FOR THE RIGHT PRICE, YOU CAN GET THE SRI RAM SENE TO ORGANISE A RIOT ANYWHERE. AN EXPOSÉ BY PUSHP SHARMA. WRITTEN BY SANJANA. ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY K ASHISH
THERE ARE 133 videos that show up on YouTube when you search for “Mangalore pub attack”. Over 300,000 people have viewed the first video. Put in the same query on Google and 69,000 websites show up in a fraction of a second. On 24 January 2009, a group of 35-40 men barged into a pub in Mangalore and attacked young women as they enjoyed an afternoon drink. Amongst the attackers were members of Sri Ram Sene — a right-wing organisation that was relatively unknown at the time. The Sene cadres considered women drinking publicly as “indecent behaviour” and more importantly “an insult to Hindu culture and tradition”. Two days after the attack, as India marked 60 years of the Constitution coming into force, national television channels looped footage of women being slapped, beaten and chased out of the pub. (In a telling detail, the footage of the assault was available only because the Sene had informed journalists and photographers in Mangalore of their intended attack 30 minutes before they entered the pub.) The footage sparked outrage. News producers from French, Russian, German television channels despatched correspondents to ground zero. Even producers from The Oprah Winfrey Show called in asking for the footage. The Sene had burst onto the scene.
As an organisation, the Sene has always claimed for itself a radical Hindu identity. Its leaders position themselves as zealous custodians of “Hindu religion” and “culture”, its cadres as valiant foot soldiers. In their own words, they will not hesitate to assault people, vandalise property, destroy artistic expressions, separate mixed religion couples — in general, interfere violently — to implement their hardline Hindutva agenda. Their professional calling card is violence justified by a puritanical, spitfire morality.
A six-week undercover investigation by TEHELKA, however, reveals that even this violent, spitfire morality can be a hypocritical sham. Sri Ram Sene members are not just committed ideologues who are spontaneously willing to become violent law-breakers for a “cause”. That’s just one of their criminal and negative faces. They are also cynical lumpen that can be bought for a price. “Contract rioting” — thugs being handed out contracts or money to create riots — no longer needs to be a matter of mere speculation. TEHELKA’s investigation shows it is an alarming reality. Vandalism can be purchased; ‘cultural nationalism’ can go on sale. It’s all kosher in the “business” of outrage.
To expose this aspect of the Sri Ram Sene, a TEHELKA journalist posing as an artist met Pramod Muthalik, the president of the Sri Ram Sene, with a proposal. Using the rationale that all controversy is good publicity, he asked Muthalik if the Sri Ram Sene would orchestrate a pre-paid, pre-meditated attack on his painting exhibition so that the resulting furore would spark public interest, catapult him to fame and help sell his paintings both in India and abroad by attracting higher bids at art auctions. (Never mind that the supposed paintings this furore might help sell evoked Hindu- Muslim amity, particularly Hindu-Muslim marriages — a phenomenon the Sene abhors.) In return, Muthalik and the Sene would regain the national stature they had achieved during the Mangalore pub attack, besides pocketing the agreed upon fee. Far from rejecting this proposal with horror and outrage, Muthalik readily connected the TEHELKA reporter to one Sene member after another — down a food chain that exposed a disturbingly entrenched criminal mindset, which is confident of fixing the system to abet it.
Before the story of what this food chain threw up, however, it might help to revisit the history of the Sri Ram Sene and its founder.
THE SRI Ram Sene was started in 2007 by Pramod Muthalik, who continues to be its National President. Born in Bagalkot in north Karnataka, Muthalik spent his formative years — he joined a shakha when he was 13 years old — with the Hindu right wing organisation, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). By 1996, his RSS seniors shifted Muthalik to its paramilitary wing, the Bajrang Dal. It took Muthalik less than a year to be named the Dal’s south India convener. People who knew him back then called him “ambitious, dedicated and sharp-tongued”. In his 23-year association with the RSS and its affiliate organisations, Muthalik had several brushes with the law, but despite being charged in numerous cases for provocative speech-making, the only significant time he has spent in jail is two months — a record he maintains till date.
Upset with the BJP’s failure to reward his Hindutva zeal with any political dividends, Muthalik severed ties with the RSS in 2004. He claims the RSS and its affiliate organisations are betraying the Hindu cause by not being hardline enough, and the BJP government in the state too is not helping him enough. Predictably then, extreme hardline Hindutva politics has been the cornerstone of the Sri Ram Sene since it was floated in 2007. Violence is the only way forward, says Muthalik. In 2008, attempting to enter political centre stage, Muthalik floated the Rashtriya Hindustan Sena — the political wing of the Sene — but failed miserably. None of the candidates fielded made a mark. While talking to TEHELKA, Muthalik admits on camera that his candidates lost the state Assembly elections because “we need money, religion and thugs to succeed. We didn’t know that. Today’s political situation is a wretched one.”
