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               Appendix A 
                Hindutva: The Growth of Violent Hindu Nationalism 
                 
                
               
                This appendix provides detailed support and elaboration of the 
                descriptions and arguments in Part 1 of this report. Accordingly, 
                it follows in large part, the same structure as Part 1 of this 
                report. We cover the following ground in this appendix: 
               
                1. Hindutva, the RSS 
                  and the Sangh Parivar 
                  2. The Sangh Parivar: The Institutional Infrastructure of Hindutva 
                   
                  3. The Effects of Hindutva: Violent Pogroms and the Destruction 
                  of the National Fabric 
               
               
              A.1 Hindutva, the RSS and the Sangh 
                Parivar 
              The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, or the 
                ‘Sangh,’-- literally ‘National Volunteer Corps’), 
                was started in 1925 for ‘propagating Hindu culture.’ 
                As an organization, the RSS is elusive and shadowy—it is 
                only open to Hindu males – primarily upper caste, it maintains 
                no membership records; it has resisted being registered with the 
                government of India as a public/charitable trust; it has no bank 
                accounts and pays no income tax.  
              
            The RSS advocates a form of Hindu nationalism, 
              which seeks to establish India as a Hindu Rashtra (Hindu Nation), 
              and rejects the notion of a composite Indian identity brought about 
              by a synthesis of different cultures and faiths. This particular 
              ideology is variously called an ideology of Hindu pride, Hindu patriotism, 
              Hindu fundamentalism, Hindu revivalism, Hindu chauvinism, Hindu 
              fascism or Hindutva. What is beyond doubt is the exclusionary and 
              discriminatory nature of the ideology. The last mentioned – 
              Hindutva (Hinduness/Hinduhood) – is the term most popularly 
              attached to this ideology and will be term of choice in this appendix. 
                 
                This exclusionary and discriminatory ideology is built around 
                a complex and ingenious definition of “who belongs” 
                or “does not belong” to the Indian nation. Probably 
                the most explicit characterization of the question of “belonging” 
                is outlined by the second sarsanghchalak (supreme leader) of the 
                RSS, M. S. Golwalkar. He writes: 
                The foreign races in Hindusthan [India] must either adopt the 
                Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in 
                reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of 
                the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e., of the 
                Hindu nation and must loose (sic) their separate existence to 
                merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated 
                to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, 
                far less any preferential treatment — not even citizen's 
                rights. There is, at least, should be, no other course for them 
                to adopt. We are an old nation; let us deal, as old nations ought 
                to and do deal, with the foreign races, who have chosen to live 
                in our country.”[53] 
                 
                Golwalkar’s commentary on who belongs to the Hindu Nation, 
                apart from its open fascist overtones, is peculiar because it 
                contradicts the popular understanding of Hinduism as a religion. 
                Instead, it frames Hinduism as a culture and Hindus as a race 
                who adhere to a Hindu culture. In this peculiar but brilliant 
                redefinition lies the specificity of Hindu fascism. It is unlike 
                most of Euro-American fascism – whether it be Nazi Germany 
                and its notion of Aryan purity or neo-fascist movements such as 
                the KKK or BNP – which are all biologically defined ideas 
                of racial purity. Hindutva’s cultural basis seems to remove 
                it from such standard forms of fascism. However, the equation 
                of race with culture – as in Golwalkar’s “Hindu 
                race and culture” – introduces a notion of purity 
                through the back door. Lochtefeld (1996), analyzing Savarkar, 
                the man who preceded Golwalkar and the first Supreme Leader of 
                the RSS, unpacks this redefinition as follows:  
                 
                Savarkar [who first expounded on the Hindu Nation] defined a Hindu 
                as anyone regarding India as a fatherland and holy land, and to 
                this day these remain the litmus test. This defines the Hindu 
                nation on cultural criteria—as a people united by a common 
                cultural heritage—and from the start Hindutva proponents 
                have insisted that the word ‘Hindu’ refers to a cultural 
                rather than a religious community…. One must look at who 
                this definition excludes. Savarkar’s definition of a Hindu 
                is plastic enough to include everyone in a notoriously polyform 
                tradition, but the condition that one regard India as the Holy 
                Land largely excludes both Muslims and Christians. This definition 
                equates Hindu identity and Indian nationalism, meaning that religious 
                minorities are not only ‘aliens’, but because of their 
                ‘extraterritorial loyalties’ (to holy lands in Arabia 
                and Israel), they are also potential traitors.”[54] 
                 
