Elephant in the room Radicals and the radicalized

Elephant in the room Radicals and the radicalized Mustafa Khan Books by the same author Aggressive Hindutva terrorism andMalegaon First Hindutva Genocide of Muslims and its Architect Decade of the Demagogue and His Demagoguery Mass-Terror Atrocities on Muslims for a Hindu Rashtra Premeditated Framing of Innocent Muslims in False Terror Charges Ishrat Jahan: Sacrificed at the Altar of Hidnutva Moloch Narendra Modi and his pack: the terror streak Muzaffarnagar, fury and ferocity Polarizing India in attempt to Hinduize it Even Keel September 25, 2015 Mustafakhan1948@gmail.com 9028225763 Contents Preface Chapter 1 Decade of radicalism of the majoritarian Chapter 2 Elephant becoming behemoth Chapter 3 The day of the jackals Chapter 4 Jamshedpur, what is radicalism and who is doing it Chapter 5 Elephant in the room, radicalism in india, UK and Is Chapter 6 Money, instigators, and intelligence agency Chapter 7 RSS as leading organization of radicalism Chapter 8 Paharpur of Bareilly Chapter 9 Radicalism is context bound Chapter 10Weakening the country by wreaking havoc Chapter 11 The most radical divider, Bal Thackeray Chapter 12 Whisper as a means of radicalizing Chapter 13 Rise in militancy in Chapter 14 Bhiwandi, the cauldronof radicalism Chapter 15 Modi as a real time avenger, peremptory radicalism Chapter 16 New Thesauras of Terrorism Chapter 17 Terrific period of Modi Chapter 18 Two birthdays Chapter 19 Zahid Chapter 20 Nasreen and Nandigram Chapter 21 Tasleema Nasreen and the four pillars of learning Chapter 22 “What is happening to the country?” Chapter 23 The scourge of terrorism and the world as a victim Chapter 24 Reforming the police Chapter 25 Hyderabad bombing Chapter 26 Need for civil rights movement Chapter 27 Ajmer, attack on composite culture Chapter 28 Inequity of religious intolerance Chapter 29 Terrorism of bondage to past Chapter 30 Hinduizing politics and militarizing Hindudom Chapter 31 Malegaon, on the trail of terror Chapter 32 Barack Obama and the cultural nationalism Chapter 33 Koran shooting !!! Chapter 34 War Hysteria and outrage Chapter 35 How to fight terror Chapter 36 Terror chooses busiest market as busiest hour 5 Preface Eugene Ionesco, the Romanian dramatist, shows how empty mind is devil’s shop in presenting a couple living together where they imagine the lover in an adjoining bed room. Both are aware that his dead body is growing like vegetable and occupying empty space in the house by its daily increase. Such creation of persons and things embodies what the characters fee rather than having a real existence. The elephant in the room is a metaphor for creating a myth of projecting one’s own construction of reality that is at odds with the actual facts. In the Bhagalpur pogroms of Muslims the government had transferred a police officer for his unjust and biased handling of the violence but he and his supporters believed that it was not so and forced his reinstatement as a result people suffered more. Godhra collector had maintained till the evening of February 27, 2002 that the fire in the compartment of Sabarmati Express was accident but Narendra Modi changed it without proof as a terrorist attack by terrorists from across the border. So if the inmates of a house believe that there are monsters in a room their paranoia creates a myth not based on tangential proof. There is the selfish or ideological design here that works mischief leading to murder and mayhem. The conclave of RSS in the first week of September 2015 would parallel the Spanish civil war situation. A democratic government vowed to hold the Constitution of the Republic flouted all the norms of the Parliamentary democracy by its PM and his ministers by attending the conclave to defend their policy and work in office instead of the floor of the Parliament. Among its deliberation there was Sakshi Maharaj asking for unconstitutional means to curb the population of Muslims. Nay, the firebrand Parvin Togadia asked for strictest measure to declare Muslims producing third child as an act of crime. “[The government] must also implement the two-children [sic] norm irrespective of the political pressures. Rather than subsidising each birth of a Muslim kid, it is must that after two children, there has to be the strictest curb. Perhaps a punishable criminal offence and stopping the ration, jobs, (and) educational facilities will streamline the population facilitation towards better development.” This is the same Togadia who sat in the clinic of VHP leader Jaideep Patel during the genocide of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 and monitored the reports coming in of mass casualties of Muslims at the hands of the extremist Hindus. Now he wants to make it a law like the proclamation of Pharaoh that all children should be extinct after the birth of first two. The UNO Convention against Genocide clearly mentions it as crime against humanity in the same way as killing of Muslim children and fetuses during the pogroms of 2002. Thereafter Modi went on winning election by creating paranoia over the fecundity of Muslims: “When we allocate funds for Becharaji, [the Congress] do not like it. And if we bring Narmada waters in the month of Shravan, then too they say they dislike it. So what should we do? Do we go and run relief camps? Should we open child-producing centres? “We want to firmly implement family planning. Hum paanch, humare pachees (We five, our 25) (laughs). Who will benefit from this development? Is family planning not necessary in Gujarat? Where does religion come in its way? Where does community come in its way? “The population is rising in Gujarat, money isn’t reaching the poor? What’s the reason? They make a beeline, fix cycle punctures (Audience laughs).” These words from his speech on September 9, 2002 and what Sakshi Maharaj and Pravin Togadia spoke on September 3-4 conclave in Delhi shows the close association of RSS and its government. What is elephant in the room is the bull in a china shop. “Is it a duty of police officer to barter information to press…I can’ turn like bull in china shop. It is beyond morally established principles,” The attorney general of Gujarat Kamal Trevedi captured the image for justifying the Gujarat government’s attempt to make investigation against former DGP (Intelligence) RB Sreekumar again. It was in connection with Sreekumar’s telling secrets of office to the press, another instance of relentless lying about the genocide of 2002 ala the lies of the professor and wife in Amedee. The Delhi conclave of RSS with full attendance of PM and his cabinet and the substance of the deliberation that the government must follow the Hindutva agenda smacks of revanchism. It is a revanchist dialogue of the ideologues and the executive that puts the ideology into practice. Both are committed to a policy of seeking to retaliate what is lost territory. It is not just the akhand bharat but also loss in population vis-a-vis Muslims. Ten years after the government of Gujarat lost its witch hunt of DGP RB Sreekumar when the Central Administrative Tribunal quashed its chargesheet, the HC of Gujarat recovered its lost ground when it allowed the State government on September 4, 2015 (when the conclave was in session in Delhi) to initiate departmental inquiry against Sreekumar. It was he who had charged Modi of conducting genocide of Muslims. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of UNO says in its Article 2 “(c) deliberate inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or part.” What is elephant in the room is the bull in a china shop. The Advocate General of Gujarat Kamal Trivedi reacted in the expected manner when he said “Is it a duty of police officer to barter information to press…I can’ turn like bull in china shop. It is beyond morally established principles.” What happened in 2002 and now that peace prevails in Gujarat and India comes under the ambit Article I “The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and publish.” Prime Minister Modi spoke of the Delhi conclave at Bodh Gaya on September 5 the next day of the RSS meet and summed up "The two day conference seems to have arrived at a broad consensus on both issues. On the issue of conflicts- most of which are being driven by religious intolerance- the participants in the conference seem to have agreed that while there is no problem about the freedom to practise one's religion, it is when the radical elements try to force their own ideologies on others, that the potential for conflict arises." Addressing a Hindu-Budhist conference at Maha Bodhi Temple he also stressed the fact that Hinduism and Buddhism have the same conflict resolution strategy. "The message by both of them was about establishing Dharma," His civilizational-cultural perspective is that of Samuel Huntington. The hall mark of it is that Muslims’ innards are bloody, they don’t live well with their neighbours. The assertion of Hindu-Buddhist culture and civilization solution is obscure and susceptible to misinterpretation. The most obvious is that there is presumption that Indian civilization is older and therefore the clash of civilizations can be resolved through dharma (duty/religion). In April 2002 PM AB Vajpayee visited Gujarat and chided Modi to do his dharma. Pat came his retort that he was already doing it. And yet he did not let the relief camps have enough food and shelter and hurriedly shut them down and blamed them as child producing factories. So flaunting of dharma as practiced by Lord Krishna in conjunction with Gautam Buddha is obscene oxymoron. Using state machinery and killing the people of other religions cannot be called dharma in a modern democracy. Furthermore going after Maoists in coming years at the instance of RSS conclave is an instance of clash within the same civilization. Going after the Muslims in strictest manner to stop them from producing children according to the whims of Sakshi Maharaj and Pravin Togadia cannot be called dhrama as duty or religion of the state of India because our Constitution does not allow it and moreover it is genocidal. Furthermore Jains have had harmonious life with Hindus. But recently Udhav Thackeray opened the lid of the canards that the Jains were behind the violence in 1993. One such in later years was Sonal Shah of Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America who collected funds and sent to Gujarat for the sake of the genocide. Is this the inter civilization dialogue Modi wants? About lies: Lokmanya Tilak had in mind Muslim celebration of Moharram which was attracting more and more people of other faiths. To prevent that he made ancient tradition of worshipping Ganesh privately into a public event. The Shiv Sena wants pandals or awning and stage on roads to celebrate Ganesh festival despite the order of the high court. “ Lokmanya brought the Ganesh festival out of people’s homes on to the roads in order to unite people against British rule. The editorial of Saamna calls it as first ignition in the freedom struggle. It militates against 1857 struggle that Hindus and Muslims made in a united alliance to fight against the British. Relentless lying about history as is the wont of the right wing groups is absurd. It is based on creating myth or story as the Romanian dramatist depicts in Amedee where the couple believes that there is the dead body of the lover of Amedee’s wife Madelein in the next room that is growing and occupying all the spaces in the room and beyond, like the elephant in the room. If that is absurd what is also matter of angst is the “explosion of anxiety” in the north eastern part of India. The deal that Modi struck with Nagas is fraught with apprehension of betrayal. The Nagas have now a cultural unity that is spread across the borders. It is making Nagas come closer to Kukis and filling Meiteis with suspicion. This is the Imphal conspiracy that gives Nagas dual loyalty. The Meiteis do not want any part of their Manipur territory given to Nagas. If that is not checked it would erode tribal unity basic to their existence. Because of the Modi deal with Nagas the Kukis want a central administration. This “explosion of anxiety” is because of the suspicions and ambiguity of the secret deal the centre has had with the Nagas. Your enemy’s enemy is your friend! In 1990s the NSCN had killed 1000 Kukis. Manipuris are only 5 % but those arrested are 75% Manipuris. Why is Delhi supporting Christians rather than Meiteis who are Hindus? . One of the most telling examples is the RDX that was brought into Maharashtra by the police agent Zabiuddin Ansari. It was recovered from three places, Malegaon, Ankai near Manmad and Verul near Aurangabad. The radicals were the leaders either civilians or police or army officers and whom they radicalized were either civilians or police and army personnel. The RDX and arms and ammunition seized in May 2006 was the “stem cell” from which grew up a series of terrorism incidents, the local train blasts known as 7/11, both the bomb blasts in Malegaon 2006 and 2008, etc. SP Rajvardhan Sinha’s role is questionable and his midnight press conference attended by Mufti Ismail amazing to say the least. Mohammad Shakeel Mohammad Yakub’s affidavit is even more confounding. The seized explosives and weapons were the first gobbet and the other gobbet that arrived in August 2008 in the form of intelligence reports according to Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark in their book The Siege, the Attack on the Taj. It was complementary to it. Thus went on the enlargement and enormity. The Hindustan Times reported that it was the hugest arms haul that India made due to the spade work of its police agent, Zabiuddin of Udgir, Marathwada. On Sunday September 13, 2015 he lay in his solitary cell of Arthur Road jail in Mumbai. He had stopped eating since August 7. The fear of the police or the jail authorities is that he was ‘quarantined’ in the safe anda cell so that he should not radicalize other inmates. This is yet another instance of covering up and thus preventing the truth from coming in the open, relentless telling of lies. So when the 13 accused were waiting in the court premises and the police summoned them for trial in 7/11 local train attacks in Mumbai they called them as “dummy accused.” They were not inveterate liars but humans who have a fondness of easily describing others as GL Singhal and others in the Ishrat Jahan case would say that the grey beard meaning Modi had told the black beard meaning Amit Shah to go ahead and kill Ishrat Jahan the college girl from Mumbra and the other three. Both the instances of euphemism are like the perfumes of Arabia that cannot sweeten the small hands of Lady Macbeth whose husband had killed King Duncan and she had extracted the knife from the dead body and got her fingers stained with blood. Blood would stink either of the king or the plebian killed in terrorism. A basic defining feature of creating radicalism or the elephant in the room is revanchism. In attempt to recover lost territory from “the other” you also destroy “them”. The circumambient features are recovering ancestral land, curbing the numbers of “the other”, weakening “them” by boycott, not leasing or selling property to “them”, justifying the unjustifiable, etc. The Hindu right under RSS, VHP, Shiv Sena and others is hell bent in creating a Hindu nation that it believes India once upon was. And should now be. So Pravin Togadia, Ashok Singhal or the RSS have declared that India would be a Hindu state 2015, or 2020. This is hearkening back to the belief that India was akhand Bharat, an unbroken integrated land occupied by well knit people professing Hinduism and living in Hindu ethos unspoiled by the contamination of other religions. As a corollary Pakistan and even Afghanistan are parts of India and must merge into India. Most of the communal riots have seen resurfacing the nightmare of Pakistan or Bangladesh as the enemy which must cease to exist so that India can regain its pristine beauty and power. Those Indians of other than Hindu faiths must cease to exist. In that endeavour Swami Asimanand, Sadhvi Pragyasigh Thakur and many others are working. If the Sadhvi is under arrest she must be freed from prison. To free her LK Advani wanted the investigation officers changed. To Ashok Singhal she is the Madonna whom the Catholic Church of Rome is pursing to trace out and kill her lineage. Little does Singhal care whether Dan Brown’s book is of fiction and not reality! ------ []Imphal's 'conspiracy' theory: Delhi behind tribal unity, unrest Prashant Jha, Hindustan Times, Imphal| Sep 09, 2015 http://www.hindustantimes.com/Images/popup/2015/9/bihar_photo1.jpg http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-conflict-arises-when-radicals-force-ideologies-on-others-pm-narendra-modi-in-bodh-gaya-2122274 http://indianexpress.com/article/india/gujarat/godhra-riots-gujarat-govt-gets-hc-nod-to-begin-probe-against-former-dgp-sreekumar/#sthash.bPeV9N4Q.dpuf Section I Defining and Delineating Radicalism Chapter 1 Decade of radicalism of the majoritarian Shiv Sena: Leading-edge of Hindutva extremism The first communal riot that scarred India in 1960s was Jabalpur riots of 1961. The sixties of 20th century saw the ascendance of extremism and of spawning of agent provocateurs and firebrands as never seen in decades before. Their incendiary speeches heralded in radicalism as a mass movement. They appropriated it as their right to do so for being from the majority. The public scene abounded in ring leaders, rabble rousers and trouble makers. Such zealots made their marks and rose in public esteem for their extremism. With the celebration of the birth of Shiv Sena was born new vigor to revivalism. In 1963 the Shiv Jayanti procession first stopped to play music before the mosques in Bhiwandi a major break from the past. In 1965 a riot was forestalled from taking its course when a stone thrown by a Muslim at another Muslim injured a third one who lied that he had fallen and injured himself. In 1967 Bhiwandi had its first communal flare up. Ganesh festival passed peacefully as its procession route through Hindu areas was concerned. But in the case of Id Milad procession Muslims persevered in their demand to take procession through Hindu areas and that was what caused the flare up. Again the Jan Sangh wanted to hold a meeting of district level on March 10, 1968 to coincide with Bakri Id. There was again tension there. January 26, 1969 was marked by the failure of Rais school participation on account of attack on students on the previous day. On April 18, there was celebration of Shiv Jayanti The role of Bal Thackeray and his lieutenant Baliram More was wily and beguiling to say the least. Committed to the cause of Marathi manoos especially in border districts of Belgaum when Thackeray was vociferous about it in his speech of April 13, 1969 his snide was clear when he spoke of shameful things happening in Bhiwandi of which he was restrained from speaking in the presence of the ladies in the Thane gathering. More was stealthy in his seeking power in Bhiwandi by all means and so he enticed the Muslims to support him in the municipality council. Thackeray again excelled in his Muslim bashing by calling Bhiwandi second Pakistan. Though there were riots elsewhere in February and March Bhiwandi remained unaffected because of the flattering attitude of Shiv Sena Bhiwandi chief Baliram More. Muslim councilors were snared. However when More saw no chance of his becoming president or even vice president of the municipality he did a Shivaji-Afzal Khan maneuvering by falsely blaming Muslims of shouting Pakistan Zindabad slogan. Justice DP Madon stated this forthrightly. Like sena chief like his sainik. Unveiling this ruse shows the true tiger’s spots that the shive sainiks have had. Muslims often call this treachery. The “aggressively communal” role of Rashtriya Utsav Mandal, [RUM] was to teach Muslims their place and particularly stop them from teasing Hindu women and destroying their temples. On March 13, 1970 RUM displayed a board saying that Hindu women suffered indignities in Pakistan, those who remained there were converted. This was extracted from the editorial of Navbharat Times. Then meetings to incite Hindus to violence followed. “These meetings were intended and utilized for making inflammatory–communal speeches calling upon the members of the Hindu community to take the law into their own hands for their protection on the ground that the administration was not competent to do so. The venue of temples for these meetings invested with the aura of religious sanctity and halo the communal propaganda carried on at these meetings and thus gave this propaganda greater force and effect. The RUM invited as guest speakers leaders of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Jan Sangh such as V. R. Patit and Pandit Brij Narayan Brajesh, and of the Jan Sangh such as G. M. Puntambekar and A.G. Nimkar.” RUM organized its first function Rajiyabhishek Din to coincide with Id Milad. This antic in generating a faceoff with minorities essentially Muslims creates the atmosphere of communal tension that is the oxygen of Hindutva. Thereafter, the manufacturing of riots begins and pays rich dividend at the polls. It did not have to wait for long as the holi festival in April 1970 widened the celebration to Padgha, Punda, Kamatghar, Kamba, Kasheli, Kalher, Puma, Karivali, Kalwa and other villages in its wake. The Jan Sangh played important role under Dr. Bhagwan Prabhashankar Vyas and Puntambekar of Malegaon and a lawyer AG Nimkar of Padgha. Such was the wildfire of communalism spreading that where a couple of villages celebrated Shiv Jayanti in Bhinwandi in 1970 there were vllagers from 500 villages present in the procession. The tension that was slowly nurtured in scores of meeting before Shiv Jayanti went to making the “theory of retaliatory self-defense”. This was the mother of all evils of radicalism and has always been used by Thackeray, Narendra Modi and their ilk. In 1969 there was horrible bloodshed in the agitation against cow slaughter. The police and the investigation agencies used this as motive of subsequent what they alleged as Muslim engineered violence for revenge of Ahmadabad massacre. The 1970 communal violence took place in the Ganesh immersion procession in Bhiwandi in which Hindus travelled from nearby villages as well as from far off in large numbers carrying vermillion flags fitted to lethal sticks which were forbidden by law and were used in attacking Muslims. The festival of public celebration started around 3 pm on May 7, 1970. One of the instances of advocacy radical means by the extremists was the use obscene and dangerously provocative slogans which were not authorized and yet were used: (1) “Galli Galli Me Shor Hai, Sub Musalman Chor Hai“; (2)”Shiv Sena Zindabad“; (3) “Rashtriya Utsav Mandal Zindabad” ; (4) “Jo Hamse Takrayega, Woh Mitti Me Mil Jayega” ; (5) “Aala Re Aala, Hindu Aala, Gela Re Gela, Landya Gela” ; (6)”Bal Thackeray Zindabad“; (7) “Hamse Jo koi Poochhega, uski Ma Ko Chodega“; (8)“Lande Sare Chor Hai“; (9) “Dr. Vyas Zindabad“; (10)”Uthav Lungi, Bajao Pungi“; (11)”Musalman Murdabad“; (12) “Jan Sangh Zindabad;” (13) “Sadak Pe Hindu, Gali Me Hindu, Idhar Se Hindu, Udhar Se Hindu;” (14) “Aali Re Aali, Shiv Sena Aali“; (15) “Landyana Haklun Lawa“; (16) “Hindu Dharmacha Vijay Aso“; and (17) “Hindu Dharma Ki Jai“. This kind of overwhelming and aggressive communalism was the sowing of seeds of radicalism thanks to Thackeray and leaders of his party Shiv Sena and tacitly approved by Jan Sangh. If this was the unwieldy crowd the police force was the epitome of it. They had arrested hundreds of Muslims and tortured them under the scorching son of May. “Their reason for not sending for fire–engines to bring drinking water for the prisoners was that most of the prisoners were Muslims and not Hindus, and the Hindu prisoners were allowed free access to the water taps at the Taluka Police Station.” The Shiv Sena tiger’s roar was heard and felt everywhere. Hi dikar konachi/Shiv Sena waghanchi. “Whose roar is this/It is of Shiv Sena.” The police accepted complains of unlawful use of loudspeakers by Muslims on April 19, 1970 even when Muslim festival of Moharram had not even begun. It began on April 22 and ended on 29. Two miscreants in the procession soon after the start of the procession shouted some of the vulgar slogans which were highly offensive to Muslims and as a result the police officers detained them. As a result Hindu leaders collected at the police station and three quarters of an hour were wasted. The police officers were prevailed upon to release them. This was a tragic flaw and dampened the morale of the senior officers and thereafter the processionists were at liberty to do willfully what was their real intension. Trouble broke out at Bhusar mohalla. A conspiracy blame on Muslim was the whispering campaign. There was no basis to this. The Hindu extremists blame Ibrahim Maddu for sending signal to Muslims to start rioting elsewhere right after the trouble at Bhusar mohalla. This was next to the mysterious threatening letters received by Hindutva leaders that they would be killed. In the meantime Dy SP PJ Saraf and AG Lankar were in close door meeting with the Hindu leaders. Justice Madon put his hand on the pulse that it was communal tension aroused in the run up to the immersion that caused the riots in which more than hundred perished. That was the basis underlying cause. It was brought about by a cartoonist who turned into a demagogue. SP MRDiwate that the immersion would not pass without violence. Bhaskar Mali, Baliram More, GM Puntamberkar, VR Patil, Pandit Brij Narayan Prajesh and Dr Vyas were determined to make their mark in the annals of history. ---- http://bhindibazaar.asia/justice-madon-commission-report-bhiwandi-riots1970/ Chapter 2 The elephant becoming behemoth The decade of 1980s was the most radical in Indian politics. In the contours of the events of the decade you can see the dynamics that would shape India in the next three decades and beyond. It was time for the right wing group of leaders in BJP and Shiv Sena, as well as PM Mrs Indira Gandhi’s majoritarian politics. Some of them could hardly cover themselves with the fig leaf of secularism. The right wing Hindutva groups were not just unabashed, for why should they be, but abrasive in assertion of their brutal majority indifference to the feelings of their compatriots in the minorities of the country. The specter of Sant Bhindranwale was so daunting that some even lost their senses and tried to turn the tide against the Muslim minority. As the crisis rose in a crescendo to what would happen on June 6, 1984 there was a peripatetic interlude in April-May with an unacknowledged civil war in the summer of the year. After the Operation Blue Star the tragedy resumed its natural course of action in opening of the doors of Babri mosque and the laying down of the ceremonial bricks for the temple to Lord Ram and the foregone conclusion in the demolition of the mosque in Ayodhya. Private and public merge in the long drawn decade. On February 11, 1981 I entered the drawing room of Iqbal Wasif where our family Dr Nanavati was sitting. On hearing my cousin Noorjahan being reunited with her husband Dr Ismail of Dound, Nanavati observed in a friendly tone that Muslims doctors are voluptuous. He furnished a list of them, Dr Shaikh Saleem, Dr Iqbal, Dr Mushtaq who migrated to the US and died there, Dr Ismail, Dr Rafiq, etc. Wasif and Nanavati were speaking of a school where 19 Muslim women taught to feed their families after being estranged or divorced. The Shah Bano case later in the decade would be a relief to them. Wasif’s father Gulab Miyan Wasif worked in the office of deputy collector. He had donated land for the ATT high school and worked under Syed Hashim Raza deputy collector of Malegaon July to December 1938. They saw the mosque of Khankha [Ashrafia] coming up near the Mosom river in the south of Malegaon. Beyond it lay the colony of milkmen whose head man was Bhima Gawli. He would figure in the communal violence in the whole decade in Malegaon and beyond in Bhiwandi and in earlier years along with his son. During this there were incidents of Sikhs and Hindus killing each other. In Panipat Hindus burnt a Gurdwara and killed Sikh drivers as on February 19. On February 21police did nothing to prevent well armed Hindu crowds roaming freely in Karnal and wreaking havoc on the Sikhs. Another Gurdwara came under attack in Jind. On 23 rd PM Indira Gandhi called Akali leaders in Golden Temple as stooges and criminals. On the Sher Shah Suri road Hindus blocked the traffic and beat up Sikhs as they did to Muslims on June 25, 1983 when a Muslim from Malegaon had his jaw bone fractured. President Zail Singh appealed to BJP not to call strike on Monday February 27 1984 in Delhi for fear that Sikhs too would call strike next. Situation grew worse by every passing day in the faceoff between the Sikhs and Hindus as in Hussainpura of Amritsar Sikhs threw bombs at the Hindu temple on February 29, 1984. Girilal Jain pooh-poohed Sikhs in an article: “The Sikhs are in danger—only an hour before midnight.” TOI March 7, 1984” In Varanasi 168, 000 Sunnis were pitted against 20, 000 Shias who won a Supreme Court battle on March 9, in which the apex court ordered the shifting of graves of a father and a daughter who had died in 1918 and 1905 respectively. On March 11, 1984 a hoarding near the Girna river at Mansoora in Malegaon called for Hindus to resort to Bhavani sword of Shivaji! This turn up to wielding the sword shows that the people have not learnt from history. Those who live by sword will die by sword. Writing in The Times of India on March 20, 1984 Amarjit Singh replied to Jain’s write up of March 7: “In the 1937 elections, the Muslim League won only one seat in the United Punjab. By 1947 the wrong actions of the Hindus and the Sikhs had compelled the Punjabi Muslims turned to the League.” Jain had said that “history has a way of repeating itself, not necessarily as a farce. The repetition can be equally tragic.” The two who saw history as a hunting ground for picking up grouse against the rani, queen, of Delhi, or against fellow citizens as eternal action and reaction of only Afzal Khan being killed by Shivaji in floats of Ganesh festival immersion processions annually would fail to see the writing on the wall. This proved its point as the months of April-June 1984 wound up only for the history to repeat, ad absurdum thereafter. By the end of March the central government agreed to accept the demand of the Sikhs and even to amending the Constitution to prevent Akalis going on strike on April first. The ‘midnight hour’ of Jain had come to the fore. Already 15 days ago the RSS had asked the government to meet the religious demands of the Sikhs. The ides of March proved tragic as it did to Julius Caesar. Bajrang Dal was founded in 1984. There were many issues which had been scattered throughout the 1980s and even beyond where whatever moves was made by the government had the potential of making the elephant in the room becoming a behemoth. Riots had broken out in Badaun and vicinity on the issue of Urdu being given the status of a second state language in UP. On September 29, 1989 Muslim passengers including women and children were pulled out of trains and brutally killed. At least 25 had been killed by fanatic Hindus. In the aftermath of this EMS Namodripad wrote in the Times of Indian on October 12 1989 that after Badaun no Muslim would like BJP and it would be dangerous for the opposition to have even seat adjustment with the BJP. On October 14 scores of Muslims were killed in clashes with police in Indore. They were attending Id Milad congregation when Hindus started pelting them. The government announced general elections to be held on November 22. “The winds of hatred that led a fanatic to assassinate Mahatma Gandhi are blowing like a gale throughout the land again…it could acquire the force of a hurricane.” [The Times of India editorial of November 17, 1989] In the meantime the Advani puja could recreate pre Plassey stagnation which the Hindus chose to see through the fantasy of soap opera of Mahabharat. [The Independent October 24, 1989] PM Narendra Modi said at Bodh Gaya on Saturday September 5 2015 said while there is no problem in practising one's religion, the potential for conflict arises when radical elements try to force their own ideologies on others. The 1980s show that the RSS pracharak was duty bound by his own RSS ideology of destroying the Babri mosque and building a Ram temple on it. He not only supported the move but actively prepared the whole plan of the launch of the LK Advani’s rath yatra from Somnath to Ayodhya where the mosque was in existence for hundreds of years with legal documents of its title-ship. Not only was that, it was again planned by RSS-VHP-BJP that in 2002 they would mark the demolition of the mosque anniversary in their attempt to build the temple there. The largest contingent of volunteers were drawn from Gujarat and one such was unwieldy and unruly which attacked Muslim passengers, molested Muslim women and girls, threw passengers from running train and refused to pay Muslim caterers and manhandled them. How could Modi as a tea vendor fail to understand what happened to the caterers at Godhra? Whose ideology was behind this violence? On October 24 1989 the worst pogroms of Muslim took place at Bhagalpur in Bihar. On October 25 and 26 Muslim men, women and children were pulled out of trains and butchered. The Muslims had been filled with fear that the demolition of the mosque would bring in all such destruction. Their fear proved true. The pogroms spread like wildfire into the rural parts. In one such place 25 bodies were recovered on October 29. The general secretary of VHP Ashok Singhal said that “Ours is not a movement for one temple only. It is a strategy for Hindu awening.” [Panchjanya October 29, 1989] The Independent reported on November 8 that more than a thousand Muslims were killed in Bhagalpur and seven thousands were still missing. On October 9th Hindu fundamentalists went ahead with their laying the foundation of the temple on plot 586 in Ayodhya in clear violation of the court order of November 7. Mark Tuly of BBC called it “the naked show of Hindu fundamentalism” referring to the ceremony on plot 586, a property of the Sunni Wakf Board. On November 10th the police stopped a procession of Muslims at Faizabad who were protesting against the usurping of the plot. The police countered them with shouting slogans in praise of Ram. PM Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan condemned the Shillaniyas puja as willful desecration of a mosque, Saudi Arabia asked India to stop Hindu violence against Muslims. Iran also voiced concern at the not too infrequent communal riots in which Muslims were killed. This was the first time that Islamic countries had spoken out against the killings of Muslims as on November 11. The next day on Sunday November 12 the Provincial Armed Constabulary virtually revolted when miscreants threw bombs at the cops in front of a police station. They also threw stone at the rally of Rajiv Gandhi in his constituency of Sultaanpur. He was about to address the public when he was injured. In Bhagalpur on the same days cops killed 10 Muslims and burnt 200 Muslim houses. Vijay subramaniam and Smita Gupta writing in The Independent on November 18, 1989 on shil puja or praying over the brick laying for foundation of temple said, “Not only have the seeds of another partition been sown but much innocent blood has been split.” The split was writ on the wall as the IX lok sabha election was in full swing. It was going to be communal manifesto with focus of BJP and Shiv Sena on: “Indians can’t own property in Kashmir, infiltration from Pakistan and Bangladesh, Shah Bano, etc. The result was illustrative of the elephant ravaging in the room. The Frontline of November 19, reported how a Muslim woman was pelted with stones leading her to death and her child within her womb also died with her. This was the first tryst with genocide for the Muslims of India. It was all for the polls! Vishwanath Pratap Singh was also attacked but escaped unhurt. PM Rajiv Gandhi reinstated SP SK Dwivedi to his post of police chief in Bhagalpur on November 27, 1989 even when he proved the worst enemy of the Muslims. According to the Illustrated Weekly of India Novermber 26 the worst episode of massacre was in Naya Baazar. Five men, two women and eleven children were murdered. The children were thrown down from the third floor of a house in that locality of Bhagalpur. The report also says that some Hindus were killed only in confrontation with Muslim while fighting with each other. It also focuses on how 125 Muslims were massacred between 7 pm on October 27 and 9 am of October 28 1989 when Major Virk of the army left the hapless victims to the police. They were all killed by the Yadavas, Kurmis and Dushadhs who threw them in the hyacinth covered ponds. The one who survived to narrate her tale was a girl, Malika Bano. She had seen her father, mother and fiancé cut to pieces. Her right foot was cut off and her thigh slashed. Major Virk said all this was done by the police. “I left 125 persons in their charge. When I returned in the morning I discovered they had been massacred. The country is wasting its money on policemen.” On December 2 1989 PM VP Sigh assumed office. The Independent had a report by NJ Naporia who said that now BJP would have power to