Swami Asimananda's Judicial Confession And Its Implications For Indian Fascism
By Niloufer Bhagwat
02 February, 2011
Countercurrents.org
The press and TV reports of the voluntary judicial confession made in Delhi on 16th December 2010, under Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure , which provides for a voluntary confession to a Metropolitan Magistrate or a Judicial Magistrate, made by one Naba Kumar Sarkar alias Swami Asimananda, a member of the Sangh Parivar , who on his own admission had “devoted a lifetime to the cause of ‘Hindutva’ as espoused by the Sangh Parivar, as distinguished from the religious philosophy of ‘Hinduism’ of which one of the most eminent devotees was Mahatma Gandhi , disclosed what was already suspected by the politically discerning , that the 2006 and 2008 Malegaon bomb blasts ,the 19th February 2007 Samjauta Express attack , the 2007 Meena Masjid bomb blasts in Hyderabad and the 11 th October 2007 Ajmer Sharif blasts, were the handiwork of Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh( RSS) Pracharaks, in which conspiracy , the Swami actively participated. Earlier the Swami had established the Shabri Dham Ashram in the Dangs District of Gujarat , a tribal region and indulged in violent attacks on Christians and Christian Churches , on the pattern of the organizations of the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashrams, organized by the RSS and its Sangh Parivar, in the predominantly tribal regions of the country , as part of the penetration into tribal areas for better commercial and economic control of these areas, amounting to internal colonization, for the take over of forest ,lands and water resources , including rivers, of the tribal people, the first or Indigenous people of India, by trading ,financial and corporate interests, camouflaged as missions of re-conversion of the tribal people from Christianity to the Hindutva fold. The reality is that the tribal people from time immemorial have had their own religious practices , different from what is propagated as ‘Hindutva’ and have at all times been regarded as inferior by upper castes/upper classes in India ,who have mercilessly exploited the tribal people, presently through inroads by Mining and other Companies, brutally seizing the property of affected sections , rendering them homeless, apart from the seizure of their livelihoods and of the small peasantry, in extensive regions, in violation of constitutional and statutory rights protecting these classes ,without consultative rehabilitation measures, by companies seeking extortionate profits through land seizure ,, which is the real cause of the escalating violence which presently prevails in Central and Eastern India among other affected regions , with the tribal people and peasantry opposing the violence of the forcible seizure of vast areas by counter violence, led by their political formations , which has led to a situation akin to civil war conditions in these regions .Significantly the Shabri Kumb Mela organized by Swami Asimananda in 2006, was attended by prominent leaders of the RSS and the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is the political extension of the RSS and by the Chief Ministers of BJP ruled States .
This judicial confession has caused shock waves in the entire country, even though the disclosures only confirmed the painstaking investigation of Joint Commissioner of Police, the late Hemant Karkare, who because of his professional exposure in RAW( Research and Analysis Wing ), the premier foreign Intelligence Agency of India , was able to comprehend the implications of the criminal conspiracy behind the blasts, for the unity and integrity of India , similar in nature to the great killings which took place, preceding and following the partition of India, by fascist religious organizations of the Hindu and Muslim community. As a consequence of the painstaking and brilliant investigation of his team, the ‘Hindutva’ conspiracy was unearthed, in which some serving and retired army officials are also involved.
The wife of the late Hemant Karkare, on his assassination , significantly and spontaneously , declined to receive condolences from the leaders of the RSS and the Sangh Parivar and refused the offer of substantial financial compensation .Significantly the Shiv Sena ,an ally of the Sangh Parivar, mentioned as ‘ accepting funds from both sides’ , in the rivalries ,corporate and political , reflected in what are known as the ‘Radia’ tapes, relating to the conversations of the official lobbyist of prominent Indian business houses based in Mumbai and in London, with the political history of this party , spanning decades of physical and media attacks, either on religious minorities in Mumbai or on migrants initially from the South and thereafter from North India , to camouflage its real political purpose,despite the reality that people from the region of Maharashtra, including the middle classes and upper middle classes are also migrants and settlers in Madhya Pradesh ,among other regions of India and abroad, declared through its daily newspaper ‘Samna’, after the investigations exposed the involvement of ‘Hindutva’ political forces in the bomb blasts in Malegaon, that a ‘Bandh’ would be declared in Mumbai, against this questionable investigation and that the officer had tortured suspects, though these allegations were baseless, as confirmed from diverse sources , even by some of those accused . Significantly the ‘Bandh’ did not take place, as this senior police officer was killed on 26/11, by a hired group of the underworld ,ostensibly from Pakistan, in which strangely, only one by the name Kasab survives. The killings took place on the same day that the editorial in ‘ Saamna’ declared that Joint .Commissioner of Police Hemant Karkare was by implication a ‘Shaista Khan’ and anti- national, in view of the nature of his investigations. There is no explanation till date, as to why an officer who was labeled as ‘Shaista Khan’ by the Shiv Sena, was killed by hired Pakistani gun men, unless there is collaboration among covert agencies in South Asia, aimed against the people of more than one country.
The grim event of 26/11, establish beyond doubt that a criminal mafia, the instrument of political and financial interests , has been over active and penetrated , not only into the heart of Mumbai, but into the heart of the Indian State , in collaboration with internal and external financial interests , steadily destroying a city and region. once known for its tolerance of dissent with a vibrant cultural tradition ; the heart of erstwhile momentous political struggles, in pre –Independence and post Independence India, now reduced to a city which houses the head offices of major Corporate bodies , is dominated by godfathers and the underworld , where pogroms and bomb blasts are plotted, acquiesced in by Mumbai’s “ Best and Brightest” citizenry, despite the hyped candle light vigils and the hypocritical ceremonies on 26/11, held from time to time .
A careful reading of the judicial confession of Swami Asimananda will reveal that with a view to reduce its impact, in view of the national and international ramifications of the bomb blasts carried out by ‘Hindutva’ fascist forces, blamed on innocent members of the Muslim minority, from the lower middle class and working classes, who were subjected to torture and jailed for several years; that there is an attempt to deliberately refer to the acts carried out by RSS Pracharaks as retaliatory ; despite which, the confession only proves what has been long suspected by the politically discerning in the regions that the bomb blasts have been taking place ,that covert fascist upper caste /upper class funded ‘Hindutva” terrorist organizations, despite their political history , have been allowed to run amuck in our country .In contrast , those who adopted a Gandhian approach to the service of humanity, like Dr. Binayak Sen , who pioneered a health care program for the most backward and poverty stricken regions of tribal India ,have been unjustly sentenced to life imprisonment along with two others, on charges of sedition under the Indian Penal Code, and for allegedly assisting and aiding unlawful organizations under the provisions of the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act 2005 and the Unlawful Activities Act 1967 , even though prima facie there is no evidence to convict him or his co-accused , with hundreds of other people in these regions, tribal and others , arrested under similar sections in these regions , where even journalists are considered subversive . The attacks on temples which have allegedly taken place in Gujarat, including at the Akshardham temple among a few other sites, referred to in the confession of the Swami , as the basis for the alleged retaliation of the RSS Pracharaks on innocent people who have died in the bomb blasts from one region to another , are all seriously suspect , as the handiwork of covert agencies for agent provocateur actions, similar in nature to the bomb blasts referred to in the judicial confession , to justify arrests of Muslim youth from lower middle class and working families. It must not be forgotten that the same theory of retaliation advanced by the Sangh Parivar and the Shiv Sena for the Mumbai pogroms of December’ 92 and January –February ‘93, were rejected by the Justice Sri Krishna Commission as having no factual basis whatsoever.
Even earlier, as per the evidence of the Special Branch( Intelligence ) of the Mumbai Police before the Srikrishna Commission, there were no well organized Muslim organizations in India , comparable to the ‘ Hindutva ‘ organizations inciting the Mumbai riots in December ‘92 and January-February ‘93 or comparable in organization to those political parties who led the fraudulent ‘Kar Sewa’ Movement for building a Ram temple in Faizabad( erstwhile Awadh, historically Ayodhya) where there are already more than twenty thousand Ram Mandirs, on the roads and in the lanes and by lanes of Faizabad. Hinduism sanctions no such religious practice as ‘Kar Sewa’ , neither is there any such precedent in any of the ancient Vedic or other religious texts, leading to the conclusion that this movement was political and not religious .
What the country has been witnessing, significantly in the very period that liberalization, privatization and globalization of the Indian economy were advanced as the main agenda of economic reforms, are communal pogroms and collective killings on one hand and on the other hand bomb blasts by covert groups ,operating furtively and in secrecy. The bomb blasts of March ‘93 in Mumbai in the immediate aftermath of the Mumbai riots against minorities , was plotted with the assistance of the Muslim criminal underworld, to justify the earlier attacks on predominantly migrant and poor Muslims in Mumbai , leaving deliberate and open traces to the Muslim underworld ,to incense majority opinion against poorer citizens of the Muslim minority who had already suffered during the pogroms of December‘ 92 and January -February ‘93 .The Muslim underworld based in Dubai among other places, were also allegedly involved from the region of the UAE, controlled by the British and US Intelligence agencies in close alliance with Saudi Arabia ,in a region where the ISI and RAW are equally active in the large Indian and Pakistani Diaspora, residing not only in Dubai but in several parts of the UAE, therefore the ease with which hired elements are available for agent provocateur actions in South Asia .
The bomb blasts of March’ 93 , significantly killed both members of the Hindu and Muslim community, which has not been satisfactorily explained .If the bomb blasts of March ‘93 in Mumbai, were really in retaliation for the pogroms against the Muslim minorities which took place in December’ 92 and January-February ‘93, which was the official line ; the attacks would have been directed exclusively against those who organized the riots of December ‘92 and January-February 93 and not against innocent citizens of both communities .Similarly the bomb blasts organized by the RSS Pracharaks admittedly targeted both Hindus and Muslims and by the deliberate and calculated arrest of innocent members of the Muslim minority by ATS teams and sometimes even special investigations of Central agencies, on covert instructions , were intended to fan ‘ Islamophobia’ throughout the length and breadth of the country, by those funding these organizations, using deliberately created terrorist incidents, for increased authoritarian economic and political control of Indian society, by reducing the freedom and civil liberties of citizens guaranteed by the Constitution of India, under the pretext of terrorism, with deliberate and high profile scanning by metal detectors in several public spaces , including for entry into the premises of the Supreme Court and High Courts , with the objective of deflecting the focus on economic and political issues, by manufacturing a serious religious divide and triggering a hate propaganda campaign against minorities ,by identifying every terrorist as a member of the Muslim minority ,using fictitious Muslim names in the print media and on television . This was the overall strategy adopted under instructions by mainstream channels and corporate controlled well established newspapers , who are to-day silent on the earlier campaign which they conducted against Muslims, who were indiscriminately labeled as terrorists, with thousands tortured into making false confessions, languishing in prison cells throughout the country at one stage or another, taking advantage of their backward social and economic conditions, revealed by the Justice Sachar Committee Report, which shocked even upper and middle class Muslims , hitherto ignorant and indifferent to actual conditions of the Muslim minority .
India being a highly diverse society, has always been vulnerable to serious destabilization from religious strife, which Jawaharlal Nehru emphasized time and again , highlighting repeatedly, that the threat to Indian democracy came from the direction of the extreme right wing .A hard headed operative of a city’s Special Police Branch (Intelligence), sickened by the sheer scale of violence and brutality of the pogrom in Gujarat in 2002, was to spontaneously inform on the covert measures being adopted to escalate the violence to manufacture a serious divide ,reporting that a special incendiary squad had arrived in Gujarat from abroad to execute major acts of arson and killings during the Gujarat pogrom, which has international ramifications , a report which has not yet been officially confirmed .
In this context , there is nothing new about the report of the FBI receiving or seeking reports from the Special Branches ( Intelligence ) in India, as joint intelligence sharing had been established by the BJP led NDA government and was continued by subsequent governments of different political complexions for the “ War on Terror”, declared by the global financial class , which is a war on people and on the economic and political sovereignty of those countries which had achieved national liberation from colonial rule. It is in this context that representatives of the Western alliance system are often invited to be present in key Indian agencies , for intelligence sharing operations, violating the sovereignty of India and its political , policing and administrative institutions. In this context ,President Obama in his inaugural address, made an important statement, in the context of the hostility to the policies of the United States of America around the world, stating that the US administration was not responsible for everything that was taking place in these countries, implying that much of it was the consequence of internal decision making of ruling classes within those countries .
Yet . despite the flaws in the judicial confession of Swami Asimananda, revealing aspects and concealing others, calculated to reduce the impact of the disclosures , the myth of the nationalist agenda of the RSS and the Sangh Parivar , has been exposed as never before, as acts calculated not to protect but to divide and control India , camouflaged behind the words ‘ nationalist’ or ‘patriotic’, used frequently by the RSS and the Sangh Parivar, including by the other front organizations , the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal, who after sowing the seeds of division in India along with the erstwhile Muslim League and Jamiat-e-Islami among other organizations ,weirdly claim monopoly of the nationalist rhetoric , to render their politics of hate and prejudice acceptable to the middle class and lower middle class in India, brainwashed into believing that the RSS and the Sangh Parivar are nationalist organizations. The real political objective of the Sangh Parivar is not the emancipation of the lower or middle class or working masses ,but the economic and social domination of the commercial ,financial and corporate classes and castes of India in a voluntary alliance with global finance capital, at the cost of Indian sovereignty, with the objective of devouring the financial and other resources of the masses of the people of India .
A significant feature of these bomb blasts is that they are almost as serious and widespread as the bomb blasts in those countries presently occupied by foreign troops .It is necessary to recall in assessing the strategy of the use of bomb blasts to create internal and sectarian strife, that bomb blasts were first widely used as weapons in the conflict in Ireland , Britain’s first colony , brutally sought to be controlled and later in and around Israel, established with the assistance of British foreign policy allied with Zionist and banking interests, using the brutal “ Holocaust” inflicted on the Jewish citizens of Europe by Germany’s Fortune 500 Companies in alliance with US and UK banking and other financial interests ,as a political camouflage for the colonization of Palestine, in the heart of the Arab world for better control of a strategic Petro-dollar region.
Apart from these bomb blasts, the cruelty of the attack on Graham Staines the Christian missionary and on his innocent children by ‘Hindutva’ activists can never be justified and was on similar lines, intended to forge a divide in Eastern India , later repeated against the Christian dalits and tribal people in the Kandhamal among other regions of Odisha( Orissa) when the BJP was an alliance partner in the State government , using the excuse of the murder of another self styled godman working in a tribal region allegedly to reconvert the tribal population from Christianity ,with thousands of dalit and tribal homes burnt and devastated and many killed in this pogrom unleashed .It was then stated by a few representatives of the Christian Churches, that one of the reasons for the tensions created, were the commercial interests involved in the forest produce and other resources of the area . The anti -Christian attacks have now spread across the country into Madhya Pradesh , Karnataka and Gujarat, among other regions, wherever it can be used to create a divide, to distract people from priority issues, social , economic and political and to divert hate on to the ‘ other ‘, to prevent unity among people on issues of priority concern . With this objective a high profile campaign was unleashed in the country against religious conversions by the Sangh Parivar out of all proportion, even though conversions are miniscule, with statutes enacted against conversion ,which are constitutionally not valid, as citizens are free to adopt any religious philosophy of their own choice and birth in a religious fold does not imply that a reasoned acceptance of a faith has taken place. The most famous conversion has been that of Dr.Ambedkar with his followers en mass to Buddhism, which no statute could have prevented as it was a revolt against caste/class injustice . The campaign conducted by the Sangh Parivar against Christians alleged that forced conversions were taking place, which is far from the truth, as many in India belonging to the Dalit groups among others who have converted , despairing of their social and economic conditions within a stratified and exploitative caste fold and the denial of minimum social dignity in rural India where the caste system is even more cruel in its impact . The oppression of upper caste groups in vast regions is borne out by the agitation in Haryana , against the steps taken to investigate those members of the Khap Panchayats who have attacked Dalits and murder people who resort to inter caste marriages or marry spouses even from the same village, even as lakhs of unborn female fetuses have disappeared from North India ,leaving a socially explosive situation behind to which the ‘Hindutva’ forces have acquiesced , even as upper castes are the most hostile to the girl child .
