the court has not accepted it. We are keeping our eyes open and will try to explore further whenever there is some new development,” inspectorgeneral of police, Ujjain range, Pawan Jain, said.
Interestingly, no one has ever dared to ask what made the government stop investigations into the murder case. In fact, the officers who decided to touch the file were not spared, an officer in Dewas said. Recently, the CBI has included the name of Joshi in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast case. Nine people died in the terror attack in Hyderabad.
Nobody in the state is really interested in explaining why it has failed to piece together the terror jigsaw, despite several key characters hailing from it. And when a team comprising the NIA ( National Investigation Agency), CBI, and Maharashtra and Rajasthan ATS officials crept into Madhya Pradesh in connection with the 2007 blasts, the state was a mute spectator. The message was clear: Madhya Pradesh would have nothing to do with the ongoing investigations.
In October 2008, the Maharashtra Police entered the state and detained four youths — Shyam Sahu ( of Tukoganj, Indore), Dilip Nahar and Shivnarayan Singh ( of Bangli Chowk, Indore) and Dharmendra Bairagi ( of Dewas) — in connection with the Malegaon and Modasa blasts.
The action followed the arrest of Pragya Singh Thakur, who is originally from Bhind district of Madhya Pradesh and is incarcerated as an accused in the Malegaon blast case. The daughter of an ayurvedic doctor, Thakur holds a masters degree. She became an activist of the Durga Vahini ( VHP’s women’s wing) and was a member of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad ( ABVP) from 1993- 2002. Thakur came into the limelight following her alleged involvement in the murder of Joshi.
Then there was the case of alleged chief strategist Sameer Kulkarni, a former member of the ABVP who got affiliated to another Hindutva organisation called Abhinav Bharat. He, too, was arrested by the Maharashtra ATS from Bhopal in October 2008. The same force detained Lt Col Srikant Prasad Purohit, who was serving at the Army Education Corps Training College and Centre in Pachmarhi — a hill station in Madhya Pradesh — in October 2008.
Two other conspirators who are natives of Madhya Pradesh are Shamlal Sahu and Ramji Kalsangra.
Kalsangra, believed to be the brain behind the September 29 Malegaon blast, is absconding.
Almost two years later, when fresh arrests took place in the state, its government kept mum again. This time, the Rajasthan ATS nabbed Chandra Shekhar Leve, a resident of Shajapur district, in April this year. He belongs to a landlord family of the district.
Leve, an active RSS member for years, has been involved with several other Hindutva groups as well.
A month after this incident, the Rajasthan ATS reached Mhow district and arrested Lokesh Sharma, who runs an engineering unit in the Pithampur industrial area of Dhar district. Now, with the name of Leve and Sharma figuring prominently in the chargesheet in the 2007 Ajmer blast case, the Madhya Pradesh government seems to be tongue- tied yet again.
“ I have read about the news in today’s newspaper. I’m not in Madhya Pradesh, so I won’t be able to comment on how we are going to act,” state home minister Uma Shankar Gupta said. “ I’ll go through all the details upon coming back and will then decide the future course of action,” he added.
October 24, 2010
Top RSS leader charged for involvement in the Ajmer blasts of 2007
Mail Today, 24 October 2010
cover story
CHARGESHEET NAILS TOP RSS LEADER'S LIE
By Sudhanshu Mishra in Jaipur
AJMER DARGAH BLAST 2007
Indresh chaired terror group meet that plotted blast
Assigned roles to RSS masterminds of attack that killed 3
TOP RASHTRIYA Swayamsevak Sangh ( RSS) leader Indresh Kumar’s lie has been nailed. A chargesheet filed by the Rajasthan Anti- Terrorism Squad in the October 2007 Ajmer Dargah blast case names several RSS functionaries, including Indresh, who is named as a person who addressed the conspirators.
Indresh had consistently denied his involvement in the blast. When M AIL T ODAY highlighted on July 15 this year that the Ajmer, Malegaon and Mecca Masjid terror probe had reached Indresh’s door, hundreds of activists attacked the offices of MAIL TODAY and the TV Today network, vandalising property. The 806-page chargesheet filed on Friday alleges that the conspiracy to explode bombs in Ajmer as well as several other Indian cities was hatched in the Gujarati Samaj Guest House in Jaipur in October 2005. It includes 213 support documents and a list of 133 witnesses. The three prime conspirators named are Devendra Gupta, Lokesh Sharma and Chandra Shekhar Leve. The chargesheet was issued by additional SP of the Rajasthan ATS Satyendra Singh Ranawat.
Leve was produced in the court of Ajmer’s acting chief judicial magistrate Jagendra Kumar Agrawal. The Rajasthan ATS also submitted jail warrants for Gupta and Sharma, currently lodged in a Hyderabad jail in connection with the Mecca Masjid blasts.
Two other accused Sandeep Dange and Ramji Kalsangre, both residents of Indore in Madhya Pradesh, are absconding. They are also accused in the Mecca Masjid case. According to the ATS, no organisation was involved in the terror act but some of their members formed a group of terrorists to execute the crime.” The chargesheet provides some sensational details. According to the document, a secret meeting was held in Room 26 of the Gujarati Samaj Guest House on October 31, 2005.
The seven persons who attended the meeting were Indresh Kumar, Pragya Thakur (accused in the Malegaon blasts), Sunil Joshi (an RSS pracharak who was shot dead in December 2007), Ramchandra alias Ramji Kalsangre, Devendra Gupta, Lokesh Sharma and Sandeep Dange. The room was booked in the name of Manoj Singh, a name that Joshi assumed for this meeting.
According to the chargesheet, Indresh was the key speaker at the meeting and had asked other group members to become affiliated to different religious bodies so that the mission was accomplished successfully. The chargesheet says: “Indresh Kumar told them you all should join some religious organisations and then begin your work so that people don’t get suspicious. It should appear that you are on a religious yatra.” It adds that the roles for the different individuals were finalised at the meeting. While Joshi was allocated the prime task of exploding the bombs, Sharma and Kalsangre were asked to collect the weapons and explosives, and also carry out a recce to identify targets.
Gupta was told to arrange the SIM cards using a fake identity. Dange and Joshi were told to arrange the finance for the terror activity. Pragya was asked to manage the media after the blasts. The Ajmer Dargah blast killed three persons and injured at least 17 others. Rajasthan home minister Shanti Dhariwal said the chargesheet proved beyond doubt that Hindu extremists and senior RSS leaders were involved in the blasts in Ajmer, Hyderabad and Malegaon. “Those named in the chargesheet will be arrested immediately after the inquiry,” he said.
Interestingly, the chargesheet does not name Indresh as an accused. Sources in the government said that the ATS may later add a supplementary chargesheet to include his name. According to the chargesheet, top Hindutva leaders identified the spots to explode bombs at meetings between February 11 and 13, 2006, in the Dang area of central Gujarat where Swami Aseemanand ran his ashram. The targets included Delhi’s Jama Masjid, Ajmer Dargah, Hyderabad’s Mecca Masjid, Malegaon and the Samjhauta Express that ran between India and Pakistan. The bombs used were allegedly made at Kalsangre’s Shanti Vihar Colony residence in Indore.
The two bombs (one never went off) were planted at the Ajmer Dargah by Dange, Kalsangre and Joshi. Later, all three went underground. The chargesheet refers to the involvement of Abhinav Bharat, a Maharashtra-based Hindutva organisation that allegedly exploded the Malegaon bombs in 2008. It alleges that Swami Aseemanand was in contact with Pragya Thakur and Shrikant Purohit, both accused in the bombing. The ATS alleged that the conspiracy was hatched by this module of saffron terrorists at Jaipur to carry out a series of blasts for taking revenge against bombings unleashed by Islamist outfits in India.
The saffron joint family did not take much time to close ranks and attributed Indresh’s implication in the Ajmer blast chargesheet as a “political conspiracy” hatched by the Congress. Both the RSS and the BJP have always said in the face of increasing evidence of a Hindutva terror network that they do not support anyone involved in terrorist activities. But Indresh’s situation could be tricky for both. As part of a 21- member central executive of the RSS comprising the top brass such as Mohan Bhagwat, Suresh Joshi, Suresh Soni, et al, the RSS can neither disown Indresh nor distance itself from his activities. The RSS had said nothing in defence of other pracharaks such as Devender Gupta and his accomplice Lokesh Sharma. The two were arrested in connection with the Ajmer blasts and had sidelined two lower-ranking Sangh officebearers Ashok Berry and Ashok Varshney, both of whom were questioned in connection with the Hindutva terror network.
For the Rajasthan ATS, a vital clue turned out to be a SIM card. It took a year for the agency to identify the code of ‘Vande Mataram’ that was used by those named in the chargesheet, including Gupta, who was arrested this April while travelling to Udaipur with his cousin. Thakur’s call details, according to the chargesheet, reveal that the number that was fed as ‘Vande Mataram’ belonged to Sunil Joshi, an RSS pracharak in Mahu district of Madhya Pradesh. Joshi, along with Pragya, was also a founder of Jai Vande Mataram organisation. Later, Swami Aseemanand linked this organisation with Abhinav Bharat to develop a group of fundamentalists to carry out the bomb blasts.
-------------
RSS big gun in the dock for plotting Ajmer blast
With inputs from Poornima Joshi and Dalip Singh in New Delhi
Continued from Page 1
attacked the offices of MAIL TODAY and the TV Today network, vandalising property. The 806-page chargesheet filed on Friday alleges that the conspiracy to explode bombs in Ajmer as well as several other Indian cities was hatched in the Gujarati Samaj Guest House in Jaipur in October 2005. It includes 213 support documents and a list of 133 witnesses. The three prime conspirators named are Devendra Gupta, Lokesh Sharma and Chandra Shekhar Leve. The chargesheet was issued by additional SP of the Rajasthan ATS Satyendra Singh Ranawat.
