BHARATA BHARATI

“What the people of India must realise is the fact that there is a pattern in the functioning of UPA, which is fraught with dangerous consequences. The hidden agenda behind the cooking of ‘Saffron Terror’ can be understood, if the ‘pattern’ of events unfolding in the national arena since 2004 is observed closely. Right from the repeal of POTA to the drafting of ‘Communal Violence Bill’ the UPA has been blatantly pro-minority and anti-majority, and in the process, it also attempts to alienate the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes from the Hindu majority, by placing them along with the minorities.” – B. R. Haran

Congress President Sonia Gandhi returned to India, after a trip to the US for a secret treatment on Thursday September 8. That Sonia was away from India during the entire monsoon session of Parliament and the anti-corruption agitation undertaken by Anna Hazare and his team of NGO activists is a point to be noted. It must also be noted that she had returned just two days before the inauguration of the National Integration Council Meeting, wherein her NAC’s pet item “Communal Violence Bill” was slated to be discussed.

Prime Minister’s bizarre statements

Inaugurating the NIC Meet on September 10, Prime Minister said, “We need to recognise that members of the minority communities often have a perception of being unfairly targeted by law enforcement agencies in the aftermath of unfortunate incidents.” Being a PM, Manmohan must know that the law enforcement agencies do not target communities as such, but only extremist organisations which indulge in terror attacks. In spite of knowing this fact, if he makes such bizarre statements, then his intentions have to be suspicious. As it can be identified, his statement was a clear giveaway underlining the following two truths:

1. Creation of ‘Hindu (Saffron) Terror’ by his government

2. Sonia’s NAC branding majority (read Hindu) community as perpetrator of violence and minorities (read Christians and Muslims) as victims in its proposed Communal Violence Bill.

Prime Minister is prone to make such bizarre statements. His statements like “Muslims have the first claim on our national resources” and “I have lost sleep after seeing the sufferings of his (terror suspect’s) family on TV”, etc, are unjustifiable and are not expected out of the head of a nation. In fact, he was the first governmental and constitutional authority to talk of the so-called Hindu terror, when he stated, “Involvement of Hindu fundamentalist outfits cannot be ruled out” while on board a special aircraft to Havana in the immediate aftermath of the September 2006 Malegaon blasts.

NAC’s devious agenda

On the other hand, it is also a fact that the law enforcement and investigative agencies (under UPA) have targeted the majority community specifically in the recent past, linking it to a few bomb blast incidents, purportedly to divert the attention from jihadi organisations and to dilute this nation’s fight against jihad. That the agencies could do that (targeting a community) only under instructions is anybody’s guess.

If on the one hand the investigations of the number of bomb blasts perpetrated by Jihadis have not progressed beyond releasing images of suspected terrorists, on the other hand the concoction of Hindu Terror and adding one blast after another to it, is moving at a fast pace without any credible evidence admissible in the court of law. So, the creation of Hindu (Safffron) Terror, repeated accusations on RSS and the drafting of the Communal Violence Bill by Sonia’s NAC, all point to a devious agenda against the majority community.

Why Saffron (Hindu) Terror?

Ever since the UPA formed the government in May 2004, its very first act of repealing POTA led to a sharp rise in sleeper modules, rejuvenation of SIMI under different names, such as ‘Indian Mujahideen’, ‘Deccan Mujahideen’ etc., and amalgamation of jihadi organisations such as MNP (Manitha Neethi Pasarai—Tamil Nadu), NDF (National Development Front—Kerala) and KFD (Karnataka for Dignity) and a few other organisations leading to the formation of ‘Popular Front of India’ (PFI), resulting in a plethora of terror attacks on Indian soil. Major cities and towns were affected, and thousands of innocents lost their precious lives, while many more were injured and maimed for life. The incompetence of the UPA government in fighting terror was exposed totally with the occurrence of frequent terror attacks leading to a high level of ‘an attack a month’, notwithstanding the activities of Maoists in more than a dozen states, ULFA in Assam and evangelist backed insurgency in the northeast.

The incompetence of the UPA government terribly agitated the Indian citizenry, which started to support Baratiya Janata Party-led NDA in various Assembly Elections. The BJP-led NDA was winning Assembly after Assembly. Punjab, Uttarakhand, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh in 2007 and Chhattisgarh, MP and Karnataka in 2008 and Bihar in 2010.

