First albatross around the neck of PM Narendra Modi

Summary The events in Gujarat in 2002-03 show a well coordinated move highlighting the life of Modi in danger which created sympathy for him. Godhra fire, attack on Akshardham, fake encounter of Samir and assassination of Haren Pandya fall into the same pattern. The day he won the election the Supreme Court acquitted the 6 innocent Muslims accused in the Akshardham temple attack of September 24, 2002. The apex court justices A K Patnaik and V Gopala Gowda severely criticized Narendra Modi for not applying his mind when giving sanction to prosecute the accused in 2003. His decision was neither informed nor based on evidence. The question that now arises is what prompted him to do so? Will he repeat the same as Prime Minister of India in such a case or even worse than this one? It was the state sponsored policy of framing Muslims in acts of terrorism they had not committed. After their release following their acquittal in the Akshardham temple attack the five accused revealed to the world what would hasten the fate of Narendra Modi to its logical end, (of course, by and by.) Mohammad Saleem one of the five said that the police had asked him to choose in which case he would like himself to be accused: Godhra train burning, Harend Pandya assassination or Akshardham temple attack. “I had been working in Saudi Arabia for 13 years, when they picked me up alleging there was a problem with my passport. They beat me brutally — I still have scars on my back, and I suffered a fracture in my foot. They asked me which case I wanted to be charged under — Akshardham, Haren Pandya or Godhra. I did not know what to say.” [1]This is the clearest indication of Modi’s involvement because it was he who had accused involvement of Pakistan ISI in Godhra train burning without giving any proof and that too within hours of the burning of the train which UC Banerjee Commission found to be an accident and not sabotage. For this initial evil full move Godhra fire accident became a terrorist attack and in revenge he allowed the Hindus three days to wreak havoc on the minority Muslims. Haren Pandya attended the meeting at the official residence of the chief minister and revealed to the people’s tribune the substance of the instruction of the CM that Hindus must be allowed to vent their anger and police should not come in the way. Akshardham attack was staged to win sympathy for Modi, one of the endangered species of fire eater Hindutva leaders. For this was Samir Khan Pathan arrested within three days of the attack on the temple under the ruse that he was trained by ISI to assassinate Modi. Abdul Qaiyum Muftisaab Mohammed Bhai was accused of writing the letters found on the bodies of the two slain attackers: “For three days and nights, they made me copy a letter that they had given me. They (the police) would bring an expert each day to check whether I had copied it well. They would ask me to copy the turns and twists of the Urdu letters so that they looked exactly the same as in the letter. I was very afraid, and did what they told me to do. Then they claimed in court that I had written the letters.” Even after acquittal and back at home he still says that it is “mere release from prison; justice had been buried at every moment in these 11 years” he was in prison. Therefore what would happen when Modi is the Prime Minister of the country and such cases come up? That worries many that the prospect of more Muslims being pilloried will surely rise. The chief of NGO helping the innocent trapped in false terror charges says: “Supreme Court and judiciary is our last hope. The government and the media have been biased, and an atmosphere has been created in which every Muslim is seen as a terrorist.” A month after the Akshardham temple attack IPS officer Police Commissioner Chittrangan Singh wrote a letter in which he questioned the identity of two terrorists killed at Akshardham temple: “It has been mentioned in the FIR pertaining to the attack on Akshardham that the two dead accused had arrived from Peshawar and Lahore. It has been found that no evidence in this regard has been found in the probe till this date [October 22, 2002] by the ATS. Then, on the basis of what evidence was this fact written in the complaint on behalf of the state?”