Narendra Modi and his pack, the terror streak

Narendra Modi and his pack, the terror streak Mustafa Khan Even Keel April 29, 2014 02554-236370 9328225763 Mustafakhan1948@gmail.com Contents Preface Chapter 1 Modi is no lone wolf Chapter 2 Revanchist dimension Chapter 3A terror tainted PM? Chapter 4 Roguery under the rogue, Gujarat Chapter 5 Terror streak as inconvenient changes Chapter 6 Gujarati diaspora insidiously dividing India Chapter 7 The unmistakable streak Chapter 8 Panchayat to Parliament Chapter 9 Rewriting even recent history Chapter 10 What happened under Modi’s watch Chapter 11 Finger of suspicion pointing at Modi Chapter 12 Future scenario Chapter 13 The comeuppance is here to stay Preface The most aggressive campaigning for parliamentary election 2014 by Narendra Modi was accompanied by a comprehensive plan to go to poll and win. It swept many away to take refuge in his development and others to either ignore the gusty gale of politicking or take shelter and think over it. The terrible decibel of his magnified voice and songs and slogans was carrying away people by the enormous publicity backed by the corporate houses and the media singing his paean. Modi himself raised many issues that defied solution because he could not be explicit as he is still a pracharak, a full time one, and propped up by the RSS. In one election rally Modi asked the Muslims to hold a computer in one hand and the Koran in the other. Modi is a victim of his group stance that the Muslims came to India with the sword and the holy book in their hands. Who has given this idea that the Muslims came to the subcontinent with a sword and the holy book in their hands? This wrong conception goes back to centuries even before MJ Akbar was born or wrote his The sword of Islam. The highly biased view point against Islam is deliberately believed that it was the sword and not the virtues of the new faith that won the day for it. That highly myopic segment has always held its sway and saw its way now to take power and turn the country into a theocratic state. Muslims here and there might be scary of Modi but most of them are not paranoiac. Hence the need of the hour is to keep sanity and have a current of discussions on why did Modi make this issue of the sword so prominent by not even uttering the word. Another issue is that he would not wear the Muslim traditional skull cap but felt justified to pontificate that people should not throw down the caps of other communities. He has gone again on offensive by implying the medieval bias that Muslim had insulted other communities by holding their headgear in contempt and were always itching to first destroy it on conquering them. I wrote the first seven books under the compulsion of having a kind of open debate on the issue of the Hindutva stance on issues including the most horrible of all, the genocide of Muslims in Gujarat 2002 and coming down to the fury and ferocity unleashed on the Muslims in Muzaffarnage and Shamli districts. I began the first book Aggressive Hindutva Terror and Malegaon. It was launched from Malegaon where I live. As I had not printing house of my own I entertained the idea of having a think tank which would aim to inculcate in people the efficacy of not overturning the stability of our country by any extremist ideology. So the thought “stable keel” was born. As most of the issues which threaten us are the result of exclusionary ideology of hate other subject matters came in the way as is seen in each of the books: First Hindutva Genocide of Muslims and its Architect Decade of the Demagogue and his Demagoguery Mass-Terror Atrocities of Muslims for a Hindu Rashtra Ishrat Jhan Sacrificed at the Altar of Hindutva Moloch Premeditated Framing of Innocent Muslims in False Terror Charges Muzaffarnagar, Fury and Ferocity. The first was of course First Hindutva Genocide of Muslims and its Architect which appeared on January 26, 2014, our Republic Day. Aggressive Hindutva Terrorism and Malegaon appeared on January 30, 2014, coinciding with the martyrdom of Mahatma Gandhi. The last on Muzaffarnagar coincided with the day Muzaffarnagar went to polls, April 10, 2014. All this unseemly hurry in writing in a place like Malegaon did not create any ‘disinterested endeavour’ for common pursuit of truth. This deficit is overturned by the robust hope that well begun is half done! My approach is based on critical thinking as taught by Rabindrranath Tagore. This approach assumes that you have to give place to a stream of thinking that may revolutionize your view and completely change your stance. This is not possible unless you enter into a process of discussion and introspection. Till the courts really and truly declare a person innocent we must have the right to discuss and analyze him most critically howsoever big or small he might be. The worry that this would defame him would extinguish critical thinking. If my study of Hindutva is from one point of view I would welcome anyone to join this endeavour to voice a different and preferably opposite and contrasting view of the same subject. He can even send his manuscripts to me for Even Keel to ponder and even publish in due course of time when we have our own press and office for discussion and publication. The present book is on the terror streak in Modi. What happened in 2002 Gujarat was terrorism unleashed upon the Muslims. It was Modi who stipulated three days for the Hindus to wreak havoc upon the minority. This vengeance or comeuppance is the most decisive and defining moment in the life of Modi. He committed the same and let his supporters for the crimes he implied when he allowed retaliation with the backing of the administration. Since then true to his ideology that shaped him he never ever accepted it let alone express regret or remotely acknowledge its existence. He was in Varanasi, his constituency, on Friday April 18, 2014. When the TV channel reporter asked him what message had he to give to the Muslims of the constituency, his reply was daggers. He said he would “never commit such a sin.” He also refused to remove the anxiety of the Muslims. He defiantly said "I haven't even started it[soothing the anxieties of Muslims]. And I am not going to do it. It is not important for me. I am totally opposed to it... For the nation my mantra is 125 crore Indians. Hindu, Muslim, Christians... The country had enough of all these terminologies. The new terminologies will be youth, poor, farmer, village, city, education." Chapter 1 Modi is no lone wolf Modi is not lone wolf, an exceptional lonely person having extreme views against the Muslim minority which is detrimental to them and proves through his acts of commission and omission during 2002 genocide of Muslims. He is a part of a pack. The Rashtrya Swayamsevak Sangh is an internationally recognized terrorist organization. According to the American think tank Terrorism Research Centre (TRC) based in East Virginia state in US it is placed in a list of organizations which are all terrorist in essence in the context of the subcontinent. The list shows different shades of terrorism. They are religion based and also secular in essence like the Maoists. While many in India call the others as terrorists but it is little known truth that RSS like ULFA is Hindu terrorist group and based on the upper caste Hindus known as swarna. 1. Al Badr 2. Al Barq 3. Al Mansooran 4. Al Umar Mujahideen 5. Al-Nasreen 6. All Tripura Tiger Forces 7. Asif Raza Commandoes 8. Harkat ul Ansar 9. Hizb ul Mujahedin 10. Islamic Front 11. Jamaat I Islami [JI] 12. Jamiat ul Mujahideen (JUM) 13.Jammu and Kashmir Freedom Force 14.Lashkar e Jabbar (LJ) 15. Mahaz e Azadi 16. Maoists 17. Muttahida Jehad Council (MJC) 18. National Liberation Front of Tripura 19. People's War Group (PGW) 20. Rajneeshee Cult 22. Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) 23. Sikh Extremists 24. Tehrik i Jihad 25. United Liberation Front of Assam [1] The appearance of the musclemen of Bajrang Dal at the beginning of the pogroms at Naroda Patia was distinctly a visual proof of that organization’s terrorist orientation. The printouts of Muslim houses and commercial establishments also came from the same quarters. In addition to the mass terrorism, the bomb blasts in Malegaon included perpetrators who were pracharaks (like Modi) of RSS and also members of the Bajrang Dal. In fact on September 9, 2006 the director general of police of Maharashtra Dr Pasricha said that the blasts of the previous day in Malegaon was the work of Banjang Dal. Despite these valid proofs there is no sign that the government is anywhere near declaring RSS/BD/VHP as terrorist organizations. India has recommended the US to declare different Muslim groups as terrorists but has never taken up the RSS or BD or VHP as terrorists with the US. This is viscerally relevant because these organizations of India receive enormous funds from the Indians in US and the European countries, the Indian Diaspora. Sonal Shah and her father have been VHP office holders of America and have sent money which was redirected from Delhi to Gujarat for the purpose of the holocaust there. The marauders had pouches of dry fruits, drinks, and cash sourced from the same fund. Modi decribed the pracharaks and volunteers of RSS as pavitra log or “sacred people” in his speech at Varanasi or Benares on Friday April 18, 2014. He remarked that the RSS was “biggest nationalistic, social and cultural organization—which has been given a bad name by news traders and people with vested interests.”[2] The news traders to him are the independent media with objective reporting of events. In contrast the Ahmadabad Sandesh is a patriotic newspaper because it contributed to violence against the Muslims by carrying distorted and biased reportage. How could the RSS be the biggest nationalistic group when it does not allow minorities in its rank? Furthermore its nationalism is Hindu cultural nationalism which excludes the minorities. Its aggressive Hindutva stance on issues is highly poisonous and divisive. A current instance is that of those inveterate adherents of RSS who would not vote Anand Paranjape of Nationalist Congress Party in the Kalyan constituency of the Lok Sabha election. Mumbra is a part of it. The NCP MLA of Mumbra Jintendra Awhad had supported Ishrat Jahan family to fight the case of the fake encounter of 2004 in which Ishrat Jahan was kidnapped and abducted to Ahmadabad and drugged and killed at the instance of Narendra Modi (white bearded, a euphemism of Gujarat police for their boss) and black bearded Amit Shah. The CBI has described Shah as the kingpin, the most crucial person in the operation of trapping the innocent girl and killing her and three others. He was arrested and imprisoned. After spending time in jail he was given bail but forbidden stay in Gujarat and surprisingly allowed political activism. Can the RSS be called what Modi has said that the cadres of it are good people and not terrorist who “dedicated their lives for the welfare of the downtrodden”? Ishrat Jahan family was penurious like the many dalits who live in Mumbra and elsewhere. Even more noteworthy is that the BJP still views Ishrat Jahan as terrorists while those who ordered her death, precisely Modi and Shah, are scot free and no one even thinks that they are really the terrorists. Even in 2002 Modi turned the fire accident on Sabarmati Express on February 27 into sabotage by Pakistan without giving any proof. Even after the conviction of the Muslims supposedly involved there is no cogent proof and he has not bothered to make it clear to his fellow Gujaratis how was Pakistan involved. His instruction to the police to let the Hindus exact revenge for three days fits into the strategy evolved by Subramanian Swamy: “What does it mean in the 21st century for Hindus to stand up? I mean by that mental clarity of the Hindus to defend the nation by effective deterrent retaliation.”[3] Modi had told the meeting in the night of February 27 that he wanted to teach Muslims a lesson they would not forget in life by showing them their place. However Modi calling Indians as brothers and saying he would not let secularism divide them is hogwash. As Swamy also spoke in a similar vein for his strategy which includes mutual work by Hindus and other minorities: “This also entails an intelligent co-option of other religious groups into the Hindu cultural continuum. That is why I advocated that Muslims accept what has been scientifically established by DNA genetic studies, that we have common ancestors and share the hoary Hindu past.” So Muslims must co opt though not cooperate voluntarily! It was this that compelled Comparative Religion Professor Diana Eck of Harvard to vote against Swamy teaching at Harvard as this is discriminatory. Modi also discriminates defiantly. She went further that Swamy “clearly crosses the line by demonising an entire religious community and calling for violence against their sacred places.”