Terror has a Hindu face

By Anupam Dasgupta

In Lt Col. Srikant Prasad Purohit, one of the main accused along with Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur in the September 29, 2008 Malegaon blasts, the country had its first serving Army officer booked on charges of terrorism. The security establishment now has to seriously consider counter-measures against a potential Hindu fundamentalist mindset that is beginning to evince group motivation and capability to engineer a ?terrorist-style attack.
For the security establishment, Purohit's involvement, and his views on majoritarian communalism needing a separate "rashtra" with its own constitution and flag, had larger internal security implications for the country. The officer had facilitated clandestine intelligence traffic through an array of "liaison channels". Along with the sadhvi and other accused, he "effectively channelised the communal angst after weaving it to the fabric of the Hindu nationalist campaign," said an intelligence source.
The residents of Malegaon are a confused lot. "We till today don't understand why the town was selected as a target," said Aasif Ali of the forum for Citizens for Justice and Peace. Ali is a founder of the Defence of India Muslim Organisation following the Kargil war to inspire locals to fight for their country,
Pre-Malegaon, there was no dominant 'organising dynamic' noticeable among the Hindu radicals. The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and destruction of the Babri Masjid were target-specific acts and not aimed at spreading terror by killing common people at large. But Malegaon marked the successful translation of "misguided orientation" into effective action, said Ajai Sahni of the Centre for Conflict Studies.
"Radicalisation of the Hindu right has been happening via small experiments," said Sahni. "But Malegaon was an example in capacity-difference. That the elements of this radical fringe sourced RDX and other resources and engineered a blast in the town are proof of a scale-shift in the way the violent retaliation (in a post-Babri world) was shaped." At the same time, Sahni was confident that Malegaon would not acquire legitimacy or "get institutional backing needed to morph into something fundamentally different with reference to Hindu chauvinism."
Jyotirmaya Sharma, professor of political science at the University of Hyderabad and an expert on Hindutva, told THE WEEK that Malegaon indicates a fundamental change more in terms of strategy than ideology. "Malegaon is an example of Sangh parivar terror, of religiosity-driven violence. A tactic legitimised by belief and fanned by the retributive impulses of its executors," said Sharma.
So did the Sangh parivar's top leadership ratify Malegaon as an elite conspiracy? Venkatesh Abdeo, VHP central joint secretary, described Malegaon as "a cleverly laid-out political conspiracy against the Hindus of the country." At the other end of the spectrum, Feroze Mitiborwala of the Muslim Intellectual Forum (MIF) dubs Malegaon a part of larger design to denigrate minorities.
But the chargesheet filed by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad lays bare the mechanics of Malegaon. It holds as culprits Purohit, Sadhvi Pragya, Sudhakar Dwivedi alias Dayanand Pandey alias Swami Amrutanand Devtirth, Shivnarayansingh Kalsangara, Shyama Banwarlal Sahu, Rakesh Dhawade, retired Major Ramesh Upadhayay, Sameer Kulkarni, Ajay Rahirkar, Sandeep Vishwas Dange and Pravin Mutalk. It says all the people facing trial tried to trigger communal passions by targetting Muslims in the backward textile town.
The operative part of the chargesheet has audio and video files retrieved from the hard disk of Sudhakar Dwivedi's laptop. The tapes have details of the many meetings the members of this Hindu band organised in places like Faridabad, Ujjain, Bhopal, Indore, Kolkata and Nashik.
Purohit, it is learnt, had amassed Rs 21 lakh on behalf of Abhinav Bharat which he formed on February 9, 2007, when he was still in the Army. The chargesheet also alleges that an organised crime syndicate had "procured and transported the materials which were required for the bomb explosions and had also transferred huge amounts of money, arms and ammunition for aiding and abetting unlawful ?activities."
1. The blast occurred at 9.35 p.m. during Ramzan, at a crowded market place. Six people were killed and 101 injured.
2. The explosive device was found fitted to a motorcycle (MH 15-P-4572). Although RDX traces were later discovered, the assemblage was crude. Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, has a masters in history and is a judo-karate expert. She was former national executive member of the ABVP, and has direct links to the near-simultaneous blasts in Malegaon in Maharashtra and Modasa in Gujarat, according to the police.
3. One pamphlet of the Abhinav Bharat exhorts members to seek revenge for the 'killing of millions of Hindus over several centuries'.
4. The arrests have thrown light on a host of fringe Hindu organisations-Rashtriya Jagran Manch, Jai Vande Mataram Jan Kalyan Samiti, Hindu Jagran Manch, Dharmashakti Sena, etc.
5. One line of the police chargesheet reads: "They advocated and facilitated to promote their fundamentalist ideology to form a separate Hindu rashtra.