Sanatan Sanstha like cancer, ban it: Mauzo

Goa-based Sahitya writer Damodar Mauzo, who has been provided security cover following intelligence inputs about a threat to his life, says right-wing outfits such as Sanatan Sanstha should be banned as they are like "cancer" for the state.

Asserting that he would continue writing and speaking against such outfits, Mauzo said bullet cannot kill a thought.

The Goa Police recently provided security cover to the 73-year-old Sahitya Akademi award winner following intelligence inputs from the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Karnataka Police, probing the murder of journalist-activist Gauri Lankesh, about a threat to his life.

Mauzo said if action was taken against the Sanatan Sanstha in 2009, when involvement of its activists in a bomb blast in Margao was established, then people like Gauri Lankesh, and rationalists Narendra Dabholkar, M M Kalburgi and Govind Pansare would not have been killed.

Two Sanatan Sanstha workers - Malgonda Patil and Yogesh Naik - had died when the bomb they were ferrying to Margao city in Goa accidentally exploded in November 2009.

The National Investigation Agency, which was probing the case, had arrested some people having links to the Sanatan Sanstha, a right-wing outfit with its headquarters at Ramnathi village in North Goa district, about 40 km from here.

"I have always been saying that Sanatan Sanstha is a rogue institution. All suspects in the four cases (Lankesh, Kalburgi, Pansare, Dabholkar) belong to this institution, which means that it is a training ground, it is a breeding ground," Mauzo alleged while talking to PTI.

After the bomb blast at Margao in 2009, the outfit should have been banned. If action was taken at that time, people like Kalburgi, Pansare, Lankesh and Dabholkar would not have died, he said.

"Why do we need such a rogue institution in our peaceful state? I can say bluntly...this is a cancer, which is curable, just remove it and Goa will be free from any fears," he said, referring to the organisation.

If action is taken against the Sanatan Sanstha, then its sister organisations will also be afraid, he opined.

"For us Goans, peaceful coexistence is so much dear to us and we know its worth. The trust between communities living in Goa has to remain," he said.

Asked about his ideology, the writer, who won the Sahitya Akademi award for his novel "Karmelin" in 1983, said, "Let others decide what ideology I belong to. I am a humanist and I will always remain a humanist."
Mauzo said at the festival, he had expressed apprehensions about multi-culturalism "which is being thrust upon by perpetrators of mono-cultaralism". "I have been vocal about such things."