Report of the IPCS Seminar held on 8 August 2008

Chair:
Mr. Dhirendra Singh, Former Home Secretary

Speakers:
Mr. Radhavinod Raju, Joint Director, CBI
Dr. Anwar Alam, Deputy Director, West Asian Studies, Jamia Milia Islamia
Ms. Rita Manchanda, South Asia Forum for Human Rights India

Introduction: Dhirendra Singh

Contemporary terrorism does not represent a sporadic threat; it calls for sustained thinking and action. What is intriguing is the exclusively urban nature of the recent terror blasts. Perhaps a distinction needs to be made between urban terrorism and insurgency in the northeast of India and militancy in Jammu & Kashmir. The choice of ideology of the terrorists is designed to threaten the credibility of the state. The terrorists are cleverly exploiting the media as a medium to be utilised for the propagation of this ideology. Thus, a greater involvement of India's civil society in tackling terrorism is necessary. Political parties keep using the issue of terrorism as a political football to cash in on the "pro-specials laws" or the "anti-special laws" section of the electorate as the case may be. But, the real issue is to strike an acceptable balance between security and individual liberty.

Radhavinod Raju

Those who do not learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat their mistakes. India has lost over 40000 lives in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) since the onset of militancy. Apart from Kashmir and the northeast, hundreds of lives are being lost in serial blasts in other parts of India. Perpetrators of these blasts are taking advantage of the latest technologies and are drawing benefits from globalization. In fact, terror has suddenly become globalized.

An interesting article appeared in the Hindustan Times on 5 August. It stated that the Muslim community of Malegaon is alienated from the police. Incidentally, all aspects of the blasts in Malegaon are yet to be solved. The reporter points out the fact that the beat constable has gone out of the system and that there are few channels of communication left between the police and the Muslim community of Malegaon. Many policemen have talked about the almost total collapse of basic policing in terms of intelligence collection and investigation. Today, it appears that the main tasks of local police are to maintain law and order and to provide security to the growing numbers of VIP's and VVIP's. There have been several calls for a separation of investigation and law and order. A PIL in the Supreme Court has laid down guidelines, but no action has been taken on these important aspects.

Let us try to understand what a beat constable does in a police station. Among the several registers in a police station, the most important one is called the Village Crime Note Book (VCNB). The jurisdiction of a police station is divided into village beats and a constable is assigned to look after a cluster of villages. The constable goes on village visits with his diary and meets various people in the village. The VCNB will have the details of the population of each village, number of males and females, community wise distribution of population, dates which are sensitive from the law and order point of view and prominent persons who are useful in times of crisis. Thus, the beat constable in question has all the information on matters pertaining to the village. If a new person with a history of violence comes to the village, the beat constable would be informed sooner or later and this would be passed on to the administration in no time. Accessibility to scientific tools etc should ease the work of the village beat constable. However, this is not the case.

In 1965, before Pakistan attacked India, Pakistan tried to create a situation in Kashmir whereby the population would rise against India and will welcome Pakistani forces. An elaborate spy system was put in place for this purpose and after that armed saboteurs were dispatched at least two to three months before the attack. Gujjar nomads came across these saboteurs in the higher reaches of the Gulmarg and promptly alerted the police. After verification, these raiders were picked up by the army and the police and the entire spy racket was busted. The uprising that Pakistan was waiting for never came thanks to effective police intervention.

According to the Hindustan Times article, seventy five percent of residents in Malegaon are Muslim. However, Muslims comprise less than 10 percent of the police force. How then do we have effective channels of communication with that community? According to a senior anti-terror official in New Delhi, in many states, there is an unwritten law not to keep Muslims in the Intelligence Units. Unless we give trust, we don't get trust. To be successful in this war against terror, the administration has to maintain uninterrupted channels of communication with the community and youth leaders of the affected minorities. This approach has borne fruit in the past. For instance, interaction with the Muslim youth federation leaders in the communally sensitive area of Khatikan Talab in Jammu in 1990 helped us in earning their trust and consequently receiving valuable information from them that led to the recovery of explosives dumped in Khatikan Talab. Therefore, emphasis needs to be laid on making the community feel part of us and have stakes in India's success.

The question is whether the data collected by J&K police is available in a central database for future reference and action. Several terrorist cases have been successfully worked out in different states. Do we have all the relevant information available on a central database?