The third successive win for Narendra Modi and the BJP opening its account in South through Karnataka landed as huge blows for the UPA in general and Congress in particular. Added to this were the retaliatory protests by Hindus in Odisha, Jammu and Karnataka against the illegal activities carried out by fundamentalist minority organisations. The Congress realised that it is losing grounds heavily and that the citizenry is getting polarised on religious grounds because of its inefficiency in curbing jihad and evangelisation. So, it resorted to ‘create’ Hindu terror not only to dilute the fight against jihad and evangelisation but also to sustain its minority vote-bank and thereby seeking to block the BJP’s advance in the electoral arena.

The three objectives behind creating ‘Hindu Terror’ are:

■ To confuse and divide the Hindu majority, which has been steadily polarising itself due to the minority-appeasing and Hindu-hating policies of the UPA.

■ To malign RSS and other Hindu organisations.

■ To win back the confidence of the minority communities and keep the minority vote bank intact.

And the ‘hidden’ aim is to dilute the fight against jihad, as this government doesn’t have the will and courage to fight against the jihadi organisations due to its ill-conceived notion that controlling jihadi terror would reduce the Muslim votes.

Maharashtra ATS and its motivated antics

The Maharashtra ATS led by Hemant Karkare conducted “political” investigations into the Malegaon blasts and exposed itself through “select” arrests and “selective” leakages of investigations to a “chosen” media. In order to add weight to its investigation, the ATS opined that the same accused were also involved in Ajmer, Hyderabad Mecca Masjid and Samjhauta Train blasts. The credibility of the investigations went for a six when its bluffs of Sadhvi Pragya’s motorcycle” theory and “Col Purohit’s RDX” formula failed to impress the nation, despite the support of a conniving mainstream media. The credibility hit the rock bottom when the ATS came out with the story that the Malegaon accused had also conspired to kill RSS leaders!

Fakers and their ‘Freudian slips’

As the Maharashtra ATS was singularly focusing on “Hindu Terror”, the jihadis were having a whale of time (at least a month) in Taj Hotel planning a major attack. In fact, just before the Mumbai attack, Hemant Karkare himself had told a TV channel that the entire ATS had been asked to focus on Malegaon probe and that ninety per cent of their forces were diverted into the Malegaon blasts investigation alone.

Even while the Taj was burning, a ‘Hindu-Zionist’ conspiracy theory was concocted and spread through the internet and clandestine mediums. A suspicion on the death of ATS chief Hemant Karkare was also brought out connecting it with the Maelgaon probe. Abdul Rehaman Antulay, the then Minority Affairs Minister, became the first ‘official’ personality to attempt to spread this canard. Digvijay Singh and Shakeel Ahmed came out openly in support of Antulay. Abishek Manu Singhvi said, “BJP has advantages and will gain from the terror attack”; R R Patil, the then Home Minister of Maharashtra said, “With the quantum of unexploded explosives recovered all over, 5000 people would have died” and he also made a startling revelation that Karkare had come and met him on the fateful evening and cried over the allegations levelled against him in the Malegaon probe. As recently as a couple of months ago, Digvijay was on record as saying that Hemant Karkare spoke to him over the phone just hours before his death!

Kapil Sibal said after Karkare’s death, “The terrorists know exactly whom they were targeting.” The then Chief Minister of Maharashtra Vilasrao Deshmukh went around the Taj Hotel with film director Ram Gopal Varma, as though he was looking out for an ideal location to shoot a terror movie. He said, “The attack had caused only 200 deaths while Mumbai’s population is more than 1.5 crores.” Narayan Rane hit out at his rivals within the party and said that some of them financed terrorists and also provided terrorists a safe haven in the country. He accepted full responsibility for this statement and added that he would provide all the details with proof at the appropriate time.

Fresh Impetus

All these statements made by Congress/ UPA leaders in various media might have sounded like Freudian slips, but the same allegations are given a fresh impetus now. The new impetus is being given due to the Congress hitting the rock bottom of credibility and popularity because of the coming out of huge scams one after another, which have exposed to the world that corruption is a way of life in Congress.

During the DGPs’ Conference in August 2010, Union Home Minister Chidambaram audaciously warned against a “new phenomenon” called “Saffron Terror”. He also refused to withdraw his remarks and had the audacity to say that his remark brought the message home and the purpose was served .