The reality is that for centuries India has remained a country where the majority of the people broadly espouse the Hindu philosophy despite the waves of immigrants from Central Asia , which include the Aryans to whom the ‘ Hindutva’ forces trace their religious origin, on the pattern of the Nazi Party of Gernmany . There is no explanation forthcoming for the fact that if there is forcible conversion to Christianity as alleged , as to why the Christian population of India is declining .However to state that Churches can be attacked and Christians killed for alleged forced conversion , is to declare that violence is the declared and preferred strategy of the fascist right wing of the upper castes /upper classes to encroach on the property and political rights of the economically and socially weaker classes and to deny them equal rights , by violating all Constitutional norms .In regions where the tribal people have been blamed for the violence , hundreds of villages , forest and water resources including whole rivers have been taken over by corporate and mining companies based in India and abroad.
Wherever necessary , organizations with new names are established from time to time , by those politically loyal to the Sangh Parivar, such as the Ram Sena in Karnataka among others, locally funded by traders , financiers and the corporate sector and used even against women; very similar to the ‘ Fatwas’ by reactionary self styled Ulemas and Maulanas and sections of the Muslim clergy , who similarly desire to control the Muslim community , with both sides using this strategy , whenever there is a need to divert attention in a political crisis or from exposures of massive corruption and illegal lobbying by Corporate Houses and financiers , with severely adverse impact on revenues , presently overwhelming the Indian State .
What is of political relevance in these dramatic disclosures of Swami Asimananda, is that even those who were soft on what was perceived as the militant nationalist rhetoric of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, are now seriously reflecting on whether the political articulation and covert activity of the RSS and its various front organizations , unites or divides India. An interesting and significant aspect of the history of the RSS , the Jamiat-e-Islami and the SGPC or the Shiromani Gurduwara Prabhandak Committeee , is that all three organizations were established in or about the nineteen twenties , even as the Indian Independence movement led by Mahatma Gandhi, among other prominent leaders of the Indian National Congress, gathered increasing mass support. The RSS the Jamiat-e-Islami and the SGPC, were not active in the freedom movement against British rule. Their main objective was openly espousing religious theocracy, along with organizations like the Muslim League and the Hindu Mahasabha , propagating the establishment of separate religious states , even if it meant the partition of India. To this end the Jamiat-e-Islami and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, both ideologically advanced the viewpoint that the Hindus and Muslims constituted separate nations. Earlier Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, an early Indian revolutionary , author of the ‘The Great War of Indian Independence’, in which the role of the Muslims leaders and masses in 1857 was extolled , on his conditional release from the Andaman Jail by the British, shifted his political objectives from Indian Independence , to the establishment of a religious theocracy and in his writings on ‘ Hindutva’, propagated that Hindus and Muslims in India were two different nations .This is significant, as the erstwhile Muslim League in British occupied India , from in or about the thirties, commenced advocating the same two nation theory from the other side of the political spectrum. This discourse that Hindus and Muslims constituted two separate nations was continued by Sarsangchalak Guru Golwalkar in ‘We or Our Nationhood Defined’ and it was this fascist religious discourse and on the ground activities, along with the other political activities of the Jamiat –e –Islami and the Muslim League, among other organizations of the upper class Muslims ,namely the landlords and commercial interests, even as the RSS and its front organizations represented and still represent predominantly upper class /upper caste Hindus, which finally paved the way for the great divide of the partition of India, in pursuance of the geopolitical objectives of British colonial rule. It was in keeping with this Imperialist strategy ,that religious fascist parties of the Muslims and Hindus were first let loose and permitted extensive leverage , with covert and overt functioning to derail Indian nationalism, by using Muslim and Hindu communalism and fanning cultural animosity and hatred, by propagating myths of superiority and inferiority, first to prolong British colonial rule by creating a divide as against the unity so visible in the I857 war of Indian Independence and when necessary to partition India for better control of the resources of South Asia .Those members of the Sangh Parivar who hold the Muslims responsible for the partition of India are deliberately distorting history ,omitting to disclose that whereas Mohammad Ali Jinnah an upper class anglophile Muslim from the commercial classes , English and Gujarati speaking ,an alien to Islamic culture , advanced the two-nation theory in 1939 ; whereas Damodar Vinayak Savarkar advanced the two nation theory a decade and a half earlier in or about 1925, followed by Guru Golwalkar , the Sangsarchalak or head of the RSS ,among others . There was no adult franchise in British India , as a consequence only those with property and educational qualifications , that is the upper class and upper castes were entitled to vote in the elections held ; to state that Muslims were responsible for the partition , is far from the truth , as the voting pattern in the Sind among other assemblies at the relevant time will disclose that a Hindu member of the Sind Assembly in pre-partition India , voted for partition and with his family immediately thereafter left for India , inexplicable!Whereas Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan of the North West Province with his entire party, the Khudai Khidmatgars , a non –violent movement among the Pashtuns opposing British Colonial Rule , affiliated to the Indian National Congress , which dominated the NWFP , opposed partition, yet their entire region, the NWFP was forcibly parceled out to Pakistan .
An eminent senior civil servant Rajeshwar Dayal of the ICS, then serving in Uttar Pradesh as Home Secretary , later in the Indian Foreign Service after independence , well known in international circles, in view of his contributions to the United Nations special missions , in his memoirs ´A Life of Our Times’ , has referred to the evidence produced before him, during the stormy days of the partition , against the then Sarsanchalak of the RSS, Guru Golwalkar, who was found with incriminating evidence during the rioting by Police officers in Uttar Pradesh . Rajeswar Dayal observes, that the arrest of Guru Golwalkar was prevented by Govind Valabh Pant , the then Congress Chief Minister of UP, dragging his feet, in a critical situation where Muslim and Hindu fascist organizations, were reinforcing each other ideologically and on the ground , with collective killings. Ironically even the united Communist Party of India , though it staunchly opposed the killings and pogroms of the religious fascist parties, committed the serious political error of supporting the creation of Pakistan ,on the fallacious application of the principle of national self-determination, though this political principle is not applicable to religious groups and was later found to be seriously politically flawed, when Bangladesh liberated itself from Pakistan, even though majority of its citizens follow the Islamic faith.
The serious divide, which to-day is being created through bomb blasts and other covert acts , is politically intended to divide people for total control, through the covert yet steady establishment of an authoritarian political state , which is the real agenda behind the bomb blasts . This is prima facie clear from the published accounts, of the reports of the discussions held by the groups involved ,plotting bomb blasts and the leaked reports of Indian investigating agencies disclosing that these groups were seeking the assistance of other governments , including the government of Israel, for their political strategy in India. The bomb blasts were intended to seriously emasculate Indian democracy and since the objective was to fragment Indian society on religious lines, was aimed at the heart of Indian civilization itself, which is historically and geographically a political and cultural unity in diversity .
Those who would give credit for the emergence of the modern Indian State to British Colonial Rule , are suffering from historical amnesia. On the one hand they extol the epics which give us a glimpse of the broad cultural unity in diversity of what is now India, inhabited by diverse peoples from Adivasis to others and on the other hand project in their so called modern political-commercial-financial fascist discourse the myth, that in India religion is the basis for nationalism, which would logically exclude most border states including the Punjab, the Christian States of the North East among others, with most of the southern states including Tamil Nadu rebelling against this dominant Aryan discourse of the Sangh Parivar ; with the , Dalits, Adivasis and Other Backward Classes in that order in the rest of India , who constitute the majority of the people of India, objecting to the Brahminical discourse extolling texts which justify caste/class superiority as a birth right in the Hindutva fold .
The question has to be seriously addressed, whether the ideology of the Sangh Parivar unites or fractures India? This question is to be answered not by rhetoric of the present political parties inside and outside parliament, but by the deeds of the political formations, as witnessed from one region to another and this must include the Congress and other political parties, who were a part of the NDA alliance , among others ,who many feel have covertly allowed their individual members and state governments to collaborate for their political convenience with the Sangh Parivar and as a consequence have acquiesced even in criminal acts of covert fascist organizations against the people of India, not being seriously prosecuted, in flagrant and dangerous conspiratorial adjustment and political concession to their internal and international supporters .
What was unprecedented even in the pre Independence period and for forty years thereafter, is the daily ideological propaganda of hatred against other religious groups heard in the last two decades , to project minorities as inferior and the whispering campaign which has led to segregated housing from one city to another, from one region to another, with the formation of ghettos of the religious minorities and the Dalits , strictly prohibited by the Constitution of India .The so called steel frame of the Indian bureaucracy, representing predominantly upper caste /upper class interests, is unable in the absence of political will by political parties in government ,in the regions most affected by social segregation , to respond administratively to the deteriorating situation on the ground and the reality is that the reason for the delayed investigation into the bomb blasts and the prima facie unjustified rounding up of innocent citizens in many cases belonging to the Mulsim minority which required detailed investigation and action by the administration and by the Courts; has largely been due to the admitted failure of administrative , intelligence and police agencies at the highest levels and the top most leadership of most political parties in parliament , to be neutral, despite their nominal allegiance to Constitution of India, leading to the inescapable conclusion that there is a “hidden agenda” in more than one political party, to use the religious card to deflect political issues , even it if leads to a serious fracture and divide of Indian society, threatening the unity and integrity of the Indian State .
Exhortations of enlightened members of the judiciary and reports of several Commissions of Inquiry , into the causes of pogroms and communal attacks which have named individuals and organizations of the Sangh Parivar among others and have pointed to the deliberate dereliction of duty of senior administrative and police officials and communalization of the police force and para military organizations , have been ignored even by governments owing allegiance to the Congress Party . Whereas some left parties have also attempted to focus on the issue of Islamic terrorism along with other political parties , despite their knowledge, that apart from across the boundary between Pak Occupied Kashmir and the Indian State of Kashmir and the funding of certain organizations in the Valley by several foreign Intelligence agencies, in the knowledge of the Central Government, there are very few organizations of the minorities which are a serious threat or capable of creating a serious divide; in the rest of the country it is covert fascist organizations with political affiliation to the Sangh Parivar or criminals acting as agent provocateurs ,who are hired for bomb blasts and terrorist activities, as per numerous investigations now emerging , including the Judicial confession of Swami Asimananda.
In the context of the Aryan political discourse of the RSS ,whose leaders had extolled the military schools of Mussolini and established military schools in India on a similar pattern, for recruitment into the armed forces , some of whose office bearers have been named in investigations conducted in bomb blast cases still pending trial and admired Hitler for his alleged nationalism in cleansing Germany( though they do not disclose to the people of India that Germany was completely destroyed by the war unleashed by German Fortune 500 companies and the German people devastated ) in the process of making it a pure ‘ Aryan’ State; reference to a recent decision of a Division Bench of the Supreme Court comprising Justice Markandya Katju and Justice Sudha Mishra may be of relevance, in an appeal filed in a case relating to atrocities committed on an Adivasi woman in the Aurangabad region of Maharashtra, the Supreme Court observed that the Adivasis now approximately only 8 percent of the Indian population are the indigenous people and the original inhabitants of this country in vast regions ; whereas the Aryans arrived in India after the Dravidians . The Division Bench emphasized that-
“ Since India is a country of great diversity it is absolutely essential if we wish to keep our country united to have tolerance and equal respect for all communities and sects .It was due to the wisdom of our founding fathers that we have a Constitution which is secular in character , and which caters to the tremendous diversity in our country.”
If this is the reality then why are the front organizations of the Sangh Parivar headed by the RSS, in deliberate denial of the sociological , philosophical , religious and cultural diversity of India ,attempting to consolidate upper caste/upper class fascism, coinciding with the introduction of the neoliberal reform agenda in India , spear headed by policies of companies, banks and financial institutions being imposed through the World Trade Order . Even though the reality as observed in the aforesaid judgment is that throughout the country, even within the same religious fold ,different groups and sects adopt different rituals , ways of worship and customs and have been in revolt against upper caste /upper class domination, both in the Hindu and in the Muslim community , as is visible from the ‘Pasmanda’ movement in Bihar, comprising Muslim artisans and other castes , opposed to upper class domination in the Muslim community, of which the leaders of the erstwhile Muslim League and Jamiat-e-Islami among other organizations are an example, representing the landlords and upper classes, seeking their own political backyard, allying with British Imperialism and thereafter US Imperialism, with horrific consequences, now seen . In Pakistan , a government collaborates with foreign armies of NATO in collective killings of its own people and the people of Afghanistan ,collaborating with Western banks and financial Institutions seeking to launder the proceeds of the drug trade of Afghanistan and the Af-Pak region into collapsing banks and financial institutions. Increasingly the financial figures of this laundering of the drug trade with the establishment of ‘Narco’ regions are being disclosed , revealing a criminalized economic policy agenda through wars and occupation, to enable the survival of the dominant economic system, which Mahatma Gandhi had referred to as “ incipient fascism”.
One interesting narrative referred to by scholars, who have researched the partition of India , referred to in the discourse on the similarities between the ideology of hate and the two nation theory propagated by the erstwhile Muslim League , Jamiat – e- Islami and other organizations on the one hand and the RSS , Sangh Parivar and its political wings on the other ; is that the Jamiat – e- Islami on partition informed the leaders of the RSS , that since Pakistan was now a reality, they looked forward to the creation of a Hindu theocratic State as a fitting partner to the Muslim State of Pakistan .It is in this context that the bomb blasts and communal attacks and pogroms taking place in India and the origins of these political formations and their role during the movement for Indian Independence, have to be researched, studied and analyzed, to comprehend their present political positions, which are in some respects a historical continuity, assisting in the penetration of South Asia and its economic and political space by comprador classes in a global alliance.
It would be timely, in the backdrop of the hate campaign and hysteria against religious minorities and some other individuals political formations unleashed in the country, to recall the written observations on the RSS of Sardar Patel, whom the Sangh Parivar extols as one of the tallest leaders of the country. Referring to the hate propaganda in the country which led to the tragic assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, (the assassins initially denied their membership of the RSS as there was a public outcry against the RSS, however one of the main conspirators was to later admit that the conspirators had been members the organization ) in a written note stated :
“ Our reports do confirm that as a result of the activities of these two bodies , particularly the former ( the RSS ) an atmosphere was created in the country in which such a ghastly tragedy ( Gandhiji’s assassination ) became possible.”
The Kapur Commission report on the murder of Mahatma Gandhi , refers to the direct involvement of the forces which propagated ‘Hindutva’ in the conspiracy to murder the father of the Indian Freedom Movement .From its inception till date, the RSS and democratic functioning have not been compatible, as openly declared by successive Sarsanghchalaks or heads of the RSS, in keeping with the tradition of fascist organizations the world over, including in Eruope ,which inspired the RSS in adopting the stick , the khakhi short pant, a favourite attire of British colonialists ( not traditional Indian dress ),supplemented by a black cap, black being a favourite colour of fascist parties the world over .The political leadership of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has always been nominated, as the democratic principle of political organization has never been accepted by the organization . Similarly upper caste domination has been predominant at the highest leadership levels, which over an extensive period was dominated by one region, where some of the most important militant influences and struggles and mass political movements against British rule took place, namely the province of Maharashtra, as an anti-dote to the nationalist and progressive sentiment in the same region.The prominent leaders of Maharashtra, whether Gopal Krishna Gokhale , the mentor of Gandhiji and Lokmanya Tilak , among many others did not believe that the Hindus and Muslims were different nations . Several movements in the region of other castes and communities, suffering Brahminical upper caste domination over centuries, were openly contemptuous of the RSS and its upper caste leadership , with its unscientific upper caste rituals laced with superstition, its obscurantist Aryan race and caste ridden propaganda .Significantly the RSS was extensively funded and supported by commercial interests and those princely states in the Central Provinces( now Madhya Pradesh, which has seen in recent days many covert conspiracies for bomb blasts ), among other regions of India , whose feudal and comprador classes owed their loyalty to the British Raj, as against those who like the Rani of Jhansi, uncompromisingly fought against British rule .
