Secular India

They want to sue Praveen Swami, but fear harassment from agencies

2011-12-21T23:16:00.000-08:00

Hyderabad: The defamation suit against Praveen Swami, the National Bureau Chief of The Hindu, by Karnataka native Muhammad Zarar Siddibapa, whom Swami had described “fugitive Indian Mujahideen commander” in his 30th Nov. story, has evoked mixed responses from Swami’s other victims.

When TCN asked the Muslim youths who were arrested in Mecca Masjid blast case of 2007 and who were later acquitted as innocent by the courts, if they were planning to move court against Swami’s media terror and false reporting, they expressed helplessness and fear of further harassment from intelligence agencies.

Praveen Swami [Photo Courtesy: Twitter page of Praveen Swami, http://twitter.com/praveenswami]

Swami in his several reports and Hindu editorials, had consistently declared the arrested Muslim youths as “Harkat ul-Jihadi-e-Islami (HUJI)” activists and responsible for the Mecca Masjid blast 2007. Swami had also overtly hinted that Ajmer and Mecca Masjid blasts were the deeds of “Islamist terror” groups, while investigations have now brought out the fact that they were the handiwork of Hindutva groups like Abhinav Bharat. The Rajasthan ATS and other investigators have by now identified Hindutva terrorists and arrested some of them.

As early as 23 May 2007 (the Mecca Masjid bombing took place on 18 May) Praveen Swami decided who the culprits are. In his news analysis titled “Behind the Mecca Masjid bombing” Swami stated with absolute certainty: “What the Mecca Masjid bombings make clear is that the Islamist threat to India's cities remains in place, notwithstanding the decline in violence since the Mumbai serial bombings…”

The Hindu editorial of October 15, 2007, titled “Challenge of Islamic terror”, the editorial begins as follows: “Investigative leads point to the Harkat ul-Jihadi-e-Islami (HUJI), the Islamist organisation behind the Mecca Masjid attack in Hyderabad, as being behind the terrorist strike at the Dargah of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti in Ajmer….Investigators have been able to establish that many of these attacks were carried out by Islamist terror groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Jaish-e-Mohammad, and the HUJI…”

Imran Khan, who was arrested in connection with Mecca Masjid blast and who remained in jail for around 17 months told TCN that initially he had contemplated approaching courts against Praveen Swami, who had regarded him along with others, as terrorists from HuJI. But later Imran’s lawyer suggested him not to do that, apprehending further harassment of torture and witch hunt from the intelligence agencies.

“Praveen Swami’s baseless and completely false reporting destroyed my life. I had thought of going to court against him but my lawyer advised me not to do that as there were practical possibilities of more harassment from the agencies,” said Imran who is as a Business Development Manager in Hyderabad.

Imran also said that there is not one, but thousands of Praveen Swamis, who have penetrated the system including the media, “How can you file cases against these thousands of Swamis? Look at the Hindi and the regional media and the way they violate all the ethical norms when they brand accused as terrorists. Who is going to file cases against them?” questioned Imran.

He expressed hope from the proposals of Justice Katju, the new Chairman, Press Council of India (PCI). Katju had criticised the media for branding Muslims as terrorists and their media trial in terror cases. He also proposed punishing the media houses in cases of breach of ethics as far as reporting of terror cases is concerned.

“Let’s see if Justice Katju manages to stop media from branding innocent youths as terrorists,” said Imran.
In other cases, the acquitted youths who were branded as terrorists by Praveen Swami, said they didn’t approach court against Swami’s false reporting because they didn’t want to remember the trauma and pain which the entire case brought on them.

Abdul Kaleem, who was another youth arrested in Mecca Masjid blast and who was acquitted after remaining in jail for around 18 months, said he could have gone to court as well, but it would have resulted in more fights and negativity. He didn’t pursue the case as he wanted to leave the trauma behind and start his life afresh.

Article Courtesy: TwoCircles.Net

सेकुलर-परिवर्तनकामी कवि आदम गोंडवी की मदद करें

2011-12-16T00:33:00.000-08:00

आदम जनता के कवि हैं, उन्‍हें बचाने के लिए आगे आएं

(पोस्ट साभार: मोहल्ला लाइव )

♦ कौशल किशोर
जनकवि रामनाथ सिंह उर्फ अदम गोंडवी की हालत अब भी चिंताजनक बनी हुई है। अपनी गजलों व शायरी से आम जन में नयी स्फूर्ति व चेतना भर देने वाले अदम लखनऊ के संजय गांधी आयुर्विज्ञान संस्थान (पीजीआई) के गेस्ट्रोलॉजी विभाग (पांचवा तल, जी ब्लॉक, बेड नं 3) में भर्ती हैं। उनकी चेतना जब भी वापस आती है, वे अपने भतीजे दिलीप कुमार सिंह को सख्त हिदायत देते हैं कि मेरे इलाज के लिए अपनी तरफ से किसी से सहयोग मत मांगो। जैसे कहना चाहते हैं कि सारी जिंदगी संघर्ष किया है, अपनी बीमारी से भी लड़ेगे। उसे भी परास्त करेंगे। वे जब भी आंख खोलते हैं, चारों तरफ अपने साथियों को पाते हैं। उनके चेहरे पर नयी चमक सी आ जाती है। एक साथी उन्हें सुनाते हैं, ‘काजू भुनी पलेट में, ह्व‍िस्की ग्लास में / उतरा है रामराज्‍य विधायक निवास में’ और अदम अपना सारा दर्द पी जाते हैं और उनके चेहरे पर हल्की सी मुस्कान फैल जाती है।

अदम गोंडवी का लीवर बुरी तरह क्षतिग्रस्त हो चुका है। किडनी भी ठीक से काम नहीं कर रही है। पेट फूला हुआ है। मुंह से पानी का घूंट भी ले पाना उनके लिए संभव नहीं है। खून में हीमोग्लोबीन का स्तर भी नीचे आ गया है। सोमवार की रात तीन बोतल खून चढ़ाया गया। संभव है आगे और खून चढ़ाना पड़े। मंगलवार को अदम गोंडवी का इंडोस्कोपी हुआ तथा कई जांचें की गयी। इनकी रिपोर्ट आने के बाद आगे के इलाज की दिशा तय होगी। पीजीआई के डाक्टरों का कहना है कि अदम गोंडवी के इलाज में करीब तीन लाख रुपये के आसपास खर्च आएगा।

लखनऊ के एक स्‍थानीय अखबार में उनकी बीमारी की खबर तथा सहयोग की अपील का अच्छा असर देखने में आया है। आज सुबह से ही लेखकों, संस्कृतिकर्मियों का पीजीआई आना शुरू हो गया। कई संगठन और व्यक्ति भी सहयोग के लिए सामने आये। जो किसी कारणवश नहीं पहुंच पाये, वे भी लगातार हालचाल पूछते रहे। पहुंचने वालों में वीरेंद्र यादव, प्रो रमेश दीक्षित, राकेश, भगवान स्वरूप कटियार, आरके सिन्हा, श्याम अंकुरम, आदियोग, संजीव सिन्हा, पीसी तिवारी, रामकिशोर आदि प्रमुख थे।

अदम गोंडवी के इलाज के लिए सहयोग जुटाने के मकसद से कई संगठन सक्रिय हो गये हैं। जसम, प्रलेस, जलेस, कलम, आवाज, ज्ञान विज्ञान समिति आदि संगठनों की ओर से राज्यपाल व मुख्यमंत्री को ज्ञापन भेजा गया तथा उनसे मांग की गयी कि अदम गोंडवी के इलाज का सारा खर्च प्रदेश सरकार उठाये। ऐसा ही ज्ञापन उत्तर प्रदेश हिंदी संस्थान और भाषा संस्थान को भी भेजा गया है। लेखक संगठनों का कहना है कि अदम गोंडवी ने सारी जिंदगी जनता की कविताएं लिखीं, जन संघर्षों को वाणी दी। ये हमारे समाज और प्रदेश की धरोहर है। इनका जीवन बचाना सरकार की नैतिक जिम्मेदारी है। वह आगे आये। रचना व साहित्य के लिए बनी सरकारी संस्थाओं का भी यही दायित्व है।
सोमवार 12 दिसंबर को अदम गोंडवी को गोंडा से लखनऊ के पीजीआई में लाया गया था। उनकी हालत काफी गंभीर थी। वे नीम बेहोशी की हालत में थे। कई घंटे वे बिना भर्ती व इलाज के पड़े रहे। इससे उनकी हालत और भी खराब होती गयी। बाद में पीजीआई के इमरजेंसी वार्ड में भर्ती हुए। सबसे बड़ी दिक्कत पैसे की थी। परिवार के पास इलाज के लिए पैसे नहीं थे। सबसे पहले मुलायम सिंह यादव का सहयोग सामने आया। उन्होंने पचास हजार का सहयोग दिया। एडीएम, मनकापुर ने दस हजार का सहयोग दिया। गोंडा में जिस प्राइवेट नर्सिंग होम में उनका इलाज चला, वहां के डाक्टर राजेश कुमार पांडेय ने दस हजार का सहयोग दिया।
12 तारीख से चले इलाज से इतना फर्क आया है कि उस दिन जहां वे नीम बेहोशी में थे, आज लोगों को पहचान रहे हैं। थोड़ी-बहुत बातचीत भी कर रहे हैं। लेकिन अदम गोंडवी का यह इलाज लंबा चलेगा। इसमें अच्छे-खासे धन की जरूरत होगी। इसके लिए सभी को जुटना होगा। उस समाज को तो जरूर ही आगे आना होगा जिसके लिए अदम गोंडवी ने सारी जिंदगी संघर्ष किया। कहते हैं बूंद-बूद से घड़ा भरता है। लोगों का छोटा सहयोग भी इस मौके पर बड़ा मायने रखता है। वे सहयोग के लिए आगे आ सकते हैं। इस सहयोग से हम अपने कवि का जीवन बचा सकते हैं। सहयोग के लिए दिलीप कुमार सिंह से 09958253708 पर संपर्क करें या सीधे अदम गोंडवी के एकाउंट में भी धन जमा किया जा सकता है। उनका एकाउंट स्‍टेट बैंक ऑफ इंडिया की परसपुर शाखा में है। एकाउंट नंबर है… 31095622283

आदम गोंडवी कीकुछ मशहूर कविताएं :

गलतियां बाबर की थीं, जुम्मन का घर फिर क्यों जले
हिंदू या मुस्लिम के अहसासात को मत छेड़िए
अपनी कुरसी के लिए जज्बात को मत छेड़िए
हममें कोई हूण, कोई शक, कोई मंगोल है
दफ्न है जो बात, अब उस बात को मत छेड़िए
गलतियां बाबर की थीं, जुम्मन का घर फिर क्यों जले
ऐसे नाजुक वक्त में हालात को मत छेड़िए
हैं कहां हिटलर, हलाकू, जार या चंगेज खां
मिट गये सब, कौम की औकात को मत छेड़िए
छेड़िए इक जंग, मिल-जुल कर गरीबी के खिलाफ
दोस्त, मेरे मजहबी नग्मात को मत छेड़िए

जनता के पास एक ही चारा है बगावत
काजू भुने पलेट में, व्हिस्की गिलास में
उतरा है रामराज विधायक निवास में
पक्के समाजवादी हैं, तस्कर हों या डकैत
इतना असर है खादी के उजले लिबास में
आजादी का वो जश्न मनाएं तो किस तरह
जो आ गये फुटपाथ पर घर की तलाश में
पैसे से आप चाहें तो सरकार गिरा दें
संसद बदल गयी है यहां की नखास में
जनता के पास एक ही चारा है बगावत
यह बात कह रहा हूं मैं होशो-हवास में

तुम्हारी फाइलों में गांव का मौसम गुलाबी है
तुम्हारी फाइलों में गांव का मौसम गुलाबी है
मगर ये आंकड़े झूठे हैं ये दावा किताबी है
उधर जम्हूरियत का ढोल पीटे जा रहे हैं वो
इधर परदे के पीछे बर्बरीयत है, नवाबी है
लगी है होड़-सी देखो अमीरी औ गरीबी में
ये गांधीवाद के ढांचे की बुनियादी खराबी है
तुम्हारी मेज चांदी की, तुम्हारे जाम सोने के
यहां जुम्मन के घर में आज भी फूटी रकाबी है

भूख के एहसास को शेरो-सुखन तक ले चलो
भूख के एहसास को शेरो-सुखन तक ले चलो
या अदब को मुफलिसों की अंजुमन तक ले चलो
जो गजल माशूक के जल्वों से वाकिफ हो गयी
उसको अब बेवा के माथे की शिकन तक ले चलो
मुझको नज्‍मो-जब्त की तालीम देना बाद में
पहले अपनी रहबरी को आचरन तक ले चलो
गंगाजल अब बूर्जुआ तहजीब की पहचान है
तिशनगी को वोदका के आचमन तक ले चलो
खुद को जख्मी कर रहे हैं गैर के धोखे में लोग
इस शहर को रोशनी के बांकपन तक ले चलो

चमारों की गली
आइए महसूस करिए जिंदगी के ताप को
मैं चमारों की गली तक ले चलूंगा आपको
जिस गली में भुखमरी की यातना से ऊब कर
मर गयी फुलिया बिचारी इक कुएं में डूब कर
है सधी सिर पर बिनौली कंडियों की टोकरी
आ रही है सामने से हरखुआ की छोकरी
चल रही है छंद के आयाम को देती दिशा
मैं इसे कहता हूं सरजूपार की मोनालिसा
कैसी यह भयभीत है हिरनी-सी घबरायी हुई
लग रही जैसे कली बेला की कुम्‍हलायी हुई
कल को यह वाचाल थी पर आज कैसी मौन है
जानते हो इसकी खामोशी का कारण कौन है
थे यही सावन के दिन हरखू गया था हाट को
सो रही बूढ़ी ओसारे में बिछाये खाट को
डूबती सूरज की किरनें खेलती थीं रेत से
घास का गट्ठर लिए वह आ रही थी खेत से
आ रही थी वह चली खोयी हुई जज्बात में
क्या पता उसको कि कोई भेड़ि़या है घात में
होनी से बेखबर कृष्ना बेखबर राहों में थी
मोड़ पर घूमी तो देखा अजनबी बाहों में थी
चीख निकली भी तो होठों में ही घुट कर रह गयी
छटपटायी पहले, फिर ढीली पड़ी, फिर ढह गयी
दिन तो सरजू के कछारों में था कब का ढल गया
वासना की आग में कौमार्य उसका जल गया
और उस दिन ये हवेली हंस रही थी मौज में
होश में आयी तो कृष्ना थी पिता की गोद में
जुड़ गयी थी भीड़ जिसमें जोर था सैलाब था
जो भी था अपनी सुनाने के लिए बेताब था
बढ़ के मंगल ने कहा काका तू कैसे मौन है
पूछ तो बेटी से आखिर वो दरिंदा कौन है
कोई हो संघर्ष से हम पांव मोड़ेंगे नहीं
कच्चा खा जाएंगे जिंदा उनको छोड़ेंगे नहीं
कैसे हो सकता है होनी कह के हम टाला करें
और ये दुश्मन बहू-बेटी से मुंह काला करें
बोला कृष्ना से – बहन, सो जा मेरे अनुरोध से
बच नहीं सकता है वो पापी मेरे प्रतिशोध से
पड़ गयी इसकी भनक थी ठाकुरों के कान में
वे इकट्ठे हो गये थे सरचंप के दालान में
दृष्टि जिसकी है जमी भाले की लंबी नोक पर
देखिए सुखराज सिंग बोले हैं खैनी ठोंक कर
क्या कहें सरपंच भाई! क्या जमाना आ गया
कल तलक जो पांव के नीचे था रुतबा पा गया
कहती है सरकार कि आपस में मिलजुल कर रहो
सुअर के बच्चों को अब कोरी नहीं हरिजन कहो
देखिए ना यह जो कृष्ना है चमारों के यहां
पड़ गया है सीप का मोती गंवारों के यहां
जैसे बरसाती नदी अल्हड़ नशे में चूर है
हाथ न पुट्ठे पे रखने देती है, मगरूर है
भेजता भी है नहीं ससुराल इसको हरखुआ
फिर कोई बाहों में इसको भींच ले तो क्या हुआ
आज सरजू पार अपने श्याम से टकरा गयी
जाने-अनजाने वो लज्जत जिंदगी की पा गयी
वो तो मंगल देखता था बात आगे बढ़ गयी
वरना वह मरदूद इन बातों को कहने से रही
जानते हैं आप मंगल एक ही मक्कार है
हरखू उसकी शह पे थाने जाने को तैयार है
कल सुबह गरदन अगर नपती है बेटे-बाप की
गांव की गलियों में क्या इज्जत रहेगी आपकी
बात का लहजा था ऐसा ताव सबको आ गया
हाथ मूंछों पर गये माहौल भी सन्ना गया
क्षणिक था आवेश जिसमें हर युवा तैमूर था
हां, मगर होनी को तो कुछ और ही मंजूर था
रात जो आया न अब तूफान वह पुर जोर था
भोर होते ही वहां का दृश्य बिलकुल और था
सिर पे टोपी बेंत की लाठी संभाले हाथ में
एक दर्जन थे सिपाही ठाकुरों के साथ में
घेरकर बस्ती कहा हलके के थानेदार ने -
“जिसका मंगल नाम हो वह व्यक्ति आये सामने”
निकला मंगल झोपड़ी का पल्ला थोड़ा खोलकर
एक सिपाही ने तभी लाठी चलायी दौड़ कर
गिर पड़ा मंगल तो माथा बूट से टकरा गया
सुन पड़ा फिर “माल वो चोरी का तूने क्या किया”
“कैसी चोरी माल कैसा” उसने जैसे ही कहा
एक लाठी फिर पड़ी बस, होश फिर जाता रहा
होश खोकर वह पड़ा था झोपड़ी के द्वार पर
ठाकुरों से फिर दरोगा ने कहा ललकार कर -
“मेरा मुंह क्या देखते हो! इसके मुंह में थूक दो
आग लाओ और इसकी झोपड़ी भी फूंक दो”
और फिर प्रतिशोध की आंधी वहां चलने लगी
बेसहारा निर्बलों की झोपड़ी जलने लगी
दुधमुंहा बच्चा व बुड्ढा जो वहां खेड़े में था
वह अभागा दीन हिंसक भीड़ के घेरे में था
घर को जलते देखकर वे होश को खोने लगे
कुछ तो मन ही मन मगर कुछ जोर से रोने लगे
“कह दो इन कुत्तों के पिल्लों से कि इतराएं नहीं
हुक्म जब तक मैं न दूं कोई कहीं जाए नहीं”
यह दरोगा जी थे मुंह से शब्द झरते फूल से
आ रहे थे ठेलते लोगों को अपने रूल से
फिर दहाड़े “इनको डंडों से सुधारा जाएगा
ठाकुरों से जो भी टकराया वो मारा जाएगा”
इक सिपाही ने कहा “साइकिल किधर को मोड़ दें
होश में आया नहीं मंगल कहो तो छोड़ दें”
बोला थानेदार “मुर्गे की तरह मत बांग दो
होश में आया नहीं तो लाठियों पर टांग लो
ये समझते हैं कि ठाकुर से उलझना खेल है
ऐसे पाजी का ठिकाना घर नहीं है जेल है”
पूछते रहते हैं मुझसे लोग अकसर यह सवाल
“कैसा है कहिए न सरजू पार की कृष्ना का हाल”
उनकी उत्सुकता को शहरी नग्नता के ज्वार को
सड़ रहे जनतंत्र के मक्कार पैरोकार को
धर्म संस्कृति और नैतिकता के ठेकेदार को
प्रांत के मंत्रीगणों को केंद्र की सरकार को
मैं निमंत्रण दे रहा हूं आएं मेरे गांव में
तट पे नदियों की घनी अमराइयों की छांव में
गांव जिसमें आज पांचाली उघाड़ी जा रही
या अहिंसा की जहां पर नथ उतारी जा रही
हैं तरसते कितने ही मंगल लंगोटी के लिए
बेचती है जिस्म कितनी कृष्ना रोटी के लिए!

गांव तक वह रौशनी आएगी कितने साल में
जो उलझ कर रह गयी है फाइलों के जाल में
गांव तक वह रौशनी आएगी कितने साल में
बूढ़ा बरगद साक्षी है किस तरह से खो गयी
राम सुधि की झौपड़ी सरपंच की चौपाल में
खेत जो सीलिंग के थे सब चक में शामिल हो गये
हम को पट्टे की सनद मिलती भी है तो ताल में

Sanjiv Bhatt's open letter to Narendra Modi

2011-12-12T21:29:00.000-08:00

Sanjiv Rajendra Bhatt
Indian Police Service

Dear Shri. Modi,

I am glad you chose to write an open letter to the ‘Six crore Gujaratis’. This has not only afforded me a window to your mind but has also given me an opportunity to write to you through the same medium.

My dear brother, it seems you have completely misconstrued the judgement and order passed by the Honourable Supreme Court of India in Criminal Appeal No. 1765 of 2011 arising out of S.L.P. (CRL.) No. 1088 of 2008 viz. Jakia Nasim Ahesan & Anr. Versus State of Gujarat & Ors. It is very likely that your chosen advisors have once again misled you and have in turn, made you mislead the ‘Six crore Gujaratis’ who look up to you as their elected leader.

Let me as a younger brother-Gujarati, help you decipher the Judgement and Order that has led to unequivocal gloating and jubilatory celebrations among some sections of the political spectrum. It has been stated in your letter that “One thing is apparent from the Supreme Court's judgment. The unhealthy environment created by the unfounded and false allegations made against me and Government of Gujarat, after 2002 riots, has come to an end”. Let me clarify that even by a long shot, the order of the Honourable Supreme Court has nowhere, even remotely, suggested that the allegations contained in the complaint filed by Mrs. Jakia Jafri were unfounded or false. The truth is that the order of the Honourable Supreme Court is in fact, a very major leap in the direction of delivering justice to the hapless victims of the Gujarat pogrom. As you are well aware, Mrs. Jafri had approached the Honorable Gujarat High Court with a prayer for registering her complaint as an FIR. The said petition was disallowed by the Honourable High Court of Gujarat. Mrs. Jafri, therefore, approached the Honourable Supreme Court of India by way of a Special Leave Petition against the order of the High Court. The Honourable Supreme Court directed the SIT to look into her complaint and subsequently also directed the learned Amicus to examine the evidence collected by the SIT. At the end of this long and arduous exercise the Honourable Supreme Court has not only allowed the Appeal of Mrs. Jafri and directed the SIT to virtually treat the complaint of Mrs. Jafrri as an FIR, but has also directed the SIT to file a report under section 173(2) of the Cr.P.C. Let me clarify for your benefit and for the benefit of your Six crore brothers and sisters of Gujarat, that this report under section 173(2) of the Cr.P.C. is colloquially known as Charge-Sheet or Final Report. The honourable Supreme Court of India has also directed the SIT to place all the evidence collected by it, including the reports of the learned Amicus before the magistrate empowered to take cognizance. I am sure you will appreciate that in order to let the law of the land take its due course, this was the best option available to the Honourable Supreme Court as per the scheme of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

What the Honourable Supreme Court of India has given to Mrs. Jafri is much more than what she had originally prayed for. The order over which some of us are gloating in feigned glee, is in fact, a very cleverly worded order that takes the perpetrators and facilitators of the 2002 carnage a few leaps closer to their day of reckoning. The false bravado comes across as a very smart attempt to mislead the gullible people of Gujarat and instil a false sense of confidence in the political rank and file. Please be assured that we will see a very different picture as the actual import of the order starts settling in and takes judicial effect.

As one of the ‘Six Crore Gujaratis’, I feel deeply pained and cheated when the likes of you, consciously or inadvertently, mislead the people of Gujarat for ulterior motives. The theory propounded and practised to perfection by Paul Joseph Goebbels, one of Adolf Hitler’s closest associate and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany, can definitely work with the majority of the populace for some time. But all of us know from historical experience that Goebbelsian Propaganda cannot fool all the people for all the time.

I fully endorse your realization that "Hate is never conquered by hate." Who would know this better than you, who has served this State for the last one decade; and I, who has served in the Indian Police Service for the last 23 years. I had the misfortune of serving with you during those days of 2002 when the dance of hatred was choreographed and perpetrated at different venues in Gujarat. Albeit this is not the appropriate forum for me to discuss and reveal the details of our respective roles, I am sure that both of us will be getting ample
opportunities before appropriately empowered fora to disclose our knowledge about the dynamics of hatred in the realpolitik of Gujarat. I hope you and your cronies, within and without the Government, will not hate me more for this.

