[Reader-list] The scars of nationalism

[Harsh Kapoor]

The Daily Herald (Chicago, USA)
7 May 2003
http://www.dailyherald.com/special/passagefromindia/hindu.asp

The scars of nationalism
Suburban Hindu nationalists say their shakhas promote pride, but in 
India similar groups are linked to atrocities

Story by Rukmini Callimachi
Photos by M. Scott Mahaskey

A stunned Shajahan Sheikh, 18, listens as her mother asks "Who will 
take her now?" referring to the scars she wears across her face after 
she was burned during the 2002 riots in Ahmedabad.AHMEDABAD, Gujarat 
- In his last hour, witnesses say, Ahsan Jafri knew he would not 
leave his house alive and so he delivered himself to the mob.

Already, houses all around his bungalow were in flames.

Jafri, this city's 74-year-old Muslim statesman, had provided refuge 
inside his two-story residence to more than 150 of his Muslim 
neighbors. When the Hindu mob turned violent, the Muslims had taken 
cover inside, thinking no harm would come to a retired member of the 
Indian parliament - even if he was a Muslim.

It was Feb. 28, 2002, a day after Muslims armed with stones and 
kerosene set four train cars on fire in Godhra, trapping the 
passengers inside. Fifty-eight Hindus were burned alive, including 
more than a dozen children. Dozens of others were horribly scarred.

The train was carrying hundreds of Hindu activists returning from a 
pilgrimage to the city of Ayodhya, where in 1992, hard-line Hindus 
tore down a 475-year-old Muslim mosque, claiming it stood on the 
birthplace of the god Ram.

As relief workers gingerly untangled the limbs of the charred bodies 
on that February day, Hindu mobs erupted in a frenzy of vengeance.

Now, reportedly 10,000 circled Jafri's home, chanting his name. When 
repeated calls to the police brought no help, some who survived said, 
Jafri decided to sacrifice himself in the hope others would be spared.

He walked onto his doorstep. The mob demanded he say "Jai Shri Ram," 
or "Victory to Lord Ram," one of the gods in the Hindu pantheon.

When he refused, they cut off his hands.

Tanveer Jafri, son of former Indian Parliament member Ahsan Jafri, 
walks through his former home. Indian Security Forces are using the 
house as a dormitory.Survivors said the attackers wore saffron 
bandanas, the signature orange color of Hindu nationalism, which 
holds that because most Indians are Hindu, India should be a Hindu 
nation. They carried tridents, the three-pronged weapon of Shiva, the 
god of destruction.

The mob asked Jafri again to honor their god. Again he refused, and 
they cut off his legs.

When he declined a third time, the mob cut him down his middle and 
dragged his body into the street.

There, they set him on fire on a road 10 miles from the ashram where 
half a century ago, Mohandas K. Gandhi perfected his doctrine of 
non-violence.

After killing Jafri, the mob set fire to his house. At least 40 Muslims died.

Ahsan Jafri has become the icon of the three-day rampage in which at 
least 2,000 Muslims were killed while another 100,000 became 
homeless, according to the U.S. State Department's 2002 human rights 
report on India. About 20,000 Muslim businesses were destroyed, said 
India's Concerned Citizen's Tribunal.

Unlike the Godhra murders, which a Human Rights Watch investigation 
said appeared to be spontaneous violence, there was evidence the 
three-day attack on Muslims was premeditated, the report said. That 
opinion was echoed by India's National Human Rights Commission and 
the Concerned Citizen's Tribunal, the latter a commission of mostly 
retired Indian judges.

Mobs, organized into "militia-like units," fanned out across the 
state, carrying printouts identifying addresses of Muslim homes and 
businesses, researchers said.

Moreover, Smita Narula, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch and a 
Hindu, believes the violence against Muslims was masterminded by a 
family of Hindu nationalist organizations, including the Vishwa Hindu 
Parishad, which all fall under the umbrella of the Rashtriya 
Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS. The National Human Rights Commission 
concurs.

International outrage over the Gujarat violence was swift. In the 
United States, a federal agency commissioned by Congress recommended 
India be placed on the list of Countries of Particular Concern.