[4] The controversy of Giriraj Singh also hearkens back to what Swamy had said. Swamy has been the president of Janta Party, now merged with BJP. "If any Muslim acknowledges his or her Hindu legacy, then we Hindus can accept him or her, others who refuse to acknowledge this can remain in India but should not have voting rights." What Hukum Singh said in Muzaffarnagar of disenfranchising Muslim refugees is a step further. In India itself the hard line approach to Muslim as terrorist is that other communities who are not Hindus like Christians, Jains, Bhuddists and Sikhs are not viewed from the narrow prism of Hindutva. As Swamy justifies: “because they have nothing to do with that terror.” This is skewed perception of terror for what Sonal Shah, her father VHPA official in the US, Amit Shah and the two Kothari brothers who climbed the towers of Babri mosque were all terrorists. Through money, action and support they entered the unholy alliance of terrorists. Amit Shah carried out the order of his boss and told the Gujarat police and their counterpart in Andhra to intercept the bus at Sangli in Maharashtra and arrest Sohrabuddin and Tulsiram Prajapati. When Kauser Bi intervened Shah contacted Modi and ordered that she too should be arrested. So far Shah has not been named in the Sohrabuddin case. He was arrested because Ayub Rana of Tehelka had furnished the phone call records to show that Shah was in contact with GL Singhal, Vanzara and Modi who had busy time when Ishrat and the others with her were killed. What other than murder was the topic of discussion among them so early and so continuously? She was just an ordinary poor girl, not a terrorist out to kill anyone let alone heavily guarded Modi and Shah! The quintessence of Hindutva stance comes out clearly when Karan Thappar cornered Swamy as he had done Modi in 2007. Karan Thapar: What gives you the feeling that the majority of Hindus agree with you. Subramanian Swamy: Go and talk to them. Karan Thapar: What do you mean go and talk to them? Subramanian Swamy: I would say judging to all the reaction to my article, the Hindus are overwhelmingly in support. Karan Thapar: Are you saying that Hindus are communal like you are? Subramanian Swamy: Well it depends how you define communal. If you think that what I have written is communal then I will say that 99 per cent are communal. Karan Thapar: 99 per cent Hindus are communal? Subramanian Swamy: If your definition of Hindu or Communalism is what you have defined it. Karan Thapar: Let's come to the reasons such as why you have this particular view and attitude to Muslims. You say and I'm quoting once again, “Muslims of India are being programmed by a slow reacted process to become radical and thus slide into suicide against Hindus. What proof do you have of this? Subramanian Swamy: Who has done the Bombay attack? Karan Thapar: What about Swami Asimanand, what about Col. Purohit what about Pragya Singh Thakur? Subramanian Swamy: Don't change the subject. Today there is sufficient evidence that home grown Muslim individuals have become terrorists. Karan Thapar: But there is also sufficient evidence of home grown Hindus become terrorists. Subramanian Swamy: Don't change the subject, first let's finish this point. And then I'm coming…I'm ready to take this point, but first let's take the first point. That for the first time I find that there is sufficient evidence with our intelligence system that Muslims are being programmed into becoming terrorists. Karan Thapar: For the sake of argument only. I will accept you are right. In fact why then associate the whole Muslim community because a small fringe lunatic element doing it.(5) Among the pack hounding Muslims is Pravin Togadia who told on Saturday April 19, 2014 “Where we are in majority, we should have courage to intimidate them by taking the law in our hands.” About the Muslim who had bought a house in a Hindu dominated Meghaninagar in Bhavnagar district he issued his fatwa: “Ensure his shop is shut. This is an offensive war strategy..take stones, burn tyres and create an atmosphere of rioting.” What a rich Muslim business man has done, Togadia generalizes for the rest of the Muslims in India: “First they buy a house at high price and purchase other houses of Hindus at half price. How do we stop this? Take possession of the house and put up a Bajrang Dal board. You will not be hanged if you take possession of the house illegally. Rajiv Gandhi killers have not been hanged, none of you are going to be hanged. I have done this in the past and kept possession of the house for a long time by pasting a Bajrang Dal board. Muslims have lost the house and money too.”[6] Who is the actual father of this hate ideology against Muslims owning houses in “Hindu” areas? It was no other than the Chief Minister Modi who had the act known as Disturbed Areas Act promulgated to prevent Muslims buying property in Hindu majority area in the aftermath of the genocide of 2002. Thousands of Muslims lost their property in the pogroms and could not buy any in the areas of the majority community who hardly lost any house of their own. Indeed, Togadia even gave this also as incentive:”The VHP leader reportedly incited the gathering to take forcible possession of the house or to pressure the state government to enforce the Disturbed Areas Act, which makes it tough to seek propriety to a member of the minority community in a negihbourhood.”[7] Rubbing salt in the wounds of the Muslim minority which still bleed when they recall the horrors of the holocaust Modi wreaked upon them in 2002, Togadia excelled in his one-upmanship: "I have done it in the past and Muslims have lost both property and money." By enacting the discriminatory DAA and also ruling Gujarat with impunity in open defiance of what the then President of India KR Narayanan wrote to Prime Minister of India AB Vajpayee for treating Muslims as human beings, Modi led the pack of wolves engaged in outfoxing. Togadia waited for the opportune time to outfox Modi now. This is something Giriraj Singh was doing in Bihar. Singh like the Sangh has not forgiven Advani’s visit to Pakistan. All these happenings in the backdrop of a general election for Indian Parliament must recall that the 2004 election was fought and lost by the BJP on the issue of the genocide. No other than the PM Vajpayee regretted the loss due to Gujarat 2002 carnage. The Sangh [RSS] chose Modi to fight ten years later because his charisma was so enchanting that the Hindutva group felt that by winning the election they would get another clean chit for what had happened then. Thousands of cases are still pending in Gujarat or in the Supreme Court or in Bombay high court. By having Modi at the helms of affair of the country only he could sweep all the cases under the carpet of the mania for development. How far Circe will infatuate the youths and the middle class will be clear in about a month’s time. But things have gone too far. It was the war cry of “Har Har Mahadev” that rang into the ears of the scared Muslims couching low in their hiding as the hordes descended upon them in 2002. By substituting the name of the god with the architect of the genocide the fans went out of control. Even the Shankaracharya of Varanasi was rattled: "People say no one can stop Modi. But if these activities continue, God will stop Modi." So who is still leading the pack? It is Modi, Togadia is incidental, so is Giriraj Singh. As India has been subjected to acts of terrorism by different groups based on different religious identities it is necessary to evolve a comprehensive definition of terrorism. on the night of April 12, 2014 a crowd of Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad led by fire eater Pravin Togadia had met in protest before the house of a Dawoodi Bohra Muslim who had bought a house at Meghani circle. Or look at the terrified parent’s plea to a journalist: “No, you cannot use my name or my letters or my story. I have three children. Modi will ruin their lives if people know my views on him.” “I pleaded with him to reconsider but he would not budge. “You do not have children. You do not know what it is like to live in Gujarat. You will return to America eventually. Please, you must understand.”[8] The fear the father of three had is what is called terror. How magnified it was when during the pogroms thousands of parents like him had their children huddle together against the closed door which would give way to the marauding crowd yelling for their blood. It was Modi who had created the situation, manufactured out of the train fire accident. A leaf from the contemporary incident of terrorism in Kansas in US would help us provided we are serious about defining terrorism. If we don’t have such a definition how could we deal with the menace? Are we going to be embroiled in the primary stage of name and identifying the scourge? A fresh debate in the US has churned up a working definition of terrorism as “acts of terror are planned attacks that are done to draw attention to some cause, rather than to inflict harm or suffering on a particular identity group.” It is “orchestrated and often part of a series of events often associated with formal organization or group” [9] In 2002 the real aim was the renewed movement for building the Ram temple at Ayodhya after a decade of the demolition of the Babri mosque. The movement was fixed for March 15 2002. For that more and terrifying violence was needed to arouse the anger of the Hindus. The fire accident on the Sabarmati Express though accidental came handy for a larger purpose. 1. http://www.terrorism.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Countries&file=index&view=113 2. Asian Age April 19, 2014. 3. http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/a-strategy-to-combat-islamic-terrorism-in-india/article2362840.ece 4. http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/harvard-scraps-swamys-courses/article2697466.ece?ref=relatedNews 5. http://ibnlive.in.com/news/indian-muslims-have-hindu-ancestry-subramanian-swamy/175660-3.html 6. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/lok-sabha-elections-2014/news/Election-Commission-directs-FIR-against-Pravin-Togadia-for-hate-speech/articleshow/34066988.cms 7. Asian Age April 22, 2014 [8] http://www.bostonreview.net/world/zahir-janmohamed-narendra-modi-india-gujarat-man-who-refuses-wear-green [9] http://kcur.org/post/what-difference-between-hate-crime-and-act-terrorism Chapter 2 Revanchist dimension Revanche is the policy of a nation seeking the return of lost territory. It is at the root of Hindutva parties and the corner stone of the ideology of RSS that informs its political configurations like BJP, Shiv Sena, VHP, etc. Revanchism is the policy of seeking to retaliate, especially to recover a lost territory. The RSS believes that the ancient Bharat or India is a compact piece of land that stretches from the Pacific Ocean in the east to the Atlantic in the west with India as its centre. This land includes Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangla Desh, Indonesia and other countries as well. It also envisages foreign rule as aberration and particularly the Mogul rule. In fact the novel Anand Math which includes the nationalist song Vande Matrum is held in great reverence because it focuses on the image of India as a goddess which wants to be liberated from the tyranny of the Mogul rule but does not view the British colonial rule as evilful. Thus there is the longing for the return of the Vedic Bharat sans the interregnum of the Mogul period. The Hindu party BJP’s antagonism to Congress party is coloured by this ideological slant. Even in the campaign for 2014 general elections has the same longing. The editorial in Saamna of April 17, 2014 has this as the subject matter: nebhdhtyanche Congress sarkar wa bhashcharyanchey nalayak sarkar kachryat fekoon deya wa teyasathich aaj matdan kra. Matdar raja, uchal ty dhanush. Mogguli vicharancha ved ghenyasathi bann soda. Paha, aakashateel tehteesh koti deo tuzhyawar fool udhadat aahey. Devanahi maharashtrat papmukti savi aahe. Teya devtanchay charni kamadphool arpan karun papacha vinash kara. Matdar raja, aaj raja sarkach waga! “Throw into the dustbin the imbecile and corrupt government of Congress. And for that cast your vote today, you voter king! Take up the bow! Shoot an arrow to take a break from the Mogul mindset. Look! There are thirty three crore Hindu gods dropping petals from the heaven upon you from the sky! Even the gods want to emancipate Maharashtra from the sinful rule. Propitiate the gods with lotus flowers and end sinfulness. O voter king, behave like a king today!” In the mammoth meeting at the complex of Bandra-Kalyan on Tuesday night April22, 2014 Udhav Thackeray thundered in the presence of Modi: “Have you [Congress] the courage to confront Pakistan and Bangladesh? You beggars for votes [of minority] you do not know how to administer the country. Our time to rule is anyway coming and then we will pummel [lathaney, repeatedly beating with our feet] out of the country the Pakis and the Bangla Deshis.” Ya deshacha pantpradhan shai imam tharvinar nahit. Ya deshache nagrik aani bhagvi mateych deshacha panpradhan tharawtil. “The Shahi Imam cannot choose the prime minister of this country. The citizens of this country and the saffron votes will determine the prime minister of this country.”