Leve was produced in the court of Ajmer’s acting chief judicial magistrate Jagendra Kumar Agrawal. The Rajasthan ATS also submitted jail warrants for Gupta and Sharma, currently lodged in a Hyderabad jail in connection with the Mecca Masjid blasts.
Two other accused Sandeep Dange and Ramji Kalsangre, both residents of Indore in Madhya Pradesh, are absconding. They are also accused in the Mecca Masjid case. According to the ATS, no organisation was involved in the terror act but some of their members formed a group of terrorists to execute the crime.” The chargesheet provides some sensational details. According to the document, a secret meeting was held in Room 26 of the Gujarati Samaj Guest House on October 31, 2005.
The seven persons who attended the meeting were Indresh Kumar, Pragya Thakur (accused in the Malegaon blasts), Sunil Joshi (an RSS pracharak who was shot dead in December 2007), Ramchandra alias Ramji Kalsangre, Devendra Gupta, Lokesh Sharma and Sandeep Dange. The room was booked in the name of Manoj Singh, a name that Joshi assumed for this meeting.
According to the chargesheet, Indresh was the key speaker at the meeting and had asked other group members to become affiliated to different religious bodies so that the mission was accomplished successfully. The chargesheet says: “Indresh Kumar told them you all should join some religious organisations and then begin your work so that people don’t get suspicious. It should appear that you are on a religious yatra.” It adds that the roles for the different individuals were finalised at the meeting. While Joshi was allocated the prime task of exploding the bombs, Sharma and Kalsangre were asked to collect the weapons and explosives, and also carry out a recce to identify targets.
Gupta was told to arrange the SIM cards using a fake identity. Dange and Joshi were told to arrange the finance for the terror activity. Pragya was asked to manage the media after the blasts. The Ajmer Dargah blast killed three persons and injured at least 17 others. Rajasthan home minister Shanti Dhariwal said the chargesheet proved beyond doubt that Hindu extremists and senior RSS leaders were involved in the blasts in Ajmer, Hyderabad and Malegaon. “Those named in the chargesheet will be arrested immediately after the inquiry,” he said.
Interestingly, the chargesheet does not name Indresh as an accused. Sources in the government said that the ATS may later add a supplementary chargesheet to include his name. According to the chargesheet, top Hindutva leaders identified the spots to explode bombs at meetings between February 11 and 13, 2006, in the Dang area of central Gujarat where Swami Aseemanand ran his ashram. The targets included Delhi’s Jama Masjid, Ajmer Dargah, Hyderabad’s Mecca Masjid, Malegaon and the Samjhauta Express that ran between India and Pakistan. The bombs used were allegedly made at Kalsangre’s Shanti Vihar Colony residence in Indore.
The two bombs (one never went off) were planted at the Ajmer Dargah by Dange, Kalsangre and Joshi. Later, all three went underground. The chargesheet refers to the involvement of Abhinav Bharat, a Maharashtra-based Hindutva organisation that allegedly exploded the Malegaon bombs in 2008. It alleges that Swami Aseemanand was in contact with Pragya Thakur and Shrikant Purohit, both accused in the bombing. The ATS alleged that the conspiracy was hatched by this module of saffron terrorists at Jaipur to carry out a series of blasts for taking revenge against bombings unleashed by Islamist outfits in India.
The saffron joint family did not take much time to close ranks and attributed Indresh’s implication in the Ajmer blast chargesheet as a “political conspiracy” hatched by the Congress. Both the RSS and the BJP have always said in the face of increasing evidence of a Hindutva terror network that they do not support anyone involved in terrorist activities. But Indresh’s situation could be tricky for both. As part of a 21- member central executive of the RSS comprising the top brass such as Mohan Bhagwat, Suresh Joshi, Suresh Soni, et al, the RSS can neither disown Indresh nor distance itself from his activities. The RSS had said nothing in defence of other pracharaks such as Devender Gupta and his accomplice Lokesh Sharma. The two were arrested in connection with the Ajmer blasts and had sidelined two lower-ranking Sangh officebearers Ashok Berry and Ashok Varshney, both of whom were questioned in connection with the Hindutva terror network.
For the Rajasthan ATS, a vital clue turned out to be a SIM card. It took a year for the agency to identify the code of ‘Vande Mataram’ that was used by those named in the chargesheet, including Gupta, who was arrested this April while travelling to Udaipur with his cousin. Thakur’s call details, according to the chargesheet, reveal that the number that was fed as ‘Vande Mataram’ belonged to Sunil Joshi, an RSS pracharak in Mahu district of Madhya Pradesh. Joshi, along with Pragya, was also a founder of Jai Vande Mataram organisation. Later, Swami Aseemanand linked this organisation with Abhinav Bharat to develop a group of fundamentalists to carry out the bomb blasts.
=============
[related report]
Mail Today, 24 October 2010
‘Purohit trying to divide the Sangh Parivar at behest of Cong leaders’
By Dalip Singh in New Delhi
A 14-PAGE document circulating among the top echelons of radical Hindutva organisations has come up with a conspiracy theory that gives an intriguing twist to the entire saffron terror plot. The document alleges that sacked Military Intelligence officer Lt Colonel Srikant Purohit, indicted for carrying out the Malegaon blast, had the blessings of the intelligence agencies as well as Congress politicians in power. It also says that the investigating agencies are leaking information to the media to malign the image of the RSS and other Hindu organisations.
But the intelligence agencies and investigating authorities have denied the serious insinuations in the unsigned document, purportedly initiated by an ultra-right Hindu organisation. Sources claim that sympathisers of Sangh Parivar members, under the scanner for carrying out terror strikes, are behind the move. The document begins with a possible theory that originated in 2004-05. It claims that on the directions of the intelligence agencies and politicians, Purohit — who is behind the bars now — was attempting to divide the Sangh Parivar.
The document even talks of alleged meetings between Purohit and some senior leaders of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. The sum and substance of the text in it is that Purohit attempted to provoke the feelings of Hindu leaders by stating that no party was espousing the cause of the majority community. This move, it says, was aimed at driving a wedge between them and the BJP. To prove the point that Purohit was acting at the behest of intelligence agencies, the document claims that during the meetings the dismissed officer cited some classified documents which were not in the public domain.
The papers further claim that Purohit used these documents to assert that the BJP was out to finish a vocal VHP leader. However, there were no takers in the Sangh Parivar for the former MI man’s theory as he was unable to produce the so-called classified documents. In a bid to distance the Sangh Parivar from the alleged saffron terror network, the document claims that Purohit made contacts with rogue Hindu fundamentalists who were divorced from organisations like the VHP and the RSS.
It gives the names of the accused in the blast cases of Ajmer and Malegaon as those influenced by Purohit. And the RSS as well as other right-wing outfits have publicly disowned Swami Dayanand Pandey, the late Sunil Joshi, Devendra Gupta, Lokesh Sharma and Thakur Pragya Singh after their names cropped up in the terror cases. Interestingly, the document claims that Pandey has links with the Congress. These people, the document claims, often met on premises owned by the government and the army, and attempted to rope in fresh faces as well as organisations in their mission to give a befitting reply to Islamic terrorism.
Intriguingly, the document propounds another theory. According to it, a misinformation campaign was launched by the incarcerated Pandey that the RSS is moving away from hardline Hindutva to mend fences with Muslims and Christians.
=======
Mail Today, 24 October 2010
Chargesheet reveals Samjhauta clues
By Aman Sharma in New Delhi
THERE could be a breakthrough in the deadlocked investigation into the bombings in the Samjhauta Express and the Jama Masjid in Delhi.
For the first time, there is an official admission by an investigating agency that these two were on the hitlist of Hindutva terrorists involved in Ajmer Sharif, Malegaon and the Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad.
The Rajasthan Anti- Terrorism Squad’s 806- page chargesheet on the Ajmer blasts says the module behind these three targets had sinister plans to target the Samjhauta Express and Jama Masjid as well. It was not clear though whether this terror cell could execute with its plan.
Over 60 Pakistanis died in the Samjhauta Express blast on February 19, 2007, while 13 people were wounded in blasts inside Jama Masjid on April 14, 2006 — months after this module ( according to the Rajasthan ATS) chose them as targets at a meeting chaired by Swami Asimanand in February 2006.
The five targets were apparently chosen at a marathon meeting in Gujarat by the module comprising Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, Swami Asimanand, Ramji Kalsangre, Sandeep Dange and Sunil Joshi, the chargesheet says.
“ From February 11 to 13 in 2006, Swami Asimanand organised a Shabri Kumbh at his Shabri Dham in Gujarat. All the hardline Hindu activists like Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, Sunil Joshi, Ramji Kalsangre, Lokesh Sharma and Sandeep Dange took part at the meeting and discussed avenging the terror attacks at the Akshardham temple in Gujarat in 2002 and other Hindu religious shrines. They drew up a list of five targets — Samjhauta Express, Mecca Masjid, Malegaon, Ajmer Sharif and Jama Masjid,” it says.
A source said Lokesh Sharma, the man who did a recce of Ajmer Sharif, confirmed this meeting after his arrest.
The bombs used in the Samjhauta Express are believed to have been assembled in Indore. But the suspected bomber, Sunil Joshi, was found mysteriously murdered in Dewas, Madhya Pradesh on December 27, 2007.
These details could let the National Investigation Agency ( NIA), which is probing the Samjhauta Express case, vital leads.
Jai Vande Mataram was created along lines of Abinav Bharat
The Times of India
Jai Vande Mataram’s act of ‘revenge’
TNN, Oct 24, 2010, 02.32am IST
JAIPUR: The Rajasthan ATS has identified many people — some of them RSS activists — who formed Jai Vande Mataram (JVM), an organisation on the lines of radical Hindu outfit Abhinav Bharat, to avenge the blasts carried out by Muslim extremists. The members included Pragya Singh, Swami Aseemanand and Sunil Joshi.
