Months ago I posted a little history lesson about the Cult of Thugee in India, from which the overused term “Thug” originated. Today Slate.com, in its dispatches, features a look at a modern day Indian thug cult of sorts, which is known as Hanuman the Monkey God’s Army.
One hundred years ago, Dharavi, which is now Asia’s largest slum, was a fishing village at the edge of Mumbai. As the growing city dumped its junk here, the salt plain turned to swampy landfill. Then, from the 1950s, as rural Indians arrived in Mumbai, or Bombay as it was then known, looking for work, they came to Dharavi. Now the teeming slum, which used to be the most marginal of all marginal communities, is right smack in the middle of Greater Mumbai.
Babalu is a clean-cut 27-year-old with a freckle embedded in the white of his right eye who works on the street hawking barrettes. He is also the head of the Lord Ram Unit of the Bajrang Dal, the paramilitary youth wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad, the religious wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The RSS is a Hindu nationalist organization that has supported a host of unsavory bigots from Adolf Hitler to Nathuram Godse, the man who assassinated Gandhi in 1948. Although the RSS claimed Godse was not a member of the organization at the time of the assassination, this was an attempt to distance the RSS from the scandal.
“As a member of BD, I’m a notorious troublemaker,” Babalu said as he sat at a back table in Venus, a vegetarian restaurant in the slum. The Bajrang Dal, otherwise known as Hanuman the Monkey God’s Army, is extremely violent. They claim to have 1.3 million members throughout India. I’d met Babalu through a lanky community leader who as a teenager had also been a member of the Bajrang Dal. The lanky man had left the organization years earlier because he was disgusted by their violence.
Reading through Slate’s dispatch I couldnÂ’t help but see similarities between this “Army of the Monkey God” and the notorious American prison gang Nuestra Familia.
Take a look first at this quote:
At first, for Babalu, being a member of the Bajrang Dal meant only attending a weekly meeting. But soon, he was invited to attend a training camp that takes place twice a year in several locations throughout the country.
“We get up at 5:15, we learn karate, how to use air rifles—we learn how to talk to people about the Bajrang Dal and the RSS,” Babalu said. Seven hundred to 1,500 young men attend each camp, he said, blowing into his glass of hot tea. They run for 10 days, and return transportation is paid for by the organization.
And now, this quote from last night’s 60 Minutes:
The gangs at Pelican Bay [a California prison] are organized like the military, with strict discipline that includes going to school, but not in the traditional sense. They go to gang school, learning, for instance, how to make weapons from materials the state is required to give them.
In a prison video, an inmate demonstrates how he constructed a crossbow out of elastic from his underwear, writing paper rolled tightly, and a plastic spoon sharpened into a lethal point. ItÂ’s made specifically to be fired through the mesh door.
The regimen of Thugs from around the world is strikingly similar it seems. White supremacist gangs function is a similar manner, just waiting for “the eventual race war.” The dispatch continues:
Despite their dislike of the Christians, for the RSS and the Bajrang Dal, Muslims are the primary enemy.
“Of course they have the right to live in India, but they should live like Indians. During a cricket match, everyone should feel happy if India wins,” Babalu said.
Babalu has been arrested seven or eight times for inciting mob violence against Muslims.
“We are in such large numbers, they have to empty schools or hotels to hold us all,” he said, laughing. “If I have numbers on my side, and there’s a struggle, someone will get killed.”
I just read it and had sent u a tip abt it.
I think this story on slate has many gross inaccuracies, misrepresentation and prejudiced viewpoints about India.
It portrays complex issues, which the author doesnt understand well enough in a overly simplified way, leading to negative stereotypes.
I usually like and respect slate magazine for its content, and was shocked to see this very unprofessional report by someone who got even basics wrong.
I dont even know where to start!!!! the whole paragraph is incomplete and inaccurate!!!
Ex 3: Ironically, the rise of the middle class in India has contributed to the radicalization of its youth. Suddenly, members of the second generation of once-rural youth do not have to work in the fields every day to eat. There is ample time to get into trouble and also to get religion.
There are plenty more in the article.
