India Today
Courtesy: Mail Today
Rift between BJP moderates and hardliners widens over saffron terror
Poornima Joshi | New Delhi, January 18, 2011 | Updated 09:15 IST
The battle between moderates and hardliners has resumed in the BJP. The trigger to the battle is the RSS pushing the party to start a campaign against the Congress brass, especially Sonia and Rahul Gandhi and party general secretary Digvijaya Singh.
The Sangh believes the three are the chief instigators for unraveling the Hindutva terror plot. The RSS has already got its appointee in the BJP president's office - Nitin Gadkari - to openly defend the organisation at a time when there are fears among its cadre that the Sangh may even be banned by the Congress- led UPA government.
To soothe the Sangh's frayed nerves, the BJP president launched an offensive against Digvijaya, comparing the Congress general secretary to Raja Jai Chand of Kannauj whose name is historically synonymous with the word 'traitor'. He also gave a certificate of respectability to the RSS which blocked the elevation of other central leaders - particularly the two chief contenders Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley - to pluck Gadkari out of the oblivion and install him in the party president's office.
"The RSS can never indulge in violence," Gadkari asserted. "The Congress has always been trying to malign the Sangh. They have banned the RSS several times. But the RSS is not afraid of such conspiracies. We have faced them many times." It was not a coincidence that Gadkari was the lone torchbearer for the RSS. Others apparently had worthier causes to espouse. The same morning, party leader Jaitley was educating workers at the Delhi BJP office about 2G spectrum allocation scam and Bofors.
Jaitley kept the focus on corruption without commenting on Hindutva terror. While Jaitley's reticence was evident, it is expected that the other ready recruit in the RSS's drive to get the BJP to defend them against Hindutva terror would be Rajnath Singh. Singh, like Gadkari, owed his appointment as BJP president to the apparatchiks in Jhandewalan and is forever eager to do the Sangh's bidding. But to win the support of the more mainstream and effective leaders - mainly Swaraj and Jaitley - the RSS seems to have devised a more nuanced strategy.
The Sangh has commandeered the services of its two powerful lobbyists - Subramanian Swamy and S. Gurumurthy who wields considerable influence over Swaraj and Jaitley's mentor L.K. Advani. The impact of their interventions was evident in the recent national executive meeting of the BJP which was saved from degenerating into a Gandhi- bashing exercise on saffron terror as well as on corruption by the " moderates" Swaraj and Jaitley.
"Both Jaitley and Swaraj have a stake in the long- term future of the BJP. In an era of coalitions which are forged in the absence of any hysterical articulation of ideological agendas, they would be committing political harakiri by defending terror suspects," said a BJP observer.
Hence, the BJP adopted the basic line articulated in the political resolution that focuses on recounting various corruption scandals including Bofors that have rocked the UPA. Neither in the political resolution nor in the public rally that followed, the BJP leaders made any comment on the Hindutva terror trail.
Gurumurthy's influence was evident in Advani's rather sharp political attack on the Congress leadership but that was where it stopped. There is no word yet from Advani, Swaraj and Jaitley on Hindutva terror trail and the role of the Congress first family in targeting the RSS. "We are a mainstream party. The two leaders of Opposition in both Houses of Parliament succeeded in focusing the party's agenda and political charter solely on an ideologically-neutral and politicallyeffective issue like corruption," said an MP and member of the national executive.
Clearly, the RSS has to try harder to enlist the services of the BJP's "moderates" in their fight against a government seemingly determined to unravel the Hindutva terror plot. With the terror trail leading up to the doorstep of the RSS headquarters, perhaps it would have been wiser in not alienating its most effective public figures such as Advani who was literally hounded out of the BJP president's office in the wake of the " Jinnah is secular" controversy. Or done better to keep Jaitley and Swaraj in good humour. Gadkari, at best, can be a second choice as a defence lawyer against the government.
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The Telegraph, 18 January 2011
Sangh seeks cover in ‘patriotism’
OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
New Delhi, Jan. 17: The RSS’s defensiveness over “Hindutva terror” came through in the editorial in the latest edition of its mouthpiece, Organiser.
Claiming that Hindus were the “most patriotic and peace-loving community in the world”, the editorial’s garbled punchline was: “The rats might desert the ship but the Hindu cannot burn his home to kill the rats.”
A number of arguments were adduced to support the thesis that there is nothing like “Hindu terror”.
The editorial that came out on January 23 said every terror strike is followed by an outfit publicly claiming responsibility for it. “... That is the only way they attract attention and publicity, which is the lifeline of their existence,” it claimed. “So far, there has been no instance of any Hindu organisation boasting credit for a terror strike anywhere in the world.”
