There are other steps that are being taken, such as court judgments that in effect curtail free speech, the right of government workers to go on strike, the right to life and livelihood. Courts have begun to micro-manage our lives in India. And criticizing the courts is a criminal offense.
But coming back to the counterterrorism initiatives, over the last decade the number of people who have been killed by the police and security forces runs into the tens of thousands. In the state of Andhra Pradesh (the pin-up girl of corporate globalization in India), an average of about two hundred “extremists” are killed in what are called “encounters” every year. The Bombay police boast of how many “gangsters” they have killed in “shootouts.” In Kashmir, in a situation that almost amounts to war, an estimated eighty thousand people have been killed since 1989. Thousands have simply “disappeared.” In the northeastern provinces, the situation is similar.
In recent years, the Indian police have opened fire on unarmed people at peaceful demonstrations, mostly Dalit and Adivasi. The preferred method is to kill them and then call them terrorists. India is not alone, though. We have seen similar things happen in countries such as Bolivia and Chile. In the era of neoliberalism, poverty is a crime, and protesting against it is more and more being defined as terrorism.
In India, the Prevention of Terrorism Act is often called the Production of Terrorism Act. It’s a versatile, hold-all law that could apply to anyone from an Al-Qaeda operative to a disgruntled bus conductor. As with all anti-terrorism laws, the genius of POTA is that it can be whatever the government wants. For example, in Tamil Nadu it has been used to imprison and silence critics of the state government. In Jharkhand 3,200 people, mostly poor Adivasis accused of being Maoists, have been named in criminal complaints under POTA. In Gujarat and Mumbai, the act is used almost exclusively against Muslims. After the 2002 state-assisted pogrom in Gujarat, in which an estimated 2,000 Muslims were savagely killed by Hindu mobs and 150,000 driven from their homes, 287 people have been accused under POTA. Of these, 286 are Muslim and one is a Sikh.
POTA allows confessions extracted in police custody to be admitted as judicial evidence. In effect, torture tends to replace investigation. The South Asia Human Rights Documentation Center reports that India has the highest number of torture and custodial deaths in the world. Government records show that there were 1,307 deaths in judicial custody in 2002 alone.
A few months ago, I was a member of a peoples’ tribunal on POTA. Over a period of two days, we listened to harrowing testimonies of what is happening in our wonderful democracy. It’s everything—from people being forced to drink urine, being stripped, humiliated, given electric shocks, burned with cigarette butts, having iron rods put up their anuses, to people being beaten and kicked to death.
The new government has promised to repeal POTA. I’d be surprised if that happens before similar legislation under a different name is put in place.
When every avenue of nonviolent dissent is closed down, and everyone who protests against the violation of their human rights is called a terrorist, should we really be surprised if vast parts of the country are overrun by those who believe in armed struggle and are more or less beyond the control of the State: in Kashmir, the northeastern provinces, large parts of Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Andhra Pradesh? Ordinary people in these regions are trapped between the violence of the militants and the state.
In Kashmir, the Indian army estimates that three to four thousand militants are operating at any given time. To control them, the Indian government deploys about five hundred thousand soldiers. Clearly it isn’t just the militants the army seeks to control, but a whole population of humiliated, unhappy people who see the Indian army as an occupation force. The primary purpose of laws like POTA is not to target real terrorists or militants, who are usually simply shot. Anti-terrorism laws are used to intimidate civil society. Inevitably, such repression has the effect of fueling discontent and anger.
The Armed Forces Special Powers Act allows not just officers but even junior commissioned officers and noncommissioned officers of the army to use force and even kill any person on suspicion of disturbing public order. It was first imposed on a few districts in the state of Manipur in 1958. Today it applies to virtually all of the northeast and Kashmir. The documentation of instances of torture, disappearances, custodial deaths, rape, and summary execution by security forces is enough to turn your stomach.
In Andhra Pradesh, in India’s heartland, the militant Marxist-
Leninist Peoples’ War Group—which for years has been engaged in a violent armed struggle and has been the principal target of many of the Andhra police’s fake “encounters”—held its first public meeting in years on July 28, 2004, in the town of Warangal.
