Of cities and bomb making

The report from Kanpur says that the BJP will toe the line of RSS and defend sadhvi Pragyasingh Thakur, who had provided her motorbike in the bomb blast in Malegaon on September 29 and hence was part of the conspiracy. The meeting of RSS seniors there has churned out this strategy on which the election would have to be fought. There is no need to have inhibition over what the sadhvi and her accomplices have done. The sangh feels more emboldened today as it enjoys comprehensive support of the Hindu population of the country although it is clearly reprehensible that conspiracy in high places and gross violation of laws do not match with the kind of democracy the country boasts of.

But this should not come as a surprise because we have fallen so low in our own estimate that everything goes in the name of religion and nationalism. After all how many felt outraged over the pogroms of Muslims in Gujarat? Compounding into this nightmare was the specter of the familiar and ubiquitous doppelganger in tunic with beard and cap although post September 29 Malegaon shows that beards and caps and tunics as well as veil for ladies are not in short supply. Do not be shocked by the terrorist at your dining table in the morning.

The coterie at Kanpur bears all the hallmarks of Delhi or Lucknow vintage 1947-48. Rajeshwar Dayal was the secretary in the central government when the deputy inspector general of UP, BLL Jaitley, came to his house with two trunks of documents of details of houses and establishments of Muslims in the western part of the state marked out and with accurate details on how to approach them. RSS had collected the information in a conspiracy to systematically attack and destroy the houses and properties of the Muslims and kill them. RSS chief Golwalker had prepared this sinister plot personally. So serious was the discovery that Dayal called it "incontrovertible evidence of a dastardly conspiracy to create a communal holocaust" and took the matter immediately to the Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru surprised him by not ordering arrest of Golwalker. Instead he wanted the cabinet to discuss the matter. The cabinet dithered and filibustered. But the premier asked Dayal to write a letter to RSS boss Golwalker about the cache. Golwalker got the wind of what was transpiring as RSS had planted moles in the high places and one such tipped him off. He changed his residence frequently to dodge the government missive. The government servant was unable to meet him although he was in the same neighbourhood.

It is highly significant to note that Malegaon blast is connected to Kanpur. The ATS is hunting for a retired colonel in UP who had directly helped in preparing the blast. The chemical analysis links the explosion to the other explosions in Kanpur in recent times.

The police have record of the 400 minutes telephonic conversation of the sadhvi with the accomplices including, serving lieutenant colonel Shasikant Purohit of the army, Ramesh Upadhya who taught the others how to make a bomb and procure RDX. Moreover they had met at the Bhonsla Military school of Nasik on April 16 among them was Sameer Kulkarni who transported the explosives to Maleagoin. The police are in search of Ram Narayan Singh who planted the bomb at Bhiku chowk. There is also report that they had met at the school on September 16, some other papers report that the meeting also took place on September 13. They are members of Abhinav Bharat which in turn was the resurrection of Abhinav Bharat society which Savarkar had found in 1905. Savarkar, Moonje and Hegdewar were captivated by fascism and Savarkar had modeled his organization on the Italian nationalist Giuseppe Mazzini’s Young Italy. Most of the accused in Malegaon blasts are also connected with Pune where Abhinav Bharat is headed by no other than the daughter in law of Savarkar. Himani Savarkar is also the niece of Nathuram Godse hence the slogan of her outfit "kshama yachna nahin ab to ran hoga, sangharsh bada bhishan hoga. This slogan is on posters of the organization in Bhopal. Nasik also occupies a crucial place as the Bhonsla military school is located there where the bombers took training and held meeting. The session court is hearing the case there.

The RSS meeting in Kanpur discussed the Malegaon blast and came out with a cynical assessment that the startling revelations of Malegaon blast would not affect the people who habitually vote BJP. Therefore they are back to square one: Hindutuva extremism. For this and all other matters of religious extremism of the Hindutuva you don’t have to go to Tirupati or Chidambrum or Trivandrum because there is a world of difference between the Hindi heartland and the Dravadian south. UP and Madhya Pardesh are central to deep-rooted antipathy to the ’other.’ After them comes Gujarat. Sadhvi Pragya was from that part of Madhya Pardesh which is famed for anti-Muslims feeling, Malwa region, for it is the stronghold of Hindutuva. If this were not so Malwa would be like Chidambrum.

Hindu Jagran Mach based in Indore came into existence in 2002 during the trouble in Dhar, MP, over prayer at Bhojshala where Hindus as well as Muslims pray in adjoining place. However, the Hindus were allowed to pray only once a year. As the extreme among the Hindus became ascendant they took to aggression and wanted to pray to Saraswati without any restrictive stipulation. The sadhvi and her accomplices are embedded in HJM for their anti minority activities.

On the other hand Kanpur boasts a much larger presence with 60 supported RSS schools known as Saraswati Vidayalas and Deen Dayal Vidayalas. Indeed one such Saraswati Vidayala of Govind nager also hosts the offices of RSS and VHP. There are some 1,500 branches of RSS in Kanpur region of which 300 are in Kanpur itself. There are also 12,000 Bajrang Dal activists. Given such a massive presence in Kanpur it is bound to be the hub of the extreme Hindutuva activities such as bomb making. Two times in August and October there have been two distinct incidents of bomb explosion. In fact in the explosion on August 24 two Bajrang Dal activists, Rajive Misra and Bhupender Sigh died while handling the bomb. An analysis of the chemicals there and of the September 29 blast in Malegaon could establish similarity. In both the places RDX must be present. As the police officer in Kanpur observed that the storage of the explosives in Kanpur was so large that it could have blown up half of the city!