Quintessential Hindutva Aseemanand effect

Quintessential Hindutva Aseemanand effect Hindutva is a legacy of VD Savarkar in its acquiring the accretion of implications down the decades. It is an aggressive stance of appropriating the right to champion politicized and militarized Hinduism and taking issues to a flashpoint of hostile confrontation vis-à-vis the minorities. It is maneuvering of historical facts and present reality and distortion of them to foist a supremacist point of view. Thus it militates against the virtues of Hindu religion of tolerance for which it has claimed a distinguished place of its own in the world comity since time immemorial. However, the arrival of Hindutva has begun to eclipse the innate strength of Hindu religion in the hurly burly of heralding a Hindu state without minorities. Most illustrative is the Hindutva intolerance of the minorities and the justification that Hindus cannot be terrorists by birth or by practice. If the members of the group commit violence, that is terrorism, it is meant for retaliating against the others who are not Hindus and can be terrorists. In this it is aping of Al Qaeda. There are pseudo secularists as well as pseudo nationalists. The latter on account of their ideology and the former are opportunist. LK Advani, Narendra Modi, Praveen Togadia are the architects of modern day Hindutva. If Advani were truly nationalist he would have debated Mandal issue and not divert it with a movement for demolishing a mosque and building a temple on its site. If that was nearly a quarter of a century ago, in more recent times he should have espoused the cause of the innocent people of Muslim community trapped in bogus terror charges instead of demanding harsher laws, even more draconian than the POTA and TADA. For his own constituency which returned him to Parliament time and again had exclusively innocents from Muslim community thrown in jails under the same laws. There is no world from him or anyone how the police had condemnably behaved by painting in rosy colour of how the police played pranks with the public at large let alone Muslims that the episode of Aseemanand repenting for the evil he had done he felt remorse and confessed. Mischievously laughing as he does the big story made up by the police he asserts: “Kaleem knew that I was in the same jail, but I couldn’t meet him.” And the crown of irony in bad taste: “How will I ever say such things to a Muslim boy?” [1]Modi too has played such pranks. The eleven Muslim falsely accused in the murder of Haren Pandya were acquitted. Even senior officers like Sanjiv Bhat have expressed what they knew that Modi himself may be behind the murder of Pandya. Mufti Sufiyan was allowed to flee to Pakistan with tacit approval and he was the master mind. Another mastermind [Haji Omar]was the Godhra accused who was acquitted! What message does Gujarat government under a Hindutva leader want to send to the world? Even in 2014 this protégé of Advani demands why not GUJCOCA be sanctioned for the state. Little does the mentor or the disciple have if any iota of introspection over the issues of playing havoc with the polity! Even Swami Aseemanand’s playing pranks on the issue of Kaleem being innocent or otherwise can hardly hide the macabre of foul tragedy they have wrought. But today the truth of Panchmahal pogrom has acquired that volubility as the mutilated woman in Shakespeare who was raped and tongue and fingers cut off to hide the rape by the king. At one point Aseemanand told the reporter that the Dangs “had the kind of work that I am good at—staying among the tribals and working with them. One should always do the work from which one gains contentment.” He illustrates with a cogent example by naming the province that was affected worse in 2002 genocide of Muslims: “The wiping out of Muslims from this area was also overseen by me.” It gratified Chief Minister Modi so much that he gifted even larger amount of public money as a reward to the mass murder of Muslims arranged by the Swami. In October 2002 Modi sanctioned huge amount of money in order to strengthen Aseemanand’s hold on Panchmahal. A part of the largess of Modi went to the construction of the huge temple in Shabri Dham. This became the monument for which a contrite nation would have dubbed it a memorial of shame over the slaughter of Muslims of Dangs. Inversely and perversely it was named after the woman who fed Lord Ram in his exile. As if mere grants were not enough Modi kick started his election campaign during the eight day recital of Ram Katha by Bapu Morari. If that was October 2002 it was 2013 when Hindutva replicated another campaign, now in UP. Modi’s confidant and fellow accomplice in the crimes of fake encounter Amit Shah emulated Modi in August 2013 by praying at Ayodhya temple raised at the rubble of the Babri Mosque. The