[Assam] Sentinel editorial

[Ram Sarangapani]

Bikash Sarmah makes some very good points and has been able to differentiate
between an 'insurgent' and a 'terrorist'.
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*Given This Brand of Insurgency
THE REALITY MIRROR
Bikash Sarmah
*T he grenade attack on the International Society for
Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) temple in
Imphal last Wednesday when ISKCON devotees
were celebrating Janmasthami, is yet another reminder of the changing face
of terrorism in the Northeast. There are discerning observers and
commentators in the Northeast who are averse to using the word ''terrorism''
to describe the militias in the region. They would rather call it
''insurgency'', theorizing — pretty convincingly too — the conflict in the
region as the one that stems from a sense of alienation of the people from
the Indian mainstream, a sense of a ''colonial'' India exploiting the
innocent masses here, a sense of history that would narrate the romanticized
tales of freedom of the past that seems to be lost now, and, of course, a
deep sense of fear of the gradual loss of ethnic and indigenous identities.
There are columnists who argue that since what is being witnessed in the
Northeast is not terrorism but insurgency, the only way out is political
solution, not a military one. True, the country's armed forces, who
otherwise defend the borders and become martyrs, fighting valiantly the
enemies of the nation, should not be seen fighting and killing their own
countrymen. But it is also equally true that 'insurgents' are not expected
to kill their own civilian brethren — as randomly and bestially as the
savage terrorist would do. They, as 'liberators' and 'revolutionaries', are
not expected to extort money from the ones who earn money of sheer hard
work, and to run an industry of sorts, quite lucrative, quite easy — because
it is so easy to threaten unarmed civilians to loot them — and hence quite
sustainable. Surely, then, our 'insurgents' are not expected to cross that
thin line of difference between insurgency and terrorism in their own whims
and fancies just because it suits them so — to be insurgents when they
invoke history, to be terrorists when they want to make their presence felt.

This long introduction to this column is deemed necessary because, over the
time, some self-styled experts on insurgency and conflict resolution have
grown and 'matured' in this region, who would not acknowledge the
impossibility of conflict resolution at a time when the contours of the very
conflict seem to be ever-changing, ever-stretching, and quite arbitrarily at
that. There have to be better theories to tackle the menace, let alone solve
the so-called problem or issue. My considered opinion is that there cannot
be a political solution to attacks like the one at the ISKCON temple in
Imphal; there can still be a political solution, but if and only if the
framework that would yield a political formula is so worked on that there
may be scope to call our insurgents sheer terrorists as and when they become
terrorists. The theory is refreshingly simple: when an insurgent throws
grenade at a place of worship or a busy market place or buses and trains, he
instantly becomes a terrorist — cowardly. When he kills women and children,
he is a terrorist whose cowardice knows no lower bound. But when an
insurgent fights open battles with the state — its armed forces — because
his insurgency is against the state and its machinery, he remains an
insurgent. The fight has to be open — it is meaningless to talk of even
guerrilla warfare. So how many insurgents do you have here?
The All Manipuri Students' Union (AMSU) did well by calling the ISKCON
attack ''an act of terrorism''. It could not be otherwise. The most
interesting thing to have happened in the wake of the attack was some
prominent Manipuri militant outfits coming out with statements denying their
role in the attack and condemning it. The first to have done so was the
Revolutionary People's Front (RPF) — the political wing of the People's
Liberation Army (PLA). According to reports, an RPF spokesman told the media
that his outfit considered such attacks ''thoughtless and cowardly''. The
United National Liberation Front (UNLF) also denied its hand in the attack.
Later, even the ones against whom fingers were being pointed, such as the
People's Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak (PREPAK) and the Kanglei Yawol
Kanba Lup (KYKL), denied their involvement. These denials are interesting
because they show how restless the militant outfits in the region become
when the occasion comes to them to prove their insurgency characteristics.
They also know it well that such occasions are rare, and that one needs to
perfect the art of identifying the best occasion. For, these are the
occasions when public anger runs high — even against insurgency. These are
the occasions when an alert and active civil society as Manipur's (remember
those elderly Manipuri women stripping naked in full public view to protest
Thangjam Manorama's brutal rape and murder by Assam Rifles jawans in 2004?)
would question the very basis of militant violence in much the same way as
they would question state violence. It is quite natural, then, that
following the ISKCON temple attack, blogs on the internet surfaced, with
''challenge'' to the militants involved in the dastardly act, asking them to
reveal their identity and ''fight man-to-man''. It surely cannot be a
response to insurgency or any liberation movement. It is a response to
terrorism. And 'insurgents' find it hard to accept such response of the
civil society.
There is another theory doing the rounds. It is that the attack on the
ISKCON temple is an outburst of the Meitei frustration at the growing
''Indianization'' of Manipuri culture and tradition. In the wake of the
attack, some internet blogs had messages that glorified the attack as the
one that would protect the indigenousness of the Manipuris. Such messages
must have emboldened outfits like the KYKL that calls itself a 'social'
organization (no truly social organization would tread the path of violence)
and is leading the campaign of Meitei revival. While one cannot dismiss
endeavours for the revival of indigenous culture in a State like Manipur, it
does not require one to attack a temple of a religious sect that does not
believe in and that does not have any proselytizing mission — unlike the
thriving missionaries all around us in this region. If there are Westerners
in the ISKCON movement, it is all because of their spiritual — not religious
— prerogatives; much in the same way as scores of Westerners thronged Osho
Rajneesh's lecture rooms to hear his sex-to-superconsciousness discourses,
beyond ritualistic Hinduism or, for that matter, any other faith. After all,
the most secular spirit on earth would have one follow his or her own ideals
according to the choice-of-reason theory. Can anyone point out that the
ISKCON movement is about forced conversion? And is the rich and pristine
Manipuri culture, nay the Meitei discourse, at the mercy of ISKCON
'propagandists'? Can the ISKCON movement corrupt any indigenous culture?
Yes, it can, but if and only if the indigenous people do not bother about
rediscovering their rich past or do not know how to go about the very path
of rediscovery. Culture and tradition, if adhered to in utmost sincerity and
awareness of the changing needs and conditions of the present, are
unassailable. This, however, is lost on the gun-toting species for whom guns
and grenades may be the only way to a bizarre variety of salvation. All said
and done, the most vital question remains: was the ISKCON attack
masterminded by the jihadis fostered by our 'friendly' neighbours,
Bangladesh and Pakistan, in tandem with our own 'insurgents' or on their
own? At the time of writing this piece, the question remains unanswered. But
anything is possible, given the brand of insurgency in this region. And yes,
we have not heard of 'insurgents' fighting the jihadis. They would not,
perhaps — all for the sake of the matrix of insurgency-jihad equations! (The
writer is the Consulting Editor of The Sentinel)
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