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Hindutva Terror In Nanded
Subhash Gatade
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Nanded is a town dear to the heart of every Sikh, particularly
so as the community celebrates the 300th Guru’ta
Gaddi Diwas. It is time the Sikhs, as also all the right
thinking people, pay attention to the activities of Hindutva’s
terror agents in this town, and stay beware of their intentions. |
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 Nanded, in
Maharashtra,
is a town with a significant population of different faiths - Hindu,
Muslim, Sikh and Buddhist. Nanded could well have become a new
metaphor for secularism as practiced in the Subcontinent, but this
was not to be. Instead, Nanded has come to represent the emergent
danger of a violent new brand of Hindu militancy, with due support
from a section of the state machinery. A place that was once witness
to the final days of Guru Gobind Singh, Sikhism's Tenth Guru, has
today metamorphosed into an epicentre of violent Hindutva. Indeed,
Nanded represents the build-up of the violent fundamentalist
Hinduism of the past half-century. The town has been witness to a
new spate of acts that can be inarguably dubbed 'terrorism'.
The inner
workings of this new form of Hindutva were on show recently in two,
evidently accidental, explosions in Nanded within a span of nine
months, in April 2006 and February 2007. These blasts, which killed
four people, took place at the houses of activists from the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena. The
arrival of Nanded on
India's 'terror'
map was followed by media investigations into similar previous
incidents, which also showed the involvement of Hindu youth in
terrorist actions.
The new element
here is the increasing similarity between Hindu militancy and
'terrorism' of other hues. While various enquiry commissions have
looked into riots in post-Independence
India and
corroborated the proactive role played by the RSS in instigating
riots, the irony of the situation is that the organisation is still
able to maintain its 'missionary' image. Part of this is because the
group has long maintained a strict division of labour within its
ranks, delegating much of the 'dirty work' to fringe workers.
The Nanded
blasts proved to be an exception to this pattern, as the RSS links
were obvious. This is why, in the immediate aftermath of the
explosions, the Sangh Parivar leadership went to great lengths to
suppress the news. Indeed, activist friends of this writer in
Maharashtra were
themselves unaware that any such incident had taken place.
One set of
blasts took place in a house belonging to Laxman Rajkondwar, an old
RSS activist, and killed two youths belonging to the Bajrang Dal and
RSS, while injuring three others. The explosives that were being
made were to be used during the entry into Maharashtra of Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) leader L K Advani's Bharat Suraksha Yatra, the
idea being to warn of the grave security situation existing in the
country.
Later
investigations found that the plan had been to instigate communal
riots in Nanded that could have spread to adjoining areas. Such a
situation, it was hoped, would boost the sagging morale of both the
BJP and its ageing stalwart, Advani.
The aim was
clearly to instigate a communal conflict. A police raid on one of
the deceased's houses found maps of nearby mosques, as well as
clothes and caps usually worn by Muslims in the area, which the
activists were going to wear to sneak into and attack the mosques
and gurudwaras. The only thing still needed was explosives. The
making of bombs in a house owned by an old RSS activist - one who
supposedly also dealt in firecrackers, at that - seemed like the
perfect plan.
Of course, the
story neither begins nor ends in Nanded. Since 2003, at least five,
and perhaps six, Hindutva-related explosions have taken place in
central
Maharashtra
alone, in Parbhani, Purna, Jalna and Nanded.
Malegaon also
witnessed a bomb blast last year, killing 40 people, with strong
indications of a Hindutva hand behind it. Beyond the geographical
similarities, the details of the attacks were uncanny: each took
place between 1:45 and 2:00 in the afternoon, just after Friday
prayers, at the most prominent mosque in town. (The bomb that went
off in Nanded in 2006 exploded on 6 April, a Thursday, but was
apparently meant to be set off at an
Aurangabad
masjid the following day.)
At the same
time, this cannot be dubbed a Maharashtra-centric phenomenon. Madhya
Pradesh's former chief minister, Digvijay Singh, has publicly
admitted to the involvement of various groups and individuals
affiliated with the RSS in similar acts in his state. As for the
rest of the country, no systematic study of saffron 'terror' has yet
been undertaken. One reason for this could be the thin line that
separates the different anushangik (affiliated) organisations of the
RSS, thereby making it possible to move from the 'legal' to the
'illegal' without great effort. Indeed, there is every possibility
that funds collected from the Hindu Diaspora for philanthropic work
might also have been channeled to further 'terrorist' activities.
Nonetheless,
culturally integrated practices are being utilised to arm certain
sections of the Hindu community. Back in 2001, Rajasthan's
then-Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot revealed that up to four million
trishuls - six to eight inches long and sharp enough to kill - had
been distributed by the Bajrang Dal to Hindu households across the
country. Meanwhile, in 2002, a group in Orissa, under the district
Shiv Sena unit, formed the first-ever Hindu suicide squad, aimed at
countering Muslim 'extremism' in Jammu & Kashmir and elsewhere. More
than 100 youths, including some women, are said to have joined the
group.