Meanwhile, scholars and non-nationalist Hindus in the United States 
increasingly are concerned about the proliferation of RSS branches in 
this country, known here as the HSS, called shakhas. In 1991, there 
were just three shakhas in the United States; now, there are more 
than 50, according to the HSS web site.

There is no evidence that connects the nationalist movement in the 
United States with the violence in Gujarat. But scholars, many of 
them Hindu, say local nationalists help support an atmosphere of hate 
- both ideologically and financially - in the mother country.

Two local shakhas meet weekly in Schaumburg and Wheeling while a 
third Chicago-area one is being formed, organizers say.

The Hindu Students Council, the HSS student wing, holds meetings at 
Northwestern University and the Illinois Institute of Technology. 
Their foremost symbol is the saffron flag, posted at every meeting.

Before the Ahmedabad mob dispersed, it planted a saffron flag in the 
courtyard of Gulbarg Society, the subdivision that Ahsan Jafri had 
built as a refuge for Muslims everywhere.

Suburban saffron

"Just seeing it fills you with joy," said Vasant Pandav, 59, 
president of the Chicago-area HSS, referring to the orange-hued flag 
that has just been posted on a portable stand inside the Schaumburg 
Park District Community Center.

It's early on a Sunday morning, and 19 members of the local HSS, the 
Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, are playing a traditional game called 
kabbadi, which resembles team tag.

The flag is orange, Pandav said, because that is the color of the sun 
at dawn. It is a symbol of Hinduism meant to dispel ignorance, just 
as the morning sun dispels the darkness of night.

Members like Shridhar Damle reject the idea that they promote an 
atmosphere of hate. Damle, of Villa Park, is a member of the local 
HSS and co-author of an authoritative account of the organization, 
"The Brotherhood in Saffron."

"Our function is to organize Hindu society in America," Damle said. 
"We do not have time or energy to think about other things.

"Our motto is 'The whole universe is one family,' so there is no room 
for hating each other."

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the "National Volunteer Corps," was 
founded in India in 1925, two decades before India won independence 
from Britain. India is a secular state, but the RSS holds that 
Hindus, 81 percent of India's 1 billion population, are the rightful 
heirs of the subcontinent.

In India, young men meet daily in the early hours before dawn for 
shakha. They salute the saffron flag. They partake in games, drills 
and discussions.

On this Sunday in Schaumburg, families are nearing the end of a 
1_-hour session. They gather in a half-moon on the floor.

"For all of history, Hindus have been kicked around and bullied," 
Pandav said, opening the discussion. "We need to unite so no one can 
beat us around. What are the latest examples of this?"

The group mentions Maxim, the men's magazine that ridiculed Gandhi in 
a recent cartoon. It sparked an online campaign, forcing the editors 
to apologize. There's also the Seattle manufacturer who made a line 
of toilet seats embellished with Kali, the Hindu goddess of 
destruction.

"Should we take this kind of insult lying down? No!" said Pandav. "A 
thousand protest e-mails were sent. This is what we can do if there 
is unity."

Pandav, who immigrated to Illinois in 1965 and lives in Downers 
Grove, says the suburban shakhas promote Hindu unity and pride in 
their heritage. Most of the attendees say they joined to reconnect 
with the homeland they miss.

Sarifa Ajmeri, 35, recalls the night in which Hindu rioters passed by 
her window."English is the language of instruction in India. I grew 
up reading the Hardy Boys," said Saurabh Jang, 29, a former member of 
the Schaumburg shakha who came to Hoffman Estates in 1996. "I always 
felt that I didn't have a firm enough grounding in my own culture."

Second-generation members like Ami Soni, 16, who was born in 
Libertyville, see it as a kind of Hindu Sunday school.

"There's a lot of things I didn't know, like why does Ganesh have a 
trunk? Or why does Hanuman have the face of a monkey?" the Mundelein 
High School junior said.

Hinduism, the world's third largest religion with 900 million 
practitioners, is a polytheistic faith with several thousand gods. It 
has no single sacred text, nor does it prescribe a single moral way 
of life. "Just as all rivers lead to the sea, eventually all paths 
lead to God" is a common Hindu saying that implies it is among the 
world's most tolerant religions.

But scholars in the United States say the Hindu nationalist groups, 
however benign they may seem, support bigotry.

