ON THE SADHVI TRAIL

Political education

It is as if in the 15 years since Pragya Singh left Bhind after becoming an ABVP fulltimer, for Ujjain, Indore, Bhopal and Surat, this musty town has not moved at all. The road is still a lurching dirt track with holes. Buildings seem frozen in time, either half-constructed or half-decayed.

There is still no industry here. Many government officials and teachers in Bhind8217;s colleges reside in Gwalior8212;as a result, college hours in Bhind8217;s leading MGS college, where Pragya sat for her MA examinations as one of the college8217;s unrecorded 8220;private8221; students, are still said to be determined by the arrival and departure of the local trains running to and from Gwalior.

Dacoits do not come in from the surrounding wilds anymore. The administration claims success in dealing with the menace that long afflicted and long defined Madhya Pradesh8217;s Chambal belt, particularly the Bhind-Morena region, and even locals concede that the large gangs are gone. But the gun culture remains bluntly in-your-face.

As Bhind begins its preparations for the assembly polls, Pragya Singh8212;an accused in the Malegaon attack8212;has come back to haunt the town to which she came to do her post graduation, while working with the ABVP. But Bhind8217;s politicians are still unsure of how to play the issue of the sadhvi8217;s arrest early this month on charges of terrorism.

The local BJP oscillates between denial and defiance: 8220;She wasn8217;t a member of the BJP. The ABVP is a separate organisation. In any case, she severed her connection with this town long ago, and was working in Gujarat when she was arrested by the Maharashtra police,8221; says Narendra Singh Kushwah, sitting BJP MLA from Bhind. 8220;Of course, if it does become an issue8221; he says, 8220;it will only benefit the BJP. After all, she is a local girl, and a sadhvi. And then, the charges against Pragya are yet to be proved.8221;

Congress8217;s Satyadev Katare, MLA from Ater constituency in Bhind district, says, 8220;If the party takes up the issue at the national level, the BJP will be exposed.8221; At the same time, he admits, 8220;It is still something new, something that hasn8217;t happened before.8221;

The fact is that both the Congress and the BJP in Bhind are waiting to take their cue from Delhi. 8220;The national leadership is still deliberating on the issue,8221; says Kushwah. Katare is more forthcoming: 8220;The central leadership will decide how to handle this. Then they will tell us,8221; he says.

The fact also is that both Congress and BJP are aware of their own limits vis-a-vis political mobilisation in Bhind. Here, they say elections are rarely fought on issues or even between the two parties in the fray. This area is long used to its politics being arranged primarily along the Thakur versus Brahmin faultline. 8220;No one works as a party here,8221; admits Katare. 8220;My own partymen worked against my candidature and for the BJP candidate in the last Lok Sabha election, on caste grounds.8221;

One thing seems certain: If the terror charge against Sadhvi Pragya Singh becomes an issue in the elections, it will not be because Bhind took the initiative.

What is also clear is that for now, Bhind is warily tightlipped about the local girl who left to become a sadhvi and now stands accused of being a terrorist. Some of those who worked with her in the ABVP offer a cursory glimpse of a short-haired girl who was 8220;bold8221; and 8220;fearless8221;, who dressed in kurta-pyjama 8220;like a man8221;, rode a motorcycle, and never shrank from a fight.

Mahesh Singh Chauhan, ABVP vibhag pramukh when she was active in the organisation in Bhind, says, 8220;She wouldn8217;t hesitate to give it back to any boy who misbehaved with any girl.8221; D.P. Gupta, zilla sanghchalak of the RSS from 1979, remembers her as 8220;daring and dashing, with the ability to rally others behind her8221;. 8220;She was the only girl from Bhind district to become a fulltimer in the ABVP,8221; recalls Satyendra Bhadoria, also with her in the ABVP, who went on to later become president of the BJP8217;s Yuva Morcha.

Bhadoria identifies Pragya from a photograph a friend fishes out from an old album. In the photograph, taken at an ABVP programme in Dhar, Pragya is surrounded by fellow ABVP workers. All of them, Bhadoria points out, went on to assume organisational posts in the state BJP.

LAHAR VILLAGE

MADHYA PRADESH

She studied in a boys8217; school

In Lahar village, about 60 km from Bhind, sandwiched between brightly painted houses on both sides of a narrow lane, is the house where Pragya Singh lived from the time she came to Lahar with her family as a child from Sitapur in neighbouring Datiya district, till she left both Lahar and Bhind as a young woman. The house has been let out on rent ever since the rest of her family shifted to Surat about eight years ago.

Her father, Chandrapal Singh Thakur is well known in the village as an RSS worker8212;he was tehsil and then zilla pracharak. He ran an ayurveda shop and was president of the village8217;s poets8217; group 8216;Paharua8217;. Two of Pragya8217;s three sisters ran a beauty parlour inside the house. One of the sisters also taught at the Saraswati Shishu Mandir in the village.

