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Shouldn’t North Block withdraw its policy paper on terrorism?
A paper, ‘National Counter-Terrorism Policy and Strategy,’ was recently put out on the home ministry’s website. Since its very first sentence reads, “India has been at the forefront of the ongoing fight against terrorism for several decades now,” it begs the question: Why now? Speculating on the answer yields three prompts: internal, internal-external and external.
The internal prompt has the Delhi terror incident late last year focusing minds. The writing up of this policy-cum-strategy paper is perhaps an outcome. The internal-external prompt was the Baisaran meadow terror incident nine months back. Normally it takes that long to come up with a policy. However, the paper appears to be a rushed job, with at least one spelling mistake and one amendment, betrayed by an insertion in a different font. This brings to fore an external prompt.
The release of the paper coincided with the prime minister’s trip to Israel, which - as it turned out – was just prior to the launch of the ‘unprovoked and illegal’ attack by the United States (US) and Israel on Iran. The paper’s rehashes officiously the old canard, ‘while all Muslims are not terrorists, all terrorists are Muslim.’ Of a piece with the scepticism of Zionism and Hindutva of Islam and Muslims, this perhaps signalled India’s reliable presence in Israel’s corner. Whether that served to incentivize Israeli aggression is moot.
The paper’s deficits
The paper itself is a curious amalgam of policy and strategy, that any public policy undergrad knows are in themselves notably distinct tracts. Ordinarily, the expectation is of an exposition on policy from a ministry. National level strategies follow, but merit separate strategy papers because internal security strategies require addressing the differentiated terrorism variants (proxy war and indigenous) that beset India.
The only policy-level articulation in the paper is the tired refrain: “…the Indian policy of ‘zero tolerance’ against terrorism.” Parenthetically, it is up for an English professor’s input whether it should be rephrased as ‘‘zero tolerance’ for terrorism.’ At any rate, a single-phrase is inadequate to holistically to cover the conceptual edifice, guiding tenets and major considerations. While not being verbose, policy decidedly cannot be merely two-word long, especially in a nation with a continental geography, history and demography. The remainder of the paper carries the counter-terrorism strategy, which incidentally National Security Adviser Ajit Doval once ruled out (1:06:40) as a non sequitur.
Even the phrase ‘zero tolerance’ needs elaboration and guardrails. For instance, while the law provides for banning organisations, it only outlines the process. A policy must set what criteria must inform the state’s decision, to rule out arbitrariness, unilateralism and policy hijack by vested interests and dominant forces.
More significantly, ‘zero tolerance’ is somewhat misleading, given that ‘selective tolerance’ is more apt. Rightly, Muslim-perpetrated and Maoist terrorism has been subject to zero-tolerance. However, terror of regime-friendly right-wing actors – not excluding cow vigilantes, lynch mobs, communal mobs, encounter killings and bull-dozer action – is elided, though within definitional scope.
An international definition – that lacking international consensus is yet to see light of day - includes the overawing of communities through violence as constitutive of terrorism. A definition reads: “criminal acts, including against civilians, committed with intent to cause death or serious bodily injury… with the purpose to provoke a state of terror in the general public or in a group of persons or particular persons, intimidate a population…”
Even the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) acknowledges acts against a ‘section of people’ in its definition meriting the term: “Whoever does any act with intent to threaten or likely to threaten the unity, integrity, security, economic security, or sovereignty of India or with intent to strike terror or likely to strike terror in the people or any section of the people in India or in any foreign country….”
Majoritarian political violence is also terrorism, given that the result and effect is indeed a ‘crushing fear.’ Late Prime Minister Vajpayee’s words need heeding: “No organisation, irrespective of whether it claims to espouse the cause of the majority or the minority community, can be allowed to inflame passions, spread hatred and incite violence.” However, in practice vigilantes enjoy impunity.
Instead, a majoritarian state views any counter-action by communities against majoritarian pressure – such as self-defence against mobs – as terrorism. Even a verbal counter is taken as falling afoul of the clause: ‘causing disaffection against India,’ using expansive UAPA clauses that read: “unlawful activity… means any action taken… intended… to bring about… the cession… or the secession… or which incites… which … questions… to disrupt the sovereignty and territorial integrity… which causes or is intended to cause disaffection…” With a collapsing of India with Naya Bharat or Hindu India, such trends can only get more troubling. A non-parochial policy paper would have mitigated such concerns.
