The Myth of Hindu Terror

Title: The Myth of Hindu Terror – Insider Account of Ministry of Home Affairs 2006-2010

Author: R V S Mani

Publisher: Vitasta Publishing, 2019 (First published 2018)

ISBN: 9789386473271

Pages: 219

 

There were a series of terrorist attacks and bomb explosions in India in the first decade of the 2000s. Several cities were traumatized by unexpected loss of life and property of its residents. Islamic militancy was at the root of all of them, but the ruling UPA government accused some fringe Hindu groups of carrying out some of the attacks like Malegaon, Samjhauta Express and Ajmer Sharif. The rallying cry of the secularist caucus was that terrorism has no religion and this could get some sustainability among people if it could be proved that Hindu groups are no better in carrying out bomb blasts that indiscriminately killed innocent people. This book is written by R V S Mani, who worked in the Ministry of Home Affairs during 2006-2010. He alleges that two home ministers who were in charge during the period – Shivraj Patil and P. Chidambaram – colluded with politicians and some senior police officials to coin the term ‘Hindu terror’. I read this book hoping to get some details on how the government found the members of little known Hindu organisations and charged them with terrorism in order to provide a counter narrative to Islamic terror. What I could see here was a paranoid author who believes that the whole world is conspiring against him. Apart from narrating some inside-office hype typical of government establishments, readers find nothing of value in these pages. This is just a personal service story of the author.

 

Mani remarks that an endemic rot had set in during 2004-2013 in India’s governance space. This is also the period when the government was run by the UPA and headed by Manmohan Singh of the Congress. This alliance believed in appeasement of organized vote banks by going slow on matters which affected a particular community. The author observes that no cause can justify terrorism, but still, there are political and non-political groups in India standing up for justifying terror acts and seek pardon for its perpetrators. These groups forced the Indian Supreme Court to convene in the dead of night preceding a terror-convict’s execution in the early morning, for reconsidering his review petition to annul the death penalty. Terror has very powerful accomplices in India.

 

The terror attack that rattled Mumbai in November 2008 which killed 175 people in several incidents of indiscriminate gunfire on passersby using lethal automatic weapons, also shook the nation to its core. The author suggests Pakistan government’s collusion at the highest levels. Home Secretary-level talks between the two countries were progressing in Islamabad the day prior to the incident. The Indian delegation, which included the top brass of its Home department, was forced to extend their stay by one more day on feeble grounds. The top officials were taken to Murree, a mountain resort where communication facilities were poor. This book argues that on the day of the Mumbai attack, senior security officials of the Indian administration were buttonholed in Murree by a clever strategy played out by Pakistan. The incompetence of the then home minister Shivraj Patil also put obstacles in the path of security agencies in putting up a fight. Patil wanted to accompany the highly trained NSG commandos flying to Mumbai on the night of 26/11, then went incommunicado for several hours. Permission to deploy locally available armed forces in the meantime was also delayed. Mani concludes that the intervention from some top office in the country had rendered the security forces ineffective, in spite of their proven capabilities.

 

The book explains the heinous acts of P. Chidambaram, who followed Patil as home minister in the aftermath of 26/11. Chidambaram stepped into the office with the single agenda of institutionalizing the idea of Hindu terror, even at the risk of the real perpetrators going scot-free. He is said to be ‘overbearing, all-pervading, all-powerful with an illusory sense of having monopoly over wisdom’ (p.104). The investigation agency NIA was formed in 2009 in the wake of Mumbai attacks. The first two Directors General of the agency was handpicked by Chidambaram, overlooking the selection process already initiated. The investigative history of NIA through 2009-10 was all about introducing a new, non-existent ‘Hindu terrorism’ concept. In every case assigned to the NIA – from the Samjhauta Express blasts, Malegaon and Ajmer Sharif – they overlooked the first set of evidence and replaced it with evidences supporting the Hindu terror narrative.

 

The book has failed in its primary objective to explain how innocent people were framed under the new target set by political bosses. It also keeps silent on the investigation into these incidents. What we see here is a continuous rant on how others victimized the author in an official capacity. He also suggests that he was targeted for kidnapping to force the government’s hand on Ajmal Kasab’s detention – the lone terrorist captured alive in the Mumbai attacks. Kasab had tied a red consecrated string similar to Hindu tradition on his right wrist and had in his pocket forged identification papers declaring him to be a Hindu. If he was killed in the attack – as was his intention - the agencies would have recovered these artifacts and come to the conclusion that he was a Hindu, thereby buttressing UPA’s Hindu terror initiative. This crucial information is not at all mentioned in the book. You can find it in Rakesh Maria’s remarkable memoir, ‘Let Me Say It Now’. Instead, this book contains references to imagined instances of stalking, especially when the author was driving a vehicle. It also depicts Hemant Karkare, the chief of Maharashtra ATS who was killed in the Mumbai attacks, as one of the persons behind initiating the campaign on Hindu terror.

 

Even though generally of little use to the reader, it narrates a few anecdotes which illustrate the ‘don’t care’ mindset of the then government towards terrorism. India’s permanent representative to the UN asked for evidence on Dawood Ibrahim to produce at the UN in 2009 to proscribe his activities, but the CBI did not furnish the data. He also states that contrary to the claims by UPA politicians that many surgical strikes against Pakistan on border areas were carried out in 2006-10, there was no information in the Home ministry regarding these strikes and the claims are false.

 

This book does not evince any interest from the reader. It is more in the form of a service memoir in which there was many scores to settle. It lacks a coherent structure and the narration is haphazard. It also contains verbatim transcripts of affidavits submitted in court, parliamentary debates and dossiers given to Pakistan to prove their culpability in terrorist acts on Indian soil.

 

The book is not recommended.

 

Rating: 2 Star