A meeting of minds
Breivik’s knights and Hindutva crusaders
BY BEN ARNOLDY
The Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik writes in
a manifesto that he acquired some 8,000 email addresses of “cultural
conservatives” not just across Europe but North America, Australia,
South Africa, Armenia, Israel and India – ensuring scrutiny of
anti-Muslim groups far beyond Europe.
Mr Breivik’s primary goal is to remove Muslims from
Europe. But his manifesto invites the possibility for cooperation with
Jewish groups in Israel, Buddhists in China and Hindu nationalist groups
in India to contain Islam. “It is essential that the European and Indian
resistance movements learn from each other and cooperate as much as
possible. Our goals are more or less identical,” he wrote.
In the case of India, there is significant overlap
between Breivik’s rhetoric and strains of Hindu nationalism – or
Hindutva – on the question of coexistence with Muslims. Human rights
monitors have long decried such rhetoric in India for creating a milieu
for communal violence and the Norway incidents are prompting calls here
to confront the issue.
The manifesto
Breivik’s 1,500-page manifesto calls for preserving
traditional European culture by cutting it off from immigration from the
Muslim world. While he is against setting up a Christian theocracy, he
envisions a revival of Christendom where the church helps unify
Europeans around a shared cultural identity.
In the manifesto, Breivik references India dozens of
times. He included a five-page paper written by a man named Shrinandan
Vyas that argues the Muslim invaders committed a “genocide” of Hindus in
the Hindu Kush region of present-day Afghanistan. Efforts to track down
Mr Vyas have failed.
Invasions by Muslims into South Asia did include
bloodshed but use of the term “genocide” is highly controversial.
But for BP Singhal, a retired BJP member of Parliament
and noted Hindutva writer: “There was a wholesale massacre.” He goes on
to cite dramatic drops in the Hindu populations in Pakistan and
Bangladesh since partition of British India – figures that Breivik also
gives in his manifesto. Mr Singhal and Breivik share a critical belief:
Muslim majorities always subjugate religious minorities.
“I was with the shooter in his objective but not in his
method,” says Singhal of Breivik. “If you want to attract the nation’s
attention, surely you need to do something drastic and dramatic but not
killing people.”
But Singhal goes on to say that sometimes violence must
be fought with violence. He says people upset by violent responses to
Islam must “go one step more to find why [Breivik’s] violence came in.
Why was that western Christian talking in bad terms about Islam?” He
says it is because of violent verses in the Koran that continue to be
preached in an intolerant way.
Singhal said India and Norway should deny voting rights
to foreigners or “foreign religionists”, meaning Muslims. That would
solve the “bane of democracy”, says Singhal, where politicians who are
strict with groups like Muslims are voted out. Breivik also proposed
curbing voting rights within democracy and both men view their
ideological opponents in the media and universities as communists.
Singhal has not corresponded with Breivik nor does he
see much need for alliances to counter Islam’s spread: “Every country
will have to find its own solutions,” he says.
Knights Templar
It is unclear as yet who Breivik reached out to in India
and what the depth of the interactions was. His manifesto says he is
among 12 “knights” fighting within a dozen regions in Europe and the US
but not India. It is not known yet whether this group, which he calls
the Knights Templar Europe, actually exists.
Breivik describes months of tedious work farming
“high-quality” email addresses off the Internet by friending networks
“representing all spheres of cultural conservative thought” on Facebook,
then acquiring members’ email addresses. The goal appeared to be to
generate a list to send his manifesto to just prior to his rampage.
Officials in India’s home ministry would not comment on
whether they are tracking down Breivik’s emails to India. [Senior
journalist Praveen] Swami, who has sources inside India’s intelligence
community, told the Monitor that India does not have the capacity
to do those traces easily until Norway provides information from
Breivik’s computers. “I’ve been trying to ask around if anyone knows
about a substantial correspondence of any kind and haven’t come up with
anything,” says Swami.
The Internet has made it easier for extremists to follow
one another internationally, he points out. But historically, European
and Indian far-right groups have not worked with each other – nor do
they have much practical reason to cooperate now.
“I think irrespective of the Norwegian [attacks], the
government needs to keep a much closer eye on the activities of the
Hindu fundamentalist groups... and crack down on hate speech, whether
it’s Hindu, Muslim or otherwise,” says Swami.
(This article was published online in The Christian
Science Monitor on July 25, 2011.)
Courtesy: The Christian Science Monitor;
www.csmonitor.com