What more is needed to stoke reaction?

Arun Shourie: Saturday, December 29, 2007

The Task Force on Border Management, one of the four that were set up in the wake of the Kargil War, reported with alarm about the way madrassas had mushroomed along India’s borders. On the basis of information it received from intelligence agencies, it expressed grave concern at the amount of money these madrassas were receiving from foreign sources. It reported that large numbers were being ‘educated’ in these institutions in subjects that did not equip them at all for jobs — other than to become preachers and teachers producing the same type of incendiary unemployables. It expressed the gravest concern at the way the madrassas were reinforcing separateness in those attending them — through the curriculum, through the medium of instruction, through the entire orientation of learning: the latter, the Task Force pointed out, was entirely turned towards Arabia, towards the ‘golden ages’ of Islamic rule. It pointed to the consequences that were certain to flow from ‘the Talibanisation’ of the madrassas. [In spite of what the Task Forces themselves advised, namely that their reports be made public, the reports have been kept secret. Accordingly, I have summarised the observations of the Task Forces in some detail in Will the Iron Fence Save a Tree Hollowed by Termites? Defence imperatives beyond the military, ASA, Delhi, 2005.]

And what does the Sachar Committee recommend? ‘Recognition of the degrees from madrassas for eligibility in competitive examinations such as the civil services, banks, defence services and other such examinations’! It recommends that government use public funds to encourage formation of Muslim NGOs and their activities. It recommends that government provide financial and other support to occupations and areas in which Muslims predominate. It recommends that Muslims be in selection committees, interview panels and boards for public services.

It recommends that a higher proportion of Muslims be inducted in offices that deal with the public — ‘the teaching community, health workers, police personnel, bank employees and so on.’ It recommends ‘provision of ‘equivalence’ to madrassa certificates/degrees for subsequent admissions into institutions of higher level of education.’ It recommends that banks be required to collect and maintain information about their transactions — deposits, advances — separately for Muslims, and that they be required to submit this to the Reserve Bank of India! It recommends that advances be made to Muslims as part of the obligation imposed on banks to give advances to Priority Sectors. It recommends that government give banks incentives to open branches in Muslim concentration areas. It recommends that, instead of being required to report merely ‘Amount Outstanding’, banks be told to report ‘Sanctions or Disbursements to Minorities’. It recommends that financial institutions be required to set up separate funds for training Muslim entrepreneurs, that they be required to set up special micro-credit schemes for Muslims. It recommends that all districts more than a quarter of whose population is Muslim be brought into the prime minister’s 15-point programme.

‘There should be transparency in information about minorities in all activities,’ the Committee declares. ‘It should be made mandatory to publish/furnish information in a prescribed format once in three months and also to post the same on the website of the departments and state governments...’ It recommends that for each programme of government, data be maintained separately about the extent to which Muslims and other minorities are benefiting from it. But it is not enough to keep data separately. Separate schemes must be instituted. It recommends that special and separate Centrally Sponsored Schemes and Central Plan Schemes be launched for ‘minorities with an equitable provision for Muslims.’ It recommends special measures for the promotion and spread of Urdu. It recommends the adoption of ‘alternate admission criteria’ in universities and autonomous colleges: assessment of merit should not be assigned more than 60 per cent out of the total — the remaining 40 per cent should be assigned in accordance with the income of the household, the backwardness of the district, and the backwardness of the caste and occupation of the family. It recommends that grants by the University Grants Commission be linked to ‘the diversity of the student population.’ It recommends that pre-entry qualification for admission to ITIs be scaled down, that ‘eligibility for such programmes should also be extended to the madrassa educated children.’ It recommends that ‘high quality government schools should be set up in all areas of Muslim concentration.’ It recommends that resources and government land be made available for ‘common public spaces’ for adults of — its euphemism — ‘Socio-Religious Categories’ to ‘interact’.

It recommends that incentives to builders, private sector employers, educational institutions be linked to ‘diversity’ of the populations in their sites and enterprises. For this purpose it wants a ‘diversity index’ to be developed for each such activity.

It recommends changes in the way constituencies are delimited. It recommends that where Muslims are elected or selected in numbers less than adequate, ‘a carefully conceived ‘nomination’ procedure’ be worked out ‘to increase the participation of minorities at the grass roots.’

It notes that there already are the Human Rights Commission and the Minorities Commission ‘to look into complaints by the minorities with respect to state action.’ But these are not adequate as the Muslims still feel that they are not getting a fair share. The solution? Here is its recommendation, and a typical passage:

‘It is imperative that if the minorities have certain perceptions of being aggrieved,’ notice the touchstone — ‘if the minorities have certain perceptions of being aggrieved’ — ‘all efforts should be made by the state to find a mechanism by which these complaints could be attended to expeditiously. This mechanism should operate in a manner which gives full satisfaction to the minorities’, notice again the touchstone — not any external criterion, but ‘full satisfaction to the minorities’ — ‘that any denial of equal opportunities or bias or discrimination in dealing with them, either by a public functionary or any private individual, will immediately be attended to and redress given. Such a mechanism should be accessible to all individuals and institutions desirous to complain that they have received less favourable treatment from any employer or any person on the basis of his/her SRC [Socio-Religious Category] background and gender.’

The responsibility is entirely that of the other. The other must function to the full satisfaction of the Muslims. As long as the Muslims ‘have certain perceptions of being aggrieved,’ the other is at fault...

So that everyone is put on notice, so that everyone who is the other is forever put to straining himself to satisfy the Muslims, the Committee recommends that a National Data Bank be created and it be mandatory for all departments and agencies to supply information to it to document how their activities are impacting Muslims and other minorities. On top of all this, government should set up an Assessment and Monitoring Authority to evaluate the benefits that are accruing to the minorities from each programme and activity...

This is the programme that every secularist who is in government is demanding that the government implement forthwith. And every secularist outside — the ever-so-secular CPI(M), for instance — is scolding the government for not implementing swiftly enough. What splendid evolution! Not long ago, unless you saw a Muslim as a human being, and not as a Muslim, you were not secular. Now, if you see a Muslim as a human being and not as a Muslim, you are not secular!

Consequences

The first consequence is as inevitable as it is obvious: such pandering whets the appetite. Seeing that governments and parties are competing to pander to them, Muslims see that they are doing so only because their community is acting cohesively, as a vote bank. So, they act even more as a bank of votes.

For the same reason, a competition is ignited within the community: to prove that he is more devoted to the community than his rival, every would-be leader of the community demands more and more from governments and parties. When the concession he demanded has been made, he declares, ‘It is not being implemented’. And he has a ready diagnosis: because implementation, he declares, is in the hands of non-Muslims. Hence, unless Muslims officers are appointed in the financial institutions meant for Muslims... With demand following demand, with secularist upon secularist straining himself to urge the demands, the leader sets about looking for grievances that he can fan. When he can’t find them, he invents them...

Governments make the fatal mistake, or — as happened in the case of the British when they announced separate electorates for Muslims — they play the master-stroke: they proffer an advantage to the community which that community, Muslims in this case, can secure only by being separate — whether this be separate electorates in the case of Lord Minto or separate financial institutions in the case of Manmohan Singh.

The community in its turn begins to assess every proposal, every measure, howsoever secular it may be, against one touchstone alone: ‘What can we extract from this measure for Muslims as Muslims?’How current the description rings that Cantwell Smith gave in his book, Modern Islam in India, published in the 1940s, of the effect that the British stratagem of instituting separate electorates for Muslims had had on the Muslim mind. The separate electorates led Muslims, as they had been designed to lead them, he observed, ‘to vote communally, think communally, listen only to communal election speeches, judge the delegates communally, look for constitutional and other reforms only in terms of more relative communal power, and express their grievances communally.’ [Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Modern Islam in India, Second Revised Edition, 1946, reprint, Usha Publications, New Delhi, 1979, p. 216]. Exactly the same consequence will follow from implementing the Sachar proposals — and the reason for that is simple: the essential point about the proposals is the same — that is, the Muslims can obtain them by being separate from the rest of the country.

The reaction cannot but set in. ‘As Muslims are being given all this because they have distanced themselves from the rest of us, why should we cling to them?’ the Hindus are bound to ask. ‘On the contrary, we should learn from them. Governments and political parties are pandering to Muslims because the latter have become a bank of votes. We should knit ourselves into a solid bloc also.’

Do you think they need a Pravin Togadia to tell them this? The genuflections of governments and parties write the lesson on the blackboard. And the abuse hurled by secularists drills it in: by the excellent work that Narendra Modi has done for development, he had already made himself the pre-eminent leader of Gujarat; by the abuse they have hurled at him, the secularists, in particular the media, have enlarged his canvas to the country.

The Media in Crises

Arun Shourie
The US campaign of bombing erstwhile Taliban positions in Afghanistan had not been on for 10 days, and our experts began pronouncing it a failure: "Osama bin Laden is still at large, the Taliban have just dispersed into the hills, the Northern Alliance is stuck where it was, Bush�s Grand Alliance is coming apart... The winter is about to set in," they said. "The Afghan is a hardy fighter, they said. He will just tie an onion and a roti (bread), fling his blanket over his shoulder, and disappear into the nearest mountain; and these American GIs � they cannot fight without their Coca Colas, their hot meals... Just look at them on TV � they are loaded with so much equipment, they have difficulty just walking. These jokers are going to fight the Taliban? Secure on the mountaintop, the Taliban Jehadi will pick them one by one as they try to clamber up the mountain. Remember Kargil? These slopes in the Afghan mountains are even steeper than the ones our soldiers had to scale."

"And remember: this is Afghanistan � no foreigner has been able to rule the country. Ever. The British in the 19th century, the Russians in the 1980s � each one of them was thrown out by the indomitable Afghans... And this generation of Afghans is even more battle-hardened than the average Afghan: the country has been at war continuously for 20 years. In contrast, the Americans who will be lumbering out of their helicopters against them have not seen action at all."

