Herald, Panjim, 22 June 2008
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Four members of the Sanatan Sanstha have been arrested in Mumbai for setting off bomb blasts in Thane and Navi Mumbai. But the organisation says it is not involved. The State Government needs to look closely into the workings of this outfit, especially since it is headquartered in Goa, says Vidyadhar Gadgil.
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The Hindu Janajagruti Samiti (HJS) and the Sanatan Sanstha (SS) have been quick to deny any responsibility for the activities of the four Sanatan Sanstha full-time activists who were recently arrested in Panvel by the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) for setting off bomb blasts during the screening of a play ‘Amhi Pachpute’ in Thane on 4 June 2008. As news of the arrests spread, the concerned organisations went into damage-control mode, protesting their innocence in the blasts, and condemning the incidents. They have also turned around and accused the government of persecuting them, saying that the enquires by the ATS amount to ‘exploitation of innocent and nurturing of offenders’.
As the matter is investigated further, more and more skeletons have begun to tumble out of the closet. Police say the arrested activists were also involved in earlier bomb blasts, during the screening of ‘Jodha Akbar’ and allegedly planted a bomb outside a mosque in Pen that failed to explode. These events confirm that extremist adherents of Hindutva have now begun adopting terrorist tactics, something that has been clear since the Nanded blasts in April 2006 in which two Bajrang Dal militants were killed due to an accidental explosion when they were allegedly manufacturing bombs at the home of a prominent RSS activist.
How much credence is one to give to the denials of the HJS and SS regarding their involvement in these attacks? The police have stated that at least one of the bombs was manufactured on the premises of the Sanatan Sanstha ‘ashram’ at Panvel. The arrested activists are committed ‘sevaks’ of these organisations. Even if the HJS and SS are granted the benefit of doubt with regards to the actual preparation and execution of the blasts -- and we assume that the activists planned these terrorist attacks on their own initiative -- we need to look carefully into what motivated them.
The accused are reported to have told the police that they have no regrets about their actions, and are in fact ‘proud of what they did to deter those who were trying to show our gods and goddesses in poor light’. In other words they interpret their actions as defending their religion.
...best form of defence?
Defence of Hinduism is one of the biggest themes in the literature and meetings of the HJS and the SS. In the massive 44-volume compilation titled ‘Science of Spirituality’, published by the Sanatan Bharatiya Sanskruti Sanstha and ‘compiled’ by Dr. Jayant Athavale, founder of the Sanatan Sanstha, Hinduism is consistently portrayed as being under threat from the forces of Christianity and Islam, aided and abetted by the ‘so-called secularists’, who are seen as traitors to Hinduism. The volumes have titles like ‘Protecting Seekers and Destroying Evildoers’ and ‘Reinstatement of the Divine Kingdom’. Defending the faith against the various purported threats by allegedly anti-Hindu forces is stated to be the primary duty of all true believers.
The nature of this ‘defence’ is spelt out in great detail. It involves identifying those who work against ‘dharm’, making lists of such people, and then moving to ‘eliminate’ them. It is claimed that all this is part of ‘spiritual practice’.
The books even provide a timetable of this spiritual practice. The period from 1997-99 was meant for ‘impressing upon the mind that destruction of evildoers is part of the spiritual practice’.
From 2000-2006 seekers are enjoined to engage in ‘actual destruction of evildoers at physical, psychological and spiritual levels’.
After that comes the preparation for the ‘kingdom of the Absolute Truth’ and then the ‘commencement of the kingdom of Absolute Truth’.
There is also another series of publications which deals with ‘self-defence’. These manuals contain detailed descriptions of various ‘self-defence’ techniques including training in firing air rifles.
The ‘Science of Spirituality’ series also contains various volumes which can be broadly termed as ‘religious’. They focus largely on ritual aspects of religion and are full of detailed instructions about ‘correct’ practice of these rituals.
Believers are exhorted to guide offenders away from the path of incorrect practice. The volumes in the series support the regressive and obscurantist practices of the past, including the caste system, talking repeatedly about the proper role of various castes in society.
One of the important themes which the series takes up is the role of the disciple and of the Guru. The Guru is projected as an essential aid in following the path to God, and is set up as infallible. The objective, quite clearly, is to create a cult of unquestioning obedience to the dictates of the Guru.
Insults: Give, but no take?
