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Created: March 30, 2003
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Backup of South Asia on the edge: communal violence and nuclear stand-off
By Murad Banaji
SOURCE: Murad Banaji, Postdoctoral Research Fellow University College London Department of Medical Physics
Copyright: Murad Banaji's Home Page for copyright info.
Included here under Fair Use Doctrine for teaching purposes.

South Asia on the edge: communal violence and nuclear stand-off Murad Banaji, Feb. 2003.

The context

Frightening events are occuring in South Asia. Two apparently unrelated events stand out - the recent violence directed against Muslims in Gujarat, and the subsequent nuclear stand-off between India and Pakistan. As so often happens these events briefly hit the headlines abroad and then went away, as though calm and normality had returned.

But these events were not unrelated, and calm and normality have not returned. The underlying dynamics continue, and what happens next is very unpredictable. It is safe to say that if the situation is left alone the worst is yet to come.

We look primarily at what is possibly the most significant development in South Asia in recent years - the rise of the Hindu Nationalist movement in India. We examine a little of the history of this movement, what it stands for and how it operates. Domestic and regional politics have a close and complicated relationship, and it is impossible to look at the rise of the Hindu right without some attempt to look at the construction of nationalism in India more generally. In this light, we also touch on conflict between India and Pakistan, and the question of Kashmir.

Where the recent story begins - the destruction of a Mosque

Communal violence - violence between communitites - has a long history in India, pre-dating independence and partition. Sometimes, as during partition, the violence has been unimaginably extreme. And even in periods of relative peace communalism has always been an underlying current in Indian society. What sometimes erupts into dramatic violence more often presents itself in segregation, a refusal to intermarry, jokes, abuse, minor tensions... A very brief history of communalism in India is presented in Box 1 .

Despite its long history, the last fifteen or so years of communal violence are different. This difference came to the fore via dramatic events in 1992. In the mid 80s an organisation called the VHP orchestrated a movement to destroy a 16th century mosque called the Babri Masjid in the north Indian town of Ayodhya. Their claim was that the mosque was built upon the birthplace of Ram - an incarnation of a Hindu God - and that a Hindu temple had been demolished to build the mosque. It is widely accepted by academics, including the Archaelogical Survey of India, that there is little historical evidence for this (14). "Pilgrims" known as kar sevaks periodically converged on Ayodhya in ever greater numbers with the purpose of destroying the mosque, but were held at bay by the state government. The battle to stop the kar sevaks assumed symbolic meaning - religious minorities and secular people felt the impending storm.

On December 6th 1992 secular forces failed. A huge mob of kar sevaks tore down the Babri Masjid. There followed the outbreak of massive communal rioting throughout India, as far away as Bombay, which left thousands dead.

Hindu Nationalism comes into its own

The destruction of the Babri Masjid had a symbolic significance which outweighed even the carnage that followed. A movement which had started with a small terrorist sect in the 1920s had finally come of age.

In 1925 a group of men with an admiration for fascist movements in Europe and a vision of India as a Hindu Nation formed an organisation called the RSS. Initially it was primarily a marginal terrorist organisation, and achieved greatest fame with its assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948. However over the next decades it gave birth to other organisations - its political wing, the Jan Sangh in 1951, later to be called the BJP, and its "religious" wing, the VHP in 1964. The "family" grew. Grandchildren were born, such as the Bajrang Dal - a violent militia created by the VHP with the distinction of being involved in almost all communal riots in India. Apart from growing by new births, the family also grew by marriage. Most famously the overtly fascist regionalist party, the Shiv Sena joined forces with the BJP and became an honorary member of the family.

Today this huge and often confusing family is aptly known as the "Sangh Parivar" - the joint family. It boasts the membership of many of India's top politicians, including the prime minister, the deputy prime minister and the chief minister of Gujarat - Narendra Modi - all of whom are members of both the BJP and the RSS. More details on the Sangh Parivar are presented in Box 2.

Gujarat

Although Ayodhya is in the north Indian state of UP, after the destruction of the Babri Masjid, violence broke out across the country. Gujarat was badly hit. It is one of India's apparent contradictions that Gujarat is one of her most urbanised and industrialised states, and is yet consistently hit hard by communal rioting. Traditionally Gujarati Muslims have spoken Gujarati, lived in mixed neighbourhoods and generally been a well-integrated community. Mixed communities can sometimes form an antidote to violence - the daily streetcorner interactions, the friendships which develop. But the violence that raged in 1992 and early 1993 caused some significant demographic shifts in Ahmedabad, and led to certain areas becoming "Hindu" or "Muslim" areas. The cycle of communal violence leading to increased segregation and mistrust between communities, which in turn facilitates future communal violence, is common in the history of riots in India.

After Babri Masjid, the Sangh Parivar became firmly established in Indian politics. In 1995 the BJP scored significant electoral successes as a result of the highly polarised atmosphere. They have controlled Gujarat ever since. The principle that communal violence brings votes had become firmly entrenched in Indian political culture. Some argued that the electoral success of the BJP would "domesticate" them, force them to be less extreme. It is indeed true that where the BJP was forced to enter into electoral alliances with other parties it had to moderate its program. But those who thought this was in some way a fundamental civilising influence of electoral politics got it very wrong. They missed the point that the party was working in tandem with a family of deeply ideological non-governmental organisations, which had none of the constraints that being involved in electoral politics brings. Events in Gujarat would illustrate this in full colour.