In a biting article in the Indian Express on 4 August, Jaithirth Rao pointed out that, among other things, our police stations do not have computers, and when they do have them, they do not work due to power cuts or sundry other reasons. They are not networked, no scanners to scan fingerprints and no centralised database. With our IT prowess, if we can help strengthen the US Homeland Security system, why, Rao asks, can we not harness the expertise to help India?

There is growing demand in India for a central agency to investigate terrorist crimes. But how can we have a centralised agency to tackle crimes when state governments do not agree to give up primacy over the police?

Anwar Alam

After the September attacks on the United States, a new paradigm has emerged in global terrorism. Quite often now, the object of attack is the common citizenry. This is very puzzling as killing common people serves no political purpose. Terrorists can be classified as those individuals who have lost faith in the justice system and thus resort to violence as a means of achieving their ends and drawing attention to their cause. Traditionally, terrorists have chosen targets which symbolise the state. For example, Hezbollah in Lebanon rammed a truck packed with explosives in a US ship anchored in port.

It is clear that much of contemporary non-state terrorism has its roots in the tribal areas of Pakistan and in Bangladesh. Islam's history and the evolution of its identity as a "global community" are concepts worth taking into account when analysing terrorism. For example, the Dalits as a marginalised group in India haven't resorted to the use of terrorism to draw attention to their plight. But formally educated, upwardly mobile urban professionals have been found guilty of terrorist activities. They believe that their aspirations are blocked by the state. Thus, attention needs to be paid in public discourse to how educated professionals morph into enemies of the state.

Turning to the debate surrounding the so-called terrorist group, "Indian Mujahideen", a remarkable facet about the emails sent by them to the Indian authorities is their Wahhabi overtones i.e. the concept of "othering the internal". But, there does not seem to be any logic to these terrorist attacks. Several Muslims, the so-called "brothers" of the terrorists continue to be killed in these terror blasts. So, what is the point of alienating the local Muslim population? This indicates the lack of any coherent ideology in these entities whatsoever.

There is no doubt that Muslims have a global consciousness. While it is easy to identify several individual liberal voices in this ummah, a powerful liberal Islamic tradition is missing. In fact, groups that are against any and all forms of syncretism are thriving. For example, Muslim women wearing bindis and Muslim participation in general in the Hindu festival of Holi is severely discouraged. Moreover, the image of Islam as essentially masculine is being actively cultivated as well.

Tablighi Jammat can be cited as an example of one such conservative Muslim group. It was founded in India in the 1920's and proclaims itself to be an apolitical, strictly socio-cultural group. It propagates the concept of "Jahaliya", the pre-Mohhamedan age of ignorance. Thus, the group sees as its priority the pro-active spreading of the Islam and the creation of the utopian Islamic state. What is really needed are organisations to effectively conduct intra-Islamic debate and dialogue. The role of Islamic civil society needs to be increased.

Looking at India specifically, there is an intrinsic secularism to the state unlike the regimes of West Asia with their authoritarian attitude towards minorities. But, the solution does not lie in strengthening security. India is fast turning into a "National Security State". This is the wrong way to approach the problem. What is really needed is for violence as a category to be delegitimised. As a society, India needs to move past the Weberian conception of the state as simply that which has a monopoly over the use of violence. In other words, the state needs to be humanised.

Rita Manchanda

A great deal of emphasis has been placed on better policing and equipping our institutional mechanisms with better laws. However, the question that we need to ask ourselves is what these measures have achieved worldwide? Consider for instance the meteoric rise in the number of suicide attacks following the 9/11 attacks. The debate on terrorism in India largely focuses on urban violence, while confining to the periphery similar issues that afflict troubled regions of northeast and J&K. Also, another crucial perspective that needs to be taken into consideration in a debate of such a nature is the communal perspective.

The serial blasts that rocked Jaipur, Bangalore and Ahmedabad and the arrests of Muslims that followed do raise certain seminal questions such as do Muslims feel they have any stake in the system? Does the law apply to them in equal measure as it does to their co-citizens from the majority community? And has the constitutional mechanism failed them? It is important to ask these questions for they help us understand the changing trajectory of terrorist violence from targeting symbols of the state to attacking common citizens. The operative logic behind such a shift is to inflict the same destruction on others as was done to them by the existing set up. The communal perspective to this debate is brought into sharper focus when we look at random raids and arrests that the police conduct which more often than not tend to target Muslims. Moreover, many of the detained end up languishing in prison for years on end on framed charges. Their ordeal is further compounded as they find no reprieve from the justice system either and since there is no redemption it reinforces alienation.