An aspect which is historically significant in the context of the RSS and its origins during British colonial rule, is the close association of Anglo-American capital with the rise of fascism in Europe. Significantly the autobiography of Benito Mussolini carried a foreword by the US Ambassador to Italy and funds for the establishment of the fascist party in Italy came from contributions from the United States, including from some Italian migrants, even as to-day well heeled and prosperous sections of the Indian Diaspora, allied with banking and financial interests , in the United States and other countries such as the UK, actively support the RSS and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, through many organizations of Indians abroad and there is an alliance between these sections and Zionists. Ironically the Zionists in Israel and elsewhere conveniently overlook and do not disclose even to Israeli citizens , that the early ideologues of the RSS , were all inspired by fascist leaders such as Mussolini and Hitler, who had declared that the “ final solution “ was the only way to rid Europe of its Jewish citizens, a political diversion to camouflage the enslavement of the working people of Europe for ‘Lebensraum’ and the seizure of their economic space and resources by any means, including through war and slave labour which was the then policy of major companies in Germany for whom Hitler was the political instrument.
A morbid aspect of the recent ongoing and earlier investigations by official agencies, is the disclosure, that members of the RSS and the Sangh Parivar have been killed fascist style or targeted for murder by their own members and that finances were being provided by external agencies inimical to India, earlier through Nepal before the abolition of the monarchy in Nepal , to individuals who are members of front organizations of the Sangh Parivar , to do away with some of their own prominent leaders. There was a hint of the involvement of the ISI in funding operations, as leaked by intelligence agencies investigating these operations, who urged the government of India , that since some of the leaders of the RSS were targeted by their own colleagues , the RSS should be equally interested in detailed investigations and not attack the bona fides of the late Joint Commissioner of Police, Hemant Karkare conducting the investigation , whose family had lived both in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra , which explains his telephone call to Mr. Digvijay Singh, erstwhile Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, on the day of his assassination, in which Hemant Karkare referred to threats to him held out by the Sangh Parivar .In Mumbai the tragic killings of 26/11 of Hindus and Muslims and a few foreigners , was followed by the assassination of advocate Shahid Azmi, to cover the tracks of those who had effected false arrests in the bomb blasts cases, as Shahid Azmi was defending , with outstanding dedication and competence , despite serious threats , very similar to those received by Hemant Karkare , innocent members of the Muslim minority from poor and lower middle class families, falsely charged in many cases including in the Malegaon bomb blasts . Shahid Azmi was significantly assassinated in Mumbai in his office , just before his client , a citizen of India ,was acquitted by the Special Court of Judge Tahilyani for allegedly handing over of a map of Bombay in Nepal in respect of the 26/11 killings by Pakistani gunmen. The Jamiat-e- Ulema –e-Hind , an organization affiliated to the Congress since the days of the Freedom movement , have not moved the Union Home Ministry for a special investigation into his case, even though there was a press release by the stating that the “patriotic” sections of the underworld had killed Shahid Azmi. Mumbai learnt that the underworld had patriotic elements as certified by local investigating agencies ! Ironically the lawyers defending cases of Sangh Parivar activists, were not subjected to the same murderous threats or attacked in the same manner as those lawyers in several regions of the country ,who were threatened and attacked for defending innocent members of the Muslim minority who were from the lower middle class and the working classes, and were falsely charged in innumerable cases , which the Swami Asinanda judicial confession now establishes .
The reason why the hate campaign of the Sangh Parivar, aided and abetted by the media made substantial advances in the country before its recent exposure, is that more than one political formation collaborated with the Sangh Parivar, including on economic or political policy in Parliament and outside Parliament . In this context , the pogrom against the Sikhs in 1984, on the assassination of Mrs Indira Gandhi , then Prime Minister, cannot be forgotten; though no less a person than Mr. Manmohan Singh, was to state during the course of an election campaign in Delhi, covered by TV channels , that there was also a covert RSS hand in this anti-Sikh pogrom, apart from the well known culprits, and the then Home Minister it was rumoured was a one time former member of the RSS in the Hyderabad of the Nizam.The indiscriminate reform agenda of liberalization , globalization and privatization without a sector by sector approach , was initiated by the Congress party among others, in collaboration with the BJP , while the Communist Party ( Marxist ) had made common cause with the RSS in its political struggle against Prime Minister Indira Gandhi during the emergency, as a part of the Jayaprakash Narayan Movement, which in Gujarat and Bihar among other regions, unfortunately had widespread upper caste/upper class support, with the poorest Dalits attacked by supporters of this movement in Gujarat, when there was a campaign against reservations for economically and socially weaker sections by casteist elements in the Jayaprakash Movement, even as the Dalits and other socially and economically weaker classes and sections were on the other side, with Indira Gandhi. The RSS was a part of the Janata government through the then Jan Sangh, a political extension of the RSS . Subsequently the Bharatiya Janata Party replaced the Jan Sangh as the political front of the RSS, with dual membership, in or about 1980. Whereas in the post 1980 period the Congress Party stooped to play the majority card, including in respect of the opening up of the lock on the Babri Masjid and thereafter the minority card, appeasing the most obscurantist sections of the Muslim community , after the Shabano judgment and amended the statute to alter the provisions for maintenance for Muslim women by enacting a separate statute conferring separate rights ,among other ill advised policies, calculated to reinforce the hold of the conservative clergy of both religious groups. However other political parties were equally responsible for developments which strengthened reaction. The two Communist parties, the CPM and the CPI , supported seat adjustment with the BJP in national elections as against the Congress party, under the formula proposed by the late V.P.Singh, which lent respectability to the BJP, enabling the BJP to occupy political centre stage , from its earlier purely peripheral role in Indian politics , as this seat adjustment increased the strength of the BJP in parliament, which was anticipated by discerning independent political observers ,who warned the left parties, that this kind of political seat adjustment to propel a fascist formation into power, was unacceptable . The experience of the rise of fascism in Europe ought to have informed the parliamentary left, that any alliance with fascism, poses a danger to democracy and democratic rights of society as a whole and that no responsible Communist party including the Bolsheviks ( (the majority in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party), have ever allied in Europe or in Latin America with fascism or entered into seat adjustments in elections which would give an edge to fascist parties and increase their strength in national or regional legislatures, as this is against the interests of people as a whole , as fascist parties represent ‘corporate rule’ as unambiguously defined by Benito Mussolini and history was a witness to the destruction of Europe under fascism and the grim developments in Latin America when fascist governments were in power from one country to another .
It is impossible to escape the conclusion that ´globalization’, which some have referred to as re-colonization, has been accompanied by the ideology of religious hatred against minorities everywhere to disrupt the unity of the broad masses of the people , by fascist political formations, for better authoritarian economic and political control and for wars of occupation of regions .An analysis of the break up of Federal States such as former Yugoslavia, by predatory financial and economic interests operating in Europe, preying on the resources and labour of Central and Eastern Europe, through well funded religious and ethnic fascist organizations, will inform many of the misuse of the religious and the so called ‘ethnic’ card , where criminal organizations entrusted with the task of manipulating widespread strife between diverse groups, were hired to further imperial financial interests for economic penetration of the economic space of former Yugoslavia , an objective which could not be achieved earlier, even by the Nazi armies during the Second World War .The rest is contemporary history ,with Yugoslavia deliberately destroyed through civil war and religious and ethnic conflict.
There are many lessons to be learnt by the RSS and the Sangh Parivar and other political parties in India and their financiers , the corporate classes, finance capital and the builders and speculators who support these organizations ,from the nature of religious theocracy established in Pakistan by the Muslim League and Jamiat-e-Islami, assisted by the most reactionary comprador classes , in alliance with imperial powers and the erstwhile colonizer, which has steadily reduced Pakistan to political shambles, economic ruin and complete loss of sovereignty , with collapse facing civil society in Pakistan.
In India , criminal activities of religious fascist organizations have been unfortunately permitted by many State governments of different political complexions ,despite the pronouncements of the Supreme Court of India ,that ‘secularism is part of the basic structure of the Constitution of India’ which cannot be amended . It must not be forgotten that the BJP led NDA government, attempted to tamper with the Indian Constitution , a manifesto of the Indian Freedom Movement ,which despite its weaknesses, in particular in the non -enforceability of the Directive Principles of State Policy through the Courts, though considered mandatory and binding in respect of government policy when read with fundamental rights, is considered a major hurdle by upper class/upper caste interests and their agenda for the Indian people . The BJP let NDA government , appointed a Constitutional Review Committee, headed by former Chief Justice M.N.Venkatchaliah ,with motives which were suspect , however they were not in a position to get their proposals through Parliament .
The hate campaign in India has been found necessary by more than one party serving special financial interests among others to avoid advancing a political agenda for the working masses, the peasantry ,the dalits , the tribal people, minorities , women and the lower middle and middle classes in rural and urban areas , by deflecting from the real development issues into diversionary fascist strategies . As a consequence of which the present political scene in India is dismal, as most political parties advance the interest of only those corporate and other interests who finance their campaigns. On the one hand radical forces are still sectarian , fragmented, weak and infantile, without a scientific political agenda for emancipation of Indian society as a whole, with priority policies for those presently below the poverty line and those on the periphery , in alliance with the unorganized and organized working classes , the peasantry , the tribal people , the lower and middle classes, minorities , women , in a broad alliance with those individuals from other classes , ready to support a manifesto for a democratic transformation , not yet accomplished in vast regions of India , for social and economic justice and a revolt against injustice , corruption , superstition and obscurantism which Mahatma Gandhi all his political life referred to as the objective of the freedom movement .An agenda which cannot exclude the careful and considered application of science and technology to vast areas, presently in abject feudal conditions , outside the pale of economic development, to advance a paradigm for development where there is neither hunger nor malnutrition and regions and localities have a voice in accessing their resources and controlling their environment , with priority for the preservation of the ecology of tribal and agricultural communities, for restoring the environment of cities and towns , reviving agriculture and industry and water sources, for public control of Banks and financial institutions , without shutting out technological advances the world which may be necessary and are not harmful to society, in a careful sector by sector approach ; this involves the painstaking task of sustained political education , throughout the length and breadth of the country on the lines of the freedom movement, to create the critical mass of political opinion to tilt the balance against an increasingly anti-human and overwhelming corrupt system, in many parts of the world. On the other hand are political forces in India, which have grown senile ,are highly compromised , degenerate and corrupt, pressurized by corporate policy as witnessed by the ‘Radia’ tapes , to abandon peoples interests ; and what is even worse , there are fascist organizations which are reactionary , revivalist , feudal and criminal , advancing the interests of a financial oligarchy in a global alliance, desiring to establish authoritarian or police states in the service of Imperialism or outright occupation by Para military and military forces, to substitute democratic practices with totalitarian methods . In this complex political situation , where the struggle is for a more genuine democracy, with people at different levels of economic , social and cultural development , attempts by fascist parties to destroy the diversity in unity which Indian civilization is all about , is an attempt to destroy Indian society and the Indian State. The national flag represents the hopes and aspirations of the diverse people of India , whereas the Sangh Parivar accepted the flag and the Constitution of India when they faced a political ban .
It is in this context that the question arises, whether it is Dr. Binayak Sen who is really seditious ?
Swami Aseemanand's confession reveals Hindutva terror activities
Vinay Kumar NEW DELHI, JANUARY 08, 2011 20:22 IST
UPDATED: OCTOBER 17, 2016 15:22 IST
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Swami Aseemanand, a key figure in the Hindutva terror network, who was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) from Haridwar in November, has admitted to having planned terror attacks on Ajmer Sharif, Mecca Masjid, Malegaon and the Samjhauta Express.
In his confession, recorded under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code before Metropolitan Magistrate Deepak Dabas at Tis Hazari courts on December 18, the arrested Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leader confessed that he and other Hindu activists were involved in bombings at Muslim religious places because they wanted to answer every Islamist terror act with “a bomb for bomb’’ policy.
His 42-page confession, recorded in Hindi, has been reported in Tehelka news magazine’s latest cover story “In the Words of a Zealot.’’ He has named senior RSS leader Indresh Kumar, the murdered RSS pracharak Sunil Joshi, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and senior RSS pracharaks Sandeep Dange and Ramji Kalsangra, among others, as being key conspirators in the terror blast.
According to him, Indresh Kumar, who was recently questioned by the CBI, had financed several of the blasts, while Sunil Joshi and his team executed many of them. He said 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 temple in Varanasi and Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar.
He said in his statement, “I told everybody that bomb ka jawab bomb se dena chahiye (we should reply to bomb blasts with bombs) I told everyone since 80 per cent of Malegaon are Muslims, we should explode the bomb in Malegaon.’’ He also said, “Since 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, according to Tehelka magazine which has also uploaded the statement on its website. The statement made is legally admissible evidence that makes it crucial for the investigators probing the terror bombings targeting Muslims at religious and other places.
The magazine says that Swami Aseemanand, of the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram in Gujarat's Dangs district, told the metropolitan magistrate that in a 2006 meeting with other Hindu radicals, including murdered RSS pracharak Sunil Joshi and Thakur Pragya Singh, it was he who propagated the policy of “bomb for a bomb”. Sunil Joshi, alleged to be the key conspirator in the Ajmer dargah blast, was shot dead in Madhya Pradesh in 2007. He is suspected to have been killed by his own men to cover up the terror act, Rajasthan Police has claimed.
The Swami, whose real name is Jatin Chatterjee, hails from Hooghly district in West Bengal and is a post-graduate in Botany. He started working whole time for “Adivasi Kalyan Ashram” of RSS in Birbhum, Bankura and Purulia districts of West Bengal from 1977.
Swami Aseemanand also confessed how he had motivated a bunch of RSS pracharaks and other Hindu radicals to carry out the terror strikes to target Muslims.
Swami Aseemanand's confession is the first direct evidence of the involvement of Hindutva extremists in the 2006 Malegaon blasts and the Samjhauta Express blast even though there have been accusations of their involvement in the Mecca Masjid and Ajmer blasts.
Swami Aseemanand is known for having worked to reconvert people in tribal areas. He also ran the Shabari Dham Ashram and has a long list of followers, many of whom have been questioned by the CBI.
More than 68 people were killed in the Samjhauta Express bombing in 2007, seven people were killed in the 2008 Malegaon blasts, while three people were killed in the 2007 bombing at the Ajmer Dargah Sharif.
Not just a confession. Forensic evidence piles up against Hindutva terror
Over the past three years the evidence gathered by the agencies against a team of RSS pracharaks and lunatic Hindutva groups like Abhinav Bharat and Jai Vande Matram is compelling
ASHISH KHETAN
2011-01-22 , Issue 03 Volume 8 Print FriendlyPrint & EmailComment
THE CONFESSION of Swami Asimananda has drawn sharp and diverse reactions from different quarters. The families of the nine Malegaon Muslims implicated in the 2006 Malegaon blasts, which claimed 31 innocent lives, have termed it the clinching proof of their innocence. Not unexpectedly, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh have alleged that Asimananda’s confession was made under coercion and thus rubbished the ongoing probe into Hindutva terror.
But the fact remains that Asimananda had made the confession in the closed chamber of a Delhi Metropolitan Magistrate with no one else being around and after spending two days in judicial custody contemplating possible repercussions. Again, what is being completely overlooked in this politically charged debate is a whole body of evidence — both material and circumstantial — which has been pieced together by different agencies over the past four years. Asimananda’s confession only confirms and adds to the existing pool of evidence.
Over the past three years the evidence gathered by the agencies against a team of RSS pracharaks and lunatic Hindutva groups like Abhinav Bharat and Jai Vande Matram is compelling.
Since the arrests of a motley group of Hindu radicals — Sadhvi Pragya Singh, Lt Col Shrikant Purohit, Dayanand Pandey and eight other residents of Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh in 2008 — every new arrest, a witness testimony and recovery of new material has further corroborated and augmented the existing case against Hindu extremists.
As the missing pieces of the Hindutava terror puzzle are falling into place, new faces at the heart of the terror conspiracy like RSS central committee member Indresh Kumar have also been exposed.
The protracted investigation, which is now in its fourth year, began on 9 June 2007 with the CBI taking over the Mecca Masjid blast probe from the Hyderabad Police.
The 17 May 2007 Mecca Masjid terror strike, which killed nine Muslims and injured over 50 others, also left behind a small but crucial scientific clue — a Nokia cell phone and inside the phone a Vodafone SIM card.
The cell phone was part of an improvised explosive device (IED) that had failed to go off and thus comprised the only clue and in many ways the starting point for the investigation.
