The Hindu Rashtra
I
The
Hindu Rashtra
“The
Hindu Rashtra” newspaper that Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi,
edited bore the phrase that was coined and used by VD Savarkar. Godse had left
a copy of the newspaper in Marathi in the hotel room while going on his
assignment to kill Gandhi on January 30, 1948. The obvious connection of the
events is self revelatory of the fact that the establishment of a nation of
only Hindus is sanguinary in nature. Without killing or massacre it cannot come
in existence. Since then history has
shown numerous attempts to bring about such a nation by causing mass casualties
through engineered riots and bomb attacks of which the overwhelming victims
would be Muslims. It also reveals that sometimes other minorities could not
escape the juggernaut of founding of such theocratic state. Even Hindus would
be targeted for coming in the way of this movement. The assassination of Mahatma
Gandhi was only the most spectacular.
The
failed attempt to cause pogroms of Muslims in the western part of the Central
Province in 1947 was a serious attempt to subvert the government in order to
have a Hindu Nation without Muslims. But it was preposterous as the
overwhelming people in the country were with Gandhi and Nehru. Finding
themselves in insignificant number the people supporting Hindutva manipulation
for the Hindu Rashtra were daunted. They also lacked respect at the hands of
the majority of the people in the country. Mahatma Gandhi’s fast in Delhi led
to cessation of violence. His visit to Noakhali also had soothing effect. He
even prevailed upon the government leadership to handover the Quwatul Islam
mosque to Muslims to pray. He even decided to travel to Pakistan and have its
dues paid. The Hindutva groups were helpless and could not muster enough
support against these moves. As a contrast to the mass movement of Gandhi and
Nehru the Hindu Mahasabh and the RSS could only manage very limited and token
protest. Thus the lack of a mass base prevented the Hindu Nation getting any
currency in the mainstream society.
The
demolition of the Babri mosque and the rathyatra or chariot ride of BJP leader
LK Advani that led to it were thoroughly bloody in its trail. The Bombay massacre
of Muslims in1992-93 was an incident of mass casualties.
The boldest attempt for the Hindu Rashtra was made by the serving
military officer Lt Col Prasad Purohit. He articulated what the RSS tacitly
propagated through its unwritten manifesto also popularly called the hidden
agenda. Purohit started Abhinav Bharat : “with the intention of propagating a
Hindu Rashtra with their own constitution and aims and objectives as Bharat
Swaraya, Surajya Suraksha.” The fourteen
and more accomplices of Purhit had taken a very daring step towards
establishing the Hindu Rashtra. It was very bold in the sense that nearly a
dozen army officers were involved many of them have not been even named in the
charge sheet of the bomb blasts case of Malegaon 2008. “This organized crime
syndicate wanted to adopt a national flag i.e. solo-themed saffron flag with a
golden border. The length of the flag would be twice its breadth with an
ancient golden torch (bhagwa dhwaj).” 1 It is strange that the government did
not charge them for treason against the country. Their terrorism was treason. The Hindu right extremism is headed by the parent body Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. But it is essentially a “multi-headed hydra monstrosity”. 2 Even the maverick Sant Mahasabha at MahaKumb, Allahabad, in February 2013 may strike one as capable of being sober. But this group is not much different, only nuances of the same colour. It called for inquiry into the demolition of the Babri mosque but not for punishing the guilty who are of course well known leaders and ministers in the governments of the day. It is open secret which batch from which place led the attack. It is also self manifest that a former head of RSS had remarked that the domes were demolished by bombs. K. Sudarshan is dead but Kalyan Singh, Vinay Katiyar, LK Advani and a host of others are still around and kicking. What is more even the sants themselves are clamouring for the temple. The Sant Mahasabha wants a dome built upon the open temple of child Ram. Among their other demands: suitable laws to control population and giving more powers to the armed forces. These are harbingers of the Hindu Rashtra in the making. 3Whatever power the army already has is awful. It has become impossible to even name the high officers of the armed forced who connived with Lt Col Prasad Purohit and were involved in what he did. More power to them would be more conceding to the Hindu extremist movement’s demand for the Hindu Rashtra.
Their
involvement in terror is in proportion of their penetration into the army and
the police. Those army officers who interviewed Anti Terrorism Squad chief of
Maharashtra police Hemant Karkare on November 24-25, 2008, only a day before
his assassination, had a crucial talk. What actually they talked about has not
been made public. Was it so scaring that Karkare had counseling from former DGP
Julio Reibero and had visited the US embassy for possible security for his
personal life and of his family. Was his meeting with the army officers and
Military Intelligence groups so ominous! All this could have weighed upon him.
His wearing the helmet and the face that looked out at the world was already
doomed. He looked deader than when he died minutes later. He was surely scared
by the reach of the RSS and its spawned Sangh parivar. So much so, that he had
ordered his men to make sure not once but thrice that they had absolute proof
before laying hand on the Hindutva extremists.
Creation of the Hindu Rashtra
overrode all other consideration and can be seen “that in fact Karkare’s
assassination was plotted by people associated with the RSS to stop him from
unmasking the face of RSS-inspired terror...If Karkare had not been killed, he
would have possibly unveiled the entire terror network and not just names of
certain individuals, trying to turn India into a Hindu rashtra through
violence.”4
The assassination of
Karkare put the clock back in time because no sooner did he die than the man
who succeeded him reversed the hunt back to jehadi terrorists. But there are
divisions within the police and armed forces. Purohit et al wanted Hindu
Rashtra but there are still many in army who are not enamoured of such an
entity. There are many Dravidian from the south who would not like to be
overwhelmed by the Brahmins who will surely dominate such a theocratic state.
