Blinding Reality

June 30, 2000

The PM refuses to face daily asaults on India's tradition of tolerance by members of his own parivar. What about us?

For Indians who truly value tolerance, every passing day sounds a death knell. The ground is slipping swiftly; we are sinking fast into the quicksand of brazen manipulation. Such outlets for articulating grievances that still exist are severely proscribed by the rapidity of events and happenings. Institutions for the affirmation of inalienable basic rights are limited by an apathy that is compounded by a piece–meal response to events.

Courts, the police, the legislature and the executive are all crippled. Either because of a self–inflicted tunnel vision that refuses to recognise the calculated plan or pattern behind the systematic build up of the climate of hate in which violence appears ‘legitimate’, or because of calculated indifference, driven by bias.

We are all witness to the wilful flouting of the rule of law, daily. As it has been happening since the mid–eighties before their formal grip on political power, and more so since 1998, after the BJP’s rise to power, the fundamental freedom of faith and the identity of Indians who are not Hindu has been a constant target.

Constant intimidation through verbal barrage and frequent acts of violence against a section of Indians — Muslims and Christians — have come to be accepted as facts of life. Vicious utterances, that go unrestrained and unchallenged by the guardians of law, have accorded them a sinister legitimacy. The statements by the leaders of the BJP/RSS/VHP/Bajrang Dal/SS, inciting hatred and violence and acts of violence themselves, are being highlighted by the mainline media every other day.

As the cumulative outcome of the carefully cultivated climate of coercion, other basic freedoms — right to life and liberty, of personal security of and the right of association — of thousands of Indians stand severely curtailed. Churches are attacked; copies of the Bible desecrated and burnt. A Christian priest is forced to worship inside a temple; adivasis are ‘re–converted’ amidst much fanfare but told to worship in separate shrines thereafter.

Physical attacks and intimidation of minorities have re–surfaced with a vengeance. Incidents in the past three months alone — between April and June 2000 — have crossed the three dozen mark. Christian religious persons running educational institutions or health centres have been singled out for murder or other forms of mistreatment. In every instance, mob rule and intimidation has overpowered the rule of law, with the local police reduced to wilful impotency.

Every attack has been preceded by systematic distribution of hate spewing pamphlets (see box 2). Since 1996, media reports have drawn repeated attention to such hate campaigns. But all the vitriol has suspiciously escaped police action under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Gujarat, and now Uttar Pradesh, are living examples of life for Indians under ‘Hindu rashtra’.

Senior officials in the police, like the DGP of Gujarat, CP Singh, have stated on record that “organisations like the VHP and Bajrang Dal are clearly behind the violence” (see CC, October 1998). Concrete evidence in specific cases points clearly to the moral and ideological backing that the sangh parivar renders to the assailants. But our watchdogs and institutions fail to make the connection or see the pattern.

Four months ago, the newly appointed RSS Sarsanghchalak, KS Sudarshan, declared that an ‘epic war’ was in progress in India between Hindus and ‘anti–Hindu forces’; in Mumbai, Bal Thackeray’s Saamna is once again spitting venom with a vengeance against ‘anti–national’ Muslims (See page 25). And yet, we resist drawing the links.

What is responsible for this selective amnesia? How is it possible for us to react to rights’ violations in individual cases but turn a blind eye to the bloody and devious design that underlies them?

One fine day, a Bajrang Dal leader, Dharmendra Sharma, sah-sahayojak for the Braj region, makes front page news declaring that Christians are now “bigger enemies” than Muslims. (The Times of India, June 23, 2000). Clarification, if any were needed, that Muslims remain the Bajrang Dal’s and the VHP’s enemies! “Maar peet to kya, hum sab kuch karne ke liye taiyar hain” (“We are prepared to use violence. There is no limit”), said Sharma, leaving no room for any confusion.

The remark prompted an expression of outrage from India’s attorney general, Soli Sorabjee. He opined that such elements should be put behind bars. The National Human Rights Commission demanded details of attacks on Christians from the central and state governments. But only weeks earlier, the remark of the all–India Bajrang Dal convenor, Dr. Surendra Jain, calling for “a second Quit India movement” to drive away Christian missionaries had passed unnoticed and unchallenged. (The Afternoon Despatch and Courier, May 27, 2000).

Life in Gujarat for a Muslim or a Christian today is a suffocating reminder that he or she no longer enjoys the precious privilege of being regarded as an equal Indian. Muslims residing in ‘cosmopolitan’ localities in Gujarat are forcibly evicted; Muslim children have to compulsory attend school and even give examinations on Id day. Discrimination and bias has insidiously crept into the marketplace of ideas, avenues of livelihood, educational institutions, the administration, the police, the judiciary. All in all, the quality that we used to proudly describe as Indian values is fast eroding.

What more will it take to force us to recognise the extent of corrosion? Mumbai’s classrooms, at the university level, reflect this public sanction to brazen bias in their own style. A professor advising students on how to write an essay for the All India Open School examination elaborates: “Write about how the British exploited this country. And how before that the Muslim rulers, thanks to their love of the good life, robbed this great wealthy land of all its wealth. Muslims have always loved the good life and it is this greed that has looted our country that used to be a sone ki chidiya (a golden bird).

There is a clever and calculated plan behind every campaign launched, sustained and developed by the RSS and its faithful followers. In the eighties, the campaign for a glorious temple in the name of Lord Ram at Ayodhya fired 18,000 villages to participate in the shilanyas in 1990, and over 5,00,000 kar sevaks to be witness and participants in the demolition of a mosque in Ayodhya two years later. Clever double entendre accompanied the campaign for a temple at Lord Ram’s legendary birthplace. The justification in the nation–wide effort was through the demonising of Mughal emperor Babar. Muslims in India today, ‘Babar ki aulad’, were crudely told again and again, that they had trampled on all that is decent Indian, read Hindu.

With the campaign for the construction of a Ram mandir at Ayodhya now in the process of being actively revived, the anti–Muslim underpinnings of the campaign are also re–surfacing in subtle and not–so–subtle forms. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), nudged by an encouraging human resources development ministry under none less than Murli Manohar Joshi, is busy excavating 46 Indian historical sites, including UNESCO–protected World Heritage sites like Fatehpur Sikri. Objective? To establish that Hindu or Jain temples exist below Mughal (read Muslim), monuments.

There is a brazenness that underlines the physical assaults and intimidation whereby the assailants present themselves as victims acting in self–defence. Of late, the Bajrang Dal has publicly started arms training for its cadre in order to prepare them for ‘defending’ Hindus and Hinduism from the demons being resurrected — Muslims and Christians. The daily violators of law and those who condone verbal assaults, physical intimidation and murder are the first to point to Pakistan’s ISI as the real culprit! Union home minister, Advani also concurs, seeing a foreign hand behind the attacks on Christians. The result: the nitty–gritty facts behind those responsible for the assaults and violence in each of the cases, where culprits inspired by or belonging to the RSS, the Bajrang Dal and the VHP have been identified, are glossed over and the police just do not act. The guilty not only escape the arm of the law but enjoy government protection every time.

Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee and his strongman, Union home minister LK Advani, have once more declared that there is “no communal twist to the recent incidents”. The liberal mukhota of the sangh parivar is useful for the saffron bandwagon at ticklish moments like this.