              The ingenuity of tying culture and race together 
                is that it makes possible a definition of a “pure” 
                nation where none is otherwise possible. India, per se, is a fascinating 
                melting pot of races and cultures. Even distinctions such as white 
                and black as available in the US (though those are also mostly 
                spurious) are entirely impossible in India. By defining belonging 
                through a territorially contained notion of culture, it becomes 
                possible to denote some minorities as within the ambit of “the 
                Hindu” and others as outside it. A large number of minorities 
                – Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains, for instance are objects of 
                integration. So also, Dalits and tribals (adivasis) though historically 
                oppressed by upper caste Hindus are in this definition not excluded 
                from the nation. The idea here is to redefine these minorities 
                as “Hindu” – where a certain specific upper 
                caste Hinduism (Sanatan Dharma), is the hegemonic pure form and 
                all others are at varying distance from this purity. In contrast, 
                Muslims, Christians, Parsis and Jews, are clearly defined as outside 
                the fold of the Nation, not because they have not been part of 
                India for centuries but because their cultural signifiers are 
                seen as lying external to the territorial nation.  
                 
                The definition of “pure” is what aligns Hindutva with 
                classical fascism of the Nazi kind. Golwalkar is clearly inspired 
                and convinced by the Nazi experiment of attempting to purge a 
                land of all those who don’t fit into a definition of German-Aryan 
                purity. He writes:  
              German national pride has now become the topic 
                of the day. To keep up the purity of the nation and its culture, 
                Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic 
                races — the Jews. National pride at its highest has been 
                manifested here. Germany has also shown how well–nigh impossible 
                it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the 
                root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for 
                us in Hindustan to learn and profit by. [55] 
              Today, the political leadership of the Sangh 
                spends some marginal effort at denying any relation to Nazi Germany 
                but does little to explain the distinction between its ideology 
                and that of Nazi Germany.  
                 
                In terms of ideology then, the Sangh’s brand of fascism 
                is simultaneously indigenous and imported. Clearly their broad 
                ideas of purity and exclusion are not very different from Nazi 
                Germany. However, the peculiar conflation of culture and race 
                does make this brand of fascism unique. 
              A.2 The Sangh Parivar: The Institutional 
                Infrastructure of Hindutva  
                 
              Institutionally, given that the RSS is itself an organization that 
              is secretive and without specified membership, its visibility is 
              low. It functions primarily through a broad range of organizations 
              that exist in every aspect of sociopolitical life in India – 
              what is referred to as the Sangh Parivar (Sangh family) of organizations. 
              However, before we explicate this visible structure of the Sangh 
              Parivar and its chief constituent organizations, we need to pay 
              some attention to the minimal aspects of what is visible as the 
              RSS.  
              
             
            A.2.1 The Role of 
              the RSS Shakha 
               
              The core unit of the RSS is referred to as a shakha (cell). The 
              shakha is a place for swayamsevaks (volunteers) to come together 
              for physical and ideological training. These shakhas operate in 
              large numbers of neighborhoods in India (and are now spreading across 
              the US), and produce a constant stream of 'volunteers' who become 
              the foot-soldiers for the Sangh's projects and organizations. Here 
              too, specific links can be drawn between European fascism and the 
              RSS. B. S. Moonje, the mentor of the founding father of the RSS, 
              Hegdewar, visited and met with Mussolini and was granted permission 
              by Mussolini to observe and understand the nature of the fascist 
              organizational structure[56]. 
              Moonje played a crucial role in molding the RSS along Italian (fascist) 
              lines. The deep impression left on Moonje by the vision of the fascist 
              organizations is confirmed by his diary. 
               
