Resurrecting Godse: The Hindutva continuum

July 31, 2004

In Frontline, January 28, 1994, Arvind Rajagopal describes his encounter with an unrepentant Gopal Godse, co-conspirator and brother of Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram

THE publicity given to the Nathuram Godse memorial meeting, held in Bombay on November 17 (1993), has been extremely embarrassing to the Bharatiya Janata Party, which would like to disown all connections with Mahatma Gandhi’s killer. The meeting, unusually for this annual event, was widely reported, and saw several inflammatory speeches eulogising Godse and vilifying Gandhiji. On November 21, BJP president LK Advani issued a statement denying that his party had anything to do with the recent attempts to glorify Nathuram. "Nathuram Godse was a bitter critic of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh," he said. "His charge was that the RSS had made Hindus impotent. We have had nothing to do with Godse. The Congress is in the habit of reviving this allegation against us when it finds nothing else." (The Times of India, November 22, 1993).

In fact, Nathuram Godse was a life-long member of the RSS, attaining the position of baudhik karyavah (intellectual worker). His statement at the murder trial (originally published in 1977, in a volume entitled May It Please Your Honour) says, "I am one of those volunteers who joined the Sangha in its initial stage" (p. 142). He says he left it to do more directly political work in the Hindu Mahasabha (he does not say when). But his brother Gopal Godse suggests that he never really left the RSS (see interview), and that the statement at his trial was meant to alleviate the pressure on the Sangh, which was banned following Gandhiji’s murder. A leader of the Hindu Mahasabha, Shyama Prasad Mookherjee, went on to found the Jana Sangh, forerunner of the BJP.

Mere membership does not, of course, mean responsibility: the BJP does not necessarily have to answer for the actions of each person ever associated with the sangh parivar. But in this case, the chickens have come home to roost. Gopal Godse reacts to Advani’s statement angrily, and calls it the response of a coward. The politics of swayamsevaks like the Godses does not differ too greatly from that of the RSS and the BJP today. The BJP’s campaign slogan in the recent elections: Hum ne jo kaha, so kiye (What we said, we did), boasting of an event that consumed thousands of lives, denotes an implacability of resolve at least equal to Nathuram’s.

Meeting Gopal Godse himself is helpful in uncovering any affinities that might exist between his politics and that of the sangh parivar. He lives in the heart of old Pune, in Sadashiv Peth, in a new apartment building called Vinayak. His flat shares a landing with a bank, and, in that busy space, it is startling to see the names in Devanagari script in prominent red on the door: "Shri Gopal Godse. Sow. Sunita Godse."

He opens the door. Gandhiji’s murderer, you think, but there he is, a tall, slightly bent man in pyjamas and an old yellow sleeveless sweater. You scan his appearance for signs of what might make him different. But as in most scandals, one experiences the shock of banality on meeting its perpetrator. He looks, for all purposes, like any other Chitpavan Brahmin one sees in Sadashiv Peth – a frail old man, albeit with hooded eyes. He remains proud of his Chitpavan heritage. He smiles slightly and lowers his gaze – the half-conscious reaction, perhaps, to a lifetime of notoriety.

A large glass case dominates the drawing room decorations. It contains a small silver urn surrounded by photographs. In the urn are the ashes of Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte. The pictures are of them and of VD Savarkar. Just below the case is a porcelain plate with Savarkar’s portrait. His motto, "Hinduise all politics and militarise Hindudom", encircles the picture. Although, "honourably acquitted" of conspiring to kill Gandhi, Savarkar was nevertheless a close associate of Nathuram Godse. Gopal Godse’s daughter Asilata has married Ashok Savarkar, son of Savarkar’s younger brother Narayan. Both families are still close to the Hindu Mahasabha (the party Nathuram belonged to and Savarkar was president of for several years); Gopal Godse was until recently its general secretary.

He is eager to talk. "Greedy to spread his message," as he puts it – to justify his brother’s act, and to propagate the concept of Hindu Rashtra which, he feels, is the only answer to the country’s political problems. He is polite and courteous; though his views may be offensive in the extreme, he tries not to let his manners impede the reception of his ideas. It is hard for most people to conceive of Gandhiji’s killers as other than demented or demonic. This is obviously a matter very much on his own mind. He is constrained to refute the myth that Nathuram was a madman or a fanatic. "You may disagree with his views, but you must first consider his arguments," Gopal says.

He rejects all existing political parties except the Hindu Mahasabha. Every other party, he says, is guilty of pandering to the Muslims and consequently endangering the nation. Similar criticisms of the BJP, however, are made by several within the RSS itself. Godse’s views themselves have much in common with those of the BJP. India is nothing if not Hindu – this is the theme he tirelessly stresses, in one variation after another. Muslims do not have their original place of worship within this country, and it is essential, in his view (derived from Savarkar), that one’s place of birth is also one’s holy land. Muslims can be loyal only to Pakistan; every Muslim in India is a Pakistani agent, he says. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad slogan "Babar ki santaan – jao Pakistan ya kabristan (Children of Babar – go to Pakistan or else to the grave!)" dramatises this sentiment.

He has spent much time in the last few years studying texts on Hindu architecture. His object is to demonstrate that, while Hinduism provided the sanskriti, or culture, of India, Islamic influence was nothing but vikruti, destruction. The Taj Mahal was a Siva temple – this is proven by the fact that Siva temples have four doorways. The Taj, like many other Mughal structures of its kind, has four doorways. All those other Mughal structures, therefore, are also Siva temples, Godse argues. The Qutb Minar is a particular preoccupation of his – another Hindu structure usurped and defaced by invaders, and originally called the Dwija Sthamba, he maintains. He has even convinced an M. Phil student to do his thesis on the subject. The Muslims did not build a single structure in India, he asserts, astonishingly. All they did was to efface Hindu icons and ornamentation from existing structures, and often incompletely. He has memorised many Sanskrit and Arabic verses for dramatic effect, and urges visitors to test his memory. He recites the verses, which few visitors understand in any case, in support of his arguments. He cites Sitaram Goel, author of What Happened to the Hindu Temples? which gave the rhetorical foundation to the VHP’s long list of mosques to be demolished. Most of his ideas with respect to architecture and culture, however, derive from PN Oak, the ex-Indian National Army volunteer and "scholar" who claims all of world culture for Hinduism’s province. Rome was named after Ram, Christianity is actually Krishna-niti, and so on; an entire history is swiftly fabricated by manipulating the syllables of proper nouns.

What unites these ideas is an insistence on the unity of history, geography, culture, religion and nation, extending to every object or individual within the region. He follows fearlessly the implications of this monistic political theology. No displacements, no articulations of different but related parts are allowed; every artefact and every text forever reduplicates the immutable truth that is ‘Hindu’. Just what this truth is, is in itself less important than its endless proliferation under the same category. All his theorising is then ultimately a process of renaming. The etymology of "category" is categorein, to accuse; "Hindu" functions not as a neutral name but in sharp opposition to its "others", notably Muslims. For Godse, Hindus and Muslims can never be part of the same nation without disastrous results, Islam is an inherently fanatic, aggressive religion, and its adherents will always take advantage of the tolerance and catholicity of Hindus. The opposition to Muslims only serves to render Hindus more like their demonic "others", the Muslims, but that seems secondary to the imperative of survival.

When questioned on the need for aggression, he demonstrates a deft ability at sophistry. Carrying through the assumption of the unity of the individual, religion and nation, he declares the concept of aggression to be inapplicable in the case of action against Muslims. "I cannot be violent in my own country," he says, comparing Muslims to a "foreign attack" of virus.

Godse’s ideas are in a continuum with Hindu right-wing thought today. They draw from and reflect its characteristics. They have the trait of candour, of fleshing out the implications of what an Advani or a Vajpayee would be more likely to obscure with assurances of moderation and democratic process that are routinely violated. They have a great deal in common with, for instance, Uma Bharati, an "extremist" who was, however, always seen by the side of the moderate Advani after the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Muslims are the main target of her wrath: "Muslims are like Sudras – dirty, filthy people," she said in a conversation with this writer last year. "We must tyrannise them. If any one of them creates any kind of fuss, they should simply be killed. Even her reassurances were alarming: "I am not a Hitler," she said. "I am not going to build gas chambers."