The Sanatan Sanstha also publishes a newspaper called Sanatan Prabhat (as ‘part of the spiritual practice of seekers of the Sanatan Sanstha’), which is widely circulated in its areas of influence, mainly coastal Maharashtra and Goa. The organisation has claimed in the past, though, that it does not publish this paper (which is owned by a trust) but is merely associated with it.
For an organisation which is so ultra-sensitive about the slightest imagined insult to Hinduism -- imagined or real -- the literature of the Sanatan Sanstha is rife with attacks on other religions. Priests are depicted with horns, indicating that they are devils. There are frequent references to the Bible, alleging that it promotes incest and other immoral practices. In September 2004, ‘Sanatan Prabhat’ carried a statement saying that the body of St. Francis Xavier should be destroyed. It has also carried other scurrilous articles about Goa’s patron saint. In November 2005, ‘Sanatan Prabhat’ published an article, ‘Mohd. Paigambar: An incarnation of Tripurasur [an ‘asur’ or demon]’, which led to rioting in Miraj town of Maharashtra, and the imprisonment of the editor of ‘Sanatan Prabhat’.
After having created an ideological framework which creates a fundamentalist mindset and makes it the ‘duty’ of the true seeker to defend the faith against all those who are projected as attacking it, it is disingenuous of the HJS and the SS to disclaim responsibility for the acts engaged in by their members. Ex-members of these organisations talk about the cult-like atmosphere that is created, with unquestioning obedience being stressed. Members are then brainwashed into believing that Hinduism is under siege. Against this background, and with all the talk about ‘defence’ and ‘elimination of evildoers’, it is hardly surprising that adherents begin to explore ways of taking direct action to defend the faith. In this regard, the philosophy of the HJS and the SS is not all that different from the philosophy of terrorists, whom they claim to oppose.
In the recent past, the SS and the HJS have increased the tempo of their activities in Goa. ‘Sanatan Prabhat’ has been circulated in Goa for some years now. The HJS has been conducting a series of ‘Dharma Jagruti Sabhas’. The rhetoric in these meetings is provocative; speakers cite supposed ‘attacks’ on Hinduism by the minority communities and assert that they will not go unpunished. In one meeting in Margao, an ‘open challenge’ was thrown to the minority community. In this way, the general atmosphere becomes communalised and the audience becomes predisposed to violence.
The HJS had also organised shows of an exhibition on terrorism by Frenchman Francois Gautier. This exhibition decontextualises the terrorism in Kashmir and, worse, adds its own inflammatory captions to the exhibition, telling the viewers that if the scenes of Hindus killed by terrorists ‘do not make their blood boil, they are not true Hindus’. The HJS also circulates inflammatory CDs, which were objected to by various organisations when the National Commission for Minorities visited Goa.
The rabble-rousing by the HJS and the SS has already left a trail of violence in its wake. There were bomb blasts and a stabbing in Ratnagiri at the residence of a family which had converted to Christianity. We have already mentioned the rioting in Miraj due to an article on the prophet of Islam in ‘Sanatan Prabhat’. The Karnataka police have also been investigating into the recruitment by the HJS for an ‘army’ called the ‘Dharma Shakti Sena’. And now activists of these organisations have been arrested for engaging in terrorist activity....
We are fortunate that despite its activities, there has been no overt violence in Goa as a result of the activities of these organisations.
But the authorities need to investigate the activities of these bodies thoroughly and impose curbs on their defamation of other religions and prevent them from rabble-rousing in the name of ‘defence of Hinduism’. The ground is being prepared for violence, and in the absence of firm action, it will not be long before we see violent incidents in Goa as well.
Can one realistically hope that the administration will act firmly and take action in the matter? The extremist right-wing votaries of Hindutva have developed a feeling of impunity, and of being above the law, due to the less than even-handed approach of governments in India when it comes to dealing with Muslim and Hindu extremism.
A case in point is the Bombay bomb blasts and the Shrikrishna Commission Report. While there have been many convictions in the Bombay blasts, no serious action has been taken on the Shrikrishna Commission Report. The feeling of impunity this results in can be seen from the recent editorial in ‘Saamna’, the Shiv Sena mouthpiece, which says that it is proud that Hindus are taking to terrorism, and calls for a ‘Hindu bomb’ to counter the ‘Muslim bomb’.
Unless the authorities act firmly and decisively, we are in for a bleak future indeed, where the two varieties of extremism will feed into each other, with innocent citizens of all religions trapped in the middle.
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