Violence and the human spirit

In downtown Srinagar on July 13, when security was tightened during the Chief Minister's visit to the area. - PICTURES: NISSAR AHMAD

The schools, madrassas and seminaries in India have not mixed political conditioning with religious extremism. Terrorists have come from breeding grounds outside.

IN the early part of 1990, at a time when terrorism in Kashmir had the security forces on the back foot, I found it very hard to reconcile the peaceful valley one had known to the tension-ridden place it had become. Graceful tall poplars seemed to conceal armed terrorists in their shadows, and the once serenely quiet apple orchards appeared to be dark, menacing lairs for murderous, hate-filled figures and their AK-47s. The streets of Srinagar used to be bustling with activity and noise, chaotic traffic mixed up with vendors and people and shops; in that bleak winter they were deserted, with small groups of jumpy para-military forces moving along the pavements, the odd jeep or car heavily escorted by police vehicles swishing past at high speed.

How did all this change, I asked a seasoned and shrewd police officer then charged with overseeing some part of the security operations. I had visited the valley some years before, and Srinagar was a gay, beautiful place, hawkers clamouring for attention; the loveliness of the valley spread out like a gorgeous piece of silk. What had transformed it into this cold region of fear and resentment? He gave me a brief account of what, according to him, was how things went wrong, which may well be just his point of view but can be an accurate summing up of the situation as it was then. I mention it because it has very crucial relevance today.

One of the factors, he said, in the 1965 and 1971 wars with Pakistan that the Pakistanis found inexplicable and infuriating was the fact that, on both occasions, where they confidently assumed that the people of Kashmir, overwhelmingly Muslim, would rise to assist the Pakistani forces, they not only did not, but actually provided sturdy support to the Indian Army, giving them information, carrying messages and turning in spies and informants that the Pakistanis had sent across the Line of Control. They could not understand it; and it took the monumentally corrupt and incompetent misgovernance of the State that followed these two wars to show them how to counter this.

The educational system of the State, he said, had more or less fallen apart thanks to the brazen dishonesty and incompetence of the State government's Education Department headed by the Ministers. Schools either did not exist, or had decrepit, half-collapsed buildings; many had no teachers, and where there were teachers they were indifferent and incompetent. Worried parents turned finally to the institutions where they felt that at least some kind of education would be given to their children - the madrassas. As a consequence, some of the brightest boys and girls went to madrassas to get a school education, and a good many of them taught the children a whole range of subjects besides religious knowledge. They were taught English, geography, history, mathematics and other subjects. This, he said, was what the Pakistanis determined was the key, and they were right.

Gradually, young men skilled in teaching these subjects, and, as we have learnt to our cost, a number of other things came into these madrassas quietly. Over the years, they turned out young men and women who had been schooled not only in history and geography but in a steady resentment and hatred for India and things Indian. They were taught to see the corruption around them, the nepotism and the injustice, and this was easy enough, there was so much of it around. And what these children were taught was corroborated widely by their parents who had experienced all this in some way or the other.

These young men formed the nucleus of what became the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), he said, and of the other groups that came up later. The gentle, peaceable young men of earlier days were replaced, he told me sadly, by trained, motivated militants. The young men went across to Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK) to the training camps there, and came back toughened, able to kill. And kill they did; they chose their targets and gunned them down, in cold blood. Most of them thought they were fighting for Kashmir, for independence; they did not, the brainwashing notwithstanding, want to be a part of Pakistan. But violence brings with it its own monsters, he said; among those young men who believed they were fighting to free their people were other killers, who had another agenda. These began targeting the Hindus, the Kashmiri Pandits, and a number of people were killed, systematically. And the Pandits left the valley, which is what the secret band of killers wanted; the movement became a communal affair. That was what they wanted; to their masters it was a bloody and warped way of declaring that the two-nation theory was right. This was the analysis I was given of the tragedy of Kashmir.

Things may well be different now, and as I said, I have no means of knowing just how accurate this police officer's reading of the situation then, in 1990, was. But it seemed accurate enough, and one cannot help a sense of deja vu when one learns of the role that some madrassas in Pakistan have been found to be playing in brainwashing young men into becoming cold-blooded mass murderers. Why Pakistan? Why not some other country? Perhaps because the interface with the rest of the world is closest in Pakistan; and coupled with that is the shadowy nexus between the state and these schools of terror. Pakistan President Musharraf has come out against them, true; but after their handiwork has been shown, in dreadful detail, to the rest of the world. One wonders what he was doing before that. And one wonders, too, how long he will be able to sustain his campaign, whether he will sooner or later find himself isolated socially and politically.

It seems, from the outside, that behind the iron-fisted dictatorship of President Musharraf there is a nebulous, dark link between some of those in power and the institutions of terror, one he may either not be aware of - unlikely - or which he is unable fully to control. Beyond him there may well be a hidden system fuelled by money and an intense, if misplaced, religious fanaticism.

But the key is in the places where the young are taught; always, it is the school that moulds and produces a genius or a tyrant. That is where it is possible to tap into the minds, the emotions, the youthful visions and the very spirit of the young. Once that is done, the world pales for them, and all that they are taught in conventional schools or colleges, or even at home, sounds like whispers, or conversation faintly heard. All that is real is the imparted goal, and the means of achieving it.

We are fortunate that, with acts of terrorism occurring in different parts of the country, our schools, madrassas and seminaries have not mixed political conditioning with religious education.

Those who have been charged with terrorist attacks have invariably come from breeding grounds outside. If there are terrorist cells in the country they are cells controlled from elsewhere; and the mental conditioning has invariably been in camps and institutions outside.

This may be a testament to the vigil of our security forces; and they have certainly not been idle, as we have seen. But it is, surely, more than that - perhaps a faith, however subconscious, in the validity of what this country, with its brawling, disorganised and tumultuous social discourse, is.