[2]It is ominous that the day Samir Khan Pathan was killed by the police the Commissioner had to write expressing doubt about the FIR about the two slain terrorists and also about Samir in the same letter. The letter shows that this officer chose to apply his mind to the FIR. He was an honest man in contrast to Modi who did not apply his mind in sanctioning the prosecution. Such acts of omission and commission on the part of Modi are of such strength and frequency that it easily makes him culpable and they militate against the false notion he has spun that the clean chits really establish him un-blameworthy. He lives in the make believe world of King Macbeth of Shakespeare that no man born of a woman could kill him and he would reign until the woods walk towards his fort. Macbeth was a military chief who had committed regicide and usurped the kingdom of the slain king. From Thane he rose to become the monarch. Modi was chief minister and now he is the Prime Minister. Indeed the plot thickened when in the following month after Akshardham, Samir Khan Pathan was brutally killed in a faked encounter. The attack on the temple was mounted by an “enemy nation” and in the next part of the FIR dealing with Pathan the country was named. The officers who were in league with DG Vanzara and hence Modi had changed the first paragraph of the acting Commissioner of Police Chittranjan Singh. Vanzara was the deputy commissioner and PP Pande the Joint Commission. They along with DGP K Chakravarthi were also involved in the conspiracy of silence surrounding the fake encounter and the terrorist attack cases. Pande, Vanzara, Singhal also were behind the other fake encounters viz, Ishrat Jahan, etc. As usual DG Vanzara and GL Singhal had been very active and equal participants and accused in the fake encounters, the genocide and also in the investigation of the attack on Akshardham. Modi sanctioned the prosecution he did not apply his mind to what he was doing because he was terribly biased against the Muslims. He toed the line of the US in fighting terrorism. When the American embassy was bombed a day before Akshardham attack, President George Bush remarked that his patience with the Indonesian government was wearing thin. The reason for his anger was that the list of suspects America had given was rejected by the Indonesian government. It was not cooperating with America’s war on terrorism. Only the previous year during 9/11 he had warned the world that in the war on terror you are either with us or against us. America suspected Al Qaeda. But David Wright Neville of Monash University in Australia believed that those behind Bali blasts carried out the attack to demonstrate that it was “archipelagic” in nature. They were capable of striking anywhere in Indonesia. That was the obvious message sent out. The president, Megawati Sukarnopoutri, of Indonesia was brought up in India and had imbibed secularism here. Even her name is a witness to the virtue of broadmindedness and impartiality. When she visited India in the aftermath of 2002 genocide in Gujarat she asked PM AB Vajpayee about it. He casually remarked “some trouble.” The matter ended there and then. But then the PM went to the Goa conclave of his Hindu party BJP and remarked that Muslims everywhere did not live with their neighbours well. This is how he generalized Godhra violence stigmatizing the whole community. A leader from his party, Giriraj Singh from Bihar, also remarked on May 15, 2014: “Since terrorism is a matter relating to the country and not to a community, why secular leaders remain silent when all persons arrested in terror cases belong to a particular community. Are there only a few to define religious non-discrimination? Is it not true that all the terrorists caught belong to one community? I am not saying that all the people in that community are terrorists but whoever is caught belongs to the same community.”[3] In the wake of the arrest of Yasin Bhatkal the chief minister of Bihar had declined to take custody of him for investigation by his police. The police from Delhi then took away Yasin to the capital. Here also the logic is either you are with us or against us. Darbhanga module of terrorists exists in Bihar, if you do not accept you are not with us! Nitish Kumar refused and Modi threatened him with revenge. Boudh temple attack followed. So did the attack in Modi’s Patna rally for which initially 4 accused Hindus were blamed. The two who died in the Akshardham temple attack could not be traced as to where from they were or their families. But the six accused Indians were tried by the media and condemned much before the trial of the case started in the court. Then the case came up in the trial court. Three were sentenced to death, one for life imprisonment and one for ten and another for 5 years in jail. Modi and his party benefited from the incident in the election three months later. As the three were waiting in the death row and the others languishing in jail a very important people’s tribunal on Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) was formed. Modi did not apply his mind to the tribunal’s findings in 2004, either. It consisted of Ram Jethmalani, Justice Suresh, Justice DK Basu KG Kannabrian. It found that (1) There was less than 2 % conviction of the people accused of the crime of terrorism. (2)They were all denied bail. (3)Their