influence government policy. [The Independent December 2, 1989]Prof CP Bhambri of JNU: “It was a communal verdict. The Muslims have remained the main targets of Hindu communalists for a long time and their cadres are specially trained to deal with the Muslims. Ashish Nandy, director for Study in Developing Societies: “the BJP is the only enemy which can damage Indian society. In spite of being the Hindu (majority community) party, its attitude and behavior is that of a minority.” [The Independent December 3, 1989] What Nandy correctly diagnosed of the pathology of BJP is also true of Shiv Sena. Their paranoia inflates the elephant in the room. Bal Thackeray addressed a rally on Shivaji Park in Bombay on December 5, 1989 in felicitation on the occasion of the poll verdict on the parliamentary election. He said that if his party and BJP came to power in Maharashtra his government would stop Muslims from praying on the road and would have their loudspeakers pulled down. Loudspeakers and praying on road may not be the best civilian solution where people of different religions live together. But all use loudspeakers and there are roadside temples encroaching upon roads. The problem is with Indian psyche that we do not want to differentiate the public and the private. Even Mahatma Gandhi was religious minded though a bête noire of the fanatic Hindus. HM Seeravi in his book Partition of India, Legend and Reality (1989) refutes the charge of Arun Shourie that Jinnah was the man who broke India. To introduce religion into politics is to court disaster. But it was not Jinnah “it was Mahatma Gandhi who, admittedly, introduced religion itn all India politics against Jinnah’s advice. (p.3) Gandhiji’s ascetic ways appealed to Hindu religious sentiments. Seeravi feels that the appeal to religious snetiment to secure political goals was dangerous to the unity of India. Gandhi did just that. Seeravi quotes from Young India of October 20, 1921, “I claim that with us both the Khilafat is the central fact, with Maulana Mohammad Ali because it is his religion, with me because in laying down my life tor Khilafat, I ensure the safety of the cow, that is my religion, from the Mussalman’s knife.” (p.13) Enlarging of the elephant into behemoth became apparent not only in 1980s but became a recurring phenomenon not only throughout the decade but finally burst destroying some. And then reappeared its other victims. This happened in the case of Prof MM Kalburgi and could also over take MM Basheer of Kerala. Kalburgi had followed the footsteps of UR Annathmurthy who would piss on Hindu idols in his childhood. Kalburgi was rationalism personified when he said in a seminar that there is nothing wrong in urinating on the idols. His tryst with destiny began when in 1989 he wrote about Veerashaiva by the Basava [the patron saint of the Lingayats, who were angered by description of the strained relationship between Basava and his second wife Nilambke. Lord Shiva had asked him to find a wife which Basava could not. Seeing this Nilambke offered herself to Shiva.]Another knotty part was another Lingayat celebrity Channabasava marrying a lower caste.] His wife and sister! The fanatics threatened him and his family. He was scared so much that he recanted years of work. But years later he described that day in 1989 as the day of his committing intellectual suicide. He survived and recovered his intellectual life but only to joining the netherworld of Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare who were done to death in 2013 and 2015 respectively. “"I did it to save the lives of my family. But I also committed intellectual suicide on that day." Karlburgi also ired many when he said that Veershaiva should be recognized as separate from Hinduism for being non Vedic in origin. After 1960s and 1980s the next most important would not be 1990s even if the Babri mosques demolition and murers and bomb blasts which were the corollary of 1980s, but the decade of the demagogue and his demagoguery, 2010-2010. It was the the decade of first Hindutva genocide of Muslims and how the demagogue got away with it. That requires a separate book. Chapter 3 In the days of the jackals: radicalism Rarely has radicalism been so crystallized in government policy and conspectus so obviously extending into public life and also echoing in international relations as of now. PM Narendra Modi’s visit to Dubai mosque in August, his rock concert style of address, and the humongous NRIs jubilation is better left for a sedate analysis. However the implications are multifarious. It was Rashtrya Swayamsevak Sangh pracharak and secretary Narendra Modi who had masterminded the launch of the chariot ride across the country of LK Advani and Pramod Mahajan for building a temple for Lord Ram. It was a foregone conclusion that the temple could come up only after razing the structure of the Babri mosque. The chariot ride of Advani started from Somnath on September 25, 1989 with Modi and Mahajan in the front. Advani said: “Somnath is the living symbol of the assault on temples and shrines of an ancient nation by Islamic invaders.” It was Modi who wanted it to begin from Somnath. When PM VP Singh came to power in Delhi he accepted the recommendations of Mandal Commission. Within no time Modi as secretary of RSS made the pivotal move of the chariot ride for temple and initiated attack on what is communalism and secularism. Women would mark the forehead of Advani, Modi and others with their own blood for the cause of the temple. When Bihar chief minister ordered the arrest of Advani, Modi declared the whole last week in October as “the week of determination” in Ahmadabad. It paralleled the assassination of Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984 which was the cause of the pogroms on Sikhs. As a consequence riots broke out and 200 people lost their lives, “one person in Gujarat played an extremely zealous role, Narendra Modi” [1] . This was the culmination of how Advani and Modi had radicalized the situation in Gujarat by foregrounding Muslims as the “other”, the enemy of Hindus. However the United Arab Emirate tergiversated all that. To the amazement of the world and especially Hindus of the subcontinent it was a bolt from blue that UAE would set aside land for the temple. And what is even greater consternation that Modi would speak of it in the same breath a warning to Pakistan for its terrorist ill repute. What a subtle face makeover of the mukhota or mask of Modi whom Karan Thappar had called mass murderer and prodded him over the need to address this issue. In even 2007 this stark stigma de-hydrated the Gujarat chief minister and abruptly terminated the interview. In contrast the same man held his sway in Abu Dubai ala MSG that is Madison Square Garden address. He drew thunderous applause over expressing gratitude over the donation of the land for temple. It was so loud like a tectonic shift that even the ISIL would be staggered. The launching of the juggernaut for building Ram temple on the site of Babri mosque was the revisionist movement. The revisionists in LK Advani, Narendra Modi or Bal Thackeray have a streak of schizophrenia in asserting right of the original owner to possess or succeed to property that they still imagine their own. In doing so the lapse of time and existing status ownership according to record cannot atrophy their inveterate belief in their past. To reverse the present situation or de facto state of existence or ownership becomes a ruling passion. Cooking up excuses to achieve that aim is tantamount to appropriating illogicality. In the present situation it has become self justificatory new normal. Be this as giving consent to the majority community to vent their worked up anger, or teaching the minority their place in the new set up or making out claim on basis of faith of ownership of land from the limbo of time immemorial are instances of radicalism. They are instances of a break from the existing situation or facts for a new set of reality which militates against morality or sober thinking. This state of radicalism is so subtle that it has been given respectability. What happened in 1992, in 2002 or in the revival of Shiv Jayanti in 1960s celebration or distorting the Prophet’s humane demeanor in showing genuine concern for the health of a woman who had been throwing dirt at him to lording over it to summoning his service for a non believer person howsoever powerful is radical in essence. In contrast is the sober and the moderate man who does want change but not over the heads of everyone in such a rude manner as to cause injury to feeling or sensibility of anyone. Vice President Hamid Ansari ruled out radicalism when he spoke on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Majlis-e-Mushawarat of Muslims’ attempt to solve their grievances and problems. They are discriminated against but the path should be “a resolution of this dilemma by devising a form and content of agitation which heals old wounds and inflicts no new ones.” Or if the “problem”(s) “of Indian democracy” (is/are) “to be resolved” (they should be resolved) “within the framework of national integration." The VP was clearly referring to the gravamen of the plight of Muslims and the rights enshrined in the Constitution of India for the people of the republic and said that the Sachar commission “specified the development deficits of the majority of Muslims in regard to education, livelihood and access to public services and the employment market across the states.” “In the same vein, Expert Group reports were prepared in 2008 on the need to develop a Diversity Index and establish an Equal Opportunity Commission. “Taken together, these and other studies bring forth sufficient evidence to substantiate the view that "inequality traps prevent the marginalised and work in favour of the dominant groups in society". He also cites the Kundu report of 2014 “development for the Muslim minority must be built on a bed-rock of a sense of security." “It is evident from this compendium of official reports that the principal problems confronting India's Muslims relate to: identity and security; education and empowerment; equitable share in the largesse of the state; and fair share in decision making. Each of these is a right of the citizen. The shortcomings in regard to each have been analyzed threadbare. The challenge before us today is to develop strategies and methodologies to address them. “The default by the State or its agents in terms of deprivation, exclusion and discrimination (including failure to provide security) is to be corrected by the State; this needs to be done at the earliest and appropriate instruments developed for it. Political sagacity, the imperative of social peace, and public opinion play an important role in it. Experience shows that the corrective has to be both at the policy and the implementation levels; the latter, in particular, necessitates mechanisms to ensure active cooperation of the State governments. “The official objective of sab ka sath sab ke vikas is commendable; a pre-requisite for this is affirmative action (where necessary) to ensure a common starting point and an ability in all to walk at the required pace. (emphasis added)This ability has to be developed through individual, social and governmental initiatives that fructify on the ground. Programmes have been made in abundance; the need of the hour is their implementation.” Thus Ansari was speaking within the frame work of the statutory bodies established by the Central government and their recommendations and also within the ambit of the PM Narendra Modi’s dictum of everyone together in the development of India. He stated a fact: that affirmative action is a key to development of the Muslims. It was not even a recommendation. He dilated more on the autonomous works that Muslim community members ought to undertake for their development. [see Full text: Affirmative action for Muslims is key to development, says Vice President Hamid Ansari] There is not even a remote hint of sedition on his part. However whenever there has been any move for the amelioration of the Muslims Bal Thackeray [when he was alive], BJP, RSS and VHP see sedition. In contrast what Thackeray, Advani, Modi did was more violent agitation and outlawry. In no way does this mean that all the Hindus are wrong or violent like them. To get back to the present a detour in a flash back shows continuing radicalism. This is through the Kashmir valley. The situation in Kashmir valley has never been as bleak as today. 1989 is much far back in history, albeit the policy of governor Jagmohan has come home to roost. He not only induced the minority Pandits to migrate by offering them government largess but even gave them transport facility and thus accentuated the communal divide rather than bridging it. Simultaneously the even more minuscule Muslims, who braved all odds to live a decent and safe life in Delhi and elsewhere fared worst, became suspect terrorists in the eyes of the rest of the country. This structured bias persists. So, the walnut tree grows through the windows and cracks in the walls of the deserted houses. Basically the human situation in the valley and of the Pandits who left it is existential as well as political. Stark realities include Srinager being one of the dirtiest cities in the world. India shining has left it far behind. The valley is no Gaza and yet nothing was rushed to it to make amends and ameliorate the situation. Among the most common human development index is the job situation. Muslims have fared the worst during Hindu, British or Indian rule. Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, no exception as he also failed to get a government job despite a master’s degree in science: “Why Muslims were singled out for such treatment. We constituted the majority and contributed the most towards the state’s revenues, still we were continually oppressed…Was it because a majority of Government servants were non-Muslims?..I concluded that the ill treatment of Muslims was an outcome of religious prejudice.” [2]Has the situation changed in the first decade of the 21st century? In 1988 this writer was in the valley for three weeks and had to cash traveler’s cheques and do shopping. Government jobs in banks and revenue departments and elsewhere were almost to the last man staffed by Hindus. At one time curiosity drove him to humouredly ask why so. The bank official was having a plate of bhajiya and a cup of tea with fellow staff members. Some of them turned to the interlocutor. The concerned officer offered bhajiya as a reply! Earlier in June 2010 the Prime Ministe Manmohan Singh made a visit to Kashmir and spoke in polite Urdu that getting a job was tough indeed for the people there. It would be untrue to say that the Kashmiri do not qualify. Justine Hardy in her new book In the Valley of Mist says about Kashmir: “its children (are) the most highly educated in the country because of the Central Government’s attempt to buy the love of the Kashmiri people, spending more on state education than in any other part of India. “It meant that they had been sowing one of the main crops of rebellion themselves, producing thousands of graduate full of ambition but very little employment to temper their expectations.”[3] Prime Minister Manmohan Singh confirmed the paucity of jobs, electricity; ration shops, roads, drinking water and infrastructure in the valley when he addressed the students on June 7, 2010 in Srinager. “I can imagine the disillusionment of those who have received education in premier institutions like the Sher-e-Kashmir University and yet cannot find good employment… “Hamare naujawan hamaare mulk ka mustaqbil hain. Hamein apne naujawanon se bahut badi umeedein hain,” “where Kashmiri youth can find lots of avenues for their ‘zahni (psychological), jazbaati (emotional) and peshawarana (professional) taraqqi”. “Main jaanta hoon ki behtareen taaleem haasil karne ke baad bhi kam mauqe milne se kis qadr maayoosi hoti hai.”[4] The Prime Minister said that he is aware of the disappointment and desperation of the young on account of unemployment in Kashmir and also acknowledges that he would like to create situations where the psychological, emotional and professional development would be possible for the young. But the stark reality is different. The boys are falling victim to the bullets of the troops while going to tuition, playing in stadium or lawns, farming or simply found in seal and search operation and driven to the border and shot! Or has the threat of Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray’s letter delivered to the Prime Minister by his son Udhav Thackeray on September 13, 2007 also come home to roost? He had held out a threat if jobs were to be given to Muslims under the recommendations of Sachar committee it would be tantamount to another partition of the country! Through a civil war?[5] It is strange that the scholarships and money given for the development of all minorities including Muslims would lead to another Pakistan but not the same facilities to other minorities would lead to further splintering of the country. It is plausible to recall President Barack Obama warning of India being more splintered. “India will succeed so long as it is not splintered along the lines of religious faith.” “In India and America, our diversity is our strength,” Mr. Obama said. “We have to guard against dividing ourselves along sectarian lines.” ““Every person has the right to practice their faith how they choose or to practice no faith at all and to do so free from persecution.” [6] It is remarkable admonition after two days of Obama’s visit to India during the Republic Day 2015. How soon have everyone including Modi forgotten as the RSS meeting in Delhi was underway on September 3- 5, 2015 with the PM and his cabinet in attendance what VP Ansari said on August 31, 2015! The rage of the speakers is against VP’s statement that the key to development of Muslims lies in affirmative action! Little did the Viswa Hindu Parishad bother to look into the real substance of “category differentiations” Ansari had in his mind. He was not asking for affirmative action on the basis of his location in religion. Not for all members of his community but for the most wretched among all the minorities including Muslims. In what way it could “push Muslims in dark alleys whose consequences will be dangerous”? [7] Why does the VHP generalize danger to all the Muslims when Ansari did not mean the whole community of Muslims? How could Ansari’s speech be “rank communal statement”? If VHP is eyeing the constitutional rights that Muslims enjoy more in India than in any other country, why then is their security not a matter of concern after what they have gone through? In 1960s, in 1980s, 1990s and 2002. The Jangh Sangh leader Subramanium Swamy has expressed the sophistry of the RSS as is his wont. Eight hundred years of Muslim rule in India and two hundred years of rule of the British are not only contrasted as cruel suppression of Hindus by Moghal followed by two hundred years of enlightened rule of the white. The white man’s rule brought prosperity to India. So, goes the quaint logic, why should India then give reservation to Muslims? This is only badgering to keep oneself in public eye. But Ram Madhav’s insistence that every Indian should be given reservation must take into consideration the past. In 1950 the president of India passed an ordinance to give reservations to Dalits of Hindu origin, the Christians and Muslims were excluded. Today the slide of Muslims in backwardness and wretchedness has gone so deep that only affirmative action can ameliorate the situation. The situation in the country is fraught with danger even for VP Hamid Ansari. Already there are people who attempted to kill him, even their names are known unlike the novel The Day of the Jackal where the real name of would be assassin of General De Gaul remains a mystery even after his death. Dr RP Singh the most virulently radical in Abhinav Bharat claims to have carried petrol to burn him alive and there was Sunil Joshi and his module who kept watch on Justice UC Bnerjee and Ansari for killing them even then no action has been taken against them. The Jackals of India have greater prerogative and position than that of the British and the French. Hemant Karkare was going to arrest Shyam Apte but was cut down in the track. Was he victim of Jackals outsourcing other Jackals assignment to kill by making the case more recondite to decipher? In his Kaul memorial lecture VP Ansari had underlined the need to have a parliamentary supervisory body to monitor intelligence gathering. Some of the Jackals may not even like this constraint. President De Gaul was targeted for giving freedom to Algeria. VP Ansari is not asking for freedom for anyone. It was not the entire French Muslim minority which was threatened or beleaguered at any time. The Gujjars, the Jats, the Patels and the Marathas who are clamouring for OBC status and have caused riots as in 1969 and in more recent times have been more assertive. The extremists among Hindus have suffered them tacitly. ----- [1] Kinshuk Nag. The Namo Story, A Political Life. Delhi Roli Books(2013) p. 56 [2]Ajit Bhattachariya, Kashmir: the wounded valley (New Delhi: UBS, 1994) p.67. [3]Justine Hardy, In the valley of mist (London: Rider, 2009) p.27. [4]“Tarraqi, kaamyaabi..”PM prays in Urdu for Kashmirs. Irna, June 7th, 2010. [5]Thackeray’s Letter. Saamna September 13, 2007. [6]http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2015/01/27/obama-india-can-only-succeed-if-it-doesnt-split-on-religious-lines/ http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/obama-message-siri-fort-india-succeed-splintered-religious-lines/1/415530.html [7] Asian Age September 2, 2015 Chapter 4 Jamshedpur:What is radicalization and who is doing it for what? Jamshedpur’s Mango locality is a recent and more relevant study in radicalization. The BJP and Bajrang Dal activists blamed Muslim youths for teasing a Hindu girl. That led to clashes between two communities, Hindu and Muslim. In stating the truth a chasm opened between the communities and between the Hindus and the administration including the police. A police officer maintained that there was no case of eve teasing at all. But a Hindu party BJP leader insisted that the police did not deal with the eve teasing in the first place and therefore the violence was the logical result. Another officer said that had the Bajrang Dal and other activists of VHP/BJP not gone around enforcing the call for bandh or strike there would not have been any violence. A report in The Indian Express on Friday July 24, 2015 said that the eve teasing was only rumour. Into this a new angle was injected by BJP MLA and State Minister Sarayu Roy who said that the violence was the outcome of “police inaction.” His innuendo is a pointer to the imaginary eve teasing which the police should have severely dealt with. It is run of the mill of every government to immediately order inquiry. However, Roy appropriated this gesture to score a point over the others when he asserted “action would be taken against the police officers found guilty”. Another officer conceded that there was a “minor incident” between “anti social elements” which was the cause of the violence. The “vested interest” of a group led to the arrest of 150 people. What the officer dilated has the clue to truth: “Had the BJP, VHP and Bajrang Dal not called for a bandh on July 21, matters would have cooled down. But there was arson as supporters of the bandh went about enforcing it.” The VHP chief of Jamshedpur Arun Singh parried this: “There have been small attacks on the Hindu community in Jamshedpur and the police failed to take steps to deal with them. The eve-teasing incident added fuel to the fire.” This is the ipso facto justification of the minor incident which was dragged on for two days by the right wing Hindutva groups. Despite the assertion of Dr. Amitabh Kaushal, Deputy Commissioner, East Singbhum, that the administration had not “ found any truth behind” it, and that “Not a soul in Jamshedpur has come forward to give any details, complaints or address of the girl who was teased” [1]the dragging of the episode was continued by the right wing groups. No complaints against the youths harassing anyone were also received. Therefore the agents of provocation were Roy, Singh and their ilk. Their work was tantamount to the radical clerics in England and other European towns and city mosques. However, such is the condition prevailing in India that in the turf war between the two communities over recurring issues there is attempt to justify radical reaction. In Rajouri the VHP manipulated the situation by imitating the Arabic/Persian words of the IS flag and then superscripted the Hindi word “Hai” “Hai” expressing contempt and scorn for IS as well as for Islam. The slur by extension mocks at the holy inscription from the Quran. On July 18 when Muslims observed Eid VHP burnt IS flag in Rajouri. Muslims threatened to observe bandh on 21 against the background of VHP burning the IS flag with holy inscriptions on it. The Hindus taunted and provoked them to first protest against the IS. [2] What is emerging from the scenes of violence in Atali, Jamshedpur, Harsul, Rajouri, etc violence that does not cost life but is still fatal. In all these the VHP is prominently playing a role as it did in Babri mosque demolition and other such cases. It is because the intensity of the groups involved. The target was selected for maximum effect like the Sankat Mochan Mandir near Gulf Guest House for Muslims in Jamshedpur. A rumour was enough to cause a conflagration instantly. The violence started from there right in the night of 20th. [3]Next day there was a bandh call from VHP and Bajrang Dal that led to the spreading of the riots. Past enmity between two gangs fuelled the violence as no confirmation of eve teasing was made.[4] Why rumour could be so horrendous? Seema Mustafa: “ why the faithful remain paranoid about the faith they follow, that they need to kill to protect what is really not their own. A large part of the answer lies in right-wing groups' ability to stoke fires through rumours, lies and distortions whereby the common person feels under siege from the ‘other’. Reason and sense is overtaken by the rumours that precede, and have preceded, every single incident of communal violence in India.” ”The politicians are for the first time succeeding in turning neighbours against neighbours, and thereby destroying the harmonious structure of the villages of India that had resisted the spread of urban communalization for all these years.” [5] It is regrettable that much of the sexual violence that is non religious in origin could lead to religious frenzy as in Muzaffarnagar and now in Jamshedpur. That incident reportedly behind the flare up in Jharkhand’s city was three youths on a motor cycle brandishing revolver tried to take off the scarves of girls coming out of a theatre after watching Salman Khan film Bajrangi Bhaijan. That led to blockade of the road in Daigutu Chowk which the members of the other community objected. What has not been established is the identity of the motor cycle riders brandishing knives and revolver and even firing at the people who reacted to it. Were they from nearby neighborhoods or outsiders? SDO Aloke Kumar says:"It is always not possible to anticipate that a local level eve-teasing incident would flare up into such law and order problem two days later." [6] The last statement would put the teasing to have taken place on Eid day July 18th. It would not be unthinkable that Muzaffarnagar pogroms started a full week after the eve teasing/harassing that led to the death of the teaser and the two cousins of the girl teased. The mahapanchayat a week later decided to settle the matter through pogroms of Muslims. Therefore it is necessary to identify those who want to worsen the situation. They should be classified as radicalizing youths of their community or provoking the other community and inducing violence. They stand to gain in the long run! The recent elections (what brought BJP into power) have vouchsafed them that. Much more frightening is that in the ensuing confrontation between the two communities their respective members fired guns in the air! India stands to lose if this scenario continues and radicalization increases. Were the 22 rounds fired in the air by the police not enough warning? There was no trace of civil life as pelters of stone threw stones in the face of DSP Animesh Naithani, the first cop to arrive on the scene, who was asking the mobs to disperse. Notwithstanding this it is strange that those who tried to molest girls at the theatre on Saturday reappeared in the night of Monday July 20th and teased the girls over again! That too with weapons in hands! They are the trouble shooters on a mission to divide not just communities but the country. Identify the radicals. Police owe a duty to the nation that if they had assured the people on Saturday that such events would not be allowed to happen then why did it occur again on Monday and same outlaws played havoc. Or was the second incident an imaginary one to launch a riot? ------ [1]http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/in-jamshedpur-clash-is-between-communities-and-police-vs-govt/#sthash.jIJCjmsF.dpuf [2] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/tension-in-rajouri-over-burning-of-isis-flag-by-vhp-bajrang-dal/#sthash.J1beix2n.dpuf [3] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/curfew-imposed-rumours-spark-communal-clashes-in-jamshedpur/#sthash.5QMFRb0l.dpuf [4] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/jamshedpur-curfew-relaxed-in-4-trouble-hit-areas-withdrawn-in-rest-parts/#sthash.FBSBLSgJ.dpuf [5] http://www.thestatesman.com/news/opinion/so-much-to-do-yet-hate-on-the-agenda/77587.html [6] jamshedpur tense after flare-up over sexual harassment Debashish Sarkar, Hindustan Times, Jamshedpur Jul 21, 2015 Chapter 5 Elephant in the room: radicalism in India, UK, US and IS “ISIS has become a bigger threat to the United States than al Qaida.” That concern of the US FBI director James Comey is based on the advisory of the IS handlers that instead of coming to Western Asia and fighting jihad “lone wolf” terror is more efficient way of carrying out the moral war in US. The difference in perception is clear since IS deems its jihad as a moral war and not “war on terror” as the US President George Bush had initiated. The latter devastated Iraq and Afghanistan even when there was no weapon of mass destruction found in Iraq and Iraq had nothing to do with al Qaeda. Afghanistan Islamic jihad was the ingenuity of the US to drive away its arch enemy Russia from Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden was its agent provocateur as well as conduit. Once the genii came out of the bottle it was impossible to put it into the bottle. The Pentagon chief however had another view nuanced its perception as less alarming. Ashton Carter on July 23, 2015 said that IS caliphate is shrinking and therefore it is back to square one stray car bombing and hence terrorism. [1]Does it not equate lone wolf in the west with the stray car bombing? Indian had jumped on the bandwagon of US war on terrorism in the aftermath of 9/11. Except in one or two genuine cases most of the terror events became suspect in the eyes of impartial observers. The most cardinal among them are 2006 and 2008 Malegaon blasts. Even the 2002 pogroms of Muslim was a conspiracy because there is no proof as yet about the ISI hand in the fire incident at Godhra railway station. And Narendra Modi as chief minister wanted the world to take it like that. He never furnished details. IB and R&AW are silent over it. Albeit Modi is on record in inventing the phrase “Islamic terrorism” even before he took over the reins of power in Gujarat. In fact he was made chief minister the very next month of making his statement. He made a radical change in perception of the fire incident which even the railway ministry appointed commission of inquiry under Justice UC Banerjee rejected. Even those arrested and tried and convicted raise doubts because there were some who had been asked to choose to which incident they would like to be tried, Godhra, Akshardham or Haren Pandya murder. In his book I am Mufti & I am not a terrorist, Eleven Years behind the bars the writer and one of the accused in Akshardham attack Mufti Qayum calls it “distribution of roles” (aapas mein kirdar tay karna)which the falsely accused were to play in dividing the blaming game of the three incidents.[2] On the eve of the first ever National Security Advisors meeting in August 2015 Pakistan Defense Minister Khwaja asked India to stop blame game as movements of separatists were growing rapidly in India. [IE August 10, 2015] With this in background India has again chosen to side with the US in fighting radicalism, now of ISIS. The Ministry of Home Affairs on July 31. 2015 announced preparation of a plan to counter radicalism. There are several features of the scheme. Counseling youths (against it) Convincing community elders (to rein in their youths from it) Monitoring social media Preventive steps As the US looks at the stray incidents of IS as terrorism, India also views it in that way. Modi called it neighbourhood of terrorism, source of terrorism in the neighbourhood, during his visit to Central Asian countries of former Russia in July 2015. According to home ministry 25 Indian Muslim youths have become radicalized since they joined IS war, 17 from Telangana, 4 from Maharashtra. It has identified 12 states including J&K, Andhra Pardesh, Karnataka, Telangana, UP, etc as affected by radicalism. As far as convincing leaders of community is concerned it primarily concerns the Muslim community among the others. One of such elders was Maulana Umerji who had told PM Vajpayee in April 2002 that the carnage in the aftermath of the burning of train at Godhra was the kaarname (evil act) of Modi. Given this background of Modi himself so radicalized what hope is there that the Muslim community elders would be counted upon to carry the burden of the MHA on their shoulders. Counseling youths against radicalism is the top priority of the government as of August 2015. Even this is in dole drums. An instance is from Jammu and Kashmir. As two generations of youths have been tempted by autonomy and aazadi only to discover neither and even Article 370 is questionable in enduring what else is there? The latest book that keeps a tab on this has this in its concluding paragraphs: “But sadly radicalism has moved apace and the signals from the neihbourhood are ominous. Not only is Pakistan in turmoil and Afghanistan yet to unravel but which way the Taliban is headed and how Islamic jihad will finally play out is difficult to say. Al-Qaeda may no longer be the force it was but is still clearly inspiring. The ISIS is attracting more and more Muslim youth the world over. Kashmir can hardly remain immune from what is happening all over the Islamic world, more so because the violence it has witnessed in the last twenty-five years. Significantly, of late Kashmiri boys involved in militancy are more highly educated and from better stock. Not surprisingly, pro-ISIS graffiti has appeared in Srinagar city and its flags flown in the university. The proclamation of a caliphate is likely to be the most significant development in international jihadism since 9/11which is beginning to impact worldwide. Nearer home, Taliban’s terror factory is on auto pilot and all the more dangerous when there is no communication with Pakistan.”[3] This is the conclusion of a man who was in charge of IB, R&AW and also worked in the PMO under AB Vajpayee. His views are based on long years in JK where the flags of IS have appeared occasionally as a sign of radicalism. However the right wing government has no love lost between it and those who oppose its mindset. Or else why is Sadhvi Prachi asking the government to hand over Udhampur attacker Mohammad Naveed Yakub to the Hindu organizations to teach a “good lesson” to him and his ilk. She also stated that there were one or two terrorists in parliament meaning those who supported Yakub Memon when they opposed the capital punishment meted out to him. "It is a big misfortune that in the Indian Parliament, we have one-two terrorists sitting there. I do not think there can be a bigger misfortune for India than this as they who, are disobeying the judgment of a court, because the court has proved that he (Yakub) is a terrorist. When the court has already proved so, those supporting the terrorist are terrorists themselves I believe."