R.S.S terror is a reality, yet India refuses to utter its name

Jitender Gupta

Scenes from 2000 Bajrang Dal training recruits at a camp in Ayodhya

Hindu terror

The Mirror Explodes

Hindu terror is a reality, yet India refuses to utter its name

Unfinished stories, goes an old idiom in Ajmer, find their denouement in Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti’s shrine. Perhaps, unfinished investigations do too. Two-and-a-half years after low-intensity blasts ripped apart the courtyard of the centuries-old shrine, the Rajasthan police arrested three men—Devendra Gupta, Vishnu Prasad and Chandrashekhar Patidar. Gupta, an RSS worker, was suspected to have bought the mobile phone and SIM card that triggered off the October 2007 blast in which three were killed. Till their arrest on April 30 this year, the story narrated by the investigators, lapped up by the establishment and reiterated in large sections of the media was that the Ajmer blast was the handiwork of jehadi terrorists.

The one troubling question—would jehadis target Muslim devout at a dargah?—can have complicated answers, as the body count at Lahore’s Data Ganj Baksh would testify. But in India, the question wasn’t even deemed worthy of being asked as a reasonable line of inquiry. The needle of suspicion remained firmly and automatically fixed on Islamic terrorists—young men from the community were detained at various stages of the investigation and interrogated at length—until the trail finally led to Gupta and pointed to radical Hindu nationalist groups instead. Says Rajasthan Anti-Terrorist Squad chief Kapil Garg: “We have arrested some people of that religion (Hinduism) and we’re dead sure we’re on the right track.”

May 18, 2007 Doom Friday Mecca Masjid was rocked by a pipe bomb

In Hyderabad too, the CBI team believes it is on the right track, finally, in the Mecca Masjid bomb blasts case. Four men belonging to radical Hindu groups were arrested this May for triggering a high-intensity bomb that went off in the masjid complex in May 2007, killing 14 and injuring some 50. At that time, the Hyderabad police had said it was most likely the work of the Harkat-ul-Jehad-e-Islami (HuJI), backed by local logistical support; some 26 Muslim men were picked up, interrogated, forced to confess and detained for up to six months.

The terror trail in India changed after the Maharashtra ATS’s investigations into the 2008 Malegaon blasts, which alerted them to Abhinav Bharat.

The story followed this script till the CBI found evidence to the contrary: the SIM card-and-mobile phone-detonated explosives packed in metal tubes were strikingly similar to the Ajmer blasts contraption. Tellingly, both bombs are believed to have contained a deadly mix of RDX and TNT, in proportions often used by the Indian army. CBI director Ashwani Kumar told the media that an activist named Sunil Joshi “played a key role in orchestrating the Ajmer blast... and a set of mobile SIM cards that had been used in activation of the bomb-triggers in the Mecca Masjid blast was used again in the Ajmer blast”.

Around the same time, officers of the National Investigating Agency (NIA) filed a chargesheet in a Panjim court accusing 11 people, all Hindus and members of the ultra-right-wing Sanathan Sanstha, of masterminding and executing the October 2009 Margao blasts that killed the two people ferrying the explosives to a local festival. Investigation in Pune’s German Bakery blast this February has run aground after the initial suspicion, detaining and interrogation of suspected Muslim men, some believed to be members of “sleeper cells of jehadi groups” or the Indian Mujahideen (IM). When Abdul Samad was arrested last month, the Maharashtra ATS actively encouraged the understanding that he was the man caught on CCTV cameras in the bakery that night. However, Samad was never charged with the blast and subsequently let off in other cases too.

Malegaon Blasts II: September 29, 2008 Deadly Bike The bomb here was mounted on a Hero Honda (Reuters, From Outlook July 19, 2010 Issue)

Malegaon Blasts-I
September 8, 2006
37 dead

• Initial arrests: Arrested include Salman Farsi, Farooq Iqbal Makhdoomi, Raees Ahmed, Noorul Huda Samsudoha and Shabbir Batterywala.
• Later revelation: Suspicion now rests on Hindu terrorists because of the 2008 blasts.

Samjhauta Express Blasts
February 18, 2007
68 dead, mostly Pakistanis

• Initial suspicion: LeT and JeM were blamed. Those arrested included Pakistani national Azmat Ali.
• Later revelation: Police have seen the evidence trail lead to right-wing Hindu activists. Investigators claim the triggering mechanism for the Mecca masjid blast three months later was similar to the one used here. Police are looking for RSS pracharaks Sandeep Dange and Ramji.