I am no RSS supporter, but this kind of incompetent trash should not pass for journalism and create negative stereotypes for us. Its shocking how a reputable organization can send someone without even a rudimentary understanding to write such crap and are there no editors to screen such stuff????
They maybe thugs but calling them a paramilitary outfit is going too far. The Assam Rifles or Rashtriya Rifles are paramilitary units.
And Bajrang Dal doesnt mean Hanumans Army. Dal just means “Party” or group. Caling themselves an army is probably just a way for the people to inflate their own egos.
Lastly they never supported Hitler. Supported Hitler would entail giving assistance and collabarating with the Nazis. A lot of Europeans and Americans did this till 1940 but the RSS certainly didnt have the resources or power that would lure the attention of the Nazis. Sometimes they are accused of collaorating with the Brits then they are accused of working with the Nazis. Interesting!
Another journalist looking for the savage East where people fight over petty petty things.
Bajrang Dal doesnt even mean Monkey God’s Army!!!!
If the standards for being a journalist are so low… I should try for a job with Slate also.
Whom should I send a resume to? Word or PDF format? Does knowing C++ help? I am dot net certified also… and yes yes i have very good leadership skills and am a very good team player 🙂
There are two aspects of this story a) The author’s background reserach or lack thereof b) The words that come directly out of the mouth of the young man who is the focus of the story.
I don’t expect a western reporter to get all the facts of a story like this correct. Maybe I should, but I’ve come to expect less. That being said however, the quotes that come from the boy’s mouth are pretty compelling.
Compelling hot air. A low level thug with nothing better to do who will inevitably in a decade or so realize that he didnt do much with his life and now has the spend the rest of it in poverty.
He was boasting to act tough and she makes it look like he is Adolf incarnate.
abhi: The author’s lack of even basic research is shocking and leads to denigrating results. If u r used to this and expect no better… then as u urself acknowledge… u should expect much much more. It is not in any desi’s interests to tolerate such incompetence, its very detrimental to the image it creates about India.
I mean the KKK is also a very intersting subject, but making it sound like its members represent a significant portion of America would be very shoddy journalism of questionable motives.
Imagine the reaction if I said ” With recent affluence Americans are getting lazy,nasty, xenophobic and getting religion leading to KKK becoming very popular”
I agree, the quotes are really compelling, and I have to give props to the writer for actually interviewing one of these guys. It provides a lot of nuance that I just haven’t seen before.
I think it’s pretty clear that people adopt this kind of radicalized-militant blend of politics and religiousity more readily when they’re poor and miserable. The Nuestra Familia parallel just confirms that analysis. Wholesale condemnation of organized religion (a knee-jerk reaction I often see in discussions of this subject) are, besides being kind of offensive, totally unrealistic. So besides condemning hatred (an important step that is, sadly, not so as effective as it should be) society can also a) improve their lot and b) provide an alternative, progressive kind of relgiosity. There’s another interesting article in Slate by Judith Shulevitz about the appeals of strict religion:
This applies equally well in India, to all the major religions. You can have deeply devout Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Jains, etc., who are all committed to the ideal of a religiously-free, pluralistic India. There ain’t no lack of non-political things to focus a sense of discipline, organization, and ritual on.
I’m just pointing this out because, like Shulevitz, I feel like a lot of people fall into the trap of the false dichotomy, strengthening the unnecessary correlation between deep observance and reactionary politics. If you are encouraging and supportive of people who are both deeply observant and unradical, well, that’s one more right action you can take to work on these problems.
cont cont: I guess the problem is one of numbers. To me 1.3 Million doesn’t sound like that big a movement, because I am constantly aware of the fact that there are over 1 Billion Indians. Are there 300,000 white supremacists in this country? Sounds like a reasonable estimate. I have read analyses of white supremacy movements that basically say that they’ve got enough economic security–ironically provided by the New Deal they love to hate–to expend effort into their supremacy movements, but not enough not to feel alienated and isolated. The problem, again, is one of context. Sitting in America and reading my New Yorker article on white supremacists in southern California, I have a pretty good idea of how marginal these folks are. Sitting in America and reading Slate . . if I didn’t know about India. . .I might have a harder time placing that in context. But it is a dispatch, there is more to the series, so why don’t yu complain and maybe she’ll mention it?