                 The idea of fascism 
                  vividly brings out the conception of unity amongst people... 
                  India and particularly Hindu Indians need some such institution 
                  for the military regeneration of the Hindus: so that the artificial 
                  distinction so much emphasised by the British of martial and 
                  non–martial classes amongst the Hindus may disappear… 
                  Our institution of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh of Nagpur under 
                  Dr. Hedgewar is of this kind, though quite independently conceived. 
                  I will spend the rest of my life in developing and extending 
                  this Institution of Dr. Hedgewar all throughout Maharashtra 
                  and other provinces. [57] 
               
               
              Moonje’s central concern while looking 
                at Italian fascism was, as he says, with the aim of “developing 
                and extending this Institution.” Thus the RSS cell structure 
                of shakhas (cells) grew with some clear similarity to the cell 
                structure of Mussolini’s National Socialists, also borrowing 
                with it the core ideas of physical training of youth and militarism. 
                Moonje’s diaries are very explicit in acknowledging the 
                centrality of violent militarism to the RSS strategy.  
               
               
                This training is meant 
                  for qualifying and fitting our boys for the game of killing 
                  masses of men with the ambition of winning victory with the 
                  best possible causalities (sic) of dead and wounded while causing 
                  the utmost possible to the adversary. [58] 
                   
               
               
              The swayamsevaks generated at the Shakhas 
                are seamlessly tied into the Sangh Parivar infrastructure. Swayamsevaks 
                go on to direct and run, projects of every size and shape – 
                from Bal Vihars (Children’s centers) to opening up new shakhas, 
                from student politics (through the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad) 
                to paramilitary operations (through the Bajrang Dal). The Sangh 
                permeates every aspect.  
              A.2.2 The Sangh Parivar and Its Constituents 
                 
                At the national level, swayamsevaks emerge to direct and run its 
                most important institutions – the BJP, the VHP, the BD and 
                the Sewa Vibhag. Each of these institutions also have an equivalent 
                organization in the US – the RSS has its image mirrored 
                through the HSS, the BJP in the OFBJP, the VHP in the VHP of America 
                and its student wing – the HSC, the BD in Hindu Unity and 
                finally the Sewa Vibhag in IDRF. Below is a brief description 
                of each – the Indian organization first, followed by its 
                US equivalent as well as a summary chart.  
               
              
                - RSS –Rashtriya Swayamsevak 
                  Sangh: The core fount of Hindutva Ideology. 
 
                   
                   
                  
                    - HSS: The Hindu Swayamsevak 
                      Sangh is the US equivalent of the RSS. HSS is registered 
                      as a tax-exempt charity in the US, and like the RSS in India, 
                      is one of the main proponents of Hindutva in the US. According 
                      to one of its flyers, “HSS is started in the USA and 
                      other parts of the world to continue what RSS is doing in 
                      India.”[59] 
                      The RSS website states that the primary purpose of the HSS 
                      is to protect the children of Hindu parents from the “vicious 
                      propaganda and corrupt conversion techniques of Christians 
                      and Muslims”[60]. 
                      Note the central concern of diasporic life in this definition 
                      is the possible “impurity” of Christian or Isamic 
                      influence. Much like the RSS branches in India, HSS also 
                      holds physical training exercises and camps, where the Hindutva 
                      doctrine is expounded. The structure of the RSS is duplicated 
                      in the US, with the Sanghchalak being the highest office 
                      bearer in the US. 
 
                       
                       
                   
                 
                - BJP: The Bharatiya Janata Party: 
                  This is a political party that participates in electoral politics. 
                  It is currently in power in the Indian state of Gujarat, which 
                  recently witnessed some of the most gruesome violence against 
                  Muslims. At the center in New Delhi, it is the leading member 
                  of a coalition that is currently in power.
 
                   
                   
                  
                    - OFBJP—Overseas Friends 
                      of BJP: This is the BJP 
                      support group in the US. While it cannot monetarily support 
                      the BJP directly from the US, many OFBJP functionaries work 
                      with other Sangh operations in the US to propagate Hindutva. 
                      In addition, it works to mobilize opinion in Washington 
                      D.C and invites BJP leadership from India to the US to meet 
                      with the Indian Diaspora. 
 