confession was the only proof. Gujarat topped the list in the country where almost all arrested and accused were from Muslim community. It was this that prompted Arundhati Roy to observe: “anti-terrorism laws are not meant for terrorists: they are for people the governments do not like.” That is the ethos of Gujarat. It has also been confirmed that the SC has taken note that the accused were taken into custody by Vanzara and Singhal even before the case was handed over to them. This is a gross violation of the procedures and Modi as his own home minister ought to have known and taken strict action against the duo. It also reveals that he had so successfully subverted the judicial system along with the police and intelligence wing that the cover up of Modi’s role in all these was coterminous with the development of the case. For why should then the High Court of Gujarat also confirm the death and imprisonment sentences on the innocent accused when the home minister had not applied his mind to the case? If the lower court had not discerned it the duty of the HC was to scrutinize the case instead of rubber stamping the case as confirmed. The failure of the police is even worse. While arresting the accused the police should have the intuition to know the genuineness of what the relatives were averring that their fathers or brothers or husbands were just innocent and they were being framed. The police should have taken the precaution to apply their intuition in the matter. The SC’s anguish can be gauged from what the learned judges AK and Gowda exclaim at: "the incompetence with which the investigating agencies had conducted the investigation of the case of such a grievous nature, involving the integrity and security of the nation"! "Instead of booking the real culprits responsible for taking so many precious lives, the police caught innocent people and imposed grievous charges against them which resulted in their conviction and subsequent sentencing." "We intend to take note of the perversity in conducting this case at various stages, right from the investigation level to the granting of sanction by the state government to prosecute the accused persons under POTA, the conviction and awarding of sentence. We, being the apex court, cannot afford to sit with folded hands when such gross violation of fundamental rights and basic human rights of the citizens of this country is presented before us." [4] Modi’s official residence was close to the temple. Hence the attack on the Akshardham was associated with ‘kill-Modi conspiracy.’ Chitrangan’s later part of the letter deals with Samir Khan murder by police. His mother Zainabbi had gone to Sabarmati Central Jail to meet her son. The police told her to go to Civil Hospital. But a neighbour rushed there to tell her that her husband was calling her home. Her son’s body was lying in the Civil Hospital. It was sent to Zainabbi’s house later in the day. Stavan Desai reported that Samir was accused of “kill-Modi conspiracy.”[5] His mother rejected the accusation:’ How was he going to kill the CM when there was no weapon found on him? With his bare hands? And if he was a terrorist, would we be living in a one-room house with some utensils and two pairs of clothes?’’ said Samir’s mother when media people went to her house on October 22, 2002 as the news spread that he was killed while trying to escape from the police. He was arrested from a bus station on September 27, 2002 on the charge that he had taken training in Pakistan and returned home to kill Modi. ‘My son doesn’t deserve this death. I admit he made some mistakes for which even I never forgave him. But this is too harsh a punishment for stealing vehicles and killing a police constable.’’ [6] Samir was transferred to judicial custody on October 16. This may have facilitated the police to kill him. The proximity of the attack on the temples and his arrest associated in the popular mind that there was indeed a conspiracy to kill Modi to avenge the genocide of Muslims. This revenge theory was easily picked from books on terrorism and applied repeatedly to drill the ordinary people in a false belief. But the autopsy report gave away the truth that he was shot two to three inches below his left temple from an elevated angle, two bullets one on the 6th and the 7th rib shot from close range, Dr Kiran Pansoria : Samir was shot point blank range, gunpowder on his shirt, burnt marks left by bullets, FIR says he offered to take the police to the garden where he had killed a cop in a brawl, the police took him there at mid night to recreate the scene, why should the cops do so when he was not arrested for the 1996 murder, the panchnama or registration of crimes gave names of witnesses from Amul Electricals but records show that on that day they did not work overtime at midnight. [7] Vanzara had