The former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Chandrababu Naidu, liked to call himself the CEO of the state. In return for his enthusiasm in implementing Structural Adjustment, Andhra Pradesh received millions of dollars of aid from the World Bank and development agencies such as Britain’s Department for International Development. As a result of Structural Adjustment, Andhra Pradesh is now best known for two things: the hundreds of suicides by farmers who were steeped in debt and the spreading influence and growing militancy of the Peoples’ War Group. During Naidu’s term in office, the PWG were not arrested or captured, they were summarily shot.
In response, the PWG campaigned actively, and, let it be said, violently, against Naidu. In May the Congress won the state elections. The Naidu government didn’t just lose, it was humiliated in the polls.
When the PWG called a public meeting, it was attended by hundreds of thousands of people. Under POTA, all of them are considered terrorists.
Are they all going to be detained in some Indian equivalent of Guantánamo Bay?
The whole of the northeast and the Kashmir valley is in ferment. What will the government do with these millions of people?
One does not endorse the violence of these militant groups. Neither morally nor strategically. But to condemn it without first denouncing the much greater violence perpetrated by the State would be to deny the people of these regions not just their basic human rights but even the right to a fair hearing. People who have lived in situations of conflict are in no doubt that militancy and armed struggle provokes a massive escalation of violence from the State. But living as they do, in situations of unbearable injustice, can they remain silent forever?
There is no discussion taking place in the world today that is more crucial than the debate about strategies of resistance. And the choice of strategy is not entirely in the hands of the public. It is also in the hands of sarkar.
After all, when the US invades and occupies Iraq in the way it has done, with such overwhelming military force, can the resistance be expected to be a conventional military one? (Of course, even if it were conventional, it would still be called terrorist.) In a strange sense, the US government’s arsenal of weapons and unrivaled air and fire power makes terrorism an all-but-inescapable response. What people lack in wealth and power, they will make up for with stealth and strategy.
In the twenty-first century, the connection between corporate globalization, religious fundamentalism, nuclear nationalism, and the pauperization of whole populations is becoming impossible to ignore. The unrest has myriad manifestations: terrorism, armed struggle, nonviolent mass resistance, and common crime.
In this restive, despairing time, if governments do not do all they can to honor nonviolent resistance, then by default they privilege those who turn to violence. No government’s condemnation of terrorism is credible if it cannot show itself to be open to change by nonviolent dissent. But instead nonviolent resistance movements are being crushed. Any kind of mass political mobilization or organization is being bought off, broken, or simply ignored.
Meanwhile, governments and the corporate media, and let’s not forg
et the film industry, lavish their time, attention, funds, technology, research, and admiration on war and terrorism. Violence has been deified.
The message this sends is disturbing and dangerous: if you seek to air a public grievance, violence is more effective than nonviolence.
As the rift between the rich and poor grows, as the need to appropriate and control the world’s resources to feed the great capitalist machine becomes more urgent, the unrest will only escalate.
For those of us who are on the wrong side of Empire, the humiliation is becoming unbearable.
Each of the Iraqi children killed by the United States was our child. Each of the prisoners tortured in Abu Ghraib was our comrade. Each of their screams was ours. When they were humiliated, we were humiliated.
The US soldiers fighting in Iraq—mostly volunteers in a poverty draft from small towns and poor urban neighborhoods—are victims, just as much as the Iraqis, of the same horrendous process, which asks them to die for a victory that will never be theirs.
The mandarins of the corporate world, the CEOs, the bankers, the politicians, the judges and generals, look down on us from on high and shake their heads sternly. “There’s no alternative,” they say, and let slip the dogs of war.
Then, from the ruins of Afghanistan, from the rubble of Iraq and Chechnya, from the streets of occupied Palestine and the mountains of Kashmir, from the hills and plains of Colombia and the forests of Andhra Pradesh and Assam, comes the chilling reply: “There’s no alternative but terrorism.” Terrorism. Armed struggle. Insurgency. Call it what you want.
Terrorism is vicious, ugly, and dehumanizing for its perpetrators as well as its victims. But so is war. You could say that terrorism is the privatization of war. Terrorists are the free marketers of war. They are people who don’t believe that the State has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.
Human society is journeying to a terrible place.
Of course, there is an alternative to terrorism. It’s called justice.