"Americans should be concerned. Any religious organization that 
promotes what could be construed as bigotry is undesirable in this 
country," said Sumit Ganguly, a professor at the University of Texas 
and a Hindu. "They seem benign, but they're not. They extol Hindu 
virtues in a way which denigrates other faiths."

Supporters of Hindu nationalism in the Chicago area are only a 
fraction of the nearly 125,000 Indian immigrants living here. 
According to Pandav, the greater Chicago HSS chapter has 50 active 
members and 3,000 supporters.

Many Hindu immigrants are suspicious of nationalist groups, said 
Padma Rangaswamy of Clarendon Hills, author of "Namaste America." One 
local temple declined to host a VHP function, she said.

"Most of the established religious institutions here want to separate 
themselves from extremist elements," she said. "The majority of 
Indians here don't even know they hold shakhas."

Chicago-based scholar Lise McKean, author of "Divine Enterprise, 
Gurus and the Hindu Nationalist Movement," said she fears the Hindu 
nationalists in this country "are creating another generation led to 
think that being Hindu somehow means that you're against Muslims."

Rangaswamy said, however, there is growing concern within the Indian 
community about the rise of a Muslim-backed insurgency in Kashmir, 
where a reported 34,000 people have been killed since 1989.

The recent spurt in shakhas goes hand-in-hand with the beginning of 
this conflict and the post-1990 wave of immigrants who came here to 
work in the tech industry, she said.

"If things simmer down at home," she said, "these kinds of 
organizations would not have a breeding ground here."

Pandav said the real issue is the general victimization of Hindus, 
like the 58 Hindus killed in Godhra.

The retaliatory attack against Muslims, Pandav said, was a reaction 
to years of pent-up pain. He denies it was organized or that the RSS 
played a role.

Damle, meanwhile, said it is possible some fringe nationalists may 
have been involved, but said that should not reflect on the Hindu 
nationalist movement.

"If you're a member of a church, and you kill someone, does that mean 
that the whole church should be blamed?" Damle said.

"Both what happened in Godhra and what happened in Ahmedabad is to be 
condemned, it was a 'mobocracy,'" he added. "But when somebody tries 
to attack me or my society, then it's my right to defend myself."

At the Schaumburg shakha, there is another component besides games 
and talk. As the group discussion wraps up, one member calls, 
"Takhsat!" - Sanskrit for "Attention!"

Immediately, the 19 men and women form a single-file line in front of 
the saffron flag.

They stand alert, military-like. Their hands are clenched at their 
sides. On cue, they pivot. One by one, they march forward and salute 
the flag, hands raised to their hearts.

No photography is allowed.

A Hindu land

On Jan. 30, 1948, Mohandas K. Gandhi was killed in New Delhi with 
three pistol shots to the chest.

Gandhi had enraged Hindu nationalists by reluctantly supporting the 
creation of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, which was carved out of 
India in 1947.

His killer, Nathuram Godse, was a former member of the RSS. As India 
grieved for Gandhi, the government banned the RSS for 18 months. 
Hindu nationalism instantly became a pariah movement.

Scholars say the dangers of the movement were evident long before 
1948. The RSS was founded with the explicit aim of creating a Hindu 
rashtra, or Hindu nation, McKean said.

"The ideology of the RSS is fascist. It explicitly modeled itself 
after Mussolini and Hitler. There's plenty of scholarship to back 
that up," McKean said. "So when one uses the term, it's not some kind 
of name-calling."

After nearly half a century on the fringe, RSS fortunes changed 
dramatically in the late 1980s when the Congress Party, which had 
governed India since independence, fell into disarray amid charges of 
corruption. In 1998, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which many contend 
is the RSS's political arm, won the general election.

"What was once a fringe movement became politically mainstream," said 
Ashutosh Varshney, director of the Center for South Asian Studies at 
the University of Michigan and a Hindu.

Inauguration of Narendra Modi, chief minister of Gujarat. It was the 
largest inauguration ceremony for any chief minister in 
Indian history.A year later, India tested nuclear weapons in a show 
of military might against Pakistan. Elementary school textbooks began 
to reflect a history that portrayed Muslims as aggressors, Varshney 
said.

The State Department says that since the BJP's rise to power, some 
government bureaucrats began to enforce laws selectively to the 
detriment of religious minorities. The "Hinduization" of education 
and the revision of history books included hate propaganda against 
Muslims and Christians.

