SPECIAL ARTICLE
Abhinav Bharat, the Malegaon Blast
and Hindu Nationalism:
Resisting and Emulating Islamist Terrorism
Christophe Jaffrelot
In recent years, some Hindutva-minded people have
created or joined new militias, which have actually turned
out to be terrorist groups whose main aim is to take
revenge on Indian Muslims for past acts of terrorism that
some Islamists have carried out. This new development
became clear during the inquiry regarding the Malegaon
blast of 2008. The Hindu militants who were allegedly
responsible for this attack were all members of a new
group, Abhinav Bharat, which resorted to violent action
to resist the Islamists by emulating them. This article is
based on the police report on the Malegaon case, a very
interesting source for two reasons. One, it provides rich
pieces of factual information regarding the actors of the
plot and their motivations. Two, it presents us with the
discourse of the Hindu nationalists when they speak
between themselves since these excerpts include the
transcripts of secret meetings they held in 2007-08 that
one of the participants recorded.
This article has benefited from the invaluable help of Malvika
Maheshwari and Vaiju Naravane, to whom I am most grateful.
The following court/police documents which are extensively referred
to in the text are posted on the EPW web site (www.epw.in) alongside
the article: (i) Chargesheets and Miscellaneous Documents regarding
the Malegaon Case, (ii) English translation of excerpts of the transcript
of the conversation between Prasad Purohit, Sudhakar Dhar Dwivedi
(SD), B L Sharma, Dr R P Singh, Ramesh Upadhyaya and others during
the Faridabad meeting of Abhinav Bharat on 26 January 2008,
(iii) English translation of the conversation between Ramesh Upadhyaya
and Sudhakar Dwivedi on 25 January 2008 – Excerpts, (iv) English
translation of the transcript of the Abhinav Meeting that took place
during the fall of 2007 – Excerpts, (v) English translation of transcripts
of interrogatories of some witnesses in the Malegaon case, and
(vi) Transcripts of Faridabad Meeting (in Hindi).
All the above documents come from “List of FIR, Panchanama and CA
Reports in (Malegaon Bomb Blast Case) ATS PS CR No 18/2008” which
had been drafted by Hemant Karkare.
The selected excerpts have been translated from Hindi and Marathi by
Vaiju Naravane and Malvika Maheshwari.
Christophe Jaffrelot (jaffrelot@ceri-sciences-po.org) is with the
CERI-SciencesPo/CNRS, Paris.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW September 4, 2010 vol xlv no 36
S
ince the turn of the century, India has been one of the
countries most severely affected by Islamist attacks. Until
November 2008, every six months or so a commando
operation or a major explosion occurred in a big Indian city – or,
less frequently, in a mid-sized town – killing dozens, sometimes
hundreds, of people. Between 2001 and 2008, such explosions
caused the death of about 800 people.
The government attributed this violence to the neighbouring
countries, at least until 2006-07. According to this official dis-
course, local citizens were not responsible for such misdeeds, and
the guilty parties were allegedly from Pakistan or Bangladesh.
But investigators have shown that Indian Muslims are increas-
ingly taking part in these terrorist activities to avenge the riots
in connection with the Ayodhya movement and the pogrom in
Gujarat. These local Islamists may work in close connection with
foreigners, but they are not just informers facilitating actions
planned by outsiders; they take the initiative for attacks as well,
as is evident from the blasts in 2008 in Jaipur, Ahmedabad and
Delhi, responsibility for which were claimed by a new organisation,
the Indian Mujahideen, allegedly emerging from the Students
Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).
As a result, Hindutva-minded people, some of them members
of the Sangh parivar, have created or joined new militias, which
have actually turned out to be terrorist groups whose main aim is
to take revenge on Indian Muslims. This new development
became clear during the inquiry regarding the Malegaon blast
which killed six people in front of a mosque in the town in Sep-
tember 2008, just after Ramzan. Material seized during house
searches has shown that the Hindu militants who were responsible
for this attack were all members of a new group, Abhinav Bharat,
which resorted to violent action to resist the Islamists by emula-
ting them. This strategy of stigmatisation and emulation of the
so-called threatening other has always been one of the favourite
repertoires of Hindu nationalists.1
This article is based on the excerpts of the report on the Malegaon
blast (uploaded on the EPW web site www.epw.in) and that had
been prepared by Hemant Karkare, the senior police officer who
was in charge of the investigation but was killed during the
November 2008 terror attacks on Mumbai. It is a most interesting
source for two reasons. First it provides rich pieces of factual in-
formation regarding the actors of the plot and their motivations.
Second, it presents us with the discourse of the Hindu nationa-
lists when they speak between themselves since these excerpts
51
SPECIAL ARTICLE
include the transcripts of secret meetings they held in 2007-08
that one of the participants recorded. Except private letters, no
source of this quality had been available so far.
Abhinav Bharat and the Malegaon Plot
The origins of Abhinav Bharat are not clear. The organisation, of
course, is named after the movement Savarkar started in 1905 in
Pune while at Fergusson College, a prestigious institution he had
joined in 1901. This organisation then drew its name and inspiration
from Mazzini’s “Young Italy”, but was also influenced by Thomas
Frost’s Secret Societies of the European Revolution (1776-1876), a
book dealing mostly with the Russian nihilists.2 Savarkar’s Abhinav
Bharat believed in revolutionary violence and was, indeed,
responsible for the assassination of several British officers. It was
disbanded in 1952.
Himani Savarkar, 61, the daughter of Gopal Godse (the brother
of Nathuram Godse, who killed Mahatma Gandhi in 1948) and the
wife of Savarkar’s nephew, claimed that Abhinav Bharat had been
started by Sameer Kulkarni, who asked her to be the chairman of
the organisation.3 At that time, Himani Savarkar was the president
of the Hindu Mahasabha, a party V D Savarkar directed in 1937-42.
She had become a full-time worker of the party and returned to
Pune after retiring in 2000 – until then she was an architect in
Mumbai. She told the police that she was elected president of
Abhinav Bharat in April 2008 during a meeting in Bhopal.4 She
also said that Madhya Pradesh was the place where Kulkarni was
developing the organisation. This meeting was also attended by
Swami Amritananda Dev Tirtha (a man also known under the
names of Sudhakar Dwivedi, Sudhakar Dhar, and Dayanand Pandey
and whom she calls the “Jammu and Kashmir Shankaracharya”),
Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, Major Ramesh Upadhyaya, Sudha-
kar Chaturvedi and Col Prasad Purohit whom, she said, she had
known for two years, their families being related for a long time.5
According to other testimonies, the real architect of Abhinav
Bharat was Purohit himself. He initiated the Abhinav Bharat
Trust in June 2006 by taking about 16 people to Shivaji’s fort in
Raigarh. One of the participants interrogated by the police re-
members: “We took the blessings of Shivaji Maharaj’s throne and
decided to name the trust Abhinav Bharat and prayed for its suc-
cess” (Interrogatories: 1). The group then met on 16 December
2006, when the members celebrated India’s victory over Pakistan
in the Bangladesh war. But the first official meeting of the trust
took place in February 2007 in Pune. The address of the trust –
16/04 Sant Krupa of Karve Road, Pune 411004 – given then for
official registration was that of the treasurer, Ajay Rahirkar.
