Asia Sentinel

Worshippers enter a temple in Madhya Pradesh

A year before his death in 1964, Jawaharlal Nehru remarked that "The danger to India, mark you, is not Communism. It is Hindu right-wing communalism." Today a wave of Hindu terrorism is raising fears that the country's first prime minister could be right.

Recently, for instance, a young 'sadhvi,' or Hindu woman monk, Pragya Singh Thakur, who rechristened herself as Sadhvi Purnachetnagiri, was arrested by Maharashtra anti-terrorism police in connection with the killing of six and injuring of six at a mosque on September 29 at Malegaon, 280 miles from Mumbai.  She was alleged to be a frontline leader of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of India's opposition Bharatiya Janata Party and, according to the anti-terrorism chief, owned the motorcycle used in the blasts, which took place at Bhikku Chowk in central Malegaon, just outside the sealed office of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India.

There are also disturbing signs that the Hindu militants have connections to India's military. Anti-terrorism interrogators rounded up half a dozen army officers including Lt. Col. Shrikant Prasat Purohit, who is believed to have confessed that he was aware of logistics and explosives to be used for the attack at Malegaon. Purohit was apparently posted at the Army Education Corps Training College and Center of Pachmarhi in Madhya Pradesh, an adjacent central Indian state, although he was actually assigned to military intelligence along India’s borders.

Purohit is said to have been one of the founders of the radical Hindu group Abhinav Bharat at Malegaon and his cellphone memory allegedly contained several conversations with Ramesh Upadhyay, a retired Army major also suspected of being involved in the blast. In one of the conversation, Purohit asked Upadhyay to change his mobile number, presumably to confuse interrogators. Anti-terrorist interrogators have sought permission to question an Army major general and two colonels, and three more commissioned officers below Purohit have been identified with linkages to militants in Kashmir in connection with procurement of RDX explosives.

According to police, the sadhvi was a member of Jai Vande Mataram Jan Kalyan Samiti, another openly anti-Muslim and anti-Christian Hindu terrorist group based in Surat in the adjacent state of Gujarat, which has yet to recover from one of the bloodiest communal riots ever, in 2002. She allegedly also had links with the radical Hindu Jagran Manch in Madhya Pradesh. Both states are under BJP rule and have been accused of torturing non-Hindus.

Although the two organizations issued denials that she was working with them, security forces intercepted 400 minutes of phone calls between them. Two others were arrested and accused of helping to plant the bomb. Two more who were detained are believed to have divulged the names of collaborators.

What is being dubbed “reverse terrorism” by Hindus seeking to get even with earlier blasts perpetrated by Islamists is a worrisome escalation in the cycle of revenge that began with the Gujarat riots, a spasm of communal violence in which as many as 2000 people died and 150,000 were displaced from their homes. But the increasing use of more sophisticated mechanical and electronics devices in detonations against Muslims and Christians is a recent phenomenon.

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