Kerala is deeply divided and cannot be swayed by the idea of the Hindu Rashtra
ruling over the whole of the state. Different groups within Hindus will not go
together far towards establishing such a nation. After everything is said and
done there are more sane Hindus who would not espouse the idea of being ruled
by any extreme idea of a theocracy. It leads to the moot question whether there
would be one or more such states coming into existence. In Vijay Tendulkar’s play Ghasiram Kotwal Ghasiram is a Brahmin
from the north. The Chitpawan Brahmins of the Peshwa who dominate government in
Poona go to the Muslim concubines while the Maratha soldiers go to the Brahmin
women. Ghasiram arrests the Brahmins and throws them in the dungeon. The
Chitpawan Brahmins complain to the Peshwa. He orders Ghasiram to be tied to the
leg of an elephant and taken around the city of Poona and then has him killed. This
kind of division can dampen the spirit for an overwhelming theocratic state. Even
all the Shankeracharyas and Sadhus and Sants do not eye VHP or RSS with favour.
So the kind of Hindu Rashtra may not be that easy for the extremists to
establish. At the worst it would split into different Hindu Rashtras.
Internal differences despite common
goal can come to surface and cause tension. However political compulsions can
sway the people. Shiv Sena and BJP joined hands in Maharashtra and formed
government for a term in the end of the 90s of the previous century. Shiv Sena
is a rabid political group. Its supremo was proud of having sent his cadres to
demolish the Babri and it was he who exhorted the Hindu fanatics to kill
Muslims in 1992 to teach them a lesson. On July 17, 2003 Bal Thackeray exhorted
Hindus to commit violence upon Muslims in protest against the Maharashtra
government’s permission to prosecute him for making hate speeches against the
Muslims. Even in Malegaon there was panic when he surrendered to the court on
July 25th. Finally, what happened was that the Hindu hearted emperor
of would be Hindu Rashtra was acquitted because of lapse of time. “Nationally,
the party joined hands with BJP to further Hindutva and its agenda for a Hindu
Rashtra, which radically transformed the city’s (Bombay) geography.”5 The riots
in Bombay, Malegaon and elsewhere have segregated the people on religious
lines. This in itself was a big milestone on the way to the Hindu Rashtra. The
long term effect is that the collector of Aurangabad sent invitation on
February 13, 2013 to welcome a minister. The collector’s official address reads
“Collectorate, Aurangabad” but the address of the bank which the minister
Balasaheb Thorat would inaugurate had the address “Khadkeshwar, Sambhajinager
(Aurangabad).”6
This lurking desire to change names of cities and localities in a way to efface
non Hindu influence or origin indicates the irrepressible tendency of what the
extremists have sown in the psyche of the common man.
The overall strategy employed by the
right wing Hindus is to slowly but steadily seize power for their ultimate goal
of establishing a Hindu Rashtra. So when the sants and sadhus in the Allahabad
Kumbh mela of 2013 asked for the abrogation of article 370(which accorded JK a
special place with special reservations) in Jammu and Kashmir or religious
based census their hidden aim is to seize land and expand Hindu population
there. But according to historical agreements the land in Kashmir was reserved
for the natives preeminently the Hindu pundits of the valley. Others cannot buy
land there. It was this that was nagging the officials as a hindrance to extend
Hindutva to the valley that led SP of Malegaon Rajwardhand, the ATS officers KP
Raghuvanshi, Subhodkumar Jaiswal, and Lt
Col Purohit to offer to the Malegaon bomb blasts accused Abrar Ahmad land
anywhere in India except Kashmir. 6 This is core of the spatial politics at the
national and state level. It spread most insidiously during the Shiv Sena
and BJP coming to power. This has given
the impression that in Maharashtra the fanatics have been only a “grasp away”
from regaining reins of the government.7
The Hindu Rashtra as
envisaged in the essay of Savarkar Hindutva:
Who is a Hindu? (1923) is based on an exclusionary hate ideology of the
extremists. They do not want Muslims and other minorities as a part of their
Hindu nation. The core philosophy of this is cultural nationalism. Muslims have
a distinctly different culture. It is this that the president of BJP Rajnath Singh
and his associates always oppose. But cultural nationalism is diametrically
opposite to and inimical of the Indian nationalism of Gandhi, Nehru, . Swami
Vivekananda, Aurobindo Ghosh, Swami Rama Tirth and with them the majority of
Hindus in the country who do not share the fanaticism of the Hindutva. The
noble philosophy of Hinduism of these stalwarts like Vivekanand, etc. is not
hateful and chauvinistic. “Savarkar on the other hand, coined the term [Hindutva]..to
propagate the two-nation theory and cult of hate. Hinduism is noble and
ancient. It shows man the path to self-realization. Hindutva, on the other
hand, is modern and ignoble. It debases man by arousing his basest emotion—fear
and hatred.”8. It was not a reaction against the movement of creating a
theocratic state of Pakistan but a movement for nationhood of Hindus based on
their culture, religion and race. The Muslims and other minorities do not
figure in this.
So when independence was at long last at
hand the overwhelming majority of Hindus and Muslims were not perturbed by any
ideology of hate. They were with Indian nationalism. There are clear
differences between cultural nationalism of Hindutva and the Indian nationalism
of Gandhi and Nehru. To the former my enemy’s enemy is my friend. Against this
base and cheap tactic is the Indian nationalism. Nehru and Gandhi did not
embrace fascism of Hitler and Mussolini to fight for the freedom of India. Dr
BS Moonje not only espoused fascism but went all the way to meet Mussolini and
import his means of committing mass atrocities. He founded the Bhonsla Military
School for Hindus. Lt Col Prasad Purohit went far beyond Moonje and Savarkar.