Others, like journalist Arun Shourie, concentrate their attacks on the enemy within, namely pseudo-secularists. In a November 25 lecture in Pune under the auspices of the Lok Swaraj Andolan (to promote his new book A Secular Agenda), he reminded his audience that Abraham Lincoln had fought a civil war to keep his country from splitting into two. The war killed two per cent of the country’s population, but no one questioned the necessity of the war – it was redeemed by the nobility of its purpose. Two per cent of India’s population amounted to 18 million, but Shourie made it clear that India too should be prepared for such a war.

If you turn to MS Golwalkar, the RSS leader, the confirmation of a continuity with Godse’s views is even more emphatic: "When we say ‘This is the Hindu Nation,’ there are some who immediately come up with the question, ‘What about the Muslims and Christians…?’ They are born in this land, no doubt. But are they true to their salt? … Do they feel a duty to serve her? No!… They look to some foreign lands as their holy places… They have cut off their ancestral moorings of this land (sic) and mentally merged themselves with the aggressors. They still think that they have come here only to conquer and establish their kingdoms. So we see that it is not merely a case of change of faith, but a change even in national identity. What else is it, if not treason, to join the camp of the enemy leaving their mother-nation in the lurch?" (Bunch of Thoughts, pp. 166-167).

Every Muslim, for Golwalkar as for Godse, is a foreign agent with little to do but engage in anti-national activities, usually of a violent kind: "…The Muslims are busy hatching a dangerous plot, piling up arms and mobilising their men and probably biding their time to strike from within when Pakistan decides upon an armed conflict with our country… Not that our leaders do not know it. The secret intelligence reports reach them all right. But it seems they have in view only elections. Elections means vote catching, which means appeasing certain sections… And the Muslims are one such solid bloc. Therein lies the root of all this appeasement and consequent disastrous effects." (Bunch of Thoughts, pp. 239-240).

Compare this with Gopal Godse: "They make bomb blasts in Bombay in the name of the Koran. They will continue because the Koran is very clear. They want to Islamise their complete world. And the secularism is the most fertile ground for them to do it… Outside, what happens today, for Haj, a Muslim who is a smuggler goes there. And a Pakistani minister goes there. They join there together under the name of Islam. They dictate what is to be done in India… So all conspiracies go on in the name of Islam. And we allow it." (Godse, personal interview).

The true Hindu patriot has two enemies: the Muslim and the "secular" (nowadays pseudo-secular) government. The Muslim’s danger is well known and unambivalent, whereas that of the secularists is much less so. Parading itself as tolerant and pluralistic, the secular government is actually calculating and selfish, and will lead the nation to disaster. Only in Hindutva is such narrow selfishness overcome, as individual identity merges with the nation. In these ideas, Godse and the RSS "guru", Golwalkar, are unanimous.

It must be conceded that the BJP and the RSS are more sensitive to public opinion, to the practicality of actually getting something done, as opposed to landing up behind bars or in the gallows after having made a "statement" of some kind. Especially with the BJP, a party primarily seeking power, the ideas its leaders express are often serviceable means to an end rather than deep convictions. In this respect, the saying goes, BJP minus RSS equals Congress (a witticism that says as much about the Congress as about the BJP). It is the RSS which is the backbone of the Hindutva party and which makes the BJP different from other parties.

The habit of seeing dangerous conspiracies everywhere, of calling for rooting out a scourge that threatens the nation, is itself sign of a paranoid mentality that in the US, for instance, was called McCarthyism. Perhaps we should cease calling a paranoid and violent politics by its own preferred name of ‘Hindutva’, and thereby deny it any respectable cover. Advani’s disavowal of Nathuram Godse’s connection with the RSS flies in the face of the well-documented connections between them and the essential similarity of their ideas, as suggested by Nathuram’s published statements, as well as Gopal Godse’s own words (see interview). The Janata Dal slogan against the BJP in the recent elections summed it up: "Muh me Ram aur dil me Nathuram (Ram on their lips and Nathuram in their hearts)".

(Frontline, January 28, 1994).

Archived from Communalism Combat, August 2004, Anniversary Issue (11th), Year 11 No.100, Cover Story

Gopal Godse: ‘Nathuram did not leave the RSS’

July 31, 2004

One trait that seems common to rabid advocates of Hindutva – be it the demolishers of the Babri Masjid or the murderers of the Mahatma — is lack of remorse at what they do in furthering their cause, despite the sense of shock and anger their act sends across the nation, and beyond. Gopal Godse, younger brother of Nathuram Godse and one of those convicted in the Gandhi murder case, comes across as one such stereotype fundamentalist in this interview he gave Arvind Rajagopal, Frontline, January 1994. Excerpts:

Were you a part of the RSS?
All the brothers were in the RSS. Nathuram, Dattatreya, myself and Govind. You can say we grew up in the RSS rather than in our home. It was like a family to us.

Nathuram stayed in the RSS? He did not leave it?
Nathuram had become a baudhik karyavah (intellectual worker) in the RSS. He has said in his statement that he left the RSS. He said it because Golwalkar and the RSS were in a lot of trouble after the murder of Gandhi. But he did not leave the RSS.

Advani has recently said that Nathuram had nothing to do with the RSS.
I have countered him, saying it is cowardice to say that. You can say that RSS did not pass a resolution, saying that, ‘go and assassinate Gandhi.’ But you do not disown him (Nathuram). The Hindu Mahasabha did not disown him. In 1944 Nathuram started doing Hindu Mahasabha work when he had been a baudhik karyavah in the RSS.

When was the plan to kill Gandhi made?
Nathuram had a teleprinter, as editor of the Hindu Rashtra, a daily. On the teleprinter, he saw that Gandhi has decided to undertake a fast on the next day. (The fast was to demand that the amount of Rs. 55 crore not be withheld from Pakistan, against the Government’s decision to withhold payment until Pakistan’s aggression in Kashmir had been resolved. The Rs. 55 crore was part of the settling of post-Partition accounts between India and Pakistan). Immediately it must have struck Nathuram – now put a fullstop. So that was the turning point.

But there were many occasions on which people may have thought of killing Gandhi. In the refugee camps. That he is the person who brought us disaster, so why not kill him? It many times happens… that the clouds gather in the skies and we assume that in the next 15 minutes it will be a rainfall – and a heavy one. But the things are otherwise. Winds blow, don’t know from which side, and take away all the clouds… So what is required for that rainfall? That particular atmosphere, the particular degree of temperature to be connected with the particles of water in the cloud. And then they take the shape of water to drop on the earth… So there might have been conspiracies and conspiracies, and the wind might have come and blown them away. But when everything was just in order, this conspiracy proved to be fruitful. So far as the conspirators were concerned. Fruitful in the sense, materialised. Their aim was achieved.

What was your involvement with (VD) Savarkar?
No question – we were all taking him to be our guru – a political guru. We read all his writings. So if we say we have understood Savarkar to the fullest, it will be a folly on our part to ask him whether we should do it. A guru’s blessings are required for a weak-hearted person. Supposing the guru ties your hands (saying) – ‘You fools don’t do any such thing,’ and some third person of his own does it, can we say, ‘Oh, we would also have done the same thing, but the guru tied our hands?’ That would be shielding our own fear and defaming the guru.

What was Savarkar’s response to the murder?
The same as that of the general leaders. "I was aghast at the news of the communication which reached me here" and so on. That was his public response.

Many writers have argued that Gandhi was responsible for bringing Hindu culture into the national movement and thereby giving the movement a broader, more popular base. What do you think?
Had it really been the case, Gandhi should have helped our government to declare this a Hindu state. But he did not want it. And this story that Gandhi died saying He Ram is a fabrication of the Congress. He said no such thing. The story that Gandhi died saying He Ram is the first use of Ram by the Congress for political purposes.

One criticism some people have made of Gandhi is that his interpretation of Hinduism was "effeminate" and that he did not emphasise the "more manly, virile" aspect of Hinduism. What do you think about this criticism?
You see, this is very much an ambiguity. For instance, he sent telegrams to Roosevelt, Churchill, Hitler, all the warlords – to stop war. And when Pandit Nehru asked him, "Shall I send the army to defend the place?" he said yes, Why didn’t he send troops with charkhas? What is the sense then? You only teach others – you don’t adhere to your principles.

