Saturday, August 28, 2010
By Abdul Zahoor Khan MarwatSometimes one is forced to admit the truth, not that one likes it but that one cannot hide it anymore. This applies to the statement of Indias home minister, who recently admitted that Hindu extremists posed an increasing risk to his countrys national security. Dubbing the threat as saffron terror, PK Chidambaram told an annual meeting of police chiefs in New Delhi that We have recently uncovered a new phenomenon of saffron terror and I ask you to be vigilant.
The cat is finally out of the bag! While the world had been closely tracking Hindu terror groups and their heinous activities, and many people were even publicly saying so, there had been silence and cover-up by the Indian government. It seems that New Delhi now realises that it cannot put the terrorism by Hindu groups under the carpet and as such PK Chidambaram has reluctantly come out in the open.
One does not have to look beyond S M Mushrifs book to learn what has been going on in India. A retired IAS officer and former IGP Maharashtra, Mushrif has spilled the beans.
Some of his observations are:
* The Hindu terror groups carried out activities using people and groups of different expertise and resources. The supporters included some high profile industrialists, politicians, media professionals, historians, academicians, armed forces officers, intelligence operatives and so on.
* True Indian nationalist police officers like Karkare, Salaskar, Kamte, etc, managed to find the real culprits behind the series of bomb blasts done in various places, including, Malegaon, Nanded and Parbhani, by Saffron groups.
* As a result, the terrorists mounted pressure on the Indian government, which turned a blind eye towards their activities.
* Mumbais Anti-Terrorism Squad chief Hemant Karkare was innovatively killed by Saffron brigade on November 28, 2008 when Mumbai was being attacked.
* In the weeks prior to his killing, Karkare had been leading a high-profile investigation into a Hindu-supremacist terrorist network that had mounted bomb attacks with the aim of killing Muslims and stoking communal strife in the country. Karkare had ordered the arrest of 11 Hindu extremists who were responsible for a series of bomb attacks in Malegaon (Maharasthra) and Madosa (Gujarat) on September 29.
* One of the most potentially explosive discoveries was that a serving Indian Army officer, Lt.Col. Srikant Purohit, had procured 60 kg of RDX from government supplies for use in the terrorist attack on the Samjhauta Express in February 2007, killing 68 people, majority of them Pakistanis.
* On November 26, 2008, elements within Indias security establishment deliberately stood down for ulterior political motives.
The list goes on and on.
Mushrif has stated that some 20-25 different journalists from small and large media houses, both print and electronic, interviewed him on 28th October 2009 at his Pune based residence but nothing really appeared the following day.
Nobody really cared to debate or discuss it in public domain, thanks to the kind of pressure the Saffron brigade has created on the media industry, is an indictment of the so-called liberal and democracy loving Indian media. While the Pakistan media has the guts to take up and condemn the militancy by the Taliban, the question is will the Indian media show the same guts and publicly condemn the saffron terrorism?
The Kashmir imbroglio, the Maoist threat, the indigenous Muslim groups, the Mumbai gangsters and now the mounting threat from Hindu terror groups. The foundations of the secular, largest democracy in the world remain on slippery grounds.
The Saffron brigade
By Abdul Zahoor Khan MarwatSometimes one is forced to admit the truth, not that one likes it but that one cannot hide it anymore. This applies to the statement of Indias home minister, who recently admitted that Hindu extremists posed an increasing risk to his countrys national security. Dubbing the threat as saffron terror, PK Chidambaram told an annual meeting of police chiefs in New Delhi that We have recently uncovered a new phenomenon of saffron terror and I ask you to be vigilant.
The cat is finally out of the bag! While the world had been closely tracking Hindu terror groups and their heinous activities, and many people were even publicly saying so, there had been silence and cover-up by the Indian government. It seems that New Delhi now realises that it cannot put the terrorism by Hindu groups under the carpet and as such PK Chidambaram has reluctantly come out in the open.
One does not have to look beyond S M Mushrifs book to learn what has been going on in India. A retired IAS officer and former IGP Maharashtra, Mushrif has spilled the beans.
Some of his observations are:
* The Hindu terror groups carried out activities using people and groups of different expertise and resources. The supporters included some high profile industrialists, politicians, media professionals, historians, academicians, armed forces officers, intelligence operatives and so on.
* True Indian nationalist police officers like Karkare, Salaskar, Kamte, etc, managed to find the real culprits behind the series of bomb blasts done in various places, including, Malegaon, Nanded and Parbhani, by Saffron groups.
* As a result, the terrorists mounted pressure on the Indian government, which turned a blind eye towards their activities.
* Mumbais Anti-Terrorism Squad chief Hemant Karkare was innovatively killed by Saffron brigade on November 28, 2008 when Mumbai was being attacked.
* In the weeks prior to his killing, Karkare had been leading a high-profile investigation into a Hindu-supremacist terrorist network that had mounted bomb attacks with the aim of killing Muslims and stoking communal strife in the country. Karkare had ordered the arrest of 11 Hindu extremists who were responsible for a series of bomb attacks in Malegaon (Maharasthra) and Madosa (Gujarat) on September 29.
* One of the most potentially explosive discoveries was that a serving Indian Army officer, Lt.Col. Srikant Purohit, had procured 60 kg of RDX from government supplies for use in the terrorist attack on the Samjhauta Express in February 2007, killing 68 people, majority of them Pakistanis.
* On November 26, 2008, elements within Indias security establishment deliberately stood down for ulterior political motives.
The list goes on and on.
Mushrif has stated that some 20-25 different journalists from small and large media houses, both print and electronic, interviewed him on 28th October 2009 at his Pune based residence but nothing really appeared the following day.
Nobody really cared to debate or discuss it in public domain, thanks to the kind of pressure the Saffron brigade has created on the media industry, is an indictment of the so-called liberal and democracy loving Indian media. While the Pakistan media has the guts to take up and condemn the militancy by the Taliban, the question is will the Indian media show the same guts and publicly condemn the saffron terrorism?
The Kashmir imbroglio, the Maoist threat, the indigenous Muslim groups, the Mumbai gangsters and now the mounting threat from Hindu terror groups. The foundations of the secular, largest democracy in the world remain on slippery grounds.
The Saffron brigade
