Title: Terrorism in India during the freedom struggle.

Subject: TERRORISM -- India

Source: Historian, Spring93, Vol. 55 Issue 3, p469, 14p, 1bw

Author: Heehs, Peter

ISSN: 0018-2370

"An official government report mentions 210 "revolutionary outrages" and 101 more attempts in Bengal involving over one thousand terrorists between 1906 and 1917. After a decade of

relative quiet, terrorism again broke out in the province. An official list gives 189 incidents in Bengal during the years 1930-1934. Outside Bengal terrorist incidents were so infrequent that they were not even itemized in the official report.[4]"

"Aurobindo Ghose, a leading Bengali Extremist, interpreted swaraj differently in his influential English-language newspaper Bande Mataram (Salutation to Mother India). He defined it as complete political independence, "a free national government unhampered even in the least by foreign control."

"Ghose was one of the founders of a secret society that turned to terrorism under his brother

Barindra Kumar ("Barin") Ghose. He and his associates Upendranath Bannerjee and Hemchandra Das argued that complete independence was India's primary need and vital to national unity, as well as to economic and social progress.

Although Aurobindo Ghose admitted to having "a strong hatred for the British," he kept this feeling out of his writings and supported his demand for independence with an appeal to the inherent right of peoples to self-government."

"Like most Bengali groups, Barin Ghose's secret society was small, urban-based, and made up almost entirely of young Hindus of the bhadralok (respectable) class. Of the thirty-six members for whom adequate records exist, thirty-two belonged to the three castes that make up the Bengali bhadralok. The six leaders had an average age of thirty-six, while the thirty rank-and-file members had an average age of twenty. The older men were professionals, primarily teachers and journalists; the younger men were students or former students."

"British observers regarded terrorism as a perversion of religion; nonreligious terrorists saw it the opposite way. In his writings and speeches Aurobindo Ghose proposed what has been called a "religion of nationalism," where nationalism was regarded as not only high and noble but divinely ordained."

"Ghose came by his conviction of divine leadership not through the profession of Hinduism as a creed but through the practice of yoga, a spiritual discipline also practiced by other Extremists and revolutionaries. Leaders as well as the rank and file were strongly influenced by such Hindu scriptures as the Bhagavad Gita and the Devi Mahatmyam but usually did not approach these texts as orthodox believers. Many young Bengalis, including some future terrorists, were influenced by the teachings of Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902)."

"Of all Chatterjee's writings, none fired the imagination of young Bengalis more than his historical novel Ananda Math (The abbey of bliss). Basing his work on accounts of a rebellion in the 1770s, Chatterjee transformed the bands of lawless brigands that roamed Bengal in those years into an Indian version of Robin Hood and his Merry Men. The aim of these virtuous outlaws is to restore the Mother-Motherland to its former glory and prosperity, which under Muslim misrule has been replaced by poverty and degradation."

"Ghose wrote, somewhat anachronistically, in the 1940s that his "cult of violence" was "learnt from the Irish Seinfeinners and Russian secret societies."[12]

"Two people connected with the rise of revolutionary activity in Bengal did have some contact with Russian anarchists. Margaret Noble, an Irish disciple of Vivekananda, whom he renamed Sister Nivedita, corresponded with one such anarchist, Peter Kropotkin, and later met him in London. One of his books, she wrote to a friend, confirmed her "determination towards Anarchism"--not necessarily the peaceful kind. Although she was "glad of every sovereign destroyed," she hoped that India, "the most civilized country in the world," might enter the

promised land without violence. Nivedita helped organize samitis (societies) that promoted physical and moral education and social service among young Bengalis. Terrorism in India was preceded by an interest in physical culture, particularly wrestling, drill, and the use of the

lathi (singlestick). Indigenous traditions of physical culture and martial arts had survived in many parts of India despite British attempts to discourage them.

