What
are the limits, if any, to India’s patience against externally
aided terrorism? This is an important question to ask because no
one knows to what extent India can be terrorized, assaulted and
bled before it concludes enough is enough.
India’s
experiences suggest that the more terrorism it has got, the greater
has become its capacity to absorb terrorist strikes without losing
its self-control.
India’s
resilience comes from negative factors. Despite the legacy of Mahatma
Gandhi, violence is endemic in Indian society. Riots, stampedes
and street disturbances are commonplace. In the same week that terrorists
killed 37 people at the Akshardham temple complex, 16 rallyists
died in a stampede at the Lucknow railway station. In fact, the
temple slayings received roughly the same amount of front-page coverage
in newspapers as a Bollywood actor running his automobile over sleeping
men.
Terrorist
attacks increasingly are treated like common instances of violence.
The recurrent terrorist killings in Jammu and Kashmir, for example,
are covered like a body-count story just like bus accidents -- five
killed day before yesterday, six yesterday, and three jawans today.
A second
factor is that the value of human life in India is dirt cheap. Even
when people die by the scores in a railway accident, building blaze
or mob violence, it does not bring about better railway or fire
safety measures or better policing because loss of human life is
no ground to enforce accountability. As the Bhopal gas catastrophe
demonstrated, even the loss of thousands of lives brings no accountability.
Terrorist slayings thus do not trigger the kind of public outrage
and response witnessed in some other societies.
Yet
another factor is the chaotic nature of Indian democracy. Those
who hold the reigns of power spend much of their time not in policy-making
but in fire-fighting. The tragedy of one day gets overtaken by another
calamity of next day. Death and destruction, even by callous, calculated
design, does not engender bipartisanship but rather whets cut-throat
electoral politics. The big question for debate after each major
terrorist strike is not how India should respond but whether the
attack would help the ruling coalition or the opposition.
As
a long-suffering nation, India, fittingly, has a prime minister
who personifies patience. Atal Bihari Vajpayee lives up to the Biblical
adage, “Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow
to wrath,” although his critics would contend that he is also
slow to hear. Since he pledged “zero tolerance” against
terrorism in his 1999 Independence Day speech, he has had to silently
practise “maximal tolerance” because terrorism has qualitatively
escalated with the advent of fidayeen attacks under his prime ministership.
But he remains imperturbable. Equally unflappable by terrorist strikes
(other than the one that killed her husband) is the leader of the
opposition, who has yet to clearly express her views on any policy.
The
increasingly daring terrorist strikes, however, have worn even Vajpayee’s
patience threadbare. This is apparent from the manner he stirred
up to make some public comments in recent days. Those comments suggest
he is drawing the right conclusions even if he still wallows in
some naiveté.
Having
failed to employ a coherent and determined anti-terrorist strategy,
Vajpayee had pinned his hopes on America reining in Pakistan’s
export of terror to India. Now Vajpayee acknowledges that US pressure
on Pakistan seemingly has not worked. So he has publicly concluded
that India must “combat terrorism on its own”. This
conclusion must be appreciated, although it has taken him four-and-a-half
years in power to reach a simple assessment with which he should
have begun his term in office.
The
good sense now on display risks being undermined by other statements
that are remote from reality. Twice in recent days Vajpayee has
said that terrorism is on its last legs. The terrorists’ masters
across the border and political opponents at home might claim that
it is Vajpayee who appears on his last legs. Not only is terrorist
violence growing in sophistication, but also it appears likely to
continue to torment India in the foreseeable future. State-sponsored
terrorism is a different kind of war, for which India has yet to
evolve new tactics and tools despite being bled for two decades.
So
is India’s patience inexhaustible, even if the patience outwardly
has worn thin? The next-door despot, Pervez Musharraf, and his fellow
generals think so, otherwise they would not renew their silent war
of ?a thousand cuts? against India after temporary cessations in
January-February and June this year. They believe they can continue
to push India with minimal or manageable risks.
Absent
from official Indian statements this year has been a ‘p’
word ‘patience’ even as the rhetoric on the other ‘p’
word ‘Pakistan’ has gone up to the extent that India
finds itself being more tightly paired with Pakistan. Terrorist
attacks on Indian targets are portrayed by the international media
not in the context of terrorism but in the India-Pakistan and Hindu-Muslim
framework. But there is a good reason why Indian officials no longer
talk about the limits of India’s patience.
Exactly
a year ago, Vajpayee wrote to American President George W. Bush
after the terrorist assault on the J&K legislature to say India’s
patience was running out. Undaunted, the masters got their proxies
to storm the Indian Parliament. Vajpayee then declared that India
had reached the upper limit of its patience. Having officially expended
its patience last December, India can no longer utter that ‘p’
word. But Musharraf is convinced that India has not yet used up
all its patience.
Bolstering
Musharraf’s policy to continue infiltrating terrorists into
India is the fact that not once has New Delhi retaliated against
Pakistan, despite incontrovertible evidence over the years about
the Pakistani connection to the rise of Sikh terrorism, the Kashmir
insurrection, the Bombay bombings, the Kandahar hijacking, the Kaluchak
and Badami Bagh raids, the Chittisinghpora, Amarnath and Raghunath
temple massacres, etc. Imagine the likely response of the much-smaller
Pakistan had it been continuously bled by India.
What
can provoke India to bite the bullet and retaliate? This is an odd
question to pose in the current international discourse, focused
on Bush’s controversial new pre-emption doctrine that reserves
for America the right to attack potential enemies before they strike
or acquire the capability to strike. While retaliation is recognised
by international law as part of the sovereign right of self-defence,
pre-emption seeks to turn international law on its head. The irony
is that Washington, while loudly asserting the right of pre-emption
for itself, has sought to deny India even the right of retaliation.
The
cheapness of human life may mean that India can continue to put
up with terrorism, as long as the victims are innocent civilians
or security personnel doing their job. Even the recent slayings
of the law minister and some school children in J&K have been
quickly forgotten. Although prosperity and security constitute a
personal rather than national agenda in India, can those who govern
the nation continue to indefinitely disregard their duty to protect
citizens?
Patience
and tact often achieve more in international relations than the
use of force, but when patience is openly mocked at as cowardice,
the ridiculers can be in for a surprise. Having left India with
few options, the merchants of terror would be well advised to heed
the famous John Dryden saying: “Beware of the fury of the
patient man.” – Courtesy: Hindustan Times
Email Story | 
Discuss Story
