Terrorism came handy to usual antagonists of Muslims, RSS and other Muslim bashers as a handle to beat the Muslim minority and a brush to tarnish its whole image in the country and beyond. The work went on in full swing whenever a bomb exploded in the country. The media preying on the paranoia of the majority community with increasing attacks blamed on JeM, LeT or HuJI sensationalized stories with descriptions kept ready. For example this facile submission, or editorial of the Hindu: “Challenge of Islamic terror”. “Investigative leads point to Harkatul Jihadi-e-Islami (HUJI), the Islamist organization behind the Mecca Masjid attack in Hyerabad, as being behind the terrorist strike at the dargah of Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti in Ajmir. What can one say about an outfit so consumed by hatred as to deliver death to the shrine of a saint who preached the oneness of god’s creation? The Ajmer bombing is the latest in a series of terror strikes directed at both Hindu and Muslim religious institutions. Investigators have been able to establish that many of these attacks were carried out by Islamist terror groups such as the Lashar-e-Taiba, the Jaish-e-eMohmmad, and the HUJI.”
The editors of the Hindu did not make any painstaking research or else they would know that the most motivated organization to create communal discord in the country is the RSS. As of now, the middle of 2010 is showing loud and clear the involvement of RSS in the bomb attacks across the country. Instead of banning it and exterminating it root and branch there are people who feel that “Hindutva terror will give Pak a handle” to beat us. We are tightly holding the handle and beating Pakistan all the while is another matter.”With the emergence of evidence that in a number of blasts, from Malegaon to Ajmer to Mecca Masjid, Hindu fundamentalist groups are involved, it weakens our case against terror internationally.” This comes from the spokesperson of the Congress party Manish Tiwari. There is a big question mark not only on what Tiwari says but on who made India join the juggernaut “to mobilize international opinion against Pakistan’s failure to contain Taliban factions and terrorist groups like Let”? Rather than fighting terror we have chosen to join what Hemant Karkare called in the last interview of his life ‘politics of terror. And why does not Tiwari include Samjhauta expess attack in his list of Hindutva terror? Karkare sacrificed his life in unearthing Malegaon that led to Samjhauta. Should the country allow his sacrifice go in vain?
Terror is being covered as news events and it has lent itself to some, who are judgmental in other fields, another occasion of covering up, hiding and camouflaging the real perpetrators behind the events. However, there are others who have redeemed sanity and refused to be obliged by partisanship. Kuldip Nayyar had called Malegaon 2006 terror attack as the handy work of al Qaeda. He dismissed it in one sentence. But over the years he was awakened to the horror of the Hindutva terror and affirmed what he heard from some of the professional minded investigators that Hindutva outfits were after all behind the Malegaon attacks of 2006.
Taveleen Singh preens herself as politically incorrect, what she means is best known to her but she believes that protests over the death of boys killed in the Kashmir valley is a return of the jihadists. “What matters is the jihad and its goal of subjugating idol-worshipping, infidel India once more to the domination of Islam”. Is by any stretch of imagination the aim of those who are throwing stones at the police this subjugation of the infidel India? If that were so why should they sacrifice themselves for what they shout Aazadi, freedom, even as their swearing by Kashmiriat is diametrically in contrast with Islam?
On the Martyrs’ Day July 13 in the valley does Singh think that those whose graves the mothers, sisters, daughters and wives are visiting were victims of any jihad? In 1994 the police would seal areas, separate men from others, and then shoot them dead in what they called seal and search operation. The so called operations were conducted to liquidate the insurgents. That was the peak year when there was not much of international focus on Kashmir thanks to the attention diverted to ethnic cleansings in former Yugoslavia. But the killings had been going on all the time. The police had also killed many in the funeral procession of the father of the present Mirwaiz Umer Farooq. That the senior Mirwaz was assassinated by the security forces is a common knowledge there. That happened during the reign of Jagmohan as the governor. During his tenure in office he put into practice what Tavleen Singh and the BJP and RSS want: extinction of the ‘terrorists’. So many were killed that that “he managed to turn the people on the streets from idealistic dreamers of freedom into a united front that despised India with the intensity only possible among the mortally aggrieved and mourning.” Where was the question of Jihad anywhere here or in other cases for that matter?
More than 800 jawans of the Rajputana Rifles had descended on the village of Kunan Poshpua in Kupwara district on February 22, 1991 and raped almost all the women and killed many men. Were the victims of police brutality jihadists, or terrorists for that matter? By what standard can the boys being killed recently jihadits? Therefore in covering the events of terror there is either an account or comment on facts or an attempt to deny the truth and create fiction which is easily sold as fact.
Justine Hardy who has been covering the events in the valley for more than two decades is sober and unbiased. She describes a slew of complexes as by product of terrorism: “The conflict (in Kashmir) has brutalized women but they do not turn to each other in their pain. They turn inwards, into silence, and away from the calls for their men to pick up the gun; from the sounds of rifle butts against their door demanding entry, from the cry of a neighbor telling them that their boy has gone, from the extremist throwing acid in their face for not wearing the veil; from the rapist between their legs, demanding entry.” Is the state not responsible for these dehumanizing reflexes as well as for more than 300 kinds of depressions that Dr Arshad Hussain of the Shri Hari Singh Medical College is treating every day? Whose terrorism is this that is playing havoc in the valley?
The religious angle is a different kettle of fish. After more than three years of dilly dallying the CBI has only now begun sighting the tip of the iceberg, that Swami Aseemanand supervised all the three instances of bomb blasts, Malegaon, Ajmer and Mecca masjid. What is looming larger as Takht-e-Suleiman overlooking all these is Samjhauta express blasts which are so dazing that the investigators are still stunned and have not regained sight! The friendly train is suppressed willfully as if our cordial relations with our neighbor are so brittle that it would sour everything, the mere acknowledgement of it. In the mean time the bomb maker and planter Ramji Kalsangrah has been busy in outshining every other terrorist by casting his vote in the local assembly election of 2009, Ramji is sending out signal that he is hale and hearty even politically by enjoying his right to choose. Thus the game of hide and seek goes on in the name of terror.
---
Challenge of Islamic terror. The Hindu. October 15, 2007.
The Jihad comes to Kashmir. Taveleen Singh Indian Express July 11, 2010
Justine Hardy. In the Valley of Mist. (London:Rider 2009). Pp 114, 137
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Valley of death and unemployment
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.” 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 travelers 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 proferred bhajiya as a reply!
Earlier in June 2010 the Prime Ministe 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.”
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.”
The Prime Minister says 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 sealed 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?
----
Ajit Bhattachariya, Kashmir: the wounded valley (New Delhi: UBS, 1994) p.67.
Justine Hardy, In the valley of mist (London: Rider, 2009) p.27.
“Tarraqi, kaamyaabi..”PM prays in Urdufor Kashmirs. Irna, June 7th, 2010.
Thackeray’s Letter. Saamna September 13, 2007.
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.” 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 travelers 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 proferred bhajiya as a reply!
Earlier in June 2010 the Prime Ministe 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.”
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.”
The Prime Minister says 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 sealed 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?
----
Ajit Bhattachariya, Kashmir: the wounded valley (New Delhi: UBS, 1994) p.67.
Justine Hardy, In the valley of mist (London: Rider, 2009) p.27.
“Tarraqi, kaamyaabi..”PM prays in Urdufor Kashmirs. Irna, June 7th, 2010.
Thackeray’s Letter. Saamna September 13, 2007.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
New gods in Kashmir and more sacrifices
When John Milton describes the horrid deity of Moloch he speaks of it as covered with the tears of mothers and the blood of innocent children sacrificed to the deity. Slowly the situation in the valley of Kashmir is reverting to that biblical manslaughter.
Zubair Ahmed Bhat (17) was sitting at the bank of the Jhelum with his friends when the troopers descended upon them. They panicked and jumped into the river. All others swam to safety but Zubair did not know swimming. A man saw him struggling in the water and tried to help him when the police shot tear gas shells at them. Zubair died soon after. That was June 18, 2010. People took out his cortege two days later and protested on the way. The police opened fire and as a result coincidentally his cousin Javed Ahmed fell a victim. None of them were stone pelters and no lyrical rhapsody of any walnut tree growing out of the abandoned home of a Pandi and protruding through the broken window can match the prosaic description of the killing in Jhelum. When parents had to offer innocent children to Moloch they would pass them through fire and put them into the brazen hands of the deity, which were terribly heated, and the children would be roasted alive. Purification either through fire or water and then comes the agonized death.
Are the troops hoping to build a safe and sanitized piece of ‘real estate’?
For on June 27 the people of Sopor took out a protest march. Bilal Ahmed, a bystander, watching the procession had a bullet shot through his neck as the troops attacked the protestors. This goes on every alternate day. On June 29 several youngsters were playing in the private lawn of one of them when the police intruded and killed two of them ( Ishtiyaq Khanday and Imtiyaz Itoo) on the spot and another died on way to hospital, the remaining two recovered from gun shot.
Why such juveniles like the nine year old Taukir Ahmed had to be killed? His age makes him a child rather than a stone thrower. Even the first boy killed on January 1, 2010 was on his way to tuition. Inayat Khan was 16 and had just passed SSC. Is it colonial complex of holding on to power despite international attention focused on the hotspot? Why should the right wing groups be so self conscious of this limelight even when they are so self assertive of the region being an integral part of the country?
This latter imbroglio is the crux of the matter because when Omar Farooq Abdullah and Mirwaiz Omar Farooq say that there is trouble in JK because it is a political issue and cannot be solved by military force or inducement of sorts, either; they mean altogether different things than what the rest of India is made to believe.