"In 1908, Barin Ghose confessed to a police officer that "there was a wide and persistent

demand all over India for one successful political murder in order to stiffen the back of the people and satisfy their spirit of vengeance." Upen-dranath Bannerjee said much the same thing in his Bengali memoirs. After a series of arrests and sedition trials, people became so enraged that "everyone seemed to be saying, 'No. This can't go on. We've got to blow out the brains of one of these bastards."'The outbreak of World War I led revolutionaries to hope that they could obtain military assistance from Germany. They did get some money, but the only significant attempt to smuggle weapons into India ended in disaster.

"In 1909 the judge in the conspiracy trial of Barin Ghose and his associates spoke prophetically: "The danger of a conspiracy such as this lies not so much in its prospect of success as in its fruition. When once the poison had entered into the system it is impossible to say where it will break out or how far-reaching will be its effects." During the first two decades of India's independence there was little organized terrorism in the country, but during the late 1960s left-wing Bengali insurgents began using terrorist methods to achieve their revolutionary aims. The 1980s saw the rise of separatist terrorism in Punjab, Kashmir, and Assam as well as among ethnic Indian Tamils in Sri Lanka. As I write (late 1991) Assamese and Kashmiri terrorists hold hostages in their respective valleys, Punjabi terrorists account for a dozen or so killings every week, and a Sri Lank Tamil group is being investigated in connection with the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. "

MATTS OF CRIME

Murder, rape and arms smuggling are a way of life for the sadhus of the matts in Ayodhya and Bihar.

KANHAIYA BHELARI in Ayodhya and Patna.

TheWeek India No. 1 weekly newmagazine

India, Nov 23, 1997

Tradition binds them to austerity, but opulence is their way. They are sworn to celibacy, but marry they do and have children. Attaining salvation is their ultimate goal, but for property they aim. In politicians they trust and on criminals they rely. They are the mahants (head priests) and sadhus of the thousands of matts in Ayodhya and other parts of eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

The matts, there are no fewer than 8,000 in Ayodhya and about 7,000 in Bihar, are an industry by themselves, with some like the Gorakhpur Temple in Uttar Pradesh raking in offerings worth Rs 50,000 each day. And the mahants live it up. According to local reports, about 200 mahants in Ayodhya have cars including Maruti 1000 and Ford; 25 have jeeps and around a thousand have two-wheelers. Colour TVs, refrigerators and telephones are passe in mahants' homes. "The mahants of Ayodhya are enjoying a luxurious life, unlike the sadhuswe read about in our religious texts," said Raghubar Sharan, a local journalist of the Hindi daily, Dainik Jagaran.

And many of them in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have criminal cases against them. Savour this:

Mahant Srikant Das of Patepur Matt in Vaishali district of Bihar is missing for the last two years. He is accused of rape and murder.

Ram Gopaldas, former mahant of the Hanuman Temple in Patna, was arrested in 1987 on the charge of possessing six rifles; an amount of Rs 6 lakh was also seized from him.

In a raid on a hotel in Bhagalpur two years ago, police arrested mahant Devramdas Vedanti of Janaki Ghat in Ayodhya, along with a girl whom he had allegedly abducted. They also seized a Spanish pistol from his possession, besides ornaments worth Rs 1 lakh and Rs 3.5 lakh in cash.

Mahant Prahalad Das of Hanuman Garhi in Ayodhya was charged under the Goondas Act on October 24 by the Faizabad district administration. There are a number of charges, under several sections of the IPC, against him. He has not been arrested yet.

These are but a few instances of the unholy lives of mahants in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The matts more often than not act as a cover for criminal activities. For instance, Sri Prakash Shukla, who has a reward of Rs 2 lakh on his head, is said to have stayed in a matt in Ayodhya for two weeks after killing BSP leader and former MLA Birendra Pratap Sahi on March 31. He took refuge in the matt once again after allegedly killing a police officer in a Lucknow hotel on August 1. The matt belonged to a mahant from Bihar.

