Is it time to Bajrangdal Again?

T. Narayan Direct confrontation: Bajrang Dal activists strike defiant poses. The Dal has a new modus operandi.

TERRORISM: BAJRANG DAL

A Call To Arms

As authorities look on, the Bajrang Dal tilts toward militancy

SMITA GUPTA In Outlook Sept 15, 2008

"The Bajrang Dal has proved as a security ring of Hindu society. Whenever there is an attack on Hindu Society, Faith and Religion, the workers of the Bajrang Dal come forward to their rescue." —from the official Vishwa Hindu Parishad website. In a curious convergence of views, policymakers—regardless of the party in power—administrators/police and journalists appear to be united in the belief that to put the activities of Hindu militant organisations under the scanner, in the way their Muslim counterparts are, would somehow upset the social balance.

Take the Bajrang Dal, the 12.5 lakh strong (official figure) armed youth wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, an affiliate of the RSS, with units across the country. From the destruction of the Babri Masj

in 1992—after which it was briefly banned—to the post-Godhra massacres in 2002, and the violence it routinely wreaks on Christian tribals in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh, it has provided enough evidence of its appetite for bloodletting. Today, once again, the Bajrang Dal—which had kept a low profile after the fall of the BJP-led NDA government in 2004—is in the news, thanks to a range of violent activities across the country. Whether providing muscle to the Amarnath agitation in Jammu, terrorising Christian tribals in Orissa, making bombs of lethal intensity in Kanpur or building a terror network across Maharashtra, it all appears to be part of a day's work.

The question now being asked, especially by civil rights organisations, is:http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20080915&fname=Bajrang+Dal+(F)&sid=1 Read more