Mecca Masjid Blast
May 18, 2007
14 dead

• Initial arrests: Around 80 Muslims detained for questioning and 25 arrested. Several have now been acquitted, including Ibrahim Junaid, Shoaib Jagirdar, Imran Khan and Mohammed Adul Kaleem.
• Later revelation: In June 2010 the CBI announced a cash reward of Rs 10 lakh for information on the two accused, Sandeep Dange and Ramchandra Kalsangra. Lokesh Sharma arrested.

Ajmer Sharif Blast
October 11, 2007
3 dead

• Initial arrests: HuJI, LeT blamed. Those arrested include Abdul Hafiz Shamim, Khushibur Rahman, Imran Ali.
• Later revelation: In 2010, Rajasthan ATS arrests Devendra Gupta, Chandrashekhar and Vishnu Prasad Patidar. Accused Sunil Joshi, who was killed weeks before the blast, is believed to have been a key planner.

Thane Cinema Blast
June 4, 2008

• Affiliated to Hindu Janjagruti Samiti and Sanathan Sanstha, Ramesh Hanumant Gadkari and Mangesh Dinkar Nikam arrested. Blast planned to oppose the screening of Jodhaa Akbar.

Kanpur And Nanded Bomb Mishaps
August 2008

• Two members of Bajrang Dal—Rajiv Mishra and Bhupinder Singh—were killed while assembling bombs in Kanpur. In April 2006, N. Rajkondwar and H. Panse from the same outfit died under similar circumstances in a bomb-making workshop in Nanded.

Malegaon Blasts II
September 29, 2008
7 dead

• Initial suspicion: Groups like Indian Mujahideen involved
• Later revelation: Abhinav Bharat and Rashtriya Jagaran Manch accused of involvement. Arrested include Pragya Singh Thakur, Lt Col Srikant Purohit and Swami Amritanand Dev Tirth, also known as Dayanand Pandey.

Goa Blasts
October 16, 2009

• 2 dead Both accused are members of the Sanathan Sanstha. Malgonda Patil and Yogesh Naik were riding a scooter laden with explosives, which accidentally went off.

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

Terror trails in India dramatically changed with the Malegaon blasts investigation in September-October 2008. Led by then Maharashtra ATS chief Hemant Karkare, who was subsequently killed on the night of 26/11, the investigation pointed to Abhinav Bharat (AB), an ultra-right-wing Pune-based organisation established in 2005-06, and its members or affiliates. What Karkare’s teams managed to uncover is part of recent history and should have become the basis of examining and monitoring the new phenomenon of Hindutva terror but didn’t.

“For a decade, stories of Hindu terror have been trickling in. Instead of a systematic investigation, it’s been an event-to-event probe so far.”

The Hindutva links to Mecca Masjid, Ajmer and other low-intensity blasts have been in the public domain for close to two years; the signs were visible since 2002-03 when an ied found at the Bhopal railway station was traced back to local Hindutva activists Ramnarayan Kalsangra and Sunil Joshi. They were questioned, but no evidence was found. Yet, it prompted Congress leader Digvijay Singh to declare a Bajrang Dal hand. Later in 2006, there were explosions in the houses of Hindutva activists in Nanded and Kanpur, where ieds were being prepared. Through that year, mosques in several towns in Maharashtra—Purna, Parbhani, Jalna—were rocked by low-intensity blasts; the Nanded one was meant for a mosque in Aurangabad. Recovered with a map of Aurangabad were false beards and Muslim male outfits. That should have been warning enough.

However, till May-June this year, the establishment did not either see these warning signals or chose to ignore them—except for a brief two-month period in 2008 when Karkare led the Malegaon probe. Now, it may be difficult to sustain the denial. “For the last 10 years, stories about Hindu right-wing violence have been trickling out. Instead of a systematic investigation, there has been an event-to-event investigation. The larger story has remained underinvestigated and under-reported,” says Mumbai advocate and human rights campaigner Mihir Desai. The CBI is only now seeking directions from the Union home ministry to see the Ajmer, Mecca Masjid, Malegaon and other blasts in conjunction after there has been no conclusive evidence of the involvement of Islamic groups.

Purohit had provided a link between Malegaon and Mecca Masjid blasts. But the police was chasing HuJI.