The burning of the Sabarmati

The territory on which the Babri Masjid had stood is now under dispute, but the campaign to build a temple on the site where the mosque once stood continues. Periodically kar sevaks are mobilised and travel to Ayodhya. In February 2002 there was one such large mobilisation.

On February 27th a train called the Sabarmati Express was journeying through Gujarat, carrying ordinary passengers, but also about 1700 kar sevaks returning from one such trip to Ayodhya. At 7:43 a.m. the train pulled into a station called Godhra. At the station there were several incidents of confrontation between the kar sevaks and local Muslims. An old Muslim vendor was harassed, and failed attempts were made to drag a teenage Muslim girl inside one of the coaches - coach S6. These events are well documented.

Accepting the provocation to the local community is not to deny the horror of what followed. The incorrect rumour that a Muslim girl had been abducted spread through the local settlement - a poor Muslim area. A mob of about 2000 gathered and started hurling stones and fire bombs at the train. The main target of the attack was coach S6 which was badly burnt. 26 women, 12 children and 20 men died. There must have been about 150 people in the compartment, and presumably the most able-bodied fled. When the police first arrived, surprisingly, no warning shots were fired to disperse the crowd. By the time the District Superintendent of Police arrived at 8:30 a.m. the mob had dispersed.

The aftermath of the Sabarmati

After this horrific event, sporadic violence broke out, but widespread violence did not break out immediately. Muslim leaders were quick to condemn the burning of the Sabarmati. Moreover there was no evidence that it had been pre-planned. Although the situation was tense, it was not a foregone conclusion that violence would engulf the state. However, on Feb. 28th, the VHP called a statewide "bandh" - a general strike - with the support of the BJP in Gujarat, although this is illegal under Indian law. The bandh was central to what followed, changing a local incident into a state-wide one, and causing violence to spread to the capital, Ahmedabad, and then on throughout the state.

The bandh was used as cover for fascist groups to regroup and organise. On the 28th and following days a highly systematic attack was carried out against the Muslim community. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) Interim Report states that there were "widespread reports and allegations of groups of well-organized persons, armed with mobile telephones and addresses, singling out certain homes and properties for death and destruction in certain districts." (3) The existence of such lists of addresses is not denied by the VHP chairman in Gujarat, Prof. Shastri. What struck every impartial observer was precisely the non-spontaneity of the riots (17). Even predominantly Muslim areas where the community attempted to defend itself were badly hit. Aided by the police mobs came from outside, burned, killed and raped.

The toll of the violence

The violence was so extreme and disturbing that it cannot be described. One has to go to the subsequent reports to get a feel for the scale of human suffering that was caused. Muslims, from babies to the very old, were slaughtered. Women and young girls were usually raped before being killed. Prominent people were not spared - a former member of Parliament, Ehsaan Jaffrey was publicly tortured before being killed. Violence only started to abate by March the 3rd with the arrival of the army.

The toll of those killed is estimated to be about 2000 and those still living in refugee camps is probably over 100,000. The total economic losses sustained by the victims are estimated at 38 billion rupees, or over half a billion pounds sterling (1). In a poor country, the magnitude of this figure is hard to comprehend. Total government compensation paid out some months later stood at less than 100 million rupees, or less than a third of a per cent of the total losses. The economic feature of the attack has its own importance - the parties of the Hindu Nationalist right call for an economic boycott of Muslim businesses because, as stated in one VHP leaflet "It will break their backbone!" The text of one VHP leaflet is presented in Box 3 (3).

Amidst the violence there were also incidents of great courage and kindness. Some Hindu families attempted to protect or shelter their Muslim neighbours and were themselves targetted. There were incidents of Dalit families who gave protection to Muslim families and were subsequently driven out of their villages.

The "family" and the state

A consistent feature of most survivors' accounts is the presence of local VHP and Bajrang Dal leaders heading the rioters. In one of the worst attacks - on a Muslim area of Ahmedabad called Naroda Patiya - residents identified five BJP/VHP workers, as having murdered and raped before their eyes. (4). As one women's team (2) put it, "In testimony after testimony, people identified by name members of the Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad involved in inciting and committing violence".

This involvement was no secret. The Chairman of the Gujarat unit of the VHP stated on tape: "The VHP has formed a panel of 50 lawyers to help release the arrested people accused of rioting and looting. None of the lawyers will charge any fees because they believe in the RSS ideology." (3)

Often there was active police participation in the attacks. In one place, survivors reported that a police sub-inspector distributed petrol from his vehicle to the mobs to burn down houses. (1). In another one of the worst instances of violence, the State Reserve Police not only refused the fleeing Muslims shelter, but fired tear gas at them, forcing them towards the waiting mobs (3).

