Violence has Backfired on Islam Militants

[Guest guest]

Title: Say no to violence, it just doesn't pay

Author: MV Kamath

Publication: The Times of India

August 29, 2002

URL: http://www.samachar.com/features/290802-fpj.html

 

It may warm the cockles of liberal, secular hearts to dam

Gujarat's

Chief Minister Narendra Modi, but the plain, unvarnished

fact must be

faced: if there was no Godhra there would not have been the

killing of

Muslims in Ahmedabad and Baroda and a few other urban

centres in the

State. Whether the elections in Gujarat are held in October

or a couple

of months later, the evidence shows that Modi's Net

Popularity Rating

(NPR) among all the Chief Minister in the country is second

only to that

of Uttaranchal's N. D. Tiwari according to an 'India Today'

(26 August)

poll.

 

Tiwari scores 58 per cent and Modi 45 per cent. Vilasrao

Deshmukh of

Maharashtra scores a bare 28 per cent and Karnataka's

Congress Chief

Minister S. M. Krishna a low 18 per cent. Do these ratings

say

something? The Truth is that even if there was a Congress

Chief Minister

in Gujarat the reaction to Godhra would have been just as

violent as it

turned out to be because Hindus, by and large, had got fed

up with the

Islamic fundamentalist violence and were in no mood to put

up with it

any longer.

 

In any event, considering that Ahmedabad Municipal

Corporation has a

Congress majority, what were its members doing? As liberals

fail to

always notice they were doing nothing. They were as much in

favour of

violent retaliation as allegedly was the Sangh parivar, a

point that our

secularists may do well to remember. What this indicates is

that

violence as a way of making a point has lost its relevance.

Whether

violence is part of Islamic 'jehadi' culture or of Marxit

Communist

culture, it no more pays dividends.

 

It has been tried in the North East by several tribal

groups, to no

effect. It has been tried by Naxalites in West Bengal. Again

to no

effect. In fact the same CPI(M) which originally favoured

violence was

ultimately forced to hit back at the Naxalites with greater

counter-violence. To all intents and purposes Naxalism died

a brutal

death, but now the CPI (M) - led government of West Bengal

is faced with

another terrorist group, the Kamtapur Liberation

Organisation (KLO)

which in a daring strike on August 17 gunned down four CPM

leaders in

their own office and escaped. Militancy, once sponsored by

the CPM had

come home to roost. Of course, in due course the West Bengal

police will

go on a killing spree and kill a few KLO militants in their

known hide-

outs. And there will be peace of some sorts prevailing in

the disturbed

areas.

 

West Bengal's next door state, Assam, has been in the grip

of violence

for more than two decades and the so- called United

Liberation Front of

Asom (ULFA) has wreaked havoc among the middle class. Has it

gained

anything? Not that anyone is aware of. Indeed the Assamese

people are

fed up with the so-called liberators. For over five years

ULFA had

demanded a boycott of August 15 celebrations and had

received some

response. This year the people of Assam came out to the

streets in full

measure to celebrate Independence Day joyously. That, no

doubt, was

intended to tell the mad ULFA men that the people of Assam

had enough of

violence and are no longer in any mood to tolerate it. The

same is true

of the people of Telangana in Andhra Pradesh.

 

The CPM killers here who thought that they were ushering in

a revolution

in the wake of India's newly-won freedom have got nowhere.

And they will

get nowhere because violence only begets counter-violence

and would

achieve no positive results. The world had moved a long way

since Lenin

captured the Russian state and Mao Tse-tung returned from

his historic

Long March to establish power in Beijing. Today, violent

revolution is

for the birds. Pakistan has yet to learn that lesson. Since

1990 it has

unleashed a war of terrorism in Kashmir, forcing over 4 lakh

Kashmiri

Pandits and a fraction of that number of Kashmiri Muslims

loyal to

Kashmiriat out of the Valley.

 

It is estimated that some 57,000 Kashmiris have been killed

because of

unleashed violence but Jammu & Kashmir is no more closer to

become part

of Pakistan than it ever was expected to be. And those who

suffered most

are the Kashmiris themselves. The lesson here to be imbibed

is yet again

the same: Violence does not pay. In their anger the Islamic

terrorists

who infiltrated into Kashmir burned down 5,500 Kashmiri

Pandit homes in

one decade of unbridled violence but Jammu & Kashmir remains

part of

India as it always will. And very few people have any

sympathy for the

Hurriyat or those in the Kashmir Valley demanding 'azadi'.

In the final

analysis the Hurriyat has to give in. The concept of

revolution has

undergone a sea change.

