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Strategic Analysis:
A Monthly Journal of the IDSA
Changing Conceptions of Terrorism
Rakesh Gupta, Professor, JNU
Abstract
This paper looks at the changing conceptions of causality and characteristics of terrorism within the framework of liberal philosophy, democracy and the market economies. It takes the position that the liberal world-view has to blame itself for terrorism and the new warlords that have emerged in the current moment. The liberal ontology, democratic political process and games that nations have played like state-sponsored terrorism are responsible for the current delineation of terror, which as a word, has meant different moral things at different times since the emergence of the modern state in the West. Given the writings of philosophers from Thomas Hobbes downward and the killing of a passenger of IC-814 flight, terror has been linked first, to right to property and, then to right to life alone. The analyses of terrorism in India look at the causes partially. They ascribe its characteristics either to religion or ideology. They further look at the causality in terms of ad-hoc administrative response of the political class. It is necessary to adopt a holistic view and look at the political process within democratic structures.
This paper takes the position that liberal ontology and democracy have created the terrorist. Within the liberal politics there are changing notions of terrorism. This is true of India’s liberal democracy.
In order to understand terrorism, one needs to look at individual episodes of terrorism to arrive at a developed understanding of the causes of terrorism before one arrives at features of terrorism/or structure of terrorism. This is necessary and the problem is the same as it was during the period of ancient Greece. For example, the difference between pre-Socratic thought 1 and Aristotle’s thought 2 is that, while the former looked at the causation of nature, the latter looked at the structure of nature. In case of the former, the scientific processes could be unfolded while in the latter, Aristotle’s social concerns could be read into the explanation of the structure of Nature to arrive at fulfillment of social needs. A combination of the two would, therefore, be a more exact way of looking at the phenomenon of terrorism. The causality of terrorism is usually attributed to subjective factors to the exclusion of the objective factors. Even if one grants that the terrorist personality and organisations would give us an insight into the causes, this in itself may not be enough. This analysis has to be related to the political and economic processes and not just to some specific theories of psychology alone. The two analyses – the objective and the subjective need to be combined in order to understand terrorist organisations and leaderships as specific case-studies, since the field is too new to look towards general theory for explanations.
Studying the Phenomenon
In any case, the research on terrorism has focussed on needs of fighting it on behalf of the state. They have not been focussed on the phenomenon per se among the academics both in the West and in India. The academic studies in the West started in the 1960s. Amongst the earliest work is on the subject of civil war. Harry Eckenstein raised the issue: "why did social science . . . produce so few (studies) on violent political disorder-internal war", by which he meant, "attempts to change by violence, or threat of violence, a government’s policies, rulers, or organisations". 3 Thomas Perry Thornton put terror as a method in the context of internal war. He excluded terror in international relations, non-violent resistance and propaganda from his understanding of terror. This early exploration does not anticipate the latter day understanding of terror as part of the games that states play since ancient times. In India the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) surveys of Political Science have not till date focussed on the phenomenon of contemporary political landscape from the north-west to the north-east and the south-east of the country.
The studies on terrorism in the West that have proliferated after the sixties suffer from certain limitations. One, they are culture specific. The racist organisations like the Ku Klux Klan are not found in the non-Western societies. Or, communalism that was a significant part of terrorism in Punjab 4 has a totally different meaning in the West. Two, most of the studies were the product of the Cold-War period. They were primarily based on the premise of the USSR being the centre of an evil empire promoting terrorist politics or, the parallel theory of the US running subterranean wars. These studies have had a much more utilisation bias of fighting strategic games in the name of terrorism. 5 In this there were two problems, i.e., the way in which the purpose of research was defined, and the lack of sufficient data. In India as well, the study of terrorism has focussed on the need to fight it, rather than see it as a research issue in itself. Here again, the Western literature has influenced the Indian studies. One of the earliest books on the subject by an Indian is by Ved Marwah. 6 His book’s concern is with describing terrorism on the basis of his own experience and Western literature. His insights do not lead him to find strategies of countering terrorism. This is his sole purpose of writing the book. He is unable to operationalise his experience of dealing with terrorists as policy options. He fails to look at the sensibility of a terrorist personality and deals with the man as a criminal. This could have well emerged from his views of a terrorist called Jinda in Punjab.
It is very difficult to delineate the meaning of the word or its definitions, despite the fact that many of its definitions exist in directories and commentaries. Most of the literature from the West has been tainted by the Cold War logic, at the political level, and with variables that defy exactitude in definitions. The more variables one adds to a political phenomenon, the more its diffuseness surfaces. One very popular directory uses twenty-six variables to arrive at what it thinks to be an acceptable definition. 7 Since politics concerns itself with struggle and accommodation, political variables only compromise the exercise of finding the exact meaning of the word. In any case, language offers pairs of words to bring out the nuances of an experience. Being courageous or fool hardy is acting in situational relativity. There would be then, many points of view of the same experience depending on the place and perception of the onlooker and the participants. Don Quixote was a courageous man but out of tune with his times, and was so regarded as Quixotic. He had failed to realise the dynamics of change and so was dubbed as desperately out of the fight. The terrorist is akin to Don Quixote in the sense that he is unable to realise that the consensus the regime is based on, cannot be moved to his cause by randomly or, especially killing his chosen objects. Yet, like the courageous, he flings at the machine of consensus-building in democratic societies. Courage becomes foolhardy here.