According to the chargesheet filed in an Ajmer court on Friday, Swami Aseemanand, the alleged key planner of the Ajmer dargah blast, had confined the formation of Jai Vande Mataram to Srikant Purohit, the army officer accused in the Malegaon blast. Purohit had allegedly revealed this to the Rajasthan ATS during interrogation in Mumbai in 2008.
Swami Aseemanand reportedly told Purohit that if Abhinav Bharat was clubbed with Jai Vande Mataram, "very good results" could be expected.
Read more: Jai Vande Mataram’s act of ‘revenge’ - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Jai-Vande-Matarams-act-of-revenge/articleshow/6801083.cms#ixzz13GQpGy2F
Jai Vande Mataram’s act of ‘revenge’
TNN, Oct 24, 2010, 02.32am IST
JAIPUR: The Rajasthan ATS has identified many people — some of them RSS activists — who formed Jai Vande Mataram (JVM), an organisation on the lines of radical Hindu outfit Abhinav Bharat, to avenge the blasts carried out by Muslim extremists. The members included Pragya Singh, Swami Aseemanand and Sunil Joshi.
According to the chargesheet filed in an Ajmer court on Friday, Swami Aseemanand, the alleged key planner of the Ajmer dargah blast, had confined the formation of Jai Vande Mataram to Srikant Purohit, the army officer accused in the Malegaon blast. Purohit had allegedly revealed this to the Rajasthan ATS during interrogation in Mumbai in 2008.
Swami Aseemanand reportedly told Purohit that if Abhinav Bharat was clubbed with Jai Vande Mataram, "very good results" could be expected.
Read more: Jai Vande Mataram’s act of ‘revenge’ - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Jai-Vande-Matarams-act-of-revenge/articleshow/6801083.cms#ixzz13GQpGy2F
October 23, 2010
Shakha 2.0
Outlook Magazine, 1 November 2010
Special Issue: Media In Crisis Media In Crisis
Shakha 2.0
The Sangh parivar, once a media pariah, is now a master at turning the tale on its head
by Christophe Jaffrelot
The RSS is known for its secrecy. The meetings of the organisation, either in Nagpur or in Delhi, are almost always held in camera. Those who take part are not even supposed to talk to journalists covering the event, making it extremely difficult to decipher the RSS decision-making process. But it isn’t as if the RSS hasn’t been conscious of the media’s importance. As early as 1947, the RSS launched its first English weekly, The Organiser, from Delhi. This RSS mouthpiece, where L.K. Advani started to work in 1960, was followed by many other publications, mostly in Indian languages (including Panchajanya in Hindi, initially UP-based, of which D. Upadhyaya was the chief architect).
The RSS embrace of cybertech is to attract a middle class that’s averse to khaki shorts and saffron flag salutes at dawn.
With time though, the RSS has shed its earlier reluctance to publicise its views in the mainstream or national media, evident from the increasingly important role of its spokesperson who is always a savvy pracharak. More important, the RSS has become increasingly keen to influence and infiltrate the mass media, which were rather hostile to it in post-independence India. Then, most journalists in the print media had what we can call a leftist orientation and Doordarshan as well as AIR were in the hands of the Congress, the party in power. No wonder the RSS was extremely happy at the appointment of L.K. Advani as Union minister for I&B in the Janata government (1977-79).
Television appeared as a more effective means of ideologising after the popular success of the serials Ramayana and Mahabharata in the 1980s. Soon after, media persons like J.K. Jain—later a BJP Rajya Sabha member—rallied around the Sangh and produced videos. That was the time when the vhs offered alternatives to Doordarshan in the electronic media, obvious from the success of Newstrack and Eyewitness. In 1990-91, vans toured the countryside to show J.K. Jain’s video recording of the first assault on Babri Masjid by kar sevaks (a dozen were killed then). These showed policemen firing at kar sevaks, portraying them as ‘martyrs’ and enabling—along with other factors such as Mandal—the BJP to double its share of votes from 11 per cent in 1989 to 22 per cent in the 1991 elections.
This isn’t a solitary instance of the RSS and the BJP exploiting the media for political purposes. They also harnessed the media for their electoral goals in Gujarat post-2000. Indeed, their master manipulator of images is Narendra Modi who, in 2002, had the bodies of the victims of the Godhra train fire transported to Ahmedabad and displayed on TV the day before the pogrom started. He then used the media to orchestrate the election campaign that followed the riots—one of his ads on TV began with the sound of a train pulling into a station, followed by the clamour of riots and women’s screams; then is heard the ringing of temple bells before it is drowned in the din of rapid firing from automatic rifles, a clear evocation of the Akshardham attack in Gandhinagar in September 2002.
In 2007, Modi turned hi-tech, hiring US firm Apco Worldwide to promote his election image at $25,000 a month.
In 2007, Modi turned high-tech during his next poll campaign. He hired US firm Apco Worldwide, which specialises in creating images of public figures through communication technology. The firm’s clients included the Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha; Nursultan Abishuly Nazarbayev, president for life of Kazakhstan; and ex-Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The company promoted Modi’s image for $25,000 a month. Not only did Modi continue to use the mass media, including a TV channel, Vande Gujarat (the name was adapted from Vande Mataram), but he posted video clips on the web. One of these begins with a bomb blast, followed by sirens and dead bodies strewn around, and Modi threatening invisible terrorists with “Int no jawab patthar thi (A stone for every brick),” testifying to the politics of fear harnessing cyberspace for diabolic ends.
Modi also used the web to maintain a direct relationship with the citizens of Gujarat. With three laptops—one each for office, home and on his travels—he supposedly spends about four hours daily reading the 200-250 e-mails he receives. He is said to respond to at least 10 per cent of those; his bureaucrats take care of the rest. In many ways, he is imitating Indira Gandhi’s political style, whose new form of populism in the ’70s helped create the myth of establishing direct relations with the people. Through cyber populism, Modi is creating the illusion of being in touch with every citizen of Gujarat. He has also used mobile phones to send SMS and MMS to potential voters and the cadre. Gujarat is susceptible to this form of propaganda—14 million of its population had a mobile phone in ’07.
Modi is exploiting technology like any modern politician does. Yet it comes as a surprise that the RSS should have adopted modern hi-tech methods in winning the hearts of Hindus, a method in sharp contrast to its shakha culture where personal relationships and a brotherly spirit are forged through drills and sports. But the emphasis of the RSS on cyber technology has a reason—it is only through it that the organisation can attract a middle class that’s averse to wearing khaki shorts and saluting the saffron flag at dawn. So what you have are cyber shakhas for the middle class, particularly the Indians in America, with whom the swayamsevaks can interact. Not only this, the RSS has sponsored websites, enabling their visitors to interact with swayamsevaks who help them make a sense of the world on a daily basis. The most important of these websites in the US is probably the Global Hindu Electronic Network.
Clearly, the Sangh’s conscious effort is to harness the media to win supporters at the time of elections. It’s also to be in tune with the globalised Hindu community. It seems the RSS may forfeit, from its own point of view, the “character-building” quality of the old shakha technique for the shakha on cyberspace.
Special Issue: Media In Crisis Media In Crisis
Shakha 2.0
The Sangh parivar, once a media pariah, is now a master at turning the tale on its head
by Christophe Jaffrelot
The RSS is known for its secrecy. The meetings of the organisation, either in Nagpur or in Delhi, are almost always held in camera. Those who take part are not even supposed to talk to journalists covering the event, making it extremely difficult to decipher the RSS decision-making process. But it isn’t as if the RSS hasn’t been conscious of the media’s importance. As early as 1947, the RSS launched its first English weekly, The Organiser, from Delhi. This RSS mouthpiece, where L.K. Advani started to work in 1960, was followed by many other publications, mostly in Indian languages (including Panchajanya in Hindi, initially UP-based, of which D. Upadhyaya was the chief architect).
The RSS embrace of cybertech is to attract a middle class that’s averse to khaki shorts and saffron flag salutes at dawn.
With time though, the RSS has shed its earlier reluctance to publicise its views in the mainstream or national media, evident from the increasingly important role of its spokesperson who is always a savvy pracharak. More important, the RSS has become increasingly keen to influence and infiltrate the mass media, which were rather hostile to it in post-independence India. Then, most journalists in the print media had what we can call a leftist orientation and Doordarshan as well as AIR were in the hands of the Congress, the party in power. No wonder the RSS was extremely happy at the appointment of L.K. Advani as Union minister for I&B in the Janata government (1977-79).
Television appeared as a more effective means of ideologising after the popular success of the serials Ramayana and Mahabharata in the 1980s. Soon after, media persons like J.K. Jain—later a BJP Rajya Sabha member—rallied around the Sangh and produced videos. That was the time when the vhs offered alternatives to Doordarshan in the electronic media, obvious from the success of Newstrack and Eyewitness. In 1990-91, vans toured the countryside to show J.K. Jain’s video recording of the first assault on Babri Masjid by kar sevaks (a dozen were killed then). These showed policemen firing at kar sevaks, portraying them as ‘martyrs’ and enabling—along with other factors such as Mandal—the BJP to double its share of votes from 11 per cent in 1989 to 22 per cent in the 1991 elections.
This isn’t a solitary instance of the RSS and the BJP exploiting the media for political purposes. They also harnessed the media for their electoral goals in Gujarat post-2000. Indeed, their master manipulator of images is Narendra Modi who, in 2002, had the bodies of the victims of the Godhra train fire transported to Ahmedabad and displayed on TV the day before the pogrom started. He then used the media to orchestrate the election campaign that followed the riots—one of his ads on TV began with the sound of a train pulling into a station, followed by the clamour of riots and women’s screams; then is heard the ringing of temple bells before it is drowned in the din of rapid firing from automatic rifles, a clear evocation of the Akshardham attack in Gandhinagar in September 2002.