But the BJP never had a secure grip. In Gujarat in the months 
preceding last year's violence, the BJP was losing ground, Varshney 
said.

"Riots, when they can be blamed on Muslims, help the Hindu 
nationalist parties," said Varshney. The districts hardest hit by 
anti-Muslim violence last February voted overwhelmingly for the BJP, 
he said.

Narendra Modi, the BJP-backed chief minister of Gujarat, was easily 
re-elected. In December, more than 120,000 people dressed in saffron 
crowded into the Ahmedabad stadium to bless Modi's inauguration. One 
young man held up a sign: "Narendra Modi = Chief Minister = Prime 
Minister = Hindu Rashtra."

Funding hate

Indian academics in the United States have voiced concerns about 
money raised here and sent to support Hindu nationalist activities in 
India.

The India Development and Relief Fund, based in Maryland, says it 
serves economically disadvantaged people in India. It raised more 
than $10 million since its inception in 1989, according to the 
Campaign to Stop Funding Hate, a group of Indian academics and 
activists in the U.S. The campaign says 82 percent of the money went 
to projects managed by groups that are explicitly part of the RSS 
family.

The RSS has undertaken thousands of development projects, medical 
clinics, orphanages and schools in India.

"But they're not exactly the Salvation Army," said Stephen P. Cohen 
of the Brookings Institute. He argues the majority of the relief work 
comes with an ideological price tag.

The "Foreign Exchange of Hate," a report written by the Campaign to 
Stop Funding Hate, claims the money went to RSS-affiliated charities 
that helped create the ideological environment that allowed the 
Gujarat violence to occur.

After the report was released in November, 320 academics in the U.S. 
who specialize in South Asian studies independently circulated a 
petition supporting the conclusions.

Motorola software engineer and former shakha member Jang, for 
instance, designates a portion of his $29.58 a month IDRF 
contribution to Ekal Vidyalayal, the "One Teacher Schools."

"Sure, they run educational institutions that teach arithmetic and 
reading," said Shalini Gera of the Campaign to Stop Funding Hate and 
herself a Hindu. "But these schools, under the cover of relief work, 
are also teaching that Muslims and Christians are foreigners. It 
teaches them to hate."

Children in a youth shakha march in a local gymnasium.Jang argues 
that Hindu schools merely counter what Christian missionaries already 
have been doing in India's tribal districts. "Christian missionaries 
never give something for nothing," he said, remembering the day 
Jehovah's Witnesses showed up at his mother's doorstep.

In 1999, the State Department documented a wave of apparently 
organized attacks against Christians in the tribal belt of Gujarat, 
including forced conversions to Hinduism. A report released this 
March said Hindu nationalists in 2002 "began an ideological campaign 
to limit access to Christian institutions and discourage or, in some 
cases, prohibit conversions to Christianity."

Until recently, employees at Sun Microsystems, Oracle and CISCO could 
donate to IDRF through payroll deductions matched by company 
donations. Oracle and Cisco halted matching contributions following 
the release of the "Foreign Exchange of Hate" report. Sun 
Microsystems is investigating, but has kept the charity on its 
payrolls.

The Illinois chapter of the IDRF is run out of the Bloomington home 
of Shrinarayan Chandak. He said the IDRF "rejects violence of any 
kind" and described the foreign exchange report as "totally false" 
and "Hindu bashing."

Jang is disturbed by the allegations and says they are false.

"If I thought that the IDRF had anything to do with the riots, I 
would not give to them," he said. "If I thought the RSS had anything 
to do with it, I would stop being a member."

Suicide squad

On the outskirts of Bombay, in the district of Thane, is the 
Hindusthani Suicide Squad training ground.

"There is nothing secret about what we are doing," said Col. 
Jayantrao Chitale, the founder of the camp that opened last fall. "A 
thousand years ago, we fought with sticks and stones. Then we fought 
with tanks. Now the new war is terrorism, and we plan to fight 
terrorism with terrorism."

His target is not Gujarat's Muslims. It is Pakistan.

For decades, Hindu nationalism has been fueled by Pakistan's 
aggression in Kashmir and acts of terrorism within India, such as the 
attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001 and on New Delhi's 
Red Fort in December 2000.

