Lesson from the Mumbai Attack

COMMENTARY

the onus of proving innocence on the accused, because his/her fingerprints were found at the scene of the crime or that weapons were recovered from him/her, then it ignores the reality that it is perfectly possible in India to plant evidence or foist false cases against someone by virtue of the fact that the person is Muslim, dalit, adivasi or Naxalite.

Conversely, police, prosecutors and the lower judiciary provide greater latitude to suspected mass murderers who are H indus, as is evident from the recent case of Gujarat minister Maya Kodnani and Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Jayant P atel who evaded summons issued by the Supreme Court appointed Special Investigation Team and managed to get anticipatory bail despite being implicated in the Naroda Patiya mass murder. It is worth noting that the Godhra accused have yet to get bail despite the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) being revoked against them. In other words, we cannot be blind to the fact that, in India, draconian laws, such as the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), POTA, Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) or Chapter VI of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) on offences against the State, have been used, selectively and deliberately, to target ethnic communities and the underclass. Besides, when the law defines unlawful acts and terrorism vaguely or when it proscribes political ideologies, thereby turning criminal what is otherwise legitimate, then the law becomes intrinsically unjust and ends up causing great harm, as Binayak Sen and Arun Ferreira’s cases so well illustrate. Finally, the fact that such laws exclude state agencies from its p urview, assuming that they cannot be guilty of carrying out acts of mass murder or of conniving in such acts carried out by non-state actors, because they are said to be acting in “good faith”, it ends up subverting the criminal justice system. The truth is that discrimination and persecution beget resentment and nurture a sense of revenge.

Therefore, we need to remind ourselves that the Pakistani state is not unique i nsofar as its patronage of “majoritarian” communal-fascist groups is concerned. Or else how diligent and fair has the Indian state been in going after mass murderers

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when they have single-mindedly focused on Muslims as suspects behind almost all such incidents, prior to the Malegaon bomb blast in 2008? What stopped the investigating and intelligence agencies from even entertaining the likely involvement of Hindu fascists in bomb blasts such as in the incidents of the Samjhauta Express (February 2007), Mecca Masjid (May 2007) and Ajmer Sharief (October 2007)? The cases filed against the Babri Masjid demolition accused move at an excruciatingly slow pace whereas little movement is seen on the suspects who carried out the anti-Muslim carnages in Mumbai and elsewhere. In Gujarat, investigation/prosecution into the anti-Muslim carnage of 2002 began only because of a stubborn campaign by concerned social activists. Such is the official bias that the largest p rivate militia in the country, Bajrang Dal and its various clones operate with impunity. They can rape, molest, bomb, plunder, abuse, blackmail, and assault, all in the name of religion/cultural nationalism, and rarely feel the weight of law against them.

Moreover, if Mumbai attack stands out because of the fact that the armed gunmen happened to be Pakistanis, then where do we place the Samjhauta Express blast (February 2007) in which 64 out of 68 were Pakistanis, including six minors, killed on Indian soil? In the Samjhauta E xpress blast case, the Haryana police was convinced about involvement of groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and the Indian authorities formally asked Pakistan to search for a person whom the Haryana p olice investigators were looking for. After an initial flurry of activity and leaks about the leads, the trail turned cold. This is d espite the fact that, in 2000, Hindu f ascists had threatened to disrupt train services between India and Pakistan. Also, two men whose sketches were released by Haryana police, according to witnesses, spoke Hindi. They had argued with the railway police when they were pulled up for entering the train without tickets, and had claimed that they wanted to go to Ahmedabad, but then got off the train just 15 minutes before the blast, as the train slowed down, for some inexplicable r eason, just before Panipat. And yet, not once, during the entire investigation, or

subsequently, when investigators got n owhere, did the police or the central agencies e ntertain the likely involvement of some Hindu fanatic group in the crime, that is, until the Malegaon 2008 probe began in earnest, and some leads pointed towards the likely involvement of Hindu fanatics. After the Mumbai attack, the probe into Samjhauta Express train blast, as well as the Mecca Masjid and Ajmer Sharief cases, has stalled. Why?

The point is not to deny the presence of fanatics among minorities in India or to whitewash the crimes of the Pakistanbased LeT, but to stress that in India the threat posed by Hindu fanatics multiplies many times over, because it enjoys the protection of the state. The prosecutors do not invoke treason and sedition laws against them as the Malegaon (2008) chargesheet reveals. Unlike India’s m inorities and underclass, Hindu fanatics never face the threat of proscription nor are they subjected to harsh procedures. Their horrible acts do not make them p ariahs for the mainstream media; rather the latter goes out of its way to allow them time and space to explain themselves, a privilege rarely extended to minority groups such as Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) or even the underclass organisations such as Naxalites, or insurgents from Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and the northeast. Is it that Hindus are considered mere “overzealous nationalists”? How dissimilar is this from Pakistani claims that M uslim groups like the Taliban and the LeT are “misguided patriots”?

Sweeping rhetoric, therefore, undercuts the Indian state’s own credibility. Just as fact and fiction have been mixed up often by the Indian state and media, it is not s urprising that Pakistan too acts in the same vein.

