3 Historical Events That Shaped Hindutva’s Politics in India
With violence as a political tool to strengthen its anti-Muslim ideology, Hindutva’s sheer inhumanity in the past played a prominent role in shaping today’s Indian politics. There are events in Indian history that were ominous for the future of democracy and secularism in the country. Though it would be difficult if not impossible to abridge the entire series of horrifying events that paved the path for Hindutva to reach the Indian throne, a glimpse of a couple of such events should be ample to reflect the kind of politics BJP and RSS had practiced in the past, making it easy to predict the future of India in the hands of such terrorists.
1992 Demolition of the Babri Masjid
A centuries-old conflict between Hindus and Muslims in the ancient city of Ayodhya over a piece of land; a sacred site claimed by both compromised by none, the Babri Masjid. 30 years since the mosque was demolished and still, it has had a profound influence on Indian politics. A 4-minute report produced by Wall Street Journal: Ayodhya: The Battle for India’s Soul comprehends this dispute very well.
Babri Masjid was located in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, India. It was a Mughal-era mosque named after the Mughal emperor Babur, built, in 1528–29. The mosque was built at the spot believed by the Hindus, as the birthplace of the Hindu deity Rama after the demolition of the pre-existing temple of Rama at the hill known as Ramkot. For that reason, the Hindus believe that this site belongs to Hindus, and Muslims on the other hand consider it a historical holy site that should be restored to its original state, this dual fixation of both sides has made the situation worse.
In 1949 after the independence, idols of Rama were placed inside the mosque by Hindu activists, resulting in the closing of the site to both communities to avoid violent confrontation. This tug of war continued in the following decades as both sides demanded access to the site in a series of legal battles. In the 1980s the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP)and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) began a campaign for the construction of a temple dedicated to Rama at the site by demolishing the mosque which for them is a symbol of slavery. On Sept 24, 1990, BJP president L K Advani started gathering support to build the temple and amid decades of tensions over the site ultimately Babri Masjid was destroyed on Dec 6, 1992.
This incident itself was tragic for Muslims so were the deaths of Muslims at the hands of Hindu extremists but the real tragedy lies deeper. Despite the fact that Muslims were immune to communal venom from the very beginning, this time was different as this venom reached the doorstep of Hindu-Muslim neighborhoods, with the demolition of the Babri mosque the wind of fear and hatred had torn open a rift that only became wider with every passing minute.
Throughout the crisis police were silent Spectators, they could have intervened to save the lives and properties of Muslims but they were obligated not to. This solidifies the claims that the government aided BJP in this. This incident triggered communal riots across India killing 2,000 mostly Muslims.
After a series of court battles in the following decades, India’s Supreme Court, on 9 November 2019 awarded a victory to the BJP and on the 5th of August 2020, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for a Hindu temple in the city of Ayodhya. The court also ordered to give the 5 acres another hand for the purpose of building a mosque as a replacement for the demolished Babri Masjid which Muslims had to accept without any further objections. All 32 accused of the Babri masjid attack were acquitted of conspiracy charges including BJP leaders LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, and Uma Bharti, a momentous victory for Hindutva.
2002 Gujarat Riot
The most horrifying Hindu-Muslim violence since the 1994 partition was the 2002 Gujarat riot, the first full-blooded pogrom in independent India. A train was burned down in Godhra on 27 February 2002, resulting in the deaths of 58 Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya, it was initially reported as a deliberate act perpetrated by Muslim extremists aimed to harm the Hindu pilgrims on the train. The media was used to give a distorted view of the situation and to instill a sense of fear and hatred, that instigated deadly violence in the history of India.
BJP used all the state machinery to plan organized terrorism in the name of revenge and justice. Following the incident, there were a series of riot incidents, with further outbreaks of violence countrywide, that continued for one year. Gujarat became the theatre of anti-Muslim mass violence that affected over a hundred towns and around a hundred villages; a pogrom against Muslims of India, claimed approximately 2,000 Muslim lives, including women and children, and the figure of missing persons — those whose bodies were never found went unreported if not unnoticed. The sexual violence perpetrated against Muslim women and girls was monstrous and horrific.
It was strange yet ironic to claim that 1,000 to 2,000 Muslims gathered and torched a train and planned all of it under BJP's nose and they just let that happen. But there was more to it…U C Banerjee, a retired judge and the head of the inquiry commission on the 2002 Godhra train attack submitted his probe report which concluded in 2005 that the fire in the railroad car that killed 59 in Godhra in 2002 was accidental and not premeditated. the evidence clearly shows the burns sustained by victims were towards the lower portion of the body indicating that the fire had started from within and was not because of any fire bombs thrown from outside. So, it was once again a Hindutva conspiracy against the Muslims to justify the riots as revenge and justice.
