:: Balbir Punj

Alienation theory: A hazard for India

BY Balbir K. Punj

Mar 13 : After the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore had blown a huge hole in the Pakistan’s contrived smugness over the Mumbai terror attacks, former military ruler of that country, General Pervez Musharraf (Retd), has used his earlier planned India visit to haul the Kashmir issue back into the centre of India-Pakistan regional dialogue. In addition, he sought to tag on the Muslim community in India into the dialogue while giving a clean chit to his colleagues in the Army and the ISI.

The gist of his thesis in his speeches in New Delhi was that it is the non-resolution of the Kashmir issue and the "alienation" of Muslims in India that are responsible for the growth of extremism in his country. Projecting his thesis he cut a role for himself as a "man for peace, not a man of peace". His final plea to all those who questioned him from his audience was to give up Pakistan-bashing in India (that was more than Indian bashing in Pakistan and had become a part of Indian politics, unlike in his country, he claimed) and both countries should "overcome the burden of history" and develop a futuristic perspective.

Days after the Lahore incident to kill the Sri Lankan players, the Pakistani authorities have no clue about the perpetrators of the attack. And the world saw through Pakistani media itself the CCTV footage of the same terrorists calmly walking off from the the well-planned attack with the local police not even pursuing the attackers. This scene has clearly posed a question about the culpability of many top level people in Pakistan in the planning and execution of the attack.

Every part of that attack now looks very similar to the one that was staged in Mumbai on November 26. The vehemence with which Islamabad is seeking to deny its involvement in Mumbai and is groping in the dark over the Lahore event is self-revealing.

As informed people have alleged, the high-level collusion between the militant jihadis and people in critical positions of the administration is daily becoming more and more evident. Mr Musharraf was perhaps trying to cover it up and help the civilian government back in Lahore to get out of the hot waters it is in.

The role of the former general as an evangelist for peace between the two countries cannot be sustained in the face of increasing evidence of how as the Pakistan Army chief he had planned the Kargil adventure to break the peace process that Atal Behari Vajpayee initiated with the then Pakistan Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, in 1998. But the most damning evidence against the Musharraf thesis has come from the US independent think tank Atlantic Council.

In a recent report titled "A Comprehensive US Policy for Pakistan", the council has clearly exposed the deception that the Pakistan Army has been practising against the US. Mr Musharraf seeks to emphasise what he calls "the trust deficit" in India’s response to Pakistan. But this "trust deficit" has been in Pakistan’s own relations with its long-term master, the United States, which has funded that Army for decades and more so of the funds spent recently: "The Congress has been right in asking for accountability of the some $10 billion of the Coalition Support Funds and other security related funding made available to the Pakistan Army over the past decade. A principal reason why Pakistan until now has not been forthcoming in responding is because it is possible that well over two-thirds of this money did not go to the Army and instead funded other government deeds. Unfortunately, the policy of the past government does not relieve the new government of dealing with this deception. There have also been questions about the purchase of larger weapons systems that may not be appropriate for counter insurgency warfare".

The problem of "jihadi extremism" is growing more dangerous with the evident effort to draw in Indian Muslims on the plea of their so-called "alienation". Fortunately, in his audience there were Muslims who did not buy that alienation theory and told the general that Indian Muslims could take care of themselves. But one cannot ignore the so-called Indian Mujahideen’s agenda and their success in running camps in this country and attracting some to be trained in terrorism in India and Pakistan. That also projects the weakness of the UPA government in dealing with terrorism and the soft attitude it and its former Communist supporters took, particularly the Left Front governments in Kerala and West Bengal. The exposure of the extent of extremist infiltration in Kerala after a series of breakthroughs by intelligence agencies has stunned the Kerala police itself.

This alienation theory seems to have some supporters in this country too. The UPA government’s ill-thought-out step in appointing the Sachar Committee and its failure to pinpoint the reason for the so-called Muslim backwardness to its own ghetto mentalities in education, modern skill development and refusal to understand the challenges of the globalising economy and technology, the continued refusal to send their girls to school, the inspired stories against immunisation and family planning and the support to Muslim orthodoxy against any attempt, even within the community, for social reforms, have backfired. To describe this as "alienation" or "refusal of justice to the Muslim community" is the Indian pseudo-secularists’ bill of trade. But it is doing tremendous damage and is certainly against the prevailing truth.

The Muslim community in India has more than doubled in the last 60 years. The Hindu community in Pakistan and Bangladesh has shrunk. India’s leading filmstars are mostly Muslims. Many Muslims are refusing to buy the alienation theory. The Oscar-winning Keralite Muslim Resul Pookutty dedicated his award as a tribute to India and recalled the sound of "Aum". Two of the three Oscar winners from India this year are Muslims, the third a Sikh.

The alienation theory is being sponsored by forces across the border. Without realising its serious implications, the "secularists" in this country are falling for it, giving the "jihadi forces" operating from outside a break-in into India. Look at the way Congress minister A.R. Antulay took a dig at the Mumbai terror attacks. And the Left is even seeking to give political legitimacy to an "extremist leader", like Madhani in Kerala by supporting his people for Parliament seats in that state. With such elements active within, does India need enemies without?

Balbir K. Punj can be contacted at punjbk@gmail.com