Hindutva Group Offended by Kamal Haasan's Godse Remark Was Linked to Bomb Blasts

New Delhi: The Hindu Munnani, which has filed a case against actor Kamal Haasan for calling Nathuram Godse 'India's first extremist', has its own history of alleged extremist acts – specifically, of staging a bomb-attack on a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) office building in 2008.

Their defence of Godse parallels that of Pragya Singh Thakur, the BJP's Lok Sabha candidate from Bhopal. On Thursday, Thakur entered the fray, describing Mahatma Gandhi's assassin as a deshbhakt (patriot), while she herself is under trial in connection to lethal terror cases from 2008.

On January 24, 2008, two pipe bombs exploded in Tenkasi in Tirunelveli district, near Madurai. One was outside the local RSS office. One person was injured.

Upon investigation, the police arrested eight people – members of the Hindu Munnani – and charged them with attempting to fabricate an Islamist terror attack to provoke communal disharmony in the district.

In May of 2008, the CPI(M)’s Brinda Karat raised a question in parliament about the attack. Shivraj Patil, home minister at the time, answered that:

"Investigations have revealed that the bomb blasts were carried out by the accused due to personal enmity arising from the murder of his brother by some Muslims. The accused had conspired to give the episode a communal colour, so as to invite police action against the other group."

In a following question, Karat said that the accused "belonged to the Hindu Munnani organisation, which is reportedly a front organisation of the RSS," and asked if the Centre would look at the Tenkasi blasts as a “solitary incident” or investigate links to similar blasts in Nanded, Maharashtra.

The House was then disrupted, but Patil eventually responded in detail, naming the prime accused but not the organisation.

Processions to pipe-bombs

Tenkasi had been the site of an escalating communal situation, mainly between two regional associations, the Hindu Munnani and the Tamil Nadu Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam (TMMK).

Since its formation in 1980, the Hindu Munnani has had a strong association with the RSS. In the past, the Munnani’s activities have centred on promoting Vinayaka Chaturthi (Ganesh Chaturthi) in the state and leading aggressive processions through Muslim areas. The TMMK is a Muslim advocacy group which, for its own part, was put under close supervision after the 1998 Coimbatore blasts.

Also read: How the Hindu Munnani Seized Vinayaga Chaturthi to Spew Venom

In the early 2000s, disturbances between the Munnani and the TMMK were mostly restricted to brawls over these processions. In December 2006, however, Kumara Pandian, a high-up in the Munnani, was murdered. On August 14, 2007, seven others – three Hindus and three Muslims – were killed in a fight.

"Preceding the bomb blasts, there was a cycle of violence in Tenkasi," said Irfan Engineer, director of the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism in Mumbai. In 2008, Engineer led a fact-finding team to Tenkasi, and met families from both communities. "The Pandian brothers had been murdered by Muslim individuals because of personal rivalries. They tried to convert this into communal conflict, to mobilise the Hindu community behind them."

"First they objected to repairs being carried out to a mosque, but got no support from the Hindu community," Engineer told The Wire. "Hence the bomb blasts."

Not a bang but a whimper

On January 24, 2008, two explosions occurred in Tenkasi – one at the entrance of the local RSS office, and another at the New Bus Stand. The next day, the state president of the BJP, La Ganesan, called it a “planned attack,” part of a “continuous conspiracy.” It held protests around the state, demanding action again Islamist terrorism.

Police initially thought that “miscreants” had lobbed two pipe-bombs into the compound; on further investigation, they said it was a remote-detonated explosive that had been planted inside.

After further investigation, the DIG of Tirunelveli, P. Kannappan, arrested and charged eight people – all reportedly members of the Hindu Munnani. One of the accused was Sivanandam, the general secretary of Hindu Munnani in the neighbouring city of Kadayanallur.

The event made Tenkasi a striking case study for two trends: how the communal conflict was being stoked in Tamil Nadu, and the apparent role of Hindu organisations in creating terrorist scares across the country in 2008 – including the deadly Malegaon blasts, for which Pragya Singh Thakur is under trial and on bail.

Saffronising the South

In this larger context, the attempted communalisation of south India, one watershed event was the 1998 Coimbatore blasts. In November 1997, after a traffic constable named R. Selvaraj was murdered, the police interrogation grew into a widespread riot, with police and the Hindu Munnani allegedly at the forefront.

The riot left 17 dead and more than a hundred seriously injured. In February 1998, a retaliatory bombing, attributed to a local Muslim extremist group, Al-Umma, killed 50.

L.K. Advani, who was in town for an election rally, was supposedly the target of these bombings, and the BJP used the terrorism card to great effect – for the first time ever, they won the Coimbatore parliamentary constituency in 1998 (with 56% votes) and again in 1999 (49%). Previously they had never won more than 7% of votes in Coimbatore.

The BJP's winning candidate from that year, C.P. Radhakrishnan, is contesting again in the 2019 race, against a CPM candidate from the DMK-led alliance.

There was a lesson to be learned. Tirunelveli district had been dominated by the DMK in the assembly. It was one of the Lok Sabha constituencies which the BJP-allied AIADMK won for the first time in 1998, and again in 1999, and was eyeing in 2008.

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