[Saamna April 23, 2014] On Monday evening April 21, 2014 MLC Ramdas Kadam thundered in the presence of Modi at the Bandra-Kurla complex: “Modi will destroy Pakistan within six months of coming to power.” “Five lakh Muslims gathered at Azad Maidan. These Muslims attacked policemen, burned their vehicles, burnt the memorials of our martyrs. These Muslims are molesting our woman policewomen. In Shivaji’s Mahrshtra, if someone is going to outrage the modesty of our mothers and sisters, then I am confident that Narendra Modi will find a permanent solution for these people.” Interestingly a Shiv Sena leader had only recently misbehaved with a woman activist of the same party but no invocation of Shivaji’s rule or the Maratha warrior’s Maharashtra was brought in the picture. So, even revanchism is selectively used by the Hindutva parties. Ramdas Kadam like his boss dared the final solution like Hitler did. Taken together Pravin Togadia, Giriraj Singh, Thackeray and Kadam are in close vicinity of the leader of the pack, Modi in their hunting of the Pakis or otherwise the Muslims of India who do not choose to vote BJP. Modi is so canny and cagey that he would only say the most sanitized statement but even here he would not condemn anyone. He observed: “Today, the flood lights are on us. We will now be increasingly put under public scrutiny.” [1] Even those who wrote something against Modi government felt that retaliation would follow soon. This palpable threat to life and property is there in what Rana Ayub wrote: “In July 2008, the Supreme Court severely reprimanded your government in Gujarat for slapping a sedition charge against senior journalist and sociologist Ashis Nandy. It protected Nandy from being arrested by the Gujarat Police after he moved the Supreme Court apprehending his arrest. Nandy was slapped with criminal charges for allegedly promoting enmity between groups in society through his analytical article on the 2007 Gujarat poll outcome. The Supreme Court remarked, “Gujarat is the state of Mahatma Gandhi and it’s very strange that the state government is unable to take any criticism.” In 2012, the Gujarat High Court quashed five sedition cases filed against the Times Of India’s Ahmedabad edition in June 2008 by the then police commissioner OP Mathur. . Sir, when civilians are subjected to stalking using the state machinery, women in this country feel highly unsafe and worry for their security. We women are also concerned about our safety should you come into power and should Amit Shah be given such blatant power to misuse the state and national machinery like the Intelligence services to stalk civilians, journalists no less, and activists who have been crusading for justice. you are a practicing Hindu who believes in culture and Hindu traditions, and you imply, sir, that by wearing the Muslim cap you disrespect your religion and culture. Two stray thoughts that come to my mind as I hear your statement: a.) Your seniors and colleagues in the party Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Rajnath Singh have attended iftaar parties and worn skullcaps. Where they lesser Hindus?, and b.) Sikhs are not Hindus, Sir, Sikhism is an altogether different faith. So, if by wearing a Muslim cap you would resort to appeasement, would it not be appeasement of the Sikhs when you wear a turban? http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/standpoint-ps-some-clarifications-narendra-modiji-on-your-latest-interview-1979363 The Sachar Commission recommendations created another cause a belli for the Hindutva. They could not stomach 15% of money sanctioned for the minorities including the Muslims for their improvement. Bal Thackeray sent his son Udhav to the PM Manmohan Singh with a letter threatening dire consequences if the recommendations were accepted. Modi never implemented them because they were based on religion. But the recommendations were a lost ground and Modi and Thackeray wanted to recover their lost ground. Recourse to the debate in 2007 is in order here. Ever growing need for commonalty is threatened by ever increasing communalism in the country. Commonalty is the concern for humankind on the basis of their wants and situation in life as well as their problems and aspirations. Communalism is dividing the humankind on the basis of religion and pitting one group against the other in considering with a bias wants, situation in life as well as problems and aspirations of the people. There will be two different perspectives when the matter of dealing with justice the question of the Muslims in the country, especially their development and their massacre and subsequent plight in Gujarat since 2002. The National Development Council that met in Delhi on Wednesday December 19, 2007 to approve the 11th five year plan document witnessed the clash between commonalty and communalism. It is universally acknowledged within the country that Muslims are more backward than any other group of our population. The Sachar Commission report makes a sobering realization of the present day tangent truth. Everyone knows but most do not want to do anything in this regard. A burgeoning economy like ours can afford to march further in the near foreseeable future. But in the long run this would increase and enlarge ghettoization to such an extent that there would be enclaves like Nagorna Karabekh and Kosovo, if they are not already there. The Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh while addressing the audience which included the chief ministers of states took a commonalty approach when he said "The goal of this plan is to invest in our people to enable them to become active participants in economic growth processes. The plan does not attempt to divide people on the basis of caste, creed or gender or religion..The plan does pay special attention on the needs of these marginalized groups and targets them in a precise manner. "Inclusiveness does mean better targeting and it is not at the cost of other groups. You will all agree that if we hope to have a prosperous, equitable, just India, we must cover all groups and ensure that no one is left”. Finance Minister Chidambram had gendered the previous budget because there was need for targeting improvement of women and empowering them. Their needs were felt to be real. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. What is crucial in today’s context is that leaving out minorities including Muslims far behind does not serve the nation as such. The 11th Plan that stipulates earmarking 15 per cent of targets and outlays under various schemes for minorities is a step in the path of bridging the gaps and avoiding pockets of stagnant pools in the backwater settlement. But that is what exactly two chief ministers from Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh opposed. Have the Muslims ceased to be part of the social fabric of India? When? Modi has a different sense of society; perhaps his spin doctors are telling that he represents the the middle class and they feel like him. This self delusory strategy worked in the relief camps when Modi closed down the camps from where the victims had nowhere to go as their commercial establishments, jobs and works were totally destroyed along with their houses, lock stock and barrel. The ration and medicine in the camps were too scanty to go around and then this expulsion! Modi dubbed the camps as the breeding grounds of “we five and our twenty five”. What he could not provide to his own population worst affected by his state sponsored pogroms he is niggardly about for the rest of the country where similar groups exist. As he lectured the audience for which the PM rebuked him. Modi: "The New 15 Point Programme that focuses on earmarking certain outlays of various developmental schemes and programmes of the government of India amongst the eligible beneficiaries, based on their minority status, should be reviewed in the interest of maintaining the social fabric of the nation. Such discrimination, amongst the eligible beneficiaries, for flow of funds based on minority status, will not help the cause if taking the people of India together on the path of development," This was a clear and most flagrant attempt to carry the laboratory experiment result from Gujarat to the whole country. In other words, the minorities, in particular Muslims, do not deserve any uplift or entitlement. As he managed the pogroms and then the closure of the relief camps and the divisive and unjust relief given to the relatives of the dead, and the boycott they face and their virtual disenfranchisement, and then the fake encounters in the name of patriotism, Modi thinks that he would carry the day with him all the time and everywhere. [1] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/politics/modi-tweets-disapproval-after-sena-leader-calls-muslims-deshdrohis-at-his-rally/99/ Chapter 3 A terror tainted Prime Minister? The Vishwa Hindu Parishad gave a call for a strike in Gujarat on February 28, 2002. It was the chief of the VHP in Ahmedabad, Jaideep Patel, to whom Chief Minister Narendra Modi handed over the 58 bodies of burnt passengers of the Sabarmati Express train at Godhra. Again, the VHP was at the Goa conclave of the BJP to force the Prime Minister of India, A.B. Vajpayee, to abandon his determination to change the head of government in Ahmedabad a few months after the pogrom. Given this clout of the Hindu supremacist outfit, can a future Prime Minister so close to Hindutva even dream of following his executive discretion in strategic national interests, overriding religious affiliation and considerations? When the official news letter of the VHP headlined, “What Gujarat does, India will have to do tomorrow”, it was not a mere blue print of town planning. It said clearly that Hindutva alone mattered in the state and would matter in India if Modi came to power. [1] Even Arun Shourie held out the threat that if Muslims persisted in demanding the implementation of the Sachar Commission recommendations, no one could stop Modi from marching to Delhi. The very day after the then PM V.P. Singh accepted the Mandal Commission report and agreed to implement it, L.K. Advani declared his Rath Yatra for building a temple for Ram at the disputed place in Ayodhya. After 1992 and 2002 is there a bigger bloodshed in the making? It is not the VHP or the RSS which will bring matters to a head. It was Modi who decided to call the fire accident a terrorist attack to initiate the pogrom. The decision came from him. The “heart of darkness” is within him. He has decided to exterminate the “brutes”, much in the way that the former PM of Israel, Golda Meier, decided to exterminate the “rodents”, the Palestinians. The “brutes” were breeding fast and multiplying, as Modi never tired of repeating. Modi’s hate ideology kept him from feeling remorse, and he will not in the future flinch from doing elsewhere in the country what he did in Gujarat in 2002. This is illustrated by no other than Swami Agnivesh and other members of a group who visited Ahmedabad on the eve of PM A.B. Vajpayee’s visit there on April 1, 2002. “On the second day,” says Swami Agnivesh, “we were to stay for the night at a place called Eshwar Bhavan in the Ahmedabad’s Navrangpura area. There, we were accosted by a group of well-dressed Hindu fundamentalists. They told us, point blank, that we were most welcome to stay in the Bhavan but our Muslim colleagues must go stay in a masjid. We said, ‘We are all together, we are here just to ask everyone to stop this madness.’ But they insisted that the Muslims must be separated from the rest. When we said that this was not acceptable, they warned us that if the Muslims stayed they would blast bombs at the site.” It was this experience that later made the Swami remark: “Modi can never become PM because of his role in the riots.” He went further and told the press conference: “Modi’s Sadbhavana fast mission for promoting communal harmony was a drama and a stunt.” [2] Before he assumed power as Chief Minister of Gujarat, Modi was a pracharak: and that is what he will always remain. What has recently come to light about “The Believer”, Swami Asimanand, clearly points to this. A crisis came in Asimanand’s active life when Keshubhai Patel of the BJP was the Chief Minister of Gujarat and L.K. Advani was Home Minister at the centre. The violence against Christians in Dangs attracted attention from across the seas. In this context Asimanand remarks: “It was Jayanti bhai of Navsari who had arranged for our meeting [his meeting with Pragya Singh Thakur]. You [reporter] should not meet him. He was a trustee of the Dang temple. He became anti-Modi, went to the Keshubhai team. So we all have distanced ourselves from him.” “When my conversion stories made national news and Sonia Gandhi flew down to make speeches against me, there was a lot of discussion about me in the media. Then Advaniji was the home minister and asked Keshubhai to rein me in. Keshubhai started stopping our work and even arrested my people.” “Then, Keshubhai left and Narendrabhai came into power. Even before he became CM, Narendrabhai used to come to meet me and he told me, “I know that Keshubhai is troubling you. He will soon be out of power and I will become the CM. Phir aapka kaam hum karenge (Then, I will do your work.).” [3] The new chief minister of Gujarat donated huge sums of money to Asimanand, apart from developing roads and infrastructure around the temple at Shabri Dham. The largess naturally made Asimanand more generous with the work he was doing for the tribals and also with Sunil Joshi. They were doing the complementary jobs of converting people back to the Hindu fold and retaliating against others due to a perceived threat to the Hindus. On February 11, 12 and 13, 2006, Asimanand arranged for the conversion of Tadwi Muslims living on the border of Gujarat and Maharashtra around Nawapur. Muslims sensed the danger and became sensitive. Muslim social workers and NGOs organized an awakening movement to prevent the Tadwi Muslims from paying attention to Swami Aseemanand or attending the meeting he was inviting them to. On the day Asimanand had arranged to convert them very few turned up and the event was called off. The road from Dangs goes straight to Malegaon. Sunil Joshi and Pragya Singh and their associates took it. Joshi reportedly rode Pragya Singh’s motor bike, with her riding pillion. Narendra Modi maintains that road. 1. Kingshshuk Nag, The Namo story: A political life, Roli Books Noida, 2013, p.175. 