New Delhi, India - A special tribunal has upheld the extension of a two-year ban on Deendar Anjuman, an 82-year-old religious organisation alleged to be behind bomb blasts in churches in southern India in 2000, following intelligence reports that it had links with Pakistan and was planning more terror attacks. The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Tribunal, constituted by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and comprising a Delhi High Court judge, last week endorsed the ban recommended by the ministry.
Justice Mukul Mudgal of the tribunal went through the home ministry intelligence report that said Deendar Anjuman has “links with Pakistan” and is “indulging in activities prejudicial to the security of the country”.
A home ministry official told IANS: “Intelligence reports have indicated that the organisation, despite a ban, had directed its activists to attack Christian institutions with the objective of embarrassing the central government in the international community and weakening it internally.”
“The report has also pointed out that the organisation had plans to target major installations, including railways, telecom network, electricity grids, oil refineries and defence installations,” he added.
Deendar Anjuman had allegedly engineered bomb explosions in 10 churches and a temple in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Goa during May-July 2000. It was first banned in 2001 and thereafter the ban was extended periodically.
In its notification in the Gazette of India on Aug 29, 2007, the home ministry declared Deendar Anjuman “an unlawful association” as its activities could “create tension among the Christians and other communities with a view to disrupting the social fabric and tarnish the secular fabric credential of the country”.
The ministry had constituted the tribunal under Section 5 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, after the notification - a mandatory procedure.
Though the tribunal upheld the ban last week, it will be considered as effective from Aug 29, 2007, when the ministry gave its recommendation.
Deendar Anjuman’s ideology to convert India into an Islamic state had reportedly brought it closer to Pakistan, said the home ministry official.
“The organisation has links at Mardan in Pakistan and has been organising bands of disgruntled Muslim youths in India into a militant outfit for launching Jehad with the objective of total Islamisation of the subcontinent,” the official said.
The Deendar Anjuman sect was founded in 1924 by Hazrat Moulana Syed Siddique Kibla, who was born in Balempet (Andhra Pradesh) and migrated to Gadag in Karnataka. Siddique Kibla claimed that he had a dream in which he was “visited” by Channabasaveswara, the founder of Veerasaivism, and proclaimed himself to be an avatar (incarnation) of Channabasaveswara and propagated a kind of syncretic Islam and a composite form of god. He moved to Hyderabad where he started an institution and established a congregation at Asifnagar.
On its face, the organisation holds on to its belief that Islam is but a fulfilment of the prophecies of Hindu scriptures. However, as early as 1922 Siddique Kibla had presented his version of Hindu-Muslim unity, which envisaged mass conversion of Hindus to Islam.
It currently has thousands of followers in southern India, mainly in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.