True Face of Hindu Secularism
By: Subhash Gatade
Nanded is a town dear to the heart of every Sikh, particularly so as the community celebrates the 300th Guru’ta Gaddi Diwas. It is time the Sikhs, as also all the right thinking people, pay attention to the activities of Hindutva’s terror agents in this town, and stay beware of their intentions. Nanded, in Maharashtra, is a town with a significant population of different faiths - Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Buddhist. Nanded could well have become a new metaphor for secularism as practiced in the Subcontinent,
but this was not to be. Instead, Nanded has come to represent the emergent danger of a violent new brand of Hindu militancy, with due support from a section of the state machinery. A place that was once witness to the final days of Guru Gobind Singh, Sikhism's Tenth Guru, has today metamorphosed into an epicentre of violent Hindutva. Indeed, Nanded represents the build-up of the violent fundamentalist Hinduism of the past half-century. The town has been witness to a new spate of acts that can be inarguably dubbed 'terrorism'.
The inner workings of this new form of Hindutva were on show recently in two, evidently accidental, explosions in Nanded within a span of nine months, in April 2006 and February 2007. These blasts, which killed four people, took place at the houses of activists from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena. The arrival of Nanded on India's 'terror' map was followed by media investigations into similar previous incidents, which also showed the involvement of Hindu youth in terrorist actions.
The new element here is the increasing similarity between Hindu militancy and 'terrorism' of other hues. While various enquiry commissions have looked into riots in post-Independence India and corroborated the proactive role played by the RSS in instigating riots, the irony of the situation is that the organisation is still able to maintain its 'missionary' image. Part of this is because the group has long maintained a strict division of labour within its ranks, delegating much of the 'dirty work' to fringe workers.
The Nanded blasts proved to be an exception to this pattern, as the RSS links were obvious. This is why, in the immediate aftermath of the explosions, the Sangh Parivar leadership went to great lengths to suppress the news. Indeed, activist friends of this writer in Maharashtra were themselves unaware that any such incident had taken place.
One set of blasts took place in a house belonging to Laxman Rajkondwar, an old RSS activist, and killed two youths belonging to the Bajrang Dal and RSS, while injuring three others. The explosives that were being made were to be used during the entry into Maharashtra of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader L K Advani's Bharat Suraksha Yatra, the idea being to warn of the grave security situation existing in the country.
Later investigations found that the plan had been to instigate communal riots in Nanded that could have spread to adjoining areas. Such a situation, it was hoped, would boost the sagging morale of both the BJP and its ageing stalwart, Advani.
The aim was clearly to instigate a communal conflict. A police raid on one of the deceased's houses found maps of nearby mosques, as well as clothes and caps usually worn by Muslims in the area, which the activists were going to wear to sneak into and attack the mosques and gurudwaras. The only thing still needed was explosives. The making of bombs in a house owned by an old RSS activist - one who supposedly also dealt in firecrackers, at that - seemed like the perfect plan.
Of course, the story neither begins nor ends in Nanded. Since 2003, at least five, and perhaps six, Hindutva-related explosions have taken place in central Maharashtra alone, in Parbhani, Purna, Jalna and Nanded. Malegaon also witnessed a bomb blast last year, killing 40 people, with strong indications of a Hindutva hand behind it. Beyond the geographical similarities, the details of the attacks were uncanny: each took place between 1:45 and 2:00 in the afternoon, just after Friday prayers, at the most prominent mosque in town. (The bomb that went off in Nanded in 2006 exploded on 6 April, a Thursday, but was apparently meant to be set off at an Aurangabad masjid the following day.)
At the same time, this cannot be dubbed a Maharashtra-centric phenomenon. Madhya Pradesh's former chief minister, Digvijay Singh, has publicly admitted to the involvement of various groups and individuals affiliated with the RSS in similar acts in his state. As for the rest of the country, no systematic study of saffron 'terror' has yet been undertaken. One reason for this could be the thin line that separates the different anushangik (affiliated) organisations of the RSS, thereby making it possible to move from the 'legal' to the 'illegal' without great effort. Indeed, there is every possibility that funds collected from the Hindu Diaspora for philanthropic work might also have been channeled to further 'terrorist' activities.
Nonetheless, culturally integrated practices are being utilised to arm certain sections of the Hindu community. Back in 2001, Rajasthan's then-Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot revealed that up to four million trishuls - six to eight inches long and sharp enough to kill - had been distributed by the Bajrang Dal to Hindu households across the country. Meanwhile, in 2002, a group in Orissa, under the district Shiv Sena unit, formed the first-ever Hindu suicide squad, aimed at countering Muslim 'extremism' in Jammu & Kashmir and elsewhere. More than 100 youths, including some women, are said to have joined the group.
