RADICAL HINDUS A BIGGER THREAT TO INDIA THAN THE ISLAMIC TERRORISTS?

MUMBAI,India - Rahul Gandhi(photo), seen as an India prime minister in waiting, told the US ambassador radical Hindu groups could posed a bigger threat to the country than the Islamists who attacked Mumbai in 2008, a leaked cable showed.

• The comments made to Timothy Roemer last year were immediately criticised by the main opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), adding to political sparring that has deadlocked parliament and pushed policymaking into limbo.
• Gandhi's comments, made in response to a question from Roemer on the Pakistani-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant group, referred to religious tension created by more extreme BJP leaders, according to the cable released by WikiLeaks and published on Friday by Britain's Guardian newspaper.
• Gandhi said there was evidence of some support for the LeT among Indian Muslims, the ambassador wrote, according to the cable.
• "However, Gandhi warned, the bigger threat may be the growth of radicalised Hindu groups, which create religious tensions and political confrontations with the Muslim community," Roemer wrote.
• India has a history of communal tensions between majority Hindus and minority Muslims, and critics say several political parties play on insecurities amongst Muslims to win votes. In 2002, about 2,500 people, mostly Muslims, were killed in riots in western Gujarat state, human rights groups estimated.
• Radical Hindu groups, some with ties to the BJP or the BJP's more extreme sister organisations, have been linked to bomb attacks against Muslim targets.
• The controversy adds to the woes of the ruling Congress party, which is already fighting to contain the damage from a series of setbacks including corruption scandals, high food prices and a poor showing in a state poll.
  
• The BJP has threatened to block the February budget session of parliament if the government does not set up a parliamentary committee to investigate charges the country lost $39 billion in revenue due to corruption in the granting of telecoms licences.

Gandhi, son of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, has sparked the BJP's ire before. He once compared the opposition party's parent organisation to the banned Students Islamic Movement of India.

Source: Reuters