"And you do not understand the difference motivation makes: on the one side there are jehadis fired up with religion, ready to embrace shahadat (martyrdom); on the other, gum-chewing Americans dying to get back to their girl friends... Bush has ignited the entire Muslim world. Protests in Indonesia... Twenty thousand Mujahideen are crossing over from Pakistan...."

What happened in fact? The Taliban did not just collapse, they fled. The Pakistanis fled faster. As for being fired up with the narcotic of shahadat, should our experts not have wondered how being fired up by prospects of houries in jannat would make one invulnerable to bombs? As for history -- from Greeks to the Kushans, from Kanishka to Maharaja Ranjit Singh... As many �outsiders� had ruled Afghanistan as northern India. The Bamiyan Buddhas -- whose destruction was so recent that even our �experts� could not have forgotten it -- were themselves reminders of the time when Afghanistan was under the sway of the Buddhist rulers of India! As for the indomitable spirit and fighting qualities of the Afghan, should our experts and commentators have so swiftly forgotten that the Taliban had acquired most of its sway without any fighting at all? The silver bullet had worked the magic. Should that not have led them to wonder whether the same sequence could not be repeated in reverse this time round?

Exactly the same sort of �analyses� had been the order of the day during the Gulf War: "battle-hardened troops of Saddam Hussein, the inhospitable desert, �General Desert Storm� which blows around this time of the year and will blind the American GIs... Have you forgotten Vietnam? The Americans cannot stand the sight of body-bags..."

"General Desert Storm" failed to turn up. The hardening that the troops of Saddam Hussein had gone through did not make them invulnerable to bombs, to gigantic war machines that just buried thousands alive. True, the Americans cannot stand the sight of bodies being brought home. But, while we were basking in vicarious memories of Vietnam, American war strategists and technologists had fashioned weapons and devised an entire war strategy that minimized the commitment of American troops. We were exulting in the last war; they had devised ways and means to make the next one an entirely different one.

In one sense, of course, this conformed to the standard of the Cold War days: the costless fashion of being anti-American. But, there is something deeper that accounted for the �analyses� : a defeatism so ingrained that by now it has become part of the nature of the Indian literati.

The proximate manifestation of this is the conviction that the government -- which government is in office makes little difference -- will not be able to handle the crisis. Yashwant Sinha had gone to Ottawa, Canada, to attend a meeting of Finance Ministers in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks.1 At the meeting, Sinha recounted, speaker after speaker lauded India for maintaining a 4.8 per cent growth rate when the richer countries other than China were struggling at growth rates of 1 to 3 per cent. Talking of the prospects for the coming months, speaker after speaker had maintained that two countries would help pull the world out of the recession: China and India. And here, in India, the refrain is the opposite, Sinha said. Here, the refrain is that if the September 11 attacks had occurred in India, the government would not have been able to handle the situation; therefore, it is nikammi (useless); therefore, it must go!

But even this particular species -- this pessimism about the governments we have -- is just the immediate manifestation of defeatism. The conviction is not just that the government will not be able to handle the crisis. We seem convinced that whatever the government is doing will in fact boomerang and recoil on India. Indeed, even that too is just the second layer of defeatism. Beneath that layer is the conviction that whatever is happening -- not just what the government is doing, but events in general -- will in fact turn against India.

"But should Jaswant Singh have rushed into announcing support for the Americans?" people asked -- within government as much as outside. "That is bound to enrage the Taliban. We have unnecessarily made ourselves a target."

Days had not passed, and the refrain became the opposite: "But Pakistan has stolen a march over us again. They offered support, and see how the Americans are wooing them. They are going to give them billions of dollars. Military aid too is being resumed. And Pakistan is sure as hell going to use it against India."

But on the logic of a few days earlier, by announcing that it was joining the international coalition against terrorism, was Pakistan not enraging the Taliban? Would the Taliban not target Pakistan rather than India? True, Pakistan was trying to extract a few extra dollars: but the very effort was bound to deepen distrust in the US and Europe, it was bound to confirm apprehensions about its nature. Bartering the very ones in whom it had taken so much pride, the Taliban, for dollars was bound to corrode the psyche of its people, to demean them in their own eyes. Dollars or no dollars, Pakistan was inviting the recoil of a defeated Taliban within Pakistan. All this was obvious, it was elementary, yet it was completely buried under our pessimism about what events -- any set of events -- are liable to entail for India.

Events had so conspired that the US and other countries were at last joining the war we in India have been fighting for two decades. For 15 years, as our people were being mowed down by terrorists trained, equipped and indoctrinated by Pakistan, the US had asked us, �But where is the evidence?� That very country had been awakened. Was that not the opportunity that we ought to grab? It was no one�s case that the US or any other country is going to solve our problem for us. Nor that any new bond that may be forged because of the events that had shaken the US was going to last forever. The premise underlying the Indian government�s response was merely that the events had provided a moment of congruence.

Consider the alternative. Supposing the response had been ambiguous, supposing we had delayed the announcement of support. Within days, scores and scores of countries, specifically including China and Pakistan, had announced that they would be part of the coalition to fight terrorism. Supposing we had announced our support for the American campaign after these other countries had signed up. Would the critics not have fumed that the government had humiliated India -- that it had reduced the country to being just the tail of even Pakistan?

Even a fool could have seen the reason for which the US and others were paying attention to Pakistan: it was not just its geographical position; the real �asset� Pakistan had was that its intelligence agencies and Army are the ones that had the closest links with the Taliban. To secure vital information about the disposition of Taliban troops, their arsenal, to learn who among them could be weaned away by bribes and through whom -- for all this the government that could help most and in the least possible time was that of Pervez Musharraf. And just as obvious were the effects that signing up in the campaign to destroy the Taliban regime in Afghanistan would inflict on Pakistan.

After all, till the other day, Pakistan had been preening itself on how, by installing the Taliban, it had acquired �strategic depth� vis-�-vis India. It had been projecting itself in the Islamic world as the country whose guidance, support and patronage had rid the area of the godless government of the atheist Communists; it had been projecting itself as the country which had helped usher in �the rule of the pure.� Till recently, it had been insisting, its intellectuals had been declaiming about, how popular the Taliban were with the people of Afghanistan -- the Taliban have brought peace, they said, they have purged society of what the people realised were the decadent values of the Christian West... And now, suddenly, the success of Pakistan was that it had positioned itself among those who were destroying the same Taliban. Would that not delegitimize the religious rationale itself? Would that delegitimization in turn not gravely affect Pakistan�s self-perception? Of its being the �fortress of Islam�? Of its being an Islamic state? Indeed, would it not undermine the religious underpinning of Pakistan -- its raison d��tre, the very basis of its self-definition as the country that is the "Not-Hindustan"?

All of this was elementary. Yet, none of it was allowed to dilute pessimism.

"But they have not banned the Jaish-e-Mohammed [JeM] and other organisations operating in India as yet." And then, the day after a news report that the US had in fact moved to proscribe some of these, The Indian Express lead story was, "Ban to have little effect on the ground." This was followed with some glee by stories to the effect that while one part of the US Administration had proposed the ban, the ban had yet to be formalised. And if the US had banned them? Without a doubt, we would have been back to "But what difference will that make on the ground? After all, these organisations do not use banking channels. Their members do not wait to get visas. In any case, they have had so much warning time, by now they must have moved their finances to safer havens." Soon, the opposite became the subject to beat our chests about:

"Isn�t it a humiliation? We offered help, but no one is taking us up on the offer? Yes, there is a war on terrorism, but where are we in that war?" In fact, there was active co-operation: intelligence sharing, access to many in the Northern Alliance with whom India had been in close touch for years.

And soon, just ten-twelve days into the bombing campaign: "The campaign is a failure, bin Laden is still at large, the Taliban have just scattered into the hills, the Northern Alliance is stuck where it was. Bush�s Grand Alliance is coming apart..."

By now more than a habit, our very nature

During the days he spent in India, the then US President, Bill Clinton made several statements which went in favour of the Indian position. In the hours that he spent on his way through Pakistan, Clinton addressed the people of that country directly, and delivered a hiding that no self-respecting country can possibly stomach. "But these are just statements," said some about the statements that underscored the Indian position: when some secondary official like Robin Raphael used to say a few words -- "Kashmir is disputed territory"2 -- these very persons used to scare us, "See, the US has come out so decisively in favour of the Pakistani position." Now, when the President of that very country was so decisively and so many times speaking against the Pakistani position, "So what? These are just statements." During a discussion on Clinton�s visit, a Star News anchorperson went a step further. The very fact that the statements were so strongly in favour of Indian perceptions and the Indian position, she saw working against India! "But don't you think that such statements may anger Pakistan so much that it adopts an even more aggressive posture?," she asked. I had to ask in turn, "Why have we got into such a negative mould? What if even one of the statements had been in favour of the Pakistani position? Would we not have been shouting, "See, the US has endorsed the Pakistani position... A colossal failure for Indian diplomacy?" She merely smiled.

When all else fails there is always China to enable us to hold on to despondence. And so it was during Clinton�s visit: "But his real motive is to use us to counter China," went the argument. Till the other day, the lament had been, "See, the US is out to undermine us. On the one side it is doing everything possible to ignore what Pakistan is doing -- in exporting terrorism, in building up its nuclear arsenal, its missile capability; in particular what it is doing in developing missiles, atomic weapons -- with the help of China, in manifest violation of international agreements, what the two together are doing in manifest disregard of the US� own laws and admonitions. On the other, the US is bending backwards to deepen its links with China." Suddenly, that the refrain became, "But Clinton's real intention is to use India to counter China."

Is it not up to us to ensure that we get the best out of an arrangement, to ensure that the other country is not able to use us? Of course, in Afghanistan, the US is acting in its own interest. But so would we, indeed so are we.