In 2007, Modi turned hi-tech, hiring US firm Apco Worldwide to promote his election image at $25,000 a month.
In 2007, Modi turned high-tech during his next poll campaign. He hired US firm Apco Worldwide, which specialises in creating images of public figures through communication technology. The firm’s clients included the Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha; Nursultan Abishuly Nazarbayev, president for life of Kazakhstan; and ex-Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The company promoted Modi’s image for $25,000 a month. Not only did Modi continue to use the mass media, including a TV channel, Vande Gujarat (the name was adapted from Vande Mataram), but he posted video clips on the web. One of these begins with a bomb blast, followed by sirens and dead bodies strewn around, and Modi threatening invisible terrorists with “Int no jawab patthar thi (A stone for every brick),” testifying to the politics of fear harnessing cyberspace for diabolic ends.
Modi also used the web to maintain a direct relationship with the citizens of Gujarat. With three laptops—one each for office, home and on his travels—he supposedly spends about four hours daily reading the 200-250 e-mails he receives. He is said to respond to at least 10 per cent of those; his bureaucrats take care of the rest. In many ways, he is imitating Indira Gandhi’s political style, whose new form of populism in the ’70s helped create the myth of establishing direct relations with the people. Through cyber populism, Modi is creating the illusion of being in touch with every citizen of Gujarat. He has also used mobile phones to send SMS and MMS to potential voters and the cadre. Gujarat is susceptible to this form of propaganda—14 million of its population had a mobile phone in ’07.
Modi is exploiting technology like any modern politician does. Yet it comes as a surprise that the RSS should have adopted modern hi-tech methods in winning the hearts of Hindus, a method in sharp contrast to its shakha culture where personal relationships and a brotherly spirit are forged through drills and sports. But the emphasis of the RSS on cyber technology has a reason—it is only through it that the organisation can attract a middle class that’s averse to wearing khaki shorts and saluting the saffron flag at dawn. So what you have are cyber shakhas for the middle class, particularly the Indians in America, with whom the swayamsevaks can interact. Not only this, the RSS has sponsored websites, enabling their visitors to interact with swayamsevaks who help them make a sense of the world on a daily basis. The most important of these websites in the US is probably the Global Hindu Electronic Network.
Clearly, the Sangh’s conscious effort is to harness the media to win supporters at the time of elections. It’s also to be in tune with the globalised Hindu community. It seems the RSS may forfeit, from its own point of view, the “character-building” quality of the old shakha technique for the shakha on cyberspace.
Senior RSS leader suspect in Ajmer blast: report
Hindustantimes.com
Agencies
New Delhi, October 23, 2010
Senior RSS leader Indresh Kumar has been named in the police chargesheet listing the accused in the 2007 Ajmer blasts, a TV channel reported on Saturday. The 806-page chargesheet filed by the Rajasthan Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS) on Friday alleges supporters of a radical Hindu group called Abhinav Bharat carried out the blast at the dargah of Khawaja Moinuddin Chishti on October 11, 2007 killing three persons and injuring 15.
Devendra Gupta, Lokesh Sharma, Chander Shekhar Lave, Sandeep Dange and Ramji Kalsangre have been charged with murder, attempt to murder, conspiracy, harming or defiling place of worship and other crimes.
Gupta, Sharma, Lave are in judicial custody while Dange and Kalsangre are absconding. Another accused Sunil Joshi died during the course of investigation.
The exact charges against Kumar are not known yet but the RSS leader told Times Now he was being harassed and will prove his innocence in court.
"This is a political conspiracy against me," he told Times Now.
According to the news channel, conspirators in the blast met several times and the RSS leader attended one such meeting in Jaipur.
The chargesheet alleges the conspiracy for the blast was led by Swami Sananand, who arranged meetings of the other accused in Jammu, Indore and Ujjain.
Agencies
New Delhi, October 23, 2010
Senior RSS leader Indresh Kumar has been named in the police chargesheet listing the accused in the 2007 Ajmer blasts, a TV channel reported on Saturday. The 806-page chargesheet filed by the Rajasthan Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS) on Friday alleges supporters of a radical Hindu group called Abhinav Bharat carried out the blast at the dargah of Khawaja Moinuddin Chishti on October 11, 2007 killing three persons and injuring 15.
Devendra Gupta, Lokesh Sharma, Chander Shekhar Lave, Sandeep Dange and Ramji Kalsangre have been charged with murder, attempt to murder, conspiracy, harming or defiling place of worship and other crimes.
Gupta, Sharma, Lave are in judicial custody while Dange and Kalsangre are absconding. Another accused Sunil Joshi died during the course of investigation.
The exact charges against Kumar are not known yet but the RSS leader told Times Now he was being harassed and will prove his innocence in court.
"This is a political conspiracy against me," he told Times Now.
According to the news channel, conspirators in the blast met several times and the RSS leader attended one such meeting in Jaipur.
The chargesheet alleges the conspiracy for the blast was led by Swami Sananand, who arranged meetings of the other accused in Jammu, Indore and Ujjain.
Rising tide of intolerance
The Hindu, 23 October, 2010
Opinion - Editorials 
Rising tide of intolerance
Anyone remotely familiar with the Shiv Sena knows that it routinely attempts to thrust itself in the public eye by protesting stridently, and sometimes violently, against the contents of books, films, and paintings. However, its recent campaign against Rohinton Mistry's Such A Long Journey — which resulted in the Man Booker Prize-shortlisted novel being withdrawn from Mumbai University's curriculum — has raised the question: Why did the Shiv Sena suddenly decide to target a work of fiction published two decades ago, which has been a part of the university's B.A. English literature syllabus for the last four years? The answer is this is in honour of Aditya Thackeray, recently inducted into politics by grandfather Bal Thackeray and appointed head of the Yuva Sena. The new youth wing chief and his party have argued that parts of this finely crafted, socio-politically sensitive novel — which is set in the early 1970s and revolves around a middle-aged Parsi bank clerk struggling to stay out of poverty — are offensive to the Shiv Sena and Marathi manoos. Such expressions of simulated hurt sentiment were used to justify the Sena's campaign of intimidation, which included burning the book on campus. Even more cynically, they were used to provide a platform for the young Mr. Thackeray to make a dramatic entry into politics.
Books have been banned before by governments on account of threats but it is unusual for a university to capitulate as meekly as Mumbai University did. Following the protest, the matter was referred to the Board of Studies, which recommended withdrawing the book from the syllabus — a decision Vice-Chancellor Rajan Welukar, who echoed some of the Sena's views about the novel, seemed tacitly to endorse. It is shameful that instead of standing up to political intimidation and preventing book-burners from influencing the curriculum, a reputed institution of higher learning cravenly abdicated its responsibility to foster and protect intellectual freedom, critical thinking, and creativity. Not surprisingly, Mr. Welukar and the university authorities have come in for strong criticism in Mumbai's academic circles. Another distasteful aspect of this episode is the stance of Maharashtra's Congress Chief Minister Ashok Chavan. Agreeing readily with the Sena that the novel contained abusive language, he has chosen to distance himself from the withdrawal issue — saying it was for the university to decide. In fact, the complicit attitudes of Maharashtra's major political parties only legitimise and strengthen the Sena's intolerance as it attempts to erode the shores that protect freedom of thought and expression in India.
October 22, 2010
Tolerating the intolerant
Dawn, 21 October 2010
by Jawed Naqvi
THE Ayodhya dispute is hardly a Hindu-Muslim issue and it would be more realistic to see it as a contrived stand-off fanned by a pseudo-secular state to keep its citizens off balance.
If anything, the tussle really is between Hindu-Muslim secularism versus Hindu-Muslim communalism. The Indian state perceives aggressive secularism as a greater challenge to its authority. It needs communalism as an ally.
By contrast, the ancient and mediaeval states in India were ahead of their times. The pre-Mughal state, for example, produced Kabir who could deliver a tongue-lashing to Muslim and Hindu priests with equal ferocity. Today the state sends an aging artist into exile for alleged blasphemy and hands over the reins of power to communal satraps in economic powerhouses like Gujarat and Maharashtra, not without a purpose.
Legends of Ram — and there were several — preceded the advent of the modern Indian state. However, the new state found the eclectic pantheism they spawned to be a problem for its purposes. It thus gleefully welcomed a high court verdict in which one of the judges had sought to legitimise one of several narratives about Ram. Semitic traditions never allowed rainbow beliefs as religions born in India did. But this may now be changing, and for the worse. Ramayana Ramayana Ramcharitmanas
As far as Lord Ram`s story goes historian Ram Puniyani has discussed several versions of the . Some of these, like Valmiki`s and Tulsidas` , are more popular. A Buddhist Jataka version of Ram Katha shows Dashrath as the ruler not of Ayodhya but of Varanasi. This tale shows Ram to be the follower of Buddha. Ramayana
Jain versions of the show Ram as the propagator of anti-Brahminical Jain values, especially as a follower of non-violence. In both versions Ravana is not projected as a villain but a great soul dedicated to the quest of knowledge. He is a spiritual mystic with majestic command over his passions. He is a sage and a responsible ruler.
Popular and prevalent songs of Telugu Brahmin women keep the women`s concern as the central theme and present alternate perspectives. These songs present Sita as finally victorious over Ram and in these Surpanakha, the sister of Ravana, succeeds in taking revenge on Ram.
Then there is the Korean belief that puts the Ayodhya narrative in a completely different light. The Korean government has been sending delegations to Ayodhya for the last several years after they came to know that their Queen Ho was a native princess of the temple town.
According to the Korean legend, one of their most famous queens, Queen Ho, was a princess of Ayodhya. Around 2,000 years ago, when Buddhism was spreading its wings in India, the princess became a disciple of the religion and started preaching in Ayodhya. The prince of the Karak dynasty of Korea heard about her beauty and came to India to marry her.
A follower of Buddhism, Queen Ho is said to be instrumental in spreading Buddhism in Korea as she took 22 Buddhist monks along with her. As many as 75 per cent of South Koreans are Buddhist and almost all the top office bearers hail from the Karak dynasty into which Queen Ho was married.
Ayodhya itself was known by its Buddhist name Saket. Where is the room in all this for any serious judge to take a stand about who was born where in order to settle a contrived dispute? Indians were worshipping Ram in Ayodhya without any fuss about which square yard exactly he was born in.
To understand this perverse tangle, we must acknowledge that religious harmony is not about peace between different religions, which I think is the easier part. There is a greater threat to society from frictions within notionally similar religious units. Churchill and Hitler were both on the same side of the religious fence and in a way even shared a racist worldview. Godse and Gandhi could have been praying together on the fateful day when one Hindu killed the other.
Mordechai Vanunu blew the whistle on Israel`s nuclear secrets and Chomsky applauded. Both Jews are hated by the Jewish state. Bhutto and Zia committed their biggest blunders by trying to prove their Islamic credentials, often to disinterested Pakistanis.
In fact a little discussed irony about the so-called global war on terror, which President Obama has renamed as something less known, is that its trigger lay in a quarrel between two staunch Muslims of the same sect — the two being the king of Saudi Arabia and Osama bin Laden. To turn the struggle between the Saudi rivals into a Christian-Jew-Hindu alliance against Islam was the work of spin doctors, probably subsidised by the Saudi monarchy and India`s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Therefore, instead of uprooting the political arrangements in Afghanistan and Iraq, had the world intervened to accommodate its former Mujahideen ally, Osama, in the administration of Riyadh — as it is now nudging President Karzai to adjust with the Taliban — it could have saved everyone a catastrophic turbulence. But that would not be expedient for Aramco and similar powerful interest groups.
In India there are two dominant communal forces and both are patronised by the Indian state. The Ayodhya controversy is played out by its pliant media as a contest between Hindus and Muslims over a remote mosque in the backwaters of the country. The fact is that the issue has helped consolidate Hindu and Muslim identities that could perish without such disputes.
It was not a coincidence that the BJP, a religious revivalist party, went into top gear to stall a caste-based revival of Indian polity in 1990. By 1992 its supporters had demolished the Babri mosque. The real reason for the demolition was the Mandal Commission, which sought to virtually restructure an entire community into Ahir, Jat, Gujar, Yadav kind of caste formations that were older than the ancient Indian state.
The move threatened to decimate not just the BJP but also the Congress party, both leaning on upper caste leadership. The Muslim clergy was given legitimacy by Indira Gandhi`s decision to sanction the formation of the Muslim Personal Law Board. But its upper caste Muslim clerics too felt threatened by Mandal politics.
Both needed the Ayodhya dispute to preserve their fictitious identities. The state needs both to shepherd its flock of disparate citizens who more than religion are asking for healthcare, education, jobs and a right to conserve the environment. Ayodhya offers the most regressive sections of Hindus and Muslims a lifeline. It is expedient for the Indian state to tolerate the intolerant.
The writer is Dawn's correspondent in Delhi.
by Jawed Naqvi
THE Ayodhya dispute is hardly a Hindu-Muslim issue and it would be more realistic to see it as a contrived stand-off fanned by a pseudo-secular state to keep its citizens off balance.
If anything, the tussle really is between Hindu-Muslim secularism versus Hindu-Muslim communalism. The Indian state perceives aggressive secularism as a greater challenge to its authority. It needs communalism as an ally.
By contrast, the ancient and mediaeval states in India were ahead of their times. The pre-Mughal state, for example, produced Kabir who could deliver a tongue-lashing to Muslim and Hindu priests with equal ferocity. Today the state sends an aging artist into exile for alleged blasphemy and hands over the reins of power to communal satraps in economic powerhouses like Gujarat and Maharashtra, not without a purpose.
Legends of Ram — and there were several — preceded the advent of the modern Indian state. However, the new state found the eclectic pantheism they spawned to be a problem for its purposes. It thus gleefully welcomed a high court verdict in which one of the judges had sought to legitimise one of several narratives about Ram. Semitic traditions never allowed rainbow beliefs as religions born in India did. But this may now be changing, and for the worse. Ramayana Ramayana Ramcharitmanas
As far as Lord Ram`s story goes historian Ram Puniyani has discussed several versions of the . Some of these, like Valmiki`s and Tulsidas` , are more popular. A Buddhist Jataka version of Ram Katha shows Dashrath as the ruler not of Ayodhya but of Varanasi. This tale shows Ram to be the follower of Buddha. Ramayana
Jain versions of the show Ram as the propagator of anti-Brahminical Jain values, especially as a follower of non-violence. In both versions Ravana is not projected as a villain but a great soul dedicated to the quest of knowledge. He is a spiritual mystic with majestic command over his passions. He is a sage and a responsible ruler.
Popular and prevalent songs of Telugu Brahmin women keep the women`s concern as the central theme and present alternate perspectives. These songs present Sita as finally victorious over Ram and in these Surpanakha, the sister of Ravana, succeeds in taking revenge on Ram.
Then there is the Korean belief that puts the Ayodhya narrative in a completely different light. The Korean government has been sending delegations to Ayodhya for the last several years after they came to know that their Queen Ho was a native princess of the temple town.
According to the Korean legend, one of their most famous queens, Queen Ho, was a princess of Ayodhya. Around 2,000 years ago, when Buddhism was spreading its wings in India, the princess became a disciple of the religion and started preaching in Ayodhya. The prince of the Karak dynasty of Korea heard about her beauty and came to India to marry her.
A follower of Buddhism, Queen Ho is said to be instrumental in spreading Buddhism in Korea as she took 22 Buddhist monks along with her. As many as 75 per cent of South Koreans are Buddhist and almost all the top office bearers hail from the Karak dynasty into which Queen Ho was married.
Ayodhya itself was known by its Buddhist name Saket. Where is the room in all this for any serious judge to take a stand about who was born where in order to settle a contrived dispute? Indians were worshipping Ram in Ayodhya without any fuss about which square yard exactly he was born in.
To understand this perverse tangle, we must acknowledge that religious harmony is not about peace between different religions, which I think is the easier part. There is a greater threat to society from frictions within notionally similar religious units. Churchill and Hitler were both on the same side of the religious fence and in a way even shared a racist worldview. Godse and Gandhi could have been praying together on the fateful day when one Hindu killed the other.
Mordechai Vanunu blew the whistle on Israel`s nuclear secrets and Chomsky applauded. Both Jews are hated by the Jewish state. Bhutto and Zia committed their biggest blunders by trying to prove their Islamic credentials, often to disinterested Pakistanis.
In fact a little discussed irony about the so-called global war on terror, which President Obama has renamed as something less known, is that its trigger lay in a quarrel between two staunch Muslims of the same sect — the two being the king of Saudi Arabia and Osama bin Laden. To turn the struggle between the Saudi rivals into a Christian-Jew-Hindu alliance against Islam was the work of spin doctors, probably subsidised by the Saudi monarchy and India`s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Therefore, instead of uprooting the political arrangements in Afghanistan and Iraq, had the world intervened to accommodate its former Mujahideen ally, Osama, in the administration of Riyadh — as it is now nudging President Karzai to adjust with the Taliban — it could have saved everyone a catastrophic turbulence. But that would not be expedient for Aramco and similar powerful interest groups.
In India there are two dominant communal forces and both are patronised by the Indian state. The Ayodhya controversy is played out by its pliant media as a contest between Hindus and Muslims over a remote mosque in the backwaters of the country. The fact is that the issue has helped consolidate Hindu and Muslim identities that could perish without such disputes.
It was not a coincidence that the BJP, a religious revivalist party, went into top gear to stall a caste-based revival of Indian polity in 1990. By 1992 its supporters had demolished the Babri mosque. The real reason for the demolition was the Mandal Commission, which sought to virtually restructure an entire community into Ahir, Jat, Gujar, Yadav kind of caste formations that were older than the ancient Indian state.
The move threatened to decimate not just the BJP but also the Congress party, both leaning on upper caste leadership. The Muslim clergy was given legitimacy by Indira Gandhi`s decision to sanction the formation of the Muslim Personal Law Board. But its upper caste Muslim clerics too felt threatened by Mandal politics.
Both needed the Ayodhya dispute to preserve their fictitious identities. The state needs both to shepherd its flock of disparate citizens who more than religion are asking for healthcare, education, jobs and a right to conserve the environment. Ayodhya offers the most regressive sections of Hindus and Muslims a lifeline. It is expedient for the Indian state to tolerate the intolerant.
The writer is Dawn's correspondent in Delhi.
Bhagwat Puran of a Different Kind: Conflating Hinduism and Hindutva
by Subhash Gatade
I.
Mr Mohan Bhagwat, the 'young' Supremo of an eighty plus year old exclusively male cultural organisation called Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is in high spirits these days.
It is not very difficult to understand the glee on his face which has to do with the latest developments in the cause celibre of Sangh Parivar. One can even notice that every member of this different kind of 'family' also seem to be upbeat , whose representatives can be traced on neighbourhood playground in the morning doing drills, playing games or listening to 'sermons' of their seniors which they call Baudhik.