Words do undergo change as depending upon the societal changes. This is true about the cannotation of the word democracy during the primitive (referred to hierarchical dispersion of power) and classical modes of production (based on limited franchise). Within the liberal tradition, the word is as ambiguous as the word ethnicity or diaspora is today. Within liberalism, there could be a liberal political community or a liberal democratic community. Practically every concept like justice, equality or liberty of political philosophy including that of liberalism is ambiguous. In that sense, we note that the word terrorism has undergone changing meanings of history and politics of societies. We do not here focus on the meanings attached to the Siccari Movement in Palestine, or the Boxers in China and the Thugs in India, during the earlier phases of their respective histories. We look at the changing connotations within the liberal world. We do so because the phenomenon of terrorism in the modern world is more a product of the liberal philosophy and practice, and not that of the pre-liberal ideology or praxis.
Tracing the Genesis
One of the earlier references to terrorism is found in a text of the later 18th century. 8 Burke was a defender of the English Revolution, but was opposed to the French Revolution. He stood for the rights of man and simultaneously regarded the attack on property as striking fear and so being terroristic. He considered the English institutions as those of hereditary principle of monarchy in constitutional government, and property as reflecting the spirit of the revolution. On those very grounds he opposed the French Revolution. The aberration in the French Revolution in the form of Reign of Robespierre was regarded as synonymous with a reign of terror or, terrorism of the state. Right in the beginning we notice that the phenomenon of terrorism would defy delineation and move in the direction of typology for a better understanding. Bonapartisms 9 in France was analysed by Karl Marx on the basis of the peasantisms’ conservative outlook in France. Nobody regards Bonapartism as terrorism but the Physiocrat, Robespierre, was regarded as setting up the regime of terror with the help of the city poor. In the 19th century in Czarist Russia, the People’s Will Group were designated as terrorist. Since their politics was against dictatorship, the word did not have any pejorative cannotation that it developed earlier.
It was Thomas Hobbes 10 , who provided the material basis of the modern state in concept of the right of preservation, especially from accidental death. The latter led to the deprivation of "happiness defined as enjoyment of commodious living." This deprivation or threat of it led to fear. In the hand of John Locke, 11 we find that the word property gets deployed to mean "right to life and commodity". In the concept of property, he was reading two of the basic assumptions of society that were prevalent in Locke’s time. First, that property leads to commodity production. Second, for this was needed a class that helps in this production, but is not in possession of property. The political divide between the two was overcome by him when he used the word property to have a double meaning. In his argument, both sections of society found a rationale to live in society through the social contract and not engage in anarchy. The government that he created had nothing to do with democracy. It was a constitutional oligarchy that he created. By his time the working class had come into existence. It is the elements of the deprived that became the cause of anarchy outside the realm of what came to be later described as political sects, trade union and the labour movements. It is in John Stuart Mill 12 that one finds the argument of liberty as necessarily an ontological predisposition of man. In his writings, delinking the essence of man from property considerations was made. With him the context of libertarian argument was stated, and the limit on the state postulated. And yet, he was a reluctant democrat since he imposed plural franchise to off-set the political majority of the working class. Given this narrow base of the liberal democratic paradigm, it was only natural that revolts would have found a place. In these revolts, the early form was that of street gangs. If one looks at the history of the word terror in the British society, it starts from the time there is violence by street gangs, who were later described as hooligans and then as terrorists. The expression street-gangs was used very early for those very elements. The working class was a totally different cup of tea. These were lumpens.
The argument in defence of democracy is made with the arrival of the pluralists who find societal conflicts as manageable and not fundamental. They argue for consensus building and participatory democracy. The case for including the liberal democratic argument in the understanding of terror politics comes much later than the phenomenon of terror. It is with this that terror can be regarded as a political actor impinging on the legitimisation process. In that sense alone can terror be considered as a ploy against democracy? Its role both in Punjab, Kashmir and Assam shows that aspect of it.
Ontological Exploration
Today, the word terror cannot be used only with reference to property. It has to be narrowed down to right to life as propounded by Thomas Hobbes. The killing of Indians on the Air India flight Kanishka a decade ago over the Atlantic, and the killing of an Indian at the Kandhar airport related to the hijacking of the flight IC-814 was a denial of life of the propertied. The death of thousands of people in the terrorist attack on the twin towers and the Pentagon in the US involved right to life of each and every individual who died there. It is only secondary that this destruction can be construed to be an attack on property of power. In any discussion on terrorism – whether it is criminal or political denial of the right to life, would be the basic philosophical category of analysis. Only secondarily can we add to it the argument of democracy. The benefit of this is that we can look at the phenomena in the earlier socialist societies. Even in the authoritarian states it would be useful, since state terror will also involve loss of life and perhaps loss of liberty. In this sense, the discussion on terrorism has to be Hobbesian. The changes in the connotation of the word terror are related to the issue of the very essence of man and the ontology has been explored sufficiently by the political philosophers.
The reasons for this perspective are not far to seek. The French Revolution, its doctrine of sovereignty and the nation unbound Prometheus from feudal ties of solidarity. He was to rise above structures and the binding morality to bring in freedom. In that sense, violence was sanctioned to such an extent that a Karl Marx would pale before a Karl Heinz, who actually inspired terrorism in Germany. In the twentieth century, it is not the leader of the Chinese liberation movement, Mao tse Tung, who came to be associated with violent politics, but people belonging to the Frankfurt School like Herbert Marcuse who inspired the writings of some leaders in Africa. Between Sartre 13 and Franz Fanon there was nothing to choose, since both of them believed that man’s essence was violence.