Then again during the AICC plenary session Sonia hit out at RSS linking it with “Hindu” terror and Pranab Mukherjee also joined the “elite” group talking about RSS indulging in terror activities in the plenary session. Rahul Gandhi, who was partying at a wedding while Mumbai was under attack by jihadi terrorists, equated RSS with SIMI. Even after the nation’s outrage, Rahul neither repented nor took his words back. Later it came through the WikiLeaks that he was indeed damaging India in the international arena by serving the cooked up story of Hindu terror. He had talked about bigger threat coming from “radicalised Hindu groups” than Pakistan-sponsored terror organisations such as LeT to American Ambassador Timothy Roemer. Notwithstanding this, he recently angered the nation in the immediate aftermath of the July 13 Mumbai blasts by saying, “It is very difficult to stop any single terrorist attack. 99 per cent of the attacks have been stopped”. No wonder he was booed, ridiculed and driven away when he went to RML Hospital pretending to show his sympathy to the victims of September 7 Delhi blasts.

NIA and ATS rescue HUJI and LeT

As the ATS in Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Haryana and Hyderabad were groping in the dark and could not move beyond a certain point, the Congress constituted a new body NIA (National Investigating Agency) to proceed further in establishing “Hindu Terror”. The recent salvo was the arrest of Swami Aseemanand and forcing a confession out of him. Swami Aseemanand, like Swami Lakshmananda Saraswati, was doing a yeoman service in the tribal areas thwarting the illegal conversion and evangelisation works carried out by dubious foreign-f

unded NGOs and Christian organisations. His activities asserted the Hindu identity of the tribes and established the supremacy of Bharatiya culture. If he is eliminated in the same way as Swami Lakshmananda, it would cause a severe backlash and therefore the abuse of official machinery to remove him from his stronghold on the pretext of Hindu terror. For UPA, his removal from the scene would not only help in continuing the Saffron Terror stories, but also in facilitating conversion activities in that tribal belt.

NIA, like the ATS, has committed an act of stupidity in its anxiety and hurry to establish “Saffron Terror” so as to please its political masters. The forced confession of Swami Aseemanada was almost a mirror image of the earlier confession of Islamic terrorist Nagori, as opined by Dr Subramanian Swamy in one of his press statements. The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and the US Department of Treasury have clearly identified LeT with the Samjhauta Train attacks and other terror attacks in India. Also credible investigations carried out by American investigators have pointed out to the involvement of LeT

in Samjhauta blasts and HuJI (Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami) in Mecca Masjid blasts. Moreover, many journalists of repute have gone on record through their articles vouching for the conduct and character of Swami Aseemananda and his selfless service for the welfare of tribal communities in Gujarat.

Now, since HuJI is reportedly involved in the 9/7 Delhi High Court blasts, NIA’s job has become more complicated, for it has to prove UNSC, US Treasury Department and American Investigating Agencies wrong and also explain the earlier confession made by Islamic terrorist Nagori. While Swami Aseemanand’s advocate has said that the confession was forcefully obtained, his brother has called the NIA bluff by saying that Swami Aseemanand had not sent any letter (written in chaste English, which he is not capable of) through him to the Presidents of India and Pakistan.

But, the continuous harassment of 2008 Malegaon blast accused, attempts to include a few RSS leaders such as Indresh Kumar in various terror-related incidents, the arrest of Swami Assemanand and selective leakages of investigations to a chosen media point out only the political agenda of painting Hindu organisations as terror outfits, by abuse of official machinery thereby dividing the Hindu majority and ensuring the minority vote-banks.

Jihadis unstoppable

The removal of Shivraj Patil and induction of Chidambaram as the Minister of Home Affairs didn’t have any effect on the jihadis. The enormity of Mumbai attack and its consequences forced them to lie low for some time. But the UPA government and its new Home Minister were under the delusion that the jihadis were under control. Hence they proceeded with their ‘Hindu Terror’ stories even while jihadis were regrouping and forming fresh network, as evidenced by the increased activities of PFI and other outfits. Meanwhile, after fine-tuning their resources, the jihadis marked their presence and showed their strength by executing a well-conceived attack on German Bakery, Pune on February 13, 2010, which left 13 people dead and more than 50 injured.