As the CBI sleuths took over the Mecca Masjid blast probe they discovered that there were a couple of striking similarities in the Mecca Masjid blast and the Samjhauta Express terror attack.
Sixty-eight people were killed when three successive powerful explosions turned two compartments of the Samjhauta Express into an inferno on 19 February 2007. The explosions had occurred at around midnight as the bi-weekly train on its way to Atari was crossing the Diwana railway station, 80 km from New Delhi.
While at Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad one bomb had malfunctioned and thus failed to explode, three unexploded IEDs were found on the Samjhauta Express.
Curiously, the 6.53 volt battery found in the unexploded IED at Mecca Masjid was exactly the same as the batteries used to power the IEDs planted on the Samjhauta Express. Besides, the metallic shells used to stuff explosives in the Mecca Masjid bombs were similar to the iron shells which were part of the IEDs planted on the Samjhauta Express.
Similar shells were recovered from the house of a Hindu radical in Nanded, Maharashtra, in April 2006 when an RSS member and a Bajrang Dal activist had died while assembling a bomb. During the investigation it had emerged that the Hindu extremists had exploded similar shell bombs outside a few mosques in Jalna and Parbhani in 2003 and 2004.
Also in December 2002, more than half-a-dozen live pipe or shell bombs were recovered from an ijtema, a large religious gathering of Muslims, held near the Bhopal railway station.
The design of the shells used in bombs in Nanded, Jalna, Parbhani, Bhopal, Samjhauta and Mecca Masjid was similar and thus hinted towards the involvement of one terror group behind all these cases.
POWER CIRCUIT
A 6.53 volt battery was part of the power circuits used in the Mecca Masjid blast
CONTAINERS
One of the two iron boxes that contained the Mecca Masjid bombs
BRIEFCASE BOMB
One of the three IEDs that failed to go off inthe Samjhauta Express
Interestingly, between 2005 and 2008, in the terror strikes targeted at Hindu neighbourhoods and temples — like the 2005 Delhi Diwali blasts, 2006 Sankatmochan Mandir blasts and 2007 Hyderabad twin blasts — the design of bombs was strikingly different from these bombs which were aimed at Muslims.
However, the counter-terrorism agencies in India remained divided over the inpossibility of Hindu radicals being involved in these Muslim targeted terror strikes — the 2006 Malegaon serial blasts, the Samjhauta Express blasts and the Mecca Masjid attack.
As opaque and extrapolated intelligence inputs — Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) being behind the Samjhauta blasts and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) behind the Mecca Masjid attack — continued to pour in, the CBI investigation pursued the forensic trail.
THE MECCA Masjid IED consisted of two pairs of metallic shells with their ends sealed, save for a small hole at one end to stuff the explosives. In the case of Mecca Masjid the explosive used was a lethal mix of high-intensity RDX and Trinitrotoluene (TNT) — both these explosives are only available with the army and paramilitary forces. Electrical detonators connected a 6.53 volt battery to the explosives through the hole at an end of each pair of the cast iron shells. The battery in turn was connected to an electrical circuit which in turn was connected to a Nokia 6030 cell phone with a SIM card. An alarm for 1.22 pm was set on the phone. Thus the cell phone served both as a timer and also the power source to trigger the circuit that would then result in the explosion of the IED. Each IED was neatly placed in a black iron box which in turn was placed in a rexine bag.
Interestingly, between 2005 and 2008, in the terror strikes targeted at Hindu neighbourhoods and temples — like the 2005 Delhi Diwali blasts, 2006 Sankatmochan Mandir blasts and 2007 Hyderabad twin blasts — the design of bombs was strikingly different from these bombs which were aimed at Muslims.
However, the counter-terrorism agencies in India remained divided over the inpossibility of Hindu radicals being involved in these Muslim targeted terror strikes — the 2006 Malegaon serial blasts, the Samjhauta Express blasts and the Mecca Masjid attack.
OMMON MODUS OPERANDI
The motorcycle used to conceal the bomb in Malegaon in 2008
In Modasa too the bomb was planted on a motorcycle
As opaque and extrapolated intelligence inputs — Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) being behind the Samjhauta blasts and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) behind the Mecca Masjid attack — continued to pour in, the CBI investigation pursued the forensic trail.
THE MECCA Masjid IED consisted of two pairs of metallic shells with their ends sealed, save for a small hole at one end to stuff the explosives. In the case of Mecca Masjid the explosive used was a lethal mix of high-intensity RDX and Trinitrotoluene (TNT) — both these explosives are only available with the army and paramilitary forces. Electrical detonators connected a 6.53 volt battery to the explosives through the hole at an end of each pair of the cast iron shells. The battery in turn was connected to an electrical circuit which in turn was connected to a Nokia 6030 cell phone with a SIM card. An alarm for 1.22 pm was set on the phone. Thus the cell phone served both as a timer and also the power source to trigger the circuit that would then result in the explosion of the IED. Each IED was neatly placed in a black iron box which in turn was placed in a rexine bag.
These SIM cards were purchased during the period of seven months between June and December 2006 from as many as seven shops — three shops in Bardhaman district, West Bengal, and four in Jamtara, Jharkhand.
An unexploded IED found at the Mecca Masjid blast site was the starting point for the investigation
RSS poster boy CM Narendra Modi in attendance at Asimananda’s ashram
RSS poster boy CM Narendra Modi in attendance at Asimananda’s ashram
On further investigation, it was revealed that all these 11 SIM cards had been used in as many as nine mobile handsets. The CBI tracked down all the shops from where these handsets were purchased. It emerged that two handsets were purchased from Faridabad (as mentioned above), three from Bardhaman, three from Jamtara and one from Gaffar Market in Delhi.
Statements of all the shopkeepers from whom these SIM cards and cell phones were purchased were recorded by the CBI. But the trail soon went cold as the identity of those who had bought these phones and SIM cards remained a mystery.
As the Mecca Masjid probe appeared to hit a dead end, on 11 October 2007, during the month of Ramzan, a powerful bomb went off at Ajmer Sharif dargah, killing three people and injuring over a dozen.
Terror linkages Indresh Kumar speaking at Shabri Kumbh in 2006
Terror linkages Indresh Kumar speaking at Shabri Kumbh in 2006
As luck would have it, like in the case of Mecca Masjid, one IED malfunctioned and did not explode. This IED was an exact replica of the Mecca Masjid device.
On investigation, the Rajasthan ATS on investigation found that the SIM card and the cell phone of the unexploded device were from the same series of SIM cards and cell phones that the CBI had compiled in the course of their investigation.
It was now clear that the Mecca Masjid and Ajmer Sharif blasts were parts of the same terror conspiracy. So, the Rajasthan ATS and the CBI began working in close coordination. A hunt was launched to find the remaining five cell phones from the series (four had already been used in the Mecca Masjid and Ajmer IEDs).
AS THE two agencies groped in the dark, on 29 September 2008, a bomb concealed in a motorcycle exploded at Bhikku Chowk, a Muslim neighbourhood in Malegaon. Simultaneously, a bomb went off in a small Gujarat town named Modassa. Like in Malegaon, the bomb was concealed in a motorbike and the blast took place in a Muslim locality when special Ramzan prayers were being offered.
The Maharashtra ATS under its then chief Hemant Karkare carried out an excellent forensic investigation and retrieved the chassis number of the motorcycle used in the Malegaon blast. The motorcycle belonged to self-styled Hindu leader Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur. Her arrest led to a series of other arrests including serving Lt Col Purohit and a Hindu religious leader Dayanand Pandey.
Dayanand Pandey’s laptop led to the recovery of evidence in the shape of 37 audio and three video clips
Pandey’s laptop led to the recovery of crucial evidence in the shape of 37 audio and three video clips. These audio and video files were recordings of terror conspiracy meetings which Pandey, Purohit and others had held, which Pandey had secretly filmed using the web camera and audio recording facility inbuilt in his laptop.
The recordings comprised a solid evidence of a wider Hindutva terror conspiracy. In one of the files the accused could also be heard talking about Swami Asimananda in glowing terms, which showed that he was known to the accused.
Upon hearing the news of Sadhvi Pragya’s arrest, Asimananda absconded. Pragya also revealed that three RSS pracharaks from Madhya Pradesh — Sunil Joshi, Ramchandra Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange — were also key conspirators. While Joshi had already been murdered under mysterious circumstances in December 2007, Kalsangra and Dange went underground before the ATS could arrest them.
IN JULY 2009, the Rajasthan ATS detected that four of the five cellphones they had been looking for were being used by a group of RSS workers in two villages — Chapri and Khardaun Kala — of Kalapipal Tehsil in Shajapur district, Madhya Pradesh. The ATS discovered these phones with the help of their IEMI numbers.
The RSS workers in question were Chandrashekhar Leve, Vishnu Patidar, Ravindra Patidar and Santosh Patidar.
THE RADICAL BUNCH
The men who played crucial roles in Hindutva terror
INDRESH KUMAR, an RSS central committee member, accused of mentoring and financing the RSS pracharaks behind Malegaon, Samjhauta, Ajmer and Mecca Masjid terror strikes.
SWAMI ASIMANANDA, the head of the Shabri Dham in Dangs, Gujarat. He allegedly selected Malgeaon, Ajmer Sharif and Hyderabad as terror targets.
SUNIL JOSHI, a former RSS E pracharak of Mhow district. Along with Hindu radicals from Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and, Rajasthan, he formed an inter-state terror infrastructure.
SANDEEP DANGE, a senior RSS pracharak from Shajapur district near Indore. Along with Joshi and Ramchandra Kalsangra, he was a key figure in the Hindutva terror conspiracy.
RAM CHANDRA KALSANGRA ALIAS RAMJI, an RSS pracharak from Madhya Pradesh. He carried out a series of terror strikes between December 2002 and 2008.
SHIVAM DHAKHAD, an RSS activist. He allegedly took training in bomb-making in 2005. He also did a reconnaissance of Aligarh Muslim University and residence of Justice UC Banerjee.
LT COL SHRIKANT PUROHIT,a founding member of terror outfit Abhinav Bharat. He is accused of supplying RDX for the 2008 Malegaon blasts.
DEVENDRA GUPTA, the RSS vibhag pracharak of Muzaffarnagar, Bihar. He provided logistics and safe havens to Joshi, Kalsangra and Dange for terror strikes.
LOKESH SHARMA, an RSS worker and associate of Joshi, Dange and Kalsangra. He bought the two Nokia handsets used in the bombs at Mecca Masjid and Ajmer.
BHARAT RATESWAR , a Hindu radical from Valsad in Gujarat. He participated in terror meetings held in Gujarat. He also travelled to Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh providing logistics for the blasts.
YOGI ADITYANATH, BJP MP from Gorakhpur. He was contacted by Asimananda to provide funds for terrorist activities. Joshi held a hush-hush meeting with him at his residence.
DR ASHOK VARSHNAY, RSS prant pracharak of Kanpur. He sheltered key terror accused and RSS pracharak Devendra Gupta at Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram in Sitapur, Uttar Pradesh.
RAJESH MISHRA, an RSS activist and owner of a foundry in Pithampura, near Mhow. He gave 15 cast iron shells in 2001 to Joshi, who used them for blasts.
SUDHAKAR DHAR DWIVEDI ALIAS DAYANAND PANDEY, he ran an ashram in Jammu. He played the role of an ideologue to those involved in the 2008 Malegaon blasts.
The investigation revealed that the absconding accused, Dange, was a close friend of Leve. While Dange was the RSS jila pracharak of Shajapur district between 2000 and 2005, Leve was RSS jila sampark pramukh of the same district.
The Rajasthan ATS recorded the statements of more than half-a-dozen RSS workers who stated that, before running off, Dange had handed over all the four phone sets to Leve. While Leve had thrown away one phone after it stopped functioning, he and his associates continued to use the other three phones.
The ATS seized all the three phones, which now were clinching scientific evidence against this team of RSS pracharaks.
All the SIM cards had been procured from the border towns of Mhijham and Chittaranjan
The interrogation of Leve and the Patidars led to the arrest of Devendra Gupta in April 2010. Gupta was originally from Ajmer but had served the RSS in different capacities in Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand. Gupta gave a detailed account of the visits made by Joshi, Kalsangra and Dange to Jamtada’s RSS office between 2005 and 2007 when Gupta was posted as RSS Jila pracharak in the district.
Gupta revealed that it was during these visits that he helped them in procuring fake identity and address proofs and SIM cards. All SIM cards were procured (as explained above) from two border towns — Chittaranjan (Bardhman district, West Bengal) and Mhijham (Jamtada district, Jharkhand).
Several people who had witnessed Joshi, Kalsangra and Dange visiting Gupta in Jamtada were examined and their statements were recorded. It was all adding up. Along with Joshi, one more Hindu radical named Bharat Riteshwar from Valsad (Gujarat) had visited the Jamtada office while the logistics for the blasts were being put together.
The ATS tracked down Riteshwar, who gave a detailed eyewitness account before a magistrate, corroborating facts already known to the ATS. Gupta’s interrogation also revealed the role of another RSS activist from Indore, Lokesh Sharma. According to the ATS, Sharma confessed to having played a key role in the terror conspiracy.
Both Riteshwar and Gupta for the first time revealed to the police that RSS central committee member Indresh Kumar was a mentor and financer of Sunil Joshi — the man at the core of the conspiracy.
Riteshwar also told the police that Joshi’s terror activities had the sanction of Indresh. Sharma went further and told the police that Indresh regularly funded Joshi for the terror activities.
In September 2010, the Madhya Pradesh Police arrested a RSS activist named Shivam Dhakhad who was involved in a murder case. In police custody, he revealed that he too was part of the Sunil Joshi-led terror module.
RSS activist Dhakhad revealed in custody that he too was part of the terror module headed by Sunil Joshi
Most importantly, he talked about a terror meeting held on 26 October 2005 in a guest house named Gujarati Samaj Atithigrah in Jaipur, in which Indresh Kumar was also present. According to Dhakhad, Sadhvi Pragya, Kalsangra, Dange and Joshi were also present during the meeting.
If Dhakhad is to be believed, Indresh told all those who had assembled, “The RSS does not support your ideology or actions. So you all can get associated with some other religious organisations and carry on with your work.”
IN SEPTEMBER 2010, the CBI recorded the statement of Rajesh Mishra, an RSS activist from Mhow, Madhya Pradesh, who owned a foundry in Pithampura and was a close associate of Joshi. He stated before the investigating team that he had provided Joshi 15 customised iron pipes with grooves on the inside. A few of these pipes were used in the failed terror strike aimed at the Bhopal ijtema.
Mishra’s statement further confirmed that the modus operandi adopted by the Hindu extremists involved using iron pipes as an important component in the IEDs they assembled.
On 19 November 2010, Swami Asimananda was arrested from his hideout in Haridwar. Exactly a month after his arrest, Asimananda confessed before a Delhi Metropolitan Magistrate, laying bare the broad terror conspiracy in which he had also played a critical part.
Asimananda asserted that it was not Muslims, but a team of RSS pracharaks who were behind the 2006 Malegaon blasts, the Samjhauta Express strike, the Mecca Masjid and Ajmer Sharif bomb blasts.
Blast after blast In a series of terror strikes over a period of two years starting with Malegaon in September 2006, Muslim neighbouhoods and mosques were targeted. Pakistan nationals were also attacked when three blasts on the Samjhauta Express in February 2007 turned several coaches of the running train into an inferno
PHOTOS: AP, SHAILENDRA PANDEY, AFP, REUTERS
Asimananda confessed that he himself had picked Malegaon, Hyderabad and Ajmer Sharif dargah as potential targets, while Sunil Joshi had taken the responsibility of striking the Samjhauta Express.
Asimananda also reproduced the conversations that he had with Indresh Kumar while hatching the terror plot. According to Asimananda, Indresh had picked up Joshi and a few other members of the RSS to carry out the blasts and had partly financed the execution.
Till date, the ATS of Maharashtra and Rajasthan have filed chargesheets in the 2008 Malegaon and 2007 Ajmer Sharif blasts respectively. However, the CBI and National Investigating Agency (NIA) probe into the Mecca Masjid and Samjhauta Express blasts is still an ongoing one.