centerpiece of the manifesto of December 2002 election was Gujarat Freedom of Religion Bill. It was this promulgation of conversion bill that one day the US would deny Modi visa in 2005. Little did the world know that this bill does not allow conversion of any Indian to any other religion without permission from the district magistrate! This in spite of the constitutional right, that Indians are free to convert to any religion they want. After the bill was passed into law in April 2003, Aseemanand, Modi and Morari planned to organize reconversion of Christians and Muslims known as ghar vapsi, return home. Morari proposed and Modi accepted. Four years continued work of construction of temple and infrastructure helped the Hindutva groups to have a mammoth programme in February 2006. The hidden agenda was of course planting bombs in places where Muslims were in sizable number but overtly it was reconversion of Christians and Muslims. Among those who attended were Narendra Modi, RSS leaders including Indresh Kumar and Mohan Bhagwat, Pragya Singh Thakur, etc. the event went down in history annals as the jubilant celebration of Hindutva. Are we prepared to acknowledge Modi and Bhagwat as terrorists? As if what had happened in2002 in Gujarat were not enough acts of terrorism, the new revelations by Swami Aseemanand have added further illustrations of perpetuation of terrorism. Rashtraiya Swayam Sevaksangh cadres and Bajrang Dal volunteers were in their uniform in large numbers in Naroda Patiya and other places at the start of the pogroms of Muslims on February 28, 2002. Officially the incidents were merely dubbed as riots in defiance of the fact that the police were firing at the Muslim minority and clearing the ground and then letting the Hindu extremists do the rest, looting, burning houses, killing and burning their victims alive, raping and yanking fetuses with their spears and swords and then making a bone fire, encircling of women by the crowds, gang raping them for hours together and then setting them on fire! This was terrorism. India has failed to call it terrorism. Here India means the political parties, their governments at state and centre and also the media, among others. These were acts of terrorism committed by the identifiable groups and even the crowds of people let loose upon the victims by the call of strike for three days. The chief minister of the state of Gujarat Narendra Modi had instructed the police to let the Hindus vent their anger at the Muslims and he stipulated three days of time for them to finish the pogroms. That the pogroms were well prepared in advance and all arrangements were made with print outs of Muslim houses and commercial establishments made available and even the surveys were conducted for it in advance. This is how Narendra Modi qualified himself to be the terrorist by his acts of commission and omission. As to the last he has till as late as February 2014 not uttered a single word of regret that the Muslims were killed in such large number. Even worse he followed it by allowing as home minister other acts of commission and omission: the fake encounters. He chose to play politics over the fake encounters. He manipulated the arrests of falsely accused Muslims as terrorists out to kill him so that he would stand to gain support for him and his party in the elections. This has gone unabated for more than ten years because he let his own lieutenants subvert the law and judiciary in the state. Furthermore in one currently debated case of Ishrat Jahan and three others Modi sanctioned the cold blooded killing and hence he is a terrorist, qua terrorist. In the statement of no other than GL Singhal whom the chief minister ordered through chain of command to kill the four the chief minister committed terrorism: Singhal gave the statement to CBI : “He (Vanzara) had showed me a complaint written in his own handwriting wherein some contents (names, number of rounds etc) were not written. It was pertaining to this case and the story of encounter in the complaint of what was registered later as Ahmadabad City DCB PS I CR No. 8/04. I had voiced my disagreement to Shri Vanzara on reading this draft complaint. My differences were basically on two points. One, the motive in the draft FIR mentioned a plan to kill the Chief Minister Shri Narendra Modi; but this was wrong. Since I had interrogated Amjadali, I knew the motive was different. Two, I had serious objections to killing the girl, Ishrat. I had said we let her go, and had promised to ensure that she would not spill the beans about this operation to anyone. Despite my strong objections, Shri Vanzara insisted on keeping the motive involving the Chief Minister and on killing the girl and branding her later as a woman terrorist. He had told me that this was already discussed with kali dadhi and safed dadhi, and that