New Delhi,January 29:The Congress and Left parties in the capital on Friday backed demands by non-governmental organisations to release a “white paper” on the number of Muslim youth arrested and detained on charges of terrorism over the past few years. These demands were made as families of the victims gathered at a day-long national meet organised by NGO Anhad and related chilling stories of detention, arrests, torture, trial by media and the callous behaviour of the Indian judiciary.
A report released by senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh and Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury at the meet has charged the “communal” bureaucracy and security agencies of launching a witch hunt against Muslim youth and ignoring leads pointing towards Hindutva groups.
“The agencies showed their abject bias and chose to pursue the beaten track of investigating Islamic terrorist organizations – with the sole exception of Maharashtra ATS (Anti-terrorism Squad) chief Hemant Karkare,” the report added.
Singh accused Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stalwart LK Advani of sowing roots of terrorism in the North Indian states of Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar by launching his so-called rath yatra in 1992. He yet again questioned the Batla House encounter in the capital and cautioned against pushing Muslim youth against the wall.
Singh further appealed to the media and intellectuals not to use terms like “saffron terror” and instead use “Sangh terror” to describe acts of terrorism by right-wing organisations. Desisting from demanding a ban on Hindu groups like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Vishwa Hindu Parishad or Bajrang Dal, Singh said one should fight these groups ideologically by creating public awareness. “Banning these groups will not help. They will come up with new names. The time has come to fight them ideologically,” he said.
Singh further targeted RSS-affiliated educational institutions – Sarswati Shishu Mandirs – describing them as breeding grounds of “Sangh terror.” He also demanded a probe into the funding of these groups and their affiliated institutions. “A probe into their international funding is also necessary,” he said.
Referring to the recent BJP’s Ekta Yatra, the Congress leader said: “They want to hoist a flag wherever there is a conflict. We should oppose this.”
Talking on the two-nation theory, which was the basis for the partition of India and creation of Pakistan, Singh said, “The father of the two-nation theory was not Mohammed Ali Jinnah but Hindutva ideologue Veer Savarkar (the founder of the Hindu Mahasabha).” Supporting the statement, the CPI(M)’s Yechury said, “The ideology of the Sangh parivar needs to change. We will take up the issue in Parliament. Diggy (Singh) rightly said that the two-nation theory was given by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.”
Yechury said there was an urgent need to change the mindset that terrorism is associated with people of only one community, and promised to raise the issue of innocent persons targeted in terror-related investigations in Parliament. He said his party will fight on behalf of those who have been unfairly targeted.
Besides Savarkar, Yechury also cited the ideology of BS Moonje, who is considered a mentor to RSS founder KB Hedgewar. Yechury pointed out that Moonje had noted in his diary that he wanted to meet Italian dictator Mussolini, and that after meeting him he established the Central Hindu Military Education Society in 1935. “This was the place where people like Colonel Shrikant Purohit were trained,” Yechury said.
The national meet demanded compensation and rehabilitation of victims and a thorough investigation by a single agency into the network of Hindutva terrorists and all blast cases of the past two decades. It demanded action against police officers engaged in torture and illegal detentions. It also expressed concern at the edicts issued by various bar associations against lawyers contesting cases in which Muslim youth are accused of terror activities.
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