Who bombed the Hilton? (30 page)

The sect in Australia certainly sends out a volley of mixed messages. Sydney Margii spokesperson Ainjile Morrison says it is tragic that people regard Lynette as a ‘programmed zombie, brainwashed into this act. It was an act of genuine sacrifice which she herself planned. She was rational about it. Buddhist monks self-immolated during the Vietnam War and no one said they were programmed. Can't you see the nobility of dying for your ideals?'
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Local Ananda Marga member Bruce Dyer is likewise intent on lamenting, not endorsing, her death, but then praising her actions. Dyer states that the Ananda Marga ‘regard her as a very great person' and ‘we regard her letters like the relics of a saint'. The Australian Proutists also regard her as ‘almost a saint' with local Prout member Craig Walter asserting that ‘her death was a tragedy, but it was a great sacrifice. She was Australia's first spiritual soldier.'
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Whether ordained by Prout or not, Lynette's ‘spectacular' suicide certainly grabs the attention of the Australian Government. First, Lynette's no doubt heartbroken father, Harold, arrives in London to lodge
a protest against the British Government, which he says ‘shares responsibility for his daughter's death because it deported her knowing she was going to burn herself to death'.
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The Australian High Commission keeps to its story that it was not informed of the deportation, and Scotland Yard keeps to theirs — that the Aussies were aware all along. I have to say I find this a bit convoluted — it can't have been all that complex to detain the obsessed young woman intent on self-harm under the
Mental Health Act
and, at the very least, as her father points out, ‘to inform her parents'.

Andrew Peacock, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, flies into this diplomatic fracas when he arrives in London the next day on a ‘routine visit'. He is asked to intervene as ‘Mr Phillips [continues to demand] the British Government […] hold an official inquiry into how his daughter — who had a prepared, signed statement on her intended self-immolation when she was arrested — was allowed to leave Britain'.
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Simultaneously, all hell is breaking loose back in Australia. Ananda Marga member Peter Henry demands the return of Brandon's passport, the issuing of a visa to Donju Gista, an Indian member of the sect living in America, and the cessation of the ‘persecution of the Ananda Marga sect by the Australian Government' or ‘he would burn himself to death next Tuesday'.
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I reckon this would be a great test to set all
Acting Ministers for Foreign Affairs to assess their mettle while the boss is overseas. What do you do? Call his bluff? Sweat him out? Play hardball? Beg him to reconsider? Poor Ian Sinclair, acting in Andrew Peacock's position, attempts all of these at once. First he makes the conciliatory statement ‘that he was willing to re-examine the issues which led to an Ananda Marga member threatening to burn himself to death'. He immediately counters this by stating (in keeping with the new counter-terrorism policy) that ‘no government could act under duress of threats of the kind or take any decision while a threat remained'.
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That's all well and good, but Sinclair and his colleagues must have little doubt, given the recent horror of Lynette's actions, that the threat is real. Sinclair hastily organises a meeting with Henry's wife, Cetana, and two members of Ananda Marga in an attempt to avert catastrophe. It is of little apparent value, despite Sinclair's reported offers to urgently re-examine the matters of both the visa and the passport, and to discuss them with Mr Henry if he would contact his Canberra office to arrange a meeting.

In response, ‘Mrs Cetana Henry stated after meeting Mr Sinclair she was certain her husband would go through with his threat [adding] the meeting had not resulted in any “real” action.'
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Let's take stock as Mr Sinclair and his government colleagues surely do at this moment. Since Abhiik
Kumar discovered on 9 August that his Michael Brandon passport had been cancelled, the Ananda Marga has disrupted Australian federal parliament twice, requiring the creation of new legislation; the daughter of some prominent wealthy Australians has burnt herself to death on the steps of the United Nations; and now a local sect member is threatening to do the same next Tuesday. There have been accompanying demonstrations, letters to newspapers, and lots of articles claiming that there are up to 80 000 members of Prout around the globe. The Australian Prout centres in Sydney and Perth have only opened recently yet already boast up to 20 trainees. Unlike their Swedish counterparts, who went out of their way to denounce Lynette's suicide, the Ananda Marga in Australia doesn't even bother to distance itself from Peter Henry's threat. Margii spokesperson Ainjile Morrison tells the press that Peter Henry is ‘a rational and sincere person and his fire-suicide threat must be taken seriously'.
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Myself, I'd be scared shitless. If the membership is willing to make these kinds of extreme gestures, what aren't they capable of? What's next? The government must be wondering how far can this go. Will it start with Mr Henry setting himself on fire on the steps of Parliament House, then extend to a pair of like-minded Margiis in Sydney or Melbourne? Perhaps they will do it in threes or fours. Maybe start lobbing bombs. Why would any rational person imagine this
kind of activism/madness was going to stop? Does Mr Sinclair urgently call Mr Peacock in London? Is there a war council in Canberra? Is Malcolm Fraser called in? All these things occur.