Flowing from the first contention was the second that the terror attacks that have implicated Hindus — Malegaon, Mecca Masjid, Ajmer and Samjhauta Express — claimed Muslim lives.
The other common feature, it said, was the initial claim and arrests made from jihadi outfits. To support the point, Organiser quoted the UN that cited the Samjhauta blast as one of Lashkar-e-Toiba’s “macabre acts” when it declared it a terror outfit and placed it on the international watch list.
The US Counter-Terrorism Center maintained that the Mecca Masjid blast was the handiwork of an alleged Pakistan-sponsored Harkat-ul-Jihadi-Islami (Huji), the editorial said.
It pointed out that before the CBI took over the case, Hyderabad police, too, had named the Huji as the blast executor.
“If the central agencies are interested in really unearthing the plot behind these terror strikes, they would not have given this kind of advance propaganda to the so-called confessions of Swami Aseemanand and a few others arrested in connection with the Malegaon blasts. Rather they would have worked on the lead... secretly... with a fool-proof chargesheet to be presented in court.”
The editorial also said it was “intriguing” that only those named in “alleged Hindu radicalism” were apparently making “confessions” while there was nothing coming from Kasab, Afzal Guru, or Geelani. “Are they so tight-lipped or do their confessions not make headlines?” it asked.
Notwithstanding the defences it marshalled, Organiser made it a point to reproduce a statement distancing the RSS from Swami Aseemanand, accused in the 2006 Malegaon blast.
The statement from the Sangh’s publicity cell chief Manmohan Vaidya claimed that the Swami had not held any post at any level in the organisation.
However, even in the Sangh and the BJP, it was of common knowledge that Assemanand was actively associated with the VHP and the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, another RSS front that spreads its ideology and has been reconverting Christian converts in the tribal areas.
The VHP has also been trying to reconvert recent converts to Islam in Uttar Pradesh’s Dalit areas. But with Mayavati in the saddle, it has made little or no headway.
Aseemanand worked from Gujarat’s Dangs, a predominantly tribal belt where he claimed “100 per cent success” in his reconversion project.
Vaidya said: “The RSS has repeatedly made it clear that it neither believes in nor supports any activity involving violence or terror. The RSS has always been co-operating with honest investigation conducted with due legal procedure.”
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The Hindu, January 12, 2011
BJP starts soft defence of RSS on Hindutva terror
by Neena Vyas
BJP chief Nitin Gadkari releasing a book “Secrets of RSS”, authored by Ratan Sharda in New Delhi on Tuesday. Photo: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar
‘Investigations into the role of radical Hindutva elements a diversionary tactic'
With investigations revealing involvement of men and women linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh with various terror blasts across the country — Malegaon, Mecca Masjid, Ajmer Sharif, and the Samjhauta Express blasts that killed around 60 people — the Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday decided to come to the rescue of its mother organisation.
At the party office on Tuesday, BJP president Nitin Gadkari released a book, Secrets of RSS, by a self-proclaimed RSS worker Ratan Sharda, who said he was disturbed by the allegations against the organisation and the lack of interest in it in the new generation. While stating that his book would demystify the working of the organisation, he launched a direct attack on Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh comparing him to Raja Jai Chand, whose name, he said, had become synonymous with the word traitor.
“We don't believe in violence”
Mr. Gadkari admitted “some radical aggressive” elements may have entered the RSS, but “by and large the RSS does not believe in violence and has never indulged in such activities.” Unless facts are ascertained there should be no character assassination, he said.
The allegation that RSS office-bearer Indresh Kumar (who has been questioned by investigative agencies in connection with the Ajmer dargah blast) was an ISI agent was laughable. Mr. Kumar, who was present at the book release, had “tea” with Mr. Gadkari.
That within the BJP there are two views on how far to go to defend those involved in terror activities was obvious here on Tuesday. Not a single senior BJP leader was present. Arun Jaitley, whose name appeared on invitations as one of the chief guests, was reported “held up at some other programme.” Sushma Swaraj was in Vidisha, Rajnath Singh in Gorakhpur and Ravi Shankar Prasad, who was in the party office, left before the function started saying he had some urgent work.
Mr. Gadkari questioned the wisdom of going after a different lead when initially the government and its agencies had pointed fingers at Pakistan for the Samjhauta Express blast. This, he said, would make India look bad.
He blamed the Congress for using investigations into the role of radical Hindu elements to divert attention from corruption scandals.
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