MRS. Doshl, Mr. Arun Bongirwar,
Mr. Bharat Doshi, Mr. Jayant Kawale, ladies and gentlemen.
I am extremely grateful to the
Lalit Doshi Memorial Trust for having invited me to deliver the 2002 Lalit
Doshi Memorial lecture. I have been asked to speak on Terrorism and India,
a subject on which, in the last one decade a tot has been written and spoken
about. But when the debate goes on and on, one of the impressions which
is formed by an average reader or an ordinary citizen, is one of great
frustration. Why is that we are not able to contain this menace? At times
some of us even do not aptly realize what the major dimensions and consequences
of this issue have been. I recollect on 9/11 when the World Trade Centre
in New York was httacked and the Pentagon was partly damaged, snore than
3000 lives were lost. In his first address to the World. the President
of the United States started off by saying that “a War has been launched
on us”. It was one major incident, highly deplorable, killing about 3,000
people, probably one of the frost severe terrorist attacks in the World
anywhere, and the US President rightly commented so. We, in India, have
had conventional wars. We had a conventional war in 1947. We had with Pakistan
a conventional war in 1965 and in 1971. We had a conventional war with
China in 1962, one recently in Kargil. I think the consequences or the
effect, the final drubbing, that our neighbour received in the other three
wars, perhaps brought about a change in thinking. Our conventional strength
far out-matches them and therefore in the last 15 odd years a different
form of proxy war has started. It would also be erroneous for us to restrict
this proxy war only in the context of Jammu & Kashmir. We have in the
last 15 odd years, seen 5 different kinds of terrorism emerging in India.
Of course the most significant one, is the one we see on account of cross
border insurgency in Jammu & Kashmir. The second in the Punjab, which
we saw through the 1980s and early 1990s, which we were fortunate to have
been able to overcome. The third we saw a severe problem since then partly
diluted, in the South from the LTTE. We have had continued insurgency in
several parts of North East and the latest to join these categories has
been the kind of terrorists which has spread along various parts of central
India the Maoist insurgency from Andhra Pradesh, Chattisgarh parts of Madhya
Pradesh, Orissa, Bihar right up till the Nepal border. No less severe,
the kind of terrorism which we see inspired by various other external agencies.
A number of people have still not realized the consequences, the price and the cost that we have had to pay for this. I remember early this year when there was a debate on the proposed anti-terrorist law. I tried to collect several figures, I have updated those figures as to what is the cost involved as far as India is concerned. And compare it to the cost United States had to pay when their President said “a War has been launched on us”. In the four conventional wars that we have fought, I am also including Kargil in it the total number of people who lost their lives, i.e. the security people, is 9857. So, a little less than 10,000 people lost their lives, in all the conventional wars that India has bought till date. In the last 15 years, the number of civilians who have lost their lives to terrorism is 62.221. A figure almost 6 to 7 times more than those who have lost their lives in conventional wars. The security personnel killed in various terrorist actions is again over 9000. You can add this to the 62,000 figure and you can find that conventional wars, which now don't seem to be a recurring occurrence, is very insignificant in comparison to this proxy war which has continued. Number of people rendered homeless is close to 6 lakhs. The total amount of money spent and this doesn't include the amount that we spent on our security forces, army and so on, on merely relief and rehabilitation, on the special paramilitary forces that we deploy for anti-insurgency - the figure now crosses Rs.45,000 crores. More than Rs.45,000 crores is what is deprived to our villages in terms of electricity and power, in terms of health care, in terms of education, in terms of roads. That is the kind of money which has actually been employed in just the anti-insurgency measures. Merely the increase in budget on agencies involved in fighting terrorism, since the early 80s, is 2600 per cent. That is the cost involved as far as terrorism is concerned. What is the kind of methodologies the terrorists employ? I will just read out one figure, I have several others, sharing the kind of seizures which our security agencies have made. What has been already deployed in killing these 62,000 and 9000 people is something separate. Just the seizures alone of explosives and I am not referring to the details of rifles, pistols, grenades, machine guns, in the seizure and you can exclude the ones (explosive) which are utilised in this, is more than 49,000 kgs.
Close to 50,000 Kgs and I asked one of the security experts, as to how much is iris figure of 49,000 kilograms plus, what is the damage potential that it has, and I was told that the damage potential that this has had is actually to strike out and blast every inch of Indian soil. That is the kind of insurgent effort as far as India is concerned. And if we geographically test it out, there is hardly any region of the-country which remains unaffected by this. These are just numerical figures, but these numerical figures in relation to terrorism, in terms of money spent, the national effort wasted is only one aspect of the picture.