The next meeting, so it seems, took place in June 2007 in Nasik
district, where the trust, incidentally, was inaugurated at the
Parshuram Saikhedkar Theatre. Purohit took several people
from Mumbai and elsewhere to the Deolali camp where Amrita-
nanda Dev Tirtha was meeting his disciples. One of the partici-
pants the police interrogated on 14 December 2008 declared
that, in this meeting,
Prasad Purohit said that many things were wrong in the country and
needed to be rectified. For that unity was very important. […] Shankara-
charya said the Hindu religion must be defended. Hindu religion is in
danger. It is our duty to defend Hinduism. So all Hindus in the country must
52
unite. While the Shankaracharya was speaking to us he had placed a
laptop on the table [for recording the meeting] (Interrogatories: 2).
Purohit made a strong plea for fighting Muslims by resorting to
bomb attacks, something others objected to. One of the partici-
pants told him that
he should not invite anyone inclined to place bombs, etc, to meetings
where there would be debate [and] also that he was opposed to any
bomb blasts, riots or violent acts. This was clearly expressed by Mr ***
to Prasad Purohit. This was because the Abhinav Bharat Trust was not
founded to perpetrate violent acts (Interrogatories: 2).
Another meeting, at least, took place in Deolali, in September
2007, again with the Mumbai people and Purohit, and also a new
recruit, B L Sharma, the former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Mem-
ber of Parliament from East Delhi. Sharma, apparently, had met
Amritananda Dev Tirtha in Delhi in 2004 while touring his consti-
tuency where he was popular among the Pandit refugees who had
fled Kashmir. Responding to the police during interrogation on 26
December 2008, he said that at that time “the Swami opened his
laptop and showed us videos. They showed Muslims slitting the
throat of Hindus” (Interrogatories: 6). In September 2007, Sharma
relates that Amritananda Dev Tirtha invited him to Nasik. There he
spoke about his idea of Akhand Bharat and of making India a Hindu
Rashtra and he also talked about the Abhinav Bharat organisation. He
told us that Prasad Purohit was trying to achieve Akhand Bharat through
his Abhinav Bharat organisation. We were told that Sudhakar Chaturvedi
was working full-time for the organisation. Our meeting lasted one hour
during which we discussed the rape of Hindu women in J and K, their
murder, etc…. I returned to Delhi after the meeting (Interrogatories: 6).
According to the police, the plot regarding Malegaon was
decided and fine-tuned during four meetings that took place in 2008
(Chargesheets and Miscellaneous Documents – Malegaon Case:
61, hereafter referred to as “Chargesheet”). On 25-27 January
2008, Purohit, Upadhyaya, Kulkarni, Chaturvedi and Amritananda
Dev Tirtha met near Faridabad in a place where the latter was
staying in a building of the Save Our Soul organisation.6 The
longest excerpt of the Malegaon report that EPW has posted on its
web site alongside the text of this article is a transcript of parts
of this meeting. On 11-12 April 2008, the same people met with
Pragya Singh Thakur in Bhopal and
conspired together to take revenge against Muslims in Malegaon by ex-
ploding a bomb at thickly populated area. Accused Purohit took the respon-
sibility of providing explosives. Accused Pragya Singh Thakur took the
responsibility of providing men for the explosion. In this meeting all the
participants agreed and consented to commit the explosion at Malegaon.7
On 11 June 2008, Pragya Singh Thakur introduced Ramchandra
Kalasangra and Sandip Dange to Amritananda Dev Tirtha as two
reliable persons who would plant the bomb in Malegaon. In early
July, she asked Amritananda Dev Tirtha to direct Purohit “to give
explosives” to Kalasangra and Dange in Pune (Chargesheet: 65).
On 3 August 2008, in a meeting held at Dharmsala of Maha-
kaleshwar temple in Ujjain, Purohit was given the responsibility
to procure RDX for Kalasangra and Dange. Purohit then asked
Rakesh Dhawade, “a trained expert in committing explosions and
assembling improvised explosive devices”, to provide explosives
to Kalasangra and Dange at Pune, where they met on 9 and 10
August (Chargesheet: 66).
September 4, 2010 vol xlv no 36 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

Sadhus, (Ex)Army Men and Disillusioned
Sangh Parivar Cadres
The 11 accused of Abhinav Bharat who were involved in the
Malegaon case – some of them have not been arrested yet – come
from three different milieus. They were either religious figures,
(ex)army men or (ex) Sangh parivar cadres. Incidentally, most of
them were Maharashtrian brahmins, mostly Chitpavans, like the
core group of V D Savarkar’s supporters during the heyday of the
Hindu Mahasabha.8
Amritananda Dev Tirtha, the Self-proclaimed Shankarach-
arya? The Hindu nationalist movement has always attracted sad-
hus and mahants who, most of the time, were figureheads giving
some religious legitimacy to the movement but who sometimes
were real activists. The Hindu Mahasabha, for instance, was sup-
ported by Dr Kurtkoti, the Shankaracharya of Kaveer Pith in
Maharashtra, and Digvijay Nath, the mahant of the Goraknath
panth in Gorakhpur, whose successors remained with the Hindu
Mahasabha before shifting to the BJP. In fact, in the 1990s the BJP
always had half a dozen MPs wearing a saffron robe. But most of
them had no real traditional base. Either because they did not
belong to a well-established sampraday or because they had
started their own ashrams from scratch. Their main asset, in fact,
was their eloquence, supported by strident militancy, as in the
case of Sadhvi Rithambara or Uma Bharati.
Amritananda Dev Tirtha belongs to the same category of Hindu
nationalist sadhus. He displayed strong militancy and strongly
anti-Muslim feelings, something that harks back to his fight for
“his” peeth (monastery). He claims to be the Shankaracharya of Sri
Sharada Sarvagyapeeth, which is situated in Pakistan Occupied
Kashmir (POK), and tries to reactivate the activities, including
celebrations and pilgrimages, that used to be there until 1949.9 After
his initial stay at Kanpur, Sudhakar Dhar shifted to Varanasi from
where he reached Jammu in 2005-06 to float the Sarvagyapeeth.