Vajpayee’s admirers, who simply refuse to believe him capable of legitimising hatred and selective murder, saw his recent bowing before the Pope at the Vatican as a “master stroke”. That the pontiff raised the issue of increasing attacks on Christians at his meeting with the PM and yet again, three days later, is seen as simply a passing hitch in international relations.

Graham Staines’ murderer, Dara Singh is today a man lionised by the literature emanating from the saffron camp. He proposes to fight the next election. For the moment, the Hindu Jagran Sammukhya, backed by the RSS, is busy distributing thousands of copies of a 16–page booklet Mu Dara Singh Kahuchi (I am Dara Singh speaking) in Manoharpur, Orissa. The booklet focuses on the activities of the Staines’ family and proclaiming that since “Staines was the killer of our culture, so his killing was necessary”.

The officially–appointed Wadhwa Commission implicated Dara Singh in the triple murder case but despite the evidence of police officers and counsel before the Commission, it exonerated the like BJP, RSS, VHP and BD. An example, yet again, of a resistance to examine the ideological backup that allows a Dara Singh to flourish and grow in popularity.
Vajpayee has been of consistent use to the hate–driven parivar. Eighteen months ago, on New Year’s Day 1999, after visiting the southern district of The Dangs in Gujarat, that had suffered systematic violence against its minuscule resident Christian community (ruining traditional Christmas celebrations), Vajpayee spoke to the national media. Without a single word on the violence and intimidation suffered by Dang Christians, he called for a national debate on conversions!

Union home minister, LK Advani, used to be the BJP’s most eloquent leader on every issue pertaining to minority–majority relations in the country in the eighties and nineties — before he took an oath swearing allegiance to the secular and democratic tenets of the Indian Constitution. Today, he has mastered the art of keeping a conspicuous silence. He does surface on appropriate occasions only to issue clean character certificates to the Bajrang Dal and the VHP every time their name gets associated with criminal incidents.

Following the triple murder by burning of Graham Staines and his young sons, Advani was quick to absolve the VHP and Bajrang Dal of any involvement in the crime. He knew these organisations well, he said, adding that they were incapable of criminal acts! It is a well–programmed symphony in operation, being played out by the different organs of the sangh parivar every day. That the Vajpayee–Advani duo is right on top of the political pyramid, ever ready with alibis, helps a great deal.

That the BJP and its supporters within and outside the sangh parivar rely heavily on Vajpayee’s liberal mask is more than understandable. What is not, however, is the wilful blindness of the secular components of the NDA, leaders such as the TDP’s technocrat, Chandrababu Naidu, the Trinamool Congress’ firebrand, Mamata Banerjee, and the ever–reasonable socialists, George Fernandes and Jaya Jaitly.

Equally difficult to appreciate is the failure of individuals within other secular political formations to categorically affirm that the basic rights and freedoms of every Indian, regardless of religion, caste, creed or gender is inalienable. (Remember a state minister from the ‘secular’ Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in Maharashtra, personally welcoming criminals allegedly associated with the Bajrang Dal on their release from the Nasik jail. They were charged with the vandalising a girl’s hostel in April. The deputy chief minister of Maharashtra, Chhagan Bhujbal, later justified the minister’s behaviour).

Most opinion polls conducted to gauge public opinion indicate that only about a quarter of the Indian population backs the BJP and not all the support is for communal reasons. The rest of India, which naturally includes minorities, Dalits and other Hindus within it, remains opposed to Hindutva’s antics.

The hitch lies, however, in the lack of translation of this opposition into organised protest and outrage. The ignominies of rights abuses and oppression of minorities, women and Dalits notwithstanding, there is an innate reluctance to accept, acknowledge and rise in unison against these horrors. One of the reasons is our refusal to abandon the prevalent myth of Indian civilisation as the most ancient, the most non-violent, and the mSost tolerant in the world.

Only the creative explosion of that myth will help rid us of our false cocoon of comfort and galvanise us into articulation of outrage that is long overdue.

Archived from Communalism Combat, July 2000, Year 7 No. 60, Cover Story

Attacks on Christians in 2000

June 30, 2000

The All–India Christian Council claims there have been over 300 attacks targeting Christians and their institutions in different parts of the country in the last two years. Given below is a list of attacks since the dawn of the new millennium.

January 1: Father Vikas attacked at St. Mary’s School, Panipat, Haryana.
February 18: Attack on a hospital and desecration of Mother Mary’s statue, Dindigul, Tamil Nadu.
March 7: Copies of Bible snatched, devotees slapped during a prayer meeting, Ahmedabad, Gujarat.
March 9: Ish Mata Catholic Church looted, a portion of the rear wall destroyed, Samalkha, Haryana.
March 12: A computer centre run by the Christians looted; inmates locked, Ghaziabad, UP.
March 31: Two priests attached to the Archbishop’s House taken to police station on fake charges and detained, Agra, UP.
April 6: St. Dominic’s School attacked and the principal abused for refusing admission to a few children, Mathura, UP.
April 10: Sacred Heart School attacked by parents for not promoting students who had failed in the examinations, Mathura, UP.
April 11: Murderous attack on the principal and nuns of St. Teresa School, Koshi Kalan, UP.
April 21: Christian group from Hyderabad attacked, literature they were carrying set on fire by Bajrang Dal activists, Haryana.
April 25: Two nuns hit by a scooterist, Rewari, Haryana.
May 2: Masked men assault nuns at a convent, Jhansi, UP.
May 3: Christian group beaten up The Dangs, Gujarat.
May 3: Break-in at a church, Sagarpur, Delhi.
May 4: Mob attack on a catholic School, Patna, Bihar.
May 6: Bajrang Dal men beat up Christians, Ahmedabad, Gujarat.
May 6: 13 Christians arrested for holding prayer meetings and street plays without prior permission, The Dangs, Gujarat.
May 9: The VHP, Bajrang Dal men barge into a girls’ hostel and assault those watching a film on Jesus Christ, Nasik, Maharashtra.
May 11: A Jesuit stabbed, Basavanpura village near Bangalore, Karnataka.
May 13: 3 churches attacked in Indore
May 16: A priest attacked, Bhind, MP.
May 21: 30 people injured in a bomb blast at a prayer meeting, Machilipatnam, Andhra Pradesh.
May 21: Prayer homes torched, Kandhmal district, Orissa.
May 29: IED’s found in churches, Medak, Vikarabad, AP.
June 7: A priest murdered at Paulus Memorial School, Mathura,UP.
June 8: Bomb explosion in churches, Karnataka, AP and Goa.
June 11: A priest is killed, Jalandhar, Punjab.
June 14: Priest beaten, paraded, in a village in Jagdalpur, MP.
June 18: Eyewitness of priest’s murder dies in police custody, Mathura, UP.
June 24: Graves dug up near church, AP.
June 27: Miscreants ransack a church, Pusad,
July 5: Missionary school guard beaten up, Jhansi, UP.
July 5: Bajrang Dal force closure of Christian school, Ahmedabad.