I cannot agree more with you when you say that “the credibility of those who have been spreading lies and defaming Gujarat has come to its lowest ebb. The people of this country will not trust such elements anymore”. But my dear brother, you seem to have got it entirely wrong as to who are the ones spreading lies and defaming Gujarat. To my mind, Gujarat has gained infamy not because of the hapless victims who have tirelessly crusading for the cause of justice and truth, but because of the despicable actions of the people who sowed and cultivated hatred to reap political and electoral benefits. Please give it a thought. Introspection can prove to be very revealing at times.

I am deeply touched by your concern and efforts to “further strengthen Gujarat's environment of peace, unity and harmony.” Thanks to you and your kinsmen, Gujarat has been free from any large scale eruption of communal violence since 2002. The reasons for this may not be very obvious to our fellow ‘Six Crore
Gujaratis”. This is my 24th year in the IPS. I was allotted to the Gujarat cadre during a time when the State was passing through the throes of widespread and sporadic communal violence. Having been baptised by fire, I have been since trying to understand and deal with the likes of you, who deal in the divisive politics of hatred. It is my well founded observation that the polity of Gujarat has now crossed the stage where ommunal violence can accrue electoral benefits to any political party, as the process of communal polarisation is very nearly complete in Gujarat. The experiments in the divisive politics of hatred have been very successful in the Gujarat Laboratory. You and your likes, in the political arena, have been largely successful in creating divides in the hearts and minds of the “Six Crore Gujaratis”. The need to resort to any further communal violence in Gujarat is already passé.

In a constitutional democracy like ours, it is incumbent upon the State to act in Good faith at all times and under all circumstances. Over the last nine and a half years many friends have fallen prey to the misleading campaign that the Gujarat Carnage of 2002 was a spontaneous reaction to the condemnable action at Godhra on the fateful morning of 27 February 2002. The Newtonian Law was never abused more. You had resorted to your knowledge and understanding of Newtonian physics in March 2002 and had sought to apply it to polity and governance at the peak of the Gujarat Carnage of 2002. But what you might have deliberately missed then, and what many of us seem to be inadvertently missing now; is the universally accepted principle of governance which mandates that in a constitutional democracy, an avowedly secular State cannot be allowed to be partisan. It was the bounden duty of the State to have anticipated and controlled the possible Newtonian reaction, if any; not orchestrate and facilitate systematic targeting of innocent individuals! Be that as it may, as an expression of solidarity with your stated objective of spreading Sadbhavana in the land of
the Mahatma, I resolve to join you in your Sadbhavana Mission. What better way to do this than helping the truth to come out and let the spirit of justice and goodwill prevail. As all of us understand, there can be no Sadbhavna or Goodwill without truth and justice. I hereby reaffirm my resolve to contribute my might towards the restoration of Sadbhavana in the administration and polity of Gujarat.

But let me warn you that genuine heartfelt goodwill is something we cannot demand, buy or extort…we can only strive to deserve it. And it is not going to be an easy task. The land of the Mahatma is slowly but surely coming out of its hypnotic state.

As the most powerful person in Gujarat you may think that you do not need to feel accountable to the perceptions of all sections of the community. But believe me, history has proved time and again, that power without genuine goodwill is a path fraught with dangers…it is also a path of no return.

Samabhava is a condition precedent for Sadbhava. Governance by equity and goodwill should not only be the first article of your faith but should also be the last article of your creed.

The truth is more frequently than not, a little bitter and not very easy to swallow. I hope that you will take this letter in the true spirit in which it is written and you or your agents will not indulge in direct or indirect acts of
retribution as is your wont.

In the words of Martin Luther King Jr. – Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. The spirit of the hapless victims who have been struggling for justice in Gujarat may occasionally flag but it will not be supressed by any amount of false Goebbelsian propaganda. The struggle for justice is never easy anywhere in the world…it calls for everlasting patience and unfailing perseverance at all times. The spirit of the crusaders for truth and justice in Gujarat is epitomised in this poem by Bhuchung Sonam, an alumnus of M.S.
University, Baroda.

I have principle and no power
You have power and no principle
You being you
And I being I
Compromise is out of the question
So let the battle begin ...
I have t ruth and no force
You have force and no truth
You being you
And I being I
Compromise is out of the question
So let the battle begin ...
You may club my skull
I will fight
You may crush my bones
I will fight
You may bury me alive
I will fight
With t ruth running through me
I will fight
With every ounce of my strength
I will fight
With my last dying breath
I will fight ...
I will fight till the
Castle that you built with your lies
Comes tumbling down
Till the devil you worshipped with your lies
Kneels down before my angel of truth.

May the kind God give you the requisite strength to be equitable and benevolent
towards one and all!
Satyamev Jayate!

With best wishes.

Yours sincerely,

(Sanjiv Bhatt)

Secularism has now become a meaningless word: Romila Thapar

2011-12-12T21:17:00.000-08:00

Romila Thapar

Stating that it was a topic that was not discussed as widely as it should be, noted historian Romila Thapar on Wednesday said secularism has now become a meaningless word and is often just a reaction to a non-secular accident that happens in the country.

Speaking at a symposium on “Redefining the Secular in Indian Society” at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library here on Wednesday, Ms. Thapar said: “People have to understand that being secular does not mean denying religion, but keeping religion at a non-invasive personal level. Also, secularism is not merely the co-existence of all religion. The implications of secularism is often misinterpreted and equated with westernisation.”

Ms. Thapar also noted that India's understanding of secularism was inadequate at present. “We still have to find the answer to the question as to what secularism means to us and look into the fact that India has the potential to nurture a secular society,” said added.

Pointing out that it was important to understand the shifting of secular to secularisation in society, historian Prof. K. N. Panikkar said: “We have to understand both secularism and community formation in a society. Secularism is not just a product of religion harmony.”

Stating that there is no one definition of secularism that everyone agreed upon, journalist P. Sainath said there are gaping holes in the definition of secularism and one of them was the issue of caste. “Till we respond to this shortcoming we cannot say that we are talking about the various issues of secularism.”

“To most of us secularism is primarily our response to Hindu-Muslim communal conflict. I want to ask if India, which is one of the most exclusionist societies, can really have secularism. The issue of caste has to be engaged with if we are looking at any real solution,” Mr. Sainath added.

The symposium, which was organised in association with SAHMAT and Social Scientist, was chaired by Prof. Prabhat Patnaik. It started with artist Ram Rahman presenting Ms. Thapar with a “gift' on her 80th birthday. “Though I was reluctant to agree for any sort of celebrations for my birthday, I am deeply touched by this gesture,” said Ms. Thapar.

Brahminism, Hindutva And The Dalit Question

2011-12-10T11:29:00.000-08:00

By Yoginder Sikand

26 August, 2011

Some weeks ago, Subramanian Swamy, President of the Janata Party and former Union Cabinet Minister of Commerce, Law and Justice, created a major stir by publishing what was widely denounced as a hard-hitting anti-Muslim article in a leading daily newspaper. The media was agog for a while with news about the story, and an irate National Commission for Minorities even threatened to take Swamy to court for it. However, the controversy appeared to have died soon out thereafter.

Scanning the Internet for material for a piece I was writing about the Swamy affair, I learned that he had written an entire tome detailing his Hindutva-grounded vision for India, and that his newspaper piece, devoted to his solution to the ‘Muslim problem’, was a modified version of a chapter of this book. I purchased the book, and forced myself to read it (despite finding it eminently avoidable) in order to learn how Swamy and folks like him who share a common commitment to Hindutva conceive of the future of this country.

Published last year by the relatively obscure Har-Anand Publications, New Delhi, Swamy’s Hindutva and National Renaissance makes agonizingly boring reading. Be that as it may, it is an invaluable guide to contemporary Hindutva socio-political thought. Whatever the merits of Swamy’s comments on Muslims may be, the book clearly indicates that votaries of Hindutva are fiercely committed to a nauseatingly Brahminical view of Indian society, culture and history. The danger they pose not just to Muslims but also to the oppressed castes, historical victims of the Hindu order, who form almost half of India’s population, is enormous, so the book, if read carefully, clearly reveals.

Sanatana Dharma and Indian Nationalism

Swamy starts off by insisting that India suffers from an acute identity crisis. That, he argues, is the source of most of India’s ills. The only way out of this predicament, he contends—and this is the central theme of his book—is for India to recover and stress its ‘Hinduness’. This, he pontificates, is also the solution to the perceived widespread loss of morals and the absence of a balance between material and spiritual forces in contemporary India. In practical terms, he lays down, this requires that sanatana dharma be revived, that Hindutva, based on sanatana dharma, form the firm basis of the Indian state, and that individual citizens, too, firmly abide by sanatana dharma in their personal lives. That, he expects us to believe, is the only solution to all of India’s many travails.

Echoing the standard Hindutva line, Swamy equates Indian nationalism and national identity with Brahminical Hinduism, thus effectively consigning all the hundreds of millions of India who refuse to accept this imposition outside the pale of Indian-ness. ‘India and sanatana dharma exist for each other’, he pompously declares. ‘Sanatana dharma is our nationalism and our nationalism is sanatana dharma,’ he announces. ‘Hinduism provides the foundation or the defining characteristic of an Indian,’ he declaims.

As for non-Hindu Indians, specifically Christians and Muslims, Swamy controversially contends that most of them are offspring of Hindus who were, so he alleges, forcibly converted to the religions of conquerors. Hence, if they were to reconvert to Hinduism or at least were to recognize and take pride in the supposed Hindu-ness of their ancestors, they could be taken to be part of the Hindu or Indian ‘nation’. Non-Hindu Indians, he writes, are to be co-opted into the Hindu fold through the use of a variety of means, which he classifies using the Sanskrit phrase saam, dhaam, bheda and dand. This roughly translates as ‘pacification, money, divisions and punishment’.

Nothing in all of this is at all novel, for Swamy simply mechanically parrots what a whole tribe of Hindutva ideologues before him have said on the subject.

Hindutva and Brahminism

Swamy’s call for Hindutva, based on sanatana dharma, to be the basis of the Indian state reflects a sternly Brahminical view of Indian history and culture. That Hindutva seeks to promote a revamped Brahminism under the guise of Hindu nationalism is amply evident from Swamy’s selective approach to Indian history as well as his bizarre claims and distortions of that history, despite his evidently not being anywhere near an expert on the subject.

Although he repeatedly invokes the term sanatana dharma, Swamy does not care—and probably deliberately so—to elaborate on precisely what it has historically been understood to mean. Roughly translatable as the ‘eternal law’, it is actually a bundle of laws and rules, reflecting duties and rights of various classes of people as conceived of by Brahmin law-givers throughout the centuries. It is geared, among other things, to the preservation of ‘upper’ caste, particularly Brahmin, supremacy, which, in turn, is premised on the permanent degradation of the Shudras and the Untouchables. Sanatana dharma has traditionally been conceived of in the Brahminical scriptures as inseparable from varna dharma, the dharmas of the four varnas of classical Hindu society.

Given this, Swamy’s calls for re-establishing and reinforcing sanatana dharma can easily be perceived as a thinly-veiled guise for shoring up ‘upper’ varna, particularly Brahmin, hegemony, his pious proclamations about caste not being based on birth notwithstanding. Swamy devotes an entire chapter to arguing the case for ‘Ram Rajya’ as the model of governance for contemporary India. And, as numerous scholars have pointed out, Ram Rajya, as described in the Ramayana, was characterized by the iron law of caste, the subjugation of the Shudras and Chandals, and the unquestioned supremacy of the Brahmins, in league with their Kshatriya subordinates.

Whitewashing Brahminism

Swamy’s thoroughly twisted understanding of Indian historical identity is clearly intended to present it as synonymous with Brahminism at the same time as it reflects a certain urgency to whitewash Brahminism completely beyond recognition. If Swamy is to be believed, all was hunky-dory in India till the Muslim invasion. The ‘Vedic civilization’, Swamy proclaims, revealing an alarming ignorance of history, provided ‘prosperity and justice to all’. It is as if the brutal reality of Brahminical hegemony, the heinous oppression of the Shudras and Untouchables and the suppression of women, all of which long predate the ‘Muslim period’ and which, in fact, were blessed in the name of the sanatana dharma, simply did not exist or that they are of no consequence whatsoever.

In Swamy’s understanding of history, it is essentially the Brahmins and Kshatriyas, who occupy the pinnacle of the caste pyramid, who seem to matter as agents of change and as instruments of governance. The rest of the population seems to be of no consequence in this regard. Thus, Swamy argues that in the pre-Muslim period the Brahmins, ‘sages’ who supposedly represented the sanatana dharma, worked in tandem with the Kshatriyas, rulers who represented worldly power, and, together they enabled a system to function that, so Swamy wants us to believe, was harmonious and just. In presenting this neatly-sanitized version of Hindu history, he conveniently ignores the fact that this system was built on the permanent subjugation and extreme degradation of the vast majority of the population—Shudras and Untouchables.

By no stretch of imagination can this most iniquitous and inhuman system ever devised by human beings be considered to be the epitome of virtue that Swamy makes it out to be. Yet, this does not hinder Swamy from insisting that the model needs to be revived and imposed today. ‘This understanding of the rishi and king alliance propounded in the Rig Veda’, he ordains, ‘can serve as a guide and inspiration to the future for India and the polity.’

Distorting History

In order to drum up support for Hindutva as the basis not just of Indian nationhood but even of every single Indian’s personal identity, Swamy and his ilk have to deal, somehow or the other, with the enormous dark spots that mar Hindu history, particularly with regard to caste and Brahminism. In true Hindutva tradition, Swamy’s method of confronting these bitter historical truths is either to ignore them completely, to twist them in a manner calculated to proving precisely the opposite of what they plainly convey, or else to blame entirely Muslims for them.

Hindutva historiography is based on such convenient contrivances, and Swamy’s book is replete with them. Thus, he desperately declaims against the Aryan invasion theory, and insists, completely blind to ample historical evidence to the contrary that is amply present even in the Vedas, that Aryans and Dravidians never warred with each other. He flatly denies that the latter were subjugated by the former and then turned by them into Shudras and Chandals. This denial is essential in order to portray Muslims as the real ‘invaders’ and the major source of all the ills of India as well as to stave off persistent Dalit critiques of Brahminism as Aryan supremacy in a religious garb forcibly hoisted on the original denizens of this land, whom the Aryans reduced to lower than sub-human status.

In order to rob assertive Dalit critics of the pride they take in the Indus Valley Civilisation, which they consider as pre-Aryan or Dravidian in origin and as having been destroyed by the marauding Aryans, Swamy imperiously announces, without citing any sensible sources, that recent historical researches have supposedly discovered that this Civilisation was Vedic in origin! In the Hindutva scheme of things, every good thing, it seems, must necessarily be a Brahminical invention! Even Buddhism, which, following Ambedkar, vast numbers of Dalits have embraced in their struggle for equality and self-respect, is sought to be denied its autonomy, and, instead, sought to be palmed off as, supposedly, merely a version of Hinduism. Swamy piously proclaims Buddhism to be simply ‘another colour or hue, in a many-splendoured thing that Hindutva is.’ In this way, Buddhism’s firm opposition to Vedic ritualism and Brahminical supremacism is completely effaced. Swamy attributes its decline in the land of its birth simply to the brutality of Islamic iconoclasts, conveniently ignoring the central role of Brahminical revivalists, who, like the Muslim conquerors, used violence on a wide scale to demolish Buddhist temples and slay bhikkus in vast numbers. That denial is necessary in order to reinforce the myth, which Swamy is at pains to reinforce, of Hinduism being the epitome of non-violence and tolerance.

Swamy’s firm commitment to Brahminical Hinduism leads him to refuse to recognize that untouchability and caste were a logical consequence of the very ideology which he so doggedly champions. Probably in order to stave off attacks against ‘upper’ caste Hindus and Brahminism by Dalits and other historical victims of the caste system, Swamy echoes a completely bogus theory that Hindutva ideologues have, of late, concocted and have been aggressively propagating. The Dalits of today, he announces, are actually descendants of brave Brahmins and Kshatriyas who refused to convert to Islam in the Muslim period, supposedly preferring social ostracism and ignominy in order to remain Hindus. As a punishment for thus defying the tyrannical Muslims, they were ‘made to carry night soil’. Hence, they were ‘disowned by other Hindus’ and declared to be Untouchables. So Swamy wants us to believe is the origin of the practice of Untoucahbility and the degradation of the Dalits.

Quite evidently, this completely fanciful theory, which has no merit at all in it, is carefully calculated to blame Muslims for the Hindus’ crime of treating Dalits as Untouchables. Simultaneously, it is geared to avoid the embarrassment of having to face the harsh reality of caste discrimination being entirely a product of ‘upper’ caste Hindus and their religion, as is clearly evidenced in Brahminical texts and scriptures that long predate India’s first brush with Islam. Swamy’s bizarre theory about the origins of the Dalits and untouchability seeks to set Dalits and Muslims, both victims of ‘upper’ caste oppression, against each other at the same time as it works to co-opt the Dalits under Brahminical hegemony.

Hindutva, ‘National Unity’ and Brahminism

Hindutva ideologues present themselves as the most ardent champions of ‘national unity’. This rhetoric of ‘national unity’ is generally deployed as a convenient guise clamp down on all dissent against ruling class/caste hegemony, including every challenge to Brahminism on the part of the oppressed castes. All such efforts are readily branded by votaries of Hindutva as alleged plots against India, which, in their minds, is synonymous with ‘upper’ caste interests. True to form, Swamy lambasts Dalit demands for separate electorates as divisive, although, as numerous scholars have pointed out, this would be a far more effective way for genuine representatives of the Dalits to emerge. Aware of the enormous popularity of Dr. Ambedkar among the Dalits, Swamy cannot avoid dealing with the fact that Ambedkar himself was a vociferous champion of separate electorates for Dalits, which Swamy considers as ‘anti-national’. And so, in true Hindutva fashion, Swamy conveniently distorts Ambedkar’s stance on the matter. Instead of acknowledging that Ambedkar was a firm supporter of separate electorates for the Dalits but that he was forced (or blackmailed, many Dalits would argue) by Gandhi into giving up the demand, Swamy terms the demand as a ‘sinister attempt’ on the part of the British to ‘divide the Hindu community on caste basis’, and speaks of Ambedkar’s ‘visionary rejection’ of it.

But Swamy’s deliberate distortion of Ambedkar does not stop there. Well aware that the most potent potential challenge that ‘upper’ caste hegemony faces is from increasingly assertive Dalits, Hindutva forces have been hard at work seeking to domesticate and co-opt the legacy of Ambedkar, the foremost critic of Hinduism and ‘upper’ caste hegemony, the unparalleled hero of the oppressed castes. Today, Brahminical forces, whom Ambedkar spent his entire life opposing, have incorporated Ambedkar into their pantheon of heroes in a bid to win over the Dalits under their fold and domesticate the challenge that Ambedkarite radicalism poses to ‘upper’ caste domination. This is no novel development, for throughout its history, Brahminism has been able to survive, spread and prosper in the face of all odds using precisely this method—of co-opting its rivals into its set of deities if it cannot defeat them directly.

Thus, brutally ignoring Ambedkar’s hard-hitting critique of Hinduism, Swamy, in true Brahminical fashion, pays him lip-service by insisting that Hindus must ‘honour him now as a great maharshi and co-opt his writings as part of the Hindutva literature’. At the same time, however, Swamy’s entire politics and ideology, as elaborated upon in his book, are intrinsically inimical to the project of Dalit liberation and the Ambedkarite vision. Swamy quotes Ambedkar on occasion, carefully selecting bits of his writings that appear to support Swamy’s vision of ‘national unity’ (just as he quotes from the Manusmriti, the Bible of Brahminism, which Ambedkar had consigned to the flames, as well). Yet, he cleverly avoids any reference to Ambedkar’s powerful criticism of Brahminism. He insists on calling Ambedkar a ‘Hindu patriot’, wholly blind to Ambedkar’s principled opposition to Hinduism, which led him to abandon the religion and embrace Buddhism instead, along with hundreds of thousands of his followers.

Hindutva Political Economy and the Caste Question

Swamy spells out in some detail the economic vision of the Hindutva-based state. Here, too, he clearly indicates how heavily such a state would weight against the poor, serving essentially as an instrument for protecting and promoting the interests of the dominant castes/classes.

The Hindutva state, Swamy lays down, must be ‘minimalist in regulatory interventions in social and economic matters’ and ‘maximalist in the maintenance of law and order, in opposing terrorism.’ This can easily be taken to mean that the state must not seek to interfere with the working of the market mechanism, which is heavily skewed in favour of the dominant castes/classes. In this scheme of things, if the state were to intervene in the working of the market in order to protect or benefit the poor, including in the form of affirmative action for the oppressed castes, it could easily be berated for allegedly exceeding its limits. This intervention might even be condemned as being anti-Hindu dharma, for, Swamy insists, ‘There is a negative correlation between the state’s coercive power and dharma.’ The main task of the state, then, it would appear, might simply be to prevent any challenge to the iniquitous status quo and to ruling caste/class hegemony—and this in the name of ‘maintaining law and order’.

Swamy prides himself in being supposedly a leading economist. His book makes it a point to mention that he is regularly invited to teach Economics at Harvard. He takes credit for the neo-liberal ‘reforms’ in the 1990s that have played such terrible havoc with the lives of India’s poor but have further fattened, far beyond their expectations, the country’s rich and their international backers. In the wake of the 1991 financial crisis, Swamy proudly declares, as India’s Commerce Minister he presented the first blue-prints for the ‘economic reform’ package that was adopted by the then Narasimha Rao government, which led, so he says, to an ‘economic boom’. This supposed father of India’s alleged ‘economic boom’ seems completely unmindful of the devastating consequences for hundreds of millions of India’s poor of the neo-liberal economic policies that he takes such pride in claiming to have ushered in. It is well-known that these policies have hit Dalits and Adivasis the worst, leading to their rapidly escalating overall impoverishment.

Swamy proudly announces that he has been critical of socialism, even at a time, so he says, when, in the 1970s, few intellectuals dared to publicly question it. This fits neatly with his stress on what he calls ‘class harmony’, which he claims is a ‘basic’ human instinct. He expresses his disgust with class-struggle, which he summarily dismisses as anti-human. Rather than admitting the existence of enormous class contradictions and urging that they be addressed, Swamy talks of the need to explore and develop ‘complementarities embedded in various conflicting interests in society’—or, to put it baldly, class-collaboration. In place of socialism he advocates what he calls a ‘Swadeshi Plan’, the details of which he conveniently leaves out. But we do learn that it is based on the so-called philosophy of ‘Integral Humanism’ of the late Deendayal Upadhyaya, leading ideologue of the RSS, and commentaries on it by the former RSS supremo Dattopant Thengadi. Swamy also confesses that his musings on the economy have been motivated by the former RSS head, ‘Guru’ Golwalkar, as well as his discussions with yet another former RSS boss, Sudarshan, whose advice on economic matters, he notes, he has incorporated in his book.

Swamy’s wants his readers to believe that the Hindu religion is ‘the liberator of mankind and is an engine of growth, prosperity and fulfillment for the individuals as well as for the society on a long term sustainable basis’. That it was precisely because of Hinduism that vast numbers of Dalits and Shudras have been consigned to grueling poverty for centuries completely escapes Swamy. His lengthy chapter on economic affairs, a field he has supposedly specialized in, contains nothing but pious and empty platitudes about the need to harmonise material and spiritual growth in order, supposedly, to abide by the laws of sanatana dharma. Curiously—or perhaps not so curiously—no mention at all is here made of the plight of the poor and of strategies to reduce the enormous socio-economic inequalities between classes/castes that are only increasing with every passing day. Presumably, these issues are of little or no concern to the Brahminists.

On the one hand, the poor, the Dalits, the Adivasis, find no mention at all in Swamy’s economic strategy, as contained in his chapter on economic development. But on the other hand, the cow, which Swamy hails as a ‘divine animal’, takes up almost half this chapter. This clearly reveals that the poor matter much less than cows in the Hindutva imagination. We are regaled with stories about the supposed divinity of the cow, of the animal being, in fact, ‘all that the sun surveys’, and of how, ‘without the blessings and help of the cow’, sinners ‘cannot swim across the Vaitrani river of hell’. We are informed about the supposed enormous merits of cow dung and urine, about alleged ‘scientific proofs’ that ‘suggest that only the milk of Bos Indicus, i.e. Indian breed of cows, has the desired health promoting properties’, about the need for a total ban on cow slaughter, about a former RSS chief meeting with ‘gobhakta’ industrialists and appealing them to set up ‘cow-based industries’, and about the urgent need that Swamy feels for a ‘a new fervor […] to create a cow-renaissance in the nation’.