Investigators believe that the genuine peeth actually existed in
POK, and Sudhakar opened a peeth in Kashmir on his own. “We are
yet to establish any link between the POK peeth and the one
launched by Sudhakar”, said a senior officer associated with the
probe (Siddiqui 2008). According to its web site, the Sarvagyapeeth
has its registered office at 248, Sector 1-A, Trikuta Nagar, Jammu
Tavi 180012, Jammu amd Kashmir, but the camp office address reads
Maa Sharika Mandir, Village Anangpur, Faridabad (Haryana), which
is in fact the address of the Save Our Soul organisation. The Asia
chairman of Save Our Soul, J N Kaul, brought Amritananda Dev
Tirtha to the organisation in 2004, according to the chief pujari of the
Chakeshwar Hari Parwat Mandir, which had just been built in 2003
and where Swami Amritanand started to come and stay “every two
months or so and stay for 15 days to a month” (Interrogatories: 4).
(Ex)Army Officers: How Deeply Involved? The second category
of people that we can identify in Abhinav Bharat comprises of
(ex)army men. The Hindu nationalist movement has always had a
martial dimension. For Savarkar, to “militarise Hindudom” was more
than a slogan: he actively supported the entry of young Hindus into
the army during the second world war so that they learned how to
fight, in view of the civil war that he was anticipating with Muslims in
Economic & Political Weekly EPW September 4, 2010 vol xlv no 36
SPECIAL ARTICLE
India. He supported the project of a military school that B S Moonje,
one of his lieutenants in the Hindu Mahasabha, had initiated in the
1930s and which resulted, eventually, in the Bhonsle Military
School (BMS), which was to be closely associated with Abhinav
Bharat. Purohit said during the Faridabad meeting: “Whatever I
have said today is in fact taken care of by the officers sitting there.
The entire school is in my hands” (26 January Conversation: 25).
Later on, the BJP was keen to induct ex-army men. In 1989-91, at
the time of its electoral take-off, the party welcomed into its ranks
two retired air marshals, six retired lieutenant-generals, four retired
major-generals, four retired brigadiers, four retired colonels, two
retired majors, three retired captains, two retired wing commanders,
and one retired air commodore, lieutenant-colonel, squadron
leader and flying officer each.10 Some of them were appointed to
the BJP’s national executive and at the helm of the party’s defence
cell. That was the case of two heroes of the 1971 war, rtd Lt-Gen
K P Candeth and rtd Lt-Gen Jack Frederick Ralph Jacob – who was
to be appointed governor of Goa by Prime Minister A B Vajpayee in
1998 – and B C Khanduri, who became MP in 1989,11 minister in
Vajpayee’s government in 2000-04, and chief minister of Utta-
rakhand in 2007. While the Indian army is known for its impeccable
records during Hindu/Muslim riots, this inflow of former army
men may reflect some change in the atmosphere in the military
institution. In December 2003, a survey done for Tehelka by the
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, one of the first among
army men and probably the most comprehensive one, showed that
19% of the soldiers interviewed believed the army practised some
religious discrimination; among the Muslim respondents 24%
shared this feeling (Tehelka, 14 February 2004).
But no officer had taken an active part in any violent Hindu
nationalist movement so far. Abhinav Bharat is the first one in
which at least two (ex)army men have been deeply involved.
Major Ramesh Upadhyaya, a former defence services officer, was
arrested first, and he immediately admitted that he had taken
part in three meetings with Pragya Singh and her accomplices on
the Nasik BMS premises to plan the Malegaon blast. Ajay Misar, the
public prosecutor, declared: “Upadhyaya, who was posted in the
artillery department while working with the Indian military, is sus-
pected to have guided the arrested accused on how to assemble a
bomb and procure RDX” (Times of India, 31 October 2008).
According to some press reports, Ramesh Upadhyaya was the
acting president of Abhinav Bharat when the president was
Himani Savarkar (Indian Express, 4 November 2008). But the key
figure of the group was another serviceman, Lt-Col Prasad Puro-
hit, who had approached Upadhyaya when he was posted at Na-
sik as liaison officer. Purohit and Upadhyaya imparted military
training to young activists and were instrumental in procuring
arms and explosives. Purohit forged documents during his stint in
Jammu and Kashmir – where he was posted in 2004-05 – to obtain
arms licences for others. After shifting to Panchmarhi (Madhya
Pradesh) in July-August 2008, he organised training camps in
which dozens of people took part and were taught to handle arms
and explosives. He had also organised similar camps in Pune.
However, most of the training camps took place in the BMS (Indian
Express, 7 November 2008), and were directed between 1973 and
1988 by rtd Major P B Kulkarni, who had been associated with the
53
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RSS since 1935 (Indian Express, 2 November 2008). In fact, the Ba-
jrang Dal organised training camps in the BMS (Nagpur) as early
as 2001 (Ganjapure 2008). Two years later, the school started to
provide firearms training to students in the 10-15 age group.
Even though there are only two (ex)army men among the accused
in the Malegaon case, the number of officers involved with Abhinav
Bharat seems to have been larger. At the meeting that took place in
Faridabad in January 2008, one Col Aditya Dhar took part in the
discussion, though very discreetly. Purohit introduced him by saying:
Purohit: I think we should introduce them to Col Aditya Dhar. He is in the
Parachute regiment and I am posted with him right now in Panchmarhi.
Col Aditya Dhar: Since 23 years I have been in the Army.
Upadhyaya: He will be on the same plane for a Hindu Rashtra, a
governing council, this will be the idea when we come in power
(26 January Conversation: 10).
The way Purohit introduced him shows that he was recruiting
in places where he worked. Three other officers have been named
as strong contenders for the governing body that Purohit and his
colleagues were willing to put in place (26 January Conversation:
29). Already, Purohit says, “Major Parag Modak is in charge of
our international office” (26 January Conversation: 9).
The case of Purohit is especially interesting because he mixed
rather freely with Hindu nationalist leaders. Himani Savarkar,
for instance, suggests that they met rather frequently and openly
and that he made no secret of his admiration for Savarkar, inclu-
ding his craze for a more martial brand of Hinduism:
I am a member of the Maharashtra Military Foundation trust founded
by Colonel Chitale and since Prasad Purohit always went to them he
also came to visit me. Besides, he worships Savarkar and he was always
borrowing and returning books by and on Savarkar (Interrogatories: 8).
Says one press report:
The interrogation of Purohit establishes him as a man with forthright
views on Hindu extremism. He was extremely frank in expressing his
concerns about Hindus getting killed by jehadi terror groups and strongly
felt that something had to be done about it. He had shared such views –
that Hindus needed to retaliate – on several occasions with his colleagues
in the Army. Of course, none of these colleagues realised the seriousness
of his opinion or that it would lead him to plot real revenge attacks.