There is another great aspect -- as to what are the other hidden costs which are involved as far as terrorism is concerned. Firstly, there is a large political cost. The political cost involved is that terrorism tends to undermine democratic values. It undermines democratic institutions. It assaults each one of them and then a feeling gains ground that in order to deal with terrorists, you need certain strong methods to deal with them and therefore you have to depart from what is the chosen democratic cause itself. It has an adverse effect as far as economic growth and development is concerned. How much did one of India's most affluent States, the Punjab, suffer on account of terrorism in 10 years?
It then leads to the - strong antiterrorist methods which are employed as part of counter terrorism, the end result is what is normally a phrase used in the areas affected by terrorism, a sense of alienation. Because a sense of alienation builds in when strong counter terrorism methods are used-, because innocent citizens at times may also become victims of counter-terrorist methods. We hear this phrase repeatedly in the context of Kashmir. Why don't you take steps in order to prevent alienation of population? The security forces don't go there to alienate the people there, they go there in fact to protect the people from the terrorists. When the security forces act, the kind of propaganda, which builds up, results in alienation of people. I was recently going through some very interesting figures when we discussed this alienation. For different years, I tried to pick up and this is the non-security expenditure from the planned and the non-planned expenditure by Government of India, which is an assistance given to various States. What is the per capita expenditure-that we undertake on every citizen of India in each State? What is the All India average when it comes to the rest of the country and what is the comparative amount that we spend on citizens living in Jammu & Kashmir. And I found that in the last 10 years, when I ran through the figures, each year the difference was ranging between 1 to 7 or 1 to 10. So in terms of expenditure you are spending on an average citizen of Jammu & Kashmir 7 to 10 times more in terms of central assistance than you are spending on an average citizen of rest of the country. And despite that a sense of alienation can get built in, because when terrorists strike them, people don't like investing, where Jehadis are moving with guns, even traditional income avenues suffer; sense of security suffers and counter- terrorism measures at times end up in alienating people. And then this defies the real logic. I looked at the second figure, in 1999-2000 the National figure of population living below poverty line is 26%. In the last three years it may have come down a little bit but that is the last figure which is available. An affluent State like Punjab compared to this national figure of 26% living below poverty line (BPL), was close to 6.5 percent. On the strength of this entire central assistance, which is given, I was curious to know what was the BPL figure, the below poverty line figure in Jammu & Kashmir. It is lesser than Punjab - at 3.8%! So, you can have 7 to 10 times more grant, you can have a BPL figure of 3.8% and still a message can go nationally and internationally that there is a growing sense of alienation, because of the entire environment created by the terrorists.
They have undermined democratic values. They have had an adverse impact on the growth rates in the state they lead to an increased sense of alienation. They assault social cohesion of the society. You have had migration of population. You had dissatisfaction between different groups of population. One community, the Pandits, had to move out completely. The valley has discontentment for its own reason. If you go to the Ladakh and Jammu regions, there is discontentment that we don't get our share of the entire assistance and development and the root cause of this discontentment that builds up, is the kind of impact that terrorism leaves on a civil society. There is also on other areas a serious adverse effect that it can have on the defence preparedness of the country. Because, if a large part of the national resource is to go into various other anti-insurgency measures and the costs involved therein, then you tend to neglect areas where you should conventionally have been spending. These are several areas with which different agencies and instruments of the government have been fully seized of. In fact now the realization that the State is having repeatedly, that the conventional wars are not the real threat. It is the on-going proxy war by way of terrorism, which can have a far more dangerous impact on a society and far more difficult to fight with.
I will just quote one or two paragraphs for instance from the deliberations of the group of ministers on national security. This is May 2001 - “while instances Of inter-State wars have significantly declined and are expected to continue to do so, there is an increase in cross border interference by one State in the internal environment of another, arising out of territorial, religious, cultural, ethnic factors and the easy availability of sophisticated weaponry in the international market. This trend is likely to continue at least in short and medium terms. The National Security Advisory Board observes - “In the foreseeable future, international terrorism and induced domestic terrorism will pose a greater danger to our national security than a conventional war. National response to terrorism in its varied form is presently inadequate, of an ad-hoe character and generally ineffective.” The Kargil review committee almost said the same thing. “Pakistan has ruthlessly employed terrorism in Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir and the North East. In the present international security environment, proxy war and terrorism have become preferred means of hurting a neighbor’s social, political and economical well-being.”