When Uma Bharati or Sadhvi Ritambara says that "we must be more aggressive," that Hindus have been cowards for too long, that ahimsa is actually weakening the Hindus…
I disagree. In my country I am never said to be aggressive. Let us take the case – I have been attacked by malaria. The doctor gives me some injections. The foreign attack of malaria has been diminished or wiped out. Should I say that I should be aggressive against malaria, that imposition of malaria is itself an aggression? So wiping it out can be a retaliation. In my country if I want to remove every germ of malaria from my body, I cannot be called aggressive.

In what ways do you find a continuity between the Hindu Mahasabha and the BJP?
All of them have to come to the way of a Hindu Rashtra. All of them. There is no alternative. There is going to be polarisation as Hindus and Muslims mingle. And the stage will come like Bosnia.

There will be a civil war?
It is bound to be. And these people only will bring it. Because of the appeasement and infiltration of the Muslims – for the sake of the votes. The BJP is not bold enough to play the Hindu card straightforwardly. They are not. Whatever you do, you cannot count on Muslim votes. One time you are doing this Ayodhya Ram Mandir. And then you are begging votes from the Muslims. These things will not do.

What do you think of the cultural background of the people involved in the social reform and nationalist movements? Many of them seem to have come from the Chitpavan Brahmin community.
This Brahminical class – Peshwas – right from the top, you will find the revolutionaries – the link is all Brahminical. Mangal Pandey, for instance, the first hero of the War of Independence, was a Brahmin. Then you go to Maharashtra, Vasudev Balwant Phadke, who led a revolt, and died after transportation to Aden in 1883. Then came the Chapekar brothers, who killed (Walter Charles) Rand (authoritarian chairman of the Plague Committee in Poona in 1897). Then Lokamanya Tilak was a Brahmin. Vishnu Shastri Chiplunkar, Ranade…

How do you explain that?
They were the thinkers and with a feeling of sacrifice to do something for the nation. So one who has integrity does it. Maharashtra was not directly affected by Partition and yet it was Maharashtra which had sympathy for the provinces that were cut and the atrocities that were going on… Why should a Maharashtrian go to a place 2,000 miles away? It is called national integrity. This tradition has moved with that spirit, that idea behind it. These papers – you can call it yellow journalism – they use the name Peshwai to defame, to put them in the class of Brahmins and Brahminism. That is the tradition because they want to appease the so-called weaker sections, or Bahujan Samaj as they call it.

You do not see any validity in those distinctions?
As I explained, at the time of Partition, no person was spared. All were slaughtered. Whoever comes as a target of the Muslim dagger is the proved definition of Hindu. So we come together in the graveyard. But while alive, we say, ‘No, I’m not a Hindu.’ The Muslim determines who is a Hindu. It so happens – to give a simile, one who gets some ancestral property without any trouble for himself just becomes spendthrift, goes in for some vices – because he does not know the value of it. Hindudom has come to these people like that.

Which people?
All these people who criticise Hindutva. And, therefore, they do not know the value of it.

(Frontline, January 28, 1994).

Archived from Communalism Combat, August 2004, Anniversary Issue (11th), Year 11 No.100, Cover Story 7

At last they got him, after five unsuccessful attempts

July 31, 2004

If Nagpur, in Maharashtra in western India is the physical seat of birth of the ideology that killed the Mahatma and Pune in the same state is the intellectual seat of the self-same Brahminical tradition, Maharashtra is also the state that has through its historians, investigated in-depth into five failed attempts on the Mahatma’s life before the final and tragically successful one

First Attempt: June 1934
Bomb thrown at Pune
During the Harijan Yatra in 1934, the Mahatma visited Pune. On June 25, he was to deliver a speech at the corporation auditorium. The Mahatma and Kasturba were travelling in a motorcade consisting of two similar cars. At one place en route, the car in which the Gandhis were travelling was detained at a railway level crossing.

The first car arrived at the auditorium and the welcoming committee assumed that the Gandhis had arrived and stepped forward to welcome them; just then a bomb was thrown at the car, which exploded, grievously injuring the chief officer of the municipal corporation, two policemen and seven others. The bomb was reportedly hurled by anti-Gandhi Hindu extremists as mentioned by Mahatma’s secretary Pyarelal in his book Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase and by his biographer BG Tendulkar. Pyarelal has written that "This time their attempt was very well planned and executed to perfection…" implying that the attempts before June 25, 1934 failed due to lack of planning and co-ordination. And also that the murderers were getting better with each attempt.

Pyarelal has said, "These people kept photographs of Gandhi, Nehru and other Congress leaders in their shoes. They were trained to shoot by using Gandhiji’s photograph as a target, these were the same people who later murdered the Mahatma while he was striving to bring peace to a riot ravaged Delhi, in 1948."

After the attack, speaking at the function to felicitate him, the Mahatma said, "It is sad that this happened while I am working for the uplift of the Harijans. I have no desire for martyrdom as yet, but if it is to happen, I am prepared to face it. It is easy to kill me. But in trying to kill me why are they inconsiderate to the innocents who are likely to be killed or injured along with me? My wife and three young girls who are like daughters to me were travelling in the car with me. How have they angered you?"

The attacker escaped and there is no record of investigations or arrests. This was the first documented attempt in India on the life of the Mahatma. Many historians have alleged that this was the work of the Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte gang.

Second Attempt: July 1944
Nathuram Attacks the Mahatma, Panchgani
After his release from the Aga Khan Palace imprisonment in May 1944, Mahatma Gandhi contracted malaria and was advised rest by his physician. Gandhi retired to Panchgani, a mountain resort near Pune famous for its pure air and Parsi boarding schools. He stayed at the Dilkhush Bungalow in Panchgani. A group of 18-20 men reached Panchgani by a chartered bus from Pune and held a day-long protest against the Mahatma and shouted anti-Gandhi slogans. When the Mahatma was told about this he invited the leader of this group, Nathuram Vinayak Godse, for a discussion. Nathuram rejected the invitation and continued with the demonstration.

During the prayer meeting that evening, Nathuram Godse, dressed in a Nehru shirt, pyjama (loose Indian pants) and jacket, rushed towards the Mahatma. He was brandishing a dagger in his hand and shouting anti-Gandhi slogans. Nathuram was overpowered by Manishankar Purohit, proprietor of the Surti Lodge of Pune and D. Bhillare Guruji of Satara, who later became a Congress legislator from Mahabaleshwar. Both swore under oath about the veracity of this attack while deposing before the Kapoor Commission, which was set up to investigate the conspiracy angle behind the murder of the Mahatma. The other youth accompanying Godse ran away. This led to a panic in the prayer meeting but Gandhiji remained calm. He asked Godse to spend eight days with him so that he could understand Godse’s point of view. Godse rejected this invitation and was allowed to go by a magnanimous Mahatma.

Before leaving Pune, Godse had boasted to his journalist friends that some important news concerning Gandhi would soon reach them from Panchgani and it did. Joglekar, a reporter with a Marathi newspaper Agrani, published and edited by Nathuram Godse from Pune, corroborated this fact. A. David, the then editor of Pune Herald swore on oath while deposing before the Kapoor Commission that an attempt to murder the Mahatma was carried out by Nathuram Godse at Panchgani that day. The Kapoor Commission rejected this theory because some close associates of the Mahatma who were not present at the said prayer meeting could not corroborate the facts.

The police record shows that there were demonstrations against Gandhiji and that Nathuram Godse was held for trying to rush at the Mahatma shouting anti-Gandhi slogans but does not state whether he was armed. Dr. Sushila Nayyar, the Mahatma’s physician and close associate, testified that one of the protestors was found to be carrying a dagger but could not confirm whether it was Nathuram Godse. But the two men who overpowered Nathuram and later went on to hold very responsible posts were clear in their recollection of the incident at separate instances that they caught and disarmed Nathuram Godse.

The fact also remains undisputed that Nathuram Godse was part of an armed gang of protestors and it is very likely that the gang consisted of Narayan Apte, Karkare and Gopal Godse, the eventual killers of the Mahatma and fanatical followers of Savarkar, a leader of the right-wing Hindu extremists.