Archived from Communalism Combat, July 2000, Year 7 No. 60, Cover Story

Hate campaign the PM knows nothing about

June 30, 2000

nciteful pamphlets distributed and incendiary speeches made at the VHP–sponsored ‘dharam sabhas’ have been ingenuously used by the BJP–RSS–VHP–Bajrang Dal combine to intensely communalise neighbourhoods and communities before an attack is launched against the minorities. Reproduced here is the English translation of a pamphlet in Gujarati, which was widely circulated in Sanjeli town and its neighbourhood a fill month before the attack on the Muslims on August 12 and 15, 1998. (First published in CC, October 1998).

Onwards to Sanjeli!

Let’s unite — to stop young, tribal women from being lured and kid napped. Let us unite to put an end to these unholy incidents of Hindu women being sold in Muslim countries — Let’s respond to bricks with stones.

Onwards to Sanjeli! Public meeting Onwards to Sanjeli!
Date: July 7, 1998, Sunday afternoon, 3 p.m.
At Rein Bassera, Sanjeli
Leaders of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and
Bajrang Dal to address the meeting

A young, 18–year–old woman, Kanta, of Randhikpur, and another married adivasi woman were seduced and kidnapped to some unknown destination by Muslim youths. We have no trace of them. This is not the first incident in our area. Whether it is Vandana from Bandibaar, or Ami and Surekha from Jhalod, or Varsha from Godhra. There have been innumerable such incidents of kidnappings and disappearances. For months and years, our sisters and daughters cannot be traced. Apart from that, tragic incidents like the suicides of several elders like Magabhai Ninama keep happening in our society.

Hindu young women are kidnapped and
Hindu elders commit suicide
Hindu population on the decline
Produce more children by kidnapping young women
Add to Muslim population
A widespread conspiracy to add to the numbers of anti–Hindu, anti–national elements is at work throughout the country

For the establishment of Ram Rajya, it was the people alone who came forward to help Bhagwan Ram. Now too, adivasi brethren will have to come forward and unite to destroy this conspiracy.

When there is a weekly village market what do these Muslim loafers do? How do these Muslim loafers behave with Adivasi women going to the river for river sand? Pretending to help, do you know how these loafers tempt and lure young adivasi women and their elders?
Without expecting anything from the police, the government, or any of the politicians who are only interested in securing our votes — come — let us save our sisters and daughters from the clutches of these yavanas (demons) who sell them to the Arabs.

Vishwa Hindu Parishad — Bajrang Dal — Sanjeli

Archived from Communalism Combat, July 2000, Year 7 No. 60, Cover Story

Hate campaign the PM knows nothing about

June 30, 2000

VHP peppers tribal regions with hate pamphlets

Ranchi, June 25: By the year 2050, the Hindus would come to a minority in the ‘Akhand Bharat’ (Greater India), comprising India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, if the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and its allied organisations are to be believed.

In a massive propaganda, the VHP is distributing pamphlets and booklets in the tribal hinterland exhorting the tribals and “fellow Hindus” to unify in the face of the “looming threat” and “teach a lesson” to the minorities.

The booklets and the pamphlets have over emphasised the threat perception on Hinduism with hate propaganda against the minorities, particularly the Christian missionaries. The booklet says that in the year 1891, there were 80 per cent Hindus in the ‘Akhand Bharat’ which came down to 67.9 per cent in 1991 and it will come down to 48 per cent in 2050.

Doling out another figure, the book published by the Sanskriti Raksha Manch says there is something called “Operation Mobilisation” by which the Christian missionaries intend to make religious literature and Bible available to 10 crore Indians by the end of the year.
The VHP and its allied organisations have planned to take their propaganda drive to every village. It has also planned several functions in the tribal hinterland to “make the people aware of their cultural and religious supremacy”.

Another booklet published by one Bharat Loktantrik Morcha, has lampooned the Christian priests and made them into actors. It claims that the Christian priests wear bhagwa (saffron) clothes and conduct artis of Jesus Christ in the church, fooling the illiterate Hindus villagers in the rural areas. “These Hindus start believing that Christ too was one of their gods and thus become Christians by default,” the booklet points out.

Taking another dramatic angle, the booklet mentions that “Christian girls entice Hindu boys” for marrying them and then converting them to Christianity. Several thousand copies of the pamphlets carrying intense hate propaganda have been lined up for distribution in the area. All of them have lampooned Christianity in particular and made the followers as some kind of “modern day monsters”.

As a result of the large–scale circulation of the pamphlets and the booklets, it is being increasingly felt here that if its proliferation is not checked, the situation may become volatile in the near future.n

(From a news report in The Hindustan Times, June 26).

Distribution of anti-Christian pamphlets alarms MPs

NEW DELHI: The recent spate of attacks on minorities and the “free distribution of hate material,” attacking missionaries have caused grave concern among Christian MPs who have felt the need to form a forum in order to focus attention on this issue and take it up with the Central government.

Former minister Eduardo Faleiro of the Congress, also a member of this forum, said he was written to the home minister enclosing copies of pamphlets circulating in UP and demanded that such provocative material be confiscated. These pamphlets, purportedly published by the Hindu Jagran Manch, Kashi and Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Gujarat, attack Christian missionaries for going in for conversions in the guise of helping the poor.

(From a news report in The Times of India, May 9)

Sangh leaders gloat over Bible-bashing book

NEW DELHI, May 20: Sangh Parivar leaders have their noses buried in a new book now, Holy Vedas and Holy Bible — A Comparative Study, an attempt by a Sangh loyalist to ridicule the Bible.

The contents is self–explanatory. It lists: Obscene episodes in Bible, Moral code of conduct in Vedas, Bible preaches atrocious intolerance, Vedas preach fraternity, Human sacrifice in Bible, non–violence in Vedas and Biblical god is jealous and vindictive, Vedic god is benevolent.

Whether it’s the RSS hedquarters in Jhandewalan, the BJP’s central office on Ashoka Road or the Vishwa Hindu Parishad media centre, everyone is talking about how forcefully the book has “exposed” the vices in The Holy Bible and the missionaries’ design to Christianise India.

The author is a known face in Sangh circles. Mr Kanayalal M Talreja, a migrant from Sindh, adheres to RSS ideology though Sangh leaders claim he was never a part of the organisation. The book was released recently by VHP working president Mr Ashok Singhal.
Mr Talreja has dedicated the book to Dayanand Saraswati, Veer Savarkar and RSS founder, Keshav Baliram Hedgewar.

The book questions Jesus Christ’s birth and quotes elaborately from the New Testament to prove that Mary was not a virgin and had other children. At one place the author asks missionaries “why Christ did not accept his holy mother and his beloved brothers.”
Among the “obscene” episodes mentioned are “Reuben’s sexual intercourse with his father’s concubine, Judah’s sexual intercourse with his widoweddaughter-in-law and castration recommended by Jesus Christ.”

The leaders, however, shy from making comments in public about the book, for fear of controversy. The BJP has decided not to patronise the book. The party headquarters’ bookstall does not have it. “It is merely the work of an individual,” a senior BJP leader said guardedly.

However, VHP senior vice-president Mr Giriraj Kishore, did not have any qualms talking about the book. For, he felt, the truth must come out. In fact, the book contains much less than what’s mentioned in the original version of the Bible, he said.

(From a news report in The Statesman, May 21).