                       
                       
                   
                 
                -  VHP—Vishwa 
                  Hindu Parishad: It was formed in 1964 with the explicit 
                  purpose of forming an aggressive and an activist wing to promote 
                  Hindutva. The first general secretary of the VHP, S.S. Apte, 
                  made its goals clear as follows: “It is therefore necessary 
                  in this age of competition and conflict to think of, and organize, 
                  the Hindu world to save itself from the evil eyes of all three” 
                  [all three being Christianity, Islam and Communism]. [61] 
                  Since its formation, the VHP has played an aggressive and agitational 
                  role in India. It rose to prominence for spearheading from the 
                  early 1980s onwards the Ram Janmabhoomi movement that ultimately 
                  led to the violent take over and destruction of a 16th century 
                  Babri mosque in Ayodhya, India. This mobilization that lasted 
                  the better part of a decade was a watershed event in terms of 
                  creating new levels of polarization between Hindu and Muslim 
                  communities in India. More recently, its international working 
                  president, Mr. Ashok Singhal, called the carnage against Muslims 
                  in Gujarat a ‘successful experiment’ and warned 
                  that it would be repeated all over India [62]. 
                  In other words, the VHP, is the core political mobilization 
                  unit that is used to create and spread conditions of religious 
                  intolerance and violence. 
 
                   
                   
                  
                    -  VHP— America 
                      : This is the US counterpart of the VHP in India, and is 
                      active at two levels – as the VHP of America chapters 
                      in large parts of the North East and the South with the 
                      primary function of support work for the Sangh in India 
                      among the professional Indian diaspora and as a student 
                      organization called the Hindu Student Council (HSC) 
                      with significant presence on prestigious American university 
                      campuses. Its work within the professional Indian diasporic 
                      community is essentially both ideological and fund raising. 
                      Though it claims to be independent of the VHP itself, this 
                      claim is at best a legal/technical claim. In real terms 
                      it works actively and in close cooperation with VHP, India. 
                      For instance, VHP America’s biggest event to date 
                      in the US was the World Vision 2000, a conference organized 
                      in Washington D.C. The guest list for that event included 
                      nearly every potential luminary in the VHP India hierarchy 
                      – from Ashok Singhal to Uma Bharati and Vijaye Raje 
                      Scindia. In addition, the VHPA promotes fund collection 
                      for a range of Sewa Vibhag activity in India. [63]
 
                       
                      The HSC in 
                      contrast works primarily with second generation Indian Americans 
                      with a project of bringing them under the influence of Hindutva. 
                      It does this through multiple levels of ideological work 
                      – by organizing mass meetings and readings on campuses 
                      on a narrow range of Hindu thought, that is ideologically 
                      a perfect fit for Hindutva, (such as Gita readings) and 
                      for those who wish to get more involved as a gateway to 
                      larger Hindutva operations in the US.  
                       
                       
                   
                 
                - Bajrang Dal is the paramilitary 
                  wing of the VHP, and was started in 1984 to provide muscle and 
                  manpower to the VHP agitations. The Bajrang Dal regularly organizes 
                  arms training camps for its members, where it teaches them the 
                  use of firearms and trishuls (tridents). According to one of 
                  the participants, the training is imparted in order to teach 
                  them “how to beat those who do not respect Hinduism.”[64] 
                  Bajrang Dal has been at the forefront of recent communal attacks 
                  against Christians in the tribal regions, against artists and 
                  intellectuals and against Muslims in Gujarat. 
 
                   
                  
                    -  HinduUnity.org, 
                      a website run from the US claims to be the official website 
                      of the Bajrang Dal. This site is a virulent hate-filled 
                      site that has already once been yanked by a web-hosting 
                      service Addr.com because of the spiteful vitriol that it 
                      publishes, and its frequent calls to violence against Muslims. 
                      A typical passage from the Website under the pop-up window 
                      called Hindu Force is given below as a sample:
 
                       
                      “Revenge on Islam must become the 
                      sole aim of the life of every Hindu today. Islam has been 
                      shedding Hindu blood for several centuries. This is something 
                      we should neither forget nor forgive. This sinister religion 
                      has been striking at Hinduism for just too long. It is time 
                      we resist this satanic force and kick it back into the same 
                      pit it crawled out of.”  
                       