He not only espoused the hate philosophy but had dealings with the enemies of
the Muslim world, Israel, and exploded bombs to fulfill the Israeli demand to
show two examples that he could perform what he wanted to show them his
capability. He was obliged to do this to continue to get support of the Jewish
state in terms of steady supply of arms and ammunitions, asylum in Israel, recognition
etc. He also had this kind of negotiation and agreement with the king of Nepal.
The Nepalese army officers undertook to train the cadres of Hindutva including
the activists of Abhinav Bharat, Bajrang Dal, and others.
Their approach of having alliance with
the enemy of the enemy worked in the days of the struggle for independence.
Savarkar had negotiation with the Viceroy of India Lord Linlithgow in Bombay on
October 9, 1939. In his report to the secretary of state for Indian affairs
Lord Zetland, the Viceroy wrote: “The situation, he [Savarkar] said, was that
His Majesty’s Government must now (when Gandhi and his Congress party had asked
its ministers to resign from ministry in protest against the British
Government) turn to the Hindus and work with their support. After all, though
we and the Hindus have had good deal of difficulty with one another in the past
that was equally true of the relations between Great Britain and the French
and, as recent events had shown, of relations between Russia and Germany. Our interests were now the same and we must
therefore work together. Even though now the most moderate of men he had
himself been in the past an adherent of a revolutionary party, as possibly, I
might be aware. (I confirmed that I was.) But now that our interests were so
closely bound together the essential thing was for Hinduism and Great Britain
to be friends, and the old antagonism was no longer necessary.”9
The coming of the Hindu Rashtra is a
matter of gradual and staggered process albeit a secret one. There was no
mention of Hindutva till 1991. Next year what happened was the most dangerous
manifestation of it without its being mentioned in the election manifesto of
the BJP. The chief of the RSS had said in 1992 what happened was what the
Muslims had had coming to them. Thus the demolition of the mosque and the blood
bath preceding it and following it were on account of the Muslims! After India
saw the worst so far and the society so vertically divided BJP manifesto
enshrined Hindutva. In the same way after India was presented with the first
Hindutva genocide of Muslims in 2002 the stage was set for the naming of the
air strip in Port Blair as Vir Savarkar air port. One incident tried to eclipse
the other or divert attention but it failed. The 2004 election underpinned this
debacle.
However, what
remained steady was the march of the Hindu Rashtra. “The strategy of Hindutva is to
engage Muslims in a hostile confrontation over issues from time to time so that
the atmosphere in the country would be charged with communal tension between
the Hindus and the Muslims. The next tactical move would be to create riots and
spread them far and wide. That has always paid the right wing Hindus rich
dividends immediately in business, trade and jobs and always at the elections.
But in 2002 Gujarat Modi had hatched a conspiracy whereby the balance would forever be turned in favour of
the Hindus. This could not be done
without genocide of the Muslims.” (0
Looking back in history there are
important steps through which the RSS and its Hindu Rashtra has gone through.
Jawharlal Nehru had refused to meet Golwalkar and on November 3, 1948 and had
remarked that the people associated with RSS were involved in activities that
were “anti-national and often subversive and violent.”11 Basically their attitude is enshrined
in the book We. “Ever since that evil
day, when Moslems first landed in Hindusthan, right up to the present moment,
the Hindu Nation has been gallantly fighting to shake off the despoilers…The
Race Spirit has been awakening.”12 Golwalkar objected to how the nationalist congress party
used ‘national,’ ‘freedom’ and ‘constitutional means’.
“All those belonging to
the national, i.e., Hindu race, Religion, Culture and Language, naturally fall
out of the pale of real ‘National’ life.
‘We repeat: in Hindusthan
, the land of the Hindus, lives and should live the Hindu Nation—satisfying all
the five essential requirement of the scientific nation concept of modern
world. Consequently only those movements are truly ‘National’ as aim at
rebuilding, revitalizing and emancipating from its present stupor, the Hindu
Nation. Those only are nationalist patriots, who with the aspiration to glorify
the Hindu race and Nation next to their heart, are prompted into activity and
strive to achieve that goal. All others are either traitors or enemies to the
National cause, or, to take a charitable view, idiots.” 13
In the last six decades or more the
cataclysm brought about by the Hindutva there is the unmistakable signs of a
systematic and surreptitious move towards achieving the dream for the Hindu
Rashtra. The Hindu party BJP was in power in Delhi with her allies a few years.
Kalyan Singh was also in power for such a short time in UP. He dared to have
the Babri mosque demolished. The government headed by Vajpayee managed the
conditions so shrewdly that the first genocide went ahead not only just because
Modi was at the helms of the affair but that BJP was also in the driving seat
in Delhi. This was enough for a Kristallnaucht even in full glare of the
camera. As on the night of November 9, 1938 Heinrich Müller the
head of the Gestapo consulted Hitler and sent a message to all the police units
in Germany that “in shortest order, actions against Jews and especially their
synagogues will take place in all of Germany. These are not to be interfered
with.” Modi followed the same. He also instructed his
police not to prevent but let the Hindus vent their anger against the Muslims.
This was the night of broken glasses on a much larger scale. Many Jews
travelled to Gujarat to see what it was like, earlier.
II
Tactics
of Terrorism: RSS
It is
an open secret that the violent and secretive means of the RSS used for
establishing the Hindu Rashtra is fraught with danger for India’s unity.
Golwalkar wrote what strikes at the root of India as a modern nation. “The
foreign races in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language,
must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no
idea but show of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e., of the
Hindu nation and must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race,
or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming
nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment—not even
citizen’s rights. We are an old nation; let us deal, as old nations ought to
and do deal with the foreign races, who have chosen to live in our country.”14
As if
this hubris is not enough, he goes further to recommend the desperate
remedy: “To keep up the purity of the
races and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her[sic] purging the
country of the Semite Races—the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been
manifested here. Germany has also shown how well nigh impossible it is for
Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated
into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to lean and profit
by.” 15 Exception, Golwalkar treats Jews and Parsis as guests.