It is quite clear that the ruler of Kashmir Hari Singh was not in favour of joining either Pakistan or India. He wanted independence. The haste with which the instruments of accession were signed and 150 planes were used to airlift troops smacks of fools rushing where angels fear to tread. Strange as it sounds Nehru himself was cautious as he had four options, which he enumerated in a letter of December 1, 1947 to Hari Singh. One was to hold a plebiscite in which the people of JK would decide their destiny. Second, an independent JK state with defense guarantee from India and Pakistan. Third, dividing the state into Ladakh going to India and the rest to Pakistan. Fourth was: Jammu and the Kashmir valley to remain with India while Poonch and beyond going to Pakistan. Historical events show that Pakistan was in haste to send the marauders into Kashmir valley. But was it the only antecedent? If we do not redeem ourselves from this murky history of the state we would again regress to 1989 situation. That is we are back to square one and have not learnt anything from the past two decades. What hope of redemption with more boys falling victims to violence!
---
July 29, 2010
My comparison of security forces as priests of Moloch should not surprise anyone. Since I wrote the above this is what has emerged. Faizan’s mother, Fareeda: “My son left with his two friends for a casual walk in the afternoon. But on the Azad Gunj Bridge they were surrounded on both the sides by Police and SOG in civvies. A local SOG man hit Faizan on the head with gun butts. And when Faizan had started to get seizures, the SOG man lifted him from his ankles and threw him into Jhelum to pass it off as death due to drowning,”
“When Faizan was drowning he waved his arms for help. But police and SOG kept firing bullets and tear gas shells at him and at everyone that tried to come to his help. I saw it with my eyes when I reached the spot,”
“On the afternoon of the third day a diver came out of water and gave thumbs up to his officer who was over-looking the proceedings. But instead of bringing out the body he took in a short rope and later came out empty handed. When we asked him, he said he had not found the body and officials excused us for lunch,” she says, adding, “The diver tied the body with something in the floor so that it could not come up during the day.”
However, the body appeared on the surface later in the evening. Faizan’s (Mother Speaks. Danish Nabi, Kashmir Times, July 28, 2010)
Zubair Ahmed Bhat (17) was sitting at the bank of the Jhelum with his friends when the troopers descended upon them. They panicked and jumped into the river. All others swam to safety but Zubair did not know swimming. A man saw him struggling in the water and tried to help him when the police shot tear gas shells at them. Zubair died soon after. That was June 18, 2010. People took out his cortege two days later and protested on the way. The police opened fire and as a result coincidentally his cousin Javed Ahmed fell a victim. None of them were stone pelters and no lyrical rhapsody of any walnut tree growing out of the abandoned home of a Pandi and protruding through the broken window can match the prosaic description of the killing in Jhelum. When parents had to offer innocent children to Moloch they would pass them through fire and put them into the brazen hands of the deity, which were terribly heated, and the children would be roasted alive. Purification either through fire or water and then comes the agonized death.
Are the troops hoping to build a safe and sanitized piece of ‘real estate’?
For on June 27 the people of Sopor took out a protest march. Bilal Ahmed, a bystander, watching the procession had a bullet shot through his neck as the troops attacked the protestors. This goes on every alternate day. On June 29 several youngsters were playing in the private lawn of one of them when the police intruded and killed two of them ( Ishtiyaq Khanday and Imtiyaz Itoo) on the spot and another died on way to hospital, the remaining two recovered from gun shot.
Why such juveniles like the nine year old Taukir Ahmed had to be killed? His age makes him a child rather than a stone thrower. Even the first boy killed on January 1, 2010 was on his way to tuition. Inayat Khan was 16 and had just passed SSC. Is it colonial complex of holding on to power despite international attention focused on the hotspot? Why should the right wing groups be so self conscious of this limelight even when they are so self assertive of the region being an integral part of the country?
This latter imbroglio is the crux of the matter because when Omar Farooq Abdullah and Mirwaiz Omar Farooq say that there is trouble in JK because it is a political issue and cannot be solved by military force or inducement of sorts, either; they mean altogether different things than what the rest of India is made to believe.
It is quite clear that the ruler of Kashmir Hari Singh was not in favour of joining either Pakistan or India. He wanted independence. The haste with which the instruments of accession were signed and 150 planes were used to airlift troops smacks of fools rushing where angels fear to tread. Strange as it sounds Nehru himself was cautious as he had four options, which he enumerated in a letter of December 1, 1947 to Hari Singh. One was to hold a plebiscite in which the people of JK would decide their destiny. Second, an independent JK state with defense guarantee from India and Pakistan. Third, dividing the state into Ladakh going to India and the rest to Pakistan. Fourth was: Jammu and the Kashmir valley to remain with India while Poonch and beyond going to Pakistan. Historical events show that Pakistan was in haste to send the marauders into Kashmir valley. But was it the only antecedent? If we do not redeem ourselves from this murky history of the state we would again regress to 1989 situation. That is we are back to square one and have not learnt anything from the past two decades. What hope of redemption with more boys falling victims to violence!
---
July 29, 2010
My comparison of security forces as priests of Moloch should not surprise anyone. Since I wrote the above this is what has emerged. Faizan’s mother, Fareeda: “My son left with his two friends for a casual walk in the afternoon. But on the Azad Gunj Bridge they were surrounded on both the sides by Police and SOG in civvies. A local SOG man hit Faizan on the head with gun butts. And when Faizan had started to get seizures, the SOG man lifted him from his ankles and threw him into Jhelum to pass it off as death due to drowning,”
“When Faizan was drowning he waved his arms for help. But police and SOG kept firing bullets and tear gas shells at him and at everyone that tried to come to his help. I saw it with my eyes when I reached the spot,”
“On the afternoon of the third day a diver came out of water and gave thumbs up to his officer who was over-looking the proceedings. But instead of bringing out the body he took in a short rope and later came out empty handed. When we asked him, he said he had not found the body and officials excused us for lunch,” she says, adding, “The diver tied the body with something in the floor so that it could not come up during the day.”
However, the body appeared on the surface later in the evening. Faizan’s (Mother Speaks. Danish Nabi, Kashmir Times, July 28, 2010)
Friday, July 2, 2010
Malegaon Experience of Riots and Communal Violence Bill
Prologue
The scene is Lalit Grand Palace, Srinager, third week of June 2010. MJ Akbar and Tarun Vijay shake hands. After greeting each other they exchange pleasantries:
Akbar: Why do you throw pebbles at Muslims. Hurl boulders at us and see how your politics (of BJP) succeeds
Vijay: Ha, ha, ha!
Akbar: In fact BJP should rebuild the Babri mosque. We have many amongst the Muslims, like you, who would themselves demolish it and rebuild it ala the Akal thakt at the Golden temple!
--------------
Malegaon has had the misfortune of engineered riots sustained with borrowed oxygen of communal hate. The borrowed oxygen costs money and according to Pramod Muthalik, more than 70 lakh for a riot and even more.
Many people in this town are overwhelmingly preoccupied with their struggle to get both the ends meet for their wretched hand to mouth existence. They live in a blissful ignorance (perhaps) and do not know that the government has decided to discuss and finalize the five year old Communal Violence (Prevention, Control and Rehabilitation of Victims) Bill on July 15, 2010.
Last time a communal riot visited upon (like an epidemic in the sense of the old testament of the Bible) the town was October 26, 2001. The cause was trifling; a decorated awning for the Navratri cum Dassera festival was slightly bent but not pulled down or damaged by Muslim crowd. Adjoining it was the temple and the Juma masjid cheek by jowl. That Friday a policeman had torn a pamphlet calling people to buy Indian goods, be Indian and buy Indian. Muslims were outraged by the behavior of the police and tried to thrash him. He took shelter in a police van which was also slightly shaken by the restive crowd.
But the Hindutva groups spread rumour that a temple was destroyed and even a dozen Hindu women were molested. That kind of rumour and propaganda spread like a wild fire. For fifteen days there was curfew order clamped down on Malegaon. However, the villages and districts around came under the fury of the tornado of communal violence that spread to more than 200 villages and half a dozen districts. More than fifteen Muslims lost their life and a Hindu was also killed. Fourteen of the Muslims killed were victims of police shooting. A Muslim girl around the Girna dam area was raped but was sheltered by the bheel community. Later the rapists were tried and convicted by the court. So many mosques were demolished that a local web site put the number in its coverage which al Qaeda website quoted.
Muslim anger was not at the Hindus at the outset. There was no riot for appreciable time when the police could have prevented the flare-up involving them turning into a full-blown communal riot. The Muslims and Hindus did not rush at each other right away at the ground zero. The Hindus were busy for their preparation for burning the effigy of Ravana in the evening later that day. They were able to finish their ceremonial duty burning Ravana but in the meantime sporadic confrontation between the communities started taking place. The situation went out of control.
One of the gravest faults was that the shops of Muslims (mostly shops and repair centres of transport business) between chawni police station and Motibag naka were allowed to be looted and then burnt. The shops were quite visible to the end from the police chowki itself and there was no need to go and see. It was within reach of the police by walk. Had a couple of dozen cops taken trouble with just sticks and tear gas shells it could have been prevented. Muslims also burnt shops in their area. Even a woman doing some chores in the balcony of her first floor fell to the bullet of the police and died. As compared to Hindu shops and business establishments Muslims had more shops and business establishments looted and burnt. Even so the police firing took more Muslim lives. That was within the city. There was of course no shooting at the Hindu crowd that was looting and burning Muslim shops between chawni police station and Motibag naka. In the rural areas and villages there was no shop or business establishments of Hindus looted or burnt. Only Muslims suffered hugely and only they were forced to migrate from villages and rural areas.
