Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant on Saturday attended the 25th anniversary celebrations of the Sanatan Sanstha that was celebrated alongside the 83rd birth anniversary of its founder Jayant Athavale. The presence of Sawant alongside a whole host of government functionaries including two ministers, the north Goa MP as well as the state BJP president marked what is perhaps the first official endorsement of the far-right organisation by the Goa government.
The secretive Sanatan Sanstha which is headquartered in Goa was kept at an arm’s distance by successive Goa governments. That its followers and former followers have been accused of, and in some cases, convicted of acts of violence has helped further such a healthy distance between the government and the organisation.
Undoubtedly the organization has denied involvement in any of the violent attacks and has claimed that those convicted were either no longer or never associated with them and that those associated with them have all been acquitted. But then so has Pakistan denied involvement in any terror attacks in India, so each denial must be tested on its own weight. There were even calls from locals in Bandora to boycott the organisation and have it move out of its location in Bandora.
None of Goa’s former chief ministers have attended or were even seen on the stage of events organised by the organisation. Founder of the Sri Rama Sene, Pramod Muthalik was even banned from entering Goa to attend a function organised by the Sanatan Sanstha after he allegedly threatened to attack pubs in Goa was even present for this year’s edition of the event after the government allowed the ban on his entry to lapse.
If Sawant’s presence as the Chief Minister of the state on the stage of an event by the Sanatan Sanstha wasn’t enough, he went on to give a speech that was full of praise for the work being done by the Sanstha across the world.
The Sanatan Sanstha is known to promote a narrowly defined version of Hindu religious conduct that does a huge disservice to the diversity and wide range of religious practices that make up Hinduism. It’s opposition and denouncement of the local practice of making larger than life sized effigies of the demon king Narkasur on Diwali eve is well documented, and while they have disassociated themselves from those who were killed while attempting to plant a bomb at a Narkasur event in Margao back in 2009, it was hard not to draw a connection between what they preach and what the two individuals sought to achieve by planting a bomb. It is to our luck that the home-made bomb harmed only those who were ferrying it and no one else.
While in legal terms, Sanatan Sanstha can claim a degree of deniability for the bomb blast and several other murders and acts of violence that have taken place in the past, public memory endures. An acquittal on grounds of lack of evidence is not a certificate of innocence. If the main accused are acquitted in a case of murder, it does not mean that the murder didn’t take place or that he was killed by ‘no one’.
Sawant’s presence at an event organised by the Sanstha in his capacity as chief minister of the state sends a wrong signal. It is quite akin to hobnobbing with someone who stood trial for murder even as the victim’s family looks on. Nothing could be more insulting to a state that values its diversity of religions, cultures and local religious practices than to endorse people who threaten the same values that we hold dear.