‘Revenge is necessary’

“The police ran away, the magistrate and his staff hid under the table to save themselves. The Muslim boy and the Hindu girl were beaten to death by the people and their dead bodies were left in the court room…. since thousands were involved, no one was convicted. The incident of Halvad is etched in golden letters in the proud history of Hindu samaj. Revenge of this type is necessary against such abduction of our girls.”
“In the complaints we file to take revenge, we should implicate the top authorities of the mission and if possible, foreign missionaries also… They may not be convicted in the court in the end, but they should be made to go up and down the court for months on end… harassment is also a type of punishment.”

(From a secret document in wide circulation in Gujarat. See Communalism Combat, April 2000 for details)

‘Missionaries have no right to live in India’
“For years, Christian padres have always abused (gaaliyan dekar) Hindu gods and goddessess and spread hatred against Hinduism. Christian and Muslim countries are sending thousands of crores of rupees to India in order to enslave the country through conversions. Hindus will soon become a minority and they will suffer in the same way as in Fiji, Kashmir, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Things are moving fast and soon you will be powerless to do anything about it.”

(From, Isai missionariyon ka bharat par aakramand [Christian missionaries launch an assault on India], by A. Shankar, Bharat Loktantrik Morcha).
Another edition of the same pamphlet published by the VHP contains the chilling sentence: “Because missionaries are utilising the mercenary press to spread dozens of lies against Hindus, they have no right to live in India.”

Christians compared to Hitler

One pamphlet compares Christian priests to Hitler (an inappropriate comparison, one would have thought, given that the founders of the RSS had a benign view of the Nazi dictator): “With the same obsession of superiority with which Hitler murdered the Jews in gas chambers, missionaries are trying to make Hindus accept that Christianity is the most superior religion. Christians are coming in the way of the work of Hindu orgainsations and are engaging in violence and murders.”

(From, Seva ki aadh mein church ka shadyantra [The church’s evil designs under cover of social service], Hindu Jagran Manch, Meerut, 1999)

Archived from Communalism Combat, July 2000, Year 7 No. 60, Cover Story

Can India survive Hindutva’s assaults?

June 30, 2000

Were the saffron project to succeed the resultant freak will be an affront to humanity, an assault on the senses

History constructs the ethos of a nation over time, vicissitudes notwithstand ing. Overarching the peri odical transitions and contingencies emerges the distinctive identity of a nation and stamps itself on its psyche and its being. The aeons–long experiential alchemy of India has fostered an ethos that has sustained it as a society and distinguished it as a unique nation. The various cultural encounters that India witnessed throughout its chequered and multi–layered history did not force it into an isolationist sulk. It creatively accommodated not only diverse peoples but also manifold thought currents. Both these — the people and the variegated streams of thought — contributed to the enrichment of Indian civilisation. And, like a person with multiple preferences and potentials, India subsumed layer upon layer of ideational variety and creative adventure in fields as far apart as philosophy and entertainment.

The thought processes and societal schemes of India, by and large, did not admit of elimination and exclusion in its cross cultural experiences (as its response). Its assimilative imagination overreached itself in even creating new gods and goddesses out of an amalgam that history had deposited at its doors. Its art forms reflected its refreshingly original blend of influences from far and near. All this from the free play of the inventive spirit, from the uninhibited exercise of the creative imagination, from the daring flights of experimental abandon.

India rejoiced in multiplicity, it celebrated its multiples of hybridity and bewildering array of heterogeneity by imaginatively transforming them into a “pure” novelty and imprinting it with characteristics all its own. India revelled in the multiverse. Pluralism became its destiny, its distinction, its divertissement. It was this overwhelming glory of an abundance that was designated as Mahajati by Tagore. An approximate, but in no way adequate, English rendition of the idea enshrined in this felicitous coinage of the poet may be the Great Race. Some of the people who mingled in the soil of India, as adumbrated in Shrimad Bhagawat (2.4.18) are: Kirat, Huna, Andhra, Pulind, Pulkash, Abhir, Shumbha, Yavana, Khasa, etc.

Violently jerked loose from these civilisational roots India will become a vicious chimera, a dreaded nightmare, an abode of evil, a frightening vista of ugliness (drab uniformity), a vast expanse of vacuity (death of creative imagination) and sterility (conformist regimentation). The resultant freak will not be India. It will have lost its bearing, and its reason for being. The detritus pretending to be India, sequent to its demolition, would be much less than even a dung heap — an affront to humanity, an assault on the senses.

Geographical territory alone isn’t enough for a nation to identify itself. That territory must have a character and an identity, forged by history and validated by time. Kurds, even without a territory, are still a nation. Violence of realpolitik may succeed in artificially creating nation-states sometimes. But it cannot create a nation. A nation is a mirror with its back to the past too.

Those who are antipathetic to this historical identity, cultural locus, and civilisational conspectus of India are foreign to its ethos as a nation and entity as a nation–state. They pose a permanent danger to the unity of the nation, to its diversity of sub–cultures and variety of sub–nationalisms, to its pluralistic conflations, and its heterogeneous self–assertions. They constitute a permanent fifth column ever ready to betray the nation and bleed it to death.

No amount of breast beating on their part can convince any sane Indian that they are patriots or nationalists. Their patriotism is parochial, their nationalism sectarian. They have carved out their narrow domain of loyalty and affinity to “their” kind. The rhetoric of “one people, one nation, one culture” is a foreign import, fascistic in intent and content, reactionary to the core, a regressive anachronism. This concept, alien to India and its psyche, had its provenance in Europe, which it drenched in blood for close to two centuries, without ever succeeding in fixing as final the territorial boundaries of any nation-state in a rational manner, fair to all its people. No saffron, the colour of fire, can purge it of its inhumane and protean contents, and render it swadeshi.

Those who denounce and repudiate this construct will do all in their power to destroy India rooted in and sustained over millennia by it. They will rather smash and shred India to smithereens than respectfully abide by its traditional ethos and let it flourish as a great model of humanistic and pluralistic nationalism for the world to emulate and be enlightened by. They will subvert it relentlessly as die–hard enemies of the nation while mumbling anathema against “others” within and without its borders.

While tearing it apart ruthlessly and forcing its diverse peoples to secede in order to escape its steamroller of hegemonic homogeneity, they will keep howling Akhand Bharat, quixotically laying claim to Afghanistan, Burma, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and of course, the Pak–Occupied Kashmir and Pakistan, and thus “restoring” the golden Bharat of a non–existent and mythical yore, and of a puerile lore.

Such malevolent ones can never look kindly upon secular democracy, participatory polity, egalitarian aspiration, and pluralistic impulse of the millions of people who constitute the nation. Rather than endorse and give in to this humane and holistic view of civic life in a nation disfigured by various divides, the Black Caps are seeking to further maul and mangle it in the interests of the few, traditionally privileged by the status quo at home, and militarily entrenched by the predatory (imperialist) business houses abroad. What they did in the matter of Kargil and Kandahar, viz., betrayal of the nation and open treason for the benefit of their party, is of a piece with their antecedents.