Though the cases built by the agencies have to still stand the scrutiny of law, due to the sheer volume of evidence, the odds are stacked against the accused.
ashish.khetan@tehelka.com
By Niloufer Bhagwat
02 February, 2011
Countercurrents.org
The press and TV reports of the voluntary judicial confession made in Delhi on 16th December 2010, under Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure , which provides for a voluntary confession to a Metropolitan Magistrate or a Judicial Magistrate, made by one Naba Kumar Sarkar alias Swami Asimananda, a member of the Sangh Parivar , who on his own admission had “devoted a lifetime to the cause of ‘Hindutva’ as espoused by the Sangh Parivar, as distinguished from the religious philosophy of ‘Hinduism’ of which one of the most eminent devotees was Mahatma Gandhi , disclosed what was already suspected by the politically discerning , that the 2006 and 2008 Malegaon bomb blasts ,the 19th February 2007 Samjauta Express attack , the 2007 Meena Masjid bomb blasts in Hyderabad and the 11 th October 2007 Ajmer Sharif blasts, were the handiwork of Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh( RSS) Pracharaks, in which conspiracy , the Swami actively participated. Earlier the Swami had established the Shabri Dham Ashram in the Dangs District of Gujarat , a tribal region and indulged in violent attacks on Christians and Christian Churches , on the pattern of the organizations of the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashrams, organized by the RSS and its Sangh Parivar, in the predominantly tribal regions of the country , as part of the penetration into tribal areas for better commercial and economic control of these areas, amounting to internal colonization, for the take over of forest ,lands and water resources , including rivers, of the tribal people, the first or Indigenous people of India, by trading ,financial and corporate interests, camouflaged as missions of re-conversion of the tribal people from Christianity to the Hindutva fold. The reality is that the tribal people from time immemorial have had their own religious practices , different from what is propagated as ‘Hindutva’ and have at all times been regarded as inferior by upper castes/upper classes in India ,who have mercilessly exploited the tribal people, presently through inroads by Mining and other Companies, brutally seizing the property of affected sections , rendering them homeless, apart from the seizure of their livelihoods and of the small peasantry, in extensive regions, in violation of constitutional and statutory rights protecting these classes ,without consultative rehabilitation measures, by companies seeking extortionate profits through land seizure ,, which is the real cause of the escalating violence which presently prevails in Central and Eastern India among other affected regions , with the tribal people and peasantry opposing the violence of the forcible seizure of vast areas by counter violence, led by their political formations , which has led to a situation akin to civil war conditions in these regions .Significantly the Shabri Kumb Mela organized by Swami Asimananda in 2006, was attended by prominent leaders of the RSS and the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is the political extension of the RSS and by the Chief Ministers of BJP ruled States .
This judicial confession has caused shock waves in the entire country, even though the disclosures only confirmed the painstaking investigation of Joint Commissioner of Police, the late Hemant Karkare, who because of his professional exposure in RAW( Research and Analysis Wing ), the premier foreign Intelligence Agency of India , was able to comprehend the implications of the criminal conspiracy behind the blasts, for the unity and integrity of India , similar in nature to the great killings which took place, preceding and following the partition of India, by fascist religious organizations of the Hindu and Muslim community. As a consequence of the painstaking and brilliant investigation of his team, the ‘Hindutva’ conspiracy was unearthed, in which some serving and retired army officials are also involved.
The wife of the late Hemant Karkare, on his assassination , significantly and spontaneously , declined to receive condolences from the leaders of the RSS and the Sangh Parivar and refused the offer of substantial financial compensation .Significantly the Shiv Sena ,an ally of the Sangh Parivar, mentioned as ‘ accepting funds from both sides’ , in the rivalries ,corporate and political , reflected in what are known as the ‘Radia’ tapes, relating to the conversations of the official lobbyist of prominent Indian business houses based in Mumbai and in London, with the political history of this party , spanning decades of physical and media attacks, either on religious minorities in Mumbai or on migrants initially from the South and thereafter from North India , to camouflage its real political purpose,despite the reality that people from the region of Maharashtra, including the middle classes and upper middle classes are also migrants and settlers in Madhya Pradesh ,among other regions of India and abroad, declared through its daily newspaper ‘Samna’, after the investigations exposed the involvement of ‘Hindutva’ political forces in the bomb blasts in Malegaon, that a ‘Bandh’ would be declared in Mumbai, against this questionable investigation and that the officer had tortured suspects, though these allegations were baseless, as confirmed from diverse sources , even by some of those accused . Significantly the ‘Bandh’ did not take place, as this senior police officer was killed on 26/11, by a hired group of the underworld ,ostensibly from Pakistan, in which strangely, only one by the name Kasab survives. The killings took place on the same day that the editorial in ‘ Saamna’ declared that Joint .Commissioner of Police Hemant Karkare was by implication a ‘Shaista Khan’ and anti- national, in view of the nature of his investigations. There is no explanation till date, as to why an officer who was labeled as ‘Shaista Khan’ by the Shiv Sena, was killed by hired Pakistani gun men, unless there is collaboration among covert agencies in South Asia, aimed against the people of more than one country.
The grim event of 26/11, establish beyond doubt that a criminal mafia, the instrument of political and financial interests , has been over active and penetrated , not only into the heart of Mumbai, but into the heart of the Indian State , in collaboration with internal and external financial interests , steadily destroying a city and region. once known for its tolerance of dissent with a vibrant cultural tradition ; the heart of erstwhile momentous political struggles, in pre –Independence and post Independence India, now reduced to a city which houses the head offices of major Corporate bodies , is dominated by godfathers and the underworld , where pogroms and bomb blasts are plotted, acquiesced in by Mumbai’s “ Best and Brightest” citizenry, despite the hyped candle light vigils and the hypocritical ceremonies on 26/11, held from time to time .
A careful reading of the judicial confession of Swami Asimananda will reveal that with a view to reduce its impact, in view of the national and international ramifications of the bomb blasts carried out by ‘Hindutva’ fascist forces, blamed on innocent members of the Muslim minority, from the lower middle class and working classes, who were subjected to torture and jailed for several years; that there is an attempt to deliberately refer to the acts carried out by RSS Pracharaks as retaliatory ; despite which, the confession only proves what has been long suspected by the politically discerning in the regions that the bomb blasts have been taking place ,that covert fascist upper caste /upper class funded ‘Hindutva” terrorist organizations, despite their political history , have been allowed to run amuck in our country .In contrast , those who adopted a Gandhian approach to the service of humanity, like Dr. Binayak Sen , who pioneered a health care program for the most backward and poverty stricken regions of tribal India ,have been unjustly sentenced to life imprisonment along with two others, on charges of sedition under the Indian Penal Code, and for allegedly assisting and aiding unlawful organizations under the provisions of the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act 2005 and the Unlawful Activities Act 1967 , even though prima facie there is no evidence to convict him or his co-accused , with hundreds of other people in these regions, tribal and others , arrested under similar sections in these regions , where even journalists are considered subversive . The attacks on temples which have allegedly taken place in Gujarat, including at the Akshardham temple among a few other sites, referred to in the confession of the Swami , as the basis for the alleged retaliation of the RSS Pracharaks on innocent people who have died in the bomb blasts from one region to another , are all seriously suspect , as the handiwork of covert agencies for agent provocateur actions, similar in nature to the bomb blasts referred to in the judicial confession , to justify arrests of Muslim youth from lower middle class and working families. It must not be forgotten that the same theory of retaliation advanced by the Sangh Parivar and the Shiv Sena for the Mumbai pogroms of December’ 92 and January –February ‘93, were rejected by the Justice Sri Krishna Commission as having no factual basis whatsoever.
Even earlier, as per the evidence of the Special Branch( Intelligence ) of the Mumbai Police before the Srikrishna Commission, there were no well organized Muslim organizations in India , comparable to the ‘ Hindutva ‘ organizations inciting the Mumbai riots in December ‘92 and January-February ‘93 or comparable in organization to those political parties who led the fraudulent ‘Kar Sewa’ Movement for building a Ram temple in Faizabad( erstwhile Awadh, historically Ayodhya) where there are already more than twenty thousand Ram Mandirs, on the roads and in the lanes and by lanes of Faizabad. Hinduism sanctions no such religious practice as ‘Kar Sewa’ , neither is there any such precedent in any of the ancient Vedic or other religious texts, leading to the conclusion that this movement was political and not religious .
What the country has been witnessing, significantly in the very period that liberalization, privatization and globalization of the Indian economy were advanced as the main agenda of economic reforms, are communal pogroms and collective killings on one hand and on the other hand bomb blasts by covert groups ,operating furtively and in secrecy. The bomb blasts of March ‘93 in Mumbai in the immediate aftermath of the Mumbai riots against minorities , was plotted with the assistance of the Muslim criminal underworld, to justify the earlier attacks on predominantly migrant and poor Muslims in Mumbai , leaving deliberate and open traces to the Muslim underworld ,to incense majority opinion against poorer citizens of the Muslim minority who had already suffered during the pogroms of December‘ 92 and January -February ‘93 .The Muslim underworld based in Dubai among other places, were also allegedly involved from the region of the UAE, controlled by the British and US Intelligence agencies in close alliance with Saudi Arabia ,in a region where the ISI and RAW are equally active in the large Indian and Pakistani Diaspora, residing not only in Dubai but in several parts of the UAE, therefore the ease with which hired elements are available for agent provocateur actions in South Asia .
The bomb blasts of March’ 93 , significantly killed both members of the Hindu and Muslim community, which has not been satisfactorily explained .If the bomb blasts of March ‘93 in Mumbai, were really in retaliation for the pogroms against the Muslim minorities which took place in December’ 92 and January-February ‘93, which was the official line ; the attacks would have been directed exclusively against those who organized the riots of December ‘92 and January-February 93 and not against innocent citizens of both communities .Similarly the bomb blasts organized by the RSS Pracharaks admittedly targeted both Hindus and Muslims and by the deliberate and calculated arrest of innocent members of the Muslim minority by ATS teams and sometimes even special investigations of Central agencies, on covert instructions , were intended to fan ‘ Islamophobia’ throughout the length and breadth of the country, by those funding these organizations, using deliberately created terrorist incidents, for increased authoritarian economic and political control of Indian society, by reducing the freedom and civil liberties of citizens guaranteed by the Constitution of India, under the pretext of terrorism, with deliberate and high profile scanning by metal detectors in several public spaces , including for entry into the premises of the Supreme Court and High Courts , with the objective of deflecting the focus on economic and political issues, by manufacturing a serious religious divide and triggering a hate propaganda campaign against minorities ,by identifying every terrorist as a member of the Muslim minority ,using fictitious Muslim names in the print media and on television . This was the overall strategy adopted under instructions by mainstream channels and corporate controlled well established newspapers , who are to-day silent on the earlier campaign which they conducted against Muslims, who were indiscriminately labeled as terrorists, with thousands tortured into making false confessions, languishing in prison cells throughout the country at one stage or another, taking advantage of their backward social and economic conditions, revealed by the Justice Sachar Committee Report, which shocked even upper and middle class Muslims , hitherto ignorant and indifferent to actual conditions of the Muslim minority .
India being a highly diverse society, has always been vulnerable to serious destabilization from religious strife, which Jawaharlal Nehru emphasized time and again , highlighting repeatedly, that the threat to Indian democracy came from the direction of the extreme right wing .A hard headed operative of a city’s Special Police Branch (Intelligence), sickened by the sheer scale of violence and brutality of the pogrom in Gujarat in 2002, was to spontaneously inform on the covert measures being adopted to escalate the violence to manufacture a serious divide ,reporting that a special incendiary squad had arrived in Gujarat from abroad to execute major acts of arson and killings during the Gujarat pogrom, which has international ramifications , a report which has not yet been officially confirmed .
In this context , there is nothing new about the report of the FBI receiving or seeking reports from the Special Branches ( Intelligence ) in India, as joint intelligence sharing had been established by the BJP led NDA government and was continued by subsequent governments of different political complexions for the “ War on Terror”, declared by the global financial class , which is a war on people and on the economic and political sovereignty of those countries which had achieved national liberation from colonial rule. It is in this context that representatives of the Western alliance system are often invited to be present in key Indian agencies , for intelligence sharing operations, violating the sovereignty of India and its political , policing and administrative institutions. In this context ,President Obama in his inaugural address, made an important statement, in the context of the hostility to the policies of the United States of America around the world, stating that the US administration was not responsible for everything that was taking place in these countries, implying that much of it was the consequence of internal decision making of ruling classes within those countries .
Yet . despite the flaws in the judicial confession of Swami Asimananda, revealing aspects and concealing others, calculated to reduce the impact of the disclosures , the myth of the nationalist agenda of the RSS and the Sangh Parivar , has been exposed as never before, as acts calculated not to protect but to divide and control India , camouflaged behind the words ‘ nationalist’ or ‘patriotic’, used frequently by the RSS and the Sangh Parivar, including by the other front organizations , the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal, who after sowing the seeds of division in India along with the erstwhile Muslim League and Jamiat-e-Islami among other organizations ,weirdly claim monopoly of the nationalist rhetoric , to render their politics of hate and prejudice acceptable to the middle class and lower middle class in India, brainwashed into believing that the RSS and the Sangh Parivar are nationalist organizations. The real political objective of the Sangh Parivar is not the emancipation of the lower or middle class or working masses ,but the economic and social domination of the commercial ,financial and corporate classes and castes of India in a voluntary alliance with global finance capital, at the cost of Indian sovereignty, with the objective of devouring the financial and other resources of the masses of the people of India .
A significant feature of these bomb blasts is that they are almost as serious and widespread as the bomb blasts in those countries presently occupied by foreign troops .It is necessary to recall in assessing the strategy of the use of bomb blasts to create internal and sectarian strife, that bomb blasts were first widely used as weapons in the conflict in Ireland , Britain’s first colony , brutally sought to be controlled and later in and around Israel, established with the assistance of British foreign policy allied with Zionist and banking interests, using the brutal “ Holocaust” inflicted on the Jewish citizens of Europe by Germany’s Fortune 500 Companies in alliance with US and UK banking and other financial interests ,as a political camouflage for the colonization of Palestine, in the heart of the Arab world for better control of a strategic Petro-dollar region.
Apart from these bomb blasts, the cruelty of the attack on Graham Staines the Christian missionary and on his innocent children by ‘Hindutva’ activists can never be justified and was on similar lines, intended to forge a divide in Eastern India , later repeated against the Christian dalits and tribal people in the Kandhamal among other regions of Odisha( Orissa) when the BJP was an alliance partner in the State government , using the excuse of the murder of another self styled godman working in a tribal region allegedly to reconvert the tribal population from Christianity ,with thousands of dalit and tribal homes burnt and devastated and many killed in this pogrom unleashed .It was then stated by a few representatives of the Christian Churches, that one of the reasons for the tensions created, were the commercial interests involved in the forest produce and other resources of the area . The anti -Christian attacks have now spread across the country into Madhya Pradesh , Karnataka and Gujarat, among other regions, wherever it can be used to create a divide, to distract people from priority issues, social , economic and political and to divert hate on to the ‘ other ‘, to prevent unity among people on issues of priority concern . With this objective a high profile campaign was unleashed in the country against religious conversions by the Sangh Parivar out of all proportion, even though conversions are miniscule, with statutes enacted against conversion ,which are constitutionally not valid, as citizens are free to adopt any religious philosophy of their own choice and birth in a religious fold does not imply that a reasoned acceptance of a faith has taken place. The most famous conversion has been that of Dr.Ambedkar with his followers en mass to Buddhism, which no statute could have prevented as it was a revolt against caste/class injustice . The campaign conducted by the Sangh Parivar against Christians alleged that forced conversions were taking place, which is far from the truth, as many in India belonging to the Dalit groups among others who have converted , despairing of their social and economic conditions within a stratified and exploitative caste fold and the denial of minimum social dignity in rural India where the caste system is even more cruel in its impact . The oppression of upper caste groups in vast regions is borne out by the agitation in Haryana , against the steps taken to investigate those members of the Khap Panchayats who have attacked Dalits and murder people who resort to inter caste marriages or marry spouses even from the same village, even as lakhs of unborn female fetuses have disappeared from North India ,leaving a socially explosive situation behind to which the ‘Hindutva’ forces have acquiesced , even as upper castes are the most hostile to the girl child .