Does all this fall into a kind of conspiracy where the police cannot extricate themselves from any blame?
A conspiracy is deep rooted secret planning of a crime and needs more than what the proposed Communal Violence is willing to admit. Nathuram Godse had made five attempts to kill Mahatma Gandhi. He even got circumcised in JJ Hospital in Bombay where the staff celebrated at the successful operation. (PM Rehmani, Faizane Rehmani, Anjuman Moinut tulba, 2005). The aim was to cause anti Muslim riot. He had shot in full view of the police and public and was no fool to believe that the people would have mercy if he was found uncircumcised. However, in the resultant melee he slipped away. But unfortunately he also carried a copy of his own newspaper “Hindu Rashtra”. The police searched lodges and hotels and came upon the abandoned copy of the Marathi newspaper and traced him to Poona. Before the day was over Prime Minister Nehru came to know the identity of the assassin and went on the air and told the nation. Till then Muslims were frightened and held their breath for the backlash that would visit upon them.
The proposed Bill should require first class honest work and follow up action on the events. The angle of conspiracy must include in every investigation of actions of individuals and organizations where there is possibility of actions and individuals affecting the two communities.
Preventing a riot is preventing conspirators from realizing their objective.
In the early 1980s SM Mushrif was SP of Malegaon when some miscreants garlanded a statue of a devi at Matamath in the center of Malegaon. The Hindu crowd became violent and threatened to retaliate. He reached the spot and tried to pacify. He wanted to call additional police force but could not wade through the crowd. Luckily the Maharashtra bank in front of the temple was open where he could use the phone. He went in and wondered why it should be open on a Sunday morning! He made inquiry and found that it was open to prepare the auction of a house of a Hindutva leader Advocate Gunjwad. He smelt a rat there. That lead proved vital for the lawyer had garlanded the statue with his own hand to cause a riot and stave off the auction!
In most cases unearthing the conspiracy is a failure and hence the festering wound of communal violence on our polity.
Similarly the administration does not show application. Application is effort or attention or using of rules of law in the case of riots with sincerity. What happened to the transport business mentioned earlier bears this out.
Controlling a riot should be prompt and effective. In the 2001 riot the police should have nipped the trouble in the bud. Their failure could also be because of some officers’ lack professionalism or bias. Officers often allow a group to fulfill its quota of inflicting damage and casualties. A prolonged curfew is a sign of lack of control of the situation. A Muslim army man was amazed and agonized over how Muslims were looting their own shops selling spices between Urdu library and the Mosom river when the curfew was relaxed. Most of the shops had been looted by Hindus on the very first day. The Muslims finished the left over.
Interesting to note is the fact that looting and burning of Muslim houses and properties went on in the villages of Nasik district and other districts. No curfew or prohibitory order was enforced in villages or towns. But in Malegaon it was enforced even when it was not as volatile as on the first day. Empowering the police now would lead to more misrule over the civil life rather than curbing violence. The police and administrative officials should be made answerable for the anomaly in enforcing curfews and using available force in very crucial time when the situation could have been brought under control. (Ashok Kamte did it well in Sholapur, Sangli and Satara posting.)
The scene is Lalit Grand Palace, Srinager, third week of June 2010. MJ Akbar and Tarun Vijay shake hands. After greeting each other they exchange pleasantries:
Akbar: Why do you throw pebbles at Muslims. Hurl boulders at us and see how your politics (of BJP) succeeds
Vijay: Ha, ha, ha!
Akbar: In fact BJP should rebuild the Babri mosque. We have many amongst the Muslims, like you, who would themselves demolish it and rebuild it ala the Akal thakt at the Golden temple!
--------------
Malegaon has had the misfortune of engineered riots sustained with borrowed oxygen of communal hate. The borrowed oxygen costs money and according to Pramod Muthalik, more than 70 lakh for a riot and even more.
Many people in this town are overwhelmingly preoccupied with their struggle to get both the ends meet for their wretched hand to mouth existence. They live in a blissful ignorance (perhaps) and do not know that the government has decided to discuss and finalize the five year old Communal Violence (Prevention, Control and Rehabilitation of Victims) Bill on July 15, 2010.
Last time a communal riot visited upon (like an epidemic in the sense of the old testament of the Bible) the town was October 26, 2001. The cause was trifling; a decorated awning for the Navratri cum Dassera festival was slightly bent but not pulled down or damaged by Muslim crowd. Adjoining it was the temple and the Juma masjid cheek by jowl. That Friday a policeman had torn a pamphlet calling people to buy Indian goods, be Indian and buy Indian. Muslims were outraged by the behavior of the police and tried to thrash him. He took shelter in a police van which was also slightly shaken by the restive crowd.
But the Hindutva groups spread rumour that a temple was destroyed and even a dozen Hindu women were molested. That kind of rumour and propaganda spread like a wild fire. For fifteen days there was curfew order clamped down on Malegaon. However, the villages and districts around came under the fury of the tornado of communal violence that spread to more than 200 villages and half a dozen districts. More than fifteen Muslims lost their life and a Hindu was also killed. Fourteen of the Muslims killed were victims of police shooting. A Muslim girl around the Girna dam area was raped but was sheltered by the bheel community. Later the rapists were tried and convicted by the court. So many mosques were demolished that a local web site put the number in its coverage which al Qaeda website quoted.
Muslim anger was not at the Hindus at the outset. There was no riot for appreciable time when the police could have prevented the flare-up involving them turning into a full-blown communal riot. The Muslims and Hindus did not rush at each other right away at the ground zero. The Hindus were busy for their preparation for burning the effigy of Ravana in the evening later that day. They were able to finish their ceremonial duty burning Ravana but in the meantime sporadic confrontation between the communities started taking place. The situation went out of control.
One of the gravest faults was that the shops of Muslims (mostly shops and repair centres of transport business) between chawni police station and Motibag naka were allowed to be looted and then burnt. The shops were quite visible to the end from the police chowki itself and there was no need to go and see. It was within reach of the police by walk. Had a couple of dozen cops taken trouble with just sticks and tear gas shells it could have been prevented. Muslims also burnt shops in their area. Even a woman doing some chores in the balcony of her first floor fell to the bullet of the police and died. As compared to Hindu shops and business establishments Muslims had more shops and business establishments looted and burnt. Even so the police firing took more Muslim lives. That was within the city. There was of course no shooting at the Hindu crowd that was looting and burning Muslim shops between chawni police station and Motibag naka. In the rural areas and villages there was no shop or business establishments of Hindus looted or burnt. Only Muslims suffered hugely and only they were forced to migrate from villages and rural areas.
Does all this fall into a kind of conspiracy where the police cannot extricate themselves from any blame?
A conspiracy is deep rooted secret planning of a crime and needs more than what the proposed Communal Violence is willing to admit. Nathuram Godse had made five attempts to kill Mahatma Gandhi. He even got circumcised in JJ Hospital in Bombay where the staff celebrated at the successful operation. (PM Rehmani, Faizane Rehmani, Anjuman Moinut tulba, 2005). The aim was to cause anti Muslim riot. He had shot in full view of the police and public and was no fool to believe that the people would have mercy if he was found uncircumcised. However, in the resultant melee he slipped away. But unfortunately he also carried a copy of his own newspaper “Hindu Rashtra”. The police searched lodges and hotels and came upon the abandoned copy of the Marathi newspaper and traced him to Poona. Before the day was over Prime Minister Nehru came to know the identity of the assassin and went on the air and told the nation. Till then Muslims were frightened and held their breath for the backlash that would visit upon them.
The proposed Bill should require first class honest work and follow up action on the events. The angle of conspiracy must include in every investigation of actions of individuals and organizations where there is possibility of actions and individuals affecting the two communities.
Preventing a riot is preventing conspirators from realizing their objective.
In the early 1980s SM Mushrif was SP of Malegaon when some miscreants garlanded a statue of a devi at Matamath in the center of Malegaon. The Hindu crowd became violent and threatened to retaliate. He reached the spot and tried to pacify. He wanted to call additional police force but could not wade through the crowd. Luckily the Maharashtra bank in front of the temple was open where he could use the phone. He went in and wondered why it should be open on a Sunday morning! He made inquiry and found that it was open to prepare the auction of a house of a Hindutva leader Advocate Gunjwad. He smelt a rat there. That lead proved vital for the lawyer had garlanded the statue with his own hand to cause a riot and stave off the auction!
In most cases unearthing the conspiracy is a failure and hence the festering wound of communal violence on our polity.
Similarly the administration does not show application. Application is effort or attention or using of rules of law in the case of riots with sincerity. What happened to the transport business mentioned earlier bears this out.
Controlling a riot should be prompt and effective. In the 2001 riot the police should have nipped the trouble in the bud. Their failure could also be because of some officers’ lack professionalism or bias. Officers often allow a group to fulfill its quota of inflicting damage and casualties. A prolonged curfew is a sign of lack of control of the situation. A Muslim army man was amazed and agonized over how Muslims were looting their own shops selling spices between Urdu library and the Mosom river when the curfew was relaxed. Most of the shops had been looted by Hindus on the very first day. The Muslims finished the left over.
