Ram Madhav

Saturday, November 24, 2012

INDIA NEEDS TO DEVELOP STRATEGIC CULTURE (Text of the Speech at Chandigarh on 25-11-12)

This conference is being organised on the occasion of 50 years of the Sino-Indian War of 1962. The outcome of that war was a sad national memory. We lost our territory, we lost our men and we lost of honour. It is for victors to celebrate, not for the vanquished. Then why are we organising this event? In fact in September this year, when we decided to pass a resolution at the national meet of the RSS on the 50 years after Sino-Indian War, some delegates took objection saying what is there to talk except to rake up the old wounds! Interestingly when I visit China and whenever the discussion turns to the 1962 War, the Chinese friends, without any malice, would advise sincerely that we should forget about that War and move on.

But do they themselves forget the Japanese aggression during the Second World War? Even to this day they protest loudly whenever a senior Japanese official visits the memorial for the Japanese soldiers who were kileed during the WW II. The Jews had not forgotten their defeat at the hands of the Romans in 1st Century AD for almost 2000 years until they reclaimed their land. No country forgets national failures and humiliations so easily. We also should not.

“Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it”, Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru used to say. We have to learn lessons from history and reform our present so that we shall enter into a brighter tomorrow. It is from that perspective that this event acquires great significance. Have we learnt any lessons from the debacle of the '62 war? Are we any different from what we were 50 years ago? Sadly, the answers to such questions are not always encouraging.

Historians, political analysts and scholars may come out with any number of theses over the reasons for India's defeat in that war. But the most critical failure of our nation was that we had not understood our enemy well. We continue to fail in that respect.

We Indians are fond of romanticism. We like slogans. Internationalism, world peace, global family – these lofty ideals attract us very much. They are genuinely very lofty ideals. But idealism and realism should go hand in hand, especially in diplomacy and international relations. Because diplomacy is not ideal-driven; it is interest-driven. It is often said that there are no permanent friends or foes in diplomacy; there are only permanent interests.

Sadly after Independence, our first Prime Minister Pt. Nehru remained a romanticist and surrealist. He ignored all the warnings about China, that came from such eminent people like Bipin Chandra Pal, Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel, Bhimrao Ambedkar, Jayaprakash Narayan and many more. He even ignored the British and Indian Commanders of the Armed Forces. He not only ignored warnings; he turned a Nelson's Eye to what was happening around him too. B.N. Mullick, his most trusted intelligence chief wrote in his memoirs 'My Years with Nehru' that the information about the Chinese building jeep tracks in Aksai Chin area was known to Nehru as early as in 1952-53. But Nehru never believed that there needed to be a cautious approach to handling our border security.

In fact when the Members of the Parliament pressed him for information he would only dodge the answer by saying he was not very clear as to whether a 'particular post built by the Chinese was on on our side of the border or their side'; or whether a 'particular road built by them was running through our territory completely'. It was this ambivalence that had resulted in our debacle in the '62 War.

Nehru, irritated by the pestering of some Members of the House, shouted one day, 'Not a blade of grass grows there'. He was suggesting that our insistence on reclaiming Aksai Chin was a ridiculous one. Almost 3 decades later, when the Chinese pushed forward several miles into our territory and built helipads in Sumdhorang Chu Valley in Aunachal Pradesh, the worthy grand son Rajiv Gandhi would inform the House in 1987 that 'while it is easy to draw border lines on the maps, it is not that easy to draw them on the actual territory; it may go a few miles this way or that way'. Has it ever gone 'that way'?

Nehru was so self-possessive that he would declare that he too 'had studied the Chinese history and he too knew them well'. India and China can together march to author a new history of mankind, he used to exhort to Chou En-lai during those years prior to '62 War with great elation. 'Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai' had almost become an article of faith with him.

The '62 War had taught us the biggest lesson that no amount of idealism and romanticism can secure our borders or interests. We need to develop a vision, outlook and culture that would safeguard and promote our strategic interests. Each country follows its own strategic doctrine; China has one, America has one, even Pakistan has one, but we have none. We are fond of living by slogans. That slogans had not yielded any results in '62 hardly matter to us.

Look at the advise of our Government to Israel in the recent Gaza strife. 'Don't use disproportionate force', our Government advised Israel. What does 'disproportionate force' mean? Should we first mutually agree upon the weapons that each one of us would use and then start the war? Does it happen that way? When the Chinese attacked us in 1962, did they use 'proportionate power'? Our soldiers were outnumbered by 1:6. In a war it is not proportion or parity that matters; it is your capability to defeat the enemy that matters.

What is the problem with us? Lack of strength or numbers? Lack of resources? In my view what we actually lack is the 'strategic culture'. You need particular way of thinking, vision and approach to your security and sovereignty. This vision is demonstrated in your behaviour, which is shaped by your culture. Instinctively nations demonstrate their strategic cultures. Take the case of Israel. It is guided by a strong fight-back instinct. That is why in spite of being thrown out of their motherland for almost 1900 years, they never forgot it. We already forgot that Pakistan belonged to us. But the Israelis reclaimed their country after 1900 years. Even today, surrounded by an enemy 5 times stronger, what makes them not only survive but live with courage and honour is the instinct of fight-back. It has become the strategic culture of that country.