Malegaon 2008 provided the much-needed aperture to review the role of Hindutva groups. In September that year, eight people were killed and many injured in a low-intensity blast. The ATS investigation led to Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, whose motorcycle was used to explode the bomb, and then to 13 others, including self-styled guru Dayanand Pandey and Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit, the first-ever serving officer to be charged. During interrogation, he had disclosed to ATS investigators that he had provided the RDX in the Mecca Masjid blasts too but the ATS was reportedly asked not to make it public as the Hyderabad police had detained HuJI suspects.The similarity with the Ajmer Sharif blasts was evident too.
Malegaon I - September 8, 2006 two bombs attached to cycles went off in a cemetery

The 4,528-page chargesheet filed in the Malegaon case offers insight into the grand design of the Abhinav Bharat and its affiliates. Purohit, the Sadhvi and others had spoken to one another “to avenge bomb attacks on Hindu shrines” and had engineered a series of blasts with the larger ambition to establish a “separate Hindu rashtra”. Abhinav Bharat—whose original avatar was started by Veer Savarkar, later disbanded, and restarted by Himani Savarkar—was set up to achieve this ambition. “This organised crime syndicate,” states the chargesheet, “wanted to adopt a national flag, that is, a solo-themed saffron flag with a golden border...with an ancient golden torch.”

The one crucial missing link, who has been named by all accused in custody as “the man”, is Ramnarayan Kalsangra, an expert at assembling bombs.

Malegaon honoured Karkare by naming a chowk after him—the tribute of a relieved town to a man they believed would have led them to the truth about the September 2006 blasts too. Three bombs had gone off that Friday afternoon near a mosque and cemetery, killing 37 and injuring 100. Typically, Muslim men alleged to be members of the proscribed SIMI were picked up, interrogated and forced to confess. But the chargesheet had several loopholes—main accused Mohammed Zahid, though a SIMI activist, was leading prayers in a village 700 km from Malegaon that day; conspirator Shabbir Masiuallah had been in police custody a month before the blasts, police sketches made on the basis of eyewitness accounts showed clean-shaven men while all accused had kept beards for years.

The Rajasthan ATS now believes that Devendra Gupta, linked to the Ajmer blasts, was in touch with AB members through RSS pracharak Sunil Joshi. Providing the other end of the link, the Maharashtra ATS says the Sadhvi, enraged when Joshi was killed by suspected SIMI activists in September 2007, ordered the 2008 Malegaon blast. Joshi has also been linked to the Samjhauta Express blasts which killed 68 people, all Pakistanis. The evidence has come from Purohit’s reported phone conversation as narrated by an unnamed witness.

Unholy deed A bomb in a schoolbag exploded during iftaar at the Ajmer Sharif
October 11, 2007

Yet, the story has several loose ends, most critical among them being fugitives Ramnarayan Kalsangra, Swami Aseemanand and others. Kalsangra, investigators in Maharashtra and Rajasthan say, was introduced to Devendra Gupta by the Sadhvi and is believed to be an expert at assembling bombs. Finding Kalsangra is crucial since all accused in custody have named him as “the man”. Ajmer, Mecca Masjid, Malegaon, Samjhauta Express and several other blasts are clearly part of a larger story. Only when the CBI puts all the pieces together will the entire Hindutva terror picture emerge, if at all.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hindu terror

‘Purohit Was Supplying Firearms For Money’

Excerpts from the confession statement of the two suspects arrested in the ’08 Malegaon blasts

Sudhakar Dwivedi, Abhinav Bharat
“A meeting was held at Deolali near Nashik in August 2007. Lt Col Purohit, (Sudhakar) Chaturvedi and Maj (retd) Ramesh Upadhyay were present. It was discussed that something should be done during Urs in Panipat because the maximum number of cows are slaughtered there. Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur demanded that Purohit ‘supply explosives’ so that the group could do something against the killing of Hindus. Purohit promised to supply explosives. Chaturvedi took the responsibility of ‘getting two bomb planters’.

“Purohit was supplying firearms for money. One Ashok from Bhopal had got a weapon from him. This Ashok (had) deposited the money in Purohit’s ICICI Bank account. Purohit was also paid Rs 5 lakh for a ‘gun consignment’ in 2008 by a man. I had convinced Purohit to procure bomb-making material as Purohit had not been taking the sadhvi seriously.”

The statement also has Dwivedi spilling the beans on detailed plans made to gun down RSS leader Indresh Kumar as Purohit and others believed he was taking money from the ISI.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



of Hindus by Muslims”. In August 2007, “I met Purohit in Deolali camp where he told me about forming a right-wing group by the name Abhinav Bharat for promoting and safeguarding Hindutva”.

In January 2008, “I attended a meeting of Abhinav Bharat in Faridabad” where Purohit, Sudhakar Chaturvedi and retired Major Ramesh Upadhyay were present. Here, Purohit spoke extensively about the “setting up of a Hindu rashtra”. Purohit also said he would “arrange for explosives which can be used to blast Muslim-dominated areas. Upadhyay then said that he can arrange for men to prepare the bombs”.