The Ayodhya verdict which deliberated on the sixty plus year old legal dispute over the title of a piece of land where a mosque stood for the last five hundred years and which was demolished by hordes of gangs inspired by the ideas which the Sangh Parivar still espouses has in fact come as a blessing in disguise for Mr Bhagwat. While every peace and justice loving person felt betrayed with the judgement which neither mentioned the criminal act of demolition of the Mosque, or the blows it gave to the Indian Constitution and the crude manner in which it rediscoverd virtues of faith, it has emboldened the Parivar which had never felt comfortable with the rule of law enshrined in the constitution. Any cursory glance at the making of the constitution provides details of the manner in which the then leaders of Project Hindutva opposed the whole process and wanted that newly independent nation adopt Manusmriti - the code of conduct of the Hindus scripted by Manu -in its place. From time to time their fascination for Manu's edicts , which supports hierarchial division of society based on caste and gender which denies basic human rights to wider populace, has been visible in very many ways. It was not for nothing that when BJP, one of the affiliated organisation of RSS came to power at the centre twelve years ago, it did not waste much time in appointing a commission to review the constitution. Although they could not tinker with it as they lacked necessary majority but still they made their intentions clear.
As any neutral observer would be able to tell that apart from the 'vindication' of their ideas the verdict has solved many of the immediate problems facing the Parivar. Gone is the talk of disarray in the fraternity with every other affiliated organisation trying to put blame on the other for the dip in their collective fortunes, gone also is the defensive posture which the RSS had to adopt when recently many of its 'wholetimers' (called Pracharaks in their lexicon) were found to be involved in terrorist acts, with sleuths of different investigating agencies raiding their houses and parading these Pracharak terrorists hooded like common criminals. In fact the situation seemed so serious that in June the top leadership of RSS assembled for a five day emergency meeting in Jodhpur to deliberate on the whole situation. Anyone can guess that the overall mood within the Parivar was quite gloomy. The verdict has altered the scene completely. Sensing this opportunity when secular-democratic camp has gone on defensive and is contemplating next line of action, like a true general Mr Bhagwat has decided to strike back. Basing himself on the ageold maxim 'Offence is the Biggest Defence' he seems to have decided to take the plunge to take the battle to the camp of 'pseudoseculars' themselves.
One is reminded of the manner in which Balasaheb Deoras, the third Supremo of RSS went round the country claiming victory (Jitam Maya - We have won) after the emergency was over (1977) and Janata Party had come to power. The high moral posture adopted by the likes of Deoras about the 'valiant struggle by the RSS against Emergency' did not last long when it was disclosed that the same Deoras had written long letters to Indira Gandhi and tried to persuade Vinoba Bhave to mediate so that ban on Sangh is lifted. The Sangh leadership had even directed thousands of its volunteers/activists lodged in different jails to give an undertaking to the jail authorities assuring them 'good behaviour' if they are released from jail. (For details of the correspondence readers may refer to 'RSS by D.R. Goyal, Rajkamal, Delhi)
II.
Close watchers of RSS know the long tradition within the organisation wherein the Supremo gives a speech on its foundation day (i.e. Dusshera) which is supposed to be a guideline to all the affiliated organisations - ranging from the parliamentary to the extraparliamentary ones . Newspapers tell us that during his speech on the Reshim bagh ground in Nagpur Mr Bhagwat basically raised three points in his speech: One, he welcomed the Ayodhya verdict and hoped that the day is not far off when they would build a 'Grand Ram Temple' at Ayodhya ; two, he talked of deteriorating situation in Kashmir and emphasised that coming months it would on the focus of the Parivar ; thirdly, he said that Hindus and terrorism are oxymorons and whosoever is calling Hindus terrorists is stigmatising the whole community.
Nobody can deny that Ayodhya and Kashmir are important issues and every social-political formation will have to devise its own strategy for intervention. And looking at the difference in world view, any truly democratic and secular intervention would be qualitatively different from what Mr Bhagwat's boys intend to do as part of their 'nationalist' duties. Not some time ago RSS had devised a unique plan to tackle the Kashmir situation by suggesting to trifurcate it on religious lines - Leh for Buddhists, Jammu for Hindus and Kashmir for Muslims. It is a different matter that this divisive plan did not get any support from the rest of the polity despite the Saffron dispensation holding the reins of power at the centre.
It is not much difficult to see that the highlight of the speech is the new wisdom which has dawned on Mr Bhagwat. that Hindus and terrorism are oxymorons. Definitely it would soothe the egos of many among the community who have no qualms in rationalising incidents like Gujarat genocide or Kandhamal riots or attacks on Churches or forcible separation of two adults belonging to different religious communities supposedly to defend community honour.
Coming to this new found thesis which emphasises incompatibility of Hindus with terrorism one wishes to ask Mr Bhagwat whether he or his organisation has made any new discoveries as far as the religious affiliations of the first terrorist of independent India called Nathuram Godse is concerned, whose band of terrorists included Madanlal Pahwa, Karkare, Parchure and several others. The same Nathuram who cut his political teeth in the RSS shakhas only and later focussed on his work on the Hindu Mahasabha front. Interestingly during his trial Nathuram formally said that he had left RSS in 1933, but in an interview to the magazine 'Frontline' in late 90 s his younger brother Gopal Godse, who was also part of the conspiracy specifically said that none of the brothers ever left RSS. When the reporter asked him pointedly why Nathuram 'lied' about his dissociation, pat came the reply : To save the organisation from harassment.
It has been on record that there were five attempts on Mahatma Gandhi's life during his life time and the last one proved fatal. It is revealing to know that Hindu fanatics were involved in all these attempts who were eager to eliminate the Mahatma - for many 'the biggest Hindu of 20 th century'.
Of course, it is possible that for many among the Hindu right who yearn to build a Hindu Rashtra of their dreams the death of the Mahatma was not a terrorist act rather it was a 'patriotic act'. It is an open secret that every year many from the hindu right do celebrate the day Nathuram was hanged as 'Martyrs day'? And it is not a Pune specific phenomenon where Nathuram lived. A narco analysis of those involved in the Nanded bomb explosion (April 2006) which saw the deaths of Himanshu Panse and Rajeev Rajkondwar - both activists of RSS/Bajrang Dal - tells us how these 'patriots of a different kind' use to organise programmes on this day.
And what about Savarkar the pioneer of the idea of Hindutva who escaped conviction in the case of Mahatma's assasination only on technical grounds. It is a different matter that the Kapoor commission which was formed in the sixties to look into the conspiracy angle of Mahatma Gandhi's assasination - where many fresh witnesses to the case appeared - rightly concluded that Savarkar was very much a part of that conspiracy. And why did these fanatics killed him, only because Gandhi was trying to practice Hinduism in his own way. And so when independence came, this frail old man - who was called 'One Man Boundary Force' by the then Governor General for singlehandedly bringing peace to strifetorn Calcutta by resorting to fast unto death - did not join the celebrations but rather was touring Noakhali to console, help people affected by riots.
While the role played by Hindu fanatics in Mahatma's assasination is widely known, not much has been written on the bomb blast in Shikarpur area of Karachi at the time of independence which witnessed deaths of two Sangh Pracharaks namely Vasudev and Prabhu Badlani. Their third accomplice was apprehended by the Pakistani police and had to languish in their jail for quite some time. And how come there was a bomb blast in the residential area in a house owned by one Raibahadur Tolaram which was rented by the RSS people supposedly to run tuitions for kids ? (RSS in Sindh, Economic and Political Weekly, 8 July 2006) The plan hatched by a 21 member team of RSS workers was to organise bomb blasts in different places in Karachi and kill as many people as possible. The house served the purpose of storing bombs. Police records reveal that the explosion was so severe that the whole house came literally crumbling down. Anderson and Damle who have penned down a monograph on the Sangh Journey 'Brotherhood in Saffron' also provide details of the incident. Perhaps Mr Bhagwat can get few more details of the case from Lal Krishna Advani, who was looking after the work of Sangh in the area. It need to be investigated further whether Mr Advani was in the know of things or not ?
To be very frank, one can quote n number of other examples which can help puncture Mr Bhagwat's argument that 'Hindus cannot be terrorists'. The exposure in the Malegaon bomb blast case (Sept 2008) which brought to the fore an elaborate national network of terrorists involving military officers like Lt Col Purohit, religious people like Swami Dayanand Pandey or for that matter Sadhvi Pragya or the likes of Dr R.P Singh, Himani Savarker or RSS activists like Ramji Kalasangra, Aseemanand or Sunil Joshi ( killed by his own people) or the actions by Sanatan Sanstha and Hindu Janjagruti Samity like putting explosives and bombs in crowded places just goes to show that contrary to popular perceptions Hindus can be found to be equally involved in such anti-human actions.
One need not go into details of every incident but the point worth underlining is that terrorism cannot be the sole preserve of a this or that community. One can find terrorists in every community and also sane elements in every community. Just as there are good people or bad people in every community, there are fanatics or sane elements in every community.
Singling out a particular community for the ills of society or for negative traits reflects what is popularly known as a communal understanding of society. Today's multicultural, multiethnic, multilingual and multireligious world where the world seems to becoming a global village such an outlook definitely sound at variance with the growing intermingling of people, communities, cultures.
Nobody can deny that post 9/11 developments have contributed a lot to further strengthen a warped understanding of history. The manner in which US declared 'War Against Terror' as a new strategem to further its influence and gain legitimacy for its criminal actions, effectively got reduced to stigmatising and targetting people, formations or countries owning allegiance to Islam. It was a sheer coincidence that BJP an affiliated organisation of RSS was in power at the centre when US rulers unleashed the 'war against terror'. Looking back one can say that there was deep resonance between what Bush regime wanted and what was on offer for them here.
III.
The 'thesis of oxymoron' has shades of the concept of Supreme Hindu Race emanating from it. In fact it can also be interpreted as an indirect admission that whereas Hindus and terrorism are incompatible with each other terrorism easily gels with all non-Hindu communities. Definitely it is a very dangerous statement not only because it tries to denigrate every other community, it tries to pass on blame to others. It can thus be seen as a poor attempt to deflect attention from the n number of crimes committed by Hindu fanatics.
