The triumph of plural India!!

The postmortem of Elections 2009 results have begun.
Some term it as the victory of secular forces. Some take it as the defeat of communal, fascist forces. The greatest victor is Sonia Gandhi and the most pathetic loser is L K Advani. With the decimation of RJD, BSP, ADMK, TDP many have started to believe that the era of regional fiefdoms and satraps is over. With Singh as King there is no room to kingmakers, they proudly proclaim.
Amidst this cacophony of meaningless, petty squabbles I stumbled upon a thoughtprovoking article on the fall of BJP. Kumar Ketkar has written it and I cherished each and every word of it.
Excerpts from the article:

The Sangh Parivar is too broad a term. It incorporates the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Bajrang Dal, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, Sri Ram Sene, Stree Shakti, Vyapari Sangh, Vanvasi Kalyan outfits and several other front organisations. It is a vast network of dedicated activists, stretching from Arunachal to Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu to Tripura and Gujarat to Kashmir.

In the past 30 years however, these outfits, and the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, the original gene, have ceased to attract the young. The shakhas have either disappeared or are virtually deserted. The top leadership is all above 70, the second rank is in the age group of 50-65. The third rank is thin and hovers around the age of 40. Then it gets emptier and emptier except in organisations like Bajrang Dal or Sri Ram Sene, where the lumpen join, because they get some kind of activity and identity. At one level, it is a reflection of rural and urban unemployment; at another, it is a manifestation of cultural frustration.

Apart from these organisations, their activists and fellow travellers, there is a huge urban middle class constituency. It is interesting to note that the BJP with its abstract Hindu cause has attracted a large corporate class in the last two decades.The BJP or the Jan Sangh before 1980 had a following in the lower middle class, primarily among Brahminical communities. This was understandable because the RSS, when founded by Dr. Hedgewar in 1925, had its origins in this social mileu.

Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar was a Congressman and had been a follower of Mahatma Gandhi. After his death in 1940, he handed the organisation over to Guru Golwalkar. Organisation was of supreme importance for the Guruji and under him, the network spread all over India, including in Karachi. The ideology of the Sangh was Hindu cultural nationalism as distinct from the inclusive, pluralistic nationalism of the Congress. Among the first three Congress presidents, one was Christian, one Muslim and one Parsi. But the Congress was a political organisation and the RSS proclaimed that it intended to keep away from politics and ‘culturally’ consolidate the Hindu masses.

It is necessary to remember that the Hindu Mahasabha was founded in 1915, a decade before the RSS, when Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was undergoing life imprisonment. If the objective was the same, then Dr. Hedgewar and his colleagues would have joined the HMS, or Veer Savarkar would have joined the RSS. But the fact is that RSS and the HMS had distinct identities. The HMS was an upfront political organisation, which believed in armed struggle to achieve independence from the British. It sought to establish a Hindu Rashtra politically, almost on the same lines of what later became Pakistan. Indeed, the Savarkarites used to ridicule the RSS swayamsevaks for their ‘political timidity’. It was much later that the RSS began to appropriate Savarkar’s ideology. Savarkar died in 1966, never having ‘officially’ endorsed the RSS. Even after the Jan Sangh was formed in 1950 as a political wing of the RSS, the HMS fought elections in several constituencies against the Jan Sangh candidates.

All this while, the base of the RSS, Jan Sangh and the HMS was essentially upper caste, urban and middle-class. When the Jan Sangh merged with the Janata Party, it began to spread out under the cover of the JP movement. Inevitably, the socialists and old Congressmen who had been the major partners of the Janata Party, were alarmed. The party split vertically on the issue of ‘dual membership’, which meant that the Jan Sangh was expected to totally dissociate from the RSS. The BJP emerged out of the wreckage of the Janata Party. It is since then that the Sangh Parivar began to suffer from a ‘multiple personality syndrome’.

In the coming decades, the BJP which was reduced to just two seats in the Lok Sabha in 1985 and declared virtually dead, expanded along with the the new middle class and Mandir politics, just as the rural elite consolidated itself with the help of Mandal. Under the stewardship of Lal Krishna Advani, the BJP spread its tentacles all over a new urban middle class. In less than a decade, from 1990 when the Rath Yatra began, to 1998, the BJP-led 18-party front came to power with 182 seats.