2. http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/narendra-modi-will-never-become-pm-says-swami-agnivesh 3. The Caravan releases transcripts of three of the four interviews with Aseemanand: http://www.caravanmagazine.in/swami-aseemanand-interviews Chapter 4 Roguery under the rogue: Gujarat The apothegm a man is known by the company he keeps is well illustrated in the campaign for 2014 election where Chief Minister Narendra Modi of Gujarat is invariably seen with the workers of Hindu party, BJP. The overwhelming ethos of the party is of course Hindu even in the secular democratic election process. His closest associate in campaign management has been his in charge of election in 2002 and has held the post in addition to a score of portfolios of ministries including minister of state for home, under the chief minister who was home minister then and for years to come. Amit Shah is in charge of election in UP. He has three counts of criminal charges of murder slapped against him in just one case. For that one case he had passed times in prison and lost his minister-ship on that account. There are numerous other such cases including 22 of fake encounters and the pogroms of 2002. He is what the investigation agencies call kingpin in the racket he conducted in collection of extortion money even through such well known figures of Sohrabuddin Sheikh. That the chief minister by no means has come clean on many sundry charges of genocide of Muslims in 2002 is another unending ‘battle’ in courts of law over his involvement. Only clean chits are issued for formality in charade of trial. Even the person who was the chief witness of Naroda Patia pogrom for which Modi’s minister Maya Kodnani is convicted and imprisoned, was murdered the day he was to give witness in court against the Hindutva extremists who conducted the genocide in Naroda Patia. Such events have been the order of the day for more than a decade when no riots took place since these events were in themselves enough to mar the face of Gujarat as a rogue state. Former chief minister Keshubhai Patel at least reined in Swami Asimanand but Modi threw all regards for law to the winds. He flagrantly gifted huge funds from the treasury to Aimanand to carry on his work of ethnic cleansing. Even those who conducted investigation like RK Raghvan were beneficiaries of the windfall of the Nano project of Tata Corporation thanks to the largess of Modi. Modi is on record of having harboured a proclaimed of laws and a mass killer in the pogroms, Babu Bhai Bajrangi of Bajrang Dal. Through then minister of home Gordon Zadhaphia, Modi sent the word that Bajrangi should hide from the law. Mt Abu Gujarat government guest house was furnished for him to abscond from the law. The shoot at sight order given by police commission PC Pande was vaudeville. Railway Minister in the Central government Lalu Prasad Yadu raised the hue and cry in the Parliament againt Bajrangi. Modi again sent words through his lieutenants to ask Bajrangi to surrender. Another pliant police officer PP Pandey conducted the farce of the show of the surrender of Bajrangi. Several judges conducted the trial of the worst offender of law. One such judge told Bajrangi that for the crimes he had committed he would sentence him to life imprisonment twice. Modi changed the judges until he came upon Justice Akshay Mehta who ordered release of Bajrangi on bail. For almost a decade Bajrangi was free to roam and rule what he saw his domain of threatening witnesses and kidnapping Hindu girls who had married non Hindus. Finally the law caught up with him and he is sentenced to life imprisonment. A decade may be a short span of history for the state but a long time for a person. Modi is no exception. In 2007 Kiran Thappar conducted an interview of the chief minister and put the gist of the matter that dogs Modi even today, more than a decade later: “In the six years that you have been the CM of Gujarat, the Rajiv Gandhi foundation has declared Gujarat to be the best-administered State. IndiaToday on two separate occasions declared that you are the most efficient Chief Minister. And despite that, people still call you to your face, a mass murderer, and they accuse you of being prejudiced against Muslims?” The interviewer reminded his interviewee that he as CM was on watch when hundreds of women and children of Muslim community were slaughtered. To this day he has not given any explanation let alone feeling regret or owning it up as his moral responsibility for protecting all the citizens of the state. What is worse he rubbed salt in the wounds of the victims who survived the pogroms by telling Reuter news agency that puppies do come under the fast moving cars at times. If this is not roguery what else is it? Even the suborning the judiciary was openly played as a game as he saw over subverting judicial process through the RSS tainted public prosecutors, using the Advocate General Tushar Mehta to send information to S Gurumurthy how best to deprive Muslims legal aid and instead of defending them aid the perpetrators of the genocide, Today he is rated as the most popular candidate for the post of PM of India! And he promises as in his Lucknow rally of Sunday March 2, 2014 that he would be on “watch” over Indian money transactions so that there is no corruption! He was on “watch” during the pogroms at Naroda Patia. So for any future such eventuality he would again turn a Nelson’s eye as was and is his wont! Even his admirers conveniently admit through Freudian slip of tongue as does Shilpi Tiwari. She attended a concert in Delhi where she declared: “He is the perfect candidate because he has shown how rogue elements from both sides (Muslims and Hindus) can be reined in so that his state could prosper. That’s the template India needs.” [1]In the light of Modi’s dispensation in Gujarat 2002 he is a rogue himself so how could he control rogues on both the sides of the great divide in India? Later he also acquired the sobriquet of safed dadi, grey beard, and Amit Shah as kali dadi, black beard who sanctioned the murder of Ishrat Jahan and three others. And the concert in Delhi on the eve of the conclave meet in Goa where Modi was chosen as the campaign in charge of his party included the proven rogues of Indian society. There was Tejinder Pal Singh Bagga with a long record of attacks on such proven secular as Arundhati Roy. Another figure in the same cast as Bagga was Suresh Albella a winner of The Great India Laughter Show on television. His macho jokes include the one that he as usual lifted from the RSS texts on nationalism. “Jaane kis din Lal Kille mein mardangi bhasha bolengee” (God knows on which day we will hear masculine language spoken from the Red Fort). In the same vein he remarked about the Prime Minister Mohan Singh, Dr Singh “remained silent like a teddy bear unless he was prodded by the high command.” The intention and perception of such people in pro Modi camp speaks volumes about what they expect Modi to do if he really dons the mantle of the prime minister. Already the postulate towards which the momentum of BJP campaign is moving is for a strong president to head Indian government and not a parliamentary democratic prime minister. Can then the parliament control the rogue given the past record? In just over a year after Noam Chomsky published his Rogue States, the rule of force in world affairs (2000) the state of Gujarat in India began a widely feared and carefully thought Hindutva laboratory experiment. In plain terms it was designed to show that the Muslims were at the sufferance of the Hindu majority and must learn to know their place and cease to be nuisance in their equation with the majority. The pogroms that followed and the subsequent fake encounters fall into this pattern. The Chief Minister of the state Narndra Modi and the Prime Minister of India AB Vajpayee and his deputy and Home Minister LK Advani maneuvered to let Modi continue his rule despite wide condemnation of the slaughter of more than two thousand Muslims, the inhuman boycott, the social and economic apartheid forcing them to live a dehumanized life in relief camps, disempowering them further and dispossessing them of whatever property they had in the holocaust that suddenly changed their life. Even a decade later their life has not returned to normal and there is no hope and scope left to them to improve their lot. The two convincing examples of Cuba blockade and Indonesia attack on East Timor compare and contrast with what Modi did with tacit approval and later open approval of Vajpayee and Advani. The blockade made the Cubans suffer inhuman conditions of poverty, disease and starvation. This was vehemently condemned by the UNO, the European Union, the Organization of American States, etc. the US did not relent. In the same way in the East Timor war of 1975 the US supported the Indonesian generals to the hilt. Within two months 60, 000 people were killed within years the number rose to 200,000 thanks to the support US gave to Indonesia. UN Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan was given the task to make UN ineffective. “The US wanted things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of States desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success.” [2] Given this kind of roguery that states can play what is in store for India under Modi? [1] Rock concert chants NaMo for PM The Telegraph, 1 June 2013 [2] Rogue States, the rule of force in world affairs (2000) New Delhi: India Research Press. Chapter 5 Terror streaks as “Inconvenient changes” It is an established practice of Modi and his ilk in the state administration that when there is fear of exposure of the crimes against humanity they take firm action against the honest officers. Their steadfastness and probity and efficiency are thrown to the wind. Thus special investigation officer Sandeep Tamgadge in the three politically sensitive cases of fake encounters, namely, Sohrabuddin, Tulsiram Prajapaty, Ishrat Jahan and others was relieved of his job and another SP rank officer Ramnish Kumar took over the investigation. Usually no transfer is made during the election period and yet this change effected during the polling period should have been stymied but the excuse that Tamgadge was overburdened is less than convincing. In Sohrabuddin and Ishrat Jahan cases Amit Shah is not only involved but he is called by the CBI as the kingpin. His boss and Chief Minister cleared the murder of Ishrat Jahan because DG Vanzara who conducted the fake encounter spoke to Modi, the white bearded one in the official euphemism, while the younger Shah is black bearded occupied the post of the most crucial person as minister for state next to Modi. Tamgadge started his work in 2011 and discovered crucial details incriminating the high rank police officers and also Shah. It was very disturbing because the inquiry dubbed Shah as occupying the most important portfolio in the ministry which conducted the fake encounter. The success of committing the crime by the police could only have taken place if the minister for home directly under the Home Minister Modi himself was doing the work by instruction through the intervening officers and also liaising with the central IB officer Rajendra Kumar. What is truly frightening is that the furor over Modi taking office of the PM has been taken for granted by some! He is on record saying that he would work as a watch [chowkidar] on the government departments. This could have unnerved the senior staff including those in the CBI as the report puts it Tamgadge “was seen to be inconvenient by the top CBI establishment, given the emerging political scenario[emphasis added].” [1]The investigation agency is dubbed as the caged bird and the expected new masters would be their nemesis. The Gujarat government waned CBI to inquire into the fake encounter of Ishrat Jahan case for a tactful strategy of saving its neck. When the CBI did its work Modi turned against the agency. In his most recent tirade against the agency he held out a sinister threat: “I will seek accounts of every penny and every minute. Your CBI will not be able to harm me in any way. Twenty more days remain. Harass me as much as you can. I am still in the battlefield.”[2] The battle he is currently fighting with Congress is part of the sangh parivar’s war on democracy and secularism. Thus it is willing that its pracharak turned prime ministerial candidate to wreak havoc on those who oppose Modi. The fight would be over by May 16, 2014 but Modi and his pack [including the cadres of RSS and musclemen of VHP] would come back another day to fight an even more fierce war using terror tactics of purging, retaliation, snooping and taking revenge. Thus he continues: “You have crossed all limits. You have even insulted Sardar Patel. I am going to take revenge.” And sensing the visit of PM Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi to Gujarat, Modi is like the street bully in his threat and retaliation:”I want to tell them not to misjudge the people of Gujarat. Your bidaai(departure) is certain, so bitter go with a smile on your face.” This rude and vulgar speech is bereft of courtesy and hospitality that a host must show to guest howsoever the guest is different. It cannot hide the terror streak that his pack showed to Swami Agnivesh who pleaded with the VHP crowd to let a Muslim stay with the delegation which had arrived just before the PM Vajpayee was visiting Gujarat in April 5, 2002. The mob did not care for the CM or the PM and would drop bombs on the delegation if they persisted in keeping the Muslim member with them. The other members were Hindu, Sikh and Christian. The horde had no objection to them. Their retort showed how deep was their hostility towards the Muslims: “This has nothing to do with Vajpayee or Modi. This is dharma yudh [religious war] and we do not want Muslims around.” [3] Agnivesh was exasperated. Finally the delegation comprising Swami Agnivesh, Rear Admiral Ramdas, Nirmala Deshpande, Valson Thampu, Father Dominic Immanuel and the Maulanas were rescued by the army. If that was April 2002, now on April 24, 2014 Modi’s threat of revenge twenty days later would be around the time the election results are out. Sensing his victory Modi is filled with hubris and that would lead him to his fall as most of his speeches are full of lies. Even his anger that 5000 units of brass parts industry in Jamnagar is closed down because of the central government policy is a canard. As the president of the Jamnagar Factory Owners’ Association Ramji Patel has called Modi’s threat a bluff and put the bare facts for the public to know: “We are growing at 5-6 per cent annually. There are 500 brass units in Jamnagar, and whatever financial benefits we get are all from the central government schemes. The state government has no scheme for the brass parts units industry.” Such blatant lies have been the characterizing attributes of Modi rule in Gujarat and it would spell disaster if he takes the rein of government at Delhi. He had instructed his two ministers to sit in the police control room and yet he lied to the SIT interrogators who without any qualms gave him clean chits even when he told them lies as in the recording of his interrogation by SIT: Q.27. Did you take a decision to allow Shri Ashok Bhatt and Shri I.K. Jadeja to sit in the State Control Room and Ahmedabad City Control Room, respectively which adversely affected the supervision of the riot situation by DGP and CP, Ahmedabad City respectively? Ans. No such decision was taken and no such discussions took place in the meeting. Subsequently, I came to know about this allegation from media. However, I do not have any personal knowledge about the positioning of these two Ministers in the two Control Rooms. It was such a sorry state of affairs in Gujarat that the Supreme Court was constrained to wonder at this modern day Nero fiddling when Ahmadabad was burning! Truth of Gujarat web site has found the details of the phone calls of Modi and his officers on special duty during February 27, 2002 and March 4, 2002. (Officer on Special Duty to Chief Minister) Sanjay Bhavsar and Tanmay Mehta. From the Ahmedabad Police Control room, Ashok Bhatt spoke 4 times with Narendra Modi through Modi’s private EPABX, 4 times with Sanjay Bhavsar and once with Tanmay Meta. In total during those 4 days when the maximum violence took place, Ashok Bhatt spoke 21 times with either Modi or Modi’s private staff. Chief Minister Narendra Modi now wants us to believe that he was not aware of his Cabinet Minister Ashok Bhatt’s whereabouts.[4] But can he get away from just shrugging off his shoulders in this matter? And also can he do it whenever any potential threat of terror is meted out to Muslims as Togadia’s where only “campaign narrative was being inconvenienced” [5]and Modi brushed it off by his tweet: "Petty statements by those claiming to be BJP’s well wishers are deviating the campaign from the issues of development & good governance." Is politics of hatred a crime in Britain or the US but in India a mere irritant? . [1]http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Home/Lok-Sabha-Elections-2014/News/Sleuth-probing-Gujarat-encounters-shifted-probe-hit/articleshow/33972289.cms [2] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/politics/modi-to-cong-just-20-days-more-will-take-revenge/ [3] “ The whole BJP is debased.” Tehelka Magazine, vol 4 issue 44 Dated November 17, 2007. [4] http://www.truthofgujarat.com/narendra-modi-lied-sit-interrogation-part-2-ministers-police-control-room/#comments [5] http://www.firstpost.com/politics/hatred-and-hindutva-togadia-is-as-modi-said-merely-an-irritant-1499181.html Chapter 6 Gujarati diaspora’s insidious role in dividing India A large number of Non Resident Indians living in the US were involved in the gruesome murder of more than 30 Muslims in Ode village in 2002. Their money power of dollars was so overwhelming that they disappeared in the thin air before the state machinery could be ordered to take custody of them. With Modi at the helms of affairs in the state it was not viable. He had what Ashis Nadny said abandoned the Constitution of India. It is ironic that in 2014 election campaign he is photographed with copies of the Constitution in his hands! Years back when I prepared to write books on what had happened in Gujarat I had the opportunity of teaching students who were either engaged to marry someone in US of Gujarati origin or were having jobs waiting for them. It was wonderful to see such a thriving community across several continents. Yet I could not believe what I wrote in two of my books. Even then neither I nor those whom I had taught had had problems until the Modi phenomenon came upon the horizon. Occasionally I would run across the returnees from the states and yet our bonhomie remained the same. But then what about the puzzle: “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 tilted in favour of the Hindus. “This could not be done without genocide of the Muslims. Past history of Gujarat shows many communal riots like the one in 1969-70 in which a thousand Muslims lost their life. Even then it was nothing but riots. Muslims did fight back wherever they could. But, in 2002, Modi specifically told his police not to save the Muslims when they would be attacked during the three days stipulated, beginning with the shutting down of Gujarat by the BJP and the VHP and followed by the shutting down of India in a strike. On his instruction the genocide was carried out with a sense of impunity that they would be shielded from law by lawyers already chosen and briefed; and, police already ordered by their seniors not to book marauders; and, lower caste Hindus and tribals secured for the onerous work of looting and killing. Funds were already collected from abroad. Food packets, wine pouches and money were already in their hands. The houses and shops of Muslims were already marked out.” (First Hindutva Genocide of Muslims and its Architect. Page 9, November 26, 2011) A decade is almost over and now comes the news that Modi had planned to order fake encounters. That surely ranks him with Ariel Sharon who conducted the genocide of Palestinians in their refugee camps in Lebanon when he was the defense minister. He rose to become the Prime Minister of Israel despite this. In what way is India better than Israel? Do we Indians also want Modi to become our prime minister for having ordered fake encounters? If this contains truth then it indicates the direction in which the wind is blowing. It would also send signal that tectonic shifts are underway of the same hateful thesis of Samuel Huntington of the clash of civilization. And that India is doomed!” (Gujarat 2002-2012: Decade of the Demagogue and his Demagoguery. Page 52, February 28, 2012) The people of Gujarat origin settled in UK and US are calling the shots in India. They had provided fund to conduct the genocide of Muslims. Obama administration did a right thing to keep Sonal Shah in check but it did precious little to order how did she or her father send huge amounts of funds which ended up in the killing of Muslims in 2002 in Gujarat. Both father and daughter have been playing leading role of Vishwa Hindu Parishad America. This has buttressed the position of Dr Pravin Togadia. Though he is at odds with Modi but both complement the agenda of the RSS to either reduce the minorities in India as second class citizens or at best expel them or terminate them. What Togadia did in the night of April 19, 2014 is the Indian version of kristalnacht, the night of the broken glasses. It is high time for the Jews to take note that there are racial supremacists who even in 21 century can replay what the Nazis did to them. There is no denying of holocaust be it in Europe or now in India. The phenomenon of the disturbing role of the Gujarati diaspora has been there for quite sometimes. It is only now that the people of India must sit up and take note of it. A noted writer Achyut Yagnik:"Pravin Togadia, though started as a local leader, soon gathered strength as the VHP spread out to countries like the US, UK and the Netherlands."[1] "While the VHP units abroad are largely headed by the Gujaratis, more so by the Patels, Togadia gained strength from the kinship." He is also a Patel. If VHP supported Modi in the Goa conclave of April 2002 and there was fear that the restive audience would have not even bothered about AB Vajpayee trying to sack Modi for the pogroms, now the one-upmanship is doing another round. Now Togadia and Giriraj Singh are the resurgent avatars of Modi in another form. Both would like to ditch Modi to uphold the supremacy of the RSS ideology over realpolitik. Thus it is worth to recall Nandy that “from most non-resident Indians who, at a safe distance from India, can afford to be more nationalist, bloodthirsty, and irresponsible.”[2] [1] http://www.rediff.com/news/slide-show/ls-election-slide-show-1-will-modi-teach-togadia-a-lesson-he-wont-forget/20140421.htm?pos=2&src=NL20140422&isnlp=0&isnlsp=0 [2] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/LEADER-ARTICLE-Blame-The-Middle-Class/articleshow/2681517.cms LEADER ARTICLE: Blame The Middle Class Ashis Nandy | Jan 8, 2008, Chapter 7 The unmistakable terror streak In the middle of the polling in the third and fourth weeks of April 2014 the terror streak reappears frequently. Even the politicians have grasped it in a nonpartisan spirit. JD(U) spokesperson Ajay Alok read the BJP's intent. "The autocracy of the BJP is exposed; if you don't vote for him [Modi] go to Pakistan. The kind of language the BJP is using reflects its character. Their intention [is] to vitiate the atmosphere. It is clearly terrorising the voters."[1] Modi, Giriraj Singh and Togadia are all in the pack terrorisig the minorities especially Muslims. It is incorrect to say that Modi petrifies Togadia. As Aakar Patel put it: “Modi's problem with him (Togadia) is rivalry and not any ideological difference. They are on the same page when it comes to ideology.” As the matters worsen there are many spin-doctors who rush to mend and paper over the offensive terror taints to sanitize them for acceptance. Among the pack of the spin doctors there is again Aakar Patel who changed the instigation to violence and outlawry into advisory issued in the best interest of the would be potential buyers of real estate in the Bhavnagar neibourhood. Patel makes it neutral advice “This is a direct translation of a recent talk by the politician on property matters.” It would make the insinuation to commit terror as unsolicited advice of a professional expert in realty business of long standing. “The meeting was called after a man, apparently a Dawoodi Bohra, bought a property in a Hindu area. The other Hindus in the neighbourhood want him out. Togadia is offering them advice.”[2] So the unlawful meeting of violent protest with violent intent of evicting a lawful owner from his legal possession of a house into a “neighbourhood meeting” on advice. If this were really so then why did Togadia cautioned the crowd to find out whether anyone had tape recorded his speech and destroy it. This is what had actually transpired when the meeting drew to an end. In fact Togadia begins his so called advice as a predetermined action plan: “In many of India’s villages and cities, Muslims have been doing this sort of thing for a long time. They buy one building at high price, and then buy out at half-price the surrounding buildings owned by Hindus. This is a part of their strategy.” His use of words like “this sort of thing” and his calling the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim owner by an explicative “Sala”[abusive term meaning brother in law] is hardly the stuff of advisory. No person in the audience asked Togadia “How can this be stopped.” He in fact continues in his monologue of a rabble rouser and then calls it: “This my straight, direct action talk.” Many would recall Mohammad Ali Jinnah giving a call for “direct action” in Calcutta in 1947. Why did Aakar Patel bother to render the translation and call it “exact translation”? Even this rendering of the translation cannot hide the incentive to violence: “Consult the lawyer tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, break the lock and put a Bajrang Dal board. “I’ve done this before, and I’ve kept possession of a building for a long time through a Bajrang Dal board. The Muslim lost his money and the building both (applause). The case kept being fought out in court. “What I’ve just said, brothers and sisters, don’t make it public, all right? (laughter).” Why did Patel volunteer to do the translation when the reporter of The Times of India had already done it so professionally: “We are in a majority. We should have courage to intimidate them [Muslims] by taking the law in our own hands…This an offensive war strategy…take stones, burn tyres and create an atmosphere of rioting.”[3] The Times of India reporter also noted how in the aftermath of the hate speech in the night of Saturday April 12, 2014 the VHP loons were out in the streets on following Monday April 14 searching for the man who had made a video record of the speech. So the pack of hounds was at it again. What guarantee is there that it would not be doing it with greater ferocity when Modi rises to the post of the Prime Minister of the country? To prepare the public for a more informed collegiate of voters rather than vote banks there is need for greater collegiality and collegiums. It should be against the spirit of “don’t make it public, all right?” approach. That approach was so blatantly conspiratorial and obscurantist that even the mob oriented towards venality laughed in confirmation of induced vandalism. They knew it from their experience of 2002 and their leader’s intent in usurping of Muslim houses and shops and rendering them jobless and homeless. Will they then be knowledgeable and well informed voters. In contrast the St. Xavier’s principle Father Frazer Mascarenhas’s letter is educative in orientation and inculcation of critical thinking and sobriety. “So what lessons does a reflection on the approaching elections teach us? The prospect of an alliance of corporate capital and communal forces coming to power constitutes a real threat to the future of our secular democracy. Support for people who pledge to work take Human Development Indicators higher and who commit themselves to a pluralistic culture in diverse India –that is the hope for the future.” This colloquium rather than the kind of rebuttal that a chorus of Smirti Irani, et al and doing in a charad ad absurdum will make an enlightened voter. [4]There is no trace of canniness or cageyness in what Mascarenhas vis-à-vis Modi and his pack, now enlarged with the addition of MJ Akbar, says in his letter. In substance it is part of a colloquium, academic seminar or conference. Who can do it as soberly as he did given his ringside view of the discussion in the Steering Committee of the current Planning Commission of which he was a member. [1] http://www.firstpost.com/politics/togadia-giriraj-singh-statements-are-modis-talks-of-development-a-facade-1490171.html?utm_source=ref_article [2] http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/FBAInPEVlDBqxZSCWHHUoO/Pravin-Togadias-real-estate-advice.html [3] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/lok-sabha-elections-2014/news/Election-Commission-directs-FIR-against-Pravin-Togadia-for-hate-speech/articleshow/34066988.cms [4] Asian Age April 24, 2014. Chapter 8 'Panchayat to Parliament' There is a greater need to scrutinize what has been appearing in newspaper reports and on youtube. Because Modi is skirting these things in order to foreground his much touted development model. Among reasons for this is that he is basically a leader of the RSS though some may call him former leader. His utterances and omissions to come clear on issues show him what he is ideologically