Third Attempt: September 1944
Threat to life at Sevagram, Godse involved
Mahatma Gandhi was preparing to hold talks with Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League. The Hindu Mahasabha was opposed to this, Nathuram Godse and LG Thatte openly campaigned against this and threatened to stop Gandhiji from meeting Jinnah by any means publicly. The Mahatma began his talks with Jinnah in Bombay on September 9, 1944; the talks lasted for 18 days.

The Mahatma travelled from Sevagram to Bombay for the talks. Godse and Thatte led a gang of men to stop Gandhi and were joined by some from Bengal. This gang picketed the Ashram to ensure that the Mahatma did not leave for Bombay. Dr. Sushila Nayyar testified at the Kapoor Commission inquiry that Nathuram Godse was stopped and detained by ashramites as he tried to reach the Mahatma and a dagger was found on his person. The police report of the assault also placed before the Kapoor Commission says that a jambiya (Indian curved half sword akin to the machete) was confiscated from one of the group consisting of Nathuram Godse, LG Thatte and other unnamed protestors who were arrested while trying to prevent the Mahatma leaving the Ashram. The police report says it wasn’t certain that they meant to harm the Mahatma but they were armed and determined to stop the Mahatma from meeting Jinnah at any cost as evident from their recorded statements.

Pyarelal, in his letter to Tej Bahadur Sapru says, "The leader of the protestors at Sevagram, an extremely bitter and fanatical die-hard, was ready to go to any lengths to stop Gandhiji from meeting Jinnah. The arresting officer who recovered the dagger from the leader of the band asked him mockingly, ‘whether he wanted to become a martyr?’ The leader replied that when Gandhi was eventually killed one of them would become a martyr. The officer again asked him why they were wasting their time and lives in the fight between their leaders and Gandhi. If Gandhi was to be stopped, why didn’t they leave it to Savarkar, their leader? The leader of the gang said, ‘If Savarkar talks with Gandhi it will be an honour for Gandhi. The time will not come for Savarkar to talk to Gandhi. Gandhi will be dealt with by our lowly orderly’." Pyarelal said that the person indicated by the group leader was Nathuram Godse.

No clarification is given about the others in the gang. This was the third time that members of the Hindu Mahasabha from Pune were involved in an untoward incident; Godse was actually named in two of them and in all likelihood the other unnamed persons were the same as the gang which finally succeeded in murdering the Mahatma.

The Fourth Attempt: June 1946

Train sabotaged en route to Pune

On the way to Pune, the train carrying Gandhiji known as the Gandhi Special met with an accident between the Nerul and Karjat stations. The engine driver in his report claimed that boulders were placed on the tracks of the train with the intention to derail it. The train crashed into the boulders but a tragedy was averted because the engine driver was alert and slowed down the train before impact. The Pune police claimed that the boulders were placed to stop goods trains by looters. There were no goods trains on that section before or after the train known as the Gandhi Special carrying Gandhiji and his entourage. The police had not disclaimed sabotage and since the Gandhi Special was the only train on that route at that time it must have been the target.

On June 30, speaking at a prayer meeting in Pune, the Mahatma said, "By the grace of God I have escaped from the jaws of death seven times. I have not hurt anybody nor do I consider anybody to be my enemy, I can’t understand why there are so many attempts on my life. Yesterday’s attempt on my life has failed. I will not die just yet, I aim to live till the age of 125." "But who will allow you to live that long?" was the retort from Nathuram Vinayak Godse, the man who eventually murdered the Mahatma.

The Fifth Attempt: January 20, 1948
Madanlal explodes a bomb, New Delhi
Today the Mahatma was late in starting his prayer meeting, the public address system had failed and thus the delay. The Mahatma had just a couple of days previously ended his fast, after he had been assured about the establishment of peace between the communities in Delhi. It was the period after Partition and also in the immediate aftermath of the cabinet’s decision to give Rs. 55 million to Pakistan.

Madanlal Kashmirilal Pahwa, Nathuram Vinayak Godse, Narayan Dattatreya Apte, Vishnu Ramkrishna Karkare, Digambar Ramchandra Badge, Gopal Godse and Shankar Kistaiya congregated at the Birla Bhavan. Madanlal Pahwa and Vishnu Karkare were at the Birla Bhavan and the others reached the prayer meeting via the rear entrance by a taxi driven by Surjeet Singh who was the 14th witness for the prosecution in the Mahatma Gandhi murder trial. Nathuram Godse was the last to reach Birla Bhavan. Madanlal Pahwa tried to bribe Choturam, a driver staying in the Birla Bhavan servant’s quarters, to allow him to approach the podium where the Mahatma was sitting, ostensibly to take a photograph of him. When questioned by Choturam about the need for photographing the Mahatma from the back and also when queried about the lack of a camera, Madanlal walked off as if he was returning to the taxi, but instead went up to the wall behind the podium and placed the gun cotton slab on the wall and ignited the fuse. The others saw that the plan was not succeeding so they rushed towards the waiting taxi and left, leaving Madanlal Pahwa, Karkare, Badge and Shankar Kistaiya behind. The bomb went off, failing to create a panic.

Madanlal was identified by Sulochana Devi, the 15th witness in the Mahatma Gandhi murder trial, who lived less than 100 metres from Birla Bhavan and who had come looking for her three-year-old son Mahendra, who used to play with other children in the servant’s quarters of Birla Bhavan. Sulochana Devi had seen the gang of eventual murderers coming to Birla Bhavan, Madanlal talking to Choturam, placing the bomb on the wall, the others rushing towards the car, Madanlal lighting the fuse, the bomb exploding and the taxi speeding off without Madanlal. She identified Madanlal as the bomber to Fulsingh, watchman at Birla Bhavan, an armed policeman and a soldier, who were the first to reach the spot where the bomb went off and who grabbed a fleeing Madanlal. On frisking Madanlal at the police camp nearby it was discovered that he was also carrying a hand grenade on his person. The last unsuccessful attempt on the Mahatma’s life thus ended in a fiasco.

On interrogation, Madanlal admitted that he was part of a seven-member gang who wanted to kill the Mahatma. The plan was that Madanlal would explode the bomb as close to the podium as possible and Badge or Kistaiya would shoot the Mahatma in the ensuing panic and stampede and use the chaotic situation to effect an escape. Karkare was to compound the chaos by hurling hand grenades. Badge panicked at the last minute because he saw through the ruse of Godse and Apte. It would have been impossible for him to escape. Without letting the others know, Badge left his revolver in the taxi and told his servant Kistaiya to do the same and also forbade him from doing anything unless specifically ordered by Badge. But the late start to the prayer meeting, Choturam’s cross-questioning of Madanlal and Madanlal’s inability to explode the bomb near the podium panicked the gang of murderers. They abandoned the murder plan, and Madanlal Pahwa. Karkare made good his escape, Badge and Kistaiya merged with the crowd and made their way to the Hindu Mahasabha office where he had a showdown with Godse and Apte and was told to go.

That night Madanlal took the police to the two hotels where the gang members were staying, Nathuram Godse and Apte at the Marina Hotel and the rest of them at the Sharief Hotel. His panicked co-conspirators had flown the coop. The police confiscated a letter and some laundry from the hotel, which corroborated the involvement of people from Maharashtra. Although there were so many previous attempts on the Mahatma’s life by the gang led by Nathuram and Apte and although the laundry confiscated from Hotel Marina bore the initials NVG (Nathuram Vinayak Godse), the police did not act on the evidence.

The gang members returned to their hometowns. Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte, after returning to Pune via Bombay, continued with their intention to kill the Mahatma. They embarked for Gwalior where they purchased a Beretta automatic and eleven bullets with the help of Dr. Parchure and Dandavate. They reached Delhi on January 29 and stayed at the retiring rooms at the station.

The Final Attempt: January 30, 1948
The Mahatma is no more
At 5.10 p.m., Nathuram Vinayak Godse, the murderer, got close to the Mahatma and shot him thrice in the chest from point-blank range and succeeded in finally snuffing out the life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the Mahatma.

