The October 29th issue of Newsweek describes Pakistan and not Iraq or Afghanistan as the mist dangerous country in the world infested with terrorists under a veneer of relative political stability. It probably had in mind among other things, the attack in Karachi just after Benazir Bhutto landed in Karachi. The authors Ron Moreau and Michael Hirsh felt that compared to neighboring Afghanistan or Iraq, things look fine, the system seems to function, there is even a semblance of democracy and there is the absence of total and complete anarchy.
The essay then goes on to dissect the origins of terrorism in the country , how in the time of General Zia ul Huq, it seemed expedient to the general to promote a brand of stern, forbidding Islam that the whisky swilling founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah would have balked at. Such a move seemed useful at the time when Afghanistan was a Soviet style client state with atheistic leanings and an appeal to religion was adrenaline to the forces battling communism and its fellow travelers.
But then of course as every on now knows, the genie released out of the bottle never ever went back in after the task was done and the Soviet backed regimes had collapsed. The Islamic fighters armed covertly or overtly or both with the Americans looking on were then deployed in Kashmir to destabilize India. And then after 9/11, yesterday’s holy warriors became today’s jihadists and as almost overnight the Americans turned against them, the tide turned. Americans and their supporters in the country, friends till the other day became overnight kafirs and infidels.
Compared to Pakistan, India’s own terrorists are home grown and not homogenous in the sense that in Pakistan, practically all terrorism is cloaked in religion though the vested interests behind them night be tribal or ethnic or even linguistic. Most of India’s terrorism concerns have a longer history and much of the insurgency witnessed in the North East today is a direct result of the messy manner in which the British dealt with their Frontiers, not quite claiming as their own territory and not quite giving them complete independence as was the case with say Nepal or Bhutan or Sikkim or even Tibet. These had their distinct political boundaries, own monarchs and traditions and customs.
But in the North East inhabited by numerous tribes each with their distinct language and culture, the British were satisfied with merely introducing an inner line permit restricting entry into the tribal areas but without the tidying up of political boundaries and the quasi independent autonomy that they any how enjoyed, independent India was left with historical debris it is still struggling to clear.
The government of India’s’ insistence that all matters should be sorted out within the parameters of the Indian constitution doesn’t help either as the constitution which itself was largely based on the Government of India Act of 1935 which concerned itself with matters pertaining to mainland British India and the Princely States. When the post independence government started talking about the Indian Constitution therefore, it was analogous to saying to a tiger roaming free in the jungle that it would have to shift to a zoo but would be free to choose the shape and color of the cage. The rather unstatesman like approach has led to chronic low independence throughout the North East.
With the decline in governance in the Post Nehruvian era, other latent insurgencies began to surface. The communists had never whole heartedly supported independence from the British and were in the elusive quest of a revolution and seeking liberated territories in Andhra Pradesh and else where led by B.T.Ranadive and others. Eventually though most of the communists opted for real politic and the parliamentary path, the remnants remained and in time became the kernel of the Naxalite movement which originated in West Bengal’s Naxal Bari, was brutally suppressed and now has spread it wings to many parts of the country like an uncontrollable epidemic.
Religion based terrorism has been relatively low key in India. In its overt form, it was most visible in the Khalistan movement of the 80s and the 90s, when there was a demand for a Sikh state in a bloody campaign funded mostly by wealthy expatriate Sikhs and supporters across the border. The response of the state was the “bullet for bullet” policy of Julio Riberio and brutal suppression and Siddhartha Shankar Ray, the last Congress Chief Minister of West Bengal who had so ably crushed the Naxalites was brought in to lend his experience. Apart from this, in the numerous insurgency movements of the North East, the church is understood to be sympathetic to some but its support has been more tacit and covert than overt with prayers and alms being distributed more along ethnic and tribal lines than purely religious lines as happened in the case of Khalistan.
Leave Your Comments