programmed. There is hardly any fig leaf that can hide the fact that the RSS is adept at prevarication. Nathuram Godse had not only killed Mahatma Gandhi when he was himself a pracharak and told the court that if Gandhi were alive he would again attempt to kill him. He had killed the ‘father of the nation’ in his sixth attempt. Still the RSS is eager and therefore hypocritical to take Rahul Gandhi to court for him having said that the RSS was behind the assassination. In the thick of many such controversies Arun Jaitley remarked “Every sensible well-wisher of the BJP is expected to exercise utmost restraint and concentrate on issue of governance, which is the theme of our campaigning. Any statement to the contrary will only help our rivals.” [1]These are deceptive words because they hide the fact that through up-fronting the façade of development the RSS wants to seize power and make its first full time pracharak rule India as he has been ruling his state of Gujarat and also replicate the Hindutva laboratory experiment everywhere else in the country. In the first instance what exactly does BJP mean 'Panchayat to Parliament' as its juggernaut of the election campaign 2014? If it means capturing power at the self government at village level called panchayat then the innocuous word panchayat signifies the smallest unit of our polity. But the actual example of Muzaffarnagar gives a different indication. It was the panchayat that the Jats had called under its leader Hukum Singh on September 7, 2013 that started the violence that snowballed into pogroms of Muslims. Such violence as even Pravin Togadia has confirmed has paid rich dividends to him and would pay to others of his fellow members of the sangh parivar. The Maharaja of Alwa used to hang the Kohinoor diamond from his penis and allowed the subject of his kingdom to have a glimpse of royalty “none such”. The last phrase is from Mark Twain;s Huckleberry Finn. Duke and King in the novel trick the villagers into watching their show after buying ticket. When their repertoire is exhausted they simply appear naked before the audience and make them go made with laughter. The Indian election is not without humour. Ramdas Kadam said on Monday evening April 21, 2014 in Mumbai that the Congress party was “tickling the beards of unpatriotic Muslims” to gain their votes. How in the name of heavens is a bearded Muslim unpatriotic? Are all the bearded Muslims unpatriotic? Was the clean shaved Sohrabuddin Shaikh who was a member of BJP along with his family for generations, patriotic? Then why did Modi and Amit Shah get him killed in fake encounter? Why did DG Vanzara justify the murder as deshbhakti or patriotism? Was Modi in particular and the Hindutva in general not taking note of the patriotism of Sohrabuddin family who had been in BJP and always traditionally voted for the Hindu party! Hanging the Kohinoor with a pendant for public view is as ludicrous as is the standard by which the Hindu right is caught in the maze of beards and veils of Muslims and judging them patriotic or unpatriotic. Our show of democracy is truly entertaining the world. It was in this context that Rudyard Kipling commented that the gods created the rulers and leaders and royalty for the entertainment of the ordinary people who otherwise have no such spectacles to amuse them in their humdrum quotidian life. This is the stuff of which “royal nonesuch” in Mark Twain and India is made of! Some move from panchayat to Parliament by tickling the beards and wearing skull cap and others take the other route of not tickling beards and wearing all kinds of caps including RSS black caps but refusing Muslim skull caps. Indeed such was the hilarity at Bandra-Kurla complex meeting that Modi wore a laughter ear to ear while rest of his body went spasmodic and he vehemently clapped his hands at what Kadam was saying. [1] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/politics/modi-tweets-disapproval-after-sena-leader-calls-muslims-deshdrohis-at-his-rally/99/ [2]http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lok-sabha-polls-2014-how-bjp-planned-mission-up-and-why-it-is-confident-of-winning-50-plus-seats/articleshow/34015698.cms Chapter 9 Re-writing even recent history The pogroms of Gujart 2002 are a matter of only just over a decade. Still, the sangh parivar and essentially BJP does not want to call them as pogroms or Holocaust or genocide. But they were just that. Officially even today India calls them as communal riots. This is misleading. The Muslims were visited with such initial shock and awe or stun strategy that there was no chance of their retaliation. The police opened fire at them and led the extremist Hindus to attack the minority people. This ethnic cleansing was initially done by the police. The marauding mobs were well armed and included RSS volunteers and Bajrang Dal activists taking active part in murder, loot and arson. This is well documented fact of history that is still fresh in the minds. By not calling the events as pogroms or holocaust let alone the extremist Hindus but the mainstream media and common Indians are also made to believe that the events were just riots! Within just over a decade the re-writing of the recent history has also begun. In a much publicized public appearance on Monday March 31, 2014 Arun Jaitley remarked that Modi was “concerned” over the pogroms [he uses the phrase violence] and was “about putting in place a system so that riots did not recur.”[1] Thus Jaitley has reduced the even watered down riots to a system which is not a riot but a riot control strategy. This is very disturbing phenomenon for India. Instead of calling a spade a spade we in our own democratic country see a fascist tendency of superimposing a falsehood to beguile the people who had seen on news channels how rampancy and savagery was taking place during 2002. What is even more disturbing is that the same strategy was used in Muzaffarnagar. What happened in UP in September 2013 was stark replication of pogroms. It was holocaust in the sense that suddenly a complete change in the life of people came over them when they were brutally killed and their women were raped by their next door neighbours and they were rendered abjectly helpless spectators, too dazed to make out any sense of why such a calamity had taken place. If this were not so Samiuddin and Hamida would have been alive and Hassan would have had his parents to vote for the Jats whom they had habitually voted in previous elections. Jaitley as an automation in a well set and pre-programmed way went on to demolish even the notorious fake encounters of Gujarat along with the pogroms. The fake encounters were another strategy to eclipse the pogroms and enhance the image of Modi as a Hindu leader facing danger from Islamic terrorists on account of the pogroms. Jaitley says “Those asking for an apology wanted the apology to be an act of confession. If he actually committed a mistake, why apologise, he should have been prosecuted and punished. ..We can squabble over the kind of expressions one wants to use…To satisfy a fake campaign he does not have to apologise.” Thus the concern for genocide and the fake encounters perpetrated by Modi using state machinery has now been transformed into “a fake campaign.” It was this concern for which Nancy Powell tendered her resignation and Katrina Lantros Swett wondered at the sworn affidavits submitted by no other than the chief of intelligence agencies, RB Sreekumar and Sanjive Bhatt. Powell and Swett are of foreign origin and US citizens and if their objectivity is also swept under the carpet of mobocracy as is prevailing since long what sense of propriety! Modi had bluntly told the media persons that they would be at risk of the fate meted out to Daniel Pearl. “Those journalists who cover Gujarat may meet the fate of Daniel Pearl. Cover communal riots at your own risk, look at Daniel Pearl.” Modi had also said the unthinkable: “The killing of Daniel Pearl in Pakistan is a perfect example.”[2]In the pogroms of Muzaffarnagar the Hindu extremists used very careful strategy of removing two journalists one covering the event and the other making video. The police had opened fire and they blamed that the journalists died because of stray bullets! This would mean that state machinery was used even ina difference. The police officers in the fields were not unamenable to communalism. If the ATS Maharashtra chief Krish Pal Raghuvansi’s niece can get her uncle delay deployment of the army and paramilitary force until more Muslims were killed there are enough eager policemen tainted with VHP and RSS bent of mind to carry out the same work as did the Bajrang Dal and RSS volunteers. But history also refuses to be rewritten. The silence of Modi on three most recent events is eloquently loud and clear of the hidden agenda that RSS through Modi is hell bent in following. And follow it it will. Gopal Menon has broken the silence over the maha panchyat ------- [1]Asian Age, April 1, 2014 [2] Indian Express June 11, 2002 Chapter 10 What happened under Modi’s watch Modi is very canny and cagey about many things: what he actually said in the meeting at his residence on February 27, 2002 and where he was during the pogroms, about his role in the Haren Pandya killing and a thousand other matters. But the matter of his deserted better half, Jashodaben, contains the real secret for the adage is not without substance that behind every successful man [and failed man also] there is a woman. Deserting his wife and not even looking her up even once for more than four decades reduces him to the abysmal level of the Negros and the white trash in the South of US who in the 1920s, and further were habitually doing it with their wives and women in their wild abandon. The civil rights movement saw a reawakening and had salutary change. But Modi belongs to RSS which enforces its pracharaks to observe celibacy. However since the murder of Sunil Joshi and his affair with Pragyasingh Thakur it has come to fore that there were many cases of violating the chastity of women by pracharaks. Notwithstanding this Modi was doing the same for a cause which in the eyes of many would make him a crusader for a religious cause. He would be applauded for his great sacrifice for the sake of his nation, albeit a theocratic nation called Hindu Rashtra. Joshodaben’s sister in law Sitaben puts it this way: “Do not criticise Modiji. He has sacrificed a lot for the country. We don't blame him for neglecting his wife.”[1] But there is essentially a feminist view of the forsaken half of Modi. Heena Deshpande : “When I met her at the school, Jashodaben was as excited as a child and could not stop smiling. She expressed a desire to talk and tell her tale. But the principal of the school, Pravinkumar P Vyas, admonished her for talking to a journalist. “You will only talk to them after school hours. Now go back to your class,” Vyas told her. “She pleaded, “Can I talk to her during the break? It will only take a few minutes.” But the principal was unrelenting. “She left the room meekly, only to come back soon. She said,“I will not say anything against my husband. He is very powerful. This job is all I have to survive. I am afraid of the consequences.” She then went back to her classroom. “Meanwhile, the principal had made a call from his mobile phone to inform somebody that Jashodaben had visitors. He then went to meet her in her classroom. After that, she became a dif¬ferent person. She smiled no more, her excite¬ment was gone and she looked nervous. She kept wringing her hands. When I approached her again, she screamed, asking to be left alone. But as she walked away, she gestured to suggest that she would talk later. “Later, some men visited the school, one after the other, in different vehicles. They parked their vehicles within the school premises, and looked directly into the principal’s office. After a while, they left. When the school day came to an end, Jashodaben almost ran out to a waiting autorick¬shaw. She pointed at me and told some villagers that I was harassing her. “[2] What else one would call this than holding her captive? And even until after the elections result on May 16 she would be in a glorified forced exile what has been a packaged tour of which the citizens of the state of Gujarat are famous. She has been picked up and packed off to the Himalayas much in the manner of the self exile of Modi after his marriage. Guru Ramdev has built a stately pleasure dome in Xanadu around Rishkesh not far from where Swamy Asimanand was harbouring and then arrested. She was fond of Char Dham and lo she is catapulted into a pilgrimage there. [ [1] EVEALED: Modi's wife Jashodaben hidden in Ramdev's ashram after being named in affidavit [2] http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/i-am-narendra-modi-s-wife “I am Narendra Modi’s Wife” Chapter 11 Finger of suspicion pointing at Modi in 2007 election Modi had won the assembly election in 2007 as well. And given his clout the election juggernaut buttressed by the corporate houses and the Saffron groups he might win 2014. But the the terror taint on his hand as it was on the hands of Prime Minister of Israel Ariel Sharon was unmistakable: Narendra Modi and the Murder of Sohrabuddin The election campaign of Chief Minister of Gujarat at Mangrol had reached a climax that might prove a temporary respite from the ultimate eventuality in his drama of politics. A huge shock had come after the exposure of the sting operation by Tehelka in November 2007. Temporarily it seemed to have passed away. But who knows whether it has. He had stirred the emotion by his insidious reference to the fake encounter death of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife Kauser. He was at his communal best when he vowed to shield Taslima Nasrin and within the same week justified the fake encounter murders. About Sohrabuddin he remarked “he got what he deserved.” He asked his people in Mangrol, south Gujarat, on December 4, 2007: What would the people do to the man who dealt in smuggling guns. They thundered: “kill him". "Then if I have done anything wrong, let the government of Sonia Gandhi