Who bombed the Hilton? (9 page)

From what I can ascertain, Special Branch is being quite thorough and fair-minded. They appear to be taking the sect's assertion that they are being framed seriously, and write copious notes on the elaborate forensic tests that the letters are subjected to in order to determine their point of origin. They also regard some of the claims by Indian nationals with scepticism. For example, after one reported attack in Canberra, Detective Toms writes that, ‘owing to the apparent fear, and confused mental state, of the occupants there are some doubts that the actual reported incidents [a man throwing projectiles at the building] did actually occur'.
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It's hard to imagine who would be more likely to write these absurdly misspelled moustache-twirling provocations — an Indian CBI agent or a Westernborn member of an Indian cult? Both would have been very well educated. Almost all Australian members of the Ananda Marga are drawn from universities, and CBI recruits are co-opted from the highest ranks of Indian society. There is something in the letters that
smacks of undergraduate humour — a kind of parody of what one expects a revolutionary religious zealot to come up with. Trying to fathom the truth of the threats and denials becomes a mind-bending exercise. Does ‘You are dead one by one your daughters will earn for us as above'
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sound more like an Indian spy impersonating a Western member of an Indian sect or a Western member of an Indian sect impersonating an Indian spy impersonating a Western member of the sect? What is to be achieved by terrorising the expat Indian population?

There is little time to allow such thoughts to bloom. After the stabbing and attempted kidnapping of Colonel Singh, Prime Minister Fraser weighs into the debate. In his opinion, while ideally an attempt should be made to disperse the violent element of the Ananda Marga — if it exists — it is clear that such an element is ‘difficult to pinpoint'.
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That said, under the circumstances they simply have to take action ‘on the assumption that there [is] a group' attempting ‘to precipitate violence against Indian officials, as a means of pressure on the Indian Government to release the leader of Ananda Marga who has been imprisoned on murder charges'.
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Fraser calls a meeting of all Commonwealth and state police, including Special Branch, and intelligence (ASIO) officers, along with a visiting Indian expert, for 28 September 1977. For Fraser, the information
collated at this meeting confirms ‘the depth of the problem'. In response he asks that all agencies agree that ‘the pursuit, collection and interchange of information on Ananda Marga be constant and intensive to permit adequate assessment of the threat' and that they set up a system of regular cooperation and coordination. Fraser indicates that he wants ‘sound information' that would give the government a ‘more precise picture of the workings' of the Ananda Marga in Australia. Both the federal and state governments provide support — both financial and in the form of licences — for a broad range of Ananda Marga activities including preschools, marriage celebrants and so on. Fraser wants to suspend any support until there is an urgent examination of the sect's activities.
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By early October the Indian High Commission and Consul General are in urgent talks with both state and federal ministers about the spate of attacks. Detective Constables Jan Krawczyk and CL Helson of Special Branch write up an exhaustive report of 43 separate incidents of actual or threatened violence upon Australia-based Indian nationals over a period of three weeks. But despite all the threats being made in the name of Ananda Marga, the detectives keep an open mind as to the identity of the perpetrators, stating, ‘All possible inquiries are being made.'
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At the same time, ASIO's covert operatives begin to talk.

Abhiik Kumar

Norm Sheather, in the first heady days of the investigation, is still embedded in the recent past, stretching his mind around the perplexing events of 1977. Who was making all these threats and committing all these acts of violence against Indian nationals in Australia?

What did the Indian Government have to gain by pretending to be Margiis or Proutists and threatening their own citizens with ‘rape-death'? To ensure Sarkar stayed in jail? To justify putting him there? To discredit a marginal cult?

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) certainly has no qualms about including the Margiis on its greatest hits list that year. In a recently declassified document produced by the CIA's National Foreign Assessment Center entitled ‘International Terrorism in 1977', the sect is contextualised alongside other groups such as the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine, the Japanese Red Army and the remnants of the Baader-Meinhof gang. It's highly probable that ASIO would have been forwarded a copy of this document and that some mention of it would have been made in the briefing Sheather received after the Hilton bombing. Interestingly, while the CIA perceived an increasing trend ‘towards cooperation' between international terrorist groups, citing the activities of Carlos the Jackal facilitating contacts between terrorist bands, they perceived no such behaviour in the Ananda Marga. It was an altogether different fish.

‘Its idiosyncratic parochial motives' also make it a difficult organisation to fathom and to penetrate. ASIO's undercover agents begin to roam around the edges, attending meditation and yoga sessions. Their encounters with members are slightly unnerving — these aren't laid-back hippies preaching free love. Many who have committed to the sect have cut themselves off completely from their families and their former lives. There is an intellectual quality to their belief system, which is rigid, controlled and tightly disciplined. It is a strictly hierarchic sect, in which orders come from the top down. The top, of course, being Sarkar (Baba), imprisoned in India. And who does Sarkar speak to about things in Australia? To the spiritual leader of the Ananda Marga in Australasia: Abhiik Kumar.