In June 2008, Pandey met the Sadhvi in Indore, who said that Purohit was not taking the cause seriously and asked him “to convince Purohit to arrange for the explosives immediately”.

AP

Samjhauta Express Blasts: February 18, 2007, 68 dead, mostly Pakistanis

EXCLUSIVE investigation: samjhauta blast

Dead In Its Tracks

The probe continued as long as Pakistan was seen as culprit. Enter Hindu angle, and...

On February 18, 2007, a bomb exploded on the Samjhauta Express which runs between India and Pakistan when it was close to Panipat. Sixty-eight persons died, many of them Pakistani nationals, and several others injured. The very next day, the Haryana police constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) and sent its men to different parts of the country to follow leads. The trail led to Indore where the SIT managed to locate the Abhinandan Bag Centre in Kothari market, from where the Kodak brand of suitcase containing the explosives was purchased, the tailor who stitched the covers of the suitcases located and other evidence. Although no terrorist outfit has claimed responsibility till date, the government’s first reaction was to blame Pakistan for it.

But within official circles, it’s widely known that investigations into the Samjhauta Express blast were discreetly stopped when the trail led to Hindu activists in Indore. Earlier, the Maharashtra ATS investigating the Malegaon blasts too had uncovered the Indore link.

Since the government had already accused Pakistan, a Hindu link would have led to loss of credibility for India.

Sources in the Haryana police told Outlook that all their leads pointed to the involvement of “Hindu fundamentalist” elements, and despite several arrests, they failed to find any evidence of the involvement of Islamic groups like Indian Mujahideen or SIMI. Why was the probe stalled then? The commonly given explanation is that when the government’s policy has been to blame Pakistan for every terrorist incident in India, it would have damaged the country’s credibility if, after blaming them for the blast, it was proved to be the work of Hindus.

Crucially, several senior police officials told Outlook that it was the office of the then National Security Advisor, M.K. Narayanan, which informally advised the police to go slow on the probe and not investigate the Hindu connection.

Interestingly, when the Maharashtra ATS did a narco test on Lt Col Srikant Purohit as part of its investigation into the Malegaon blast, it was revealed that though he wasn’t personally involved in the Samjhauta blast, he seemed to know something about those who were. In September 2007, the Haryana home department wrote to the central government, requesting the CBI to take over the investigation, but this was not done.

Later, the CBI helped the Haryana police with the investigations but as an officer connected with it points out, it amounted to very little. Officers say that the key persons who can shed some light on the matter are Sandeep Dange and Ramji, both RSS pracharaks. The two have eluded arrest so far.

There have been half-hearted attempts to restart the stalled investigation, but nothing much seems to have happened. In August 2009, a coordination meeting of the National Investigating Agency north zone was held at Panchkula, where all senior police officers of Haryana and other states participated. It was decided at this meeting that the SP/GRP will have a coordination meeting with the CBI and a meeting was fixed at the CBI headquarters in Delhi. This too was not held.

SOCIETY

The Bomber Among Us

The Hindu majority has a blind spot for terror among its own

Hindus are docile, peace-loving, non-violent people. India is a land of unity in diversity. This is, after all, the country that produced Mahatma Gandhi. Terrorists are always Muslims. What of the so-called Maoist terrorists? Oh, they are tribals and their leaders are communists. They are not really Hindus!

These are the stereotypes we live with, blinding us to an unfolding reality. That there is indeed a phenomenon that can only be described as ‘Hindu terror’. For the people who display trishuls, shout shrill slogans for Bharat Mata and believe in retributive justice against minorities are not fringe lunatics with crazy ideas. Increasingly, investigations reveal that they have actually taken to making bombs and planting them in places where Muslims would be blamed. Why do they do this? Perhaps, in their distorted worldview, any action that would mobilise the people against the minorities is justified.

Yet most of us believe that Hindu terror does not exist because we do not see it. And what we don’t see, we don’t know and we don’t believe. Hence the conspiracy of silence on the issue. Jyotirmaya Sharma, author of books on Golwalkar and Hindutva, says this stems from the myth that most Indians harbour about the peaceful, other-worldly Hindu. “If you participate in the myth, you participate in the conspiracy,” he says. Indeed, he argues that while we can separate mainstream Muslims from the extreme Wahabi Islam promoted by organisations like the LeT, in the case of Hindu terrorists, they are emerging from the wellspring of the Sangh parivar. “The BJP parliamentarians and the terrorists are from the same tradition and that should worry us deeply,” he says.

