Over the years, Sikhs
scattered across the globe have successfully defended their right to say no
to a helmet even at the workplace in countries where a workman is legally
obliged to wear them as a safety measure. To do so, they have argued, would
mean removing the turban from their heads, which for them is a religious
obligation. Back home, some years ago, on being elected to the Lok Sabha,
Simranjeet Singh Mann had insisted on his right to carry his kirpan
inside the Indian Parliament. Wielded as a weapon, the kirpan could
kill. But devout Sikhs maintain that the kirpan for them is an
obligatory religious symbol, not an offensive weapon. Even post September
11, an American court has ruled that the kirpan on the person of a
Sikh is indeed to be treated as a religious symbol.
It can be argued that what is
kirpan to a Sikh a trishul is to a Hindu. And it is precisely
for that reason that both are exempt from the provisions of the Indian Arms
Act. Indians are all too familiar with the sight of sadhus moving
around the country with the three–pronged trishul at the end of a pole,
which also serves as a walking stick. So far so good. But now? As we all
know, a very large number of people from the Sikh faith whom we encounter in
daily life — offices, schools, public places — still wear turbans. But
we come across very few Sikhs who still carry a kirpan. And apart
from sadhus, one can hardly think of Hindus, however devout, who move
around with trishuls.
What then does one make of
the Bajrang Dal’s countrywide Trishul Diksha Samarohs in the course
of which, according to Rajasthan’s chief minister, Ashok Gehlot, over 40
lakh Hindus have already been gifted with trishuls in recent months?
Has the Bajrang Dal launched a campaign to turn all Hindus into devout sadhus?
Given the track record of this extremist outfit, given its arms training
camps across the country in the last two years, and given recent calls by
some from the sangh parivar to Hindus to prepare to ‘defend’
themselves, religiosity is the least plausible motive driving the current
campaign. The most incriminating aspect of the Bajrang Dal’s trishul
is that it looks nothing like what one associates with sadhus — if
anything, as Congress leaders and police officials point out, they are
nothing but Rampuri knives that can kill, specially crafted to look like a
religious symbol.
Without a shred of doubt, the
Bajrang Dal is engaged a national programme to ‘militarise’ Hindus. If
this should shock all peace–loving Indians, what is even more shocking is
the fact that the insidious game plan has not created a national uproar.
While drawing attention to this highly disturbing trend, our cover story
this month also highlights what appears to be an obvious attempt on the part
of the sangh parivar to replicate its highly effective experiment of
communalising BJP–ruled Gujarat in neighbouring Rajasthan, a state
presently under Congress rule but a traditional Jana Sangh/BJP bastion. It
is not insignificant that apart from the large–scale distribution of ‘trishuls’
and incendiary pamphlets now banned by the state government, as also the VHP’s
jalabhishek programme, there appears to be a pre–mediated plan at
work to destroy mazaars and dargahs which for long have been
the common meeting ground for Hindus, Muslims and people from other
religions, too.
And, as is also evident from
the report of the fact–finding team of human rights activists who visited
Malegaon to investigate last month’s riots in that town, the sangh
brigade now appears to be working on a plan (in Maharashtra as
much as in Gujarat and Rajasthan) whose aim is not so much to kill as to
economically cripple the Muslim community.
Elsewhere in this issue we
have reproduced a report from the Daily Star published from Dhaka
that presents a grim account of the highly condemnable, countrywide attacks
on Hindus — murder, rape, loot, arson, nothing has been left out — in
Bangladesh from the moment the Jamaat–e–Islami backed Begum Khaleda Zia
was returned to power. Without doubt, religious intolerance and communal
violence is a sub-continental scourge — Christians were attacked in
Pakistan recently in ‘retaliation’ to America’s bombing of Afghanistan
— and has to be fought at that level.
— EDITORS