We have been guided by an instinct of compromise. The culture of strategic thinking has not evolved in our country. In fact the China War of '62 is a classic illustration of the difference in the strategic culture of our two countries. Let me give you two examples.

India and China had signed Panchsheel agreement in 1954. Among other things it emphasised 'peaceful coexistence' of neighbors as a cherished objective. For Nehru, peaceful coexistence became a mantra for next several years and he even ignored the suggestions for equipping our Army well. In his own words, he genuinely used to believe that a “deliberate policy of friendship with other countries goes further in gaining security than almost anything else”. By 'anything else' he meant the Army, its weapons, preparedness etc. And he continued to believe that after Panchsheel we didn't need any doctrine of defense. 'Defense against whom?', his loyal Defense Minister Mr. Krishna Menon was said to have famously asked when reminded about the pathetic situation on the India-Tibet border.

Nehru and all his loyalists had faith in Panchsheel as the best defense with China until Mao smirked at Chou En-lai and told that what we needed was not 'peaceful coexistence but armed coexistence'. By then it was too late for India. This is the difference in strategic cultures of our countries.

We must remember that even today we are made to believe that trade is the best defense between India and China. We are given glorious figures like $ 70 billion trade between our two countries. But we seldom realize that out of the $ 70 billion, our exports to China are only $ 10 billion and the rest of $ 60 Billion are the Chinese exports into India. More importantly our exports to China are majorly the raw materials like iron ore while our imports are all finished goods. We are being sucked more and more into the Chinese economy through this uneven trade relationship. There is a joke that if you borrow a million rupees from a bank and don't repay, it will be a problem for you; but if you borrow a few billion rupees from the bank and don't repay, it will the bank's problem. Excessive trade imbalance will be our major problem in future.

But on the other hand we have still been lagging behind in a big way in our border management. All our border infrastructure projects are running great delays. There is no need to mention here about the border infrastructure including missile-launching sites on the Chinese side all along the 4000-km Indo-Tibetan border.

Let me give another example to elaborate my point further. The Great Wall of China stretches from Shanhaiguan in the east, to Lop Lake in the west, along an arc that roughly delineates the southern edge of Inner Mongolia. A comprehensive archaeological survey, using advanced technologies, has concluded that the walls roughly measure 8,850 km. They were built essentially to protect the Chinese kingdom from the nomadic invasions from the North.

Look at what happened in India. We were repeatedly invaded from the North-West. Most of the invasions from Greeks to Kushans to Moghuls came through just one mountain pass called the Khyber Pass. Have we ever thought of sealing that one mountain pass? The simple answer is that it defies our strategic thinking. Or we totally lack it.

China follows a meticulous strategic doctrine developed largely based on an ancient text called 'The Art of war' by Sun Tzu. Written some 2000 years ago, this small book of 100 pages gives great strategic insights into the art and craft of war. The Chinese tradition is mostly based on the teachings of this book. As Henry Kissinger points out in his book 'On China', “Where the Western tradition prized the decisive clash of forces emphasizing feats of heroism, the Chinese ideal stressed subtlety, indirection, and the patient accumulation of relative advantage”.

We play the war game Chess in our country. We are masters of the game and we pride in having a Grand Masters like Vishwanathan Anand in our country. The Russians too had their Grand Masters, so did the Americans. But not the Chinese. Why? Are they weak in war games? The real reason is the cultural difference. Chess is about total victory, decisive battle wherein the opposite king is totally defeated and all his men killed.

The Chinese don't believe in such a war. They have a different game called Wei Chi. Wei Chi is not about winning the battle, but about protracted campaign. It is not about total victory; it is about relative advantage. In Chess the player always tries to occupy the center of the board; Wei Chi teaches the art of strategic encirclement. In Chess the players moves ahead in head-on clashes and eliminates the pawns of the adversary; whereas in Wei Chi the player moves into empty spaces on the board gradually mitigating the strategic potential of his opponent's pieces. Chess produces single-mindedness; Wei Chi generates strategic flexibility.

We can analyse the entire India-China war and realise that China literally followed these principles. In the long history of independent India we too did it once when we perched up the peaks of Siachen. But we are so much at unease; we want to give it up.

Sun Tzu was a great strategic thinker. His book contains so many invaluable insights into how a war should not only be fought but also not fought. Normally for a strategist, victory is the benchmark of a war. But for Sun Tzu the objective is to have victory where battles become unnecessary.

Just look at one of his doctrines:

'Ultimate excellence lies

Not in winning

Every battle

But in defeating the enemy

Without ever fighting.

The highest form of warfare

Is to attack (the enemy's)

Strategy itself;

The next,

To attack (his)

Alliances.

The next,

To attack

Armies;

The lowest form of war is

To attack

Cities.”

'Engagement with containment' and 'strategic encirclement' are the two maxims that the Chinese derive from the Sun Tzu text and apply to their strategic goals today. They continually engaged us until the 1962 war and suddenly executed a decisive blow. In stead of going for an all out war, they preferred to protract it and kept us engaged through all these decades. They continued their campaigns, by entering in Gilgit-Baltistan in '60s, Sumdhorang Chu Valley in '80s, Sikkim in 2000, and through innumerable border incursions and claims over Arunachal Pradesh in the last decade or so. But at the same time they kept us engaged all through.