Hindutva
collusion
Nanded's
population is made up of around 500,000 Hindus, 200,000 Muslims and
100,000 Sikhs. The town has seen a significant amount of communal
tension in the past, which spiked following the demolition of the
Babri Masjid in December 1992. In more recent years, this tension
seems to have also spilled over into surrounding towns such as
Parbhani, where, in November 2003, motorcycle-borne attackers hurled
bombs into the midst of a large congregation of Muslims assembled
for Friday papers. Although the identities of the Parbhani
bomb-throwers were never traced, forensic tests following the Nanded
blasts revealed that the accused were part of the same group of
Hindu militants that had executed the attack in Parbhani.
Following the
April 2006 blasts in Nanded, an odd silence ensued - in the local
and national media, as well as in the local and national
governments. There was also a disturbing lack of sincerity on the
part of the investigating agencies in pursuing the case, despite
appearing to have gathered significant evidence of the involvement
of district and state leaders of the RSS and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).
As investigations by the People's
Union for Civil
Liberties (PUCL) and other rights organisations have made clear, the
district administration even saw to it that news of the blasts did
not receive wide coverage.
Local police
made contradictory statements, and failed to make arrests in the
initial stages. Despite the sensitive nature of the Nanded case, the
CBI expressed its "inability" to conduct the subsequent
investigation.
In response to a
case filed by some social organisations against the tardiness of the
investigations, the CBI filed a suo moto affidavit explaining that
it was "overburdened" and had "limited hands to deal with such
cases". The cumulative effect of the half-hearted - or wholly
obstructionist - initiatives, at both the state and central level,
was to show the kid-glove treatment being meted out to
India's new
breed of Hindutva militants. Secular activists questioned whether
the reaction would have been similar had the explosions taken place
in a minority-dominated area, and the involvement of some 'fanatic'
Islamic group been detected.
The cavalier
manner in which the probes of the Nanded blasts were undertaken may
have prepared the ground for a stepping-up of similar activities in
the area.
On
10 February
2007, at little after midnight, biscuit boxes being hauled by
28-year-old Pandurang Ameelkanthwar in another area in Nanded
exploded, killing him instantly. His cousin, Dnaneshwar Manikwar,
sustained massive burns and died six days later. Ameelkanthwar had
been a former shakha pramukh (branch head) of the Shiv Sena, and was
also associated with the Bajrang Dal. He hailed from an area in
Nanded called Rangargalli, a known hotbed of rightwing Hindu
outfits.
A mere
'fire-related accident' was how state officials subsequently
reported the incident. But preliminary findings of a civil-society
inquiry suggest that Ameelkanthwar and Manikwar died due to handled
planted explosives. Neighbours near the explosion also told the team
that there had been a third person present at the time, who had also
been injured but has been unaccounted for in subsequent reports.
These
eyewitnesses also said that a police officer, who went on to be part
of the official investigation, supervised the seizing and spiriting
away of critical evidence from the spot. In their report, the
civil-society investigators state that the
Maharashtra
police, particularly the superintendent and inspector-general,
appeared to be in "undue haste to close all possibilities of a
possible liquid-substance-driven explosion, preferring to quote oral
findings of forensic experts from Aurangabad who are reported to
have told them that it was a petrol-ignited fire". Among other
evidence, this conclusion is brought under serious suspicion by the
fact the explosion threw the iron shutter of a nearby godown a
distance of 40 feet - an extremely long way for a fire set off by
burning gasoline.
The civil
society team also refers to a "nexus between some police officials
and the rightwing Hindu outfits". According to the probe's findings,
Nanded Police Inspector Ramesh Bhurewar, who was leading the
investigation of the 2006 Nanded blast, was also in charge of the
investigation into the Parbhani blasts in November 2003. During the
course of the long investigation, he had not made a single arrest. A
First Information Report was only registered after a legislator
raised a question in the state assembly.
But following
the Nanded blasts in April 2006, the accused admitted to having
placed the bombs at Parbhani. As such, the civil-society report
concludes:
"The Nanded and
state police are hence guilty of underplaying crimes wherein members
of the minority community are the victims, causing a loss of face
for the state police."
In their
conclusion, the fact-finding team demanded that the central
government keep a close watch over the increasing incidence of
Hindutva 'terror' activities. They also asked for independent
investigations under a team of neutral officers; and impartial,
public inquiries into the Nanded,
Malegaon,
Parbhani and Purna incidents, in order to ascertain whether state
intelligence and police agencies are indeed professional and neutral
enough to investigate instances of politically driven Hindutva
violence.
16
July, 2008
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