More than 40,000 'holymen' live in the mutts in Ayodhya. Of them more than 60 per cent of the mahants and over 25,000 sadhus are from Bihar. Most of them are Bhumihars or Brahmins, and they fight over matt property. Kishore Kunal, IG of the CISF, even said that the Bhumihar mahants of Ayodhya's matts had hired a number of criminals from the Begusarai belt of Bihar to establish their supremacy among the sadhus in Ayodhya.
 
 

Title: Memory and India's identity crisis. Subject: INDIA -- Social conditions

Source: World & I, May94, Vol. 9 Issue 5, p430, 8p, 4bw

Author: Smith, Brian K.

Abstract: Discusses India's identity crisis involving a radical reconception of its history by a large minority of chauvinistic Hindus. Anti-Muslim violence instigated by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Shiv Sena; Efforts to revise historical facts; Razing of the Ayodhya mosque in December 1992. INSET: Precis.

AN: 9407143654

ISSN: 0887-9346

Control over the past is indeed what is at issue in many a contemporary struggle for power. Controlling the past sometimes means forgetting large parts of it. In the former Yugoslavia, place-names associated with unpleasant memories of foreign domination have been changed in a "linguistic cleansing" complementing the more-publicized "ethnic cleansing." Bosnian Serbs even object to the name Bosnin which reminds them of the oppression suffered under Turkish and Austro-Hungarian rule. "By eliminating this term," says Djordeje Mikic, a Bosnian Serb

historian, "we are eliminating the memory and consequences that stem from it."

Although Muslims share the same culture and languages with Hindus and have lived in India for centuries, they now find themselves labeled "foreigners." Bal Thackeray, the leader of the radical Shiv Sena (God's Army), which was behind much of the violence directed at Muslims during the Bombay riots of January 1993, has declared that Muslims must be expelled from the "Hindu motherland." In a well-publicized interview, Thackeray, an admirer of Adolf Hitler, compared India's Muslims to the Jews in Nazi Germany: 'Have they behaved like the Jews in Nazi Germany? If so, there is nothing wrong if they are treated as Jews were in Germany."

To reinvent the present, one must reinterpret the past, and Hindu activists have been hard at work doing just that. If Muslims are to be reconstituted as "foreigners" and Hindus as the true and indigenous Indians, the inconvenient fact that the ancient forebears of Hinduism, the Aryans, originally came as invaders of the subcontinent from a probable homeland in the Russian steppe must be altered. At a conference held in January 1993, right-wing historians introduced a new and more "politically correct" version of the archaic past. The Aryans, it is now asserted, were native to India all along, and their successors are therefore the rightful inheritors of the land.

Ayodhya, it is claimed, is the actual birthplace of a Hindu deity. The god Rama was born, according to BJP historians, sometime during or before the third millennium B.C. In the sixteenth century, so the story goes, the Islamic ruler Babur destroyed the Hindu temple dedicated to Rama, which had existed since time immemorial, and erected on its ruins a mosque. It was this structure that was pulled down in six hours, by hand, by thousands of

Hindu nationalists.

The BJP has marched out its own historians and archaeologists to provide official validation of its claims about Ayodhya. A certain Sudha Malaiya, described in a press release as a "young and bright art historian," was put on display to tell the nation about the remarkable archaeological finds she had uncovered in the rubble on the day the mosque was destroyed. The evidence--including pillars from the ancient Hindu temple that had, astonishingly, been left wholly intact and a perfectly preserved large sandstone slab bearing inscriptions in Sanskrit--unsurprisingly confirmed all the main points of the BJP's version of Ayodhya's past.

The miraculous nature of these finds was immediately noted, and their authenticity was disputed by experts of a more secular bent. Especially critical were those who had worked for years on systematic archaeological excavations, which had turned up nothing remotely suggesting that the site held such antiquarian wonders and indisputable proof for religious beliefs. B.B. Lal, the director-general of the Archaeological Survey of India, had conducted one such excavation in the 1970s and found absolutely no evidence of any preexisting Hindu temple at the site.