Hindutva collusion
Nanded's population is made up of around 500,000 Hindus, 200,000 Muslims and 100,000 Sikhs. The town has seen a significant amount of communal tension in the past, which spiked following the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992. In more recent years, this tension seems to have also spilled over into surrounding towns such as Parbhani, where, in November 2003, motorcycle-borne attackers hurled bombs into the midst of a large congregation of Muslims assembled for Friday papers. Although the identities of the Parbhani bomb-throwers were never traced, forensic tests following the Nanded blasts revealed that the accused were part of the same group of Hindu militants that had executed the attack in Parbhani.
Following the April 2006 blasts in Nanded, an odd silence ensued - in the local and national media, as well as in the local and national governments. There was also a disturbing lack of sincerity on the part of the investigating agencies in pursuing the case, despite appearing to have gathered significant evidence of the involvement of district and state leaders of the RSS and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). As investigations by the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) and other rights organisations have made clear, the district administration even saw to it that news of the blasts did not receive wide coverage.
Local police made contradictory statements, and failed to make arrests in the initial stages. Despite the sensitive nature of the Nanded case, the CBI expressed its "inability" to conduct the subsequent investigation.
In response to a case filed by some social organisations against the tardiness of the investigations, the CBI filed a suo moto affidavit explaining that it was "overburdened" and had "limited hands to deal with such cases". The cumulative effect of the half-hearted - or wholly obstructionist - initiatives, at both the state and central level, was to show the kid-glove treatment being meted out to India's new breed of Hindutva militants. Secular activists questioned whether the reaction would have been similar had the explosions taken place in a minority-dominated area, and the involvement of some 'fanatic' Islamic group been detected.
The cavalier manner in which the probes of the Nanded blasts were undertaken may have prepared the ground for a stepping-up of similar activities in the area.
On 10 February 2007, at little after midnight, biscuit boxes being hauled by 28-year-old Pandurang Ameelkanthwar in another area in Nanded exploded, killing him instantly. His cousin, Dnaneshwar Manikwar, sustained massive burns and died six days later. Ameelkanthwar had been a former shakha pramukh (branch head) of the Shiv Sena, and was also associated with the Bajrang Dal. He hailed from an area in Nanded called Rangargalli, a known hotbed of rightwing Hindu outfits.
A mere 'fire-related accident' was how state officials subsequently reported the incident. But preliminary findings of a civil-society inquiry suggest that Ameelkanthwar and Manikwar died due to handled planted explosives. Neighbours near the explosion also told the team that there had been a third person present at the time, who had also been injured but has been unaccounted for in subsequent reports.
These eyewitnesses also said that a police officer, who went on to be part of the official investigation, supervised the seizing and spiriting away of critical evidence from the spot. In their report, the civil-society investigators state that the Maharashtra police, particularly the superintendent and inspector-general, appeared to be in "undue haste to close all possibilities of a possible liquid-substance-driven explosion, preferring to quote oral findings of forensic experts from Aurangabad who are reported to have told them that it was a petrol-ignited fire". Among other evidence, this conclusion is brought under serious suspicion by the fact the explosion threw the iron shutter of a nearby godown a distance of 40 feet - an extremely long way for a fire set off by burning gasoline.
The civil society team also refers to a "nexus between some police officials and the rightwing Hindu outfits". According to the probe's findings, Nanded Police Inspector Ramesh Bhurewar, who was leading the investigation of the 2006 Nanded blast, was also in charge of the investigation into the Parbhani blasts in November 2003. During the course of the long investigation, he had not made a single arrest. A First Information Report was only registered after a legislator raised a question in the state assembly.
But following the Nanded blasts in April 2006, the accused admitted to having placed the bombs at Parbhani. As such, the civil-society report concludes:
"The Nanded and state police are hence guilty of underplaying crimes wherein members of the minority community are the victims, causing a loss of face for the state police."
In their conclusion, the fact-finding team demanded that the central government keep a close watch over the increasing incidence of Hindutva 'terror' activities. They also asked for independent investigations under a team of neutral officers; and impartial, public inquiries into the Nanded, Malegaon, Parbhani and Purna incidents, in order to ascertain whether state intelligence and police agencies are indeed professional and neutral enough to investigate instances of politically driven Hindutva violence.
:: SECULAR INDIA ::..
my dear India is nowhere near even 10% with regard to secularism, What to say about way too much as much as 90%.
yes my dear ngold jee i have to update my knowledge about Hindus as i never Knew that Sikhs are also Hindus
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