They have a way in this engagement – 'engagement with containment'. Shri Atal Behari Vajpayee visited China in 1979 as Foreign Minister. This was the first high level visit after the '62 War. But the Chinese decided to launch their Vietnam campaign on that same day forcing Vajpayee to cancel his trip and come back. Shri Rajiv Gandhi was to go China in 1988 and they encroached into Sumdhorang Chu Valley in 1987 forcing Rajiv to alter his agenda. Shri Narasimha Rao went to China in 1993 and signed - what was described as a 'historic agreement' – the 'Peace and Tranquility Agreement'. In just two years China revised its nuclear policy by stating that its 'No First Use' principle applies only to those countries that are signatories to the NPT regime. That means India is excluded from the No First Use doctrine. Shri Vajpayee visited China in 2003, this time as Prime Minister. This visit happened on the eve of the Chinese raking up Sikkim question once again. A settled question was settled once again 'in India's favour', by extracting from India the phrase 'the Tibetan Autonomous Province of China'.

Today China strategically encircles us. In the North they are on the Karakoram Highway; in the Arabian Sea the Gwadar Port has changed hands from the Singaporeans to the Chinese two years ago. They are building Hambanthotta port and docks in Sri Lanka and they have upgraded their Listening Posts at the Coco Islands in Myanmar in the Bay of Bengal. They are there in Chittagong in Bangladesh. China is the largest arms supplier to all our neighbours – Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Nepal.

Most important final point that I wanted to make is with reference to the penetration of the Chinese in our country. Chinese have mastered a therapeutic system called the Acupressure, a derivative from the Acupuncture technique. It is a technique of gaining control of the body through certain nerve-centers in the body parts like hands, legs etc. The points or combinations of points are said to be used to manipulate or incapacitate an opponent. They are using such a technique on our body-politic too. They are entering vital areas like energy, communications, manufacturing industry, finished goods etc. They have mastered the art of cyber warfare. Some estimates suggest that China has developed some 150,000 hacker-strong Cyber Army.

All this is a product of a certain strategic culture that is derived mostly from the ancient Confucian and Sun Tzu wisdom. India needs to rethink about its strategic environment. We are described as a 'Soft State'. Even that is not because it was out of any strategic thinking that we opted to be that way. It has become a sort of a culture with us.

The biggest lesson for India to learn from the 1962 debacle is that it should develop a new strategic culture in the country. Please note that I am not talking about the strategic doctrine. A strategic doctrine is a dynamic thing. But a strategic culture is a fundamental requirement for any nation; much more for India which is surrounded from all sides by forces inimical.

Thank you.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Strategic Culture

We Need a New Strategic Culture

India has earned the sobriquet 'Soft State' due to its handling of terrorism and hostile neighbours over the years. After the hanging of Ajmal Kasab, the terrorist responsible for Mumbai attacks in 2008, some commentators opined that India has now shed the image of a Soft State. Is it true?

There is no denying the fact that the decision of the Government to hang Kasab after his mercy plea was rejected by Hon' President Sri Pranab Mukharjee has certainly given a sense of relief to the people of the country. After all we brought one dreaded terrorist to justice, they felt. The Government, and especially Shri Pranab Mukharjee, must be complimented for their swiftness and boldness.

However it will be premature to conclude that we have shed the Soft State tag completely. Actually it is not about just a couple of decisions. Demands have arisen, correctly, that the other dreaded terrorist who was responsible for the carnage at the Parliament building in 2001,Afzal Guru, be also executed immediately. His mercy plea is pending before the President at the moment. The nation hopes that Afzal Guru too will join Kasab soon.

But these decisions are in a way inevitable ones. The judicial process was duly completed and the Government is only expected to follow the procedures in these cases.

But for us to change our image we need to do a lot more. The opposite to Soft State is not Hard or Harsh State. What we need is a Stern State, a polity that betrays zero tolerance to attacks on its sovereignty, dignity and integrity.

Countries like Israel, USA and even Russia display such attitude. It is in their culture. Israel is by culture driven by fight back instinct. It is not 'teeth for teeth' with them; 'for one tooth, the entire jaw'. That is the reason why in spite of being surrounded by the enemy 5 times larger in terms of demography and military strength and sworn to wipe out Israel from the map of the world, they not only merely survive, but lead a life of strength, courage and pragmatism.

India is driven by an instinct of compromise. We may pay lip sympathy to Gaza by asking Israel not to use disproportionate force; but one has to be on the other side of the Gaza border to understand what it means to be a target of Hamas terrorism. Everything is fair in love and war, they say. We ourselves were victims of excessive softness in 1962 when waves and waves of Chinese soldiers had invaded our territory outnumbering our soldiers by 1:6. Excessive force argument doesn't have any merit in a war; and Israel is in a perpetual war.

In USA, terrorists are tried in military courts and punished swiftly. Mind you, USA is one of the world's leading democracies. Russia cannot claim that honour, but when it comes to handling terror, Putin had demonstrated extreme commitment when he carpet-bombed Chechnya relentlessly for a month to finish off Islamic terrorism once and for all on Russian soil.

Our real problem lies in the lack of that courage and determination. We are driven by a romanticist attitude of peace, love etc when what we actually need is a strategic culture. Wen Nehru proposed Panchsheel - five principles for peaceful coexistence - to Chou En-lai, Mao retorted by saying what we needed was 'armed coexistence'.