[4] These are extreme swings of emotion and if there is no love lost between two such groups it leads to face off. That did not take time as Tiger Menon’s night call to his mother shows: "Tiger repeatedly tells his mother that Yakub's death will be avenged. "Main unko chukwaonga (I will make them pay)." A distraught Hanifa is heard sobbing on the phone and asks Tiger to stop the violence. She says, "Bas ho gaya. Pehle ke vajah se mera Yakub gaya ab aur nahi main dekh sakti. (Stop this, due to the first incident, I have lost Yakub. Now I can't bear to see any more people dying)." Hanifa Memon's appeal, however, falls on deaf ears as Tiger repeats his revenge message." [5] Both Tiger and Sadhvi chime well with each other. The common denominator is threat of more deaths through violence. Handing over an alleged terrorist to Hindu vigilante groups to teach him a lesson and threat of more bombing to avenge is outright terror. There is greater need to de-radicalize now than ever. Neither Sadhvi Prachi nor Tiger Menon care to think of the victims of terrorism who are mostly ordinary innocent citizens. One such was one of the accused in the Akshardham temple attack. He was a caught in cross fire. A standing lesson to both is Mufti Qayum learned Muslim without any blemish of extremist or fanaticism. He suffered 11 years of incarceration and most cruel and barbaric torture at the hands of DG Vanzara who headed ATS in Gujarat and VD Vanar. Surprisingly he did not get radicalized though the main charge apart from terrorism was that in the relief camp he was busy in radical agenda of turning Muslim youths in the refugee camps into radicals. After his acquittal on May 16, 2014 when Modi became the Prime Minister he wrote tue book Eleven years behind bars striving to serve justice and save others including non Muslims from injustice. It is in this context he quotes the Quran most judiciously: “lest any enmity against any community compel you to do injustice and cruelty, do justice which is the only thing in upright moral and sanctioned thing.” [6] Can newly thought over strategy of India to fight radicalism through counseling youths succeed? This is next to impossible because misuse of fund in India is far worse than in Britain where the efforts to stem radicalism are almost defeated. Fighting terrorism has become rich game of pocketing rewards and getting promotion in office by wily and manipulative tactics. An example is that of the case of the innocent Muslims accused in the Akshardham temple attack. The investigators pretended to visit a supposed Pakistan terrorist Ayub Khan and availed air plane travel ticket worth 11, 000 rupees. Most of them undertook the junket as a tempting first ever air travel of their life. All this just for the fun of enjoying tours in Kashmir. The case was absolutely bogus as far as the accused were concerned. Promotion in post and rise in salary is the motive and modus operandi to pocket money is framing innocent Muslims. Vanzara was the arch devil of torture and so was Vanar but on reaching Kashmir Vanzara put his arm on Mufti Qayum’s shoulders and instructed him and other accused Adam bhai Ajmeri and Maulana Abdullah to tell others that they were tourists and were holidaying there. While they were airborne they made the mufti call the hostess and steward and ask for chocolates and other delicacies. They had no experience of it as the mufti had for he had occasionally travelled to Mecca for haj and umra. They were also impressed by lack of inhibition in his role of acting as a host. As an effective means of stemming the rot of radicalism in the crime branch and including IB and R&AW and particularly of Vanzara and Vanar and others like them like Rajendra Kumar courts in India may order recovery of the money they spend on such junkets paid from the income tax collected from the people of India. In the Malegaon blasts of 2006 in addition to the money used in buying false witness and making him approver and framing innocent Muslims the police also paid more than 25 lakh rupees to Abrar Ahmad’s father in law and his wife Janatunnisa to prevent him from turning hostile. And those who performed this were glorious in name and fame of fighting terrorism: SP Rajwardhan Sinha, ATS chief KP Raghuvanshi, etc. The nadir of radicalism in Gujarat was that the man whose sentence became the title of the book on the report of genocide in Gujarat by the US Human Rights Watch, KK Mysorewala was SP of Modasa when the bomb exploded on September 29, 2008. At the same time there was another attack in Malegaon in which many more died and injured. Hemant Karkare arrested sadhvi Pragyasingh Thakur and Lt Col Prasad Purohit and many others, but in Gujarat Mysorewala arrested none. The British radicals are well educated and come from educated background. They also obey the law but they use language that is radical and lead to action that would be radical. In contrast Indian radicals like Prachi would preach hatred and also ask Modi to order bombing Jeddah. The prime minister has turned a deaf ear to such pronouncement including the recent one of shoving the arrested accused to the Hindu vigilante and extremist groups like Bajrang Dal and VHP. Modi’s taciturnity chimes with the utterances of extremist radicals. He should have emulated David Cameron’s assurance of ending radicalism through legislation: “put out of action the key extremist influencers who are careful to operate just inside the law, but who clearly detest British society and everything we stand for". What does Modi stand for? [7] “Using money to win people over is perhaps the most effective tool at the disposal of intelligence officers not just in Kashmir, and not just all over the subcontinent, but all over the world. Most agents are paid agents…no one has come up with a better way of dealing with Kashmir.”[8] If this is true that Kashmir is held under India because of money then by extension what the Indian intelligence agencies are doing in fighting so called terror under the nomenclature of counter terrorism is also due to the money involved. The sleuths always told Abrar that they could buy flats and rooms in India but not in Kashmir. They reportedly gave flats and rooms in Mumbai and Bhiwandi in addition to money to his family. This slip of tongue reveals what Dulat does not so obvious state in his book. Money also played its role in Britain’s fight against radicalism to no desirable end. Anjem Choudary and Mohammed Mizanur Rahman were put through two years of de-radicalization but came out with determination to continue their work. They would play pool in the prison and there was hardly systematic training in de-radicalizing. Moreover the funds were misused in spying on the Muslims. Two years ago they invited people to join IS. Despite imprisonment there is no let up in the youths’ fascination to war in the Western Asia. There is another side of it. Many Americans are joining Israeli army in its operation in Israel or in the occupied Palestinian land. The west does not consider this radicalism. In India there are increasing numbers of military men involved in acts of terror and crimes against humanity as far as Indian Muslims are victims of violence. Even so there are no significant numbers of Muslims turning radical within the country. On the other hand those who ran the relief camp in Gujarat 2002 genocide were arrested and accused of turning Muslim youths radical and terrorists. Mufti Qayum was arrested solely on the basis of running a relief camp. So, British foreign policy and Indian police and army treating bona fide Indian Muslim citizens as terrorists even when they are not involved in terrorism is the elephant in the room. [9]India or Britain or the UK must confront with this reality first. ----- [1] Asian Age, July 24, 2015 [2] Eleven years behind the bars, Mumbai 2015, p. 16 [3] AS Dulat. Kashmir: the Vajpayee years Harper Colins 2015 p. 325-6 [4] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Privilege-notice-against-Sadhvi-Prachi-for-terrorists-in-Parliament-remark/articleshow/48389366.cms http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/There-are-1-2-terrorists-in-Parliament-says-Sadhvi-Prachi-stokes-another-controversy/articleshow/48377590.cms [5] http://www.firstpost.com/india/hours-before-yakub-memons-hanging-tiger-had-called-family-to-promise-revenge-report-2382648.html [6] Eleven years behind bars, p. 102 [7] http://www.businessinsider.com/britains-most-high-profile-islamist-cleric-charged-with-inviting-support-for-isis-2015-8#ixzz3i3OYvBBP [8] AS Dulat Kashmir: the Vajpayee years p. 157-8 [9] http://www.businessinsider.com/r-why-britain-is-still-losing-its-fight-against-radicalization-2014-10#ixzz3i3OCcmYh Chapter 6 Money, instigators and intelligence agents Dulat, Modi, Malika Sarabhai Majid Dar, Tiripura governor, Two days after Yakub Memon was hanged the central government home ministry decided to fight against radicalization. The context was a discussion in the parliament about the Gurdaspur terror attack, the first of its kind where the alleged ISI agent provocateurs had intruded India and killed Indians. KPS Gill called it IS visiting card sent to Indian government and people. It is a foregone conclusion that such agents of a neighbouring hostile government are paid huge amounts of money. Or else why should they undertake a suicidal venture. But killing the intruders after eleven hours of battle raises more questions than answering any. At least one of them could have been saved to find out the truth of their mission. When the Batla house encounter resulted in the death of Sharma, at the time of the cremation of his body among the mourners was Sachin Vaze. He was accused of killing Khwaja Yunus in a fake encounter. According to another accused Dr Mateen he was beaten so badly that he has vomited blood. Among his other torture techniques was water boarding. As an innocent person without any record of crime let alone participating in terror contracts with his torturers who were radicals in uniform. They hated him for belonging to Muslim community which was generally blamed for terrorism. The hate crime that Vaze and his accomplices committed was an instance of having been radicalized. DG Vanzara and GL Singhal of Gujarat police were also radicals who believed that Muslims were a threat to the country and must be killed. When they had Mufti Qayum arrested their torture was most inhuman and barbaric. The ferocious and saturnine appearance of the “club party” was so macabre that anyone would be terrorized by their appearance. They would apply third degree torture. Chapter 7 RSS as the leading radical organization It is well established fact that Rashtriya Swayamsevk Sangh or RSS is never shy of bringing about great changes that produce political and social tension and violence. This defining attribute makes it a premier conglomerate of many groups hell bent on changing India radically. Destroying the Babri mosque and building a Ram temple is a cardinal example. Mathura and Kashi will follow suit is its manifest aim in the same way. Such great is the change ushered in that BJP had just a couple of members in the parliament but after the demolition it got substantial number of members to form a government in Delhi. Its work has not stopped nor is there any sign of it ever stopping unless all the minorities disappear from the surface of earth as far as India is concerned and a monolithic Hinduism is established with a Hindu nation. This gigantic work is so well prepared that RSS restrained from the struggle to make India free in order to save its energy and resources that it could use it later after independence to make India free from Muslims and other minorities left over after partition. That saved up and stored force is now in full swing under PM Narendra Modi in channeling radical agenda. Eid was celebrated on July 18, 2015. In the previous year RSS had prevented Muslims from celebrating Eid in the Shri Ram Colony in Delhi, a Muslim dominated neighbourhood. So on July 3, 2015 Muslims of the area met the commissioner of police and complained about it and told him that Hindus from other parts are imported to attend the shakhas or congregation of RSS in order to prevent Muslims from observing their annual prayer. The Muslims also apprised the Lt Governor and sought intervention. They also stated that the police are forcing them to enter into agreement with the RSS. Last year also they were deprived of their annual public prayer at Rajiv Park despite an understanding reached. [1] In UP Bajrang Dal chief Ajju Chauhan was entrusted with reconversion in Agra district area. It was also a radical change, preventing Muslims from marrying Hindu girls but encouraging Hindu parents to make Muslim girls as their daughters in law, bahu banao. Thus the Hindu parents are allowed to increase Hindu population by accepting Muslim girls as their daughters in law. The other half of it is that they should prevent their own daughters from crossing religion and marrying Muslim youths, instead. That is beti bachao or saying daughters. The context of this were the educational institutions where VHP believes Muslims youths recruit not for education but campaign for love jihad. So diametrically are the two conceptions opposed to each other and hence the change is great and obviously radical. [1] http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/brinda-takes-muslim-group-to-l-g-bid-to-whip-up-communal-tension-in-colony/ Chapter 8 Paharpur of Bareilly and the politics of mahapanchayat A mahapanchayat is a non legal court of a caste that extra-judically decides matters which lead to violence and murder. It is against the constitution of the republic of India. In the case of Muzaffarnagar 2013 case a whole week after harassment of a Jat girl the panchayat decided to teach the Muslims a lesson and that led to the pogroms of Muslims in western UP for the first time. It is also debatable whether it was eve teasing or traffic skirmish. In Paharpur of Bareilly in UP a similar thing happened on July 20, 2015. Five Muslim youths of Tanda village teased girls from Paharpur. They were arrested and the matter was settled. But a mahapanchayat was organized for July 27. It aimed to ratchet the social issue of harassment from moving towards détente and dissolution without violence. Hitherto the elderly members of Rajput community and Muslims would settle such matters amicably through dialogue. Therefore the intervention of the mahapanchayat is ominous. Even the Muslims of the village apprehended the change in the situation. In fact they say that their youths could not have teased the girls as 11.am is odd hour as the girls do not walk to or return from college at that hour. So resigned are they to their helplessness that one of them, Zainab Ali blamed the Hindu leaders.“The BJP leaders did it. They visited Paharpur village daily and created pressure on police to arrest my innocent brothers.” [1]The people who thrashed the 5 Muslim youths were clearly radicalized greatly. Radicalization in this instance is due to the break-up of the age old tradition of the elders of the two communities solving such contentious issue through their long established rural traditions of policing. In the changed and charged situation today the radicals want direct confrontation that is calculated to produce riots. ----- [1]http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/lucknow/vhp-enters-calls-beti-bachao-meet-over-bareilly-eve-teasing/#sthash.pKT9v0hq.dpuf Chapter 9 Radicalism, context bound Radical is that which is context bound change and difference very great and important. In the context of the burning of Sabarmati Express train at Godhra on February 27, 2002, CM Narendra Modi made a great change in the situation by calling it sabotage, a terrorist attack despite the fact that he had no proof of it and the collector of Godhra maintaining it as a fire accident. The consequences were horrible as thousands of innocent people mostly Muslims were massacred. One of the worst scenes of mass murders was Naroda Patia. Among the accused were Babu Bajrangi, Maya Kodnani, Jaideep Patel etc. Now as is the fashion in Gujarat those committed crimes against humanity are not only acquitted but reinstated in their position of power like GL Singhal and others. Of these the court heard the case of bail/acquittal some in the end of July 2015. Another order passed by the Ministry of Home Affairs on Monday September 7, 2015 had grossly discriminated against Muslims in matter of giving citizenship even if they are persecuted in neighbouring countries of Bangladesh and Pakistan. According to the order only Hindu, Sikh, Christian, Jain, Parsi and Buddhist refugees would be welcomed to India and settle down freely. Among the Muslims there are Zararas and Ahmadiaz who are persecuted by others in Pakistan and Bangladesh. In fact the Zararas go and settle in Australia. The Oz has given them status of citizenship based on their persecution in their country of origin. But India does not allow them although the Ahmadia sect founder was from Qadian in India. Such a move has fuelled fury in Assam where there have been pogroms resulting in massacres of Bengali Muslims who are Indian by birth or residence. The Assamese resent Hindu and Muslim migrants from the neighbouring Bangladesh. But Modi government has earmarked Hindu migrants of Bangladesh to settle in Assam, nay, it has also sanction money for them. No sooner the order was passed than BJP and RSS leader Ram Madhave demanded that Buddhist and Hindu refuge seekers should be released from detention centres. The Muslim refuge seekers who till now have been languishing in jail have been denied their moral and legal right. This move would put question mark on the 1985 Assam accord. In his speech on August 11, 1947 Mohammad Ali Jinnah had remarked that “in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus, and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State” in Pakistan. Thus the two nation theory of Jinnah looks more humane and moderate as compared to the changes that Modi government is bringing in. By making such changes the right wing government is making religious group as political and hence the fear of radicalism is enhanced. It would mean in the long run only Hindu groups would have the privilege and status of citizenship. http://scroll.in/article/754588/we-express-outrage-at-the-picture-of-the-syrian-boy-because-we-feel-its-the-right-thing-to-do Chapter 10 Weakening the country by wreaking havoc on the innocent Muslim prisoners The innocent Muslims remained intact in their love for life in their country of birth, India. But their impassivity in the face of onslaught on them in prison weakened their motherland. Their assailants were bulky Vanzaras and Vanars of Gujarat where the middle class in the sense of Ashish Nandy, escaped the wrath, but poor Muslims could not. The middle class came in their luxury cars to loot Mercedese from Muslim shopkeepers’ show rooms for a more indulgent life. Even if caught they were served dinner from staff guest houses as D G Vanzara hosted them a banquet and at the word of the chief minister, Narendra Modi, he let them go home at the end of the mass murders at Naroda Patia. Vanzara was radical as was Vannar because of their ideology. They called fake encounters and pogroms committed on Muslims as deshbhakti, patriotism. In this warped nationalism they were like their master Modi. On the waters of Narmada he performed worshipping of his gods who had sent rains and challenged the Muslims to produce the same result in monsoon season of Saravan in their Ramzan! Inside the murky Gaikwad Haveli and gloomy prisons there was Mufti Qayum who was undergoing what he describes in one Mossad technique the cops had learnt. The hapless mufti and others had Muslim intelligence surrogates or informers on their back who kept GL Singhal, Vikhatsinh Devisinh Vanar and Vanzara informed as to where the quarry was and how much time the road to Gaikwar Haveli would take. Even the police inspectors were Muslims. As soon as they delivered their fellow Muslims they would try to give scanty comfort of soothing while scared eyes of theirs would be watching stealthily at their masters. The masters would be filled with misgivings at what they perceived as mischief of their subordinate Muslim lower staff and scold them. The sessions of torture would begin as soon as the Muslim subordinate officers would turn their back. There was GL Singhal who was famous for staring so intensely and so long that his eyes would burn in the body of the victim like red hot iron. Vanzara would take over ultimately by calling the stick club to descend: weakening the country by wreaking havocs on the innocent Muslim prisoners:” (This club stick party was a group of five to six inhumans, comprising of appalling, uncivilised persons who would rush upon like hungry wolves on the oppressed and helpless people and they used to beat them until they themselves got tired or the victims became unconscious or dead.).... Hence, the club party arrived, whose dreadful faces were enough to frighten me. No sooner they came, they put handcuffs on my hands and one buffalo-like fat oppressor held me down from my waist, another caught hold of both my legs. In spite of my hands fettered in iron chains, two of them caught hold of both my shoulders and stood me facing the wall and V.D. Vanar started hitting me on my back with great inhumanity...."[2] Of all the cruelest people there was no one who could match Vanar. His hatred of Islam and intense bigotry against Muslims was unparalleled. He rued the money spent on arrest and trial of Muslims, they should instead be shot dead to save money, and he would rub this in the wounds while the victim passed out and occasionally passed away. Such was the perverted patriotism of Vanar and Vanzara that the former would say that the courts, the police and the governments were foolish to waste money on the likes of the mufti. They should simply be killed. Where the master is like Modi and servant like Vanar it is already a weakened country. For the hard working and honest albeit poor citizenry is made of the stuff of Qayum. To the home ministry under Rajnath Singh this may not be palatable but it is true. Even before Sushilkumar Shinde invented the phrase ‘Hindu terrorism’ in 2013 and P Chidambrum also used it, Modi had characterized Islamic terrorism in the September 2002 debate anchored by Rajdeep Sardesai. Even that time the Muslims were not radicalized. In opposing Modi, the man who confronted him was a weakened in health and sober in language but firm in his belief, Dr Rafiq Zakaria, the antithetic of radicalism. The mufti in contrast to Modi and Vanzara is a different kettle of fish. He was very poor and plain. As he was on his way to Gaikwad Haveli he saw his father taking tea, he took him in satiating his heart’s yearning lest it might not be the last time. Eleven years would pass and he would not see him nor would be allowed to attend his funeral. In contrast is another prisoner, Lt Col Prasad Purohit who according to the 4000 pages of charge sheet submitted in 2009 by ATS Purohit was the main accused who had brought RDX from Kashmir and had given it to Sadhvi Praygasingh Thakur. He had floated a separate organization Abhinav Bharat “to propagate a separate Hindu Rashtra with its own Constitution.”[2] He had with him 21 lakh rupees which werea distributed through the treasurer Ajay Rahirkar to the other members of AB. Afterwards the conspiracy meetings were held in January 2008 at Faridabad, Bhopal, Kolkata, Jabalpur, Indore and Nashik. The bombs were assembled at his house in Pune by Sudhakar Chaturvedi and wanted accused Ramji Kalsangra, and one of them was used on the September 29 blast at Malegaon. In Bhopal meeting of April 11, 2008 Purohit had undertaken the responsibility of making the bomb while the Sadhvi would provide her men for planting. Purohit had also prepared the distribution of work of attack into those who would plan, those would collect funds, those who would provide necessary materials, etc. As the planters were mostly from MP the home state of Sadhvi the prime accused in planting and Sunil Joshi it stands to reason that Pragyasingh was very much in the centre of the making conspiracy and execution as she naturally wondered why so few had died when she spoke to Ramji. In the context of Malegaon thickest crowd was at the Nukad corner of Anjuman chowk, cheek by jowl from the Bhiku chowk where the crowd was thinner. Who is radical Qayum or Purhit and Pragyasingh? How could then Rajnath wail in parliament on July 31 in the discussion over Gurdaspur attack of July 2015: “In this house in 2013, the then home minister had coined the new terminology ‘Hindu terrorism’ in order to change the course of the probe. Beause of this, we have not been able to fight terrorism as strongly as we should be.”[3] Singh said this in the context of the discovery that 3 of the attackers in Gurdaspur were given shelter in a house next to the police station. ----- [1] I am Mufti & I am not a terrorist: Gyarah saal sulkhon key peeche Jameeatul Ulema, Mumbai 20015 p8 [2] Malegaon blast: ATS chargesheet says Purohit main conspirator PTI January 20, 2008 [3]Asian Age Saturday 1, 2015 --- http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Malegaon-blast-ATS-chargesheet-says-Purohit-main-conspirator/articleshow/4008140.cms Chapter 11 The most radical divider, Bal Thackeray There are recurring instances of two sets of events compared and contrasted in which radicalism of the right wing Hindu fanatics is eclipsed or made attempts for the same. However the new normal system getting established under Modi focuses on the radicalism ascribed to Muslims as a tool to arouse hatred for the Muslims. That Bal Thackeray was the most virulent radical that inspired bloody retaliation caused more deaths of Muslims than the natural confrontation led to in January 1993. As the Srikrishna commission report says: "One common link between the riots of December 1992 and January 1993 and bomb blasts of 12th March 1993 appear to be that the former appear to have been a causative factor for the latter. There does appear to be a cause and effect relationship between the two riots and the serial bomb blasts.” “Tiger Memon, the key figure in the serial bomb blasts case and his family had suffered extensively during the riots and therefore can be said to have had deep rooted motive for revenge. It would appear that one of his trusted accomplices, Javed Dawood Tailor alias Javed Chikna, had also suffered a bullet injury during the riots and therefore he also had a motive for revenge. Mahesh Narain Singh who was heading the team of investigators who investigated into the serial bomb blasts case…… also emphasises that the serial bomb blasts were a reaction to the totality of events at Ayodhya and Bombay in December 1992 and January 1993 and the Commission is inclined to agree with him." After the hanging of Yakub Justice Srikrishna himself came forward to note the iniquity: ‘Yakub hanging is justice, wish same zeal shown in 1993 riots cases’. “It is distressing that instead of being looked at as incidents of crimes, the two sets of acts got dealt with disparately depending on the communal inclinations of the state apparatus.” “As long as the inherent state bias is not removed, there would be no change in the situation,” he said. “The victims of such state complicity in aggression, therefore, looked for succour from outside and that resulted in the bomb explosions.” “The role the prosecutor is to impartially place all relevant evidence before the court to judge. Unfortunately, this is not done as impartially as required. Prosecutors tend to go overboard for securing convictions as that gets them greater number of feathers in their caps.”[1] This is a serious matter that could agitate the minority Muslims who suffered heavily in the communal violence. That some were pushed to the wall to retaliate seems to be lost to successive generations of Shiv Sainiks who justify Bal Thackeray’s call for bloodbath of Muslims as “instilling fear of Hindus” for soly “national” interest as if those who lost the Babri mosque and bore the brunt of murder and arson and loot were not “national.” The radicalization of the sectarian party Shiv Sena has never ceased from its aim. In the aftermath the attack in Udhampur BSF bus its mouthpiece Saamna had this advice: "Hindus should be able to live in this country with pride and his (a Hindu's) voice should roar like that of a lion. If an answer has to be given to Pakistan extremists, Hindus will also have to become highly religious." "To answer Pakistan, Hindus need to become human bombs and invade their country." Although there was no role for Pakistan to play in Babri mosque incident the Shiv Sena still justifies its penchant to take on the Muslims not of Pakistan but of India! "If his [ Bal Thakeray’s] stand that Pakistani extremists should be responded in their own terms can be called as terrorism, then this kind of terrorism was in the national interest." [2] Around the time Shiv Sena was expressing its outrage, the PM Narendra Modi was in Abu Dubai where in joint statement he spoke of terrorism as a joint endeavour to: "work together to control, regulate and share information on flow of funds that could have a bearing on radicalisation activities and cooperate in interdicting illegal flows and take action against concerned individuals and organisations." [3]He conveniently played hypocrisy to the gallery of the diaspora that it was the Indian diaspora in the US which had supplied money for the pogroms in Gujarat 2002 through Sonal Shah and her father who had been important office holders of Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America. This kind of double standard on terrorism completely ignores pogroms of Muslims as not terrorism as also the pogroms of Muslims during the temple movement in 1992 and earlier. Our own radicalism is no radicalism. Modi government also hunted Muslim youths in relief camp accusing them of radicals when not even a single such refugee turned to terrorism to avenge the mass atrocities on the minority. It is this schism that has succeeded created the bugaboo of radicalism as the elephant in the room. There is one part of the joint statement that can be revealing of the inference of the above rationale; these pieties do not reflect the reality on the ground so far as Hindutva terrorism is concerned. “II. Coordinate efforts to counter radicalization and misuse of religion by groups and countries for inciting hatred, perpetrating and justifying terrorism or pursuing political aims. The two sides will facilitate regular exchanges of religious scholars and intellectuals and organise conferences and seminars to promote the values of peace, tolerance, inclusiveness and welfare that is inherent in all religions. III. Denounce and oppose terrorism in all forms and manifestations, wherever committed and by whomever, calling on all states to reject and abandon the use of terrorism against other countries, dismantle terrorism infrastructures where they exist, and bring perpetrators of terrorism to justice. IV. Enhance cooperation in counter-terrorism operations, intelligence sharing and capacity building. V. Work together for the adoption of India's proposed Comprehensive convention on International Terrorism in the United Nations. VI. Work together to control, regulate and share information on flow of funds that could have a bearing on radicalization activities and cooperate in interdicting illegal flows and take action against concerned individuals and organizations. XIII. Cooperate in manufacture of defence equipment in India.[4] [1]http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/yakub-hanging-is-justice-wish-same-zeal-shown-in-1993-riots-cases-judge-who-probed-mumbai-riots/#sthash.zVbp46Yf.dpuf [2] http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-hindus-must-become-human-bombs-invade-pakistan-shiv-sena-211590 Daily News and Analysis, 18 August 2015 [3] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-3201344/PM-makes-veiled-attack-Pakistan-terrorism-addresses-Indian-diaspora.html#ixzz3jHaQMlfm [4] http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/full-text-of-joint-statement-between-uae-and-india-1208254 Chapter 12 Whisper as means of radicalizing Whisper is a symbol of radicalism of the whisperer. His victim has to bear the brunt of all kinds of torture and brutality as the majority is carried off by the insinuation of the whispering campaign. It was this whisper that led the Bajrang Dal activist and murderer Babu Bajrangi to surrender when Modi sent a word through KK Mysorewala to him to surrender because Lalu Prasa Yadav was make life difficult for Modi by raising the issues of the pogroms of 2002 in parliament. The same when DG Vanzara released all those caught in the worst incident of mass murders at Naroda Patiya, the guilty were set free. Another instance is the threat that Modi held to journalist when he told visiting journalists to cover Gujarat at their risk and remember the fate of the American journalist Daniel Pearl. Since then other examples have turned up. When Justice Jyotsi Vagnik was threatened for convicting Bajrangi and Maya Kodnani for their involvement in the genocide in Naroda Patiya, her class mate, Trivedi, wrote from New Zealand that in 2002 he too was a victim of the whispering campaign of intimidating judges. He wrote back from there in his facebook comment: "Teesta Setalvad. Hats off. I have always admired you and your courage and outspokenness on these issues. I also take this opportunity to state that I am indeed pained (and I am the one who had QUIT Gujarat's Judiciary (I was a district cadre judge in Ahmedabad City Civil and Sessions Court - once a colleague of the bravest judge Ms Jyotsna Yagnik) ... because they (the State of Gujarat) wanted us (the judges and the judiciary) of Gujarat to be acting against minority community (albeit with no written orders but DEFINITELY communicated loud and clear messages to us). I could not be part of it as I was sworn to Constitution of India and not to the butchers..." [1] ----- [1]I quit Gujarat judiciary because govt. wanted me to act against minority: Former judge. 04 Aug 2015 By IndiaTomorrow.net] Chapter 13 Rise in militancy in Kashmir The return of militancy in Kashmir is ominous to say the least. The month of 2015 saw helicopters flying over head in areas of Kashmir after the BSF bus came under attack on August 2. The youths fighting to gain their freedom have resurfaced. When they display IS flags they do not hesitate showing their face, except one or two. They also snatch weapons from Kashmir police and the army. That is sure pass to become recruits. No other than former CM Omar Abdullah regretted that the militants could attack a target south of the Jawahar tunnel in Udhampur. They exude self confidence as never before. [1] In contrast Punjab is equally sensitive but the degree of security preparedness is lowered. KPS Gill a former DGP may voice concern over it but cannot afford to have his second term in the state to fight counter terrorism. He may aver that the attackers in Gurdaspur had come from Pakistan as far as their GPS indicate and had night vision equipment. That they had stayed in a house adjoining the police station shows complicity of the locals. And perhaps there was attempt to create gulf between Sikhs and Muslims. This could not be solved as all the attackers were killed. Gill also raises the bogey of Islamist terrorism in the changed situation of ascent of IS. ------ [1] http://www.firstpost.com/india/shattered-calm-in-kashmir-homegrown-militancy-rears-its-ugly-head-yet-again-2392410.html [2]http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/surprised-at-gurdaspur/#sthash.u6iT2nKO.dpuf] ] Chapter 14 Bhiwandi, the cauldron of radicalism The gravamen of Hindu extremism is that the acts of a few Hindu extremists are broadened by them into justifiable retaliatory acts by Hindus in general. What is more they are always in self defense and this universal assumption is prepared before any provocation and is ever readily and invariably applied in incidents of violence. Who is there that ever initiates this? It is the right wing RSS and its conglomerates. In the case of Bhiwandi the superintendent of police of Thane district under which comes Bhiwandi wrote a note to his superiors in 1970: "I found that a section of Hindu elements, particularly the RSS and some PSP men, were bent upon creating mischief. Their idea in accompanying the procession was not so much to pay respects to the Great Shivaji but to establish their right and, if possible, to provoke and humiliate Muslims."