they wanted it that way.” Muslim youths were arrested and framed in false charges of terrorism just because of their appearance with beard and tunic. However, in this case the “black” and “white beard” is the minister of state for home Amit Shah and the chief minister Narendra Modi. They have not been arrested for years on end. Those who were killed outright like Ishrat Jahan were not terrorists at all. Modi, Shah and his police men including the special joint director of IB Rajendra Kumar have not only been alive but in power and they used their office and position to subvert the law and the judicial process. Why these terrorists have prerogatives and the others who were not, were not only brutally killed but made to bear mark of ignominy ever since their death. The act of killing the innocent was passed off as patriotism, deshbhakti as Vanzara called it. Prizes were awarded and promotions lavished. Their killer right from Modi to the cops of all ranks were allowed to rule the land. Courts and police malfunctioned for so long and so cussedly that the entire Muslim community had to suffer ignominy and death of their near and dear ones. Even today there is no suo moto attempt to redress the wrong and frame charges against the real killers. Why is this kind of terrorism different from the terrorism of Ajmal Kasab and Afzal Guru? The reason is not difficult to ascertain. India is not matured in democratic principles to call a spade a spade. Modi and Mohan Bhagwat are the counterparts of those who are doing the same. Swami Aseemanand has stated a fact in his own voice recorded by Leena Reghunanthan on her phone what constitutes Bhagwat confessing terrorism. RSS as a terrorist organization: manifest threat to the existence of Muslims. In the killing fields of Mujaffarnagar and everywhere else It was on January 23, 2014 when the Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi took on Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadu at Gorakhpur. “Netaji, do you know the meaning of converting to Gujarat? It means 24 hours electricity in every village and street.” Then thumping his barrel of chest: “It requires 56inch chest.” Both the fore grounded examples of development are heavily loaded with implications. Before this Mulayam Singh had accused Modi of responsibility for the genocide of Muslims in 2002. The entire strategy of Modi to foist on the Muslims the genocide was calculated to win election which he did. The collector of Godhra Jayanti Geetha had repeatedly told on radio that it was a fire incident in the S6 compartment and there was no sign of protest or fight when the compartment burnt. Even the American writer Martha C Nussbaum in her book “The Clash Within” says that Muslims from behind the platform shanty helped the crowd collect water from their well to douse the fire in S6. This disproves Modi’s hypothesis that the Ghanchi Muslims residing behind the railway station at Signal Falia are criminal by nature. As to the cause of fire the writer says: “Some of them [passengers returning from Ayodha, kar sevaks or Hindu pilgrims who wanted to build Ram temple at Ayodha] got into arguments with Muslim vendors. One tea hawker had tea thrown on him; another selling cigarette was not paid. Another tea hawker went into coach S-6 and was literally picked up and thrown out, because the kar sevaks did not want a Muslim selling tea to Hindus. Another report mentions that a Muslim vendor was beaten up when he refused to say “Jai Sri Ram” (Hail Ram). A boy tried to molest a fourteen-year-old Muslim girl named Sophia…” This unruly scene had not developed into a riot. The crowd of Muslims had gathered outside beyond the iron railing and thus the crowd on the ground was fenced off. Even if there was stone pelting those within the train were not only well armed but had sharp edged stones from the tracks to retaliate. But there was another aspect. The compartments were locked from within, particularly S6 where the passengers had also stacked their luggage against the door so that other passenger could not enter it. Within most of the compartments the pilgrims had kerosene stoves and food stuff to cook cheaper meals on the journey. One such stove must have burst into fire. The train had reached the station at 7.43 and stopped for four minutes at Godhra. The chain was pulled in four compartments [from within of course] because some passengers had not been prompt enough to get on the train when it started moving. The train stopped and there was the fire incident. The fire engines arrived at the scene after 8.30 and the fire was put out by 10 am. It was this fire incident that Narendra Modi turned into a terrorist attack by Muslims and ISI. This is a vivid illustration of the tactic that Aseemanand calls: making Hindus Katter or hardcore fanatics. “To stop conversions is an easy job. Use