There was a crucial interplay between the fact that the Sangh Parivar controlled not only the mobs, but also held state power. A small minority of police officers attempted to do their duty and protect the Muslim community. On March 24, the Gujarat administration transferred 27 police officers in the State. Those transferred were those who took a stand against the mobs. An incident which sums up the trend is when one senior police officer, Vivek Srivastava was transferred because he arrested three Sangh Parivar activists (two from the VHP and one belonging to the Shiv Sena) for attacking the priest of a shrine. Srivastava received a call from the state home minister (a BJP and VHP man) asking him to drop the charges. When he did not comply he was transferred. (3).

The structure of the Sangh Parivar means that it will always be hard to prove conclusively the direct involvement of the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi. It is telling that many of the mobs shouted "Narendra Modi Zindabad" (Long live Narendra Modi) as they killed and mutilated. There is evidence that during the violence some ministers were sitting in the police control rooms (1). After the violence, Modi repeatedly referred to the what had happened as a "reaction" to Godhra and quoted Newton's third law of motion. He also stated that the people of Gujarat had been remarkably restrained in their response.

Recent elections

This disturbing pre-planned pogrom shocked many people across India. Human rights groups from every corner travelled to Gujarat to aid with the relief work and document the testimonies of the survivors. It is because of this documentation that today there is so much evidence of pre-planning (8).

In December 2002, as the state was still reeling from the violence, the BJP won the state elections with a majority increased by 5%. Its vote was highest in those parts of Gujarat where the post-Godhra violence was greatest.

Understanding how this is possible requires a little look at some of the background. The main conclusion must be that the shock and disgust the actions of the Sangh Parivar inspired in many, was not enough to counter the benefits they reaped from the increased political polarisation.

Constructing India as a Hindu Nation

Over the past years, the Muslim community in India has been demonised in both subtle and overt ways. Box 3 below presents a typical example of this. There Hindu right is obsessed with sexuality and power, obsessions which manifested themselves in most gruesome form during the riots via both the systematic attacks on Muslim women and the widespread - and false - stories circulating that Hindu women were being abducted and raped by Muslim men (31), (2).

The second key obsession is with "nation". It is telling that immediately after the burning of the Sabarmati the deputy prime minister LK Advani said that the event was Pakistani-inspired, in the absence of any evidence. Although some claimed that this was to divert blame away from the local Muslim community, the record of the Sangh Parivar, and Advani in particular, shows that the fundamental motivations are quite the opposite - to call the nationality of Indian Muslims into question.

Creating strong associations between the notion of "Muslim" and the notion of "foreigner" is a part of the Sangh Parivar project of the construction of India as a Hindu state. During the riots it is common for mobs to chant the verse "there are only two places for Muslims - Pakistan or the cemetery (kabrastan)". Traditionally secular forces in India have attempted to undermine these notions by stressing the "Indianness" and "loyalty" of Indian Muslims, the role of so many in the freedom struggle, etc. However until recently, few have actually attempted to undermine the very concept of Pakistan as the eternal enemy - i.e. to undermine chauvinist nationalism itself. Only rarely have secular people asked ordinary Indians why they should have any quarrel with ordinary Pakistanis. (For a recent attempt at this different approach, see for example the excellent film War and Peace (27)).

India, Pakistan, Kashmir and nuclear politics

But these questions have become very pressing. The interplay between Hindu nationalism and war-fever is a two-way process. In the aftermath of Gujarat, in what was seen by many as a cynical attempt to divert attention away from the carnage there, the Indian government engineered a confrontation with Pakistan which brought the region to the edge of nuclear war. On 14th May 2002 an army barracks at Kaluchak near Jammu was stormed by militants and both soldiers and their families were killed. Although there have been such attacks before - indeed ones which have taken a greater toll - this time India immediately geared up for war with Pakistan (29). It is very unclear what degree of control Pakistan has over militants who cross the border into India, but with the country still reeling from the violence in Gujarat it was clearly a convenient time to divert everyone's attention towards the permanent enemy. The dictatorship in Pakistan responded to India's belligerent attitude by saying that if there was a war it might use nuclear weapons, and suddenly the whole conflict took on a frightening new dimension. Foreigners were advised to leave the region, embassies shut down. Partly as a result of international pressure, the conflict defused, but it brought home just how dangerous the region had become.

The primary excuse for the convenient permanent enmity between India and Pakistan is Kashmir. In Box 4 we present an outline of the history of the Kashmir dispute for those not familiar with it. Any demilitarisation of the region would involve steps towards an ending of conflict in Kashmir. This would undoubtedly have an immense knock-on effect of weakening communalism in both India and Pakistan.

However, political parties in both India and Pakistan have used the issue of Kashmir to divert attention from their domestic failings, without attempting to provide meaningful solutions to any of the problems of Kashmir. The one thing which is consistently left out of the equation is the rights of the Kashmiri people. The Indian government's record of torture, humiliation, rape and extrajudicial killing means that it cannot possibly preside over any peace process. The Pakistani state on the other hand has always had an instrumentalist attitude towards Kashmir financing militant groups which have shown little respect for human rights in order to satisfy domestic political needs and keep the Indian army busy. Two states fighting a proxy war over the bodies of the Kashmiri people cannot be trusted to represent their will and Kashmiris have long called for neutral international intervention.

