Sanatan Sanstha and rise of hardline right wing groups in Maharashtra

The detention of a member of right-wing group Sanatan Sanstha for the murder of anti-superstition activist Dr Narendra Dabholkar, has brought the focus in Maharashtra back not only on the quiet strengthening of Hindu hardline groups in the state, but also on the rising intolerance and violence in the state’s polity. This is not the first time that the Sanatan Sanstha, repeatedly sought to be banned, has been in the news for a violent crime. Back in June 2008, seven people were injured in a theatre in Thane when a crude, low-intensity bomb went off in the parking lot. A few days earlier, another explosive device was found in an auditorium in Vashi. Both venues were hosting shows of controversial Marathi play Aamhi Pachpute. The Hindu Janajagruti Samiti had first penned missives to the Thane police and other state authorities demanding a ban on the play, which they claimed depicted Hindu mythological characters in poor light. Finally, the ATS said, a handful of men planned the explosions as retaliation. Aamhi Pachpute was a satire about five brothers contesting ownership of a single asset, the title and storyline a loose reference to the Pandavas. Six men were eventually arrested, members of the Sanatan Sanstha and the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, two of them also members of a small group called the Dharmakranti Sena. The latter organization, a newly launched outfit at whose inaugural rally in April 2008 young men were seen dressed in fatigues, called for establishing “Ramrajya” and to give free self-defence classes for Hindus, alongside extolling the armed battle of Hindu revolutionaries, saints, RSS leader Golwalkar and others. [caption id=“attachment_1069437” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  The murder of Daholkar may just be another indication of the rise of hardline right wing groups in Maharashtra. PTI[/caption] Some of the arrested were also tried for a small explosion in February that year during a screening of Bollywood film Jodhaa Akbar in a Navi Mumbai cinema hall. Four were eventually acquitted. The Sanatan Sanstha and sister organization Hindu Janajagruti Samiti are registered in Goa as charitable organizations. The Dharmakranti Sena more or less fell off the map along with the 2008 arrests. Neither has any high-profile leader, and yet the two organizations have a keen online presence, besides lakhs of followers across the country and abroad. The Sanatan Sanstha, which also publishes a Hindi daily Sanatan Prabhat, was founded by Dr Jayant Athavale, a 65-year-old former clinical hypnotherapist who earlier founded the Indian Society of Clinical Hypnosis and Research. The reclusive and low-profile Athavale’s teachings and writings are however keenly awaited and circulated by followers of the groups and readers of the Sanatan Prabhat. Following Dabholkar’s murder, according to this comment by Dalit scholar Anand Teltumbde, the Sanatan Prabhat wrote, “Everybody gets the fruit of his karma. Instead of dying of illness in a bedridden state or dying a painful death after an operation, the death Dabholkar met with was a grace of god.” The same article also provokes thought on the larger context in Maharashtra within which the murder took place, the increasingly vociferous contestations by “institutions of Hindu Rashtra, the strategic multi-fanged outfits of the Sangh Pariwar, with their mighty propagandist infrastructure”. The Sanatan Sanstha is a key part of that architecture, with an ashram near Panvel, about 50 km from Mumbai, apart from the one in Ramnathi, Goa from where a devotee was detained in relation to Dabholkar’s killing. Ramesh Gadkari, one of the accused in the 2008 Thane auditorium blast case, had apparently lived with his wife in the Panvel ashram for five years. The Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, which has been operating for a little over a decade, has in the past undertaken protests against MF Husain’s paintings, “anti-Hindu” Hollywood movies, Bollywood songs with any references to Hindu deities or rituals and “anti-Hindu textbooks”. Neither outfit has a formal membership pattern, but active members live across the world. In a comment on growing intolerance in Maharashtra’s polity, Rajeshwari Deshpande writes in The Indian Express about identity politics and various forms of parochial prides marring peaceful dialogue on subjects. Citing various attacks on the freedom of expression – the James Laine controversy, the attacks on the staging of Aamhi Pachpute, forced censorship, attacks on the press and more – she writes, “These versions of identity politics no doubt represent a curious mix of material anxieties and political frustrations of various sections of Maharashtra society.” Significantly, investigators in the 2008 case had been clear that though the explosive devices used were very crude – late Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray had even called them damp squibs – there was no denying that the interlinked groups were mobilizing Hindus around the jingoistic idea of a religious revolution. Even if the latest detention has come after some serious pressure on the Pune Police to show results, the continuing mobilisation of people on an aggressive Hindutva agenda will be something the Congress-NCP government would want to consider carefully.