Patricia Mukhim
Terrorists thrive on grievances about one or other issue. The army of terrorists across the world would be equal in number to the armies of several nations put together. Terrorism is a subversive form of warfare because those enlisted on its rolls are there for a cause. They are not army regulars who are looked after by the state. They are indoctrinated into an ideology which has morphed into a radical form of the religion they belong to. They are not there for the money but because of their belief that they are pursuing a holy war. It takes a lot to be a suicide bomber who when in the process of inflicting pain on the ‘enemy’ would also blow himself up into smithereens. India has seen two prime ministers die at the hands of terrorists. Indira Gandhi was killed by her own guards who were sure she had done incalculable harm to the cause of the Sikhs and their demand for Khalistan by ordering the storming of the Golden Temple. Rajiv Gandhi was the victim of a live bomb from a woman cadre of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who were fighting for a sovereign space within Sri Lanka. India should therefore have come up a counter-terrorism doctrine that has short, medium and long term strategies. This country can no longer become a sitting duck for terrorists striking from across the border or those nurtured on its own soil.
While there are distinguishing features between the Maoists of central, south and eastern India and their terror modules and the terror mongers in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) and also large areas within Kashmir, the tactics employed are the same although the motivations are different. The Maoists see the state as their natural enemy; an enemy that has disempowered them, subjected them to gross neglect, confiscated their land and resources through use of coercive measures and taken away their agency to speak up and voice their genuine or perceived grievances. The seeds of terrorism are nurtured in the crucible of collective hurt that is converted to anger. That anger is channelized into a force that is constantly fed by an anti-state propaganda. The anger has to be sustained; so too the non-state forces. Money is a critical resource and it comes from extortion and from public support. Terrorism cannot sustain itself without the support of the local populace that is conditioned to believe in state failure to address and redress their long-felt grievances and which therefore sees the needs for a counter, redemptive force to avenge those grievances.
In Kashmir, terrorism is sustained by a belief and justification that the Indian state is an occupation force and that the people of Kashmir are victims of an unfinished agenda of Partition. That was evident ever since Sheikh Abdullah refused to extend the rule of the Kashmir state beyond those areas that constituted a Muslim majority area after Maharajah Hari Singh had signed the Instrument of Accession into the Indian Union. This notion of an occupation force gains currency when the Indian armed forces are sent to Kashmir to counter terror. This is an egg and chicken game that has gone on for a long time. One of the grievances of the Kashmiris is also that the plebiscite sanctioned by the United Nations was never carried out.
The following excerpts from history bring out clearly the reasons why the plebiscite was never conducted. Maharajah Hari Singh signed the Instrument of Accession to India on 26 October 1947 in Srinagar. Before that he has sought help from India to tackle the Pakistan raiders. As soon as the IoA was signed India airlifted its forces to Srinagar on 27 October 1947. India then took the matter to the United Nations (UN). The UN Resolution clearly stated that Pakistan is the aggressor in this case and that the issue is between the independent State of Jammu & Kashmir and India. Pakistan was told to vacate all occupied territory in J&K and handover the vacated territory to India. On its part India had to remove all its forces leaving only enough to maintain law and order. Only when those conditions were fulfilled would a plebiscite be conducted in J&K where people would choose whether they wanted to be with Pakistan or India. Interestingly, Pakistan sought for time to vacate its occupation but it never complied with this UN Resolution.
It would be a good reading for all historians and young scholars trying to understand the real Pakistan to read Prof KK Aziz’s deconstruction of history as taught to students in Pakistan. Prof Aziz, a Pakistani historian studied at the Government College, Lahore, where his teachers included Ahmed Shah Bukhari Patras and Prof Sirajuddin. He went on to teach at Cambridge, Oxford, Manchester, Toronto, Khartoum and Heidelberg.
According to Prof Aziz who has scrutinized the history books taught in the schools of Pakistan, generations of Pakistani children have been taught lies and untruths. He has documented these misleading aspects of history in his book, “Murder of History.” The real history of Pakistan from 1947 is not taught or discussed in Pakistan and is also ignored by Kashmiri separatists despite being aware of the facts.
The division of India into Muslim majority Pakistan and India under the India Independence Act was applicable to areas under British India and not to principalities. Jammu and Kashmir was a principality where the writ of the India Independence Act did not run. Jinnah, the Governor General of Pakistan signed a STANDSTILL agreement that recognised J&K as a sovereign and independent state. On October 22, 1947 Pakistan invaded J&K. This is recorded by the Prime Minister of Pakistan Liaqat Ali Khan in Feb 1948 before the UN fact finding mission when it visited Karachi. One of the clauses in the Indian Independence Act was that sovereign states such as Hyderabad, J&K amongst others had the right to decide whether to accede to India or Pakistan. However since Maharajah Hari Singh was a Hindu while the majority population of J&K was Muslim the Act provided for a plebiscite in the state. But since one third of J&K was occupied by Pakistan in complete violation of the UN Resolution, India could never conduct the plebiscite in J&K. Before the invasion of Pakistan on October 22, 1947 J&K included the present territory of POK, Gilgit, Baltistan , Jammu, Ladakh and Kashmir valley.
Cited below are some of the deconstructions of Pakistan’s history books by Prof KK Aziz Citations from the Social Studies book – Mu’ashrati Ulum
Prescribed myths: As soon as the partition of India took place “many Mulsims began to migrate from the Hindu- majority areas to Pakistan (page2).
Facts: “Many” Muslims from the Hindu provinces did not migrate to Pakistan. A very small minority came over from Delhi, the United Provinces and Bihar, a tiny trickle from Bombay and the Central provinces and a few hundred families from South India. Had “many” Muslims left India for Pakistan the India of today would not have a Muslim population exceeding that of Pakistan. In the same chapter wars with India are mentioned in patriotic not historical terms. It says, “In 1965, the Pakistan Army conquered several areas of India and when India was on the point of being defeated she requested the United nations to arrange a ceasefire,”….. After the 1965 war, India with the help of the Hindus living in East Pakistan instigated the people there against the people of West Pakistan and at last in December 1971 herself invaded East Pakistan. The conspiracy resulted in the separation of East Pakistan from us. All of us should receive military training and be prepared to fight the enemy (page 93).
The real gem according to Prof Aziz appears on Page 139 in the chapter on India which says, “previously it was a part of our country.” Aziz asks, Was Pakistan a part of India before 1947 or India a part of Pakistan, the author and the book alone can answer this question. The outer cover-cum-title page informs us that this book, though written in Urdu, is also prescribed for the English medium schools. The following credentials for the book leaves us with no doubt about Pakistan’s indoctrination project of its young minds who will all grow up hating the enemy – India.
Mu’ashrati Ulum, West Pakistan Textbook Board, Lahore, 5th. cd., April 1969, pp. 160. Author : Muhammad Abdul Aziz, M.A. (Alig.), M.A. (London), Ph.D. (Indiana), West Pakistan Education Service (Senior), Director, West Pakistan Bureau of Education, Lahore. The title page says it is published for the Board by Qaumi Kutab Khana, Lahore; the outside front cover says it is published for the Board by Pakistan Book Store, Lahore. Print order: 73,000 copies.
The present attacks on India are based on these wrong constructs of history which have now become embedded in religious ideology and therefore more difficult to tackle. Imagine several generations being brainwashed to construct an enemy that must be avenged. This makes the war on terror a difficult terrain that would require the best minds to strategise and find a way forward.