Mumbai Jihad: Overwhelming Force or Judicious Prudence

As the debates rages on in the Indian sub-continent about an appropriate response to the Mumbai Jihad, thinkers and policy makers in India lurch between an all-out war espousing the annihilation of Pakistan to understanding terrorism as a symptomatic response to past injustices...

Speech by Arun Shourie to the Rajya Sabha. His basic premise being 'Not an eye for an eye, but for an eye, both eyes'.

Please realize -- this is a point for the liberals also -- whenever we are pushed into such a situation we say that NO, force should not be used. Only minimal force should be used. But no war is won with minimal force. It is won by overwhelming the enemy. As it has happened in Mumbai now. You can't do it with minimal force. You try and kill six people in China and see what happens. Here you can kill 60,000 people and nothing happens to the killers!. Not an eye-for-an-eye, not a tooth-for-a-tooth. That is completely wrong. For an eye, both eyes! For a tooth, the whole jaw! Unless India has that determination and that clarity, we will continue to bleed like this all the time.

Arundhati Roy seeks rationality in the actions of the terrorists and reminds us of the historical background behind the current conflict.

There is a fierce, unforgiving fault line that runs through the contemporary discourse on terrorism. On one side (let's call it Side A) are those who see terrorism, especially 'Islamist' terrorism, as a hateful, insane scourge that spins on its own axis, in its own orbit and has nothing to do with the world around it, nothing to do with history, geography or economics. Therefore, Side A says, to try and place it in a political context, or even try to understand it, amounts to justifying it and is a crime in itself. Side B believes that though nothing can ever excuse or justify terrorism, it exists in a particular time, place and political context, and to refuse to see that will only aggravate the problem and put more and more people in harm's way.
So, on balance, if I had to choose between Side A and Side B, I'd pick Side B. We need context. Always.
In this nuclear subcontinent, that context is Partition. The Radcliffe Line which separated India and Pakistan and tore through states, districts, villages, fields, communities, water systems, homes and families, was drawn virtually overnight. It was Britain's final, parting kick to us. Partition triggered the massacre of more than a million people and the largest migration of a human population in contemporary history. Eight million people—Hindus fleeing the new Pakistan, Muslims fleeing the new kind of India—left their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Each of those people carries and passes down a story of unimaginable pain, hate, horror, but yearning too. That wound, those torn but still un-severed muscles, that blood and those splintered bones still lock us together in a close embrace of hatred, terrifying familiarity but also love. It has left Kashmir trapped in a nightmare from which it can't seem to emerge, a nightmare that has claimed more than 60,000 lives. Pakistan, the Land of the Pure, became an Islamic republic, and then, very quickly a corrupt, violent military state, openly intolerant of other faiths. India on the other hand declared herself an inclusive, secular democracy. It was a magnificent undertaking, but Babu Bajrangi's predecessors had been hard at work since the 1920s, dripping poison into India's bloodstream, undermining that idea of India even before it was born. By 1990, they were ready to make a bid for power. In 1992, Hindu mobs exhorted by L.K. Advani stormed the Babri Masjid and demolished it. By 1998, the BJP was in power at the Centre. The US War on Terror put the wind in their sails. It allowed them to do exactly as they pleased, even to commit genocide and then present their fascism as a legitimate form of chaotic democracy. This happened at a time when India had opened its huge market to international finance, and it was in the interests of international corporations and the media houses they owned to project it as a country that could do no wrong. That gave Hindu Nationalists all the impetus and the impunity they needed. This, then, is the larger historical context of terrorism in the subcontinent, and of the Mumbai attacks.

Interestingly, in many of the conflicts around the world, there is always the ever-present ghost of colonialist policies practiced by the British. Africa, the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent were the prime theaters used to by the British to satiate their appetite for unlimited access to raw materials, free or borderline cheap labor and access to regional riches. I see their guilty hand in almost every conflict; of course, many of these conflicts have now been conveniently wallpapered over and relabeled as regional uprisings, religious zealotry or intra cultural discords endemic to a regions peoples and attendant cultures. Delve a little deeper and one finds the pernicious effects of British rule lurking under the covers… Someday I hope to write more on the enduring effects and the daily horrors that one has to put up just because the English decided that it was in the best interests of their people to invade countries around the world.

The site of the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center seven years after the towers went down. I remember taking this picture walking past it a couple of months back...

