The Buck Stops Here talk show of NDTV anchored by Ms Barkha Dutt had an interesting discussion on August 25, 2010, on the passing reference to the recently noticed phenomenon of "Saffron Terror" made by Mr P.Chidambaram, the Home Minister, while inaugurating a conference of Directors-General of Police at New Delhi the same day.
The discussion was balanced and free of accusations and counter-accusations. It was refreshing to note that all the participants, including Shri Swapan Dasgupta, shared the concern of Shri Chidambaram over this phenomenon. There was no attempt to deny the fact that some Hindu elements, known to be close to the ideology of the Hindu nationalist group, are suspected of involvement in acts of terrorism against members of our Muslim community and that there was a need for a thorough investigation into this.
The debate, while refreshingly balanced and free of ideological polemic, was incomplete in some important respects. I myself , in my writings and speeches, have refrained from naming this phenomenon "Saffron" or "Hindutva" or Hindu terror since I felt that such characterisations could politicise the investigation and prosecution and aggravate the divide between the Hindus and the Muslims. I, therefore, prefer calling the phenomenon "Hindu reprisal terrorism".
In the relations between the Hindus and the Muslims, there have always been acts of reprisal during communal riots in different parts of the country, but those were acts of reprisal committed in the heat of the moment at the height of the riots.What we have been seeing since the Malegaon blasts on September 8, 2006, are some pre-meditated acts of reprisal by some members of the Hindu community against Muslim soft targets. These are deliberate acts meant to punish Indian Muslims for the acts committed by some Pakistani terrorist organisations sponsored by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)-- with or without the help of Indian Muslims belonging to the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).
The Malegaon blasts of September 8, 2006, constituted in my view the first act of reprisal terrorism by some Hindus against innocent Muslims. While almost everybody was blaming the ISI and its Pakistani surrogates for the blasts, in an article written on September 10, 2006--two days after the blasts-- I said inter alia: