The wrath yatra

The Bajrang Dal, or vanar sena (army of apes), as it is infamously called because of the wanton vandalism indulged by its members, was bo...

The Bajrang Dal, or vanar sena (army of apes), as it is infamously called because of the wanton vandalism indulged by its members, was born 15 years ago, just as the Ramjanmabhoomi movement was beginning to roll off the ground. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), which was spearheading the movement with the tacit blessing of the Sangh Parivar, had planned the Sri Ram Janki Yatra, from Ayodhya to Lucknow, which immediately ran into trouble with the Uttar Pradesh state authorities. Stung by the state’s determination to stop the procession, the yatris made a clarion call to Hindu youths in surrounding villages for protection. By the time the yatra reached the state capital, a name was already found for the band of Hindu soldiers’ — the Bajrang Dal.

What began as a temporary security arrangement, soon swelled to a menacing army of misguided youths who were preyed upon and infused with a fatal potion: a sense of “colossal historical wrongdoing” and “wounded Hindu pride”. Heady with a new sense of purpose anddirection, the Bajrang Dal’s Hindu Yuva Shakti (youth power) was successfully employed to carry out a campaign of terror and destruction in the Parivar’s eternal quest to cleanse and purify Hindu society. The Bajrang Dalis became the foot soldiers of the Parivar’s army, ready and alert for the call of battle. Training camps were set up on the outskirts of Ayodhya, called Karsevapuram, on the banks of the Gomti river, where youths lived in dormitories and learnt the art of war. The combat wear was equally fierce — blazing saffron bandanas and shirts, glistening, giant trishuls and swords in their hands, and provocative slogans in the air. Hindutva had truly arrived.

As the militant, rabble-rousers muscled their way around and successfully set up centres all over the cow belt, to the satisfaction of the Parivar’s patriarchs, the Bajrang Dal gave the kickstart to the Ramjanmabhoomi movement. They participated in the shilanyas after the doors of the Babri Masjid were unlocked by a court order, organised bandhsand demonstrations in the name of Ram, which most often ended violently, but their first foray outside UP, however, was in 1989, when the organisation announced it would chant the Hanuman chalisa in Jama Masjid, New Delhi. In a few months, Dal activists joined the big league when they led L.K. Advani’s 1991 rath yatra, roaring alongside Advani’s Toyota chariot on motorbikes in full combat gear, leaving behind a trail of violence and destruction.

It was in this atmosphere of hatred and fear, that the plan to demolish the Babri Masjid quietly unfolded, and on December 6, 1992, the job was ruthlessly accomplished. But if there were any hopes the Bajrang Dal would disband and go back to their previous lives now that the “historical slur had been wiped clean”, soon evaporated after it announced it was now the official youth wing of the VHP. Worse, the ban on the Bajrang Dal with the RSS and VHP, after the demolition of the mosque, gave it a separate identity. What was first dismissed as a great nuisance value,the lunatic fringe of the Hindutva movement, soon gave way to a group that was spread out, organised, well-funded, and with immense muscle power. Though the Dal has steadfastly maintained it has no political ambitions but exists purely to “liberate and unshackle Hindu samaj” and is not associated with any political party including the BJP, its members (also from its parent organisation, the VHP) however, soon filled Parliament and the UP Legislative Assembly after the 1991 elections.

Arun Katiyar, the Dal’s first convenor, was elected an MP, and he was part of the clutch of sadhus and sants that thundered into Parliament as elected members, brandishing trishuls and kamandals. For a year-and-a-half, until the militant organisations were banned (December 10, 1992), the BJP looked on benignly as the sadhus and Dal MPs and MLAs vociferously agitated for their demands raging from changing the Constitution radically to the familiar one of a ban on cow slaughter. But the Parivar’s paternal indulgence on the“boys and sants” soon diminished as it sought to hide its aggressive Hindutva image behind a more “tolerant” one. The sudden decision came after the humiliating defeat of the BJP in the Assembly elections in the Hindi belt, and the uncomfortable truth sunk in that Hindutva alone will not bring in the votes.

To add to the BJP’s discomfort, the sants kept up the pressure to build the Ram temple in Ayodhya, many of them fell out squabbling among themselves on who should lead the temple-building, Katiyar stood completely discredited when he was accused of raping of a young girl, Kusum Misra, whose tale of continuous abuse and torture created an uproar, and very soon the BJP and the Parivar began to distance itself publicly from the militant outfits. In the 1996 general election, unlike in the election before (in 1991), when Dal workers were visible everywhere campaigning for the BJP, this time the saffron wave was pushed back as BJP workers conducted their own campaign. But the irrepressible Bajrang Dalsoon surfaced to continue their “service to Hindu samaj”.

In 1996, 26 Dal activists were jailed in Mumbai for smashing the house of eminent artist Maqbool Fida Husain, for his “nude” paintings of a Hindu goddess. The next year, 17 beauty contests were suspended in different parts of the country due to Bajrang Dal’s “protests.” It also forced 16 cigarette and pan masala companies to stop using portraits of Hindu gods and goddesses on their products. But it was in 1998, that the Bajrang Dal was resurrected to give expression to the Parivar’s “anger” against Christian missionaries and get them to suspend their “chagai meetings” (spiritual healing) in places as far-flung as Haryana, Gujarat, UP, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh. The violence and terror that has followed and last week’s ghastly murder of an Australian missionary and his two sons, has once again brought back old nightmares. By calling the violence against Christian missionaries a “natural reaction” of the local people to “forcedconversions”, the Dal once again thrust itself in the forefront, willing as always to start another debate on the threat to Hinduism from minority communities.