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

“BJP parliamentarians and the terrorists are from the same tradition ...and that should worry us deeply.” Jyotirmaya Sharma, Author		“They get away with murderous activities as they have sympathy among a section of the Hindu elite.” Dilip Simeon, Historian
“Past records are bad enough...the Indian state can’t afford any complacency against Hindu terrorists.” Christophe Jaffrelot, Historian		“Hindu chauvinism has grown in the past 20 years...there are many who silently support such attitudes.” Kumar Ketkar, Senior Journalist

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

“What is objectionable is using government machinery to give currency to the idea of Hindu terrorism.” Seshadri Chari, Ex-editor, Organiser

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Historian Dilip Simeon digs out some data from the past to argue “that to disregard the nature of the RSS would be to pull wool over our eyes”. He quotes from the February 4, 1948, communique of the government of India declaring the RSS unlawful because “its members have been found circulating leaflets exhorting people to resort to terrorist methods, to collect firearms and suborn the police and military. These activities have been carried out under the cloak of secrecy...the cult of violence of the Sangh has claimed many victims. The latest and most precious to fall was Gandhiji himself”. Besides, Simeon asks, “Is Praveen Togadia’s yatra in Kandhamal that resulted in 125 dead, thousands injured and rendered refugees any less a terrorist act than that of the cadre involved in the Malegaon and Ajmer blasts? They get away with their murderous activities because of sympathy among a section of the elite.”

Crimson tide Malegaon blast accused Pragya Singh Thakur

Why does mainstream discourse rationalise and accept groups like the VHP, Shiv Sena and the RSS? At worst, they are trivialised as a looney fringe. Senior Maharashtra-based journalist Kumar Ketkar says this attitude comes from a middle class ambiguity. “Hindu chauvinism surfaced over the last 20 years and there are many who silently support it. And the classes who have such attitudes are in high-end professions like media, academics, law and judiciary.” S.M. Mushrif, ex-IGP (Maharashtra) and author of the book Who Killed Karkare?, calls it Brahminists’ propaganda. “The mainstream media, police, government are all victim to their propaganda. I purposely don’t call them Hindus. At every stage in the investigation of these cases of Hindu terror, there was interference by the IB which has also been taken over by the Brahminists.”

Clearly, there are strong views on the issue. Historian Christophe Jaffrelot says Hindu terror groups may not pose as big a threat to India as Pakistan-sponsored Islamist organisations like the Lashkar-e-Toiba but they still need to be dealt with seriously. He counts at least three reasons for this. “First, they belong to a resilient tradition that harks back to Savarkar and Godse for whom terrorist violence was a legitimate modus operandi against Muslims and even the Mahatma. This school of thought has always been on the fringe of the Hindu nationalist movement, but they re-emerge in the context of crises like Partition and the post-9/11 series of Islamist attacks in India. More importantly, the Sangh parivar tends to move in this direction as is evident from the techniques of the Bajrang Dal and the involvement of RSS members in the Ajmer blast and the Mecca Masjid attack (Hyderabad). Second, even if organisations like Abhinav Bharat are microscopic, they were started by serving or retired army officers, including Ramesh Upadhyay and Lt Col Purohit. This development takes place after the BJP and VHP have already attracted dozens of former armymen and senior policemen. While India can congratulate itself on the apolitical role of its military personnel, any infiltration of these institutions by communal ideas or elements is alarming.”

Blast proof Major Upadhyay and Swami Amritanand Maharaj

Ironically, the BJP and RSS, alarmed by the questioning and investigations of its cadre, now say that terrorism has no religion. BJP spokesman Prakash Javadekar told Outlook, “We believe you cannot defame all Muslims just because some are terrorists. You don’t say Muslim terrorists, so why say Hindu terrorists? We condemn your communal approach to terrorism.” Seshadri Chari, member of the BJP’s national executive and a former editor of RSS mouthpiece Organiser, says the police has every right to investigate and question people. “What is objectionable is using government machinery and planting news to give currency to the idea of Hindu terrorism. The government is under pressure from some quarters to say that terrorism is not peculiar to people of the Islamic faith.” In other words, Hindus cannot be terrorists and if someone says they are, it can only be under pressure from those who work for Islamic terrorists!

Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh is one of those who has consistently raised the issue of Hindu terrorism with the government. He told Outlook: “I have been saying for a long time that Hindu radicals and Muslim radicals are two faces of the same coin. Acts of terrorism increased after the Babri Masjid demolition. This in turn led to the radicalisation of a section of the Hindus. There is so much evidence of the RSS/VHP combine operating via various militant organisations, so much proof that they have given training in bomb-making. Unfortunately, the media mostly goes with a one-sided story. Whenever there is a blast, the same day the media comes out with names of Muslim boys.”

Blast proof Terror outfit Abhinav Bharat’s Lt Col Shrikant Purohit

The media, after all, only reflects the stereotypes and prejudices of society. Indeed, it thrives on sensational images of Muslim terrorists. A mainstream English and many language channels have even admitted that TRPs go up whenever they show visuals of Muslim terrorists and the Taliban. Hindu terror, it seems, doesn’t have that kind of mainstream audience.

So we have a situation where Muslims are picked up randomly, presumed guilty until proven innocent. In the case of so-called Hindu terrorism, though, the reverse is always true. As Jaffrelot explains, “The Indian state cannot afford to display any complacency vis-a-vis Hindu terrorists as the past records are bad enough. Till recently, policemen—sometimes contradicting themselves in the course of the investigations itself—were quick to attribute any blast to Islamist groups...even when the casualties were Muslims. If the guilty men of Abhinav Bharat and other groups are not dealt with in the right way, the impression that is gaining momentum among the minorities—that some Indian citizens are more equal than others before the law—will have a devastating impact.”

That process has already begun. The irony is that much of what Indian Muslims have been blamed for may well turn out to be the act of a terrorist determined to communalise the situation and blame minorities for wanton violence. We can only wonder who would benefit from such a vitiated atmosphere.

Interview with D.R. Goyal, author of an authoritative narrative of RSS history about Hindutwa terror

COVER STORY

Culture of hate

AJOY ASHIRWAD MAHAPRASHASTA

Interview with D.R. Goyal, author of an authoritative narrative of RSS history.

SHANKER CHAKRAVARTY

D.R. Goyal. He says the militant ideology of the majority is more vicious than those of other sections.

D.R. GOYAL, at present with the Qaumi Ekta Trust, an anti-communalism front, wrote an account of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) in 1978, tracing its history and its politics. It is seen as the most authentic account of the RSS as he himself was an RSS member from 1942 to 1947. He left the organisation after realising that it was corrupt, prevented inventive thinking and propagated a culture of hatred among Hindus. He has also written a biography of Maulana Hussain Ahmed Madani of Dar-ul-Uloom and is now working on a book on Indian madrassas.

In an interview to Frontline, the author of Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh elaborates on how the Hindutva hand in the Ajmer, Hyderabad and Malegaon blasts is nothing new and explains how Hindutva as a political ideology breeds terror.

The investigations in the Ajmer, Hyderabad and Malegaon blast cases point towards the involvement of Hindu fundamentalists. Over the past five years, we have heard a lot about fundamentalist Hindu organisations plotting bomb blasts in Muslim areas across the country. This kind of secret plotting seems to be a new development in India. What could be its political repercussions?

First of all, bomb-making and such other acts are not a new thing for these organisations. For example, in 1947, Mr L.K. Advani, then an RSS swayamsewak and not a Bharatiya Janata Party leader, ran away from Karachi because in his house bombs were being made to kill Mr Jinnah. Many of his associates were arrested and punished. He was able to get out. Now he says that he came by plane to Gujarat after the incident. But in his first biography by Atma Ram, it was said that he took a boat from Karachi to Gujarat and then could go to Rajasthan and other places in India.

It is not only bombs. Terrorism can take many forms. What happened in Gujarat in 2002? Is it not terrorism? See Kandhamal. Are they not terrorising Muslims and Christians? I would say that it is not Hindu terrorism, as most of the media have coined it, but it is Hindutva terrorism, which is political in nature.

Do you recollect any other instances in history where the RSS and other such Hindu organisations engaged with such forms of terrorism?

Many such instances can be noted. What was Madanlal Pahwa doing when he threw a bomb at Mahatma Gandhi? Was he not inspired by the RSS? After that, Nathuram Godse fired at Mahatma Gandhi and killed him. The RSS tried to wriggle out of the matter by trying to dissociate itself from Godse. But later, Frontline quoted Godse's brother as saying that they were all members of the RSS family. All the brothers, not only one. So, it is not a question of something new happening. They say that they are trying to be friendly with Muslims. The fact is that they can never do that ideologically. M.S. Golwalkar, the RSS' most important ideologue, in his book We or Our Nationhood Defined says the minorities in this country should be treated as Hitler treated Jews in Germany. So the Muslims and Christians should be treated the same way.