the route of religion. Make the Hindus kattar [fanatic]. The rest of the work will be done by them.”Thus by turning an accident into a terrorist attack Modi aroused the passions of the people of the majority community and gave them three days time to take revenge on the hapless Muslims. The RSS chief Mohan Bhatwat told his cadres on 15 January at Dombivali, Mumbai, that “Sixty five years of Independence to our country had passed. Whatever changes have taken place has been mere physical. Change is in the permanent behavior of the people. The politicians or government servants cannot bring about this because they have to maintain their popularity among the people. Change should come from within the society. Society is the ‘father’ of everyone. ” appla desh swatantra houn 65 warsh jhali. Jey parivartan jhaley tey warwarchey. Pariwartan sthayee bhaw asoon tey rajky nete, sarkar, pariwartan aandnar nahin. Karan teyana lok priyata japoon dhewawi lagtey. ..smaj hatch sarwancha baap aahey. “Those who do not call themselves Hindus were descendants of Hindus. There should be no shame in calling ourselves as Hindus. The Hindu society can lead the world dynamically. Hindustan is a land of Hindus. Hindu ways of worshipping is not related to Hindu religion. Everyone is free to worship or not worship in Hindu religion.” Hindu nahi khnarey purvi hindu purjayanchey hote. Aamhi hinud aahot yachi laaj nako, sanpurn hindu samaj jaga chy netruto prakhty ney karoo shakel. Hinusthan hindun cha desh aahey. Hindu pooja paddaticha hindu dharmanshi sanbhan nahin. Hindu dharmat sarwanna pooja karneha chey, na karneyche swatantry asleycehy…(Saamna January 16, 2014) Seemingly Modi and Bhagwat are speaking two different kinds of changes. But the crux of the matter is that those who put India First as their ideal and thereby worship it as goddess mother are Indians. Those who do not subscribe to this are not Indians. It was precisely on this discrimination that Modi ordered payment of 2,00, 000 rupees to every Hindu who died in the fire incident on the Sabamati Express train and afterward and only 1,00,000 to Muslims who were killed in the post Godhra pogroms. Since then the chief minister of Gujarat has refused to disburse the scholarship or stipend to the Muslim citizens of Gujarat. What is more RSS and other groups of extremists are unapologetic over the killing of Muslims for the same reason. When cadres of RSS and hordes of its affiliates killed Muslims it was not terrorism according to them! Therefore every Hindu converted to Islam or converted a Hindu girl while marrying her means one more enemy of the Hindus as swami Aseemanand learnt and so did Modi from Swami Vivekanand. Aseemanand, Bhagwat and so Modi would like to see that Muslims become idolatrous and touch the feet of Bharat Mata image or statue to be truly Indian as Bankam Chand Chatterji has given in his poem: Mother, I bow to thee! Rich with thy hurrying streams, Bright with thy orchard gleams, Cool with thy winds of delight, Dark fields waving, Mother of might, Mother free. Glory of moonlight dreams Over thy branches and lordly streams, Clad in thy blossoming trees, Mother, giver of ease. Laughing low and sweet! Mother, I kiss thy feet, Speaker sweet and low! Mother, to thee I bow. Who hath said thou are weak in thy lands, When the swords flash out in twice seventy million hands And seventy million voices roar Thy dreadful name from shore to shore? Thou art wisdom, thou art law, Thou our heart, our soul, our breath, Thou the love divine, the awe In our hearts that conquers death. In the case of the Muzaffarnagar pogroms a Muslim youth reportedly stalked a jat girl. Her brothers killed him, and in retaliation the Muslims killed the two brothers. Another version is that a Valmiki stopped his dirt cart before the shop of a Muslim who objected and quarrel started on Augusts 27 August 2013. A mass gathering of jats was held on September 7th and the attacks took place. People were apprehensive of Amit Shah in charge of UP election going to Ayodha and performing puja at the beginning of his campaign in the wake of Nitish Kumar breaking the 17 year alliance between his party in Bihar and BJP. When he did this, Modi threatened dire consequences for what he dubbed as betrayal. He also vowed to avenge it. The jats till then were not fanatics and had always voted with Muslims. To make them kattar or fanatic a BJP MLA made a doctored video of Afghanistan Talibans executing their victims and passed it off as Muslims killing the two brothers. The same tactic was used, making Hindus kattar. Create hatred against the Muslims and ignite fire of communalism and revenge. The tenets of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) have been latent but have now been becoming more and more apparent and unambiguous so much that it can send chilling apprehension