Ban cry grows, but Dal leaders unfazed

NEW DELHI: In the face of overriding evidence of its role in communal violence, there have been demands from several quarters to ban the Bajrang Dal.

”All outfits that encourage caste-based of communal violence should be banned, whether it is Simi or VHP, Bajrang Dal or HYV,” Roop Rekha Verma, ex-vice chancellor of Lucknow University, says.

But the Bajrang Dal leadership is unfazed. Its Kanpur-based national convenor Prakash Sharma made light of the ban demand.

“The Congress had tried to ban the Dal in 1992 also. This is vote bank politics. Elections are near and the Congress is again playing its games,” he told DNA.

“The Congress supports Simi, it is the Congress and the so-called secularists who are demanding a ban on the Bajrang Dal to please Muslims.”

VHP’s national spokesperson Surendra Jain has a slightly different take on his organisation’s potential role in improving the instability affecting India. “The failure to tackle terrorism is not intelligence but political failure. The fight against terror should involve society and the social system. The ministers who support Simi and citizenship to Bangladeshi infiltrators should be thrown out of the cabinet,” Jain, an ex-Dal president, says.

Jain believes the Dal has a role, and a constructive one: “The Bajrang Dal is setting up block suraksha samitis with the help of ex-servicemen, retired police men, people from the judiciary, social activists, etc. These will help detect anti-national activities, keep society vigilant and keep a watch on ‘carriers of terror’ who help terrorists, such as phone booths outside Muslim areas, the guest houses and hotels around them, etc.”