And, that the essence of that expression (freedom) was the use of violence. From this, to take a position that only violence is the way to conduct politics by alienated individuals is a small but significant step from rebellion to terrorism. In that vein, one can find interpretation of Che Gueverra and leaders of violent national struggles that describe them as terrorist. We noted earlier that terror tactics could be a phase in a struggle for liberation, and not the essence of the struggle. The liberal philosophy’s ontology itself led to putting premium on the prowess of the human individuals to bring in freedom, which was distorted in the hands of the terrorists. Therefore, liberal ontology itself produced its other-the terrorist who had nothing in common with the other, namely the worker. The social background of terrorist also shows that they do not necessarily come from the deprived sections of society. They very often belong to the middle classes and as far as India is concerned, they come from semi-urban and rural backgrounds.
So is the case with the liberal democratic practice and the party system. The fact that liberal democracy came into existence is accompanied by the growth of political parties in their twentieth century version. They were regarded as having the iron law of oligarchies, and the system of suffrage saw to it that it was the party that got represented and not the constituency that it proposed to represent. The party system as it evolved moved in a way that sectional interests and ethnic or communal interests could not be represented. This for example, is the case with the Irish parties’ call against the British system. Secondly, and more importantly, political parties themselves made use of terror tactics on a permanent, periodic and episodic basis. Thirdly, the party system led to the distortion of the political process. All over the world this phenomenon is witnessed, no matter what the party system is, including in India.
Here a distinction needs to be made between a rebel and a terrorist, and between guerilla warfare and terrorist attacks. A rebel could and did use violence in the larger context of a struggle. But he does not equate violence and guerilla tactics with the struggle for emancipation. A leader like Bal Gangadhar Tilak is a case in point. He had no fetish for non-violence. He applauded the peasant leader Phadke who used violence. He was a rebel but not a terrorist. Even then, he was interned and incarcerated. He was not in the same mould as some Punjab and Bengal ‘terrorists’ were. He was a mass leader, not an alchemist of revolution. Mahatma Gandhi was a rebel with his entire pacifist menace. An ordinary Indian, under the Constitution, is allowed to resist a regime’s acts, he can bond, organise, and demonstrate but, not with arms. Such an individual is also a rebel. His commitment is to the cause of his people and not to himself or his group which is the commitment of a terrorist. A rebel depends on the support of his people. A terrorist is an alienated and educated individual who fails to move the people, and engages in conspiratorial attacks on innocents to strike fear among the audience that are a witness to his act to influence governmental policy. A revolutionary does not forsake the masses, as does a mercenary engaging in the criticism by the gun. That precisely is the difference between the communist and the current leaders of organisations professing extreme left-wing ideology of current Naxalism. In that, they join up with extreme right-wing, which also engages in the criticism by the gun, like the practitioners of cultural nationalism in the name of religion, race or tribe.
Apart from the ontological perspectives, liberal democracy and collapse of feudal solidarities, we notice that terrorist politics had its genesis in the development of the scientific revolution. The development of the modern nation-state led to the genesis of what came to be called the military industrial sector. This implied the combination of the civilian and the military bureaucrat for perpetuating power. It is this that led to the application of science and technology to military use. In this, the discovery of dynamite played a significant role in helping the terrorist convey his message through sensational acts. The very essence of terrorist acts is that the message is conveyed through an alarming act of muderous violence, so that fear is caused not in the object but in the subject: the audience which is a witness to the act.
An alchemist of revolution is one who is unable to move the masses to his cause. An American newspaper described this appropriately in 1884, "Dynamite! Of all the good stuff, this is the stuff. Stuff several pounds of this sublime stuff in to an inch pipe (gas or water pipe), plug up both the ends, insert a cap with a fuse attached, place this in the neighbourhood of a lot of rich loafers who live by the sweat of other people’s brow, and a most gratifying result will follow’. 14 In the context of the ISI supply of rockets, a similar description is not out of place: "A militant could thus put the rocket in an ordinary pipe, fix a target, and leave it overnight. When the first rays of dawn hit the solar energy cell, it would ignite the rocket and launch it at the target. In the meantime the militants would have escaped. One could also reverse the circuit, so that once the current was broken, the rocket would be ignited; that way, the target could be fixed during the day, and the rocket would only be fired when darkness fell. No timer was needed with such a rocket . . ." 15 Look at the method used to blow up the twin towers on 11 September, 2001. It was not possible to imagine this before the growth of the aeronautical sciences. It could not be possible without the knowledge that a certain quantity of burning fuel will make the steel used in the construction of the towers melt. Also, it is now possible to see the lethal use of simple paper knives for hijacking of planes.
A Martyr or a Terrorist?
