ITL: Indian Terror League

I have finally turned off my telly and am breathing a little easier after almost two entire days of being glued to it. It has been like watching a cricket match and keeping score, as a friend said. The entire nation was keeping score - one dead, two down, three, four. Shots fired - one, two.. twenty. The final death toll ranges from 125 - 155. Bodies are still being brought out the back door of the Taj and Oberoi hotels in Mumbai. We will know the official count tomorrow. 327 have been injured. Many may still succumb to their wounds. After all help has not been able to reach some people for more than a day.

Here's where I come in. What on earth is the Deccan Mujahideen? What is the NDFB, ULFA, Huji in Assam? Who are the HNLC in Meghalaya? Paralleling the Indian Premier League of regional cricket teams, we have the Indian Terror League of regional militant outfits operating quite comfortably within the borders of our country in separate regions. For more information and data on a state-wise breakup of militant groups visit the South Asia Terrorism Portal website and try not to drown in the alphabet soup.

I have never been a xenophobic patriot and am not one even as I write this. But watching all of this unfolding live on TV, I cannot help but wonder if this is a turning point for many of us. We all need to draw the line at the killing of innocents. If we could all come together and condemn 9/11 and feel for the American nation even though many of us had never set foot on American soil, we can certainly come together to condemn this act as a nation.

But the question really is - what makes a nation? And are we a nation at all? My recent experiences traveling to the borders and marginalized corners of this country makes me answer my own question in the negative. For some parts of 'India', the CRPF, NSG, army, paramilitary are heroes. For people sitting in Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur, Assam, Meghalaya and Nagaland these are agents of oppression.

'India' stands contested by the Indian Terror League, but we seem to notice only after 125 people are confirmed killed, the entire Anti-Terror Squad leadership is annhilated and our media vociferously froths at the mouth, journalists weep openly while reporting and the media actually AIRS footage of young men shouting anti-Pakistan slogans. Yes, we are all brave. Yes, the media has given us a sense of being part of something exciting and adventurous. We feel invigorated, varying amounts of adrenalin pumps through our bodies. But really what have we done to resolve any of this. Absolutely nothing!

To me targeting one set of terrorist organizations, which also just happen to be Muslim ones, is to single out an entire community for attack. The NDFB, led by Ranjan Daimary, is a Bodo outfit. It is apparently responsible for the Guwahati blasts. NOT, as was initially reported the Muslim outfit called Huji and the ULFA. Many newspapers in India did not correct this story. They let people believe that the Bangladeshi backed Huji and ULFA had orchestrated the blasts. And the Indian Mujahideen supposedly made up now of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) has become the new agent of terror. The point I am simply trying to make is this - there are various kinds of terrorist outfits in our country and not all of them are Islamic in nature. Yes, the top brass of the ULFA, HNLC, etc have crossed over to Bangladesh and they conduct their operations remotely. But the top brass of many other outfits have also crossed over into Burma.

Our political class, our intelligence gathering agencies have failed us time and again. Electoral calculations have trumped actual democratic representation. In Meghalaya, according to a source, the army intelligence actually taps the phones of Meghalaya police officials because no one will tell army intelligence anything. This is a ridiculous state of affairs for any country. We need to be very worried when our own security agencies refuse to cooperate with each other. The Meghalaya state police has been very successful in eliminating HNLC from the state because the one thing they dread more than this outfit is the presence of active, centrally deployed paramilitary troops. So they clean up their house very well, because they don't want the head janitor to come in.

Instead of now singling out one community of people as terrorists, we need a policy which treats terror uniformly across the country. We apparently have something like this in place, but terrorism in the mainland always gets more attention than terror elsewhere. In the northeast, militant outfits encounter troops and police everyday. Police patrols every night in jungles. But since the place is so removed from the imagining of 'India', frankly no one gives a damn.

So we don't need to just combat the Indian Mujahideen specifically or the Deccan Mujahideen (whoever these guys are). We need to combat the Indian Terror League by first and foremost stepping up our intelligence gathering.

If some of you are surprised that I am coming across as a bit of a hardliner, it has something to do with the fact that recently I have become really disappointed with the democratic process in 'India'. But I will reiterate, I am not a blind, xenophobic patriot. I am someone who has seen too much terror recently at very close quarters. In two cities Delhi and Guwahati I had just managed to leave areas where serial blasts then occured. I also saw entirely burnt down Muslim and Bodo villages in Udalguri and Darrang in Assam and since I am not a politician or a bureaucrat, I could not promise the people in refugee camps any relief. I wrote, I nodded, I looked at the collection of bullets the inmates from camps laid on a table for the National Commission of Minorities and I left. I filed my report. It may have reached the government. I made recommendations through the Commission members. It may translate into policy.

But what has remained with me through all of this and the two day vigil I kept on the news channels for Mumbai, is the need for concerted political action. After all that happened, FINALLY Manmohan Singh asked the ISI chief to be sent down to India. We had an apologetic Pakistani foreign minister on the line with Prannoy Roy and instead of asking him hard hitting questions, we asked, "Why should we trust you?"

The drama is over for now. We will see repeat telecasts of some poignant moments on the telly for the next week or so. In all of this stage-management, few paid attention to the death of VP Singh, a former Prime Minister, who implemented OBC reservations in government services.

On September 11, 2001 as I walked back to my hostel in JNU, New Delhi a cocky class mate came up to me and said, "Hey.. The Pentagon is now square." For some reason, these words keep coming back to me. What smart comment can one make about Mumbai, I wonder!!