The RSS
has sufficiently been around for almost a century and has shown a penchant for
terrorism unsurpassed by any other organization in the subcontinent let alone
India.
Its
very foundation was terrorism. Dr Balkrishna Shivram Moonje had sent Dr Keshav
Baliram Hegdewar (the founder of the RSS) to Calcutta in 1910 for medical
course but the real purpose was to learn making bombs for which the Bengal
revolutionaries were known in the subcontinent. Much later Moonje travelled to
Italy and met Mussolini expressly to learn how to cause mass casualties of
Muslims. Till the present time Hegdewar’s organization has gone on perfecting
making bombs to make deadlier ones. The life and career of Sunil Joshi
illustrates the life achievement of an individual single RSS pracharak, unit
chief. He is in a line of many others who have excelled in making and exploding
bombs across the states of India. Among other such pracahraks are Dwender
Gupta, Ramji Kalsangrah, Sandeep Dange, etc. The arrest of Mafat Lal aka Mehul
on March 7, 2013 makes it possible that ultimately RSS senior leader Indresh
Kumar is not far behind. It was he who had allegedly ordered the murder of
Sunil Joshi. The men who shared the room with Joshi in his hiding from law
after murdering the Congress leader Ninawa and his son also killed him to wipe
out the leads that surely lead to Kumar. These are notable terrorists who have
left their individual signature on the murders and terror attacks. The kind of
grooved pipes used in bombs which
Kalsangra made bore his signature. But they were also members of the mother
organization, RSS.
On the
other side the founding of Abinav Bharat in 2007 underscores the spawning of
the multi headed monstrosity. It is unabated. If this is the work of the mother
organization of the Hindutva why did it spawn so many others? Basically to
divert attention from it and disown or dodge responsibility in the first place,
and division of work was the next. It grew astronomically over the years and
hence shedding load became third reason. The influx of the dollar and other
foreign currency led the RSS to organize and fund the first Hindutva genocide
of Muslims and its architect, the Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. Gujarat
housed Swami Aseemanand and his headquarters, made extraordinary rendition a
living truth in India in flagrant disregard of the world opinion. Mehtar, Ishrat Jehan, Sohrabuddin, Tulsiram Prajapati and others
were caught in different states like Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya
Pradesh, Rajasthan etc and were handed over to the Gujarat police. The police
in Gujarat through the right hand man of Modi’s DG Vanzara had these prisoners
of other states tortured in private bungalows and then killed and taken to
sites to orchestrate ‘encounter’ which it never was. The hapless innocent
Muslims youths were bumped off on the bogus pretext that they were out to kill
Narendra Modi. He never could have been even threatened in a wild dream. Such
was the redoubtable figure that had not only shown the Muslim their place but
had also taught them a lesson they would never forget. He forever tilted the
scale against them in favour of the majority.
Behind
the scene the Prime Minister of the country and the Home Minister carried on
the work of the government as if these fake encounters and the genocide had not
been even taking place.
The
right wing Hindutva dominated government of Prime Minister AB Vajpyee piggy
rode the US in the so called war on terror in the wake of 9/11. It took full
advantage of the atmosphere created by the New York attacks and the hoopla
created by the Huntington theory of the clash of civilization. And under this
ruse the genocide of Muslims was brushed under the carpet of the weltanschauung
that the innards of Islam were also bloody, as Samuel Huntington had put it.
The blood of the neighbours with whom the Muslim do not know how to live with!
That was what PM Vajpayee remarked at the Goa conclave of his party BJP in the
aftermath of the genocide in 2002. To give that reason the central government
had first looked around what had happened at the Gulbarga society (where 69
women, children and men burnt alive) and the dry well of Naroda Patia( about
800 were herded into the well and set on fire from above!). They succeeded in
keeping out Amnesty International from visiting India as Modi held threat to
the journalists warning them of the fate of the terror victim Daniel Pearl. So
Vajpayee had reached the conclusion of overtly supporting Modi after musing
alone as he travelled from Port Blair to Goa, in his “sphinx like silence.”
That made him appear as a lookalike of Savarkar sitting in the court with
Nathuram Godse and other accused in the assassination of Gandhi.
This
interlude of Gujarat was the sustained taste of what the Hindu Rashtra would be
when it would be replicated all over the country as VHP would like to have it.
No account of terror and imprisoning the innocent will ever be complete unless
Gujarat 2002 is fully comprehended.
Suffice
it to say that the preparation for the genocide was done much before the train
compartment burst into flames on February 27, 2002. On the following day RSS
and Bajrang Dal activists were out in large number in their uniforms well armed
and well supplied with dry fruits and drinks to begin the slaughter of Muslims.
Arms including rockets were brought into Gujarat from Punjab, Bihar, UP and
other states even during the curfew hours. Like burning of the German
parliament by the Gestapo under Hitler the kristallnacht in Gujarat had begun
with a pretext created.
This
strategy of the RSS is galore in evidence in events after events involving
terror. This kind of preparation had alarmed the first government of free India
so much that a government communiqué of February 4, 1948 said “The professed
aims and objects of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh are to promote the
physical, intellectual and moral well-being of the Hindus and also to foster
feelings of brotherhood, love and service among them…Government have,
however, noticed with regret that in
practice members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh have not adhered to their
professed ideals.
