Bajrang Dal is the street force of Hindu Nationalism

The Bajrang Dal, as well as India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP,) are among over a hundred groups affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS.) Through the groups, the RSS seeks to achieve its goal of transforming India into a Hindu nation. It also seeks political power as well as influence over wide sections of Indian society – students and teachers, trade unions and retired army personnel, intellectuals and Bollywood actors.

A courageous journalist

The Bajrang Dal occupies a key position among RSS affiliates since it is viewed as the street enforcement arm. The Dal, like other RSS affiliates, is secretive and avoids media exposure. The violent tactics and the Hindu extremist ideology of one of the Dal leaders has been exposed in a story this month in The Wired, by Mohammad Ali, a courageous Indian journalist.

Ali describes the beatings and other strong arm tactics used by a Dal leader against Muslims, accusing them of killing cows, which are consider sacred by Hindus, and seducing Hindu women. Through his reporting, Ali proves that the allegations are baseless, just like all the other ones spread by the Dal and the RSS, including that Muslims are taking over land owned by Hindus and that they are procreating in large numbers to become a majority in the Hindu country.

Gaining attention after beating a Muslim laborer

For the story, Ali conducted several interviews with Vivek Premi, 26, a Bajrang Dal leader in Uttar Pradesh. Premi’s father runs a jewelry store in Shamli, Uttar Pradesh. In 2015, Premi belted a poor Muslim laborer in a public square in the town, falsely accusing him of taking a cow to a slaughterhouse. A video of the beating went viral on WhatsApp and Facebook, gaining Premi thousands of supporters. Later that year, after Modi’s government freed him from jail, Premi rapidly rose in the Dal hierarchy.

After Wired published the story, Ali tweeted, “It took me an year investigating Bajrang Dal’s role in radicalizing the majority and pushing India to a brink of Genocide. After long, depressing days, nights & therapy sessions, this story is out. Something essential inside me got broken during this.” Ali has over 14,000 followers on Twitter­. Link.

Protecting Hindu extremists marching to destroy a mosque

The role of the “Bajrang Dal in Hindu Awakening is not a secret,” notes the Dal’s website. It was formed in 1984, to organize Hindu youths to protect a march held that year from “anti-Hindu and anti-social elements.” These elements, the site continues, “threatened…dire consequences” to the marchers.

The march “was nothing against other religions,” the Dal says. Yet it was organized by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, another RSS affiliate and the parent organization of the Dal. Narendra Modi, now India’s Prime Minister, was a key organizer. The march was led by Lal Krishna Advani, a ­leader of the BJP. He said his goal was to reach Ayodhya, in Uttar Pradesh, and demolish a 15th century mosque and build a temple in its place. But there was a more important political goal, namely to expand the political support for the BJP.

Using Hindu nationalism to win elections

For decades following India’s independence, the BJP - and its earlier incarnation the Bharatiya Jana Sangh - was a marginal political force representing mostly Vaishyas, the business caste, and Brahmans. In the 1971 national parliamentary elections, for instance, the Sangh got just 7% of the votes.

The march to destroy the mosque, the Hindu-Muslim clashes in its wake and the demolition of the mosque in 1992, by the Bajrang Dal and other Hindu groups, fueled a rise in popular support for Hindu nationalism and the BJP. In 1996, the BJP got the most seats in the national parliamentary elections. Link.

The Dal describes itself as a youth power that is “absolutely not ready to tolerate any symbols of insult to the Hindu society.” It has over half a million active volunteers who “are devoted to the service of Mother India and Hindu Dharma (religion.)” The motto, the Dal site continues, is “Service, Security, and Embellishment.”

Training to use guns and swords

Acting as a “security ring of Hindu Society,” the Dal protects “Hindu Society, Faith, and Religion…(which) are being kicked and insulted by various forces for the last fourteen hundred years. Demolitions of more than 3,000 temples, fraudulent or forceful conversion of (millions) of Hindus (to Islam and Christianity) were the main tactics,” according to the Dal. Link.

“Since childhood I was fond of having pistols in my hand,” Premi told Ali. Later in the Bajrang Dal, he trained instructors who run camps that prepare Hindu youth for self-defense with rifles, swords, and sticks. Such camps are illegal, Ali writes, but each year the Dal trains thousands of youngsters across India.

Premi’s rise also shows the links between the RSS, the Bajrang Dal and the BJP. He was educated at a school run by the RSS, joined the Dal in his youth and is now a leader of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh.

A Muslim interviewing a Hindu extremist

Ali met Premi at various Dal office. He writes, that as a Muslim, “I often felt provoked, needled, and scrutinized in my reactions, and occasionally vaguely threatened.” Perhaps Premi chatted with Ali because he thought he may be able to convert him back to Hinduism. One of the goals of the RSS is to convert Muslims, Christians and Buddhists in India “back to Hinduism.” Also, given his political ambitions, Premi perhaps wanted to get national media coverage.  

One major gap in Ali’s story is how do Premi and other activists of the Dal make a living. Assuming they get a monthly payment from the Dal, is that enough to support them? Premi’s bills for riding around in a Bullet motorcycle alone must be quite large. What are their other sources of income? How does the Dal raise funds? Like with other such muscle groups, are Dal’s members involved in criminal activities, like protection and extortion, that fund them?

Earlier from 2012 until 2018, Ali was a staff writer for The Hindu, the second largest English language newspaper in India. In 2014, after Modi was elected prime minister, he took a transfer from Delhi to Uttar Pradesh, “because I wanted to understand what was really happening beyond” Delhi. A state with nearly a fifth of India’s 1.4 billion population, UP is the key to India’s parliamentary elections. Also, about a fifth of the state’s population are Muslims.

From 2015 to 2018, Ali covered the lynching of eight Muslims by Hindu mobs in Uttar Pradesh, for allegedly killing cows. The Bajrang Dal, he notes, was involved in many of these attacks.

Now a writer based in New York and New Delhi, Ali is working on a book about India under Narendra Modi. He studied journalism at Columbia University, New York. Reflecting on the recent attempts by Modi’s government to deprive Muslims of their citizenship and right to vote, Ali writes “I feel a sense of betrayal more strange and personal than anything I’ve felt before toward my country: India is breaking its constitutional promise to protect everyone irrespective of religion.”

For Mohammad Ali’s Wired story go to: Link.

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