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Warring with neighbours

By Sudhanshu Ranade

The shocking attack in Amarnath is an obvious effort to turn back the clock — to push the two countries, India and Pakistan, to the brink of war so as to ease the squeeze on cross-border terrorism. Reacting to the news, a spokesperson for the Kashmir Study Group told the BBC that cross-border terrorism was not the only problem. Ten to twelve Kashmiri Muslims are killed every day.

The point is that unless the problem is solved in its entirety, it cannot be solved at all. But problem solving is the last thing on our minds. The Shiv Sena hot-heads say the Government lacks the `will' to fight terror. Playing right into the hands of the terrorists, they would like to open up a second front. The VHP leader, Ashok Singhal, insists on opening up a third front as well. All Muslims, he says, must pay for what some of them are doing.

The challenge of gradually squeezing the life out of cross-border terrorism without a single shot being fired is well understood and despite appearances, is being satisfactorily dealt with, though we do need to hold steady in the face of gusts, and work out an imaginative `everybody wins' solution for Kashmir.

On the third front, however, we are headed for a major disaster. If there are troubles within the family we will have no peace at home and no peace with our neighbour. Asking Muslims to `go to Pakistan' is in effect an invitation for Pakistan to come to us.

A disaster on this front can be averted only if we come to grips with the things that go into its making. As it happens a handy blueprint is available, in the form of an insightful study on the Deadly Ethnic Riot (OUP 2001), which described the recent riots in Gujarat in startling detail even before they actually occurred. Forewarned is forearmed.

The book does not specifically name Godhra as the trigger for the Gujarat carnage. But that is a matter of detail. So long as the atmosphere is combustible any other sufficiently inflammatory provocation could serve as a precipitant, the function of which is to `enable crowds to spontaneously act in unison', thereby maximising the `rewards' even as it minimises the risk. After all, even though it is always the Hindus who are on the defensive, those arrested on such occasions are mostly Muslims, who also account for a majority of those killed.

From a strategic point of view, when and where riots actually erupt does not matter. What matters is the creation of a combustible atmosphere in large parts of the country and this task is accomplished by a cold calculation that is barely visible behind the wild and violent mobs who take centre-stage every time a riot erupts.

Goad and taunt Hindus to `defend' themselves against Muslims, hand out bricks, `trishuls', and swords if necessary to `equip' them to do so generate hostility, create a wedge.

It was in Gujarat that this strategy was first institutionalised 30 years ago, with the formation of a Committee to Defend the Hindu Religion.

Provocative public meetings/processions and the distribution of inflammatory literature led to the 1969 riot in Ahmedabad, the most serious anti-Muslim riot in the half decade of serious riots that followed the war with Pakistan in 1965.

Muslims must be taught a lesson — beaten and/or humiliated into submission, Hindus alienated from their Muslim friends and from secular or caste-based parties, officials paralysed into inactivity by the intensity of popular support for the cause — as reflected in, say, the total lack of remorse among the essentially normal rather than deviant young males who actually engage in the riots, and among those who stand on the sidelines giving silent support.

It is hard to break out of this trap once the wheel is set in motion. The worse things get the more propitious the atmosphere for hardliners. On both sides, it is foolish to try beating people into submission. This only results in the marginalisation of decent instincts, especially if the more belligerent more combustible elements have friends who are beyond your reach.

The only glimmer of hope is that leaders who have managed to ascend to power on the basis of such strategies now have interests that are diametrically opposed to those who are still on their way up. Once their personal needs have been met it is in their interest to help people to put contentious memories aside. Ideologues can be persuaded that they now have a chance to win their battles without a single shot being fired.

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