Deendar Anjuman


Deendar Anjuman is an Islamic religious organization founded in Hyderabad, India. The group was banned for carrying out multiple bomb blasts in churches across South India and carrying out a hate campaign against the Christian community.

History

The Deendar Anjuman was founded in 1924 by Siddique Deendar Channa Basaveshwara Qibla in Gadag town of Karnataka. After claiming links to Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, he claimed to be the reincarnation of Channa Basaveshwara, a Hindu deity primarily worshipped by the Lingayats and converted Hindus to Islam. He moved to Hyderabad where the seventh Nizam of Hyderabad, Osman Ali Khan, recognised him as a spiritual leader and gifted him a five-acre estate from where he could continue to propagate Islam.

Ban

Deendar Anjuman was banned in May 2001 for engineering the 2000 Church bombings, and carrying out a hate campaign against the Christian community. The group's founder Siddique is reported to have hated Christians after the British colonial government in 1934 jailed Siddiqui and 18 of his followers for indulging in inflammatory speeches and writings.
In October 2007 the ban was extended and the group declared an unlawful association under the Unlawful Activities Act for "indulging in activities which are pre-judicial to the security of the country having the potential to disturb peace and communal harmony and to disrupt the secular fabric of the country".
In 2008, Capital punishment was awarded to 11 people and life sentence to 12 others by a local court. The prime accused in the case, Zia-ul-Hassan was the son of Syed Siddique Hussain, the founder of Deendar Anjuman. Zia-ul-Hassan had migrated to Pakistan and used to visit Hyderabad during his father's death anniversary. The accused believed that "blasts at churches in India would trigger a civil war between Hindus and Christians, and a religious leader from Afghanistan would invade and conquer India, which would be converted into an Islamic country".
The serial blasts were carried out by activists of Deendar Channabasaveshwara Anjuman, founded in the 1920s. The conspiracy was hatched in October 1999 in Hyderabad, during the death anniversary of its founder Hajrath Moulana Siddiqui.