What does the economic vision that Swamy spells out for the Hindutva state mean for the hundreds of millions of India’s pathetically poor, mostly Dalits and other historically oppressed castes? Briefly put, Swamy’s opposition to state intervention in the economy, his advocacy of market-oriented policies in the name of ‘economic reforms’ and, more than that, his deafening silence on the plight of the poor all simply mean that as far as the poor are concerned they can expect nothing from Hindutva but further pauperization and mounting socio-economic inequalities. Land reforms and redistribution of assets, basic democratic demands that are indispensable for empowering the poor and addressing the yawning gap between the dominant castes/classes and the dominated, would probably be totally ruled out, for Swamy harkens to what he calls the ‘Hindu concepts of trusteeship of wealth, philanthropy and voluntary group action’. He expects us to believe in the efficacy of the thoroughly-discredited Gandhian theory of trusteeship as being able to address the question of poverty, wherein the rich continue to control productive resources but as trustees for the rest of society, supposedly in the name of helping the poor. Needless to say, the theory has never worked and never will, and today even most Gandhians might find it embarrassing to admit that Gandhi fervently championed it.

Swamy’s vision fits snugly in with the American imperialist global agenda. For all practical purposes, and despite his deafening rhetoric of national pride, Swamy advocates India’s surrender to American dictates and designs. That, he indicates, is the price it must pay if it India is to achieve the dream of becoming a ‘developed’ country. This, he argues, can happen ‘only through a globally competitive economy,’ which, he contends, ‘requires assured access to the markets and technological innovations of the United States and its allies.’ And, in turn, he revealingly adds, ‘This has concomitant political obligations which must be accepted as essential for national renaissance.’

Muslims and the Struggle Against Hindutva

To be fair to Swamy, much that he says on the Muslim question—and this occupies a major part of his book—is not wide off the mark. Some of his observations on general Muslim intolerance of non-Muslims are, to be fair, acute and compelling. Who can deny the strong streak of intolerance in most interpretations of the Semitic theologies that proclaim themselves to be the only way to please God and that declare the rest of humanity to be doomed to eternal perdition in hell? The phenomenon of Islamic supremacism and extremism cannot be denied, but, sadly, that is precisely what many Indian ‘secularists’ generally do in order to appear politically correct. And so I do not quite find myself comfortable in the company of those who rushed to condemn Swamy simply for his statements about Muslims and the undeniably real threat of Muslim extremism from across India’s borders.

Hindutva simply cannot be challenged simply by pointing out the dangers it poses to ‘secularism’ and, in particular, to Muslims, as our professional ‘secularists’ are wont to do. Indeed, given the grim reality of violent extremism in the name of Islam in India’s neighbourhood, such an approach to combating Hindutva can only strengthen its appeal to most non-Muslims, who are sure to accuse ‘secularists’ of double-standards and of being soft on or even completely ignoring Muslim extremism and intolerance.

As Swamy’s book clearly shows, while claiming to speak for all ‘Hindus’, Hindutva poses an immense danger not just to Muslims and other non-Hindus but also to the vast majority of the ‘Hindus’ themselves—the Dalits, the Adivasis, the Shudras. A revamped Brahminism, Hindutva is geared to shoring up and promoting the hegemony of the minority dominant caste-class elites. Accordingly, the challenge of Hindutva can be effectively met only be exposing its caste-class underpinnings and highlighting its ominous implications for the subaltern castes, in whose name it claims to speak. Only then can these castes be enthused to struggle against it. Till such time as our ‘secularists’ continue to harp on Hindutva as simply a threat to minority rights and secularism, the subaltern castes can hardly be expected to evince any interest in opposing it. This clearly indicates that the struggle against Hindutva needs to expand from simply being an anti-communal struggle or a struggle simply for secularism and minority rights (which is how mostly ‘upper’ caste ‘secularists’, indifferent, despite their democratic pretentions, to the issue of caste oppression and the menace of Brahminism, conceive it) to become part of the wider struggle for social justice for the oppressed castes and of their quest for emancipation from Brahminical hegemony.

Yoginder Sikand is Indian writer-academic and the author of several books on Islam-related issues in India.

Public Meeting & Film: Confronting Hindutva: 15 DEC. 2011, New Delhi

2011-12-10T09:34:00.000-08:00

Dear friends,

Champa-The Amiya And B.G.Rao Foundation have organised Public Meeting and screening of a documentary on the subject:CONFRONTING HINDUTVA & ITS STRATEGIES on 15th December, 2011 at 4.30 PM at Indian Law Institute, Bhagwan Dass Road,(in front of Supreme Court), New Delhi. Shri Kumar Ketkar, veteran journalist and commentator and Manisha Sethi, human rights activist and President Jamia Teachers Solidarity Association will speak. A short film prepared by Samrendra Das on violence against christian tribal communities in Orrisa will be shown. A poster detailing the programme is attached.
We request you to participate in the said meeting.

N.D.Pancholi

Why Narendra Modi will never become PM

2011-12-10T09:20:00.001-08:00

Aditya Sinha, DNA

Sunday, November 13, 2011

This week’s court conviction of 31 people for crimes including murder during the 2002 post-Godhra riots in Gujarat makes it clear that state Chief Minister Narendra Modi will never be prime minister of India. It would be foolish to try and channel even an iota of the prevailing anti-Congress sentiment around the country that shows no sign of abating in the foreseeable future towards this egotistical man. Each act by Modi demonstrates that he has no misgivings about the death of a thousand Indians during those riots; indeed he is contemptuous about making shows of generosity towards Muslims, as evidenced during his fast (an attempt to appropriate Anna Hazare’s effective anti-Congress tool) when he refused to wear a cap offered by a Muslim. Actually, what could be greater evidence than the fact that he hasn’t made the simple, no-cost political move of apologising for the post-Godhra riots? If Modi thinks that the lack of proof of a chain of culpability on technical grounds is going to be enough, he has another think coming. And no matter how compromised the credibility of police officer Sanjiv Bhatt may be, Modi’s government’s attempts to discredit him mirror the clumsy attempts by the Congress party to discredit Anna Hazare’s team.

As much as Modi’s aggression and ruthlessness may appeal to that section of the Indian middle class which thinks it is high time India kicked into a higher gear, it does not appeal to most other Indians; and no one can become prime minister unless they appeal to a majority of Indians (we don’t have direct elections to the post, but even in pre- or post-poll tie-ups, regional leaders are going to think twice about hitching their fortunes to this man). India Inc can’t stop gushing about how Modi is the man of the future, and how he will be the one to take India to the next stage of rapid economic growth, but these are contestable claims. I wonder whether or not Gujarat, which has traditionally seen high economic activity in India, would have grown without Modi at the helm. I also wonder how many Gujarati industrialists are willing to concede that their rise and success is due to Modi. In any case, the crony capitalism and the corporate complicity in big-ticket corruption during past few years are evidence of how little India Inc really cares for India.

Anybody who thinks that Modi is the man to rescue the nation from the Congress should also look at the parallels thrown up by the coming US presidential elections. President Barack Obama has unfortunately had to hold office during a time when the global economy has spluttered and faces further “lost years”. His leadership has been found wanting by his voters and all precedent points to his being a single-term president — if he faces a strong opponent. Trouble is, Republicans don’t seem able to find a strong candidate to take on Obama. In the run-up to their primary process, each Republican candidate looks more ridiculous and unelectable than the next. An apt analogy might be that Narendra Modi is the Rick Perry of Indian politics. Except that Rick Perry did not preside over the murder of nearly a thousand Texans.

The Congress party is vulnerable because of its own misdeeds, starting from the nuclear deal that was pushed through Parliament with purchased votes, to the blind eye turned to the loot of the country in the 2G scam. Anna Hazare has demonstrated the widespread public revulsion that exists for the UPA government; character assassination of Team Anna members may remove the personnel, but not the public revulsion. Such is the state of public nausea that voters are willing to tolerate a timid and unimaginative chief minister like Maharashtra’s Prithviraj Chavan so long as he’s clean, as a DNA survey showed this week. The opposition parties must think of maximising the opportunity on the horizon; however, on current evidence it looks a tall order. The BJP has over-estimated its own strength and its ability to deliver an alternative. The fact that some of its worthies still think that the 84-year-old rath yatri LK Advani is a PM candidate, despite the fact that he led a losing campaign in 2009, demonstrates the bankruptcy of their political strategy.

India has had several experiments with non-Congress, non-BJP governments, but they have not lasted the full course. This does not mean a future experiment will also come up short. But the regional parties have to get their act together for 2012’s two milestones: the UP elections and India’s Presidential election. Mayawati looks on course to decide the first; perhaps she should take the lead in strategising an alternative for the next Parliamentary election. (I don’t give importance to the anti-Mayawati reports in our casteist media, and I don’t think the voters will either.) And the others, be it Mamata, Jayalalithaa, Nitish, etc, should follow her lead. Doing so would be far better than to delude oneself into following Modi’s lead, because his is a road that will lead nowhere in a hurry.

Caste, communalism and coup

2011-12-10T09:20:00.000-08:00

Jawed Naqvi, Delhi,
HardNews

There were at least two occasions in recent memory when the exultation on Indian TV channels was telling.Gen Musharraf staged a military coup in Pakistan and at about the same time, in India, then prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was heading for the majestic British-built presidential palace for a swearing-in ceremony of his newly elected government.

More recently, as India's independent election commission announced the dates for the next parliamentary polls in April, a fractious and querulous coalition government in Pakistan was making a largely atavistic deal with Taliban fanatics in the scenic Swat valley.

This week the boot was on the other foot. As much of Pakistan united in a largely peaceful national campaign to clean up the all-encompassing mess dumped in its judicial and political arteries by the last round of military rule, news headlines in India were riveted to its own variant of atavism.

Although caste-based politics and communal mobilisation had a start before Indian independence, their resurgent manifestation as a popular ploy in the country's democratic journey deserves closer scrutiny. Much outrage was expressed in Wednesday's papers over Varun Gandhi's abusive election campaign, in which he threatened to chop the hands of Indian Muslims and send them to Pakistan. (It was a string of filthy speeches but enough for TV channels to seek an improvement in their TRP ratings. Put it to the fallout of global recession!)

Varun Gandhi is Rahul Gandhi's younger first cousin, both being grandsons of Indira Gandhi, and great grandsons of Jawaharlal Nehru himself. Indian newspapers found it particularly scandalous that the scion of the house of Nehru, the erudite, liberal and secular founder leader of Indian democracy could indulge in dirty street slang. For a
knockout blow he even abused Mahatma Gandhi, who though unrelated to India's ruling Gandhi clan, has served as an ageless mascot for a host of parties.

It would make sense to berate a young first-time candidate in the fray for straying from the line. But that is putting it mildly. What the Indian media will not discuss is that the young Gandhi is a product of decades of the communalisation that has given India many a popular government both at the centre and in the states. Their coyness is nothing but a sleight of hand, for it fortifies the very tendencies that the media and indeed a section of the middle classes appear to want to reject.

For months if not years Varun Gandhi has been spewing communal venom in his columns through the rightwing journal, Organiser. Every significant Hindu leader has patronised the journal, which is treated with reverence reserved for a party mouthpiece.

Of course, that is where the sleight of hand comes in. The question that will not be asked is whether and why Atal Behari Vajpayee, before India's opinion makers anointed him as a moderate leader and before he began to compare himself with Nehru, gave exactly the same speech as his younger party colleague did the other day.When did Vajpayee, whose Enoch Powell-like "rivers of blood" speech in Assam led to the infamous Nellie massacre of Muslim women and children by enraged Hindus in 1983, become a moderate leader?

Indira Gandhi had to personally throw out copies of the India Today magazine from Delhi's Vigyan Bhavan where the Non Aligned Movement was holding a summit conference. She was naturally embarrassed that the world would see the cover, which showed piles of dead bodies of Nellie victims. That was the contribution of Vajpayee to his heir Varun Gandhi's upbringing. The supposedly moderate Vajpayee made another contribution to India's communal cauldron. He revived in one stroke the foundation of muslim zealots in Assam. Today, they have gained worrying electoral clout in the sensitive state.

Again that may have been the precise purpose of the rightwing BJP and it could partly explain the vested interest that exists in creating the communal Muslim genie. It is hardly a coincidence that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, rightwing Hinduism's ideological
fountainhead, issued an appeal the other day - even as Varun Gandhi was laying into the Muslims in his constituency in the Himalayan foothills - to increase the salaries of the muezzins of thousands of Indian mosques. The Muslim clergy is both a necessary counterpoint and a potential ally of majority communalism in India.

Outrage over Varun Gandhi's fulminations was also laced with words of sympathy for the BJP's current prime ministerial candidate Lal Kishan Advani. The brash and irresponsible Gandhi was out to tarnish the image of the moderate Advani, it was claimed. The lament was uniformly shared across the mainstream media. Moderate Advani? When did the charioteer of Ayodhya whose men tore down a nondescript mosque to assert their nationalist identity become the mild mannered, soft-spoken liberal he is made out to be? Oh well, look at the alternative, we are cautioned. Would you prefer Narendra Modi of Gujarat instead? The offered choice is deliberately false. Both the worthies are role models for the impressionable and still-groping-in-the-dark Varun Gandhi.

Communalism like a military coup is a means of shepherding recalcitrant citizens towards a choice offered by the state that they would be otherwise reluctant to accept. A happy tiding for both India and Pakistan is that enough people are still around to resist the
state's insidious manoeuvres, failing which we would quickly collapse into a South Asian variant of fascism. Instigating a communal standoff between India's religious communities has come to serve another strategic purpose. It helps paper over the far deeper fault lines of caste. Part of the purpose behind Advani's chariot journey to Ayodhya was to neutralise the disruptive effects of caste polarisation on Hindu society that was unleashed by the Mandal Commission's recommendations for caste-based affirmative action. Hindutva was resurrected to counter it. That the upper-caste Muslim clergy too would lose its stranglehold on their community has remained a less discussed outcome of the Mandal report. Since 1991, with the rise of free-market-driven corporate enterprises in India, the role of business clubs has increased dramatically in guiding and honing communal politics across the country. Big-time money is at stake in keeping the embers of religious strife alive. The recent public patronage extended by leading tycoons to Narendra Modi's communally driven governance in Gujarat is an example of this aspect of Indian democracy.

While it is reassuring that mainstream Pakistan has succeeded in saving democracy from another grievous blow from the military there is little to suggest that the worst is behind us. The deal with the Taliban in Swat remains ominous, even more so if it was clinched to serve interests other than the nation's own. India had a brief fling with authoritarian rule but its merrily regressive religious underpinning has ensured that a democratic façade serves the purpose of manufacturing consent well without recourse to overt state violence.

Neither archaeological nor literary sources actually provide any link between the present day Ayodhya and the Ayodhya of the treta age

2011-12-10T09:15:00.000-08:00

Soma Marik

Viewpoints Online

Within a short while after the destruction of the Babri Masjid on 6^th December 1992, Lal Krishna Advani boldly announced that on 6^th December, a “national shame” had been abolished(1). The extremist fundamentalists are all agreed that by overthrowing a hundreds of years old symbol of “foreign chains”, India’s ‘Hindutva’ has today regained its lost prestige. Behind this utterance is an entire complex of claims – that in India there is an integral ‘Hindu’ race or nation, whose greatness, supremacy and novel tolerance required no proof; but whose tolerance has been abused by Muslim “rulers”, who have kept the Hindus subjugated for ages; that the chief and most offensive symbol of this Muslim domination was the destruction of the temple at Lord Rama’s birthplace and the creation of a mosque in its place. So what happened on 6^thDecember, far from being the work of a party, was allegedly the spontaneous and united action of Hindus to take historic avenge for the accumulated insult of their ages long subjugation. So truly the struggle to liberate the Ram Janmabhoomi, is an indispensable aspect of the total struggle to unify the Hindu nation or to re-establish their national self-respect.

In order to buttress this claim, the BJP-RSS-VHP and other communalists’ bloc claims that history is on their side. According to them, the Babri Masjid was constructed exactly where Rama was born. At the end of the treta age, we are told, Ayodhya was lost. But later on, the emperor Vikramaditya learnt from Prayag, the king of the holy places (teertharaj) that Rama’s birthplace was close to the Sarayu river, (itself so holy that even Prayag bathed in it so that he could be cleansed), in Ayodhya. Though he lost this holy place, Vikramaditya found it again with the help of a yogi in a miraculous way. There he built a beautiful Rama temple with 84 pillars. Thereafter, during the tyrannical rule of Babar, (a form of rule wherein he was not distinguished from any other Muslim ruler), by his own orders, in 1528 A.D., his general Mir Baki smashed up the temple and sowed the temerity of building a mosque on that very spot. From that very period, Hindus have fought valiantly to rescue this sacred place. For example, there were twenty attempts to liberate the Jamasthan during the reign of Akbar. Vijay Raje Scindia wrote in the Organiser (6^th July, 1986), that hundreds of thousands of Hindus have fought and died for the Rama Janmabhoomi for centuries. But it proved impossible to ‘liberate’ Rama Janmabhoomi even at the end of the British rule. And so, on the night of 22-23 December 1949, Ram Lalla appeared in his own place in order to remind Hindu society of its sacred national task.

To firmly establish this long tale, a number of popular “histories” have been written, like Ram Janmabhoomi Ka Rakta Ranjit Itihasby Ramgopal Pandey, or Ayodhya ka Prachin Itihas by Acharya Gunduji Sharma. Initially, the emphasis was on the historicity of Ayodhya and of the spurious Ram temple. But in an influential pamphlet circulated by the VHP and written by Justice Deoki Nandan, the secretary of the Sri Ram Janmabhoomi Mukti Yajna Samiti, the author comments that there can be no dispute over the existence of an ancient Ram temple in Ayodhya. It is an historical truth beyond controversies. Such a comment, and a repeated emphasis on “true” history, shows that these fundamentalists are not really concerned about authentic history.[1]

History is certainly factual. But that is why it has no space for axiomatic conclusions. All conclusions of history are subject to verification. They have to be measured in the yardstick of facts. And that is why, history needs no special adjective like “true”, unless the use of such of terms is a deliberate attempt to pass off falsehoods.

The “true” history of the makers of the “Hindutva” ideology must therefore be checked against facts. To start with, it is necessary to say that Sri Ramchandra, who is being put forward as India’s ‘rashtrapurush’, was in no way an historic character. He does not even have an analogue in history. Ram is the hero of an epic. A speciality of the epic Ramayana is the multiplicity of versions, both in India and outside India. The Ram Katha is the sum of a number of tales, which different poets have used in different ways in accordance with their views. The Valmiki Ramayana was neither the only version, nor a sacred text.

Ram’s transition from an imaginary hero of a fictitious epic to an incarnation of Vishnu came about in the Gupta age, during the reassertion of Brahmanical power, when the epics were given a written form in place of the oral tradition of the past. There was thus a definite political motivation behind the privileging of one of the variants as the only truthful tale instead of acknowledging the multiple versions. Besides this, the real link between Ramayana and history was snapped. Instead of Ramayana as a creation of history, it seemed as though history is guided by Ram and Ramayana.

Neither archaeological nor literary sources actually provide any link between the present day Ayodhya and the Ayodhya of the treta age. The excavations of B.B. Lal and A.K. Narain (done independently) show that the oldest layer of the present Ayodhya does not go back further than the 7^th Century B, C. And if we are to take the myth as history, the treta age was thousands of years in the past – way beyond 7^th Century B.C. Moreover, the earliest settlements in Ayodhya bear no resemblance to the highly developed urban centre described by Valmiki. Urbanisation did not begin here before the 5^th century. And even then, it was not the kind of urban centre that Valmiki depicts. In the list of dynastic names of this place, we find neither Ram nor Dasarath.

The geographical location and the history of the place called Ayodhya is very close to the ancient Buddhist centre of education, Saket near the Sarayu. The Chinese travellers Fa Hien and Hiuen Tsang refer to the place. It can be assumed that king Vikramaditya (by which is meant in this case probably the emperor Skanda Gpta) changed the name of the place in order to show his association with such a valorous hero and a Rajchakravartin (universal emperor) as Ram. Thus, the naming of Saketa as Ayodhya, too, was a political action in its day.

In Buddhist and Jain literature, Saketa / Ayodhya appears repeatedly as the centre of Buddhist and Jain religions, not as the nerve centre of a Rama cult. Thereafter one finds Saivite and particularly vaishnava religions, but till the growing influence of the Ramanandi community in the 18thCentury A.D., Ayodhya had no tradition of Ram-worship or any cult of Ram. So, quite naturally, before this period one finds no reference to any Ram temple. No contemporary or near contemporary literary source admits such an event as Mir Baki’s “destruction” of a Ram temple and the construction of a mosque on that spot. Babar’s memoirs are silent on this. It is in the annotation by Beveridge, not in Babar’s own writings, where the claim about the alleged temple destruction is made. Nor do other writings of his or his successor’s period mention either the destruction of a temple, or the so-called inherent tendency of Muslims to smash up temples. Even Abdul Qadir Badauni, the very orthodox Islamic writer, who strongly disapproved of Akbar’s liberalism, has nothing to say about this act of Babar, which was surely one that, had it really been committed, should have gladdened him as an exemplary performance of duty. In the same period, Tulsidas was composing his Ramcharitmanas, the version that really popularised the Ramkatha in the Hindi belt. Had it been true that the “barbarity” of the Muslim rulers, and specifically the act of Babar in destroying the Ram temple, had really shocked the Hindus of contemporary North India, one should have expected Tulsidas to rue the humiliation of his beloved Ram. It is gratifying that neither Advani nor Singhal has so far discovered any “unpublished works” of Tulsidas proving the destruction of the temple.

However, some professional archaeologists have joined the RSS-VHP bandwagon. They are all trying to prove that below the Babri Masjid, there are the ruins of a Ram temple constructed in the 11^th Century. The name most strongly associated with this effort in the annals of Indian archaeology is that of B.B. Lal. Having done his actual work in 1975 – 80, Lal jumped into the fray only in 1990, when he wrote that as a result of his excavations, brick pillars had been found to the south of the masjid, at the top most layer, giving evidence of having been built in the 11^th Century. Interestingly, this revelation by Lal appeared in an RSS journal,Manthan. From this, he concluded that a temple had indeed been destroyed in order to build a masjid.

Yet the same B.B. Lal, when he published his preliminary report on the Ayodhya excavations in the Indian Archaeological Reviewin 1976-77, disclosed that in the middle ages, between 11^th and 16^th Centuries, Ayodhya played no historically significant role. Just under the level of the masjid, that is, in the 13-15^th Century layer, no specifically Hindu motifs are available. Rather, this layer had a thick deposit of Muslim Glazed Ware Pottery. The work under the guidance of A.K. Narain (1969-70) came to the same conclusion. The natural question is, why in that case did B.B. Lal keep silent for 15 years or so, even if he had obtained some new data after his preliminary report? And if at all he had new historical facts why did he select, not an academic journal but an RSS propaganda sheet and that at a time when the mandir-masjid dispute was rapidly rising to a peak?[2] So we can state emphatically that just as Kasalya’s labour room cannot be located in history, so can history not provide the directions to the Ram mandir. It never existed, and it can only be imagined with difficulty. Whatever existed, prior to the building of the Babri Masjid, it was not a temple, and no structure at all seems to have existed in period 13^th-15^th Centuries.

Defeat in the academic battlefield has led to the construction of “true history” on the ground of faith. Obviously, with faith in the authenticity of Ram, his birthplace and the existence of a temple prior to its destruction by Babar or his general, there can be no dispute based on mere reason.

The Origins of the Myth:

If the story of Ram’s birthplace and a temple there is a pure fable, a lie, who raised it and why? The origin seems to have been a follow up of a Hindu-Muslim conflict over the Hanumangarhi temple, which the local Muslims claimed was built over a mosque. This was proved to be untrue. But local Hindus, led by the mahant of Haumangarhi, raised a counter claim, in order to put the Muslims on the defensive, that the Babri Masjid had been built over a temple. At the same time, they forcibly occupied a part of the land surrounding the Masjid to build the Ram Chabutara.

