That Old Psychotic Path

The ‘us’ versus ‘them’ line is strikingly evident in an editorial in the January 23 issue of Organiser, the RSS mouthpiece: “More intriguing is that only the persons named in alleged Hindu radicalism seem to be making ‘confessions’. We have not heard of a Kasab, Afzal or (S.A.R.) Geelani or such other jehadi terrorists making any confession. Are they so tight-lipped or do their confessions not make headlines?” Leave aside the fallacy of “if person X didn’t confess in a certain case, then person B’s confession in another case is not to be trusted”, the piece seems to imply that it was more important for the investigating agencies to have made Kasab and Guru and Geelani confess, rather than gather evidence that stood scrutiny in court. It’s another matter that Kasab and Guru have been convicted and Geelani acquitted in the cases they were charged in. And since neither the investigators nor the Sangh parivar have ever accused these persons of involvement in the Malegaon, Ajmer or Hyderabad cases, in which Swami Aseemanand has confessed involvement, why drag them in at all?

What the editorial certainly does not address is matters germane to the issue. It does not analyse the correctness or otherwise of the swami’s confession, made before a magistrate. If it was seeking to build a defence for the swami, the editorial could have discussed the utter confusion that now surrounds the blasts cases.

Caught on the wrong foot, the Sangh parivar has chosen to go for a political and ideological counterattack rather than a rational and reasonable defence in the public discourse, one that the swami, or any suspect for that matter, is anyway entitled to in a court of law. It’s a counterattack carefully modulated to sharpen and feed on existing communal faultlines in our society, treading the beaten Hindutva path of nurturing a siege mentality and fear psychosis vis-a-vis the Muslim ‘other’, profiled as a dreaded terrorist.

With the earlier arrests of Lt Col Shrikant Purohit, Dayanand Pandey and Pragya Singh Thakur for bomb attacks in the service of the Hindutva ideology, the Sangh parivar found its “all Muslims are not terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims” myth punctured. But it could still claim these were either fringe elements, not directly associated with the RSS or its affiliate bodies, or ones that had left the Sangh parivar to pursue their own maniacal vision.

However, with investigating agencies pointing at, one by one, several persons linked closely with the Sangh parivar for involvement in four bomb blasts that killed many innocents and for which several Muslims had been arrested and tortured, the RSS had no go but to launch this blitzkrieg of obfuscation. None of its ‘secularist’ opponents had ever suggested that the aam Hindu was a terrorist, but the RSS had to bring in that reference to buttress its ‘victim Hindu’ plank—as if disowning the fringe elements or saying they’d left the parivar wasn’t enough.

Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS chief, himself thought it fit to emphasise the point in his Dussehra address: “‘Hindu terror’ is an oxymoron, and the two terms can never be related to each other. This was an attempt to weaken the strength of Hindus in India and at the same time appease the Muslims.” This is a dogmatic claim of moral superiority for Hindus,  as opposed to people of other faiths. Dovetailed as it is with the ‘Muslim appeasement’ line, it harks back to the sloganeering of the Ayodhya agitation days. It is a well-thought-out line, aimed at reviving the Ayodhya issue, to which the Allahabad High Court verdict has opened a window.

While it is for the courts to decide whether the swami and the others are guilty or not of acts of terror, the Sangh parivar would be better advised to marshal their defence in the public discourse using logic and the facts of the case rather than lay itself open to the charge of divisive, communal mobilisation. Old habits die hard.