That is what is meant the strategic cultural difference in thinking. It is not about any doctrine alone. It is more about the culture. We simply don't have it. The last known leader to have thought in terms of a comprehensive strategic cultural doctrine was Chanakya when he asked the ruler of Patna to go and befriend the rulers of the Republics in today's Afghan-Iran border thousands of miles away. There were kings like Shivaji who had used strategic wars to secure their kingdoms, but a strategic doctrine leading to a strategic culture was last developed by Chanakya in Artha Shastra, which we no longer follow.

Let me give you a simple example to buttress my point: in order to secure its borders from the Mongol invaders in the North the Qing dynasty in China had built the Great Wall of China - a thousands-of-km-long wall around its central territory after 13th Century. India was invaded by successive waves of hordes for more than 2000 years through one mountain pass called the Khyber Pass. Why has no Indian king ever thought of sealing that pass to prevent the invasions?

That is where the difference in strategic cultures stands. That is why we can't even seal our borders with Bangladesh. Even if we post our BSF men there, we give them clear orders that they cannot fire on the infiltrators even at night.

For us to really shed off this Soft State image we need to transform our cultural outlook about our security, sovereignty and national honour. We need a new strategic culture in our country.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

DOES THE EUROPEAN UNION DESERVE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE?

Last week in Brussels I bumped into a junior level official at the European Commission. Brussels has one of the best public transport systems – underground and overground metro, tram and bus – and our chance meeting happened in one of the overground metros. It was in that meeting that I came to know about the anxiety of several European Union countries to make sure that the arrangement doesn't collapse due to impending pulls and pressures from within as well as without. In fact the official equated collapse of EU to relapse of jingoistic nationalism of the Nazi variety, although it sounded a bit far fetched to me.

But the strains are evident. Not all is well with the EU. There is resentment brewing in different countries in the South like Greece, Italy and Spain. Left Liberal parties are gaining in many of these Member-Countries. Recessionary trends are not showing any signs of change. Euro is struggling to remain afloat. And most importantly the cold war between the big and mighty like Germany, France and UK is continuing to haunt the progress of the Union. After several decades of its existence the European Union is certainly facing biggest challenge ever to its very raison d'être.

It is at this juncture that the Norway-based Nobel Awards Committee has decided to give this year's Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union. Mr. Srinivasan, former Foreign Secretary of India, has written an excellent article on this decision of the Nobel Committee in the Times of India dated 17 October 2012.

Not many people knew that Norway is one important country that refuses to join the European Union. In the referenda held twice the people of that country categorically voted against being a part of the EU. Norway is an important country because it is the richest economy in the entire Europe, and its joining the EU would certainly have helped the struggling EU economy due to severe recession.

Nobel prizes are given away by the committee headquartered in Oslo, the capital city of Norway. On one hand Norway refuses to join the EU and rescue it from collapse, while on the other hand it decided to award this year's Nobel Peace Prize to that very same crumbling edifice. That is why many in Europe are describing it as a crude joke, black humour etc.

Nobel awards have lost their reputation long ago. Especially the Peace Award increasingly came to be seen by the world as a politically motivated one. Of course there were honourable exceptions in recent years like HH the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela etc. But there were less than honourable cases like that of Barack Obama who was awarded a Nobel Peace prize within just a few months of ascension to the Oval Office. Of course no Indian, not even the greatest champion of peace Mahatma Gandhi, has ever been considered for the Peace Prize.

This time also there is no convincing reason for the Peace Award to go to the European Union. Within the EU member countries also this announcement was received with cynicism, sarcasm and scoffing by several groups. In the last one decade or so the EU has not covered itself in any particular glory. It has not played any meaningful role in securing world peace. Several of its member states like the UK, France etc were active partners in George Bush era wars in the Arab world. Several of the EU nations were involved in lending direct or indirect support to Orange Revolution in some countries of the Arab region that had culminated in bringing into power illiberal Islamists in many of those countries.

Within the EU also things are not so much in order for it to deserve any such Award. Cold War between Germany and France and UK continues to dominate EU politics. Uneasy truce is of course an achievement between Germany and France. Euro is in deep distress. Countries in the south are bankrupt while those in the north are in no mood to come to their rescue. As a result nationalism and anti-EU sentiment is on the rise in some of these countries like Spain, Greece etc. There were even demonstrations against the German Chancellor Merkel when she visited Greece recently.

Recovery of Euro seems to remain a distant dream. European Union is becoming increasingly irrelevant to global politics and seen by many countries in the rest of the world as only an appendage of the US. In spite of its existence for long years, countries in the rest of the world find it convenient to deal with individual countries rather than the EU as an entity.

In fact EU as an entity doesn't really inspire confidence as a democratic body. It's two wings the European Parliament and the European Commission act independent of each other with the former practically having no meaningful powers. The European Parliament is duly elected by the people of different member countries. But it has no powers to prevent the European Commission, the ruling establishment, from pursuing, making or unmaking various policies.

In such a scenario for the Nobel Committee to decide to give the coveted Peace Prize to the EU can at best be described as a morale booster only. But the fact remains that the EU is in dire need of such boosters. It is no denying a fact that several of the smaller member countries have benefitted from the EU arrangement as it has given them access to free markets and movements. Pre-Second World War Europe experience of German and Italian Nationalist movements is still a chilling memory for many in Europe.