The media is an influential protagonist in today's discourses in society. Consider for example how the media along with government agencies went to great lengths to strongly propound the idea of Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) being implicated in terrorist activities. However, surprisingly there have been no editorials in major publications following a significant judgment by the Delhi High Court Judge Ms. Geeta Mittal who refused to sustain the ban on SIMI for lack of evidence. Similarly, editorials in publications like The Hindu talked of revenge as a driving motive behind the killing of Haren Pandya - a BJP leader who is known to have led murderous mobs of Hindus attacking Muslims in 2002 - even though forensic experts involved with the case do not endorse the the police version of Pandya's assassination by the alleged Muslim youths, who continue to languish in prison. The same editorial talks of Maulana Sufipatangiya as being driven by the same logic to induct and radicalize Gujarati Muslim youth from the relief camps set up following the 2002 violence in the state. The Indian Express too weaves a story implicating the Ahmedabad Maulvi as a SIMI activist involved in the Ahmedabad blasts.

A notable exception in this regard is Tehelka which carried out a sting operation that indicted the stand that the state authorities had been complicit in the violence that engulfed the state of Gujarat following the carnage at Godhra. The report reveals that while those who indulged in post-Godhra violence targeting members of a particular community are walking scott free, the Godhra carnage accused are not only languishing in jail but an appeal for hearing their bail plea has also been denied. The question we need to ask is what message are such acts sending out?

While undeniably we do require better mechanism for policing and investigation but this by itself will not help, for a political dimension to address the issue is indispensable. We need to ensure that alienated sections of society are brought back into the fold by giving them a stake in the system. Although it is only a section of a community that gets alienated but it is their propagation of violence that compounds the gravity of the problem we face which will not diminish until we acknowledge that there is social discrimination and state violence. One of the goals of the terrorists is too widen the circle of alienation in order to draw in more recruits to swell their ranks. The way to counter this challenge is not through draconian laws like POTA and TADA that are selectively used, validating thereby, the hesitation to reintroduce them. Nor can the issue be addressed through a system of vigilante justice that is totally unacceptable. Instead we need to address problems of blatant discrimination that beset some of our state structures and address law and order reform with utmost seriousness.

Discussion

The State of Institutional Mechanisms

• In India our internal security is plagued by weak policing and poor and selective implementation of the law. There is a need to earnestly build up the credibility of the police.

• There is a need for a Federal Investigative Agency; this could be done overtly by the central government through merging a Federal Investigative Agency within the ranks of the existing but overburdened Central Bureau of Investigation. An enquiry commission has been constituted that is looking into this question.

• Our justice system lacks efficiency which compounds the problems manifold for the poor. If we look at the status of Gujarat riot cases or the enquiry into the 1992 Bombay riots we notice that while the key perpetrators of violence continue to walk free, the Godhra accused are languishing in prison. Implicit in the manner in which such a system functions is discrimination. Even a high profile case such as the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case took four years to come up for hearing in a special tribunal. Thus, the very credibility of our criminal justice system is at stake.

• Greater transparency is needed in the functioning of our investigative, intelligence agencies and in the implementation of the law. Emphasis needs to be laid on developing intelligence at the local, grass root level.

Alienation of Minority Community

• All names that terrorist attacks throw up are from the Muslim community. The limited number of Muslims in our services further indicates a degree of alienation among the community at large. Such instances demand a political solution. However vote bank politics has further compounded the problem.

• Alienation and insecurity in society are also leading to ghettoization of Muslims. Such a situation of communal ghettoization occurs when what Ashutosh Varshney calls break down in 'civil networks' in a society. The state needs to reach out to the people in order to bridge the trust deficit.

• It is crucial at this stage to bring the alienated individuals back into the fold by giving them a stake in the system. Reports like the Sachar committee are steps in the right direction. Similarly, in spite of a 'dirty war' situation prevailing in Kashmir, by and large the state police cadre have not been attacked as care was taken to recruit native officers in relative proportion to the population composition thus creating stakes in the system.

• Community leaders, as seen for instance in the Kashmir valley, could play a more constructive role in restoring 'civil networks' of society.