Australia breeding ground for Hindu fundamentalists

Australia may be a new home for fundamentalists, if a threatening religious hate mail from an unknown Hindu religious group is considered, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jul 10, 2007, 22:52:45 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Australia may be a new home for fundamentalists, if the Delhi Police investigation about a threatening religious hate mail from an unknown Hindu religious group to Congress president Sonia Gandhi and member of National Integration Council John Dayal is considered.

Deputy Commissioner of Police, Economic Offences Wing, Prabhakar told Hindustan Times: “We have received the email and are trying to locate its origin. The complaint is being investigated”.

John Dayal, who received the mail recently, said, “I was shocked to see the letter in an envelope bearing Australian postage stamps and marking. There was a print from a website saying devout Hindus stop conversion in Madhya Pradesh and a page full of derogatory remarks”.

The letter asked all Christians, including Sonia Gandhi, to leave the country and mentioned that former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was killed by a Hindu. “Keep doing this and see what we can do,” the letter said, referring to conversions of Hindus into Christians and Gandhi’s assassination.

The hate mail also contains derogatory and unparliamentary remarks against Gandhis not fit to be reproduced.

Recently, Australian Prime Minister John Howard said that his country is harbouring would-be terrorists who may want to launch attacks like those witnessed in United Kindgom last month.

A government research reported by an Australian newspaper said that in Sydney alone there may be 3,000 young Muslims, who are in a danger of being radicalized by fundamentalist groups.

Dayal says the mail received by him clearly demonstrates that even Hindu fundamentalist groups have a strong base in Australia. “It appears that Australia is emerging as a base for Indian fundamentalist groups loyal to Al Queeda or Hindutva fundamentalist organizations,” he said.

Number of Indians is growing in Australia with the country being a new education destination for Indian students. Every year about 30,000 Indian students land in Australia for education as compared to just 10,000 in 2001 and 500 in early 1990s. One of such students, Mohammad Haneef, resident of Bangalore, was detained in Australia last Monday in connection with the Glasgow explosions.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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