The reality is that for centuries India has remained a country where the majority of the people broadly espouse the Hindu philosophy despite the waves of immigrants from Central Asia , which include the Aryans to whom the ‘ Hindutva’ forces trace their religious origin, on the pattern of the Nazi Party of Gernmany . There is no explanation forthcoming for the fact that if there is forcible conversion to Christianity as alleged , as to why the Christian population of India is declining .However to state that Churches can be attacked and Christians killed for alleged forced conversion , is to declare that violence is the declared and preferred strategy of the fascist right wing of the upper castes /upper classes to encroach on the property and political rights of the economically and socially weaker classes and to deny them equal rights , by violating all Constitutional norms .In regions where the tribal people have been blamed for the violence , hundreds of villages , forest and water resources including whole rivers have been taken over by corporate and mining companies based in India and abroad.
Wherever necessary , organizations with new names are established from time to time , by those politically loyal to the Sangh Parivar, such as the Ram Sena in Karnataka among others, locally funded by traders , financiers and the corporate sector and used even against women; very similar to the ‘ Fatwas’ by reactionary self styled Ulemas and Maulanas and sections of the Muslim clergy , who similarly desire to control the Muslim community , with both sides using this strategy , whenever there is a need to divert attention in a political crisis or from exposures of massive corruption and illegal lobbying by Corporate Houses and financiers , with severely adverse impact on revenues , presently overwhelming the Indian State .
What is of political relevance in these dramatic disclosures of Swami Asimananda, is that even those who were soft on what was perceived as the militant nationalist rhetoric of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, are now seriously reflecting on whether the political articulation and covert activity of the RSS and its various front organizations , unites or divides India. An interesting and significant aspect of the history of the RSS , the Jamiat-e-Islami and the SGPC or the Shiromani Gurduwara Prabhandak Committeee , is that all three organizations were established in or about the nineteen twenties , even as the Indian Independence movement led by Mahatma Gandhi, among other prominent leaders of the Indian National Congress, gathered increasing mass support. The RSS the Jamiat-e-Islami and the SGPC, were not active in the freedom movement against British rule. Their main objective was openly espousing religious theocracy, along with organizations like the Muslim League and the Hindu Mahasabha , propagating the establishment of separate religious states , even if it meant the partition of India. To this end the Jamiat-e-Islami and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, both ideologically advanced the viewpoint that the Hindus and Muslims constituted separate nations. Earlier Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, an early Indian revolutionary , author of the ‘The Great War of Indian Independence’, in which the role of the Muslims leaders and masses in 1857 was extolled , on his conditional release from the Andaman Jail by the British, shifted his political objectives from Indian Independence , to the establishment of a religious theocracy and in his writings on ‘ Hindutva’, propagated that Hindus and Muslims in India were two different nations .This is significant, as the erstwhile Muslim League in British occupied India , from in or about the thirties, commenced advocating the same two nation theory from the other side of the political spectrum. This discourse that Hindus and Muslims constituted two separate nations was continued by Sarsangchalak Guru Golwalkar in ‘We or Our Nationhood Defined’ and it was this fascist religious discourse and on the ground activities, along with the other political activities of the Jamiat –e –Islami and the Muslim League, among other organizations of the upper class Muslims ,namely the landlords and commercial interests, even as the RSS and its front organizations represented and still represent predominantly upper class /upper caste Hindus, which finally paved the way for the great divide of the partition of India, in pursuance of the geopolitical objectives of British colonial rule. It was in keeping with this Imperialist strategy ,that religious fascist parties of the Muslims and Hindus were first let loose and permitted extensive leverage , with covert and overt functioning to derail Indian nationalism, by using Muslim and Hindu communalism and fanning cultural animosity and hatred, by propagating myths of superiority and inferiority, first to prolong British colonial rule by creating a divide as against the unity so visible in the I857 war of Indian Independence and when necessary to partition India for better control of the resources of South Asia .Those members of the Sangh Parivar who hold the Muslims responsible for the partition of India are deliberately distorting history ,omitting to disclose that whereas Mohammad Ali Jinnah an upper class anglophile Muslim from the commercial classes , English and Gujarati speaking ,an alien to Islamic culture , advanced the two-nation theory in 1939 ; whereas Damodar Vinayak Savarkar advanced the two nation theory a decade and a half earlier in or about 1925, followed by Guru Golwalkar , the Sangsarchalak or head of the RSS ,among others . There was no adult franchise in British India , as a consequence only those with property and educational qualifications , that is the upper class and upper castes were entitled to vote in the elections held ; to state that Muslims were responsible for the partition , is far from the truth , as the voting pattern in the Sind among other assemblies at the relevant time will disclose that a Hindu member of the Sind Assembly in pre-partition India , voted for partition and with his family immediately thereafter left for India , inexplicable!Whereas Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan of the North West Province with his entire party, the Khudai Khidmatgars , a non –violent movement among the Pashtuns opposing British Colonial Rule , affiliated to the Indian National Congress , which dominated the NWFP , opposed partition, yet their entire region, the NWFP was forcibly parceled out to Pakistan .
An eminent senior civil servant Rajeshwar Dayal of the ICS, then serving in Uttar Pradesh as Home Secretary , later in the Indian Foreign Service after independence , well known in international circles, in view of his contributions to the United Nations special missions , in his memoirs ´A Life of Our Times’ , has referred to the evidence produced before him, during the stormy days of the partition , against the then Sarsanchalak of the RSS, Guru Golwalkar, who was found with incriminating evidence during the rioting by Police officers in Uttar Pradesh . Rajeswar Dayal observes, that the arrest of Guru Golwalkar was prevented by Govind Valabh Pant , the then Congress Chief Minister of UP, dragging his feet, in a critical situation where Muslim and Hindu fascist organizations, were reinforcing each other ideologically and on the ground , with collective killings. Ironically even the united Communist Party of India , though it staunchly opposed the killings and pogroms of the religious fascist parties, committed the serious political error of supporting the creation of Pakistan ,on the fallacious application of the principle of national self-determination, though this political principle is not applicable to religious groups and was later found to be seriously politically flawed, when Bangladesh liberated itself from Pakistan, even though majority of its citizens follow the Islamic faith.
The serious divide, which to-day is being created through bomb blasts and other covert acts , is politically intended to divide people for total control, through the covert yet steady establishment of an authoritarian political state , which is the real agenda behind the bomb blasts . This is prima facie clear from the published accounts, of the reports of the discussions held by the groups involved ,plotting bomb blasts and the leaked reports of Indian investigating agencies disclosing that these groups were seeking the assistance of other governments , including the government of Israel, for their political strategy in India. The bomb blasts were intended to seriously emasculate Indian democracy and since the objective was to fragment Indian society on religious lines, was aimed at the heart of Indian civilization itself, which is historically and geographically a political and cultural unity in diversity .
Those who would give credit for the emergence of the modern Indian State to British Colonial Rule , are suffering from historical amnesia. On the one hand they extol the epics which give us a glimpse of the broad cultural unity in diversity of what is now India, inhabited by diverse peoples from Adivasis to others and on the other hand project in their so called modern political-commercial-financial fascist discourse the myth, that in India religion is the basis for nationalism, which would logically exclude most border states including the Punjab, the Christian States of the North East among others, with most of the southern states including Tamil Nadu rebelling against this dominant Aryan discourse of the Sangh Parivar ; with the , Dalits, Adivasis and Other Backward Classes in that order in the rest of India , who constitute the majority of the people of India, objecting to the Brahminical discourse extolling texts which justify caste/class superiority as a birth right in the Hindutva fold .
The question has to be seriously addressed, whether the ideology of the Sangh Parivar unites or fractures India? This question is to be answered not by rhetoric of the present political parties inside and outside parliament, but by the deeds of the political formations, as witnessed from one region to another and this must include the Congress and other political parties, who were a part of the NDA alliance , among others ,who many feel have covertly allowed their individual members and state governments to collaborate for their political convenience with the Sangh Parivar and as a consequence have acquiesced even in criminal acts of covert fascist organizations against the people of India, not being seriously prosecuted, in flagrant and dangerous conspiratorial adjustment and political concession to their internal and international supporters .
What was unprecedented even in the pre Independence period and for forty years thereafter, is the daily ideological propaganda of hatred against other religious groups heard in the last two decades , to project minorities as inferior and the whispering campaign which has led to segregated housing from one city to another, from one region to another, with the formation of ghettos of the religious minorities and the Dalits , strictly prohibited by the Constitution of India .The so called steel frame of the Indian bureaucracy, representing predominantly upper caste /upper class interests, is unable in the absence of political will by political parties in government ,in the regions most affected by social segregation , to respond administratively to the deteriorating situation on the ground and the reality is that the reason for the delayed investigation into the bomb blasts and the prima facie unjustified rounding up of innocent citizens in many cases belonging to the Mulsim minority which required detailed investigation and action by the administration and by the Courts; has largely been due to the admitted failure of administrative , intelligence and police agencies at the highest levels and the top most leadership of most political parties in parliament , to be neutral, despite their nominal allegiance to Constitution of India, leading to the inescapable conclusion that there is a “hidden agenda” in more than one political party, to use the religious card to deflect political issues , even it if leads to a serious fracture and divide of Indian society, threatening the unity and integrity of the Indian State .
Exhortations of enlightened members of the judiciary and reports of several Commissions of Inquiry , into the causes of pogroms and communal attacks which have named individuals and organizations of the Sangh Parivar among others and have pointed to the deliberate dereliction of duty of senior administrative and police officials and communalization of the police force and para military organizations , have been ignored even by governments owing allegiance to the Congress Party . Whereas some left parties have also attempted to focus on the issue of Islamic terrorism along with other political parties , despite their knowledge, that apart from across the boundary between Pak Occupied Kashmir and the Indian State of Kashmir and the funding of certain organizations in the Valley by several foreign Intelligence agencies, in the knowledge of the Central Government, there are very few organizations of the minorities which are a serious threat or capable of creating a serious divide; in the rest of the country it is covert fascist organizations with political affiliation to the Sangh Parivar or criminals acting as agent provocateurs ,who are hired for bomb blasts and terrorist activities, as per numerous investigations now emerging , including the Judicial confession of Swami Asimananda.
In the context of the Aryan political discourse of the RSS ,whose leaders had extolled the military schools of Mussolini and established military schools in India on a similar pattern, for recruitment into the armed forces , some of whose office bearers have been named in investigations conducted in bomb blast cases still pending trial and admired Hitler for his alleged nationalism in cleansing Germany( though they do not disclose to the people of India that Germany was completely destroyed by the war unleashed by German Fortune 500 companies and the German people devastated ) in the process of making it a pure ‘ Aryan’ State; reference to a recent decision of a Division Bench of the Supreme Court comprising Justice Markandya Katju and Justice Sudha Mishra may be of relevance, in an appeal filed in a case relating to atrocities committed on an Adivasi woman in the Aurangabad region of Maharashtra, the Supreme Court observed that the Adivasis now approximately only 8 percent of the Indian population are the indigenous people and the original inhabitants of this country in vast regions ; whereas the Aryans arrived in India after the Dravidians . The Division Bench emphasized that-
“ Since India is a country of great diversity it is absolutely essential if we wish to keep our country united to have tolerance and equal respect for all communities and sects .It was due to the wisdom of our founding fathers that we have a Constitution which is secular in character , and which caters to the tremendous diversity in our country.”
If this is the reality then why are the front organizations of the Sangh Parivar headed by the RSS, in deliberate denial of the sociological , philosophical , religious and cultural diversity of India ,attempting to consolidate upper caste/upper class fascism, coinciding with the introduction of the neoliberal reform agenda in India , spear headed by policies of companies, banks and financial institutions being imposed through the World Trade Order . Even though the reality as observed in the aforesaid judgment is that throughout the country, even within the same religious fold ,different groups and sects adopt different rituals , ways of worship and customs and have been in revolt against upper caste /upper class domination, both in the Hindu and in the Muslim community , as is visible from the ‘Pasmanda’ movement in Bihar, comprising Muslim artisans and other castes , opposed to upper class domination in the Muslim community, of which the leaders of the erstwhile Muslim League and Jamiat-e-Islami among other organizations are an example, representing the landlords and upper classes, seeking their own political backyard, allying with British Imperialism and thereafter US Imperialism, with horrific consequences, now seen . In Pakistan , a government collaborates with foreign armies of NATO in collective killings of its own people and the people of Afghanistan ,collaborating with Western banks and financial Institutions seeking to launder the proceeds of the drug trade of Afghanistan and the Af-Pak region into collapsing banks and financial institutions. Increasingly the financial figures of this laundering of the drug trade with the establishment of ‘Narco’ regions are being disclosed , revealing a criminalized economic policy agenda through wars and occupation, to enable the survival of the dominant economic system, which Mahatma Gandhi had referred to as “ incipient fascism”.
One interesting narrative referred to by scholars, who have researched the partition of India , referred to in the discourse on the similarities between the ideology of hate and the two nation theory propagated by the erstwhile Muslim League , Jamiat – e- Islami and other organizations on the one hand and the RSS , Sangh Parivar and its political wings on the other ; is that the Jamiat – e- Islami on partition informed the leaders of the RSS , that since Pakistan was now a reality, they looked forward to the creation of a Hindu theocratic State as a fitting partner to the Muslim State of Pakistan .It is in this context that the bomb blasts and communal attacks and pogroms taking place in India and the origins of these political formations and their role during the movement for Indian Independence, have to be researched, studied and analyzed, to comprehend their present political positions, which are in some respects a historical continuity, assisting in the penetration of South Asia and its economic and political space by comprador classes in a global alliance.
It would be timely, in the backdrop of the hate campaign and hysteria against religious minorities and some other individuals political formations unleashed in the country, to recall the written observations on the RSS of Sardar Patel, whom the Sangh Parivar extols as one of the tallest leaders of the country. Referring to the hate propaganda in the country which led to the tragic assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, (the assassins initially denied their membership of the RSS as there was a public outcry against the RSS, however one of the main conspirators was to later admit that the conspirators had been members the organization ) in a written note stated :
“ Our reports do confirm that as a result of the activities of these two bodies , particularly the former ( the RSS ) an atmosphere was created in the country in which such a ghastly tragedy ( Gandhiji’s assassination ) became possible.”
The Kapur Commission report on the murder of Mahatma Gandhi , refers to the direct involvement of the forces which propagated ‘Hindutva’ in the conspiracy to murder the father of the Indian Freedom Movement .From its inception till date, the RSS and democratic functioning have not been compatible, as openly declared by successive Sarsanghchalaks or heads of the RSS, in keeping with the tradition of fascist organizations the world over, including in Eruope ,which inspired the RSS in adopting the stick , the khakhi short pant, a favourite attire of British colonialists ( not traditional Indian dress ),supplemented by a black cap, black being a favourite colour of fascist parties the world over .The political leadership of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has always been nominated, as the democratic principle of political organization has never been accepted by the organization . Similarly upper caste domination has been predominant at the highest leadership levels, which over an extensive period was dominated by one region, where some of the most important militant influences and struggles and mass political movements against British rule took place, namely the province of Maharashtra, as an anti-dote to the nationalist and progressive sentiment in the same region.The prominent leaders of Maharashtra, whether Gopal Krishna Gokhale , the mentor of Gandhiji and Lokmanya Tilak , among many others did not believe that the Hindus and Muslims were different nations . Several movements in the region of other castes and communities, suffering Brahminical upper caste domination over centuries, were openly contemptuous of the RSS and its upper caste leadership , with its unscientific upper caste rituals laced with superstition, its obscurantist Aryan race and caste ridden propaganda .Significantly the RSS was extensively funded and supported by commercial interests and those princely states in the Central Provinces( now Madhya Pradesh, which has seen in recent days many covert conspiracies for bomb blasts ), among other regions of India , whose feudal and comprador classes owed their loyalty to the British Raj, as against those who like the Rani of Jhansi, uncompromisingly fought against British rule .