This localised conflict was utilised by the British imperialists. Their initial aim was to prove the break down of law and order in states administered by Indians (since Ayodhya was part of the domain of the Nawab of Oudh). Later, they used the story of Babar’s supposed vandalism (e.g., by Colonel Sleeman) to stoke the embers of communal hatered. It was Sleeman who encouraged the beginning of Ram worship in the Chabutara. They did not stop here. In 1902 the district magistrate of Faizabad created a local committee whose task was to “identify” Hindu places of worship. It goes without saying that they put a sign in front of the Babri Masjid : ‘Ram Janmabhoomi : No.1’.

Local tradition was also turned into a redoubtable “fact of history” by the use of techniques of scholarship, in various writings from the history of the Faizabad tehsil to the translation of the Baburnama. In the case of Beveridge, a mere “assumption” was granted the status of historical fact. According to her, Babar passed through Aodhya and since he was a Muslim, he must have been intolerant to other religions, and so it was perhaps natural for him to have built a masjid by destroying a temple. This is a note appended by Beveridge, not a part of Babar’s own text. The total illogical nature of the claim becomes a little more understandable if we look at if as part of the imperialist viewpoint, where the distortions of history had to serve the purpose of creating myths like the oppression of Hindus by Muslims etc., in order to create or accentuate Hindu-Muslim differences and to increase thereby the life span of the British empire.

Though our task here is not chiefly to focus on the role of the British, by showing their role, we have been able to establish the fact that the development of the mandir-masjid dispute, from a local conflict to a national issue, has been mediated by political motives. The ”disputed structure” was an indisputable masjid till the fascist mob pulled it down on 6^th December, 1992. Even after independence, it has been used as a mosque. Till a week or so prior to 22^nd December, Muslims had prayed there. But then, by the morning of 23^rd December, the idol was smuggled into the mosque. The mosque was promptly declared a “disputed structure” and by order of the district magistrate K.K. Nayar, the Hindus were allowed entry into the Chabutara for purposes of worship but the right of the Muslims to offer namaaz in the over 400 years old masjid was taken away. Nayar’s plea was certainly excellent. He wanted to maintain peace. Truly, appeasing Hindu communalists is the best way to keep peace. This also shows how much “Muslim appeasement” has been done by any government, for at that time the Chief Minister of U.P. was G.B. Pant and the Prime Minister was Jawaharlal Nehru.

For his valour, K.K. Nayar was later picked up by the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the direct predecessor of the BJP, to become one of its MPs. On the other hand, the role of the Congress is also evident. The communalisation of the situation in Ayodhya was of its creation. Shortly after the extremely bloody partition of the country, the Congress sought to use the Ram cult to heighten communal feelings and thereby to defeat the Socialist candidate, Acharya Narendra Dev, in a by-election in 1948. The Congress candidate Baba Raghavdas and his band of bairagis and mahants everywhere went on a spree of communal campaign to win the polls.

The Making of Hindutva:

However, it was a long step from this sporadic use of Hindu sentiment for electoral purposes to the creation of a systematic Hindutva ideology. While in recent years the Ram Janmabhoomi myth has been central to this creation, it is part of a wider project. In about 5000 schools controlled by the RSS, a new history is taught. Ancient India is being shown as an age of uninterrupted progress in the sciences and arts, in intellectual activities, etc. The Hindu glory of the Aryans and its revival in the Gupta age is supposed to be at its roots. The Aryans are turned into indigenous people, and the Harappa civilisation credited to them. So great was this glory of Hindutva, that we are expected to forget varna and jati based discriminations and oppression, the subordinate status of women etc., not to speak of the class domination of the land owning rulers. Moreover, the actual course of history shows the rise of religions of protest, of the absorption of Greeks, Sakas and others in defiance of a strict definition of the caste system. If casteism is supposed to have acted as a force of integration, as M.S.Golwalkar once claimed in his Bunch of Thoughts, if ancient India was free of social conflicts, why did Asoka find it necessary to preach the virtues of toleration? Does one preach peace to peace lovers?

All this required some amount of critical thinking, which is the last thing that the RSS wants. So the creation of heros takes a standard pattern, and so does the parallel demonology. The “greatness” of the “Hindu age” was supposedly followed by the dark ages as soon as the Muslims came to India, as “murderers”, “forces of destruction”, “plunderers”, and the like. The history of the medieval states shows that the rulers looked after the interests of the ruling class and the state. Daring the Mughal period, Rajputs, Marathas, Sikhs, Jats, clashed with the Mughals primarily due to political –economic causes, not over religion. But Savarkar for instance, turned Shivaji’s struggle for power into a “great movement” for national liberation.

As for the destruction of places of worship, this was not confined to Muslim rulers. The Paramar king Subhaga Barman attacked Gujarat and destroyed a number of temples. On the other side, one can find evidence of Aurangzeb issuing firmans for the grant of land for the upkeep of the Mahakaleswar temple in Ujjain, the Balaji temple in Chitrakut and other temples. Similarly just as a number of Muslim Sultans and Badshahs imposed the jiziya on their Hindu subjects, the Hindu Zamorins of the Malabar region levied religious taxes on their Jewish subjects. The myth of the “Muslim dark ages” obscures actual social, economic and cultural developments of this period. Socialists have no need to applaud old ruling classes for any progress the wrought, for all such progress everywhere is at the cost of the producing and exploited classes. But still less is there any reason to falsify the reality of such progress.

The new history of the RSS is old communalist mythology. It aim is the desecularisation of civil society without which, at the merely political level, the fascist form of communal politics cannot succeed. That is why it debunks the actual progressive content of the national movement, its anti-imperialism, however limited and truncated that may have been, and claims that the real freedom struggle was the anti Muslim struggle. In this, they are true to their origins for they never fought against imperialism in the least. Shyama Prosad Mukherjee, founder of the Jana Sangh, even actively opposed the Quit India moment as a member of the Bengal cabinet.

The distortion of history has served to create two imagined, ‘eternally opposed’ communities, of whom the minority is allegedly by nature a community of murderers, rapists and the like, while the majority is soft and pacific, weak, disunited, disorganised. Hence, it is claimed, Hindus must cease to be weak, disunited, disorganised. It is ‘legitimate’ for them to be angry. They must redress past errors by teaching such a lesson to those who are “Babar’s children” that they can never again behave in an uppity manner.

The ideology round which such militant Hindu unity is to be achieved is Hindutva. It is the struggle for the retention of ‘Hindu’ values, ‘Hindu’ interests. True nationalism resides in militant politics of Hindutva, because according to the RSS theorists, culture is at the root of nationality, and religion is the basis of culture. In 1923, in his pamphlet Hindutva, Savarkar defined as Hindus those who accept India as their “pitribhoomi” and ‘punyabhoomi’.[3] Similarly, Golwalkar claimed that Hindus alone are truly Indians, because they alone are the creators of India’s holy social and cultural heritage. These theorists of “cultural nationalism” strenuously deny equal status to non-Hindus, because their “holy land” lies outside India. The necessity of the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation flows from this. According to the proponents of Hindutva, Muslims, Christians and Communists are not true Indians, because they derive inspiration from Mecca, or Jerusalem, or Russia. Muslims, in particular, have been constantly held up as an eternally hostile and “non-National” part of the social and political structure, for whom the options are either to accept a subordinate status, or to abandon Islam, or, finally, to face expulsion from the country.

Golwalkar learnt the lessons of fascism from abroad, and exulted that Germany and Italy showed Hindus the way ahead. Hailing the anti-Jewish policies of the Nazis, he said that it is not possible for different races and cultures to mix, and asked the people to draw appropriate lessons.

Thus, the myth of “Muslim invaders/Hindu resistance” was used deftly to establish as truth the blatant lie that Hindutva is the real face of Indian nationalism. To establish one central lie, supporting lies are required. So “true history” was called on to provide another lesson, namely, that without the awakening of a fierce spirit among the Hindus the reestablishment of the great religious tradition of India is impossible. So the very existence of the Hindus as an entity comes to depend on the battle for Hindutva. Ram became a crucial element in this battle. As historian Neeladri Bhattacharyya points out, the programme of Hinduisation is a project to create an artificial “Hindu essence”. This was to consolidate a macho and offensive communal spirit.

Thus, the struggle for “Ram Janma Bhoomi” is part of a wider political struggle to build a “Hindu” identity. Why is this necessary? This is not a religious issue. The RSS pamphlet, “Angry Hindu”? Yes, Why Not?” gives an answer. It is an all out attack on secularism. It says, to start with, that Hindus have always been tolerant, liberal and so on. But these very traits are then depicted as symptoms of weakness, which has been utilised by Muslim rulers to destroy the great culture and civilisation of ancient India. So the time has come to stand up and resent. Not “womanly tolerance”, but manly aggressiveness is required. Hence every yatra organised by the V.H. P. Has caused riots. For the same reason, in Surat, not only have women been brutally raped and tortured, but the process has been videotaped to show the masculine prowess of the new Hindutva. Perhaps we can now place Ram in context. As the authors of the recent book, Khaki Shirts, Saffron Flag point out, the V.H.P. portrayal of Ram is two-fold – Ram the warrior, standing on a backcloth of storm to wrest his right, and Ram as the king of a “golden age”. It both cases, he stands alone – the epitome of masculinity. Sita has no space. Truly, how can she have space? Ram fought to repossess her, but after the war he abandoned her because she had been “sullied” by the touch of another man. The spokespersons of Hindutva explain this away after Golwalkar, for whom it is bad to be an honest, even a religious man in private life if you collaborate with Muslims, while a man who in personal life is a scoundrel should be unquestioningly obeyed if he is the “leader” of the “national struggle” for Hindutva. In the RSS shakhas, the authors of Khaki Shirts, Saffron Flag relate, a part of the training is to ask, what will you do if your leader asks you to jump in a well? The person to whom the question is asked must immediately answer that he will do so. From this moronic obedience it is but a step to killing “enemies” under the instructions of the leaders. This reminds one of the Nazi Fuhrerprinzip and the defence put up by the accused in the Nuremberg Trials, or by Eichmann.

Thus, Hindutva in its current incarnation is a fascist ideology aiming to establish, in the name of “Hindu Rashtra”, a fascist state. Ram, the leader, could treat his wife shabbily. So what? He had done his duty by repossessing her after defeating the enemy had he not? This is the role model for the future.

Class, caste or gender exploitations are glossed over in the name of a unity against “the enemy” As Islam is an “organised force” a counter organisation is called for. The RSS and V.H.P. are the models for this. Through the unity of the sants, the V.H.P. is portrayed as, not an organisation in society, but the organisation of Hindu society. After this claim is peddled repeatedly, the demands and orders of the VHP can be passed off as the demands of Hindus en bloc. Romila Thapar, the well known historian, has shown that this VHP model Hindutva is being presented as an ideology of modernisation. It is being claimed that modernisation is the outcome of capitalist development, which in turn has been made possible through the influence of semitic type organised religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam). Thus Hindutva must take on a semitic organisational shape. For this it requires a founder, a central religious text, a geographically definite place of origin, a structure and conversions. Ram substitutes for a founder. Ramayan, Ayodhya, and the VHP do the rest.

Religion is not the end for the VHP, only a means to fight the organisations and the struggles of the oppressed. Golwalkar recognised the danger inherent in reservations, and called it separatism. To say only that all Hindus are equal, and to oppose actual attempts, however limited, at social equality, points to the upper class – upper caste – male dominated character of this ideology. It is not surprising that Sankar Guha Neogi could be murdered and the struggle in Chhattisgarh continuously attacked, both by state agencies and by goondas in BJP ruled Madhya Pradesh.

The class equality that Golwalkar preaches is simple. It is not right that a clerk should be called ‘aap’, while a rickshaw-puller is called ‘tu’. But as for actual reforms, let alone class struggle, that is to be fought against. Along with this, the RSS, and its wings, including the BMS, fight to obliterate all consciousness of class identity among workers.

On women’s liberation Hindutva is even sterner. How could it be otherwise for those who uphold Ram as the symbol of struggle? It is true that this counter-revolutionary struggle has mobilised many women. But they are told that they can do so only after ensuring that this does not upset domestic peace. “We do not tear up the home” – is a refrain of the sevikas. The women are ultimately fully under male control. For Golwalkar, the ideal of womanhood are the Rajput women who observed Jawahar Vrata (committed self-immolation). Naturally, in an area of strong RSS influence like Rajasthan, Roop Kanwar was burnt to death as a “sati”. Even the BJP stand on the Shah Bano case shows, the BJP did not support her struggle as a woman who had been deprived. They only wanted to make political capital out of so-called concessions to Muslims. In reality, concessions to Muslim communalism go against the interests, above all, of ordinary Muslims, particularly Muslim women. The civil code the BJP-RSS want, has a great difference with the Non-sexist Secular Code that we, along with feminists, demand, for Hindutva is by no means non-sexist.

History is not the sole constituent element of the fascist ideology. But is an important ingredient. The Goebbelsian technique of continuous lies in the name of history is important for the fascists in consolidating a general mood in their favour. Out of this come the disciplined storm troopers, those who fight as their leaders dictate.

The events surrounding the destruction of the Babri Masjid show how far fascism has progressed. To fight fascism, it is necessary to regain the terrain of civil society, to secularise it. It is not useful to call the fascists names, if the left also takes to the politics of quoting Gita and Koran. The basis of communism is materialism, not idealism. Unless we start from that base, and put forward a positive programme of struggles capable of enhancing class unity, the ideological challenge of Hindutva cannot be countered. At best, “Liberal Hinduism” will serve “democratic” capitalism. At worst, the failure of class-consciousness will lead to increasing fragmentation of the working class and the other working people, with religion serving a possible fascist takeover.

-------------------------

[1] Since 1992-3, much has happened. There have been major attacks on the writing of history. Space does not allow a proper discussion of that theme. See however the contributions of Romila Thapar, Sumit Sarkar, and Praful Bidwai in the section entitled Rewriting History.

[2] Under the dispensation of Murli Manohar Joshi, a leading RSS and BJP figure, who is now the Union Human Resource Development Minister, Lal received a high position in the Indian Council of Historical Research, which might explain why he had selected Manthan, not an academic journal. Lal’s most recent exploit is to explain the Aryan origins of the Indus Valley Civilisation, and the claim that the people of IVC spoke Sanskrit. How a civilization whose script remains shrouded in fog and about whom all our information comes from archaeology can be said definitively to have spoken in Sanskrit is a mystery that only those possessing an inner eye (or inner ear of a special kind) can vouch for.

[3] Fatherland and Holy Land. Muslims and Christians, with their Holy Lands outside India, were redefined into second rate citizenship by this strategy.

The writer teaches at Department of History, RKSM Vivekananda Vidyabhavan, Kolkata. She is an active member of Nari Nirjatan Pratirodh Mancha (Forum Against Oppression of Women, Kolkata) and Radical Socialist. Email: mariksoma@hotmail.com

Disguised Hindutva radicals planted Malegaon bombs?

2011-12-10T09:05:00.000-08:00

Rediff.com
November 14, 2011 17:17 IST

Hindu extremist groups, who carried out blasts the 2006 Malegaon blasts, were disguised as Muslims to mislead investigators. Vicky Nanjappa reports

On Monday, as seven of the nine accused who were granted bail in the 2006 Malegaon blasts are set to be released from jail, there was a sense of relief in Nashik town. For years, investigators have been suspecting the involvement of Muslim youths in this case.

It's just a matter of time that the National Investigating Agency files its status report in the case, which is likely to indict the two accused -- Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and Lieutenant Colonel Srikant Purohit.

The focus of the probe in the 2006 Malegaon blasts case has been on the confessions made by Swami Aseemanand, a key figure in the Hindutva terror network. After having admitted to have planned terror attacks on Ajmer Sharif, Mecca Masjid, Malegaon and the Samjhauta Express, Aseemanand retracted his statement. But it was this confession that made it easier of the NIA to gather leads in the 2006 case.

Aseemanand's retraction will not have much impact on the case, according to legal experts. He will have to prove before the trial court that the statement was made under duress. And if he does prove this the court will have to direct the magistrate before whom the statement was made to testify. But despite this the NIA will tread carefully and only use the confession to obtain leads rather than document it before the court.

Today, the investigators are close to cracking the case. But for years the biggest point of debate has been over who planted the bombs in the Muslim cemetery. Hemant Karkare, who led the investigations in the 2008 Malegaon blasts, gave a new dimension to the case after he pointed out the involvement of some radical Hindu groups in terror-related activities. One of angles that was being probed was that Purohit threatened some Muslim youths from the banned Students Islamic Movement of India to prepare the bombs since they had the required expertise. Another theory was that Muslim youths were hired by Hindu extremists to plant the bombs.

Investigations into the 2006 Nanded blast, which investigators say was one of the first terror activities involving Hindu extremists, point out to yet another interesting tactic deployed by saffron extremists.

During a raid that was conducted after the Nanded blast, the police recovered Muslim attire, skullcaps and fake beards at a place where the operation was allegedly planned. During the course of the investigation it was also found that Hindu radicals planned to dress up like Muslims to plant bombs in a move to malign the minority community.

Investigators say that those behind the 2006 Malegaon blasts could have also disguised themselves as Muslims. Soon after the blasts a Muslim newspaper The Milli Gazette reported that a corpse with a fake beard was discovered while lifting bodies after the strike. The police in Malegaon immediately took charge of the body and claimed to have sent it to Nashik. However, the next day it denied that any such body was ever found, said the report.

The report also said that the news of the corpse with the fake beard was carried by Delhi's Urdu daily Hindustan Express on September 9, 2006 and the Mumbai-based Inquilab on September 11, 2006.

Probe agencies have been able to draw a lot of similarities between the attacks in Nanded and Malegaon operations. However, investigators have not been able to reach at a conclusive decision regarding the hiring of Muslim youth to plant bombs or Hindu extremists disguising themselves.

But, Aseemanand had admitted to investigators that he had developed a deep sense of vengeance against Muslims in general. One of the accused in the Nanded blasts -- Manohar Rao -- had confessed to having procured Muslim attire, beards and caps. The accused have said that they wanted to mislead the police by leaving traces of the involvement of the Muslim community. If they planted bombs disguised as Muslims the eyewitnesses' account would reveal the same.

The module also created fake email ids in the names of Muslims once again with an intention of misguiding investigators. A similar modus operandi was used in the terror operations carried out in the Marathwada region in central Maharashtra -- at Jalna, Purna and Parbhani, say insiders.

Aseemanand in his confessions made no mention of the Nanded, Parbhani, Jalna and Purna operations and only spoke about the Mecca Masjid, Malegaon, Samjautha and Ajmer blasts. This clearly indicates that two different modules were involved in the attacks though their motives were similar.

The accused in the Nanded case said that they wanted to hit back at the Dawood Ibhraim gang for helping terrorists carry out 2003 Mumbai twin blasts at Gateway of India and Zaveri Bazaar. Aseemanand also speaks about similar revenge when he propounded the "bomb ka badla bomb" theory.

The NIA is expected to file a status report in the 2006 Malegaon case, but that's going to be no cakewalk. "Like the Mecca Masjid case, while probing the Malegaon we were misled and a lot needs to be undone. Moreover, the four cases -- Mecca Masjid, Malegaon, Samjautha and Ajmer blats -- are interlinked," say NIA officials.

Read the fine print: Ramachandra Guha on Ramanujan's Essay

2011-12-10T08:48:00.000-08:00

From: Hindustan Times

Ramachandra Guha

December 05, 2011

A western spin doctor once formulated a numerical rule as regards adverse publicity. If critical stories about a prominent individual appeared in a particular newspaper, then that person would do best to ignore them. However, if these stories were picked up by other newspapers, and the controversy dragged on for more than 10 days, then the person was in trouble, and should take remedial measures.

This 10-day rule applies as much to organisations as to indi-viduals. Consider the controversy around AK Ramanujan’s essay Three Hundred Ramayanas published in this country by the Oxford University Press (OUP), first in an edited collection entitled Many Ramayanas, and then in the author’s own Collected Essays. A litigant in a small town claimed the essay offended his sentiments. Rather than contest the claim, the OUP apologised (in rather craven terms), and allowed the books containing the essay to go out of print. This decision then encouraged the (reactionary or pusillanimous) vice chancellor of the University of Delhi to have the essay withdrawn from the syllabus.

The behaviour of the OUP was widely condemned by the scholarly community. Its actions were seen as a blow to the freedom of expression, and as an insult to the memory of arguably the greatest scholar in the humanities produced by India. Poet, folklorist, essayist, translator, and theorist, AK Ramanujan had a profound, enduring influence on Indian and global scholarship. That his work was being suppressed due to pressure from Hindutva bigots was particularly ironic — for his majestic translations of medieval Hindu poetry had done much to make the world aware of the beauty and depth of our mystical traditions.

The OUP’s abandonment of Ramanujan led to an outrage that was spontaneous, and worldwide. Critical articles appeared in the Indian press while a petition urging the OUP to bring the essay back into circulation was endorsed by more than 500 scholars, many of them very distinguished indeed.

The OUP is the world’s greatest (and oldest) publisher. OUP India has itself played a transformative role in nurturing Indian scholarship. A short list of OUP authors would include Shahid Amin, Kaushik Basu, Andre Beteille, Partha Chatterjee, Veena Das, Jean Dreze, Ranajit Guha, Irfan Habib, Niraja Gopal Jayal, Girish Karnad, Nayanjot Lahiri, Ashis Nandy, Sumit Sarkar, Amartya Sen, Vijay Tendulkar, and Romila Thapar. To this stellar cast of Indians one can add an equally eminent roster of the finest foreign scholars on India.

The anguish over the OUP’s betrayal of Ramanujan was in part because of the press’s reputation; in part because of Ramanujan’s own distinction; and in part because it followed on other such examples of the betrayal of scholars and scholarship. In recent years, the OUP has withdrawn books on the law, on medieval history, and on Indian nationalism under pressure from bigots and from the State.

These successive betrayals were, it now appears, a product of an obsessive concern with the bottom line. The profits the OUP makes come largely from textbooks and dictionaries, so why then care about the concerns of scholars? Indeed, when it comes to its material interests, OUP India is happy to engage in a battle in court. While it acquiesced in the suppression of AK Ramanujan’s work, it recruited some of the country’s most expensive lawyers to fight a tax case on its behalf.

This obsession with profit, so manifest in the past decade, has meant that the books produced by the OUP have often been carelessly edited and badly produced. This has led to a flight to other presses of some of its best-known authors, and (as importantly) of its best-qualified editors. It may very well be that there is no one in the OUP today who has read AK Ramanujan or knows of his intellectual standing. How else can one explain that disavowal of his work in court?

Notably, when the first series of critical articles appeared in the Indian press, the OUP dismissed it as the work of malicious or motivated individuals. This was characteristic; famous and powerful organisations think their fame and power will in itself quell all criticism. For years, the Catholic Church refused to admit that a growing number of its priests were abusing children. The US government denied that unspeakable crimes were being committed by it in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

But, as in those other instances, the criticisms would not go away. Fresh articles appeared, highlighting previous instances of the suppression of books by the OUP. Then came that cross-continental signature campaign. In meetings with top bosses in Delhi and Oxford, OUP authors expressed their anger and dismay. By now, the public shaming of the OUP had extended well beyond the 10-day period. It was time to make amends. And so the OUP has agreed to reprint AK Ramanujan’s Collected Essays, in a belated but still welcome vindication of that author, of other authors, of the history of the organisation, and of the principle of freedom of expression.

Scholars and intellectuals may have won this particular battle. But any complacency would be unwarranted. For Indians who stand for the freedom of artistic expression have lost very many battles in the past. There is a long, melancholy list of writers and artists — MF Hussain, James Laine, Taslima Nasreen, Salman Rushdie et al — whose work has been suppressed in India by bigots and fundamentalists, aided by the State and political parties.

In most cases, the denial of freedom occurs because elected politicians allow goondas to get their way. In this case, it was the spine of a private organisation, the OUP, which needed stiffening. It may be much harder to get state and central governments to exchange their habitual cowardice for an unqualified commitment to constitutional values and the rule of law.