The RSS and other Hindutva organisations have started attacking media offices. For instance, the Headlines Today office was attacked in Delhi and Zee 24 was attacked in Mumbai. We saw the same kind of attack last year at the CNN-IBN office.

This, too, is nothing new. In pre-Independence days, they were against publishing any news about the RSS. Even if some newspaper published a report of Golwalkar arriving somewhere, it was attacked. Journalists were attacked for publishing news about the RSS. It is true that until 1947 there was hardly any news published about the activities of the RSS, which means that they were trying to work secretly. Secret work is always the mark of terrorists. They started open work only after 1947. The scheme was to set up a political front. Various issues of the RSS mouthpiece Organiser in the late 1940s clearly show a debate within the RSS whether to enter politics or not. The argument in favour of setting up a political party was that when the RSS was banned, there were no political voices to condemn the ban and defend it. It was with this objective that they formed the Jan Sangh. But it was not a regular party with a constitution, a concrete political programme, and a foreign policy stand. The Jan Sangh's only programme was to defend the RSS. And then they started taking up the issues of Akhand Bharat and abolition of Article 370. It was Atal Bihari Vajpayee who first stated that history could not be changed and Pakistan would have to be accepted as a nation state. Before that, they [Hindutva leaders] did not even accept Pakistan as an independent state. They wanted to have Pakistan just as Pakistan wanted to have Kashmir. But the BJP still publicly states that it draws its inspiration from the RSS.

I would say that their attitude towards social life is the same as that of the Taliban – those who are not Hindus have to be punished. Either you convert to Hinduism or you will be punished.

What explains the time gap of such terrorist action by the RSS and its sister groups? All the examples you gave were pre-Independence and the recent terrorist acts are not more than five years old.

In between, they were actively involved in engineering riots. If you look at the pattern of the Sangh Parivar-led riots, detailed planning and execution were involved. Babri Masjid demolition means for them a statement that unless they get back all the temples destroyed in history, they will demolish all the mosques. What does it mean? The RSS is creating an atmosphere where fear prevails and other people are expected to act out of fear through riots and carnage like in Kandhamal. See what is happening in Karnataka. The RSS, as an organisation, has not been properly understood both by our state and by our people.

The RSS, in rhetoric at least, has dissociated itself from organisations like Sanatan Sanstha, Abhinav Bharat or Sri Ram Sene, which have been linked to bomb blasts and rioting.

The RSS has always said that it is a social and cultural organisation and not a political one and that it does only social work. But the question to ask is: When did it start saying this? Only after it was banned. Golwalkar and Savarkar were arrested for the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and were released only on the grounds that the prosecution could not produce enough witnesses. Some of the witnesses ran away. If Godse's brother is to be believed, all of them were RSS workers. Then it was the teachings of the RSS that prompted Nathuram to kill Gandhi. Madanlal Pahwa could also be cited as a case in point. It was banned because Sardar Patel himself wrote in a letter to [Jawaharlal] Nehru that saving Hindus was one thing but creating an atmosphere [of hatred] against Muslims was wrong. He also wrote that the worst thing the RSS did was to create an atmosphere that led to Gandhi being assassinated.

To get the ban withdrawn, the RSS submitted a constitution to the Home Ministry saying that it accepted the national flag and the Indian Constitution. Until 1949, the RSS had no constitution. The organisation had operated for almost a quarter of a century without a constitution. It was a secret organisation.

According to their constitution, they had to keep a record of its members. They have no such record as yet. Their constitution is not even known to many members. In 1967, there was a court question to the RSS about its finances and whether it paid taxes. The RSS replied that its work was akin to politics and it was not liable to pay taxes. Their accounts are all secret. When I was in the RSS, no one except Golwalkar was allowed to write anything. My fault was that I wrote three letters to a senior person in the RSS asking the organisation to help Hindus when the famine had broken out. This was criticised. My habit of reading was also severely discouraged. I was then asked to come to the central office where I saw all kinds of corruption. Money laundering was very much there. All these organisations are Hindutva carriers and members of the RSS. Dissociating itself from these organisations, therefore, would hardly prove the RSS' innocence. For instance, in 1969, riots broke out in Ahmedabad. There was a separate organisation called “Support for Hindus” to lead the riot. Similarly, when there were riots in Jalgaon and Bhiwandi, a similar organisation was set up. However, if you look at their composition, all the members were also members of the RSS. The parent organisation of such groups that engineer such riots is always the RSS.

In the teachings and writings of the RSS, do you see enough instigation for militant action?