The newly emerging middle class, which was the product of economic liberalisation, was the exact opposite of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, another Parivar outfit, which opposed globalisation and Americanisation. But for militant Hinduism, the BJP-led front could not have come to power. But to seek power through such militancy and to run a country like India, whose distinguishing characteristic is pluralism, are not easily reconciliable. That is why Vajpayee became the mask and Advani the face behind the mask. The moderates in the BJP became Vajpayee followers, the hardliners joined the Advani camp and the far right in the Parivar promoted the Togadias and Modis.

The BJP thus became a hybrid organisation, which is now looking for a stable personality. Vajpayee and Advani could not agree on Modi. Now, the BJP cannot recognise the ‘real face’ from the several masks that it has acquired for electoral persuasion. Once it had a strong urban base. Now it has lost all the major cities. Till a few months ago, Modi was promoted as a corporate as well as militant icon.

In Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, the vast majority across classes and castes, has found the real plural India. Today, along with the markets, most Indian people have introspected and recognised the the folly of militant Mandir and Mandal politics. That is why we saw the decimation of Mulayam and Mayawati, the marginalisation of Pawar and Paswan, and the discomfiture of Advani and Modi. Plural India has triumphed.

What does Maya Kodnani deserve?

India's dangerous divide!! by Ramachandra Guha

A day after I heard a BJP leader denounce the Congress for making the Muslims into a "pampered and privileged minority," I found myself making a turn into the busiest road in my home town, Bangalore. Just ahead of me was a Muslim gentleman, who was attempting to do likewise. Except that he was making the turn not behind the wheel of a powerful Korean-made car but with a hand-cart on which were piled some bananas.

That the fruit seller was Muslim was made clear by his headgear, a white cap with perforations. He was an elderly man, about 60, short and slightly-built. The turn was made hard by his age and infirmity, and harder by the fact that the road sloped steeply downward, and by the further fact that making the turn with him were very many motor vehicles. Had he gone too slow he would have been bunched in against the cars; had he gone too fast he might have lost control altogether. Placed right behind the fruit seller, I saw him visibly relax his shoulders as the turn was successfully made, with cart and bananas both intact.

One should not read too much into a single image, but it does seem to be that that perilous turn was symptomatic of an entire life -- a life lived at the edge of subsistence, a life taken one day at a time and from one turn to the next. In this respect the fruit seller was quite representative of Indian Muslims in general. Far from being pampered or privileged, most Muslims are poor farmers, laborers, artisans and traders, says Ramachandra Guha, noted historian and writer.

Excerpts from his article :

In October 1947, a bare six weeks after India and Pakistan achieved their independence from British rule, the Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, wrote a remarkable letter to the Chief Ministers of the different provinces. Here Nehru pointed out that despite the creation of Pakistan as a Muslim homeland, there remained, within India,

"a Muslim minority who are so large in numbers that they cannot, even if they want, go anywhere else. That is a basic fact about which there can be no argument. Whatever the provocation from Pakistan and whatever the indignities and horrors inflicted on non-Muslims there, we have got to deal with this minority in a civilized manner. We must give them security and the rights of citizens in a democratic State."

In the wake of the recent incidents in Mumbai, these words make salutary reading. It seems quite certain that the terrorists who attacked the financial capital were trained in Pakistan. The outrages have sparked a wave of indignation among the middle class. Demonstrations have been held in the major cities, calling for revenge, in particular for strikes against training camps in Pakistan. The models held up here are Israel and the United States; if they can "take out" individual terrorists and invade whole countries, ask some Indians, why not we?

Other commentators have called for a more measured response. They note that the civilian government in Islamabad is not in control of the army, the army not in control of the notorious Inter Services Intelligence agency, the ISI not in control of the extremists it has funded. They point out that Pakistan has itself been a victim of massive terror attacks. India, they say, should make its disapproval manifest in other ways, such as canceling sporting tours and recalling diplomats. At the same time, the United States should be asked to demand of Pakistan, its erratically reliable ally, that it act more decisively against the terrorists who operate from its soil.