It’s time to recognize that no amount of nuclear weapons, or full-spectrum dominance, or daisy cutters, or spurious governing councils and loya jirgas, can buy peace at the cost of justice.
The urge for hegemony and preponderance by some will be matched with greater intensity by the longing for dignity and justice by others.
Exactly what form that battle takes, whether it’s beautiful or bloodthirsty, depends on us.
Notes
My Seditious Heart: An Unfinished Diary of Nowadays
1. Dr. Gokarakonda Naga Saibaba s/o G. Satayanarayana Murthy v. State of Maharashtra, Criminal Application No. 785 (2015).
2. B. R. Ambedkar, The Annihilation of Caste, ed. S. Anand (London: Verso, 2014), 241–42.
3. Mohd Haroon & Ors. v. Union of India & Anr., Writ Petition (Criminal) No. 155 (2013), 2.
4. Sruthisagar Yamunan, “IIT-Madras Derecognises Student Group,” Hindu, May 28, 2015, http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/iitmadras
-derecognises-student-group/article7256712.ece.
5. “My Birth Is My Fatal Accident: Full Text of Dalit Student Rohith’s Suicide Letter, Indian Express, January 19, 2016, http://indianexpress.com/article/india
/india-news-india/dalit-student-suicide-full-text-of-suicide-letter-hyderabad/.
6. Dalit Panthers, “Dalit Panthers Manifesto” (Bombay, 1973), quoted in Barbara R. Joshi, ed., Untouchable!: Voices of the Dalit Liberation Movement (London: Zed Books, 1986), p. 145. For further discussion, see Roy, “The Doctor and the Saint,” in Annihilation of Caste, p. 116.
7. “The Case against Afza,” Hindu, February 10, 2013, http://www.thehindu.com
/news/national/the-case-against-afzal/article4397845.ece.
8. Mohammad Ali, “BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj Courts Controversy over JNU Unrest,” Hindu, February 15, 2016, http://www.thehindu.com/news/national
/other-states/bjp-mp-sakshi-maharaj-courts-controversy-over-jnu-unrest
/article8237932.ece; Abhinav Malhotra, “Sakshi Maharaj Demands Strict Action against Those behind JNU Incident,” February 14, 2016, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kanpur/Sakshi-Maharaj-demands-strict-action-against
-those-behind-JNU-incident/articleshow/50979831.cms.
9. Samreena Mushtaq, Essar Batool, Natasha Rather, Munaza Rashid, and Ifrah Butt, Do You Remember Kunan Poshpura? The Story of a Mass Rape (New Delhi: Zubaan Books, 2016).
10. “From the Delhi HC Order Granting Bail to Kanhaiya: ‘Those Shouting Anti-
national Slogans May Not Be Able to Withstand Siachen for an Hour,’” Indian Express, March 3, 2016, http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india
/jnu-row-from-the-high-court-order-granting-bail-to-kanhaiya-those-shouting-
anti-national-slogans-may-not-be-able-to-withstand-siachen-for-an-hour/.
2. Democracy: Who Is She When She’s at Home?
Her name has been changed.
Violence was directed especially at women. See, for
example, the following report by Laxmi Murthy: “A doctor in rural Vadodara said that the wounded who started pouring in from February 28 had injuries of a kind he had never witnessed before even in earlier situations of communal violence. In a grave challenge to the Hippocratic oath, doctors have been threatened for treating Muslim patients, and pressurised to use the blood donated by RSS volunteers only to treat Hindu patients. Sword injuries, mutilated breasts and burns of varying intensity characterised the early days of the massacre. Doctors conducted post-mortems on a number of women who had been gang raped, many of whom had been burnt subsequently. A woman from Kheda district who was gang raped had her head shaved and ‘Om’ cut into her head with a knife by the rapists. She died after a few days in the hospital. There were other instances of ‘Om’ engraved with a knife on women’s backs and buttocks.” From Laxmi Murthy, “In the Name of Honour,” CorpWatch India, April 23, 2002.
See “Stray Incidents Take Gujarat Toll to 544,” Times of India, March 5, 2002.