An aspect which is historically significant in the context of the RSS and its origins during British colonial rule, is the close association of Anglo-American capital with the rise of fascism in Europe. Significantly the autobiography of Benito Mussolini carried a foreword by the US Ambassador to Italy and funds for the establishment of the fascist party in Italy came from contributions from the United States, including from some Italian migrants, even as to-day well heeled and prosperous sections of the Indian Diaspora, allied with banking and financial interests , in the United States and other countries such as the UK, actively support the RSS and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, through many organizations of Indians abroad and there is an alliance between these sections and Zionists. Ironically the Zionists in Israel and elsewhere conveniently overlook and do not disclose even to Israeli citizens , that the early ideologues of the RSS , were all inspired by fascist leaders such as Mussolini and Hitler, who had declared that the “ final solution “ was the only way to rid Europe of its Jewish citizens, a political diversion to camouflage the enslavement of the working people of Europe for ‘Lebensraum’ and the seizure of their economic space and resources by any means, including through war and slave labour which was the then policy of major companies in Germany for whom Hitler was the political instrument.
A morbid aspect of the recent ongoing and earlier investigations by official agencies, is the disclosure, that members of the RSS and the Sangh Parivar have been killed fascist style or targeted for murder by their own members and that finances were being provided by external agencies inimical to India, earlier through Nepal before the abolition of the monarchy in Nepal , to individuals who are members of front organizations of the Sangh Parivar , to do away with some of their own prominent leaders. There was a hint of the involvement of the ISI in funding operations, as leaked by intelligence agencies investigating these operations, who urged the government of India , that since some of the leaders of the RSS were targeted by their own colleagues , the RSS should be equally interested in detailed investigations and not attack the bona fides of the late Joint Commissioner of Police, Hemant Karkare conducting the investigation , whose family had lived both in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra , which explains his telephone call to Mr. Digvijay Singh, erstwhile Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, on the day of his assassination, in which Hemant Karkare referred to threats to him held out by the Sangh Parivar .In Mumbai the tragic killings of 26/11 of Hindus and Muslims and a few foreigners , was followed by the assassination of advocate Shahid Azmi, to cover the tracks of those who had effected false arrests in the bomb blasts cases, as Shahid Azmi was defending , with outstanding dedication and competence , despite serious threats , very similar to those received by Hemant Karkare , innocent members of the Muslim minority from poor and lower middle class families, falsely charged in many cases including in the Malegaon bomb blasts . Shahid Azmi was significantly assassinated in Mumbai in his office , just before his client , a citizen of India ,was acquitted by the Special Court of Judge Tahilyani for allegedly handing over of a map of Bombay in Nepal in respect of the 26/11 killings by Pakistani gunmen. The Jamiat-e- Ulema –e-Hind , an organization affiliated to the Congress since the days of the Freedom movement , have not moved the Union Home Ministry for a special investigation into his case, even though there was a press release by the stating that the “patriotic” sections of the underworld had killed Shahid Azmi. Mumbai learnt that the underworld had patriotic elements as certified by local investigating agencies ! Ironically the lawyers defending cases of Sangh Parivar activists, were not subjected to the same murderous threats or attacked in the same manner as those lawyers in several regions of the country ,who were threatened and attacked for defending innocent members of the Muslim minority who were from the lower middle class and the working classes, and were falsely charged in innumerable cases , which the Swami Asinanda judicial confession now establishes .
The reason why the hate campaign of the Sangh Parivar, aided and abetted by the media made substantial advances in the country before its recent exposure, is that more than one political formation collaborated with the Sangh Parivar, including on economic or political policy in Parliament and outside Parliament . In this context , the pogrom against the Sikhs in 1984, on the assassination of Mrs Indira Gandhi , then Prime Minister, cannot be forgotten; though no less a person than Mr. Manmohan Singh, was to state during the course of an election campaign in Delhi, covered by TV channels , that there was also a covert RSS hand in this anti-Sikh pogrom, apart from the well known culprits, and the then Home Minister it was rumoured was a one time former member of the RSS in the Hyderabad of the Nizam.The indiscriminate reform agenda of liberalization , globalization and privatization without a sector by sector approach , was initiated by the Congress party among others, in collaboration with the BJP , while the Communist Party ( Marxist ) had made common cause with the RSS in its political struggle against Prime Minister Indira Gandhi during the emergency, as a part of the Jayaprakash Narayan Movement, which in Gujarat and Bihar among other regions, unfortunately had widespread upper caste/upper class support, with the poorest Dalits attacked by supporters of this movement in Gujarat, when there was a campaign against reservations for economically and socially weaker sections by casteist elements in the Jayaprakash Movement, even as the Dalits and other socially and economically weaker classes and sections were on the other side, with Indira Gandhi. The RSS was a part of the Janata government through the then Jan Sangh, a political extension of the RSS . Subsequently the Bharatiya Janata Party replaced the Jan Sangh as the political front of the RSS, with dual membership, in or about 1980. Whereas in the post 1980 period the Congress Party stooped to play the majority card, including in respect of the opening up of the lock on the Babri Masjid and thereafter the minority card, appeasing the most obscurantist sections of the Muslim community , after the Shabano judgment and amended the statute to alter the provisions for maintenance for Muslim women by enacting a separate statute conferring separate rights ,among other ill advised policies, calculated to reinforce the hold of the conservative clergy of both religious groups. However other political parties were equally responsible for developments which strengthened reaction. The two Communist parties, the CPM and the CPI , supported seat adjustment with the BJP in national elections as against the Congress party, under the formula proposed by the late V.P.Singh, which lent respectability to the BJP, enabling the BJP to occupy political centre stage , from its earlier purely peripheral role in Indian politics , as this seat adjustment increased the strength of the BJP in parliament, which was anticipated by discerning independent political observers ,who warned the left parties, that this kind of political seat adjustment to propel a fascist formation into power, was unacceptable . The experience of the rise of fascism in Europe ought to have informed the parliamentary left, that any alliance with fascism, poses a danger to democracy and democratic rights of society as a whole and that no responsible Communist party including the Bolsheviks ( (the majority in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party), have ever allied in Europe or in Latin America with fascism or entered into seat adjustments in elections which would give an edge to fascist parties and increase their strength in national or regional legislatures, as this is against the interests of people as a whole , as fascist parties represent ‘corporate rule’ as unambiguously defined by Benito Mussolini and history was a witness to the destruction of Europe under fascism and the grim developments in Latin America when fascist governments were in power from one country to another .
It is impossible to escape the conclusion that ´globalization’, which some have referred to as re-colonization, has been accompanied by the ideology of religious hatred against minorities everywhere to disrupt the unity of the broad masses of the people , by fascist political formations, for better authoritarian economic and political control and for wars of occupation of regions .An analysis of the break up of Federal States such as former Yugoslavia, by predatory financial and economic interests operating in Europe, preying on the resources and labour of Central and Eastern Europe, through well funded religious and ethnic fascist organizations, will inform many of the misuse of the religious and the so called ‘ethnic’ card , where criminal organizations entrusted with the task of manipulating widespread strife between diverse groups, were hired to further imperial financial interests for economic penetration of the economic space of former Yugoslavia , an objective which could not be achieved earlier, even by the Nazi armies during the Second World War .The rest is contemporary history ,with Yugoslavia deliberately destroyed through civil war and religious and ethnic conflict.
There are many lessons to be learnt by the RSS and the Sangh Parivar and other political parties in India and their financiers , the corporate classes, finance capital and the builders and speculators who support these organizations ,from the nature of religious theocracy established in Pakistan by the Muslim League and Jamiat-e-Islami, assisted by the most reactionary comprador classes , in alliance with imperial powers and the erstwhile colonizer, which has steadily reduced Pakistan to political shambles, economic ruin and complete loss of sovereignty , with collapse facing civil society in Pakistan.
In India , criminal activities of religious fascist organizations have been unfortunately permitted by many State governments of different political complexions ,despite the pronouncements of the Supreme Court of India ,that ‘secularism is part of the basic structure of the Constitution of India’ which cannot be amended . It must not be forgotten that the BJP led NDA government, attempted to tamper with the Indian Constitution , a manifesto of the Indian Freedom Movement ,which despite its weaknesses, in particular in the non -enforceability of the Directive Principles of State Policy through the Courts, though considered mandatory and binding in respect of government policy when read with fundamental rights, is considered a major hurdle by upper class/upper caste interests and their agenda for the Indian people . The BJP let NDA government , appointed a Constitutional Review Committee, headed by former Chief Justice M.N.Venkatchaliah ,with motives which were suspect , however they were not in a position to get their proposals through Parliament .
The hate campaign in India has been found necessary by more than one party serving special financial interests among others to avoid advancing a political agenda for the working masses, the peasantry ,the dalits , the tribal people, minorities , women and the lower middle and middle classes in rural and urban areas , by deflecting from the real development issues into diversionary fascist strategies . As a consequence of which the present political scene in India is dismal, as most political parties advance the interest of only those corporate and other interests who finance their campaigns. On the one hand radical forces are still sectarian , fragmented, weak and infantile, without a scientific political agenda for emancipation of Indian society as a whole, with priority policies for those presently below the poverty line and those on the periphery , in alliance with the unorganized and organized working classes , the peasantry , the tribal people , the lower and middle classes, minorities , women , in a broad alliance with those individuals from other classes , ready to support a manifesto for a democratic transformation , not yet accomplished in vast regions of India , for social and economic justice and a revolt against injustice , corruption , superstition and obscurantism which Mahatma Gandhi all his political life referred to as the objective of the freedom movement .An agenda which cannot exclude the careful and considered application of science and technology to vast areas, presently in abject feudal conditions , outside the pale of economic development, to advance a paradigm for development where there is neither hunger nor malnutrition and regions and localities have a voice in accessing their resources and controlling their environment , with priority for the preservation of the ecology of tribal and agricultural communities, for restoring the environment of cities and towns , reviving agriculture and industry and water sources, for public control of Banks and financial institutions , without shutting out technological advances the world which may be necessary and are not harmful to society, in a careful sector by sector approach ; this involves the painstaking task of sustained political education , throughout the length and breadth of the country on the lines of the freedom movement, to create the critical mass of political opinion to tilt the balance against an increasingly anti-human and overwhelming corrupt system, in many parts of the world. On the other hand are political forces in India, which have grown senile ,are highly compromised , degenerate and corrupt, pressurized by corporate policy as witnessed by the ‘Radia’ tapes , to abandon peoples interests ; and what is even worse , there are fascist organizations which are reactionary , revivalist , feudal and criminal , advancing the interests of a financial oligarchy in a global alliance, desiring to establish authoritarian or police states in the service of Imperialism or outright occupation by Para military and military forces, to substitute democratic practices with totalitarian methods . In this complex political situation , where the struggle is for a more genuine democracy, with people at different levels of economic , social and cultural development , attempts by fascist parties to destroy the diversity in unity which Indian civilization is all about , is an attempt to destroy Indian society and the Indian State. The national flag represents the hopes and aspirations of the diverse people of India , whereas the Sangh Parivar accepted the flag and the Constitution of India when they faced a political ban .
It is in this context that the question arises, whether it is Dr. Binayak Sen who is really seditious ?
Swami Aseemanand's confession reveals Hindutva terror activities
Vinay Kumar NEW DELHI, JANUARY 08, 2011 20:22 IST
UPDATED: OCTOBER 17, 2016 15:22 IST
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Swami Aseemanand, a key figure in the Hindutva terror network, who was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) from Haridwar in November, has admitted to having planned terror attacks on Ajmer Sharif, Mecca Masjid, Malegaon and the Samjhauta Express.
In his confession, recorded under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code before Metropolitan Magistrate Deepak Dabas at Tis Hazari courts on December 18, the arrested Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leader confessed that he and other Hindu activists were involved in bombings at Muslim religious places because they wanted to answer every Islamist terror act with “a bomb for bomb’’ policy.
His 42-page confession, recorded in Hindi, has been reported in Tehelka news magazine’s latest cover story “In the Words of a Zealot.’’ He has named senior RSS leader Indresh Kumar, the murdered RSS pracharak Sunil Joshi, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and senior RSS pracharaks Sandeep Dange and Ramji Kalsangra, among others, as being key conspirators in the terror blast.
According to him, Indresh Kumar, who was recently questioned by the CBI, had financed several of the blasts, while Sunil Joshi and his team executed many of them. He said 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 temple in Varanasi and Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar.
He said in his statement, “I told everybody that bomb ka jawab bomb se dena chahiye (we should reply to bomb blasts with bombs) I told everyone since 80 per cent of Malegaon are Muslims, we should explode the bomb in Malegaon.’’ He also said, “Since 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, according to Tehelka magazine which has also uploaded the statement on its website. The statement made is legally admissible evidence that makes it crucial for the investigators probing the terror bombings targeting Muslims at religious and other places.
The magazine says that Swami Aseemanand, of the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram in Gujarat's Dangs district, told the metropolitan magistrate that in a 2006 meeting with other Hindu radicals, including murdered RSS pracharak Sunil Joshi and Thakur Pragya Singh, it was he who propagated the policy of “bomb for a bomb”. Sunil Joshi, alleged to be the key conspirator in the Ajmer dargah blast, was shot dead in Madhya Pradesh in 2007. He is suspected to have been killed by his own men to cover up the terror act, Rajasthan Police has claimed.
The Swami, whose real name is Jatin Chatterjee, hails from Hooghly district in West Bengal and is a post-graduate in Botany. He started working whole time for “Adivasi Kalyan Ashram” of RSS in Birbhum, Bankura and Purulia districts of West Bengal from 1977.
Swami Aseemanand also confessed how he had motivated a bunch of RSS pracharaks and other Hindu radicals to carry out the terror strikes to target Muslims.
Swami Aseemanand's confession is the first direct evidence of the involvement of Hindutva extremists in the 2006 Malegaon blasts and the Samjhauta Express blast even though there have been accusations of their involvement in the Mecca Masjid and Ajmer blasts.
Swami Aseemanand is known for having worked to reconvert people in tribal areas. He also ran the Shabari Dham Ashram and has a long list of followers, many of whom have been questioned by the CBI.
More than 68 people were killed in the Samjhauta Express bombing in 2007, seven people were killed in the 2008 Malegaon blasts, while three people were killed in the 2007 bombing at the Ajmer Dargah Sharif.
Not just a confession. Forensic evidence piles up against Hindutva terror
Over the past three years the evidence gathered by the agencies against a team of RSS pracharaks and lunatic Hindutva groups like Abhinav Bharat and Jai Vande Matram is compelling
ASHISH KHETAN
2011-01-22 , Issue 03 Volume 8 Print FriendlyPrint & EmailComment
THE CONFESSION of Swami Asimananda has drawn sharp and diverse reactions from different quarters. The families of the nine Malegaon Muslims implicated in the 2006 Malegaon blasts, which claimed 31 innocent lives, have termed it the clinching proof of their innocence. Not unexpectedly, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh have alleged that Asimananda’s confession was made under coercion and thus rubbished the ongoing probe into Hindutva terror.
But the fact remains that Asimananda had made the confession in the closed chamber of a Delhi Metropolitan Magistrate with no one else being around and after spending two days in judicial custody contemplating possible repercussions. Again, what is being completely overlooked in this politically charged debate is a whole body of evidence — both material and circumstantial — which has been pieced together by different agencies over the past four years. Asimananda’s confession only confirms and adds to the existing pool of evidence.
Over the past three years the evidence gathered by the agencies against a team of RSS pracharaks and lunatic Hindutva groups like Abhinav Bharat and Jai Vande Matram is compelling.
Since the arrests of a motley group of Hindu radicals — Sadhvi Pragya Singh, Lt Col Shrikant Purohit, Dayanand Pandey and eight other residents of Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh in 2008 — every new arrest, a witness testimony and recovery of new material has further corroborated and augmented the existing case against Hindu extremists.
As the missing pieces of the Hindutava terror puzzle are falling into place, new faces at the heart of the terror conspiracy like RSS central committee member Indresh Kumar have also been exposed.
The protracted investigation, which is now in its fourth year, began on 9 June 2007 with the CBI taking over the Mecca Masjid blast probe from the Hyderabad Police.
The 17 May 2007 Mecca Masjid terror strike, which killed nine Muslims and injured over 50 others, also left behind a small but crucial scientific clue — a Nokia cell phone and inside the phone a Vodafone SIM card.
The cell phone was part of an improvised explosive device (IED) that had failed to go off and thus comprised the only clue and in many ways the starting point for the investigation.