[...] Purohit was the key man behind Abhinav Bharat, building its cad-
re by drawing ‘extremist’ elements from VHP [Vishwa Hindu Parishad]
and RSS. An expert at liaisoning, Purohit had a unique sixth sense in
identifying radical members of the right-wing outfits like VHP and
then motivating them to join Abhinav Bharat” (Bharti Jain 2008).
Such a configuration recalls the way Savarkar attracted Godse,
an RSS man, into his own Hindu Rashtra Dal. Godse then shifted from
one militia to another because he found the RSS too slow in taking
action against Muslims and Gandhi, who had betrayed Hindus.
Similarly, Abhinav Bharat attracted several (former) RSS cadre.
Disillusioned Sangh Parivar Cadres: In fact, Upadhyaya once
headed the Mumbai unit of the BJP’s ex-servicemen cell (Hafeez
2008). But he was not the only Abhinav Bharat leader with strong
Sangh parivar connections. The first person to be arrested by the
police in this case, Pragya Singh, was a sadhvi (a female world re-
nouncer), who was an Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP)
leader in Ujjain and Indore until 199712 before becoming a member
of the national executive of the ABVP and taking up sannyas.13
54
Even more importantly, Sameer Kulkarni, who had apparently
initiated the Madhya Pradesh branch of Abhinav Bharat, was an
RSS worker. During interrogation by the police on 26 December
2008, Himani Savarkar said:
I met Kulkarni some one and a half years ago when he was working as a
full-time member of the RSS. Since my house is next to Savarkar’s, he would
come often and I came to know him very well. Then he told me he would be
in Madhya Pradesh to work for Abhinav Bharat (Interrogatories: 8).
The best example of the disillusioned Sangh parivar workers
who had been attracted by Abhinav Bharat, however, is B L Sharma.
An RSS worker since 1940, Sharma was seconded to the BJP by the
Sangh during the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, in which he was
taking an active part on the VHP side. He won the Lok Sabha seat
of east Delhi in 1991 and 1996, but resigned his seat and mem-
bership of the BJP in 1997. He then concentrated on VHP work as
state secretary of the organisation but was obviously disappointed
by the Sangh parivar work regarding the Akhand Bharat issue. He
wrote a very telling letter to L K Advani on this question, which he
read out to other Abhinav Bharat people who took part in the Fari-
dabad meeting in January 2008: “Akhand Bharat was a lost phrase
until Savarkarji revived and propagated it. But the Sangh kept this
idea limited to itself. Jana Sangh adopted it, but with the forma-
tion of the BJP it was sidelined” (26 January Conversation: 8).
Sharma not only did not believe in the BJP and in party politics
any more, but he did not believe in democracy either. Instead, he
believed that a military coup and some violent shock to awaken
the people were needed:
The country should be taken over by the Army. How far is it feasible?
It’s been a year that I have sent some three lakh letters, distributed
20,000 maps of Akhand Bharat on 26 January, but these Brahmins
and traders have never done anything and neither will they do. I do
not talk of casteism. It’s just that they don’t have the potential; they
don’t have the aptitude for this kind of feelings. Ultimately they do
things that are feasible. One Chanakya comes up and becomes a
moderate ruler. Even if people have the capability it is only when a
seed is planted in the mind [that] it can make huge differences. It is
not that physical power is the only way to make a difference but to
awaken people mentally. I believe that you have [to] set fire in the soci-
ety, at least a spark (26 January Conversation: 12).
Such a discourse did not prevent Sharma from being the BJP
candidate, at the VHP’s request, for the Delhi north-east seat in
2009, but it shows that some Sangh parivar people were in favour
of a different strategy.
Abhinav Bharat’s Strategies
To Replace the Sangh Parivar? The strategy of Abhinav Bharat is
to replace the Sangh parivar where it has failed, that is, in the do-
main of immediate action. The RSS is seen as long-term oriented
when urgent actions are needed. Its ideology and agenda are not
questioned by Abhinav Bharat, its modus operandi is.
In the long run, Purohit aspires to see Abhinav Bharat repla-
cing the RSS by attracting his best people:
Purohit: When an organisation gets ready with an ideology it is nor-
mally because of a single person’s leadership but soon after the exit of
that person those who do not even have the same vision occupy that
position of importance, which eventually leads to the downfall of the
September 4, 2010 vol xlv no 36 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

organisation. In today’s date this is the situation of the Sangh Parivar. ‘I
said this once, that the day Abhinav Bharat will become strong I will eat
it up’. In army there are three steps which should also correspond to the
growth of any organisation: Raising: together, all five of us are in-
volved in raising Abhinav Bharat. Similarly the Sangh and RSS were
raised and mobilised. The third step of the army is to land the opera-
tion on the ground. RSS was raised and mobilised but could not be
landed on the ground. Reason being the lack of leadership. Such a big
Hindu organisation, with so many principled and valuable people but
just because of leadership their car would not be able to go further and
this we were not able to see. They will have to take a beating. We do not
have so much time that first we get the men ready and then the men
will get the organisation going. It is advisable to take men from there
(26 January Conversation: 28).
But the component of the Sangh parivar they value the most
is the VHP. Purohit was in touch with Praveen Togadia, one of
the VHP leaders from Gujarat. He suggested to Togadia that
Abhinav Bharat could organise bomb attacks and the Sangh pari-
var claim responsibility for it. In the Faridabad meeting, he said:
“I asked Praveenbhai that I would make the action happen but
will you come forward to claim it? Will BJP come forward? He
told me clearly that neither would come forward” (26 January
Conversation: 21).
Abhinav Bharat’s leaders came to the conclusion that in the
short run they could not expect anything from the Sangh parivar,
even from the VHP, which was forced to tone down its ideology by
the rest of the Parivar. But in the long term they hoped to be able
to attract the VHP people in a big way. At the Faridabad meeting,
Purohit said:
The Vishwa Hindu Parishad has a different identity, a serious leader-
ship of Praveen Togadia. Those who are talking about removing this
leadership are saying this because of some opposition within the BJP,
which is detrimental to their political aims. There are all ‘fighter peo-
ple’ and religious believers in VHP. If and when [VHP leader Ashok]
Singhalji will be removed from VHP it will become a headless chicken.
A body without a head will remain and this is what BJP wants. This
wing should become ours. Do not oppose me on this. This will be our
main weapon. This non-political organisation will definitely turn into
a political organisation. Which means that BJP will be Shiv Sena at the
national level and this is what we want (26 January Conversation: 6-7).
But in the short term, there is nothing to expect from the Sangh
parivar, which appears to Abhinav Bharat as paralysed once in
office through the BJP. As Purohit put it, “They have come into
power but don’t know what to do” (26 January Conversation: 20).