LEFT-LEANING HISTORIANS

Historians at the prestigious and left-leaning Jawaharlal Nehru University have also joined the fray, publishing pamphlets and articles in an attempt to discredit the BJP account of Ayodhya's past. In a publication titled The Political Abuse of History, members of the university's Centre for Historical Studies write that "when beliefs claim the legitimacy of history, then the historian has to attempt a demarcation between the limits of belief and historical evidence." They conclude that, although it is "quite plausible that there was a structure somewhere in the vicinity," there is no evidence for a Hindu temple once occupying the controversial spot at Ayodhya.

Hindu extremists, for their part, have countered by broadening their efforts. They have recently distributed a list of three thousand sites across the country where, they say, Muslim emperors usurped sacred Hindu ground. Some of these sites could well become the Ayodhyas of the future. One of the more likely targets for the future is a seventeenth-century mosque in the Hindu holy city of Benares. That town's senior police officer has warned that "this city is sitting on a powder keg."

Other Hindu revisionists have gone so far as to claim that the Taj Mahal itself was not built by a Mogul emperor to commemorate his wife but is, in fact, a pre-Islamic Hindu monument appropriated later by the insatiable Muslims. Recently, thirty thousand Hindus burst into the popular tourist attraction with the intent of"recapturing" and "converting" it. Priests have taken to chanting Sanskrit verses within the Taj, apparently in the attempt to transform one of the seven wonders of the world into a Hindu temple. Cheap plastic replicas are now for sale with the Islamic crescent moon that adorns the top of the real monument replaced by a trishul, a Hindu trident symbolizing divinity.

A BATTLE IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

The battle for India's past is also being waged in classrooms of the elementary and high schools. Textbooks in states controlled by the BJP have been rewritten to glorify the "Hindu past" and excoriate the policies of the "Muslim invaders." In the Indian version of "linguistic cleansing,' cities and other geographical locales with nonHindu names have been given new designations more in keeping with the fundamentalist vision of the country: Delhi has become "Indraprasth," Lucknow is "Lakshmanpuri," and the Arabian and Indian oceans are now "Sindbu Sagar" and "Ganga Sagar" respectively.
 
 

The Rediff Interview/Dr Kancha Ilaiah

January 17, 2000

Why are you a ferocious critic of Hinduism?

My criticism has grown out of my experiences and convictions in life. The Hindu religion and the Hindutva movement describe all Sudras, Chandalas and Adivasis as Hindus. That is wrong. I come from an Other Backward Class family called the Kurumas. The question is if I am a Hindu, my parents should have known that they were part of a particular religion. But they never knew whether they belonged to the Hindu religion.

Hinduism never initiated me or my people into its religion. We do not wear the threads, we cannot become temple priests, we do not have childhood formations like Brahminical children. Moreover, if I belong to Hinduism, I should share the food habits and ritual symbols of that religion. We do not share them also.

So, in your opinion, OBC Hindus do not believe in Hindu religious texts?

OBC Hindus cannot believe in the religious texts for various reasons. Take Hindu religious texts like the Rig Veda and Bhagwad Gita. According to these books, the Sudras were born from the feet of God and the Brahmins from the head. So if we were born from the feet, how do we go towards the head, which belongs to the Brahmins?

I believe the Hindu religious texts are not divine. They did not come from God. Brahminical forces deliberately wrote these religious texts showing the entire Sudra community as their feet boys. This is a very dehumanising proposition. And the tragedy is there is no way that we, the lower caste people, can escape from the tyranny of the Brahmins.

Do you hate Hinduism?

Yes, I hate Hinduism. Hinduism is not ours, it is against us. If we have to become Hindus, the Brahmins will have to change the entire religious texts, our food habits, our gods and goddesses

and images. I am angry at the Hindu gods.

Why are you angry with Hindu gods?