In this context, a distinction needs to be made between a martyr and a terrorist. What is terrorism? Traits of terrorism are captured not only in terms of methods but also in terms of targets in the following view: " . . .when the indirect, but really important, aim is to force someone to do something they would otherwise not do, when this is to be achieved by intimidation, and when intimidation is effected by using violence against innocent people by killing, maiming, or otherwise severely harming them-or by threatening to do so, then the indirect strategy is that of terrorism." Terrorists may attack a group of people to leave a place or, they "may attack such a group with the purpose of causing the government into accepting their demands, as is, usually the case in air plane hijacking", it is terrorism. 16 At the time of hijacking of the IC Flight 814 at Kandahar, when a terrorist killed an innocent civilian, he knew in his mind that he was killing an innocent. No amount of rationalisation by the psychology of ‘jihad’ could make him a martyr in his own eyes. He is a terrorist, first and last. Since a terrorist action today is a small group action against innocents either against national or international law, it is criminal too. It intends to cause panic. In the contemporary period, therefore, terrorism will have three elements: attacks on neutrals, attacks on non-combatants, and cruel and atrocious behaviour. In the current context, terrorism could be defined thus: " . . .consists of violent actions carried out for political or other social purposes, including some large-scale mercenary purpose, by individuals or groups, having an aim which might be either good or bad, but carried out by means of either or both of the following: (1.) attacks on innocents or neutral or randomly chosen people, or (2.) using means which involve atrocities, e.g., torture, cruel killings, or mutilation of the living or the dead, committed against randomly or non-randomly chosen people who may be innocent or not". 17 Since terrorists profess indifference to existing codes, they sacrifice all moral and humanitarian cosiderations. Such people will lose their chamak (shine), sooner than later, since no religious belief including ‘jihad’ teaches anyone immoral acts. That is the reason why it is noticed that the politics of terror does not have a mass base. Its impact is short run, either in terms of fragmentation or concentration of power. People forsake it. For them, therefore, no terrorist is a martyr, for he kills his own innocent people. KPS Gill’s view that the terrorist and terrorism is to be fought in the battlefield alone by the police or the soldier, has its very significant operational merit. It is the operational view of actually weeding out the terrorists from the battlefield as well as from the hideouts. If the battlefield is also the minds and masses, then the role of the people will readily be recognised by all. The starting point may be fatigue that mindless violence causes.
Individuals who are engaged in contemporary terrorism could be doctors, dentists, farmers, professors, workers, ancient holymen, women and children. The recruits are not romantics, they are aggrieved. The core leadership does not pick up those who are the best minds but those who can be manipulated, and thus are acceptable. The core will never allow highly motivated people or highly independently thinking people. They need discipline as much as obeisance. Such people may be motivated by desires of good life. Very few have shown devotion to a religious or a millenarian cause. The terrorist need not be seen as a frustrated body committing aggression. He needs to be seen as rational, logical, ruthless, intelligent and young from a rural or an urban background. He may be highly educated or be a school or college drop-out. He may give up the family for the terrorist path, but he does not kill his sensibilities. It is this combined with the consciousness of the failure to move the masses that can bring him back to the family in narrow and broad terms. In narrow terms, it means the immediate family. In broader terms, it means the mainstream politics of democratic politics. The restoration of the democratic process, however faulty it is, in J&K and Punjab, is proof of this sensibility on the part of the people and the terrorist.
The Inner Dynamics of Terrorist Groups
The highest number of deaths owing to terrorism were in 1998 and the lowest in 1971. Since the end of the Cold War, while the terrorist attacks have gone down, the number of terrorist related fatalities have gone up. Today’s terrorists are different from their counterparts during the Cold War period. According to an US State Department report, the motivations of today’s terrorists are religion, millenarianism, racism and financial gain. 18 Among these, religion is registered as the single most significant motivation. In India, some analysts regard this as a significant factor. As far as India is concerned this is further related to the geopolitical situation in the region, and the role of trans-national terrorism. In this, the role of Pakistan is highlighted, especially in relation to Kashmir. The students of international history of wars know that since the time of the Peloponessian Wars, 19 internal destabilisation by external forces was commonly used as a tactic. Given the unmanageable costs of nuclear and conventional wars, states do sponsor terrorism and other forms of low intensity conflicts. The latter has happened in Afghanistan since 1979. Whereas Pakistan has practiced the former against India since then. The two are closely connected in terms of infrastructure, training, money and geo-strategic calculation. Criminal groups and creamy layer of terrorists may combine with state-sponsored terrorists to serve as force multipliers. A distinction needs to be maintained between the creamy, criminal and the middle layer. Creamy layer usually, as far as India’s experience goes, gets related to foreign sponsors of terrorist tactics. This has an essential variable of games that nations like Pakistan play in the subcontinent. Since 1979 Pakistan sponsored terror, and this coincided with the US sponsoring Mujahideen resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Pakistan against India, as always, used the help that came to Pakistan in the US fight. The recruits who are moved by other than religious factors, are lured into the world of money and training to perform terrorist deeds. The criminal layer becomes irrelevant to it after a point, since it remains where it always was. The majority of recruits belong to the middle layer. They are, however, not motivated by those lofty ideals that may motivate the creamy layer. In many cases, it is the desire for good life that may motivate them. In that sense, any fetish of ideology, religion or millenarian causes may over-burden state policy options to deal with this. Their commitment to the cause may not be so fanatic. 20
Other differences relate to organisation of terrorists. Terrorist groups have evolved from hierarchical, vertical organisational structures to more horizontal, less command driven groups. Leadership is derived from a set of principles that can set boundaries and provide guidelines for decisions and actions, so those members do not have to resort to a hierarchy – they know what they have to do. The role of information technology is as significant as the knowledge about dynamite was. They may use the Internet but also selectively jam it. They may be interested in systemic disruption rather than total disruption of information technology. 21
Apart from the issue of Kashmir, there are a number of incidents where foreign states are involved in sponsoring terrorism during the period 1993-1996. These incidents were the following: 1 October 1996 in Vladivostock; 20 February, 1996 in Turkey; 13 February 1995 in Greece; 13 April 1994 in Lebanon; 4 January 1994 in Turkey again; 15 April 1993 in Kuwait. 22 This incident-based directory does not include terrorist campaigns over a longer period, and does not, therefore, include intra-state conflicts in general. That kind of analysis would lead one to look at the terrorist politics from the perspective of political economy. Parallel authority structures that come into existence have their linkages with parallel economy.