blamed Samir as a Jaise Mohammad operative. Chitrangan wrote to DGP Chakravorty 10 points which raised doubts about the whole operation. A subsequent inquiry by the Human Rights and Social Justice of DCP office found that the letter was replaced by another with fewer points. On October 31, 2003 the case was transferred to CID. IK Yadav was deputy officer there. He found the above mentioned points and wrote a report which the cell of Human Rights and Social Justice supported. The ancient mariner in the famous English ballad by ST Coleridge started on a voyage when an albatross came and sat on the mast. It brought strong wind but the mariner shot it down and that brought disaster. He was wearing a cross which fell into the sea and instead there appeared the dead body of the bird of good omens hanging from his neck. Modi’s assuming office is marked by the first stricture against him by the Supreme Court while in office. What is ominous is he is accused of many such acts of omission and commission. Indeed in the case of Haren Pandya IBS officer Sanjiv Bhatt in charge of Modi’s security gave in writing that Modi may have been behind the murder. Malika Sarabhai, Sanjiv Bhatt and RB Sreekumar averred that Modi had order payment of 10 lakh rupees to Mallika’s lawyer as a bribe to sabotage the Naroda Patiya case. Pandya’s wife Jagruty went to Visakhapatnam where Asghar Ali [acquitted in the case of murder of her husband but found innocent after 8 years in jail]told her who it was (Tulisram Prajapati). There are many more such cases which call for an impartial inquiry for Modi to face. All the more so because the Modi regime in Gujarat also had a penchant for deshdrohis or traitors to the country whom the administration under him presumed to be only Muslims. Getting rid of them was what Vanzara called deshbhakti or patriotism. Modi’s chief secretary PK Mishra had intervened and asked Chitrangan to take back his letter because Samir Khan Pathan, the two slain at the temple and the six accused were the traitors. Modi had dubbed Sohrabuddin also as a traitor though the whole family of Sohrabuddin including him were supporters of BJP. Moreover he was involved in racketeering and extortion and worked under Amit Shah. There is no way for the Augean stables of Modi to be washed clean and now he is the PM! [1] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/gujarat/they-asked-me-to-choose-godhra-pandya-or-akshardham/ [2] http://www.tehelka.com/gujarat-police-fudged-probe-into-akshardham-police-letter-survives-to-tell-the-tale/ [3] http://www.deccanchronicle.com/140515/nation-politics/article/bjp-leader-giriraj-hate-speech-row-again [4] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/Supreme-Court-pull-up-Gujrat-police-for-poor-investigation/articleshow/35315314.cms [5]http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/Supreme-Court-pull-up-Gujrat-police-for-poor-investigation/articleshow/35315314.cms [6] ‘He made mistakes but didn’t deserve this’ Indian Express October 23, 2002. [7] Indian Express, May 9, 2007.

Pogroms in Assam: the Modi effect India squeaking

Stephen Cohen speaking at the Brookings Institution said of India: “India has not squeaked at all and squeaking wheels get the grease and India’s got to be squeaking loud. It’s got to be doing things, some risky, some dangerous, some positive.” Narendra Modi’s foreign policy will of course be of concern. The visa ban on Modi was the result of the genocide of Muslims in 2002 from which despite the clean chits issued to Modi the legal battle is still going on. Among the three things risky and dangerous have been there before the 2014 polls started, through the polls and even post poll. The pogroms in Assam are the most portentous ones after the Muzaffarnagar’s share of the preplanned events. All on account of what phenomenon Narendra Modi has created. It is bound to have tectonic changes if Modi is to assume office as prime minister of India. India has been squeaking without the foreigners taking serious note of it except the US Commission on Religious Freedom. It did and recommended visa ban. Cohen says that once Modi is in office India may squeak “with a vengeance with the advent of a Modi foreign policy.” [1]This is undeniable because Muslims were massacred in 2002, 2013 Muzaffanagar and Assam in 2012 and the same repeated in May 2014. The last was on account of the poll which has churned out the Modi phenomenon as a presidential type of electioneering tsunami. It sucked up the highest amount of money so far spent on election by a single party. The human rights violation by the police and the militia in Gujarat and Assam and also the upsurge of the Hindutva militia be it in Muzaffarnagar or Gujarat 2002 have marred the image of India as a multiracial society. Its repercussion is there to see: the US ambassador Nancy Powell