(Ramachandra Guha is the author of India After Gandhi: The History Of The World’s Largest Democracy)

Political Machinations Of Hindutva

2011-12-10T08:41:00.000-08:00

By Ram Puniyani

21 March, 2011
Countercurrents.org

Film Review

(Film: Saffron War by Rajiv Yadav, Shahanawaz Alam and Lakshman Prashad, Duration 61 Minutes, Contribution, Rs 95, Available from: 632/13, Shankarpuri, Kamta, Post: Chinhat, Lucknow, UP)

With the rise of Hindutva movement during last three decades there has also been an attempt to understand this phenomenon through analytic essays, articles and films. These films have also served the purpose of spreading the awareness about the rising threat of communal politics, and dangers to national integration due to the rising communal tide in the society. The Mumbai violence, Gujarat genocide, Kandhmal amongst others has been the object of serious study and analysis amongst the activists and scholars. ‘Saffron War: A War against nation’ is the latest in the series of the significant works, which have come out lately. This film is a unique combination of analysis of Hindutva ideology, its cooption of dalits in to communal politics and the gradual manipulation of the low caste movements from their struggle for social justice to their current mobilization in the fold of Hindutva where they are made to believe that the real problems of society are not due to the caste structure but the external one coming form Muslim minorities.

This film is made in the backdrop of Gorakhpur, where Yogi Adiyanath, A BJP MP has been spreading his tentacles in a very aggressive way. The film’s major contribution is to show as to how Gorakhnath Math has been gradually been shifted away from its struggle against caste oppression, how its focus on intercommunity amity has been shifted away to hatred for the minorities. The film through different interviews and visuals shows us the spread of venom against minorities. The language used by the Yogi and his followers comes under the category of ‘Hate Speech’, which is going on in the open fashion. All the prejudices and biases against minorities, Muslims in particular, are being openly asserted in the public meetings where not only are the Muslims presented in the negative light but also violence is openly propagated and promoted. The imaginary fear of minorities is projected and all the propagation of violence is done in the name of ‘Defense of Hindu religion’. The degree of aggression in the language is shocking to say the least. In many a meetings when these hateful speeches are being made, even the police is standing as the passive listeners, unmindful of the fact that such hate speech should invite strong legal action.

The major mobilization is done in the name of Yogi Adityanath and the majority of people who are mobilized and co-opted are dalits and OBCs. They begin with Savarkar’s definition of Hinduva and Hindu Rashtra is made the base of Hate other propaganda. This goes on to say that Muslims have to be relegated to second class citizenship. They cite the example of Pakistan to spread this hate. Yogi’s propaganda further adds that Muslims’voting rights have to be taken away. Gorakhpur and surrounding areas must be one of the few places where Savarkar is quoted so blatantly in the anti minority tirade. The emphasis on converting UP in to Gujarat through Uttaranchal comes up regularly. On the lines of Bajrang Dal, there is formation of Arya Veer Sena and Hindu Yuva Vahini giving the training to youth in the use of arms, with Har Har Mahadev as the war cry.

The film brings out clearly as to how the earlier Bharat Milap procession in this area symbolized Hindu Muslim brother hood, but now it has been converted into the occasion where anti Muslim sentiments are invoked. This has seriously intimidated the Minorities in the area. The role of these forces in the Mau riots of 2005 is well brought out in this film.

While the film does well to focus on the core points of Savarkar ideology and cooption, Sanskrtisation of dalits, there is a need to link up this with the overall Hindutva politics of the country. The link between Savarkar and RSS ideology also should have been highlighted. The strong point of the film is to show the political dynamics of conversion of a low caste, syncretic space into the one dominated by Braminical ideology and Hindutva politics. The film does show in a forthright manner, the way in which Hindutva politics builds up. The history of Gorakhnath Math comes out very well along with the fact the communalization process has converted this syncretic spaces into exclusive Hindutva places. It is Gorakhnath Math where Muslims used to throng in large numbers and were welcome there. The scenario is dismal, there is need to develop political, ideological and cultural campaigns against this politics to bring back the issues of caste and gender in to the mainstream of social movements. The need to work for national integration needs to be highlighted in more ways than one.

While the film is a comprehensive study of communalism in Uttaranchal, Gorakhpur in particular, it should have connected a bit more with the National phenomenon. The film does need some technical improvisation.

Breakthrough Development In Hindutva Terror Network Investigation

2011-12-10T08:36:00.000-08:00

By Tehelka

09 January, 2011

Tehelka scoops Hindutva zealot Swami Aseemanand’s 42-page chilling confession before the magistrate

Evidence of a sinister Hindutva terror network has been growing with every new arrest over the last few months. But on Decemeber 18, 2010, in a breakthrough development, Swami Aseemanand, a key figure in the terror module, made a stunning confession before magistrate Deepak Dabas of the Tis Hazari court. Recorded under 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code, this is the first legally admissible evidence that not Muslims but a range of RSS pracharaks were involved in a series of heinous terror blasts ranging from Malegaon 2006 to the Mecca Masjid, Ajmer Sharif and Samjhauta Express blasts.

Ashish Khetan, Editor, Investigations, Tehelka has scooped this 42-page confession (written in Hindi) as reported in Tehelka’s latest cover story , which is now out on the stands and on the tehelka website, www.tehelka.com

In his statement, Aseemanand admits to having planned terror attacks on Ajmer Sharif, Mecca Masjid, Malegaon and the Samjhauta Express.

He names senior RSS leader Indresh Kumar, the murdered RSS pracharak Sunil Joshi, Sadhvi Pragya Thakur and senior RSS pracharaks Sandeep Dange and Ramji Kalsangra, Swami Aseemanand himself, among others, as being key conspirators in the terror blasts.

According to him, Indresh Kumar financed several of the blasts, while Sunil Joshi and his team executed many of them.

Aseemanand says the terror conspiracy was hatched over several meetings at which he was present along with these Hindutva leaders. According to him the trigger for their conspiracy was the Islamist terror strikes on Sankatmochan mandir and Akshardham temple. Aseemanad says, “I told everybody
that bomb ka jawab bomb se dena chahiye”.

Their reasons for picking their targets are chilling. Aseemanand says, “I told everyone since 80 percent of Malegaon are Muslims we should explode the bomb in Malegaon”.

He also says, “Since Hindus throng to the Ajmer Sharif dargah, we thought a bomb blast in Ajmer would deter Hindus from going there.”

Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad was chosen because the Nizam of Hyderbad had wanted to opt for Pakistan during Partition!

And Samjhauta Express was chosen because it was mostly used by Pakistanis.

This confession will have wide-ranging political ramifications. The RSS will have to confront extremely uncomfortable and explosive questions about members of its organisation.

This confession also exposes the cynical assumption that had crept into the Indian criminal justice system. There was a deep-seated prejudice that if there is a terror blast, there will be a Muslim behind it. This confession exposes the shockingly shoddy approach of sections of investigative agencies where they rounded up and wrongly arrested scores of innocent Muslim boys and men for blasts they had not committed. Just to claim they had “cracked the case” and caught the “masterminds”. Many of these innocent Muslims were tortured and kept in jail for years. It is a measure of the extent of this cynicism that even when the targets were Muslim neighbourhoods or mosques, Muslims were still blamed for it. In the meantime, the real culprits of terror blasts across the country – both Islamist and ultra-Hindutva men – were allowed to go scot-free.

Thirty two innocent Muslim men were, in fact, also arrested for this series of blasts which Aseemanand has now admitted were perpetrated by him and his comrades. These men have also been featured in Tehelka’s story. This leaves many questions and much reparation to be made to the Muslims who were wrongly arrested.

Christian Council demands Government enact Communal Violence Prevention Bill

2011-12-10T08:33:00.000-08:00

Pune, December 9, 2011

ALL INDIA CHRISTIAN COUNCIL
Pune Chapter
Punya Dham Society, A/ 2/ 20 Wadgaonsheri, Pune 411014

[The following is the text of the Press Statement issued by Dr John Dayal, Secretary General, All India Christian Council, at a Press conference at Patrakar Bhawan, Navi Peth, Pune, Maharashtra, on 9th December 2011. Other Christian leaders who addressed the press conference included Prof Indira Athawale, Dr Sanjay Kore, Pastor Peter Paul Geore and Mr Diego Almeida.]

The All India Christian Council [aicc], an apex Human Rights and Freedom of Faith forum, has urged the Government of India to urgently bring before Parliament and pass the Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparation) Bill 2011. The Bill, commonly called the CV Prevention Bill, was drafted earlier this year by the National Advisory Council and is now with the Union government.

The Bill has been strongly supported by religious minorities as well as by most members of civil society as an effective means to curb communal violence which has plagued this country after Independence in 1947, and bring justice to the victims. In the last ten years there have been more than 6,000 incidents of communal violence, according to information provided by the government to Parliament.

Among the most heinous mass crimes against religious communities in India have been the anti Sikh violence of 1984 in New Delhi and other cities, the anti Muslim pogrom in Gujarat of 2002 and the anti Christian massacre and mass arson in Kandhamal in Orissa in which 56,000 persons were forced to flee to forests when over 5,600 houses in 400 villages were burnt down by Hindutva mobs. Over 100 persons were killed, Nuns and other women were raped and over 290 churches destroyed. In all cases, the police and officials stood by without acting. Many police and civil officers were guilty of involvement in all these acts of mass violence, and others were guilty of inaction and impunity. Kashmiri Pundits have also been subject of targeted violence.

Rehabilitation and resettlement in all cases has been tardy. The worst is the issue of justice. Most victims, including of murder, have been denied justice. In Kandhamal, for instance, not a single person has been convicted for murder. The proposed Bill seeks to secure justice for victims and end the climate of impunity by bringing the guilty officials to book. The proposed law maintains that minorities are denied justice because of the communal behaviour of a section of religious and political extremists and the apathy or involvement of the administration.

The Bill will also curb hate speech and similar actions. In recent months, VHP leader Dr Praveen Togadia has called for the beheading of missionaries in issues of conversion. Janata party leader Subramaniam Swamy has launched a slander campaign against the Christian and Muslim communities in general, and against the aicc in particular. The All India Christian Council also denounces conspiracies to scuttle the Bill. The government should take immediate steps and discuss the Bill with political parties to end the attempt of Hindutva groups to raise false alarms against the proposed law.

Dr John Dayal said Christian leaders in Mumbai had earlier filed a formal complaint demanding legal action against Dr Subramaniam Swamy for spreading hate and violating the Constitution when he wrote an article in a Mumbai newspaper advocating that Muslims should not be given voting rights. Complaints were also filed in New Delhi. Holding that communalism is as evil as corruption, the All India Christian Council has repeatedly called for strong laws to curb hate campaigns and similar activity which leads to the targetting of minorities and marginalised communities, including Muslims, Christians, Dalits and Tribals.

Referring to issues of development of Minorities in Maharashtra state and Pune City, the Council called for adequate and commensurate representation of the Christian community in all walks of life, government and public sector undertakings and in the political establishment. Political parties too must give the community substantial representation and opportunities. Many youth were underemployed. Christian students could not get scholarships because of bureaucratic red tape and lack of information because the Union and state governments had not taken adequate steps. This situation must be rectified.

The AICC called for an end to physical and hidden forms of communalism in the region which has seen burning of churches, harassment if priests and nuns and the attempted blackmailing and violence against schools at admission time. The state government must act in time to prevent such incidents.

All India Christian Council who can be contacted at aiccdelhi(at)gmail(dot)com

Brahminism, Hindutva And The Dalit Question

2011-12-10T08:32:00.001-08:00

By Yoginder Sikand

26 August, 2011
Countercurrents.org

Sanatana Dharma and Indian Nationalism

Nothing in all of this is at all novel, for Swamy simply mechanically parrots what a whole tribe of Hindutva ideologues before him have said on the subject.

Hindutva and Brahminism

Whitewashing Brahminism

Distorting History

Hindutva, ‘National Unity’ and Brahminism

Hindutva Political Economy and the Caste Question

Muslims and the Struggle Against Hindutva

Yoginder Sikand is Indian writer-academic and the author of several books on Islam-related issues in India.

Unraveling the Truth: Book Review: Godse's Children by Subhash Gatade

2011-12-10T08:20:00.000-08:00

by Ram Puniyani

(Book Reviewed: Godse’s Children- Hindutva Terror in India, Pharos Media, Delhi, Pages 400, Rs 360, Pb)

Terrorist violence has been one of the major problems of recent times. This phenomenon came to popular notice more so after the 9/11 attack on WTC, which was followed by, apart from other things, popularization of the terms ‘Islamic Terror’, ‘Jehdi terror’. The popular perception associating Terrorism with Islam and Muslims dominated the ‘social common sense’ and acts of terror got associated with Islam and Muslims. It is in this context that when two Bajrang dal workers died while making bombs in Nanded, Maharashtra, the Maharashtra ATS, did not pursue the investigation to its logical conclusion to unravel the whole truth. It is in this light that when most of the acts of terror took place around Parbhani, Jalna, Aurangabad, Ajmer, Mecca Masjid, Malegaon, and Samjhauta Express blast, that authorities rushed to investigate those acts on the lines that ‘all terrorists are Muslims’, many a innocent Muslim youth were arrested and some of them released much later for the lack of proper evidence, whatsoever, by which time the lives of most of them were ruined.

It was Hemant Karkare, who meticulously investigated the Malegaon blast and, much against the intimidation from the likes of Narendra Modi and Bal Thackeray, put forward the truth of involvement of Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, Swami Dayanand Pandey, Lt Col Purohit and other groups associated with RSS ideology. With further perusal of the issue gradually the role of Hindutva groups Sanatan Sanstha, Abhinav Bharat and even some members of RSS started coming to light, in cases of blasts which occurred in front of mosques when congregation was just over, or in Samjhauta express blast.

This is the backdrop in which one welcomes the meticulous and well articulated contribution by Subhash Gatade. Gatade has been consistently writing against the sectarian politics of Hindutva forces-RSS combine. This book was contemplated in this context, when the Hindutva elements were exploding bombs here and there and the investigation authorities were looking the other way around. The result was that the likes of sadhvi, swamis and their associates, were merrily getting away without getting any punishment. This comprehensive volume is very strong on investigation of different episodes of act of terror, covering most of the blasts done by Hindutva elements, the major being the span of blasts from Nanded blasts 2006 to the confessions of Swami Aseemanand. Each of these acts has been presented and the immaculate evidence of the involvement of RSS affiliates and those inspired by the RSS ideology of Hindu Nation is laid bare in an incontestable way. After the reading of even the few chapters of the book, one realizes how misplaced has been the investigation in these cases, how distorted has been the social common sense of people and the authorities in these matters.

To add to the strength of the book, we have an apt introduction by Dr. Shamsul Islam, who himself is an authority on RSS. This is an important part of the book and outlines the ideology of RSS, its agenda of Hindu nation, its clever ways of instigating violence and how its structure has been kept fluid enough to keep it insulated from the impact of its members who indulge in violence. The book demands in a forthright manner from RSS, the list of members who were asked to leave or have left due to their involvement in acts of terror. The RSS chief had stated that RSS does not indulge in violence; and those of its members who were indulging in it have already left or have been told to leave. One knows that starting from Nathuram Godse to Swami Assemanand, were the part of RSS as an organization and as vehicles of its agenda and work. It came to be claimed that they have ‘left’ RSS. This is a shrewd and clever arrangement and the book lays bare this methodology of the RSS which controls innumerable organizations to actualize its agenda. The confusion between the terms Hinduism and Hindutva has been elaborated competently. Gatade does well to discuss the definition of the complex term, ‘terrorism’ and also incorporates the state terrorism in his exposition. The latter is generally ignored in the discourse of terrorism as such.

What emerges from this book is that the saffron terror, Hindutva terror, has twin foundations. One, it is a sort of response; a revenge to many acts of terror by the groups identified as Muslim groups, and two this terror trail has been brought up to pursue the agenda of Hindu nation to target the Muslim minorities. These acts, with their anti-Muslim focus are to achieve Hindu rashtra according to their plan. The author brings to fore the influence of RSS ideology in army, the role of Bhosla Military School, virtually controlled by RSS, and the role of some army officers in facilitating the acts of terror by these groups. Lt. Col Purohit, the accused in Malegaon blast, who also supplied RDX from army stores to the Hindutva terror groups, is one such officer, and he may tip of the iceberg. This has a very frightening prospect for our democracy.

The book debunks the popular perceptions which links Islam and Muslims to acts of terror and makes it clear that acts of terror are politically motivated actions with different agendas. The fascination of RSS with the fascist methods being pursued by Israel and the role of Mossad in particular is the high point of the book. Our investigation agencies need to take a cue from this and put their investigations on more professional lines.

The book takes a broad overview of Hindutva politics also and the role of media and the international connections of Hindutva politics are also presented in detail. What is missing is a time line of Hidnutva terror. Such a time line would have made it easy from the reader to see the whole picture in perspective. An Introduction by the author, putting the book in proper context and summarizing the main arguments of the book would have been a valuable addition to this otherwise most timely and revealing contribution from this journalist-activist.

This work is a serious attempt to piece together the statements of the RSS functionaries and the news items in some of the periodicals to come to the conclusions. It is a comprehensive presentation, filling the gaps in popular knowledge about the real causes of terror attacks in India. Pharos Media, the publishers need to be complemented for publishing this second book on the topic, the first one being “Who killed Karkare?” by S. M. Mushrif, which again was an eye opener. Godse’s Children, an apt name for the book, is a must for all those who seek truth in contemporary times, particularly when truth is being suppressed deliberately in pursuit of sectarian agendas. This compendium will go a long way to shape the popular opinion in a correct direction.

Two Books On Hindutva Politics And Terror: Mahtab Alam

2011-12-10T08:18:00.000-08:00

14 November, 2011
Mainstreamweekly.net

Godse’s Children: Hindutva Terror in India by Subhash Gatade; Pharos Media & Publishing Private Ltd, New Delhi; 2011; pp. 400; Price: Rs 360.

The Saffron Condition: Politics of Repression and Exclusion in Neoliberal India by Subhash Gatade; Three Essays Collective, Gurgaon; 2011; pp. X+475; Price: 500.

In December 2010, when Swami Aseemanand, a ‘former’ RSS pracharak and key functionary of the Sangh backed Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, admitted before a Metropolitan Magistrate to have planned terror attacks on Ajmer Sharif, Mecca Masjid, Malegaon and the Samjhauta Express, it came as the official seal of the Hindutva terror network in India. In his confession, recorded under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code (Cr.P.C.) before Metropolitan Magistrate Deepak Dabas at Tis Hazari Court, Delhi on December 18, he confessed that he and other Hindutva activists, were involved inbombings at Muslim religious places because they wanted to answer every Islamist terror act with “a bomb-for-bomb’’ policy. “I told everybody that bomb ka jawab bomb se dena chahiye (we should reply to bomb blasts with similar bomb blasts),” reads his 42-page confession. He categorically named (in his confession) the senior RSS leader, Indresh Kumar, the murdered RSS pracharaks Sunil Joshi, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and senior RSS pracharaks Sandeep Dange and Ramji Kalsangra, among others, as being key conspirators in the terror blasts.

What is to be noted here is that this was not a ‘confession’ that the police forces are known for—the forced kind of confession, which is not admissible in the court. Rather, it was a voluntary one, in the wake of a Hirday Parivartan or change of heart and made before the Magistrate under Section 164 of the Cr.P.C., which is also considered as evidence. However, the question arises: should we take this as an exception or an ‘individual’ act of terror, as often argued by the Sangh leaders? Would it be proper to believe that the Parivar people were unaware of their fellow activist’s actions, given the hierarchal and disciplined nature of the Parivar? The books under discussion ably answerthese questions.

Subhash Gatade, as many of us would know, is one of the foremost independent journalists and long-time activist of human rights and social justice. He has been writing constantly and consistently about Hindutva politics, terror and issues of repression and exclusion. Over a period of more than two decades, he has followed many cases and written on them extensively. In his two books released, he deals with the above subject at great length and reveals important facts about the Hindutva forces, its allies, network, politics and agendas—both short and long-term. While the first book, Godse’s Children: Hindutva Terror in India, focuses on the terrorist activities of the Sangh and its allies, the second book, The Saffron Condition: Politics of Repression and Exclusion in Neo-Liberal India, essentially deals with the policies and politics of the Hindutva outfits. The writer in these two important works also outlines the various processes adopted by these forces in persuasion of their long-term agenda—establishment of a Hindu Rashtra.

After reading these two books one would find it to be a gross underestimation, in fact criminal negligence, if one thought these to be individual acts and the first terrorist activity planned and carried out by the Sangh and its ilk. Because the politics of hate and terror were never absent from the Sangh Parivar’s system. “The tag of terrorism,” as rightly pointed out by Dr Shamsul Islam, who is an authority on Hindutva politics in India, “is not something new.” The history of the anti-national and terrorist activities of the RSS is very long and can be traced to its roots. It is because of its activities that the RSS and its network have been repeatedly censured by umpteen numbers of commissions of inquiry for its complicity in communal violence and terrorist activities. The first of these incidents can be traced way back to June 1934, when the first attempt to kill Mahatma Gandhi was made by the Hindutva fanatics in Pune. It is also an established fact that the first terrorist act in independent India, the killing of Mahtama Gandhi, was carried out by none other than a ‘former’ pracharak of the RSS, Nathuram Godse.

•

IN Godse’s Children, tracing the historical background and ideological foundation, the author points out: “Commission after commission have blamed RSS and its affiliated organisations for their participation in different riots across the length and breadth of the country…but that was different from the confession—about organising terror acts—before a judicial magis-trate by one amongst them.” (p. 32) Ana-lysing the RSS chief’s claim, terrorism and Hindus are oxymorons, Subhash Gatade says: “The thesis of the ‘oxymoron’ has shades of the concept of the Supreme Hindu race emanating from it.” He further writes: “In fact, it can also be interpreted as an indirect admission that whereas Hindus and terrorism are incompatible with each other, terrorism easily gels with non-Hindu religions and communities. Definitely, this is a very dangerous statement to make, not only because it is not based on facts but because it also tries to denigrate every other community and religion, and also because it tries to terrorise them. It can, thus, be seen as a poor attempt to deflect attention from the umpteen crimes committed by Hindu fanatics.“ (p. 71)

On the Hindutvaisation of the military forces, while discussing the case of Col. Purohit, the author notes: “Involvement of military personnel in such activities can happen in multiple ways: i. ideological; ii. direct participation; iii. in the role of facilitator. While people like Purohit could be categorised as ‘direct participants’ in such activities, it can be easily guessed that there might be many more of his ilk who may not have played any direct role in such activities, but would have acted as facilitators and ideological input-givers to the project.” (p. 135) To substantiate his claim, the writer quotes the former Naval Chief, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, who says: “There’s a clear majoritarian view in the military. The RSS has always had an agenda to infiltrate the armed forces, the intelligence services and the bureaucracy.” (p. 136)

The author in this book proficiently documents hundreds of cases of Hindutva terror carried out in different parts of India and concludes: “…if the political leadership, intelli-gence agencies and the police were interested, it would have been possible to avoid many innocent deaths at the hands of self-proclaimed pioneers of Hindu Rashtra trying their best to turn the dreams of Savarkar, Hedegawar and Golwakar in to reality.” (p. 187)

While dealing with the global dimensions of Hindutva forces, Gatade points out that “…for quite sometime, Hindutva extremists in Nepal have maintained close relations with extremist forces on the Indian side of the border. This relationship had blossomed during the colonial period in India itself, when one found elements belonging to the RSS or Hindu Mahasabha frequenting Nepal or using its example to demonstrate their ‘model state’. For the Sangh Parivar, Nepal happened to be the only state in the world where the ‘one nation, one people, one culture’ weltanschauung of Hindu Rastra was already in place.”(p. 251)

In this section, the author also deals with the role of the Israeli Intelligence agency, Mossad. Towards the end of the book, while concluding, the author seeks our urgent attention and action as he demands: “A lot depends upon the way the secular forces react to the ongoing investi-gations. Whether they would focus themselves on the role of the State only, and confine them-selves to issuing statements and appearing in talk shows only, or they are ready to take up the gauntlet thrown by the challenges of Hindutva Terror in a more militant and creative way that would be the deciding factor”. (p. 318)

•

THE Saffron Condition: Politics of Repression and Exclusion in Neolibral India is divided into three main sections, namely, Saffronisation and the Neolibral State, Logic of Caste in New India, and State and Human Rights. The book deals with the day-to-day and larger politics of the Hindutva outfits. While the first section of this book is most of what is discussed in Godse’s Children, the section on ‘The Saffron Condition’ is a very crucial one. In this section, the author outlines the politics of repression and exclusion with the marginalised sections of the society especially Dalits, despite the constitutional safeguards. The author notes: “It is a tragedy of our times that in India, more than sixty years after independence, the age old exclusivist mind-set which stunted the growth of our society, remains unchanged. It is a mind-set based on the notions of purity and pollution, which has helped strengthen the structured hierarchy in our society, and claims religious sanction as well.” (p. 9).