For them, especially the countries that have been the beneficiaries of the EU arrangement, its continuance is critical. There are some other countries like Turkey, which are perpetually waiting to enter and some new ones like Serbia whose entry doesn't make much difference.

In any case can this morale booster injection of Nobel offered by Norway help rescue the European Union from going the USSR way needs to be watched.

Friday, September 7, 2012

Detect and Disenfranchise Infiltrators

Text of the Speech Delivered at Bengaluru on 01-09-12

We all must be evergrateful to the All Assam Students Union and it's leaders like Prafulla Mahonta and Sarvananda Sonowal. It was they, as young men and women some 30 years ago, who fought against the illegal migration from Bangladesh into Assam and the rest of India. These youngmen in their 20s and 30s sacrificed their education, their careers and even their lives in order to secure our Motherland and it's integrity. But for the massive agitation launched by them in late 70s and early 80s the country would have been blissfully ignorant of the dangerous threat to its North East; but for their movement we would probably have lost the NE by now forever to the foreigners.

The problem of illegal migration from Bangladesh, which is at the root of many ills plaguing the North East including the recent Bodoland clashes, has today acquired humongous proportions. We all know that the North East comprising the Seven Sisters - Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram, Manipur, Meghalaya and Tripura - is a land of nature's bounty. It is also strategically a very important region for us, whose borders touch four countries - Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Tibet/China.

This strategic region of the NE is linked to rest of India through a tenuous land link called the Siliguri Corridor. Various agencies like the Chinese, the ISI, the CIA are all active in the region. Various terrorist groups operate under their patronage in different states of the region.

Singularly important problem in the NE is the illegal migration/infiltration from Bangladesh. None has the actual data. But estimates - official or otherwise - put the numbers anywhere between 20 million to 30 million Bangladeshis in India, one third of whom have made the NE as their home.

Bangladesh is the world's most densely populated country with 982 persons/sq. km. Our NE states have just 215 persons/sq. km. Additionally Bangladesh is one country that has exported tens of millions of its people to other countries. Besides those who infiltrated into India a whopping 15 million Bangladeshis live in other countries of the world. This amounts to more than half of the population of Bangladesh.

We must first of all accept and bear in mind that we are dealing with this kind of a humongous problem. Our tragedy is that a section of our political and intellectual leadership is not willing to accept the real dimensions of this problem. The issue of infiltration from Bangladesh is mired in controversies mostly on account of vote bank politics and pseudo-secular and pseudo-humanitarian pseudo-intellectualism. Result is that we are not able to have one solid opinion on any dimension of this problem.

Is infiltration by Bangladeshis into our country a political problem? We witness constant somersaults on the issue. In 90s Hiteswar Saikia, the then Chief Minister of Assam declared on the floor of the House that there were 3 million Bangladeshis in Assam. Immediately pressure was mounted on him from leaders in Delhi. Within one week he made a complete u-turn, this time claiming that there was not a single Bangladeshi in his State.

This continues even to this day. Tarun Gogoi, the Chief Minister of Assam today, is known for speaking in different tongues on this issue. One day he will say that there is no place for Bangladeshis in Assam; another day he would say that there are no Bangladeshis in Assam at all. Several other political parties too exhibit this lack of conviction and political will to openly declare that there is a never-ending influx of infiltration from Bangladesh into our country.

Usurping Assam has been on the agenda of successive leaders of Pakistan and Bangladesh for decades. Jinnah, the architect of partition of Bharat, visited Guwahati in 1946 and expressed full confidence in his speech that the city would certainly become a part of his dream country Pakistan. In fact he tried to use his proximity to the British leadership to bring Assam and East Bengal into one group so that he could take away the entire region at the time of Partition. Congress leadership was too indifferent to see through this dangerous game plan and in fact it almost acquiesced to the proposal. But for the alert intervention of Gopinath Bardoloi, senior Congress leader from Assam, who later became the first Chief Minister of Assam, the State would have fallen in the hands of Jinnah. It was Bardoloi who opposed the move to group Assam with East Bengal thus saving the state from slipping out of Bharat.

In the preceding years of Partition a systematic effort was made to alter the demography of Assam in order to make it easy to take it away. Md. Sadulla, the then premier of Assam and East Bengal, deliberately encouraged migration of Muslim farmers into Assam in the name of supplementing the British efforts to increase rice production in the region in order to ward off the repeat of drought. Lord Wavell, the British Viceroy, had commented that in the name of growing more rice Sadullah was indulging in growing more Muslims.

The Pakistan leadership had never given up on their agenda on Assam. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in his book “Myth of Independence” wrote, “It would be wrong to think that Kashmir is the only dispute that divides India and Pakistan. One at least is nearly as important as the Kashmir dispute, that of Assam and some districts of India adjacent to East Pakistan. To these, Pakistan has very good claims. East Pakistan must include Assam to be financially and economically strong”.