Babalu … are his parents Desi Arnaz fans?
Watched a really cool travel show on Northern Ireland last night, and realized how narrow it was of me to consider that part of the world a den of iniquity based on the religious warfare that went on there. The people who make it into the news of a little known area of unrest are almost usually the extremists – we tend to overlook the moderates of any faith.
Bablu is a common North Indian nickname.
I am amazed how this guy takes violence so lightly.
Funny how I can replace Hinduism with Christianity and RSS with any of the evangelical sects, and the above statement would be true. This is just gratuitous slander in an otherwise reasonable article.
Saheli:
How do u know that a journalistic of no credibility or talent has got even that 1.3 million figure right??? what is this 1.3 million?members of bajrang dal or bajrang dal+rss+vhp+bjp? even if it is only Bajrang Dal, how many of them are active? how many of them do these comments represent?
I am no journalist but i would guess that Class 1 Lesson 1 of Journalism 101 would be “GET YOUR FACTS RIGHT”
I have serious doubts abt the article. After reading the article its clear there is no way the writer was even trying to be fair and balanced. How am I to trust her credibility?What is the guaranty that even the quotes attributed to babulu are accurate?
Afterall this babulu dude is not gonna get online and read the article and none of the readers are gonna ask him.
Infact I suspect a big mess behind this thing: a ‘la NYT. The reporter under pressure to write something shocking is doing that without giving a rats ass about truth or making an effort to find it. I suspect Slate’s tendency to make interesting copy has resulting in this crap, sacrificing facts in the process.
My, we’re a bit thin-skinned, aren’t we?
a. Eliza never says that Bajrang Dal literally translates into “Monkey God’s Army”–she says it “is otherwise knowns as..” However, even if she had made the statement, it would have been relatively accurate. Bajrang DOES refer to Lord Hanuman. And while “Dal” doesn’t necessarily mean “army” (“Corps” would have been more accurate), it’s pretty damn close.
b. Frankly, there is more insight about the RSS and Bajrang Dal and their pernicious influence in this article than anything I’ve seen in publications like India Abroad
c. And ASR–you mean to tell me that there haven’t been articles written about the Klan and racism in America in international publiations?
d. If I was a Muslim living in Godhra I wouldn’t so cavalier in dismissing this guy as an irrelevant thug
Vinod:
a)I donno what u r trying to say. The title is Monkey God’s Army. That phrase by itself is disrespectful. You think she was only loosely translating Bajrang Dal to mean Monkey God’s Army , when any Indian will tell u that translation is wrong, with no negative intentions what so ever????What do u mean pretty damn close? Calling a party army or Hanuman Diety Monkey God is not close. I am not thin skinned, Just not impervious either.
and btw Dal doesnt even mean Corps( Where did you get this translation??? By extension Janata Dal is People’s Army LMAO… I suppose ur Hindi is a little rusty)
b) U think this is real insight into RSS and Bajrang Dal??? I pity you. Why is it that you make a leap from Bajrang Dal to RSS to BJP so easily??? On what basis??
Its like making a leap from KKK to Cristian Coalition to Republican Party.
C) Yes there are articles about Klan and racism, but they dont use klan,racism,Focus on the Family, Cristian Coalition and Republicans in the same sentence. Do you realise that is exactly what the author has done????
I dont like these fellows either…. but i dislike factually incorrect articles about these fanatics even more. They dont portray real India at all.
When was the last time that you read an article saying : In a 80% hindu country there is a Muslim President, a Sikh Prime Minister, the most powerful person in the country is a Catholic Cristian Woman, Muslim Supreme Court Chief Justice, Muslim woman as Chairman of Assembly and countless other examples???
It just rankles people like me that third rate reporting on third rate people makes headlines here without a protest.
If you really have a problem with the original article then do something about it. Voice your opinion to Slate. Besides the idiotic title of their story and some lack of “big picture detail,” I wasn’t very offended by it. I thought it captured one boy’s story quite well. If this blog has taught me anything its that different people get offended by different things.
u r simplee giving comfort to white racists by posting this tripe! why don’t you talk about all the guidos who run organized crime in places that american browns live in like NYC?!?!