In the freedom struggle of India these anti–national, anti–social elements not only never participated, but also did their damned best to thwart it as stool pigeons and informers of the Brits. They, a national shame, constitute an indelible stigma on the social fabric of India.
The same love for the wily aliens (“Aryan” affinity, conjured in servility by the Black Caps) who drained India of its resources and subjected its people to massive tyranny (unbearable taxes and recurrent famines) and misery (devastating immiseration), is again in evidence in the grovelling welcome laid out for Bill Clinton.

And, these traditional traitors have offered to replace Pakistan as the imperium’s outpost in Asia. Emulating Pakistan! And, as new peons of Uncle Sam, also courting its fate — ignominy, isolation, abandonment after use, and political anarchy.

The US–Pak strategic alliance (SEATO, CENTO) was the prototype of the newly emergent Indo-US one, fabricated to advance American interests post–Cold War. Thus reduced to a watchdog of imperialist hegemony, facilitating and participating in the subjugation of South Asia to White aliens, India is set to become an agent of tyranny and loot directed by the imperium. This is the role pre–ordained and natally prescribed for those who made common cause with India’s enemy, the Brits.

This is the role the saffronites have played to the hilt with sickening regularity whenever they could. And, thus they betrayed the nation to Pakistan in Kargil and Talibans in Kandahar. The same role they have now pledged to play in the Indian Ocean region, ditching the interests and security of India and South Asia to oblige the foreign masters.
The number and kind of bills legislated lately by the Parliament are tell tale. They bespeak the priorities of the neo–Hindu bandwagon.

Not one enactment redressing the grievous issues currently affecting the masses, and no hurry in that direction. All the legislative flurry that has been in evidence has been strictly in favour of the foreign traders, mortgaging sector after sector of national economy (insurance, lawyers, etc.) to interests abroad. All national resources sacrificed to the holy trinity of globalisation (hegemonic death grip), liberalisation (foreign and feral exploitation), and privatisation (a fancy name for the sweetheart give–aways of public undertakings to foreigners and their native clones).

Historically, the neo–Hindus have been inimical to the people of India. And this roster only briefly showcases their bid to hasten the sell out, all as the unholy agenda of Hindutva. For diversionary ploys they never lack issues: violence against minorities, stuffing textbooks with vicious anecdotes as history, removing scholars from the ICHR for fear of exposure as Quislings, appointing avowed murderers at the helm in the NCERT, making Pakistan’s ISI responsible for its own gross incompetence and ineptitude, subverting the democratic process by gratuitously offering the Constitution for “review” and rooting for a Presidential form of government as if their tyranny in the present set–up is terribly restricted, performing neo–Hindu havanas and chanting of shlokas in state–sponsored events, encouraging barbaric vandalism by lumpens against artistic freedom of expression, communalising the bureaucracy and the police, brazenly making the governor an unabashed agent of the ruling party at the Centre, etc.

Their offensive against Hinduism, were it to succeed, may culminate into its shrinking to a cult. Only a cult has the fanaticism, narrowness, bigotry, and brain–dead conformity that the Black Caps impose on their cadres and on the society that they seek to “Hinduise”. It will have no resemblance with historical Hinduism, scriptural and popular. It would be a version of Christianity under Hitler which was quite “popular” in Germany in the accursed decades. The Black Cap Hindutva will snuff out the liberal, multi–faceted, large–hearted openness of imaginative expanse that characterised Hinduism over the millennia gone by. It would be one more Semitic sect, though not in external appearance, with its adherents dead to the wider world of humanity and its concerns, incapable of and unwilling to contribute to it anything in solidarity and enrichment. It would be dead Hinduism over whose ashes will Hindutva prevail.

As to India, this neo-Hindu fascist onslaught will prove its undoing. Its polity and society will be rent apart irremediably. Two points are worth pondering. One: This menace has not registered its ferocity well enough on the public mind. The intelligentsia is either lethargic or naive. Since its rampage is sporadic and spread out, the generality of people have not yet woken up to its fangs. But any delay in resisting it tooth and nail will amount to inviting national disaster.

Two: Fascist Hindutva will ride to power clutching the coat-tails of democracy — elections, legislatures, etc. But conceding this fig leaf of legitimacy and respectability to the murderous cult of neo–Hindus would ring the death knell of the democratic enterprise that is India.

Archived from Communalism Combat, July 2000, Year 7 No. 60, Cover Story

TADA Re-Incarnated

March 31, 2000

A new preventive detention Bill , the Criminal Law Amendment Bill, 1998 is a replica of the old TADA with more draconian measures. Worse, it seeks to make preventive detention a permanent feature of our criminal law

Indian Parliament is on the verge of passing a freshly drafted, preventive detention leg islation, the Criminal Law
Amendment Bill, 1998 (CLA) that is a brazen measure aimed at stifling democratic dissent and which, moreover exposes a sinister motive of incorporating a preventive detention law permanently within the criminal law statute.

Inherent to all preventive detention laws are severe curtailments of basic rights of the citizen, rights related to grounds for arrest, detention, fair trial and other crucial checks and balances on a law and order machinery that, with arbitrary power under law, could well misuse these against the detainee.

The present Bill was introduced by the ministry of home affairs under Congress rule in May 1995. The draft of the new legislation proposed then to replace TADA after toning down some of the harsher provisions contained within TADA. The government proposed to rush it through with open support of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) but this attempt was stalled. A working paper circulated by the Law Commission in early 2000 with the revised draft, the CLA, 1998 reveals that the proposed law is a replica of TADA, with some additional draconian features brought back in. Following highly critical feedback on the new Bill, the Law Commission, is currently working on a revision of the working paper that is likely to be ready in April 2000.

The working paper of 1999 reveals a narrow and partisan view of the political situation in the country and our recent political history. The section Security Situation in the Country contains statistics and other data concerned with acts of violence in Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab and the North-East. The Religious Fundamentalist Militancy section mentions that Muslim militancy increased after the bomb blasts in Mumbai, but there is no mention at all of the events before and on December 6, 1992 and the nationwide holocaust that followed.

In 1985 the following clauses contained within TADA were removed from the new Bill. They now re-appear in the CLA Bill of 1998.

Ø The pernicious clause (section 15) which made confessions before police officers admissible as evidence was deleted

Ø The right of appeal to the High Court (and not only to the Supreme Court was restored

Ø Restrictions on the right to bail were removed following judicial direction in Hitendra Thakur v/s State judgement, SC 255.

Ø Section 5 of TADA that had been incorporated into the new Bill, the section pertaining to the mere possession of arms in a notified area constituting an offence was also removed. This followed the SC judgement in the Sanjay Dutt v/s State through CBI (1994 5SCC 410). This section is now back.

Ø Section 22 of TADA, 1987, also incorporated in the new Bill, which substituted a test identification parade with photo identification was deleted. This provision in TADA had also been held by the SC to be illegal in Kartar Singh. It is now back.

The new Bill sets dangerous precedents in the already black history of preventive detention in India

Ø TADA had to be specially notified in areas that were deemed to be fit for the operation of such a law, the CLA will automatically operate throughout the length and breadth of the country.

Ø The proposed CLA Bill, 1998 will remain in force for five full years. The Law Commission is of the opinion that India requires a permanent anti-terrorist law in view of the alarming proportions that terrorism has acquired over the past few years.