One short-term consequence of the terror in Mumbai is a sharpening of hostility between India and Pakistan. And, as is always the case when relations between these two countries deteriorate, right-wing Hindus have begun to scapegoat those Muslims who live in India. They have begun to speculate as to whether the attackers were aided by their Indian co-religionists, and to demand oaths of loyalty from Muslim clerics and political leaders.

There are 150 million Muslims in India. They have gained particular prominence in one area: Bollywood. Several top directors and composers are Muslim, as well as some of India's biggest movie stars. One, Aamir Khan, was a star and producer in "Lagaan," a song-and-dance epic about a game of cricket that was nominated for an Academy Award in 2002.

But Muslims are massively underrepresented in the professions -- few of India's top lawyers, judges, doctors and professors are Muslim. Many Indian Muslims are poor, and a few are angry.

Pakistan was carved out of the eastern and western portions of British India. To this new nation flocked Muslims from the Indian heartland. Leading the migration were the lawyers, teachers and entrepreneurs who hoped that in a state reserved for people of their faith, they would be free of competition from the more populous (and better educated) Hindus.

Pakistan was created to give a sense of security to the Muslims of the sub-continent. In fact, it only made them more insecure. Nehru's letter of October 1947 was written in response to a surge of Hindu militancy, which called for retribution against the millions of Muslims who stayed behind in India. Three months later, Mahatma Gandhi, who was both Father of the Indian Nation as well as Nehru's mentor, was shot dead by a Hindu fanatic. That act shamed the religious right, who retreated into the shadows. There they stayed until the 1970s, when, through a combination of factors elaborated upon below, they came to occupy center-stage in Indian politics.

From the 1980s, the dominance of the Congress party has been challenged by the Bharatiya Janata Party. The BJP seeks to make India a "Hindu" nation, by basing the nation's political culture on the religious traditions (and prejudices) of the dominant community. Charging the Congress with "minority appeasement," with corruption and with dynastic rule, the BJP came to power in many states, and eventually in New Delhi. However, its commitment to the secular ideals of the Indian Constitution is somewhat uncertain. For the party's members and fellow travelers, only Indians of the Hindu faith are to be considered full or first-class citizens. Of the others, the Parsis are to be tolerated, the Christians distrusted, and the Muslims detested. One form this detestation takes is verbal -- the circulation of innuendos based on lies and half-truths (as in the claim that Muslims outbreed Hindus and will soon outnumber them).

Another form is physical -- thus, the hand of the BJP lies behind some of the worst communal riots in independent India, for example Bhagalpur in 1989, Mumbai in 1992, and Gujarat in 2002; in all cases, an overwhelming majority of the victims were Muslims.

In its activities BJP is helped by a series of allied groups. Known also by their abbreviations -- RSS, VHP, etc. -- these were in the forefront of the religious violence of the 1980s and beyond. Roaming the streets of small- (and big-) town India, they addressed their Muslim prey with the slogan "Pakistan or Kabristan!" (Flee to Pakistan, or we will send you straight to your graves). Meanwhile, their ideologues in the press -- some with degrees from the best British universities -- make the argument that Muslims are inherently violent, or unpatriotic, or both.

In fact, the ordinary Muslim is much like any other ordinary Indian -- honest, hard-working and just about scraping a living.

A day after I heard a BJP leader denounce the Congress for making the Muslims into a "pampered and privileged minority," I found myself making a turn into the busiest road in my home town, Bangalore. Just ahead of me was a Muslim gentleman, who was attempting to do likewise. Except that he was making the turn not behind the wheel of a powerful Korean-made car but with a hand-cart on which were piled some bananas.

That the fruit seller was Muslim was made clear by his headgear, a white cap with perforations. He was an elderly man, about 60, short and slightly-built. The turn was made hard by his age and infirmity, and harder by the fact that the road sloped steeply downward, and by the further fact that making the turn with him were very many motor vehicles. Had he gone too slow he would have been bunched in against the cars; had he gone too fast he might have lost control altogether. Placed right behind the fruit seller, I saw him visibly relax his shoulders as the turn was successfully made, with cart and bananas both intact.