On the basis of these newer conflicts, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union, commentators have started analysing the changing face of international relations. They make a distinction between pre-modern, modern and post-modern wars. The pre-modern actors of war were mercenaries or, amateurs, the modern were the regular soldiers and the post-modern actors are apart from the professional soldier, militias, mercenaries and children. During the pre-modern phase if the fight was for clan, tribe, warlord and soldiers; in the modern phase it was for the state. In the post-modern phase it is for the nation, ethnic, religious group or warlords. The why of pre-modern, wars were economic, e.g. booty; in the modern, it was for political ends; in the post-modern it was for individual and group ends. If in pre-modern times the weapons were primitive; in modern times they were conventional and Weapons of Mass Destruction; in the post-modern times these are small arms and computer viruses. 23
The Post-Modern Conflict
Like other conflicts, territoriality is an issue in terrorist conflicts. At one level, territoriality’s role is clear and acknowledged: it is the central stake in secessionist conflicts. It is also an issue in intra-state conflicts. These range from boundary disputes between administrative units to territorial gang wars, and from competition over marketing areas, or control over parts of silk route among firms and tribes, clans and groups of people respectively, to gendered conflicts over how to create ‘secure’ or ‘functional’ places. In India, Chandigarh has been as much an issue in Punjab as sharing of river waters, like the, Krishna river. In one case it led to terrorist conflict, while in case of the latter it did not owing to the intervening variables, nature of politics, leadership perceptions and mobilisations and ideological orientations. Territorial conflicts can also be caused by ethnicity. The entire division of Assam, though formally done to help the problems of underdevelopment, has inbuilt ethnic argument of language, race, tribe and religion. This has raised the issue of territoriality. The conflicts between Boros, Tai Ahoms and the Ahoms is the conflict among sons of the same soil. The Naga-Kuki conflicts in Manipur are also over the route of trade in the region. Ethnicity has raised the issue of sub-nationalism and in case of terrorist politics that of secession in the hands of United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) and the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (NSCN).
Path of development and the consequent issues of scarce natural resources could motivate terrorist actions apart from trade routes, territoriality, water and terrain. Genocide has been practised in Rwanda. It had the mix of Hutu-Tutsi ethnic conflict, development model that violated the sentiment of dignity by denying job opportunities to the multitudes; the soil erosion caused by incessant agriculture on the mountain slopes of fertile part of Rwanda tradition of ethnic violence, absence of any international constraining factor and the socio-political system that caused it. The rising inequality resulted not so much from the differences in natural resource endowments or individual dynamism, but from the functioning of a socio-political system based on multiple exclusion. On the development aid funds, Peter Uvin 24 says that they ended up in the hands of the richest one per cent people in society, and so most of the farmers remained unaffected by this. The symbol of discontent was that people threw stones at symbols of that development. Soil erosion owing to failure of extensive production contributed to the malaise.
In a way then, if one has a reductionist reading of hijackings, kidnappings, bombings, bomb blasts, genocides, and internet jammings, one discovers that territory, water, soil, language, natural resources mix with race, religion, communalism combined with socio-political variables and make for the heady brew of contexts of terrorist politics. These in themselves are not enough to lead to terrorist politics. The argument here is that poverty alone may cause disenchantment, but need not make every poor individual, group or region a terrorist. The most poor of the Hindi belt of India do not produce terrorists. On the contrary, it is the granary of Punjab that did so. There is nothing in a religion that makes a man terrorist. In fact, ideological interpretations of the same religious texts lead to different kinds of politics. In Kashmir, the Sufi tradition of co-mingling has been a means of conducting the battle of the minds. Interpretations of the Sanatan Dharam produced the secular politics of Gandhi, and it was the communal Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) that had a Godse who shot him. Language in itself may have nothing that produces terrorist politics. The language agitations, in India since the 1950s produced its own leaders and agitators but they did not produce terrorists – in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab and the Assam of the 1950s, 1960s and the 1970s. Water disputes in India have not produced terrorists, despite their long history. In contemporary times, the one between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka has not done so. Alienation and frustration do not on their own produce terror politics. Alienation among the poor in India is well known but it is precisely the lack of their support for extremist politics that leads some to terrorist methods such as Naxalism, foresaking all pretensions to mass revolutionary politics.
The issue is, what is it that causes terrorist politics? In the next section we look at some of the representative writings that explain the phenomenon in India. Terrorism began here after 1971, especially after the defeat of Pakistan in the Indo-Pakistan conflict of 1971. The date, and the Pakistani decision to go nuclear in that context introduces a geo-strategic and a geo-political factor. The geo-strategic factor being a need to overcome the perceived Indian preponderance in conventional terms and bleed India with a thousand cuts, since a conventional war was found to be very costly. It was a tested game. The geo-political logic was to use the populations across the boundaries for bleeding the country with a hundred cuts-an easier task owing to the commonality of border populations’ ethnic, linguistic, religious and racial compositions. The Chinese had been practising it since the 1950s in the North-East. In this endeavour, Pakistan had helped them in an effort to change the demographic character of India’s border regions, for example, in Assam. In 1970s this came to the notice of the government and it became one of the issues in the Assam agitation under All Assam Students’ Union (ASSU) and All Bodo Students Union (ABSU) in the 1980s. Around this time, the pot in Punjab also started to boil. If a date has to be fixed, it is 1979 for Punjab and the beginning of the 1980s in Assam. It is more than a coincidence that the early part of the 1970s also saw the adoption of the Anandpur Saheb resolution in Punjab and the formation of the ULFA in Assam. Different interpretations to the resolution led to terrorist politics in the Punjab. The coming into power of the ASSU, the government brought forth the ULFA manace in Assam. In Kashmir, the accord with Sheikh Abdullah raised many hopes in 1975. His departure from the scene in 1982 created a political vacuum to be occupied among other forces by terrorist activities by 1989. The external factor gave these a flavour of Balkanisation of India in the name of ideology religion and the internal factor gave it the flavour of terrorist politics against the values, structures and processes in the country. Between the two lay the bleeding hopes of the alienated and the hungry for a better tomorrow.