Ø Modeled on UK and US Anti-Terrorism legislation, a factor that the government is using as justification, the CLA, 1998 omits critical features of accountability contained in the originator legislations. In those countries, government is bound to present annual details of arrests and convictions on the floor of Parliament to ensure a measure of accountability. No such measure of government accountability is contained here.

Ø In the wake of the bomb blasts in Coimbatore in February 1998 (that incidentally also followed three months after brutal bloodletting against the city’s Muslims in November 1997, the Tamil Nadu government enacted the Prevention of Terrorist Activities Act (POTA) which was only recently repealed due to sustained campaigns in that state. In early 1999, the Maharashtra government brought in the Control of Organised Crime Act, 1999 which also contains the most draconian provisions of TADA. In such a situation, what will the combined effect of a surfeit of preventive detention be except to unlawfully and unconstitutionally vest more and more arbitrary powers with the police?

Ø Article 4 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) to which India is a signatory since 1979, permits states to derogate from certain sections when there is a ‘public emergency that threatens the life of the nation,’ and only ‘to the extent strictly required by the exigencies of the situation.’ This qualification makes it difficult to justify the application of CLA indiscriminately to all parts of the country.

India has a abysmal record of blatant human rights violations that include systematic encounter killings by the law and order machinery or security forces (note the senseless killings of four innocent Kashmiri Muslims near the Zontangri peak to ‘avenge’ the massacre of 35 Sikhs allegedly by foreign militants at Chitti Singhpora on March 20 by the Indian army and the police), a pathetic record of deaths and brutal torture in custody and a non-existent adherence to basic criminal law procedures in matters of arrest, detention and questioning. A new law that grants further immunity to the Indian state and the police from checks and balances from arbitrary misuse, is to put it mildly, ominous.

We are also a state with the longest history of preventive detention since our Independence barring the three-year period between 1977-1980. The worst human rights record was during decade-long existence of the Terrorist and Disputed Activities (Prevention) Act, 1987, the legislation first introduced in 1985 in the wake of Operation Bluestar in the Punjab and prime minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination and thereafter extended for a two year period until it was finally repealed on May 23, 1995. The repeal of TADA followed burgeoning protests from the human rights’ movement all over the country.

Justice Ranganath Mishra, then chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission had publicly stated that the act had ‘been prima facie abused in Gujarat.’ He convened a meeting on August 22, 1993, at which several chief secretaries and home secretaries of states were present, to push for the review of its application.

The official admission of allegations of misuse of TADA is evident from a letter by former union home minister, S.B.Chavan, dated July 27,1994 to the chief ministers of all states where TADA was applicable. The letter emphasised that TADA should not be used against political opponents, trade union leaders, journalists, former judges and civil servants. The very need for such a letter is evidence that such abuse of the law had been taking place.

The statement of objectives of the Act specified that TADA that is reproduced verbatim within the new Bill, was meant to curtail overt acts of terrorism in Punjab and Haryana. A spate of terrorism-related violence in the two years that followed between 1985-87 exposed the ineffectivity of TADA for the specific purpose that it was ostensibly enacted.

On the contrary, TADA in ten years of its existence was actually used, highhandedly, against the Indian civilian population in different states, albeit those sections that the police and governments decided were most inconvenient at that particular moment in time.

TADA was used to stifle any form of democratic protest. For example, 57 women belonging to the progressive organisation of women protesting against GATT were arrested under TADA in Nandyal in Andhra Pradesh during a prime ministerial visit. By 1995, in 22 of the 25 states TADA had been notified for application. In ten years a staggering 52, 998 persons were arrested all over the country under TADA, of which only 448 were convicted. The rate of conviction of TADA detainees was less than one per cent.

Maximum TADA detentions took place in the state of Gujarat that arrested 19,000 persons under that law. Trade unionists, environmental activists and citizens belonging to the minority community were the sufferers. The tale of Mumbai in December 1992-1993 is a sorry record of partisan and brutal police behaviour (see pages 23-24) against the state’s minorities. In the aggression and frenzy unleashed by the Maharashtra and Mumbai police following the bomb blasts of March 1993, members of the minority community were threatened with indiscriminate arrests under TADA and huge monies extorted from them under this threat. Muslim businessmen had then alleged that as much as Rs. 25 crores had been extorted from them in this fashion.

The National Minorities Commission also passed a unanimous resolution condemning the misuse of the law against the minorities. Justice Rajinder Sachar, a retired chief justice of the Delhi High Court and senior functionary of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) had stated on record, “TADA is being misused…After Bombay (bomb blasts) many Muslims have been arrested under TADA.”

The revised CLA retains the earlier definition contained within TADA of a ‘terrorist act.’ However under section 3(1) it widens the scope of the definition. Apart from intentions to overawe the government, strike terror, alienate any section and adversely affect harmony, the definition of a terrorist act has been expanded further.

To this already wide definition, the Law Commission has added the words, ‘threaten the unity, integrity, security and sovereignty of India.’ This section three is very wide and over-arching in its definition and scope. It includes within it acts that are both violent and non-violent.

Within the political scenario that confronts us at the moment a profound battle rages on. It is a battle for the ideological and political future f the Indian state. Details of the battle apart, a major and contested issue is on what and who constitutes the threat to the unity, security and sovereignty of India. Arguably, some of us feel that the divisive and pernicious politics of the BJP-RSS-VHP-BD combine, overtly manifest in senior functionaries who occupy government posts today and who have as their goal the transformation of the Indian state from its current democratic character to an authoritarian and sectarian one, is the singular and greatest threat to our unity, our integrity and our security.

Saying, believing and campaigning for what we believe could, for the sake of argument, immediately attract the provisions of these draconian sections.

The really dangerous aspect of the section is that it seeks to punish political ‘intent’ as much as the act itself. Section 3(1) of the Act states that it is an offence to conspire, attempt, incite, abet, or assist in the preparation of a terrorist act, or to knowingly harbour or conceal a terrorist. Membership of terrorist gangs, holding of property derived from terrorist funds are also offences under the Act. Section 4(2) also provides that whoever commits or conspires or attempts or abets advocates, advises, facilitates the preparation or commission of a disruptive act or harbours a disruptionist would also come within the purview of this section.

This section clearly violates section 19 (1)(a) of the Constitution that guarantees freedom of speech and expression. For example, a poet or a cartoonist merely expressing the opinion that a plebiscite should be held to determine the future status of Kashmir could well be held and tried as a disruptionist if this Bill becomes law. This means that anyone can be detained for peacefully expressing their views on matters of ordinary political debate and if found guilty would be sentenced for a minimum sentence of five years, considerably longer than the envisaged international human rights standards.

Under section 5 of the CLA enhanced penalties can be given for offences under the Arms Act, 1959, the Explosives Act, 1884, the Explosive Substances Act, 1908 or the Inflammable Substances Act, 1952 “with an intent to aid a terrorist or a disrputionist.” Offences related to the possession of arms have been linked to ostensible acts of terrorism in ways that are bound to make them deadly weapons in the hands of the police.

Section 3(8) of the proposed legislation makes the failure to disclose information to the police to prevent a terrorist act by any person liable to imprisonment for a year. All citizens have a moral duty to assist in the enforcement of law; the failure to do so here makes this omission a penal offence. Another way of legitimising police harassment and torture of relatives and friends of alleged terrorists?