                       
                   
                 
                -  Sewa Vibhag: The Service 
                  Wing of the Hindutva Movement is the RSS’s most incoherent 
                  structure. However, in its very incoherence lies its ingenuity. 
                  The service wing operates through hundreds of organizations 
                  spread across the country – many different names and functions 
                  – all presented as if they were entirely independent organizations. 
                  This proliferation of Sewa Vibhag projects as independent organizations 
                  gives an impression of seeming incoherence. However, it is also 
                  the most inconspicuous way of placing swayamsevaks distributed 
                  across the country and creating entry points for them to do 
                  their ideological work. Often it is difficult to place an organization 
                  as an RSS Sewa Vibhag operation. It takes systematic matching 
                  of organizational trustees with other known RSS operations to 
                  establish the links. However, while this is true for a large 
                  number of RSS Sewa Vibhag operations, the role of the Sewa Vibhag 
                  as an entry point to do the core ideological work of the Sangh 
                  creates some long term patterns and institutions. For instance, 
                  education offers an effective cover for ideological work and 
                  the remaking of identities. Thus many Sewa Vibhag operations 
                  are crafted as educational activities. Following such patterns 
                  it becomes possible to identify Vidya Bharati as an RSS operation. 
                  Similarly, it becomes possible to identify a whole range of 
                  organizations that work with tribals (adivasis) as RSS operations 
                  because the adivasis are an important target constituency for 
                  the RSS. As these multitude of projects are what is the object 
                  of funding from the US, in a sense, these organizations of the 
                  Sewa Vibhag that do the core work of spreading the ideology 
                  of the Sangh are an extremely critical part of this report. 
                  Thus two more appendices – F and G – attached to 
                  Part 3 of this report (Funding Hate?) are on the Sangh’s 
                  work in tribal (adivasi) areas and on the Sangh’s educational 
                  work. 
 
                   
                   
                  
                    - India Development and Relief 
                      Fund (IDRF): IDRF is the US based funding arm of 
                      the Sangh and primarily funds the Sangh through its Sewa 
                      Vibhag operations. It is directly connected to Sewa International, 
                      the part of the Sewa Vibhag that coordinates international 
                      Sewa activity. Sewa International itself operates as the 
                      equivalent to IDRF in the UK.
 
                   
                 
               
               
               
                A.3 The Effects of Hindutva: Violent Pogroms and the Destruction 
                of a Multicultural Society 
              Violence is a core aspect of Hindutva. It 
                has never been shy of advocating violence for the achievement 
                of its goals of a Hindu Rashtra. It depicts ‘Hinduism’ 
                as constantly under threat from external/foreign forces (of Islam, 
                Christianity and ‘Secularism’), and hence, portrays 
                violence against Muslims, Christians and advocates of pluralism 
                in India as a form of ‘self-defense.’ This, self defense 
                is further positioned as the process of regeneration of Hindu 
                manhood. This twin trope of self-defense and a lost manhood that 
                is in need of recovery are part of the daily rhetoric of Hindutva. 
                This psychological justification of violence is under girded by 
                a more open strategic and essential appreciation of it – 
                some of which we have already recorded in this appendix – 
                whether it be Golwalkar’s open appreciation for the efforts 
                to “purge” the German nation of all Jews by the Nazis, 
                or Moonje’s hope that the RSS would create conditions of 
                a “military regeneration of Hindus”, and prepare “our 
                boys in the game of killing masses of people.” Here violence 
                is clearly both essential to purge the nation of all that it does 
                not desire, and strategic in Golwalkar’s goal to ensure 
                that the minorities live in fear and seek no privileges.  
              There is ample evidence that this essential 
                and strategic understanding of violence is central to the Hindutva 
                project. Numerous government reports have clearly indicted the 
                Sangh for fomenting communal violence:  
               
               
                “If the Jaganmohan 
                  Reddy Commission on the Ahmedabad riots (1969) and the Madan 
                  Commission on the Bhiwandi riots (1970) exposed the Unified 
                  Front tactics of the RSS and its political wing, the Jan Sangh, 
                  ancestor of the BJP, Justice Vithayathil’s report on the 
                  Tellicherry riots (1971) censured the RSS for ‘rousing 
                  up’ communal feelings and for ’preparing the background 
                  for the disturbances’. Justice Jitendra Narain’s 
                  Report on the Jamshedpur riots (1979) censured the RSS supremo 
                  M.D Deoras personally for the communal propaganda that had caused 
                  the riots. The RSS had held a conference there ‘only four 
                  days before the Ram Navami festival (when the riots erupted) 
                  and the speech delivered by Balasaheb Deoras contributed their 
                  full share in fomenting these communal feelings’. The 
                  RSS had created ‘a climate for these disturbances’. 
                  The report of Justice P Venugopal of the Madras High Court, 
                  on the riots in Kanyakumari in March 1982, found the RSS guilty 
                  of fomenting anti-Christian feelings: ‘It has taken upon 
                  itself the task to teach the minority their place and if they 
                  are not willing to learn their place, teach them a lesson. The 
                  RSS has given respectability to communalism and communal riots 
                  and demoralise (sic) administration.’ ” [65] 
               
