Insurgency and Other Disruptive Forces Crippling India

Apart from the problems of precipitous decline in political morality, rampant corruption, growing impoverishment and stark economic disparities, other serious problems, which are distinct but related to or caused by these problems, plaguing India are insurgency and other disruptive movements raging in, and outraging various parts of, India. These movements appear in diverse forms which may be categorized broadly as separatist including secessionist movements inspired by cultural, religious, linguistic and ethnic identities or movements caused by socio-economic disparities and marginalization. Very often these movements are violent, being directed against established authorities of government. Sometimes, they are directed against certain groups of people who, being outside the identities characterizing the local population, are perceived to be either exploiters or undue beneficiaries at their cost. Depending upon the nature and strategy of perpetrating the violence, the movements may be termed as militant, extremist or insurgent. With the advent and currency of suicide bombing, these movements, particularly those associated with religious fundamentalism, even deploy terrorism involving wanton killings in order to make their point.
Except for religion-based movements which originated in pre-independence India due to the British rulers playing the religious card in an attempt to preserve and perpetuate their colonial rule and promoting the preposterous principle of religion as the rationale for nationhood, all other movements are post-independence phenomena. Even if the seeds of these problems existed then, they remained dormant and subjugated to the British rule. They blossomed and bloomed in the post-independence Indian republic, bringing the Indian nationhood in question and to ransom. The salient such movements and consequent disruptions in various parts of India are indicated below.
India’s independence accompanied by its partition into two nation-states based on the two-nation theory, which was unacceptable to India, set the stage for future separatist movements in free India. One example is the emergence of many self-styled organizations in Kashmir demanding autonomy, self-determination, independence, or even accession to Pakistan, often using violence, mostly aided and abetted by cross-border instigations and occasionally accompanied by terrorist activities. For the last at least two decades, Kashmir has been an insecure and disturbed part of India, resulting in several hundred thousands of casualties involving civilians, militants and security personnel in insurgency and counter-insurgency operations, and in near collapse of the thriving tourist and related trades. Another example of unrest and violent movement emanating from the acceptance of religion as a basis of nationhood is the Khalistan movement aimed at creating a separate Sikh nation, which rocked the Punjab region by violence, militancy and terrorism for almost two decades in the seventies and eighties. It was preceded by a movement for creation of a Sikh majority state, which was done in 1966 through an Act of the Parliament. The high points of the Khalistan movement were Operation Blue Star of the Indian Army in order to quell the armed secessionist movement, assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the subsequent outbreak of anti-Sikh riots in Delhi and the mid-air blowing up of the plane of an Air India Flight. The movement, in which the Sikh Diaspora have played an active role, is now at least dormant largely because of other overwhelming developments in the country.
Another part of India which has been one of South Asia’s hottest trouble spots since the sixties is its seven north-eastern states. As many as 30 armed insurgent organizations such as ULFA (United Liberation Front of Asom), NDFB (National Democratic Front of Bodoland), PLA (People’s Liberation Army) of Manipur, NSCN (National Socialist Council of Nagaland) and NLFT (National Liberation Front of Tripura) have been operating in the region, fighting the Indian state with demands ranging from right to self-determination and autonomy to secession. As this region having an area of 255,000 sq. km. (8% of India’s geographical area) has 4500 km long highly porous borders with four countries, China, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Myanmar, this insurgency has been rendered complex and intractable due to its trans-border ramifications and operations. It takes several diabolical forms such as extortion, kidnapping, wanton killing, particularly of people having migrated from other parts of India and settled here, as well as confrontation with the police and the army. Even though some of these organizations have been banned because of their patently anti-national activities and agenda, insurgent activities have been going on, overtly or covertly, for the last four decades or so in this region.
Apart from these major insurgencies, various other events and activities such as narrow regionalism in the name of ‘sons of the soil’, demands for bifurcation of states with the professed objective of more balanced development and various water disputes are actually manifestations of negation of integrity and unity of India. Moreover, due to these forces of separatism, India has increasingly become a soft target of pan-Islamic terrorism.
The above-mentioned insurgencies are abetted by, and ultimately aimed at, separatism and are based essentially on religion or ethnicity. In the last four decades, however, altogether another type of insurgency has gripped parts of India and is growing. Originating in an obscure West Bengal village called Naxalbari, marked by strident poverty, as a left-wing extremist uprising against the establishment, this movement now afflicts almost half of the 28 states of India, concentrated mostly in tribal and mine rich parts of eastern and central India. This insurgency has been expanding both in area and population being affected as well as in level of violence associated with it. Today, the Naxalities or Maoists as these insurgents are called control about 92,000 sq. km. of India, where only the writs of their parallel government run. Their cadres consisting of both men and women are mostly recruited from their rural strongholds and are given professional training in armed insurgency. Their primary targets are police, government property and installations, highways, railways and the activities symbolizing present day governance such as elections and even developmental works.
Thus, we see that basically two types of insurgency afflict contemporary India, one based on fractured identities of religion, ethnicity, region and language as against a national identity, and the other based on increasing impoverishment and widening socio-economic disparity. At the root of both these types of insurgencies lies a sense of non-participation and alienation from the prevailing system of governance. While the first category of insurgents reacts to this sense by seeking a separate institution of governance in which they matter, the second category expresses their wrath at the failed system of governance which has not been able to deliver the goods over the decades. Whatever, these insurgencies cost a tremendous amount of national energy and resources. A nation saddled with such disruptive and dissipative forces can hardly hope to get out of the woods.