The Hindu Nationalist Brand of Regime Change: Abhinav Bharat
was determined to change the Constitution of India. At the
Faridabad meeting, Purohit opened the discussion by saying,
“We will fight the Constitution to fight for our nation”
(26 January Conversation: 1).
In fact, the meeting was supposed to be entirely devoted to the
rewriting of the Indian Constitution. Amritananda Dev Tirtha
was keen to draw his inspiration from traditional Hindu
scriptures, adopting the same perspective as VHP sadhus, who
had expressed the same idea already in the 1990s:
For ruling techniques and ways we have some Puranic treaties. Our
traditions and memories are the constitutional basis of our society.
First of all millions of sins and good deeds, Sanskrit chants have
been tampered with – added and deleted. We should follow its core
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SPECIAL ARTICLE
guidelines and explanations to turn it into a mass discourse. This
way we must come to a conclusion. At this moment we have 14 trea-
tises in our country and we should collect all of these (26 January
Conversation: 46).
Purohit agrees: “We have to establish this country in accord-
ance with the Vedic procedures, we want the Sanatan Dharma,
the Vedic Dharma” (26 January Conversation: 7).
Another important dimension of the new regime, for him,
concerns the affirmation of the Asian identity of India that is rooted
in a kind of clash of civilisations perspective. The Abhinav Bharat
leaders want to “unify Buddhist and Hindu nations to fight Islamic
and Christian invasions”, contending that very few moderate
Christians would be ready to be their supporters as well (26 Ja-
nuary Conversation: 17). For Purohit, this world view should trans-
late into some political union: “Hindu and Oriental Nations Union
is a must for us. Cambodia, Thailand, Bharat, Nepal, Bhutan, Japan,
Korea – this Union should happen” (26 January Conversation: 9).
At one point of the meeting, Purohit reads out an excerpt of a
constitution for India that Abhinav Bharat has drafted. The
preamble is replete with nationalism; in five lines, the words
“nation” and “nationhood” occur seven times. Abhinav Bharat
denounces “cultural diversity” and makes a strong plea for “a singu-
lar cultural binding” (26 January Conversation: 16). So far as gov-
ernance is concerned, the main provisions are coined in a rather
authoritarian style. Freedom of expression is, for instance, limited
to the minimum. The constitution of Abhinav Bharat provides
“free exchanges of views to facilitate the leader to take a suitable de-
cision, and the decision once taken by the leader shall be followed
at all the levels without questioning the authority. We are talking
about a presidential system” (26 January Conversation: 16). The
Constitution according to Abhinav Bharat also provides for “one-
party rule” (26 January Conversation: 17): “Any Hindu on earth
will be an honorary member of this organisation”. The organisa-
tion was supposed to be militarised since “every member at all
levels will have the basic knowledge of weapons”. “An academy
of indoctrinisation will be established. At the end of the course
members will be tested and those who pass will be finally admit-
ted” (26 January Conversation: 17). The concluding comment
that was made in the draft of the constitution that was discussed
in Faridabad was: “Very important point: political excommunica-
tion of people whose ideas are detrimental to Hindu Rashtra…
some of them should be killed” (26 January Conversation: 18).
The Immediate Task: To Resist and Emulate the Islamist
Terrorists: Hindu nationalism has always been shaped and re-
shaped by reacting to perceived threats posed by Muslims. It
crystallised in the 1920s in reaction to the Khilafat Movement; it
was relaunched in the context of Partition and then reactivated
in the wake of the Iranian Revolution and the Meenakshipuram
conversion, and by the Shah Bano affair and the Kashmir insurgency.
Since 2001, Islamist attacks in the form of deadly blasts have
created a new feeling of vulnerability.
Hindu nationalists have also considered that their community
was weak because there was no other Hindu country on earth
(hence the idea of joining hands with Buddhist countries), be-
cause it was divided into many castes and sects when Muslims
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were fully united, and because it followed a non-violent ethos
when Muslims were ferocious fighters (and meat eaters!). Hence
the strong emphasis they always put on organisation, sangathan
and on emulating the so-called violence-based value system
of Muslims.
Abhinav Bharat replicates some of the ingredients of this
Hindu nationalist alchemy. First, their complex vis-à-vis the mo-
bilisation capacity of Muslims echoes that of the founding fathers
of the Hindutva movement in the 1920s, as is evident from this
conversation between Purohit and Amritananda Dev Tirtha at
the beginning of the Faridabad meeting:
Purohit: So swamiji, the thing is we have to fight the Constitution, we
have to fight for our independence.
SD: Listen, how will you fight? What is your modus operandi?
Purohit: I put in front of you the proposal that we had spoken about.
Till the time we do not, in a united, thoughtful, inspired manner begin
the work, people will not associate themselves with us. This is the situ-
ation of Muslims today. They may not have a particular fund but they
have fifty-thousand people.
SD: This is global. Their front is Islam. They all come together on this
single front.
Purohit: This is the thing. Fifty-thousand people can come together on
one land in half an hour. We do not come together like this. Once these
fifty-thousand people come together they automatically get negotia-
tion powers. The thing they want they do it themselves (26 January
Conversation: 2).
The Abhinav Bharat people are obsessed with the need to unite
Hindus the same way as Muslims and even Christians are united
today:
Col Dhar: A chain has to tie the people. [The] Words of Swami
Vivekanand and Adi Shankaracharya should be read out because
Muslims are very strong and have been tied to their chains through
changing their body parts, through doing the namaaz (prayers) five times,
tying them with the Ramadan fasts. Hindus have been given a lot of lee-
way. All this should be included in moral rules and ethics, so it is neces-
sary to tie them in chains from the beginning itself. For this there will be a
central training team aiding the organisation’s vision of purification.
Purohit: Panchmarhi is the ideal place for this – a little secluded so
that the centre is not much exposed to the media.
Col Dhar: Purification should be implemented centrally because this is
the first step that will bind everyone together. Like Christians pray
before their meal – this might be a small thing but it ties everyone to-
gether (26 January Conversation: 23).
The same kind of considerations had arisen in one of the first
meetings of Abhinav Bharat in 2007, in which Purohit, Sharma
and Dwivedi took part along with other, unidentified partici-
pants. One of them said:
Ninad Bedekar: They have a scheme in the next 5 years to acquire
rupees 20,000 crore and give that money to madarsas. The money will
come by taking away the land that belongs to temples and other holy
shrines and sold to builders. They want to bring all those people to the
mainstream, but what kind of mainstream will they produce. Those
who study in madarsas are extremists. They don’t teach anything
other than the Quran or the hadith there. If the Satyam (sic: Sachar)
Committee report is implemented then we are destroyed. Our next
generation will be ruined.