So pervasive has this habit become that the fact that the replacement of the Taliban regime would be a boon for us -- one factory manufacturing terrorists less, a major defeat for militant Islam, the patrons and guides of the terrorists either crushed or made busy protecting themselves, fissures in Pakistani society widened -- all this was all but obscured in the anxiety to discover the latest shred by which the government could be pilloried, or the gloominess confirmed.

Nor is this phenomenon limited to foreign or security affairs. Over the decades, an entire industry has grown up whose sole function is to frighten us about the future. I well remember the seemingly learned essays that the Economic and Political Weekly used to carry during the Green Revolution days. They were written by prominent economists and we had to mug them up for our exams. The new seed varieties will increase productivity per acre, the argument went. That will make land more valuable. The rich �kulaks� -- a much favoured term then -- will buy up the holdings of small and marginal farmers. The latter will sink into being landless labourers... Progressive immiserisation of the masses... The Green Revolution will turn red... What happened in fact? Productivity did increase. Land did become more valuable. So valuable that no one would sell it...

The �Dunkel Draft�, the new regime on Intellectual Property Rights, allowing foreign investment in the insurance sector, the much-denounced �terminator seeds�� The �debate� on each has followed the identical course.

Bleakness is deduced whichever of the opposites comes to pass. If the West gives aid; �It is trying to entangle us in the coils of international capitalism.� If it does not, "It is heartless, to say nothing of access to its markets, it is denying us even aid." If the multinationals invest, �They are taking over.� If they do not, �But where is the investment?� If caps for foreign investment are raised, �Multinationals will swallow us up.� When evidence suggests that they are themselves on the run � that these companies are being threatened by newcomers every other day, �But all the more reason for them to invade territories in which they can establish themselves more easily.� If fertiliser subsidies are lowered, �This is an anti-farmer Government.� If they are not, �Chemical fertilisers and pesticides are poisoning our land, our rivers, our bodies. The Government is subsidising cancer.�

For years, papers had been writing about the pollution that Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) buses had been causing. As the Delhi Administration had done little in the matter other than keep asking for time, the Supreme Court eventually ordered that a class of the worst polluters be taken off the road. The Hindustan Times story now was, "School children to be affected by SC order"!

Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam was delivering the first lecture in the Ideas that have worked series that I had started under the auspices of the Administrative Reforms Department.3 He had just given a gripping account of what it had been to work under prominent scientists Vikram Sarabhai, Satish Dhawan and Brahmaprakash; of what it had been to participate in projects to build rockets that would carry satellites into space; of what it had been to be present at the launching of those satellites, of being present for Pokharan-II. "So, we have a rocket," a member of the audience began. "But what has that done for the common man?" Kalam had to justify rocket research by recalling how it had helped develop the Reddy-Kalam stent for heart patients!

Ever so often, the gloom is induced by utter misrepresentation. If you take a twig from the neem-tree, you will have to pay royalty to the multinationals, it was said at the height of the propaganda against the �Dunkel Draft.� The reader will recall the pamphlet that was put out over the signatures of the formidable Dattopant Thengdi denouncing the Sankhya Vahini proposal.5 Who is Dr. Raj Reddy? it asked -- actually he was... But the Carnegie Mellon University has little standing in information technology, it declared - in fact,... And the clincher, �Is the project not a violation of the Indian Telegraph Act?� A project in the year 2000, a project in a sphere in which a new product is overtaken within 12 to 18 months, in which entire technologies are overtaken in 24 to 36 months, a project in such an area was being criticised on the ground that it was in violation of a law passed in 1885!

As the controversy built up, I studied the proposal. The case against it was patently a contrivance. I took up the matter with a prominent ideologue of such critiques. "There has been a mistake," he said. "It was thought that this was a project of Pramod Mahajan [Union Minister for Information Technology, Communications and Parliamentary Affairs]. That is why the RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh] decided that it must not go through." It had turned out that the sponsor of the project had actually been some other minister � indeed, one who was in the very good books of the RSS. But, supposing the Sankhya Vahini had in fact been Mahajan's project. Was that a good enough reason to kill it? "In any case, the pamphlet was not written by anyone in the RSS," the person explained. "It was written by an ex-civil servant." But the high personage had lent his name to the specious argumentation. It is precisely because Dattopant Thengdi had lent his name to the critique that it had been so consequential. "I am myself going to write a note to Dattopantji on this pamphlet," the person said. "Send me the points that strike you." But the controversy killed the project.

In 1993, Motorola had approached India with a proposal to set up a plant to produce computer chips. They wanted some facilities. We spurned them. They packed their bags and went over to Malaysia. Today, Malaysia is the world�s leading exporter of computer chips,6 and we are importers� Our activists drove out Monsanto, and its experiments on genetically modified cotton.7 Today, 40 per cent of China�s cotton is produced from those seeds. They have obviated the need for pesticides. Productivity per acre is almost 35-40 per cent higher than the varieties we use, with the result that our textile industry is at an even greater handicap.

Such prophecies fulfil themselves. We frighten ourselves about the future. As a result, we are less able to focus on the task at hand. And, so the prophecy comes true. In India, being in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has become yet another occasion for us to frighten ourselves and to accuse each other of selling the country�s interests down the drain. In China, the prospect of joining WTO was converted into a timetable -- for implementing reforms.

Respective tasks

It is nobody�s case that the Press should not be critical. Criticising a government and pillorying it is most certainly not �anti-national�. It is the media�s job to keep governments on their toes. But, at the same time, it is an error to mistake contrariness for independence. Correspondingly, it is the job of governments to explain the reasons that have led them to a policy or measure. But, that done, it is the duty of governments to go ahead -- in the face of criticism if necessary. Waiting for a consensus to emerge will be to wait forever -- specially in view of what being out of office has come to mean in India today: that because the person or group is in the Opposition, its job is to denounce, it is to block everything anyone in office proposes to do; even the things that the person was doing when he was in office; in fact, even the things that he is doing where he is in office today. In a word, governments must explain, but, having set out the facts and reasons, it is their duty to do what the country requires. They must proceed in the confidence that 10 years later there will be a consensus around the new configuration that would have come about because of the measures that are being taken now.

As far as the media are concerned, the point is not that they must support what some government is doing. The point is about presumption. The presumption that an Indian government just will not be able to handle a situation.

The presumption has meant that, for the media, India cannot be in the right -- whether on terrorism in Punjab, or in combating the assault on Kashmir, or with regard to the demographic invasion from Bangladesh. The presumption that leads commentators to see virtue in someone else doing something and when India does the same thing -- when it even attempts to do same thing -- it makes our commentators detect fascism, communalism and evil. Indian liberals are awe struck when they see Muslims go through the postures of namaz: �What devotion, what surrender,� they exclaim as ten thousand Muslims in the local Jama Masjid bend and rise in unison. But, when Hindus flock to their temples in thousands, or when thirty million of them gather at the sangam for the Kumbh mela, the very persons sneer, �Look at those ignoramuses, steeped neck deep in superstition. How will you ever get these people to develop?� When Bill Clinton was not able to get two of his nominees to be appointed as Attorneys General because they had employed an unregistered alien for the briefest of times, that was taken as evidence of the great respect the American system has for law. Here, whenever a government has made some effort -- however small -- to send Bangladeshis back, a howl has been raised, so great a howl that governments have given up making even an effort to deport illegal immigrants.

As India cannot be right, the presumption that everyone who speaks up for the country, everyone who stands up for it, who risks his life for it, also cannot be right. Recall the total fabrications that were put out about �atrocities committed by the Army� in Kashmir -- fabrications nailed in the Press Council report, Crisis and Credibility.8 Recall the way self-serving, backdated letters of a Brigadier were used by the press to put the armed forces in the wrong during the Kargil war.

The presumption finally that every development is liable to work against India.

This addiction to the negative is compounded by laziness. Anyone can say anything. So long as it is negative, it will get him headlines in the media. A natural disaster occurs -- an earthquake in the Kumaon hills or Gujarat, a cyclone tears a region apart in Orissa or Gujarat, and Sonia Gandhi is sure to arrive. And on each occasion, she has the same comment: the government has completely failed to provide adequate relief to the victims. On not a single occasion has she documented her charge. But each time she gets headlines, �Sonia blasts Government.� Natwar Singh and other spokespersons of the Congress, after the May 1998 atomic tests -- condemning the Government one day for betraying the traditions of Buddha, Ashoka and Gandhi, and the next on the ground that it had not yet taken the requisite steps for �atomic weaponisation�: headlines on both days. The drivel of Kapil Sibal and others during the Kargil war...

On December 13, 2001, terrorists entered the premises of Parliament. Guns, grenades, RDX -- it was a huge assault. The next day, The Hindu carried on its front page, in bold type, the statement of Syed Salahuddin, chief of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM) from Pakistan: the attack has been engineered by Indian intelligence agencies, the paper reported him saying, so as to pressurise Parliament into passing the anti-terrorist ordinance, and to pressurise the international alliance against terrorism "to bracket the Kashmir freedom struggle with terrorism"! The same day, opposite the edit-page that paper carried a dispatch -- again in bold type -- from a conspicuous commentator-correspondent: �Who called in the Army?� he asked; had the "well established procedures" been followed for this "entirely irregular requisitioning of Army units?" he wanted to know. What an occasion for Constitutionalism!

It is as if press persons and others in the media feel that, by printing something negative -- even if it be drivel of this kind -- they prove that they are independent; that, conversely, were they to say, or even report anything positive they would be damned as having �sold themselves�, as having become chamchas. Indeed, so pervasive is this habit that it seems that they are afraid not just that others will conclude that they have �sold out�, but that in their own eyes they would have done so.