The chief of Vishwa Hindu Parishad encouraged the mass murder of Muslims and said that it was: “the first positive response of the Hindus to Muslim fundamentalism in 1,000 years.”
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh passed a controversial resolution that said: “Let the Muslims understand that their real safety lies in the goodwill of the majority… winning goodwill means respecting, tolerating, and cooperating with the majority community” (the Indian Express, March 18, 2002).
Some leading Indian newspapers also suggested that the state government and law enforcement were complicit in the violence that occurred after the Godhra attack as there were no such actions taken by the state to stop it.
In the interview that appeared in the Malayalam monthly Manava Samskriti, Former President K R Narayanan accused the BJP government of the Gujarat riot:
“There was governmental and administrative support for the communal riots in Gujarat. I gave several letters to Prime Minister Vajpayee in this regard on this issue. I met him personally and talked to him directly. But Vajpayee did not do anything effective. I requested him to send the army to Gujarat and suppress the riots. The Centre had the Constitutional responsibility and powers to send the military if the state governments asked. The military was sent, but they were not given powers to shoot. If the military was given powers to shoot at the perpetrators of violence, recurrence of tragedies in Gujarat could have been avoided. However, both the state and central government did not do so. I feel there was a conspiracy involving the state and central governments behind the Gujarat riots.”
In the following years, there was a series of actions taken in order to shape circumstances according to the BJP's political will. A detailed report on the Gujarat massacre by Human Rights Watch “India: A Decade on, Gujarat Justice Incomplete” spells out numerous shocking revelations regarding the riots. Policemen and judges who cooperated with the Godhra attack and during the Gujrat riots were promoted, those who did not were sidelined, and evidence related to the incident was destroyed. Victims were forced to withdraw their complaints, bribery and intimidation tactics were used on the witnesses to change statements, and those who were accused were acquitted and yet again the breeze of victory fluttered the flags of Hindutva.
2007 Samjhauta Express Bombings
It was on the night of 18 February 2007, a bomb blast tore up two carriages of the Samjhauta Express, near Panipat in Haryana, killing 68 mostly Muslims including 42 Pakistani citizens. The Samjhauta Express train service between India and Pakistan also called the Friendship Express, was started in 1994 as a goodwill initiative to help to reconnect the families separated by the 1947 India-Pakistan partition. This cross-border train service connects Delhi with Lahore.
One unexploded incendiary device was recovered from the site and packed in a suitcase. On dismantling the device police started searching for the origin of every item of the bomb upon following the trail left behind, and the investigation team came across information regarding the purchase and assembling of the incendiary device. The parts of the bomb (all of them ) were bought from within Indian territory specifically from Indore and none of them was neither smuggled nor bought from Pakistan or elsewhere.
In the course of investigations, it was found that the parts were purchased by people linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its associate groups. A man named Sunil Joshi along with two of his accomplices in Indore was considered complicit in the bombing but before the team could reach him he was murdered leaving his other two accomplices missing. The Former SIT head Vikash Narain Rai who was the lead investigator of the 2007 bombing, said in an interview that there was enough evidence to prove the involvement of Hindutva extremists in the horrible incident. BJP and RSS dismiss the ‘Hindutva angle’ in the Samjhauta case calling it Congress-party propaganda and trying to divert the attention towards Pakistan.
There was no further headway until the 2008 Malegaon bombings, ATS investigation revealed that several of the accused may have been involved in other acts of terrorism including the Modasa blast in Gujarat in 2008, the Malegaon blast of 2006, the Mecca Masjid Blast in Hyderabad in 2007, the Ajmer Sharif explosions (2007). a similar pattern, the same devices, and the same method was used in all these and the Samjhauta Express bombing. Hemant Karkare, Maharashtra’s anti-terrorism squad chief, had picked up some very vital clues but before he could share any information he was killed in the Mumbai attack in 2008.
In 2010 a special National Investigation Agency (NIA) took over the case, NIA investigation held Swami Aseemanand, alias Naba Kumar Das, a former member of the Hindu nationalist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), responsible for the attack submitting ample proof of him being the alleged mastermind in the conspiracy. A special court in Haryana, India on March 20, 2019, acquitted four Hindutva terrorists; Swami Aseemanand, Kamal Chauhan, Rajinder Chaudhary, and Lokesh Sharma accused of the Samjhauta Express bombing because of a lack of evidence. As per the ruling cited. “Prosecution has failed to prove the case so the court acquitted all of them.”.
Samjhauta Express bombing proved the growing influence that BJP had on Indian politics and its lawlessness that is eating the Indian secular edifice from the inside swiftly.