Interesting to note is the fact that looting and burning of Muslim houses and properties went on in the villages of Nasik district and other districts. No curfew or prohibitory order was enforced in villages or towns. But in Malegaon it was enforced even when it was not as volatile as on the first day. Empowering the police now would lead to more misrule over the civil life rather than curbing violence. The police and administrative officials should be made answerable for the anomaly in enforcing curfews and using available force in very crucial time when the situation could have been brought under control. (Ashok Kamte did it well in Sholapur, Sangli and Satara posting.)
Sunday, June 27, 2010
RSS stance against the floodgagte of startling revelations: prevarication
RSS stance against the floodgate of startling revelations: prevarication
Prevarication is dodging facing the truth. Prevaricating in matters of national interest where the unity and integrity of the country is involved is even worse treachery. Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has hallmark of this prevarication. The RSS has spawned numerous organizations as a tactic in their strategy to have India as a Hindu Rashtra with minorities existing, if at all, at their sufferance.
This latter fact is the governing thought of the pre-partition ethos of the communal politics vis-à-vis Muslim League’s determination to have a separate country, Pakistan. Muslims raping Hindu women and girls or parading them naked in Lahore was as much terror as Hindus and Sikhs raping or parading of Muslim women and girls naked in Amritsar. Terrorism was not born on 9/11 2001. History is replete with uncountable such events showing how men have behaved with fellow human beings. But politics of terrorism—the co called ‘war on terrorism’ and its hideous adjunct that ‘either you are with us or against us’—was born at the onset of 21st century in the US and India. This is true, though not all the people of India know it or support it.
K K Mysorewala was in charge of Naroda Patiya 2002 where horrendous murder, rape and burning human beings alive took place. When Muslim women pleaded with him to shelter them from the rampaging mob he had famously said that he had orders from above that that day they had to let the Hindu mobs wreak havoc on the Muslims. Come September 29, 2008 a bomb exploded near a mosque in Modasa killing a fifteen year old and injuring many others in the Ramadan crowd of Muslims, just like what happened exactly at the same time in Malegaon. Now that National Investigation Agency is taking over the investigation there is need for a more comprehensive inquiry into the kind of prevarication that Mysorewala was engaged in at both the occasions as both are instances of terror. As RSS keeps no record of its members and the central government has no appetite to ban any Hindu organizations there is no need to find out whether the duo, Mysorewala and Narendra Modi, belong to the same organization. Modi had blessed the chhara community women for having given birth to men who had performed the pogroms. Why should he or anyone prevaricate on the conduct of a pogrom? Transparency is the best way to assure justice and, what is more: guarantee that this nation survives with honour despite bouts of murder and mayhem. There is no sophistry of ‘cultural nationalism’ here.
The virus of prevarication, telling half truth or lie, is spread all through and up to the top. The retired deputy director of Intelligence Bureau Ashok Karnik who should know the kind of society we have ‘created’ says “On a few occasions when extremists are traced and arrested, there is clamour from civil libertarians to ensure that they get fair trial. This is a just demand in a society which takes pride in its adherence to the rule of law. However it runs counter to the outraged feelings in the society which is not prepared to listen to any defence of terrorism.” Why is it lost on this IB official that defence of terrorism is one thing and defence of an accused is another? How in the heavens can he equate defence of accused as defence of terrorism? Unless the court has proved a person guilty beyond doubt he is an honourable citizen of this country. That is how the so called “society which takes pride in its adherence to the rule of law” should look at what has happened in all incidents of terrorism including Gujarat 2002 and Modasa 2008. Unfortunately the government set-up and the society are not up to the ideals of any sort or else Vinita Kamte would not have the misgivings she had. She says:”There was a time when I was so desperate for the truth that I felt that I should go and meet Kasab and ask him what happened? Can you imagine my situation—should I feel the need to ask a terrorist what happened that night—do you feel the situation has changed! I felt it was important to speak one’s mind. I just thought we would expose the system and people would take it forward. I still feel that people must ask questions and hold those in power responsible.” Why shouldn’t people ask Mysorewala and Modi questions that disturb us, the ordinary citizens of this great country? Do the questions of the widow of slain deputy commissioner of police Ashok Kamte disturb Rakesh Maria, a colleague and of the same batch of IPS and now a successor of the angelic Hemant Karkare?
The kind of sophistry that RSS and its ‘cultural nationalism’ have woven around makes it difficult if not impossible to know the truth. However, the times have changed. The floodgate of information opening up on the involvement of RSS is staggering. Devendra Gupta was what Ram Madhav calls vibagh pramukh of three districts. He had procured sim cards used in Ajmer, Mecca mosque and Samjhauta express attacks and it does not stop with him. Ramji Kalsangrah, Himanshu Panse, Sandeep Dange, Sunil Joshi, etc are all from RSS. They are the progeny of Nathuram Godse and Madanlal Pawa.
Despite the overwhelming nature of evidence does “a society which takes pride in its adherence to the rule of law” unequivocally say that they, above mentioned RSS functionaries, are terrorists? Ram Madhav is the epitome of prevarication: “We don't know the charges yet. When we know about it, then we will certainly think about it. But beyond that there is nothing.
“Let me talk about the other part of your question. This vicarious satisfaction of people like you is amazing. The event (arrests of Hindus) doesn't mitigate the fact that there exists something called Islamic terrorism in this world, not just in India.
“There is something called global terrorism that is inspired by the ideology of jihad. It exists.
“Just because someone associated with the RSS or Bajrang Dal or any organisation gets arrested, it doesn't mean there is no Islamic terrorism. How can you say that?
I am saying that there is no Hindu terrorism. For a simple reason -- at the most some Hindus have indulged in such acts which have to be condemned by everyone.
“At the most you can call these people's action as counter-Islamic terrorism. It is not at all Hindu terrorism.”
This is what Madhav told Sheilla Bhatt. But Modi had been asserting the third law of Newton ad absurdum. Suresh Joshi has also chipped in “Its counter-Islamic terrorism, not Hindu terror”. So, Islamic terrorism or jihadist terrorism is all right but not Hindu terrorism (the kind of terror that Ramji Kalsangrah unleashed at Bhiku chowk in Malegaon! How could countering terror through terror be justified? Rajiv Gandhi had sent Indian peace keeping force to Sri Lanka where Indian soldiers suffered heavy casualties. LTTE also countered by terror that took the life of the former prime minister of India and many others. Could India accept that counter terrorism is no terror?
Or, the current crucible test of Samjhauta express (and contrast it with Maoists blowing trains!) where Abhinav Bharat has claimed responsibility, its founding member Lt Col Purohit supplied RDX and the Haryana police have already identified the shops from where the bags were bought and even some of the explosives in Indore. Now comes the news that Kalsangra, Devenda Gupte were also connected with the event. Interestingly some new statements of Purohit were added to distance himself and his Abhinav Bharat from RSS. He plotted to kill Mohan Bhagwat and Indrashkumar. The mystery of the white powder that could wipe out the trail of the murder! These brain children of RSS also include Ashok Singhal who sees in the arrest of Sadhvi Pragyasingh Thakur the myth of Mary Magdalane and the attempt of the Roman Catholic Church to destroy her line of descent. The mystery surrounding RSS is much thicker because it involves highly educated and well placed executives of all levels. We will require many volumes thicker than Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code to unravel everything.
Suffice to say for the present that we have reached the capital of terrorism, Indore. Lokesh Sharma had bought a cell phone from this town of his birth. The phone was hanging in a bag with the bomb outside on the grill of Mecca mosque. However, the sim card was bought by Devendra Gupta! But then these are individuals who do not make up the RSS, says Ram Madhav. He knows the truth for he is an honourable man!
Prevarication is dodging facing the truth. Prevaricating in matters of national interest where the unity and integrity of the country is involved is even worse treachery. Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has hallmark of this prevarication. The RSS has spawned numerous organizations as a tactic in their strategy to have India as a Hindu Rashtra with minorities existing, if at all, at their sufferance.
This latter fact is the governing thought of the pre-partition ethos of the communal politics vis-à-vis Muslim League’s determination to have a separate country, Pakistan. Muslims raping Hindu women and girls or parading them naked in Lahore was as much terror as Hindus and Sikhs raping or parading of Muslim women and girls naked in Amritsar. Terrorism was not born on 9/11 2001. History is replete with uncountable such events showing how men have behaved with fellow human beings. But politics of terrorism—the co called ‘war on terrorism’ and its hideous adjunct that ‘either you are with us or against us’—was born at the onset of 21st century in the US and India. This is true, though not all the people of India know it or support it.
K K Mysorewala was in charge of Naroda Patiya 2002 where horrendous murder, rape and burning human beings alive took place. When Muslim women pleaded with him to shelter them from the rampaging mob he had famously said that he had orders from above that that day they had to let the Hindu mobs wreak havoc on the Muslims. Come September 29, 2008 a bomb exploded near a mosque in Modasa killing a fifteen year old and injuring many others in the Ramadan crowd of Muslims, just like what happened exactly at the same time in Malegaon. Now that National Investigation Agency is taking over the investigation there is need for a more comprehensive inquiry into the kind of prevarication that Mysorewala was engaged in at both the occasions as both are instances of terror. As RSS keeps no record of its members and the central government has no appetite to ban any Hindu organizations there is no need to find out whether the duo, Mysorewala and Narendra Modi, belong to the same organization. Modi had blessed the chhara community women for having given birth to men who had performed the pogroms. Why should he or anyone prevaricate on the conduct of a pogrom? Transparency is the best way to assure justice and, what is more: guarantee that this nation survives with honour despite bouts of murder and mayhem. There is no sophistry of ‘cultural nationalism’ here.