“Undesirable and even dangerous activities have been carried on by the
members of the Sangh, the extremist groups of Hindus. It has been found that in
several parts of the country individual members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
have indulged in acts of violence involving arson, robbery, dacoity and murder
and have collected illicit arms and ammunitions. They have been found
circulating leaflets, exhorting people to resort to terrorist methods, to collect firearms to create disaffection
against the government and suborn the Police and Military.” 17
The
“terrorist methods” were in force even before independence. Madanlal Pawa’s
activities were causing terror in the minorities of Gwalior and the Central
Province so much that Mahatma Gandhi had intervened and forced the princely
state to stop his terrorizing Muslims by attacking them and causing riots and
demanding ransom. When the ruler took a strict approach Pawa left the Central
Province and went to Ahmednager in Maharashtra. There also he started hounding
the minority Muslims and went back to the Punjab refugees settling there as his
hideout. Visnhu Karkare was his ally and both along with others had attempted
to kill Gandhi on January 20, 1948. This terrorism of such individuals was
smaller as compared to what RSS chief Golwalker was doing on much larger scale.
He was collecting arms and ammunitions and preparing for pogroms of Muslims in
the Central Province when a warrant against him was issued. But chief minister
Govind Pant did not arrest him. The
assassination of Gandhi was another milestone in the path of terror that RSS
practiced.
Forty
years later the things began to move so fast that terror returned to India as
never before. LK Advani’s rathyatra opened up the new avenues of terror.
Bajrang Dal was inducted into terror when its awesome strength and arms
prevented Muslims from marching to Ayodhya. When the Hindu militants were
brought there prior to demolition of the Babri mosque it was sheer terror as
Muslims held their breath in fear of what might happen next. Most of them were
frightened greatly. The bloody riots were unparalleled in the history of the country.
The demolition of Babri mosque was a terrorist act. 18
In
March 1998 BJP with its allies formed the government at the centre. This
obviously led to increase in communal tension. The Archbishop of Delhi Alan de
Lastic observed: “ever since the government came to power the attacks on
Christians and Christian missionaries have increased.” The Director General of
Police of Gujarat CP Singh noted towards the end of December 1998 how VHP and
Bajrng Dal were engaged in terror methods. “One thing was clear in the pattern
of incidents. It was the activities of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang
Dal who were taking the law in their hands, which posed a serious danger to
peace in Gujarat. Many of the attacks on
the minorities were after these organizations had whipped up local conversions
and allegedly forced inter religious marriages…our investigations revealed that
in most cases these were entirely baseless allegations.”19
Sixty
five years after the activities of the RSS that the government communiqué
dubbed terrorist methods the groups it has spawned have increased
exponentially. They were in new version of the Machiavellian art of “terrorist
methods”, “suborning the Police and the Military”. Or, else what is the continued payment of
salary to Lt Col Prasad Purohit despite his involvement in conspiracy to
overthrow the government, collecting deadly arms like AK 47s, planting bombs on
trains and in towns, joining hands with Nepal and Israel for manifest aim of
killing Muslims and Maoists, indicate. If these are not terrorist methods what are they then? Purohit had killed a Maoist in cold blood and
thrown the body into the sewer, if this is not crime and he a diehard criminal,
what else is this? If stealing more than 50 kg of RDX from the army stock is
not dacoity what else is it? His being in prison has gone haywire since his
wife gets the salary; he has a laptop to compose what he wants, etc. Subversion
of the police and the army if it is not what else is it?
It is well known fact that conspiracy is the hallmark of RSS. The conspiracy to assassinate Mahatma Gandhi is the most illustrious. Savarkar who had organized and financed it wished Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte “yashashvi hou ya” Be successful this time! In the case of Dhingra killing Wyllie in London Savarkar had given the gun for the murder and had told Dhingra to finish Wyllie this time or else don’t show face to him! In 1909 the Hindutva activists had killed the collector of Nasik, Mr Jackson, for his recommending Savarkar’s elder brother for prosecution in the murder. Savarkar was behind these and more. He also wept in the court that he could be implicated in the assassination, what with Gandhi and his wife visiting him in London as family friends in the bygone days! In the case of 2008 attack in Malegaon the conspiracy was hatched for at least seven months and meetings were held in the length and breadth of different towns of different states of India. They included Shabridham, Surat in Gujarat, Jaipur in Rajasthan, Nasik, Poona in Maharashtra, Faridabad in Haryana, Jabalpur, Indore, Bhopal, Ujjain in Madha Pradesh, Gorakhpur , and Allahabad, in UP, etc. In the aftermath of the sankatmochan temple attack in March 2006 Aseemanand attended the meeting and suggested that Malegaon be targeted for revenge.
In the light of the means calculated to achieve Hindu Rashtra the role of terrorism is vital though terrorism has come in vogue only in the wake of 9/11 but it was always there. Terrorism is a handy tool in attacking composite culture as can be seen in the attacks in Hyderabad in 2007 and again on February 21, 2013. Jayprakash Narayan succinctly pointed it out that he objected RSS using devious means “to influence politics under the garb of a cultural nationalism. ..I have always condemned Hindu nationalism of the RSS. For it is a dangerous doctrine and is against the ideal of composite Indian nationalism. “20 When the National Executive accepted Morarji Desai formula it included Jan Sangh. The formula read: “Every member of the Janta Party shall unconditionally accept and strive to preserve the composite culture and secular state established in our country and nation not based on religion.”