There is thus, first the laziness -- anything anyone says is just swallowed and vomited; specially if what that person says casts doubt, specially if he hurls an allegation. Recall the play that Ajit Jogi�s calumny got: "Three officers -- one in the Prime Minister's Office, one in the Disinvestment Department, one in my Government -- have pocketed Rs. 100 Crore in the [Bharat Aluminium Company] BALCO disinvestment."9 In no country would that kind of calumny, especially when made by that kind of a person, be reproduced � here it became headline news. Where is that calumny today? Actually, we know where it is; "...the facts herein show that a fair, just and equitable procedure has been followed in carrying out this disinvestment," the Supreme Court has held in its judgement on the BALCO case. "The allegations of lack of transparency or that the decision was taken in a hurry or that there has been an arbitrary exercise of power are without any basis. We strongly deprecate such unfounded averments which have been made by an officer of the State..." But what is the remedy for the immense harm that was done by those who broadcast those allegations -- without the slightest examination?

Next, there is the sudden switch. A dacoit is caught; suddenly, he becomes an �under-trial� � till yesterday the Press was full of jeers about the government�s ham-handedness because of which it was not being able to apprehend him; the moment he is caught, the same Press is after the police and jail officials for not respecting his rights.

One day the question is, "But why are you not talking to Pakistan? After all, what is the harm in just talking?" The moment a step is taken to talk, suddenly the question becomes, "You had said you won�t talk to Pakistan so long as cross-border terrorism continues. It has not stopped. Why are you thinking of talking to Musharraf now? In any case, what has come out of your talks in the past?"

When the hijacked Indian aircraft IC-81410 was in Kandahar, Afghanistan, media were full of the shouting of the relatives of the passengers. This barrage, I can testify from personal knowledge, weighed heavily on the key decision-makers. It was one of the main factors that led them to decide that there was no alternative but to accept the demands of the hijackers and to release the Pakistani terrorists that the hijackers had demanded. The moment the terrorists were released, the same newspapers were pontificating about the �abject surrender to terrorism�, they were contrasting the pusillanimity of the Indian government with the example of Israel, they were lecturing the same government they had, by their selective coverage, pressurised with reminders of the policy of the US -- �No negotiations with terrorists.�

The moment there is some massacre by terrorists, our papers are full of pictures of corpses. But I heard some of the same editors remark with admiration at the way the American media had covered the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon: �Not one gory scene, not one image that could dishearten the people... Look at the way they are building up Bush. After all, his IQ could not have shot up all of a sudden. They were making fun of him till yesterday, and suddenly he is being made to come across as such a decisive, knowledgeable leader, as one in full control...�

Socialism for the masses. Patriotism for other countries! As in government so in media: there is paralysis by analysis. Recall, China during the Gulf War: it quietly got the post-Tiananmen sanctions lifted; here in India we encoiled ourselves in acrimonious accusations about whether we should give America refuelling facilities. The accusations about offering to assist in the campaign against the Taliban regime ended only because the Taliban collapsed so soon, and so ignominiously. In a word, while other countries get down to doing what their interest requires, we debate the alternatives to death even before we have chosen one of them.

Two basic factors

Beyond these proximate factors are two. First, by now the notion that a newspaper is �a product�, like soap, the notion that media persons are in the �infotainment business�, not in public service, has indeed triumphed. Superciliousness has become the reigning ideology. Being bothered about the country is to be hysterical. Examining a matter in depth is to be a bore. So, on the one hand, the smart question, and on the other the �sound-byte� is all.

Every event, every situation -- war as much as some development project -- is yet another spectator sport. Media do not feel that they have any responsibility at all for helping find a solution: it is satiated when, in its own view, it has punctured any and every proposal that has been put forward by others. And when, on the rare occasion, a �solution� is urged, it is simplicity itself: �Advani must go,� �Fernandes should resign,� �The Government should...�

But the fundamental cause is deeper. Beneath the presumptions that we have noticed, lies indoctrination of a hundred and fifty years: the notions that we have taken in from the elder Mill, Macaulay, Marx, and the missionaries. Our commentators are hybrids of these forbears. India is not a country, Indians are not a nation. It is a zoo, to recall Girilal Jain�s description of their view. There are monkeys in it, zebras, elephants, the whole lot. But each of these is a separate species. When a Vivekananda or a Gandhi looks at the people, what strikes him are the myriad common elements. But when these persons see the very same people, what strikes them on the other hand is what is different! India is not real, they declare, it is but a geographical expression. It was never one country. It was put together only recently � and that too by the British. Not one country? Ever heard of a group of pilgrims being stopped as they crossed from one �kingdom� into the next one? India is not real, they declare; caste is real, being Hindu or Muslim, being Tamil or Bengali -- that is what is real.

As India is not one, it is not entitled to defend its position in Kashmir, it has no right to throw out Bangladeshis on the ground that they are �outsiders�. When the Pakistani government, having financed, patronised and controlled madrasas (seminaries) for decades, at last announces moves to regulate them, that announcement, though just an announcement, becomes proof positive that the government is taking a giant step towards secularism, that it is taking a bold step towards modernising that country, that it is giving up the past and is ready to establish peace with India -- and if peace does not come about, that is only because the Indian Government, indeed India itself has not liberated itself from phobias it has conjured up about the past.

This disengagement from our past, from our country, from our people, from our very being, has become so extreme that anything alien is the fashion of choice. And the more alien, the more fashionable. A singer from Pakistan, even when he or she is little above the mediocre; even better, a couple of singers from Pakistan singing �Sufi music�, when neither the singers nor their caveman-like braying has the remotest link with Sufis -- what a fashion it is to swoon over them! Advocating what in fact is the Pakistani line on an issue -- even when that issue is one that concerns our defence forces, even when it concerns our territorial integrity -- doing so establishes the commentator�s �independence.� "I am ...," a well-known editor said as he met Musharraf at Agra for that breakfast meeting, adding with evident and defiant pride, "In India I am known as a Pakistani agent, and I am proud of that."

When he was the Pakistani Ambassador in Delhi, Riaz Khokhar was in effect editing three of Delhi's dailies without using newsprint -- so easily was he able to get the Pakistani slant into reports and editorial comments on Kashmir and the rest. Having made nationalism a dirty word, having made it synonymous with �fascism�, the media has altered its reflexes. Its natural reaction is to strike a pose -- and that pose which will advertise the fact that it is not �fascist�!

END NOTES

1. A meeting of G-20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors took place on November 16-17, 2001 in Ottawa.

2. She declared the whole of Kashmir as "disputed" with three contending parties-India, Pakistan and Kashmir. See Parama Sinha Palit, "The Kashmir Policy of the United States: A Study of the Perceptions, Conflicts and Dilemmas", Strategic Analysis, New Delhi, vol. XXV, no. 6, September 2001, p. 791.

3. Dr. Kalam, the then Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India, delivered the first lecture on March 11, 2000 in New Delhi. It was organised by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances in collaboration with the Civil Services Officers� Institute (CSOI) and the Government of Andhra Pradesh. See "India Needs Double Digit GDP to Remove Poverty : Dr. Kalam", Link

4. Thengdi is the chief of Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), a trade union affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

5. Sankhya Vahini was a joint venture project that envisages a high-speed data communication network to serve as India�s high bandwidth Internet backbone. Sankhya Vahini India Limited (SVIL), with an authorised share capital of Rs.1,000 crores, is a collaborative venture between the Department of Telecommunications/Department of Telecom Services (DoT/DTS), some premier educational institutions, the Department of Electronics (DoE), the Ministry of Information Technology (MIT) and the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) of the United States, through a U.S.-based company called IUNet Inc. The Memorandum of Understanding was signed on October 16, 1998. Dr. V S Arunachalam and Dr. Raj Reddy, both attached to the CMU, are principle designers of the network. See, for instance, "Sankhya Vahini and some questions," Frontline, Chennai, vol. 17, no. 11, May 27 � June 09, 2000. Link.

6. See "Developing SE Asia: Singapore and Malaysia", Link.

7. "Indian peasants torch crops amid fear of losing home-grown seed", The Guardian, London, October 6, 1999.

8. Crisis and Credibility, Report of the Press Council of India, January and July 1991, Lancer Paper 4, New Delhi: Lancer International, 1991. In December 1990, the Press Council of India (PCI) appointed a Committee to study the role of the press and its functioning in Jammu and Kashmir, as well as the alleged reports of excesses by the armed forces against civilians of the State. The Committee paid a visit to the State and its report was adopted by the PCI in July 1991. The findings indicated that reports of excesses "have been 'grossly exaggerated or invented." The Committee consisted of B G Verghese, K Vikram Rao and Jamna Das Akhtar.

9. Ajit Jogi, Chief Minister of Chhatisgarh, had alleged that a bribe of Rs 100 crore was paid to the officers in the Bharat Aluminium Company (BALCO) disinvestment case. See "Shourie asks Jogi to come out with proof of corruption charges", Daily Excelsior, Jammu, March 11, 2001. Also see "Jogi says there is massive corruption in Balco deal", The Financial Express, New Delhi, March 19, 2001.

10. The Indian Airlines flight IC-814 was hijacked from Kathmandu, Nepal on December 24, 1999. The incident culminated with the terrorists-for-hostages swap on December 31, 1999 at Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Combating Terrorism -II

Arun Shourie
�A State that�s patronising terrorists should wake up to the consequences; in any case its immediate neighbours must�

* Corresponding to the four ��don�ts�� are six ��do�s��: Believe what the ideologues and organisations of the terrorists say. The one thing for which ideologues and organisations can be credited is that they are absolutely explicit about their aims and objectives. The fault -- the fatal fault -- is that of liberal societies: to this day they continue to shut their eyes to what these organisations proclaim to be their aim: domination, conquest, conversion of the ��land of war�� into the ��land of peace,�� that is the land which is at peace because it is under their heel -- exactly as they had shut their eyes to Hitler in the 1930s and to Stalin later. Read their press, reflect over their books and pamphlets, and act in time -- that is, before they have wreaked the havoc they proclaim they will.