Lahar is about 100 km away from development in every direction8212;from Gwalior, Jhansi or Etawah in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh. It is known, if at all, for the Rawatpura mandir nearby, frequently patronised by Bhopal8217;s high and mighty, chief ministers and ministers, who come to pay homage to the resident 8216;baba8217;, also known as 8220;Rawatpura sarkar8221;.

The villagers are visibly prickly, and suspicious of the media. A small crowd gathers outside her house. 8220;Pappi8221;, as Pragya was known in her neighbourhood, was just an 8220;ordinary8221; girl, they say. She was 8220;sincere8221;, and 8220;always regular8221;, says her school teacher, Hari Shankar Hinnariya, who taught her in Lahar8217;s Girls Higher Secondary School.

8220;She wasn8217;t scared or shy to settle scores there and then8221;. They talk of how drunks and goondas were afraid to venture into 8220;Didi8217;s8221; neighbourhood.

In his small baithak, advocate Asharam Sharma, senior in the RSS to Pragya8217;s father, says, 8220;Lahar is only paying for its past infamy. It has been looked at with suspicion for being located in the Chambal region.8221; The case against Pragya Singh is a 8220;conspiracy8221;. 8220;There is no 8216;Hindu terror,8217;8221; says the RSS veteran, 8220;If there was Hindu terror, there would have been no Islamic terror in the first place.8221;

Devendra Tripathi, advocate and president of the block Congress committee in Lahar, has prepared a one-page note on Pragya Singh for his seniors in the Congress in Delhi. In sentences that run into each other without full stops, it blandly lists information about the family that migrated to Madhya Pradesh many decades ago from UP. Tripathi remembers Pragya as 8220;different8230; the only girl in Lahar to give speeches from the village8217;s Lohia chauraha8221;.

Abhilak Singh, who runs a photo studio in the village market, became her 8220;rakhi-brother8221; after she joined his class in the boys8217; school because the girls8217; school didn8217;t go beyond class 10. He, too, remembers Pragya as 8220;bold8221;. She participated in the local agitation for a degree college in the village in 1990, he recalls, and went to Ayodhya with a batch of kar sevaks in 1992. A state-level kabaddi player, she also did a physical training diploma from Bilaspur8212;something she made use of later in Ujjain where she taught in a school as a PT teacher.

INDORE

MADHYA PRADESH

THE INDORE CONNECTION

Moving out from Bhind, Pragya spent some time in Indore, Dewas, Jabalpur and Bhopal, before shifting to Surat where her family lives. In Indore, she was one of the prominent religious figures at a massive Koti Chand Yagna organised by former MP education minister Laxman Singh Gaud, a couple of months before he died in a road accident. She was spotted in a photograph among senior BJP leaders, including party president Rajnath Singh and Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

After his death in February, she spent considerable time at one of his homes8212;she also stayed with a couple of his relatives. Gaud8217;s wife Malini admits Pragya lived in one of their homes in Indore. 8220;She is a nice girl. I don8217;t think she can do anything like this.8221;

The most vocal support for her has come from Kailash Vijayvargiya, the PWD minister who is also the official spokesman of the state BJP government. 8220;The prime minister said he could not sleep when Dr Hanif was arrested in Australia. Why is he not saying anything even when there is no evidence against the Sadhvi,8221; he asks. The minister claimed he had first met the sadhvi at an event, to which she was invited by HRD minister Arjun Singh8217;s son Ajay. The Congress leader is a follower of the Sadhvi8217;s Guru, Swami Avdheshanandji.

SURAT

GUJARAT

SADHVI ON A BIKE

Pragya stayed for five months last year in a rented bungalow in Surat8217;s Ganga Sagar Society, where she gave religious speeches and held satsangs.

Before she moved out of Surat, she took bungalow No. 19 on rent for her parents. It was from here that Pragya was arrested and it8217;s here that Pragya8217;s younger sister Pratibha and her husband Bhagwan Jha live. Pratibha runs a beauty parlour in the Model township area of Godadara, Surat.

Bungalow No. 25, where Pragya lived a year ago, is owned by a textile businessman, Ghanshyambhai. 8220;I had taken a deposit of Rs 10,000 from Pragya and had fixed a monthly rent of Rs 2,500. She stayed at my flat from December 2006 to April 2007.8221;

According to Chandrapal Singh Thakur, the sadhvi8217;s father, his daughter is a motorcycle enthusiast. 8220;After buying a new motorcycle in Surat, she took it everywhere she went. She kept a motorcycle at Bhind where she had close contacts with the RSS leaders. She always tells us she will fight injustice and will die fighting injustice.8221;

Pragya, the third of Chandrapal8217;s five children, is venerated and has her photograph sharing space with those of the Gods in the family puja room.

With MILIND GHATWAI and KAMAL SAIYED