The Organisational Dimension
It is well known that the condition of anarchy that market society created in the West, required organisations to mediate conflicts generated by the political economy of the liberal states. For Rousseau, it was General Will’s collectivism. For Durkheim, it was the solidarity groups especially the religious ones. For Weber, bureaucracy was to introduce rationality into the chaotic social order. For Marx, it was the class solidarity. This emphasis on organisation was not meant to deny the enlightenment project, but to enrich it, even revolutionise it. Pluralist organisations did not negate the project, but were used to operate the project in the liberal framework, while the communist organisations were meant to transcend the negative dimension of the contradiction of the enlightenment project. The terrorist organisations that have sprung up are against the liberal democratic project, as well as its Marxian version. The dialectic of the terrorist politics is that, while it remains an electoral actor it also negates the legitimisation process. It disrupts that process and opposes its restoration. It responds to the ground reality of ennui, alienation and anomie created by the project, which is used by the terrorist leadership to come to power. In that sense, terrorist politics is more a product of the elite conflicts from within the political space, and this may or may not link up the organisations with political parties. It may further raise the issue of the leadership of the terrorist organisations. It has been found that the leadership of Babbar Khalsa and of ULFA enjoyed the lives of the rich, which their politics gave them, while the lowest were living the wretchedness of criminality.
The organisational approach helps to look at terrorism as a process-in-itself. It needs to be studied, since the terrorist organisations have a life of their own in terms of inter-organisational and intra-organisational relationships and structures. The collaborative and conflictive dimension of politics can be witnessed here as well. In Punjab, Kashmir and the North-East the assassinations of rival groups’ members and rivals within the same group are witnessed. In Kashmir, for example, the organisations that came into existence have been categorised as pro-independence outfits and, the revivalist pro-Pakistan outfits. Those who wanted azadi split further, and some became secular while others became Islamic. Such groups fought amongst themselves. These fights deteriorated into ego clashes. Finally, all this gave way to barbarism. 25 In Punjab the situation is summed up thus: "The movement however, lost its ideological moorings at this stage, and a number of splinter groups emerged, defined not by any specific doctrinal differences, but essentially by a clash of egos between the various leaders. The initial groupings were around two ‘Panthic Committees’, . . .there were various subsequent reorganisations, with as many as five Panthic committees emerging, and no clear line of authority could ever be established over the more than 160 gangs that went on a rampage all over the state". 26
The analyses of terrorist phenomenon have been worked out by police and military officers, as well as journalists. Their diagnosis is related to one plus two factors, i.e., the strategic role of Pakistan, the role of religion and the faulty democratic process. Some samples of these writings are as follows:
(1) ‘Pakistan’s perception of its ‘strategic interests’ in the region, moreover, make Punjab a target in perpetuity for its machinations. It was, however, the Sikh religious leadership-and prominently among them, the Akalis that picked up the fundamentalist card; moreover, it was this leadership that had, over the preceding four decades, been preparing the soil in which the seed of bigotry and communal violence would thrive. And eventually it was this very religious leadership that either participated in, encouraged, or failed to oppose or dissociate itself from, the campaign of terror for Khalistan." 27 (KPS Gill).
(2) Balraj Puri who is very critical of the way in which Nehru handled the Kashmir issue in the late 1940s, says: "Another development cast doubts on the bonafide intentions of Pakistan. It started negotiations with China on the demarcation of the border of the State of Jammu and Kashmir with that of Sinkiang. It also ceded some territory to China over which India still claimed sovereignty a claim accepted by the Security Council Resolution of August 1948." 28
(3) On Pakistan’s aid to terrorism, Maheshwari says in the context of kidnapping of Rubayya, daughter of the then home minister in the Government of India: "Here were persons who had the practical experience of all aspects of terrorism-training, border-crossing and smuggling weapons from Pakistan in Kashmir." 29
(4) Peer Giya-Sud-Din, the former J&K Minister, said on the religious factor the following: "But with the degeneration of Islamic empires (Khalifas), the institution of Muslim priesthood has become a centre of vested interest, a class of exploiters and main levers of reaction, fundamentalism, defenders of dictatorship, imperialism and status quo . . . In Pakistan they were the worst defenders of worst dictatorships and even today are the main prop of the military . . .Mullaism, the institution of Muslim priests, held key positions in the social life of Kashmir . . . The local priesthood was an exponent of the mystic order (Bhakti) and its main proponents were Nundu Rishi . . . But Muslim United Front and the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, whose main lever is the Jamaat is behind the militant regressive social reform". 30
Not every body agrees with this religious argument. On Punjab and J&K, the following view suggests the negation of the religious factor.