Even Sheik Mujibur Rehman, who owed everything to India without whose support he wouldn't have succeeded in carving out Bangladesh, too nurtured the ambition of annexing at least parts of Assam if not full. In his book Eastern Pakistan – It's Population and Economics he asserted:

“East Pakistan must have land for its expansion and because Assam has abundant forests, mineral resources, coal, petroleum etc. Eastern Pakistan must include Assam to be economically and financially strong.”

The infiltration from Bangladesh must be seen in this backdrop. Bangladeshis today became a deciding factor in about 200 Assembly and 25 Parliament seats. 11 Districts in Assam have become partially or fully Bangladeshi Muslim majority. 4 districts in W. Bengal are close to halfway mark in number of Bangladeshis. Even in the national capital Delhi, right under the nose of our Government, 1.6 million Bangladeshis live all over.

There is a political party in Assam by name United National Front of Assam. It's leader is one Maulana by name Badruddin Ajmal. Ajmal's party is described by many as the party of infiltrators. He himself is a Member of Parliament from Dhubri, which is 70% Bangladeshi constituency. That means he can never be defeated by any Indian.

Ajmal is accused of fanning communal tensions in Bodoland area that culminated in huge clashes. He is also allegedly the main financier of Raza Academy which organised the Mumbai protests leading to violence. Ajmal's party is the main opposition party in Assam Assembly today, winning 18 seats in 2009 elections leaving the BJP and the AGP far behind. Ajmal nurtures the dream of winning double the number of seats in next election and with the help of 'friendly' co-religionists in other parties capture power in the state that has just 121 Assembly seats.

That the infiltrators enjoy immunity, if not protection, from the ruling establishment became clear once again when the Assam administration chose to arrest Pradeep Brahma, a Bodo MLA, for the violence but didn't touch Ajmal in spite of demands for the same by many. In fact it is this kind of politics of power and vote banks that have been the bane of our country and blessing for the illegal citizens.

Is it demographic invasion?

Just as we refuse to see the political dimensions of the infiltration we refuse to accept that no country allows its territories to become victims of silent demographic invasion. 'Demography is destiny' is the dictum every country follows, of course except us. No other country has so much experience as we do and paid so much price as we did due to demographic imbalances. The country was partitioned primarily on demographic grounds. Partition was not peaceful - millions had lost their lives while tens of millions had become hapless refugees. One of the largest mass migrations in human history was witnessed in 1947 for the simple reason of demographic differences.

Yet we don't understand the gravity of the emerging scenario due to unabating influx of Bangladeshi infiltrators. The community-wise growth rate given as under will give us a better picture of communal imbalance being created in Assam by the immigration of Bangladeshis :-

1951-1961. Hindus. 33.71 Muslims. 38.35

1991-2001. Hindus 44.08. Muslims 89.25

In 1991 census, four districts of Assam namely Dhubri, Goalpara, Barpeta and Hailakandi became Muslim majority districts. Two more districts; Nagaon and Karimganj have attained Muslim majority in 1998.

The tribal population of Tripura, which was 93 percent in 1947 has been reduced to a minority of 23 percent of its 31.9 million population today.

As per the Home Ministry and IB estimates approx 54 lakh Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants are settled in West Bengal.

Lest we forget, the Election Commission of Bangladesh had declared around this time that a couple of million voters were 'missing' from their country.

In India as well as in Bangladesh there are many intellectuals who try to project it as a humanitarian issue. In fact some intellectuals in Bangladesh have gone to the extent of describing this migration as 'Lebensraum'. This is a German word meaning 'Living Space'. In his book Mein Kampf, Hitler detailed his belief that the growing population of the German people needed Lebensraum ("living space"), and that it should be found in Eastern Europe. It was the stated policy of the Nazis to kill, deport, or enslave the Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, and other Slavic populations, whom they considered inferior, and to repopulate the land with Germanic people.

This Fascist argument is now being forwarded by our intellectuals in the garb of humanitarianism.

No country tolerates such illegal migration. Through the "Secure Fence Act of 2006" the USA has by law started fencing its borders with Mexico. By 2010 it has completed 1200 kms of border fencing almost covering all hospitable terrains.

Although China is a great friend of North Korea it nevertheless is building a strong barrier on its border to prevent illegal infiltrators from entering Chinese territory. Recently the Chinese administration has announced a 100-Yuan reward to the whistle-blowers on illegal infiltrators. It passed a new law pronouncing much harsher punishment for illegal migrants.

What is interesting to note is that while many million Bangladeshis infiltrate into India they hardly dare to enter China although the countries - Bangladesh and China - have been great friends.

In Myanmar nearly a million Rohingya Muslims, who are originally from Bangladesh and live on the western border of the country, have been treated for decades as non-citizens without any citizens' rights.

Even Muslim countries don't tolerate this nonsense. The Malaysian government has recently revoked the visas of about 70,000 Bangladeshi migrants. There was a news item a few years ago that Saudi Arabia had forcibly deported some 600 Bangladeshis who were found overstaying.

What is the status of our laws with regard to infiltration? Firstly the Foreigners' Act, which was meant to deal with this problem, hardly can cope with the very magnitude of it. In the 80's, especially after the massacre of Nellie in Assam in 1983 in which some 2000 people, mostly the infiltrators, were killed, the Government of Smt. India Gandhi had brought in the infamous Illegal Migrants Determination by Tribunal Act, popularly known as the IMDT Act.