A critical feature of the Indian Constitution is the separation of the judiciary and the executive (Article 50). The CLA Bill seeks not only to erode this but also to vest extraordinary powers to the executive. The executive that is the government and its wing, the police have been given the power to frame all rules, mete out punishment, prescribe procedures, seize and confiscate property. Under section 6A the investigating officer (Superintendent of Police) can seize or attach property which at the stage of the investigation, he believes to be obtained by terrorist acts or the proceeds of terrorism.

In continuation of the thinking behind TADA, the CLA upholds the logic that special crimes need special procedures. Checks and balances in accordance with the basic rights of a citizen, rights relating to procedures for arrest, detention, ownership of FIRs and other police records, detailed at length in the CRPC, are given the complete go-by. Permanently.

Section 14c) of the CLA provides for not disclosing the identity of the witness even during cross-examination, while section 3(7) provides for the punishment to a person who may threaten the witness. Arbitrary tools for the police. It is a very serious matter that trade unions and other mass movements have been covered within the purview of the act. The provision implied in section 4(1)© is that if such organisations even by mistake become a party to violence, they can be booked under the section of ‘disruptive activities.’

The Bill gives no discretionary power of bail to the Court unless by prior consent of the public prosecutor. This provision from TADA was grossly misused especially in Gujarat.

The Bill does not allow for appeal on the interlocutory order. Further, the Bill requires that the FIR must be ratified by the DGP within 10 days or the review committee within 30 days: since both are state authorities, it is unlikely that the verification will not take place. Section 13(5) provides that ‘a special court may if it thinks fit and for reasons recorded ….proceed with the trial in the absence of the accused or the pleader.’

This could allow for the grossest abuse. Section 18(2)(b) gives unlimited power to the police to retain the custody of the accused for 180 days without filing a charge sheet. Finally, section 17(3) restricts the period for appeal by the accused to only thirty days when Indian criminal law allows for sixty-ninety days.

Ironically all offences mentioned both in TADA and the CLA find mention in the Indian Penal Code –sections 121-A, 122, 124, 124-A, 153-A and 153-B, besides offences of rioting, grievous hurt, murder, dacoity and piracy. The IPC also contains various offences relating to the Army, Navy and Air Force. In the past, for the protection of defence of the country, a statute like the Defence of India, Act 1962 was enacted which authorised the Central government to make such rules as appeared to be necessary for the Defence of India: civil defence, public safety, maintenance of public order, efficient conduct of military operations and security forces.

The experience of TADA and its brutal and insensitive application to the Indian civilian population is testimony of the desire and designs of a government and law and order machinery that wishes the experience to be repeated. Terrorism was not curtailed then, it was not even contained despite the existence of TADA On the contrary, thorough investigative procedures were given the go-by, dulling the professionalism of the law and order machinery that was simultaneously empowered by a brutal law to become trigger happy and break the law. Do we want this experience to be repeated?

Archived from Communalism Combat, April 2000. Year 7 No, 58, Special Report 3

The Mirror of History’

March 31, 2000

History is a laboratory of social theory. It is also the terrain of Identity, a category that sits uneasily with human equality, and has taken millions of lives.

"The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence"

Adolf Hitler, in Mein Kampf.

The history of India over the past century unfolds like a chronicle of civil war. India was partitioned, the segment re-partitioned. "Internal enemies" were identified and massacres unleashed. No solutions were found. Today, communal myths possess nuclear bombs. There are lines of control everywhere – in villages, cities and in hearts. Barbed wire, iron gates and security guards abound. Flagpoles of religious places compete with each other for height. Society is awash with fear. Thanks to the guardians of "identity", outraged sentiment seems to be on the rampage – battling over cricket pitches, books, films and paintings.

Humanity possesses a natural tendency for remembrance and its transmission. For those interested in ideals of progress history is a laboratory of social theory. It is also the terrain of Identity, a category that sits uneasily with human equality, and has taken millions of lives. History as the maidservant of a cause undermines its own disciplinary procedures. No history is free of tendency, and historians’ convictions undoubtedly affect their output. However, just as the Euclidian point is essential to geometry, the search for truth has to remain an ideal, even if an unattainable one, for history.

This is a painful commitment, because historical materials defy dogma. None of us like our beliefs being challenged. Gandhians do not want to be reminded of the repercussions of the Khilafat movement or the Congress’ attitude to the 1946 naval mutiny. Communists are defensive about the stance of the CPI in 1942 and the Adhikari resolution supporting Partition. Admirers of Savarkar do not advertise the fact that he assisted the British war effort, was not averse to Mahasabha participation in the Muslim League ministry of NWFP in 1943, and was a main accused in the Gandhi murder trial. The Pakistan Ideology Act restrains Pakistani historians from questioning the two-nation theory or writing a non-tendentious account of Jinnah’s career. The RSS might not like to be reminded that in May 1947 the Akhil Rajya Hindu Sabha under J&K RSS chief Prem Nath Dogra, passed a resolution on Kashmir stating that "a Hindu state should not join secular India". Or that Sardar Patel accused RSS men of celebrating Gandhi’s assassination. Trotskyists don’t dwell on Bolshevik military action against the Kronstadt sailors in 1921, Stalinists don’t remember state terror and mock trials in the USSR. Nazi apologists don’t recall the Holocaust and Zionists suffer amnesia about the terror unleashed by the Haganah and Stern gangs in 1948. Japanese historians are defensive about the massacres in Nanking and Shanghai and some day Chinese historians will forget that China waged war on Vietnam in 1979 in tandem with the USA.

For some ideologues, the past is a saga of victory and defeat. The fear of ambivalence is characteristic of them and in their hands, history is pure polemic. Savarkar’s speech to the Hindu Mahasabha in 1942 described 17th century India as being "a veritable Pakistan", with "Hindustan being wiped out", and the 18th century witnessing the march of Hinduism. This anachronism is repeated in a Pakistani textbook of 1982, which teaches that in the 16th century, "`Hindustan’ disappeared and was absorbed in ‘Pakistan’". The distortions extend to contemporary analysis. Time summed up the history of the 20th century as a victory of "free minds and free markets over fascism and communism" (December 31, 1999). Along with Clinton’s essay it misrepresents the Allied victory in World War II as an American one, ignoring the role of the Red Army and the fact that the USSR lost over twenty million dead, compared to less than 3 lakh Americans. This is History as the paean of megalomania. I do not believe that all viewpoints are equally biased, or that history provides no lessons. From the welter of partiality, we may glean truths and hope – but only if our profession is motivated by respect for human experience, and not just "Hindu" or "Muslim" experience. The historian has to be an iconoclast or risk becoming a propagandist.

In an attempted refutation of Bharat Bhushan’s article The Other Italian Connection (HT Feb 18), K.R. Malkani (Feb 23) states that the RSS was founded before Moonje visited Italy, that its heroes were Indians, and that Gandhi also met Mussolini. Here is an example of history as polemic. It was the militaristic mind-set of fascism, not its specific heroes that inspired Moonje. All ultra-rightists had their own "national" heroes. Mussolini seized power in 1922, and his impact was evident by the time the RSS was founded in 1925. And whereas Moonje was greatly impressed by Mussolini, Gandhi told the latter that his state was "a house of cards", and took a dim view of the man – "his eyes are never still". Moonje’s trip was not an innocuous replica of Gandhi’s.