As the Maharashtra ATS and NIA were clueless and could not go beyond a stage, a low-intensity blast occured at Jama Masjid, Delhi, on September 19 obviously to confuse the investigating agencies, to mislead them and also to keep alive the ‘Hindu Terror’ angle. This is not the first time that such an act happened at Jama Masjid, especially after a bomb blast elsewhere. On an earlier occasion in April 2006, twin blasts, of course of low intensity, ‘occurred’ in Jama Masjid, in a month’s time after triple blasts devastated Varanasi killing 28 people and injuring 62, on March 7, 2006. Anything concerning either with Shahi Imam Syed Ahmed Bukhari or with the Jamma Masjid, the Delhi police always prefer to stay away, for their own reasons.

Then jihadis struck within the next 3 months, on December 7, 2010, again at Varanasi on the banks of the Ganges, which left 1 girl dead and 20 people injured including a few foreigners. Any terror attack, which is of low intensity, must be taken by the law enforcing agencies as a “trial run”. But unfortunately, our agencies under the present UPA regime, have become so imbecile that they ignore them. The ignoring of May 25 trial run by jihadis at the Delhi High Court resulted in the latest major attack at the same place, which took the lives of 12 people and injured more than 50 people.

In between, when the jihadis struck at three different places in the Commercial Capital Mumbai on July 13, 2011, taking the lives of 21 people and injuring more than 100, the UPA ministers conspicuously refrained from naming any of the jihadi organisations. The arrogant Digvijay Singh, as usual, tried to blame RSS and Hindu activists, even as the Home Minister and the Prime Minister endorsed his statements by remaining silent.

The denial of UPA government, its incompetency at handling jihadi terror, its obsession with ‘Hindu Terror’ and its attempt to table a pro-minority and anti-majority ‘Communal Violence Bill’ have emboldened the jihadis to strike at will as and when they please. They have started having fun with the government through e-mails ridiculing the investigating agencies and their ‘investigating talents’ and provoking them.

Pseudo-secularism puts the nation in a perilous state

The national scenario has changed drastically with the advent of Sonia-led UPA government since 2004. Jihadis are on a killing run and evangelists are on a harvesting spree. The repealing of POTA, indefinite postponement of hanging Afzal Guru, royal treatment to Ajmal Kasab, creation of Hindu Terror and ultimately the drafting of pro-minority and anti-majority Communal Violence Bill have all emboldened the jihadis to continue their terror activities unabatedly. The pursuing of minority appeasement policies by the UPA government supported by a section of the mainstream media has led to the creation of a hostile environment for the majority community. The undue freedom given to the anti-nation industry of NGOs and their activists and HROs (Human Rights Organisations) has had a profound effect on the morale of investigating agencies and police departments.

In this context, it will be very appropriate to quote from a report by The New Indian Express dated September 11, 2011, which says, “Pseudo-secularist threat demoralises security agencies, leading to more terror attacks. Police Officers all over the country are unwilling to stick their necks or guns out, fearing a witch-hunt by human rights organisations and politicians—mainly belonging to UPA—baying for blood. For the past two years, not a single preventive arrest has been made in the country. They haven’t apprehended or silenced any sleeping terrorist modules either. With over 60 police officers in jail for the alleged encounter deaths of terrorists like Sohrabuddin and Prajapathi, the law enforcement system is in a state of permanent freeze. They don’t fear terrorists; it is politicians and human rights activists whom they fear.”

Conclusion

A telling report like this, that too on the first page of a ‘secular’ newspaper, is a real surprise. But then, what the people of India must realise is the fact that there is a pattern in the functioning of UPA, which is fraught with dangerous consequences. The hidden agenda behind the cooking of “Saffron Terror” can be understood, if the “pattern” of events unfolding in the national arena since 2004 is observed closely. Right from the repeal of POTA to the drafting of Communal Violence Bill the UPA has been blatantly pro-minority and anti-majority, and in the process, it also attempts to alienate the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes from the Hindu majority, by placing them along with the minorities.

The NAC’s ‘Communal Violence Bill’ is Sonia’s ultimate trump card to destabilise this nation. Fortunately better sense has prevailed among the opposition and some constituents of UPA, which is likely to result in the outright rejection of the proposed bill. The weak and corrupt UPA has put the nation in jeopardy. – Uday India, 1 Oct. 2011

» B. R. Haran is an independent senior journalist in Chennai.

Filed under: india | Tagged: communal violence bill, communalism, hindu, indian politics, islam, islamic terrorism, nehruism, p. chidambaram, saffron terror, secularism |