Going into the historical details of ‘merit’, on an earlier point he writes: “The manner in which the reservation discourse has developed in our society reflects a very static understanding of merit. Interestingly, all those who have become upholders of the ‘merit mantra’ would be shocked to find how badly their own forefathers and foremothers fared when they took their first hesitant steps in the education system initiated by the British. The very genesis of third division in education in the Madras Presidency College way back in first part of the nineteenth century was necessitated by the large number of failures amongst the students, most of them upper caste (Tamil Brahmans), who were unable to pass their examinations in first and second divisions.” (pp. 7-8)

Linking Hindutva politics with the neo-liberal paradigm of development, the author comments: “The growing dominance of the highly regressive and reactionary Hindutva politics appears more striking if we consider the simple fact that Gujarat is supposed to be a more ‘advanced State’ of the Indian Union, recognised for its progress in the economic sphere. It has awell-developed middle class. In so far as foreign direct investment is concerned, it stands at number two in being able to attract foreign direct investment. The enterprising nature of the Guajarati elite is also noticeable in that many of the noveau riche from the farming sector have made inroads in the urban sector…Of course this elaboration of the dynamic Gujarati society would be incomplete if we do not focus on the ‘other Gujarat’ which exhibits the underlying social tensions not normally visible. Apart from the overtly visible violence, the invisible violence takes up myriad forms.” (p. 229) Explaining the role of courts and other apparatus of the state in the era of neo-liberalism, the author notes: “In the era of LPG (Liberalisation, Globalisation and Privatisation) and triumphalism of the market, one is not very surprised to see the judiciary becoming more and more insensitive to the rights of the marginalised and the underprivileged, whether it is the workers in a polluting industry or squatters in one of those sprawling slums.” (p. 428)

While these two books inform us, they are instructive as well and place a great responsibility before all of those who wish to create an egalitarian, just and equitable society. A must read for all kinds of activists, human rights and social justice campaigners, students of social sciences, especially those of sociology and political sciences. Those working on Communalism, Terrorism and Caste issues can hardly afford to miss these.

(Mahtab Alam is a Delhi based Civil Rights’ Activist and Independent Journalist. He can be contacted at activist.journalist@gmail.com )

Poems on Secularism and Communal Harmony

2011-12-10T05:30:00.000-08:00

कैफी आजमी
राम वनवास से लौट कर घर में आये

राम वनवास से लौट कर घर में आये

2011-12-10T05:27:00.000-08:00

राम वनवास से लौट कर घर में आये

"राम वनवास से लौट कर घर में आये,
याद जंगल बहुत आया जो शहर में आये,

रक्शे दीवानगी आंगन में जो देखा होगा,
छ: दिसंबर को श्रीराम ने सोचा होगा
इतने दीवाने कहां से उनके घर में आये,
धर्म क्या था?क्या जात थी ये जानता कौन,
घर न जलता तो उन्हें रात में पहचानता कौन?

घर जलाने को मेरा लोग जो घर में आये,
शाकाहारी है मेरे दोस्त तुम्हारा खंजर,
तुमने बाबर की तरफ फैंके थे सारे पत्थर,
है मेरे सर की ख़ता जो जख़्म सर में आये,

जगमगाते थे जहां राम के कदमों के निशाँ,
प्यार की कहकशाँ लेती थी अंगड़ाई जहां,
मोड़ नफरत के उसी रहगुजर आए,
पाँव अभी सरजू में राम ने धोये भी न थे
कि नजर आये वहां खून के गहरे धब्बे.

पाँव धोये बगैर सरजू के किनारे से उठे
राम ये कहते हुवे अपने दुवारे से उठे
राजधानी की फजाँ रास आयी न मुझे,
छ: दिसंबर को मिला दूसरा वनवास मुझे!"

.....कैफी आजमी

Toba Tek Singh

2011-12-10T02:42:00.000-08:00

by Sadat Hasan Manto

Two or three years after the 1947 Partition, it occurred to the governments of India and Pakistan to exchange their lunatics in the same manner as they had exchanged their criminals. The Muslim lunatics in India were to be sent over to Pakistan and the Hindu and Sikh lunatics in Pakistani asylums were to be handed over to India.

It was difficult to say whether the proposal made any sense or not. However, the decision had been taken at the topmost level on both sides. After high-level conferences were held a day was fixed for exchange of the lunatics. It was agreed that those Muslims who had families in India would be permitted to stay back while the rest would be escorted to the border. Since almost all the Hindus and Sikhs had migrated from Pakistan, the question of retaining non-Muslim lunatics in Pakistan did not arise. All of them were to be taken to India.

Nobody knew what transpired in India, but so far as Pakistan was concerned this news created quite a stir in the lunatic asylum at Lahore, leading to all sorts of funny developments. A Muslim lunatic, a regular reader of the fiery Urdu daily Zamindar, when asked what Pakistan was, reflected for a while and then replied, "Don't you know? A place in India known for manufacturing cut-throat razors." Apparently satisfied, the friend asked no more questions.

Likewise, a Sikh lunatic asked another Sikh, "Sardarji, why are we being deported to India? We don't even know their language." The Sikh gave a knowing smile. "But I know the language of Hindostoras" he replied. "These bloody Indians, the way they strut about!"

One day while taking his bath, a Muslim lunatic yelled, "Pakistan Zindabad!" with such force that he slipped, fell down on the floor and was knocked unconscious.

Not all the inmates were insane. Quite a few were murderers. To escape the gallows, their relatives had gotten them in by bribing the officials. They had only a vague idea about the division of India or what Pakistan was. They were utterly ignorant of the present situation. Newspapers hardly ever gave the true picture and the asylum warders were illiterates from whose conversation they could not glean anything. All that these inmates knew was that there was a man by the name of Quaid-e-Azam who had set up a separate state for Muslims, called Pakistan. But they had no idea where Pakistan was. That was why they were all at a loss whether they were now in India or in Pakistan. If they were in India, then where was Pakistan? If they were in Pakistan, how come that only a short while ago they were in India? How could they be in India a short while ago and now suddenly in Pakistan?

One of the lunatics got so bewildered with this India-Pakistan-Pakistan-India rigmarole that one day while sweeping the floor he climbed up a tree, and sitting on a branch, harangued the people below for two hours on end about the delicate problems of India and Pakistan. When the guards asked him to come down he climbed up still higher and said, "I don't want to live in India and Pakistan. I'm going to make my home right here on this tree."

All this hubbub affected a radio engineer with an MSc degree, a Muslim, a quiet man who took long walks by himself. One day he stripped off all his clothes, gave them to a guard and ran in the garden stark naked.

Another Muslim inmate from Chiniot, an erstwhile adherent of the Muslim League who bathed fifteen or sixteen times a day, suddenly gave up bathing. As his name was Mohammed Ali, he one day proclaimed that he was none other than Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Taking a cue from him a Sikh announced that he was Master Tara Singh, the leader of the Sikhs. This could have led to open violence. But before any harm could be done the two lunatics were declared dangerous and locked up in separate cells.

Among the inmates of the asylum was a Hindu lawyer from Lahore who had gone mad because of unrequited love. He was deeply pained when he learnt that Amritsar, where the girl lived, would form part of India. He roundly abused all the Hindu and Muslim leaders who had conspired to divide India into two, thus making his beloved an Indian and him a Pakistani. When the talks on the exchange were finalized his mad friends asked him to take heart since now he could go to India. But the young lawyer did not want to leave Lahore, for he feared for his legal practice in Amritsar.

There were two Anglo-Indians in the European ward. When informed the British were leaving, they spent hours together discussing the problems they would be faced with: Would the European ward be abolished? Would they get breakfast? Instead of bread, would they have to make do with measly Indian chapattis?

There was a Sikh who had been admitted into the asylum fifteen years ago. Whenever he spoke it was the same mysterious gibberish: "Uper the gur gur the annexe the bay dhayana the mung the dal of the laltain." The guards said that he had not slept a wink in all this time. He would not even lie down to rest. His feet were swollen with constant standing and his calves had puffed out in the middle, but in spite of this agony he never cared to lie down. He listened with rapt attention to all discussions about the exchange of lunatics between India and Pakistan. If someone asked his views on the subject he would reply in a grave tone: "Uper the gur gur the annexe the bay dhayana the mung the dal of the Government of Pakistan." But later on he started substituting "the Government of Pakistan" with "Tobak Tek Singh," which was his home town. Now he begun asking where Toba Tek Singh was to go. But nobody seemed to know where it was. Those who tried to explain themselves got bogged down in another enigma: Sialkot, which used to be in India, now was in Pakistan. At this rate, it seemed as if Lahore, which was now in Pakistan, would slide over to India. Perhaps the whole of India might become Pakistan. It was all so confusing! And who could say if both India and Pakistan might not entirely disappear from the face of the earth one day?

The hair on the Sikh lunatic's head had thinned and his beard had matted, making him look wild and ferocious. But he was a harmless creature. In fifteen years he had not even once had a row with anyone. The older employees of the asylum knew that he had been a well-to-do fellow who had owned considerable land in Toba Tek Singh. Then he had suddenly gone mad. His family had brought him to the asylum in chains and left him there. They came to meet him once a month but ever since the communal riots had begun, his relatives had stopped visiting him.

His name was Bishan Singh but everybody called him Toba Tek Singh. He did not know what day it was, what month it was and how many years he had spent in the asylum. Yet as if by instinct he knew when his relatives were going to visit, and on that day he would take a long bath, scrub his body with soap, put oil in his hair, comb it and put on clean clothes. If his relatives asked him anything he would keep silent or burst out with ìUper the gur gur the annexe the bay dhayana the mung the dal of the laltain."

When he had been brought to the asylum, he had left behind an infant daughter. She was now a comely and striking young girl of fifteen, who Bishan Singh failed to recognize. She would come to visit him, and not be able to hold back her tears.

When the India-Pakistan caboodle started Bishan Singh often asked the other inmates where Toba Tek Singh was. Nobody could tell him. Now even the visitors had stopped coming. Previously his sixth sense would tell him when the visitors were due to come. But not anymore. His inner voice seemed to have stilled. He missed his family, the gifts they used to bring and the concern with which they used to speak to him. He was sure they would have told him whether Toba Tek Singh was in India or Pakistan. He also had the feeling that they came from Toba Tek Singh, his old home.

One of the lunatics had declared himself God. One day Bishan Singh asked him where Toba Tek Singh was. As was his habit the man greeted Bishan Singh's question with a loud laugh and then said, "It's neither in India nor in Pakistan. In fact, it is nowhere because till now I have not taken any decision about its location."

Bishan begged the man who called himself God to pass the necessary orders and solve the problem. But 'God' seemed to be very busy other matters. At last Bishan Singh's patience ran out and he cried out: "Uper the gur gur the annexe the mung the dal of Guruji da Khalsa and Guruji ki fatehÖjo boley so nihal sat sri akal."

What he wanted to say was: "You don't answer my prayers because you a Muslim God. Had you been a Sikh God, you would have surely helped me out."

A few days before the exchange was due to take place, a Muslim from Toba Tek Singh who happened to be a friend of Bishan Singh came to meet him. He had never visited him before. On seeing him, Bishan Singh tried to slink away, but the warder barred his way. "Don't you recognize your friend Fazal Din?" he said. "He has come to meet you." Bishan Singh looked furtively at Fazal Din, then started to mumble something. Fazal Din placed his hand on Bishan Singh's shoulder. "I have been thinking of visiting you for a long time," he said. "But I couldn't get the time. Your family is well and has gone to India safely. I did what I could to help. As for your daughter, Roop KaurÖ" --he hesitated--'She is safe tooÖin India."

Bishan Singh kept quiet. Fazal Din continued: "Your family wanted me to make sure you were well. Soon you'll be moving to India. Please give my salaam to bhai Balbir Singh and bhai Raghbir Singh and bahain Amrit Kaur. Tell Balbir that Fazal Din is well. The two brown buffaloes he left behind are well too. Both of them gave birth to calves, but, unfortunately, one of them died. Say I think of them often and to write to me if there is anything I can do."

Then he added "Here, I've brought some plums for you."

Bishan Singh took the gift from Fazal Din and handed it to the guard. "Where is Toba Tek Singh?" he asked.

"Where? Why, it is where it has always been."

"In India or Pakistan?î

"In IndiaÖno, in Pakistan."

Without saying another word, Bishan Singh walked away, muttering "Uper the gur gur the annexe the bay dhyana the mung the dal of the Pakistan and India dur fittey moun."

At long last the arrangements for the exchange were complete. The lists of lunatics who were to be sent over from either side were exchanged and the date fixed.

On a cold winter evening truckloads of Hindu and Sikh lunatics from the Lahore asylum were moved out to the Indian border under police escort. Senior officials went with them to ensure a smooth exchange. The two sides met at the Wagah border check-post, signed documents and the transfer got underway.

Getting the lunatics out of the trucks and handing them over to the opposite side proved to be a tough job. Some refused to get down from the trucks. Those who could be persuaded to do so began to run in all directions. Some were stark naked. As soon as they were dressed they tore off their clothes again. They swore, they sang, they fought with each other. Others wept. Female lunatics, who were also being exchanged, were even noisier. It was pure bedlam. Their teeth chattered in the bitter cold.

Most of the inmates appeared to be dead set against the entire operation. They simply could not understand why they were being forcibly removed to a strange place. Slogans of 'Pakistan Zindabad' and 'Pakistan Murdabad' were raised, and only timely intervention prevented serious clashes.

When Bishan Singh's turn came to give his personal details to be recorded in the register, he asked the official "Where's Toba Tek Singh? In India or Pakistan?"

The officer laughed loudly, "In Pakistan, of course."

Hearing that Bishan Singh turned and ran back to join his companions. The Pakistani guards caught hold of him and tried to push him across the line to India. Bishan Singh wouldn't move. "This is Toba Tek Singh," he announced. "Uper the gur gur the annexe the be dyhana mung the dal of Toba Tek Singh and Pakistan."

It was explained to him over and over again that Toba Tek Singh was in India, or very soon would be, but all this persuasion had no effect.

They even tried to drag him to the other side, but it was no use. There he stood on his swollen legs as if no power on earth could dislodge him. Soon, since he was a harmless old man, the officials left him alone for the time being and proceeded with the rest of the exchange.

Just before sunrise, Bishan Singh let out a horrible scream. As everybody rushed towards him, the man who had stood erect on his legs for fifteen years, now pitched face-forward on to the ground. On one side, behind barbed wire, stood together the lunatics of India and on the other side, behind more barbed wire, stood the lunatics of Pakistan. In between, on a bit of earth which had no name, lay Toba Tek Singh.

Gandhi and Godse: Conflicting Nationalism

2011-12-08T19:49:00.001-08:00

Ram Puniyani

(9 October 2001)

The play by Pradeep Dalvi, Mee Nathuram Godse Boltoy, (This is Nathuram Godse Speaking), was banned by Maharashtra Govt. three years ago on the grounds that this play is likely to hurt the sentiments of the followers of Mahatma. In a recent order the court has lifted the ban on the plea that the ban is an infringement of the rights of expression of the writer. The judgment is a welcome one but the play needs to be evaluated from political angle also.

This play distorts the History, and that too the one of such a recent time. In just fifty years the contributions of Mahatma are sidelined, forgotten and the RSS creed, who were opposed to the secular Nationalism,
to the Freedom movement, make Godse appear to be the Hero and Mahatma, the one who led the freedom movement, as the one who was in the wrong. Though for electoral purposes even the organizations like RSS, where Godse got his training, disown him and he is projected to be an individual, not related to the Hindutva family, which is a lie.

After Gandhi's murder by Godse, some of he leaders of Hindu Mahasabha, including Savarkar, who was let off for the lack of sufficient evidence, were also accused of conspiring in the murder. RSS, the other Hindutva
twin staunchly denied any affiliation with the killer of Gandhi. In a way the Gandhi murder was product of intolerance of Hindutva politics to the Liberal and progressive values of Secular Nationalism, which Gandhi
represented.

The followers of RSS and Hindu Mahasabha remained aloof from freedom
struggle and at all crucial times collaborated with British. The votaries
of Hindu Rashtra were divided into Hindu Mahasabha (HM), which was more
interested in the immediate participation in politics as the flag bearers
of Hindu communal politics, and the RSS, which was concentrating on making
a network of 'cadres'. Both these denominations of Hindutva politics had
the common goal of Hindu Rashtra. Their goals were common, their social
base was common, their key texts were common, but their methods differed.
Nathuram Godse, killer of Mahatma 'uniquely' symbolized the fusion of both
these trends.
After the murder of Mahatma, the official RSS line had been that we have
nothing to do with Godse, neither is he a member of RSS. They could get
away with this as there was no official record of members of RSS, and they
could disown Godse at 'legal' level. In 1930, Godse joined RSS and very
soon rose to be the bauddhik pracharak (intellectual propagator), Like
both HM & RSS he was ardent supporter of Akhand Bharat, undivided Hindu
India, comprising of today's Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar. "Having worked
for the uplift of the Hindus I felt it necessary to take part in political
activities of the country for the protection of just rights of Hindus. I
therefore left the Sangh (RSS, added) and joined Hindu Mahasabha (Godse,
'Why I Assassinated Mahatma Gandhi' 1993, Pg. 102).
As an ardent Hindutvawadi he was extremely critical of Gandhi's ahimsa
(non-violence), the movements led by him, and thought very lowly of him.
Godse uses very peculiar scales to assess Gandhi, "His followers cannot
see what is clear even to the blind viz. that Gandhi was a mere pigmy
before Shivaji, Rana Pratap and Guru Govind (ibid Pg. 40) and finally
about the winning of swaraj and freedom "I maintain the Mahatma's
contribution was negligible." (Ibid. pg. 87) He held Mahatma responsible
for appeasing Muslims, and thereby the formation of Pakistan. He joined
HM (Hindu Mahasabha), at that time the only political party of Hindutva,
and became general secretary of its Pune Branch. In due course he started
a newspaper, as founder editor, called Agrani, its subtitle was Hindu
Rashtra. The subtitle of this paper expressed the goal of this paper.
Jagan Phadnis in His book 'Mahatmyachi Akher'(The End of Mahatma)
(Lokvangymay Griha, 1994) argues that Gandhi murder was not on the charges
propagated by them (Partition and insistence on paying Pakistan's dues,55
crores, from the treasury), but due to the basic deep differences with the
politics of Gandhi and that of the followers of the Hindu Rashtra. He also
recalls that number of attempts was made on Gandhi's life, the last of
which, the one by Godse was 'successful' in eliminating the 'thorn in the
flesh' of Hindutva politics. These two reasons are proffered merely as a
pretext for the same.
In an interview '(TOI, 25 Jan 98) his brother Gopal Godse, who was also an
accomplice in the murder elaborates the apparent reasons and about
Nathuram's RSS membership. "The appeasement policy followed by him and
imposed on all Congress governments' encouraged the Muslim separatist
tendencies that eventually created Pakistan. Technically and theoretically
he (Nathuram) was a member (of RSS), but he stopped workings for it later.
His statement in the court that he had left the RSS was to protect the RSS
workers who would be imprisoned following the murder. On the understanding
that they (RSS workers) would benefit from his dissociating himself from
the RSS, he gladly did it."
This murder was steeped in both the streams of Hindutva politics, RSS and
HM. His editing the paper called, 'Hindu Rashtra was quite symbolic.
This murder had a broad sanction of the followers of HM and RSS, as they
celebrated Mahatma's murder by distributing sweets, "All their (RSS)
leaders' speeches were full of communal poison. As a final result, the
poisonous atmosphere was created in which such a ghastly tragedy
(Gandhi's murder) became possible. RSS men expressed their joy and
distributed sweets after Gandhi's death." (Excerpts from Sardar Patel's
letters to M S Golwalkar and S P Mookerjee. Outlook, April 27, 1998). In
a way Godse was no freak. The way Hindu communalists were spewing poison
against Gandhi, it was logical outcome of their politics. And Godse had
the 'benefit' of the teachings of both RSS as well as HM to be the ideal
person to execute the job. They used the word wadh for this murder, which
stands for killing a demon who is harming the society. In a way Gandhi
murder was the first major offensive of the Hindutva politics on Indian
Secular Nationalism, in a way it was to herald the onset of bigger strides
which Hindutva politics was to a assume in times to come.
Though officially Sangh Parivar dissociates from Gandhi's murder by Godse,
in private many a members not only uphold the dastardly act, but also have
even succeeded in undermining the importance of Mahatma and 'sympathize'
with Godse. This complex trick can be achieved only by a multi-headed
organization, capable of talking with different tongues at the same
time.
It is unfortunate that such a recent history, as this one, can be doctored
to suit the interests of communal politics. Here the question is how does
one present the correct picture in the times when the distortion of
history, past and recent, is the major agenda of the Govt. led by BJP and
the education Dept. being headed by a RSS Swayamsevak, Dr. Murli Manohar
Joshi. The question is not just of such vicious plays being produced and
being staged but also of the threat of communal Nationalism trying to
eclipse the secular nationalism, which stands for the values of Liberty,
Equality and Fraternity.

(Writer works with EKTA, Committee for Communal Amity,Mumbai)

The Fascist Mind: Reading Mein Kampf Today

2011-12-07T11:31:00.000-08:00

Aditya Nigam

NOTES ON THE THEORY OF IDEOLOGY

It is highly instructive to go through the range of comments that some of our recent posts on terrorism and violence have elicited. Apart from some of the more mindless ones, there have also been some that raise supposedly substantive questions but in a manner that presupposes the answers. The very manner of raising the ‘questions’ is such that any answer but the one contained in the ‘question’ is bound to bring forth a volley of charges to which the comments themselves stand witness.

However, this ‘style’ or mode of responding or debating is not special to these comments. It involves a larger problem that would necessitate another intellectual ride away from the world of the commentators for I must confess that this is a question that has been troubling me for a very long time now.

Rewind to 31 October, 1984. That was when I first encountered this style. Over three thousand Sikhs were massacred within the space of three days in the city of Delhi. Like many others, I was bewildered.

Not so much by the actual violence and bloodshed on the streets and in localities of Delhi. I was bewildered by the ease with which ‘normal’, ‘ordinary’, and perfectly reasonable people began justifying the killings: “They were distributing sweets at Indira Gandhi’s assassination, weren’t they?” That was supposed to be a adequate justification for what was happening. Later, we saw respectable middle class people going in their cars to loot from the shops whose owners had been burnt alive. Tolerant Hindus…what a lovely myth.

Many years later, Gujarat 2002, we saw a repeat performance. Writers, poets, soft and sensitive people who prided themselves on staying far away from the grimy and unprincipled world of politics – all came out in justification of the killings of Muslims. Icons of toleration and reasonableness turned justifiers of violence, rape and more. In a ‘sweet’ little story told to us by a friend, a little toddler was humored by his/her parents with goodies from a bakery (probably Best Bakery!)…The fascism in all of us – we who cannot kill a fly ourselves – exists right here, always ready-to-use at the first opportunity…

Classical wisdom in political science and political theory assumes a passive and malleable ‘mass’ which is put to different kinds of uses through ‘mobilization’ by leaders and vanguards. The leaders – proponents of ideologies – create the political movement/s that ‘mobilize’ the masses and constitute them into particular kinds of subjectivity.

It is only when we begin to look a close and hard look at the ‘fascist’ phenomenon, that we begin to see the fallacy of this idea. For, as serious scholarly work showed in the German context, Nazism was not simply a product of Hitler’s mind. Ideas that went into the making of Nazi politics were fairly widely prevalent in turn-of-the-century Germany and beyond, enveloping practically all of Europe. Anti-semitism was certainly one of the key elements of this ingredient and theDreyfus affair in France was a particularly important indicator that fascism could well have take root there. You could hear all standard accusations that are hurled today against Muslims (including ‘global conspiracy’, ‘treachery’ etc), thrown at the face of the the Jews. No argument – not even the revelation of the real culprit, Major Marie Charles Esterhazy, nor Dreyfus’ subsequent exoneration could change the way Dreyfus, once framed as a ‘treacherous Jew’, was produced in public discourse. All the tropes used for the Jews in fin-de-siecle Europe, acquired through what we can call ‘ideology’, a modular form that could be deployed at will anywhere, anytime. And, let us reiterate, neither Hitler nor Mussolini created these modular tropes. In fact, as scholars have been at pains to point out, they were part of the overall climate of public discourse. What made Germany more easily prone to a Hitlerite takeover, was of course, the defeat in WWI and the humiliating terms forced upon it by the Treaty of Versailles – but that is another story.