Look at the images of Hindu gods. They wield weapons. We read that Hindu gods killed our own ancestors. How can I worship the killers as divine? What kind of a religion is it? There are three

major religions -- Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. These major religions were constructed by prophets who sacrificed and struggled in life for people's liberation. All these three religions

never said that the larger sections of their people were born from the feet of God.

So you do not consider Hinduism a religion?

Is Hinduism a religion of the stature of Buddhism, Islam and Christianity? In my view, Hinduism is not a religion. It is a cult of worshipping certain violent figures. A religion never worships a violent figure. Religion is a very enlightened social force. Religion is a very civilised thing that came into existence. Religion establishes certain agreements and covenants.

Hinduism does not have any divine covenants. Hinduism is a cult of Brahmins, Baniyas and Kshatriyas worshipping violent gods. This cult was constructed against the Sudras, Chandalas and Adivasis.

If it is not a cult, but a religion, it should have at least a holy book that gives all people equal rights. Does the Bhagwad Gita give equal rights? In the Bhagwad Gita, God says I have created four Varnas and the Sudra, Chandalas and Adivasis were created to serve the Brahmins. If that is the statement of a God, then I do not consider Hinduism a religion.

What is your advice to Hindu religious leaders?

I am asking Hindutva forces to liberate the OBCs, SCs, and STs from inhuman conditions. They do not have any religious rights. We can be given religious rights only if Hinduism is reformed.

Do you think India cannot be modernised if Hinduism is not reformed?

If India has to become a modern nation, it has to Dalitise itself. It has to discover its villages where 80 per cent of Indians, the SCs, STs, and OBCs, live. It has to establish an egalitarian relationship between Brahmins and the lower castes.

What should Hindu religious leaders do to create such an egalitarian relationship?

To begin with, they should sit down with the Sudras to rewrite a true Hindu religious holy book. It should be an egalitarian, spiritual democratic book written by the people's covenants. But again, for that, I think we the Sudras should be allowed to initiate the writing. Because we do not trust the Shankaracharyas and other religious leaders. We do not trust the Brahmin leaders. We cannot trust the sadhus and sanyasis who are going naked at the Kumbh Mela. Can we take those people who walk naked as spiritually advanced people?

All these Brahmins in the name of the Kumbh Mela are walking naked before the nation. I am terrified seeing the naked sadhus taking out processions. The sight is inhuman. Is it an enlightened religion? It is these VHP leaders and sadhus who are parading naked who want to take a decision whether the Ram Mandir should be built at the Babri mosque site. This is the greatest tragedy of India.

If you are against everything in Hinduism, how would do you describe the religion?

Hinduism is basically a spiritual fascist cult. It does not give rights to the lower castes. If the Brahmins want us to become Hindus, they should respect our food, culture and language. Why do Hindu leaders say only vegetarianism is divine? Why do Hindu leaders say prayers should be only in Sanskrit? Why can't I pray in Telugu?

Hindutva leader Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi is spending Rs 200 crore to establish Sanskrit schools across the country. Whom will he teach Sanskrit?

Let me tell you the statistics. Nearly 90 per cent of Brahmin students in the country are in English medium convent schools. They are sending their children to Christian schools and at the

same time attacking Christian missionaries. Why should low caste Hindus learn Sanskrit? Having mastered Sanskrit, do we get the rights to control temples?

What then are your struggles for?

Our struggle is to have our own religious rights. When we are not Hindus, don't we have the right to embrace any other religions that gives equality? Why are the Brahmins attacking Christianity and Islam? Because there is a possibility that during this era of globalisation, global religions like Christianity and Islam can firmly establish themselves in India. For spirituality and religion, there are no borders.

BBC News, Net version
Monday, December 28, 1998 Published at 21:30 GMT
World: South Asia

No season of goodwill for India's Christians

Right-wing Hindus protesting at what they see as forced conversions

Christmas in the Indian state of Gujarat has been marked by violent clashes between Hindu extremists and Christians.
Tensions remain high, despite police the western state making a number of arrests following a weekend of violence.
Buildings, including schools, hospitals, and churches were attacked on Christmas Day. In the village of Varki, a Pentecostal church was burned down by what the United Christian Forum for Human Rights (UCFHR) said was a mob of around 70 people from a Hindu extremist organisation.

