DR. S. AUSAF SAIED VASFI analyses the innocuous use of expression “Saffron Terror” by the Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram followed by its disowning by the Congress as well as reaction from the Saffron brigade.
Does the Congress, as a policy, acquiesce before the Saffron and, has in some cases let off the saffron accused or the suspects much before their conviction and humiliation before the nation?
More importantly, what is the basis, what is the rationale, what is the philosophy behind the perverse policy?
This unbelievable question has, of late, been agitating several minds in the principal minority of plural Bharat. The issue came under sharper focus when the Union Home Minister’s innocuous use of expression “Saffron Terror” was disowned by the Congress, which only reinvigorated the general view of the party’s pusillanimity?
READ AND RE-READ
You read and re-read what Mr. P. Chidambaram said while inaugurating a 3-day conference of Directors-General and Inspectors-General of Police in New Delhi on August 25: “There is no let up in the attempts to radicalise young men and women in India. Besides, there is the recently uncovered phenomenon of Saffron Terrorism that has been implicated in many bomb blasts of the past. My advice to you is that you must remain ever vigilant and continue to build, at the central and state levels, our capacity to counter terrorism (emphasis added).
Did you find a single word that seeks to malign our entire majority community brethren?
You may not have found that. But the BJP, VHP and Shiv Sena, etc. insist the Home Minister committed the offence and should resign, apologise and withdraw the remark. This is not the tragedy. The tragedy is the totally uncalled for defensive attitude of the Home Minister’s party. Is this just a manifestation of in-cohesiveness of the Congress or a well-thought-out strategy that stipulates distance from any party official the moment his remark causes discomfort to the Hindutva family?
TALKING POINT
The point is: was the Hindu majority the talking point of Mr. Chidrambaram’s speech? Was the Saffron or Bhagwa or Kesaria the talking point of his advice to the top echelons of police that the Congress in-charge of media, Mr. Janardhan Dwivedi also stressed the importance of saffron colour in India as well as in freedom struggle?
If there happens to be any divinity in the said colour or its various shades, the Saffron offshoots should behave ideally because they don the robes divinely ordained.
What Mr. Chidambaram, wanted to say was that the right wing fundamentalist groups are suspected to be behind some bomb blasts. He also recalled that earlier several members of UPA have used the expression. There has also been a debate in Parliament in 2001 on “Saffronisation of Education”. Much more boldly the UNC president and agriculture minister, Mr. Sharad Pawar said in Mumbai on August 28 that it was he who had for the first time used the phrase at Alibagh over a year ago, after which the police had traced the involvement of several Hindutva groups in various bomb blasts cases across the country.
THE OUTFITS
The Hindu, in an editorial (Aug 28,2010) has succinctly summed up the situation: “Bomb blasts in 2007 targeting the Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad and the Ajmer Sharif Dargah, the September 29, 2008 bomb blasts at Malegaon in Maharashtra and last year’s bomb blasts in Goa highlighted the trend of directed attacks intended to rattle the Muslim community. Painstaking investigation conducted over the last three years led by the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of Maharashtra have pointed to a larger network of Hindutva groups such as Abhinav Bharat, Rashtriya Jagran Manch and Sanatan Sanstha as being implicated in these blasts. Those involved in these indefensible crimes are members of fringe groups claiming allegiance to Hindutva, their intention clearly to ignite fresh polarization between the majority and the minority communities.”
The truth is that the much-delayed arrests of the activists belonging to Abhinav Bharat, Bhartiya Jagran Manch and Sanatan Sanstha had demoralised the RSS and the BJP considerably. They were on the back foot and felt themselves in the dock. Why in this promising background, the Congress decided to abstain from performance is inexplicable. Equally mystifying is the fact that Congressmen asked their minister to be cautious in the use of language. But they virtually failed to ask the Saffron fraternity why their men have been arrested by the ATS if they are so ‘milked bathed’? There appears to be a design.