[1] Lighting the cauldron was quintessential radicalism. The next step was spreading it to other areas. That other places would burn so horrendously was beyond the control of the original activists of hatred. Girilal Jain editor of the Times of India, Bombay, wrote on May 21, 1984: “After Nellie in Assam last year, Bhiwandi in Maharashtra now. Indeed, Bhiwandi is a worse horror even if the number of victims is much smaller. Never like this has ever been witnessed in independent India, after the holocaust following partition. The psyche behind the crime is so alien as to be incomprehensible….The roasting alive of over a score of fellow Indians is not another communal clash. It is materialization of hell on earth....While the horror is a fact, it is impossible to believe that this could have happened in a civilized society.” Instead of being shocked by what happened in the nearby town, Bombay witnessed the worst. Chief Minister Vasantdada Patil took a radical turn by blaming the Urdu papers. Instead of resigning he continued and gave the impression as if nothing had happened. He turned out to be radical rather then what others might have thought. Even the editor had supported him previously. This “deadening of our sensibility” one of its earliest example became the archetype of what would happen in the same year and 1992, and 2002. The riots in Bhiwandi and in other places in 1970 were very gruesome thanks to the steady rise in communal tension that was allowed to develop in a crescendo since the public celebration was allowed in Bhiwandi in 1964. Every year the same set pattern of events would be repeated. That is gulal or red powder would be thrown at mosques in the sensitive areas to spark off clashes and arson. Villages were roped in the frenzied celebration in Bhiwandi. According to Justice DP Madon Commission report 164 died in Bhiwandi, 142 Muslims and 20 Hindus, in Khoni and Nagaon villages 78 were killed, 50 Muslims , 17 Hindus. Despite Madan Commission report into the 1970 all its findings and preventive measures suggested by the judge, riots again took place in 1984. This time around another inquiry was made by an intelligence officer posted at Thane, Suresh Khopade. He did a good job of his work and wrote a book, Bhiwandi Riots 1984. Of the 200 killed only 66 bodies were identified. That shows how fiery death visited the victims. There were 960 people chargesheeted but justice is still elusive. His friends and acquaintances asked him frequently: “Suresh who is more aggressive, we or they? Who suffered more deaths, we are they?” The answers to the first would naturally result in who is more radicalized and well prepared for violence and has an upper hand. The answer to the second would imply who suffered more and who is more underprivileged. Also the role of the police would tilt the balance. As Khopade says that justice is not done to the victims it is not difficult to know that Muslims suffered more. Justice Madon points an accusing figure on the agents provocateurs amongst whom he places a lawyer from Malegaon, GM Puntamberkar. He had visited Bhiwandi and its surrounding villages and gave incendiary speeches against the Muslims. On September 2, 1963 he played active role in stoking communal flare up in which police fired and killed 6 Muslims and injure 40 others. Again on April 14, 1964 he was clearly seen behind the fracas that led to tension and lathicharge during Shiv Jayanty. On April 13, 1965 he carried the calf of a cow allegedly slaughtered by butchers through the Muslim and Hindu areas that aroused such passion police injured 25 in firing and 5 others were killed. One Muslim was burnt alive in Tilak road, the road where his house is located in the front. On June 10, 1983 Puntambekar was present in person when Milind Kulkarni and other miscreants blew crackers inside the Jama mosque while celebrating Indian’s win in the World Cup Cricket tournament. Six Muslims lost their life and 400 were injured. This clearly illustrates Khopade’s argument that the police were not taking any preventive measures to curb the violence and were biased against the minority. During this time Puntambekar was active in both the places, in Bhiwandi as well as in Malegaon. Khopade’s inference is that instead of fire fighting type of response to communal violence the police should prevent it from taking shape. The BJP and its patrons in RSS know that they initiate action that leads to communal violence and hence they shot down the Prevention of Communally Targeted Violence bill. Or else how could their ideology survive? The involvement of RSS is of grave concern because the extent of its reach not only within the country but across the globe will legitimately attract attention to its record in terrorism as well as in communal violence. is also a reflection of terrorism. The RSS chief Golwalkar wrote in 1971: "Let Muslims look upon Rama as their hero and the communal problems will be over." [1] This kind of shibboleth is simply unacceptable. Hundreds have died even when the marauding crowds forced their victims to repeat that in slogans like ‘Jai shri Ram!’ What is missed in discussion is that in Bhiwandi riot of 1970 there were riots in Mahad and Jalgaon and the movement for celebrating Hindu festival was extended to villages in the case of Ram Vami and Shiv Jayanti in 1964. This could not be stopped even if the Muslims had chosen to shout from their roofs the litany of praising Ram. According to Dr Ambedkar in his book Riddles of Hinduism Lord Ram had cut off the fingers of a Dalit because of concerted efforts of mohalla peace committee in which the police willy-nilly joined hands in the effort. However what changed forever after Bhiwandi 1970 was the stepped up participation of villagers in the Shiv Jayanti which till then was more or less an event in the towns and cities. Another such change was the 1971 riot in Tellicherry in Kerala where the Mopla riots did dent in the relationship between Muslims and Hindus but the establishment of RSS office and regular gatherings made a chemical change in perception and practice of what the “other” is doing. According to Justice Joseph Vithyathil inquiry commission thousands of years of living together as brothers ended with anti Muslim propaganda of RSS. [1] http://teestasetalvad.blogspot.in/2013/12/who-cast-first-stone-is-it-any-wonder.html Organiser, June 20, 1971. Chapter 15 Modi as a realtime avenger: peremptory radicalism Even before he became chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi had played very crucial role as a pracharak or guide of RSS, the extremist Hindu organization. His words and deeds show the hallmark of hate ideology of the saffron brotherhood. His role as a catalyst agent of extremist Hindu leader has still not been fully exposed. In the early nineteen nineties he was a recondite mobilizing figure behind the LK Advani’s rathyatra. That chariot ride for the cause of demolition of Babri mosque and building a temple led to a bloody trail of bloodshed across the country. Its consequence was the massacre of Muslims in Bombay and the retaliatory serial bomb blasts of 1993. Ten years after in 2002 the juggernaut for rejuvenating the movement for temple led to mobilization of extremist Hindus. They travelled to Ayodhya for building the temple. One of the trains carrying the unwieldy volunteers of temple was the Sabamati express. Its journey was marked by roughing up of passengers by the volunteers and throwing them out of the running train. It stopped at the Godhra railway station where the volunteers molested a Muslim girl and beat up Muslim tea vendors. Train compartment S6 was heavily barricaded from within and no outsider could enter it. As the volunteers were cooking breakfast the compartment caught fire. Modi held meetings secretly and then declared that it was sabotage and blamed the Inter Services Intelligence of Pakistan without furnishing any proof while the collector of Godhra who visited the fire site first declared and maintained that it was a fire accident. During those secret meetings the conspiracy was given final touches and the pogroms of Muslim started. Modi gave three days to the Hindus to take revenge during which the police would not save Muslims. A Citizens Tribunal of retired judges was the first to investigate the matter and came out with a report called Crime against Humanity. Some of its findings show that Modi was the architect of the first Hindutva genocide of Muslims in independent India. "The post-Godhra carnage in Gujarat was an organised crime perpetrated by the chief minister and his government," nay "the chief author and architect of all that happened in Gujarat after February 27". [See chapter on “state complicity”] The report also says that "evidence of a well thought-out scheme to extract maximum political capital out of Godhra". The report goes beyond and avers what is so contrary to the official Indian stand that it was not what the government would like to accept, "genocide and not a communal riot as generally perceived". "In communal riot, communities are at war with each other while in this case, 94 per cent of those killed were Muslims." In what could be called the night of radicalizing Hindu mobs and the police there was a meeting at the house of Modi in the night of February 27, 2002 where according to Haren Pandya, the revenue minister, Modi stated that there would be justice for Godhra train victims. Pandya had made a video recording of the meeting. He showed it to the Citizens Tribunal and asked the judges not to disclose his name. Modi had given the phone number of Pandya to his principal secretary PK Mishra who had asked DGP (Intelligence) Sreekumar to keep tab on it. On August 29, 2011 the court dropped all the charges against the nine accused of murdering Pandya. When they were in the Sabamati jail, one of them, Asghar Ali, had told the superintendent of prison Sanjiv Bhat that Pandya was killed by Tulsiram Prajapati. Sohrabuddin Sheikh was giving assignment to kill Pandya. He was told that Pandya had played an active role in killing Muslims in 2002 pogroms. Afterward Sohrabuddin found out that Pandya had not played any such role and therefore he refused to carry out the assassination. Even Azim Khan of Udaipur had said this but the government forced him to re tract. Who else could have such a clout to get not only the assassination of a former minister done but also conduct such complicated cover up, except the chief minister? These were acts of terrorism which were committed because there were radicals in power from the chief minister to ATS chief DG Vanzara. When Asghar told this to Bhatt the latter revealed it to MoH Amit Shah who was so perturbed that he at once told Bhatt not to mention it to anyone. Bhatt did not stop just there. He dashed off a letter to Shah informing it. This stymied Shah from wiping out the crucial features of the assassination. http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/tulsiram-prajapati-killed-haren-pandya-sanjiv-bhatt/1/149590.html ------ Initially, the crime branch under DIG DG Vanzara probed the Pandya murder and later assisted CBI which took over the case on March 28, 2003 Red 5-8-10 Did Sohrab have a role in Haren Pandya killing? Udaipur-based Azam Khan, who is listed as prosecution witness no. 4 in the CBI chargesheet, has told CBI about the close link jailed DCP Abhay Chudasama had with Sohrabuddin and how the IPS officer had told him, “main Sohrabuddin ka bahut achha dost tha aur maine hi usko Haren Pandya murder case mein ulajhne se bachaya tha”. (I was a good friend of Sohrabuddin and had saved him from getting stuck in the Haren Pandya murder case). He describes this meeting with Chudasama in Himmatnagar in 2009 at the home of a common contact, Ahmed Jabbir. Chapter 16 New thesaurus on terrorism The rise of IS will require a new thesaurus on terrorism. It has turned India and UAE as strange bedfellows. They would fight together whom? Pakistan as India perceives or IS? Who is more radical of the two? When President Genera Musharraf unequivocally aligned his country with the US it was a break, a game changer. Never then did he threaten India. But now he also says that Pakistan’s bombs are not meant for Shab-e-barat. It is no random guessing for anyone to decipher his meaning. India’s concern for fighting terrorism from across the border is still in the rut of war on terrorism initiated by the US. But the impact of the appearance of ISIS on the horizon has dented India’s anti terrorism endeavour in Kashmir and elsewhere. As the PM Narendra Modi is now talking of terrorism versus humanity he cannot escape the taint of his own role in 2002 pogroms of Muslims and his being a long associate of RSS as well as his association with Swami Asimanand. As India jumped on the bandwagon of American war on terrorism in the aftermath of 9/11it has still traces of the US in dealing with terrorism. The war on terrorism by the US began when it became clear that it was Al Qaeda which was behind 9/11. It had also believed that it was Osama bin Laden who masterminded 9/11. The irony that the US had created Laden to fight the jihad in Afghanistan against the Russians was not considered as terrorism. But afterward America waged a war against the regime of Saddam Hussein in which many other nations of the world especially from Europe jointed under the Nato command. That Iraq had developed a weapon of mass destruction and that Al Qaeda was with Saddam led to years of occupation of Iraq. It ruined Iraq and Afghanistan. Only after the war on terrorism began to unravel facts that there was no weapon of mass destruction and that Saddam was against Laden’s groups, that the futility of the war began to weigh on the minds of the world. But the harm was already done. The people in Iraq and later Syria and Libya suffered so much that a home grown militia started counter attack against the regimes in Syria, Iraq and Libya. Their initial successes unnerved not just the US, the Europeans but also Indians. David Petraeus was the commander in chief of the US forces in Iraq in 2007 and later took over the post of the chief of CIA. In an interview to The Daily Beast Petraeus on August 31, 2015 he advocated that Al Qaeda should be roped in to fight IS. This reversal of 14 years of war against Al Qaeda is not and should not surprise anyone because the US had already used Al Qaeda in 1990s against the Russians. The fig leaf that the Nusra Front of Al Qaeda was amenable to US and therefore it should now fight against IS because it was a conservative Sunni branch. Some also think Ahrar al Sham could also help fight IS. There is some similarity in what Petraeus says and others in India also think like taking out a thorn with another. Essentially it is splintering your enemy in order to sow discord and weaken it. Petraeus says: “We should under no circumstances try to use or co-opt Nusra, an Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, as an organization against ISIL. But some individual fighters, and perhaps some elements, within Nusra today have undoubtedly joined for opportunistic rather than ideological reasons: they saw Nusra as a strong horse, and they haven’t seen a credible alternative, as the moderate opposition has yet to be adequately resourced.” "Although the situation in Syria today is different from that in Iraq during the Surge in numerous ways, we should nonetheless consider the possibility of trying to defeat radical groups in Syria not simply by killing or capturing the entirety of their membership -- though much of that will have to be done -- but also by splintering their ranks by offering a credible alternative to those 'reconcilable' elements of those organizations."[1] [1]http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/31/petraeus-use-al-qaeda-fighters-to-beat-isis.html Chapter 17 Terrific period of Modi Prime Minister Narendra Modi have had a terrific period of a whole decade of radical upheaval in life of the state and that of his own personal life. Once it looked as if he would be at the threshold of arrest and punishment but such gigantic was the resourceful state response that he managed to survive all the hurdles like Oediupus who had secured the oracle telling him that he was not the one who could have killed his father. So it is refreshing to go back to that point in history when he was the chief minister at a great risk and on the brink of disaster! A look back in the history reveals this. [1] There is little doubt left any more that the Chief Minister Narendra Modi is neck deep involved in crimes like kidnapping, illegal detention, ‘extraordinary renditions’, murder, fake encounters, tampering with evidence, covering up crimes as well as crimes against humanity. These crimes were committed by the top brass of his police and intelligence agencies and he was directly connected in chain of command order. Therefore, these call for no less than immediate arrest. However, whether the government and the judiciary follow it to the logical conclusion is the crux of the matter. Even as late as July 30, 2010 his CID submitted its charge sheet in the matter of Sohrabuddin case in which Dy SP Narendra Amin was not mentioned. Amin had recorded on his mobile Amit Shah asking inspector VN Chauhan to kill Kauserbi and other conversations between Shah and Vanzara. While Chauhan was guarding the farmhouses Disha and Aram used as centres of extraordinary renditions at no other place than the state capital Gandhinager, the seat of Modi’s government and power. Such was the case of Amin, even then the Gujarat CID which investigated the case for three years did not mention Amin! He had also shot dead with his hand a Muslim youth in a crowd at a police station in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, where they were protesting the arrest of innocent people. Right in Gujarat the scene was murkier. Even after murders and mayhem Amin had been around his official residence and still managed to abscond from the police who had gone to arrest him! With all this high drama in the background his name does not figure in the state CID charge sheet! It was submitted as he was applying for turning approver in the fake encounter case. This was done to lure him away from turning into approver in the same case being investigated by CBI. This may remind you how the ATS under KP Raghuvanshi submitted charge sheet in the Malegaon 2006 case only hours before the case was handed over to the CBI. This is an instance of what Hemant Karkare called politics of terror. This is a maneuvering. With Amit Shah being under arrest who is behind the hurried submission of the chargesheet if not Modi? Can he be let off the hook when he hectors his audience: “Am I doing anything wrong by fighting terrorism?” This rhetorical question of Narendra Modi is contextualized in the present and past events of his fighting not terrorism but playing politics of terror. Ishrat Jehan was kept in the same farm house where was Kauserbi lodged. She was tortured before she was bumped off on the road and declared a terrorist. She was kidnapped from her house in Mumbai and then killed. Does the law of the country justify that you kidnap and kill a person whom no court has found guilty; in fact such a person has not appeared in any court? Can the people of Gujarat be taken to be so gullible that they would feel proud at such death? Is this the asmita or pride of the state which gave birth to Gandhi? Whose ideology does this extraordinary renditions suit, Mahatma Gandhi’s or Nathuram Godse’s? (For record, Nathuram according to his brother Gopal Godse never left the RSS.) Will the people of Gujarat and outside it allow the record to slide into oblivion of Modi harbouring Babu Bajrangi in the state guest house of the government of Gujarat in Mount Abu when the Commissioner of Police of Ahemdabad PC Pande had issued shoot at sight order against him? The same Pande, who later ‘welcomed’ Bajrangi in a farcical surrender to law! It did not stop there. Modi shifted one judge after another until he brought in Judge Akshay Mehta who released Bajrangi on bail. One of the judges had told Bajrangi that he would have given him death sentence twice for having killed so many Muslims. Modi also got Mehta on the Nanavati-Shah commission of inquiry into the pogroms of 2002. Will Mehta sit on judgment on Bajrangi? Does the pride of Gujarati people want to see this happen endlessly? Were the innocent Muslims hounded out of Naroda Patia and mercilessly killed, terrorists? Was Modi fighting terrorism when he complemented the chharra women for having given birth to men who had butchered the hapless Muslims there? Was the police officer KK Mysorewala glorifying Gujarat when his sentence became headline that there was order from above to deny shelter to the hounded Muslim women and children begging him to give them refuge? ‘Strategic depth’ The BJP ruled states powered by RSS ideology have strategic depth in each other, mainly in Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat; and occasionally in Rajasthan, Goa and Andhra, Karnataka,etc. For example in order to get Sohrabuddin killed the marble and textile tycoons belonging to BJP gave contract to no other than the home minister of Rajasthan Gulabchand Kataria who contacted Amit Shah who ordered arrest, kidnapping and murder of victims through the police in Gujarat. To eliminate Tulsiram Prajapati the Gujarat police had him brought into the state and then they got Vanzara assume charge of the border region and then they killed him on the way. Modi also got Abhay Chaudasma included in the inquiry committee on the fake encounter of Sohrabuddin so that he could deal with the witnesses so as to save the accused police officers close to Modi. GC Raiger had the list of witness taken from Geetha Johari to facilitate Chaudasma. Can anyone expect a fair inquiry with the web of such senior officers around? Is this why Modi had a penchant for Gujarat Control of Organized Crime Act cleared by the centre? A mere confession extracted by his police would have given him and his cops even more impunity to finish off anyone. Will the people of Gujarat be safe under a chief minister who is sworn to protect their life and property but does the very opposite? The strategic depth is well illustrated by what Chaudasma told Robabuddin and others of the family of Sohrabuddin living in Madhya Pradesh that “the government of the same political party was in power in that state and he (by that Chaudasma meant, Amit Shah) could get them eliminated in Madhya Pradesh itself” if they did not withdraw the case. And what for does he do it? Communalism combined with grab for power is the hidden agenda of the RSS and its political front BJP. Who is the communalist wielding enormous political power to do all this and also seek more power to fight ‘terrorism’? Power means money, the sangh parivar and its political leaders know it too well. If Indresh Kumar could get three crore rupees, Kataria got ten. Communalism is the spring source of power for BJP and Shiv Sena and a rich source of income. RSS, BJP and VHP had made it clear to the adivasis or tribals that they had three days to loot and acquire property of Muslims during the carnage of February 28, March 1, 2, in 2002. Even very rich Gujarati Hindus would come in air-conditioned cars to loot valuable items from the shops owned by Muslims! Fake encounters which followed the pogroms were an extension of what Modi said he was doing, fighting terrorism. He justified the first and subsequently justified the other. Therefore, there is need to look at them in a larger context and book Modi for this larger conspiracy against the Muslims. Modi has stepped up his attack on CBI ever since the arrest of Amit Shah. He has come to such a sorry pass of insanity that he does not know what he is saying. He has been accusing that Sohrabuddin has been caught with AK 47s and that is why his fake encounter is justified! He is saying it now, end of July 2010 and August 2010. Even in December 2007 he had spoken so and as a result of it his own defense lawyer KTS Tulsi had resigned on moral ground protesting: “Modi’s statement has created an awkward situation. It is not proper for me to argue for the state in the case, unless the Chief Minister takes his statement back. I can’t defend the state government, whose Chief Minister justifies one of the most heinous crimes and its policemen go on killing citizens in cold blood.” The arrest of Modi should be imminent provided the government and the judiciary are informed enough to note that he is now inciting the mobs to show outrage against the continuing inquiry by CBI ordered by no other than the Supreme Court of the Republic of India![2] Tehelka’s expose reveals shocking facts about the 2002 Gujarat riots and the part played by senior politicians and policemen in the state A national newsmagazine and website has put out fresh evidence of the alleged complicity of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi in planning and executing the 2002 Gujarat riots, as well as shielding the perpetrators. The publication’s undercover reporter filmed several high-profile individuals giving accounts of their activities before and during the riots. On October 25, Tehelka released the contents of ‘Operation Kalank’, which was also carried in its story, ‘The Truth: Gujarat 2002’, to widespread outrage across India and beyond. In the footage in question, members of Gujarat’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its affiliate organisations the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Bajrang Dal and political ally the Shiv Sena have been shown giving firsthand graphic accounts of how they attacked, raped and killed Muslims during the post-Godhra riots, with the tacit approval of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Politicians recount how they planned the riots days in advance, and rioters are seen narrating how they escaped the law under protection from the state and even a section of the judiciary. Conducted over a six-month period, starting May 2007, by an undercover journalist who talked to several Hindu rightwing activists, the expose, comprising over 50 hours of secretly filmed footage, is new evidence of state-sponsored rioting in Gujarat, an allegation that has been levelled against Narendra Modi from the start. It also points to the involvement of a number of notorious rioters including the infamous ‘Butcher of Naroda’, Babu Bajrangi. The undercover operation nails the lie that the riots were not a “spontaneous swell of anger, but a planned genocide,” said Tehelka’s editor-in-chief Tarun Tejpal. “The genocide following the burning of Coach S6 of the Sabarmati Express in Godhra was strategised and executed by top functionaries of the RSS, the VHP, the Bajrang Dal and the state authorities, with the knowledge and sanction of Chief Minister Narendra Modi.” “Several conspirators mention key meetings across the states that were held on the evening of February 27, 2002, itself. The strategy on how to hit back and give a befitting reply was devised at these meetings, barely a few hours after the burning of the coach of the Sabarmati Express. The investigation also holds accounts from conspirators and rioters on how the police colluded with them,” Tejpal said. According to a Tehelka statement, a senior VHP functionary who was on the Sabarmati Express said on tape: “The Muslims have played a one-day (cricket) match with us… they have given us a target of 60… we have to win this match at any cost, so don’t stop till you have made 600 runs… Modi gave us a free run to do whatever we wanted… the police was with us.” According to Tehelka, besides the killings, “73 Muslim religious places were torched in Ahmedabad alone, 55 in Sabarkantha, 22 in Vadodara”. Babu Bajrangi, the ‘Butcher of Naroda-Patiya’, where 105 Muslims were ruthlessly killed, boasts in the footage about his most infamous crime -- the rape of a pregnant woman, Kausar Bi, and the murder of her foetus. “In my FIR it is written that I plunged my knife into her womb, took out the foetus and threw it into the fire,” he is seen telling the undercover reporter. Currently a member of the Shiv Sena, Bajrangi admits that he and his men killed 91 Muslim men and women in Naroda-Patiya. “We organised everything… mobilised a team… chased them (Muslims) and were able to scare them into a huge khadda (pit). There we surrounded them and finished everything off.” Bajrangi said the mob “hacked” and “burnt” the victims. “We showed the Muslims what we are capable of.” Bajrangi said he called Gordhan Zadaphia, minister of state for home at that time, on the evening of the February 28 massacre to tell him how many people the mob led by him had killed. “He told me to leave Gujarat and go into hiding,” Bajrangi said. Bajrangi claimed that when Modi was told of the massacres he called him up to tell him he was doing a “fantastic job”. He also revealed how Modi helped him evade the law after a shoot-at-sight order was issued against him. “Narendrabhai kept me at Gujarat Bhavan at Mount Abu for four-and-a-half months. After that, I did whatever Narendrabhai told me to do.” He said Modi had “changed judges thrice” to get him out on bail. “He made everything all right, otherwise who would have had the strength… it was his hand all the way,” Bajrangi said. The rioter also revealed how Ahmedabad’s police chief during the riots, P C Pandey, helped destroy evidence of the massacre at Naroda-Patiya. “By the end of the evening, there were about 700-800 bodies. They were all removed. The commissioner came that night and said if there were so many dead at one place it would create trouble for him. So he had the corpses picked up and dumped all over Ahmedabad. When they were brought to the civil hospital for the post-mortem, they were said to be from this place or that.” Anil Pandya, counsel for the Gujarat government before the Nanavati-Shah Commission investigating the riot cases, said: “Modi came and gave oral instructions to the police to remain with the Hindus.” Suresh Richard, another Naroda-Patiya accused, has corroborated Bajrangi’s claims that the police were hand-in-glove with the mob. “The police were with us… They were shooting right in front of us… They must have killed 70 or 80 or more... didn’t even spare women,” Richard said. He too said Modi had lauded him on hearing of his actions, saying “you are blessed”. The prime accused in the Gulbarg Society massacre, Maangilal Jain and Madan Chawaal, said that they surrounded Congress legislator Ehsaan Jafri’s flat in Gulbarg Society and set it ablaze. “He could do nothing and got burnt,” said Jain. But Chawaal claimed that in his last moments Jafri peeped out of the window of his house pleading with the rioters to spare his life and showing them a bundle of money. “I told him, you come out and we’ll see,” claimed Chawaal. “As soon as he came out I pushed him back into the house and chopped him up. The money just flew from his hands. Whoever wanted the money took it,” he reminisced. Bharatiya Janata Party legislator from Godhra, Haresh Bhatt, claimed that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi gave him “three days” to do “whatever he wanted in Godhra” to prepare a response to the Sabarmati train “attack”. “I started making country-made bombs and revolvers in my factory,” said Bhatt. “We also ordered three truckloads of swords from Punjab.” In a further shocking admission, he said that “even rocket launchers were made by me”. Asked if the country-made rocket launchers were used, he said: “Arre border mein use kiya na” (We used it on the ‘border’) . Prodded further, he said the rioters used the launchers in Ahmedabad (‘Ahmedadad border’ is commonly used to refer to the wall that demarcates Muslim and Hindu areas). “Modi’s reaction was favourable after the Godhra riots,” Bhatt said. Source: NDTV, October 27, 2007 The Telegraph, October 26, 2007 www.dnaindia.com, October 26, 2007 The Hindustan Times, October 26, 2007 www.newindpress.com, October 26, 2007 [1]http://www.milligazette.com/news/7716-is-arrest-of-narendra-modi-imminent [2]http://infochangeindia.org/human-rights/news/sting-operation-alleges-new-evidence-of-state-complicity-in-gujarat-riots.html Chapter 18 Two birth days MF Hussein was born on September 17, 1915, he died on June 9, 2011 in London. He was a Qatari by nationality. This proud son of India was born in Pandharpur in Maharashtra, a holy place for Maharashtra as the Hindus worship their god Vithal whose temple is reve revered by Hindus of the world. This wonderful and worshipful place also was the cradle where Hussein was nurtured and grew up. He painted Bharat Mata in nudity which the Supre Court of India considered a work of art and genius. But the most radical organizations including RSS, Sanathan Sanstan were uncompromising in their attitude and wanted to extract revenge and kill him. They would have succeeded but fate had different course of his remaining life in store. The RSS itself twitted: RSS ‏@RSS_Org 6h6 hours ago RSS retweeted RSS Google India should apologise for insulting the nation and Hindus by Showing the MF Hussain on his front page What the Google had done, it simply put his portrait on its front page to mark his 100th birth day on September 17, 2015: It was a tribute to a gnius rather than commemorizing of his disrespect for any one. He had not even given the name of Bharat Mata to the woman in nude he had painted. It was the auctioner who titled it as Bharat Mata. For this fault of the auctioner he had to go in exile and die in exile with the tage that he was a Qatari. All this did not matter who opposed his painting but the Supreme Court had a remarkable sense of art when it considered how the sculptures in nudity in all dimensions are so familiar in contrast to his painting when the Bench asked the petitioner: "Does the sentiment of the petitioner get scandalized by the large number of photographs of erotic sculptures which are in circulation?" The Bench countered: "It is an art like the sculptures. None gets scandalized looking at the sculptures." [1] Narendra Modi has the honour of having been born the same day. [1] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Bharat-Mata-a-work-of-art-SC/articleshow/3459623.cms Chapter 19 Zahid Much before India banned Students’ Islamic Movement of India, Mohammad Zahid was active in the struggle to purify the youths and their character. He would work for Muslim youths in order to prevent them from waywardness of adulthood; prevent boys from meeting girls and vice versa in any un-Islamic ways. He and his organization would ask the boys to develop their moral character and keep safe distance from each other as far as gender is concerned. They would advise the youths not to go to cinema or smoke or keep obscene pictures. They would also disfavor obscene posters being pasted on walls or shutters of shops. His father would not let him do even that for he feared that others including the police would not like it. Majid, a teacher, had brought up his children in a disciplined manner and prevented them from mixing with the street children. As a result all his children were sober and educated. However Zahid was active in organizational work that his father warned him against. On Jun 2, 2000 SIMI had organized a protest against Russian atrocities in Chechnya. They wanted to burn the Russian flag. The police arrested 13 youths of which Zahid was one. The police came to his house to take him to police station. He was not at home. His father told them that he had already expelled his son years ago for his radical works for which the police would visit the house and question him. Then on August 25, 2001 the police called Majid and asked him for his son Mohammad Zahid. On August 26 Majid too his elder son Javed Ahmed and went to PSI RH Choudhary who detained Javed and asked Majid to bring Zahid. Majid told him that he had disowned his son and where he lived he did not know. Then on August 27, 2001 Majid went to police station and told the officer on duty that he could not find his son Zahid. The police then brought Javed to court and charged him for a case of 1998 and since then he was absconding. However Javed got bail. Then suddenly a month later the police called Javed and arrested him on September 27, 2001 for being a member of SIMI. At 11 in the night there were eight who were kept in the dark cell of the police station and next day they were produced in the court and accused of protesting against the ban on SIMI. They were then sent to prison. The ban had come in force on September 27. How could he have protested against the ban when he was in police custody on September 27, 28? After 5 days in police custody they were released but rearrested when they came out of jail on October 5th. But the police kept on pestering him. On October 26, 2001 there was a serious riot in Malegaon. That night the police came to Javed’s house. He was not at home so they took away Majid and detained him. Next day he surrendered and was given judicial custody for 15 days. In the intervening night of May 11 and 12 2006 the police slapped Javed in the arms haul case known as Malegaon-Aurangabad arms seizure. When the bombs exploded in two places in Malegaon on September 8, 2008 the police slapped another case of terrorism against Zahid and subsequently arrested him. The importance of being Zahid lies in the fact that the maulana or imam was not the one who planted bombs anywhere in 2006 Malegaon blasts but being far away in Phoolsanghvi in Yawatmal leading Friday prayer on September 8, 2006. In evidentiary value it was like Hemant Karkare’s discovery of the ownership of Sadhvi Pragyasigh Thackur. Both were divine human beings, a sober maulana and another a radical sadhvi. II Situation and Solutions In the history of nations there are episodes which can be tested in the crucible of what is best for mankind, the commonalty. The Canadian writer Michael Ignatieff’s definition of democracy is a government which is committed to the people where the minorities are safe and secure. Such episodes are scattered throughout the world whether they are from West Bengal, the US or anywhere else. What happens when even those who believe in non violence use violent means to achieve their cherished object or try win back lost ground of status in culture and society or express their anger at the victims and their belief or in the name of faith lose sight of decency and decorum. Chapter 20 Nasreen and Nandigram: Intent behind evenvts military deployment in central Kolkata, the first since the demolition of Babri mosque, assumes sinister dimension. Pity that it is to defend a single woman for whom the phalanx of CRPF, RAF and the military are ranged, what though they had failed earlier. The intent matters. This time nothing would happen because of the presence of political will as it also happened in the case of the Kalayan Singh government in UP and Narsimha Rao government at the centre when the political will was absent to prevent what was impending. Ever since assuming charge of the West Bengal government Budhadeb Bhattcharjee has had a difficult equation with the Muslim minority. Madrassa when it came handy or refugees when they gave him the chance and now the poor peasants whose land grab became the end of the stick in hand and finally a much universal chorus of Islam and woman (Nasreen’s war cry) despite the ghoulish murder of Rizwanurrehman. As if these were not enough the periodic taunts and barbs of Tasleema Nasreen on religious practices were beyond the propriety of being an asylum seeker. It is also reflective of her prejudiced mentality that the rape of scores of women mostly Muslim in Satangabari Ranichawk and elsewhere in Nandigram and death of many did not impinge her mind while the death of 19 Hindus during 1992-93 made her write a whole novel against the Muslims of Bangladesh. Being a Marxist run state the poor should have been taken care of by the left rather than leaving them at the mercy of the Bhumi Uchched Pratirodh Committee. And if Trinamool Congress and Congress parties entered the fray what queered the pitch? The minorities at the receiving end, suppressed and oppressed, in view of the concerted effort to exploit them for their lands so that the upper class/caste would pocket the jobs once the industrialization takes place, turned to the opposition parties. Their growing support to the opposition parties and vice versa emboldened the movement for keeping their land in their hands. This sent alarm to the CPM who feared their citadel falling to the opposition, it could have cascading effect. Alarmed by these the chief minister chose to become a Machiavellian politician rather than a statesman. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said: “Well, it was a violent takeover by dangerous forces, they have now been paid back in the same coin. We did not trigger violence. We faced it, resisted it for months and then, eventually countered it. As I said before, the Opposition and the BUPC have got a taste of their own medicine. There was tension, total chaos and lack of peace in Nandigram. We had to do something. Our supporters risked their lives and returned home and retaliated only in desperation,” The so called take over was no less than state terrorism unleashed on the hapless. The police were not sent in, in fact the CRPF was kept at bay when hundreds were hounded out of their houses, many were killed, women were raped and their houses were burnt after looting. A handful who returned had to rejoin CPM, organize marches twice a day and shout slogans in favour of the ruling party. Others cannot even dare to return. The imam of the Juma mosque of Delhi was not allowed to enter Nandigram in the aftermath of the March firing and death. If his entry was feared to cause communal heightening of tension what has the backing of Congress and Trinamool Congress done to the minorities? Summoning of the army and clamping curfew is on the pretext of the situation turning communal. Protest against Nasreen is not any new phenomenon on the horizon. Why now? To the minorities like Muslim it is another cause of grievance but to the ruling elite it is another card in the hand they can use in the game. The chief minister was equally obdurate in dealing with the Rizwanurrehman and Priyanka Todi matter. His top police officers in the press conference they had called even kept secret the last call Rizwanur made to his lawyer. In this matter also Nasreen chose to keep silence. Even the two Todi girls are more feminist and more secular minded as they chose their partners in life irrespective of religious consideration. One chose a Muslim graphics teacher and the other her Hindu driver. How the government mishandled these cases are now history. These episodes have alienated the intelligentsia and the chief minister must have been disturbed and even panicked in reaction. The large scale violence during the three hours of bandh on Wednesday resulted in the burning of two dozen vehicles including a school bus and a couple of CPM offices, arrests of hundreds and injuries to many. What role did the police play is far from clear. But Idris Ali the president of All India Minorities Forum said that the police arrested 200 agitators from his organization and the Furfurasharif Muzadeddia Anath Foundation “without reason”. The Muslims are agitated and duly concerned as they face even extinction as can be seen in what happened to one Golam Rasool. Golam Rasool of Chowk Kendamar was kidnapped by the CPM cadres and kept in a jungle. Then he along with others was transported by a motor launch to Orissa. He would have been killed but he told the guards that he wanted to relieve himself. Then he made good his escape. They chased him but after an hour he gave them the slip. He got a lift in a truck somewhere near Cuttack. He contacted his father from a PCO as he had only three rupees in his pocket. His father came to his rescue. His abduction and capture and imprisonment in a camp and torture are nothing less than extraordinary rendition (the outsourcing of torture that the US is practicing in Iraq and with the prisoners at the Guantanaymo Bay). Chapter 21 Tasleema Nasreen And The Four Pillars Of Learning Fifteen years have passed since UNESCO published its report on education for the 21st century, The Treasure Within, which among other things emphasizes learning to live together. Fifteen years into the new century and our education seems to be where it was at the turn of the last century. This is quintessentially true in one of the four pillars of learning, learning to live together. In the other three, viz., learning to know, to do and to be, there is some change in the contour. We and particularly young learners inherit a complex world. If the world has not made us learn to live with others better what is the remedy? The remedy is surely education itself which Jacques Delors describes as a necessary utopia; “humankind sees in education an indispensable asset in its attempt to attain the ideals of peace, freedom and social justice.” It is “a principal means available to foster a deeper and more harmonious form of human development and thereby to reduce poverty, exclusion, ignorance, depression and war.” Failure to educate so results in violence and disruption. On March 1, 2010 violence broke out on account of what Tasleema Nasreen had purportedly written much earlier. "If the Quran advises women to use purdah, should they do so? My answer is No. Irrespective of which book says it, which person advises, whoever commands, women should not have purdah. No veil, no chador, no hijab, no burqa, no headscarf. Women should not use any of these things because all these are instruments of disrespect". She denied that the words ascribed to her are hers. Why did the violence break out, then? Doing anything on the spur of the moment reveals lack of education. Only when you know all the aspects of a case you can respond, if at all you choose to do so. Since the Quran shows other ways of responding, have the protesters gone through them? Have they tried some of them and exhausted them? Keeping patience in the face of provocation would have paid better dividends. Similarly you are given right of expression, but should you twist the words of a writer who did not intend it and then publish them? Or would you put words of your own in her mouth? In the same way why did the Kannada papers wait until she was granted her last extension of visa only in the last week of 2010 and republish her article to coincide with it? Of course, there is a tactical move which would bring political gains to one party but would not have the moral justification of communities living together. Harmonious peaceful coexistence rather than political skullduggery or radicalism should have weighed in republishing that article, “Let’s Think Again About the Burqa”. However, two people have been killed and scores of others injured. Hundreds of vehicles vandalized. That does not seem to go down so easily. Learning to know should have helped learning to do better. The first incident took place in Shimoga the constituency of Chief Minister BS Yeddyuappa and then it spread to Hassan, the constituency of former Prime Minister HD Devi Gowda. From there to Gokak in Belgaum district. Then, entered Shri Ram Sene. It shows that those who maneuvered this or chose to act did not learn to be better informed and enlightened citizens. As a result of the failure in varying degree of the four pillars of learning the society suffered. If the executive, legislative and administrative wings fail, the onus is on the teachers. Will they take on the daunting task of education for a brighter India? They have to when they renovate themselves to the task. On their shoulders more rather than on any others’ lies the responsibility that the media has played havoc with the society. It has sensationalized issues which have disfigured our streets with hundreds of shops and vehicles burnt. Bringing panels of ‘experts’ who are die hard politicians and ideologues to discuss and thrash ad absurdum the latest incidents of violence and thereby making people more entrenched in their petty biases and prejudices! The teachers have to make the young generation to discover “the treasure within” rather than come out on the streets with their hidden treasure of stones, bars, sticks, knives and swords to confront the other. It is time for the teachers to sensitize the youths and children that we have common purposes to struggle together for. That, we must strive to avoid our slow collective suicide that is the degradation of our environment. That, equitable distribution of the wealth accumulating from our more than 8% growth of our gross national products reaches to all. Given these common goals of all the people of the country the violence in Karnataka is puerile. Is Tasleema Nasreen, a foreigner, such a powerful visiting planet that can pull us out of the gravitation of the orbit of our noble national endeavour for a better life? Chapter 22 “What is happening in our country?” The politics of terrorism Woebegone widow of Hemant Karkare is at a loss to understand how could an upright, honest and a man of integrity like her husband be “martyred” and then politicking be played over him in assembly halls, in parliament, on public platforms and even in the offices of those who were policing the state differently from her husand. Kavita like many others in the country knew that Hemant was doing what is expected of an officer and that he was aware that there are no half measures in discharging your duty when the country calls on you to do your duty. How could she so traumatized know that those who played on the chessboard just moved a pawn, a person made use of by others for their own advantage! But then things began to dawn upon her. The politics of terror is the way an organized group uses its clout to effect change in the course of events by violent means or by subterfuge for a slant of thought. What is that slant of thought differs from place to place and people to people. As we near the seventh anniversary of 26/11 it is easy to recall that it followed on the heels of Malegaon bomb blast of September 29—a matter of 47 days between the two. Both are events of terrorism scarring the face of India. However, much water has flowed down the river between the two. One of the most remarkable and least bothered about flotsam and jetsam was ganging up of Hindutva groups to exert pressure for reversing the ongoing investigation that Hemant Karkare was busy in. Hellbent on this were groups and their leaders like LK Advani and Bal Thackeray and Narendra Modi as well as those handpicked by them for august offices administering the country to scuttle the ATS juggernaut of unearthing the real culprits in the conspiracy of the blast in Malegaon. It threatened to give them out in their entirety, of course including Praveen Togadia. In an epoch making discovery the ATS had found that Hindutva terrorists were behind it. Formally, this was nothing less than seismic jolt in the fault line of our very conception of terror. By the time it happened we were inured to the jihadi terrorism as if it was the whole and sole ubiquitous phenomenon plaguing nations of the world. Karkare discovered the truth of terror but not invented it. The Hindu right would have us believe that he did the latter. There were obvious clues which no one could have afforded to ignore. When he visited Bhiku chowk, the site of September 29 blast, the local people told him and home minister RR Patil that the Muslims were not involved in the attack and they demanded impartial inquiry. He must have been struck by unanimous chant of innocent people being arrested and the guilty going scot free. The badly mangled motor cycle of Sadhvi Pragyasingh Thakur was the most visible proof of it. Then came the startling phone records of the sadhvi and Ramji Kalsangrah. Phones and vehicles are as much a gift of science as are bullet proof jackets both defective and good ones. If David Coleman Headley and other handlers abroad and in Mumbai itself or just across the borders could pull the strings, the local pliant players were not far behind in picking up which jackets they wanted on the occasion. Headley’s role is ominous on account of his being a self professed Jew and a commission agent. Did anyone outsource terrorism to him living in the US? Or did he graft one kind of terrorism on another to exact maximum profit from it? The extreme orthodox Jewish centre of Chabbad house has acquired the dubious distinction that the cook Qazi Zakir Hussein there had bought a huge amount of chicken and wine as if there was going to be a big party for many people for many days while the inmates were so few. There was also celebration there when the news of the death Karkare was announced on the television. The puzzling inordinate delay in which the police reached places under attack like the Chabbad house and the efforts of the security guard from the Israeli consulate and his manhandling by the people are shrouded in mystery. For a simple minded woman albeit well educated and a professor at that it was too much to have lost her husband and also comprehend at once the politics of terror. But she got certain things firm in the mind right from the beginning. One, that someone directed her husband to the scene of action (though he was not officially obliged to directly and personally) fight the awesomely armed terrorists. Second, someone spoke to him on phone at the last moment and what was the message or content of it? The authorities have not taken any care to tell the widow what her mind had questioned her. And then came more disturbing disclosures that her husband waited 40 minutes for a back up that did not come and then he was left wounded for more than 40 minutes and nobody attended him in that condition and, he a top police officer! Any cop worth his name would not have left a fellow police man at such crucial time because the bond between the officer and his men still exists unless ordered otherwise. History is replete with the fact that the Jews have made countries fight among themselves so that they get maximum advantage from their warfare sale of arms. Moreover, the Israeli connection thanks to Lt Col Prasad Purohit’s liaison effort is veritable truth. It is no surprise that the Jews have done it again. This connection goes back to a much earlier time. Handbills pasted by Jewish groups at public places blaming the Arabs for the hardship Indians were going through had appeared in Pune in the wake of the oil embargo of 1973. The Jews were at it again. Kavita’s exclamation at what the country is coming to was not simple exasperation at corruption. It assumes larger significance when looked against the backdrop of how India opened diplomatic relationship with Israel and then soon came the demolition of the historic mosque at Ayodhya. It is not for nothing that such things happen. Wherever Headley went there struck terror. Security officials from India have made beeline to Israel to study the Israeli strategy in fighting terrorism and the intifada of the Palestinians and the acquiring and occupying of more and more of the Palestinian land in the occupied territories. In fact a high ranking Israeli military official had given his official view of how to deal with the land acquisition in Kashmir valley which one of the terrorists at Chabbad house had warned India not to follow. This is no simple matter as superintendant of police in Malegaon Mr Rajwardhan Sinha and other police officers visiting Abrar Ahmed, an accused in 2006 Malegaon blasts turned approver, had promised him land anywhere in India but outside Kashmir valley if he toed the police version on terrorism in the case of September 8, 2006 attack. This smacks of the grouse of Abhinav Bharat and other extremist groups of the Hindu right on the dispute of land in Jammu and Kashmir. The allotment of land for Amarnath pilgrims and the revocation of it and the bloody scenes that followed are in the back ground of what was happening in Maharashtra in the name of the so called terrorism. There is something of Sudhakar Pandey in this as well as of Purohit who was posted in the valley and from where he sourced the RDX for use in Malegaon and on Samjhauta express. The basic apprehension of Kavita Karkare is that what happened to her husband is what we call insider’s job much like insider trading. The deliberate hiding of the telephone conversation of the callers to her husband and the mysterious disappearance of the bullet proof jacket and the plethora of discrepancies in the postmortem report and the real wounds on his body not to speak of the staggered delay in complying with his call for back up and the designed dereliction of duty in leaving him bleeding for more than forty minutes at the scene of action. The abduction of the fisherwoman Anita Uddaiya who saw the six terrorists as she insists [10 as the police would make us believe] pass through the fisherman’s shanty on the sea beach. She was taken to the US and mysteriously brought back by the FBI. Why the police cannot come out of it clean is the irrefutable truth that the insider is capable of having knowledge of what is happening on the ground, manipulating action and covering up what is undesirable and unwanted. The media people who told her that she would never know the full truth made a mistake. For they forgot that a surmise can tell you as much truth as hard evidence can which the police (or the two saffron clad men who picked up and put in a car a man without injury or blood on him resembling in dress that Karkare wore) could have attempted to destroy. And even Shakespeare’s wise man Polonious also tells that through indirection you can find the direction out. Therefore some detour: on September 1, 2008 ATS officers Jaiswal, Sachin Kadam and Rajwardhan sinha (then posted at Malegaon and now a deputy commissioner of police in Mumbai) had gone to meet Abrar in jail. They told him “hum logon ka ek mission hai. Do dhai mahine men pura ho jayga. Phir beech kay kuch log jo tang ada rahen hain koi nahin rahey ga.”[We have a mission. In two and half months it would be over. Then those people who are obstructing us would not obstruct us.] Then they specified the mission: “hum nay 2006 men jo tahkikat ker kay chargesheet bani thi use wo log badal dal rahe hain. Isi liya unhain beech may se hatana jaroori hai.” [Those people are changing what we had investigated in Malegaon 2006case. Therefore it is necessary to remove them from our path.] In substance it would mean that there are two groups of officers. One which includes the above three as well as the boss of ATS Raghuvanshi had already prepared the charge sheet in the case of the September 2006 blast in Malegaon. But the others preeminently Karkare had begun making changes in the charge sheet. It was the mission of the first group to obviate the second. There is no need to make it out anymore melodramatic than what it already is. But if you read the original it is gory tale of a clique. Moreover this is what Abrar has put in his affidavit to Judge YB Shinde. The court is competent enough to disabuse us or Abrar of the macabre surrounding the same. Even so there is internal logic that cannot be denied. For example Rajwardhan Sinha had given more than twenty five lakh rupees to the father in law of Abrar to accept the police version and forget what he had told earlier of what he had overheard at the Medi care hospital that the blast was the work of Hindu right and Dr Rajinder Amin, Dr Bipin Parekh and Someshwar Shanker and others were behind it. Abrar was kept in hotel Pritam at Dadar in Mumbai and taken out for shopping, then his junket to Indore, Ujjain and other places at the expense of the ATS. The costly mobiles given to him and his wife by Rajwardhan and his interaction on phone with that worthy cop are bizarre to say the least. At one time Abrar boasted that he had more than fifty lakh rupees and an Indica car to drive him around towns of Madhya Pradesh. This fabulous amount of wealth could only come from the Jews for the Israeli officials did promise Purohit monetary support. It mocks the country which cannot afford good quality helmets and bullet proof jackets for honest officers has such treasure trove available for a song to such who have sworn to defend the country like the serving lieutenant colonel, Purohit. This is what the country is coming to! To his consternation Karkare found no evidence of involvement of SIMI or local Muslims in the blasts of 2006. Interestingly the CBI has just told the high court in Mumbai that they have no evidence against the acused prompting the judge to exlaim why shouldn’t they be then given bail! A day before he was assassinated he had told Indian Express reporters in confidence: "I don't know why this case has become so political," "The pressure is tremendous and I am wondering how to extricate it from all the politics." Was the pressure telling on the investigation, what with someone who could be the next prime minister of the country questioning the credibility of the ATS? "Of course," was the answer. "We are being very very careful. In fact, when we want to question a suspect and if he or she has any Hindutvawadi connections, we make sure once, twice, thrice, that we have enough reason and evidence to even question. Normally it is not like that. We are able to freely question anyone we suspect." This revelation is crystallized by the anguish the people who had gathered at the Taj hotel with burning candles had felt as well as the well meaning people of the country. Could Kavita avoid feeling the angst? Or, we? This would be the richest tribute from our hearts for this wonderful son of India! May his soul rest in peace for the service he did to the country! Chapter 23 The scourge of Terror: the World as Victim It is rare if a day passes without people falling victim to terror. People everywhere suffer and no one can be safe forever. India had not experienced terror before 1992-93. Since then we have had no respite from that nemesis. In 7/11 attack on the local trains in Mumbai we had a painter who lost his arm that helped him to paint pictures and get his livelihood. He was among the many that lost their lives and limbs and living. There is no end in sight. The manifold suffering includes apart from death and mayhem, migration and displacement. A police constable killed in Mumbai has a wife and children who find it difficult to maintain establishment in the metropolis, they either go back to ancestral village or eke out existence by little moiety from the government. Personal and family loss of the dear one killed is all the time numbing the brain with excruciating pain of loss. Even hope seems to be gone with the wind of terrorism that is blowing across the world. Hope revived some months ago that in the inferno of Iraq at least soccer was the saving grace. See the image of the boys and adolescents celebrating Iraq ’s victory over South Korea on Wednesday July 25, 2007. They have taken off their shirts and are waving them as flags rejoicing at the win. Their placards are neatly printed and clean from any speck of dirt. The heroes of their national team are all in smiles on the placards. There is neither schism here nor sectarian divide. And yet minutes later bombs went off killing at least fifty people, among them must have been some of the innocent boys and adolescents celebrating the victory. What is the source of their suffering? It is the inhuman monster of terrorism that is stalking through the streets of Baghdad and moving down the Tigris where thousands of dead bodies have been fished out and buried. Making holes with the electric drill in the skull or knees of victims and letting them bleed to death in the hospitals and mortuaries of Baghdad is a daily sight. John Howard is in Bali, Indonesia . The meeting on July 27, 2007 between the Australian Prime Minister and his host, the Indonesian President assumes significance in the ongoing terrorist activities around the globe which show no sign of ebbing. The victims of the Bali attack some years back were mostly Australian tourists. Tourists of different nationalities have been targeted for different reasons. The reasons in Turkey are different from Middle East. Bali and Kashmir have different causes of sources of suffering and revenge. The world suffers and yet it has not sufficient motivated drive to end the suffering. The only unipolar power was the US but it is mired in the war on terror which is threatening to create more than end it. Myopic vision and skewed perception are also the disastrous effects of terrorism. In much parts of the world the religion of Islam is in focus. In particular Wahabism is blamed and yet the staunchest Wahabis are the Saudis who are also victims of the same scourge. Colour blindness is in evidence when people blame the Tablighi Jamaat and bundle it with the Wahabism. One is content with its other worldly focus and the other requires a very demanding and literal meaning of the holy book here and now. From the roll call of Justice P.D.Kode’s sentencing the ’93 serial bomb blast perpetrators none seems be either a Whabi or a Tablighi. They were more latitudinarian as they came from the precincts of the Mahim area enjoying the vicinity of the dargah there. Religion itself of all the things after human life is mute sufferer and agonized victim. Bali Hindus lived cheek by jowl with the Muslims and had no record of communal disharmony. But from out of the blue came the scourge of terror. The blasts that rocked the tourist hive of Bali Island in mid October 2002 killed 300 and maimed as many more. The attack was blamed on al Qaeda because two years ago on the same day the USS Cole was hit in the Gulf of Aden , Yemen . The choice of Bali for the terror strike is both simple and difficult to explain. Bali is predominantly (93%) a Hindu province in a Muslim majority country. Thousands of temples dot the “islands of Gods”, but the majority of visitors are Christian Westerners. The President of that time Megawati Sukarnoputri was imbued in Indian culture as she was brought up here; even her name is a witness of the fact. She was most secular minded too. It is interesting to remember that Indonesia and the US did not hold each other in high esteem. When the US embassy was attacked on September 23, 2002, the Indonesians were not convinced about America ’s list of suspects. President Bush had earlier said that his patience with the Indonesian government was wearing thin as it was not cooperating in his war on terrorism. David Wright Neville of Monash University in Australia , who had studied the terrorist network in Southeast Asia , out rightly dismissed the claim that the Bali blasts were meant as an ominous signal to the US . He thought the attack was “archipelagic” in nature, and the perpetrators wanted to show that they could strike at will on any part of the Indonesian island. Most remarkable is the terror in Jammu and Kashmir . I stayed in Srinager for more than a fortnight in 1988-89 with my family. That was the beginning of terror in the valley. We prayed in the famed Hazratbal mosque. Overwhelming number of people was of sufi type. After Friday prayers they would turn their faces and stand and say a hymn in praise of the sufi saint Abdul Qadir Geelani. There was neither any Tablighi jamaat there nor Wahabis. Kashmiri Islam was unique to us. We found to our consternation that the males would wash their penises in the Dal Lake water in full view. That was part of ablution. Nowhere else would you found such a puzzling practice? One day my wife went to buy socks and mentioned that we were from ‘India’. The shopkeeper asked her not to mention India there! Much of what happened since then has become history. Subsequently I attended a month old refresher course in Defence and Strategic Studies of the University of Pune . I put my humble thought that let alone religion or caste or a sect, the real cause of terror was poverty. There were great and learned people from the different parts of India, some were ambassadors, high ranking defence officials including the Admiral of the Navy, and of course strategists and professors. They were convinced that there was some truth in my assertion. Chapter 24 Reforming the police for better handling of communal riots There are several aspects of communal riots which call for serious attention. Identifying the political affiliation of the rioters will give help in dealing with the situation better. When rioters have been and are also frequent protesters in the street the political association will tell the police their type of goondaism. This will be useful in-feeding as the police can be readied to deal with what size and intensity of protest or rioting, weaponry, methods, political pressure, political patronage, retaliatory techniques they would bring to a disturbed situation.. For example dealing with Narmada Bachao Andolan activists, or SIMI protesters, or Shiv Sainiks, or Congress workers, or CPI workers calls for different strategies in controlling the riot or protest. The police tackle a rag tag protester very harshly, may be because he comes from a party which seems to have exhausted all its steam. However, a well dressed businessman instantly leaving his executive position in a commercial complex to lead a mob often makes a different impact in a charged situation involving communal riot. The rag tag person will not get any personal protection of his group but the businessman has a cordon of supporters readily thrown around him daunting the police more because of their social and political standing and colouring. A protest for a civil cause and another with communal potential are of different nature though at times unpredictable in consequences. Repeated appearance of protesters and rioters on police radar screen must fetch them an epithet. Their unruly riotous behaviour deserves the description of communal goondas or hoodlums. Their position in their community or commercial establishment may be august or mediocre but before the law enforcement authorities they are communal goondas and must be booked under IPC 153 sections A and B as well. Their background record must enter in every fresh investigation. The laxity of police in taking cognizance of this factor makes some of them heroes rather than the villains they are. It was Justice Srikrishna who used the words communal goondas based on the Communal Riot Scheme 1986 and “Guidelines.” He was dealing with the investigation of the communal riots of 1992-93 but the name is useful for other communal riots of the past and also of the present and for the ones we fear would come. The police commissioner of Bombay said in his statement to the Srikrishna commission that the political affiliation of the alleged rioter is unimportant because it does not result in greater or lesser punishment if convicted. Commissioner Bapat was otherwise replying tongue in cheek. The affiliation was and is and will be important. Political affiliation should be made descriptive sensitive in handling ground reality. Justice BN Srikrishna observes in this regard: “It is true that the political or other affiliation of an accused does not alter the quantum of punishment to be imposed on him in case he is found guilty. It certainly identifies and tags him so that the next time an opportunity arises for preventive or detective action, the police can easily zero in on the tagged accused as well as his associates from the identified communal organization.” When does a representative of the people become a communal goonda? Some of the above ideas may sound strange. However, they are no stranger than the police station in the neibourhood of houses of law abiding respectable people. The greatest crowd puller in curfew and riot affected area is the local municipal member, MLA or MP or just a political leader. He it is who turns facts into fiction and fiction into facts. He it is who is well connected to the police station. He it is who sees that the obliging cops are aware that they are there at his sufferance. He it is who can get you out of there and vice versa. He it is who enlarges the revenue of the spoils of office, his own and of the police station incharge. What he does is a truth universally acknowledged that anyone who is in need of getting a felon out of trouble must go to him. Justice Srikrishna does not directly call the public representative as a communal goonda. He makes it in the context of detestable work the representative does during riots. “While it may be legitimate for ministers and elected representatives of public to tour their constituencies or area under their charge for effective supervision of riot control and rehabilitation measures, they should be strictly prohibited from visiting police stations and interfering with policing including searches, seizures and combing. Visits to police stations while the riot is in progress and their questioning the officers in–charge about arrests and insisting upon interviews with the arrested persons is highly demoralizing and amounts to interference in the work of police. Communal goondas and mischievous elements get vocal representation inside the police station which interrogates and arraigns the arresting officer, as if he is on trial.” The visit of the communal goonda to a police station is like striking a match in the driver’s cabin of a leaking tanker which has profusely passed out petrol all around within the cabin as well around the high way. “It is true that the policeman is a constituent of society and cannot avoid being impressed by the communal influences in the society in which he lives. While communal thinking in an ordinary citizen, however objectionable, may not produce immediately visible pernicious results, communalisation of a policeman has that effect. It is, therefore, necessary to exorcise the police force of this evil and to inoculate it against it.” The interference of the communal goonda is quite catastrophic. It is time consuming when every minute is very precious for registering the crime, controlling a fast changing situation from turning worse. The ongoing administrative action of the police is directly subverted to exacerbating the communal tension and increasing chances of more bloodshed and enmity. A very difficult and almost insurmountable outcome is shoddy registering of crimes, the result of the machination of the communal goondas. In an interview Justice Srikrishna said on this aspect of investigation: “If the police does some fair documenting that serves as a useful tool, and can be taken as the authentic account of what has happened. But if the protector himself is biased, then it becomes very difficult. You have to go for other witness. Now if a police document says X, but witnesses all say Y, and I know X is a doctored document it becomes a difficult choice for me. When all the way from the CM to a police constable, there is heavy bias.” The Summary A cases are the nagging consequences of police being swayed away by interference of the communal goondas. There are 1,371 such cases which are “true but undetected.” The Shive Sena/BJP government appointed a committee under chairmanship the director general of police to scrutinize the cases. It scrutinized all and decided to reinvestigate 112 cases and filed charge sheet in 8. The government of Congress and NC constituted a Special Task Force which reinvestigated only 15 cases and added fresh 8 cases. How difficult is the task of cleaning the Augean stables of the police! The arduous work of Srikrishna spread to five years during which he could have judged 20,000 cases must not go in vain if we want our police to improve. Chapter 25 Hyderabad bombings, a national tragedy The two bombing incidents of May 18, 2007 and August 25, 2007 in Hyderabad show the fury with which the city has been subjected to suffering. In the case of the Mecca mosque the young boy lying on his side with left hand folded under head seems to be sleeping innocently except the gory hole in the head and pool of blood under head instead of a pillow. The young well dressed gentleman lying between the rows of plastic chairs in Lumbini amusement park is seemingly oversleeping after having slid from the chair when everyone left the stadium except the blood soaked debris. Death and destruction is common to both. What is not common is the violent protest against the police of the first incident leading to police firing and more casualties. Moreover the first attack was specifically clear in targeting a community exclusively on the basis of religion. Friday mid day prayer was more tempting time than other times of prayer on the same or other days of the week. But in the second the target is obviously not of the same clear focus. A chat bhandar or eatery and an amusement park are familiar places for all communities. This is all the more convincing since that Saturday was not a religious festival day. Saturday evening and night are also more relaxed times