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A comment on the recent revelations by serving
army official Prasad Purohit who has been arrested for his involvement
in the Malegaon blasts of 2008.
Hindu nationalists in uniform and RSS leaders indicted
Let’s begin with the new light that has been shed on
the Hindutva phenomenon. First, there is now no doubt left about the
presence of Hindutva enthusiasts among the Indian army officers - as
already evident from the transcripts of the Abhinav Bharat meetings I
have used in a recent article1. Purohit is not apologetic about his ideological commitments. He merely argues, in an interview with Outlook magazine:
“Having a particular ideology does not make me a terrorist or
anti-national”. Incidentally, Purohit was not the only army man who has
been investigated by the specially instituted court of inquiry of the
army because of their implication in Abhinav Bharat, the group
responsible for the Malegaon blast. - there were four others (another
lieutenant colonel, a captain, a major and a subedar).
Second, while the role of RSS foot soldiers - including pracharaks
like Sunil Joshi - in several bomb blasts have been ascertained, the
implication of senior leaders has not been proved so far. In an hand
written letter dated 15 Oct. 2008, Purohit emphasises the part that
Indresh Kumar - a member of the Nagpur-based executive body of the
Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh - played in connection with Abhinav Bharat
people. He even mentions, referring to the Gujarat blasts of July 2008,
that he was “instrumental in carrying out these actions”. These words
reconfirm the confession of Swami Aseemanand2.
Purohit, an infiltrator?
In contrast to these - disturbing - clarifications
“L’Affaire Purohit” is becoming “murkier and murkier” to use former
security official and current commentator B. Raman’s words.
In his Outlook interview, Purohit claims
that he has inflitrated Abhinav Bharat as a member of the army
intelligence : “I have done my job properly, have kept my bosses in the
loop and everything is on paper in the army records”. Indeed, he gave
the name of Sadhvi Pragya as one of the persons responsible for the
Malegaon blast only one week after this event - and he wrote to no one
else but major Bhagirath Dey, the Jabalpur-based intelligence officer
and colonel Vinay Panchpore, the commanding officer of southern liaison
unit.
Then the question is: why did the army hand him over to the Anti-Terrorism Squad - and so quickly?
Given the opacity of the whole affair, we can only
speculate. But two hypothesis - at least! - can be made. First, the army
preferred to let Purohit appear as an Hindutva zealot turned terrorist
rather than admitting that it was collecting intelligence in a place
where it was not supposed to do so - Madhya Pradesh is not Jammu and
Kashmir or the North East. The military institution preferred to
sacrifice Purohit if this theory is right.
Or the second hypothesis could be that Purohit, who
might have been an infiltrator first (something we need to corroborate
on the basis of other testimonies), had become part and parcel of
Abhinav Bharat and, therefore, a turn coat like David Headley vis-a-vis
the US intelligence. This theory is well in tune with Purohit’s
discourses during the Abhinav Bharat meetings.
Hopefully, a proper investigation will take place and
its conclusions will be made public - since nobody should be above the
law in a vibrant democracy like India. But neither the clarifications
we’ve just received, nor the hypothesis we can make are comforting.
1 C. Jaffrelot, “Abhinav Bharat, the Malegaon Blast and Hindu Nationalism”, Economic and Political Weekly, Sept. 4, 2010, vol. XLV n° 36, pp. 51-58.
2 C. Jaffrelot and M. Maheshwari, “Paradigm Shift by the RSS? Lessons from Aseemanand’s Confession”, Economic and Political Weekly, Feb., 5, 2011, vol XLVI, n° 6, pp. 42-46.
