Politics of 'Hindu terror'

http://www.dailypioneer.com/134642/Politics-of-Hindu-terror.html

Sunday Pioneer
16 Nov 2008

Politics of 'Hindu terror'

The cutting Ed: Chandan Mitra

Ab Tak Chhappan! The title of this Ram Gopal Varma film easily comes to mind observing the manner in which the Maharashtra ATS is going about picking up people all over India and slapping them into the cooler on a daily basis, ostensibly in a bid to unearth dimensions of "Hindu terror".

We have lost count of the number of persons interrogated, sent on police or judicial remand, their brains penetrated with narcotic substances to induce confession to their "crimes". But not a day has passed, since Sadhvi Pragya was nabbed some 25 days ago, without somebody or the other being arrested, allegedly in connection with a fantastic plot conjured up by the Maharashtra Police.

Those arrested included serving and retired Army officers, school and college teachers, political activists and now even a resourceful sadhu. Every evening at the news meeting in our office, the first question asked is, "What's the score today? Ab tak ...?"

Buoyed by enthusiastic endorsement from the "secular" media, which is gleefully eating out of the ATS' hands, the so-called Hindu terror plot keeps assuming an ever-growing magnitude. Not content with pinning the blame for the minor bomb blasts in Malegaon and Modasa, then Nanded and later Kanpur, the ATS' ambitions have increased manifold. Currently, it is busy trying to implicate the same group in the 2006 Samjhauta Express blasts. Curiously, SIMI commander Safdar Nagori's narco tests have resulted in a confession that his organisation executed the Samjhauta bombings. Does this mean that so-called Hindu terrorists have been synchronising their moves with SIMI? Or, maybe ATS will tomorrow come up with a theory that "Hindu terrorists" have been funding and masterminding the actions of jihadis who innocently fell into the Hindu trap in the lure of money. Far fetched? Not really, if you consider the gigantic yarns being spun around the purported confessions of the detained suspects.

Interestingly, in the last seven days, contradictory "leaks" have been planted on the handpicked media about the responses of detained suspects. A particularly hilarious story front-paged by a leading national daily claimed that the narco-analysis of Sadhvi Pragya came to a naught because she meditates daily! Apparently, those who are ardent practitioners of that spiritual art become immune to narco tests because their mental powers are strong enough to resist drug-induced coercion aimed at extracting confessions.

Moral of the story: All criminals ought to mediate, for then narco-tests shall fail and they go scot-free!

By the way, it would be interesting to know if the servants arrested in the Arushi Talwar murder case were also trained in the art of meditation. Must be, for the CBI failed to get any information out of them and finally they had to be released. Similarly, Lt Col. Srikant Purohit, too, foiled the investigators' desperate attempts to cajole him into confessing his crime because, we are told, as an Armyman, he was trained to absorb stress and no amount of drugs got him to talk. Halted on their tracks, the ATS then leaked purported details of Purohit's confessions, which were eagerly lapped up by sections of the media to further their campaign to equate "Hindu" with jihadi terror.

Following the arrest of Swami Amritanand aka Dayanand Pandey or Sudhakar Dwivedi, we were treated to details of his past, website photos, his ashrams, connections with top national personalities, ex-President APJ Abdul Kalam downwards. But what we never got to know was his role in the Malegaon blasts. Within hours of his arrest, the Haryana Railway Police swooped down on him apparently to discover his link to the Samjhauta Express blasts, which self-confessedly, SIMI had carried out. Without a shred of evidence to that effect, he has already been awarded the epithet of "Terror Guru".

In the same way, the highly respected Bhonsala Military School has been dubbed a terror factory - a term used hitherto for Talibanised madrasas. Merely because some members of a little known outfit called Abhinav Bharat, an adjunct of the largely defunct Hindu Mahasabha, visited the premises of the school, its custodians were hounded to the point of putting in their papers.

Judging by the hype accompanying the "Hindu terror" revelations, it would appear that nothing else is happening in this country for the last month or so. With every passing day, the ATS' concoctions get more incredible, the scale of "leaked" stories magnified and the media's tone becomes predictably shriller. All this before any of the arrested persons is formally charged or given an opportunity to defend themselves. Wasn't it the Congress that kept cautioning us against trial by media? Wasn't it Manmohan Singh who plaintively lamented that everything in this country gets politicised? But when a trial by the media is actually sponsored by the Government and agencies under its control, like the Maharashtra ATS, nobody sees anything wrong with it.

That, in the process, even the Army is being hauled over the coals and its exalted status sullied beyond repair is of no consequence. Clearly, the Government thinks tarnishing the Army serves its short-term agenda: Putting BJP on the backfoot. Nothing is too sacrosanct to achieve that aim in an election year. In the face of mounting public anger against the UPA's all-round failure, especially its vote-bank politics over terrorism, the Government desperately needed a face-saver. So, they decided to construct an elaborate theory of all-pervasive Hindu terror hoping to convince the electorate that the Hindutva forces are the real fountainhead of all terrorist activities. It is a matter of time before it is volubly argued by "secular" politicians and their media cheerleaders that jihadi terror is nothing but an act of self-defence in the face of rampant "Hindu terrorist" provocation.

With investigating agencies dragging their feet (could it be under orders from above?), failing to convict any terror accused so far, this is a clever ploy to divert attention from the real danger jihadi terror poses to India. Determined to thwart efforts by BJP-ruled States to introduce tough anti-terror laws, the Government has directed the President to return Narendra Modi's proposed GUJCOC, drafted on the lines of MCOCA, which is operational in UPA-ruled Maharashtra. And the Centre is equally determined not to execute Afzal Guru despite the Supreme Court sentencing him to death several years back. Incidentally, Muslim-majority Indonesia has fewer qualms: It executed three Islamic radicals last week, soon after they were convicted for the Bali bombings.

But our Government is focused on damning Hindu organisations by a sustained campaign of calumny. I wonder if the Maharashtra ATS will soon "unearth" global linkages of Hindu terror and accuse some sadhvi, swami or an Army officer of having plotted 9/11 too!

What the Congress-led Government is failing to recognise is that public anger against a regime increasingly seen as decidedly anti-Hindu, is rising. In the process, the Congress may actually be helping to create a Hindu vote for the first time in India's history. Pyromaniacs often end up being consumed by the very fire they light.