Ban the bombers

Last month’s special 15th anniversary issue of Communalism Combat highlighted not just the disturbing phenomenon of the emergence of a wide network of ‘Hindu’ terror. Far worse is the attempt by the central investigating agency, the CBI, to cover-up this fact during its investigations. Instead of a thorough probe into the Nanded blasts case of April 2006, the charge sheet submitted by the CBI before the Nanded court shows a very clear bias. (CC cover, Blast After Blast.)

On August 28, 2008 we organised a public meeting in Delhi to focus attention on the issue and to reiterate a citizen’s demand for a ban on the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bajrang Dal (BD). This demand was one that we had repeatedly made between 1999 and 2002 along with other secular activists. Justice BG Kolse Patil (former judge, Bombay High Court), filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt, former director general of police, Gujarat, RB Sreekumar, and I addressed the meeting.

Four days before the meeting two activists of the Bajrang Dal had died in yet another accidental blast in Kanpur (see accompanying story). Around the same time there was the grotesque manifestation of mob-cum-state terror against innocent Christians in Orissa. Here again, the same sangh parivar outfits were involved. This added urgency to our renewed demand for a ban.

As ominously, the same organisations currently being investigated by the Maharashtra ATS (Anti-Terrorism Squad) for the blasts that took place in Thane and Panvel (Maharashtra) in May and June this year – the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, the Sanatan Sanstha and the Guru Kripa Pratisthan – have also been found to be active in the Jammu region. Prominent members of these outfits were the most vocal and communal voices in the Shri Amarnath Yatra Sangharsh Samiti.

Our meeting was well attended. Though media persons were present in large numbers, there was little reportage in the print or the electronic media. This is strange, to say the least, for the same media is known to play up stories related to terrorism and terrorist activities. It is particularly surprising given the fact that an attempted cover-up by the CBI was spelt out in great detail.

Justice Kolse Patil, who had earlier exchanged notes with other jurists and legal experts, emphasised that no other issue in the country warranted greater attention than the one being raised at the meeting. Among the issues of concern was the deliberate turning of a blind eye to an obvious pseudo-Hindu terror network active in different states by the crime branch, the ATS or the STF (Special Task Force) in each state. A point that was specifically highlighted was the CBI’s attempted cover-up of the entire RSS-Bajrang Dal-VHP terror network unearthed by the Maharashtra ATS in the Nanded 2006 blasts case.

What emerged from the Delhi meeting was a demand for the constitution of a special tribunal consisting of three judges of the Supreme Court to monitor and examine the investigations in all blasts cases in the country. The outfits involved in the ‘pseudo-Hindu’ blasts are the same outfits in whose agenda ‘hate Muslims’ is an integral part. Given this scenario, the question of a non-discriminatory approach by investigating and other law enforcement agencies is critical if confidence in the process must be assured.

A failure by the Indian state, the political class and the media to respond to this crying need does not augur well for abiding peace and justice in the country. The deafening silence of the media on this issue even as it remains proactively engaged in the glossy makeover of the master of state-sponsored terror, Narendra Modi, raises both suspicions and hackles.

Former chief minister of Madhya Pradesh and currently general secretary of the AICC, Digvijay Singh is one politician who has been quite vociferous in demanding a ban on the Bajrang Dal and the VHP. It was also a demand made by his government in 2001 during NDA rule at the centre. (In its special issue titled "Genocide Gujarat 2002" of March-April 2002, CC had reproduced the MP government notification making out the case for a ban). The silence from the rest of the Congress party both then and now is deafening.

The demands made at the meeting on August 28 – a ban on the Bajrang Dal and the VHP and a special tribunal – were addressed to the central UPA government. Endorsing these demands, politburo member of the CPI(M) and MP, Hannan Mollah, has written to the prime minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh, asking for urgent action.

Among the few papers that reported on the meeting were the Delhi edition of The Hindu and Mail Today. To its credit, Outlook magazine has taken its journalistic investigations even further. Tehelka too has been fair and consistent in its coverage of the issue. But Frontline continues to turn a blind eye. As for the electronic media, there was no reportage, no emotionally charged panel discussions, no attempt to bring to national attention the dangerous emergence of Hindu terrorist outfits. The silence of the same media that thrives on the sensational, that otherwise inundates us with information after every bomb blast, is strangely silent about blasts involving Hindu extremist outfits. Its silence is as telling as that of both the ruling party and the major opposition parties. Is there an unholy conspiracy of silence?

The opening lines of the special report in the latest issue of Outlook make the same observation: "in a curious convergence of views, policymakers – regardless of the party in power – administrators/police and journalists appear to be united in the belief that to put the activities of Hindu militants under the scanner in the way their Muslim counterparts are would somehow upset the social balance." The report is prefaced with a chilling quote accessed from the VHP’s official website: "The Bajrang Dal has proved as a security ring of Hindu society. Whenever there is an attack on Hindu society, faith and religion the workers of the Bajrang Dal come to their rescue." That the sinister meaning of this message is lost, or is being wilfully ignored by state agencies which are supposed to ensure the rule of law and to protect the life and property of every Indian, is extremely ominous. Where are we heading?

The Outlook investigation lays bare the activities of the Bajrang Dal in the Jammu region. In 2004 Surendra Jain, the all-India secretary of the BD said that the organisation was working undercover in the Hindu-dominated villages in Jammu city, Poonch, Doda and Rajouri. Its activists had also penetrated the village defence committees. In the last four years the BD appears to have changed its tactics – from mob terror to bomb terror. The bombs the two BD activists from Kanpur were planning before it blew up in their faces on August 24 are not just one more example of a shift in strategy but also indicate plans for "massive explosions" to cause death and devastation on a huge scale.

CC has repeatedly warned of the nefarious designs of the Bajrang Dal since 1999. Under the benevolent gaze of the NDA until 2004, the RSS-VHP-BD triumvirate were openly involved in arming civil society (read Hindus) through the distribution of trishuls and military training camps for young men and women. And as the ATS investigation into the Nanded blasts uncovers, by 2003 the BD with covert support from the VHP and the RSS had graduated to training in the making and blasting of bombs.

A police officer who prefers anonymity told Outlook, "While the BD may not be as powerful as other terror outfits, it has the know-how. For instance, during the state-sponsored Gujarat genocide that killed 2,500 Muslims in 2002, some 500-600 bombs went off, a majority of which were linked to Hindu organisations. In Orissa, the police have recorded a conversation between two local BJP leaders about how the violence in that state will help the party politically."