Now this is the real challenge, and for this real challenge we have various forces, substantially outside the country some of them even aided by small groups within the country and I for one believe we should never be misled by the kind of ostensible stand that people take when put under various international pressures so that they get to escape out of a given situation convenient stands of the kind which our neighbour has taken. May I just highlight this by quoting what the real intention, and here I am just going to quote 5-7 people as to what their real intention as far as employing terrorism as an instrument of state policy by our neighbour is concerned or by' various groups, which at least our neighbour now wants us to believe and wants the world to believe, are functioning without its patronage or authority. General Pervez Musharraf, I am reading one of his year 2000 statements, -- “Jehad is not Terrorism”. This is the philosophy he tried to espouse. “Mujahideen organizations are not Terrorist organizations. Jehad has been revived during the Afghan war and now it is Jehad in Kashmir, Muslims from different parts of the world were coming to support their oppressed brothers and sisters.” It is a different matter that after 9/11 he decided to have a different policy, having publicly taken a stance that what was happening in Afghanistan was actually Jehad. He decided to create a distinction between what he wanted to do on his western border as against what he wanted to do on his eastern border. On the western border he joined the global war against terrorism. The forces which had organized terrorism in Afghanistan had actually been sponsored and promoted by the Afghan bureau of the ISI. He distanced himself when put under international pressure but for some reasonable period of time had a completely contrary stand when it came to the western borders. “Fighting Jehad against India is a duty of the entire Muslim world. Kashmir cannot be resolved by means other than Jehad” This is Osama Bin Laden on August 27
Masoor Azhar one of the terrorists who got released after the hijack - “Our mission is just not Srinagar, we have to capture New Delhi”. And the tactics which are deployed --when I mentioned the deployment of tactics like attacking social cohesion in Indian society -- you have the head of the Deendar-e-Anjuman chief – this is the organization which was banned after several churches in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh were attacked -- “The Mujahideen will fight, you must cause loss to the government property and divert its attention when I enter India through Kashmir with 8 lakh people, money should be looted for financing the activities.” And the next sentence is very significant in the context of what this organisation. Deendar-e-Anjuman had done. “Attack Christians so that international pressure will be built on government and on India.”
This is really the magnitude of the threat that we face today. How do we try and answer this threat? The threat, this can really surface by various methodologies which are reached. There is a lot of ideological inspiration which goes in, there is a lot of training which goes in. The kind of training, which almost inspires you and motivates you to die yourself. In fact, the suicide squads which have created an impact in several parts of the world, United States, India being some of their prime targets, are organized by people who are actually not scared to die and therefore, with their ability to hit out at a target which is not prepared for such an assault, the danger level seems to be very high. What then is the real answer to this? The answers are several. For one, you need a very powerful, not only domestic but with international cooperation a very strong link, a grid virtually a national and international grid, as far as the intelligence systems on these people are concerned. You need to have knowledge of their activities in advance because terrorists always choose the time and place of their assault. They never give you warning in advance and therefore targets are taken by surprise. You need a genuine and a powerful international cooperation as far as terrorists are concerned. You need a powerful security regime as far as terrorists are concerned and finally you need a very strong and powerful legal regime. How to deal with them once you are able to get hold of them. As far as the international regime is concerned, over the last few years it has slowly been building up. After 9/11 hopes have really been raised that the international regime against terrorism is actually going to be very powerful and strong. In fact, I do recollect, this is what the Home Minister had mentioned yesterday in Parliament, that there was one impression of the World during the cold war regime. There were identified groups, identified poles in the World with which smaller nations had their own friendships and therefore their stands were well known in advance. But once the World moved towards more being a uni-polar world, coupled with the new terrorist threat, the World has started actually having a newer methodology of looking at all this. And particularly in this context, when we meet our friends from the United States of America, one of the surprises which we always express to them, are the concerns which we express to them, that today the regime for having two different standards on dealing with terrorist organizations or on dealing with democracies world over is entirely different. And, therefore, whenever an effort is made to give at least some more time, if not benefit of the doubt, to those nations which are responsible for sponsoring terrorism in this region and trying to destabilize the region, it becomes quite un-understandable, particularly after 9/11. Our war or battle against terrorism did not begin on 911. We have been fighting our lone war for almost 10 to 15 years prior to that. 9/11 only enabled the world to wake up to the reality of the consequences of terrorism. And the World having woken up to that reality when 3,000 people unfortunately lost their lives in New York, labeled it as a war which is launched on the United States of America; then with more than 70,000 people having suffered the same fate, terrorism on our soil cannot be taken to be any ordinary war and therefore, the world leaders of the global alliance need not at this stage merely advise restraint. They equally have a responsibility to be on the forefront of fighting this terrorism because their war against terrorism is not selective, it is global.
Shri Arun Jaitley's article on terrorism is so comprehensive that we decided to publish it in full, without unnecessarily editing it, in two parts. The first part appears in this issue (December 16-31). The second and last pare will appear in the January 1-15, 2003 issue.
Editor