has resigned for opposing visa to Modi. Cohen has had this in mind among other things when he observed: “Modi has close relations with China, Japan, and South Korea, and bad relations with the US.” It is not Modi who had bad relation. Cohen is ironic. It the human rights violation and concern over religious freedom that is at the heart of the matter. On Sunday May 4, 2014 the death toll in massacre of Bengali speaking Muslims in Assam rose to 34 when two more bodies were found. The atrocities on Muslims had begun in the night of May 1. They had not voted for the Bodos was the blame upon them. This was poll revenge exacted upon them under the inspiration of and by the kind of hatred Narendra Modi and Amit Shah had been pouring against the Muslims in disguise of innuendos and sarcasm and outright chicanery. They had worked up the audience into a frenzy of lusty cheering during their declamation in every rally. One such was in the night of May 4 where Modi dared the unthinkable: rubbing salt into the wounds still bleeding. Accusing the state government of Mamta Banerjee of West Bengal Modi remarked: “You are concerned about infiltrators and not your own people ... they must go back, they are robbing the youths of India of their livelihood.” [2]West Bengal has always had Bengali speaking Muslims who had lived there even before the partition of Bengal. The Bengali speaking people also had lived in Assam, too, before 1947. But owing to the agitation against immigrants in Assam the Indian Muslims of Bengali origin became aliens in the land of their birth and also choice, they were indigenous Assamese. Many had been surviving only on what they can get at the end of the day to buy food in the evening. Such penurious ones had gone to market to buy food or for work at 3.30 pm when the killers entered the hamlets and assaulted the children and women left in their huts. The recriminating campaigning of Narendra Modi against the Muslim minority everywhere including West Bengal and Assam is responsible for the plight of the Muslims. The river had given them life but man ended their life using river as the boundary. The riverine islands grew up when the river piled up the silt at one place and then continued amassing until it rose above the water level of the river. Having been sufficiently dried up for the seeds to fertilize and the sprouts to show up and then slowly grow into bushes and the grounds to harden enough to bear the weight of man and goods is how inhabitation of the humans opened the way for community life. Man moved in such newly formed land sufficient for vegetation and for man to live, the islands slowly acquired the appearance of a human settlement where there was no need for any passport, visa or identity. Nature’s plenty was enough to supply food and fuel. The poorest had god’s kingdom come to them. The marauders secured the banks first. The men of the Muslim settlement had left for distant places to buy provision or attend work leaving their children and women at home. The attackers took out their AK series assault rifles and sprayed death. The victims in traumatic commotion took to their heels and ran to the opposite direction for the river bank without knowing that more attackers were hiding there in bushes to finish them. In the meantime some children hid behind bushes and trees too petrified to run any more. They were chosen by fate to see what the marauders did to their mothers, sisters and brothers and the elderly. That is the story of Narayanguri. The doorway to the splendours of nature in North East of India had become the corridor of death, murder and mayhem. Ten of the attackers were forest rangers and five were former Bodo guerilla terrorists. They were coordinating the attack for they knew the terrain well and were in service, at least the forest guards. They were tainted with the bias against the Muslims being “the other” taking their land and jobs and making their future bleak. Modi’s ideology worked in them as rebellious against the official line that Assam included the victims as citizens as it did the Bodo tribals. Pramilla Rani Brahma was the MLA from East Kokrajhar and formerly a minister in the Tarun Gogoi government in charge of the forest land. The forest guards and the forest minister had common share in the claim that the [to use the words of Robert Frost] ‘land was theirs before they were of the land.’ Those who came later were the spoilers of the virgin forest. The obvious choice of ways to remove the outsiders was violence and terror. Brahma was involved in the bomb blasts in the Paltan Bazar in 1992 in which 20 people lost their lives. She was arrested. But later she was released because the case was withdrawn as political expediency overruled terrorism. It was she who had said in her speech of April 30, 2014 that Muslims had not voted for Bodo People’s Front candidate Chandan Brahma and therefore there was no chance for Bodo candidate to win. Modi had already been threatening and Amit Shah was also talking of revenge for honour. Another accused in the bomb blast of 1992 was the president of Bodoland Peoples Front Hagrama Mohilary who is also chief executive member of the Bodoland Territorial Council. It is this council that runs the Bodoland Territorial Area Districts comprising of Kokrajhar, Chirang, Baksa, and Udaiguri. Former boss of the Bodoland Liberation Tigers which also included Thibeta of which Mohilary was the chief. Brahma had accused that the Muslims had voted Naba Kumar Sarania who enjoys the support of ULFA which is against separate territorial rights given to Bodos. More details of deeper political conspiracy behind the killings in Assam show that it was well in line with the policy of Modi and Shah. Both played communal card alternating with caste card to divide the society wherever it suited their need. If Modi played the caste card in UP it was aimed at BSP of Mayawati. In Assam it was a carefully thought plan to enhance the enmity between the Bodos and indigenous Assamese Muslims who speak Bengali. It came handy to the right wing Hindutva party BJP to blame them as illegal Bangladeshi immigrants. Their circumstances in life are so indigent that they hardly have their three meals a day let alone utensils or having identification documents. Their condition is that of existential level of the lowest strata of society. It is thus easier to play Hindutva politics of framing the Muslims as immigrants and disenfranchising them. This was done earlier in the case of the pogroms in Muzaffarnager where BJP MLA Hukum Singh said that the Muslim refugees had lost their power to vote because they had become squatters. He threatened that he would not let them vote. Another aspect of the same is “The canard of illegal "Bangladeshi" immigrants has been used primarily by the Hindu nationalist BJP as a red herring in order to leverage ethnic rivalry between Bodos and Muslims and gain political mileage.”[3] In the same way the Bodos enjoying state patronage in share of jobs also joined in the preplanned and targeted massacre. As a victim recalls: “I guess we are attacked because of the way people voted in theLok Sabha polls this time…a majority of the non-Bodos, especially the Muslim community, has voted for non-Bodos. The attackers were fromer Bodland Liberation Tigers (BLT) rebel who had jobs in Forest Department.”[4] This is a long simmering problem and cannot be wished away. It would be incorrect to say as does Cohen that “Pogroms against Muslims in India -- I don’t think that’s going to be his [Modi’s] policy. He correctly argues in his defense that whatever we did in 2002, look what the Congress (party) did in 1984 against the Sikhs.”There is a clear difference 1984 was one momentous event albeit a pogrom against the Sikhs but not a result of any entrenched hate ideology against the Sikhs. In the case of the Muslims the hate ideology is very deep rooted and the Hindutva forces could use Sikhs against the Muslims but not vice versa. If the west represented by US and UK speak out against the human rights violation as in Gujarat, Muzaffarnagar and Assam it would not amount to what Cohen thinks damning Hinduism for the pogroms. It would be for equity and justice. Therefore Cohen is less convincing when he says the danger to Modi: “Will be from his right and the belief, the theory that America and the United Kingdom are in a conspiracy against India trying to undercut India by being anti-Hindu.” Much of the violence in Assam is on account of the polls. There have been more such deadly scenes. Even in the peak of the deadly attacks on Hindus by the militant Sikhs in 1984 there were daily massacres. The Akali Dal party wanted greater share in power. The editor of The Times of India, Girilal Jain wrote on March 27, 1984, a day after the Akalis withdrew their agitation: “I sincerely believe the agitation [of Akalis] is misconceived because Sikhs cannot, in my opinion, possibly have any genuine grievances.”[5] Their grievance included that they had only one member in the parliament. A fortnight ago RSS chief Balasaheb Deoras had asked the government to accept the religious demands of the Akalis. In contrast RSS and its conglomerate do not want to accept any demands of the Muslims who have of course not demanded anything in this regard. The grievance of RSS and Modi and Thackerays and the Hindu right is what the government appointed Sachar Commission has recommended and the government has agreed to implement for job reservations for all minorities and not just Muslims. Those killed in Narayanguri were the poorest of the poor. Such penurious and also unpredictable is their life that Syeda Hameed and Gunjan Veda draw a frightening