By the nomenclature it sounds as though it was meant to prevent infiltration. But in reality the Act was designed in such a way that it actually turned out to be the Illegal Migrants Protection Act. While under the Foreigners Act the government agencies are empowered to investigate and act against illegal immigrants upon receiving any information, under the IMDT Act the onus of proving that a said person is an illegal immigrant rested on the complainant. What is worse, the complainant had to pay a certain amount before complaining. This Act had thus become a boon for the infiltrators because Assam was excluded from the jurisdiction of the Foreigners' Act and placed under this Act.

In spite of this adverse nature of the Act between 1983 and 2000 a total of over 3 lac complaints came before the Tribunal out of which around 10,000 were found true; but less than 1500 deported. Governor of Assam Lt. Gen. Ajai Singh had sent confidential report to the Union Home Ministry on infiltration in 2005 in which he claimed that about 6000 people sneak into Assam from Bangladesh everyday. When this report got leaked out into media partially he was reported to have amended his statement by saying that 6000 people cross over into India every day.

This is mind boggling. 6000 infiltrators enter every day while we send back 1 infiltrator every 4-5 days. Now, the Government figures suggest that a whopping 750 crore rupees had been spent on this great job of deporting 1400+ infiltrators.

While this being the state of affairs, the IMDT Act in the meantime became a symbol of India's much-maligned pseudo-secularism. Parties started vying with each other to safeguard this grossly anti-national Act. Even the BJP as the lead Party of the NDA could do specious little to scrap this Act because of the same political compulsions. When the Supreme Court, acting upon the petition of Sarvananda Sonowal of the AGP, asked the NDA regime to repeal the Act it submitted before the Court it's inability due to lack of numbers in the Upper House. However it did agree with the Court's view that the IMDT Act must go. Finally it fell on the Court to scrape it.

What shocked everybody was the cynical and diabolical attempt by the UPA 1 government in 2005 to circumvent and defeat the spirit of the Supreme Court judgment on IMDT by amending the Foreigners' Act so as to allow the same detrimental provisions of the IMDT Act a back door entry into it. Fortunately an alert Supreme Court intervened again and strike down the amendments as illegal. This one incident shows vividly how shameless and irresponsible our political system has become in handling such sensitive issues.

We are not realising that infiltration is a huge security issue as well. Our intelligence agencies have definite information that more than 150 ISI training camps run in Bangladesh. Under the previous regime of Begum Khalida Zia in Bangladesh all the insurgent groups of the North East like the ULFA, Kantipur National Army, NLFT etc have had safe havens in the bordering regions in that country. Fortunately the present regime in Bangladesh under Sheik Hasina has been helping India in weeding out these elements. But the fact remains that infiltration is a major security threat to our country.

This infiltration is putting a lot of pressure on our internal security machinery. The agencies come under increased pressure in all the cities where the Bangladeshis live in large numbers. Their illegal colonies become the hub of all terrorist and anti-national activities. Besides this, normal policing too faces increased pressure due to the presence of these foreigners. In cities like Delhi many crimes like dacoity, robbery, murder etc are traced in several cases to these infiltrators.

This issue of infiltration must be dealt at the diplomatic level also. We need to take up the issue with the counterparts in Bangladesh. However it is a sad commentary of diplomacy that our side never presses this matter forcefully with Bangladesh. It is not that we don't discuss important issues regarding this region bilaterally. As recently as early this year India and Bangladesh have arrived at a pathbreaking border delimitation agreement under which Indian side has conceded around 10,000 hectors of territory to Bangladesh. Even while demonstrating such magnanimity the Indian side has not demanded that Bangladesh reciprocate by taking effective measures to curb infiltration.

For sometime now the Bangladesh officials are taking a strange belligerent line of argument. There are no illegal Bangladeshis in India, they insist arguing that those who own a ration card and voter identity card of India can't be called Bangladeshi nationals. It is a clever, yet hollow argument. But it does point out the ugly political reality in our country where the infiltrators are not seen as a security risk but as vote banks.

In any case the stand of Bangladesh on the issue of illegal migrants seems to be downright negationism. Whenever the BSF tries to push back infiltrators the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) refuses to let them in saying they are not their nationals.

Sometime back the Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina rather curtly told British Secretary of International Development Affairs Andrew Mitchell in London, that 'countries including Britain, which are concerned over the Rohingya issue, should hold talks with Myanmar instead of putting pressure on Bangladesh'.

While the apologists for infiltrators in India put forth the humanitarianism argument the leadership of the very country to which they belong doesn't betray any humanitarian concern for them.

Is it a religious issue also? We are hammered by our pseudo-intelligentsia and media that it shouldn't be seen as a religious issue. We too agree that the issue is essentially about infiltrators. But does the other side also see it that way? The Muslim League of Bangladesh, which had a field day under Khalida Zia's regime, spews venom against Hindus and India. It aggressively campaigns for Jihad to takeover the districts of Assam.

In our country too how can we explain the reaction of Muslims in Mumbai, Ranchi, Allahabad, Lucknow, Hyderabad etc? It is they who make it into a Hindu-Muslim issue. The insidious campaign that was unleashed in the wake of clashes in Bodoland is an affront on the entire North East. It was propagated as though the land of Shankar Dev had become a land of anti-Muslim marauders. Calls were given by clerics for street demonstrations against what they portrayed as 'anti-Muslim pogrom'. Funds were collected in each and every mosque in the name of supporting the brethren of Umma.