Defending the recent withdrawal of the ICHR volumes, government protagonists aver that the authors reduced Gandhi to a footnote. It is ironic that persons sympathetic to the politics of Gandhi’s assassin repeatedly take refuge behind Gandhi’s memory. Let us address the issue differently. Gandhi was a proponent of ahimsa. Hinduttva’s proponents believe that Hindus are too pacific – even cowardly, and need to become militant. Their heroes are those whom they identify as warriors. Their constant evocation of wounded sentiment as a justification for "direct action", prompt us to ask the government to clarify its position on violence. Should sentiment be elevated to a level superior to the needs of civic order and criminal justice? Is it surprising that a retired CBI director is so fond of the Bajrang Dal, an organisation known more for muscle than mind? That a former union minister encouraged the intimidation of a film unit? That the vandalisation of the BCCI office was condoned by a Chief Minister who saw no reason for a police case? Is it their case that Naxalite violence is wrong but violence unleashed by outraged sentiment is acceptable? Do they have the courage to say so explicitly?

The assault on the mind is the most dangerous feature of the current situation. Mushirul Hasan was attacked for suggesting that the ban on Satanic Verses be lifted. (A prominent Congressman incited that campaign). Asghar Engineer is beaten up for questioning the Syedna’s powers. Whatever happened to the rights of minorities within minorities? Demands are voiced – rather belatedly – for a ban on Dante’s Inferno. Film screenings are disrupted. Literary commentaries on the Granth Sahib result in threats of excommunication. (How brave our militants are!). And when we need a discussion on the rule of law, we indulge instead in literary criticism, film appreciation etc. Surely the point ought to be whether bad authors and filmmakers have a right to remain alive, with their bones intact. Whether the government can ensure a peaceful resolution of conflicts or if musclemen may run amuck because they have high connections. Gandhi rendered Hindus nirvirya and napunsak, said Godse. I beg to differ.

Gandhi had greater physical courage than most politicians in his time – and not many of today’s luminaries would venture forth without protection after three attempts at assassination. His ahimsa was a name for restraint, without which no society may survive and no institutions gather strength. Let us stop flaunting our boringly delicate sentiments, and address the deliberate inculcation of revenge and hatred. Those who care about human survival can see their future in the mirror of history.

(This article are fisrt publish in The Hindustan Times.)

Archived from Communalism Combat, April 2000. Year 7 No, 58, Editor's Choice

Aftermath of the massacre

March 31, 2000

Unless the killing of innocents, irrespective of their religion, and irrespective of who was responsible for it, is universally condemned, the cleavage between communities would widen

The massacre of 35 Sikhs at Chhitsinghpora in Kashmir on March 20 and the way the situation was subsequently handled by the state government and the security forces have exposed the crisis of governance in the state and indicate the dangers ahead.

The massacre caused great outrage within and outside the state. Not only because it was the largest toll of innocent civilians allegedly taken by the militants but also because the victims were Sikhs who were considered safe so far. Forgetting their differences, the entire community united in launching massive protests everywhere against the outrageous act. At some places Hindu extremists tried to form a united front with them and divert their anger against Muslims. But as the latter, particularly in Kashmir, expressed full solidarity with the bereaved families and the Sikh community, through hartals and protest demonstrations, the designs of the communal forces were frustrated.

The tragedy had occasioned a rethinking on the part of many Kashmiris about the role of violence in achieving their objectives. For it is damaging their cause and defaming their movement. Moreover the militant groups were no longer under their control; they are now controlled from across the border. Since 1998, Hindus have became the direct targets of these militants simply because they were Hindus.

The killing of 25 Kashmiri Pandits at Wandhama and the mass killing of Hindus at Prankote, Champnari and Kishtwar in the Jammu region have taken a heavy toll of innocent lives. The secessionist leaders in Kashmir have tried to absolve the militants of such inhuman crimes by attributing them to the Indian security forces “in order to discredit the azadi movement.” But they have not produced any shred of evidence to prove their allegations whereas some contrary evidence has often been produced.

Despite Pakistan’s charge that Chhitisinghpora killings were done by the Indian army, most Kashmiri Muslims were willing to suspend their judgement and supported the demand for a credible inquiry. If the government had responded to this and handled the situation intelligently and tactfully, the militants could have been isolated and further bloodshed in the state could have been stopped.

But why did the state government and the security forces behave in a manner exactly opposite to what should have been done? This is not the first time this has happened. When Mirwaiz Maulvi Farooq was killed in May 1990, the indiscriminate firing on his funeral diverted the anger of his devout followers against militants to against the Indian government. Since then a number of similar incidents can be cited. In recent years, the Wandhama killing of Hindus was soon followed by the killing of seven innocent Muslims in Kishtwar.

Perhaps the security forces are provoked by the senseless and brutal killing of Hindus by militants who are Muslim. They are also encouraged to be more ruthless by cries of “free hand to the security forces” and warnings to human rights activists to desist from criticising the security forces. In its haste to claim it has successfully eliminated the militants responsible for the killings of the Sikhs, the army apparently was not careful enough to distinguish between the militants and local Muslims. And the state government showed callous indifference to the demands of the parents of the missing youth to trace them and hold an inquiry into what had been done to them. After week–long protest demonstrations, as the ranks of demonstrators swelled, the state police fired on them and killed seven civilians. Whatever the provocation, why were other methods not used to disperse the mob? Why were tear gas and water cannons not used before resorting to firing?

Chhitisinghpora wounds would not heal so soon. The bereaved families, Sikhs of the Valley, the community outside and many Hindus will continue to be haunted by the tragedy. But the Anantnag firing on Muslims tends to somewhat unburden the sense of guilt that they had felt over the killing of Sikhs in the name of their religion. Whatever extra security arrangements may be made for the protection of the Sikh community in the Valley, including supply of arms, they have not become securer after the latest police firing.

The situation may perhaps be retrieved even now if an independent inquiry is held, if possible in association with Amnesty International, into both incidents — Chhitisinghpora and Anantnag — to locate the responsibility. Those held guilty must be punished severely. Even if the government is confident that Chhitisinghpora massacre was committed by the militants, the failure of various agencies to prevent it still needs an inquiry. Moreover, all those who were rightly agitated over the killing of Sikhs should equally strongly condemn the killing of Muslims.

Unless the killing of innocents, irrespective of their religion, and irrespective of who was responsible for it, is universally condemned, the cleavage between communities would widen and one set of killings would be justified by another set of killings; the victims in both cases will be innocent.

Archived from Communalism Combat, April 2000, Year 7 No. 58, Special Report 1

1...2,6832,6842,685...2,698 Page 2,684 of 2,698

Blinding Reality

Attacks on Christians in 2000

Hate campaign the PM knows nothing about

Hate campaign the PM knows nothing about

VHP peppers tribal regions with hate pamphlets

Can India survive Hindutva’s assaults?

TADA Re-Incarnated

The Mirror of History’

Aftermath of the massacre

JOIN OUR MAILING LIST

JOIN OUR MAILING LIST

Important Links

Other Links

CONNECT