Root Causes

This brings me to the final point. The Mumbai attack points towards drawing a clear line between attacks linked to c auses which are rooted inside the country, and those that are carried out by groups located outside, using these as a cover for their own myopic world view. It is perverse to argue that because the I ndian state brutalises people say in J&K, therefore, Pakistan-based LeT’s mass

COMMENTARY

m urders flow from that action. Just as r evolution cannot be exported neither can right to resist oppression become an exportable commodity. It is equally perverse to claim that, because Pakistan allows LeT to operate freely and carry out its vicious campaign against non-Muslims, therefore, Indian Muslims or visiting Pakistanis should be made to suffer, as Hindutva groups believe. People, who suffer brutalisation at the hands of security forces, such as in J&K, have the inalienable right to offer resistance, but even they cannot target civilians. Unfortunately, it is one thing to espouse this, quite another matter for it to be followed. The reason is that those who are motivated by hatred will continue to practise what they preach and they clutch at excuses, which can keep shifting. It is thus that root causes behind internal conflicts and simmering discontent among sections of our own people get linked with such acts as the Mumbai attack. The LeT, which carried out the attack in Mumbai, in the email sent under the name of D eccan Mujahedeen, justified the massacre in order to avenge injustices perpetrated on the Muslim community in I ndia since 1947 (The Indian Express, 28 November 2009).

However much they offend our sensibilities, or however totally hypocritical such claims sound when made by mass murderers, the fact is that Indian society has suffered from gross injustices perpetrated against our own people. One of the most flagrant forms of these is the bias and prejudice practised by the state and its pavlovian recourse to military suppression when confronted by separatism or r ebellion of the marginalised people. C onsequently, the umbilical ties between the I ndian state and the Hindutva groups have to be addressed and we must have the courage to search for democratic r esolutions of internal conflicts. This is within the grasp of the Indian state and also its constitutional obligation. Providing speedy justice to the victims of all h einous crimes robs hate mongers and mass murderers of their raison d’être and blunts their capacity to mobilise support and inflict harm. Thus, for all the pain it has caused, the Mumbai attack ought to become an occasion for us to look inwards in order to rectify wrongs which exist.

This does not require pleading for international support, use of coercive diplomacy, diversion of scarce resources at a time of e conomic meltdown, or feeling frustrated with Pakistan’s dilatory tactics. We can neither control the external world nor choose our neighbours. But it is possible to secure our state and society, and influence the course of events in India and the world outside, by ensuring justice for our own people who are marginalised and suffer persecution.

Notes

1 Despite spending $25 billion after 1999 and committed to purchase military hardware worth $30 billion between 2007 and 2012, the Indian armed forces remain ill-prepared to launch an attack on Pakistan. There is enough material available in the public domain to know that, apart from US pressure, there were other pressing reasons that helped rule out war. A good analysis is offered by Manoj Joshi writing in Mail Today (17 January 2009) wherein he notes that the Indian armed forces were unwilling to “guarantee” that a surgical strike would not spiral into an all-out war. He further pointed out that the stocks of ammunition, missiles and equipment, which is maintained for an offensive action, was found lacking. He also notes that “(t)he heavy involvement of the Army in counter-insurgency operations cannot but affect its preparedness for its primary role, which is to defend the country against external aggression”. In fact, it is interesting to note that counter-insurgency has resulted in poor performance of Indian army officers with only 23-25 per cent clearing the in-house-service exams for promotions. Retired Lt General H S Bagga, formerly director-general of the army’s manpower, planning and personnel division, says that, until the “late 80s, when Kashmir was peaceful, almost 80 to 90% officers cleared these exams” (The H industan Times, 2 February 2009).

2 In the one-day debate in the Lok Sabha on 11 December 2008 on the amendments moved for UAPA as well as the National Investigation Agency, there were 50 members present in the morning; at 3.30 pm there were 78 members, which fell to 47 by 6 pm. When the PM spoke there were only 90 members present. The effective strength of the house is 507 out of 552 seats earmarked by the Constitution.

3 It is also worth noting that against a sanctioned strength of 15.7 lakh state police, of which 12,09,904 was civil force and 314,122 was armed police in 2007, the shortfall was 118,005 in civil police and 50,000 in state armed police.

4 There is some confusion in the news report which mentions 127 additional battalions for the central paramilitary force, but the break-up provided adds up to 125 battalions, which is as follows: 10 for CRPF, 10 for ITBP, 27 for BSF, 37 for CISF, 37 for SSB and 4 for NSG (The Economic Times, 28 January 2009).

5 The Report of the Group of Ministers on National Security entitled “Reforming the National Security System” (February 2001) had suggested: “In the long run, dispersal of the NSG units at strategic points across the country, would enhance its operational efficiency” (para 4.74, p 52). Why was this recommendation not implemented? They had also recommended that the NSG “should not be deployed for duties, which stretch far beyond its original mandate, as this results in enormous wastage of resources” (para 4.73). Surely VIP duty is one such wastage of public money. More over, it is the Indian public which needs protection from many a person being protected by NSG.

6 The GoM report was presented in February 2001 and therefore it is assumed that military expenditure after that took into account the requirements in line with the recommendations which were made. See also my “Shrinking Horizon of an Expanding Economy: India’s Military Spending”, EPW, Vol XLI, No 14, 8 April 2006, for details.