To avoid confusion of any sort when we are discussing crimes of Hindu fanatics then it should in no way construed as one is soft towards the crimes of Islamic fanatics or Christian fanatics or similar faith based fanaticisms. Fanaticism of every kind needs to be condemned in every possible manner. In fact, history is witness to the fact that religion based fanaticism has killed more innocent people than any other social catastrophe.
Surprisingly Mr Bhagwat's speech also conveys the deliberate conflation of two distinct terms : Hinduism and Hindutva. According to him all those people who talk of Hindu terrorism are trying to denigrate the whole community. It cannot be denied that few people did describe the role of Hindu fanatics in terrorist operation as 'Hindu terrorism'. But a large majority of the critics avoided describing it in this fashion and instead talked of Hindutva terrorism.which seems to be a more accurate description of the phenomenon.
All those people who are not aware of the debates in the movement would feel that what is the big difference between Hindu terrorism and Hindutva terrorism. Perhaps it would be better to refer to a book by Savarkar, who is considered to be a pioneer of the Hindu Right or 'Hindu nationalist movement'. This monograph which is named 'Hindutva' has reached classic status and lays down the guiding principles of the idea.
What does the monograph say ? Its key contribution is the way in which it differentiates between Hinduism and Hindutva :
It is imperative that before getting confused with what Mr Bhagwat wants to convey , it would be definitely helpful if one refers to this classic monograph and understand for herself / himself that when we say Hindutva terror then it is does not at all mean all those people who have deep faith in principles of Hinduism. Just as Islam and Political Islam cannot be considered equivalent, Hinduism and Hindutva cannot be measured on the same scale.
Looking at the emphasis on action as opposed to contemplation (which involves reading also) in the whole Hinduva movement, it can easily be presumed that a large majority of those people who today owe their allegiance to the ideas of Savarkar, Hedgewar and Golwalkar and who want India to usher into Hindu Rashtra must not have bothered to even read Savarkar's monograph. And this cannot be said to be an exaggeration There have been instances when RSS-BJP people had to withdraw books which were published under their own aegis or withdraw articles from textbooks which they themselves had ratified.
A newsitem is worth taking note of :
But perhaps the Orissa experience truly shows the mental abilities of the plethora of activists of the Hindutva brigade who needed around five years to notice 'discrepancy' in a textbook when the person in charge of education department was a hardcore RSS pracharak called Samir Dey himself. It was the period when BJP was sharing power with Biju Janata Dal.
In its report on its front page captioned 'In NDA Orissa, a textbook equates BJP with Lashkar' (Indian Express, Delhi, 2 nd February 2007) the paper gave details about the manner in which a textbook on 'Indian Polity' for second-year degree students in Orissa clubbed Lashkar-e-Toiba with BJP. According to the report
It is worth noting that the said textbook - which was written by one Amarendra Mohanty and Shyama Charan Mohanty, teachers of political science was taught since 2003. The matter could come to light only after a BJP worker in Salepur, about 60 KM from the state capital, noticed it and lodged a FIR. And as expected to remove the egg on its face members of the Hindutva brigade did lot of things which can be bracketed as 'taking law into their hands.'
Mr Bhagwat who is in high spirits these days, would do his organisation a great favour if he could inculcate some reading habits in his people who believe more in action.
I.
Mr Mohan Bhagwat, the 'young' Supremo of an eighty plus year old exclusively male cultural organisation called Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is in high spirits these days.
It is not very difficult to understand the glee on his face which has to do with the latest developments in the cause celibre of Sangh Parivar. One can even notice that every member of this different kind of 'family' also seem to be upbeat , whose representatives can be traced on neighbourhood playground in the morning doing drills, playing games or listening to 'sermons' of their seniors which they call Baudhik.
The Ayodhya verdict which deliberated on the sixty plus year old legal dispute over the title of a piece of land where a mosque stood for the last five hundred years and which was demolished by hordes of gangs inspired by the ideas which the Sangh Parivar still espouses has in fact come as a blessing in disguise for Mr Bhagwat. While every peace and justice loving person felt betrayed with the judgement which neither mentioned the criminal act of demolition of the Mosque, or the blows it gave to the Indian Constitution and the crude manner in which it rediscoverd virtues of faith, it has emboldened the Parivar which had never felt comfortable with the rule of law enshrined in the constitution. Any cursory glance at the making of the constitution provides details of the manner in which the then leaders of Project Hindutva opposed the whole process and wanted that newly independent nation adopt Manusmriti - the code of conduct of the Hindus scripted by Manu -in its place. From time to time their fascination for Manu's edicts , which supports hierarchial division of society based on caste and gender which denies basic human rights to wider populace, has been visible in very many ways. It was not for nothing that when BJP, one of the affiliated organisation of RSS came to power at the centre twelve years ago, it did not waste much time in appointing a commission to review the constitution. Although they could not tinker with it as they lacked necessary majority but still they made their intentions clear.
As any neutral observer would be able to tell that apart from the 'vindication' of their ideas the verdict has solved many of the immediate problems facing the Parivar. Gone is the talk of disarray in the fraternity with every other affiliated organisation trying to put blame on the other for the dip in their collective fortunes, gone also is the defensive posture which the RSS had to adopt when recently many of its 'wholetimers' (called Pracharaks in their lexicon) were found to be involved in terrorist acts, with sleuths of different investigating agencies raiding their houses and parading these Pracharak terrorists hooded like common criminals. In fact the situation seemed so serious that in June the top leadership of RSS assembled for a five day emergency meeting in Jodhpur to deliberate on the whole situation. Anyone can guess that the overall mood within the Parivar was quite gloomy. The verdict has altered the scene completely. Sensing this opportunity when secular-democratic camp has gone on defensive and is contemplating next line of action, like a true general Mr Bhagwat has decided to strike back. Basing himself on the ageold maxim 'Offence is the Biggest Defence' he seems to have decided to take the plunge to take the battle to the camp of 'pseudoseculars' themselves.
One is reminded of the manner in which Balasaheb Deoras, the third Supremo of RSS went round the country claiming victory (Jitam Maya - We have won) after the emergency was over (1977) and Janata Party had come to power. The high moral posture adopted by the likes of Deoras about the 'valiant struggle by the RSS against Emergency' did not last long when it was disclosed that the same Deoras had written long letters to Indira Gandhi and tried to persuade Vinoba Bhave to mediate so that ban on Sangh is lifted. The Sangh leadership had even directed thousands of its volunteers/activists lodged in different jails to give an undertaking to the jail authorities assuring them 'good behaviour' if they are released from jail. (For details of the correspondence readers may refer to 'RSS by D.R. Goyal, Rajkamal, Delhi)
II.
Terrorism, Hindus are oxymoron: Mohan Bhagwat
17 October 2010, press trust of india
Nagpur, 17 OCT: Taking strong exception to the use of the term 'saffron or Hindu terror', RSS chief Mr Mohan Bhagwat today said terrorism and Hindus are “oxymoron” and can never be linked to each other.
“There is only one country left in the world on which you can’t put the blame of terrorism and that country is India. Terrorism and Hindus, terrorism and saffron, and terrorism and the Sangh are oxymoron and can never be related to each other.
“This (effort to connect the two) was an attempt to weaken the strength of Hindus in India and, at the same time, to appease Muslims, he said ..addressing the annual Dussehra rally at Reshim Bagh ground here. ...“These are sinister conspiracies to mislead the Hindus through a campaign of lies and defame Hindu saints and noble citizens,”
Close watchers of RSS know the long tradition within the organisation wherein the Supremo gives a speech on its foundation day (i.e. Dusshera) which is supposed to be a guideline to all the affiliated organisations - ranging from the parliamentary to the extraparliamentary ones . Newspapers tell us that during his speech on the Reshim bagh ground in Nagpur Mr Bhagwat basically raised three points in his speech: One, he welcomed the Ayodhya verdict and hoped that the day is not far off when they would build a 'Grand Ram Temple' at Ayodhya ; two, he talked of deteriorating situation in Kashmir and emphasised that coming months it would on the focus of the Parivar ; thirdly, he said that Hindus and terrorism are oxymorons and whosoever is calling Hindus terrorists is stigmatising the whole community.
Nobody can deny that Ayodhya and Kashmir are important issues and every social-political formation will have to devise its own strategy for intervention. And looking at the difference in world view, any truly democratic and secular intervention would be qualitatively different from what Mr Bhagwat's boys intend to do as part of their 'nationalist' duties. Not some time ago RSS had devised a unique plan to tackle the Kashmir situation by suggesting to trifurcate it on religious lines - Leh for Buddhists, Jammu for Hindus and Kashmir for Muslims. It is a different matter that this divisive plan did not get any support from the rest of the polity despite the Saffron dispensation holding the reins of power at the centre.
It is not much difficult to see that the highlight of the speech is the new wisdom which has dawned on Mr Bhagwat. that Hindus and terrorism are oxymorons. Definitely it would soothe the egos of many among the community who have no qualms in rationalising incidents like Gujarat genocide or Kandhamal riots or attacks on Churches or forcible separation of two adults belonging to different religious communities supposedly to defend community honour.
Coming to this new found thesis which emphasises incompatibility of Hindus with terrorism one wishes to ask Mr Bhagwat whether he or his organisation has made any new discoveries as far as the religious affiliations of the first terrorist of independent India called Nathuram Godse is concerned, whose band of terrorists included Madanlal Pahwa, Karkare, Parchure and several others. The same Nathuram who cut his political teeth in the RSS shakhas only and later focussed on his work on the Hindu Mahasabha front. Interestingly during his trial Nathuram formally said that he had left RSS in 1933, but in an interview to the magazine 'Frontline' in late 90 s his younger brother Gopal Godse, who was also part of the conspiracy specifically said that none of the brothers ever left RSS. When the reporter asked him pointedly why Nathuram 'lied' about his dissociation, pat came the reply : To save the organisation from harassment.
