The acquittal of Swami Aseemanand and others in three cases of “Hindu terror”, including last week in the Samjhauta Express case, due to lack of evidence, demonstrates the sinister nature of the plot to paint Hindu terror as a threat to the “idea of India”. – Minhaz Merchant
Over several years, a myth has been carefully manufactured that “Hindu terror” poses an existential threat to Indian Muslims, Christians and other minorities.
During the Congress-led UPA-1 and UPA-2 governments, this myth was given a label—“saffron terror”.
The crafting was meticulous.
The reported Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorist, Ishrat Jahan, killed by the Gujarat police, became a secular cause célèbre. Websites sprang up describing her as an innocent college girl, murdered apparently on the orders of then-Chief Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah. The narrative was smoothly taken up by certain co-opted media. In Parliament, Home Minister Shivraj Patil spoke darkly of “Hindutva terrorism”.
P. Chidambaram, then finance minister, warned of the dangers of saffron terror. Terrorism, he reportedly said, had no religion—but it had a colour.
Rahul Gandhi showed an early predilection for backing such subverted narratives. He reportedly told a visiting American envoy, in a conversation leaked by Wikileaks, that right-wing terror was more dangerous to India’s integrity than Islamist terrorism.
In November 2008—as if to cruelly mock that assertion—LeT terrorists killed 166 people in two Mumbai hotels, a Jewish outreach centre and Mumbai’s largest railway station, over three and a half days of rampaging terror.
The acquittal of Swami Aseemanand and others in three cases of “Hindu terror”, including last week in the Samjhauta Express case, due to lack of evidence, demonstrates the sinister nature of the plot to paint Hindu terror as a threat to the “idea of India”.
By aligning its position with Pakistan, against the court’s acquittal of Swami Aseemanand, the Congress has once again revealed where it stands on “saffron terror”—the wrong side of history.
Comments by Sam Pitroda, Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s senior advisor, apparently questioning the Jaish-e-Mohammed’s role in the Pulwama terror attack and the efficacy of the IAF’s Balakot air strikes, underscore deep fault lines in the Congress.
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