"Without claims to prescience of any sort, I can say that the country has now acknowledged what I had all along: that the root cause of the Punjab problem was NOT Sikh seaparatism, NOT Hindu-Sikh conflict, NOT fundamentalist isolationism, NOT Khalistan ambitions and definitely NOT alienation with the rest of India.’ 31 On J&K, Arjun Ray says, that only 10 per cent of the terrorists have religious motivations. 32
Communalism in its Political Incarnation
It is necessary to go into a discussion of the cultural factors that contribute to terrorism. Some commentators show that some communities, like the Muslims and the Sikhs are violence prone owing to their history, family traditions and religion. Sikhism and Islam combine with the other social constructs of the individual and social psyche of a people to give terrorist politics. It needs to be noticed, however, that no community, as no individual, is by nature war prone. It is the social circumstances that are the cause. For example, it is well known that Sikhism predominantly believes in peace. Sikhism is identified with the spirit of accommodation and reconciliation. Guru Nanak spoke of a single humanity: love, peace, and goodwill were the true watchwords of true religion. Akali movement itself was not violent. 33 Islam also has had its liberationist and secularist interpretations in the history of the liberation movement, and is pacifist in it.
If these two religious were raised to the level of terrorist politics’ orientation, then the following points need to be made. First, it is not religion but communalism. Communalism in its political incarnation has to be pin-pointed as a variable in the modern liberal democratic project of India. Its birth is related to the British policies, rather than to the feudal proclivities. If communalism is the factor, then its genesis and role have to be understood in the context of the British colonial policy followed by, its role in independent India. In the former, it is the British who consciously injected the cancer in the body politic with its division of Bengal in 1905 and through it various political reform acts and its operation of the civil services. Hindu and Muslim communalism fed on each other. After independence it was the threat of the Hindu communalism that circumscribed the secular polity and original elan of Nehruvian India. In the Punjab, it is the communal politics of the Jan Singh and the Akalis against the secular organisations like the Congress and the Communist Part of India, which set the tone of the politics of the seventies. The seventies also witnessed the coming together of the right-wing parties at the national level. The game of power, therefore, has to be understood in the context of the communalising of the polity, which was the context of Zail Singh’s support to Bhindranwale, who ultimately out-smarted one and all. The religious factor, therefore, takes us to the political factors that become the facilitating context for the play of the terrorist card.
Similarly in Kashmir the mystic Suffism is aborted by mullaism for a variety of factors in which the imperial game of partition, the subsequent support to Pakistan, the play of the India card by Pakistan and its clandestine strategic games combined with the internal dynamics of politics that prepared the ground for terrorist politics. The two casualities were the radical socio-economic reforms of the National Conference and the non-ideal type, in the Weberian sense, the secular politics in the state. The queering of the pitch never abated. It began with the razakars, continued through the loss of the holy symbol in the 1960s, the wars and, then the terrorist politics. Here again the pointer is towards the political dimension, and not the religious dimension.
The cultural realm is the contest of the political, as Gramsci would tell us, is the struggle for hegemony by the state over the civil society. Nehru had said that the founders created a secular state in a religious society. He had also pointed towards the danger of right wing politics in India taking over. The struggle at the cultural level was between the secular state and communal counter practice. The culprit has been the Hindu, Muslim and Sikh communalism that besieged the secular state, whose response in this context is regarded as soft (a characterisation that was made by Gunnar Myrdal in his Asian Drama).
The nationalist discourse on self-determination has now taken the form of sub-national, with the underpinnings of no moral support to it. In fact, it has been suggested, after Etzioni discarded the moral dimensions to self-determination, that sub-nationalism should be seen as episodes signifying a process of micro-nationalism challenging the nationalist discourse. 34 This is flawed, since the destruction of Yugoslavia shows that secular identities have led to assertion of primordial loyalties.
The political dimension takes one to a set of variables related to the partyisation and the political process that developed in India. The party-system that developed in India was from the one-dominant-party-system to coalition government at the national level, and from one-party-dominance through the two parties to the multiple party system in the states. How far terrorism is related to the parties and their politics, is an area that needs to be empirically proven. The theme is relevant since some evidence does exist to show that linkage. 35 The RSS that engages in cultural practice of the Hindus is linked with the current BJP and earlier with the BJS. It is necessary to examine this. Second, since the splits in the communist movement have made for splintering organisations, terrorist tactics have dominated the Naxal politics. The middle ground of parties shows their flirtation with criminalisation. One cannot ignore the following facts: (a) The Akali Party began the Dharam Yudh out of frustration and acquiecised in the terrorist politics, which had a criminal layer in it subsequently. (b) No political party has called for the implementation of the Parliamentary report of the bank scam of Harshad Mehta. (c) The truth about the Hawala scandal is not yet out, though part of its money went to the Kashmir terrorists and the perpetrators of the Bombay blasts. (d) The Vohra Committee Report tells us of the smuggler-bureaucrat-politician nexus in the wake of the Bombay blasts. The report of Sri Krishna Commission is not being implemented, though it indicts the right-wing communal parties in Bombay for perpetrating communal riots. The market economy at the all-India and global level has to be also empirically analysed to unravel the dynamics of the causes of terrorism, as also its changing contours.