down the spinal cord of the minorities. Its methods have been conspiratorial, violent, self justificatory and extremely chauvinistic. It sanctioned bomb blasts against Muslims in areas dominated by them demographically because of the bogey that Muslims produce more children than Hindus and would take over India in future. This explains why the RSS started advising Hindus to produce more than two children. To this end the organization through its affiliates multiplied over the years according to the same need aimed at extinction of Muslims. From worshipping of weapons of mass destruction and really using them and experimenting for more dangerous ones it remained unabashed, unconstitutional and outright criminal. But obviously the RSS never overtly states any such thing. Even so the belief in bombing and other acts of violence by it comes in open as in the latest news on Aseemanand from the Ambala central jail: ‘Swamiji, if you do this we will be at ease with it. Nothing wrong will happen then. Criminalisation nahin hoga (It will not be criminalised). If you do it, then people won’t say that we did a crime for the sake of committing a crime. It will be connected to the ideology. This is very important for Hindus. Please do this. You have our blessings.” Ours means saffron brigands. They command government donated land, funds, schools, separate funds especially for temples, etc. Into this juggernaut Narendra Modi’s election campaigning has added fuel to ignite Hindu sentiments. After all he was and is qua paracharak and not a chief minister or else he would not have let the marauding crowds of fanatics butcher Muslims for three days. He allowed this even after having sworn on the religious book that safety and security of all citizens and not just Hindus of Gujarat was his constitutional duty. Since then he has maneuvered through his lieutenant and in charge of UP election, Amit Shah, the pogroms in Muzaffarnagar and other districts. And those whom he gifted astronomical amount of money from the state exchequer have vision of global Hindu rashtra. He has paid from secret funds bribes to the lawyers of Mallika Sarabhai who was fighting a case for justice to the Muslims butchered in Naroda Patia. The Gujarati Diaspora has made funds available which would perpetrate more killings and later bribe judges and prosecutors or buy them outright in the defense of the accused in the pogroms. They bore the expenses of the pogroms by distributing money and food packages during February and March 2002 in Gujarat. RSS is now a threat overseas for its staunch stalwart’s [Aseemanand’s]vision of ‘a global Hindu rashtra.’ The Diaspora has settled on Modi to carry out the task. For nothing else than this apprehension in mind that Frank Raj remarked that more than Sharia, Hindutva is a danger to the world. [3] Apropos this the Supreme Court is at long last in a mood to decide whether Hinduism and Hindutva are the same and are nor prejudicial to the other groups of Indians. The revelation of Aseemanand past his two confessions in Panchkula and Delhi and the Caravan addition as an appendix the debate has come a full circle. The election in 2014 holds promise that the sanity would prevail among the citizens of the republic to see through the thick fog that Modi’s speeches have spread as a miasma. The SC had ruled in 1995 that "Hindutva/Hinduism is a way of life of the people in the sub-continent" and "is a state of mind." [4] Modi and Aseemanand are the counterpoints that can crystallize what exactly should be done. At stake is the Republic of India and not any party or demagogue of enormous proportion looming large over the elections still months away. Jusice JS Verma had ruled in three judge bench that Hinduism and Hindutva are the same and what Dr Murli Manohar Joshi had said during election then in the aftermath of the sway of his party thanks to the demolition of the Babri mosque was not unlawful. Joshi had foretold: “First Hindu State will be established in Maharashtra did not amount to appeal on ground of religion." Contrasted with Praveen Togadia’s statement of it in Hyderabad that first Hindu rashtra will be established in Gujarat in 2015. [5] Therefore, Joshi, Modi, Asimanand and Verma have each in his own ways shown unity of purpose. When Prime Minister AB Vajpayee sent Justice JS Verma and Attorny General Soli Sorabji to Vienna in 2002 to prevent Mary Robinson from visiting Gujarat to ascertain the extent of the genocide they were acting within the broader framework of the ideology. [1]http://caravanmagazine.in/reportage/believer [2]Saamna January 16, 2014. [3] More dangerous than shariah: Hindutva. Frank Raj [4] http://www.deccanherald.com/content/384155/sc039s-seven-judge-bench-revisit.html) [5] http://www.rediff.com/news/report/vhp-will-declare-gujarat-a-hindu-state –by-2015-togadia-/20130401.html