* To combat a belief-system One must have a thorough knowledge of the scriptures of that ideology: during the early 1980s, propagandists start asserting, ��Sikhism is closer to Islam than to Hinduism;�� how can one counter the poison unless one has deep and intimate knowledge of the Granth Sahib, unless one knows what the Gurus fought for and against whom they fought? Commentator after commentator has been referring to the Taliban as Deobandis, he has been recounting how they were minted at the Binauri madrasa in Karachi. But unless we know what the Dar ul Uloom in Deoband has been churning out we will be easily deflected from grasping what has been forged in those factories of hatred.

* Similarly, unless we have liberated ourselves from the shackles of political correctness sufficiently to broadcast what these religious seminaries have put out, and are putting out to this day, how will we awaken citizens to the danger that faces them?

* Go by what the scripture as a whole says, not by what a stray passage plucked from it says - what will determine the outcome is the mind which the scripture, the tradition creates; and this will be determined by the teaching as a whole, not by a stray passage.

* Go by the plain meaning of the scripture, not by the construction that apologists and commentators contrive to put on it: again, it is by the plain meaning of the scripture that the faithful will proceed, not by the convolutions of some liberal.

* Go by what those who are recognised by that group as authorities say about the ideology -- the CPSU in Stalin�s Russia, the ulema in Islamic groups and States; not by what some columnist or retired politician says. Often great effort is expended in securing press statements that support the anti-terrorist campaign -- on occasion even a fatwa has been procured to that effect. These are useless.

Those who issue them are dismissed as ��sarkari sants��, their statements are rejected as command performances. This rejection reflex is deeply, and consciously instilled into members of such groups, indeed into the communities themselves. If someone who is not a member of the group -- if he is not a Communist, if he is not a Muslim -- his critique will be rejected automatically: what else can you expect from that ��agent of imperialism�� in one case, from that ��enemy of the faith�� in the other.

On the other hand, no believer will raise questions of any consequence -- neither about the basic approach of the group nor about, to take the current context, the individual act of destruction.

If he does so, his critique will be dismissed as swiftly, and as much by reflex: ��he has crossed the barricades,�� that was the refrain about fellow-travelers who at last spoke up; ��he is an apostate�� -- that has been the refrain in Islamic societies for centuries about any believer who has dared to raise even the slightest question that touches fundamentals.

To gauge the true content of that ideology and its potential for evil, see what these authorities do when they are in power: to ascertain what Communism actually means, do not be lulled by the act that Communists have to put up in a free and open polity such as ours; see what their gods did in Stalin�s Russia, in Mao�s China; to gauge what a religion portends, see what their rulers did in medieval India, what Iran went through under Imam Khomeini, what the Taliban have been doing in Afghanistan.

Terrorism is just a weapon, it is just one among an array of weapons. To expect that by killing one band of terrorists, smashing one network, or even by reclaiming one country from the grip of an extremist band, one has taken care of the problem is suicidal. The aim of the terrorist is not to trigger one explosion, his fulfillment is not in carrying out one assassination. The explosion and assassination are instruments. The terrorist is himself an instrument, he sees himself as an instrument -- of history in Marxism-Leninism, of the Will of Allah in Islam.

For that reason to think that by giving in over Chechnya, by making concessions to Hamas, by handing Kashmir to them, one will effectively deal with ��the causes of Muslim anger�� is to play the fool. For the believer the ��problem�� is not Chechnya or Kashmir. The ��problem�� is that aeons having passed, the world has not yet accepted his creed.

His object is not the real estate of Chechnya or Kashmir, or Jerusalem. His object -- indeed, the duty which has been ordained for him -- is to convert the land of war, that is the land the people of which have not yet submitted to that creed, into one in which that creed prevails. The believer cannot remain true to his faith unless he prosecutes the war till this consummation is achieved. Ideologues and propagandists have a well-practiced division of labour in this regard.

The directors of the ideology intoxicate believers with visions of how affairs will be ultimately -- of how total domination will be secured over the whole world. The propagandists addressing the rest of the world, on the other hand, focus a narrow beam -- on the next, single objective: Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya. The beam is as blindingly intense as it is narrow: the aim is to convince ordinary folk that if only this one concession is made, all problems will cease. This focus and suggestion is accompanied by a systematic campaign -- through front-organisations, intellectuals, fellow travelers -- that raises an ��intellectual�� debate, and thereby foments doubts in the minds of the victims about the moral rights of the issue.

The assault has two prongs. On the one hand violence and terror: these aim at tiring out the victims by inflicting death and carnage. Simultaneously, doubts are fomented in the victims developed about the rightness of their cause -- these ripen into a rationale for capitulation: why not yield a bit on Kashmir?, after all, this one gesture will ensure peace, and we will be free to go our way after that; in any case, the world is not entirely convinced of our case... Victory on that one item in its pocket, the group commences the same sequence on the next target: and doing so is but natural, for the issue -- Kashmir, Chechnya -- was just an instrument.

BELIEVERS will inevitably come to internalise this mindset -- of unremitting violence � whenever the ideology has the following ingredients:

* Reality is simple;

* It has been revealed to one person;

* That person has put it in one Book;

* Every syllable in that Book is divine, it is the ultimate truth; anything that contradicts what is in the Book is not just false, it is a device of the Devil, a device to mislead and waylay the believer; nothing that is not in the Book is of consequence;

* The Book is difficult to fathom;

* Therefore, believers require an intermediary -- the Party, the Church, the ulema;

* Once all humans embrace the way of life that the Book prescribes, eternal peace and prosperity will break out; unless all embrace it, that dawn will not break;

* It is, therefore, the duty of that intermediary to invite you to accept the Faith;

* The truth of the message is so vivid that if, in spite of the invitation, you do not embrace the faith, that is itself proof that you are inherently evil; it is, therefore, the duty of that intermediary, indeed it is the duty of every ordinary adherent to put you out of harm�s way: for you are then blocking the march of History -- in Marxism-Leninism, you are blocking the Will of God, you and your obstinacy are thwarting the dawn, and manifestly you are doing so because of the evil in you;

* As this is a duty ordained, it is but right that the agent use whatever means are required to ensure that the Cause prevails. Unless the rest of the world has come to consist of docile imbeciles, these propositions inevitably entail violence -- the forms of violence that come to mind when we talk of terrorism being just the weapon of choice for a particular circumstance, a particular locale.

THE faith has three further ingredients:

* It forecloses alternatives to inevitable, protracted, indeed eternal, and violent struggle. Allah, for instance, repeatedly declares that unbelievers are congenitally perverse, that nothing the faithful can possibly do will bring them round -- for, He says, I have Myself made them turn their faces away from Me; indeed, He tells believers, I have deliberately put them in your way to test you. They have but one aim, He tells believers: to turn you away from your faith, to beguile you into becoming like them, to deceive you into giving up your duty.

* It drugs the faithful into believing that victory is not just inevitable, it is imminent. Recall, the ��imminent collapse of capitalism�� theses that were the staple of Communist pamphleteering.

* But as victory eludes the believers, the Faith provides rationalizations, indeed consolations for failure. It conditions the believer -- in this case the terrorist -- to persevere in either event, in the face of defeat as much as upon succeeding.

* When he succeeds, he is fortified in the belief that Jehovah in the Old Testament, Allah in the Quran, History in the Marxist texts, is on his side. When he fails, the indoctrination leads him to believe that Jehovah, that Allah, is just testing him -- God wants to assess whether his faith in Him will falter in the face of the setback. In the alternate ��secular�� religion, the adherent is conditioned to believe that, as History moves dialectically, the setback will itself create the conditions for eventual success.

Faced with such indoctrination, two things are imperative:

* Know the opiate, broadcast it before hand, and thereby provide the spectacles through which the believer will view the event;

* Having forged the spectacles, do not just sit back and hope that the believers will see events through them. In the wake of the engagement, especially when the terrorist group has been subjected to a setback, show up the hollowness of the rationalizations that the believers had internalised. Of course, the group will have its ways of shutting out the evidence of defeat. But even as it does so, it will be weakening the foundations of falsehood on which its edifice is built.

Till the other day, Pakistani intellectuals and ulema were projecting the Taliban as one of the great successes -- of the Army and the ISI who had secured ��strategic depth�� for Pakistan, of Islam -- for rulership of pure, idealist youngsters had been established, a rulership that the people loved as it had brought peace, as it had pulled them back from the abyss of immorality and licentiousness.

That was the refrain -- day in and day out for years. And then suddenly Pakistan was being told that joining the campaign to crush the very same Taliban was a masterstroke. The somersaults that the Comintern used to execute seemed so clever at the time. Soon, they delegitimized the ideology itself.

The lethal potential of these ideologies is now compounded by the fact that States such as Pakistan have adopted terrorism as an instrument of State policy. Musharraf has said in so many words, ��Jehad is an instrument of State policy.�� For such States this is a particularly attractive proposition: it is war on the cheap. The ideology that goes with adopting such means, the spread of the gun-culture that invariably accompanies such a strategy, eventually boomerangs -- as the Talibanisation of Pakistan shows. But in the meanwhile the decision of a State to adopt terrorism as an instrument is certain to inflict enormous costs on its neighbours.

What was said of Mussolini�s goons is doubly true of terrorists: ��they were nothing without the State, but with it they were unstoppable.�� In a shrunken world, all countries are the ��neighbours�� of such a State -- as the US has been reminded by the 11th September attacks. The State that patronises such governments or States should wake up to the consequences its patronage will foment. In any case, the immediate neighbours must.