The Hindu Mahasabha and its followers celebrated the murder of the Mahatma by distributing sweets. More than one million people congregated in Delhi on January 31, 1948 to bid a tearful adieu to the Father of the Nation. A sea of humanity followed the funeral cortege of the Mahatma from Birla Bhavan to Raj Ghat.

(From mahatma.org; information based on the books Mahatmey Chi Akher (The End of the Mahatma) by Jagan Phadnis, Gandhi-Hatyakand (The Story of Gandhi Murder), Nathuramayana by YD Phadke, English translation by Mukta Rajadhyaksha for Communalism Combat, October 2000).

Archived from Communalism Combat, August 2004, Anniversary Issue (11th), Year 11 No.100, Cover Story 8

The RSS and the Freedom Struggle

July 31, 2004

— The RSS kept totally aloof from the many anti-British movements of the 1940s: the individual Civil Disobedience of 1940-41, the Quit India struggle of 1942, Azad Hind Fauj, the 1945-46 upsurges around the INA trials and the Bombay Naval Mutiny.

— Yet the early and mid-1940s remained a period of rapid growth, with the number of shakhas doubling between 1940-42, and with 10,000 swayamsevaks being trained by 1945 in Officers Training Camps (set up in nearly every province).

— Similar to the Muslim League and the other Hindu communal groups, the RSS, too, benefited from the fact that it was never a target of British wartime repression.

— But much more important was the way in which Hindu and Muslim communalism were feeding into each other, with the drive for Pakistan making more and more Hindus feel that the RSS was their best and perhaps only defender. Such sentiments spread particularly among the Hindus of the Muslim-majority province of Punjab as well UP, where there was a highly articulate and aggressive Muslim leadership. A section of the Congress, too, had come to consider the RSS a useful bulwark against the increasing intransigence of the Muslim League.

— In Bengal, the other major Muslim-majority area, in contrast, the already powerful progressive and Left traditions were able to block large scale RSS inroads. Taking the country as a whole, however, recruits were trooping into shakhas, and money, too, was pouring in.

— It was a time of prosperity for trading groups, with ample opportunities for war contracts and profiteering, and traders have always provided the major social bases for the RSS. Significant inroads seemed to have been made during these years into government services also.

— The communal holocaust of 1946-47, ushered in by Jinnah’s call for direct action and the Great Calcutta Killings of August 1946, was regarded as its ‘finest hour’ by the RSS.

— Through active participation in riots, relief work in Hindu refugee camps and virulent propaganda, the RSS contributed vastly to the development of a massive fear psychosis among large sections of Hindus about the ‘foreign’ Muslims.

— Even a section of the Congress high command, particularly Vallabhbhai Patel, had become fairly sympathetic towards the RSS, although Nehru remained bitterly hostile. In the interviews they gave us, GL Sudarshan kept discreetly quiet about these bloodstained years; BL Sharma, however, boasted openly about his active role in the Punjab riots. (Authors of Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags).

— The onward march of the RSS was abruptly halted by the impact of the murder of Mahatma Gandhi.

(Source: Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags, Orient Longman, 1993).

Archived from Communalism Combat, August 2004, Anniversary Issue (11th), Year 11 No.100, Cover Story 10

‘Teach them a lesson’

July 31, 2004

For the sangh parivar, the Pakistan government’s treacherous misadventure in Kargil in 1999 soon after AB Vajpayee’s Lahore initiative was one more episode in the ‘1,000–year–old’ clash between ‘Muslim barbarians’ and ‘peace–loving Hindus’

This has been going on for centuries now. Bharat’s northern borders have always been assaulted by Islamic invaders. The cause for the long chain of evil deeds from Mohammed Bin Qasim to Nawaz Sharif were never that we had occupied their land, attacked or looted them. The only reason for the animosity has always been that Bharat has always been a peace–loving land, wealthy and loyal to its faith. This was intolerable for them. To loot our land of its wealth, to change our faith and to shatter our peace — that is why these attacks have always taken place.

These people have always come under the garb of looters and barbarians. From the story of Raja Dahit to squadron leader Ajay Ahuja and lieutenant Saurabh Kaliya, we can see the imprint of the same barbarism and inhumanity of these invaders. These invaders have always been ruthless and devious. They have always attacked us stealthily in the dark of the night.

They have always fought in the name of religion and given their deception the name of jehad. Even when they kill animals, they bleed it to a tortuous death and then call it halaal. Forget granting life to men, how can one expect from them even a dignified death? This is their way, this is their nature. And they never change their ways except when the hands of brave soldiers go for their jugular.

This inhuman lot can never forget 1971! Like bleating goats, 94,000 jehadis had then stood, their heads bowed in abject surrender before our brave soldiers. Had it been some Islamic country in our place, it would have beheaded the entire lot and dispatched 94,000 skulls to Islamabad. But true to our own civilised values and culture, we even fed milk to these 94,000 snakes. Fed on our generosity, they all returned, well fattened, to their homeland.

Look at them now! So "brave" are they that when they encountered six of our soldiers on patrol, they would not fight them like men would. Instead, they were encircled, disarmed and then, crossing all limits of bestiality, tortured in such inhuman ways that even hearing or reading about it is intolerable. The blood of every Indian is on the boil today. From Ladakh to Kanyakumari, the entire nation is raising only one demand — Revenge! Revenge!

The time has come again for India’s Bheema to tear open the breasts of these infidels and purify the soiled tresses of Draupadi with blood. Pakistan will not listen just like that. We have a centuries’ old debt to settle with this mindset. It is the same demon that has been throwing a challenge at Durga since the time of Mohammed Bin Qasim. Arise, Atal Behari! Who knows if fate has destined you to be the author of the final chapter of this long story.

For what have we manufactured bombs? For what have we exercised the nuclear option? The courageous give their enemy time to retreat. In the beginning, they even forgive. But if the perverse and incorrigible are bent on inviting his own death, the brave never disappoint them.

Just recall, with what crookedness and violence Pakistan has responded to our magnanimity since 1947. Enough is enough. To tolerate any more would be sheer cowardice. To teach them a lesson is the only dharma now.

(Excerpted from an English translation of the editorial in the June 20, 1999 issue of the RSS mouthpiece Panchjanya).

______________________

The over 1,000 years of our struggle with barbarians and religious bigots and their vandalism is written with the blood of martyrs who were subjected to the most inhuman torture unparalleled in history. The terrorist state of Pakistan is the continuation of that gory past.

(Seshadri Chari, editor, in a signed article in Organiser, June 20, 1999)

______________________

The barbaric and cruel behaviour of Pakistan with Indian soldiers is a good indicator of their mindset and their ‘civilisation’. The same mindset was at work during the time of Guru Tegh Bahadur, his colleagues, too, were martyred in the same cruel way. Killing a person in the normal fashion is alien to their culture. By behaving with Indian soldiers today with the same bestiality as in case of Bhai Matidas, Bhai Satidas, Bhai Dayala etc., Pakistan clearly shows that even today its outlook is anything but humanitarian.

(Rajendra Singh, RSS sarsanghchalak (chief), in Organiser, June 20, 1999).

Archived from Communalism Combat, August 2004, Anniversary Issue (11th), Year 11 No.100, Cover Story 11

The Sangh’s bloody trail

July 31, 2004

Hindu communal organisations have always maintained that it is always the Muslims who start riots, forcing "justifiable retaliatory acts by Hindus in self-defence". But virtually every single officially appointed judicial commission to probe into the cause of riots in different parts of the country has found the RSS and other majoritarian communal outfits guilty. We reproduce some excerpts below:

Report of the Justice Jagmohan Reddy Commission of Inquiry investigating the Ahmedabad riots of 1969:

"There was not only a failure of intelligence and culpable failure to suppress the outbreak of violence but (also) deliberate attempts to suppress the truth from the Commission, especially the active participation in the riots of some RSS and Jana Sangh leaders."

Report of the Justice DP Madon Commission of Inquiry into the Communal Disturbances at Bhiwandi, Jalgaon and Mahad of 1970:

"If the events surrounding the Shiv Jayanti procession in Bhiwandi, Jalgaon and Mahad are looked at more closely, the start of the riot was not with the simplistic reaction of the procession being attacked by a group of Muslims. Tension did not begin with the Shiv Jayanti celebrations of that year but began in 1964, the first year that the practice of publicly celebrating Shiv Jayanti had been started and had seen an annual build up in tensions since.