DILUTIONS
How strong cases are diluted to the advantage of the perpetrators of crimes? Mr. Praful Bidwai, an eminent political commentator and analyst, recalls in Frontline (Nov 15, 2008): “Shortly after the explosion at Nanded on April 6, Secular Citizens Forum and the People’s Union of Civil Liberties in Nagpur and Movement for Peace and Justice in Nanded collected photographs that, according to them, showed bomb-fabrication operation run by the Bajrang Dal. The pictures proved that the local police tried to cover up Bajrang Dal-VHP involvement by planting firecrackers to suggest that the blast was not caused by bombs. They also ignored the planting of false beards to suggest that the perpetrators were Muslims. They played down the fact that a second bomb was recovered from the same place…. According to anti-communalism activist Teesta Setalvad, who moved a right to information application to get hold of the CBI’s charge sheet, the CBI considerably diluted the terrorism related charges and presented the Nanded explosion as an isolated incident unconnected with the Sangh Parivar and delinked from a larger conspiracy. It then pleaded its ‘inability’ to proceed with the investigation.”
KESARIA CONGRESS?
This brings us to the “why and what” of this palpably biased and prejudiced attitude and open latitude to the Saffron. To quote Mr. Bidwai once again: “The government’s reluctance to bring Sangh Parivar fanatics to book is premised on the belief that Hindu extremists are somehow more patriotic and therefore less evil than Islamist extremists. This is a Hindu majoritarian anti-secular view. It presumes that Hindus by virtue of being the majority are quintessentially more committed to the Indian nation than Muslims or Christians and hence deserving of sympathy. The repugnant presumption profoundly misrepresents and seriously violates India’s civic nationalism which is based on the modem concept of equality of all citizens, irrespective of their religion or ethnicity. It is incompatible with our constitution’s foundational values. In reality, the Sangh Parivar is not committed to the Indian nation but to the “Hindu Nation”, in which the minorities must accept a subordinate, second class status.”
The Congress’ periodic rescue of its arch rivals strengthens the impression that it is a rigged fight. If the right wing extremists are pure saffron, the Congress can be conveniently branded as kesaria.
ANOTHER INSTANCE
Just another significant example of deliberately letting off a Saffron stalwart by the Congress: Mr. Rajeshwar Dayal, the first Home Secretary of United Province after Independence, recounts in his autobiography an incident which exposes the sinister designs of RSS in fomenting communal tension in the country on the eve of independence.
In A Life of Our Times (Orient Longmans, 1999, 93-94), Rajeshwar Dayal writes: ‘I must record an episode of a very grave nature when the procrastination and indecision of the UP cabinet led to dire consequences. When communal tension was still at fever pitch, the Deputy Inspector General of Police of the Western Range, a very seasoned and capable officer, B.B.L. Jaitley, arrived at my house in great secrecy. He was accompanied by two of his officers who brought with them two large steel trunks securely locked. When the trunks were opened, they revealed incontrovertible evidence of a dastardly conspiracy to create a communal holocaust throughout the western district of the province. The trunks were crammed with the blueprints of great accuracy and professionalism of every town and village in that vast area, prominently marking out the Muslim localities and habitations. ‘Greatly alarmed by those revelations, I immediately took the police party to the Premier (chief minister’s house. There in a closed room, Jaitley gave a full report of his discovery, backed by all the evidence contained in the steel trunks. Timely raids conducted on the premises of RSS had brought the massive conspiracy to the light. The whole plot had been concerted under the direction and supervision of the Supremo of the organisation himself. Both Jaitley and I pressed for the immediate arrest of the prime accused, Shri Golwalker, who was still in area. …What ultimately emerged was that a letter should be issued to Shri Golwalker pointing out the contents and nature of the evidence which had been gathered and demanding an explanation thereof….
Golwalker, however, had been tipped off and he was nowhere to be found in the area. Came January 30, 1948 when the Mahatma, that supreme apostle of peace, fell to a bullet fired by an RSS fanatic. The tragic episode left me sick at heart.’
THE JAICHANDS
In fact, there is a history of some Congressmen wearing khaki under their pants or dhotis. How would you explain the demolition of Babri Masjid when Congress was in power under Mr. P.V. Narasimha Rao? How would you explain no action worth the name in at least three judicial probes? How would you explain let off in the Batla House case and above all, how would you explain inaction against the architect of Gujarat genocide?
Simultaneously, we sincerely feel that if there is an iota of truth in the premise referred to above that our Hindu brethren are more patriotic and brave, let there be a national debate on the subject. Let the TV channels discuss this question threadbare to prove to the hilt that those who sell state secrets to enemy countries, those who run away from the battlefield are not Hindus but Muslims. Substantive questions, armed with data pertaining to Indian spies in various jails should be presented in Parliament so that the plural nation recognises its Jaichands of the day.