One should not read too much into a single image, but it does seem to be that that perilous turn was symptomatic of an entire life -- a life lived at the edge of subsistence, a life taken one day at a time and from one turn to the next. In this respect the fruit seller was quite representative of Indian Muslims in general. Far from being pampered or privileged, most Muslims are poor farmers, laborers, artisans and traders.

The failure to punish the perpetrators of successive pogroms has thrown some young men into the arms of fundamentalist groups. But the number is not, as yet, very large. And it is counterbalanced by other trends, for instance, the growing hunger for modern education among the youth. The desire to learn English is ubiquitous, as is the fascination for computers.

Even in the disgruntled valley of Kashmir, a press survey found that the iconic founder of India's most respected software company, Infosys Technologies, a Hindu named N. R. Narayana Murthy, was a greater hero among Muslim students than the founder of Al Qaeda.

Since the reasons for the poverty (and the anger) are so complex, a successful compact between Indian Muslims and modernity will require patient and many-sided work.

And the BJP must recognize, in word and in deed, that the 150 million Muslims in India have to be dealt with in a civilized manner, and given the security and the rights due them as equal citizens in a democratic and non-denominational State.

Writing in 1957, the historian Wilfred Cantwell Smith pointed out that Indian Muslims were unique in that they shared their citizenship "with an immense number of people. They constitute the only sizable body of Muslims in the world of which this is, or ever has been true."

True no longer, for in many countries of Western Europe and even in the United States, the Muslims are now a sizeable but not dominant component of the national population. This makes this particular case even more special. For if, notwithstanding the poisonous residues of history and the competitive chauvinisms of politicians, Indians of different faiths were to live in peace, dignity and (even a moderate) prosperity, they might set an example for the world.

To read the full story click here

Read : "Mumbai attack is not 9/11" by Arundhati Roy

Read : As the Fires Die: The Terror of the Aftermath

Just The Tip Won't Do: Expose The Whole Iceberg

Kavita Krishnan has said explicitly and boldly. The following is the excerpts from her article on Latest developments:

No longer can the Sangh Parivar and BJP ever disown its role in terrorism. A former firebrand ABVP leader and so-called 'sadhvi', Pragya Singh Thakur, has been arrested for her role in the Malegaon blasts of September 2006 as well as in the more recent Modasa blasts. Even more ominously, two ex-Army officers are implicated in the blasts, and it has come to light that an institution called the 'Bhonsala Military Academy' in Nagpur has been imparting arms training to the Bajrang Dal.

The Sangh Parivar has reacted by disclaiming its links with 'sadhvi' on the one hand, and on the other, by suggesting that it is inconceivable that a 'sadhvi' could be a terrorist. BJP spokesperson Venkaiyya Naidu has reminded us that according to the rule of law, the sadhvi is innocent till proven guilty, and the BJP has objected strongly to the term 'Hindutva terrorism.'

For a minute, imagine if the story were the same – with just one detail changed: replace the 'sadhvi' with a 'maulvi.' Then imagine the righteous roars that would be voiced by the BJP, demanding blood. In the Jamia Nagar blasts case, the BJP would not allow teenage boys the benefit of 'rule of law;' they castigated the Jamia VC for arranging legal aid, and in UP, Sangh cadre have beaten up lawyers taking up cases of blast-accused. Muslims accused of terrorism, it seems, are guilty even if proven innocent, and are certainly not entitled to the opportunity to prove themselves innocent!

There is ample proof that the sadhvi has campaigned for the BJP in elections, and has appeared in public gatherings with BJP President Rajnath Singh and MP CM Shivraj Singh Chauhan. Under POTA, as under the Chhattisgarh Special Security Act, those who are associated with or have known the accused can be prosecuted as 'conspirators.' Will the BJP tell us why Rajnath and Shivraj should not be prosecuted as 'conspirators' according to the principles espoused by the BJP itself? Surely there is more ground to prosecute Rajnath or Shivraj of conspiring with saffron terrorists than there is to prosecute Dr.Binayak Sen for links with Maoists?

