Manufacturers of ‘Saffron Terrorism’ Portray Gujarat as Cauldron of Communalism

In 2013, in an interview given to Headlines Today, the then AICC General Secretary Digvijay Singh criticized the Hindutva ideology. He said Hindutva is not related to Hinduism but a ‘highly communal mindset’ of some people and that it was coined by Savarkar who did not believe in Hinduism. In such a way the insane Digvijay crossed his limit by attacking Veer Savarkar on the Hindutva issue. Even after 9-10 years and getting decimated in two general elections, the stand of Congress on Hindutva didn’t change. 

Digvijay Singh’s remarks on Hindutva were a response to the then Gujarat CM Narendra Modi’s demand for a Uniform Civil Code and repealing of Art. 370 from the Indian Constitution during the 2014 election campaign. It was quite funny that the Indian media regarded Digvijay Singh as a champion of secularism despite his staunch opposition to the Common Civil Code and branded Modi as a communal person for supporting the enactment of a Common Civil Code in India. Earlier, Congress blamed Gujarat riots for creation of terror outfit Indian Mujahideen, a remark slammed as ‘reprehensible’ by BJP which accused it of playing the communal card for vote bank politics.

‘Indian Mujahideen (IM) was formed after the Gujarat riots, says NIA in its charge sheet. Even now BJP and RSS will not desist from their communal politics ?,’ Congress leader Shakeel Ahmed claimed earlier on the microblogging site Twitter. Actually, Shakeel had taken on the role of being a spokesperson of Indian Mujahideen inside Congress !!!

Hitting back, BJP said the remarks were ‘stupid’ and ‘reprehensible’ as the Pakistan links of such outfits were well known and alleged that it was a ‘desperate’ Congress which was actually trying to communalise the political scenario and playing with national security as it had ‘no answers for all the wrongs’ it had done.

Then Digvijay Singh blamed the ‘communal politics of BJP for the chain reaction’ on the issue of terror. “This (2002 riots) was the reason behind the creation of Indian Mujahideen. If they forsake their communal politics, outfits like IM will cease to exist,” Ahmed said.

BJP said it was well known that Pakistan has been aiding and abetting terror outfits that are active in India.

“There is this competition among the various Congress spokespersons and leaders to deliberately communalise the country’s political scenario, because they have no answer to stinking corruption, misgovernance, price rise, unemployment, the general sense of suffering the people of India are having,” Deputy Leader of BJP in Rajya Sabha Ravishankar Prasad had responded as opposition leader.

Then, Ravishankar Prasad said terror outfits were active in the country before the 2002 riots also. And Congress has never any concrete stand to combat Islamic Terrorism in India. “Why are they playing with national security ? Is it not a fact that IM has links with Pakistan-based terrorist outfits…. Is it not a fact that much before 2002, there was SIMI with designs to usher in terrorist attacks in India ? These are all too well known. Please don’t play with national security. This competitive politics for vote bank to deliberately stoke communalism is reprehensible,” he said.

Congress is the source of Communalism in India

Actually, Congress is the main culprit to promote Islamic Communalism in India as it tagged the Khilafat Movement (1919-1924) with the Indian Freedom Struggle in 1920 due to the insanity of Gandhi for his own projection as a universally accepted leader of Muslims too. Gandhi was the Father of Communalism in India. In the name of the Khilafat movement, fanatic Mopla Muslims of the Malabar region ruined the lives of hapless Hindus through deadly riots in 1921. Congress supported the Moplas. The Mopla insurgency actually rejuvenated the Muslim armed revolution in India with the moral support of the Muslim League in Bengal and Rajakars in Hyderabad. Muslim League was established in 1906.

The most prominent Muslim League leader and the Prince of Communalism in India and the Father of Pakistan, Mr Mohammad Ali Jinnah was a Congressman. In 1920, Jinnah left the Congress party and became the President of the Muslim League. After 1920, communal turmoil was created in India by the Muslim League led by Jinnah who was an ex-Congressman, but even later he had a huge influence on Congress with his friends like Gandhi and agents like Abul Kalam Azad.