So far, Chitale said, 40 young men have signed the "suicide bond" 
that binds them to give their life for Mother India.

The camp once was closed by the Maharashtra state government. It was 
quietly allowed to reopen. Chitale said he is informing every member 
of the Lok Sabha, India's parliament, that he intends to train the 
suicide squad and keep it ready. It will only be deployed, he said, 
with government approval.

"Gandhi was a very weak person," said Chitale, "and Indian people are 
like cattle. You drive them and they will be driven. We need to send 
the message to Pakistan that if you blow off one bus, we'll blow off 
five."

Coming home

"There were bodies in every single room," said Tanveer Jafri, 40, 
Ahsan Jafri's eldest son and the first family member to get to the 
house after the massacre.

"Ahsan Jafri's son, Zuber, holds out the last photograph of his 
father.The first floor of Ahsan Jafri's house, with its bare cement 
and exposed wires, now is a dormitory for India's Central Reserve 
Police Force. Police were sent here last December to "protect 
minorities," 10 months after the riots.

The 2002 State Department report said that during the Gujarat riots, 
the police reportedly told frantic Muslim callers, "We don't have 
orders to save you."

"When we called for them, they wouldn't come," Tanveer Jafri said. 
"Now that we don't need them, they are here."

The second floor of Jafri's house withstood the burning. More than 70 
women and children, including Jafri's wife, huddled there in terror, 
waiting for it to end even as the walls became so hot that posters 
began to warp.

A dozen crumpled Indian flags are buried in the rubble here, under a 
heavy coat of soot. The flags are relics from Ahsan Jafri's days as a 
leader of Gujarat's Congress Party.

Tanveer Jafri bent down to inspect a flag that, by a dark 
coincidence, had crumpled into a shape like the outline of the 
subcontinent.

One year later, no one has been convicted in connection with the 
deaths of the Muslims in Gujarat, said Human Rights Watch's Smita 
Narula. Tanveer Jafri collected 22 signed affidavits from the 
survivors of Gulbarg Society, naming specific attackers. All are out 
on bail, Jafri said.

After taking testimony from survivors of the massacre, including 
Ahsan Jafri's daughter Nishrin Hussain, the U.S. Commission on 
International Religious Freedom recommended India be placed on the 
list of Countries of Particular Concern. The Bush administration 
responded this spring with "no."

"The commission was deeply disappointed," Commission Chair Felice D. 
Gaer said. "There is credible evidence that orders were given to 
police not to interfere. Muslim homes were singled out for death and 
destruction."

But the violence also gave birth to activism, including the Campaign 
to Stop Funding Hate. In the Chicago suburbs, a group of Muslim and 
Hindu residents began meeting at the Darien Public Library, forming 
the Coalition for a Secular and Democratic India.

A tattered Indian flag lies on the third floor of Ahsan 
Jafri's home.The Indian Muslim Council also was formed. In March, it 
sponsored Nishrin Hussain, Jafri's daughter, to speak to the Islamic 
Foundation of Villa Park on the anniversary of the riots.

She spoke to a packed hall, many of them members of the Gujarati 
Muslim community. About 2,000 Gujarati Muslims live in the Chicago 
area, said Akhtar Sadiq, president of the Gujarati Muslim Association 
of America, headquartered in Downers Grove.

In Villa Park, the crowd surrounding Hussain supported her as she 
struggled at the podium, clasping a poem written by her father. It 
compares India to a beautiful woman whose hair was trimmed by a Hindu 
saint, whose form was called out by Guru Nanak, the founder of 
Sikhism, and whose vibrant garments were painted by Buddha and an 
Islamic poet.

Hussain broke down and couldn't read the final line.

"This is my land," says the English translation. "This is my land. 
This is my land."

Shridhar Damle's house is just three minutes from the Islamic 
Foundation. On a side table in his living room is a tiny saffron flag 
- a 2-inch version of the one ceremoniously installed each week in 
Schaumburg, in 50 shakhas nationwide and in 25,000 shakhas around the 
globe.

It is the pilot light of a movement.

"Everywhere you went in Gujarat, there were saffron flags," said 
Smita Narula. "You were literally tripping over them."

For Damle, it stands for Hindu pride.

For Hussain, it might be the last color her father saw.