 

Waving swords or Kalashnikovs may result in the death of a

hundred or

thousand, but in the end the forces of law and order will

prevail. The

forces of violence may have the upper hand for a period of

time but they

will be put down, as they have been put down everywhere, in

due course.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi caught on to this truth as early

as in the

twenties. It is not for nothing that he came to be known as

Mahatma.

Gandhi knew the power of soul force better than any leader

of his time.

He used it with brilliance first in South Africa and later

in his own

motherland, India. And the nation was better for it. The

British when

they finally departed, left no bitterness behind them.

Pakistan never

understood this. Right from the very beginning - from

Deliverance day

that Jinnah called for, that left several thousand dead in

Kolkata - to

present times, Pakistan has put its trust in killing.

 

The Kolkata killings did not win Jinnah the whole of Bengal

as he had

hoped. Bengal was truncated. The killings in Punjab did not

get Pakistan

the whole of Punjab either, Again the state was cut into

two. For over a

decade now Pakistan has engaged in violence - to no purpose.

The moral,

again, is the same: Violence Does Not Pay. One hopes that

the

Hindu-hating Muslims of Godhra have learnt this simple

lesson and there

will never again be a repetition of the burning of coaches

under any

circumstances.

 

Violence is no way to express one's negative feelings. Then

why isn't

the Hurriyat agreeable to participating in the October

elections? The

answer is simple: it Knows that it will be effectively

defeated and will

stand exposed. But then, how come? Figures speak for

themselves.

According to 'Outlook' (26 August), of 10,200 Kashmiri

civilians killed

between 1998 and 2002 in Jammu & Kashmir, 9,000 were

Muslims! Kashmiri

Muslims have had enough of violence. They want peace. And

that is why

Farouk Abdullah is expressing his willingness to step down

and let the

state go under presidential rule if only the Hurriyat will

agree to

participate in the elections. He knows that the Hurriyat are

cowards.

They also know that their followers, if ever they had any,

are

dwindling. The followers have come to appreciate the limits

of violence.

The leaders are still under the sway of Islamabad.

 

In a recent article in 'The Tribune' (17 August), a former

police chief,

the highly respected K. F. Rustomji raised an important

question in

another context. "What is the use of living in a great

democracy, under

a good Constitution, and a working criminal justice system

if nobody can

step in at the height of a carnage and say: 'Stop, you are

damaging the

nation'? We have a fine panoply of power, enormous strength

of military,

large para-military forces, national reserves of police and

Home Guards

which could have been used to end the savagery (in Gujarat).

We waited

all stupefied, feeling that Godhra deserved revenge, without

knowing the

truth about it...." Rustomji then proceed to compare Gujarat

with the

"organised hysteria in Hitler's Germany" - a favourite theme

of our

liberals and secularists.

 

To compare the mob hysteria that followed Godhra with

Hitler's Germany

is studied. Neither the RSS or the Sangh Parivar is

organising a

holocaust. If anybody thinks that the Parivar can send 120

million

Muslims into gas chambers, either he does not know history

or is just

cranky. Mob hysteria is dangerous but in Gujarat it was set

off by

Godhra, a fact that needs again and again to be stated with

force.

Muslims throughout the country and Muslims in Pakistan

especially, must

be told in no uncertain terms that violence just will not

succeed, that

'jehad' is an outmoded concept, that in future any

differences that may

crop up between the various communities in India must be

settled through

dialogue and not through whipping up secular hysteria.

 

If the concept of Hidutva is narrow, as some secularists

think, the

concept of secularism is even narrower. As B. G. Verghese

writing again

in 'The Tribune' (14 August) has noted, all 'isms' tend to

ossify and so

it is with secularism which Henry Cox in 'Secular City'

recently

described as "an ideology, a new closed world view which

functions very

much like a new religion" which "menaces the openness and

freedom

'secularisation' has produced and must therefore be watched

carefully to

prevent it becoming the ideology of a new establishment".

Further, Cox

noted, secularism "clips the wings of emancipation and fixes

a society

on the pins of another orthodoxy". That is exactly what has

happened in

India. What happened in Gujarat was not Nazism, howsoever

defined, but a

revolt against Islamic violence and a determination to put

it down for

all times.

 

Over and over again Muslims must come to accept this truth:

Violence

does not pay. Say No to Violence. Narendra Modi will then

become totally

irrelevant. And so, one suspects, the Rustomjis and other

secularists of

India. The fault, Mr Rustomji, is not with Gujarat but in

people who

thought they had a monopoly on violence. So let the word

reach one and

all. Never more practice violence. Never more and never

again. Grace and

good sense make for happy living.