New Delhi must be put on high alert with the Delhi court seeking a response from Delhi Police on a plea against Suresh Chavhanke. At an event organized by the ‘Hindu Yuva Vahini’ in Delhi, Chavhanke was seen administering an oath to a group of people to “die for and kill” to make India a “Hindu Rashtra”. Thus, why this concern for mass atrocities is reaching a new height? RSS was founded for this and given to its won’t it will have it. What does the past warrant it?
In his visit to Italy in 1931 to meet Mussolini, Dr. Balkrishna Shivaram Moonje’s sole objective was to ascertain how to cause mass casualties. Towards this aim, he established the Central Hindu Education Society in Nasik in 1935. This led to the foundation of the Bhonsle Military School there and another at Nagpur town which has the headquarters of the Hindu extremist group Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS).
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Moonje was one of the founders of RSS
It was in these “military” schools that Lt. Col. Prasad Shrikant Purohit imparted training to around 5000 activists of Abhinav Bharat who were also members of the RSS. The training was in line with the mass casualties that they wanted to commit in the name of exclusionary cultural nationalism of their hateful ideology.
These groups wanted to cause enormous casualties as in the case of Malegaon 2006 and Malegaon 2008 terror attacks, the Samjhauta Express attack of 2007 and the plan to attack the Ijtema or congregation of Muslims in 2001 in Bhopal. Each of these and many others have the same script.
The Ajmer shrine of Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti was the target of a bomb attack on October 11, 2007. There were twofold aims of the attack. One primary aim was that it was a revered shrine of Muslims, and others also worshipped there, and the second was to destroy a symbol of pluralist culture. (The reason why Muslims cannot be suspected is given below.) So naturally, those suspected would be the Hindu extremists or the Hindutva groups including RSS, VHP, Bajrang Dal and Abhinav Bharat, among others. They have vowed to wipe out Muslims and destroy a composite culture.
But instead of taking this line of investigation Police and intelligence agencies had the very opposite aim of framing Muslims and blaming them. As it turned out, those who carried out the blast were extremist Hindutva activists of the module led by Sunil Joshi. Every event related to Sunil Joshi in his role as a module chief was meant to cause mass casualties of Muslims and, at the same time, inflict blame on them for it.
Even in his death, he proved true to this policy. As the Indian Police and investigation agencies take a long time, sometimes even more than a decade, to genuinely investigate the terror-related cases, it has become imperative of our times to make way for independent jurists of international repute to help India establish the truth and move beyond. The delay is on account of the infiltration of the right-wing Hindutva activists in the investigation agencies, Police and even the Army.
The extremist Hindu organizations are so well-entrenched that their deliberations and planning are carried over years. This shows their power and determination to harm the Muslims to the fullest extent even when there is no provocation. In 2001 Sunil Joshi had exploded bombs at a Hindu temple in his native Dewas, Madhya Pradesh. His aim was to incite communal violence in which obviously the Muslim minority would suffer. There was no immediate provocation for this attack.
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This module held several meetings aimed at planning violence against Muslims
In their secret meetings, they decided to attack Muslims on some pretext or other, as the attack on Amarnath pilgrimage in July 2001, on the temples of Raghunath of Jammu in March 2002 and of Akshardham in September 2002.
In a meeting in April-May 2004 at Ujjain during the Sinhasth Kumbh, they planned more terrorist attacks. Another such meeting was held in the Gujarat Guest House of Jaipur on 26 October 2005 in which the second most influential office-bearer of the RSS, Indresh Kumar, participated. He exhorted the module members to cause mass casualties on Muslims and hide in Hindu temples to escape police arrest. Those who attended the meeting were Sunil Joshi, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, Ramji Kalsangra, Lokesh Sharma, Sandeep Dange, Shivam Dhakad, and Samander.
Sunil Joshi carried out the assignment in Malegaon 2006, Samjhauta Express in February 2007, Mecca Mosque in Hyderabad in May, and Ajmer shrine in October of the same year. Sunil Joshi was the link with Indresh Kumar and the modules. Indresh Kumar became apprehensive that Joshi knew too much and feared that he would put him in jeopardy. An opportunity came his way to have Joshi killed. Joshi lived in hiding with the assumed name of “Manoj”. Indresh Kumar had an inkling that Joshi was under a Police scanner.
After murdering the Congress leader Pyare Singh Ninawa and his son in 2003, Joshi was hiding in Gujarat. After Joshi returned from Dangs ashram of Aseemanand, he lived in Dewas. There were others who shared the room with him and were living with assumed names. One was Rajender Choudhary whom Lokesh Sharma at the instance of Indresh Kumar ordered to shoot and kill Joshi. (There could be a bigger conspiracy behind this crime.) In the meantime, Joshi reportedly had tried to molest Pragya.
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That was the flashpoint
(This story is disputable because Lokesh Sharma was among the elite of the module who would not risk the murder of his own chief over such a sensitive but private matter and hence the suspicion is on Indresh Kumar.) Joshi was called out to visit someone at a distance. His motorcycle was out for repair and hence he walked the distance. His roommates overtook him and killed him on December 29, 2007.
Joshi’s murder too was blamed on Muslims and they were subjected to terror and suffered atrocities. First, they named “anti-national elements like SIMI” to be behind the murder. The fanatics of Bajrang Dal and RSS called a bandh (strike) on the second day of Joshi’s murder. During the strike they attacked Muslims. In Sutarkheda near Dewas, they went to the house of Rasheed Shah (65) and killed the old man. Then they burnt alive his son Jalil (27). They also wanted to kill his other two sons. They shot at them and injured both of them but they escaped death.
A five-year-old girl suffered burn injuries but survived. The crowd, carrying firearms and swords, shouted “Burn them! Burn them!” The goons bolted the door of the house from outside. The family was taken by surprise because Rasheed was a member of the committee of “Radhyshyam” Satsang and had good relations with Hindus. His wife Sheraj even in her dreams could not believe that such a terror would visit upon them.
Rasheed and the family were part of the composite culture of which the Ajmer shrine was a symbol. Little did they know that those who killed them wanted to establish a Hindu Rashtra of which they could not be members. This instance of atrocity is “the world’s worst crime” (in the words of President Barack Obama who created the Atrocities Prevention Board to deal with such crimes.)
The simple life and beliefs of the Shah family are verified by the US embassy cables which establish the fact that Indian Muslims are not attracted to extremism. One such US diplomatic cable says: “Separatism and religious extremism have little appeal to Indian Muslims, and the overwhelming majority espouse moderate doctrines.” (The Hindu, December 18, 2010)
This remarkably contrasts with the aggressive Hindutva terror as in the case of the Sunil Joshi module, the Abhinav Bharat and other conglomerations allied with the RSS. Given this background, it was truly “news” when the murder of Joshi has easily explained away and right-wing Hindus were made to believe that this murder was a handiwork of “anti-national elements like SIMI”. Later, in the following year, Malegaon experienced a repeat performance of Hindutva terror.
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The broader aim of the Hindutva juggernaut is the establishment of a Hindu Rashtra. Be it Purohit, Togadia, or Narendra Modi, the roller skater of Hindutva will move on with or without them. It may be hindered temporarily but it resumes its course soon thereafter.