hang me," he said. There is a more accurate version of the Tuesday meeting of Mangrol: Modi asked, "What should have been done to a man from whom a large number of AK-47 rifles were recovered, who was on the search list of police from four states, who attacked the police, who had relations with Pakistan and was eyeing to enter Gujarat?" The crowd replied "mari nakho, mari nakho (kill him)" to which the Chief Minister responded, "Does my Government need to take permission of Soniaben for this?" Modi had thrown down his gauntlet not only to Congress but to the judiciary of our nation, as well as the Election Commission. This was playing with fire. But the premium was very high. For example there was the case of Haresh Bhatt who was the Bajrang Dal rashtriya sah sanyojak in 2002 and was the BJP MLA from Godhra in 2007. He had said that bombs were made at his factory and that even rocket launchers were made there and then they were distributed throughout Ahmedabad during the pogroms of 2002. During curfew in the city arms including guns and swords were brought in from Punjab, Bihar, UP and MP for the obvious reason of murdering Muslims during the pogroms. They were distributed under the nose of the police in the curfew times. How Haresh Bhatt and his men distributed the weapons to the murderous crowds he narrated proudly: Bhatt: I have my own gun factory… I used to make firecrackers… We made all the bombs there… Diesel bombs, pipe bombs, we made them there… and we used to distribute them from there as well… We ordered two truckloads of swords from Punjab… right here, in a village called Dhariya, we readied everything there… and then we distributed the samaan [arms]… At that time, the only thing was that the samaan was needed… TEHELKA: Where did you get the arms from? Bhatt:We got many country-made pistols… from MP, from UP… we got pistols from everywhere and I distributed them from here… I am talking about this for the first time…nobody knew this secret. TEHELKA: I know that Hindus do not keep weapons, apart perhaps from kitchen knives… Bhatt:We distributed so many weapons that people were shocked to see how many there were… We would make them here and then test them... We made a complete launcher inside a pipe, right here in the factory... It was a launcher from the side and had piping over that… chaar ki pipe lagaate the… after closing the entire hole we filled thatwith shrapnel and nails... and beneath that placed a 595 bomb… We’d set it off… it would go through a wall nine inches thick…• • • Bhatt and his cohorts also smuggled weapons as Modi hinted that Sohrabuddin did: TEHELKA: Hareshbhai, you were saying that you got arms from Kanpur, but there was curfew… Bhatt: Why couldn’t they have been brought?… Anything can be brought. TEHELKA: I was thinking that if curfew… Bhatt: I got them from MP… I got them from Bihar. TEHELKA: But how, when curfew was in force? Bhatt: Things come, everything can come.[1] TEHELKA: If it came from other states, it had to cross borders… Bhatt: That’s it… they would smuggle [emphasis added] it… and it wasn’t just one trip that came for me… there were scores of them. Another person who told similar ghoulish premeditated plans of carrying out the genocide is Dhawal Jayanti Patel, the VHP Sabarkantha zila sanyojak: Patel: Lots of bombs… lots of desi bombs were made and sent… TEHELKA: A thousand? Two thousand? Patel: They were useful in the galis, in face-to-face encounters… Juhapura… Kalupur The vibhag pramukh of VHP Anil Patel has corroborated what Haresh Bhatt and Dhawal Jayanti Patel have said. Tthe ball is in the courts of the Election Commission and the judicial courts. Given Modi’s justification of the murder of Sohrabuddin and his wife Kauser and his tacit involvement in it [or else why should he wish to be hanged] and the asseveration of Haresh Bhatt, Anil Patel and Dhawal Jayanti Patel of their evil deeds; they [the courts and the Commission]have to define what is smuggling, can any individual or organization take the laws in their hands to mete out punishment for smuggling, who have smuggled arms; their party affiliation and should the election in Gujarat go ahead as if nothing had happened. What I had written in newspaper columns on May 6, 2007has relevance here: “The proverbial iceberg tip in the Sohrabbudin and Kauser bi Sheikh, and Tulsiram Prajapati murder in Gujarat will become quite ominous to our national life in the days to come. What with state elections due there and elsewhere. To the truly national minded it sends a chill of apprehension down the spinal cord. From all accounts including the ones that the Rajasthan government has purportedly colluded to save its Inspector Dinesh, Sohrabuddin and Prjapati were as much criminal as many others, including BJP MP from Dahod, Gujarat, Babubhai Katara [accused in smuggling people into the US and Europe], and his son Bhavesh who is accused of killing Muslims in the post Godhra carnage and the last election. .. . “Sohrabbudin and Prajapati were taken out of the Hyderabad Sangli bus. Kauser climbed down the bus in protest, the cops told her to go back into the bus. When she didn’t they took away her as well. The fiery burial that police inspector DG Vanzara gave to Kauser is most macabre and the disposal of the ash most saturnine. A glimpse of the state sponsorship of pogroms is also here. Traffic was stopped for arresting and carrying dead body of Kauser, crane was used to haul out of mud the car carrying the dead body. Anti Terrorist Squad purchased 400 kg wood to burn the body. Ala Modi, everything was done for a noble cause: patriotism. Precisely this justification had the potential to polarize the country again. Mark the gathering and shouting of slogans of the burly members of the Vanjhara community in the court of the metropolitan magistrate on May 2, 2007but mark more how the Chief Minister Modi, as a true Machiavellian, is reportedly instructing his cadres to exploit the murders in the coming polls.” Modi had also won the 2012 elections. So it was not the terror taint of one man but the terror streak had taken roots in a large section of the populace and the administration. Ashis Nandy was therefore right a year later in 2008 when he observed: “Gujarat's spectacular development has underwritten the de-civilising process. One of the worst-kept secrets of our times is that dramatic development almost always has an authoritarian tail. Post-World War II Asia too has had its love affair with developmental despotism and the censorship, surveillance and thought control that go with it. The East Asian tigers have all been maneaters most of the time. Gujarat has now chosen to join the pack. Development in the state now justifies amorality, abridgement of freedom, and collapse of social ethics.” Furthermore the Gujarat society was already so degenerated then to have sent its affluent members to loot the luxury goods from posh show rooms owned by Muslim and carry them home in their air conditioned cars. Their subsequent discussions in their drawing rooms were without any qualms. May be this was brought about by rote learning and lack of critical thinking as Martha Nussbaum discussed in her book The Clash Within. Everything had become so cussed that Nandy had said what prompted the Sultan of governance to order his arrest: “Gujarat this class has smelt blood, for it does not have to do the killings but can plan, finance and coordinate them with impunity. The actual killers are the lowest of the low, mostly tribals and Dalits. The middle class controls the media and education, which have become hate factories in recent times. And they receive spirited support from most non-resident Indians who, at a safe distance from India, can afford to be more nationalist, bloodthirsty, and irresponsible.”[1] With hindsight, Nandy’s insight into Gujarat and Modi was correct because what he said in 2008 was preceded by his perception of Modi in 1985:: “I came out of the interview shaken and told Yagnik that, for the first time, I had met a textbook case of a fascist and a prospective killer, perhaps even a future mass murderer.”[3] [1] Tehelka November 3, 2007. [2] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/LEADER-ARTICLE-Blame-The-Middle-Class/articleshow/2681517.cms [3] http://www.bostonreview.net/world/zahir-janmohamed-narendra-modi-india-gujarat-man-who-refuses-wear-green Chapter 12 Future scenario There have been speculations about the future of India in the hands of a leader of RSS known in vernacular a pracharak. Modi has not behaved otherwise than a pracharak even the prime minister of the day could not remove him. There are also fears of a disaster taking place in the case of a face down with India’s neighbours. Sanjay Basak in his essay Acid Test for Modi calls Modi a product of aggressive Hindutva and wonders whether he can withstand RSS who would try to extract their pound of flesh once they come in power. [1] The RSS views India extending far beyond Afghanistan and also asserts that it would regain the lost land by force, be it a nuclear attack or anything beyond. In the aftermath of attack on Indian Parliament the government amassed its soldiers at the borders in the west for a real war on Pakistan. Given greater advance in nuclear strike capability next such a face down would be decidedly a horrendous nuclear strike. The Hindutva ideology is based on sheer power to cause maximum fatal devastation to the enemy. Unlike the US it views Afghanistan and Nepal friendly countries and its only enemy is Pakistan. This of course is the intent of Modi and his party. In 2002 Modi fought the election as if it was really a choice between Mian Musharraf and Modi. As the disposition of Muslims of India goes, they care a tuppence either for the deshi Slobodan Milosevik or Pakistan. The cricket matches between India and Pakistan area a different kettle of fish. The third front leaders like Lalu Prasad Yadu do not view Pakistanis as enemy despite their unambiguous condemnation of Pakistan involvement in 26/11 attack in Mumbai. Even erstwhile ally Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar refused to fight war on terror in the aftermath of arrest of Yasin Bhatkal. Modi wanted him to fight the war on terrorism. In future the politics of war on terrorism will become more intensified given Modi’s penchant for it. Another third front party TCP of Mamta Banerjee which views the Bengali speaking Muslims settled in India with their ration cards or voter identity cards as Indians . The Hindutva parties like Shiv Sena or BJP just cannot accept them as citizens of India. This could be a big source of discontent and violence in future. “I want to warn from here that, after May 16, we will send these Bangladeshis with their bags and baggages. You are spreading the red carpet for Bangladeshis. If people from Bihar come, they seem to be outsiders to you, if people from Orissa come they seem be outsiders to you, you feel bad about it, you feel bad if Marwaris come.. But if some Bangladeshi comes your face seems to shine. Sreerampore has a lot of Hindi speaking migrants working in jute mill. “When I say what about the employment of youths, they say what about secularism. When I day what about the welfare of farmers, they way what about secularism. I say what about two square meals for the poor, they way what about secularism. I talk of security of women on whom atrocities are being met out. They say what about secularism.” [2] This litany of secularism is based on his bête noire of “vote bank politics.” In future there would be even more concern for the secularism that is enshrined in the Constitution which Modi and Hindutva don’t eye with favour and oppose it tooth and nail. His well known definition is secularism is India First where India would matter and not secularism. In the name of India everything else including secularism will be annulled. The gravamen of the terrorist tag attached to RSS and by its implications the monstrosity of several dozen organizations it has spawned is that this multi headed hydra has one aim of bringing a religion based nationalism into practice and declare India a Hindu country where minorities do not have any right. At the most they can survive at the sufferance of the Hindus. Therefore this huge conglomeration is day and night engaged in activities detrimental to the minorities and especially Muslims, Christians and even the Dalits. However in the name of Hindu fold the sangh parivar coopts the Dalits as it did in the pogroms in 2002 and more recently in Muzaffarnagar 2013. In future there is no hope that the civil society or government would curb the acitivities of the RSS and its sub groups. In fact the sign is already there that the activities would continue. Togadia instigated the VHP and Bajrang Dal musclemen in the kristallnacht of April 12, 2014 at the Meghani Circle in Bhaunagar: "Don't be reluctant to pressurize Congress or BJP for the sake of Hindus' safety." [3]How could a member of the pacifist Dawoodi Bohra endanger the security of the Hindus who dominate the neighbourhood and he is the only Muslim living there? The future holds no prospect of any change in Modi. When reporters asked him if he would address the Muslims over their apprehension of what happened in Gujarat and their future this was couched in the euphemism of reaching out to them, he said that he would not commit this sin and dilated: "I haven't even started it. And I am not going to do it. It is not important for me. I am totally opposed to it.” And then he proceeded to elaborate what is not even the proverbial fig leaf that can hide the truth: “For the nation my mantra is 125 crore Indians. Hindu, Muslim, Christians... The country had enough of all these terminologies. The new terminologies will be youth, poor, farmer, village, city, education." Even the single component of “poor” here does not support his hypocritical pretension for he has hermetically refused to release the scholarships that the central government sanctioned for the Muslim students living below poverty line. [1] Asian Age April 27, 2014 [2] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/politics/as-modi-turns-knife-in-tmc-sees-butcher-who-ignored-wife/99/ [3]http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Evict-Muslims-from-Hindu-areas-Pravin-Togadia/articleshow/34017292.cms April 29, 2014 Chapter 13 The comeuppance is here to stay As India was through the polls to elect members of Parliament in 2014 the numerous attacks on Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal, Shabnam Hashmi and a host of others show that BJP and the other packs of the sangh parivar will never relent from their zeal for their pound of flesh. The new mantra of development is either you vote with us or you have it coming: the comeuppance. The strategy is the same old calculated one to either force the minority to accept second class citizenship and toe the Hindutva line or be ready to be thrown into the sea. The two aspects of post poll are “targeted killing” and “vote retaliation.” The discussion on communal targeted killing of minorities was much in vogue in 2012-2013. The bill on it died down without anyone noticing it as it was so watered down that there was no taker for it! However it reappeared in the Thursday night of May 1, 2014. Bodoland People’s Front legislator Pramilla Rani Brahma “accused” the Muslim minority of not voting with the majority, the Bodos. For National Democratic Federation of Bodoland’s Songbijit it was a matter of survival. The attack on Muslims began, first eleven members of the community were killed in the initial attack and many were injured. The casualties rose to23 in the evening of Friday May 2, mostly women and children who could not run and fell victim of terrorism. Nine more dead bodies were recovered on May 3. Six of them were children. Most remarkable feature was they were cut down by AK series of assault rifles. [Modi did not include this AK series in his notorious series: AK Antony, AK49=Arvind Kejriwal, AK47 Al Qaeda.] The violence took place in the area of an outpost of Gossaigaon in Kokrajhar and Baksa, Assam. Though Bodo Territorial Council chief Hagrama Mahiliary assured the Muslims not to leave their houses some 2000 had already left on the first day. The bodies of a boy and a girl were found raising the toll to 34 Less than a month ago Pravin Togadia had warned the Indian Muslims that those who wanted Pakistan should remember Kokrajhar and Muzaffarnagar. That would be inverse logic that the Bengali speaking citizens of India of Muslim origin long settled in Assam would be expelled or subject to communal violence and pogroms if they did not recognize the racial superiority of the Hindus. How else this could be explained than a carefully crafted plan to play with the hare and hunt with the hounds. BJP shares with the extremists in Assam who eye the Bengali speaking Muslim Assamese as Pakistanis. This recrudescence of communal violence is post poll retaliation. Togadia’s warning as well as Modi’s during his visit to Assam in the end of April 2014 were directed at the same target group of minority Muslim. Modi had said he would expel them if he came to power. The BJP election manifesto is an instance of playing with the hare when it mentions vikas bhi, imaan bhi, garibon kaa samman bhi. “BJP stands for development, for [Islamic] faith and respect for the poor.”[1 ] Fighting election on religious plank is not a new thing. It has always been there. On January 8, 2002 Krantikari Manuvadi Morcha president RK Bharadwaj announced that the murderer of Graham Staines and his two sons would fight election from Orissa jail in the coming elections in UP in February 2002. The announcement was made at a function in Muzaffarnagar. Bharadwaj said Dara Singh “is not a criminal. He was merely driven to defend Hindu religion from Christian and Islamic terrorism.”[2] There are such extremist groups who want to use the election process for their extremist agenda. Dara Singh being a Jat had elicited empathy from such a group. Twelve years later the Jats under the leadership of Hukum Singh and with active encouragement from Modi and Amit Shah wanted to fight election to take revenge and also see that the Muslims who fled from their homes and became refugees would lose their voting power. Gujarat has a long history of communal violence. But that does not mean that it should be taken for granted or the law of the land should be disregarded. Modi was not a new phenomenon on the horizon. On the day he was scheduled to cohabit with his wife Jashodaben, he had gone to RSS office in Ahmadabad and hid there. He was an incorrigible leader of the RSS with full commitment to the hate ideology. He it was who had stood with Advani when the Rathyatra for building the Ram temple at Ayodhya started from Somnath temple in Gujarat. He had organized the inception of what would become a bloody trail of terror. Can we assume that he did not play any role in the demolition of the mosque when the groups from Gujarat and Maharashtra were chosen to assault the Babri mosque! Bal Thackeray’s contingent was made up of Shiv Sainiks and he often boasted how Maharashtra was the first to teach Modi in such activities. Earlier Modi was associated with the biggest riots in Gujarat in 1969-70 and again in 1986-87. As a chief minister he ordered crack down on madrasa on February 19, 2002. The chief secretary of Gujarat government G Subba Rao said it was done at the instruction of the Chief Miniser. [4]. On February 24 2002 the VHP activists were making a video shooting of a cow slaughter that led to clashes in which one Ayub Musa Allaria was killed in Tankaria village of Bharuch. Jatin Vyas led the members of Gau Raksha Samiti (a wing of VHP). The police gave a cover to the VHP activists who immediately fled when police fired at the Muslims. [4] It is well documented fact that the extremists wanted to organize a big rally at Ayodhya on March 15, 2002 for building the Ram temple for which the Gujarat volunteers were organized and on the move to go to Ayodhya. Muslims leaders were apprehensive of the dire consequences: "We do not believe that our sentiments would be respected and the rule of law would be upheld in Ayodhya after our experience on December 6, 1992. Therefore, we would thwart the VHP plan," said Shaik Mahboob Ali and M.A. Majid, president and vice-president respectively of the DJS, at a press conference in Hyderabad on Wednesday. [5] And now when the election results will be declared in just over a week, Amit Shah has dubbed Azamgarh as “the base of terrorists.” Thus has started the war on terrorism for the Prime Minister “designate”, Modi. Even without cogent proof as in the case of Batla House fake encounter, he would fight the imaginary terrorists to pillory the whole Muslim community.. He is what Salman Rushdie called “a hardliner’s hardliner”, “a highly divisive force” and his pack is “Modistas” ala Sandinistas. Rushdie might have seen the video made by Gopal Menon of what was unmistakably a bloodthirsty mob of Narendra Modi Sena on the way to the mahapanchayat on September 27, 2013 just before they killed a journalist and a videographer. Rushdie: “I am pretty concerned about a Modi-run government. The indications that it would be a fairly bullying government are already there. We have already seen journalists and writers being bullied and (the BJP) has not taken power yet.” “You already see even more worryingly a kind of self censorship setting in, people worry that they are going to be bullied and therefore try not to do anything that will attract the wrath of the ‘Modistas’” And when Rushdie remarked that there was never a leader in India like Narendra Modi, the inference is that he was and is a pracharak of RSS who will not compromise on any Hindutva issue. This became evident when on Tuesday he stood on the stage with the picture of Babri mosque demolished and the temple coming up on its place and Lord Ram. His words also spell out substance of his ideology: “I may be from low caste, but don’t play low politics.”[6] He leaves no one in doubts that he is playing the politics of the high caste dominated RSS. He mocked that he had sold only tea and not the motherland, India. This stream of extreme right wing nationalism is pure politics and spells doom for future of democracy in India. It is like the left wing Nicaraguan organization Sandinista National Liberation Front [FSLN] which fought a bloody guerilla war against the dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979. The US backed the Contras and Israel supplied arms to the Contras despite the ban. Ultimately the Contras came back to power in 1990. Modi may cause serious problems for India. It was the right wing leader Vajpayee who ordered the nuclear tests in 1998 soon after coming to power and ordered mobilization of the army on the cusp of yet another war, for India believed that the attack on Parliament in December 2001 was made by Pakistan based terrorists. It is not insignificant that the US prevailed upon India not to escalate tension that would lead to war with Pakistan. Modi has gone far beyond. The BJP election manifesto, his own brain child as that of the RSS, says that Indian would keep the choice to first make nuclear strike against obviously Pakistan. There was worldwide repercussion when the right wing Hindu organizations had demolished the Babri mosque in 1992. If they carry out their ominously crafted foreign policy we will be in for a turmoil in the South East Asia and also world at large. Furthermore the right wing party would implement resettling any Hindu displaced anywhere in the world right here in India which would surely create domestic disturbance as it is likely to queer the pitch for the minorities. Modi, Hukum Singh, Togadia, Ramdas Kadam, Giriraj Singh and others have threatened to expel Indian Muslims of Bengali origin and also those who oppose Modi. Such a dynamic for humanitarian disaster may alert the neighbours who would use it for their own strategic needs. Modi reiterated the comeuppance “in the land of Ram” with the portrait of Lord Ram in the background of the stage in Faizabad on May 5, 2014. What he said was that the people must teach a lesson to Congress and those who support it for poll promises which they have not allowed to be fulfilled. In plain words it would mean that the BJP, Shiv Sena and their fellow saffron groups had fought election for building a Ram temple at the site of Babri mosque. Congress and Muslims who have so far defied the public will through court appeal and vote bank politics need to be taught a lesson this time. This is surely an appeal based on communalism for which the Election Commission can very well annul Modi’s election at Varanasi and Vadodra. The other version would be that Congress made promises and not kept them and hence it should be punished through ballot! [7] May 7, 2014 (postscript) [1] Inquilab May 3, 2014 [2] The Times of India January 9,2002 [3] The Times of India Feb 19, 2002 [4] AsianAge February 25,2002 [5]The Hindu February 28, 2002 [6] Asian Age May 7, 2014 [7] Asian Age May 6, 2014 Index Advani. LK 19, 23 Agnivesh, Swamy 19, 24 Aggressive Hindutva 44 Ahwad, Jitendra 9, Akbar, MJ 4, 32, Alok, Ajay 30 Anand math 15 Asimanand, Swamy 20, 38 Azamgarh 48 Babu Bajrangi 21, 22 Bagga, Tejinder singh Pal 22 Bajrang Dal 21, 31, 36, 37, 45, Bhatkal, Yasin 44 Bhatt, Ashok 26 Bhatt, Haresh 41 Bhatt, Sanjiv 37 Bhavesh Kataria 42 Bodo Peoples front 46 Bodo Territorial Council 46 British rule 15 Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) 9, Chidambrum 17 Chomsky, Noam 23 Commonalty 17 Communalism 17 Critical thinking 6, Cuba 23 Deshpande, Heena 38 Diaspora 27 Edck, Prof Diana 10, East Timor 23 Even Keel 5 Gandhi. Rahul 34 Gandhi, Rajiv 11 Gandhi, Sonia 24, 40 Genocide 5, 36, Goa conclave 19 Gose, Nathuram 34 Hagrama 46Hamida 36 Hassan 36 Hashmi, Shabnam 46 Hindu laboratory experiment 34 Holocaust 9, 36, Huckleberry Finn 34 Huntington, Samuel 28 Ishrat Jahan 9, 10 Jadeja, IK 26 Jamnagar Brass industry 25 Jaitley, Arun 3 Jashodaben (Modi) 38 Jinnah, Mohammad Ali 31 Joshi, Sunil 20 Kadam, Ramdas 15, 34, 49 Kataria, Babubhai 42 Kausar, 42 Kejriwal, Arun 46 Kipling, Rudyard 35 Kodnani, Dr Maya 21 Kosovo 17 Kothari brothers 10 Kristallnacht 45 Kumar, Nitn 44 Malegaon 5,8, Mamta, Banerjee 44 Mandal 19 Mangrol 40 Maoists 7 Mascrenhas, Father Frazer 32 Mathur, OP 16 Meghani circle 45 Meir, Golda 19 Menon, Gopal 37 Modi, Narendra 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 16, 17, 19, 23, 31, as chowkidar 24, 44, 47, 48, 49 Mogul rule 15, Mt Abu 22 Mumbra 9 Musharraf, President Perves 44 Muslims 10, Muzaffarnagar 5, 10, 34, 36, 37, 47, Nagorna Karabekh 17 Nandy, Ashis 27, 42 Nano 21 National Development Council 17 Naroda Patiya 21 Navrangpura 19 Nussbaum, Martha 43 Ode 27 Pasricha Dr 8 Patel, Aakar 31 Patel, Anil 42 Patel, Dhaval Jayani 4241, Patel, Keshubhai 20 Patel, Dr Jaideep 19 Patel, Sardar 24 Pearl, Daniel 37 Pogroms 36 Powell, Ambassador Nancy37 Prajapati, Tulsiram 10, 42 Pracharak 4, 5, 34, Pragyasingh Thakur, Sadhvi 20 Pramila Rani Brahma 46 Rabindranath Tagor 6 Raghvan, RK 21, Ramdev, Guru 38 Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) 7, 9, 34-37, 45, 38 Rana Ayub 10, 16 Relief camp 18 Roy, Arundhati 23, 36, Royal nonesuch 34 Rushdie, Salman 48 Sabarmati Express 9, Sabri Dham 20 Samiuddin, 36 Sandesh 9, Sandinista National Liberation Front 48 Secularism 44 Shah, Amit 9, 10, 21, 24, 35, 47, 48 Shah, Sonal 8, 10, Sharon, Ariel 28,40 Singh, Dara 47 Singh, Giriraj 10,31, 49 Singh, Hukum 10,34, 47, 49 Singh, Dr Manmohan 16, 23,24, Singh, Rajnath 16 Singh, PM VP 19 Singhal, GL 10, Shivaji rule 16 Slobodin Milsoevik 44 Smirti Irani 32 Sohrbuddin Sheikh 10, 21,34, 35, 40, 42 Songbijit 46 Souri, Arun 19 Sreekumar, RB 37 Stein, Graham 47 Swamy, Subramanium 9, 10, Swett, Katrina Lantros 37 Sword & Koran 4 Taslima Nasreen 40 Tehelka 10, Terrorism Research Centre (TRC) 7 Thackeray, Bal 16 Thackeray, Udvay 16 Thapar, Karan 10, 22, Tiwari, Shilpi 22, Togadia, Pravin 11, 31, 34, 46, 47, 49 Twain, Mark 34 United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA)7 Vajpayee 16, 19,23, 24 Vande matrum 15 Vanzara, DG 10, 35, 42 Varanasi 6 Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP)8, 9, 10, Vyas, Pravin Kumar 38 Yadav, Lalu Prasad 44 Zadaphia, Gordhan 22