Why Parliament logjam?

Evidence of a sinister Hindutva terror network has been growing with every new arrest over the last few months. But on December 18, 2010, in a breakthrough development, Swami Aseemanand, a key figure in the terror module, made a stunning confession before magistrate Deepak Dabas of the Tis Hazari court. Recorded under section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code, this is the first legally admissible evidence that not Muslims but a range of RSS pracharaks  were involved in a series of heinous terror blasts ranging from Malegaon 2006 to the Mecca Masjid, Ajmer Sharif and Samjhauta Express blasts.

In his statement, Aseemanand admits to having planned terror attacks on Ajmer Sharif, Mecca Masjid, Malegaon and the Samjhauta Express. He names senior RSS leader Indresh Kumar, the murdered RSS pracharak Sunil Joshi, Sadhvi Pragya Thakur and senior RSS pracharaks Sandeep Dange and Ramji Kalsangra, Swami Aseemanand himself, among others, as being key conspirators in the terror blasts. According to him, Indresh Kumar financed several of the blasts, while Sunil Joshi and his team executed many of them.

Aseemanand says the terror conspiracy was hatched over several meetings at which he was present along with these Hindutva leaders. According to him the trigger for their conspiracy was the ‘Islamist’ terror strikes on Sankatmochan mandir and Akshardham temple. Aseemanand says, “I told everybody that bomb ka jawab bomb se dena chahiye”.

Their reasons for picking their targets are chilling. Aseemanand says, “I told everyone, as 80 percent of Malegaon are Muslims we should explode the bomb in Malegaon”. He also says, “As Hindus throng to the Ajmer Sharif dargah, we thought a bomb blast in Ajmer would deter Hindus from going there.”

Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad was chosen because the Nizam of Hyderabad had wanted to opt for Pakistan during Partition! And Samjhauta Express was chosen because it was mostly used by Pakistanis. This confession will have wide-ranging political ramifications. The RSS will have to confront extremely uncomfortable and explosive questions about members of its organisation.

This confession also exposes the cynical assumption that had crept into the Indian criminal justice system. There was a deep-seated prejudice that if there is a terror blast, there will be a Muslim behind it. This confession exposes the shockingly shoddy approach of sections of investigative agencies where they rounded up and wrongly arrested scores of innocent Muslim boys and men for blasts they had not committed. Just to claim they had “cracked the case” and caught the “masterminds”. Many of these innocent Muslims were tortured and kept in jail for years. It is a measure of the extent of this cynicism that even when the targets were Muslim neighbourhoods or mosques, Muslims were still blamed for it. In the meantime, the real culprits of terror blasts across the country – both Islamist and ultra-Hindutva men – were allowed to go scot-free.

Thirty two innocent Muslim men were, in fact, also arrested for this series of blasts which Aseemanand has now admitted were perpetrated by him and his comrades. This leaves many questions unanswered and much reparation to be made to the Muslims who were wrongly arrested.

Aseemanand, who worked for the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram of the RSS in the Dangs district in Gujarat had told the magistrate that theirs was not a rump group like the ultra right wing Abhinav Bharat and that RSS national executive member Indresh Kumar, who allegedly handpicked and financed some pracharaks, also played a role in the terror strikes.

Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh, who has been at the forefront of the Congress attack on the Sangh Parivar, said, Aseemanand’s confessions vindicated the line he had taken. “I have been saying this for a long time, but unfortunately, I wasn’t taken seriously. The country faces a serious threat from extremists, fanatic ideologies with religious overtones, whether of the majority or the minority community. We have to encourage liberal Hindus and Muslims to fight this in every nook and corner of the country.  “The BJP and the RSS are using religion for their own political ends and to poison communal harmony. This led to communal riots which, in turn, spawned terrorist acts by fringe extremist groups belonging to both the minority community and the RSS. Mahatma Gandhi was murdered not by Nathuram Godse but by extremist fanatic Sanghis,” he added

Congress spokesman Shakeel Ahmed said that “the confessions have brought out the new terrorist face of the RSS. This is ‘Sanghi' terrorism which poses a big threat to the country. The involvement of people with links to the RSS has compromised India’s position on terror vis-à-vis Pakistan. It’s time the BJP came clean on this.”

The confessions by Assemanand show that it was not just a few extremist individuals, who are involved in Hindutva terror groups, but also a wide network which includes top pracharaks of the RSS. It must be recalled that the then BJP President Rajnath Singh met Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, accused in Malegaon blast case in the jail and the top brass of the BJP including L.K.Advani observed hunger strike in New Delhi demanding her release and withdrawal of prosecution. Even though the investigations were belated it is imperative that those responsible for the heinous crimes in Malegaon, Ajmer Sharif, Mecca Masjid and for the Samjauta train attack be punished. The Hindutva terror groups have been spawned by the hate campaign of the RSS. Now, RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat has admitted that ‘some’ of its members who held radical (a misnomer for extremism and terrorism) views were told to leave the organization. But it is not some but the ideology and practice of RSS organization itself is extremist.

One wonders whether the BJP, in order to save its face in the context of recent disclosures and reports on Sanghi terrorism and avert grilling by secular and democratic parties on the floors of Parliament, has blown out of proportion the so-called scams and willfully created a logjam in Parliament, for which unfortunately the Left parties have also provided a handle!