Querying the ‘threat profile’
Ideological baggage from the political market-place has contaminated what ought to be an exercise in ideology-immune policy formulation. This is clear from the one-para long ‘threat profile’ painted in the paper:
India has since long been affected by sponsored terrorism from across the border, with Jihadi terror outfits as well as their frontal organizations, continuing to plan, coordinate, facilitate and execute terror attacks in India. India has been on the target of global terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which have been trying to incite violence in the country through sleeper cells. Violent Extremists operating from the soils of foreign countries have hatched conspiracies to promote terrorism.
There appear to be only two sources of terrorist threat: one is state-sponsored Islamist threat and the other is from non-state actor affiliated jihadists. A possible third site of terror can faintly be gleaned from a passing mention: “…use of Drones, for facilitating terror-related activities and attacks in Punjab…”
In the paper, there is no mention of left wing extremism (LWE) or Maoist terrorism, even though the term terrorism is liberally associated with it. If non-minority groups are not to figure as terrorists, then a policy paper ought to make that clear. Since terrorism is a tactic of insurgency (1:06:15), a distinction must be made between terrorism, terrorism as part of an insurgency and insurgency.
To be sure, at a point some two decades back, a terror threat in the hinterland was manifest. The threat was attributed to Muslim extremists, described as ‘sleeper cells’ both then and in the paper. This is a misrepresentation of self-help groups that organically come up in mohallas, particularly where and when the police plays partisan.
The threat perception disregards the fact that the statistics on terrorism stood inflated by actions of majoritarian extremists designed to pass off as Muslim-perpetrated. Clearly, the paper is missing a significant national security threat.
The latter of the two listed threats – from Daesh and Al Qaeda - has long been debunked. The paper is anachronistic since that global threat is largely passé. As for any residual threat, India now has an obliging security partner in the Afghan Taliban. Or is the paper anticipating an Islamist backlash in wake of renewed US intervention in West Asia, whose possible spillover needs to be deterred? If so, doesn’t the timing of the paper’s release showup Indian foreknowledge?
Querying the ‘principled approach’
The paper holds: “India… has been steadfast in its belief that there can be no justification whatsoever, for violence in the world (italics added).” Other than Jainism perhaps, all four major Indian religions have place for righteous resort to violence, albeit plentifully caveated. Self-defence is a birth-right. Even Gandhian thought is not so pacifist, as his dispelling of self-doubt within British Indian army officers shows. This is also at variance with the regime’s own muscular ideology, evident in the choice of title, Prahaar, meaning ‘strike’.
So, what is the origin of this bland articulation as an Indian ‘ideal’?
Understandably with its minister pronouncing (obliviously of Tamil Tigers) ‘no hindu can ever be a terrorist,’ a paper from the ministry can hardly be realistic. The answer therefore must be seen in light of the pronounced Muslim-baiting in the paper. The ‘ideal’ held out pre-emptively deprives Muslims of any recourse – either verbal or physical – against pressures that can only mount with the Special Intensive Review, the looming census and - who knows - the national register of citizens, national population register et. al. to follow.
Not quibbles
In its homework the ministry may have chanced upon prescriptions out there. Yet, blackholes exist, testifying to lack of due diligence and a standard operating procedure on preparing its flagship products. Providing no executive summary, the ministry enthused by the recent AI summit apparently expects readers to rely on an AI-generated summary.
There is no mention of accountability. For instance in J&K, does the army answer to the defence ministry or the home ministry? There is no mention of a negotiated settlement, though peace processes abound other than in J&K. The ‘no talks with terrorism’ position could have done with elucidation, given the indigenous component of the insurgency persists. There is no mention of mediation using the good offices of interlocutors, when the discord is between two communities, as in Manipur. Finally, there is no mention of how strategy implementation will be audited; for instance, how will the homilies on human rights be evaluated?
Since the catchy acronym – ‘PRAHAAR’ – is only strategy-relevant, an opportunity for accolades on finally putting together its higher-order policy thoughts stands wasted. The democratic scheme of checks and balances bases on intrinsic strength in institutions, which ministries are expected to possess. The paper reveals much more of the ministry than its text lets on; all of which spell ominously for the future.