Resolving to return to electoral politics after establishing himself more stridently, Muthalik and the Sene launched a series of plans to strengthen its “Hindu” identity. Though the organisation is most strongly rooted in the coastal Karnataka region and pockets of north Karnataka, their activities have not been limited to these regions. On August 24, 2008, in Delhi, a few Sene members barged into an art exhibition organised by SAHMAT an NGO, and destroyed several MF Husain paintings, leaving behind a clutch of pamphlets denouncing Husain’s attempts to hurt Hindu pride. A month later in September, speaking at a public event in Mangalore, Muthalik referred to the Bengaluru bomb blasts that had taken place a week earlier and declared 700 Sene members were being trained to carry out suicide attacks. “We have no more patience. Tit for tat is the only mantra before us to save Hinduism,” he had announced. “If centres of religious importance for Hindus are targeted, twice the number of religious centres of the opposite party will be smashed. If Hindu girls are exploited by the members of other religions, double the number of girls from other religions will be targeted.”
Months later, in January 2009, the Karnataka police arrested nine people in connection with bomb blasts that exploded in Hubli during the state Assembly elections. The kingpin, Nagaraj Jambagi, was a Sene member and a close Muthalik associate — a fact Muthalik himself had admitted to at the time. In July 2009, Jambagi was murdered while serving time in Bagalokot Jail.
During the Mangalore pub attack, minutes before he was arrested for inciting his cadres, Muthalik had asked newspersons gathered at the scene why everybody was making such a big issue of the attacks. “We took steps to protect our Hindu culture and punished girls who were attempting to destroy that tradition by going to pubs. We will not tolerate anybody who steps out of this code of decency,” he said then.
This Muthalik-prescribed code of “decency” is still being enforced in several ways in coastal Karnataka. In Mangalore, Sene cadres walked into a Hindu wedding celebration on July 15, 2009, and assaulted a Muslim guest for attending the event. Muslim boys, in fact, are often beaten up across the region merely for talking to Hindu girls. And they have whipped up anxiety and anger about a derisive concept called “Love Jihad”— a conspiracy allegedly evolved by Muslim boys to convert Hindu girls to Islam through proposals of marriage — through vicious attacks and propaganda.
As part of the investigation then, the TEHELKA journalist posing as an artist declared his forthcoming exhibition would be on positive images of “Love Jihad”. But it did not seem to bother Muthalik — or any of the Sene members TEHELKA met — that their help was being sought to boost sales of paintings on a theme they claimed to ideologically oppose. For a man who frequently talks of how he does not have a single bank account in his name and depends entirely on public contributions, Muthalik’s easy acceptance of the proposal is a telling comment in many ways.
Here is how the story unfurled once TEHELKA met with Muthalik.
TEHELKA FIRST met with Muthalik at the Sene office in Hubli. Before laying out the proposal of a preengineered attack on the art exhibition, a cash donation of Rs 10,000 is offered to Muthalik — “Hindutva ke liye hum bhi kuch karen (We want to do our bit for Hindutva).” Muthalik immediately reaches for the money and puts it in his pocket, without even a token refusal.
Over the course of the conversation, a detailed proposal is suggested that could potentially be a mutually beneficial proposition. Muthalik betrays no surprise or shock — not even when the reporter suggests that the art exhibition should be organised in a Muslim-dominated area in Bengaluru for the impact of the attack to be maximised. Muthalik’s only response to the suggestion is — “Yes, we can do it. In Mangalore as well.” The acceptance and the suggestion of Mangalore, another city where the attack can be staged, are instantaneous. Within the next five minutes, Muthalik offers to depute the task of coordination and suggests taking the discussion forward to two Sene leaders — Vasantkumar Bhavani, the President of the Bengaluru city unit, and Prasad Attavar, the Sene vice-president, who is based out of Mangalore.
(Though the conversations are in Hindi, the transcripts have been translated into English here for the purpose of the story.)