The RSS was formed at the request of Savarkar, who had written the book Hindutva. But because Savarkar was not able to function openly owing to his house arrest, he asked K.B. Hedgewar to start a youth organisation as an affiliate to the Hindu Mahasabha to propagate Hindutva politics. It is well known that until 1937, the RSS was a volunteer organisation under the Hindu Mahasabha. But after Golwalkar lost an election for the post of secretary of the Hindu Mahasabha, he severed all relations with the Hindu Mahasabha. Golwalkar wrote We or Our Nationhood Defined and Bunch of Thoughts.

In Bunch of Thoughts, he clearly identifies three enemies – Muslims, Christians, and Communists. If you have defined enemies, it is assumed that you have to fight and kill them. He also wrote that sacrificing your life is not heroism but success is. He wrote about “parakramavada” (aggressive bravery). You have to be aggressive and win to become heroic.

When I was an RSS member as a child, I was very averse to bloodshed. They used to teach us how to kill pigeons as if we should start with pigeons, and then graduate later to killing bigger mortals.

In recent times, the appointment of Nitin Gadkari as president of the BJP is being seen as the RSS asserting its control over its political front again.

The job of the Jan Sangh was to defend the RSS. Power was never its objective. It so happened that in 1977 it was able to collaborate with other political parties. They [Hindutva forces] started getting into power. Then, in 1998, they got power at the Centre. When this happened, their old leaders Vajpayee and Advani started to see RSS chiefs and leaders as their juniors. As long as Golwalkar was alive and until Balasaheb Deoras was there in the RSS, these two leaders of the BJP revered them and were also afraid of them. After Golwalkar and Deoras, they felt that they were senior to the RSS chief. This led to some differences between the RSS and the BJP. Former RSS chief K.S. Sudarshan even went ahead to say that these two should take retirement. After Vajpayee became too ill to be politically active and the BJP lost the last parliamentary elections under Advani's leadership, the RSS used it to its advantage to impose its own man, Gadkari, on the BJP.

Factionalism, however, has grown in the RSS. Mohan Bhagwat is seen as a junior person. Students who go to colleges and schools prefer to go to Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad [student wing of the BJP] rather than an RSS shakha.

Could you tell us more about the process of indoctrination in the RSS?

The speech made by the RSS chief at the annual Dasara function in Nagpur is circulated to all the shakhas and the members are made to hear it many times. If you compare what Nitin Gadkari is talking about and what Bhagwat spoke of in the last meeting, they are similar. He talked about China, Maoists, failure in security arrangements – the same thing. They say that not all Muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims.

What, according to you, will be the political repercussion of such a militant trend in the RSS and other Hindutva groups?

When they came to power at the Centre, they gave up the demands of a Ram temple [at the Babri Masjid site] and abolition of Article 370. Then a person like Kalyan Singh also declared that they were cowards. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad [VHP] refused to invite Advani to a function in Haridwar, complaining that he did not push the Ram temple issue. Both the RSS and the VHP are trying to revive the issue in another name, “Hanuman Jagaran”, but the BJP is reluctant. The VHP is planning to hold a meeting of sadhus and sants in Ayodhya to revive that. They may not be able to do that, but they are trying.

How do you differentiate between Hindutva terrorism and Islamist terrorism?

Terrorism always starts when a community identifies itself as a nation. The same is the case with the Taliban in Pakistan. The militant ideology of the majority section of population, however, is more vicious in nature. In Ludhiana, I remember a Muslim leader called Ludhianvi who was close to Nehru. When there were riots in Ludhiana, he sheltered many Muslims at his house.

Muslims thought since their leader was there, there was no need for them to leave their original homes. The RSS realised this, and every night fire torches and stones were thrown at his house. Subsequently, Nehru requested him to leave Ludhiana and come to Delhi. Now, there is hardly any Muslim population in Ludhiana.

Islamist terrorism, as I see in India, was not organised until recently. They were mostly reactions. You could see individual reactions from goondas like Dawood Ibrahim who held the torch of the Muslim cause. It was because Muslims were marginalised and discriminated against, the cause of which could be attributed to organisations like the RSS.

From 1950 onwards, a trend started wherein a riot results in polarisation and consolidation of Hindu votes in favour of the Jan Sangh and later the BJP. The inquiry commissions set up after every riot failed to point out that a particular organisation was behind it. Whenever the Sangh Parivar combine finds itself in a politically weak position, it does such things. See how the BJP, pushed to a corner in politics, is once again trying to revive the Hindutva debate through such terrorist acts. Hindutva forces have always used terrorism to their political advantage and not because they suffer socially and economically like the Muslims in India.