The potential implications of a conflagration in Kashmir have become truly global recently, thanks to the recent speeding up of a regional nuclear arms race. In 1998 for the first time in 24 years, and without any public consultation or warning, India tested five nuclear devices in the deserts of Rajasthan. Shortly afterwards Pakistan responded with six tests of its own. At the time of the nuclear tests, various establishment figures in India assured people that the "nuclear deterrent" increased the safety of the region. The Sangh Parivar also attempted to whip up a kind of hysterical pride about India's supposed new status as a "superpower". The lack of basic education about nuclear weapons in South Asia is so great that many people actually believe that the Indian government possesses technology to stop Pakistani nuclear weapons hitting India's major cities!

But four years and one major incident of nuclear brinkmanship later South Asia is a distinctly more dangerous place than ever before. The presence of nuclear weapons had no deterrent effect and a conventional war broke out in the icy heights of Kargil (Kashmir) in 1999 after militants crossed over from the Pakistani side of the border. The incidents of May 2002 only confirmed that rather than any deterrence, what has been added to the equation is the frightening new nuclear rhetoric, and today two highly militarised countries with long-standing territorial disputes, religious extremists gaining increasing power, and very low levels of democratic accountability face each other.

The militarisation of the region is quite extreme. Today India is the world's second biggest importer of arms, second only to China. It spends two and half times its entire primary education budget on defence, and this spending has doubled over the past five years. The total proportion of India's GDP spent on military and paramilitary forces is three times what is spent on health. (32)

A few conclusions

If there are a few key lessons to be taken away they are these:

• What is special about the current situation in India is the coming together of an already authoritarian and corrupt state and the Hindu Nationalist movement.
• All groups, whether Hindu or Muslim, which encourage narrow communal identities are adding to the problem. The reality is that real people's identities are fluid and complex, whereas the project of ethnic nationalism requires the construction of narrow identities, and then the use of those identities to mobilise people. In this way, the apparently innocent encouraging of religious identity can be part of a process which culminates in violence.
• Riots are rarely spontaneous events. Probably the most incorrect caricature of the recent violence is of spontaneous tit-for-tat violence. To highlight the organised nature of the violence is not to brush away the difficult questions of where exactly mass violence and mass sexual violence come from, and how these are connected with authoritarianism and sexual repression.
• The religious right in India exploits to great effect its multiple faces, from the more respectable to the more extreme. The key thing to recognise is that the differences between the organisations are tactical rather than ideological.
• There are no golden pasts. History, especially the pre-British history of India, has become a battle-ground with Hindu Nationalists reminding us of an apparently beautiful pre-Islamic era, and secularists attempting to counter this with examples of peace, progress and cohesion achieved during the time of Mughal rule. The reality is that such simplifications of history are always dangerous. All empires, pre-Islamic, Islamic and post-Islamic have been born through brutal conquest and expansion and seen great social injustices. Many have also had their times of relative peace and stability, and have seen social progress. Today it is probably more useful to question the overall way that history is caricatured, rather than getting bogged down in detailed debate.
• Enmity between India and Pakistan is crucially linked to the ability of the Sangh Parivar in India to orchestrate violence against Muslims. Fear of the enemy without and the enemy within feed off each other. The perceived threat of "terrorism", the associated climate of fear, and the need for "strong leaders" which this breeds are preconditions for getting the complicity of significant sections of the population in a genocidal project. Thus the anti-communal movement must be linked to a peace movement. Undermining the construction of India as a Hindu state, undermining the construction of Pakistan as a Muslim state, and undermining the cross-border tensions are all linked ingredients in preventing a slide towards fascism and war.

Fascism?

In this piece we have used the word fascism a few times, and it should be pointed out that there is an important debate about whether the Sangh Parivar constitutes a fascist movement or not. Without ending up having a purely semantic discussion it is worth noting in particular these consistent features of their ideology and mode of action.

• An extreme ethnic supremacism - the vision of India as a Hindu state, the constant harking back to a supposedly golden era of the past.
• The use of mass mobilisation and mass violence against civilians in order to achieve its aims.
• The existence of organisations both governmental and non-governmental working in tandem.
• Authoritarianism and a general disregard for human rights/women's rights.
• A cult of masculinity and power, manifested as admiration for historical figures like Hitler and the paramilitary training camps of the RSS where young men are taught obedience and discipline.

Whether in government or out of it, the BJP and its cohort of organisations continue to undermine civil society and democracy in India. Whether it is at the level of legislative or educational reform, or at the level of extreme propaganda and paramilitary training. They are highly aware of the importance of penetrating certain organisations such as the police force and sections of the civil service. The way that corruption is very widespread aids this ability of the Sangh Parivar to work at filling certain organisations with their own cadre.

What people outside the subcontinent can do

Communal groups often have a stong hold on communities abroad, and it is important to try and counter these trends. For example Hindu fundamentalism is gaining ground in Britain (26) and this must be countered as much as possible within the Hindu community. Similarly with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism within Muslim communities. Mobilising strong anti-racist/anti-war/social justice movements tends to bring people together and undermine all kinds of fundamentalisms.