TEHELKA: I’ll take leave sir, what I want is to gain popularity and if I get popularity my business will improve. If you say then I…just tell me a time limit… these many boys will be there…this much for advo…meaning that of lawyers…we will not even complain… because that is our understanding… but sir, it is that whatever you say that amount of advance I will leave with you, then I say to you that now it has all come to you, and sir now do the job…
THERE ARE 133 videos that show up on YouTube when you search for “Mangalore pub attack”. Over 300,000 people have viewed the first video. Put in the same query on Google and 69,000 websites show up in a fraction of a second. On 24 January 2009, a group of 35-40 men barged into a pub in Mangalore and attacked young women as they enjoyed an afternoon drink. Amongst the attackers were members of Sri Ram Sene — a right-wing organisation that was relatively unknown at the time. The Sene cadres considered women drinking publicly as “indecent behaviour” and more importantly “an insult to Hindu culture and tradition”. Two days after the attack, as India marked 60 years of the Constitution coming into force, national television channels looped footage of women being slapped, beaten and chased out of the pub. (In a telling detail, the footage of the assault was available only because the Sene had informed journalists and photographers in Mangalore of their intended attack 30 minutes before they entered the pub.) The footage sparked outrage. News producers from French, Russian, German television channels despatched correspondents to ground zero. Even producers from The Oprah Winfrey Show called in asking for the footage. The Sene had burst onto the scene.
As an organisation, the Sene has always claimed for itself a radical Hindu identity. Its leaders position themselves as zealous custodians of “Hindu religion” and “culture”, its cadres as valiant foot soldiers. In their own words, they will not hesitate to assault people, vandalise property, destroy artistic expressions, separate mixed religion couples — in general, interfere violently — to implement their hardline Hindutva agenda. Their professional calling card is violence justified by a puritanical, spitfire morality.
A six-week undercover investigation by TEHELKA, however, reveals that even this violent, spitfire morality can be a hypocritical sham. Sri Ram Sene members are not just committed ideologues who are spontaneously willing to become violent law-breakers for a “cause”. That’s just one of their criminal and negative faces. They are also cynical lumpen that can be bought for a price. “Contract rioting” — thugs being handed out contracts or money to create riots — no longer needs to be a matter of mere speculation. TEHELKA’s investigation shows it is an alarming reality. Vandalism can be purchased; ‘cultural nationalism’ can go on sale. It’s all kosher in the “business” of outrage.
To expose this aspect of the Sri Ram Sene, a TEHELKA journalist posing as an artist met Pramod Muthalik, the president of the Sri Ram Sene, with a proposal. Using the rationale that all controversy is good publicity, he asked Muthalik if the Sri Ram Sene would orchestrate a pre-paid, pre-meditated attack on his painting exhibition so that the resulting furore would spark public interest, catapult him to fame and help sell his paintings both in India and abroad by attracting higher bids at art auctions. (Never mind that the supposed paintings this furore might help sell evoked Hindu- Muslim amity, particularly Hindu-Muslim marriages — a phenomenon the Sene abhors.) In return, Muthalik and the Sene would regain the national stature they had achieved during the Mangalore pub attack, besides pocketing the agreed upon fee. Far from rejecting this proposal with horror and outrage, Muthalik readily connected the TEHELKA reporter to one Sene member after another — down a food chain that exposed a disturbingly entrenched criminal mindset, which is confident of fixing the system to abet it.
Before the story of what this food chain threw up, however, it might help to revisit the history of the Sri Ram Sene and its founder.
THE SRI Ram Sene was started in 2007 by Pramod Muthalik, who continues to be its National President. Born in Bagalkot in north Karnataka, Muthalik spent his formative years — he joined a shakha when he was 13 years old — with the Hindu right wing organisation, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). By 1996, his RSS seniors shifted Muthalik to its paramilitary wing, the Bajrang Dal. It took Muthalik less than a year to be named the Dal’s south India convener. People who knew him back then called him “ambitious, dedicated and sharp-tongued”. In his 23-year association with the RSS and its affiliate organisations, Muthalik had several brushes with the law, but despite being charged in numerous cases for provocative speech-making, the only significant time he has spent in jail is two months — a record he maintains till date.
Upset with the BJP’s failure to reward his Hindutva zeal with any political dividends, Muthalik severed ties with the RSS in 2004. He claims the RSS and its affiliate organisations are betraying the Hindu cause by not being hardline enough, and the BJP government in the state too is not helping him enough. Predictably then, extreme hardline Hindutva politics has been the cornerstone of the Sri Ram Sene since it was floated in 2007. Violence is the only way forward, says Muthalik. In 2008, attempting to enter political centre stage, Muthalik floated the Rashtriya Hindustan Sena — the political wing of the Sene — but failed miserably. None of the candidates fielded made a mark. While talking to TEHELKA, Muthalik admits on camera that his candidates lost the state Assembly elections because “we need money, religion and thugs to succeed. We didn’t know that. Today’s political situation is a wretched one.”