Often a State can end up inflicting grave injury on another even when it does not bear active hostility towards its neighbour. For instance, the intelligence agencies and sections of the Army of Bangladesh are so closely linked to their counterparts in Pakistan that leaders and cadre of groups such as ULFA operate in complete safety from them. Bhutan and Myanmar exemplify a different sort of situation: the administrative grip of these countries over their own territory is so loose that terrorists operating in India are able to carve out their own areas of influence in those countries.

AS important as getting at the State which patronises terrorists is to get at their networks. Terrorists have established numerous fronts: mosques, madrasas, ��research institutions��, ��charity foundations��. The range of persons and organisations against whom the US and other countries had to move after the 11th September attacks -- from those that had been involved in managing finances to those who had been providing safe houses -- gave a glimpse of how the networks, even of just one brand of terrorism, now spread across the globe. Indeed, one of the devices they have mastered is how to use religion and ��religious bodies�� as fronts: Bhindranwale�s conversion of the Golden Temple into a headquarters for terror, eventually into a fortress; the use of charities in Pakistan for raising laundering funds for jihadi groups; the orchestrated appeals from across the globe that the Americans suspend bombing during Ramzan...

For a society to survive, it must have the gumption to tear these veils apart, expose the fronts for what they are, and demolish them.

Terrorism constitutes a threat to all: what is being inflicted on one country today can be inflicted on another tomorrow. It is worse than imprudent, therefore, for a State to consort with States that patronise, finance, train, arm, give sanctuary to terrorists.

For the same reason, and as the evil are so well knit, States should share their resources, in particular intelligence to combat terrorism. That is what should be. In the real world, a country such as India must remember that no one else is going to fight our war for us. For fighting that war the sine qua non is: when the battle has been won, do not forget those who delivered you -- as, to our shame and misfortune, we in India are in the habit of doing.

Part I - What if Osama were caught in India? A debate would explode: should he be tried under evidence act? POTO?

Indian Express
December 19, 2001

Combating Terrorism I

Arun Shourie

What if Osama were caught in India? A debate would explode: should he be tried under evidence act? POTO?

From our experience over the last 20 years the following emerge as self-evident axioms.

*
The technology of inflicting large-scale violence is becoming easier to obtain, and -- per quotient of lethality -- less and less expensive. This in turn yields three lemmas:
*
The target country has to be equipped to counter the entire spectrum of violence: to take the current examples from the United States -- from aircraft being used as missiles to anthrax;
*
It is almost impossible in an open society to block a determined lot from acquiring the technology they want by blocking the technology itself -- the only practical way is to be a leap ahead of the technology the terrorist acquires;

All this is certain to cost the target country a great deal -- but that is the price one has to pay to survive in the world of today; to cavil at it is no better than an elderly couple that grudges the locks they have to put on doors in a city marred by crimes against the elderly.

As the technology of violence has become more and more lethal and as it has been miniaturised, the final act can be done by just a handful, indeed just by an individual acting alone. That individual can bide his time. He can choose his place. He has to succeed just once. For that reason, it is not possible to completely insulate a country from the depredations of the terrorist. Superior intelligence is obviously the key to making things more difficult for the terrorist. But just as important is what the targeted society does in the wake of the attack: overwhelming, and visibly overwhelming reprisal alone will deter others from emulating the terrorist who gets through. Potential recruits, as well as the controllers of organisations and countries that backed him, must be personally touched by the retaliatory measures.

While the final act can be executed by even a single individual, terrorism as a means cannot do without an extensive network: from nurseries that indoctrinate youngsters and forge them into lobotomised killing machines, safe-houses, couriers, informers, suppliers of weapons and explosives, to those who will carry on businesses to earn the money needed for ammunition and arms, and the rest.

By now there are very many groups that have taken to terrorism. They are increasingly intertwined: in India, as well as the world over -- look at the range of locations from which persons were picked up in the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The knitting together comes about in many ways. Groups in India are encouraged by agencies hostile to India to coordinate their activities: for instance, the ISI has been putting Naxalite groups, the various groups operating in the Northeast in touch with each other.

Often the groups are brought together by ��natural�� factors: for instance, both groups may be running drugs -- they may become couriers, suppliers, customers of each other; they may be securing arms for an arms supplier -- and through him they may get to know each other; they may be using the same agents or routes for money laundering....

Among the technologies the terrorists have mastered is that of using the instruments of mass media. They use these to arouse sympathy for their cause -- look at the shrewd way in which Hamas in Palestine, the Taliban in Afghanistan generate revulsion at what their opponents do by giving selective access to Western media to photograph civilian casualties. They are as adept at using the mass media as Greens and other activists for creating the echo-effect that so often leads policy makers to desist from taking stern measures.

��They are wrong-headed,�� many in Punjab used to say of Bhindranwale and his men, ��but you can�t deny their idealism, their readiness to die for what they think is right.�� The reality is altogether different. Terrorism has become lucrative business: in the Northeast, for instance, joining one of the terrorist organisations is a sure way to rake in a minor fortune -- the proceeds from the ��taxes�� the organisations collect, the ransom they extract from kidnapping. The terrorists strive hard to cover their loot under the cloak of ideological, even idealist rhetoric: recall the religious rant of the terrorists in Punjab, and the reality behind it -- what they were doing to young girls across the state, the properties that their leaders had amassed. Just as the terrorists strain to hide their loot, the State and society must bare the truth about them.

To de-fang the terrorist the country has to move on many fronts: their sources of money, those who give them facilities to stay and stage their operations, their sources of weapons and explosives, the network of their couriers. And the moves against these multiple targets have to be carried through simultaneously. For these measures to succeed, all institutions of the State have to act in the same direction, indeed they have to work in concert. For the police to capture terrorists and for the courts to function the way our courts do, for them to go on using norms devised for quieter times, for the Army to track down caches of explosives while the Customs men let in RDX -- is to hand victory to the terrorists.

The lemma is inescapable: we cannot have a flabby State, a somnolent society and a super-efficient anti-terrorist operation. That no one gets convicted for the Bombay blasts for eight years is certain to encourage scores to sign up. Customs officers who take bribes for letting in gold one day are certain to overlook arms consignments tomorrow. Police personnel who let Bangladeshis smuggle themselves across the border in return for bribes will constitute no obstacle to agents of the ISI making their way into the country.

Imagine what would happen if Osama bin Laden slips out of Afghanistan. If he made his way into Iran or China, the international alliance would be confident that he can be executed without any one knowing. If he went to one of the Central Asian countries, the allies would be confident that, if they wanted him for trial, he would be handed over. If he escaped into Pakistan, the allies would be confident that Pakistan could deliver either solution -- hand him over or have his vehicle fall off a cliff in an accident.

But what if he escaped into India? Acrimonious debates would explode. Should he be tried under the Indian Evidence Act or under the provisions of POTO? By ordinary courts or a Special Court? Is the Government not acting under American dictates as to what we should do? His rights as an undertrial... Another hijacking... fulsome focus on the wailing of relatives of the passengers... Released in exchange for letting the passengers go...

Not just the formal institutions of the State, society must act to that end -- that is, the overwhelming number of individuals must be acting in concert independently of or in support of what the State is doing. The State apparatus on its own can no longer stem the Bangladeshis� demographic invasion. It can only be staunched by creating that atmosphere in the Northeast which will convince the potential infiltrator that he better stay away from this region, as it is hostile territory, a territory in which he is certain to lose life and limb.

Not just society in general, the ordinary, individual citizen too must be acting in concert with the authorities. The passenger who kicks up a fuss when he is frisked at an airport, the house-owner who insists that being advised to inform the neighbourhood police station about the new tenant is an intrusion into his private affairs -- such individuals unwittingly help terrorism: on the one hand, the terrorist has an easier time establishing the safe-house from which he will carry out his next explosion; on the other, the average policeman is discouraged from doing his assigned duty.

For any of this to happen, the balance of discourse has to be reversed, literally reversed in India. Under POTO, the terrorists� lawyer is to have the right to meet him during interrogations. Under it a policeman doing his duty can be tried on the charge that he misused his authority and he can be imprisoned for up to two years -- even if he is not convicted in the end, rushing from court to court, as the Punjab policemen are doing today, will be enough. Such are the provisions, and yet the Ordinance is being pilloried out of shape. Esoteric distinctions are being made: the Ordinance provides that the terrorist�s property can be seized. ��But that should be property acquired by him from the proceeds of terrorism. It would be unfair to seize property that he or his relatives may have acquired by legitimate means.�� How will we fight terrorism with this mindset?

Temporary expedients will boomerang: giving handsome amounts to the SULFA cadre, giving them jobs, allowing them to retain weapons -- these steps have resulted in Assam now having not one set of extortionists -- ULFA -- but two. For the same reason, were the USA, for instance, to do what news reports suggest it is considering doing -- delivering a package of 7 billion dollars to a society and State as heavily Talibanised as Pakistan -- it would only be compounding the problem -- for neighbours of Pakistan in the immediate future, and for itself eventually. Events have repeatedly thrown up this lesson, and yet few heed it. One reason surely is that those who have a resource -- say, money -- or are particularly good at one thing -- say, technology -- instinctively think that that particular resource is what will do the trick.

The terrorist must be defeated at every turn, in every engagement. While contending with the IRA youth, Mrs. Thatcher rightly said, ��Publicity is the oxygen on which the terrorist lives.�� Success is the food on which he multiplies: the strikes against the World Trade Center Towers will live in terrorist mythology for decades, they will lure recruits to lethal organizations for long. If the terrorist is able to execute an operation successfully, he, his organisation, their sponsors must be subjected to punitive retaliation of such an order that all of them down the line feel the costs of having inflicted the violence they did. In this matter, we must remember:

There is no kind way to prosecute a war; war is death and destruction, it is blood and gore. Those who recoil from what war entails should mobilise the people at the first sign of extremist ideology so that the terrorists are forestalled, and the State does not ultimately have to move against them -- in fact, the kind who shout the loudest once war begins are the very kind who in the preceding years have lent a verisimilitude of legitimacy to the fabrications of such groups.