What were Pragya Thakur's known activities? Her role in the communal pogrom in Gujarat 2002 is indicated: in fact, she campaigned for the BJP in Surat in 2002 and again in 2007. Her father, defending her, offers proof of some of the noble work she was known for: "Pragya and her organisation Jai Vande Matram would rescue girls who eloped with boys of another community, sometimes bring them back to their parents." So, like the notorious Babu Bajrangi, Pragya was involved in terrorising, kidnapping and coercing women who had married of their own accord outside their community. Pragya is proof positive of the fact that the same forces who openly indulge in communal pogroms and obscurantism violence against women could in fact be secretly involved in terrorism.

This said, it is also important to ask why the above facts were kept hidden from us for the past two years. Soon after the Malegaon blasts, in nearby Nanded, Bajrang Dal activists were accidentally killed by their own bombs, and investigation had revealed fake beards and 'Muslim-looking' clothing in their home. In other parts of Maharashtra and the country – Parbhani, tenkasi, Kanpur, Faizabad – there have been leads linking saffron forces to bomb blasts. Had these leads been pursued, is it not possible that some subsequent terrorist incidents could have been avoided? The state and ruling establishment is criminally guilty of ignoring these vital leads.

We are everyday asked to believe as gospel whatever is peddled as 'fact' by the police via the media in a terror investigation: to question is to be branded 'anti-national.' It is worth recalling that on November 26, 2007, less than two months after the Malegaon blasts, Director General of Police P S Pasricha had claimed to have 'solved' the case. Several Muslims were arrested and paraded, the names SIMI and Lashkar were bandied about, involvement of Pakistan and training received by the 'masterminds' in Pakistan pointed to. The police over the next two years have confidently given us detailed 'facts' about how the 8 arrested conceived of and executed the blasts. Those arrested were also linked with the Mumbai train blasts, according to the police. The ATS has prima facie "ruled out the involvement of Hindu fundamentalist groups in the Malegaon blasts" claiming that "RDX is only available to Islamic terrorist outfits." (TOI, 12 September 2006) Three of the accused were said to have "confessed" to the crime.

Now, we are told that the motorbike used in the September 29 Malegaon bomb blasts was registered in Pragya's name, and this led to her arrest. Are we to believe that the police took two years to find out the registration details of a bike involved in the blasts? The same police that just have to take one look at a bomb site to tell us confidently the exact nationality and organisational affiliation of the perpetrators? Is there any material at all – including RDX – that ex-Army men cannot easily have access to? Will the police explain to us how the 'confessions' of three Muslim men were secured (will they admit to torture)? Who will restore freedom, and apologise for character assassination and torture, to those who for the past two years have been blamed for blasts they did not do? Most importantly, are we really to believe that the Governments at State and Centre did not know all along about the activities of the Bhonsala Military Academy, and the fact that it was openly holding arms training camps for Bajrang Dal goons from all over the country? Blasts aside, how come such training camps for communal outfits were not deemed illegal and banned even as Bajrang Dal brigades repeatedly conducted anti-Muslim and anti-Christian violence?

The recent revelations in the Malegaon blasts put every ongoing blast investigation under a cloud and a question mark. Clearly, the police suppressed all the trails that led to Sangh outfits and BJP leaders – allowing these terrorists to roam free and contest and campaign in elections – while misleading the nation by framing innocents of a minority community. Is it not all too possible that this is happening in every single blast investigation?

To read more, click here. Thank you, counter currents!!
Also read : Malegaon, Mecca Masjid and Justice!!
Also read : The cat is out of the bag!
Also read : Abhinav, Godse and bombs!!

The cat is out of the bag!!!

Pragya Singh Thakur, third from left with MP chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan left
and BJP chief Rajnath Singh, foreground.

Manoj Joshi, veteran Journalist based in New Delhi has dwelled in detail about the emerging truths, shady deals, holy alliances - everything concerned with the bomb blasts in India. It can be claimed that finally the cat is out of the bag. But, still what really matters is that who is to bell the cat? And that is the trillion dollar question. Excerpts from his article:

The arrival of Hindutva terrorism in India — via the Malegaon and Modasa blasts arrests — has been anticipated for some time now.
Between 2003 and 2006, there have been several unexplained and unsolved bombings targeting Muslims in many small towns of Maharashtra.