The virus of prevarication, telling half truth or lie, is spread all through and up to the top. The retired deputy director of Intelligence Bureau Ashok Karnik who should know the kind of society we have ‘created’ says “On a few occasions when extremists are traced and arrested, there is clamour from civil libertarians to ensure that they get fair trial. This is a just demand in a society which takes pride in its adherence to the rule of law. However it runs counter to the outraged feelings in the society which is not prepared to listen to any defence of terrorism.” Why is it lost on this IB official that defence of terrorism is one thing and defence of an accused is another? How in the heavens can he equate defence of accused as defence of terrorism? Unless the court has proved a person guilty beyond doubt he is an honourable citizen of this country. That is how the so called “society which takes pride in its adherence to the rule of law” should look at what has happened in all incidents of terrorism including Gujarat 2002 and Modasa 2008. Unfortunately the government set-up and the society are not up to the ideals of any sort or else Vinita Kamte would not have the misgivings she had. She says:”There was a time when I was so desperate for the truth that I felt that I should go and meet Kasab and ask him what happened? Can you imagine my situation—should I feel the need to ask a terrorist what happened that night—do you feel the situation has changed! I felt it was important to speak one’s mind. I just thought we would expose the system and people would take it forward. I still feel that people must ask questions and hold those in power responsible.” Why shouldn’t people ask Mysorewala and Modi questions that disturb us, the ordinary citizens of this great country? Do the questions of the widow of slain deputy commissioner of police Ashok Kamte disturb Rakesh Maria, a colleague and of the same batch of IPS and now a successor of the angelic Hemant Karkare?
The kind of sophistry that RSS and its ‘cultural nationalism’ have woven around makes it difficult if not impossible to know the truth. However, the times have changed. The floodgate of information opening up on the involvement of RSS is staggering. Devendra Gupta was what Ram Madhav calls vibagh pramukh of three districts. He had procured sim cards used in Ajmer, Mecca mosque and Samjhauta express attacks and it does not stop with him. Ramji Kalsangrah, Himanshu Panse, Sandeep Dange, Sunil Joshi, etc are all from RSS. They are the progeny of Nathuram Godse and Madanlal Pawa.
Despite the overwhelming nature of evidence does “a society which takes pride in its adherence to the rule of law” unequivocally say that they, above mentioned RSS functionaries, are terrorists? Ram Madhav is the epitome of prevarication: “We don't know the charges yet. When we know about it, then we will certainly think about it. But beyond that there is nothing.
“Let me talk about the other part of your question. This vicarious satisfaction of people like you is amazing. The event (arrests of Hindus) doesn't mitigate the fact that there exists something called Islamic terrorism in this world, not just in India.
“There is something called global terrorism that is inspired by the ideology of jihad. It exists.
“Just because someone associated with the RSS or Bajrang Dal or any organisation gets arrested, it doesn't mean there is no Islamic terrorism. How can you say that?
I am saying that there is no Hindu terrorism. For a simple reason -- at the most some Hindus have indulged in such acts which have to be condemned by everyone.
“At the most you can call these people's action as counter-Islamic terrorism. It is not at all Hindu terrorism.”
This is what Madhav told Sheilla Bhatt. But Modi had been asserting the third law of Newton ad absurdum. Suresh Joshi has also chipped in “Its counter-Islamic terrorism, not Hindu terror”. So, Islamic terrorism or jihadist terrorism is all right but not Hindu terrorism (the kind of terror that Ramji Kalsangrah unleashed at Bhiku chowk in Malegaon! How could countering terror through terror be justified? Rajiv Gandhi had sent Indian peace keeping force to Sri Lanka where Indian soldiers suffered heavy casualties. LTTE also countered by terror that took the life of the former prime minister of India and many others. Could India accept that counter terrorism is no terror?
Or, the current crucible test of Samjhauta express (and contrast it with Maoists blowing trains!) where Abhinav Bharat has claimed responsibility, its founding member Lt Col Purohit supplied RDX and the Haryana police have already identified the shops from where the bags were bought and even some of the explosives in Indore. Now comes the news that Kalsangra, Devenda Gupte were also connected with the event. Interestingly some new statements of Purohit were added to distance himself and his Abhinav Bharat from RSS. He plotted to kill Mohan Bhagwat and Indrashkumar. The mystery of the white powder that could wipe out the trail of the murder! These brain children of RSS also include Ashok Singhal who sees in the arrest of Sadhvi Pragyasingh Thakur the myth of Mary Magdalane and the attempt of the Roman Catholic Church to destroy her line of descent. The mystery surrounding RSS is much thicker because it involves highly educated and well placed executives of all levels. We will require many volumes thicker than Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code to unravel everything.
Suffice to say for the present that we have reached the capital of terrorism, Indore. Lokesh Sharma had bought a cell phone from this town of his birth. The phone was hanging in a bag with the bomb outside on the grill of Mecca mosque. However, the sim card was bought by Devendra Gupta! But then these are individuals who do not make up the RSS, says Ram Madhav. He knows the truth for he is an honourable man!
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Communalism is terrorism: Shiv Sena at 45 does not know terrorism!
Malegaon bomb blasts of 2006 and 2008 a reflection
Malegaon bomb blasts of 2006 and 2008 have created an upheaval in the country and sharply crystallized the political parties. Never before was the town mentioned so often as since when ATS chief Hemant Karkare started arresting Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit of the army, Sadhvi Pragyasingh Thakur and others and facts of extremist Hindus responsible for the terrorist attacks of September 29, 2008 started making headlines.
The earliest straw in the wind was the complete silence over who did it. Nobody had claimed responsibility for either of the two terrorist incidents of 2006 and 2008. Both of them took place in September and initially were sought out to be explained away as sequel to September 11, 2001 attack on World Trade Centre twin towers and the Pentagon, jihadist attacks. Immediately, Lashkare-toiba or al Badre were blamed and even al Qaida. In the aftermath of 2006 explosions some twenty Hindus were interrogated by the police and a well known yarn trader Mahesh Patodiya was called by the police for questioning. In the latter case a huge Hindu crowd encircled the killa police station. The police released him soon. But from the third week of the October they started arresting Muslim youths on suspicion. Many of them are still behind the bars with hardly any evidence against them than their own confession under duress. But then happened 2008 and as most of the arrested in 2006 were accused to be members of SIMI who else was left to be arrested now?
But more than the residual situation was the coming of the new ATS chief Hemant Kakare on the scene. He began investigation objectively from ground zero and came upon the motor cycle of Pragyasingh Thakur.
When Purohit and Pragya were brought to the court in Nasik a mammoth gathering that included Shiv Sainks showered petals on the Hindu accused. They made it into a gala event of celebration and jubilation. Never before had this happened in India. Bal Thackeray and his party assured tickets for the accused to fight the election that was round the corner.
LK Advani was swept away by the overwhelming revelations that these times round the terrorists were Hindus. He like Thackeray was so much inveterate that his reaction was also schizophrenic. He wanted to change the composition of the investigation team altogether. Thackeray thundered that the names of the investigation officers would be directly revealed to the public who would naturally mete out justice or punishment to the investigators as they deemed necessary. List of lawyers who would defend grew in three digits. All these left no doubt to the public that the Hindus could not take to terrorism and they were superior to their fellow countrymen from the Islamic faith. It was much like the Hasidim Lubavitch orthodox Jews.
This creation of reality of the situation of bombing is reminiscent of the Godhra train burning. It did not stop there even nationalism was ascribed to those who accepted the created reality.
That is the persistent problem with terrorism. Those who have appropriated nationalism in this way create the reality which they enforce on others. Inadvertently it is deepening the gulf between communities and that might become unbridgeable. Within a week of September 2008 bombing neighbouring town Dhulia had its first ever wide spread communal riot. Eerie and fraught with dangerous consequences, the Hindu Raksha Samiti wanted to protect Hindus from the fall out of the bomb blast in Malegaon! Their pamphlet makes it clear. The occasion was well chosen. Shabbir Bhangarwala was returning from haj and notice boards were set up announcing a welcome programme. There was another board of the Samiti. Who damaged one such board is difficult to say but the riots ensued. Bhangarwala was detained and the police made an appeal for his remand in which the superintendent of the police said that it was an established fact that Muslims are the masterminds behind all terrorist attacks in India. Hindu Rakshak Samiti only retaliated. Here also the created reality is made out to be even the police version! Later the DGP AN Roy ordered an inquiry into the affair.
The created reality and the appropriation of nationalism based on this skewed perception have gone so deep into the psyche of the Hindu right and in the case of many others that 45th anniversary of Shiv Sena is illustrative of it. In its editorial of Saturday June19, 2010 Saamna says that “such is the vote bank politics of the Congress party that when bombs are exploded by Islamic extremists, Hindus are blamed for the bombs and the explosions. That is how the Hindus have been blamed in the Malegaon bomb blasts. Now that the police have no lead on Pune German bakery bomb blast (of February 19, 2010) they want to hide their impotence by blaming the Hindus only.” The editorial shows how schizophrenia has seized Hindu extremist political outfits like Shiv Sena and BJP.
Many especially in the minority see no scope or hope for justice or fair play for Muslims who are often not only themselves killed in terrorist attacks but also their youths are falsely implicated into such crimes and languish decades of their life in prison. That is what has happened in Delhi, Hyderabad and is true of the Malegaon 2006.
The party mouthpiece says: “We are brave macho Marathas. But when there is danger to the country we are primarily and foremost Hindus who would descend to the battlefield with our weapons.”