scnenario: “Some three million people or twelve percent of the state’s [Assam’s] population live over 2, 500 islands of the Brahamaputra. Most of these are poor migrants or tribals. At last count, there were 2, 300 villages floating on the river (many chars, and, hence the villages on them, are semi-permanent). Country boats are the only means of connectivity, and these are usually dugouts pulled by oars. During the flood, people’s lives are shattered. Every year, lakhs of women, children and men become homeless and take shelter in temporary relief camps. Here they huddle together for weeks, waiting for the water levels to recede.” [6] Given this low level of indigence the most disempowered Indians on the islands of the river/s were hapless and at the mercy of the dominant majority tribe of Bodos. The forest minister, MLA, the forest guards and others mentioned earlier were not only former surrendered rebels and terrorists accused of bomb blasts they were also empowered with jobs and resources of all kinds. The former rebels used AK assault rifles but the guards used their service guns. The slain had the bullets as silent witness to the pogroms. Yes, they were pogroms. A high court judge hearing the pogroms case and fake encounters of 2002 and after years has gone on record saying that pogroms, holocaust and genocides are foreign terms not applicable to India. His pretension of ignorance is quite understandable because he does not cite as he should the previous such instances. As a judge he should refer. It is his duty. Holocaust deniers are not only in the west but in the south east also. To give one instance. There were the pogroms of 1979 in Jamshedpur in which 108 Muslims were killed. No Hindu was even injured. This was the finding of an official commission whose report was published in The Times of India and Indian Express on September 14, 1981. The commission was appointed by the Janta party government when there was no split in the Janta government or the party. Among other findings, nine Muslims were burnt alive in their house. In one horrible instance an ambulance carrying injured children and women was firebombed killing everyone in it. If this is not pogrom what else is this? The learned judge’s myopic vision is revelatory of how rank communalism works in the Indian polity. Cohen also must know that pogroms have always taken place and it is the RSS in particular with its affiliates has been in the forefront. Five days before the pogroms of 1979 RSS boss Balasaheb Deoras had visited Jamshedpur and had aroused the raw passion of the Hindus against the Muslims. Deoras,Modi, Pramila Rani Brahma, Hagrama Mahilary, Pravin Togadia, etc along with their lieutenants like Maya Kodnani have insistently urged Hindus to attack, kill and rape and burn Muslims. Even government officers like the deputy commissioner of Chotanagpur was involved in the pogroms of 1979, as the commission of inquiry found it. The most recent pogroms have made India squeak. Modi cannot stop it even if he becomes PM or leader of the opposition in Parliament because it is not he but his ideological group RSS that will make India squeak. Even the Jamshedpur educational institutes were rife with the RSS cadets and leaders. It was for this that the South Virginia based Terrorism Research Centre named RSS as a terrorist organization. Vengeance is a recurring feature of pogroms now as highlighted by Modi and Amit Shah. In Assam Modi said in Dhemaji, Assam, that the government was allowing the extermination of the endangered rhinoceros to let the illegal immigrant Muslims settle there. The audience would naturally be instigated to violence against Muslims. Shah asking the voters in western part of UP state to take revenge against those who killed the Jats is as serious as the Jats in their grand kham panchayat or assembly instigated their members to kill Muslims in order to protect Jat women! The Bodo leaders also had egged on the audience to attack Muslims who had not voted their candidate who had no chance of winning on account of the Muslims. BJP had always castigated vote bank politics ascribed to Muslims and days before the polling the Bodo leaders wanted to avenge it. [1] http://www.rediff.com/news/report/ls-election-danger-to-modi-as-prime-minister-will-be-from-his-right-stephen-cohen/20140513.htm Danger to Modi as prime minister 'will be from his right': Stephen Cohen [2] http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/05/04/modi-assam-muslims-immigrant-congress-idINKBN0DK0FQ20140504 Modi rails against illegal immigrants after Muslim killings [3] www.iamc.com [4] http://www.tehelka.com/assam-violence-the-killings-never-stop-bodoland/ [5] Times of India March 27, 1984 [6] Syeda Hameed, Gunjan Veda. Beautiful Country stories from another India Harper Collins Publishers India. New Delhi (2012) p 5