Evidence that the Australian Government regards this as the start of a potential third wave of violence from sect members is found in another confidential Cabinet paper, written in early October. The paper, prepared by Attorney-General Peter Durack, seeks:

Among those consulted are ‘officers of the Senate, the House of Representatives, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Department of Administrative Services'. You can hear the panic in the prose. Under the title ‘URGENCY', the Cabinet paper declares ‘the matter is urgent because of the second incident by members of the Ananda Marga sect in the House of Representatives. Further attempts to disrupt Parliament can be expected if action is not taken urgently.'
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There are a lot of ‘urgents' in that paragraph. Yet one can detect the government sliding rapidly away from its non-negotiable counter-terrorism policy, circulated a little over three weeks earlier. This is clear when Mr Peter Henry announces on 17 October that he is not going to burn himself to death after all. Appeals from his family, sect members, the Anglican Archbishop of Melbourne and — critically — the actions of the Acting Minister for Foreign Affairs, have given him pause. Peter Henry, reportedly looking ‘tanned and relaxed', fronts a press conference with his wife and baby daughter. He announces breezily, ‘I think the publicity of the past week about my actions has achieved my aim and Mr Sinclair … has agreed to reconsider the decision over Michael Brandon's passport.'
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Clearly if you make the right sort of terrifying threats, despite the newly hewn counter-terrorism policy, you can still negotiate aggressively and successfully with the authorities.

What is so impressive throughout all this threatened violence over the passport is that the owner of it, Michael Brandon (aka Kumar), has not uttered a single word the entire time. Of course he doesn't need to — it's perfectly obvious there is no lack of minions to throw things, scream, protest or burn in the quest to get his passport back. Why lift a finger when you can just watch your brethren do it all for you?

A new phenomenon

By late October the government is not just on the back foot but scrambling for solutions. They convene another consultation group made up of all the same departments and organisations that had gathered in the immediate aftermath of the Hilton bombing. This time the tone is completely reactive. The agenda is to summarise clearly the events involving all members of the Ananda Marga sect to date, and to decide if the strategies in place — immigration restrictions, suspension of recognition of and assistance to Ananda Marga, protective measures for Indian establishments in Australia — are sufficient given recent events. The question is then raised ‘whether further measures should be taken in the light of the continued harassment of the government'. The question next to this is a more
worrisome one: ‘Whether the further measures might provoke increased harassment and violence against the government and other authorities and establishments, and, if so, should this weigh against further measures?'
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Like the paper on counter-terrorism, this document, finalised by November and marked ‘secret', will remain classified for 30 years. The threat assessment from ASIO, COMPOL and the Department of Foreign affairs is stark and unambiguous. It is reiterated that starting in August 1977, Ananda Marga members in Australia and throughout the world mounted a campaign of violent harassment of Indian nationals in order to achieve the release of their imprisoned leader, Sarkar; ‘the campaign assumed world wide proportions, ceasing after Sarkar's release on bail in August 1978'.
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Now they believe it is beginning again.

The ASIO summary is as follows:

The report warns that should this current campaign fail to secure the return of Brandon's passport, ‘further incidents, some of which may be violent, will occur. There are indications that senior Ananda Marga members have decided on a possible long-term campaign for revolution in Australia.' On the positive side, ‘Ananda Marga's capacity to enter into such a campaign is limited and it is not yet possible to determine the extent of support for revolutionary action within the sect'.
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Limited capacity or not, the Ananda Marga in Australia has to be dealt with. It's becoming terrifyingly clear that any legislation the government enacts, or any restriction it imposes on the sect, could create a horrific backlash of violence. Collating all the evidence from ASIO, Special Branch, Sheather's task force, COMPOL and Interpol over the last few years, it is manifest that, outside India, Australia's Margiis have been involved with more ‘publicised acts of violence and harassment attributable to [sect] members than anywhere else'.
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It's reasoned that this unenviable position is owing to Australia's more stringent measures against the organisation, which, in turn, led to increased retaliation. These facts twist into a Gordian knot that leaves the government flummoxed.

They carefully reconstruct the conundrum before them. While similar to what they faced in September 1977, months before the Hilton bombing, it is a problem they imagined would evaporate once the mighty
Sarkar was freed from his prison in Patna. How wrong they were. Indeed, what is becoming obvious is that:

In addition to this is the extraordinary admission that they are virtually powerless in the face of such extremism: ‘The administrative, legal, and protective apparatus currently available to the government is not capable of dealing satisfactorily with the phenomenon, other than in a reactive way.'
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You can understand why they would want to keep documents like this secret for so long. It's hardly edifying for the public to see that their government is incapable of standing up to a deranged splinter group within a fringe cult adept at plausible deniability.

The way they characterise the situation in mid-November 1978 is that the ‘basic problem is twofold': on the one hand there is ‘how to deter individual fanatical members of the Ananda Marga from
committing violent and unlawful acts to further the sect's cause', and on the other there is ‘how to prevent the sect as an organisation from mounting campaigns of violence and intimidation. In either case, the hierarchy of Ananda Marga is able to dissociate itself, as an organisation, from unlawful acts.'
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