This practice did not only introduce the poison of communalism in Bhiwandi indirectly, but through the years, the organisers did not make any attempt to disguise the real motive and anti-Muslim slogans and provocative floats were part of the celebrations from the very beginning, the first year. In spite of police opposition, the organisers made every attempt to incite rioting by insisting on taking their procession through Muslim-dominated areas, throwing gulal (coloured powder) at mosques and shouting incendiary slogans like "we will grind any one who opposes us into dust".

In his report to his superiors, the SP, Thane district has stated, "I found that a section of Hindu elements, particularly the RSS and some PSP men, were bent upon creating mischief. Their idea in accompanying the procession was not so much to pay respects to the Great Shivaji but to establish their right and, if possible, to provoke and humiliate Muslims."

It was in 1970 that for the first time propaganda was carried on in villages exhorting villagers to participate in the Shiv Jayanti procession in Bhiwandi and this was the first year when villagers were mobilised to participate by the Rashtriya Utsav Mandal, an offshoot of the Jana Sangh, and the SS and the object of these organisations in bringing villagers to participate was ‘to intimidate the Muslims’, the participants carried lathis to which bhagwa (saffron) flags were tied, banners of the three organisations, the Jana Sangh, the RUM and the SS, were displayed by processionists.

The villagers shouted provocative, anti-Muslim slogans, behaved aggressively, threw gulal on the Moti Masjid at Bangad Galli and Hyderi mosque situated at the junction of Dargah Road and Sutar Galli aided by a passive police."

Report of the Commission of Inquiry, Tellicherry Disturbance, 1971, Justice Joseph Vithyathil:

"In Tellicherry the Hindus and Muslims were living as brothers for centuries. The ‘Mopla riots’ did not affect the cordial relationship that existed between the two communities in Tellicherry. It was only after the RSS and the Jana Sangh set up their units and began activities in Tellicherry that there came a change in the situation. Their anti-Muslim propaganda, its reaction on the Muslims who rallied round their communal organisation, the Muslim League, which championed their cause, and the communal tension that followed prepared the background for their disturbances.

According to the RSS, until the Muslims give up their separatist attitude and join the mainstream of Indian National Life there will be no communal harmony in this country. Guruji Golwalkar is said to have a very simple remedy for communal riots in India. He said: "Let Muslims look upon Rama as their hero and the communal problems will be over" (Organiser, June 20, 1971). That is what the rioters who attacked the house of Kunhammad asked him to do. "If you want to save your life you should go round the house three times repeating the words ‘Rama, Rama’. Kunhammad did that. But you cannot expect the 70 million Muslims of India to do that as a condition for maintaining communal harmony in the country. This attitude of the RSS can only help to compel the Muslims to take shelter under their own communal organisation."

Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Communal Disturbances at Jamshedpur, April 1979:

"The evidence of government officials shows that after the communal riots of 1964, the Ram Navmi Festival, like other festivals, became the occasion for greater vigilance and alertness for the law and order authorities; simultaneously, the number of Ram Navmi processions kept on increasing till it had risen to 79 in the year 1979.

In the run up to the communal build up before the elections prepared by the Intelligence Branch, Jamshedpur (dated March 23, 1979) there was special mention made to the Divisional Conference of the RSS scheduled to be held on March 31 and April 1 in which, among others, the RSS sarsanghchalak was to participate.

The dispute on the route of the procession (the administration after consideration had denied permission for the route to pass through Muslim areas) became sharp and agitated reactions from a group of persons calling themselves the "Sanyukt Bajrang Bali Akhara Samiti" who systematically distributed pamphlets to heighten communal feelings and had organisational links with the RSS. A call for the defiance of the authority and the administration when it refused permission for one of the routes led to a violent mob protesting and raising anti-Muslim slogans and thereafter an incendiary leaflet doing the rounds of Jamshedpur (issued on behalf of the "Sri Ramnavmi Kendriya Akhara Samity") that is nothing short of an attempt to rouse the sentiments of Hindus to a high pitch and to distort events and show some actions as attacks on Hindus that appear to be part of a design.

A survey had already established that all policemen, havaldars, home guards etc. were at heart ready to give support to them (Hindu communalist organisations). This not only shows the extent of the planning that had been going on, but also how the people in general were being assured of protection from punitive action by the police due to the alleged attitude of its subordinate formations."

Justice Venugopal Commission of Inquiry into the Kanyakumari riots of 1982 (prolonged confrontation between Hindus and Christians):

"The RSS adopts a militant and aggressive attitude and sets itself up as the champion of what it considers to be the rights of Hindus against minorities. It has taken upon itself to teach the minorities their place and if they are not willing to learn their place to teach them a lesson. The RSS methodology for provoking communal violence is:

a) rousing communal feelings in the majority community by the propaganda that Christians are not loyal citizens of this country;

b) deepening the fear in the majority community by clever propaganda that the population of the minorities is increasing and that of the Hindus is decreasing;

c) infiltrating into the administration and inducing the members of the civil and police services by adopting and developing communal attitudes;

d) training young people of the majority community in the use of weapons like daggers, swords and spears;

e) spreading rumours to widen the communal cleavage and deepen communal feelings by giving a communal colour to any trivial incident."

(‘Who is to blame?’, Communalism Combat, March 1998).

Archived from Communalism Combat, August 2004, Anniversary Issue (11th), Year 11 No.100, Cover Story 12

Hubli hungama, Hindutva’s hypocrisy

July 31, 2004

At a press conference in New Delhi in August 1994, noted playwright Girish Karnad issued the following statement . As the sangh parivar’s propaganda machinery relies heavily on public memory being short, we are reproducing the statement in its entirety to put the current campaign of the sangh parivar on the Hubli controversy in its proper perspective

Citizens for Democracy, Karnataka (CFD-K) has just published a report titled The Controversy regarding the Raising of National Flag in the Idgah Maidan. The report is written by Dr. Sanjeev Kulkarni but is a collaborative effort of citizens from all walks of life, such as SR Hiremath, a scientist-turned-social worker, John Bellary, a teacher, Basava Prabhu Hoskeri, a lawyer, RA Nagamule, an engineer, Dr. AM Jamadar, a doctor, and several others. It is written in Kannada and an English version is being prepared.

I, as a citizen of Hubli-Dharwad, am keen that their findings be placed before the national press in view of the extensive coverage that the event has received this year as well as the escalating violence that has been accompanying it. Responsibility for phrasing of the following text as well as its tone of rendering and remarks within brackets are entirely mine.

There are two separate facets to the Idgah Maidan controversy. The first relates to the question of ownership of the Maidan, the second to the issue of hoisting the national flag in the Maidan. The two issues have to be understood separately if the whole sorry episode is to make sense.

The issue of ownership

The Idgah Maidan is an open plot of land of about 991 square yards (CTS No. 174 in Ward No. 3) near the main bus-stop in Hubli. The Muslim community of Hubli claims that the Idgah Maidan has been in their exclusive possession for over 200 years and that the prayer walls there are at least that old, a claim that has been contested by other parties.

The basic facts of the case are as follows:

The Hubli municipality was formed in 1920. On August 5, 1921, the municipality passed a resolution granting the Maidan on a 999-year lease to the Anjuman-e-Islam organisation for an annual rent of rupee one. (Among other provisions, it permitted the Anjuman to build a compound wall around the property, which in fact was never built). This grant was approved by the government of Bombay on January 11, 1922 and the lease deed was signed in May 1930.

In 1960, when the municipal borough was under suppression, the Anjuman sought the permission of the government administrator to build a building on the Maidan, the ground floor of which would be used for commercial purposes and the upper floors for an educational institution. This plan was approved by the divisional commissioner in Belgaum as well as by the then Mysore government. This is when the trouble started. The government’s approval of the plan proposed by the Anjuman was challenged by some citizens in a court of law.

I shall skip the tedious details. The decision delivered by the court of the munsiff in Hubli on December 7, 1972 went against the Anjuman-e-Islam. On appeal, the additional civil judge upheld a part of the verdict of the munsiff court. On further appeal, the high court of Karnataka, on June 8, 1992, upheld the judgement of the additional civil judge. The judgement of the high court may be summarised as follows:

1. The Idgah Maidan is not the exclusive property of the Anjuman-e-Islam but belongs to what was by then the Hubli-Dharwad municipal corporation.