Similarly, if we go into the conceptualisation of terrorism in India we notice a three level analysis. One, it is ascribed to the Pakistan factor. Two, it is linked to the religious factor. Third, it is related to the ad hocism of the administrative set up. Finally, it is related to the mercenary character of the left-wing and right-wing terrorists associated or, independent of political parties. In recent writings, the issue of parallel economy through the issue of corruption and terrorist ‘entrepreneur’ is being raised. 36 In other words, a new warlord is emerging in India and abroad. Osama bin Laden is said to be one such figure, and is related to the poppy crops in Uzbekistan and other businesses in which the US leaders are alleged to have an interest. 37 This paper points to the more basic causation that also determines its conception, i.e., the liberal paradigm of theory and liberal-democratic politics. 38
In conclusion, one can say that the liberal view of man, liberal democratic politics, its parallel economy, and political process account for a large measure of the objective factors that can create terrorism, but only in conjunction with certain subjective factors which this paper has not looked into. These relate to the cultural and psychological dimensions of response to the experience of the liberal democratic politics and the failure of the individual to adjust to the fact that the people may be with the state, rather than with the alienated individual who may turn to the politics of terror.
Endnotes
Note 1: George Thompson, Study in Ancient Greek Philosophy, First Philosophers, Vol. 2 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1955). Back.
Note 2: Ernest Barker, Introduction and Translation, Aristotle, Politics. Back.
Note 3: Harry Eckenstein, edited, Internal War, Problems and Approaches, New York and London, 1964. Back.
Note 4: Government of India, White Paper On Punjab. Back.
Note 5: Ted Robert Gurr, ‘Empirical Research on Political Terrorism; State of the Art and How it might be improved’ in Current Perspectives of Terrorism, editors, Robert O’ Slatter and Michael Stohl, London, 1988, p. 143. Back.
Note 6: Ved Marwah, Uncivil Wars, (Delhi: Harper and Collins, 1995). Back.
Note 7: Alex P. Schmid and Albert J. Longman, et al. Political Terrorism: A New Guide to Actors, Authors, Concepts, Data Bases, Theories and Literature, Amersterdam, Oxford, New York, 1988. Back.
Note 8: Edmund Burke, Sublime and Beautiful. Back.
Note 9: Karl Marx, Eighteenth Brummaire of Louis Bonaparte, (Moscow: Progress, 1966). Back.
Note 10: Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan. Back.
Note 11: John Locke, Two Treatise On Civil Government. Back.
Note 12: John Stuart Mill, Essays on Liberty and Democracy. Back.
Note 13: Jean Paul Sartre, Introduction to Franz Fanon, Wretched of The Earth. Back.
Note 14: The Alarm, 1884. Back.
Note 15: Aditya Sinha, Death of Dreams, A Terrorist’s Tale (India: Harper Collins, 2000). Back.
Note 16: Igor Primoratz, "What is Terrorism", in Terrorism edited by Conor Gearty, Darmouth, Aldershot, USA, Singapore, Sydney, 1994. Back.
Note 17: Jenny Teichman, How To Define Terrorism in ibid. Back.
Note 18: US State Department Report on Terrorism, 1998. Back.
Note 19: Thucydides, Peloponnesian Wars, Great Britain, 1954. Back.
Note 20: J. Bower Bell, The Dynamics of the Armed Struggle, (London: Frank Cass, 1998). Back.
Note 21: Chris Dishman, ‘How To Define Terrorism’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, vol. 22, no. 4, October-December, 1999, pp. 357-62. Back.
Note 22: US Department of State, Patterns of Global Terrorism, 1993-97. Back.
Note 23: Bjorn Moller, ‘Faces of War’ in Ethnicity and Inter-State conflicts, Types, Causes and Peace Strategies, edited by Haken Wiberg and Christina P. Shirer, (Ashgate, 1999). Back.
Note 24: Peter Uvin, Adding Violence, The Development of Enterprise in Rwanda, (Connecticut, USA: Kumarian, 1998), pp.101, 109-116, 141-200. Back.
Note 25: Aditya Sinha, F.N. 15. Back.
Note 26: K.P.S. Gill, Knights of Falsehood, (New Delhi: Har Anand), p. 99. Back.
Note 28: Balraj Puri, Kashmir, Towards Insurgency, (New Delhi: Orient Longman), pp. 18-19. Back.
Note 29: Anil Maheshwari, Crescent Over Kashmir, Politics of Mullahism, (New Delhi: Rupa and Co. 1993). p. 49. Back.
Note 31: V.N. Narayanan, Tryst With Terror, Punjab’s Turbulent Decade, (Ajanta 1996), p. 3 Back.
Note 32: Arjun Ray, Kashmir Diary, Psychology of Militancy, (New Delhi, 1997), pp. 70-73. Back.
Note 33: Harbans Singh, Sikhism, World Encyclopaedia, Honorary Editor, Linius Pauling, vol. 2, no. 2, (New York, Beijing, Toronto: Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1986). Back.
Note 34: Sanjib Barua, India Against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. Back.
Note 35: Leonard Weinberg, Political Parties and Terrorism. Back.
Note 36: Ajai Sahni and J. George, ‘Security and Development In India’s Northeast: An Alternative Perspective’, Faultines, Writings on Conflict and Resolution. Edited by K.P.S. Gill & Ajai Sahni, Bulwark & Institute of Conflict Management, vol. 4, New Delhi. Back.
Note 37: Michael C. Rupert, "Osama bin Laden’s Bush Family Business Connection", From The Wilderness, September 18 issue. Back.
Note 38: Rakesh Gupta, India’s Internal Security Dimensions-A Framework Of Analysis, Occasional Paper, International Centre for Peace Studies, New Delhi, February 2001;-Do-, India: Towards A Political Economy of Intra State Conflicts, Faultlines, Writings on Conflict & Resolution, edited by K.P.S. Gill & Ajai Sahni, vol. 5, Bulwark & Institute For Conflict Management, May 2000. Back.