Funding is a key issue. The Sangh Parivar sets up charities which claim to collect money for relief work but often also channel money into sectarian violence. SEWA international in the UK is one such charity as was recently exposed on Channel 4 news (24). The India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF) does the same in the US, and has been the subject of a recent, detailed expose. (25). Campaigns against these organisations make a difference - apart from cutting the flow of money to the bigots they are part of a general process of education about the situation.

Raising the issue of Kashmir, but not in terms of Indian or Pakistani nationalism is very important. Putting human rights above abstract notions such as "territorial integrity" is the responsibility of people living abroad.

Addressing the arms trade and calling on Western governments not to supply arms and military technology to the region is very important. Cynical governments like ours here in the UK supply arms to both sides even at the height of tension between the two countries. Sometimes the strange argument that it is somehow pro-imperialist to call for a cessation of arms sales to the region is used. What makes this argument all the more bizarre is that the arms are only ever used in wars against other countries in the region.

Finally, and perhaps most important of all is encouraging contact at a person-to-person level. For example exchanges of students between India and Pakistan allow young people to see how arbitrary borders are, and how similar thoughts and dreams are across them. Standing together abroad also makes a difference. During the nuclear confrontation between India and Pakistan a joint demonstration for peace by South Asians in London got very positive press coverage in the subcontinent. We need to make it clear that the rulers, with their greed, hunger for power and their hatred, do not speak for ordinary people.

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Box 1: India - community and communalism

Today India has a population of over a billion. Although by religion the majority of Indians are Hindus, approximately 14 per cent are Muslims, with significant Sikh, Christian, Buddhist and other minorities. A great number of languages are spoken. This diversity today reflects the fact that historically South Asia has always been a meeting point for a large number of cultures and traditions. Over the past four thousand years and more, migrations based on commerce and conquest have occurred from India's borders to the North-West and the North-East. In the last 1000 years, new cultures, new religions (such as Sikhism), and even new languages (such as Urdu) have been born out of this process.

During the time the British ruled India, an anti-colonial nationalist movement gradually took shape. Alongside this secular nationalism, Muslim and Hindu nationalisms also evolved, finding expression in organisations such as the Muslim League and the RSS - grandparent of the modern Hindu Nationalist movement. How and why this happened is a complicated historical question. It is certainly true that in order to contain the rising tide of anti-colonialism the British explicitly encouraged divisions along religious lines (18). But other factors were also important - as independence approached many Muslims felt understandably worried about their place in a predominantly Hindu India. And both Hindu and Muslim politicians saw in communalism a golden opportunity - a new basis on which to mobilise people.

Independence - the birth of India and Pakistan as modern nations - was accompanied by a human tragedy of unimaginable proportions - partition. Once it had been decided that two states were to be created, one of the largest population transfers in history took place: fearing persecution, 12-14 million people, started to flee: Muslims travelled west towards Pakistan while Hindus and Sikhs migrated in the opposite direction. At least one million of them never made it. Some estimates are higher (28). In what must remain one of modern history's most shameful incidents, entire trainloads of people were killed.

After partition, it was not until 1961 that serious communal violence between Hindus and Muslims took place in India. But in terms of sheer scale the next date to stand out is 1984. About three thousand men, women and children - almost all Sikhs - were murdered in New Delhi following the assassination of the Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, by a Sikh body guard. Documents and testimonies show that this was organised violence (19). In a pattern that has now become familiar, members of the ruling political party at the time (Congress) explicitly orchestrated, or at best allowed, the violence. Although in this piece we mainly focus on the Hindu Nationalist Right, it is important to remind ourselves that they are not the only ones to orchestrate religious violence in India.

Underlying communal violence has been a general social acceptance of caste and religious segregation at various levels. Mixed marriages across community lines are still something of a rarity. Supposedly educated middle-class communities are often the most strong in their insistence on this segregation. Ideas to do with "blood" and "purity" which would be considered fascistic in other societies are common. The micro-level idiocies of caste - for example the refusal of some people to eat using the same spoons as others - are accepted by otherwise rational people.

Where the progressive and women's movements have attempted to undermine these notions, they are presented as attacking the "sanctity" of the family itself - people with "Westernised" values intruding into the privacy of age-old communities. One main question after the recent violence is why so many people were prepared to stand back and do nothing while Muslims were slaughtered in Gujarat. Beyond the obvious factor of fear, the answer to this question must lie at least in part in the low level prejudice and social segregation which pervades Indian society.

Education, particularly about history, is another important site at which communalism works. The importance of history - or rather of the place that distorted and simplistic versions of history have in popular culture - is clearly evidenced by events surrounding the destruction of the Babri Mosque. School text-books are rewritten to present versions of Indian history where Muslims have a barbaric and cruel role.

Box 2: A brief history of the Hindu Nationalist right in India

The political party which currently rules India as part of a coalition government is the BJP (Bharatiya Janta Party or Indian People's Party). The BJP belongs to a family of organisations which have come to be known as the Sangh Parivar. The beginning of the Sangh Parivar dates to the creation of an organisation called the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or National Self-help Corps) in 1925. This organisation is the parent of the family. It's early leaders had admiration for, and links with, the fascist movements that were gaining ground in Europe during the 20s and 30s (10). The ideology of its founder, Dr. Hedgewar, was that national unity would only come about if it was declared that all non-Hindus in India do not form a part of the nation. This remains the core of the ideology of the RSS today. From the beginning this ideology was married to a strategy of political terrorism. It was a member of the RSS, Nathuram Godse, who assassinated Gandhi in 1948. It is telling that even today the RSS is not an organisation which welcomes publicity. Although it is generally acknowledged by Hindu Nationalists themselves to be the key ideological machine behind the whole movement, it rarely gives interviews or produces documentation in its own name.