2. The Maidan was licensed to the Anjuman for purely religious purposes, that is, to offer prayers on two days in the year, Bakri-Id and Ramzan.

3. The Anjuman may not use the property for any educational or commercial purpose.

4. The permanent structures already erected by the Anjuman may be demolished within 45 days.

5. The public (inclusive of the Muslim community) has no customary rights of the user on the property.
Following this judgement, the Anjuman made a special leave petition to the Supreme Court to appeal against the above judgement and sought a stay order against the demolition of the permanent structures. The stay was granted. Members of the sangh parivar also appealed to the Supreme Court seeking restoration of customary rights to the public. After condonation of delay, the petition was allowed by the Supreme Court on April 19, 1993. (This part is generally not known.)

What the Anjuman underlines is that from the beginning (in 1920), it has sought and received sanction from the requisite legal authority for every one of its actions. It has been scrupulous in remaining on the right side of the law.

The national flag issue

According to the statement made by the Rashtradhvaja Gowrava Samrakshana Samiti (The Committee for Protecting the Honour of the National Flag) to the Citizens for Democracy, Karnataka, when Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi declared that he would hoist the national flag in the Lal Chowk of Srinagar on January 26, 1992 as a part of the ‘Save Kashmir’ campaign, it was decided to hold similar functions all over India. In Hubli, neither the Nehru Maidan nor the Murusavira Matha Maidan was available. So the Samiti decided to hoist the flag in the ‘Chennamma Maidan’ of the corporation (the sangh parivar’s special name for the Idgah Maidan).

When they approached the police, the latter tried to dissuade them. But a group of about 50 volunteers decided to go ahead with their plan regardless. According to them, as they were raising the flag, the police rushed in and pulled the flag down in an insulting manner, which wounded their patriotic sentiments. Since in independent India a citizen has the right to fly the national flag in any place, they vowed to persist until they had succeeded in hoisting the flag in the Maidan. They wrote to all the political parties seeking support but only the BJP responded.

Two main points need to be noted here: The incident took place on January 26, 1992, when the case was still being considered by the high court and was therefore sub judice. The RGSS could not have been unaware of this fact. Secondly, as is clear from the above description, the dispute is between the RGSS and the police and therefore does not involve the Anjuman-e-Islam.

Since then, on every August 15 and January 25, the RGSS in association with the RSS and the BJP has attempted to hoist the flag in the Idgah Maidan. This year the BJP even gave their full support and treated it as an event of national importance by sending its leaders, like Uma Bharati, Sikander Bakht, and Abbas Ali Bohra, to participate in the event.
How lawful are these subsequent attempts? Apart from the fact that the high court has quite explicitly not conceded the customary rights of the user to the public and this has been challenged in the Supreme Court by the sangh parivar itself,

1. Before every August 15 and January 26, a certain Devendra Naik has been approaching the munsiff court in Hubli for permission to hoist the flag and has been refused permission.

2. In August 1993, several members of the RGSS approached the high court of Karnataka for permission to fly the flag and the high court left the decision to the government.

Neither the RGSS, nor the RSS nor the BJP is party to any of the lawsuits, preferring to fight them through individuals. (This enables them to claim victory when the verdict is in their favour and pretend ignorance when it is not.)
The Anjuman-e-Islam has refused to comment (or act) on the flag issue and has remained absolutely silent. The controversy thus involves only the RGSS and the state government and not the Anjuman. (I must point out here that the impression created in the press that the Muslim community is refusing to raise the flag in the Idgah Maidan because it does not want the national flag to fly on their prayer ground is totally baseless.

It is another instance of the deliberate misinformation that surrounds the issue. No question of flying the national flag on the Idgah Maidan had arisen until the problem was manufactured by the sangh parivar. The Muslim community sees no reasons to be pressurised into doing so now by parties obviously out to embarrass or harass them. The communal intent of the sangh parivar’s endeavour is clear in their insistence on calling the place ‘Chennamma Maidan’ after the statue of Queen Kittur Chennamma installed recently in the traffic circle nearby rather than by its official name, ‘Idgah Maidan’ – although the latter is used, by them, inevitably, in all court documents.)

The future

The absolute refusal of the Muslim community to comment on the flag issue has foiled the sangh parivar’s hopes of communalising the issue. That the debate is now only between the sangh parivar and the state government is not of any obvious advantage to the former. So they have now started saying that they do not care who flies the flag as long as it is flown.

(What political advantage the parivar will try to gain from the unfortunate police firing on August 15, 1994, in which six bystanders were killed, remains to be seen. It is significant that the ABVP leaders were demanding that the six bodies be cremated on the Idgah Maidan itself.)

The Karnataka state elections are scheduled for November 1994. The BJP is perfectly aware that if elected to power its government will not be able to fly the flag in the Idgah Maidan without being guilty of contempt of court. They have therefore been declaring that the attempt on August 15, 1994 would be the last such attempt.

The solution

The RGSS and its allies have always claimed that their wish is to see the national flag fly on the Idgah Maidan properly just once. On the morning of August 15, 1994, the sangh parivar claimed that they had succeeded in hoisting the flag on the Idgah Maidan, unseen by the police. Whatever the veracity of this claim, now that they have done so to their own satisfaction, it is to be hoped there will be no further repetition of this unfortunate event, which has turned the two national days into sheer nightmares for the citizens of Hubli-Dharwad.

Additional points

The Anjuman-e-Islam is an educational institution founded in 1905. It runs several schools, colleges and educational institutions. Only a third of its students are Muslim, the rest being mainly from the backward classes. It has a college named after Nehru. On every August 15 and January 26, the national flag is flown and the national anthem sung at all Anjuman institutions, which is more than can be said of the RSS!

Will the solution of the flag issue make life easier for the Muslims of Hubli-Dharwad? Since 1984, the Muslim community has stopped celebrating Mohurram as it invariably led to trouble. (In my childhood, Hindus also participated in the Mohurram celebration.) Several times in the past, and again this year, the massive procession on the day of the Id-e-Milad has been cancelled for fear of disturbances. Playing of music and the bursting of crackers at weddings have been stopped by the Muslim community.

The parivar’s next stop after the Idgah Maidan is the Dargah of a Sufi saint, Raja Bagh Sawar, which used to attract both Hindu and Muslim devotees. This Muslim shrine, which has traditionally had Hindu priests, has now been converted into a Hindu shrine. The saffron flag flies atop it. The Urs of the saint is now referred to as the Jatra of Changed Maharaja. When the Muslims registered a complaint with the police, they were asked to remain calm; the issue, they were told, would be sorted out by the authorities. Of course, nothing has been done so far. On the contrary, the converted shrine was quoted to bolster the case against the Anjuman in court documents.

The Muslim community allowed a highway to be built through its graveyard. But when, in order to protect its graves, they began to build a compound wall, a stay order was brought against the construction of the wall thus preventing them from enclosing their own exclusive property.
The flag-hoisting issue is only one example of the harassment and baiting to which the Muslim community in Karnataka has been continually subjected during the last two decades.

August 26, 1994.

Archived from Communalism Combat, August 2004, Anniversary Issue (11th), Year 11 No.100, Cover Story 13

Blood for blood: An extract from Tamas

July 31, 2004

A young man’s chilling initiation into the world of hate politics and violence. Extract from Tamas by Hindi writer Bhisham Sahni

Ranvir, the son of the president of the committee, followed Master Devbrat, the instructor of the gymnasium-cum-wrestling pit, the sound of Devbrat’s boots echoing in the cobbled lane. The fifteen-year-old Ranvir was bursting with excitement. Today he would undergo the test and if he made it, he would be taken into the fold.

No lane of the city ran straight. A lane would run straight for a few yards and would then be joined by another tortuous lane. The houses flanking the lanes almost seemed to topple over one another so packed together were they. The sound of Devbrat’s heavy boots was a familiar one in the lanes of the town.

Ranvir was still very young and his eyes had not lost their child-like curiosity. They even lacked that earnestness, so necessary when undergoing a supreme test. But in place of earnestness he had a sense of bravado, a blind determination to do or die at the behest of his mentor.