Who makes it into a religious issue then? Why teach others about not communalising the issue while the Muslim leadership in the country is openly and blatantly making it into a communal one? Asaduddin Owaisi, a Member of Parliament known for his rabid communalist views, openly threatened on the floor of Lok Sabha that a third wave of radicalisation of Muslim youths will soon start. According to him the first two waves were post-Ayodhya and post-Gujarat.

It is significant, in this context, to note that, Lafikul Islam, the 'publicity secretary' of the All Bodoland Muslim Student's Union (ABMSU), had warned the state government on July 7, 2012, that, if the 'culprits' of the violence of July 6, 2012, were not arrested within 24 hours the ABMSU would declare jehad and take up arms.

Such open and blatant communalist banalities are pushed under the carpet in our country while Hindus are routinely pontificated about treating it as a secular and humanitarian issue.

How can we explain the solidarity of Indian Muslims with the Bangladeshi infiltrators in India or in Myanmar - the Rohingyas? We must not forget the fact that under Islam the entire Muslim world is one single Umma - nation. Islam doesn't recognise any other national boundaries. Additionally there is this concept of Hijra - migration of Muslims to greener pastures. 'Whole world is a big Mosque for you', declared the Prophet and ordained his people to go anywhere and called upon the fellow-religionists that it is their religious obligation to support them.

It is another matter that the Saudis, the Malaysians and even the Bangladeshis themselves don't recognise this principle when it comes to their own lands.

What needs to be done now to remedy the situation?

Firstly, under the Assam Accord of 1986 the Government of India was to revise the National Register of Citizens adjusting it with the census data of 1971. That year has been agreed upon as the cut-off year for identifying infiltrators. Those who entered India illegally after 1971 will be treated as infiltrators and sent back. Since this Accord of 1986 succeeded the IMDT Act it should have prevailed over the Act in detecting and deporting them.

But like the IMDT Act there occurred a fiasco on the issue of National Register of Citizens too. Under the pressure of the Supreme Court, the centre in 2005 decided to update the National Register of Citizens (NRC) 'within two years', on the basis of the 1971 rolls. But the exercise never took off for reasons known only to the governments. On April 22, 2009, during the tripartite discussions between the Central and State governments, and the All Assam Students Union (AASU), the government promised to initiate NRC updates in two revenue circles, Chaygaon in Kamrup district and Barpeta revenue circle in Barpeta district. The process commenced on June 7, 2010, as a pilot project, but almost immediately ran into trouble, with 'law and order problems' surfacing in Barpeta. On July 21, 2010, protestors under the banner of the Barpeta district unit of the All Assam Muslim Students Union (AAMSU), demonstrated violently outside the Deputy Commissioner's Office, demanding a halt to the process. Police eventually opened fire, killing four and injuring 50. While no official suspension was announced, the 'pilot project' stood abandoned from that time on.

On March 26, 2012, the government announced the 'decision' to re-launch the Registrar General of Citizens' Registration pilot project to update the NRC in three phases from July 1, 2012. Once again the AAMSU, with 24 other 'minority organizations', started issuing threats of agitation against this decision. The process has not begun till date.

The first requirement is to complete the process of identifying legal citizens of our country by revising the National Register of Citizens (NRC).

Then comes the question of detecting and deporting the infiltrators. A national consensus eludes in this matter too because of the Minority vote bank politics. The least that we should agree upon is to detect and disenfranchise the infiltrators. The Rohingyas of Myanmar are an example. Some 800,000 Rohingya Muslims, who are infiltrators from Bangladesh, live illegally on the western coast of Myanmar. The Myanmar government treats them as infiltrators only and refuses to extend citizens' rights to them. The least that we can do is to declare infiltrators as illegal citizens and deny them rights like voting, housing, ration etc.

Irrespective of whether it yield results or not we should continue to exert pressure on Bangladesh to take back these infiltrators.

Another important measure to take is to seal our borders. India and Bangladesh share 4096 km long border. A feeble attempt has been made after a lot of pressure to build fencing along the border. Less than 1/4th of the border fencing only could be completed till date. Even that fencing is found very fragile and easy to break at a lot of places.

It costs Rs three crores per km to effectively police this border, i.e., on account of manning of border by policing force, construction and maintenance of border roads, border fencing, riverine patrols, watchtowers and so on. Over three scores of battalions of Border Security Force are presently policing the border which is woefully inadequate. For effective domination and policing requirement is well over 100 battalions. The government has been able to fence only 987 km of this border till now. Rs. 2300 crores are being spent every year in guarding this border. (WB-2217 Kms, Assam-262 Kms, Meghalaya-443 Kms, Tripura-856 Kms, Mizoram-318 Kms).

Last but not the least, we need to silence the apologists and supporters of these illegal migrants among the politicians, intellectuals and the clergymen. The tragedy is that the Government, in stead, wants to silence the patriotic voices by shutting down Twitter accounts etc.

That brings us to the critical point - the political will. We need leaders who have the political will to tackle this menace even if it required some ruthlessness. What we need is a stern State; not a soft and measly one that we see today. Then only the people of the NE and the rest of the country can sleep peacefully.