Both India's prime minister, A.B. Vajpayee and its deputy prime Minister and Home Minister (L.K. Advani) are lifelong RSS members, along with many other leading politicians in the BJP, including, very importantly, Gujarat's chief minister, Narendra Modi (12) . In 1964 the RSS created the religious wing of the Hindu nationalist movement - the VHP (Vishva Hindu Parishad or World Council of Hindus) supposedly to combat "proselytising religions" in India (13). Posing as a religious/cultural organisation in the West, the VHP has been a key player in much of the communal violence in India in recent times. It is one of the best-financed wings of the Sangh Parivar with large quantities of money flowing in from overseas, particularly the United States. After the recent violence in Gujarat, VHP leader Praveen Togadia stridently declared that India will become a Hindu nation in two years' time.

The BJP, RSS and VHP are but three of a sometimes confusing collection of groups. For example, there are further organisations such as the Bajrang Dal - an organisation created by the VHP as the "storm troopers" of the movement, the ABVP (student wing of the Sangh Parivar) the BKS (their trade union) and the Maharashtrian regionalist party the Shiv Sena. The different organisations possess apparently different aims and work in different ways. While the VHP organises within temples, the RSS organises Shakhas - cells where young people are given military training, the BJP fights national elections, and the ABVP fights students union elections, etc. But a certain vague notion of India as a Hindu Nation unites them all and it is common for the same individuals to belong to a number of different Sangh Parivar organisations.

Although currently Muslims are placed as the main enemy, the Sangh Parivar's platform is not just anti-Muslim. For example during 1998-1999 they turned their attention on Gujarat's tiny Christian community. Attacks were launched against Christians and their property in several districts (30). At other times other communities have also been targetted.

The question naturally arises as to why, given that Hindus are a large majority in India, the Hindu Nationalists feel the need to orchestrate extreme violence against tiny minorities like the Christians, or relatively poor and unorganised minorities like Muslims. Why not simply win elections and pass laws which further their agenda? The answer almost certainly lies in the need to unite Hindus across lines of caste and class. Hinduism is not a monolithic religion, and there is very little that can properly be called a Hindu identity which crosses other barriers. Thus as is the case with all fundamentalisms, the first thing is to attempt to construct this identity. The fact that Hinduism has a great plurality of traditions - something that should rightly be claimed as a positive attribute - also has the side-effect that it makes the construction of a Hindu identity, and the definition of a "Hindu Nation" necessarily difficult. In this situation, unity can only be created via the construction of a demonic "other".

Box 3: Text of a VHP leaflet

[VHP leaflet, Jai Shri Ram]

Wake up! Arise! Think! Enforce!

ave the country! Save the religion!

Economic boycott is the only solution! The anti-national elements use the money earned from the Hindus to destroy us!

They buy arms! They molest our sisters and daughters! The way to break the backbone of these elements is: An economic non-cooperation movement.

Let us resolve:

1. From now on I will not buy anything from a Muslim shopkeeper!
2. I will not sell anything from my shop to such elements!
3. Neither shall I use the hotels of these anti-nationals, nor their garages!
4. I shall give my vehicles only to Hindu garages! From a needle to gold, I shall not buy anything made by Muslims, neither shall we sell them things made by us!
5. Boycott whole-heartedly films in which Muslim hero-heroines act! Throw out films produced by these anti-nationals!
6. Never work in offices of Muslims! Do not hire them!
7. Do not let them buy offices in our business premises, nor sell or rent out houses to them in our housing societies, colonies or communities.
8. I shall certainly vote, but only for him who will protect the Hindu nation.
9. I shall be alert to ensure that our sisters-daughters do not fall into the `love-trap' of Muslim boys at school-college-workplace.
10. I shall not receive any education or training from a Muslim teacher.

Such strict economic boycott will throttle these elements! It will break their backbone! Then it will be difficult for them to live in any corner of this country. Friends, begin this economic boycott from today! Then no Muslim will raise his head before us! Did you read this leaflet? Then make ten photocopies of it, and distribute it to our brothers. The curse of Hanumanji [be] on him who does not implement this, and distribute it to others! The curse of Ramchandraji also be on him! Jai Shriram!

A true Hindu patriot!

Box 4: A brief history of Kashmir since Independence

At the time of independence "princely states" such as Kashmir were left to decide their own future, so that the future of the state lay in the hands of the unpopular king Maharaja Hari Singh. He dithered for a while before acceding to India. The Kashmiri people were never consulted. Throughout the period hostilities between India and Pakistan were taking place, and these resulted in a UN-mediated agreement by which part of Kashmir (about a quarter) ended up in Pakistan, and the modern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir was formed from the rest.