Purohit: 22% people will go.
B L Sharma: They had a conference 10 years ago and the same things
are being spoken even today. Even today they don’t eat beef and Mus-
lims do. Gujjars do not kill cows. The agenda is halted on the issue of
giving five girls and five boys. No Hindu stood up for this. How many
people will accept this?
56
Bhai Delvi: They only come together during festivals, to read namaaz.
There should be an explosion in India then to kill lakhs and crores to-
gether. There should be fear everywhere, then only they will walk the line.
Dwivedi: When pressure will be created conversions will start hap-
pening on its own. Once this flow begins then it will not take time for
the entire nation to be converted.
B L Sharma: Our weak blood could not bear the Muslim’s sword. That is
why they were cowards and not stronger than us. That is our weak blood.
They were our brave ancestors who did not convert. Those who convert-
ed were mere cowards (Excerpts of Translation of Transcript of Abhinav
Bharat Meeting, Fall 2007: 1, hereafter “Abhinav Bharat Meeting 2007”).
While previous Hindu nationalist reactions resulted in the
creation of organisations such as the RSS and/or anti-Muslim
riots, Abhinav Bharat inaugurated another kind of strategy
based on bomb blasts. That was because of the kind of threat
they felt they were facing: Muslims themselves were seen as
terrorising Hindus by anonymous attacks of that kind. Just be-
fore the Faridabad meeting, Upadhyaya and Swami Amritanand
had a private conversation (that was recorded too) in which
the former said: “SIMI these days seems invincible but it can
be broken” (Conversation between Ramesh Upadhyaya and
Sudhakar Dwivedi, 25 January 2008: 2, hereafter “Conversation
Upadhyaya-Dwivedi”).
In 2007, Sharma added: “A weapon can only be destroyed with
a weapon and that is why I chose the Army, CRP, Border Security
Force, armed forces” (Abhinav Bharat Meeting 2007: 2). This
logic of tit for tat that Himani Savarkar endorsed in her interview
with Outlook through the formula “blast for blast” is not an end
in itself though for all the Abhinav Bharat leaders.
Purohit had a more sophisticated approach than just taking
vengeance. He first wanted to terrorise Muslims to unite them.
He said at the Faridabad meeting:
Till the time we do not oppose them as a threat they will not be
united. The day Muslims get united that will be our biggest victory.
Today there are regional differences amongst Muslims, like the Chief
Minister (CM) there backs Maharashtrian Muslims and says the Kashmiri
Muslim is not like ours (Maharashtrian Muslims). The plan is to begin
striking at them and let the Imam Bukhari stand up for the community.
He has to say that I will not tolerate injustices in Maharashtra; let them
unite, start shouting together…we are working for unification of Islam,
Christians and Maoists against us (26 January Conversation: 21).
Once Muslims united and formed a bloc behind extremist
leaders – as Imam Bukhari of the Jama Masjid in Delhi is por-
trayed – Purohit thought, Abhinav Bharat would be in a position
to consolidate the Hindu majority and to mobilise it behind its
game plan. For this he wanted Abhinav Bharat to become a
“Phantom organisation – like a ghost that appeared from no-
where” (26 January Conversation: 21) which would gain what he
called “nuisance value” (26 January Conversation: 3 and 11), blast
after blast by striking Muslims without claiming responsibility
for any of these attacks. Eventually, this “nuisance value” was
supposed to give it some bargaining power, so much so the
organisation could join the political process – by taking over the
VHP and transforming itself into a political party.
To acquire such a “nuisance value”, Abhinav Bharat resorted to
two tactics:
(1) Bomb Blasts: Abhinav Bharat was responsible for three
bomb blasts. Before Malegaon, it was responsible for two other
September 4, 2010 vol xlv no 36 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

operations. During the Faridabad meeting, Purohit disclosed
this secret:
I will say something, which has not been said before: we did two
operations. They were both successful. I am capable of doing opera-
tions. I have no shortage of equipment. I can produce equipments. I can
get the equipments if and once I make up my mind. But to select the
target, in my opinion, should not be my prerogative alone. We will decide
this in the council or not? (26 January Conversation: 4).
During his private conversation with Swami Amritanand on
25 January 2008, Major Upadhyaya gave details about one of the
two operations in question. He said that some of the Abhinav
Bharat members
should be used to spread fear amongst the Muslim and Christian com-
munities. This action has to be kept alive like the blast in the Hydera-
bad mosque. There was no one involved from the ISI (Inter-Services
Intelligence) or anything. It was one of our men only. I can say this on
basis of my knowledge. This was done in the name of duty (Conversa-
tion Upadhyaya-Dwivedi: 1).
The other attack could well be that of Nanded or that of
Parbhani or Jalna, two bomb attacks in which Rakesh Dhawade –
one of the accused in the Malegaon case – had been implicated.
For these operations, Purohit raised a lot of money and trai-
ned quite a few people. The Malegaon report reads: “Accused
Prasad Purohit collected huge amount of funds to the tune of
Rs 21,00,000 for himself and for his Abhinav Bharat organisa-
tion to promote his fundamentalist organisation (Chargesheet –
Malegaon Case: 64).
(2) The Search for Outside Support: The Abhinav Bharat leaders
found supporters in Israel and Nepal. Purohit said, in the Farida-
bad meeting:
I made contacts in Israel – one of our ‘captains’ has already gone and
come back from there. We had a very positive response from their
side. They told us, ‘you should show us something on the ground.’
At this time even our web site wasn’t launched. We had only given
them on paper. They replied be saying ‘We wait and watch for six
months’. We demanded four things from them: (i) continuous and
uninterrupted supply of equipment and training, (ii) allow us to start
our office with saffron flag in Tel Aviv, (iii) political asylum, (iv) sup-
port our cause in the UN that a Hindu nation is born. They have
agreed to two things. They don’t want to fly our national flag in
Tel Aviv, the reason being that their relations with India are getting
better and they want that, but by allowing this, relations will turn
sour. Secondly, they will not support us in the international forum
for the next two years – till the time our movement does not
gain some momentum. Political asylum; any time, equipment and
training once we show something on the ground. Even if I was achiev-
ing these targets I’d still think l that I shouldn’t proceed with
these decisions on my own. For this we must bring together a council.
We must understand our requirements. I must also tell you this that
our meeting was fi xed with King Gyanendra for 25 June 2006 and
2007 last year. Technically this meeting was fi xed telephonically on
13 February.
There is one Col Prajwal. He has been appointed as a Brigadier
in Intelligence. We had tried hard to fi x this meeting. I proposed
him, which he accepted that my 20 men will receive training as
officers. Every six months to a year I will have 40 men and my
200 men will receive training as soldiers. So in one year I will have
400 men. You (Nepal) being an independent nation should ask for
AKS from Czechoslovakia. We will pay the money and the ammuni-
tion. That is not a worry. The King accepted this (26 January Conver-
sation: 4-5).