Actually, those who are trying to fabricate a  reaction theory, either do not know the real history or are deliberately misleading. In 1910, an All India Hindu Conference was organised in Allahabad by leading Hindu social and political leaders who sought to organise Indian Hindus politically in response to the rise of the Muslim League. The Hindu Mahasabha was founded in 1914 in Amritsar and established its headquarters in Haridwar. Amongst its early leaders was the prominent nationalist and educationalist Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, who founded the Benaras Hindu University in 1916. It is pertinent to note that the Aligarh Muslim University, the fountainhead of Islamic separatism in India, was established in 1920. AMU’s formation was initiated way back in 1875 as Madrasatul Uloom Musalmanan-e-Hind, which later became Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College (MAO College). Extremely popular Punjabi leader Lala Lajpat Rai, Madanmohan Malaviya and the Hindu Mahasabha campaigned for Hindu political unity, for the education and economic development of Hindus as well as for the re-conversion of Muslims to Hinduism. The Mopla movement saw a massacre of Hindus in thousands and forceful conversions to Islam with the option of either converting to Islam or facing violent death. Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya and Lala Lajpat Rai were both nationalist Congress leaders and its patron for a very long time.

In its political evolution, Jana Sangha was founded in 1951 and BJP was formed just in December 1980.

Now the question of formation of Indian Mujahideen as a reaction to Gujarat Riot

At least two Muslim fundamentalist Congress leaders, Salman Khurshid and Shakeel Ahamed have been trying to defend and promote SIMI (Student Islamic Movement in India) and IM (Indian Mujahideen) for their own interest to achieve another Islamic State within India by using the Congress platform as a useful tool.

The Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), proscribed under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, is an Islamist fundamentalist organization, which advocates the ‘liberation of India’ by converting it to an Islamic land. The SIMI, an organisation of young extremist students has declared Jihad against India, the aim of which is to establish Dar-ul-Islam (land of Islam) by either forcefully converting everyone to Islam or by violence. The SIMI, the source of the formation of Indian Mujahideen was formed at Aligarh in the State of Uttar Pradesh on April 25, 1977, three years before the establishment of the BJP.

Mohammad Ahmadullah Siddiqi (a progenitor of Muslim renaissance), founded the Islamic Students Movement of India. A scholar in Physics, Ahmadullah was inspired to change streams of mass media and journalism for projecting better image of Muslims of India. He started it as a united platform for Muslim students and youth wing of the JeI Hind with the objective of restoring the Caliphate for the unity of Ummah (Muslim community) by rejecting the concept of nationalism, secularism and democracy), Professor of Journalism and Public Relations at the Western Illinois University Macomb, Illinois (after migrating from India in 1981), was the founding President of the outfit. It originally emerged as a student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH). The alliance, however, lasted only till 1981, when SIMI activists protested against Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat’s visit to India, and greeted him with black flags in New Delhi. Young SIMI activists identified Arafat as a western puppet, while the senior JIH leaders saw Arafat as a champion of the cause of Palestine. JIH decided to abandon SIMI and floated a new student wing, the Students Islamic Organization (SIO).

The communal riots post the 1992 incident, saw the rise of the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and the mutation of a section of ambitious Muslim youth into terrorists with the help of forces across the border.

The story of home-grown jihadists as solely responsible for 26/11 would have gained ground had it not been for the testimonies of David Coleman Headley and Sarfaraz Nawaz on the involvement of the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence, top Lashkar-e-Taiba leadership, the Al Qaida and the Karachi project, whose demonic child is the Indian Mujahideen. This book is the first-ever attempt to link up jihadists all over India and trace their linkages with terrorists based in countries like Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

SIMI is widely believed to be against Hinduism, western beliefs and ideals, as well as other ‘anti-Islamic cultures’. Among its various objectives, the SIMI aims to counter what it believes is the increasing moral degeneration, and sexual anarchy in Indian society as also the ‘insensitiveness’ of a ‘decadent’ west. Ideologically, SIMI maintains that the concepts of secularism, democracy and nationalism, keystones of the Indian Constitution, are antithetical to Islam. Parallel to its rejection of secularism, democracy and nationalism is its oft-repeated objective of restoration of the ‘Khilafat’, emphasis on ‘Ummah’, and the need for a Jehad to establish the supremacy of Islam.

Obviously, there is no connection between the BJP and the establishment or promotion of SIMI. But, Congress leader Salman Khurshid at-least appeared to desire the removal of dangerous elements of SIMI after its ban by the Central Govt. When Khurshid was chief of the Congress in UP, he defended the Islamic terrorist outfit Students Islamic Movement of India [SIMI] – reincarnated later as Indian Mujhahideen – as peace-loving lads, arguing as its counsel in courts. This was in 2001, before Gujarat Riot.

Actually SIMI or its ultra-radical formation Indian Mujahideen has its global connection of Pan Jihad not with Gujarat Riot.

(Courtesy : Excerpts from an Article by Upananda Brahmachari posted on bharatvoice.in; 22.2.2023)