By Sajjad Shaukat
The former Soviet Union which had subjugated the minorities and ethnic groups in various provinces and regions through its military, disintegrated in 1991. Even its nuclear weapons could not save its collapse. One of the important causes of the disintegration of the Russian Empire was that its greater defence expenditure exceeded to the maximum, resulting in economic crises inside the country. In this regard, about a prolonged war in Afghanistan, the former President Gorbachev had declared it as the bleeding wound. However, militarisation of the Soviet Union failed in controlling the movements of liberation, launched by various ethnic nationalities.
On the other hand, while learning no lesson from its previous close friend, India has been acting upon the similar policies in some other way, which led to the demise of the Soviet Union.
For the last 25 years, India has been providing its military and intelligence agency RAW with huge funds in order to support insurgency, separatism and lawlessness in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhuttan, Sikkim and China. Although these covert activities vary from country to country, yet the same intensifies in case of Pakistan. In this respect, a well-established network of Indian army and RAW has been working to destabilise Pakistan by supporting insurgency in the Frontier Province and separatism in Balochistan. New Delhi has been spending huge money to train and equip the militants who have been entering Pakistan on daily basis and have been conducting suicide attacks in our country, and assaults on our security forces. Besides other regional countries, Indian secret operations inside Pakistan are being conducted with great professional skill, having mutiple tactics like propaganda, political dissent, ethnic divisions, economic backwardness and criminal elements to foment subversion so as to weaken our country in conssonance with Indian regional ambitions.
Indian anti-Pakistan plan has also been endorsed by a 72-page white paper handed over to its Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the aftermath of Mumbai carnage. The paper, titled, War on Terror: The Agenda for Action, (Also available on the website of India Today) advised New Delhi to exploit the divisions within Pakistan and expose its weaknesses in Balochistan, FATA and Azad Kashmir including building of pressure on Islamabad especially by the US.
Although, New Delhi has been backing the forces of separatism especially in Pakistan and China (Chinese Tibetan regions), yet like the former Soviet Union, it has been rapidly moving towards the destruction of the Indian union.
No doubt, the former Russia was a totalitarian state which had controlled other ethnic minorities through various techniques of force. But under the mask of democracy and secularism, Indian subsequent regimes dominated by politicians from the Hindi heartland�Hindutva (Hindu nationalism) use brutal force ruthlessly against any move to free Assam, Kashmir, Khalistan, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tamil Nadu and Tripura where wars of liberation continue in one or the other form. Recently, Maoist intensified their struggle, attacking official installments. In this context, Indian media admitted that Maoists have now entered the cities, expanding their activities against the Indian union. In this connection, on August 24 this year, they blew up another railway track in Latehar, and bombed a mobile tower in neighbouring Palamu district. Train services were disrupted between Barwadih-Barkakana route following the incident. The CPI (Maoist) has claimed in a release that they have enforced the two-day shut down in Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal, Bihar and Chhattisgarh due to the arrest of its two senior members.
As regards the Indian-held Kashmir, since 1947, India forces have been intermittently been employing all the possible techniques of military terrorism such as curfews, crackdowns, sieges, massacre, targeted killings etc. to maintain their alien rule. However, under the new puppet regime in the occupied Kashmir, Indian brutalities keeps on going against the current phase of Kashmiri uprising which began on August 12, 2008 when Indian forces killed Hurriyat Conference leader Sheikh Abdul Aziz.
Post-Napoleonic era in Europe proves that it is not possible to suppress the wars of liberation through military terrorism. In that context, Prince Metternich, emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire did what he could by subjugating the alien peoples by employing every possible techniques of state terrorism. According to Indian historian, Mahahin, Matternich had to admit that he was fighting for a useless cause, and the empire disintegrated, resulting in the independence of Italy, Bulgaria and other states whose secret societies had been waging wars of liberation. In the recent past, despite the employment of unlimited atrocities by the President Milosevic, collapse of the former Yugoslavia could not be stopped.
Every entity of South Asia is well-aware that even under the rule of Congress which claims to be a secular party, Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP), Rashtriya Swayamsevak Singh (RSS), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Shev Sina and Bajrang Dal have missed no opportunity to communalise national politics of India. Although violence against the other communities has been used by Hindu fundamentalists as a normal practice since partition, yet anti-Christian and anti-Muslim bloodshed in the last decade coupled with the dissemination of Hindutva has increased. Besides previous genocide of Muslims and destruction of the Babri Mosque, more than 2500 Muslims were massacred in 2002 in the BJP-ruled Indian state of Gujarat. On September 13, 2008, the communal riots in Uttar Pradesh killed more than 200 Muslims. In one of the most tragic incidents in Assam, Hindu extremists burnt alive six members of a Muslim family on October 12 last year. Similarly, assaults on Christians and their property have continued by the Hindu mobs in Orissa, Assam, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. Even the year of 2009 witnessed a number of incidents of religious intolerance. In this respect, at least 60 Christians have been assassinated in the recent past by Hindu fundamentalists in the state of Orissa. Other minorities of India are also target of Hindu terrorism.
It is notable that ideology of Hindu nationalism prevails in every field at the cost of other minorities groups. It is even supported by Indian defence forces clandestinely. This fact could be judged from the recent past, when on April 6, 2008 in the house of Bajrang Dal fundamentalists in Nanded, a bomb went off. The investigations proved that the militants belonging to the Bajrang Dal were found in the bomb-making and attack on a mosque in Parbhani in 2003. Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of the Maharashtra arrested a serving Lt. Col. Srikant Purohit and a retired army Major Samir Kulkarniand along with two other culprits, indicating that these army officers were helping in training the Hindu terrorists, providing them with the military-grade explosive RDX, used in the Malegaon bombings and terrorist attacks in other Indian cities. ATS further disclosed that Lt. Col. Purohit confessed that in 2007 that he was involved in bombing of Samjhota express, which brunt alive 69 Pakistanis. Leaders of the Indian extremist parties, Shiv Sena, BJP, VHP and RSS are now pressurising the Congress regime to release the fugitives.
Indian fundamentalism and mistreatment of religious minorities could be judged from a latest development. After serving the BJP for 30 years, Jaswant Singh was expelled from the party for praising Mohammad Ali Jinnah and echoing the pain of the Indian Muslims in his book, Jinnah�India, Partition, Independence. While pointing out the BJPs attitude towards the minorities, Singh wrote: Every Muslim that lives in India is a loyal Indian
look into the eyes of Indian Muslims and see the pain. He warned in his book, if such a policy continued, India could have third partition.
It is mentionable that provincial and regional disparities have been widening in India day by day as majority of Indian populations are living below the poverty level, lacking basic facilities like fresh food and clean water. While yielding to acute poverty, every day, some persons commit suicide in India. On the other side, New Delhi which recently decided 34 percent increase in its defence budget, signed the pact of civil nuclear technology with the US last year has been importing latest versions of arms and ammunition from Israel, America, Russia, Germany and other western countries.
In the past, New Delhi which incurred huge amounts on advancement of its nuclear weapons and successfully tested missile, Agni-111in May 2007, has been extending its range. On July 27 this year, India launched its first nuclear-powered submarine.
Returning to our earlier discussion, just like the Soviet Union, the artificial union of India which is maintained through militarisation of the country by incurring too much expenditure for importing arms, for subjugating minorities through force, for crushing wars of liberations with brutal tactics and for sponsoring insurgency in Pakistan, China, and other regional countries, is bound to result in disintegration.
Sajjad Shaukat writes on international affairs and is author of the book: US vs Islamic Militants, Invisible Balance of Power: Dangerous Shift in International Relations.
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