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SPECIAL ARTICLE
So far as Israel was concerned, Swami Amritananda declared
during the Faridabad meeting:
Two people from Israel came to me the other day. They are here. What-
ever it is, they are the first ones to give us support.
Purohit: They have given support. They have agreed to our things on
the Internet and now they want it faxed. They have opened an email ID.
We cannot access it; we type it and put it in the draft. For this both of us
know the password. They open it themselves and check it. Ok, not ok,
accepted – this is what they let us know (26 January Conversation: 7).
So far as Nepal was concerned, the Abhinav Bharat leaders
were in touch with royalist groups which had just been declared
terrorist groups. R P Singh declared in that respect in the Farida-
bad meeting:
In today’s date the Lok Tantric Madhesi Morcha and the Jana Tantric
Madhesi Morcha have been declared terrorists. Some of their leaders
are in UP and Bihar. We are continuously in touch with them. Jwalasi-
ngh’s group is in favour of a symbolic monarchy and this is also what
we want. This is the democratic and symbolic time and we believe that
this is the only way Hindutva will survive. A full pleasant monarchy is
not possible in this world anymore. So that is why we are fighting con-
tinuously in favour of a symbolic monarchy. Through this develop-
ment our powers have increased around and in Kathmandu. The re-
sult of this was that we did a small symbolic blast to instill terror but
not to hurt anyone. We had a pact with a leading political party whose
chief was arrested day before yesterday by Maoists. We are right now
struggling to have him released. An important result of this was that
we are going to open a new office in New Delhi and we will gather
Nepalis in our army (26 January Conversation: 8).
Besides Israel and Nepal, the Abhinav Bharat leaders were loo-
king for the support of the United Nations as they considered that
their cause could be presented in Wilsonian terms: the Hindus
were a nationality in quest of official recognition – people’s right
to self-determination was simply denied to them unjustly. They
wanted, therefore, to create “a central Hindu government in exile”
(26 January Conversation: 4, 10 and 19) and to use the UN as an
international forum, the same way as, according to them, the
Kashmiris had done before. Purohit said at the Faridabad meeting:
The Hurriat conference was in fact the announcement of an indepen-
dent government. ‘Huroor’ in Arabic means independence. They made
their way through the UN [JKLF leader] Yasin Malik internationalised
the issue, thereby gaining legitimacy for the cause. If we follow this
process then they will have to recognise the Hindu identity and the
government (26 January Conversation: 24).
Are Abhinav Bharat People That Isolated?
The excerpts of the Malegaon case report show that, in the con-
text of an unprecedented wave of Islamist blasts, Hindu national-
ist activists had decided to imitate the modus operandi of the
jihadists, not only to terrorise Muslims, but also, eventually, to
seize power and with the help of external supporters, to turn
India into an Hindu Rashtra. Some of these activists came from
the Sangh parivar, an organisational network the Abhinav Bharat
leaders consider with a great deal of ambivalence. On the one hand
they admire it, but on the other they criticise its passivity, the same
way as Nathuram Godse resented the RSS inaction at the time of
Partition. Other Abhinav Bharat leaders were religious figures and
(ex)army officers, the moving spirit of the organisation being
Lt Col Purohit.
Reading the transcript of the meetings of Abhinav Bharat, one
comes to the conclusion that the organisation was following a
57
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fully unrealistic agenda and was made of a handful of extremist,
fringe elements. But was the organisation that isolated? While
Abhinav Bharat was rather critical of the Sangh parivar, the lat-
ter, after some hesitation, supported those who had been accused
in the Malegaon case and therefore did not consider them as ri-
vals whose extremism was misplaced. Bajrang Dal chief Prakash
Sharma declared that “policymakers should be worried if the
Hindus were taking to arms because of the government’s skewed
approach to war on terror” and admitted that the Bajrang Dal
was running training camps also “to boost their morale [of
Bajrang Dal’s members]. The country wouldn’t get its [Olympian]
Abhinav Bindras if there were no armed training for the youth”
(Indian Express, 30 October 2008).
Such comments suggest that, in contrast to the 1940s when the
Savarkarites and the RSS leaders followed two different routes,
there is more affinity between the two now. This convergence
has largely been reflected in the trajectory of the Bajrang Dal, an
RSS affiliate which tends to operate like Abhinav Bharat.14 During
the 2006 inquiry into the Nanded blast,15 a retired navy officer
hailing from Pune, S R Bhate, who was associated with the RSS
since 1996, declared to the police that as early as March-April
2000 he had been asked by the local Bajrang Dal leader “to train
his activists in the use of gelatine sticks at a camp in the city”
(Indian Express 2008) and then at a larger one in the BMS (Nasik).
Bhate told the ATS [Anti-Terror Squad] investigators that the camp had
been organised by the RSS and about 115 activists from across the coun-
try were trained in karate, ground obstacles and firing of revolvers.
Two retired ex-servicemen and a senior retired officer from the IB [In-
telligence Bureau] were also present, he stated (Indian Express 2008).
This modus operandi calls to mind that of the RSS in 1947
when the movement organised training camps in Alwar state. In
a way the RSS, with the Bajrang Dal, has created a buffer organi-
sation which endows the Sangh parivar with an organisation
doing the dirty work the Sangh was once obliged to do for itself,
tasks similar to those of the Savarkarite organisations, be they
called Hindu Rashtra Dal or Abhinav Bharat.

Notes Abhinav Bharat leaders made a special provision References

1 This is the argument I have made in Jaffrelot (1999).
2 Home Department (Political), Proceedings for the
year 1911, P/8713, April 1910 Pro No 47, India Of-
fice Library and Records (London).
3 Interview of Himani Savarkar in Outlook (2008).
4 “English translation of transcripts of interrogation
of some witnesses in the Malegaon case”, p 70
(excerpts, hereafter called “Interrogatories”, post-
ed on www.epw.in).
5 “I know colonel Purohit personally, for over two
years but our families have ties that go back a
long time.” But, she said, “He has never ever spo-
ken to me about the Abhinav Bharat Trust – either
that he founded it or about its work. Similarly, I do
not know if he as involved with the Abhinav Bharat
Sangathan in Madhya Pradesh” (Interrogatories:
8). Another source gives June 2008 as the founda-
tion date. It also says that the movement was
founded at Jabalpur on the premises of a Sindhi
organisation (Sindhu Shakti Parishad). Mayaram
Jeswani, the president of this association and the
vice-president of the Madhya Pradesh branch of
Abhinav Bharat, is a former activist of the RSS and
the VHP (S Bose, “Sindhi Body under Scanner for
Terror Links”, Times of India, 4 November 2008).