Thus full four years after the first bomb incidents in Malegaon and two years after the second attack Shiv Sena refuses to accept that Hindus could plant bombs. Their enemy within the homeland is the Muslim.
As there is no perceptible dissidence against this one feels amazed whether the Marathi speaking Hindus fully comprehend and understand ‘”aata islami atirekyani phodlele bomb aani sfotanche gunhe hindun chya nawawar dakhan kele jat aahet malegaon sfotantasech hinduvana badnam kele.” (Now the bombs exploded by Muslim extremists and explosion crimes are blamed on the Hindus. In Malegaon bomb explosions Hindus have been blamed.)?
This is clear insinuation that only Muslims are terrorists for which Hindus have to wear the cross. What is worse the party and its mouthpiece have sworn to inspire and instigate the Hindus. History is replete with innumerable instances of how the Shiv Sena and its supreme leader have incited violence. Again, what is cocking a snook at the authorities and the government: “teyana petvineyanche kaam aamhi karat rahu” (We will continue to fire or instigate them,” the Hindus. ) Does not this aim at creating hatred between communities? In other words the Malegaon blasts have come to be tools in the hands of the Hindu parties to continue their fight against the Muslims for just being Muslims. Terrorism has fully succeeded superseding communalism. Communal violence of yore is terrorist violence, murder and mayhem of today.
Why there is no hope for justice under the right wing Hindu parties coming to power is again enshrined in the editorial as the Shiv Sena does not publish a manifesto its manifesto is what Thackeray says and writes in the editorials. Look at a seminal thought of Thackeray. “I want in Mumbai goondas, hooch distillers, smugglers and all Marathi people.” His nephew followed him. They unleashed violence on the North Indians which was pure terror. They went further and declared if this makes them terrorists they are proud to declare that they are terrorists! This part of history is caught on camera by the electronic media and there is no need to look into the archives for evidence. The situation boils down to this: the Muslim youths must perish in prison but the Hindus (not all certainly but even the extremists among them) cannot be terrorists. Malegaon blasts have gone into history proving this.
Why have we reached this stage? Communalism, that too aggressive one, played havoc. Its first casualty is not the unsuspecting knifed in the street. But what is within us, our power of discerning right and wrong and doing the right. Terrorism must not be allowed to atrophy introspection. Even those who fight for human rights must introspect as well as those who indulge in violating the human rights. Did the Shiv Sena activists and the Bajrang Dal musclemen introspect how small children in the Malegaon graveyard mosque had their limbs blown up by explosion? Many had their necks pierced and broken by deadly missiles of small balls and nails of the bombs. Most were either beggars or children. Shiv Sena and Uma Bharti who offered tickets to fight election to the Sadhvi and Purohit or the fake encounter cop Sachin Vaze had no introspection.
Given the communal polarization it will become perhaps inevitable that communities like their leaders will very soon come to justify terrorism. Bal Thackeray had occasionally remarked that he wished Tamil Tigers or the Naxalites would help Hindus retaliate what Himani Savarkar (true to her name, sharp edge weapon) calls bomb for bomb revenge against the Muslims whom they view as just terrorists. Will the claiming of responsibility be far behind? Or, has it begun. Shiv Sena and MNS activists who unleashed terror on North Indians have made no bones of it. When it comes to sons of the soil ideology they would use force call what you may, if this is terrorism they are happy to be terrorists.
------
Dhule police’s Muslim remark raises eyebrows
Kartikeya & Nitasha Natu, TNN, Nov 18, 2008 it is an established fact that Muslims are the masterminds behind all terrorist attacks in India, pernicious remand appeal for Shabbir Bhangarwala, which also includes the assertion that Hindu Raksha Samiti only retaliated. Two HRS members are also under detention.
Fresh charges on Purohit; Cong, BJP trade charges
Tue Nov 18 2008, IE Advani demanded change in the investigation team
Malegaon bomb blasts of 2006 and 2008 have created an upheaval in the country and sharply crystallized the political parties. Never before was the town mentioned so often as since when ATS chief Hemant Karkare started arresting Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit of the army, Sadhvi Pragyasingh Thakur and others and facts of extremist Hindus responsible for the terrorist attacks of September 29, 2008 started making headlines.
The earliest straw in the wind was the complete silence over who did it. Nobody had claimed responsibility for either of the two terrorist incidents of 2006 and 2008. Both of them took place in September and initially were sought out to be explained away as sequel to September 11, 2001 attack on World Trade Centre twin towers and the Pentagon, jihadist attacks. Immediately, Lashkare-toiba or al Badre were blamed and even al Qaida. In the aftermath of 2006 explosions some twenty Hindus were interrogated by the police and a well known yarn trader Mahesh Patodiya was called by the police for questioning. In the latter case a huge Hindu crowd encircled the killa police station. The police released him soon. But from the third week of the October they started arresting Muslim youths on suspicion. Many of them are still behind the bars with hardly any evidence against them than their own confession under duress. But then happened 2008 and as most of the arrested in 2006 were accused to be members of SIMI who else was left to be arrested now?
But more than the residual situation was the coming of the new ATS chief Hemant Kakare on the scene. He began investigation objectively from ground zero and came upon the motor cycle of Pragyasingh Thakur.
When Purohit and Pragya were brought to the court in Nasik a mammoth gathering that included Shiv Sainks showered petals on the Hindu accused. They made it into a gala event of celebration and jubilation. Never before had this happened in India. Bal Thackeray and his party assured tickets for the accused to fight the election that was round the corner.
LK Advani was swept away by the overwhelming revelations that these times round the terrorists were Hindus. He like Thackeray was so much inveterate that his reaction was also schizophrenic. He wanted to change the composition of the investigation team altogether. Thackeray thundered that the names of the investigation officers would be directly revealed to the public who would naturally mete out justice or punishment to the investigators as they deemed necessary. List of lawyers who would defend grew in three digits. All these left no doubt to the public that the Hindus could not take to terrorism and they were superior to their fellow countrymen from the Islamic faith. It was much like the Hasidim Lubavitch orthodox Jews.
This creation of reality of the situation of bombing is reminiscent of the Godhra train burning. It did not stop there even nationalism was ascribed to those who accepted the created reality.
That is the persistent problem with terrorism. Those who have appropriated nationalism in this way create the reality which they enforce on others. Inadvertently it is deepening the gulf between communities and that might become unbridgeable. Within a week of September 2008 bombing neighbouring town Dhulia had its first ever wide spread communal riot. Eerie and fraught with dangerous consequences, the Hindu Raksha Samiti wanted to protect Hindus from the fall out of the bomb blast in Malegaon! Their pamphlet makes it clear. The occasion was well chosen. Shabbir Bhangarwala was returning from haj and notice boards were set up announcing a welcome programme. There was another board of the Samiti. Who damaged one such board is difficult to say but the riots ensued. Bhangarwala was detained and the police made an appeal for his remand in which the superintendent of the police said that it was an established fact that Muslims are the masterminds behind all terrorist attacks in India. Hindu Rakshak Samiti only retaliated. Here also the created reality is made out to be even the police version! Later the DGP AN Roy ordered an inquiry into the affair.
The created reality and the appropriation of nationalism based on this skewed perception have gone so deep into the psyche of the Hindu right and in the case of many others that 45th anniversary of Shiv Sena is illustrative of it. In its editorial of Saturday June19, 2010 Saamna says that “such is the vote bank politics of the Congress party that when bombs are exploded by Islamic extremists, Hindus are blamed for the bombs and the explosions. That is how the Hindus have been blamed in the Malegaon bomb blasts. Now that the police have no lead on Pune German bakery bomb blast (of February 19, 2010) they want to hide their impotence by blaming the Hindus only.” The editorial shows how schizophrenia has seized Hindu extremist political outfits like Shiv Sena and BJP.
Many especially in the minority see no scope or hope for justice or fair play for Muslims who are often not only themselves killed in terrorist attacks but also their youths are falsely implicated into such crimes and languish decades of their life in prison. That is what has happened in Delhi, Hyderabad and is true of the Malegaon 2006.
The party mouthpiece says: “We are brave macho Marathas. But when there is danger to the country we are primarily and foremost Hindus who would descend to the battlefield with our weapons.”
Thus full four years after the first bomb incidents in Malegaon and two years after the second attack Shiv Sena refuses to accept that Hindus could plant bombs. Their enemy within the homeland is the Muslim.
As there is no perceptible dissidence against this one feels amazed whether the Marathi speaking Hindus fully comprehend and understand ‘”aata islami atirekyani phodlele bomb aani sfotanche gunhe hindun chya nawawar dakhan kele jat aahet malegaon sfotantasech hinduvana badnam kele.” (Now the bombs exploded by Muslim extremists and explosion crimes are blamed on the Hindus. In Malegaon bomb explosions Hindus have been blamed.)?
This is clear insinuation that only Muslims are terrorists for which Hindus have to wear the cross. What is worse the party and its mouthpiece have sworn to inspire and instigate the Hindus. History is replete with innumerable instances of how the Shiv Sena and its supreme leader have incited violence. Again, what is cocking a snook at the authorities and the government: “teyana petvineyanche kaam aamhi karat rahu” (We will continue to fire or instigate them,” the Hindus. ) Does not this aim at creating hatred between communities? In other words the Malegaon blasts have come to be tools in the hands of the Hindu parties to continue their fight against the Muslims for just being Muslims. Terrorism has fully succeeded superseding communalism. Communal violence of yore is terrorist violence, murder and mayhem of today.