When Ranvir was very young, Master Devbrat would entertain him with stories of heroes of Indian history. There was an episode from Rana Pratap’s life, for instance, when the cat had stolen his food, leaving him famished and making him acutely aware of his total helplessness. Ranvir would have visions of Chetak, Rana Pratap’s favourite horse, as it went tramping over the hills overlooking the city. He would even see in his mind Shivaji watching a horde of approaching Muslims from the top of some hill. He also recalled the dramatic episode in Shivaji’s life when he had caught a Muslim ruler in a fatal embrace. Masterji had taught Ranvir the basic principles of knot tying and wall climbing. He had explained the characteristics of the ‘fire’ and the ‘rain’ producing arrows depicted in the ancient Hindu epics.

Ranvir was told by Masterji that the Vedas were the repository of all knowledge and held the secret of making the bomb and flying machines. Masterji talks of the marvels of yogic power had held Ranvir spellbound. ‘One having yogic power can achieve the impossible,’ Masterji would repeatedly impress upon Ranvir.

‘You know the story of that yogi, don’t you?’ he would ask his pupil, and then repeat a story he had often narrated. ‘A yogi had gone into a trance at the foot of the Himalayas. He achieved great occult powers. One day, when he had gone into meditation, a Muslim, an unclean man, came there with the mischievous intention of disrupting his meditation. You know these unclean people. They don’t bathe, nor do they wash their hands after shitting. They have no compunction in sharing each other’s spittled food. This ‘unclean’ person stood there glaring at the sadhu. As his polluted shadow fell over the sadhu, he opened his eyes. A gleam shot out of his eyes and singed the polluted man to death.’

These ‘unclean’ people would often revolve before Ranvir’s eyes. In his neighbourhood, the cobbler who sat by the roadside, mending shoes, was said to be an ‘unclean’ man. So was the tonga driver who lived in front of their house. Hamid, who studied with him at school in the same class, was also ‘unclean’. All the members of the family living next door were also considered to be ‘unclean’ and polluted. It must be some such person who had gone to the foot of the Himalayas to disrupt the sadhu’s meditation. Today, out of the eight boys he instructed, Master Devbrat had singled out Ranvir for the test. The boys were scared of Masterji. He wore khaki shorts and heavy black boots and spoke in a voice like thunder. His wrath was unpredictable and could fall on anybody without warning. The test which Ranvir was to undergo was secret and esoteric, only the initiates knew what it was.

The lanes looked desolate. At one place Ranvir felt as if they were walking along a thick web of darkness. As they drew nearer they discovered that the wall of a house had crumbled down and the darkness was seeping out of its debris.

Suddenly Devbrat stopped in his tracks. Although the desolate look of the lane had given Ranvir an eerie feeling, it had not been able to curb his exuberance. There was a narrow door framed against a long wall. Devbrat pushed it open. They stepped into a big courtyard at the end of which they saw the door of a narrow room across which hung a tarpaulin curtain. In the left corner of the courtyard lay two big heaps of rubble. The place looked deserted.

Walking across the courtyard, Master Devbrat pounded on the door. Ranvir heard the sound of coughing, followed by the shuffling of feet.

‘It’s I, Devbrat.’

The door was flung open. The old Gorkha chowkidar of the school stood in the door, peering at the visitors. He folded his hands in salutation and bowed his head.

It was dark inside the room. To one side lay a charpoy covered with a dirty bedsheet. A lathi stood against the right wall and by its side a chelum lay upside down. Over a wooden peg hung the chowkidar’s woollen overcoat and a long sword sheathed in a black scabbard.

Ranvir heard the crackling of hens and turned to look. About half-a-dozen white hens lay tied in a big basket in a corner of the room.

Holding Ranvir by the arm Master Devbrat led him into another courtyard, much smaller than the first and abruptly ending against the high wall of a neighbouring house. The Gorkha chowkidar followed them holding a hen in one hand and a knife in the other.

‘Ranvir, kill the hen,’ Master Devbrat said. The chowkidar handed Devbrat the knife. ‘Before you’re initiated into our fold you must prove that you possess a stout heart.’

Devbrat pushed Ranvir forward. ‘An Aryan youth must be strong in faith, resolute at heart, and determined in action. Take the knife and go and sit there!’ He gave Ranvir another shove forward.

Ranvir felt the place had suddenly turned sinister. He saw feathers of hens lying scattered all over. Near some rubble rested a slab of stone turned black with blood.

‘Sit down and put one leg of the hen under your right foot.’ Devbrat pressed the hen’s wings and twisted one wing under the other.

The hen cackled furiously. But its wings having been firmly tied together it could only struggle futilely. It did this for a while then lay still.

‘Hold it!’ Master Devbrat sat down by Ranvir’s side. ‘Go ahead. Let the knife do its job!’

Sweat broke out on Ranvir’s forehead and his face turned pale. Master Devbrat knew that the boy was feeling queasy.

‘Ranvir!’ he cried and slapped him hard on his cheek. Ranvir fell down in a heap on the ground. He felt like crying. The Gorkha standing behind him, watched him, a glitter of excitement in his eyes. Ranvir was still feeling unequal to the task but the slap seemed to have driven away his nausea.

‘Get up, Ranvir!’ Master Devbrat cried.

Ranvir slowly rose to his feet and looked at his mentor with heavy, dazed eyes.

‘There’s nothing difficult about it,’ Master Devbrat said. ‘Watch, I’ll show you how.’

He pressed one of the hen’s feet under his boot. The bird’s eyes became glazed and then slowly closed. He held the hen’s neck in his right hand and slit it. Blood spurted from the neck, some drops falling on Devbrat’s hand. But he did not let the hen go even though its head had been cut off. He firmly held the windpipe down till it turned white. The hen’s headless body kept quivering and then became still and its wings drenched with blood became limp. All that Ranvir saw was a handful of white feathers spattered with blood lying before him. Master Devbrat flung the remains of the dead bird to one side and got up.

‘Bring another hen!’ he told the Gorkha.

As he turned towards Ranvir, he saw that he had vomited on the ground and was sitting there, holding his head between his hands, and breathing heavily. Master Devbrat felt like slapping him again but he controlled himself and just stood there watching him in disgust.

‘I’m going to give you one more chance,’ he said at last. ‘A youth who can’t kill a hen – how can one expect him to deal with an enemy?’

Soon Ranvir’s breathing became normal and his stomach, which had knotted gradually, loosened up.

I’ll give you five more minutes,’ Devbrat said. ‘If you fail to kill the hen this time it’s all over with you. No initiation, no nothing.’ He turned on his heel and walked out of the courtyard.

When he returned after five minutes, he saw a hen writhing under the wall, drops of blood flying from it in all directions, Ranvir was sitting by the side of the bird, his right arm held between his knees. Devbrat guessed how things must have gone. While Ranvir was struggling with the hen, it must have pecked at his hand and he had only succeeded in wounding the bird instead of killing it outright.

Writhing in agony the bird kept jumping in the air and falling heavily on the ground, leaving more and more blood stains on the ground. Blood fountained from its neck.

‘Get up, Ranvir!’ Master Devbrat patted him on his back. Ranvir slowly rose to his feet. He had succeeded in the test.

‘Shabash!’ Master Devbrat said. ‘You’ve determination, you have will power. Though your arm still lacks strength, you’ve made the grade and won your reward.’ He bent to the ground and dipping his finger in the blood spattered on the stone slab, made a blood mark on Ranvir’s forehead.

(Extract from Tamas (Darkness) by Bhisham Sahni, translated from the Hindi by Jai Ratan, Penguin Books (India) Limited).

Archived from Communalism Combat, August 2004, Anniversary Issue (11th), Year 11 No.100, Cover Story 14

1...2,6532,6542,655...2,698 Page 2,654 of 2,698

Resurrecting Godse: The Hindutva continuum

Gopal Godse: ‘Nathuram did not leave the RSS’

At last they got him, after five unsuccessful attempts

The RSS and the Freedom Struggle

‘Teach them a lesson’

The Sangh’s bloody trail

Hubli hungama, Hindutva’s hypocrisy

Blood for blood: An extract from Tamas

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