Vinaash Kale Vipreet Budhi

Since time immemorial Indians have traded with the known western civilization of its time. The trade in material was two ways but it seems India has given a lot to the world in what one may call intellectual property but has not taken much in return. Since the control of India by the British, the trend has reversed we not only lagged behind in our export of products we also imported heavily in the realm of ideas and philosophies. The modern India that we see today owes a lot to the western civilization.

The import of Western products, entertainment, and ideas into India continues unabated. It is not that country should live in isolation and not learn from the practices of any country whether in the east of India or the west. But as a popular Urdu saying goes – ‘naql ke liye bhi aql chaahiye.’

Think Tanks as a concept emerged in the western world after the Second World War. It has grown really popular in recent years all over the world and India has also seen a boost in the number of organizations that can be called think tanks. But as the name suggests think tanks without much thinking is just a tank which can not think and will also resist new ideas coming to it.

Established in 1973, the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) is one of the important think tanks of India when it comes to the public policy. Bharat Karnad, who is a professor at CPR recently wrote an op-ed piece in Mint that if it was written a blog I would have simply ignored it. The solutions to India’s terrorism problem offered in that article is outrageous that you will think it comes form a nut-job blogger hiding behind the anonymity and spewing venom in the online world.

Bharat Karnad resume is impressive; he has been in position of great influence in the central government advising in various capacities. From a reading of his profile, it seems that he is close to nation’s defence establishment. A great majority of his work is in nuclear policy of India. But in security business, these days money is in terrorism so suddenly he shifted gear and has given us his terrifying solution for dealing with the menace of terrorism.

He argues that Indian forces and security apparatus are unprepared for the new “urban guerilla warfare-qua-terrorism.” He proposes that a new force be created that are trained just for fighting urban warfare with the terrorist. So far so good until you get to the part that this training should be done by Israeli military experts. Why not American or Russians? That is curious.

“A cadre of super-specialists is the surest bet, particularly one trained by Israeli military experts, who are the most experienced and the best in the business.”

There is a fascination with Israel’s handling of its terrorism problem by Indian elites. I am not sure if they read international newspapers, otherwise they would have noticed that Israel is no where near success in dealing with the violence. It has lost thousands of its citizens and its hold in occupied territories continues to be at a great cost to its citizenry and economy. And Israel’s withdrawl from Lebanon will be akin to India giving up Kashmir. Surely Israel is not an example that India wants to follow.

With antagonistic relations with most of its neighboring countries Israel survives on the US financial and military support. If this is the vision that the great think tanks are dreaming for India then I see disaster.

“There’s one other factor that is critical for success. Uruguay battling the Tupamaros and Argentina the Monteneros in the 1960s both realized what the US Homeland Security scheme, Russia fighting the Chechen insurgents in Grozny, and Israel have established: Success against the urban terrorist guerilla is predicated on “oppressive population control”. The more aggressively potential sympathizers in a society are deterred from offering moral and material support to terrorists and would-be terrorists, the more effectively this threat can be quelled. Thus, for example, nowhere are residents and citizens with Muslim-sounding names under stricter surveillance than in the US, where there has been no incidence of extremist Islamic terror after 9/11.”

Again, some time the residents of these think tanks need to come out of their ivory towers and touch the ground for a dose of reality. But within the confines of their office they can acquire enough research material to know that none of the terror thereat has been quelled by oppressive population control in all cases changed political scenario, a process of redressal of grievances, and a way to bring the disenfranchised into the mainstream are the only ways that terrorism has ended. Of course I am not saying that improved security measures should be taken but with terms like “oppressive population control” reminds me of the solutions thought up by the fascists in Hitler’s Germany- concentration camps.

It is really interesting that he doesn’t mention Russia and Israel as the success stories but only the United States after 9/11. US record is indeed impressive and requires much careful study to understand how they did it. The US has only two countries that it shares borders with and both are friendly to it. Though both north and south borders are porous and many miles of US coastlines continues to be unprotected. Though security measures have increased in the US but still the society continues to have less apparent security controls than what is visible in India.

Prof. Karnad is incorrect and seems that he has not done any research on the US anti-terrorism methods applied domestically. Yes there is a no-fly list and yes some Muslims have been put on no-fly zones. But he seems to be unaware of the FBI’s increased outreach effort to the American Muslims. Again, let me remind the professor that terrorists responsible for 9/11 would have gone through even in the presence of a no-fly list back then. Also, none of the 19 terrorists were American citizen or residents, all of them were from overseas entered the country legally and had no support from the Muslims of America. So to suggest that all these measures have prevented terror attack is ludicrous.

“What is urgently called for is more intrusive overt and covert policing of the minority community in India. This may be a politically onerous but unavoidable policy. The sting of the targeted approach can, however, be diluted by subsuming it in a system of more intense monitoring of the population at large.”

What a masterpiece- so not only he wants to put the minority community (read Muslims) in a concentration camp and increased informant activity within them because apparently he doesn’t trust any of them. But also in one stroke he comes up with a system to monitor entire over a billion citizen of India. It is a different matter that India has not been able to reach them with water, health, and education will give billions of dollars to Israeli, American, and European companies to sell us products and expertise that will help make all of India a gulag.

So as the Sanskrit saying reminds us that vinaash kale vipreet budhi (terrible idea at a dangerous time), I would request Dr. Karnad and all of the think tank community to go on a vacation and spare India with their half-baked ideas that will create more problems than solve it.

Can someone explain to me why there is not even one Muslim among the faculty and staff of the CPR? Do they trust them not?

And shame on Mint for publishing his opinion.

My own suggestions on what India and Indians should do to fight terrorism and other problems can be found here.