Why there is no hope for justice under the right wing Hindu parties coming to power is again enshrined in the editorial as the Shiv Sena does not publish a manifesto its manifesto is what Thackeray says and writes in the editorials. Look at a seminal thought of Thackeray. “I want in Mumbai goondas, hooch distillers, smugglers and all Marathi people.” His nephew followed him. They unleashed violence on the North Indians which was pure terror. They went further and declared if this makes them terrorists they are proud to declare that they are terrorists! This part of history is caught on camera by the electronic media and there is no need to look into the archives for evidence. The situation boils down to this: the Muslim youths must perish in prison but the Hindus (not all certainly but even the extremists among them) cannot be terrorists. Malegaon blasts have gone into history proving this.
Why have we reached this stage? Communalism, that too aggressive one, played havoc. Its first casualty is not the unsuspecting knifed in the street. But what is within us, our power of discerning right and wrong and doing the right. Terrorism must not be allowed to atrophy introspection. Even those who fight for human rights must introspect as well as those who indulge in violating the human rights. Did the Shiv Sena activists and the Bajrang Dal musclemen introspect how small children in the Malegaon graveyard mosque had their limbs blown up by explosion? Many had their necks pierced and broken by deadly missiles of small balls and nails of the bombs. Most were either beggars or children. Shiv Sena and Uma Bharti who offered tickets to fight election to the Sadhvi and Purohit or the fake encounter cop Sachin Vaze had no introspection.
Given the communal polarization it will become perhaps inevitable that communities like their leaders will very soon come to justify terrorism. Bal Thackeray had occasionally remarked that he wished Tamil Tigers or the Naxalites would help Hindus retaliate what Himani Savarkar (true to her name, sharp edge weapon) calls bomb for bomb revenge against the Muslims whom they view as just terrorists. Will the claiming of responsibility be far behind? Or, has it begun. Shiv Sena and MNS activists who unleashed terror on North Indians have made no bones of it. When it comes to sons of the soil ideology they would use force call what you may, if this is terrorism they are happy to be terrorists.
------
Dhule police’s Muslim remark raises eyebrows
Kartikeya & Nitasha Natu, TNN, Nov 18, 2008 it is an established fact that Muslims are the masterminds behind all terrorist attacks in India, pernicious remand appeal for Shabbir Bhangarwala, which also includes the assertion that Hindu Raksha Samiti only retaliated. Two HRS members are also under detention.
Fresh charges on Purohit; Cong, BJP trade charges
Tue Nov 18 2008, IE Advani demanded change in the investigation team
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Advertisement of those who shun publicity: RSS and its catch22
The hallmark of the RSS functioning style is secrecy, spreading rumour and insinuation. The RSS has so insidiously developed cultural nationalism based on communalism that it would take a couple of decades to counter their ideological onslaught on our constitutional democracy and plain national spirit sans religious and caste colours. The same holds true for the growth of the rule of law and thwarting of waywardness of the rule of jungle on opportune times. This could be done if there is public support and will power in the rulers of India.
It is illogical to simply say what the apologists say with qualifications about 2002 genocide in Gujarat that “Gujarat investigators are now getting cops involved in fake encounters mounted on non-terrorists merely to curry favour with Narendra Modi.” There was no currying favour, as Narendra Modi has acknowledged that he was himself responsible for the fate of Sohrabuddin and dared Sonia Gandhi to hang him! This is only the tip of the iceberg. He was equally responsible for the pogroms of Muslims which preceded the fake encounters. The fake encounters simply stopped with the advance in investigation into the murder of the Sohabuddin and his wife Kauser. Moreover the fake encounters in Gujarat were a by-product of the pogroms. The atmosphere created by the pogroms made everything viable what with the Prime Minister and Home Minister not only from the ruling BJP alliance but willing to connive through sophistry of words. They chose to throw to the winds what the president of India KR Narayanan would write to advise or warn them Buying over through inducement and threat is stamped on the face of Zahira Sheikh in the Best bakery case. Babu Bajrangi’s free movement is at the sufferance of Modi and Advani.
Vanzara had called the victims as traitors to the country and cleansing them from the country was his patriotic duty, he said. How could the traitors turn tail and leave Gujarat for good?
It gives away the canard. They were not traitors and DG Vanzara and other cops were indeed not doing what they boasted as deshbhakti or patriotism in hunting and killing the victims. They had taken the law of the land in their own hands for which they were assured impunity by the kind of administration Modi had ushered in after he was inducted in office. The RSS had prepared the experiment that he was conducting in his ‘laboratory’—the selected areas of Gujarat state.
The apologists of Modi need to look at it in a holistic manner. That the RSS roped in the Chhara community in conducting the pogroms. They had mobilized the backward communities as they had done in Surat and other places during and after the demolition of the Babri mosque in the 90s. What they had sown then they would reap in the succeeding years. In the first decade of the twenty first century most of the terrorist attacks have the dubious distinction of indigenized terrorism. The vanar sena according to Pritish Nandi had taken over the juggernaut of blowing up bombs in what they made out as ‘retaliation’. In this home grown terrorism people actively engaged or involved in RSS training and works were complicit. Simply removing Devendra Gupta or Chandershekhar Patidar from responsibility RSS cannot wipe out the guilt, it sticks and now it stinks far and wide. Sunil Joshi was killed but like the corps in the French absurd drama his dead body is enlarging and spreading out so much from the bed room that it has grown into the sitting room and the kitchen!
Others outside India also were attentive to this. A research institute in North Carolina had named RSS as a terrorist organization. The US denied visa to Modi and very recently the German delegation of parliamentarians called a spade a spade and refused to accept the genocide as anything but just that.
Therefore, the need for perspicuity was never felt so much as in today’s hurly burly world of Indian politics. As we move away from moral certainty to relativity of market based ethics there is a slide over values and entrenching of self justification and self interest.
Far too long many never felt as much outraged as normal human beings should over the manufactured ‘reality’ of the burning of Sabarmati express, the state sponsored genocide in Gujarat 2002 and were taken in by the fake encounters. The élan of India shining is grinding down into bathos as the moral turpitude is coming home to roost.
The allies of BJP did not feel outraged in 2002. In fact George Fernandes justified as usual the murder, mayhem, rape and arson of Muslims of Gujarat and their homes and commercial establishment. Many chose to hobnob with Chief Minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi.
Why does Nitish Kumar want to dissociate from the Gujarat’s Modi? Is it only his self interest? Political stake of a party does matter but the nefarious vendetta that Narendra Modi is wantonly pursuing despite adversity shows how die hard communalism has become so fixated thanks to the ideology of the RSS nurtured as a culture for decades. BJP is the political organizational configuration of RSS as is Modi its personified ideological essence. BJP has brazenly put up a hoarding in Vadodra showing Sohrabuddin( as a proclaimed offender) insinuating that Congress was also involved. There has also been protest against the arrest of deputy police commissioner Abhay Chaudasma directly involved in the fake encounter of Sohabuddin and his wife and fried.
Photographs in advertisement can be as much revealing as the ones taken in hot action. How could the photos of two girls from Azamgarh be used to advertise how Muslims have a secure financial future and brighter prospects in Gujarat? The eager and smiling faces of the girls from Azamgarh cannot be used as a camouflage to represent how the much physically abused and socially and economically boycotted survivors of pogroms as economically safe and secure in Gujarat? This is after all the standard of RSS secrecy of blaming the Muslims for having caused the demolition of Babri mosque and caused all the violence! In the aftermath of the demolition the RSS chief even remarked that the Muslims had it coming to them!
RSS is essentially a divisive ideology. It has greatest potential to divide India again. If Gupta and Patidar are its functionaries and now removed from responsibilities, it still leaves them free to attend the shakhas. If Intelligence Bureau is itself involved along with the army in Malegaon blast of 2008 it is because RSS ideology has succeeded in contaminating government servants so well that they are capable of playing different roles, government servants as well as cadres ready to undertake terrorist tasks as protecting India from Muslims who they deem as terrorists.
This has been confirmed by what the ATS official has just revealed to India Today: “The conversations recorded in Dayanand Pandey’s laptop clearly show that on one instance, there was an IB officer who was present in one of the meetings. On seeing this officer, others were told to keep quiet and not to discuss their plans. We had passed this information to other agencies concerned. They should have found out who this IB officer was and why he didn’t reveal the conspiracy to the police.”
Government servants in civil or police uniform are so much biased under the influence of the RSS ideology that the police have arrested and put in prison nine innocent Muslims since 2006 Malegaon blasts. (True, some of the accused could have violated some rules which have no connection with terrorism, qua terrorism.) Most of them have no criminal record. In fact they have written letters from prison that it was SP Mr Rajwardhan of Nashik (rual) police who framed them. One of them happens to be an informer of police turned approver, Abrar Ahmed, who now claims in his affidavit of April 18, 2009 that Rajwadhan gave more than 25 lakh rupees to his father in law and had arranged for him to meet Sadhvi Pragyasingh and Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit in September- October 2006.