To destroy the composite culture the extremists have always tried to use fascist techniques. Togadia rode on motor bike with statue of Hanuman with streets screened off with cloth to not allow Muslims to peep at. Marching through sensitive areas of the minority is the opportunity the fascist used in 1930s to wreak havocs on the Jews or Protestants in Ireland. Togadia followed in the footsteps of them. Advani had done it by wading through the bloodshed during his rathyatra. The bricks with Ram marked on it and consecrated and carried through Aligarh in 1989 produced pogroms but also showed hegemony of the extremists who can create terror in the Muslim ghettos at their will. The RSS cadets and Bajrang Dal activists come armed and begin to shout very indecent slogans against Muslims to create riot at the slightest pretext. It was this that Ashok Singhal wanted when he remarked on April 4, 1991 “Our shobha yatra (religious processions) should pass through every locality.” 21
The slogans shouted at such marches are no doubt abusive of Muslims and challenging: Mussalmaan key do hi sthaan/Pakistan ya kabrasthan. (There are only two places for a Muslim, Pakistan or the cemetery.) Jo kahta hai Ali Ali/uski maan ko choddo gali gali. (He who calls out to Ali, fuck his mother in every alley. Jis Hindu ka khoon na khaule/khunnahim hai pani hai (The Hindu whose blood doesn’t boil has water in his veins.22
So demonized Muslims in the Hindu Rashtra in the ‘making’ is that Singhal and Togadia and the late Bal Thackeray have surpassed each other in mouthing ignominy against the minority. “It is time to catch Muslims by their neck and tell them where their place lies. Kashi and Mathura are ours. It the Muslims want to avoid further humiliation, they should hand over those shrines quietly. That is what Ashok Singhal ranted in Lucknow on December 29, 1997.23 Not only in words but in deeds the Hindutva extremists leave no doubt how they would deal with the hapless minority. Indian Express reported that “Advani was heard ordering sealing of all entry points in Ayodhya to prevent Central forces from entering the town.” His sharing sweets with his fellow party men is no secret. All this is on account of their infiltration in the police, army and administration. These three are the most important agencies. How far they remain sane will decide the future.
The RSS has infiltrated all the three and hence the future course of the Hindu Rashtra otherwise would depend on the sangh parivar, the saffron group. The governments of West Bengal, Kerala and Tamil Nadu have deftly handled riots and snipped them in the bud. This is not in any less measure due to the limited influence of the RSS there. However in the rest of the country the situation is different. Look at Karnataka since it has come under the influence of the hate ideology of the RSS.
The dynamics that generate riots is the past, the rule of the Mughals and Muslims which the RSS makes out to be a tyranny for the Hindus. This is far from truth. For the Dogra rule in Kashmir was worst as far as the Hindus and also Muslims are concerned. The pundits suffered more under the Dogras. Tipu Sultan ruled in a way that left no bitterness in the Hindu subject as the tiger of Mysore was ferociously fighting the foreign rule of the English. To the Hindu right the English were their endeared ones. But not Tipu. It was this that prompted Golwalkar to say that the Jews and the Parsis came as guests but the Muslims came as invaders. Why did he leave out the English then? Savarkar might have been behind the murder of Jackson in Nasik, Wyllie in England but he was very servile and officious to the English rule in the country. What did he expect from them for this?
III
Frightening
implications of the Hindu Rashtra
A long
term chilling effect of in-the- process of realizing Hindu Rashtra is the
innocuous albeit surreptitious change in terminology. What has been sheer
terrorism has come to pass as riot. Gujarat 2002 and Dhulia 2013 were in no way
riots nor was Dhulia October 2008 that. It was terrorism, qua terrorism. At the
inception of the attacks in Naroda Patia a Tamil paraplegic was stabbed to
death most brutally. Imagine the poor disabled handicapped on crutches and
steel rod attached to his legs being set upon by the Bajrang Dal and RSS
marauders armed with swords, choppers, iron rods, white deadly powder, gas
cylinders and burning torch approaching him. Of course, that after the police
had cleared the passage by shooting at the Muslims to scare them into hiding
and then giving cover to the marauders to go in for the kill! The message as
propaganda was unmistakable: Muslims have no place to live in India.
The
prevailing condition in 1947 was also the same. Imagine “two large steel trunks
securely locked. When the trunks were opened, they revealed incontrovertible
evidence of a dastardly conspiracy to create a communal holocaust throughout
the western districts of the province. The trunks were crammed with
blueprints of great accuracy and professionalism of every town and village in
that vast area, prominently marking out the Muslim localities and
habitations.” Imagine also that
arms were stocked in secret places and trained marauders waiting for the nod.
The unfolding scenario would be sheer terror and not riot as the swords and
choppers would be descending upon the hapless people sleeping not having least
suspicion that their neighbours would attack them so stealthily. But that is
what RSS chief Golwalkar had done for the unsuspecting Muslims in the western
part of the Central Province! The premier of the Central Province was Gobind
Ballabh Pant who dithered in the matter of arresting Golwalker. “Had Pant
but acted, Gandhi's life might have been saved. Had Golwalkar's plans been
carried out, a pogrom would have been staged on a pretext and the media would
have called it - a 'riot'” (24)There were two acts here, arms were
collected to kill Muslims on the pretext of repeated attempts to kill Gandhiji.
Gandhi survived the attacks that had failed until the sixth and the last one
six months later. Had the conspiracy not exposed there would have been pogroms
of Muslims as in Gujarat 2002. In official record it is still called
riots.
The Muslims in Dhulia were also dazed
that the Hindu Jagran Manch or Samiti would create terror in Dhulia because a bomb
in Bhiku Chowk of Malegaon had blown up many Muslims killing seven and injuring
hundreds on September 29 2008. Dhulia is seventy kilometers away from Malegaon.