The Christian community says the attacks are part of a concerted campaign against them which has worsened since the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party came to power in Delhi in March.

However, the leadership of the BJP - which also holds power in the state of Gujarat - has consistently condemned the violence.
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee met Christian leaders earlier this month after they held a nationwide protest.

Wednesday, December 30, 1998 Published at 10:30 GMT

World: South Asia

Delhi investigates attacks on Christians

The Chief Secretary of Gujarat and the Director-General of police have been summoned to appear before India's National Commission for Minorities to explain why the Christian population has not been protected.

"Attacks are continuing despite the presence of police," he said.

The UCFHR says it has recorded more than 60 cases of violence against Christians, including incidents of Bible burning and rape, since January. Most of the attacks are said to have taken place in Gujarat.

The Christian community says the attacks are part of a concerted campaign against them which has worsened since the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party came to power in Delhi in March. However, the leadership of the BJP - which also holds power in the state of GGujarat - has consistently condemned the violence.

The Hindu groups Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) and Bajrang Dal have both denied accusations that they were responsible for the attacks. Both organisations say the violence was provoked by the forcible conversion of Hindus to Christianity. Christian missionaries in turn say their work is to help the poor, and not to force people to adopt Christianity.

The Yale Journal of Criticism 9.1 (1996) 121-145

Discovering India, Imagining Thuggee

Parama Roy

"I am a Thug, my father and grandfather were Thugs, and I have thugged with many. Let the government employ me and I will do its work."

--Confession of the thug Bukhtawar in James Sleeman, Thug, or A Million Murders

"Colonial accounts of thuggee, on the other hand, represent thuggee as outside a realm of political and economic rationality (since it is religiously sanctioned, grounded in caste, and linked to ex-orbitant pleasures). Nonetheless, as the obsessive invocations of the Mutiny of 1857 and of the Bengal revolutionaries of the twentieth century indicate, thuggee was simultaneously addressed (even if not acknowledged) as a peculiarly potent threat to the authority and benevolence of the empire in India. "To the colonial regime," says David Arnold, "crime and politics were almost inseparable: serious crime was an implicit defiance of state authority and a possible prelude to rebellion; political resistance was either a 'crime' or the likely occasion for it."16 Freitag [End Page 125] points to the fundamental distinctions, both in terms of the allocation of resources and of formulating legal procedures, that the Raj made between crimes committed by individuals ("ordinary crime") and those committed by collectivities ("extraordinary crime"): "

"Thus, despite the putative restoration to wholeness, Englishness, and legality of William Savage at the close of the story, the narrative nonetheless opens up a space for investigating the "double and split subject" of the colonial enunciation, for what Bhabha calls -- in the context of the nation's fissured enunciation—"dissemination": "a space that is internally marked by cultural difference and the heterogeneous histories of contending peoples, antagonistic authorities, and tense cultural locations."48 As in the case of so many other Englishmen, Savage will have to turn to Indianness in order to return to or consolidate or improve his English self; in doing so, he will come back as a new and more English Englishman, but he will also, temporarily at least, be transformed into a border subject, changed by his experience of Indianness, surrendering illusions of full agency and Englishness in the crossing of bound aries. Whereas for Kipling's Kim O'Hara, identity formation follows an accretive model, in which the elements (British and Indian) are clearly hierarchized and manipulable, for Savage, identity is the locus of strain and contradiction rather than being expansive or pluralist. That is why Savage can at the end afford to take no prisoners or recruit any approvers from among his erstwhile comrades; the thugs whom he has led and who are now pursuing him must be wiped out in an act of violence that not only precludes the need for approvers but also does away with any witnesses against, and rem(a)inders of, his own thug self."