Edna Fernandes, “India Pushes Through Anti-terror Law,” Financial Times (London), March 27, 2002, 11; “Terror Law Gets President’s Nod,” Times of India, April 3, 2002; Scott Baldauf, “As Spring Arrives, Kashmir Braces for Fresh Fighting,” Christian Science Monitor, April 9, 2002, 7; Howard W. French and Raymond Bonner, “At Tense Time, Pakistan Starts to Test Missiles,” New York Times, May 25, 2002, A1; Edward Luce, “The Saffron Revolution,” Financial Times (London), May 4, 2002, 1; Martin Regg Cohn, “India’s ‘Saffron’ Curriculum,” Toronto Star, April 14, 2002, B4; and Pankaj Mishra, “Holy Lies,” Guardian (London), April 6, 2002, 24.
See Edward Luce, “Battle over Ayodhya Temple Looms,” Financial Times (London), February 2, 2002, 7.
“Gujarat’s Tale of Sorrow: 846 Dead,” Economic Times, April 18, 2002; see also Celia W. Dugger, “Religious Riots Loom over Indian Politics,” New York Times, July 27, 2002, A1; Edna Fernandes, “Gujarat Violence Backed by State, Says EU Report,” Financial Times (London), April 30, 2002, 12; and Human Rights Watch, “‘We Have No Orders to Save You’: State Participation and Complicity in Communal Violence in Gujarat,” vol. 14, no. 3(C), April 2002, www.hrw.org/reports/2002/india/ (hereafter HRW Report). See also Human Rights Watch, “India: Gujarat Officials Took Part in Anti-Muslim Violence,” press release, New York, April 30, 2002.
“A Tainted Election,” Indian Express, April 17, 2002; Meena Menon, “A Divided Gujarat Not Ready for Snap Poll,” Inter Press Service, July 21, 2002.
See HRW Report, 27–31. Dugger, “Religious Riots Loom over Indian Politics,” A1; “Women Relive the Horrors of Gujarat,” Hindu, May 18, 2002; Harbaksh Singh Nanda, “Muslim Survivors Speak in India,” United Press International, April 27, 2002; and “Gujarat Carnage: The Aftermath—Impact of Violence on Women,” 2002, www.onlinevolunteers.org/gujarat/women/index.htm.
HRW Report, 15–16, 31; Justice A. P. Ravani, Submission to the National Human Rights Commission, New Delhi, March 21, 2002, appendix 4. See also Dugger, “Religious Riots Loom over Indian Politics,” A1.
HRW Report, 31; and “Artists Protest Destruction of Cultural Landmarks,” Press Trust of India, April 13, 2002.
HRW Report, 7, 45. Rama Lakshmi, “Sectarian Violence Haunts Indian City: Hindu Militants Bar Muslims from Work,” Washington Post, April 8, 2002, A12.
Communalism Combat (March–April 2002) recounted Jaffri’s final moments: “Ehsan Jaffri is pulled out of his house, brutally treated for 45 minutes, stripped, paraded naked, and asked to say, ‘Vande Maataram!’ and ‘Jai Shri Ram!’ He refuses. His fingers are chopped off, he is paraded around in the locality, badly injured. Next, his hands and feet are chopped off. He is then dragged, a fork-like instrument clutching his neck, down the road before being thrown into the fire.” See also “50 Killed in Communal Violence in Gujarat, 30 of Them Burnt,” Press Trust of India, February 28, 2002.
HRW Report, 5. See also Dugger, “Religious Riots Loom over Indian Politics,” A1.
“ML Launches Frontal Attack on Sangh Parivar,” Times of India, May 8, 2002.
HRW Report, 21–27. See also the remarks of Kamal Mitra Chenoy of Jawaharlal Nehru University, who led an independent fact-finding mission to Gujarat, “Can India End Religious Revenge?” CNN International, “Q&A with Zain Verjee,” April 4, 2002.
See Tavleen Sigh, “Out of Tune,” India Today, April 15, 2002, 21. See also Sharad Gupta, “BJP: His Excellency,” India Today, January 28, 2002, 18.
Khozem Merchant, “Gujarat: Vajpayee Visits Scene of Communal Clashes,” Financial Times (London), April 5, 2002, 10. See also Pushpesh Pant, “Atal at the Helm, or Running on Auto?” Times of India, April 8, 2002.