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Bajrang Dal gives arms training in Ayodhya

Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow

The Bajrang Dal has organised a ten-day training camp to impart shooting lessons to volunteers in the ancient Hindu temple town of Ayodhya.

Though the current exercise is being carried out with air-guns, Bajrang Dal state chief Ved Prakash Sachan said he plans to give volunteers a feel of real guns. "This is the induction stage. Later we will train our boys with proper guns and rifles," he admited over telephone, while claiming "this is part of our drill to ensure protection of Hindus."

Sachan is personally supervising the camp, which was not the first of its kind in the state. According to him, similar camps have been held in Varanasi, Mathura and Meerut.

Sachan justifies the necessity for these camps by highlighting the "increasing Inter Services Intelligence activity on the Indo-Nepal border." Referring to the "mushrooming growth" of 'madarsas' and mosques along the border in Uttar Pradesh, the Bajrang Dal strongman said, "after all our sole objective is to provide protection to Hindus, who are under constant threat of increasing Pakistani ISI infiltration in these institutions."

The opposition parties see the development as a "major threat to communal harmony in the state." While Samajwadi Party state chief Ram Saran Das sees a "sinister design in which the ruling BJP was also neck deep," Congress spokesman Ram Kumar Bhargava demanded an immediate ban on such camps. "Already, the ruling party has unleashed a reign of terror on Christians now this training in firearms is alarming", he pointed out.

The state administration appears to be at its wits end to stop this exercise . "After all there is no ban on practising shooting with airguns; so how can we stop anyone from doing so?" asked a district official of Faizabad.

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