No war has been won by deploying ��minimum force�� -- the quantum that liberals concede when the terrorist leaves them no option but to allow that something just has to be done. Wars are won by over-powering the opponent with over-whelming force. And so it must be in the case of terrorism, and of the States that sponsor it: not ��an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth��; for an eye, both eyes, for a tooth, the whole jaw.

The next lesson too is so obvious that its disregard can only be taken to be deliberate: it is a fatal error to judge what needs to be done in an area or in times infested by terrorists, by standards honed from normal places and quieter times. No judge, no human rights organization that today gives lectures about the conduct of the Police in Punjab has set out how the Police was to prosecute the war when the entire judicial system had literally evaporated: magistrates were in mortal dread of terrorists, witnesses -- even those who had seen those dearest to them being gunned down in front of their eyes -- would not, they could not come forth to testify without risking their lives. Far from falling prey to such specious assumptions, such habitual hectoring, we should beware of the oft-proclaimed device of extremist groups and movements: to use the instruments of democracy to destroy democracy. We should bear in mind Hitler�s ��legality oath�� -- he had sworn that the Nazis would use only legal means to attain power; he stuck to the oath. We should declare openly: yes, we will heed the rights of terrorists -- but only to the extent to which they heed the rights of their victims.

Their access to arms, to money etc. is important, but even more consequential is the ideology of the terrorists: this is what fires them, by internalizing which they become killing machines; this is what beguiles ordinary by-standers into supporting them. More than anything else, this ideology must be exhumed. To accomplish this, there are four things to shun, and six to do.

Shun pseudo explanations. ��Unemployment, specially among the educated youth�� -- each time terrorism erupts, it is attributed to some figment such as this. Unemployment was no higher in Punjab than elsewhere in the early 1980s. Terrorism erupted there and not in, say, Bihar, because Pakistan saw and seized the opportunity that the lunacy of our local politicians had presented: to gain a leg over the Akalis, the Congress leaders had patronized Bhindranwale; he went out of hand; Pakistan took over the bunch around him.

Similarly, unemployment is no less in Punjab today than it was then, but there is no terrorism -- because Pakistan�s design was crushed. What spurred terrorism in Punjab, what spurs it today in Kashmir, in the Northeast is not unemployment -- but opportunity: we have created an open, unobstructed field for the enemy. A country seeing that the one it views as its enemy has blinkered its eyes, that it has tied its hands, shackled its legs, sealed its lips -- as we have -- shall not let the opportunity pass: victory is at hand, it will convince itself.

For the same reason, shun pseudo-remedies. ��But we must get to the roots of their anger,�� many an analyst writes today. And deduces that India, Israel or Russia just must make some concession or the other on Kashmir, Palestine or Chechnya. But the ��anger�� has not been triggered by issues of this kind. It is the result of indoctrination, its roots lie not in Chechnya and Kashmir but in what is drilled into their wards by madrasas.

Similarly, on the assumption that it is inadequate development which is fueling terrorism in an area -- say, Kashmir or the Northeast -- governments are apt to conclude that the remedy is to pump more money into the region, or give further incentives for industrialists to set up shop there. The money just goes to the terrorists. The people, and even more so the rulers of the area, sense that terrorism brings lucre: they develop an immediate, mercenary reason for keeping the area in ferment. Crushing defeat, not more money, is the remedy.

Beware of rationalizers. They come in two sets: the liberals, and the professional propagandists. The latters� efforts are well known, though liberal societies invariably underestimate the sophistication of their techniques, as well as their gall: in reading their tracts, for instance, the average person is liable to think that he has insulated himself by discounting their claims a bit; confident that he has taken the requisite prophylactic, he becomes all the more susceptible to the 100 per cent fabrication.

The liberal apologists are much more destructive: they are more numerous; as they are ��people like us,�� their formulations and rationalizations are more readily believed. ��No religion teaches the killing of innocents,�� says the liberal apologist today � a cliche that turns on what is meant by the word ��innocent��, a meaning the liberal never spells out with reference to the text. For instance, is the person to whom the doctrine of that religion or of that group has been offered, and who does not embrace it, ��innocent��? Innocent not in the eyes of the liberal apologist, but in the eyes of that religion or text. ��God says in the holy book,�� the liberal bleats, ���To you your religion, to me mine��; God declares, �There is no compulsion in religion�.�� But that is but a microscopic fraction of what the text says. Nor does the liberal ever recall the very specific context in which such stray phrases occur in the text. Recall the efforts of the apologists for Communism to whitewash the reality with essays about the �Early Marx�, about the �Paris Manuscripts�.

Shun political correctness. Few things have prevented the West from waking up in time to the dangers that Islamic terrorism today constitutes for it as notions of what is politically correct. These notions have stifled scholarship, they have stifled discourse. They have led the West to shut its eyes to the ideology by which the terrorists were being fired up. The verbal terrorism by which notions of what is correct and what is not the dominant intellectual group in India -- the leftists -- has enforced the norms has disabled the ruling groups, and, through them, the country, to the point of paralysis. Standing up to that verbal terrorism, liberating discourse from those notions is the first requisite of fighting the war against terrorism in India.

Part II - �A State that�s patronising terrorists should wake up to the consequences; in any case its immediate neighbours must�

Indian Express
December 12, 2001

What Propels Them? What Blinds Them?

Arun Shourie
"India has massacred 60,000 Kashmiris, but the people of Kashmir will never rest till they have won freedom;" "India has deployed 700,000 soldiers in the Valley, and yet the Kashmiri mujahideen are inflicting heavy losses on them every day;" "How laughable it is that India has packed the Kargil sector with 40,000 troops, and just a handful of mujahidin are able to inflict humiliation upon humiliation on them;" Indian infrastructure has collapsed to such an extent that even those Indian casualties which were "lucky enough to be evacuated by air, had to wait for three days for a bed in Srinagar hospitals" -- such "facts" are repeated ad nauseum in Pakistani papers. Sixty thousand Kashmiris killed by India? Seven hundred thousand troops in Kashmir? Forty thousand troops in Kargil? Soldiers waiting for three days to get a hospital bed? We tend to dismiss such assertions as the usual lies -- friends who run one of our most conscientious news services about happenings in our neighbourhood, Public Opinion Trends, are so inured to these concoctions that they excise them from their reports! In fact, the concoctions deserve attention.

For one thing they are part of a world-view, they are part of an Ideology. Everything Pakistan does about Kashmir -- stoking terrorism, sending army regulars, spreading fabrications at every international gathering -- it pictures to itself as jihad, as a religious undertaking, indeed as an Allah-ordained duty. Concocting lies then becomes a device for discharging that duty. "War is stratagem," the Prophet has said, "War is deceit." [Sahih Muslim, Volume III, pp. 945, 990-91; Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume IV, pp. 166-67; Sunan Abu Dawud, Volume II, p. 728] Thus one may lie, one may kill the enemy while he is asleep, one may kill him by tricking him. [For instance, Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume IV, pp. 164-65, 167-68.] That is one problem: for the man or force weaned on jihad, the concoctions are an intrinsic part of the struggle he is waging, for him the fact that the war he is waging is Allah-ordained is a complete justification for cruelty, for lies and the rest; on our side, we don't just shut our eyes to the concoctions that result from it, we shut our eyes even more tightly to the Ideology of which they are but the result.

There is an immediate, practical result also. These sorts of "facts" and assertions are repeated so often that by now they have sunk into the subconscious of the average Pakistani. He actually believes that India has massacred sixty thousand Kashmiris, he actually believes that Kashmir is aflame, that Kashmiris are dying to merge into Pakistan, that it is just a matter of months and they will be able to do so. From this it is but a step to conclude that all that is necessary is to give one more push, to launch one more offensive, and the Kashmiris will rise, the place will go up in flames, India will be broken, the job will be done.

The believer, having internalised the concoction, just can't see why the world doesn't believe what he is putting out. As we have seen, Pakistani papers had themselves been reporting -- with evident self-congratulation -- that soldiers of the Pakistan Army have wrested posts from the Indian Army, that they have occupied a village in... As international opinion turned against Pakistan for that very reason, suddenly, as if a switch had been turned, references to the Pakistan Army ceased, and the victories were ascribed to the valiant mujahidin. Within days, references to these mythical mujahidin too were replaced -- now it was the "Kashmiri freedom fighters" who were inflicting the "humiliating defeats" on the Indian Army. One feature of course is that these switches come naturally -- as the war is a jihad in the cause of Allah, whichever thesis will serve The Great Cause is the one which must be pushed. The other is that the believer is just not able to see why the world does not swallow his fabrication.

As everything is a matter of belief in Allah, to question the "fact" which has been put out, to doubt a scenario -- the sheikhchili's scenario in which one favourable twist leads to another devastating turn -- becomes blasphemy, it becomes proof that one lacks faith, it is betrayal. Thus, not to believe that Indians have massacred sixty thousand Kashmiris, to doubt that Kashmir is on the brink of breaking away from India, not to believe that Kashmiris are pining to join Pakistan is to be unpatriotic, it is to lack faith in the fundamental notion that, as they all believe in Islam, all Muslims constitute one, seamless ummah. As a consequence, while not even the allies and props of Pakistan are buying its assertions today, self-delusion remains a duty!