In contrast to these nine imprisoned, Swami Asimanand was found to have attended the meetings of Abhinav Bharat when the conspiracy was hatched and arranged for training in arms and bomb making in his ashram in Gujarat but he was not declared even as absconder! Doctored phone conversations of the accused Muslims can withstand court scrutiny but not Asimanand’s attendance! Trailing Sandeep Dange, Ram Kalsangrah or Pravin Mutalik may take ages so should the Muslim accused languish in jail until the three are caught and more details are ‘advertised’ about Asimanand. Even the bail they had legitimate right to is denied. What stronger evidence did the investigating agencies need to have than the phone of his driver that Asimanand used and the ATS knew it? His disappearance itself is valid enough reason to declare him an offender absconding from law. On the contrary Abdul Samad was in Bhatkal and not in Pune during the bomb blast in the German bakery on February 13, 2010. He had gone to Dubai to meet his father and when his visa expired he returned to Mangalore when the Maharashtra ATS in a melodramatic manner whisked him away by plane to Mumbai. His mother pleaded with the authorities that he was not Yasin Bhatkal whom the police suspect to have planted bomb in the bakery. He appealed for bail and the judge granted it saying that the police had not even mentioned him as “wanted accused” in the Mumbai arms smuggling case of 2009.
What great service RSS has done to the country is making government departments and agencies dysfunctional. Even the home ministry is floundering. Chidambrum praised the police when they arrested Abdul Samad. The police detained Maulvi Noorulhoda of a madrasa in Faizabad moments before the plane he was in was about to take off. A lady overheard and called the police when he talked to his family and told folks at home that the plane was about to take off ('jahaz udane wala hai). Of course, Chidambrum intervened and the maulvi was allowed to travel, but the question remains: who has created this atmosphere of distrust against the Muslims?
----
Hindutva terror probe wallows in official lethargy. India Today June 15, 2010.
Let the cops do their job. Sujata Anandan. Hindustant Times, June 11, 2010.
Sniffing opportunity, Congress asks Nitish Kumar to dump BJP
TNN, Jun 13, 2010
It is illogical to simply say what the apologists say with qualifications about 2002 genocide in Gujarat that “Gujarat investigators are now getting cops involved in fake encounters mounted on non-terrorists merely to curry favour with Narendra Modi.” There was no currying favour, as Narendra Modi has acknowledged that he was himself responsible for the fate of Sohrabuddin and dared Sonia Gandhi to hang him! This is only the tip of the iceberg. He was equally responsible for the pogroms of Muslims which preceded the fake encounters. The fake encounters simply stopped with the advance in investigation into the murder of the Sohabuddin and his wife Kauser. Moreover the fake encounters in Gujarat were a by-product of the pogroms. The atmosphere created by the pogroms made everything viable what with the Prime Minister and Home Minister not only from the ruling BJP alliance but willing to connive through sophistry of words. They chose to throw to the winds what the president of India KR Narayanan would write to advise or warn them Buying over through inducement and threat is stamped on the face of Zahira Sheikh in the Best bakery case. Babu Bajrangi’s free movement is at the sufferance of Modi and Advani.
Vanzara had called the victims as traitors to the country and cleansing them from the country was his patriotic duty, he said. How could the traitors turn tail and leave Gujarat for good?
It gives away the canard. They were not traitors and DG Vanzara and other cops were indeed not doing what they boasted as deshbhakti or patriotism in hunting and killing the victims. They had taken the law of the land in their own hands for which they were assured impunity by the kind of administration Modi had ushered in after he was inducted in office. The RSS had prepared the experiment that he was conducting in his ‘laboratory’—the selected areas of Gujarat state.
The apologists of Modi need to look at it in a holistic manner. That the RSS roped in the Chhara community in conducting the pogroms. They had mobilized the backward communities as they had done in Surat and other places during and after the demolition of the Babri mosque in the 90s. What they had sown then they would reap in the succeeding years. In the first decade of the twenty first century most of the terrorist attacks have the dubious distinction of indigenized terrorism. The vanar sena according to Pritish Nandi had taken over the juggernaut of blowing up bombs in what they made out as ‘retaliation’. In this home grown terrorism people actively engaged or involved in RSS training and works were complicit. Simply removing Devendra Gupta or Chandershekhar Patidar from responsibility RSS cannot wipe out the guilt, it sticks and now it stinks far and wide. Sunil Joshi was killed but like the corps in the French absurd drama his dead body is enlarging and spreading out so much from the bed room that it has grown into the sitting room and the kitchen!
Others outside India also were attentive to this. A research institute in North Carolina had named RSS as a terrorist organization. The US denied visa to Modi and very recently the German delegation of parliamentarians called a spade a spade and refused to accept the genocide as anything but just that.
Therefore, the need for perspicuity was never felt so much as in today’s hurly burly world of Indian politics. As we move away from moral certainty to relativity of market based ethics there is a slide over values and entrenching of self justification and self interest.
Far too long many never felt as much outraged as normal human beings should over the manufactured ‘reality’ of the burning of Sabarmati express, the state sponsored genocide in Gujarat 2002 and were taken in by the fake encounters. The élan of India shining is grinding down into bathos as the moral turpitude is coming home to roost.
The allies of BJP did not feel outraged in 2002. In fact George Fernandes justified as usual the murder, mayhem, rape and arson of Muslims of Gujarat and their homes and commercial establishment. Many chose to hobnob with Chief Minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi.
Why does Nitish Kumar want to dissociate from the Gujarat’s Modi? Is it only his self interest? Political stake of a party does matter but the nefarious vendetta that Narendra Modi is wantonly pursuing despite adversity shows how die hard communalism has become so fixated thanks to the ideology of the RSS nurtured as a culture for decades. BJP is the political organizational configuration of RSS as is Modi its personified ideological essence. BJP has brazenly put up a hoarding in Vadodra showing Sohrabuddin( as a proclaimed offender) insinuating that Congress was also involved. There has also been protest against the arrest of deputy police commissioner Abhay Chaudasma directly involved in the fake encounter of Sohabuddin and his wife and fried.
Photographs in advertisement can be as much revealing as the ones taken in hot action. How could the photos of two girls from Azamgarh be used to advertise how Muslims have a secure financial future and brighter prospects in Gujarat? The eager and smiling faces of the girls from Azamgarh cannot be used as a camouflage to represent how the much physically abused and socially and economically boycotted survivors of pogroms as economically safe and secure in Gujarat? This is after all the standard of RSS secrecy of blaming the Muslims for having caused the demolition of Babri mosque and caused all the violence! In the aftermath of the demolition the RSS chief even remarked that the Muslims had it coming to them!
RSS is essentially a divisive ideology. It has greatest potential to divide India again. If Gupta and Patidar are its functionaries and now removed from responsibilities, it still leaves them free to attend the shakhas. If Intelligence Bureau is itself involved along with the army in Malegaon blast of 2008 it is because RSS ideology has succeeded in contaminating government servants so well that they are capable of playing different roles, government servants as well as cadres ready to undertake terrorist tasks as protecting India from Muslims who they deem as terrorists.
This has been confirmed by what the ATS official has just revealed to India Today: “The conversations recorded in Dayanand Pandey’s laptop clearly show that on one instance, there was an IB officer who was present in one of the meetings. On seeing this officer, others were told to keep quiet and not to discuss their plans. We had passed this information to other agencies concerned. They should have found out who this IB officer was and why he didn’t reveal the conspiracy to the police.”
Government servants in civil or police uniform are so much biased under the influence of the RSS ideology that the police have arrested and put in prison nine innocent Muslims since 2006 Malegaon blasts. (True, some of the accused could have violated some rules which have no connection with terrorism, qua terrorism.) Most of them have no criminal record. In fact they have written letters from prison that it was SP Mr Rajwardhan of Nashik (rual) police who framed them. One of them happens to be an informer of police turned approver, Abrar Ahmed, who now claims in his affidavit of April 18, 2009 that Rajwadhan gave more than 25 lakh rupees to his father in law and had arranged for him to meet Sadhvi Pragyasingh and Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit in September- October 2006.
In contrast to these nine imprisoned, Swami Asimanand was found to have attended the meetings of Abhinav Bharat when the conspiracy was hatched and arranged for training in arms and bomb making in his ashram in Gujarat but he was not declared even as absconder! Doctored phone conversations of the accused Muslims can withstand court scrutiny but not Asimanand’s attendance! Trailing Sandeep Dange, Ram Kalsangrah or Pravin Mutalik may take ages so should the Muslim accused languish in jail until the three are caught and more details are ‘advertised’ about Asimanand. Even the bail they had legitimate right to is denied. What stronger evidence did the investigating agencies need to have than the phone of his driver that Asimanand used and the ATS knew it? His disappearance itself is valid enough reason to declare him an offender absconding from law. On the contrary Abdul Samad was in Bhatkal and not in Pune during the bomb blast in the German bakery on February 13, 2010. He had gone to Dubai to meet his father and when his visa expired he returned to Mangalore when the Maharashtra ATS in a melodramatic manner whisked him away by plane to Mumbai. His mother pleaded with the authorities that he was not Yasin Bhatkal whom the police suspect to have planted bomb in the bakery. He appealed for bail and the judge granted it saying that the police had not even mentioned him as “wanted accused” in the Mumbai arms smuggling case of 2009.
What great service RSS has done to the country is making government departments and agencies dysfunctional. Even the home ministry is floundering. Chidambrum praised the police when they arrested Abdul Samad. The police detained Maulvi Noorulhoda of a madrasa in Faizabad moments before the plane he was in was about to take off. A lady overheard and called the police when he talked to his family and told folks at home that the plane was about to take off ('jahaz udane wala hai). Of course, Chidambrum intervened and the maulvi was allowed to travel, but the question remains: who has created this atmosphere of distrust against the Muslims?
----
Hindutva terror probe wallows in official lethargy. India Today June 15, 2010.
Let the cops do their job. Sujata Anandan. Hindustant Times, June 11, 2010.
Sniffing opportunity, Congress asks Nitish Kumar to dump BJP
TNN, Jun 13, 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