               
              
            With a history of inciting and conducting violent 
              campaigns going back to the partition of India and Pakistan, for 
              the RSS violence is part of a strategy of breaking the back of an 
              integrated multi-religious society and creating polarized communities 
              of Hindus, Muslims and Christians. In a recent film on the RSS – 
              “Men in the Tree” – filmmaker Lalit Vachani records 
              a series of critical interviews with former RSS members – 
              D. R. Goyal and Purshottam Agrawal. Both men speak openly of how 
              it was part of their work as RSS swayamsevaks to create and spread 
              rumors that would produce conditions conducive for a communal riot. 
              The gradual but continuos polarization of the religious communities 
              through violence is a fundamental fact of the Sangh strategy.  
              As Hindutva has grown more and more powerful 
                and gained State power over the years, its strategic use of riots 
                to polarize religious communities has slowly began to transform 
                into a process of fundamentally destroying and displacing minority 
                communities. In other words, over the last decade religious violence 
                in India is no longer cases of Hindutva cadre fighting a Muslim 
                or Christian right wing forces cadre on the streets but has increasingly 
                become organized pogroms to eliminate and reduce minority communities 
                to rubble. The recent Gujarat riot is a case in point.  
              A.4.1 From Riots to Pogroms: Gujarat 
                2002 
                 
                On February 27, 2002, a train carrying Hindu activists was set 
                afire in Godhra, a city in the western Indian state of Gujarat, 
                allegedly by a Muslim mob, resulting in the death of 58 people. 
                 
                 
                The following excerpt from the Human Rights Watch report describes 
                what followed: 
               
               
                “Between February 
                  28 and March 2, thousands of attackers descended on Muslim neighbourhoods, 
                  clad in saffron scarves and khaki shorts, the signature uniform 
                  of Hindu nationalist groups, and armed with swords, sophisticated 
                  explosives, and gas cylinders. They were guided by voter lists 
                  and printouts of addresses of Muslim-owned properties-information 
                  obtained from the local municipality… The groups most 
                  directly involved in the violence against Muslims include the 
                  Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council, VHP), the Bajrang 
                  Dal, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata 
                  Party (BJP) that heads the Gujarat state government” [66] 
               
               Over 2000 people were 
                killed, and more than 100,000 were rendered homeless—around 
                90% of the victims were Muslims. In addition, reports from women’s 
                groups state that hundreds of Muslim women were gang-raped by 
                the Hindutva mobs and then burnt. [67] 
                 
                 
                The State government, headed by the BJP—the parliamentary 
                arm of the Sangh Parivar, was strikingly ineffective in controlling 
                the rioters, and has also been accused of complicity in the violence 
                by several Human Rights groups [68]. 
                Instances of direct support of the Hindu rioters by the police 
                and the administration have also been documented. What gives much 
                credence to the accusation that the Gujarat State government actively 
                participated in the riots, is a well documented story in a leading 
                news magazine – Outlook India – where a minister of 
                the State cabinet informed the press of a meeting on the evening 
                of February 28th at the residence of the chief minister Narendra 
                Modi where State administration officials were instructed not 
                to stop the Hindu backlash that was coming. [69] 
                 
                Many independent fact-finding missions have verified the central 
                role played by the different Sangh Parivar organizations in orchestrating 
                the violence: 
               
                “In testimony 
                  after testimony, people identified by name members of the Bajrang 
                  Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad involved in inciting and committing 
                  violence. The fact-finding team spoke with women activists and 
                  victims in the camps about their views on the growing polarization 
                  between the Hindu and Muslim communities. Both sets of people 
                  linked it to the aggressive agenda of the Sangh Parivar - particularly 
                  the Bajrang Dal, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and, in some cases, 
                  the Shiv Sena. In the rural context, women directly linked a 
                  rise in tension with the establishment of local units of the 
                  Bajrang Dal and the VHP. They spoke of meetings organized by 
                  these groups, and the arms they distributed at these meetings. 
                  Many believe that the tension has really escalated in the last 
                  six months.” [70] 
                    