It has been on record that there were five attempts on Mahatma Gandhi's life during his life time and the last one proved fatal. It is revealing to know that Hindu fanatics were involved in all these attempts who were eager to eliminate the Mahatma - for many 'the biggest Hindu of 20 th century'.
Of course, it is possible that for many among the Hindu right who yearn to build a Hindu Rashtra of their dreams the death of the Mahatma was not a terrorist act rather it was a 'patriotic act'. It is an open secret that every year many from the hindu right do celebrate the day Nathuram was hanged as 'Martyrs day'? And it is not a Pune specific phenomenon where Nathuram lived. A narco analysis of those involved in the Nanded bomb explosion (April 2006) which saw the deaths of Himanshu Panse and Rajeev Rajkondwar - both activists of RSS/Bajrang Dal - tells us how these 'patriots of a different kind' use to organise programmes on this day.
And what about Savarkar the pioneer of the idea of Hindutva who escaped conviction in the case of Mahatma's assasination only on technical grounds. It is a different matter that the Kapoor commission which was formed in the sixties to look into the conspiracy angle of Mahatma Gandhi's assasination - where many fresh witnesses to the case appeared - rightly concluded that Savarkar was very much a part of that conspiracy. And why did these fanatics killed him, only because Gandhi was trying to practice Hinduism in his own way. And so when independence came, this frail old man - who was called 'One Man Boundary Force' by the then Governor General for singlehandedly bringing peace to strifetorn Calcutta by resorting to fast unto death - did not join the celebrations but rather was touring Noakhali to console, help people affected by riots.
While the role played by Hindu fanatics in Mahatma's assasination is widely known, not much has been written on the bomb blast in Shikarpur area of Karachi at the time of independence which witnessed deaths of two Sangh Pracharaks namely Vasudev and Prabhu Badlani. Their third accomplice was apprehended by the Pakistani police and had to languish in their jail for quite some time. And how come there was a bomb blast in the residential area in a house owned by one Raibahadur Tolaram which was rented by the RSS people supposedly to run tuitions for kids ? (RSS in Sindh, Economic and Political Weekly, 8 July 2006) The plan hatched by a 21 member team of RSS workers was to organise bomb blasts in different places in Karachi and kill as many people as possible. The house served the purpose of storing bombs. Police records reveal that the explosion was so severe that the whole house came literally crumbling down. Anderson and Damle who have penned down a monograph on the Sangh Journey 'Brotherhood in Saffron' also provide details of the incident. Perhaps Mr Bhagwat can get few more details of the case from Lal Krishna Advani, who was looking after the work of Sangh in the area. It need to be investigated further whether Mr Advani was in the know of things or not ?
To be very frank, one can quote n number of other examples which can help puncture Mr Bhagwat's argument that 'Hindus cannot be terrorists'. The exposure in the Malegaon bomb blast case (Sept 2008) which brought to the fore an elaborate national network of terrorists involving military officers like Lt Col Purohit, religious people like Swami Dayanand Pandey or for that matter Sadhvi Pragya or the likes of Dr R.P Singh, Himani Savarker or RSS activists like Ramji Kalasangra, Aseemanand or Sunil Joshi ( killed by his own people) or the actions by Sanatan Sanstha and Hindu Janjagruti Samity like putting explosives and bombs in crowded places just goes to show that contrary to popular perceptions Hindus can be found to be equally involved in such anti-human actions.
One need not go into details of every incident but the point worth underlining is that terrorism cannot be the sole preserve of a this or that community. One can find terrorists in every community and also sane elements in every community. Just as there are good people or bad people in every community, there are fanatics or sane elements in every community.
Singling out a particular community for the ills of society or for negative traits reflects what is popularly known as a communal understanding of society. Today's multicultural, multiethnic, multilingual and multireligious world where the world seems to becoming a global village such an outlook definitely sound at variance with the growing intermingling of people, communities, cultures.
Nobody can deny that post 9/11 developments have contributed a lot to further strengthen a warped understanding of history. The manner in which US declared 'War Against Terror' as a new strategem to further its influence and gain legitimacy for its criminal actions, effectively got reduced to stigmatising and targetting people, formations or countries owning allegiance to Islam. It was a sheer coincidence that BJP an affiliated organisation of RSS was in power at the centre when US rulers unleashed the 'war against terror'. Looking back one can say that there was deep resonance between what Bush regime wanted and what was on offer for them here.
III.
The 'thesis of oxymoron' has shades of the concept of Supreme Hindu Race emanating from it. In fact it can also be interpreted as an indirect admission that whereas Hindus and terrorism are incompatible with each other terrorism easily gels with all non-Hindu communities. Definitely it is a very dangerous statement not only because it tries to denigrate every other community, it tries to pass on blame to others. It can thus be seen as a poor attempt to deflect attention from the n number of crimes committed by Hindu fanatics.
To avoid confusion of any sort when we are discussing crimes of Hindu fanatics then it should in no way construed as one is soft towards the crimes of Islamic fanatics or Christian fanatics or similar faith based fanaticisms. Fanaticism of every kind needs to be condemned in every possible manner. In fact, history is witness to the fact that religion based fanaticism has killed more innocent people than any other social catastrophe.
Surprisingly Mr Bhagwat's speech also conveys the deliberate conflation of two distinct terms : Hinduism and Hindutva. According to him all those people who talk of Hindu terrorism are trying to denigrate the whole community. It cannot be denied that few people did describe the role of Hindu fanatics in terrorist operation as 'Hindu terrorism'. But a large majority of the critics avoided describing it in this fashion and instead talked of Hindutva terrorism.which seems to be a more accurate description of the phenomenon.
All those people who are not aware of the debates in the movement would feel that what is the big difference between Hindu terrorism and Hindutva terrorism. Perhaps it would be better to refer to a book by Savarkar, who is considered to be a pioneer of the Hindu Right or 'Hindu nationalist movement'. This monograph which is named 'Hindutva' has reached classic status and lays down the guiding principles of the idea.
What does the monograph say ? Its key contribution is the way in which it differentiates between Hinduism and Hindutva :
Hinduism is only a derivative, a fraction, a part of Hindutva. Unless it is made clear what is meant by the latter, the first remains unintelligible and vague.Failure to distinguish between these two terms has given rise to much misunderstanding and mutual suspicion between some of those sister communities that have inherited this inestimable and common treasure of Hindu civilisation.[..] Here it is enough to point out that Hindutva is not identical with what is vaguely indicated by the term Hinduism. By an 'ism' it is generally meant a theory or a code more or less based on spiritual or religious dogma or system. But when we attempt to investigate into the essential significance of Hindutva, we do not primarily and certainly not mainly concern ourselves with any particular theocratic or religious dogma or creed. Had not linguistic usage stood in our way, then 'Hinduness' would have certainly been a better word than Hinduism as a near parallel to Hindutva. Hindutva embraces all the departments of thought and activity of the whole being our our Hindu race[..] It is imperative to point out that we are by no means attempting a definition or even a description of the more limited, less satisfactory and essentially sectarian term Hinduism.
(V. D. Savarkar, Hindutva (Delhi : Bharti Sahitya Sadan, 1989 ; sixth edition}, 3-4)
It is imperative that before getting confused with what Mr Bhagwat wants to convey , it would be definitely helpful if one refers to this classic monograph and understand for herself / himself that when we say Hindutva terror then it is does not at all mean all those people who have deep faith in principles of Hinduism. Just as Islam and Political Islam cannot be considered equivalent, Hinduism and Hindutva cannot be measured on the same scale.
Looking at the emphasis on action as opposed to contemplation (which involves reading also) in the whole Hinduva movement, it can easily be presumed that a large majority of those people who today owe their allegiance to the ideas of Savarkar, Hedgewar and Golwalkar and who want India to usher into Hindu Rashtra must not have bothered to even read Savarkar's monograph. And this cannot be said to be an exaggeration There have been instances when RSS-BJP people had to withdraw books which were published under their own aegis or withdraw articles from textbooks which they themselves had ratified.
A newsitem is worth taking note of :
Mystery surrounds the sudden withdrawal of one of the 16 volumes of an official account of the Jana Sangh-BJP history, four months after it was released as part of the silver jubilee celebrations in Mumbai. The series, written by historian Makhan Lal under the supervision of senior BJP leader J P Mathur, carry a foreword by Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha L K Advani. (Indian Express, 9 th May 2006)
But perhaps the Orissa experience truly shows the mental abilities of the plethora of activists of the Hindutva brigade who needed around five years to notice 'discrepancy' in a textbook when the person in charge of education department was a hardcore RSS pracharak called Samir Dey himself. It was the period when BJP was sharing power with Biju Janata Dal.
In its report on its front page captioned 'In NDA Orissa, a textbook equates BJP with Lashkar' (Indian Express, Delhi, 2 nd February 2007) the paper gave details about the manner in which a textbook on 'Indian Polity' for second-year degree students in Orissa clubbed Lashkar-e-Toiba with BJP. According to the report
The chapter on the 'Existence of Terrorist Organisation' says : "Terrorist organisations create tension in the country. Communal parties like the BJP, RSS, Bajrang Dal, Hurriyat Conference and Lashkar-e-Toiba are responsible for fomenting violence..leading to the killing of hundreds in the country and especially Kashmir."
It is worth noting that the said textbook - which was written by one Amarendra Mohanty and Shyama Charan Mohanty, teachers of political science was taught since 2003. The matter could come to light only after a BJP worker in Salepur, about 60 KM from the state capital, noticed it and lodged a FIR. And as expected to remove the egg on its face members of the Hindutva brigade did lot of things which can be bracketed as 'taking law into their hands.'
Mr Bhagwat who is in high spirits these days, would do his organisation a great favour if he could inculcate some reading habits in his people who believe more in action.
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