The Double Helix of Violence
(Mukul Sinha)
8.12.2008
THE FIRST HELIX
The arrest of Pragya Singh Thakur by the Mumbai ATS Chief Hemant Karkare for the 29thSeptember,2008 Malegaon bomb blast had cracked the very foundation of the propaganda regarding “islamic terrorism” that the Hindu rightist forces were building up for the past two decades. The further arrest of Lt. Col. Shrikant Purohit and his direct involvement in the Malegaon bomb blast that left six dead, exposed the real face of the rightist forces who were uniting all the splinter groups across the country to unleash a widespread terrorist violence to overawe the secular forces and subvert the constitution.
As the news of the death of the ATS Chief Hemant Karkarare in the terrorist shoot-out on 26th November, 2008, spread across the country, a shocked population recalled with horror, the threats and abuses this officer had received till the previous day of his death.
An anonymous caller, on 24th November, 2008 used a PCO to contact Pune police, threatened to blow up the residence of Hemant Karkare "within a couple of days".
In fact, just a few days before that, on 21st November, 2008, the VHP had held a meeting in Delhi and declared that,"The time has come when all Hindus should unite to fight against injustice meted out to people being accused in Malegaon blast," VHP spokesperson Vinod Bansal had said.
On 22ndNovember, the BJP leader L K Advani during a poll-meeting in Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh delared that"The people of India will never forgive the UPA Govt for arresting and torturing Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, Advani said. Modi in fact went a step further by demanding the removal of Hemant from his post
Dying as he did, fighting the foreign terrorists in Mumbai on 26th November, 2008, the brave Hemant Karkare has done this country a supreme service. He has exposed the double helix of terrorism that is afflicting our country (1) exposed the underground faces of the over ground “nationalist” forces who have been taking this country for a ride promising to usher in a “Ram rajya”and (2) The incursion of the international terrorism into our country and developing local contacts because of definite conditions created within the country.
To trace the history of the first category of violence we go back over two decades in time. A little known Babri Masjid Ramjanmabhoomi dispute was ingeniously resurrected in 1984 by the formation of the “Sri Ram Janma Bhoomi Mukti Yagna Samiti” and a 130 kilometer march was organised by VHP from Ayodhya to Lucknow in October, 1984 to voice the demand for liberating the site on which the Babri Masjid stood. The Sangh Parivar’s ‘National Thinkers Conferences’ held across the country in 1987 and the BJP’s Palampur Resolution on Ayodhya in June 1989 finally put Ram Janma Bhoomi on the political agenda of the Sagh Parivar.
The November,1989 general election thus saw the worst ever communal violence in which over 800 people died in the Hindi belt. V.P.Singh became the Prime Minister with the support of BJP which won 88 seats. To push its own agenda, BJP/ VHP combine first declared February 14th, 1990 as the date to begin the temple construction which was changed to 8th June and later to 30th October, 1990. As a last ditch effort to keep away the other back ward classes from uniting with the upper caste BJP, V P Singh introduced the “Mandal Bill” in the loksabha on 7th August, 1990. That’s is when the LK Advani hit back with his Ram card, his Rath Yatra from Somnath to Ayodhya.
The arrest of Advani in Bihar on 23rd October, 1990 and the collapse of the V P Singh Government on 9th November, 1990, forever altered the course of Indian politics. The demolition of the Babri Masjid on 6th December, 1992 became the first major act of terrorism that terrorized the entire minority community but instead of being tried under TADA or POTA, Advani became the Home Minister!
The repeated instances of communal violence and the hate campaign against the Muslims unleashed by the Sangh Parivar thereafter on one hand created the bogey of “Islamic terrorism in India” and on the other hand laid the foundation of creating violent underground groups like “Abhinav Bharat” led by pseudo religious figures like Dayanand Pandeys supported by the over ground political parties like BJP and social and religious organizations like VHP,RSS, Hindu Jan Jagaran Samiti etc.
In reaction to the repeated instances of communal riots that broke out after the Rath Yatra of Advani onwards and more particularly the Mumbai riots after the demolition of the Babri Masjid wherein scores of innocent Muslims were killed, the underworld of Mumbai triggered the horrendous serial bomb blasts that killed over two hundred innocent citizens of Mumbai. The 1993 serial blast marked the turning point of the use of ‘terrorist violence’ by any Muslim group in India. Till 1993, even the “terrorist violence” from across the borders did not spill outside the boundaries of Jammu Kashmir and the use of ‘terrorist violence’ by any Muslim group in India was unheard of.
THE SECOND HELIX
While the Hindu rightist Groups were uncoiling their long cherished objectives of creating a “Hindu Rashtra” and pursuant to that objective has been training its cadre in martial art, another violent movement was building up against the hegemony of the Americans after the Second World War. The creation of Israel rendering the Palestinians refugees in their own home land pushed the Palestinians to organize their own resistance against the American-Zionist forces and form PLO.
In addition to fighting against Israeli political and military targets, the PLO and/or its factionlike the Black September Organization had killed 11 Israeli athletes in the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Thus grew the spiral of violence. Between 1988 and 2001 however, the defeat of the Soviet forces supporting the Najibulla Government of Afghanistan at the hands of the Mujahids led by of Osama Bin Laden, gave a complete new dimension to the Muslim resistance to the American hegemony. Al-Qaeda which was born around 1988 joined hands with the Taliban and on 2nd September,1996, Osama gave the call to “launch a guerrilla war against American forces and expel the infidels from the Arabian peninsular”. Several attacks followed, one major one being the suicide bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killing over 220 persons on 7th August 1998.
Nearly 3,000 people died during the attacks on 11th September, 2001when two planes crashed into the twin WTC Towers . The so called War on Terrorism is ongoing US military response to the attack, which is now the focus of American security and foreign policy.
THE DOUBLE HELIX
The two limbs would have never connected to form the double helix if it wasn’t for their common target. The “War on terror” of the Imperialist forces led by America and the aggressive movement of the Hindu rightist groups in their quest for a “Hindu Rashtra” had a common enemy- the Muslims. The integration of the Indian economy with the Global economy ofcourse became the foundation of the super structural unity between the Indian and the American State. The recent Nuclear deal being one such illustrations of this new found alliance.
The Godhra incident in which 59 passengers had died due to the burning of the S6 coach of the Sabarmati Express near the Godhra Railway station in Gujarat on 27th February, 2002, in fact heralded the “war on terror” in the Indian soil. The Chief Minister Shri Narendra Modi deliberately dubbed the incident as a “preplanned terrorist violence of one community against another” to enable him to declare his brand of war against “terrorism”! First of all around 2000 innocent Muslims were butchered to avenge the deaths of the 59 passengers by makimg it appear that the Muslims had conspired to killed them. Over a score of so called “terrorist” were thereafter killed in police encounters in Gujarat between 2002 till the investigations into the killing of Sourabuddin under the orders of the Supreme Court revealed that the encounter were fake! The riot victims were systematicaly denied legal justice.
Thus, starting with the demolition of the Babri Masjid to the pogrom in Gujarat, the ground was made fertile for the foreign terrorist Groups like Lashkare-Taieba , Jaise Mohammed etc to develop Indian contacts to carry out their operations against their perceived common enemy. The grave tragedy that struck Mumbai on 26th December, 2008, is perhaps a specific illustration of this point.