This name is probably unfamiliar to anyone who followed the sagas of Margiis Alister, Anderson and Dunn. Indeed in all the books, articles, multiple films, both documentary and dramatised, about the ins and outs of the case, decrying injustice, demanding royal commissions, arguing conspiracy over all the years, there is barely any mention of him.

And yet there he is, centre stage, the focus of inquiries in late 1977. Well, when I say centre stage, he is admittedly hard to make out at first, concealed as he is behind scrim and smoke. Even for ardent Australian devotees of the sect in 1977 he is an elusive character, revered, if not often seen. There is first up the matter of
his name. Or rather, his names. He is Acharya Abhiik Kumar to the faithful, but he travels during mid to late 1977 under the name Jason Holman Alexander. That's the name he adopted in March that year, changing it from Jon Hoffman by deed poll.
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Hoffman, born in the USA, comes to Australia to increase Ananda Marga membership in the early 1970s not long after Sarkar's original imprisonment. He has another occasional name of Mark Randall and he has other names he will adopt officially and otherwise in the future, such as AK Brahmacarii,
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Stephen James Manly, David Hart and Michael Brandon. But right now, as ASIO and Special Branch start to pierce the gloaming, and as Norm starts to see, his names are Alexander and/or Kumar.

The first official report on him from ASIO lays out the known facts:

It's not much to go on and the membership is reverential. When engaged in chitchat they all reiterate the public statements — Margiis deplore all violence and these actions in the name of UPRF are not condoned by them.

However, the attack on Colonel Singh and his wife in September draws not only Prime Minister Fraser's attention, it also draws out a former sect member who has information to impart. While his name is completely erased from the archive it is clear that he somehow contacted or was contacted by ASIO and arranged to speak to them on two separate occasions, 24 and 27 October 1977.

It's quite a story, both detailed and charmingly domestic before it veers into the dark. It starts in 1974, shortly after his young son joins the Margiis' Sunrise School in North Sydney. One day at a school fete he
and his wife meet Eric Fouter, a member of the sect who invites the couple to attend an Ananda Marga meeting. After this other members take a great deal of interest in them and they are invited to join the organisation. They agree to join because ‘they felt it might help their son at school'.

Later that year he is approached by Abhiik Kumar, who asks if he would help run their 100-acre farm in Queensland. He agrees to do this on a short-term basis. By the end of the year he is asked to assist with a feasibility study relating to setting up health food shops across Australia. Again he agrees and does so for a while before giving up ‘through utter frustration'. About the same time he is approached by ‘Kapil' (probably Hanspeter Arn, a Swiss national) about some of the ‘lads' in the organisation getting some training in self-defence on the farm in Queensland. This time the subject declines because ‘a person known as Katutuvera', whom he describes ‘as a psychopath', insists that the trainees should learn how to ‘kill an opponent'. Despite his refusal to participate, he thinks that the training did eventually take place in June 1975.

Over the course of the two days, the subject's story grows in credibility. He relates detailed and hitherto unpublicised information about the New Zealand explosives theft and kidnapping in 1975, and about the inner workings of the sect. The sect's impenetrability owes much to the particularities of its
recruitment processes. Only friends of current Margiis are asked to join, and then undergo a rigorous process of induction. This involves a month of rigid discipline, intensive fasting, instruction and cold showers at one of the sect's schools. After this recruits are required to sever all contact with their own family and surrender all their possessions. The latter then becomes the primary source of Ananda Marga's resources. Outstanding graduates are then selected for further ‘severe' and rigorous training, which ‘involves unquestioned obedience to the Ananda Marga leadership'.

While embarking on this path, and after almost 18 months of membership, the subject gradually begins to be groomed by Kumar himself and admitted into the inner workings of the group. In late 1975 he is summoned to meet Abhiik Kumar. The sect leader is impressed by the subject's staunch anticommunism, which reflects very much the position of Ananda Marga. He then asks him how far he would be prepared to go in the fight against communism and ‘whether or not he would be prepared to kill in the process'. That would depend, he replies, on ‘whether or not Australia was threatened or endangered by the communists'.

A few days later the subject is summoned once again to Kumar's office. Abhiik asks the subject whether he is willing to ‘cooperate in organising a political group known as Prout'. This group, of which Kapil is
a member, is to be separate from Ananda Marga and its task is to nominate candidates for election to parliament and to infiltrate organisations such as trade unions, Friends of the Earth and conservation groups. I'm too busy, says the subject. Kumar then wants to know what he feels about a pornographic film being screened at a Sydney theatre. He thinks such films should be banned. Ring them up, Kumar suggests, and threaten ‘to have the theatre bombed unless the film is withdrawn'. The subject replies, ‘I'm not sure I want to go that far.'