This is so annoying. Could everyone please write legibly (i.e. without three ?s after every statement and spelling out at least half the words in every a sentence? I’m try not to be elitist, but it’s really hard to follow a conversation that has so much outrage (well, from one “side” at least) and so little grammar.
What is interesting is who endorsed the article. Some mutiny indeed!
What is interesting is who endorsed the article. Some mutiny indeed!
That’s because I enjoyed the article especially for the story of the young man. I am not filled with any sort of nationalistic pride that I have to defend the honor of India at every turn, especially when its not the point of the post. Despite the factual errors (most importantly the title) I still feel the article is very compelling. Vinod said it best.
That’s the thing about mutineers: you never know which side they’re on. Tricky bastards.
What is interesting is who endorsed the article. Some mutiny indeed!
actually…it seems MORE mutinous to me that they went against the reactionary, conventional position of “brown uber alles”. if you’re confidently secure about India’s awesomeness, this won’t bug you. it’s really not that negative. the tonight show skit sucked far harder.
i love how a lack of spittle-enhanced, outraged incoherence somehow equals “endorsement”. abhi was just calling it like he saw it, while making some fascinating comparisons. oh, and it’s still a mutiny, even if you don’t approve of it. 😉 we’re talking about it, aren’t we? we are aware that the article even exists. that means this blog did what it set out to do. if you think they’re not taking enough umbrage, follow abhi’s excellent advice and take on Slate. you have the power, too.
p.s. Saurav? AMEN.
Saurav- THANK you.
or should I say, U? if you can take the time to type out “denigration”, then surely typing “you” isn’t an inconvenience, people.
I am aware of this. It was an attempt at a rhetorical funny. I LOVE Indian nicknames. How can you not giggle in the face of a 20-ton Guju bouncer named Pinku?
As well as assuming that all Slate readers are immediately going to associate India, Hinduism and/or Hanuman with reactionary politics. Every country and faith has got extremists (ok, maybe not the Swiss, but you get the idea).
Dude Saurav: If you want to argue on content and ideas do it. If you want to talk about grammar, learn it first. Also dont worry about being mistaken for an elitist. Your post is far from elite. Learn to respect others opinion.
I am done posting on this. Jai Bajrang Bali
Hmm… One should recognize that Bajrang dal has been a rectionary force rather than a pro-active one. It should also be noted that RSS and Bajrang dal roots are same but that does not mean they are identical in their ideology.
We should also recognize that India is home to some of the most notorious Islamic exteremists – like Daud Ibrahim and numerous terrorist outfits in J&K. There are literally thousands of madrassas (teaching everthing but modern education) operating throughout India. It is these terrosits and their supports who are Bajrang dal enemies.
Oh and.. those who celebrate only when Pakistan wins a cricket match, especially against India.
BD are just trying to be on the offensive rather than letting the opponent take hold of it.
We should also recognize that India is home to some of the most notorious Islamic exteremists – like Daud Ibrahim
I Dowd Ibrahim was a notorious smuggler famous for his penchant for Bollywood women and movies. Since when did he become an Islamic extremist working to establish the Caliphate in India ?
Correction : *I thought and not I. I am not Dowd Ibrahim;)
Dowd Ibrahim was a notorious smuggler famous for his penchant for Bollywood women and movies.
wow… you put it so mildly that Dowd seems like a local Munnabhai. Did you forget the series of 13 bombs that rocked Bombay? They didnt detonate themselves – courtesey of Dowd bhai’s.
Only India can tolerate such attrocities – especially the self-secular, dynastical Congress alliance.
Even without dowd bhai, there are many fundamentalist jehadi’s (which most Muslims are not) ready to cut non-Muslim throats.
Funny how you placed Down Ibrahim with Islamic extremists. As Mujahid mentioned, he is not inolved in any such activities in the name of religion. Notorious but not an extremist.
bhai hu mai bhai to fikar mat kar…uski ma ki…uski bhain ki jo dekhey idhar.apun ko bata kya dikkaat hai? thori daru pee aur tension mita.