The Saffron Terror: A threat to National Integration

One shouldn't be surprised over saffron terror on "beef". A deadly pattern with a common motive from Uttar Pradesh Dadri to a remote  Paccchad in Himachal Pradesh. is quite discernible. Everywhere, from Kashmir to Karntaka, saffron terror is  more conspicuous after Modi govt came to power at Delhi. As feared, it was bound to surface.  Saffron party leaders are doctrined in neologism- the acts of violence motivated by Hindu nationalism.  Its a "theocratic" state of mind  to reinforce the Hindutva on non-Hindus in India.  The acts are  perpetrated by members of  right-wig Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Abhinav Bharat. The term comes from the symbolic use made of the saffron color by the Hindu nationalist organisations They want to rule India by terrorizing citizens to accept "saffron agenda'. As such, they pride themselves speaking against Muslims for advocating Hindutva.  Sadly, for saffron leaders Hindutva means observing such petty things like cow protection, building Ram Temple, conversion of  minorities into Hindu religion and so on. Not surprisingly, the other day  Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar Hindutva spoke loudly advising Muslims to shun beef eating if they wanted to live in India unmindful of his allegiance to constitution of India that bars constitutional posts from invoking communal utterances.  The first known  "Saffron Terror"  was seen  in the  aftermath of  September 2008 Malegoan bomb blast in the predominantly Muslim town of Maharashtra. Police arrested members of a Hindu terrorist cell allegedly involved in Malegaon blast. As early as August 2010,  the then Home  Minister, P. Chidambaram had warned of "Saffron terror".  Since then, it has been surfacing  nakedly across the country. The recent killing of a leading liberal writer in Karnatka and subsequent threats to some others are the blatant manifestation of saffron terror. The lynching of a Muslim in Dadri for alleged beef eating and another man in Himachal for cow smuggling are also the manifestation  of same design. The lack of institutional resistance has helped saffron terror  to spread unabated. In a raft of terror cases that emerged in the 2000s and implicated Hindu extremists, state responses followed a familiar pattern, of denial, cover-up and delay. As they swung into action after each blast, state agencies seemed to operate on the assumption that terror, by definition, has a Muslim face, is propelled by jihadist agendas and must be “anti-national”. Malegaon, 2006, Samjhauta Express, 2007, Mecca Masjid, 2007, Ajmer Sharif, 2007, and again Malegaon, 2008, all tell the same story ‒ Muslims rounded up and arrested in a reflex reaction, fingers pointed at terror outfits like the Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, and then the appearance of an amended list of suspects, mostly Hindu.  Rohini Salian, special public prosecutor in the 2008 Malegaon blast case, was reported as saying soon after the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government came to power last year, she was instructed by the National Investigation Agency to “go soft” on Hindu extremists accused in the case. This month, just as the case was to come up for a regular hearing before the Supreme Court, she was reportedly told another advocate would appear for the proceedings. The message, Salian says, was that state agencies did not want “favourable orders”. Investigation and prosecution both are short of commitment.  Moreover,  police force and intelligence agencies  have few Muslim personnel. In the 2006 blast in Nanded, which killed two people suspected of making bombs for a Hindutva terror network, the Central Bureau of Investigations diluted the charges, initially framed under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, and the terror trail went cold as initial leads were allegedly not followed up  .Apparantly,  law enforcement agencies take political briefings  when dealing with saffron terror. And politically, there has been a curious reticence about it, starting with a refusal to recognise the phenomenon at all. It was not until 2008, when the Maharashtra anti-terrorism squad chief, the late Hemant Karkare, launched investigations in the Malegaon blast case, that “saffron terror” became part of an accepted lexicon. Political reactions to Hindutva ranged from ambivalence to denial even in the past.  Now that saffron govt led by RSS pracharak Narendra Modi rules the nation, reticence over saffron terror is more discernible. If not let saffron party sack the likes of Khattar, Mahesh Sharma.