For historical reasons, the Kashmir valley has a unique culture. Although the great majority of residents of the valley are Muslim, they identify themselves primarily as Kashmiris, and the same is true for Kashmiri Hindus. In fact there is a strong secular tradition in Kashmir. At the time of the partition of the state and the UN mediated solution, the understanding was that in the longer term there would be a plebiscite where the Kashmiri people would decide their own future. There were implictly three possibilities for the people of Kashmir - to join the state of India, to join the state of Pakistan, or independence from both. (23).

However no Indian government since independence has had the courage to organise any form of plebiscite. In the late 80s the demand for Independence from India resurfaced in a militant form. Instead of any political negotiation, the Indian government responded with extremely heavy state repression. During the following years a cycle developed during which state repression worsened and militancy in Kashmir was increasingly taken over by pro-Pakistan groups such as the Hizbul Mujahideen.

During the nineties civilians suffered heavily in the proxy war fought between the Indian army and militant groups. Effectively the whole of the Kashmiri population were treated as terrorists by the Indian state. Civilians were subjected to long curfews, faced daily humiliation at checkpoints, were subjected to random beatings, and women were molested.

Under the guise of counter-insurgency the Border Security Force - perhaps the most vicious arm of the Indian Army - routinely tortured, raped and looted Kashmiri civilians as part of a strategy of "deterring" Kashmiris from joining militant groups. All human rights reports from the period are replete with instances of torture. To describe these tactics of the Indian state as terrorism seems somewhat mild. Unofficial statistics estimate that 40,000 people died between 1988 and 1995, the great majority killed by the military (3). The most conservative statistics put the toll at more than 17,000.

It is probably most of all the routine harassment and violence against civilians which has led to the extreme disaffectment. A relatively minor incident was described in one report from 1994:

"... We were stopped at a bunker in Magarmal. Our driver was pulled out and asked where he was from. On hearing "Batmaloo", the jawan [ soldier] exclaimed that every man in Batmaloo was a militant and proceeded to beat the driver with the butt of his gun accompanied by the choicest abuses. .. Another jawan came up with a flashlight, looked us over, leered and touched us... A mixture of argument, cajoling and threats of press exposure finally made them stop beating the driver. We do not know what his fate would have been if we had not been able to intervene as `outsiders'" (20).

Instead of driving people away from militancy, the behaviour of the Indian army simply fuelled the militancy and undoubtedly resulted in more young Kashmiri men crossing the border into Pakistan to obtain training and guns.

Although during the 90s the militant groups lost ground militarily in much of Kashmir, there are border areas to the North and South of the state which see similar confrontations and human rights abuses as during the early nineties. So-called "encounters" are claimed by the Indian army when in fact the usual case is for young men simply to be picked out by informers on identity parades and shot. One doctor described the killing of his brother:

"My brother was 25 years old. He was running a cosmetics shop. The BSF came and took him. In front of my father and family, he was killed. Someone had pointed him out as being a militant. He was not armed and in the news that evening they gave that there was an encounter, when there was no encounter at all." (23)

A disturbing very recent trend has been the increasing infiltration of Taliban-style Jihadi groups into the movement (22). As a side effect of the war in Afghanistan several of these groups shifted operations to Kashmir. These groups have an agenda which is virulently anti-women, communal and authoritarian ideas of these groups. Posters appear with taliban-style edicts on how men and women should dress, and these edicts are enforced at the barrel of a gun. Recently several Muslim women have been murdered for not wearing the burqa. Kashmir's Hindu minority have also been targetted.

References and Resources

A. The reports on the violence in Gujarat:

1. A Continuing Crime: The relief and rehabilitation measures, the attitude of the judiciary and police investigation and arrests with regard to the genocide in Gujarat. A Joint Fact Finding Team Report. May 2002, The team consisted of Kranti Chaitanya (Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee (APCLC)); Ashok Debroy (Association for the Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR), West Bengal), K.Balgopal, P. Ramulu, B. Ramulu and Leya Matthew (Human Rights Forum, Andhra Pradesh), P.A.Sebastian, Niranjini Shetty, Jennifer Coutinho, Premsagar Gupta, Aseem Prakash, K. Leena and K. Haridas (Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights (CPDR), Mumbai), and Sanober Keshwaar (Lokshahi Hakk Sanghatana (LHS), Maharashtra). Available by emailing: cpdr@rediffmail.com
2. How has the Gujarat Massacre Affected Minority Women: The Survivors Speak. Fact-finding by a women's panel consisting of: S yeda Hameed, Muslim Women's Forum, Delhi, Ruth Manorama, National Alliance of Women, Bangalore, Malini Ghose, Nirantar, Delhi, Sheba George, Sahrwaru, Ahmedabad, Farah Naqvi, Independent Journalist, Delhi, Mari Thekaekara, Accord, Tamil Nadu. Sponsored by Citizen's Initiative, Ahmedabad [India] April 16, 2002. Available online at http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/Women_s_reportGujrat02.html
3. Gujarat Carnage 2002: A Report to the Nation. By An Independent Fact Finding Mission: Dr Kamal Mitra Chenoy, S.P. Shukla, K.S. Subramanian, Achin Vanaik, 10th April 2002. Available online at http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/GujCarnage.html.
4. Ethnic Cleansing in Ahmedabad: A preliminary report: SAHMAT fact finding team to Ahmedabad, 10-11th March 2002, Dr. Kamal Mitra Chenoy, Vishnu Nagar, Prasenjit Bose, Vijoo Krishnan. Available online at http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/sahmatreport032002.html
5. Report of a visit by CPI(M) and AIDWA (All India Democratic Women's Association) to Gujarat - March 2002. Available online at http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/CPMAIDWA2002gujaratreport.html
6. Amnesty Report, March 2002. Available online at http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/amnestysGujaratreport.pdf
7. Human Rights Watch report: "We Have No Orders To Save You", State Participation and Complicity in Communal Violence in Gujarat, Available online at http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/india/
8. Gujarat 2002 --Untold and retold stories from Hindutva's Lab (Every single major civil society investigation into Gujarat from 1998 to June 2002) Edited by John Dayal. Published by All India Christian Council and Justice and peace Commission Distributed by Media house, New Delhi. Media house can be reached for copies at mediabooks@hotmail.com and http://www.mediahousedelhi.com.