Mumbai Jihad - theories in religion

The Mumbai attacks seems to have focused attention on religions prevalent in India, their perceived origins and how they seem to have played out over the millenia... This piece was written a couple of months before the attacks took place. The author is jingoistic, but compelling at times.

To understand Christianity, we need to learn the features of Semitic religions. They are also called Prophetic religions. It means that these religions were established by a prophet each. The roots lie in the Jewish religion established by Prophet Abraham. Christianity, established by Jesus Christ, is a modified form of Judaism. Later, Prophet Mohammed established Islam borrowing various tenets of Abraham’s Judaism. The message common to these religions is that ‘God is not directly accessible to Man. You are, fundamentally, Sinners. God is exceptionally terrible and cruel and punishes without qualms. You will have to believe me, your Messiah, and follow my preaching to obtain an opportunity to avoid burning in hell. If you do not pay heed, you are sure to end up in hell. You will have to place faith in this religion. You will have to convert others to this faith. You will have to spread this message and convert people wherever you go, even if it necessitates the use of force. That is Religion; that is the code.’ Prophet Mohammed taught methods of torturing, killing and enslaving those who did not believe in Islam. These teachings are an integral part of Quran and have been highlighted in several places in the text. Prophets are intolerant towards Gods of other religions. Jesus Christ was one such Prophet.

These three Prophetic Religions born out of the desert and the religions born in India have one fundamental difference. All these Prophets claimed that their word was the ultimate truth and that God’s word has been sent through them. They demanded absolute submission and the alternative they offered was hell. They also propounded that God’s word, as pronounced by them, ought to be spread across the world as a message using violence if needed. Prophetic religions are basically blind-faiths. Indian faiths that derive their roots from the Vedas state: ekam sat viprAh bahudha vadanti (There is only one truth- the learned men explain it in different ways). This free thought has found echo in several Indian religious channels. In Jain philosophy syadvAda (syat = possibility; existence) holds prime position. It delineates that there is nothing that can claim to be absolute truth – including what I say. There is every possibility that the exact opposite may be true or both could coexist. Jains identify the possibility of existence of up to seven truths at one time. This is an expression of the previously stated Vedic philosophy of One Truth. All Indian religious testaments agree on this basic philosophy. They encourage debate. This is perhaps what differentiates Indian religions that encourage exploration of truth from Prophetic Religions that command unflinching obedience to the Gospel. The Sages (Rishis) behind Vedas (texts outlining the basic tenets of what evolved to become the Hindu way of life) and Upanishads (texts containing the essence of Vedas) were not Prophets. Koenraad Elst, a Belgian Scholar on Religious Evaluation, states in his book : “Prophets talk a great deal about themselves. They ascribe special powers to themselves and state that they have a special connection with the Creator of the World. Sages, on the other hand, talk about Universal Truths and that these truths can be divined in a state of awareness which can be achieved through practice”. The Buddha was not a Prophet but a Sage who indulged in the study of treatise belonging to the age of Upanishads. His insights are not contrary to the ones presented in the Upanishads. Vedic Religions, Jainism and Buddhism use the term Dharma (Way of Life) and not the term Religion, employed by Prophetic Religions.

Mumbai Jihad - another way forward

Tom Friedman considers the reverse scenario (which I pray must not take place).

After all, if 10 young Indians from a splinter wing of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party traveled by boat to Pakistan, shot up two hotels in Karachi and the central train station, killed at least 173 people, and then, for good measure, murdered the imam and his wife at a Saudi-financed mosque while they were cradling their 2-year-old son — purely because they were Sunni Muslims — where would we be today? The entire Muslim world would be aflame and in the streets.

The end of terrorism that stalks the world today and rears its dirty head every couple of months somewhere in the globe will only go away when the Muslim grassroots start to believe that it is in their self interests and in the best interests of their religion to condemn attacks like what happened in Mumbai. The condemnations should not be empty rhetoric aimed at garnering temporary headlines but should come from deep within the inner Muslim heart (the majority of whom are a great and a decent group of people). Governments across the world will continue spending money on beefing up security but will not be able to contain that single determined individual who thinks nothing of giving up his/her life in the misguided notion that they are waging a holy war for their religion.

Again, in the words of Tom: Because, I repeat, this kind of murderous violence only stops when the village — all the good people in Pakistan, including the community elders and spiritual leaders who want a decent future for their country — declares, as a collective, that those who carry out such murders are shameful unbelievers who will not dance with virgins in heaven but burn in hell. And they do it with the same vehemence with which they denounce Danish cartoons.