New Delhi: A book by a Left-oriented writer
claims that Hindutva terror has emerged and says a Himalayan
task awaits the investigating agencies which are yet to nab
any of the masterminds "despite ample evidence".
The book titled "Godse's Children - Hindutva Terror in
India", written by Subhash Gatade, alleges that the blast in
an RSS activist's house in Nanded, Maharashtra, had brought to
the fore the systematic manner in which people associated with
it and allied groups were engaged in making and storing
explosives, imparting arms training and planning to bomb
minorities as part of the mission to establish "Hindu Rashtra"
in India.
It was on April 6, 2006 when Nanded witnessed a blast at
the house of Laxman Rajkondwar, a long time RSS activist,
killing his son and another Sangh activist, it says.
"Five years later, investigating agencies are in the know
of involvement of Hindutva supremacists in dozens of blasts
like Malegaon and Samjhauta Express," it says.
The role of international linkages and networks of
different Hindutva formations in collecting funds, mobilising
resources and supporting the cause has added further ferocity
to this project, says the author, who has extensively written
on issues of communalism and Dalit emancipation.
The book has a chapter "First terrorist of Independent
India" which details how Nathuram Godse and his accomplices
carried out the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.
The author, however, makes it clear that "this does not
mean we are absolving the jihadi terrorists of the criminal
acts they are engaged in nor we consider them less dangerous
for the furtherance of peace, justice and progress in today's
world".
Gatade laments that the "great tragedy of our times is
that all such extremisms and fanaticisms feed on each other".
"A focus on the Hindutva terrorism should not be
considered as one being soft towards a phenomenon towards
jihadi terrorism or other faith based terrorisms, may it be
Khalistani desperadoes or Buddhist monks doubling up as
Sinhala supremacists or Christian Phalangists or Zionist
terrorists...", he writes.
He says till recently, when the phenomenon of Hindutva
terror had not made its presence felt with its nationwide
network and overseas contacts, blaming any terrorist act in
any part of the country on jihadi groups "was the rule".
He contends that looking back, one finds the formations
of the Hindutva right were moving on from "terror of riot" to
"terror of bomb", but the change in the stratagem remained
unregistered and unnoticed by the government agencies and the
civil society.
"Biased investigation and a communalised police force
have created a situation where hundreds of innocent Muslim
youths are still languishing in jails in different parts of
the country on trumped up charges of terrorism," he alleges.
Besides, he says "another disturbing aspect" of the
whole situation is that terrorist acts by Hindutva groups
receive a "kid-glove treatment" by both the security agencies
and the media.
Gatade feels that the ruling dispensation at the Centre
led by the Congress does not seem to have a "collective
realisation" about the danger posed by the majoritarian
terrorism before the secular polity.
"This is evident in the half-hearted attempts to take
the investigations into such cases to their logical
culmination," he argues.
PTI
First Published: Sunday, October 09, 2011, 11:13