And as a result to that the Hindutva group would initiate violent attacks six
days later in Dhulia to provide safety to Hindus from the terrorist attack in
Dhulia! The second Dhulia event was outright terror as the cops shot at the
upper parts of the bodies of Muslims, looting the shops of the Muslims and
letting the extremist Hindutva people attack the Muslims. There were few
Muslims houses encircled by lanes and lanes full of Hindu houses. All were burning with many victims frozen to
death with fear within the burning houses surrounded by the engulfing inferno
and the cops waiting for the denouement! The two Dhulia disturbances are
nothing but the 'institutional riot system.' as a central factor
in the production of Hindu-Muslim violence
“What
we call 'riots' are pogroms which is why in every single riot Muslims are the
worst sufferers but the largest victims of police brutality. More Muslims are
arrested even as they are the worst sufferers in the 'riots'.”
The Hindu extremists have volunteered
what would be the consequences once India is transformed into a Hindu nation. This
is from the professor of physics and a long time human resource development
minister Dr Murli Manohar Joshi: “Hindu
rashtra need not be a formal structure. It is the basic culture of this
country. I say that all Indian Muslims are Mohammadiya Hindus; all Indian
Christians are Christi Hindus. They are Hindus who have adopted Christianity
and Islam as their religion.” 25 This threatening posture was held out in the
midst of the bloodiest riots taking place as a sequence of the movement for the
Ram temple in the place where Babri mosque stood. The temple whenever it comes
up would be symbolic but it is clear from the following report of what the
thugs of Hindutva would do when they come for the minorities. In the
unforgettable words of Martin Niemöller “They came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up
because I wasn’t a Communist; And then they came for the trade unionists, And I
didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist; And then they came for the
Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew; And then... they came for
me... And by that time there was no one left to speak up.”
It
would be like the Jews in the concentration camp, give a dog a name and hang
him. Still in the animal imagery the dog and the mouse illustrate the point.
The
fall off of the juggernaut of the Hindu Rashtra is becoming more illustrative
by the day. Numerous instances are there where innocent Muslims are flagrantly
thrown into dungeons across the country. What for? But the despicable attitude
created by Golwalkar towards the minorities, essentially Muslims. First Mathi-ur-Rehman Siddiqui as a dog who
also became a mouse .
“In 2008, a youth was arrested from my neighbourhood in
Hubli for alleged links with the Student Islamic Movement of India. He was
studying to be a doctor and had no history of indiscipline or run-ins with the
law. His family was traumatised, and still is, for he continues to languish in
jail. If that could happen to a young, educated Muslim like him, it could
happen to me, too, I thought then. Five years later, that passing thought
became an ugly reality. On August 29, 2012, a posse of armed policemen barged
into the one-bedroom flat I shared with four other boys in Bangalore. They
pretended to be looking for my roommate Shoaib Ahmed Mirza, whom they accused
of plotting to assassinate some right-wing Kannada columnists. Ironically, they
had picked him up from the locality just a while earlier. In our flat, they slapped
his brother, Aijaz Ahmed, abused the other three and suddenly handcuffed me
too. I pleaded with them to tell me why they were taking me away. I asked one
of the policemen, whom I had spoken to earlier when I was a crime reporter with
Deccan Herald, what was going on. All I got was a sarcastic look. The brazen
manner in which we were picked up was more like a kidnapping than an arrest.
With my pleas unanswered, my mind slid into numbness. I went blank. I could not
think. The story of that youth kept replaying in my head.
My first night in the cell was the longest night of my life. We kept pleading with the cops, including the junior-most constables, to not destroy our lives. During our 30 days in police custody, the cops abused us in every way they could. One policeman asked me, “So, you work for a Pakistani newspaper?” I don’t even want to get into the nasty things they said about my faith. I was surprised that unlike the others, I was not physically abused. Outside the prison, though, I was planted as the “mastermind”. 26
My first night in the cell was the longest night of my life. We kept pleading with the cops, including the junior-most constables, to not destroy our lives. During our 30 days in police custody, the cops abused us in every way they could. One policeman asked me, “So, you work for a Pakistani newspaper?” I don’t even want to get into the nasty things they said about my faith. I was surprised that unlike the others, I was not physically abused. Outside the prison, though, I was planted as the “mastermind”. 26
Karnataka is the most crucial arena to watch as far as the rise of
Hindutva extremist is concerned. Even since BJP came to power and formed
government in Bangalore the birth pangs of the Hindu Rashtra was vividly seen
in day today life. The coastal areas where Muslims around Bhatkal are thriving
in a better off situation the police are also breathing down their necks always
hunting for the Bhatkals, be it Riyaz or any other. Even Muslim mothers are at their
wit’s end for correcting the police that their sons are not what they describe
in calling the first names and then the ubiquitous Bhatkal. And where the names
is altogether a different one then the other soubriquet is “Mastermind” as in
the case of Mathi-ur-Rehman Siddiqui.
The prison that swallowed him in August 2012 and threw up out on
February 25, 2013 like the snake that can swallow a mouse and is capable of
also throwing it out. This is not a wild simile but a contemporary literary
device of the double-speak of Hindutva. Addressing the Indian community
residing in Chicago and New York, Narendra Modi on March 10, 2013 remarked that
“Nation first” is secularism. If this
were so why would the police arrest Mathi-ur-Rehman? He was an Indian. The
others who were also Muslims arrested with him were also Indians. They had no
iota of any feeling for any other country near or far. They had opened their
eyes in this world of India and were destined to end their physical life by
being contently buried in the soil that gave them birth. Therefore what MM
Joshi had said was now being put in new sanitized words of Modi, as he holds
forth: “Shivji’s family is truly unique….