6 The police have retrieved the video of this mee-
ting recorded by Amritananda Dev Tirtha. It
shows that there were at least three other partici-
pants, B L Sharma, Dr R P Singh from the Apollo
Hospital and Col Adithya Dhar. During the Fari-
dabad meeting, R P Singh declared that he had
not only filed a case against M F Husain but also
thought about going against him during a func-
tion in his honour at Jamia Milia. “I had gone to
oppose it. I carried with me 15 litres of petrol but I
didn’t get a chance. Hamid Ansari then was the
vice-chancellor of Jamia. M F Husain was being
given an award. He didn’t come but his son had
come” (English translation of excerpts of the
transcript of the conversation between Prasad
Purohit, Sudhakar Dhar Dwivedi (SD), B L Sharma,
Dr R P Singh, Ramesh Upadhyaya and others
during the Faridabad meeting of Abhinav Bharat
on 26 January 2008, www.epw.in, p 2, hereafter
referred to as “26 January Conversation”).
7 “Chargesheet”, p 65. The police has established that
in addition to the participants of the Bhopal meeting
who have finally become accused in the Malegaon
case, other people took part in the meeting. During
her interrogation, Himani Savarkar, for instance,
admitted that she was there (Interrogatories, p 7).
8 In the new constitution of India that they started
to draft during the Faridabad meeting, the
in order to have more Chitpavan brahmins in the
air force (26 January Conversation, p 17).
9 See his interview in the mouthpiece of the RSS,
Organiser, 17 February 2008. There, he says:
“Shardapeeth is the one where Shankaracharya
parampara originated. In the Mathamnayopanishad
written by Adi Shankara, it is clearly stated that
there are seven Aamnay in Shankara parampara,
namely, (1) Nishkalamnay, (2) Poorvamnay,
(3) Paschimamnay, (4) Uttaramnay, (5) Dakshi-
namnay, (6) Atmamnay, and (7) Urdhvamnay.
Nishkalamnay Sharda Sarvagyapeeth is the first
among them and is in Kashmir (Village: Shardi,
Tehsil: Attmuqam, District: Muzzaffarabad, POK).
It is purely and clearly an Indian heritage. So the
revival of it becomes significant and relevant spe-
cially when India and Pakistan are not having
good diplomatic relations on Kashmir issue.”
10 Times of India, 30 May 1991 and Statesman (Delhi),
9 July 1991. These newcomers joined the BJP after
several other ex-armymen, including Major
Jaswant Singh and Capt Jagat Vir Singh Drona,
who became the RSS sanghchalak of Kanpur after
he retired, and the city MP in 1989. In addition to
ex-servicemen, ex-policemen joined the BJP in the
late 1980s-early 1990s, including S C Dixit, former
DGP of Uttar Pradesh who became vice-president of
the VHP and Varanasi MP on the BJP ticket in 1991,
as well as B P Singhal (former DGP of Uttar Pradesh
as well), Ashok Singhal’s brother (Organiser,
28 April 1991, p 5 and Times of India, 22 July 1991).
11 In addition to Drona, Khanduri and Jaswant
Singh, rtd Maj D D Khanoria was elected MP of
Kangra (Himachal Pradesh) in 1990.
12 Before then she was a member of the Madhya
Pradesh executive council of the ABVP (Times of
India, 26 October 2008).
13 According to some press reports she was also
the president of the national executive of the
Durga Vahini for quite some time (Hafeez M and
S Sonawane 2008). Pragya Singh was arrested along
with Shamlal Bhavar Sahu, a commerce graduate
from Christian College in Indore, who owned a mo-
bile phone shop but also acted as a realty broker, and
Shiv Narayan Singh, a BSc graduate from New School
College in Indore who was an electrician and an insu-
rance agent. These electronics experts were involved
in the making of the bombs that exploded in Male-
gaon (Times of India, 27 October 2008).
14 This is the argument I make in Jaffrelot (2009).
15 In that incident, two Bajrang Dal activists were
killed while they were allegedly assembling
a bomb in a Nanded home (Indian Express,
9 November 2008).
Ganjapure, V (2008) : “We Love Our Country and
Aim to Produce All-round Leaders”, Times of
India, 2 November.
Hafeez, M (2008): “Retd Major Trained Sadhvi in Bomb-
making: Prosecutor”, Times of India, 31 October.
Hafeez, M and S Sonawane (2008): “Malegaon Blast:
Lt-Col Purohit Held”, Times of India, 6 November.
Indian Express (2008): “A 2006 Probe Had Also
Thrown Up Ex-servicemen, Bhonsala School
Links”, 1 November.
Jaffrelot, Christophe (1999): The Hindu Nationalist
Movement and Indian Politics (New Delhi: Penguin).
– (2009): “The Militias of Hindutva: Communal
Violence, Terrorism and Cultural Policing” in L Gay-
er and C Jaffrelot (ed.), Armed Militias of South
Asia: Fundamentalist, Maoists and Separatists (Lon-
don: Hurst, New York: Columbia University Press,
New Delhi: Foundation Books), pp 199-236.
Jain, Bharti (2008): “I Masterminded Malegaon
Blast: Lt Col”, The Economic Times, 7 November.
Outlook (2008): “‘Why Not Blast for Blast’? Asks Ab-
hinav Bharat President Himani Savarkar”, Inter-
view of Himani Savarkar , 13 November, accessed
9/25/2009.
Siddiqui, Pervez Iqbal (2008): “Terror Swami from
Jammu – sarvagyapeeth.com”, Times of India,
13 November.
Documents
Chargesheets and Miscellaneous Documents
regarding the Malegaon Case (referred to as
“Chargesheets”).
English translation of excerpts of the transcript of the
conversation between Prasad Purohit, Sudhakar
Dhar Dwivedi (SD), B L Sharma, Dr R P Singh,
Ramesh Upadhyaya and others during the Farida-
bad meeting of Abhinav Bharat on 26 January
2008 (referred to as “26 January Conversation”).
English translation of the conversation between
Ramesh Upadhyaya and Sudhakar Dwivedi
(25 January 2008) – excerpts (referred to as “Con-
versation Upadhyaya-Dwivedi”).
English translation of the transcript of the Abhinav
Meeting that took place during the fall of 2007 –
excerpts (referred to as “Abhinav Bharat Meeting
2007”).
English translation of transcripts of interrogatories of
some witnesses in the Malegaon case (referred to
as “Interrogatories”).
Transcripts of Faridabad Meeting in Hindi.

58 September 4, 2010 vol xlv no 36 EPW Economic & Political Weekly