At the moment, I wish to dwell a bit on the phenomenon of what an old-fashioned term called ‘ideology’. Louis Althusser, in his life-long reflections on ‘ideology’, underlined (in a particular phase) that Ideology hails individuals; it ‘interpellates them as subjects.’ This presupposed a Big Subject called the State, which ‘hailed’ or called out in its daily roll call and you responded. What the experience of fascism (which we use here now in a more general sense) shows however is that there is no Big Subject. The ‘ideologue’ alone is not the Author-voice that hails; the ideologue as well as his ranks/audience are constituted in one single plane that we may call the plane of Ideology. It is not simply that the ideologue is the agent, and his ranks passive recipients of “the line”. The ideologue knows what s/he must do; what the ranks want her to do.Likewise, the ranks know what they must do. The compact exists in treading and rehearsing the known.

In his autobiography, Mein Kampf, Hitler dwells on this problem. His repeated emphasis on the spoken word is worth recalling. In the ‘Foreword’ itself, he says that “Every great movement on earth is due to great speakers and not to great writers”. But he returns to this theme again and again. His reasons are telling: “An orator receives continuous guidance from his audience, enabling him to correct his lecture” (Hitler, Mein Kampf: 189). Not only does the orator get a sense of whether the “audience is following his arguments intelligently” but also whether “his words are producing the effect he desires.” It is true that a leader leads. But s/he does not do so entirely on his or her terms. Not infrequently, says Hitler, is it “a case of overcoming prejudices which do not come from their [the audience’s] understanding but are mainly unconscious and supported by sentiment. It is a thousand times harder to overcome this barrier of instinctive repulsion, sentimental hatred and negative bias…” Thus, “nothing but an appeal to these hidden forces can succeed here” (Ibid: 190, emphasis added).

In the discussion that follows, Hitler repeatedly turns to Marxist agitation and propaganda as the model from which he learnt. It is likely that he also improved it a bit in his own way but that is beside the point.

Let us now return to some of the comments in our discussion. Having adequately demonized the other – Muslims, human rights activists, Leftists and so on – they then embark upon the task of “explaining the conduct” of these now-demonized adversaries. In these explanation, propositions do not follow from one another nor even have any relationship with each other. Nor is any empirical evidence adduced for making a point. Everything is simply stated as an assertion. This is a mode that works only in specific settings of public discourse dominated by the common sense of Hindutva and its public rituals. This mode of argument can not be sustained in any scholarly setting, for as mentioned earlier its first precondition is that both the speaker/author and the audience must share a certain belief structure.

Ideology and Interpellation

One of the most difficult questions for any radical political theory and practice then, is raised by the persistence of these ways of thinking and construing ‘the self’ and ‘the world’. I say ‘persistence’ because they remain unaffected by anything outside themselves: neither empirical evidence nor argument nor anything else can shake such beliefs. Marxist scholars of various hues have taken these kinds of instances of supposedly ‘backward masses,’ to explore the question of ‘reification’ and ‘false consciousness’ in order to arrive at a more satisfactory understanding of popular subjectivity. Generations of Marxists have tried at least since the advent of Nazism, to also understand the ‘psychic structures’ or ‘structures of consciousness’ of the ‘popular masses’ without much success. Some theorists like Wilhelm Reich and Erich Fromm did propose some suggestive possibilities for further exploration in terms of the sexual politics of ‘repression’ but none of them seem satisfactory enough – if only because of their unidimensionality. One of the reasons such efforts appear incapable of addressing the issues involved squarely, is because they invariably tend to pose their question in terms a perceived ‘backwardness of the masses’, who are somehow resistant to the call of Reason.

Something of a departure was registered in this regard by Althusser, who took the notion of ‘ideology’ away from notions of truth and falsehood (and therefore of ‘false consciousness’ and ‘backwardness’) and situated it in the domain of theory and knowledge. Even though vitiated to an extent because of his radical counter-position of ‘ideology’ and ‘science’, his intervention marked something of an important break from earlier theorizations. Ideology always exists in the vicinity of ‘science’ (read ‘theory’): it occupies it, haunts it and lies in wait for it(Althusser, For Marx: 170) – unless a constant struggle in theory is carried out to free it from this ever-threatening overlay. ‘Science’ in Althusser’s view, we may recall, lives by paying attention to “the points where it is theoretically fragile.” It depends for “its life” on what it does not know, rather than on what it knows (Althusser and Balibar, Reading Capital: 30). Ideology, on the other hand, “imposes obviousnesses as obviousnesses, which we cannot fail to recognize…” (Althusser, ‘Ideology and ideological State Apparatuses’).

It was the great merit of the Althusserian notion of ideology that it was able to see ideology as the mode by which theories and ideas assume a mass political character. This point is also emphasized by Gramsci who sees philosophy, religion and common sense as existing in a common field. Thus he claims: “Every philosophical current leaves behind a sedimentation of ‘common sense’: this is the document of its historical effectiveness” (Gramsci 1971: 326). Common sense, Gramsci suggests, is the “folklore of philosophy”, enriched by philosophical ideas that have entered ordinary life. In Althusser’s spin on this relationship, common sense is not at all so benign. It is the very stuff of ideology that relentlessly reduces every new question and every new idea to the “already known” and the familiar, so that individuals continue to participate in the rituals of subjectivity/subjection. “Everything was/is already known to Marxism” or “everything is already there in the Scriptures” are therefore, ideological responses. So are responses that seek to relentlessly transform every threatening question into an obvious answer.

Take for instance recent critiques of modernity and its homogenizing project. One standard ideological response has been of the kind that asserts: “But modernity was never one, it has always had different trajectories.” It will be noticed that such an assertion is not false. It is certainly true that modernity has had many trajectories. However by asserting this and incorporating elements of the critique into the very “definition” of modernity, such a response effectively closes the possibility of asking a new question that was beginning to be asked and which could have posed a challenge to some of our dearly held certainties. In this rendering, the project of modernity is simply collapsed into ‘actually existing modernities’. That is what makes it an ideological move.

Or, to take another example from the world of Marxism: One of the most widespread common responses among various Left groups and their affiliated intellectuals in India, following the collapse of socialism, was that “socialism collapsed because it was backward socialism, because it was being built in societies where capitalism had not fully bloomed.” This response seeks to find an answer only in the scriptures. Once upon a time, its proponents had found it possible to acclaim Lenin’s boldness and greatness in foreseeing the possibility of revolution in the “weakest link” in the imperialist chain. The victories of the revolution in “backward” societies of the third world through most of the twentieth century were seen as a vindication of Lenin’s revolutionary genius. Following the collapse of Soviet bloc socialism, however, the easiest solution at hand was to silently bury this Leninist innovation by resuscitating an old, long abandoned idea, already “available” in the texts. How could socialism be built, it now began to be asked, without passing through capitalism or exhausting its potential? This “explanation” of the collapse has acquired something of a common sense status in a whole range of marxist parties and intellectuals in India. Indeed, it sits well with a fairly widespread Western Marxist disdain for Third World Marxism, long seen by it as corrupted by “peasant consciousness.”

In both the instances above, the effect is the same: an incipient question is replaced by an answer that was apparently already there. That is why, says Althusser, “unlike a science, an ideology is both theoretically closed and politically supple and adaptable.” It bends to the interests of the times but without any apparent movement. “It moves, but with an immobile motion which maintains it where it is” (Althusser and Balibar: 142).

It is not difficult to see that this mode of reasoning shares at least two crucial traits with beliefs such as say, that Hinduism is intrinsically tolerant, or that all Muslims are potential terrorists: Firstly, such beliefs neither require nor brook any argumentation and/or substantiation. They circle around their known and familiar territories. Secondly, they are all infinitely malleable and “politically supple” beliefs which do not require us to confront any new question. Ideology thus performs a ‘practical’ rather than a ‘theoretical’ or ‘knowledge’ function, insofar as it helps navigate the lanes and by lanes of everyday existence where the chance encounter with the unknown is often unnerving. From ‘ideology’ to ‘stereotype’ is actually a small step that calls for much closer examination than is possible here.

Ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as subjects such that the individual learns to see her world and her self through certain everyday rituals of recognition. ‘Interpellation’ is the becoming-subject of an individual – by responding to the ‘call’, by recognizing that it is she who is being hailed. And to be sure, this is not about ‘truth’ but about a certain relationship to the world. An existential relationship, we might say. If that be the case, there is a way in which, affect, emotions, passions, are all deeply implicated in our ideological being – we are not mere creatures of rational-critical discourse, willing to convince and be convinced by a good argument.

Aditya Nigam, December 1, 2008 Kafila

Malegaon to Modasa Blasts: The H Factor ?

2011-12-07T11:29:00.000-08:00

Subhash Gatade, October 04, 2008 Kafila

Saba Parveen still repents the fact that she sent her younger sister Farheen to Bhikku Chowk to buy some Pakoras. Little she could have the premonition that she would never get to see her 10 year old sister a class V student alive.

The blast at Malegaon’s Bhikku Chowk, has literally shattered the family of Shaikh Liaquat Wahiuddin, Farheen’s father who lives around 100 feet away from the Chowk near the Kasbapada masjid. A father of three daughters and two sons and a wife has seen all the hell broke lose soon after the bomb blast.

The couple fainted when they reached Wadia hospital to see their own daughter who had suffered severe burns in the blast turned lifeless. The latest bomb blasts in Malegaon have seen four deaths wherein a motorcycle parked near old SIMI office which was laden with explosives exploded killing four people on the spot. It was worth noting that the people living in the vicinity of the Chowk had informed the police about this unclaimed motorcycle standing there for hours together. But the police did not bother to turn up and reached the place only after the blast which saw these deaths.

It is not difficult to imagine the palpable anger which exists among people about the callousness of the police and the insensitivity of the administration. People of this town which has a significant no of Muslim population have not forgotten the treatment meted out to them by the police and the administration when there were similar blasts in the city during their religious congregations killing 40 people in 2006. Despite enough hints about the involvement of Hindutva terror groups in the perpetration of these acts, where a torso with a fake beard was also identified, ultimately saw few Muslim youths getting booked for this crime who are still languishing in jail. A CBI enquiry which was ordered after lot of pressure claims to have reached a deadend. In a recent meeting with Baba Siddique, the ’guardian’ minister of Nasik, representatives of different Muslim organisations in Malegaon gave vent to their feelings of disgust and deep hurt over the developments. Angry community leaders asked the minister “You blame SIMI for blasts in temples, you blame SIMI for blasts in market places, you blame SIMI for blast Masjids. The latest blast has taken place just below the SIMI office. Now whom will you blame ?”( Mailtoday, Oct 3, 2008)

Hemant Karkare, chief of the Anti Terrorist Squad of Maharashtra Police, who was instrumental in nabbing the activists of Sanatan Sanstha and Hindu Janjagruti Samity for the bomb blasts in Thane, Vashi and few other places in Maharashtra (June 2008) and his team of officers also shied away from blaming some or the other Islamic terrorist organisation for the blast.The perpetrators of the bomb blast who had packed a splendour motorcycle with nuts, bolts, nails and ballbearings and three kilograms of explosive material, near a mosque, beside a SIMI office and the time chosen by them – on the eve of Eid – has definitely put local police and ATS groping in the dark.

But according to an investigative report filed by Mailtoday ( 1 October 2008) : “Police, however, are sure of one thing – that the blasts in Malegaon and Modasa in Gujarat were a coordinated effort, as both occured at around 9.30 p.m. in Muslim dominated areas.Karkare felt that the Gujarat and the Malegaon blasts were similar in nature also.” In fact any close watcher of the bomb blasts in the country cannot miss the fact that bikes have been a favourite instrument of the Bajrang Dal to attack Muslims. A narcotest of those involved in Nanded bomb blasts (April 2006) which saw deaths of two Bajrang Dal activists had clearly revealed that ’mysterious blasts’ in Parbhani in 2003 and Jalna (2004) which involved perpetrators on bikes throwing bombs at the congregation and fleeing were actually the handiwork of a terror module of the Bajrang Dal itself.

The report in Mailtoday further adds ” This is similar to the blast in Mehrauli market in New Delhi blast on Saturday and also some other cases where bombs were placed on bikes.”

Of course Mailtoday is not alone in pointing fingers at Hindu terror groups for these bomb blasts, a detailed writeup in Indian Express ( Hindu Extremist Groups on Radar In Malegaon Probe, Sagnik Chowdhury, 1 st October 2008) reiterates the line of thinking of the ATS officials as far as the particular blast is concerned. ” A day after the Maharashtra police said it could not rule out the possibility of Hindu extremist hand in Monday’s blast in Malegaon, investigators are revisiting the crude bombs that were planted in auditoriums on the outskirts of Mumbai earlier this year.” The ATS is planning to question the activists of Hindu Janjagruti Samiti, Sanatan Sanstha and other stray Hindu extremist organisations for their possible involvement in the act.The 1020 page chargesheet filed by the ATS in September against the members of these organisations for their terrorist acts is an added reminder for it to pursue the case in a balanced manner.

A deeper analysis of terror strikes since 2006 also reveal that there are at least five such terror strikes which targeted minorities and their religious places and they still remain unresolved. A report filed by Aman Sharma ( Mailtoday, October 3, 2008) provides details of these blasts and the status of investigations. Jama Masjid blast ( 14 injured, April 2006 – Friday) where low intensity, crude bombs were placed in a polythene bag is still pending with Delhi police, no outfit has been named. Malegaon ( 40 killed, September 8, 2006 – Friday) which saw four bombs outside mosques on Shab-e-Barat where RDX-ammonium nitrate bombs in boxes on bicycles was used, still remains unresolved. The investigation in Samjhuta express blasts (66 killed, Feb 19, 2007) where six bombs were planted inside Indo-Pak Samjhauta Express has also not shown any progress and neither any organisation has been named. The case of Mecca Masjid blasts ( 11 killed, May 18, 2007 -Friday) where two bombs were planted inside Mecca Masjid in boxes, is also pending with CBI. The enquiry into Ajmer Sharif bomb blasts (3 killed, October 11, 2007 – Friday) where two bombs in tiffin boxes wee used and where ammonium nitrate bombs were triggered by mobile phone has also not made much headway.The case at present pending with Rajasthan police has also not named any organisation.

Looking at the fact that communal common sense dominates the functioning of the police and the media in our country it is difficult to predict what will happen next. The investigations into the recent Kanpur blast (24 August 2008) which saw deaths of two RSS activists, Rajiv Mishra and Bhupendra Chopra, while making ammonium nitrate bombs, is an example worth studying. While the police took two of their colleagues for narcoanalysis, it did not even bother to question their alleged mentors -one of whom happened to be a Professor in IIT with RSS background.

Fanatic Dalits, Empowered Dalits? The Not-So-Fascinating World of Dalit-Hindutva Engagement

2011-12-07T11:25:00.000-08:00

Subhash gatade, July 19, 2009, Kafila

Fascinating Hindutva: Saffron Politics and Dalit Mobilisation Badri Narayan, 2009, Sage, pages 195

—the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, —a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face
- Du Bois ( The Soul of Black Folks)

The question of mapping ‘agency’ as it unfolds itself in the trajectory of the oppressed has been a recurring theme in the social sciences of the 20 th century ? In his historic treatise ‘Soul of the Black Folks’ the legendary African-American social scientist and activist Du Bois had discussed the ‘double consciousness’ which inhabits the Negro ( this was the term which was used then for the African-Americans) and tried to delineate the dilemma through which every oppressed individual / formation is condemned to pass. According to Du Bois, a black individual lives with a feeling of ‘twoness’ in a dominant white society. On the one hand S/he is engaged in confrontation with the dominant white world to oppose racial discrimination and on the other hand s/he also yearns to become an American ‘without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows’.

If the feeling of ‘twoness’ inhabited the blacks, is it possible to think about the dalits in a Varna society on similar lines. The contradictoriness of the consciousness is very much visible in this case as well. On the one hand s/he is engaged in imitating/following the Varna hierarchy ( this process of upward mobility is variously described as Brahminisation/Sanskritisation by scholars a la M.N. Srinivas) and on the other hand one encounters a strong current of resistance to this cooption.

Interestingly, as we approach the sixtieth year of India’s becoming a republic when (to quote Dr Ambedkar) we embarked on the journey of becoming a political democracy where one wo/man had one vote and the challenge of its becoming a ‘social democracy’ with one wo/man one value still beckoned us, an altogether different situation awaits us. We have before us dalit assertion reaching its zenith signified by a ‘dalit ki beti’ becoming Chief Minister of the largest state in the Indian Union and the ‘guest actor role of the dalits’ in the Indian polity becoming a thing of the past. And simultaneously one encounters the ideological and institutional incorporation of a section of the subalterns – namely dalits, tribals, backwards – in the unfolding Hindutva agenda also coming to its fruition. As is widely known if the 1992-93 riots in Bombay made us aware of the communalisation of a section of the women and their turning stormtroopers for the Hindutva brigade, (discussed and debated in detail in the volume ‘Women and the Hindu Right – ed.) throwing many of our earlier assumptions about women’s empowerment to the winds, the Gujarat genocide in the year 2002 made us aware of this dangerous and the anti-human detour of the dalit consciousness.

Interestingly while it is easy to comprehend dalit assertion on autonomous lines, connecting it to the glorious tradition of cultural revolts led by the likes of Phule, Jyothee Thass, Periyar, Ambedkar and others, one is normally baffled by a section of the dalits cooption by the Hindutva forces and their becoming stormtroopers for its hate agenda.

The book under discussion by Mr Badri Narayan titled ‘Fascinating Hindutva : Saffron Politics and Dalit Mobilisation’ ( Sage, 2009) in fact tries to unravel this dynamics of dalit identity to ‘deconstruct the tactics used by the Hindutva forces to politically mobilise Dalits’ to its side. The articles collated in this volume -a few of which have appeared in different journals/magazines- are mainly based on the original empirical data collected by the writer through his extensive field trips to UP and Bihar, wherein he has looked at the recent goings on in individual marginal communities and the manner in which politics of identity is being played out in these communities at the behest of political forces on the right namely Hindutva forces. The writer has focussed his attention on mainly four dalit castes Pasi, Nishads, Musahars and Dusadhs and their clever manipulation by the RSS-BJP.

The book is divided into eight chapters with an added chapter on introduction wherein the author lays down the basic premise of his work where he describes in detail how politically motivated communal forces are silently but ingeniously working among common people supposedly to break up the harmony existing in society. Communalisation of the identity construction of different communities, their positing against other communities which are in turn projected as their enemies, conversion of the pride of a community in own identities into feeling of hatred for other communities, replacement of the narratives of self-respect by narratives of violence against other communities – essentially the modus operandi used by the Hindutva forces has been explained in great detail.

The Introduction part of the book looks at the use of ‘pastness’ by individuals / communities which is the source of a person’s /communities identity and which is deeply entrenched in his/her/their dreams/desires. For the author pastness is ‘both the truth and the imagination of the past’ which takes shape ‘during the process of rememberance of the past.’ For the communities the sense of pastness ‘help fight anxities and insecurities that arise from their increasing feeling of temporiness’ which is a result of its ‘encounters with statehood, modernity, the onslaught of globalisation and the changing forms of the market.’ Political parties and other agencies which are engaged in impacting the communities cleverly encash this strong desire of communities to assert their identities. One can easily notice a shift in the strategy of political mobilisation by these political formations. If earlier the emphasis use to be on making promises and offering allurements to the gullible masses, since 1980 s with the phenomenon of dalit assertion making its presence felt, one notices creative strategies to mobilise smaller castes/communities by arousing their sense of pastness. The interplay between the new mobilisation strategies and the assertion by the communities themselves has ‘led to the evolution of prevailing political strategy based on the exploitation of ‘pastness’.

This process unfolds itself in the picking out of heroes from myths, histories, legends present in the oral culture of the castes, reinterpretation, recreation and reconstruction of such heroes to suit the political ideologies of the concerned party and their transmission back to the people as symbols of their caste identities. The next stage involves celebration of these heroes by organising programmes, erecting statues, holding rallies, bringing out booklets and pamphlettes valorising these heroes and narrating their legends in the form, which suits the political agenda of the party.

Although the phenomenon of identity construction and assertion is visible at an all India level, for the author this political strategy is being most successfully carried out in the states of Bihar and UP. This can be attributed to the typical social formation in this region, which makes it amenable to those parties, which are engaged in caste and identity politics. Interestingly while most of the political parties are engaged in this game of identity politics, BSP and BJP can be considered to be the main players as far as politics in UP is concerned. And both the parties seem to be following diametrically opposite approaches to the question.

If the BJP is trying to win over Dalits to its side by appropriating its past and identity as a Hindu past and identity, the BSP seems to be empowering the Dalit communities and providing them self-respect and confidence. (It is debatable if this understanding can be said to be still valid. A close look at the trajectory of the BSP during last one and half decades, one notices very many changes. Earlier when the strategy was to challenge and question the upper caste hegemony, the slogan was ‘Tilak, tarazu aur Talar/inko maaro joote char’ and today when power considerations have led to new alignments the key slogan today seems to be ‘Haath Nahin Ganesh Hai, Brahma Vishnu Mahesh Hai’. Two inferences are unavoidable. One, there is no conscious attempt to stop/decelerate the process of Hinduisation of dalit identity; secondly, since attaining political power seems to have become a key goal, the alliances with upper caste dominated forces like BJP on three occasions has definitely impacted the process of dalit assertion) One also comes across recreation of memories through myths, heroes and caste histories in a manner which suits the political formation. It can also be observed that the same caste hero or myth invoked by the BSP being interpreted by the BJP in a more aggressive manner and its getting posited as anti-Muslim hero. Another significant difference between the two parties seem to be whereas BSP focuses on the myths of Dalit women heroes of the 1857 revolt – Jhalakaribai, Udadevi, Mahavirdevi, Avantibai and Pannadhai supposedly to buttress to the image of its leader Mayawati, one rarely comes across myths of Dalit women in BJP’s political discourse. The manner in which story of Suhaldev, caste hero of the Pasis has been appropriated is a case in point.

The dargah of Ghazi Mian situated in Bahraich, UP is very popular among the local populace. Any normal day one can witness thousands of devotees thronging there to have a glimpse of the Mazaar. Lakhs of devotees gather in the month of May when a fair is held in his memory. Interestingly, a majority of the devotees are Hindus. As the popular perception goes, the dargah is reputed to be a place where the wishes of all devotees are supposedly granted. There are broadly two contesting versions about Ghazi Mian popular in the region. If the first one can be said to be a folk or popular version the other seems to be the product of the machinations of communal elements Ghazi mian, whose actual name was Salar Masood and who was nephew of Mahmood Ghazanavi had come to the area in Bahraich to hunt. The local population supposedly approached him and asked him to act as their saviour. It was the period when Suhaldev was the king of the Bhar/Pasi community who happened to a very cruel king and oppressed people of his kingdom. When Suhaldev heard about Ghazi Mian, he attacked him and killed him and his entire army. Suhaldev also died in the battle. The popularity of Ghazi Mian in the region arose from the fact that when his tomb was built, it supposedly acquired magical powers. Local people believe that both Hindus and Muslims are blessed after praying there.

A parallel version which has been consciously built and circulated by communal elements talks of the great warrior Maharaja Suhaldev, who defended Hindu religion and Hindus from the foreing invader Masood who despoiled Indian cultural traditions, ravaged women and killed children and men. One can easily see that there are broadly two purposes behind the creation of communal warring memories of the myth of Suhaldev, if the first one pertains to the appropriation of Pasis – a dalit caste which is numerically no. two among them – into their political fold, the second is to extend and construct a Hindu history against Islam to mobilise Hindus under their fold. In order to counter the popularity of Ghazi Mian – where a majority of the devotees are Hindus – and bring the straying Hindus back into the fold, the Hindutva elements/formations have also started organising parallel fairs and other cultural programmes/event to commemorate his memory. Many programmes are organised to celebrate Suhaldev namely Kalash Yatra, yajna, sports competitions, a huge wrestling match and a Ram katha.

One also witnesses the ‘spatial strategy’ (to quote Satish Deshpande, Page 85, Contemporary India, 2003, Viking) of Hindutva based on site in full play here.

