Anna and the RSS

Team Anna has questioned the veracity of ‘BJP’s Team B’, a report published in Open’s issue of 20 February. Here is our reply

NEW DELHI ~ In this age of information, we must all grow used to the fact that no matter how hard we try, we cannot always get away with what we do in broad daylight. For some reason, though, Team Anna continues to believe it can defy this ground rule forever and emerge unscathed again, despite a rather overt display of its ties with the RSS. What is even more perplexing is the manner in which the group has reacted to Open’s on-the-field report on how sectarian pamphlets were distributed at Team Anna’s rallies in Uttar Pradesh and how it has been campaigning—more or less—for the BJP ahead of the first phase of Assembly polls in the state.

If anything, the press release issued by India Against Corruption (IAC), the official outfit leading Anna’s agitation, in response to our report on the team’s activities at Fatehpur (Barabanki) and Gonda on 2 February and Faizabad and Basti on 3 February proves that very point: it still believes, and naively so, that it can keep misleading people as long as it can make self-righteous claims. Instead of countering and refuting the issues and facts raised in ‘BJP’s Team B’ (Open, 20 February), it seeks to obscure some truths, misinterpret others and disown outright what appear to be the most damning ones. As if still not sure whether it has made its point, the IAC release takes recourse to ad hominem attacks, a clear sign of having run out of arguments—it attributes motives and charges the news report with being ‘a predetermined story’ to which ‘Team Anna members including Manish Sisodia and Maulana Shamoom Qasmi’ have ‘strong objections’.

Let us consider the charges one by one. In its release, the IAC says, ‘The magazine claimed that our public meeting at Baramanki (sic) was coordinated by Rakesh Kumar Premil, who is an RSS associate. The correspondent also claimed that Premil was assisted by some Ram Kumar Yadav, a local quack who was also the president of the Fatehpur unit of the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, the farmers’ wing of the RSS… Our Fatehpur rally at Barabanki was coordinated by Dr Sajjan Lal Verma, who has been associated with the IAC movement since April 5 last year. Also, we don’t know any Ram Kumar Yadav, as mentioned by the reporter. Rakesh Kumar Premil has no association with the RSS or BJP. However, Premil runs an NGO, Manav Utkarsha Sewa Sansthan, [which] was part of the organising team.’

To begin with, Open’s report never claimed Rakesh Kumar Premil is district coordinator of Team Anna’s Barabanki unit. That post indeed is held by Dr Sajjan Lal Verma. Why then this attempt to confuse readers? The report says that Premil ‘led the local group organising the entire event’ at Fatehpur, which is a subdivision in Barabanki located 40 km away from the district headquarters. That Premil led the Fatehpur event is beyond dispute. Not only were banners of his NGO displayed all around the Mahadev Talab ground, the site of the public meeting, even permission for use of the venue and vehicles for the purpose had been obtained in his name.

In fact, Premil himself told me that the responsibility of organising the inaugural rally at Fatehpur fell on him once the IAC decided to kickstart its campaign in UP from Barabanki and Dr Sajjan Lal Verma expressed his inability to muster a large enough crowd at the district headquarters. Thereafter, it was the local organising group at Fatehpur that did most of the work on the ground. This group was undoubtedly led by Premil, while Dr Verma arranged funding and supervised it from Barabanki.

Premil, indeed, is a prominent member of the local unit of the Sangh Parivar. I was, therefore, not surprised when he said that “Hindus must be roused to fight against corruption”, or when he revealed that he was president of the Shiv Sena’s Fatehpur unit in the late 1990s and early 2000s, or when he made his way round the Mahadev Talab ground together with the local unit president of the RSS-affiliated Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, Ram Kumar Yadav, issuing instructions to volunteers. Team Anna may now disown him and claim that ‘we don’t know any Ram Kumar Yadav’, but this only reveals the IAC’s hypocrisy.

Also, who exactly compose the IAC today? And when it says that it does not know Ram Kumar Yadav, what does it mean? Does it mean none of the five prominent members is aware of him, or that none of the main coordinators is aware, or that whoever drafted the press release is unaware?

The IAC then goes on to claim, ‘… the reporter alleged that a 13-point “letter of oath” was being distributed during the public meeting at Barabanki. IAC is surprised to learn such false claims through this magazine Open.’

The truth is that this communal and absurd ‘letter of oath’ was distributed widely at the Mahadev Talab ground, together with a pamphlet with Anna Hazare’s message to prospective voters of UP, by local volunteers of the team. In fact, it so happened that I lost the ‘letter of oath’ on my way back from Fatehpur. The next day, I called Premil on his mobile phone (which I had taken at the ground after a half-an-hour interview with him), and requested him to fax me the pamphlet at Faizabad, where I was staying. Within hours, he faxed it. Two days later, as I began my journey back to Lucknow, I called Premil once again and asked him if he could give me a few copies of this pamphlet as I wanted to keep the original copy with me. He readily turned up at Barabanki town, which lies on the way from Faizabad to Lucknow. There he also told me that after distributing this pamphlet at the Mahadev Talab ground, his team was now going door-to-door, convincing prospective voters to get poll contestants to swear themselves to the cause—and particularly the pledges printed in the ‘letter of oath’.

The links are clear. Why is the IAC press note silent on the role played by volunteers of the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh and Rashtra Bhakta Vichar Manch as well as the Jai Kali Kalyan Samiti of Agra?

The IAC’s release further says, ‘Gonda coordinator Dilip Shukla is a lecturer at Lal Bahadur Degree College, Gonda.’ Indeed, he is a lecturer, but he is also a known RSS face in town. Also, why doesn’t Team Anna’s note talk about its lieutenant at Basti, the last stop of its first leg of the UP campaign? Here, I cite the same Open article that Team Anna has ‘strong objections’ to: ‘Harishchandra Pratap Singh, an advocate and a key figure in the local committee (at Basti), has been district convener of the Shri Rama Janmabhoomi Mukti Sewa Samiti formed in late 1980s and was one of the leaders of its karsewak wing. He is a well-known Hindutva face in the district.’

As for Faizabad, Open’s report clearly states that it was organised by those who have for long been associated with the Left and Dalit politics in the area. The pre-ss release, by deliberately misinterpreting our report, is trying to mislead its own au-dience. If Team Anna has nothing to hide, it should come clean on its RSS links.

BJPRSSTeam Anna