Author: Editorial
Publication: The Daily Pioneer
Date: March 27, 2006
The Seema Suraksha Bal (SSB) is understandably
concerned over the mushrooming of 1,900 madarsas on both sides of the India-Nepal
border in the recent past. Particularly significant is their proliferation
- 800 in number - on Nepal's side of the border. Muslims constitute a minuscule
part of that country's population and though they are concentrated along the
India-Nepal border, the size of their population hardly warrants such a massive
sprouting of these seminaries.
Clearly, there is more here than meets the
eye given the seriousness of the problem of cross-border terrorism that India
faces and the ISI's role in using Nepal as a base for promoting it. The organisation's
imprimatur was starkly visible in the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight
IC-814 from Kathmandu to Delhi, to Kandahar in Afghanistan on December 14,
1999.
Besides, it has been closely involved in attempts
to despatch into India fake Rs 500 denomination currency notes with a view
to damaging this country's economy. The porous nature of the 1,868 km long
India-Nepal border has helped it in not only this but also the infiltration
of terrorists, arms and ammunition, and explosives.
The intelligence agencies are doubtless keeping
an eye on the 50 or 60 of madarsas considered sensitive among the 1,100 on
the Indian side of the border. This is hardly enough given the length and
the porousness of the border which as many as five Indian States - Uttaranchal,
Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Sikkim - have with Nepal and the serious
situation created by growing links between Maoists, who now control 87 per
cent of the mountain kingdom's territory, and the ISI which is eager to use
any situation or group to hit at India.
While the plan to increase the SSB's strength
by 20 battalions, modernising it, and creating two more sectors for its activities,
will help when it is implemented - which is expected to be done by 2008 -
the question remains as to what happens in the interim, particularly since
madarsas have been used for mass producing fundamentalist Islamist terrorists
in both Pakistan and Bangladesh, and are known to have harboured terrorists
in India.
The problem has a pan-Indian dimension. Madarsas
have proliferated along India's borders with Bangladesh along West Bengal
and Assam, and Pakistan along the Rajasthan border, as well. In fact they
have sprouted all over the country. According to an Intelligence Bureau report
in April 2002, there were as many as 23,098 madarsas in 12 Indian States with
the largest number being in Kerala with 9,975 of them. Madhya Pradesh followed
with 6,000 and Maharashtra 2,435. The border States of West Bengal, Assam,
Gujarat and Rajasthan had 2,116, 2,002, 1,825 and 1,780 of them respectively.
The first requisite is to control their growth
through compulsory registration and regulate their functioning and curricula
to ensure that they do not breed Islamist terrorism. The States that have
laws to this end should enforce them effectively; those that do not, should
enact them. And for both to happen, there has to be a strong mass movement
against the politics of minority appeasement that is severely threatening
the country's security.