A blast took place at Parbhani’s Mohammadiya Mosque on Friday November 21, 2003, a blast at the Meraj-ul-uloom madarsa at Purna took place again on a Friday, August 27, 2004. On the same day, the Qadiriya mosque at Jalna was also the target of a bomb blast.

On September 8, 2006, again a Friday, a bomb was planted near a graveyard in Malegaon on the day of Shab-e-Barat, when Muslims congregate to commemorate their departed. There were bigger strikes, too, which were not of the normal pattern because they targeted Muslims — the May 2007 blast at Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad, the twin blasts at New Delhi’s Jama Masjid in April 2006, the blast at the Ajmer Sharif shrine in October 2007 and the Samjhauta Express attack of February 2007.

The Kanpur blasts were more recent. Two men, Rajiv Mishra and Bhupinder Singh, were killed in what was an accidental blast at the Kalyanpur area of the city in August this year. Apparently they had been making bombs and had been associated with the Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The police recovered some hand grenades, explosives and timers that the two were using.

To read the complete story, click here.

Also Read : The Hindutva virus can have all manner of consequences for the Indian armed forces
Also Read : The Fiery And Fanatical Sadhvi

Malegaon, Mecca Masjid and Justice

Asghar Ali Engineer is a Mumbai based Peace activist. He is in the field for the past thirty years. He has been awarded Right livelihood award alongwith Swami Agniwesh in 2004 "...for promoting over many years in South Asia the values of religious and communal co-existence, tolerance and mutual understanding." He has been running centre for study of society and secularism (CSSS) which strives with the of spreadling the spirit of Secularism and communal harmony and social peace.

Now that the latest revelations of Malegaun blasts has hit the nation, Mr. Asghar Ali Engineer has expressed his thoughts in his own way. The following is the excerpts from his thought provoking article "And now Hindu Terrorists?":

I had investigated Malegaon blasts of 2006 and had met all political leaders across party lines and common people and intellectuals and no one was convinced that those arrested after the blasts in 2006 in which more than 50 persons were killed could have been carried out by those arrested by the police. It was important festival and Friday and the bombs went off just when the Friday prayers ended. No Muslim would go for blasting bombs at such a place on such an occasion.

Yet the police was determined to blame it only on some ex-SIMI members and would listen to no arguments.

The 2006 blasts should be reinvestigated and I am sure something else would be revealed. I have seen the charge sheets filed by ATS in 2006 Malegaon blasts. It totally depends on confessions obtained in police custody and is bound to fail in any court of law. The real culprits would certainly escape.

The Nanded blasts in which two Bajrang Dal activists were killed had taken place just before Malegaon blasts of 2006 and there was every possibility of involvement of some of those persons in Malegaon blasts. Similarly the Mecca Masjid blasts of Hyderabad should also be thoroughly reinvestigated as it also took place on Friday just at the end of Friday prayers when thousands of Muslims were coming out of the Mosque.

And all those arrested in Mecca Masjid blasts were also mostly innocent persons. I have heard them in a public hearing in Hyderabad and human rights activists and civil rights group worked hard to get them released on bail as there was nothing by way of credible evidence against them. The courts had to give them bail. The Hyderabad police could not, or did not want to lay its hands on real culprits.

The involvement of some army officers even of the rank of major should not be surprising as many RSS sympathizers are regularly employed and after retirement they become active in Hindutva organizations. The army usually claims to be quite secular, and probably it is, but it should be much more careful while recruiting soldiers and officers. No one with communal background should be recruited. This principle is not being rigorously observed at the time of recruitment. Many people who come out of RSS controlled schools and colleges are recruited in army.

I think it will be better if all terror blast cases be investigated by the police of credible conduct under the supervision of retired high court justices. This will reduce possibility of biased investigation though may not all together eliminate it. It is in the interests of the internal security of the country. It appears communal riots are fast being replaced by bomb blasts and some people suspect, it is new strategy of the communal forces. Major communal riots are becoming increasingly difficult to organize.

The civil society should also become vigilant against all terrorists of whatever religion or group. As communal riots were major danger in twentieth century, terrorist attacks are for 21st century.

To read the full article, click here.