As the CBI sleuths took over the Mecca Masjid blast probe they discovered that there were a couple of striking similarities in the Mecca Masjid blast and the Samjhauta Express terror attack.
Sixty-eight people were killed when three successive powerful explosions turned two compartments of the Samjhauta Express into an inferno on 19 February 2007. The explosions had occurred at around midnight as the bi-weekly train on its way to Atari was crossing the Diwana railway station, 80 km from New Delhi.
While at Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad one bomb had malfunctioned and thus failed to explode, three unexploded IEDs were found on the Samjhauta Express.
Curiously, the 6.53 volt battery found in the unexploded IED at Mecca Masjid was exactly the same as the batteries used to power the IEDs planted on the Samjhauta Express. Besides, the metallic shells used to stuff explosives in the Mecca Masjid bombs were similar to the iron shells which were part of the IEDs planted on the Samjhauta Express.
Similar shells were recovered from the house of a Hindu radical in Nanded, Maharashtra, in April 2006 when an RSS member and a Bajrang Dal activist had died while assembling a bomb. During the investigation it had emerged that the Hindu extremists had exploded similar shell bombs outside a few mosques in Jalna and Parbhani in 2003 and 2004.
Also in December 2002, more than half-a-dozen live pipe or shell bombs were recovered from an ijtema, a large religious gathering of Muslims, held near the Bhopal railway station.
The design of the shells used in bombs in Nanded, Jalna, Parbhani, Bhopal, Samjhauta and Mecca Masjid was similar and thus hinted towards the involvement of one terror group behind all these cases.
POWER CIRCUIT
A 6.53 volt battery was part of the power circuits used in the Mecca Masjid blast
CONTAINERS
One of the two iron boxes that contained the Mecca Masjid bombs
BRIEFCASE BOMB
One of the three IEDs that failed to go off inthe Samjhauta Express
Interestingly, between 2005 and 2008, in the terror strikes targeted at Hindu neighbourhoods and temples — like the 2005 Delhi Diwali blasts, 2006 Sankatmochan Mandir blasts and 2007 Hyderabad twin blasts — the design of bombs was strikingly different from these bombs which were aimed at Muslims.
However, the counter-terrorism agencies in India remained divided over the inpossibility of Hindu radicals being involved in these Muslim targeted terror strikes — the 2006 Malegaon serial blasts, the Samjhauta Express blasts and the Mecca Masjid attack.
As opaque and extrapolated intelligence inputs — Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) being behind the Samjhauta blasts and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) behind the Mecca Masjid attack — continued to pour in, the CBI investigation pursued the forensic trail.
THE MECCA Masjid IED consisted of two pairs of metallic shells with their ends sealed, save for a small hole at one end to stuff the explosives. In the case of Mecca Masjid the explosive used was a lethal mix of high-intensity RDX and Trinitrotoluene (TNT) — both these explosives are only available with the army and paramilitary forces. Electrical detonators connected a 6.53 volt battery to the explosives through the hole at an end of each pair of the cast iron shells. The battery in turn was connected to an electrical circuit which in turn was connected to a Nokia 6030 cell phone with a SIM card. An alarm for 1.22 pm was set on the phone. Thus the cell phone served both as a timer and also the power source to trigger the circuit that would then result in the explosion of the IED. Each IED was neatly placed in a black iron box which in turn was placed in a rexine bag.
Interestingly, between 2005 and 2008, in the terror strikes targeted at Hindu neighbourhoods and temples — like the 2005 Delhi Diwali blasts, 2006 Sankatmochan Mandir blasts and 2007 Hyderabad twin blasts — the design of bombs was strikingly different from these bombs which were aimed at Muslims.
However, the counter-terrorism agencies in India remained divided over the inpossibility of Hindu radicals being involved in these Muslim targeted terror strikes — the 2006 Malegaon serial blasts, the Samjhauta Express blasts and the Mecca Masjid attack.
OMMON MODUS OPERANDI
The motorcycle used to conceal the bomb in Malegaon in 2008
In Modasa too the bomb was planted on a motorcycle
As opaque and extrapolated intelligence inputs — Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) being behind the Samjhauta blasts and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) behind the Mecca Masjid attack — continued to pour in, the CBI investigation pursued the forensic trail.
THE MECCA Masjid IED consisted of two pairs of metallic shells with their ends sealed, save for a small hole at one end to stuff the explosives. In the case of Mecca Masjid the explosive used was a lethal mix of high-intensity RDX and Trinitrotoluene (TNT) — both these explosives are only available with the army and paramilitary forces. Electrical detonators connected a 6.53 volt battery to the explosives through the hole at an end of each pair of the cast iron shells. The battery in turn was connected to an electrical circuit which in turn was connected to a Nokia 6030 cell phone with a SIM card. An alarm for 1.22 pm was set on the phone. Thus the cell phone served both as a timer and also the power source to trigger the circuit that would then result in the explosion of the IED. Each IED was neatly placed in a black iron box which in turn was placed in a rexine bag.
These SIM cards were purchased during the period of seven months between June and December 2006 from as many as seven shops — three shops in Bardhaman district, West Bengal, and four in Jamtara, Jharkhand.
An unexploded IED found at the Mecca Masjid blast site was the starting point for the investigation
RSS poster boy CM Narendra Modi in attendance at Asimananda’s ashram
RSS poster boy CM Narendra Modi in attendance at Asimananda’s ashram
On further investigation, it was revealed that all these 11 SIM cards had been used in as many as nine mobile handsets. The CBI tracked down all the shops from where these handsets were purchased. It emerged that two handsets were purchased from Faridabad (as mentioned above), three from Bardhaman, three from Jamtara and one from Gaffar Market in Delhi.
Statements of all the shopkeepers from whom these SIM cards and cell phones were purchased were recorded by the CBI. But the trail soon went cold as the identity of those who had bought these phones and SIM cards remained a mystery.
As the Mecca Masjid probe appeared to hit a dead end, on 11 October 2007, during the month of Ramzan, a powerful bomb went off at Ajmer Sharif dargah, killing three people and injuring over a dozen.
Terror linkages Indresh Kumar speaking at Shabri Kumbh in 2006
Terror linkages Indresh Kumar speaking at Shabri Kumbh in 2006
As luck would have it, like in the case of Mecca Masjid, one IED malfunctioned and did not explode. This IED was an exact replica of the Mecca Masjid device.
On investigation, the Rajasthan ATS on investigation found that the SIM card and the cell phone of the unexploded device were from the same series of SIM cards and cell phones that the CBI had compiled in the course of their investigation.
It was now clear that the Mecca Masjid and Ajmer Sharif blasts were parts of the same terror conspiracy. So, the Rajasthan ATS and the CBI began working in close coordination. A hunt was launched to find the remaining five cell phones from the series (four had already been used in the Mecca Masjid and Ajmer IEDs).
AS THE two agencies groped in the dark, on 29 September 2008, a bomb concealed in a motorcycle exploded at Bhikku Chowk, a Muslim neighbourhood in Malegaon. Simultaneously, a bomb went off in a small Gujarat town named Modassa. Like in Malegaon, the bomb was concealed in a motorbike and the blast took place in a Muslim locality when special Ramzan prayers were being offered.
The Maharashtra ATS under its then chief Hemant Karkare carried out an excellent forensic investigation and retrieved the chassis number of the motorcycle used in the Malegaon blast. The motorcycle belonged to self-styled Hindu leader Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur. Her arrest led to a series of other arrests including serving Lt Col Purohit and a Hindu religious leader Dayanand Pandey.
Dayanand Pandey’s laptop led to the recovery of evidence in the shape of 37 audio and three video clips
Pandey’s laptop led to the recovery of crucial evidence in the shape of 37 audio and three video clips. These audio and video files were recordings of terror conspiracy meetings which Pandey, Purohit and others had held, which Pandey had secretly filmed using the web camera and audio recording facility inbuilt in his laptop.
The recordings comprised a solid evidence of a wider Hindutva terror conspiracy. In one of the files the accused could also be heard talking about Swami Asimananda in glowing terms, which showed that he was known to the accused.
Upon hearing the news of Sadhvi Pragya’s arrest, Asimananda absconded. Pragya also revealed that three RSS pracharaks from Madhya Pradesh — Sunil Joshi, Ramchandra Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange — were also key conspirators. While Joshi had already been murdered under mysterious circumstances in December 2007, Kalsangra and Dange went underground before the ATS could arrest them.
IN JULY 2009, the Rajasthan ATS detected that four of the five cellphones they had been looking for were being used by a group of RSS workers in two villages — Chapri and Khardaun Kala — of Kalapipal Tehsil in Shajapur district, Madhya Pradesh. The ATS discovered these phones with the help of their IEMI numbers.
The RSS workers in question were Chandrashekhar Leve, Vishnu Patidar, Ravindra Patidar and Santosh Patidar.
THE RADICAL BUNCH
The men who played crucial roles in Hindutva terror
INDRESH KUMAR, an RSS central committee member, accused of mentoring and financing the RSS pracharaks behind Malegaon, Samjhauta, Ajmer and Mecca Masjid terror strikes.
SWAMI ASIMANANDA, the head of the Shabri Dham in Dangs, Gujarat. He allegedly selected Malgeaon, Ajmer Sharif and Hyderabad as terror targets.
SUNIL JOSHI, a former RSS E pracharak of Mhow district. Along with Hindu radicals from Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and, Rajasthan, he formed an inter-state terror infrastructure.
SANDEEP DANGE, a senior RSS pracharak from Shajapur district near Indore. Along with Joshi and Ramchandra Kalsangra, he was a key figure in the Hindutva terror conspiracy.
RAM CHANDRA KALSANGRA ALIAS RAMJI, an RSS pracharak from Madhya Pradesh. He carried out a series of terror strikes between December 2002 and 2008.
SHIVAM DHAKHAD, an RSS activist. He allegedly took training in bomb-making in 2005. He also did a reconnaissance of Aligarh Muslim University and residence of Justice UC Banerjee.
LT COL SHRIKANT PUROHIT,a founding member of terror outfit Abhinav Bharat. He is accused of supplying RDX for the 2008 Malegaon blasts.
DEVENDRA GUPTA, the RSS vibhag pracharak of Muzaffarnagar, Bihar. He provided logistics and safe havens to Joshi, Kalsangra and Dange for terror strikes.
LOKESH SHARMA, an RSS worker and associate of Joshi, Dange and Kalsangra. He bought the two Nokia handsets used in the bombs at Mecca Masjid and Ajmer.
BHARAT RATESWAR , a Hindu radical from Valsad in Gujarat. He participated in terror meetings held in Gujarat. He also travelled to Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh providing logistics for the blasts.
YOGI ADITYANATH, BJP MP from Gorakhpur. He was contacted by Asimananda to provide funds for terrorist activities. Joshi held a hush-hush meeting with him at his residence.
DR ASHOK VARSHNAY, RSS prant pracharak of Kanpur. He sheltered key terror accused and RSS pracharak Devendra Gupta at Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram in Sitapur, Uttar Pradesh.
RAJESH MISHRA, an RSS activist and owner of a foundry in Pithampura, near Mhow. He gave 15 cast iron shells in 2001 to Joshi, who used them for blasts.
SUDHAKAR DHAR DWIVEDI ALIAS DAYANAND PANDEY, he ran an ashram in Jammu. He played the role of an ideologue to those involved in the 2008 Malegaon blasts.
The investigation revealed that the absconding accused, Dange, was a close friend of Leve. While Dange was the RSS jila pracharak of Shajapur district between 2000 and 2005, Leve was RSS jila sampark pramukh of the same district.
The Rajasthan ATS recorded the statements of more than half-a-dozen RSS workers who stated that, before running off, Dange had handed over all the four phone sets to Leve. While Leve had thrown away one phone after it stopped functioning, he and his associates continued to use the other three phones.
The ATS seized all the three phones, which now were clinching scientific evidence against this team of RSS pracharaks.
All the SIM cards had been procured from the border towns of Mhijham and Chittaranjan
The interrogation of Leve and the Patidars led to the arrest of Devendra Gupta in April 2010. Gupta was originally from Ajmer but had served the RSS in different capacities in Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand. Gupta gave a detailed account of the visits made by Joshi, Kalsangra and Dange to Jamtada’s RSS office between 2005 and 2007 when Gupta was posted as RSS Jila pracharak in the district.
Gupta revealed that it was during these visits that he helped them in procuring fake identity and address proofs and SIM cards. All SIM cards were procured (as explained above) from two border towns — Chittaranjan (Bardhman district, West Bengal) and Mhijham (Jamtada district, Jharkhand).
Several people who had witnessed Joshi, Kalsangra and Dange visiting Gupta in Jamtada were examined and their statements were recorded. It was all adding up. Along with Joshi, one more Hindu radical named Bharat Riteshwar from Valsad (Gujarat) had visited the Jamtada office while the logistics for the blasts were being put together.
The ATS tracked down Riteshwar, who gave a detailed eyewitness account before a magistrate, corroborating facts already known to the ATS. Gupta’s interrogation also revealed the role of another RSS activist from Indore, Lokesh Sharma. According to the ATS, Sharma confessed to having played a key role in the terror conspiracy.
Both Riteshwar and Gupta for the first time revealed to the police that RSS central committee member Indresh Kumar was a mentor and financer of Sunil Joshi — the man at the core of the conspiracy.
Riteshwar also told the police that Joshi’s terror activities had the sanction of Indresh. Sharma went further and told the police that Indresh regularly funded Joshi for the terror activities.
In September 2010, the Madhya Pradesh Police arrested a RSS activist named Shivam Dhakhad who was involved in a murder case. In police custody, he revealed that he too was part of the Sunil Joshi-led terror module.
RSS activist Dhakhad revealed in custody that he too was part of the terror module headed by Sunil Joshi
Most importantly, he talked about a terror meeting held on 26 October 2005 in a guest house named Gujarati Samaj Atithigrah in Jaipur, in which Indresh Kumar was also present. According to Dhakhad, Sadhvi Pragya, Kalsangra, Dange and Joshi were also present during the meeting.
If Dhakhad is to be believed, Indresh told all those who had assembled, “The RSS does not support your ideology or actions. So you all can get associated with some other religious organisations and carry on with your work.”
IN SEPTEMBER 2010, the CBI recorded the statement of Rajesh Mishra, an RSS activist from Mhow, Madhya Pradesh, who owned a foundry in Pithampura and was a close associate of Joshi. He stated before the investigating team that he had provided Joshi 15 customised iron pipes with grooves on the inside. A few of these pipes were used in the failed terror strike aimed at the Bhopal ijtema.
Mishra’s statement further confirmed that the modus operandi adopted by the Hindu extremists involved using iron pipes as an important component in the IEDs they assembled.
On 19 November 2010, Swami Asimananda was arrested from his hideout in Haridwar. Exactly a month after his arrest, Asimananda confessed before a Delhi Metropolitan Magistrate, laying bare the broad terror conspiracy in which he had also played a critical part.
Asimananda asserted that it was not Muslims, but a team of RSS pracharaks who were behind the 2006 Malegaon blasts, the Samjhauta Express strike, the Mecca Masjid and Ajmer Sharif bomb blasts.
Blast after blast In a series of terror strikes over a period of two years starting with Malegaon in September 2006, Muslim neighbouhoods and mosques were targeted. Pakistan nationals were also attacked when three blasts on the Samjhauta Express in February 2007 turned several coaches of the running train into an inferno
PHOTOS: AP, SHAILENDRA PANDEY, AFP, REUTERS
Asimananda confessed that he himself had picked Malegaon, Hyderabad and Ajmer Sharif dargah as potential targets, while Sunil Joshi had taken the responsibility of striking the Samjhauta Express.
Asimananda also reproduced the conversations that he had with Indresh Kumar while hatching the terror plot. According to Asimananda, Indresh had picked up Joshi and a few other members of the RSS to carry out the blasts and had partly financed the execution.
Till date, the ATS of Maharashtra and Rajasthan have filed chargesheets in the 2008 Malegaon and 2007 Ajmer Sharif blasts respectively. However, the CBI and National Investigating Agency (NIA) probe into the Mecca Masjid and Samjhauta Express blasts is still an ongoing one.
Though the cases built by the agencies have to still stand the scrutiny of law, due to the sheer volume of evidence, the odds are stacked against the accused.
ashish.khetan@tehelka.com
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