               
               Everything about Gujarat 
                points in the direction of a pogrom. There is evidence that the 
                distribution of arms was an on going activity. The material used 
                in the violence, apart from the swords and trishuls was some variety 
                of a chemical solvent which could not have been procured spontaneously. 
                Voter lists and the specific targeting of Muslim businesses and 
                homes is another clear indication of the organized nature of the 
                violence. Even at the time of writing this report, eight months 
                after the pogrom began, many Muslims remain homeless and are unable 
                to return to their homes because of the fear that they will be 
                killed.  
               
              A.4.2 The Confidence to Kill Without 
                Cover 
                 
                If Gujarat is a stark testimony that the Sangh’s violence 
                has reached the fascist proportions that Moonje and Golwalkar 
                had in mind, then the complete confidence of the Sangh that it 
                can carry out violent campaigns without any fear is also indicated 
                by its targeted violence against individuals. The best case to 
                illustrate this would be the continuos targeting of Christian 
                nuns, priests and Evangelists by the Sangh activists. Human Rights 
                Watch, New York published a report on anti-Christian violence 
                in India in September 1999 [71] 
                and also indicted the Sangh Parivar for their role in fomenting 
                ethnic hatred against Christians: 
               
               
                Attacks against Christians 
                  throughout the country have increased significantly since the 
                  BJP began its rule at the center in March 1998. They include 
                  the killings of priests, the raping of nuns, and the physical 
                  destruction of Christian institutions, schools, churches, colleges, 
                  and cemeteries. Thousands of Christians have also been forced 
                  to convert to Hinduism. 
               
               
              Frontline, a mainstream newsmagazine, recorded 
                over 50 incidents of violence, targeted against a specific individual 
                or institution, in an organized effort to push Christian missionaries 
                out of India [72]. 
                These specified and directed attacks against individuals and institutions 
                are equally important to note as organized mass violence because 
                they are indicative of the fact that the movement has reached 
                a point where it feels the confidence to undertake such violent 
                campaigns without even the cover of a presumed communal riot. 
                 
              A.4.3 Hindutva’s First Indian 
                Act: The Murder of Gandhi 
                 
                Probably there is no more a poignant way to underscore the issue 
                of Hindutva’s definition as a violent movement than the 
                murder of Mahatma Gandhi by a prominent Hindutva activist Nathuram 
                Godse. On January 30 1948 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was shot 
                dead by Nathuram Godse. Inspite of the fact that the RSS disassociated 
                itself from Godse, the then government of India banned the organization. 
                 
                That the RSS’s denial of any involvement with Gandhi’s 
                murder is false, is clear from many associated facts.  
               
              
                -  Godse’s successful 
                  attempt to kill Gandhi was not the first but the sixth attempt 
                  on Gandhi’s life by the Hindutva movement [73]. 
                  The thesis that Godse was an exception and a misguided young 
                  man marginally associated with Hindutva, fades in light of this 
                  history of attempts from within the movement. 
 
                   
                   
                
              -  Further, the reaction 
                to the murder of Gandhi within the RSS, was one of open elation 
                – where RSS swayamsevaks were on streets celebrating. Clearly 
                the sentiment was an openly available one within the Sangh. Sardar 
                Patel, the first Home Minister of India, confirmed this in a letter 
                to the RSS supreme, M.S. Golwalkar in a letter dated September 
                11, 1948, he wrote [74], 
                
 
                   
                  “As a final result of the poison, the country had 
                  to suffer the sacrifice of the invaluable life of Gandhiji. 
                  Even an iota of the sympathy of the Government or of the people 
                  no more remained for the RSS. In fact, opposition grew. Opposition 
                  turned more severe when the RSS men expressed joy and distributed 
                  sweets after Gandhiji's death.”  
                   