Resolving to return to electoral politics after establishing himself more stridently, Muthalik and the Sene launched a series of plans to strengthen its “Hindu” identity. Though the organisation is most strongly rooted in the coastal Karnataka region and pockets of north Karnataka, their activities have not been limited to these regions. On August 24, 2008, in Delhi, a few Sene members barged into an art exhibition organised by SAHMAT an NGO, and destroyed several MF Husain paintings, leaving behind a clutch of pamphlets denouncing Husain’s attempts to hurt Hindu pride. A month later in September, speaking at a public event in Mangalore, Muthalik referred to the Bengaluru bomb blasts that had taken place a week earlier and declared 700 Sene members were being trained to carry out suicide attacks. “We have no more patience. Tit for tat is the only mantra before us to save Hinduism,” he had announced. “If centres of religious importance for Hindus are targeted, twice the number of religious centres of the opposite party will be smashed. If Hindu girls are exploited by the members of other religions, double the number of girls from other religions will be targeted.”
Months later, in January 2009, the Karnataka police arrested nine people in connection with bomb blasts that exploded in Hubli during the state Assembly elections. The kingpin, Nagaraj Jambagi, was a Sene member and a close Muthalik associate — a fact Muthalik himself had admitted to at the time. In July 2009, Jambagi was murdered while serving time in Bagalokot Jail.
During the Mangalore pub attack, minutes before he was arrested for inciting his cadres, Muthalik had asked newspersons gathered at the scene why everybody was making such a big issue of the attacks. “We took steps to protect our Hindu culture and punished girls who were attempting to destroy that tradition by going to pubs. We will not tolerate anybody who steps out of this code of decency,” he said then.
This Muthalik-prescribed code of “decency” is still being enforced in several ways in coastal Karnataka. In Mangalore, Sene cadres walked into a Hindu wedding celebration on July 15, 2009, and assaulted a Muslim guest for attending the event. Muslim boys, in fact, are often beaten up across the region merely for talking to Hindu girls. And they have whipped up anxiety and anger about a derisive concept called “Love Jihad”— a conspiracy allegedly evolved by Muslim boys to convert Hindu girls to Islam through proposals of marriage — through vicious attacks and propaganda.
As part of the investigation then, the TEHELKA journalist posing as an artist declared his forthcoming exhibition would be on positive images of “Love Jihad”. But it did not seem to bother Muthalik — or any of the Sene members TEHELKA met — that their help was being sought to boost sales of paintings on a theme they claimed to ideologically oppose. For a man who frequently talks of how he does not have a single bank account in his name and depends entirely on public contributions, Muthalik’s easy acceptance of the proposal is a telling comment in many ways.
Here is how the story unfurled once TEHELKA met with Muthalik.
TEHELKA FIRST met with Muthalik at the Sene office in Hubli. Before laying out the proposal of a preengineered attack on the art exhibition, a cash donation of Rs 10,000 is offered to Muthalik — “Hindutva ke liye hum bhi kuch karen (We want to do our bit for Hindutva).” Muthalik immediately reaches for the money and puts it in his pocket, without even a token refusal.
Over the course of the conversation, a detailed proposal is suggested that could potentially be a mutually beneficial proposition. Muthalik betrays no surprise or shock — not even when the reporter suggests that the art exhibition should be organised in a Muslim-dominated area in Bengaluru for the impact of the attack to be maximised. Muthalik’s only response to the suggestion is — “Yes, we can do it. In Mangalore as well.” The acceptance and the suggestion of Mangalore, another city where the attack can be staged, are instantaneous. Within the next five minutes, Muthalik offers to depute the task of coordination and suggests taking the discussion forward to two Sene leaders — Vasantkumar Bhavani, the President of the Bengaluru city unit, and Prasad Attavar, the Sene vice-president, who is based out of Mangalore.
(Though the conversations are in Hindi, the transcripts have been translated into English here for the purpose of the story.)
TEHELKA: I’ll take leave sir, what I want is to gain popularity and if I get popularity my business will improve. If you say then I…just tell me a time limit… these many boys will be there…this much for advo…meaning that of lawyers…we will not even complain… because that is our understanding… but sir, it is that whatever you say that amount of advance I will leave with you, then I say to you that now it has all come to you, and sir now do the job…