   B. The Hindu Right

9. Human Rights Watch report: The context of the violence in Gujarat. Available at http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/india/India0402-05.htm
10. Hindutva's Foreign Tie Up in the 1930's: Archival Evidence , Marzola Casolari, Economic and Political Weekly, January 22, 2000. Available online at:http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/casolari.html
11. Gandhi and Godse: Conflicting Nationalism , Ram Puniyani , 9 October 2001. Available online at http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/godsevsGandhi.html
12. BBC News: Profile: Narendra Modi, Rajyasri Rao, 30th Dec. 2002 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1958555.stm
13. VHP in brief: The Sangh's right fist, Vandita Mishra, Indian Express, Feb 24th 2002http://www.indian-express.com/ie20020224/op2.html
14. Babri Masjid: Historical Facts vs. VHP's claim, Prem Vora : http://www.geocities.com/indianfascism/Babri/vhp_claims.htm
15. VHP website: http://www.vhp.org/englishsite/d.Dimensions_of_VHP/myouth-wing/bajrangdalsjain.htm (here we present a site of the far right itself - it is often very educative to visit their own sites and view the way they choose to present themselves.)

    C. Other Gujarat resources

16. Gujarat: The Making of a Tragedy Siddharth Varadarajan (Ed.), Penguin, 2002.
17. What's so spontaneous about an attack that leaves only the seventh shop on a crowded street burnt down? Barkha Dutt, Outlook India. Available online at http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20020325&fname=Column+Barkha+Dutt+%28F%29&sid=1

    D. 1984 massacre of Sikhs

18. Genesis of communal violence in India. http://www.panjab.org.uk/english/genesis.html
19. Who are the guilty? - Report of a joint inquiry into the causes and impact of the anti-sikh violence in Delhi from 31 October to 10 November, 1984: PUCL-PUDR (Also in Hindi : Doshi Kaun?)

    E. Kashmir

20. Women's testimonies from Kashmir: "The Green of the Valley is Khaki", Report by a Women's initiative, Gouri Choudhury, Ritu Dewan, Manimala,. Sheba Chhachhi, 1994
21. Behind the Kashmir Conflict: Abuses by Indian Security Forces and Militant groups continue. Human Rights Watch report. Available online at: http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/kashmir/
22. The Jihad International, Kashmir and Secularization, by VIJAY PRASHAD,CounterPunch, Dec. 28th 2002. Available online at: http://www.counterpunch.org/prashad1228.html
23. Kashmir in conflict: India, Pakistan and the unfinished war, Victoria Schofield, I.B. Tauris, 2000.

    F. Foreign funding of Hindu Nationalists

24. Breaking News From the UK: Channel 4 Report on Hindutva's Foreign Funding from the UK. Available online at: http://stopfundinghate.org/resources/news/121202SFHPressAdv.htm
25. Campaign to Stop Funding Hate: http://stopfundinghate.org/index.shtml

    G. Other Resources

26. The Impact of Hindu fundamentalism in Britain , Pragna Patel . Available online at http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/i_aii/Hfund.html
27. "War and Peace" A film by Anand Patwardhan which draws links between nuclearisation and the rise of the religious right in India and Pakistan.
28. The 1947 Partition of India: A Paradigm for Pathological Politics in India and Pakistan, Ishtiaq Ahmed, Asian Ethnicity, Volume 3, number 1, March 2002, Available online at http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/IshtiaqAhmed2002.html
29. A strange recklessness, Jeremy Seabrook in the New Internationalist (3/06/02) Available online at: http://www.newint.org/features/gujarat/index.html
30. Human Rights Watch report: Politics by other means: Attacks Against Christians in India, Available online at: http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/indiachr/
31. Semiotics of Terror: Muslim Children and Women in Hindu Rashtra, Tanika Sarkar, EPW Commentary, July 13, 2002. Available online at: http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/TanikaSarkarJUL02.html
32. More weapons, less peace: A militarised South Asia will be insecure, unhappy. Praful Bidwai in Communalism Combat, No. 83, Jan 2003.