for educated and employed to go out and eat and enjoy with family. The weekend and Friday midday prayer are occasions of crowding and rush time. However a look at the dead reveals that the recent bombing is sweeping in target. It is more or less all-India in its comprehension. Could that be a signal? From Saki Naka Mumbai to Tamil Nadu in the south, Haryana in the north and Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand in the east, to Rajkot in the North West, you have the whole country metaphorically bombed. This must lead to a resurgence of nationalist feeling of the pre independent India of Gandhi, Nehru and Azad rather than of today that is exclusionary, polarizing, and self seeking. There is a cacophony and chorus of responses and analyses that hardly contribute to strength and unity. The suffering of the mother of Baja Srilekha (18) for the death of her daughter or grief etched contours of the face of the father of Irshad Ahmed Abdul Gani (19) is Indian. This calls for a nationalist response that among other things sets the house in order first and then helps us to know where we have come and why and the remedy. Given this commonality as well as disparity of situation what could be the common or otherwise motive, hidden agenda and who the perpetrators of the heinous crime? There is hardly any terror strike in India which does not come with the immediate blame on the ISI in tandem. It is has become so quotidian that the foreign spokesperson of a neighbouring country has acquired the chic in asking us to investigate and not speculate! And another neighbour has the cheek to show boredom of denying over and over again the same accusation from our side. Such denials of every accusation have changed into standard formal automatic responses. Of course, on both the sides. Next we need to introspect about formulating what could be the aim of the perpetrators. Equally true is ubiquity of the same aim of explosion: dividing the people on communal lines. However we have reached a point when religion must cease to make us look at the ghastly tragedy taking place around us from this angle. If at all there are religious factors we must take them purely in terms of rationality and humanity. If it is political Islam it is just realpolitik and not Islam. If it is Hindutuva then it is not Hinduism. In the tragedy of Hyderabad as well as around the country there have been practically no communal riots as an outcome of the explosions. Sometimes protesters have damaged shops and suspected people of a community. But by and large there has been no communal riot or carnage following on the heels of terror strikes. Therefore there is need to not upfront the communal divide as the primary motivating factor. Other reasons must be probed. India has 10 % growth rate and the US is wooing it for reasons not fully spelled including as a checkmate against China. An unknown factor can come up. Terror itself does not discriminate its victims, between Irshad Ahmed Abdul Gani from Saki naka of Mumbai or Sachin Dattatrya Bhinor from Ahmednager. The victims were from diverse fields of disciplines with which their youthful hearts were filled to make a name in the world and serve the country. Among them were the seven students from Mahrashtra, several of them from Nashik itself and three professors. A boy called Milind Mandage was the son of a school teacher from Pimpri Gawali village in Parner in Maharashtra and wanted to sail in the world on ambition powered by mathematics in which he excelled. Sujeet Kumar Jha (19) from Laheriasarai in Bihar’s Darbhanga was pursuing his ambition in electronics which his father supported from a loan. There were 18 engineers from Jabalpur, Kota and Bhopal sent to Hyderabad. From this group M K Jain and Ibrahim Khan died in the park. Both were under training in driving train engines using microprocessor-based speedometers for diesel locomotives. Another victim was from Orissa’s Berhampur Dr K V Ananda Rao who was pursuing super-specialisation in medical oncology at the NIMS in Hyderabad. Irshad was a student of engineering and was hopeful of doing MBA to rise in the world. Kiran Choudhary is of course the young gentleman man we have pictured in the first paragraph as oversleeping. He was also an engineer; a Maharashtrian from Kalyan. Saurabh Kumar of Samsatipur in Bihar was studying computer science in Symbiosis of Poona. Vallabh Fefar was a dealer in mattresses and was prospering in business when the mattress company sent him on Hyderbad tour as incentive. He took his family with him. He died and his son seriously injured. He was from Rajkot, Gujarat. Terrorism could not have been so selective in its target! While the victims were from all the corners of the country, the perpetrators though not identified as yet remain a miniscule non representative entity. Even so the make of the bombs of May and August show clear differences. That may even help in identification, mode of assembly, motive and the brain behind. At the face of it we may think of Harkat-ul-Jehadi Islami (HuJI) or the JeM but the difficulty is to prove that Abdul Sahil Mohammad based in Karachi or Hamza could use RDX in the mosque and then shift to ordinary Neogel 90 and ammonium nitrate manufactured in Nagpur. Such far fetched argument that the people hang posters of Musharraf and Osama bin Laden in their houses in Hyderbad therefore they are suspect is ridiculous. Because between these two men stands the Lal masjid. Or should we do Sherlock Holmes detection of the portrait of martyred imam of the red mosque taking the place of Musharraf? (Don’t be surprised by the syllogism, it is from an additional secretary of the central government who was also with the RAW, the Kaoboy.) Howsoever ridiculous any argument, it must also be examined. Even the vicinity of Hyderabad to Nanded where crackers exploded worse than bombs should not be far fetched. Events have a strange way of unfolding and much stranger way of being reported. On February 27, 1933 the German paratroopers under Nazi leader Herman Goring had helped a man from Holland Marinus van der Lubbe burn the Reichstag (the German parliament). Adolf Hitler became angry and went to the office of the newspaper Volkischer Beobachter and worked the whole night with editor Goebbels They concocted a story blaming the communists. As a result 4000 communists lost their lives. What followed was the very holocaust. We in India have had enough of our own and must establish the truth to save the nation. Chapter 26 Need for Civil Rights Movement in India The civil rights movement in the United States was a watershed in the relationship between the whites and blacks. It opened up the American society for justice and equality. Much of the ugly racial violence substantially subsided because of it. Equal opportunity took roots in the aftermath of the movement in the 1960s. The result is there for anyone to see. More blacks have got education and jobs and come in the mainstream as one can see them in the armed forces, in the state department or the defence department, in the judiciary as well as in the legislature. Barak Obama, Secretary of States Dr Condoleeza Rice and her predecessor Colin Powell are all blacks. The great writers and musicians and sports persons from that community make a much bigger list. The nation enjoys greater sense of togetherness. Civil rights marches in the streets of Washington and elsewhere included whites and blacks alike. Martin Luther King Jr and his fellow workers across the racial divide bridged the gulf that was a cause of disaffection and violence. India has not seen such civil rights movement although the communal violence has risen in a crescendo and threatens to make haywire of the society if it has not done so already. The bomb blasts in Hyderabad on May 18 and August 25 of 2007 crystallize how two different sets of reactions were witnessed. This fissiparous attitude calls for the civil rights movement that would bring back sanity to the people as the people themselves suffer irrespective of their religion. Similarly the judgment in the serial bomb blasts of March 1993 is not followed by equally prompt registration of crimes of rioting and fair investigation and conviction. The Chief Minister Mr Deshmuckh and his party succeeded in persuading the Muslim to call off their rally on August 20, 2007. That rally was meant to put pressure for speedy justice to the victims of the communal riots of December 1992 and January 1993. However, what happened after that is not only dragging feet in the matter of inquiry and prosecution but self-justification on the part of the police. Instead of good will there is deepening of the stagnancy of ill will, which does not augur well. On Thursday September 20, 2007 thousands of blacks and human rights activists descended on the town of Jena in Louisiana to launch a second civil rights movement in America. Exactly a year ago six black boys had attacked a fellow white schoolmate who became unconscious. The victim Justin Barker had his face badly swollen but attended school later that night. The six were arrested and tried for attempted murder. They were released on bail except Michal Bell, 16. He remained in prison for a whole year and could not get $90,000 for bail. The civil rights groups point out that the police have selectively used the criminal laws. In September 2006 a black boy in US sat under a tree in the recess. The tree was called “white tree”, not that the bark was white but because it was preserved for the whites. Three white boys hung three nooses from the tree later that day. This was reminiscent of lynching of the blacks in the pre 1960s civil rights time and also a warning to the coloured students to avoid the tree. The three whites were suspended from school but were not prosecuted. The tree was cut down. Racial tension increased and then the six attacked Justin. The police did not register a case of hate crime against the whites but not only arrested the six blacks but booked them for adult crime while they should have been booked under juvenile court laws. Addressing the rally Rev Al Sharpton remarked that he would work with others and have the district magistrate explain to the American Congress his indiscriminate use of law. Martin Luther King III (son of the legendary father who addressed the famous 1960s’ march and delivered “I have a dream” speech) told the gathering that punishment of some sort may be in order for the six defendants, but “the justice system isn’t applied the same to all crimes and all people.” "It's not just about Jena, but about inequalities and disparities around the country," said Stephanie Brown, 26, national youth director for the NAACP. "Every year at Jena High School there's a black-and-white fight," said Casa Compton, 26, a Jena native, who is African-American. "It's always been tense. There's always been prejudice and bigotry here. Every day they're throwing away a black man's life down here.'' "I think a lot of people recognize that the criminal justice system grinds down people of colour everyday," said J. Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group based in Montgomery, Ala. Rev Jesse Jackson said of the district magistrate prosecuting the case and who threatened the blacks that he would "ruin" their lives, "That is persecution, not prosecution. That is prosecutorial misconduct." "Nobody has taken our side. The only white people who have are from out of town," said Tina Jones, the mother of 18-year-old Bryant Purvis, the only defendant still facing attempted-murder charges. "I don't know if it's racism. But blacks and whites are not treated equal. That's what I call it." With this kind of another civil rights movement underway in the US, the situation in India is far more aggravated but there is no civil rights movement to take up the cause for the greater good of the nation. In the third week of September 2007 the government of Maharashtra submitted two affidavits in Bombay high court regarding the Hari masjid, Sewri, firing case of January 10, 1993, in which six people were killed and among the injured was Farooq Mapkar. Justice Srikrishna had found sub inspector Nikhil Kapse “guilty of unjustified firing and inhuman and brutal behaviour” However, police deputy commissioner Dattatrya Shinde and senior inspector Namdeo Wayal in their affidavits now assert that Kapse did his duty when a mob attacked the police. Farooq Mapkar was one of the 40 arrested. Except him the others cooperated with the police and were released. Mapkar had appealed the court to book Kapse for murder. In response to this the police now charge Mapkar with murder and have produced an “eyewitness”, Arun Ghadge. But the same Arun Ghadge had in his deposition to the court said in 2006 that he was not in the locality at the time of the incident. How differently would have the civil rights movement activists handled this case if it were in America! Sacchar committee report and the follow up recommendations of Mr Antulay to improve the backwardness in Muslim minority should have created some kind of affirmative action acceptable to all. This is what the Americans did Instead we have the signed statement of Bal Thackeray containing ominous warning and repudiation of Muslims. It does not acknowledge the backwardness of the minority rather ascribes to them that they have more landed property than the Hindus of India, and where they are less in number and are considered poor then where they are in larger numbers they must be deemed rich, they enjoy a Haj committee, their literacy rate is higher than that of the Hindus, if the ajlaf in their community are backward the ashraf have shored them up, they have financial corporation of their own (so, the Hindus have none?). In this letter to the Prime Minister he questions the need to appoint Sachar commission, and ironically points out that the dalits have already their quotas and are numerically more than the Muslims. Therefore giving concessions to Muslims will harm their interest. He ends the letter with warning that it is sowing of seed of another partition. Thus the lot of the Muslims must remain what it is. They must remain where they are and doing anything to them would be paving way for another partition of the country. This trend of thinking shows that the sense of civil society has not taken roots in the country yet. Civil society involves an equal regard for all others who share life and amenities with us. Whereas the need of the hour is to involve all others and reach out to all others within the country in a spirit of affirmative action Thackeray’s line and that of the BJP would create negative action. Deprive more the deprived rather than redress. In Jamshedpur riots of early 1960s people of majority community had shut the door of a factory and descended on the hapless unarmed Muslim employees and butchered them as did the medical students of Ranchi medical college slaughtered fellow students of Muslim minority community. No civil rights march were there then except that a delegation of Muslim thinkers and educationists visited the area where even the Hindus were gathered to welcome them and wept over the butchery! Chapter 27 Ajmer: attack on composite cuture The bomb blast at the shrine of Moinuddin Chisti in Ajmer was a sinister and diabolic event to have happened. It is clear targeting of the Muslim community. This is borne out by similar attacks on Jama Masjid of Delhi, Mecca mosque of Hyderbad, Malegaon Hamidia mosque and several mosques of Purna, Parbhani and other places of Marathwada region in the past. Of the most holy nights this last lailatulkader, the powerful night of prayer is revered by all sections of the community. The only other night is the shab-be-barat that precedes Ramzan by a fortnight. Both these holy occasions were chosen to kill and maim Muslims in India. Shab-be-barat here in Malegaon on September 8, 2006 saw the mosque and cemetery, biggest in India, bombed. More than fifty Muslim boys and men were blown up and killed, more than two hundred injured. This evening of October 11, 2007 is the onset of the last of the lailatulkader of Ramzan. The place is Ajmer, the sanctum sanctorum of Sufism:Moinuddin Chisti’s gave side. Three have died in the bomb blast and seventeen injured, five of them are serious. One of them is Abdul Rehman from Nasik. It will shock the members of Muslim minority everywhere in the country as well as Hindus. At this early hour it is difficult to say who might have carried it out. But ominous signs are there. It is crystal clear that this is an attack on our composite culture of which the shrine is a symbol. Hindus, if not more, equally revere the shrine, like their Muslim brethren. Thousands of them pay respect and wish for their well being there. Scores of film stars, candidates in election, business men and ordinary people go there seeking blessings and praying for prospects in profession, business and family. All visiting heads of states and governments who come to India invariably visit the shrine and pay tributes. Those who carried out the bombing did not like the worldwide obeisance and the composite culture. The dargah was the mark of the secular foundation of the Indian polity and a popular place of national unity. A third reason is propaganda. Every act, as this one is the latest, of terrorism is an exercise in propaganda. Someone is trying to destroy the secular and constitutional foundations of the country and this is their message. The hour is iftar or breaking fast, no other moment would be so peak hour for publicity as well as for crowding as this one! What do they want to propagate? It is irony of ironies that government minister Shri Prakash Jaipal had visited the shrine ten days ago and warned that it was on the target of the terrorists. That is what exactly happened. It again underscores the universal failure of the intelligence agencies and indifference of the police. The top intelligence agency RAW is entirely made up of Hindus. They have barred Muslims and Sikhs from entering the agency. Currently they are preoccupied with corruption to the tunes of crores of rupees. Is that the work they deem necessary and hence bar others from sharing? Intelligence gathering requires people of all castes and communities who can merge with the crowd and infiltrate organizations to find out vital clues. The official stance is highly discriminatory against the minorities like the Muslim and the Sikh. It also smacks of lack of trust in fellow countrymen. In most of the bomb blasts cases there seems to be no tab kept on the Hindu organizations like the RSS, Bajrang Dal, VHP, whether such organizations have any thing up their sleeves or not. This lack of intelligence has been pointed out by no other than a former police commissioner of Mumbai, Julio Ribero. It is also the syllogism of the Nanded bomb blasts in which RSS and Bajrang Dal activists in collusion with VHP were actively making bombs. Such a one exploded before it could be used before the targeted mosque in Aurangabad. The narco test analysis of one of the injured shows this to be the case. To hold this mighty country together it is necessary to involve all. The dargah at Ajmer teaches a lesson to the agencies of the government. The Hindus who have been injured there bear witness to this fact. Once officials readily and facilely blame the ‘terrorists’ our attention is diverted from the fact that there are others who also believe in violence and practice it for their sectarian interest what if they come from the majority? The other angle is that Islam is blamed for what the so-called jihadi terrorism is doing around the world. But there is a catch here. There is no credible evidence that Muslims themselves are hell bent on destroying their own mosques and shrines so that they alone would be held responsible and bear the ignominy. Dividing the community between the Wahabis and the Sufis, or Sunnis or Shias or Salafis does not render any help. All of them hold the occasions of lailatulkader and shab-be-barat in high respect and do works of piety and devote hours in praying for individual and group salvation and forgiveness. They may not practice each tenet in the same way. But to attribute terrorism to them at such times would be rather far-fetched if not unrealistic. Another angle is the agent provocateurs from across the border. In every bomb blasts in the country the Pakistani agent is involved but he is never caught. Is he the mythical wandering Jew? Why? And the Paki foreign spokesperson asks us to do our homework first before raising accusing finger. Checking and frisking fifteen to twenty thousand people is worth detecting the tiffin box, or school bag that contains the RDX. Already the place was teeming with security personnel. What are they there for? Chapter 28 Iniquity of religious intolerance It is self evident that all religions have come for the well being ofmen. God has created all men equal. There are certain moral values inevery religion which wants its followers to obey. However perceiveddifferences in meaning of what religions say lead to differences whichmorph into groups. One group tries to out do the others. Every modernstate is bound by some governing principles of equality before laws aswell as security of life and property and retributive justice, if anyone is wronged, is the right of every citizen.The Iraqis had enjoyed many such rights as well as religiousobservance until the other day. But now the state and religioussituation is so skewed that they have undergone a traumatictransformation. Neither religion nor the state can be justified forthe suffering of the people in its name. India has also seen greatupheavals of injustice. The genocide of Muslims in Gujarat is onesuch glaring case.In Iraq the lots of the women plummeted with the fall of Baghdad. Theylost freedom and equality they had enjoyed before 2003. The policechief of the southern town on Basra said in mid November 2007 thatreligious intolerance had risen very high. One section tried to showthat it was holier than the other. They were shias of differentdenominations. Imam Khomeni had brought a degree of modest coveringfor women which allowed them to live in Iran as well as in Mumbai orPoona like many Muslims in Kerala. Now extremism has seized the land.There are self styled followers of religion who chase women and runthem down by their cars because they are unveiled. In this way a partof the religious observance is made into the whole body of faith,synecdochic Islam. Ayaan Hirshi Ali calls it Parada Islam. There aregroups who apply the electric grill to the knees of their opponents toinstant death. In America there is a similar change. In his book Our EndangeredValues former president Jimmy Carter says that in the last quartercentury there has emerged a right wing movement. This right wingmovement is revolutionary (radical) and gives special favours for thepowerful at the expense of the others, and justifies abandonment ofsocial justice and denigration of those who differ. All of theseviolate the basic Christian teaching of loving our neighbours asourselves. The fundamentalist Pat Robertson says about the differentgroups, "You say you are supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians andthe Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, and the other thing.Nonsense, I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the antichrist."Samuel Huntington has nuanced his nefarious thesis of "clash ofcivilization" (Islam versus the Rest) into cultural conflicts. Thisis nothing else but what the RSS has been saying in India. Golwalkerand others have always asserted that everyone who lives here is Hindu.But the RSS exists to maintain the Hindu culture against the culturesof the minorities. Thus on October 20, 2007, marking the 82ndanniversary Sarsanghchalak S.K.Sudarshan said "When we try to evaluatethe result of more than eight decades of effort, one thing comesoutstandingly. When in 1925 the Sangh was founded, the Hindu societyhad descended to such an abyss of self negation that they were ashamedof calling themselves as Hindus. 'Call us donkeys but don't call usHindus.' Today, however, the Hindu has become conscious of hisidentity. He doesn't feel any inhibition in calling himself aHindu…But the Sangh is not satisfied with only this much. Sangh wantsthat not only the Hindu society should be vigilant and full of selfrespect but should be able to face all kinds of onslaught perpetratedagainst the Hindu society." Former sangh pracharak and now Chief Minister of Gujarat Narendra Modiused state power to make experiment in the Gujarat Hindutivalaboratory of what sarsanghchalak exhorts above. The result is thegenocide of Muslims, on whatever pretext that comes handy. Therefore,the subversion of religious and state power and belief is not onlyinterlinked but justified. To save India from such disastrousconsequences the retributive justice system must be enforcedimpartially.J.S.Bandukwala's specious appeal to Muslims to forgive theperpetrators of the genocide of 2002 and his placatory lopsidedreasons cut no ice. He says "It is time for Muslims to considerunilateral forgiveness. Such forgiveness by victims confirms to thehighest traditions of Islam." Bandukwala fails to understand that inthe Hindutva laboratory the guinea pigs are Muslims. They areessentially victims of the pogroms but in the heinous design of theexperimenters the Muslims have always been victors and aggressors anddeserve no pity. That is what Bajrangi and Bhatt, Modi and Sudarshanwant. Can eighty years of cumulative revengeful efforts disappear by aformal declaration of forgiveness? Chapter 29 Terrorism of bondage to past The Indian subcontinent is still a captive to its past. It is infected with the menace of terrorism as a legacy of its past. There is no sign that it has redeemed itself from its harrowing past or is willing, either. Therefore the politicized mechanism to fight is also motivated by history rather than ground reality. Mumbai attacks of November 26, 2008 were at first thought unique for being quite new in aspect, dimension and preparation. However if you look closely the serial blasts of March 1993 were also of the same dimension and preparation and so was the aspect of RDX imported and used in attacks. Muslims essentially in India figure as perpetrators (and also victims, like their fellow countrymen). That the terrorists were Pakistanis and not Indians makes no difference in perception as far as November 26 attacks are concerned. Basically revenge against atrocity has powered one sort as the Anand Math has done the other. The incidents of Bankum Chand Chatterjee’s novel depict the terrifying Sanayasi rebellious terrorism of early 1700s against the Muslim rule in Bengal. Today India is ruled neither by the Mughals or their descendants nor by the crusaders. Whether India survives or not our gods must is the trickster’s fancy as it is premised upon the belief that we lost Kabul, Peshawar and Lahore through terrorism because our gods also lost space there. Another inference of this new Anand Math approach is that since only 6 Muslims lost life in Malegaon blast of September 29, it is, nationally speaking, not as material as Mumbai attacks. More so because in the latter case all the ten terrorists were Muslims while all the eleven accused in the former are of different faith who cannot be terrorist thanks to their faith. Equally nefarious and potentially dangerous is the next inference that India paid a heavy price for diverting attention to Malegaon in order to cater a vote bank rather than maintaining focus on the recent bomb blasts in Ahmdabad, Delhi, etc. This latter course would have turned the screw on ‘the enemies of the nation’ while the former course (in which Hemant Karkare had found a Sadhvi and a Shankaracharya and a serving lieutenant colonel, etc as perpetrators) was politicized as it turned on the lawbreakers who were not Muslims. There is a good deal of talk about Hindutva terror or sangh parivar terror since the arrest of the sadhvi, the swami and the lieutenant colonel. However like all other terrorism this is not new. Digamber Badge (one of the accused in Mahatma Gandhi assassination case) was just like a sadhu (a foil of Guru Golawlker) when he peddled arms and carried some to VD Savarkar to inspect when he went to meet that ‘revolutionary’ along with Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte. RSS member Madanlal Pahwa had joined the 1000 strong private army of RSS volunteers of Dr Dattatraya Parchure of Gwaliar and would attack Muslims who were leaving Bhopal on the way to newly created Pakistan. Was his murderous violence any less kind of terror? Indeed it was so terrifying that no other than Gandhiji himself forced the ruler of Gwaliar to reign in Parchure. That so disgusted Madanlal that he left Parchure’s militia and came to Mumbai and continued terrorist attack in hotels and on hawkers. From there he went to Ahmednager and threw a grenade at a Muslim procession and ran away and took refuge in the Deccan Guest House of fellow RSS member Vishnu Karkare. Was this not terror? Attacking Gandhiji with bombs and bullets was exactly terror. There was a motivation and propaganda in it. So the whole talk of extremist Hindus taking to terrorism in recent years does not match with the historic facts given above. The much-debated jihad terrorism is also not new. The origin of the word assassin comes from Arabic and its historic incidents in Turkey are as stark terror as the Kurds there using terrorism for their different ends today. The terrorists from the other side of our borders deign it their duty to speak for the Muslims of the country whom they consider as victims of Hindu extremism without bothering to know that their every act enhances the excruciating suffering of the increasingly ghettoized Muslims of India. What is new about the Mumbai attacks of November 26, however, is the divergent responses including the rage the people feel against Pakistan, Indian intelligence agencies, the politicians (remember the attacks coincided with the assembly election in BJP ruled Madhya Pardesh and ended with the election in Delhi). If this rage motivates the people and the government in the right direction we can begin to redeem ourselves from the bondage to the past. Nevertheless we run across a blockade, the triangular complexity of still-shrouded-in-mystery connectivity of the juggernaut to stymie the investigation into the Sanayasi terrorism as Malegaon went through of the sadhvi, the swami and the lieutenant colonel, the assassination of Hemant Karkare and the looming 60-hour long attack in Mumbai. The monk in Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code also practices Sanayasi terrorism. Or, what else was it? The monk’s assassination of the key members of the mysterious Christian order, the Masonic order, too, was terror. The challenge is how to decode and who is to do it. Sophia’s grandfather Saunnier was the custodian of the museum and was steeped in it, as was Hemant Karkare in the codes of the Sanayasi-Sadhvi :“Singh has sung” and “the cat is out of the bag”. But the assassination of the trio, Hemant Karkare, Salaskar and Komte, is reminiscent of another sensational drama of yesterday involving three murders. On November 22, 1963 President John F Kennedy was assassinated. His assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was spotted walking in a deserted street, as deserted as the back streets of Cama hospital and Metro cinema, a police officer tried to arrest him but he shot the officer dead. Afterward Oswald went to a cinema where the police arrested him. But two days later a mafia man called Jack Ruby (an Orthodox Jew, a night club owner, whose real name was Jacob Rubinstein) shot Oswald dead shouting, “Jews have guts”. Some also blamed that the Masonic order got the President killed. In the present case of Mumbai, the ten terrorists had come to the Chabad house where the Orthodox Jew Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg lived with wife Rovla. The terrorists sent the servant to buy 100 kilo of chicken and 25 kilo of dry fruits. Israeli rescue and recovery organization called Zaka says that the bullets of the terrorists did not cause the death of the rabbi. But the next day the Israeli government denied it fearing its special and strategic relation with India would be jeopardized. It claimed that the rabbi died by bullets fired by the terrorists. It is interesting to remember how the email of the Indian Mujahideen was allegedly sent from the computer of another orthodox evangelical order to which Kenneth Heyward belonged in Mumbai and Bangalore. The dead cannot tell their tale, who can? Chapter 30 Hinduising politics and militarizing Hindudom, the consequences The advantage of having different organizations helps the sangh parivar not only to carry out their work but also escape legal hurdles and deflect attention focused on any one of them. VHP and Bajrang Dal were involved in the violent protest in Jammu over Amarnath yatra land dispute although the Amarnath sangharsh samiti was mentioned on the banners and its officials were making statements. There were Abhinav Bharat activists involved in it as well. With Sudhakar Pandey officiating as Shankaracharya of Jammu and Kashmir and based very much in Jammu itself during the height of the violent agitation what more could the extremists want? Many people in the crowd had their faces covered . Simultaneously Indresh Kumar of RSS with active support from RSS chief Sudershan and Mohan Bhagwat was conducting his march for peace and harmony form Nizamuddin to Hazratbal mosque in Kashmir where ‘nationalist’ minded Muslims were involved. This is how the sangh has its cake and eats it too. Much like the specious argument that we should not communalize terrorism not because ‘no Hindus are terrorists or all Muslims are.’ VD Savarkar had founded the Hindu Mahasabha as well as Abhinav Bharat for one objective but different means to achieve it. In England he was involved in activities of the radicals or revolutionaries including bomb making. He was caught and was being taken to India when the ship anchored at Marseilles in France. He knew the laws well and was afraid that he would be prosecuted so he slid down through the shaft in the latrine and swam to the shore. He attacked a police constable on duty so that the French would arrest him and prevent his deportation to India. But the French handed him back to the British. The present complex relationship of RSS and the fire-eaters of Abhinav Bharat is nothing new. They have a common core of interest which they cannot allow their internal differences to capsize. Savarkar’s book Hindutva and its ideology cannot be pacifist manifesto of a liberal group. Nathuram Godse carried the book when he went to kill Mahatma Gandhi. Narayan Apte and Vishnu Karkare(no relation of Hemant Karkare) accompanied him. As the president of Hindu Mahasabha Savarkar was behind them. Their unmitigated hate for Muslims was deeply ingrained. In his childhood Savarkar would organize attacks on mosques in Bhagur near Nasik in retaliation against perceived/reported injustice or wrong suffered by Hindus elsewhere in the country. His child play slowly grew into a life long passion and a philosophy. Himani Savarkar’s[ president of the revived Abhinav Bharat] father Gopal Godse asserted that all the four Savarkar brothers grew up in the milieu of the RSS rather than in their kin family. Their kinship in ideology was better defining attribute than their (including Apte’s) descent from Chitpawan Brahamanism. The ideology betrayed them as the erased number on the chassis of the motorcycle of sadhvi Pragyasingh Thakur did her. A Punjabi youth Mandanlal Pawa had hurled a bomb at Mahatma Gandhi on January 20, 1948. There were other accomplices. Nathuram and Gopal Godse had their grenades in their hands but the commotion unnerved them so much that they fled the scene. A terrified woman collecting her child and running to safety saw the police and pointed out the attacker. The police nabbed him. Madanlal did not know the names of his accomplices but he told the police that they were from Poona and one of them was the editor of “Hindu Rashtra” newspaper. The police went to the hotel where Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte had stayed. The two had been so scared that they did not collect their things before they fled Delhi. They had left a document signed by Ashutosh Lahiri of Hindu Mahasabha which denounced Gandhiji and the condition on which he broke his fast. Gandhiji had gone on hunger strike in protest against killing of Muslims in the city. In Bombay deputy commissioner Jimmy Nagarvalla had his Bombay Watchers’ Club keep a watch on the house of Savarkar which reported that Madanlal had visited the house a week ago. The police did a fine job and identified the people from Poona and got their photos as well and handed them over to the deputy director general of police of the province, UH Rana. Instead of rushing to Delhi by plane to brief home department he traveled by train and on January 24-25 he had the file with the photos of the killers and details but did not tell the Delhi police and did not pass it to the security guards of Gandhiji at the Birla house. That proved fatal on Friday January 30, as Nathuram Godse, Vishnu Karkare and Nrayan Apte not only reached Birla house but also did a rehearsal. Nathuram shot at the target on the tree with the gun that Gwaliar doctor Parchure of RSS had procured him. Soon afterward he succeeded in killing Gandhiji. Taking advantage of the police uniform he had donned he melted in the crowd. The pertinent thing to remember is that like the Abhinav Bharat of today there was similarity of views and unity of purpose. The assassins and their backer were intolerant of Muslims. Gandhiji had demanded that Muslims be allowed to pray at the Quwwatul Islam Mosque at Mehrauli at the midmorning too. The Government accepted this condition. That Friday Gandhiji had gone to the mosque along with his two nieces. The Muslims embraced him and welcomed the two girls within the mosque, which is against their canonized practice. This was outrageous to Savarkar and also to his followers. In 2001 Sunil Joshi and Narayansingh Kalsingram (Ramji who planted the Freedom motorcycle of Sadhvi Pragyasingh thakur at Bhiku chowk of Malegaon) wanted to disturb the Tablighee Ijtema at Bhopal but were allowed to go free by the government. Their grouse was how could the government allow this huge gathering of the Muslims. Uninhibited and unabashed hatred of Muslims and not terrorism was and is the driving force of the Abhinav Bharat. Lt Col Purohit, Ramesh Upadhya as well as Himani Savarkar had lived down the massacre of 37 Sikhs in Chittisingpora on the eve of Bill Clinton visit. The army, the governor, Dayanand Pandey and the rest of the country were silent witness to national security advisor Brajesh Mishra rushing to news conference declaring the Islamic terrorists behind the massacre, exhuming of the bodies of the five innocent Muslims who were made to bear the cross of stigma of Jihad terrorism, then the bungle of the DNA test report and finally the truth. Closer at home they had also known the brutal murder of Khwaja Yunus by the cops of Mumbai. In their much vaunted laboraroty of Hindutva, Gujarat 2002, they had seen visuals of Gulbarg society being encircled a full day before the hapless victims within were taken out and murdered in full view of the public with the police standing around there. If they still wanted to kill Muslims it was not terrorism but their inveterate hatred for them. The same strong feeling is in Dr RP Singh of Abhinav Bharat. He did not like that the RSS should be training the Maoists in RSS run schools in Nepal. That was against the interest of the Hindu dynasty there. He along with Himani Savarkar had one common target: if there is bullet for bullet there should be blast for blast as well. But the moot point was the cops could use bullet for bullet in encounters. However blast for blast required sourcing RDX and cash. The former was with the army and the latter was also available abroad. That is where Shyam Apte comes in picture. Most worrisome is the spectre of 54 youths whom Rakesh Dhawde had arranged to be trained at the Sinhgad camp in 2003. All of them, including Dhawde, had joined Abhinav Bharat. What if the 60 kg of RDX obtained by Purohit is still with them. And according to Sameer Kulkarni, co founder of Abhinav Bharat, there are 5000 members of the organization across the country. Nay, they have even created sleeper cells in Bangladesh to retaliate. Chapter 31 Malegaon, crime trail of terror As investigations into recent bomb blasts are still underway and it is difficult to prove what we write howsoever we may try to be objective there is still the emergent need for introspection that cannot be denied to journalism. Whatever you read between the lines may open up a new vista which may have till now been choked up by the ‘dumping of toxic feelings” by leaders and religious biased groups. Much of the coverage on Malegaon is bound to generate heat in debates and discussions where cool-headed analysis in the national interest is required. The evolving scenario makes one wonder as to what has been happening when we were ‘sleeping’. Therefore we walk a tight rope in dealing with bomb blasts and the cases of Sonal Shah, now on the advisory committee of President elect Barack Obama. It is reported in a Marathi daily of Malegaon that Sadhvi Pragyasingh has confessed that foreign fund was used in the bomb blast in Malegaon. This contrasts with what has been reported that Lt Col Purohit had misappropriated military intelligence fund. Both the sources of funding are serious and dangerous for the country. They involve fraud nationally and internationally that goes against the grain of the army that has had world opinion on its sides till recently as far as discipline is concerned. Therefore the necessity of each one accused in terrorism facing scrutiny at all levels and from all angles. Purohit had taken Rs 20,000 from Mr Shirish Yeshwant Date who had family acquaintance with him for getting him licence for arms. Purohit supplied false information by giving bogus documents stating that Date lived in the defence colony of Deolali, Nasik. This fraudulent means of getting money is debauchery. Mystery surrounds the arrest of Sudhakar Chaturvedi who was arrested from Dadar railway station on November 4 with a country-made revolver and a fake army identity card. If Purohit could give fake residence certificate that Date lived in defence colony of Deolali he could provide fake army identity card as well. It is reported that he not only knew the Malegaon conspiracy but was very much present in Malegaon itself. BJP is the only political party that boasts a separate retired army personnel cell. One such retiree is the chief minister of Uttarakhand B C Khanduria retired Major General. Another retired officer and BJP member, Sabyasachi Bagchi proudly says that RSS develops the character of the young people. It is this character building that makes them good soldier. If this were so why has the training of RSS gone haywire in the case of Purohit? Of greater concern is the interference of the party and its ideology in the armed forces through this association. SS Raikar of Bhonsla military school is also a retired person rom the army. He allowed the school premises for terror, hatching conspiracy as well as arms training and providing accommodation. The former governor of Jammu and Kashmir SK Sinha has allegedly allowed Dyanand Padey to stay in the official residence. Why have these army men behaved the way they have done? A neutral source retired Lt Gen V.R. Raghavan, former director-general of military operations blames “ultra nationalism of a narrow kind” responsible for the criminality of the contaminated serving and retired army officers. Thus what Bagchi says is eyewash. No less is the case of Sameer Kulkarni who had taken deposit money from a customer to provide him a computer. Failing to supply he issued a cheque as the customer threatened him. The cheque bounced. The police registered a case against Kulkarni. Dyanand Pandey’s first appearance in the court on November 17 is of grave import as he broke down and begged that the court should rather hang him but not touch his laptop. What is there in the laptop that he should be so much concerned about it? A popular news channel probed the matter and believes that the Pandey must have stored nude pictures of women and great men of his acquaintance. This bonanza of pornography is bound to shame him along with all those who figure in the collection. The police again used the old technique of retrieving the deleted files for clues. Or is the suspicion real that there is similar delay here as it was in the case of Purohit’s laptop. The delay in finding the laptop was a ruse behind which lies the real intention of deleting the more serious files? Pandey had harboured criminals in his ashram in Dhand, Ahmdabad. It is also believed that Ramji Kalsangar alias Ramnarayan Singh was sheltered there. On Friday November 14 2008 Dyannd Pandey committed perjury by saying that he was not Dayanand Pandey but Amritanand Dwivedi. He has other aliases as well and that is why the Kanpur judicial magistrate Mukesh Kumar Singh on Thursday noted the multiple names adopted by Amritanand while granting transit remand to ATS as he felt certain that Dayanand Pandey, Sudhakar Dwivedi and Swami Amritanand Dev were aliases of the same person who heads the Sharada Sarvadnya Peeth in Jammu. His craze to false identity is venal as he was in Gorakhpur in 2006 at the invitation of BJP MLA Shiv Pratap Shukla as Jagatguru Shankracharya. He fled when a man asked about his identity. Murkier still was his craze to meet devotees only at night when he was in Faridabad staying at Mata Mandir as self styled Jagatguru Swami Amritanand Devtirth Maraharj. He also committed embezzlement as president of f Sharda Peeth of Jammu where he called himself Swami Amritanand. He was thrown out of the Peeth. But he was so Machiavellian that he soon started Sharda Sarvgya Peeth of his own and called himself Swami Amritanand Dev Teerth. A fuller list of his crimes should make the BJP and RSS and other right wing affiliates of the sangh parivar sit up and face the nation to clarify whether they still want identity based politics and governance. Will they still misappropriate funds raised in the US in the name of relief and divert it to buy pouches of food and wine and distribute cash for those who perpetrated the pogroms in Gujarat 2002 with connivance of the government of Narendra Modi? Ramesh Upadhya’s stalking a woman and giving her phone number on website as a call girl and also cheating the woman through the matrimonial site by showing that he was 37 and not 57 have a damaging effect on the kind of people in the sangh parivar. These disrepute people under prosecution threaten to lower the position of India in the world opinion thanks to the sangh parivar’s involvement. If a serving lieutenant colonel of the Indian army is supplying 60 kg of RDX for terrorism that too against visiting Pakistanis then in what way are the ISI and extreme Hindu groups different in ideology and practice. On November 15 the ATS claims that the bomb blast in Malegaon is linked to the February 7, 2007 blasts on Samjhauta Express carrying Pakistanis because RDX was used in both the incidents. But two days later it allegedly changes its stance under the goading of the Intelligence Bureau. All through the government of India has been blaming the ISI of Pakistan for all the blasts in the country and especially the Samjhauta Express blasts. As to the foreign funds used in Malegaon attack it is necessary to look at how the funds end up in India, the real end users. There are documented proofs that huge amounts of money collected in the US go into the accounts of VHP and other conglomerates of RSS. Sonal Shah and her father Ramesh have been in the core group of VHPA [America] and have been instrumental in sending fund under the name of Eklavya Vidyalaya for backward tribals. But the real use is not to ameliorate the lot of the tribal people by educating them, it is rather to convert them to Hinduism if they are animists or have taken to Christianity. In the recent anti Christian riots in Kanthamal of Orissa and other parts of India it is this fund that played havoc as it did in 2002 against the Muslims of Gujarat. The backward community of Charras was roped in by the RSS to wreak “vengeance” on the Muslims by slaughtering them. This confession is caught on camera and no action has been taken as if that was not terrorism. George Fernandes had asked the army chief, the Air Marshal, and the Admiral to report the Kargil war to MPs. When the three went to the place it was the party office of BJP. That is how the sangh parivar interferes in the affairs of the armed forces, directly. Section three Frozen in time Chapter 32 Barrack Obama, terrorism and “cultural nationalism” Nationalism is and should be natural or strong devotion to your nation. But this natural tendency is warped by the clout of the dominant majority and acquires different hues like tribal nationalism of the Hutus and Tutsi in Congo and Rwanda, cultural nationalism of the right wing Hindus, religious nationalism as of Saudi Arabia, and racial and religious as of Sudan. In conflict zone the natural nationalism is stunted by the superimposed consideration of race, religion, region, culture, origin, etc. In the fight against terrorism this superimposed ideology plays havoc. In Sudan’s Dahfur region the native Muslims of African origin are suppressed and oppressed by the janjiwads or Muslims of Arab origin, the ruling elite. Overwhelming Arab nationalists do not view the terror unleashed upon the Dahfurians by the janjiwads as terror. In India there is attempt to rationalize the ever-latent-so-far-but-newly-discovered Hindu terrorism of the ilk of Sadhvi Pragayasingh Thakur. All the Hindus like all the Muslims cannot be terrorists nor can a religion be dubbed as terrorist despite the creed of jihad or the mythical opening of the third eye of Shiva. The compulsive competitive opposition between the right wing Hindutva and the rest representing a spectrum of views from the liberal to cautious rationalist is throwing up many grave matters that touch upon the national security of the country. Among them are: can the self-professed protestations of “cultural” nationalism be allowed vigilantism and are the recent bomb blasts in the country a matter of huge amount of funding for terror. The right wing is in the habit of describing all terrorist acts in the country as the handiwork of the Jihad inspired Muslims. In such gory incidents only Hindus have had the pain of suffering, according to them. Therefore the insidious suggestion of the need for Hindu vigilante group to save Hindus from terrorism. Such is the false syllogism on the horns of a dilemma. To have natural or “cultural” nationalism. In all this, where does the aspiration of the Muslims for natural nationalism figure in when they sing a hymn to Allah “to decorate my nation with my life blood/ like flowers glorifying the garden”? (ho mere dum se yuhin mayre vatan ki zinat/ jis tarha hoti hai phoolon se chaman ki zinat). As the security agencies are probing funds pouring into the country to madrasas and other organizations the need of the hour is to investigate the foreign and native (including siphoning of government funds under deceptive headings) funding of the RSS and its affiliates of all hues. In the present case of Malegaon blast of September 29 police have arrested the financier of the Malegaon blast, Ajay Eknath Rahirkar. Sameer Kulkarni was paid five thousand rupees a month. Like that how many others are on the pay sheets? The sum total would come to astronomical figures given the widespread humongous establishments of RSS. In addition Madhya Pradesh has sent a lawyer, Ganesh Savle, to fight the case of the Sadhvi and other accused. Chief Minister Narendra Modi has gifted hefty amount to the Sadhvi that has made her affluent enough to have vehicles and modern houses in different towns of different states all of a sudden, unthinkable in the case of a country girl from down trodden Chambal and Morena belt! Where cash does not count RDX counts. How come the intelligence officer Srikant Purohit of lieutenant colonel rank having free and easy access to ordnance stocks hatch conspiracy in which RDX has played the most disastrous role and has thereby brought the enviable repute of communalism-free army to disrepute. This has serious strategic implications for our nation (nation, in the natural sense of the word). Or did he also subscribe to the nation in the warped and exclusionary sense of Hindu rashtra? As BJP president Rajnath Singh has remarked that anyone who believes in “cultural” nationalism cannot be a terrorist. There was a moving demonstration of this as the police cavalcade bearing the accused neared the session court in Nasik where the mammoth gathering of Ahinav Bharat and Shiv Sena activists showered flowers on it with shouts of “Hinduon ka nara hai, Hindustan hamara hai.”[The slogan of the Hindus is that India is theirs] “Hindustan Hinduon ka, nahi kisi ke bap ka.”[India belongs to Hindus and is not the property of the father of any body’s] Hindu rashtra has virtually arrived. In such a rashtra you cannot dare to have any lawyer defend a Muslim accused in terrorism. Let alone that even a serving jawan of BSF Arif Hussain Khati of Sherud, Dhulia, on duty defending the country in a part of Kashmir, cannot claim either his national identity or his house as his own. The crowd that burnt his identity card and house along with his military uniform knew only the “cultural nationalism” to which he could not belong. As a contrast to this Lt Col Purohit and Major (retired)Upadhya and other military officers involved in Malegaon bombings have the cultural national identity. Look at the sea of afffron flags and the surge of emotion at the court scene where the accused were cheered and applauded as heroes. It bodes good for the cultural nationalism but the chanting of the discriminating slogans tolls the knell of natural nationalism, at least for the time being or till sanity prevails upon the misguided and laws of the land are allowed take the course of action. However, in the aftermath of the President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohansigh’s meeting in October it is clear that India will be involved in fighting what is ordinarily described as Jihad terrorism as it is going on in Afghanistan but surprisingly not in Iraq, at leas not in the view of the president elect Barack Obama. This is how the nation must feel proud to have entered the nuclear club of the western nations. Obama’s fight against terrorism poses a challenge to the artificially created hype on terrorism in India. It calls for a supra national approach to confront the menace of terrorism in our backyard. Widespread belief among the people in India is that Kashmiri terrorism is Islamic terrorism. It verges on terrorism as an alternate to Islamism. Obama would like India to settle its dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir and join the so-called ‘war on terrorism’ in Afghanistan. This sounds anathema to many but it has potential for the future. After having adopted cultural nationalism (which intentionally excludes Muslims and other minorities) as Indian nationalism (love for the country of birth and residence) the right wing groups would be at pains to make out how could it be that they would be essentially helping one group against another of the same faith! One swears by Islam as much as the other. That is no man’s land to fight terrorism. Here at home the beard, the tunic and the round cap were enough to identify but over there everyone is alike. The odd man should be out. Chapter 33 Koran Shooting !!!! In a highly charged situation shooting the Koran is tantamount to shooting the albatross, the bird of good omen. The war in Iraq is purportedly fought also for winning the hearts and minds of the people. When the wind of anti insurgency seems just to have started blowing shooting the holy book could wreck the very ship in which the Americans and the Iraqi government are sailing.. This is not a theological perception of any presentiment but rather a gauge of geopolitical realization of the facts on ground. An enlisted soldier of the US army used the holy book to practice shooting target. This incident has come full several years after the flushing of the same holy book in the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. Both are contemptible outrageous deeds. Instead of winning hearts and minds such odious acts would create cataclysmic reaction. It is like carrying gunpowder for the al Qaeda cannon aimed at the so called crusaders besieging the Muslims. In the fist place it is a symbolic action. A thin wire far away or gravel would have done the job better. But choosing the thick book with hundreds of pages the American soldier wants to signify certain things that are fixated in his mind. It is objectification of his hate. He can shoot even without bothering the crossed hair in the view. In the words of Najam Sethi such deliberate wilful act of vandalism is seen ‘as evidence of how America and the West make the war against terrorism synonymous with the war against Islam.’ [Somini Gupta and Salman Masood, “Guantanamo Comes to Define US to Muslims” New York Times, May 21, 2005] It also lends credence to the fact that there is design behind all the incidents of desecration. It was no other than a two-star general in charge of the hunt of Osama bin Laden, William G ‘Jerry” Boykin who told in 2003 a gathering of Christians that America was cast as a Christian nation locked in a battle with Satan. The general made such a statement wearing full military uniform. He also described his god as greater than the god of the Muslims. It is for nothing that some 4000 Christian missionaries landed in Baghdad after the invasion began in 2003. On May 9, 2008 American soldiers were practicing target shooting in the police station of Radhwaniya on the western outskirts of Baghdad. They had clearly marked the centre of a copy of the Quran for this purpose. Afterward the bullet ridden copy was retrieved by an Iraqi policeman, Abdullah. There were fourteen bullet marks and the pages of the holy book were scrawled with graffiti. Since then the Americans have pulled the particular sniper soldier out of the country and flown him to US. In the past US officials were dismissive in their attitude and did not tender any apology. Their attitude is summed up what the soldier in charge said when US planes had bombed a marriage party. A senior officer had remarked: “Hey, bad people can have parties too.” In the case of the shooting the Koran the New York Times reporter described the reaction of the people as irrational popular anger [May 20]. The blogger site Abu Muqawama devoted to fighting insurgency merely called the soldier stupid and the American response to apologize: quick. A meeting of tribal leaders was called on May 17 where a grim looking officer, General Jeffrey Hammond said: “I come before you here seeking your forgiveness, In the most humble manner, I look in your eyes today and I say please forgive me and my soldiers.” President Bush who was lecturing the Arabs on democracy and asking for more oil around the same time spoke to the Iraqi Prime Minister Noori al Maliki and expressed his concern. There was no extraordinary effort on his part as was in evidence during his visit to Israel. He ignored to dilate on the kind of attitude his soldiers had for Islam and the Muslims. He had won the hearts and minds of the people of Israel when on that foreign soil of the ally he had castigated Barack Obama for daring to speak with radicals and terrorists. The Americans know whose hearts and minds they really want to win. Many others in America justified saying that shooting the holy book is of the same class as beheading Daniel Pearl and Nicholas Berg. For them Jehovah was guidance: an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. They did not bother that such attitude puts the soldiers in the rank of the terrorists. Of this Matthew Arnold had said of armies clashing in the dark of the night when the sea of faith was ebbing. But now it is full. So full that every event has a biblical justification. Some took strong exception to American soldiers kissing the Quran by way of tendering apology. They also felt angry at army officers’ submission to the tribal leaders and their demand. Submission as a metaphorical substitute of Islam is a bete noire to many. However, when all is said and done, what really matters is that US is a secular country and yet such regrettable incidents happen, that too in the army. Another is the absence of chain of command in the episode. The higher officers on duty enjoy the cloak of anonymity. No one seems to question what they were doing when the incident transpired. Call it what you will, debasement or demoralization. Occupation of a foreign land has queer ways of recoiling on the occupiers. President Bush had attacked talking to radicals or ‘terrorists’ as appeasement. What else were the army officers in Baghdad doing when they met the tribal leaders? True, real politick is necessary, but the Americans and their allies in the Noori government have much longer to stay together, if at all staying the course is feasible. It is for this that many people recall how Britain had to deal with the IRA for a hundred years. In a world where IRA, yes, but Hamas and Iranisns, no, the Reformation is still needed in the West. Chapter 34 War hysteria and outrages There is nothing new in the saber rattling in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks. Indian jets straying into Pakistani space on December 13,2008 is the latest jejune trick of real politicks. To say so is not to diminish the enormity of the attacks in Mumbai but rather to highlight it. The so-called ‘stateless actors’ who attacked the metropolis were dubious in character. If they were jihadists they were also drinking alcohol. If they were Muslims they were also killing innocent people and prominently passengers, women and children and smirking at their crimes. If they were Pakistanis they were also endangering their country into a retaliation that would be catastrophic to them, to say the least. If they were after an imaginary Islam that is based on sharias alone, India was not the place for it let alone an ideal place. However, their evil deeds have unleashed a pent up hysteria for war. Some people in India have mistakenly believed that war could solve the problem of terror. Israel has fought more terrific wars with its Arab neighbours. But each war has spawned more terror. The doppelganger of Hezbollah is nothing but the product of war, the Israelis rue the day it was born. Who fathered LTTE after Singhalese terror of the yore? Our neighbour is desperately trying to survive its own misdeeds of mixing religion and politics and playing second fiddle to the West. We are surely falling into the same pitfall. The shoe thrower journalist at President George Bush’s press meeting was also a warning us, as enormous amount of writing against the unjust war had not been heeded for so long. In no way is Pakistan going to benefit from the Mumbai attacks or any war. But those who cry from the top of the roof of their house for war must reckon with the lumpen network of gangsters and cohorts of politicians. There is a thriving thralldom where rickshaw pullers and shopkeepers have to pay through their nose to the local muscleman or gangster regular hafta or extortion which ultimately reaches the pockets of the political bosses or the cops. They must also see how Madina Pathan of Gujarat is retracting. In the aftermath of the Gujarat genocide she had identified the accused who had raped her and burnt alive her family. But now she is recanting. She is saying that no one raped her and burnt her family. Considering the incidents of shocking violence and cruelty in Mumbai we are outraged. How is it that we fail to be outraged when we see victims of another outrage retract their accounts of those who perpetrated the worst acts of terror on them in full view of the public who till that morning were their neighbours and fellow citizens? Why is this gross violation of morality and decency not an outrage to us? Maqsood Mian Patan had seen senior police officer KK Mysorewala taking a black suitcase from Naroda corporator Vallabh Patel and Ashok Saheb and leaving the Muslims to be slaughtered in their hundreds in Naroda Patia and not arresting even when there was order of the commissioner to shoot Babu Bajrangi on sight. Maqsood is now turning hostile and is saying that these things did not happen. These cases have gone to the Supreme Court. Incidentally the same Mysorewala is in charge of Modasa that along with Malegaon suffered terrorist attack of September 29, 2008. Will he again prefer money to duty? Why is one outrage prompting us to war on a neighbour country and another outrage not even making us give a rap on the knuckles of the rapists and murderers? The Sadhvi accused in Malegaon blast and the Kasab accused in Mumbai attacks are perverted individual persons and their collective occupational nouns neither can whittle down nor enhance their crimes; nor can their gender nouns. They are satanic forces personified. To save the Sadhvi and group Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal and BJP would go to any extent, even to the extent of civil strife. Similarly to deny legal succor to the Kasab the same groups would go to vandalism and violation of the constitution of the land. These hawkish outfits of Mars would be the pioneering forces that threaten to wage war within and without even before the formal declaration of war. There are two conflicting and contradictory current theses on possibility of war between India and Pakistan. Pakistan had once tried to lead India into a military confrontation over the terrorist attack on the Parliament in 2001 when India responded by Operation Parakaram. But now India has grown wiser and this old alibi for not tackling terror by the neighbour will not work. Hence India must take on Pakistan. This view is coloured by the weltanschauung or world view of Islam as terrorism as it views the Mumbai attack as “jihadi offensive against civilized nations and values.” (K Subramanyam). Diametrically opposite to this is the view that in a situation of war Pakistan will have to take its soldiers from the western borders, which are hotbeds of terrorism of the al Qaeda and the Taliban type and deploy them on the Indian borders. That would not solve the problem of terrorism(Ahmed Rashid). Those who subscribe to the first theory believe war as solution. War begins in the minds of men. As Eugene O’Neill said of tragedy that we wear masques and our tragedy or misfortune begins when we evaluate ourselves through the eyes of others. Today we see through the western perspective, hence the corrective need to claim Mumbai attack as our tragedy (Arundhati Roy). Moreover terrorism is a technique (Zbigniew Brezesnki, a former national security advisor to the US president) and needs to be fought by a technique. But this time around as of now India is keeping sanity and not rushing where angels fear to tread. Chapter 35 How To Fight Terror? The question how to fight terror should concern all right thinking Indians as well as others affected by the menace directly or remotely. But fighting terror should not be fighting ideology of those you consider your rivals or the “other”. Fighting terror should be your strategy and not your own warped ideology. Given this veritable although unpleasant truth as the rock foundation of fight against terrorism we must not indulge in fear peddling nor should we keep harping on what is skewed perception at the best. Nowhere is this more pertinently true than in the zeal and enthusiasm shown in fighting what is generally called the jihadist terror. Terror itself does not make discrimination. The relatively easygoing concern for ULFA or Naxal terror is quite obvious. Those who are immediately in the vicinity of such a terror can only express their apprehension. Their concern is not shared with the political right or even the left. But the jihadist terror is another kettle of fish, at least in India. The perception of the investigation or intelligence agencies also is equally skewed. Thus CBI says that there is a great difference between Malegaon blasts of 2006 and Jaipur blasts of 2008. The agency says that the explosions in Malegaon were calculated to produce less casualties than those in Jaipur.. This would imply that the terrorists wanted to minimize the toll in Malegaon but maximize it in Jaipur. As a matter of fact more than forty lost their life in Malegaon while 80 in Jaipur. But there is a vital factor that the agency does not consider. There were only three bombs which blew up in Malegaon, two in the cemetery and one in the Mushawarat chowk. In Jaipur there were eight bombs which exploded at five different places. As far as the shibboleth of terror in India is concerned it is Afzal Guru. There is a fair amount of reason that Afzal Guru could also have been acquitted had an astute lawyer with legal acumen been available for him. As Sayyed Abdul Rehman Geelani could fortunately get support of excellent legal help and support of fellow teachers and students his innocence was made convincing in the court of law. There are certain dark areas in the mess up in which Afzal Guru found himself. Our assumption is and should be that if Afzal is guilty he should hang. There should be no ifs and buts there. However the matter does not rest there. There are puzzling circumstances structurally built into the whole affair. Was he really employed by the special task force of the police? If so what task was he assigned to do just before the attack on the parliament of our country? He transported a would-be terrorist from Jammu and Kashmir to Delhi and helped him obtain the car used in the attack. Who exactly used him and for what? There is a kind of idiocy and naiveté ascribed to him that makes him look like the retarded brother in law of The Secret Agent of Joseph Conrad who carried the bomb to the observatory. He was incapable of understanding what he was doing. No doubt Afzal is not mentally handicapped but what if he was used by someone? Who used him is more important. We almost went to war with our neighbour Pakistan for the attack on Parliament. The US and allies attack on Iraq on the pretext of a bogus WMD and terrorist link has now made many Americans rue the day they went to war on so called terror in Iraq. With a hind sight it would be better that we do our home work with meticulous care before we rush to any conclusion. A lone convict in death row can wait as long as possible till those who are behind him are also caught and punished. Punish we must, we did it once in the case of Maqbool Butt. No one should doubt our resolve! How much more stringent antiterrorist law could you make? The contemporary American laws in the matter of water boarding, all the three kinds of renditions, including the extraordinary, the Guantanamo detention without trial have all failed. More innocent people have suffered. Did Khwaja Yunus also go through water boarding? What killed this innocent citizen of our country? He came from a part of Maharashtra where de facto terrorist attacks have taken place. They have been brushed under the carpet of crackers. If the police selectively apply even the most stringent laws will it be effective? The fear is that more disaffection between people will be produced. And against what? Despite this, the former lawyer and now a spokesperson of BJP Arun Jaitley has counted 5 reasons why we are unable to fight terror. One, the BJP ruled states want very strict laws against terror but the central government does not allow them to have such laws. In his sophistry he mentions Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh but does not mention Gujarat where even ordinary crimes are booked under Pota. Even so the attack on Akshardham had taken place. He mentions Maharashtra which has a law against organized crime. How does he forget that despite this law the explosions of bombs in Nanded in the house of RSS, Bajrang Dal, VHP activists were cavalierly treated. Incidentally the Supreme Court recently came down heavily against booking the alleged culprits of bomb blasts of 2006 against the organized crime law. Two, the central government has failed to execute Afzal Guru. Three, those who allegedly burnt Sabarmati express are booked under Pota and yet the central government is helping them. Arun Jaitley does not specify what he means by help. He should not have better mentioned Gujarat. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had ignored the written letters of the President of India, KR Narayanan, on the situation in Gujarat at that height of the massacres of Muslims in 2002. Jaitley also mentions Madhya Pradesh. But he conveniently forgets that Mr Sreekumar was DIG of intelligence department of Gujarat police. He has mentioned in diary the details which would have damned any head of state elsewhere in the world. The Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh was no other than BJP President Rajnath Singh who was also entrusted with Home Department and he had not complied with the reporting of the unruly behaviour of the kar sevaks of the Sabarmati express which had passed through his state. Confessions of crime by people like Babu Bajrangi have been recorded on camera and yet nothing has happened. What greater Pota does Gujarat want? Even in the investigation of the burning of the train different inquiry commissions have found different versions of truth and the confessions of the alleged and also police statements have been changed and facts fabricated. Four, confession of alleged perpetrators is not taken as proof of their crime. Jaitley would like mere confession as admissible proof, and he a former lawyer at that! Five, the culprits are able to get bail easily. How short is our memory! The bomb blasts of Faizabad, Lucknow and Varanasi reveal that the alleged criminals were attacked by lawyers and their bail applications are pending because no lawyer can dare plead for them. This is not only unconstitutional but inhuman. Jaitley and his party would make this unconstitutional into a stringent law to fight terror. Perhaps this can be done otherwise. But then India would have to attack and annex a part of Sri Laka and create its own Guantanamo prison somewhere in Jaffna. Spain did fight terrorism with convincing justification as far as the Madrid bombing is concerned. It did not take on the followers of any ideology per se. Nor did it pass any more stringent laws to deal with the situation. Australia did try to use extraordinary legal provision but then set Dr Haneef free although his cell phone card was used by his cousin who blew himself at the Glasgow airport. Dr Haneef himself was not involved. In the case of 7/11 metro bombing in England a brother of the main accused was set free which would be impossible if the kind of draconian law we want to enact here in our own country. There was no proof against him. His identity was not important there. But is the identity of an accused important here? Chapter 36 Terror Chooses Busiest Market At Busiest Hour The seven blasts that rocked the pink city of Jaipur also wore off its charm and romance, at least for sometime to come. Known for its wonderful monuments the city was bustling as usual with tourists from all over the world. The sunset crowd at 7.12 was enjoying a whiff of cool air, one of the reasons of crowding, when tragedy struck. Among others: prayer, shopping and strolling. For the next fifteen minutes five hubs of public gathering became virtual inferno what with the dead lying on the roads and wounded crying in pain and almost every other person running in disorderly haste. Are we caught in a vicious circle of reprisal as far as terrorism is concerned? A day before Jaipur is rocked by explosion; Hubli in Karnataka was scene of another explosion. That too, it was in the court set up for trying terror suspects. Terror and politicking go hand in hand as is evident after every bomb blast. BJP president Rajnath Singh dubs Jaipur serial blasts as the work of Pakistan and describes it as ‘dangerous’. In a tow as is his wont Mukhtar Ahmed Naqvi calls the Prime Minister ‘weak’ and Home Minister a ‘coward’. They never bothered about it when their party-run Rajasthan state showed leniency in treating its police officer who bumped off Ram Prajapati, the accomplice of Sohrabuddin. That was no mean terror, though DIG Vanzara called it patriotism. Another part of mud slinging is that central government does not share intelligence with state governments. In the case of Ajmer the centre did alert Rajasthan government of possible attack. The serial bombs exploded at a Hanuman temple in Tripolia Bazaar, Johari Bazaar, Manak Chowk, Badi Choupal and Choti Choupal. Nearly 80 died and 150 were injured. DIG AS Gill said that cycles were used to blow up the bombs. The gleaming cycles in the wreckage remind you of the ones used in Malegaon serial blasts at a mosque adjoining a cemetery and a nearby crowded chowk in September 2006. The IG of Jaipur said that there were eight blasts which went off in just over ten minutes. As a knee jerk reaction the Intelligence Bureau pointed finger at Harkut-ul Jihad al Islami (of course by now the familiar acronym HuJI) — like a sudden involuntary reflex movement. There are also self start groups of terrorists. They are modules. A module is each of a set of standardized parts or independent units that can be used to construct a more complex structure. This dictionary meaning of the word seems to be lost on the Intelligence Bureau. Even before reaching the site of the latest attack the bureau says in a chorus that it is the work of HuJI. Even before the details emerge you can hear the chant emanating from mostly Delhi. Jaipur is full 160 miles from there. But the announcement almost coincides with the event. In the case of Madrid bombing of March 2004 humongous blame ala IB that al Qaeda was behind the attack was belied. A group of immigrants having no links to any terrorist group let alone the most dreaded chose to target trains. They chose what was easily had through some venal adjustment. Bicycles stationary or parked are currently in use in our country. On the fringe of the crowds praying in a cemetery in Malegaon or the milling crowd around a temple in Jaipur, they can play havoc. But the question is where the security and intelligence people were. A new bicycle should be as much an object of suspicion as an abandoned bag. After Malegaon and Gorakhpur and Faizabad the security personnel should have been instructed into what to look out for. Ammonium nitrate and ball bearing and small pipes as splinters go as standard constituents of easily made bombs assembled at short notice. They can be put in containers and loaded on to new bicycles. They are sure recipe of destruction. In Malegaon the buyers of the cycle did not ride them. They walked nearly a kilometer from the shop with the explosive material on the cycles. Yet this did not draw attention of the police and intelligence department personnel. A mammoth crowd as at the Hanuman mandir at Tripolia bazaar must have been impossible for the culprits to walk through. Ajmer draws the attention of the world for the renowned shrine of Khwaja Chisti and Jaipur for its romantic monuments like the hawa mahal and numerous others. Tourist centres or environs were free from the menace of terrorism so far at least outside Delhi. This will be the first jolt to tourist industry. The heart of the old city is also the heart of tourism in Jaipur and in the whole of Rajasthan. The city is one of the three corners of the so called Golden Triangle of tourism in India, Delhi, Agra and Jaipur. Anyone visiting Rajasthan visits the old part of the city. Choosing the shrine and the temples the unmistakable handwriting on the wall is clearly decipherable. There are people who do not want to see that we Indians live together. Therefore we must rise to the occasion in a national spirit of unity and solidarity. However, the ground reality is different, 15 areas of the city are under curfew 9 to 6 for fear of communal riot. The day time curfew is a sort of ominous barometer of our civil life. This surely had not happened in a proverbially violence prone and intermittently communally charged Malegaon. Hindus and Muslims together donated blood and faced what turned out to be a nightmare where scores of children and women were killed. Afterword This book has three sections, one dealing with defining and delineating radicalism, second real situations and solutions thereof and the third on the frozen truth that has been not looked over for a long time. Such a fact is what Indira Gandhi said of her concern for majority Hindu people when Muslims suffered heavily in Maharashtra in 1980s. Thackeray and Bhiwandi circa1960s Sanjiv Bha"We are not a nation that wants justice for everyone." Sanjiv Bhatt Sameer Gaikwad of Sanatan Sanstha On April 21, 1984 Bal Thackeray made a highly offensive remark on Prophet Mohammad. At Girgaon chowpaty he said “The Prophet Mohammad was a sweeper who cleaned the offal of the non Muslims.” The Urdu paper Akhbar-e-Aalam carried a report of it on May 13, 1984. He also exhorted the Hindus to do to the Muslims what Punjabis [Sikhs] were doing to the Hindus. Mrs Indira Gandhi visited Punjab on April 24, 1984. Next day CRPF killed 25 Nihangs travelling on the roof of a bus. On May 13, 1984 Bal Thackeray joined hands with Vikram Savarkar of Hindu Mahasangh. Shab-e-Qader was celebrated on May 16. On May 19 communal violence started in Bombay against Thackeray’s derogatory remark on the prophet. On the same day the Marathi magazine carried a defamatory article on the Koran. Meanwhile communal clashes and violence increased and continued in Bombay and Bhiwandi. According to Blitz on May 27 1984 “Why no action was taken when on May 18 one Mahesh Joshi submitted in writing to the Chief Mnister that eight truckloads of people were transported to Bhiwandi from Talegaon Dahbade near Pune on the night of May 14? On May 21 the Indian Express reported that the mischief started with Shiv Sena tryig ot forc ebandh and take out procession in various places following reports that a portrait of Bal Thackeray was garlanded with chappals. The government of Maharashtra started proceeding to prosecute Bal Thackeray for his inflammatory speeches against the Muslims. He would be tired at Nasik, chandwad, Satana, Yeola, Ojhar and Manmad where he had spoken derogatorily against the Muslims. The home department did not know what he had spoken on April 21 1984. People held protest and demonstration against the violence perpetrated on Muslims in Bhiwandi. It was in this context that PM Indira Gandhi remarked: “Government has to think of the majority, too. If there is injustice to them for if they did not get their rights, then it would be more dangerous to the integrity of the country.”[The Times of India, June 1, 1984] On the day this report came in the papers there was a gun battle for more than seven hours. This was the height of radicalism that marred the 1984. It was presicely this kind of atmosphere prevailing throughout the deade of 80s that made it more important than even 1990s. The only other decade to match it was 2000-2010. Among the radicals must be counted the new converts thanks to the eandeavour of Amit Shah and Narendra Modi who added another feather in their cap by introducing revanchism in Muzaffarnagar whose MLA in 2013 was Hukum Singh. There are others like Sangeet Sinch Som and suresh Raina who were behind the pogroms of Muslims. Hukum Singh. His pertinent remark is revealing of lebensraum of Nazis “Loosing home in Muzaffarnagar,Mizoram or Assam would mean loosing right to vote in this election [2014]”. Most of the war on terrorism is foul play of the police, the politicians and the media where their aim is to malign the Muslims and create illwiil against them. Modi had been the moving force behind the Advani rath yatra. Later he was the most notable person although not so vocal as he is now when he played a lion’s share in the Ekta Yatra after the demolition of the Babri and then revival of the temple movement in 2002 that led to the genocide of Muslims at the end of February that year. The media has always been on the back of the Musims even when there is no truth of their involvement in terrorism. A Marathi paper Punya Nagri in its Jalgaon edition of Tuesday March 30, 2010 carries banner headline: “Jalgaon as the target of Indian Mujahideen.” The report says that the Indian Mujahideen is busy (magan) training suicide squads which care a tuppence (befikar) for spewing deaths. The terrorists of IM are immersed (gark) in the training. The squad is named “Bullet 313”. The intelligence agency that has prepared the report for the government says that “Bullet 313” has first preference for Jalgaon as the target of attack. IM is recruiting students of mechanical and chemical engineering, students of computer science, as well as the usual collegians. The students of higher education are grouped in modules which would create terror in all the parts of the country. Thus, Jalgaon is the University of Terrorism in India. Delhi and Vangni near Badlapur are other such places. In the last named place the training is going on in a housing colony. The first batch has admitted 200 students and 113 will join soon. That would make it 313. The expense is covered by the fund generated in the Middle East and sent through hawala from Indonesia. It is spent on buying arms. Even if one ‘bullet’ succeeds in destroying its target the country would be in turmoil, the report adds. Among those who were looking after the internally displaced persons during the pogroms of 2002 was one Mufti Abdul Qayum Ahmad Hussein Mansoorie. In his book “Eleven years behind the bars” he says he was arrested in the attack on the Akshardham temple attack. The Supreme Court acquitted him of all the charges and discharged him. He came out of jail on the day Modi assumed office as the Prime Minister of India. Why is Modi not telling his did ki baat, the truth from the bottom of his heart? The temple is the nearnest to hisown official residence. The Mufti tells us how the Sabarmati prison superintendent was Sanjiv Bhatt who also had looked after the security of the chief minister, Modi. One day he narrated to Bhatt how he was absolutely innocent and had done nothing wrong in his life. He wrote a letter to the court how the confession of his involvement was extracted from his under the worst degree of torture anyone could give to prisoners. “With the help of Bhatt I sent my letter to the POTA court and other human rights organizations. Not only this, one day, Bhatt brought all the priests of the temple in cluding the head priest of the Akshardham temple to his cell in the prison. I narrated my tale of sorrow to all the sants, mhants and the chief Swamy. The chief of Akshardham temple asked me: “What do you expect from me?” “I request you to recommond to the government to have a CBI inquiry in my case. If I am proved guilty of attck on the temple, let them hang me.” He heard and left” [p.128-129] Qayum calls Bhatt marde hakikat,[p 148] a man of facts who was in IB during the Godhra violence and had opposed the government on grounds of truth that he was aware of and which the government had suppressed from seeing the light of the day. He was kind and just. There were others who came after Bhatt. One such was Pargy sahib who said that the inmates of the prison are less guilty than those outside and free! On September 18, 2015 Aligarh Muslim University authorities lodged a complaint against president and three activists of Hindu Yuva Vahini against their remark that AMU was the “nursery of terror”. So full five years later the same mindset of those who want to rewrite the history of India in the light of Hindutva ideology of hatred for Muslims came to the fore. Their main thrust is to bring about a momentous change in India. In contrast the University teachers and students are content and happy with the educational facility they enjoy in the name of a minority institution. In contrast are the Bhonsla Military Schools of Nasik and Nagpur and Pune’s Wadia College. Two professors of Wadia College had been associated with bomb making and training organized by lieutenant colonel Purohit and his Abhinav Bharat. The AB also organized training in bomb making at Bhonsla MilitarySchool of Nasik. There is no reaction of either the media or the government towards these institutions. Instead of looking over these matters the Hindu right wing parties in power are more aggressively following a policy of consolidating their hold on power and spreading their tentacles over the educational institutions of the country and changing even the syllabus to orient and induct their right wing ideology where it was not earlier. When in matter of money Modi can withhold scholarship and stipend that the central government has sanctioned the special status of Jammu and Kashmir is a quandary as former chief minister Omar Abdullah spoke of in parliament. He was never radical and yet his agony is worth looking over or examining: “I am a Muslim, and I am an Indian. I see no distinction between the two. I see no reason why I, as a Muslim, have to fear a deal between India and the United States of America (USA). This is a deal between two countries. It is a deal between, we hope, two countries that in the future will be two equals... “Sir, the enemies of Indian Muslims are not the Americans, and the enemies of the Indian Muslims are not 'deals' like this. The enemies of Indian Muslims are the same enemies that all the poor people of India face -- poverty and hunger, unemployment, lack of development and the absence of a voice. It is that we are against: the effort being made to crush our voice.” “Sir, I made the mistake of standing with them once. On the question of Gujarat, I did not resign when my conscience told me to do so, and my conscience has still not forgiven me. I need not make the same mistake again. … “aapne amarnath ka aarop lagaya aap ek jagaah dikhaiye jahaaN kisi Kashmiri ne yaatra ke khilaf baat ki ho, aap ek jagaah dikhayiye jahaaN kisi Kashmiri ne kahaa ho hameN yaatri nahi chaahiye, ek jagaah dikhaaiye jahaaN pe yatriyoN ke uupar hamla hua ho. “hamaarii zamiiN kaa muddaa thaa ham apnii zamiiN ke liye laRe aur marte dam tak apnii zamiiN ke liye laRenge. lekin ham aapkii tarah firkaaparast nahiiN haiN, ham aapkii tarhaa communal nahiiN haeN, ham masjid nahii giraate ham mandir bhi nahii giraate. “ek sau saal se bhi zyaada amarnath ki yaatra wahaNa chaltii aaii hae aur jab tak kashmir meN musalmaan hae srinagar aur amarnath mai aapkii yhttps://www.blogger.com/homeaatra chaltii rahaigii. ”Lekin yeh baat mae daawe se kahena chahataa huuN ke in logoN kii tarhaa merii siyaasat badaltii nahii hai, aaj iss taraf kal uss taraf, hamne secular forces ke saath haath milaya hae aur milaate rahenge.” [“You talk of Amarnath, and you have levelled accusations regarding the Amarnath pilgrimage. Please show me one instance where any Kashmiri has spoken against the pilgrimage. Where any Kashmiri may have said that we do not want the pilgrimage. Where the pilgrims may have been attacked. The issue was our land. We fought for our land. We will continue to fight for our land till our last breath. But unlike you, we are not communal. We do not demolish mosques. We do not demolish temples either. For over a hundred years, the Amarnath yatra has been going on and as long as there are Muslims in Kashmir, the yatra shall go on. But I want to say it with conviction that my politics does not change like theirs, today this side and tomorrow that. We have shaken hands with the secular forces and shall continue to do so.”] There has been a degree of contentment and satisfaction that the Kashmiris have humanity in serving the Hindu pilgrims and feed them when there is any humanitarian disaster. [1] Furthermore people like the Abdullah family have had long affiliation with India and have shared experience of the ups and downs of what happened ever since accession of Kashmir to India that they have sobriety as hallmark of people who are content and happy within the comity of states. Yet they are rattled when Modi’s junior minister Jitendra Singh remarked that Article 370 would be reviewed along with other issues. Omar returned the fire: on May 27, 2014: "Mark my words & save this tweet - long after Modi Govt is a distant memory either J&K won't be part of India or Art 370 will still exist." "Art 370 is the ONLY constitutional link between J&K & rest of India. Talk of revocation of not just ill informed it's irresponsible,"[2] Singh says that psychological barrier is hindering progress and not physical has to pass the test in the crucible of time and lived experience. Most of the psychological barriers are created by the policy makers in India. For example promotion of police and army personnel is linked to how many “terrorists” they kill in encounter and in intrusion of the trained youths from across the border. What if they have been enticed by the special task forces to enter Pakistan and take training and tell the secrets and then being killed or legally executed as was Afzal Guru. The boulder and the stream solution of Kashmir spells out need for patiently bearing the paramilitary and not confronting the forces. If the people of Kashmir accept India and march forward it would bring great benefits to them. This realization or epiphany of a seer is charming to observe in the bucolic sylvan setting of the valley but not in the narrow meandering lanes and by lanes with shop shutters down and streets deserted and stones strewn all over. As a reminder of the previous days’ or earlier days’ engagement with the soldiers it is a heap of images of waste, the valley has become the waste land. The valley was beautiful and quiet when the soldiers were only guarding the borders and were confined to their barracks. Now the whole valley has turned into a garrison and you have to negotiate every check posts almost like the Palestinians who take days and months to reach their relatives just across a stretch of a few kilometers away. Are we also turning Kashmir into another West Bank and Gaza? Yes, if this is what the valley has become then surely the paramilitary forces have transformed it into an occupied territory and it would remain so for good because it would legitimize what India and Pakistan want: turning line of control into a recognized border. Wither autonomy, then? There would be none. The boulder and stream tantalizing also belies the fact that the valley was traumatized by the two upheavals of the mainland: the seismic upheavals of the events around 1992 and the Gujarat 2002 pogroms of Muslims. It would be foolhardy of anyone to ask the people to continue living halcyon days of pre 1989 as if nothing has happened. How much is viable Maulana Wahiduddin Khan’s advice that, “The developments over the last decade or so clearly indicate that, in today’s context, Kashmir’s benefit lies not in independence or in joining Pakistan, but, rather in being part of India and in abandoning the path of violence in exchange for peaceful reconstruction and progress.”? The shift in situation on ground in Jammu and the rest of the country is not helpful to the Kashmiris. The ascendency of the right wing Hindu groups does not want to see even the article 370 enacted. In times of trouble the blockade of Kashmiri goods from entering into the rest of India and essential supplies reaching the valley threatens existence of the people. Those who enforce the blockade know that their action economically cripples the valley and has no visible effect on India. What prospect does it hold for the future? Similarly people hesitating to visit Kashmiri shops in Delhi on account of the identity of the shopkeepers is not a result of insurgency in the valley but rather a fall out of the misconceived perception that all Muslims are terrorists. Justin Hardy mentions that even Japanese hastily withdrew from Mohammad Dar’s shop in Delhi. As far as development is concerned if 600,000 Kashmiri youths are unemployed Omar Abdullah’s now asking the centre to create 50,000 thousand jobs is not that enviable offer. But more pertinent is to ask why so far the jobs were not created? If economic plight of the ordinary people fuels protest on the street it is supplemented by sometimes 27 days in a month closure of shops due to inordinate curfew and the consequences of continuing death toll of the young people. Sometimes it is not the boulder that obstructs but the man made policy of commission and omission. Is there any sign of change? Despite, the ten percent growth! The figure of unemployed is given in TIME August 21, 2010 under the heading “Kashmir’s new warriors”. Another instance is that of Lt Col Prasad Purohit’s assignment in JK. He was posted in Kashmir at the line of control in Uri.On January 23, 2001 he confronted the intruders at 10.20 pm. He chased five and seized RDX and weapons they had left behind. Hemant Karkare and his team of ATS of Maharashtra found out how he had stolen RDX from JK and hid it in a predetermined spot and later brought it to his house in Pune. Another army officer, Atul Joshi saw it in a room of Purohit’s house. However, Purohit’s lawyer Shrikant Shivde argued on September 15, 2015 for his bail application and said that it was the ATS officer who put the RDX in Purohit’s room at Deolali artillery camp. That is how the mainland India is made to link to the valley! In the case of Mufti Qayum, DG Vanzara and other officers of Gujarat ATS had taken him and other accused to identify the Kashmiri militants involved in Gujarat Akshardham temple attack. But their attempt was a fiasco. The why and how of it needs careful examination. The prime minister of India is not only morally responsible for such shady dealings as he was also chief minister when this was happening in a stone’s throw from his official resident in Gandhinagar, Ahmadabad, he is also legally accountable. There is a pattern that emerges in what was happening in Gujarat and Malegaon. Swami Asimanand had provided sanctuary to those like Sunil Joshi and also to those who had killed him for fear that he would expose their role in Samjhauta express attack of February 18, 2007. No other than Sadhvi Pragyasingh Thakur was directly involved in that murder. Abrar Ahmad accused in Malegaon 2006 blasts speaks of saman which in the given context is RDX. If Purohit had stolen it and brought it to make bombs in a room of Deolali artillery cantonment and the bomb exploded in Bhiku chowk on September 29, 2008 then the same RDX was used in all the cases of attacks in 2006 and 2008. This has not been carefully looked over. Those accused in the 7/11 were framed falsely and it looks that the judicial process has been suborned. Arun Ferreira testified in court on September 21, 2015 about the ten accused in 7/11 Kamal Ahamed Ansari, Tanvir Ahmed Ansari, Mohammad Majid Shafi, Shaikh Alam Shaikh, Mohd Sajid Ansari, Muzzammil Shaikh, Soheil Mehmood Shaikh, Zamir Ahmad Shaikh, Naveed Khan and Asif Khan: “In June 2008, when they (11/7 accused) were transferred from Mumbai to Nagpur, they had bruises on their back. When they came to Nagpur jail, they were respected by many inmates as they would help others with court work or drafting letters,”[3] Abdul Wahid Din Mohammed Shaikh was the only one who was acquitted from 7/11 blasts in the local trains in Mumbai. “Like me, even the other accused are innocent, and I am here for them.. .I did not expect to be convicted, as we had been falsely implicated. But after the court’s decision to convict the others, I feel justice is dead. They promised to give me Rs 10 lakh and said they would let me off with less jail time of just a few months. They even told me they would find a film actress to be my bride.” The investigators were the police officers under AN Roy, police commissioner of Mumbai or ATS boss KP Raghuvansi and later Rakesh Maria. It appears that the government of Maharashtra had a brief for them that they should implicate innocent Muslims and make bogus cases against them. This would mean that the tentacles of RSS hate ideology had spread out into the police, crime branch and CID departments. Their strategy to fight terrorism was to use the government fund or money from RSS to frame innocent Muslims and buy them as approvers. The huge amount of money and promise of a film actress as wife or offer of land outside Kashmir was a tactical move. Even in the Malegaon 2006 blasts case the authorities had offered more than 25 lakh rupees to the accused Abrar Ahmad to turn approver. The money given to his father in law. His wife Jannatunnisha received monthly money order by post, sent to her by ATS. [4] It has been in the public domain that Modi’s police and administration would use state machinery in the cover up of 2002 massacre of Muslims. The state advocate general Tushar Mehta would collect the details of the defense counsel and send it to Hindutva ideologue S Gurumurthy and even editor of the Hindu newspaper, Ram, to prevent the real culprits of the crimes against Muslims. The Supreme Court lawyer Indira Jaising says that Amit Shah was behind the operation and therefore Sanjiv Bhatt wants Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah to be made part of a petition for allegedly foisting false charges against him related to the hacking of then Gujarat additional advocate general Tushar Mehta's e-mail. Mufti Qayum was also a victim of Amit Shah. In his book he says that he wants that justice should not be limited to him and his fellow falsely accused but there are many Hindus accused in false cases though not of terrorism even they should get justice. Why is our kitchen not a private space for us? Shiv Sena’s rise in the city of Bombay as it was called in 1960s and was changed to Mumbai by no other than Sena government when it came to power later was the most radical branching off of politics in Maharashtra. It went on to unfold one revanchist outsmart another. CM Vasant Naik, his nephew CM Sudhakar Naik and CM Vasant Dada Patil used it for their narrow end. By espousing rank communalism for gaining power and profit of office, Sena was unabashed but on leash in the hands of the Congress. The demolition of Babri mosque changed all that. Its misdeeds came out in open by Sena’s own conceding to their evil intent. The latest being the editorial in its mouthpiece Saamna. "Until now, only fanatic Muslims used to bully people in the name of religion. If the Jains too are going on the path of Muslims, then God save them. During the 1992-93 Mumbai riots, Marathis had protected Jains, who were saved because violence had been answered by violence. At that time too 'Paryushan' was on. But Jains were at the forefront of supporting violence then." [1]The leaders of Sena and MNS chief Raj Thackeray became more menacing. They also nuanced from their former extremist. When Yakub Memon was hanged in August 2015 Sena admitted that they had to instill fear in the Muslims on January 8, 1993 and subsequently. It also brushed the hanging under the carpet by saying as did Uddhav Thackeray that it was kirkod or trifling matter and advised the sainiks to refrain from celebrating it. But within a month the sky cleared and came the thunder bolt. ‘You keep your religion at home, we will follow ours. We will not tolerate it if you are interfering in our kitchen and teaching us.” Uddhav Thackeray thundered. Raj went ahead with the same gusto: Jains should not teach us what to eat. This is Maharashtra, not Gujarat.” He also blamed Modi and Amit Shah who have been used by the Jains for the ban. [2]AA September11, 2015] It is true that Jains if not to the last member of the community had sided with the extremist Hindus bent on building the Ram temple. In fact two Jain brothers Ram Kothari(23) and Sharad Kothari(21) from West Bengal had started a journey to join rath yatra of LK Advani on October 22, 1989 a day before CM of Bihar ordered the arrest of Advani. Both the brothers lost their lives in police firing on November 3. When the fervor evaporated their mother said: “Even more painful is the fact that my sons were duped into courting death for a poll plank. We believed in the kar seva call but those who had started the movement were dishonest. Nobody talks about Ayodhya any more, except during election. And I don’t think the temple will be built in my lifetime.” (Sumitra Devi Kothari, Ram and Sharad’s mother to Times of India, Nov 25, 2009) Those who had duped them were Advani and Modi. The latter had spewed hatred for the Muslims and transformed them as the other. The Gujarati women had marked their foreheads with their own blood. The Kothari family as a business family from Gujarat. Sumitra Devi’s statement of 2009 reflects what went in the name of religion; how Modi who was RSS secretary when he did the spade work of initiating the rath yatra on September 25, 1989 went on to become chief minister of Gujarat in 2002 and was responsible for foisting an election in September of 2002 which was held later in the year. What followed is history. Hundreds of Muslim girls were raped and others had their meager dowry collected over years of hard work looted in 2002. All for election! The realization of Sumitra Devi came too late. Ram and Sharad’s sister Purnima was to marry in December 1992. “We were made to believe that it was only a matter of time for the temple to be built. My brothers believed it and were ready to risk their lives for the ause. Thought the BJP rode to power on the temple issue, but conveniently swept it under the carpet. It hurts very much to realize thet my brothers and hundreds others like them were taken for a ride.” [3] Another Jain family Shyamlal Kankaria also was actively engaged in the juggernaut of building the temple. They are the owners of the most well-known stationery and book shop in Malegaon, Kasturi. The scion of the rich family Lalit had organized the dispatching of the kar sevaks from Malegaon. The daughter Manisha married a man in Calcutta. [1]Saamna September 8, 2015 [2]Asian Age September 11, 2015 [3]http://www.indianexponent.com/2013/08/kothari-brothers-tragedy-the-wasted-martyrdom-ayodhya-revisited.html (Milan Kumrar) ------ [1] http://www.outlookindia.com/article/i-am-a-muslim-and-i-am-an-indian/237984 [2] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Either-Article-370-will-exist-or-JK-wont-be-a-part-of-India-Omar-Abdullah-tweets/articleshow/35634684.cms [3] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Either-Article-370-will-exist-or-JK-wont-be-a-part-of-India-Omar-Abdullah-tweets/articleshow/35634684.cms [4] http://www.mid-day.com/articles/i-was-promised-rs-10-lakh-and-a-bollywood-bride-if-i-turned-approver/16537164 One single event that has been regularly overlooked is the role of Bal Thackeray in his own self confessed assertion that his Shiv Sainks were behind the demolition of Babri mosque and his hidden role in the Bombay riots of January 8, 1993. What needs to be looked over is truth surfacing from time to time. One such occasion was the Paryushan Jains celebrated by observing enfoced ban on meat for four days in September 2015. It piqued Shiv Seana in its defensive position in not observing the ban: "Until now, only fanatic Muslims used to bully people in the name of religion. If the Jains too are going on the path of Muslims, then God save them. During the 1992-93 Mumbai riots, Marathis had protected Jains, who were saved because violence had been answered by violence. At that time too 'Paryushan' was on. But Jains were at the forefront of supporting violence then," "I and four other Muslims were summoned to the local police station recently and detained for the whole day. We were released only after we gave in writing that we will not sacrifice any animal in Mushara," said Mohammed Khalid. Mehendupaar to do so. In 2007 the Hindu Yuva Vahini, an extremist Hindu outfit led by BJP's Yogi Adityanath, who represents the adjoining GorakhpurIndia: Police won't let a UP's Mushara village sacrifice goats on Eid - to appease far right hindutva leader Adityanath's men Justice Vishnu Sahai’s finding tht the pogroms of Musaffarnagar were planned three to four month earlier is a disturbing phenomenon. How could the dociles people of western UP become so radicalized needs examination in the light of the the finding of the judge heading the commission. Facts must preceded evertyhig else. On August 27 Shahnawaz was killed in brawl over traffic problem. The mahapanchayat was held next month on September 7. It could be that the Valmiki who kept his dirct cart before the sweet shop of a Muslim who took objection that led to physical assault was the sprark and simultaneously there was the grand meeting of the Jats was taking place. In the name of saving their daughters and daughters in law they became aggressive and the riots started. The report is still not made public. But there are precedents. In 2008 a Muslim youth from Nardana near Dhulia had love affair with a Hindu girl. The two families solved the matter through mediation by September 23, 2008. But on October 5 it led to widespread riots in Nardana and Dhulia and elsewhere. It began over alleged tampering with a notice board of the Hindu Raksha Samiti at a time where there was welcome procession of a scrap monger who was returning from Haj in Nardana all the Muslims houses were torched despite the fact that the two families had amicably settled their matter. So why do the people become so radicalized? It is because of the atmosphere is created when even an ordinary incident of road rage or stationing a dirt cart or disturbing the public notice board can engulf the whole town into a turmoil. To use Sahai’s phrase the police react ina turmoil but a judge makinginquiry into the riots does his work sedately. However the fact is that the conspirators also have lesure to prepare the plane for sometime before the catalyst agent comes along the way. . While India is becoming more radical under BJP rule and RSS wants it to go full steam in the same direction, theonly other Hidnu majority country has passed a resolution to make it a secular democracy. On September 20, 2015 the Nepalese government passed a bill to change the country from what it was a monarchy where Hinduism was state religion to a democracy through election. And what is more it went through a devastating eqrthquake wheich made the people close their ranks and forget their differences and make Nepal a secular democracy. India also had experienced an earth quake in Kutch region of Gujarat in 2001 just before Modi became its next chief minister. He worked so quaint that he virtually made Gujarat what they called as the first Hindu state in India. Only the date is flexible. Some say it would be a Hindu nation by 2015, others in 2020. The president of Rashtriya Seva Smuh: "Looking at the present condition and how the government, completely controlled by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), is trying to attack minority communities and infringe on their lives, it is the need of the hour to come together and put a brake on these outfits for a better India." http://www.punemirror.in/pune/civic/Ex-judges-rise-against-saffronites/articleshow/49065850.cms Among the other revivalists who have gone to radicalism in a sharp turn the Sanatan Sanstha figured in 2008 and again in 2015. It is gravitating attention precisely because of terrorist record of numerous incidents of murder and mayhem and continuing radical activities and revanchist stance. Equally obdurate stance is that of the state of Maharashtra which saw it fit to hang Yakub Menon and yet what Bal Thackeray did in the night of Januyary 8, 1993—refusing to sign appeal for peace in Bombay because it was signed by Haji Mastan and ordering on three phones uninterrupted his militia to kill Muslims, as recorded by Yuraj Mohite of Mahanagar Marathi daily in the presence of Mayor Chandrakant Handoray—dithered as did the courts by using the jejune clause of time lapse. Nay such is the keenness of Shiv Sena to recover the demographic loss that they want now Muslims disenfranchised, lose civil rights if they produce more than two children. Sena and Sansthan are self righteous, the latter also wants Nepal to remain a Hindu state.