::: Star Weekend Magazine :::

Neighbours

The Rise of Hindu Terrorism

Khalid Iqbal

The main accused of the Samjhota blast, Swami Aseemanand, confessed in front of a magistrate at a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court: “It's not Muslims, but Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) activists who planned and executed the bomb blasts at Malegaon in 2006, on the Samjhota Express in 2007, in Ajmer Sharif in 2007, and Mecca Masjid in 2007.”

The RSS, the Hindu radical group of Aseemanand is the spiritual parent of India's Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). This confession has substantially highlighted Pakistan's point of view that Hindu extremist outfits carry out false flag terrorist acts for which the Muslim entities of India and neighbouring countries are promptly blamed under a well thought out scheme.

Swami's confession is only a confirmation of the open secret about the phenomenal rise of the homegrown Hindu terrorism in India. According to the Indian weekly, Tehelka magazine, which has obtained a copy of Swami's 42-page confession, the accused told his interrogators that the attacks on Muslim places were in response to the attacks by Islamist militants.

The 2007 bloody bombing of the Pakistan-bound Samjhota Express train.

India has been dragging its feet on the Samjhota-related investigations since long. Pakistan is likely to raise the extradition demand of Swami and others, following India's refusal to share the details of the train bombing probe with Pakistan. Demand for extradition may come up during the Indo-Pak foreign secretary level talks in Bhutan during the first week of February.

Pakistan's foreign office has already summoned the Indian envoy and asked him to hand over the findings of the bombing investigation. So far, India has been dilly-dallying that “it was premature” to provide results of the probe to Pakistan, while drumming up its campaign that the latter should quickly bring to justice the masterminds of the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Now, Islamabad has also listed other bombing incidents involving the false flag actions by Hindu radicals, like Gujarat, Malegoan, Mecca Masjid, and Ajmer Sharif. Initially, Pakistan was blamed for these incidents.

Shamsul Islam, associate professor of the Department of Political Science at Satyawati College, University of Delhi, has recently commented: “The culprit of Samjhota Express dresses up in the full Hindu saffron regalia, and is followed to and from places by his band of marauders who carry the Hindu Trident and yell anti-Muslim slogans. Lt. Col. Purohit dresses the same way, and is treated like a hero in Bharat. Pakistan will be demanding the extradition of Hindu terrorists... who were involved in the 2007 bloody bombing of the Pakistan-bound Samjhota Express train that killed 68 innocent people, 42 of which were Pakistan nationals... the 2008 blast in the town of Malegaon killed seven people and left more than 100 injured. A female Hindu priest, Sadhwi Pragya Singh Thakur, and a serving Indian army officer were among the 11 people who were arrested in connection with the attack...”