Who is Pramod Mutalik?

 Pramod Mutalik may have become a Muslim household name with his provocative statement, “Malegaon is a Jhalak. More is possible if every woman picks up bombs”, but he was in the news much before Sadhvi Pragya. In the second half of 2008, the same Mutalik, a vendor of anarchy, had said in a press conference held in Bangalore press club that Hindu suicide squads are ready “to take on Islamic terrorists.”

This news item remained on the fringe and nobody bothered to pick it up since Mutalik posed a threat only to the Indian Muslims. He became a despicable object only when his men attacked ‘Hindu’ women in a pub in Mangalore.

Sadhvi Rithambara, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and Pramod Mutalik once belonged to BJP whose unofficial doctrine is based on the hate culture. It is altogether a different matter that when the hate crosses the permissible limit, BJP tries to distance itself from its ardent supporters.

From Mubasshir Mushtaq's article in Inquilab

To read the full article, click here.

What does it take to stoke a riot in Bangalore? Not a lot, for if you are willing to spend then Pramod Muthalik’s Sri Ram Sene will do the job.

This was the essence of the six-weeks long joint investigation by the news channel, Headlines Today, and Tehelka magazine, which was aired on Thursday.

Muthalik — whose claim to notoriety is the Mangalore pub attack of 2009 — has been caught on a hidden camera saying that a communal riot can be ‘organised’ in Bangalore or Mangalore. “Mangalore main kar sakte hain...Bangalore.” 

The sting’s script was simple: A reporter posed as an artist hungry for fame and wanted a communal riot sparked off by his exhibition so that he could be ‘famous like M F Hussain’; Muthalik said it could be organised and directed the artist to meet his deputies.

What followed was a series of meetings, primarily, with Prasad Attavur, national vicepresident, Sri Ram Sene and Vasantkumar Bhavani, Bangalore head of the Sene.Three out of four conversations with Attavur were held inside a jail. Muthalik is also shown accepting a donation of Rs 10,000 from a painter for “the cause of Hindutva”.
From Express News Service's report in Expressbuzz
To read the full report click here

'Sri Ram Sene-like elements are there within the Congress and the CPM too', says Ramachandra Guha

Tehelka's extraordinary exposé of the Sri Ram Sene demonstrates how 'popular and religious sentiment' is cynically manufactured -- for a price. It should lead to serious introspection among all our political parties, who -- as the cases of Salman Rushdie, MF Husain, Taslima Nasreen and James Laine all show -- have so often stifled or suppressed artistic freedom in the name of protecting this alleged sentiment. 

The Tehelka exposé should provoke not self-satisfaction but shame, for there are Sri Ram Sene-like elements within the Congress, the CPM, and the BJP as well. 

Ramachandra Guha's reaction to the Tehelka expose on Shri Rama Sene

I would like to congratulate Tehelka for a brilliant exposé on the ugly face of fundamentalism in India. People like Pramod Muthalik and organisations like the Sri Ram Sene are a threat to India and strict legal action should be taken against them based on what they have said in the tapes. 

Everyone has a right to follow one's religion, but no one has the right to instigate the public and create communal tension in the name of religion. This is precisely what the Sene and the other parties like the RSS are doing. 

Also, the onus should not be on the Sri Ram Sene as much as it should be on the BJP and the VHP. Muthalik is just an off-shoot of the fundamentalist agenda of the VHP and the RSS, which receive patronage from the BJP. 

The exposé has brought into public conscience what these parties can do to spread communal tension in the country.

Sanjay Nirupam's reaction to the Tehelka expose on Pramod Mutalik and Shri Rama Sene

To read the reaction of H D Deve Gowda, Digvijay Singh and others click here.