Shivji, Parvati, Ganesha, Kartikeya. The common belief is that a snake devours
mice. Yet you see Shivji wearing a snake around his neck. His son Ganesha uses
a mouse as his vaahan (mount). This is the greatest example of
co-existence.”27 Thus in the Hindutva
Rashtra the second class citizens or Mohammadiya Hindus would be like the mouse
that carries the Ganesha, does the drudgery. The snake can suck the mouse into
his belly and resume its position around the neck of Shiva as it happened on
the night of February 27, 2002 when Modi told his police to let the Hindus vent
their anger at the Muslims. It reminds one of
similar order given to the Gestapo on the eve of krystallnach :
“in shortest order, actions against Jews and especially their synagogues will
take place in all of Germany. These are not to be interfered with.” The result was
holocaust. Modi and Vajpayee also scored one of their own.
The myth of Hindutva easily lends itself
to a mythical interpretation in Jungian psychology of the unconscious. Thus the family is Shivji, wife Parvati,
offspring are Ganesha and Karikeya. The mouse and the snake are not part of the
family. The Hindu Rashtra will be made up of the family as seen here. Those who
are not in the family are the snakes and mice. So the two thousand Muslims
killed in the genocide in Gujarat are vermin like the mice and the snakes,
outside the family.
In a country like Australia which is not
India if an innocent Muslim is accused of terror as was Dr Hanif the government
would apologize for its mistake to the doctor. India as a Hindu Rashtra does
not have to. This is how the nascent move towards Hindu Rashtra is unfolding
itself.
The mantra of development is so
charismatic that even genocide can fade into insignificance. Modi: “The objective is not to win elections,
but if you are voted to power with a five-year mandate, it is incumbent on you
to serve your people, sincerely and dedicatedly, without looking at
self-interest. If you do it, people forgive you your other lapses.” This is the
syllogism of the Hindutva that once they win election and form a majority
government they would replicate Gujarat everywhere and brush the other lapses
under the carpet of development. The double speak of Hindutva for a Hindu
Rashtra is just that. The hidden agenda of the Hindu right reveals itself in
this way in “Bharat Prem and Bharat Bhakti.”
These words of Modi are, ipso facto,
apologia of what he did in February-March 2002 and has maintained it without
let up. The above mythological interpretation of the totems of Hindu mythology
lend different meanings to different people inhabiting India. In early January
1993 Bal Thackeray also used mythology that Shiva’s (read Modi’s usage, Shivji)
third eye was opening. Even the defense minister of India staying in Bombay
could not control let alone prevent the slaughter of Muslims that ensured the
ominous mythical warning. The Shiv Sainiks ruled the city and even when they
were caught by the army with arms in their cars on the move to supply to real
time massacre they were let off. One of them Madhukar Saroptdar was even
allowed to meet the Prime Minister Narsimha Rao. In such explosive situations
one can see de facto Hindu Rashtra.
Lest anyone should forget, Modi, Advani
and Vajpayee are committed, what is called, Savarkerites. Remember how Muslim
girls and women were raped, mutilated, and burnt alive in 2002. Many of the
girls and women had rods sticking out of their crotches in the front and the
back. They did not have any piece of cloth to hide their shame. Nor did the
women on the road they traversed to reach the relief camp help them to cover
their nude and live mutilation. They could not walk even as they passed alien
and inhospitable and deserted streets and yet they were not given even a glass
of water to quench their thirst. Even a sea full of water could not have
quenched their thirst as they had gone through harrowing and most traumatic
times of several centuries in just few hours of hounding out, raping,
mutilation and being burnt alive and in
case they survived the endless travail.
This is what Savarkar wanted
Shivaji to have done to the daughter in law of Kalya’s ruler when the Maratha
king defeated the ruler but sent back the girl with full honour and respect.
Vajpayee, Modi and Advani fulfilled many such wishes of Savarkar, that too in one
year, 2002. That is the fate waiting for many when the Hindu Rashtra would be
ushered in.
(1)
(2)Mustafa Khan. Sangh parivar: Multiheaded Hydera Monstrosity.
Commonalty blog
(3)
(4)http://www.indianexpress.com/news/two-hours-before-26-11-attacks-karkare-called-me-to-say-his-life-under-threat-digvijaya/723183/0
(4) Aziz Burny
(5) Laurent Gayer and Christophe Jaffrelot, Muslims in Indian Cities:
Trajectories of Marginalisation, Delhi:
Harper Collins, 2012)
(6)Asian Express
February 14, 2013.
Our Hindu rashtra Samar Halarnkar February 13, 2013)
(8) AG Noorani. Savarkar and Hindutva
(9)“Hindutva’s foreign tie-up in the 1930’s:
Archival Evidence”. Economic and
Political Weekly, January 22, 2000 p 226.)
(10)(Mustafa Khan.First Hindutva Genocide of Muslims and
its Architect. Page 9, November 26, 2011)
(11)AG Noorani. The RSS
and the BJP Delhi:Leftword 2000.p.28
(12)ibid p.19
(13)ibid p.20
(14) AG Noorani The
RSS and the BJP A Division of Labour .
Delhi Leftword 2000)
(15) ibid 20
(16) http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2004&leaf=01&filename=6726&filetype=html
(17) AG Noorani. The RSS and
the BJP. Delhi, 2000. P27.
(18) AG Noorani in Frontline January 7, 2000.
(19) Communalism
Combat October 1998)
(20) Dinman. April 8, 1979.
(21) The RSS and the BJP, p 40.
(22) Shashi Tharoor.
Riot. Penguin 2001. P128.(23)The RSS and the BJP. P 67.
(24)
Communal 'Riots': Some Harsh Truths
As Noorani has argued
in his review of the book The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in
Contemporary India by Paul R Brass;Oxford University Press, 2002. Subsequent references are from the same
source.
(25) Sunday Observer, January 13, 1991|
‘I was discriminated
against because I am Muslim’
|
(27)
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