                   
                -  Years later, Gopal 
                  Godse, one of the co-accused in the Gandhi murder case and Nathuram 
                  Godse’s brother, confirmed that both he and his brother 
                  were actively involved with the RSS at the time of the assassination. 
                  In an interview in 1994, he stated [75]:
 
                   
                  “All the brothers 
                  were in the RSS. Nathuram, Dattatreya, myself and Govind. You 
                  can say we grew up in the RSS rather than in our home. It was 
                  like a family to us. Nathuram had become a baudhik karyavah 
                  [intellectual worker] in the RSS. He has said in his statement 
                  that he had left the RSS. He said it because Golwalkar [the 
                  RSS Supremo] and the RSS were in a lot of trouble after the 
                  murder of Gandhi. But he did not leave the RSS.” 
               
              A movement, that began its work in a newly 
                independent India, with the murder of an apostle of peace and 
                respect for all communities, has today surfaced in its open and 
                naked form – as a fundamentally fascist movement. 
               
               
               53. We or Our Nationhood 
              Defined, Golwalkar, 1939, pp. 47-48 
               
             54. James G. Lochtefeld 
            (1996) New 
            Wine, Old Skins: The Sangh Parivar and the Transformation of Hinduism, 
            Religion 26, 101-118  
               
               55. We or Our Nationhood 
              Defined, MS Golwalkar, 1939 
               
             56. M Casolari, (1993) 
            Hindutva’s 
            foreign tie-up in the 1930s: Archival Evidence, Economic and Political 
            Weekly, Jan 22, 2000  
               
             57. M 
            Casolari, (1993) Hindutva’s 
            foreign tie-up in the 1930s: Archival Evidence, Economic and Political 
            Weekly, Jan 22, 2000  
               
             58. M 
            Casolari, (1993) Hindutva’s 
            foreign tie-up in the 1930s: Archival Evidence, Economic and Political 
            Weekly, Jan 22, 2000  
               
             59. http://www.idrf.org/flyers/balvihar/html/hss.html 
             
               
             60. http://www.rss.org/rssstor.htm 
            under the subtitle ‘Towards Maintaining Cultural Identity’ 
               
               61. The Organiser, 
              Diwali Special, 1964. 
               
             62. ‘We’ll 
            repeat our Gujarat experiment’ Indian Express, Sept 4th, 
            2002  
               
             63. James G. Lochtefeld 
            (1996) New 
            Wine, Old Skins: The Sangh Parivar and the Transformation of Hinduism, 
            Religion 26, 101-118  
               
             64. Bajrang 
            Dal activists take up arms, The Times of India, June 13th, 2001 
             
               
             65. A 
            Half Century’s Gory Record, AG Noorani, The Statesman, January 
            15, 2000 
               
               66. India: 
              Gujarat Officials Took Part in Anti-Muslim Violence: Press Release 
              by HRW, April 30, 2002  
               
               67. How 
              Has The Gujarat Massacre Affected Minority Women? The Survivors 
              Speak : A fact finding report by a Women’s Panel, Citizen’s 
              Initiative, Ahmedabad, April 16th, 2002  
               
               68. See for example, 
              the National Human Rights Commission’s Report, Final 
              order on Gujarat dated May 31, 2002,  
               
             69. A 
            Plot From The Devil's Lair, Manu Joseph, S. Anand, Outlook June 
            3, 2002  
               
               70. How 
              Has The Gujarat Massacre Affected Minority Women? The Survivors 
              Speak : A fact finding report by a Women’s Panel, Citizen’s 
              Initiative, Ahmedabad, April 16th, 2002 
               
               71. Anti-Christian 
              violence on the rise in India: New Report details politics behind 
              extremist Hindu attacks Press Release by the HRW Full Report 
              at POLITICS 
              BY OTHER MEANS: Attacks Against Christians in India HRW Report, 
              September 1999  
               
               72. A 
              catalogue of crimes, Pravin Swami, Frontline, Vol. 16 (3) Jan. 
              30 - Feb. 12, 1999  
               
               73. Tushar Gandhi, 
              http://www.mahatma.org.in/murderattempts/attempts.jsp?link=ld&id=1&cat=murderattempts 
               
               
               74. A 
              Law Unto Itself, AG Noorani, Frontline, Volume 15 (17), Aug 
              15-22, 1998 http://www.flonnet.com/fl1517/15171170.htm  
               
               75. Frontline, January 
              28, 1994 quoted in The RSS and the BJP: A Division of Labour, AG 
              Noorani, Leftword Books, 2000 p. 30 http://www.sabrang.com/gujarat/rssbible.htm 
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