To quote :

The strategy based on the site has two facets. First, a chosen spot or site is invested with some unique particularity, such that it can be declared to be the only one of its kind ; or if a site already has some such claims, these claims are refined and amplified. However, the criterion of selection is that the spot must implicate the ‘other’ deeply enough to prevent easy extrication. The combined result is to prepare a battleground where Hindu ‘pride’ or ‘self-respect’ can be defended only by inflicting an insult of some kind on the ‘other’.

Apart from projecting Salar Masood as a cruel person, the RSS emphasises repeatedly that the dargah was once the ashram of Balark Rishi. The ashram and the Suryakund inside it were razed by Salar. To denigrate the Hindus, who are believers in composite culture and heritage, the RSS claims that the Hindus have forgot the saviour of the nation and Hindu religion and they have no qualms in going and praying at the imaginary tomb of a foreing invader.

It is worth noting that despite the feverish attempts by RSS and its affiliated organisations to vitiate the atmosphere, the popular narrative of the people contradicts what they are peddling. And this narrative looks at Suhaldev as a villain and Ghazi Mian as a hero.

There is no denying the fact that the ‘construction of Suhaldev as a great warrior’ has definitely helped Hindutva forces in mobilising people and creating for them a solid constituency among the Pasis there, who have a significant population in areas around Bahraich. For the Pasis, the discovery of Suhaldev has acted as an iconic figure who was born into their own community..

Apart from describing in detail this ‘Making of a War Hero’ the book also discusses similar interventions in other dalit communities. In case of Nishads, which is a sub-caste of Mallah caste, which is a ‘water-centric’ community whose primary occupation is boating and fishing, it discusses the use of its cultural resources by other dalit parties as well. The metamorphosis of these ‘castes’ into ‘political constituency’, which the ‘political parties are contesting to win’ has benn explained in detail. According to Mr Badri Narayan ‘ All these political parties are using the same mythical and cultural resources, with the common motive of winning the votes of these castes, but are reinterpreting and recreating them in different ways to suit their political agendas.’ It also finds that as an interesting side effect of this process is that the castes are acquiring power to negotiate with various parties in the fray.

Taking advantage of the mythical hero of the Nishads namely Nishadraj Guhya, who supposedly helped Ram, the BJP-RSS combine skillfully used the community during the infamous Ram Janambhoomi-Babri mosque agitation. In 1990 when Advani was undertaking his rath yatra around the country and his entourage was prevented from entering Ayodhya, the Nishads were mobilised to transport the kar sevaks to Ayodhya through the water route.

In case of Musahars, while the myths of Savari – a character in the minor sub-plot in Ramayana – and that of two brothers Dina-Bhadri – who were great fighters – have helped the community to assert themselves or, raise themselves in the social hierarchy and develop their social confidence, they have become handy for the BJP-RSS also to further its agenda. As the Musahars consider themselves descendants of Savari, the RSS-BJP tried to mobilise the Musahars to help in Ramkaj (incomplete work of Ram). The two brothers Dina-Bhadri are also projected as reincarnations of Ram-Laxman although RSS-BJP are careful enough not to highlight their struggle for the cause of Nonia and Beldars against the contractors and the people employed by them to dig the land. The author laments over the fact that left and other democratic forces have not understood the significance of these cultural resources for mobilising the Musahars and creating popular support for them

To conclude, it need be commended that the book is a welcome addition to the small albeit growing scholarly/popular works on the theme where Hindutva’s engagement with the dalits is being dealt in a specific way. A combination of fieldwork laced with oral history and a broad knowledge of the theme based on research has definitely added to novelty to the book.

It has been successful in not only explaining the dynamics of dalit identity but has also looked very closely at the manner in which forces like RSS-BJP – who are opposed to the composite heritage of the people – operate in our society. Through different case studies the danger, which this situation presents before the dream of an inclusive, tolerant, just India is also conveyed.

The book emphasises a very important point, which has not received the attention it deserves. Whenever there has been a talk of Hindutvaisation of Dalits, witnessed as a phenomenon during the 2002 Gujarat genocide, an attempt has been made to deny ‘agency’ to the dalits. The participation of a section of the dalits in the anti-Muslim violence was explained on the grounds that they were either misled or used by the varna dominated communal forces.

The author rightly tells that the ‘success’ of the Hindutva forces in saffronising myths and legends of Dalits is not only because the strategies used by Hindutva forces have been smart, but also because there is a strong urge within the dalit communities ‘to seek acceptance from the upper-caste hindus who had always culturally and socially marginalised them’

The process of Hinduisation can thus be interpreted as a ‘dual’ process, wherein on the one hand it is an attempt to seek acceptance from the dominant castes by imitating them and on the other hand, one can find a vein of dissent which gets exhibited in the subaltern’s challenge to the dominant hegemony by ‘becoming’ one like them.

The only lacunae which one notices in this book is absence of proper editing. If the author would have been careful enough he could have avoided repetitions of ideas, details at various places. This definitely makes it a dull reading. It is also surprising that the author has missed to refer or mention a few important publications, which have discussed the same phenomenon, which have appeared during this interregnum. And a most notable among these books is ‘Hindutva and Dalits’ (Edited by Anand Teltumbde, 2004, Samya)

At the end one just hopes that a radical dalit community would emerge which can critically engage with the reconstruction and reappropriation of its memory by vested interests and move towards the emancipatory agenda put forward by Phule, Ambedkar, Periyar and others.

Resurgent Hindutva Terror: Will Goa Blast Investigations Go the Nanded Way?

2011-12-07T11:23:00.000-08:00

Subhash Gatade, NOvember 2, 2009, Kafila

PANAJI: Goa Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders like Manohar Parrikar have expressed support for the Sanatan Sanstha, the Hindu outfit blamed for the pre-Diwali blasts that killed two people on Wednesday.
Virendra Marathe, managing trustee of the Sanstha, named BJP state president Shripad Naik, leader of opposition Parrikar and party legislator Dayanand Mandrekar as politicians who stood by them in the aftermath of the blasts in Margao, 35 km from here.
Police say the blasts were engineered and executed by members of the Sanstha.
“The BJP MLAs supported us. They advised us to sue the media for defamation, for slandering the Sansthan. Dayanand Mandrekar, Parrikar and Shripad Naik supported us,” Marathe said at a press conference in Panaji.
Goa BJP leaders support us: Sanatan Sanstha
IANS 28 October 2009, 02:35pm IST ( Times of India, 28 th October 2009)

How much time do the powers that be need to make any significant move when they unearth a conspiracy hatched by a self proclaimed ‘spiritual group’ to massacre dozens of innocent people supposedly to vindicate their weltanshauung and instigate a communal riot? Do they keep quibbling over minor details and let the real masterminds obfuscate their obvious links with the executioners? Do they keep talking in multiple voices and make themselves vulnerable over attacks by oppositional parties supposedly for their ‘dilly-dallying’?
It has been more than a fortnight that one witnessed a blast in Margao, where two people belonging to ‘Sanatan Sanstha’ carrying explosives in their scooter were killed and another bomb was detected – around twenty kilometres from the first spot – in a truck carrying 40 youth and a Narkasur for competition – which exposed a sinister conspiracy to instigate communal riots, but one is yet to see any concrete step on part of the government to nab the real terrorists and break their wider network.
The home minister of Goa, Mr Ravi Naik had also categorically stated ( Mail Today, 19 th Oct 2009) that ‘The Scooter on which the bombs were being carried belongs to Sanatan Sanstha. It seems to be a clear attempt to create communal discord in the state.” Many senior police officers of the state had also expressed similar opinions. There was also talk of questioning the wife of a cabinet minister herself because of her proximity to the extremist outfit including the proposal that the government is contemplating a ban on the controversial organisation.
The Herald, a prominent daily from Goa had rather voiced concerns of a the vast majority of Goans ( not to say the majority of people in the subcontinent) when it asked the powers that be to (Herald front-page editorial, 18 October 2009) to take urgent steps to curb this phenomenon and had also delineated the real objectives of the perpetrators :

The blast in Margao, as well as the one averted in Sancoale, have brought to the fore the ugly face of terrorism in Goa. Fortunately, the bomb exploded before it could be planted, killing Malgonda Patil and critically injuring Yogesh Naik, the terrorists who planned to massacre dozens of innocent people. The bomb in Sancoale was detected by an alert youth. Had it exploded where it was planted – in a truck carrying 40 youth and a Narkasur for a competition – it would have taken a large number of lives. Those who made and planted it are yet to be brought to justice.
This dastardly terrorist attack was, first, intended to target the Diwali Narkasur festival, which is unique to Goa and Goans, but which the Hindu fundamentalist Sanatan Sanstha denounces as a glorification of evil. The second objective, far more sinister, was to instigate religious riots in Margao, which has a history of communal tension. This cowardly attempt to hurt Goan traditions and destroy the State’s communal harmony must be put down swiftly and decisively.
This is the second terrorist act linked to the Sanatan Sanstha, which is active mainly in Maharashtra and Goa, and has its national headquarters at Ramnathi. ..

It is clear that if enough pressure is not put on the powers that be, it is possible that much on the lines of Kanpur blasts and Nanded blasts – which also witnessed deaths of Hindutva terrorists – this blast would also get erased from people’s memory.

For a layperson also it is easy to see how majoritarian terrorism has raised its ugly head after a brief lull in the aftermath of Malegaon bomb blast and the painstaking investigation undertaken by ATS Chief Hemant Karkare to nab the real culprits. It need not be underlined that this no nonsense officer was under tremendous pressure supposedly for going after top honchos of the Hindutva terrorism network. And looking back it is clear why he had asked for banning this organisation and its affiliated groups when he led the investigation in the Gadkari Rangayatan and similar other blasts which were engineered by activists associated with ‘Sanatan Sanstha’ and its affiliate ‘Hindu Janjagruti Samity’. Karkare had forwarded the proposal some time before he was gunned down by terrorists in 26/11 terror attacks.
In fact if Maharashtra government had acted on a proposal forwarded by the Anti-Terrorism Squad last year, then one could have saved lot of innocent blood spilling on the streets. As of now a proposal to ban the Sanstha is pending with the Maharashtra government since last year, a top ATS officer is reported to have told the media.
To proscribe an organisation, the state government has to forward its proposal to the centre, which takes a call after considering the recommendations. This had not been done, official sources said.
On June 4, 2008, there was a blast in the basement parking of Gadkari Rangayatan in Thane where Marathi play Amhi Pachpute was being staged. Probe revealed that members of the Sanstha had threatened the playwright not to stage the play, which was a satire on Mahabharat.
Around the same time there were two minor blasts in theatres at Panvel and Vashi in Navi Mumbai where Hindi film Jodha Akbar was being screened. Investigations linked these blasts to Sanstha members.
Apart from its involvement in these terrorist acts, it is also being revealed that members of Sanatan Sanstha were also involved in Miraj riots too. (Express, October 21, 2009). In fact Malgounda Patil, an active member of the Sanstha who was carrying explosives and died in the Goa blast, was in Miraj for two weeks when the construction of a controversial arch in the town sparked off communal riots.
The Superintendent of Police of Sangli Mr Krishna Prakash told Express reporter

“We had information that Sanatan Sanstha members were distributing weapons to Hindus during the riots. We had also seized a four-wheeler of the Sanatan Sanstha carrying swords and chains. Three Sanatan Sanstha members were arrested in the case.” According to him they had earlier arrested a female member of Sanstha identified as Bhakti Joglekar, for distributing pamphlets with communal content and there are so far five offences against Sanatan Sanstha in Sangli…”.
In an extensive coverage of the ‘Whiff of Hindutva Terror in Goa’ Mail today ( 20 th October 2009) tells us how ‘Sanatan Sanstha is no stranger to communal conspiracies. From riots to bombing theatres, this organisation was allegedly involved in many acts of violence in Maharashtra before the bomb blasts in Goa ripped apart its spiritual facade.” (Outfit No Stranger to Communal Conspiracies, Krishna Kumar) Of course, it does not forget to mention the BJP links of the fanatic group. ” Like the Malegaon blasts, this case too has a BJP link. One of the Sanstha’s top leaders in Miraj, Madhusudan Kulkarni, has been seen at political rallies of the party.In a thinly veiled argument on its website the Sanstha exhorts Hindus to attack Muslims and be better prepared during riots.”

“violence towards evildoers is non-violence itself” and “it is a sin not to slay an evildoer”!
- Jayant Athavale

Sanatan Sanstha which talks of spreading spirituality as a science and was founded in 1990 by a a clinical hypnotherapist Jayant Balaji Athavale from Mumbai, conducts discourses and workshops on spirituality and religion at its ashrams and also known to impart ‘self defence training to its members.It is really difficult to believe how an organisation which supposedly ‘aims to present religious mysticism in a scientific language for the curious and to guide seekers’ and which ‘conducts weekly spiritual meetings, discourses, child guidance classes, workshops on spirituality, training in self-defense and campaigns to create awareness of righteousness’ to further these aims can double up as an organisation which can invite prosecution under ‘laws meant for unlawful and terrorist organisations’.
The other part of the story is that here ‘destruction of evildoers’ is an integral part of ‘spiritual practice’. And this ‘destruction’ is to be done at ‘physical and psychological level’. Interestingly to facilitate this ‘Dharm Kranti’ (religious revolution) the seekers are also provided with training in arms – rifles, trishuls, lathis and other weapons. (www.sanatan.org)
It need be told that apart from the ‘magnum opus’ of the founder of SS and HJS, Jayant Athavale which is called “Science of Spirituality’ – which is book of 21 volumes – and other texts about ‘Divine Kingdom’, ‘Arts for God Realisation’ and ‘Spiritual Experiences of Seekers’ etc. a very important text in the training of the seekers is Texts on Defence where seekers of divine kingdom are also imparted training with air rifles ( Vol 3 H – Self Defence Training, Chapter 6, Page 108-109)
It would be opportune to discuss a portion from this text which trains the seeker in ‘Firing’ . In 7 a. it trains the seeker in standing stance (kada pavitra) [shooting in the standing posture] in section 7 b. it discusses Sitting Stance (baitha pavitra) [shooting in the sitting stance]. It also shows the photograph of Vinay Panvalkar wearing a hat showing the different positions.
7 B. Sitting Stance (baitha pavitra) [shooting in the sitting stance]
1. Load the rifle according to steps ‘A to F’ of point 6. Loading the rifle.’ Then proceed as given below.
2. Ready to fire – one ( fire ke liye sajja -ek) :
Once this command is given touch the right knee to the ground. Bending the toes of the right foot support the foot on its ball. At that time the left knee should be bent and kept in front of the right one. ….
Another writeup in Goan Observer also displays seven photographs of Vinay Panvalkar which have appeared in another of Sanatan Sanstha’s publication [‘Swasaunrakshan Prashikshan’ (Self Defence Training)] While four photographs show training by rifle, two photographs show how to attack someone with a long Trishul and the last one is the usual fight with hands. The same writeup makes an interesting point vis-a-vis HJS/SS and RSS/VHP/Bajrang Dal.
According to the writeup
..It would appear that these hardline organisations have come up because of the disillusion meant amongst hardcore fanatic Hindus that the BJP and the RSS have compromised their core values for political gains. In fact though the Sansthan boasted of over two lakh members when it started in 1999, many members were expelled because they were proved to be ‘corrupt’. Unlike the RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal activists the activists of the Sanstha maintain a very low profile which makes it difficult to combat their mischief .
The same page carries a photograph of Jayant Athavale, founder of HJS, and SS, in military fatigue exhorting people to ‘Become Hindu Naxalites to combat the Naxalites who are the biggest enemies of Dharamrajya’.
Jayant Athavale’s magnum opus ‘Science of Spirituality’ in its chapter ‘Spiritual Practice of Protecting Seekers and Destroying Evildoers’ ( Vol I, E, Page 64-65) underlines the importance of Guru to undertake spiritual practice’. It clearly absolves the seeker from any act of destroying evildoers.
It says
B 2. One chanting continuously : The action of destroying evildoers becomes a non-action only if done along with chanting the Lord’s name, as then it becomes a mere act (Kriya). Then the Law of Karma (Action) does not apply.
B 3. One who is permitted by saints or Gurus to undertake this spiritual practice: Destroy evildoers if you have been advised by saints or Gurus to do so. Then these acts are not registered in your name.
According to the book
Timetable of the spiritual practice
a. Year 1997-1999 A.D. ( 3 Years) : Impressing upon the mind that ‘destruction of evildoers’ is a part of the spiritual nature.
b. Year 2000-2006 A.D. ( 7 years) : Actual destruction of evildoers at physical, psychological and spiritual levels.
c. Year 2007-2022 A.D. ( 16 Years ) : Generating the potential to run the kingdom of the Absolute truth
d. Year 2023 – 2025 A.D. ( 3 Years) : Commencement of the regime of Absolute Truth ( divine kingdom)
In Vol 4 of the book ‘Texts about the Divine Kingdom’ which focusses itself on Social Upliftment, National Security it measures someone’s ‘spiritual progress’ when he is compelled to ‘kill someone.’ (Page 48-49)
6 C 4. Test of Spiritual Progress : One will perceive how much spiritual progress one has made only when he is compelled to kill someon. It is easy to make statements like ‘everything is Brahman’ (God)’ When actually performing the act of killing, if the mind remains steady and does not waver at all like Arjun’s did, only then can one say that one has realised Brahman.
It also presents its ideas about who would ‘bring about a revolution’
6 D. Only warrior seekers (Kshatravir) can bring about a revolution.
6 D 1. Warrior seekers who have an unparalleled combination of a selfless attitude, unity, intense motivation to undertake the mission and faith in it The Lord. It is not an easy task to oust evil politicians. To achieve this, one will have to combat their ruffian party workers, the police force and the army under their command. Therefore, this is certainly not the work of selfish politicians. The people have experienced in the last 54 years after independence that despite granting opportunity to various parties to assume power, replacement of one politician by another does not bring about any change in society.

For an organisation which is so ultra-sensitive about the slightest imagined insult to Hinduism — imagined or real — the literature of the Sanatan Sanstha is rife with attacks on other religions. Apart from valorising violence through its literature and actions, the organisations have achieved notoriety for abusing other religions and their prophets. e.g In one of its issues ofSanatan Prabhat ( 9 th Dec 2005) – a newspaper brought out by it from many districts in Maharashtra and Goa, it ‘exposes the real nature of Bible’ by calling it a ‘manual for teaching immorality’ which discusses in detail ‘ the rape of a sister by a brother’. There are frequent references to the Bible, alleging that it promotes incest and other immoral practices. It is part of its usual practice to show a Pastor with horns whose sole agenda is proselytisation. In September 2004, Sanatan Prabhat carried a statement saying that the body of St. Francis Xavier should be destroyed. It has also carried other scurrilous articles about Goa’s patron saint. Its humiliation of Islam and Prophet Muhammad nearly created a riot like situation in Miraj ( first week of November 2005) and the imprisonment of the editor of Sanatan Prabhat.
Interestingly all talk of Hindu Unity in the worldview of HJS falls at the altar caste and other regressive practices in our society. Believers are exhorted to guide offenders away from the path of incorrect practice. The volumes in the series support the regressive and obscurantist practices of the past, including the caste system, talking repeatedly about the proper role of various castes in society. (Herald Panjim, 22 June 2008)
Herald (Panjim, 22 June 2008) concludes with the observation

After having created an ideological framework which creates a fundamentalist mindset and makes it the ‘duty’ of the true seeker to defend the faith against all those who are projected as attacking it, it is disingenuous of the HJS and the SS to disclaim responsibility for the acts engaged in by their members. Ex-members of these organisations talk about the cult-like atmosphere that is created, with unquestioning obedience being stressed. Members are then brainwashed into believing that Hinduism is under siege. Against this background, and with all the talk about ‘defence’ and ‘elimination of evildoers’, it is hardly surprising that adherents begin to explore ways of taking direct action to defend the faith. In this regard, the philosophy of the HJS and the SS is not all that different from the philosophy of terrorists, whom they claim to oppose.

In a detailed writeup in Goan Observer ( Protecting Hinduism : Sanatan Style, Pradnya Gaonkar, 28 June 2008) the ‘covert activities of self-professed protectors of Hinduism, the Sanatan Sanstha and the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti,’ have been looked into. The author writes that “The Chief Minister, Digamber Kamat, and the Leader of the Opposition, Manohar Parrikar, not to mention the IGP Kishen Kumar should be more concerned over the terrorist activities of the Sanatan Sanstha and the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti than chasing imaginary naxalites.” Apart from their strong presence in Goa at rural levels the author also brings to the fore the political patronage received by them at the highest levels.
The investigations done by Goan Observer “..[r]evealed that Jyoti Sudin Dhavlikar, wife of the MGP leader and Transport Minister in the Digamber Kamat government Sudin Dhavlikar, is in charge of the Goa Unit of the Sanatan Sanstha. Goan Observer also understands that the IGP, Kishen Kumar, despite being directed to investigate the activities of the Sanatan Sanstha in Goa, did not follow it up seriously because of political pressure…The Marcaim MGP MLA, Sudin Dhavlikar, and his brother are crucial to the continued survival of the Digamber Kamat government which explains why the Chief Minister is not enthusiastic about investigating the credentials of the Sanatan Sanstha.”
The Self Defence manual of the Sanatan Sanstha “.[w]hich is mandatory reading for its activists, reveals the insidious nature of the communal propaganda being carried out by the ‘charitable organisation’. Surely, there can be nothing charitable about images showing young men in military uniform shooting dead a man typically dressed like a Muslim. The defence of course would be that the young men were shooting the ‘Muslim’, who is also shown armed, in self defence. The Sanatan Sanstha’s Swasaunrakshan Prashikshan contains explicit instructions on what parts of the anatomy should be targeted for causing maximum damage, shows how the trishul can be used as an offensive weapon and has entire chapter on how to use air rifles. Except that the training imparted for using air rifles can be used for handling AK-47s also. The images of the activists wielding the gun shows them wearing t-shirts identifying them as soldiers of the Sanatan Sanstha and exhorts activists to kill ‘evil’ and uphold Hindu values.”
The study also throws light on the process of indoctrination which follows a policy of targeting young minds and systematically brainwashing them. It is much on the lines of “.. …[o]ther Hindu fundamentalist organisations like the RSS, the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad,”
“The fact that the moving spirit, if not the founder of the Sansthan, Dr. Jayant Balaji Athavale, was a clinical hypnotherapist has been reflected in the methodology adopted by the Sanatan Sanstha for indoctrinating and brainwashing young minds. Young people who attended the satsangs (weekly meets of the members of the SS) of the Sanstha narrate that they are required to fill pages with the name of the Kuldevta and obtain mental peace. The satsangs were cleverly packaged to convert young open minds into fanatical defenders of the Sanatan Sanstha version of dharma. The publication of the Sanstha revealed that it is committed to militant defence of Hinduism, which it claims is under threat not only from the minorities but from members of the Hindu community themselves who are either not conscious of the threat to Hinduism or not committed enough to Hinduism to aggressively protect it from real or imaginary threats.”

As we go to the press there are reports that joint teams set up to probe blasts across the country which still remain unresolved despite the initial clamour that they were handiwork of SIMI, recently interrogated at least three people on Monday (Hindustan Times, 20 th Oct 2009) allegedly linked to Hindu right wing groups, in connection with the Samjhauta Express blasts. (Fwb 18, 2007). “Police sources said officers were trying to figure out whether Ramji Kalsangra (main accused in the Sept 2008 Malegaon blast, who is still absconding) and Sunil Joshi, an RSS functionary who was shot dead in the neighbouring town of Dewas on December 23 2007, were also behind the Samjhauta Express blast.”
It may also be recalled that ATS chief Hemant Karkare was also looking into the links of the main accused in the Malegaon Bomb blast case Lieutenant Colonel Srikant Prasad Purohit with the perpetrators of the Gadkari Rangayatan and Panvel blasts before he was killed in the melee that followed the terrorist attack in Bombay.
There is no doubt that if he would have remained alive he would have moved ahead to unearth the hidden links between the different Hindutva groups who were engaged in terrorism.
It was not for nothing that Sangh Parivar, Shiv Sena and other fanatic Hindutva organisations continued to vilify him, continued to paint the accused in the Malegaon blast case as victims and tried every means to stymie investigations.
One just wishes that the investigations in the Goa blast do not follow a similar path and do not face a fate similar to many other mysterious blasts which made lot of noise at the time of occurence but were quickly buried in the selective amnesia of the people and the government.