The insurgency which Pakistan had orchestrated in Kashmir is dead: to cite a single index, while the number of tourists in the Valley had fallen to just 600 in 1996, this year they are running close to 250,000. Recruitment of locals has evaporated. But in the Pakistani press the insurgency is at the point of overturning the Indian State! A fundamental change has taken place in the area, writes a commentator in The News of 3 June. " ...Freedom fighters in Kashmir have attained self-sufficiency in weapons and have developed indigenous techniques of fighting which have become a way of life for them," he writes. "They fight under the cover of darkness, under the protection of mountains and in their own area which they know very well. They move in the area like wild goats and can reach anywhere without any difficulty. They return to their homes and hearths in the morning after accomplishing their task and join their family on the jobs which are needed to be done to earn livelihood." "Two weeks of fighting in the Kargil sector have established the following facts," the analyst continues. "That the indigenous insurrection movement in Kashmir is so strong and so well-armed that India can no longer hold it in check. It is also no longer possible for India to cross the international boundary and so the fighting will remain confined to Kashmir where India has always been the loser..."

"On the diplomatic front the Indians are playing on the back-foot," writes an analyst in The News of 4 June. "....The Kargil operation [of India], aimed at killing the Kashmir issue, will have helped to chisel away at the paralysed and hardened Kashmir position of the international players [an acknowledgment there!]. And the Kashmiris living under Indian control know that. Much like the Intifada which proved to be a potent stimulus for the Palestinians under Israeli occupation, India's Kargil fiasco will renew the Kashmiri resolve to fight on. Psychologically, the fact that a mere 400 - 600 mujahidin have bogged down the world's third largest army for a few months, irrespective of the final outcome [another acknowledgment there!], will be a major morale booster for the Kashmiris of Kashmir." The diplomatic isolation of Pakistan is for all to see, but the analyst remarks, "Nawaz Sharief meanwhile, ably supported on foreign policy issues by his Information Minister and Foreign Office, has pursued a near-faultless India policy. He has mixed peace offers with commitment to his country's defence and projected nuclear strength with gentleness. He is indeed South Asia's strong man of peace...." Remember, The News is the paper which was till recently the special target of the attentions of Nawaz Sharief and his Information Minister!

Belief makes one not just blind, it makes one reckless. The Taliban in the madrasas are of course fed Quranic stories of the "wars" of Badr etc. But they are not the only ones. The regular soldier and officer of the Pakistani Army has them drilled into him just as deep. And the lesson from these stories which is stuffed into him is not some particular stratagem to be followed in a siege or an assault, say; the lesson he internalises is that Allah shall always come to the aid of believers, that the side of Allah shall prevail. So all one has to do is leap.

One of the things that strikes one in reading books from Pakistan, the analyses in their newspapers, judgments of their courts is the singular absence of subtlety, of shades. The analyses are gross: the categories are basic, the conclusions predictable. This is not the result merely of mental habits or capacities. Ideology makes grossness inevitable. Everything is either black or white, everyone is either a co-religionist or one who will some day deceive one, every engagement is going to turn out one way -- capitalism is certain to collapse, it is on the verge of collapsing, Allah is bound to come to the assistance of believers, His cause is bound to prevail...

There is another consequence -- Pakistani newspapers are replete with instances of it. The belief having been drilled into him that he is doing Allah's Will -- or, as in Marxism-Leninism, of History -- the believer just cannot believe that the fault may lie with him. As the war he is waging has been ordained by Allah, the one who is opposing him must, by definition, be doing so for some perverse reason, for some ulterior purpose. Pakistanis have been genuinely surprised at Washington's statements disapproving their crossing the Line of Control. They just cannot see that Pakistan might be in the wrong. Their analysts hint that the USA is tilting towards India because it is drooling at the prospect of India's large market! Commenting on a statement of the American Secretary of State, The Nation of June 6 remarks ruefully, "India being the bigger market for trade does not mean that the world should give up its moral values on political issues"! By the 8th, the paper is hinting at some even deeper mystery! Repeating the new fabrications on the Line of Control, the paper remarks in an editorial, "If despite India's strange illogicality, the US State Department chooses to buy the Indian accusations and discounts the Pakistani version of the incident, there has to be more to it than a fair assessment of the situation"!

The Indians cannot be fighting Pakistani troops because they have occupied Indian territory. They are doing so for some other, unworthy, deplorable reasons. Vajpayee is facing an election, and launching a war against Pakistan has been his party's traditional way of gathering votes! "The BJP government has collapsed despite its 'popular' nuclear policy," observes Najam Sethi's The Friday Times of 4-10 June in its editorial, "but it still clings to the old political tricks to garner votes. It is also hostage to an aggressive policy in Kashmir. If it lets up, the Congress will pillory it by adopting a more hawkish stance. India's politicians have therefore hog-tied themselves by their devotion to this vote-getting gimmick..." "They [the Indian politicians] have made de-escalation more difficult all round," it continues -- Pakistani troops cross the Line of Control, our forces, by fighting back, make de-escalation difficult! "The Congress government committed the 'popular' folly of sending troops to Siachin. But no later government has dared to withdraw troops from it..." So long as Pakistani troops were occupying Siachin it was far-sightedness, it became folly when Indians occupied it! And daring would consist in vacating Siachin for the Pakistani Army, not in holding it!

In this analysis the BJP government is strong enough to push its "old tricks to garner votes". In other analyses, the reason is the opposite! Writing in The Nation of 28 May, an analyst tells his readers that an Interim, weak government is in office in Delhi, and that "hawks in the Indian military establishment are ruling the roost," and that this is what accounts for the scale of the response, the air-strikes and the rest!

But such objective factors -- "old political tricks to garner votes" and the like -- are never enough for a believer. He must detect something deep, some fundamental perversity in the one who is being so obdurate as not to fall at the believer's feet. Predictably, therefore, that staple of Pakistani papers has returned: "Hindu cunning"! And this time, just as predictably, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee is the epitome of it. "Mr Vajpayee has proved more two-faced than his predecessor," notes The Friday Times. "Vajpayee -- the man who showed statesmanship by describing his visit to Minar Pakistan as 'the defining moment in history' -- has only appeared at the bar of history as a clumsy pygmy," The News of 30 May tells its readers. "A short-sighted and pathetically parochial politician whose instincts for political survival are both reactionary and jingoistic. His passion for the cheap thrill coupled with the BJP's desire to regain a foothold in contemporary Indian politics have resulted in airstrikes on Kashmiri freedom fighters..."

It isn't just information from which Ideology insulates one. Ideology insulates one from experience just as much. When the believer succeeds, he is confirmed in the belief that the Ideology has driven into him -- that Allah is with him. But the Ideology has also driven another notion into him -- a notion that protects the Ideology from an adverse outcome, but by the same token disables the believer from learning. When they are defeated, the faithful have been taught to conclude, Allah is just testing their faith: Allah has put defeat in their path, they have been taught, to ascertain whether at such a time they lose faith in Allah's promise. Do they abandon their faith in Allah?, Allah wants to see. Do they blame Him rather than themselves?, Allah wants to make sure.

This Ideology-induced deafness is compounded in the case of Pakistan by the essentially authoritarian nature of both -- its society as well as polity. In free, democratic societies there is incessant self-examination. In authoritarian societies pasting blame on The Other becomes nature. The defeat in Vietnam caused an enormous amount of introspection in America: it led, among other things, to new strategic thinking, to new technologies. The rout in Bangladesh caused none in Pakistan. We see the same sequence today. Indian forces are rolling back the Pakistanis in Kargil. Internationally Pakistan stands isolated as never before. But Pakistani press is singing hosannas: the success of the mujahideen in holding the Indian Army at bay has inspired the freedom fighters of Kashmir, they sing to themselves, the uprising against India will now reach new heights; the Kashmir issue has been "irretrievably internationalized," they exult; the world now realizes that Kashmir can be the nuclear flash-point, they declare to their own satisfaction.

These features hold for Pakistanis in general, immersed as they are in, committed as they are to an Ideology, Islam. Each of them is compounded ten-fold in the case of the officer and soldier of the Pakistan Army. Stephen Cohen has noted how the "Sandhurst" and "American" generations of their officers have passed, how the officer-class consists increasingly of persons from the lower middle class and peasant stock. In the country at large these classes are among the ones which have been swept up most by Islamic rhetoric: and, what with the continuing collapse of educational institutions, at an accelerating pace. The success which the Army has achieved through the Taliban in Afghanistan also buttresses the notion that "the time of Islam has returned".

There are other factors too. The more intense Islamic rhetoric has become, the more cut-off from outside influences and opinions Pakistan has become, the Army even more so than other sections: almost the only thing which has kept an aperture open to the rest of the world is Pakistan's technological backwardness -- because of this backwardness, it has had to continue relying on other countries for technical upgradation, and hence some contrary ideas must still be sneaking in. But it is a tiny aperture: the countries from whom it secures the weapons are also ones whose life and ways its Ideology teaches it to hate and reject.

Not only is the Army, like other sections of Pakistani society, insulated from the world, it is insulated from those other sections within Pakistan too. The Army is overwhelmingly Punjabi. Within that one province, its recruits are overwhelmingly from a small clutch of five or six districts.

Furthermore, that the Army has such an over-weaning, predominant status in Pakistani society and governance impels a certain deafness: few dare question what it says and does, all the greater reason for the Army to conclude that what it is thinking is valid. And there is another twist. The Pakistani Army has great power, overwhelming power vis a vis other sections of society, but not esteem. That went -- first with the way it lost Pakistan in 1971, and then with the mess that the Army made of the country during the years it had absolute sway, the Zia years. Since then, while the success in Afghanistan has restored its esteem somewhat, this is counter-balanced with the reputation for corruption, the reputation for being involved in the drug-trade etc. which have got stuck to it.

To the faith of the believer, therefore, has been added a compulsion -- to prove itself again.

Each of these factors applies to organizations like the ISI twenty-fold. And to the terrorist organizations the ISI etc. have spawned -- a hundred-fold.

In a word, Kargil is but the latest of what Pakistan will continue to inflict on us. Defeating each such venture with demonstrative harshness is as much a part of the peace-process as pursuing every opening like Lahore.

The Afternoon Despatch & Courier
June 25, 1999