FIGHTING TERROR – LESSONS FROM THE RAJ

FIGHTING TERROR – LESSONS FROM THE RAJ

By

VK Singh

The recent terror attacks have highlighted, once again, the inability of the State to protect its citizens. The calls for more draconian laws to deal with terror are growing more strident, leading the Government to announce a slew of measures to deal with the problem. The terrorists have struck at will, at the time and place of their own choosing, sparing not even the Capital, reportedly one of the most protected cities in the World. Clearly, our intelligence agencies have failed. The all too familiar exercise of passing the buck has been repeated, with no concrete results. Not a single head has rolled, further adding to our reputation as a soft State, where hard decisions are rarely taken. Can one imagine such a thing happening in Israel, USA, Russia or China? I recall the incident over twenty years ago when an American youngster landed an airplane on Red Square in Moscow. The Defence Minister and all senior officers dealing with Air Defence, including the C-in-C, were sacked. A similar thing happened in India in 1962, when the Defence Minister resigned and the Army Chief was removed after the ignominious defeat by the Chinese. What has happened to us in the last forty five years?

Terrorism is not new for India. In 1913, the Ghadr (Revolution) party came into being in 1913 in San Francisco, taking its name from the newspaper brought out by Lala Hardayal. It found support among the large number of Indian emigrants then living in Canada and the USA, who had left their homelands due to famine and unemployment, especially in the Punjab. The avowed aim of the Ghadr party was to end British rule in India by fomenting an armed revolution. Just before the outbreak of World War II, the Komagata Maru incident took place, when several hundred Sikhs who wanted to emigrate were not allowed to land at Vancouver and were turned by the Canadian authorities, under British pressure.  After spending two months moored in the harbour, without supplies and water, the ship began its return journey. Touching Yokohama, Kobe and Singapore, the Komagata Maru finally arrived at Budge Budge near Calcutta where the authorities had arranged a special train to carry them to Punjab. However, the passengers refused to board the train and tried to enter the city. The Police tried to stop them but was unsuccessful. Finally, British troops were called in and many Sikhs were killed in the firing, giving rise to considerable resentment. Subsequently, many Ghadrites were sent to India from Canada and the USA, to carry out acts of subversion and sabotage. However, most of them were caught by the CID as soon as they landed.

During  World War II, the Indian National Army was formed in South East Asia with the help of the Japanese. During the Burma campaign, dozens of intelligence operatives of the INA were sent to India to carry out acts of sabotage. Again, almost all of them were caught as soon as they landed and were executed.  Intelligence operations were then handled by the CID, which was staffed almost completely by Indians, except for a few British officers in senior appointments. It was held in high regard not only in India but even outside. Not surprisingly, when Lord Mounbatten took over as Viceroy, he remarked that he had inherited one of the best intelligence services in the World. The present IB and RAW are descended from the same CID of the British Raj. With such an impeccable pedigree, why can’t they do half as much?

Though the freedom movement was largely non-violent, there were many who followed their own agenda. Patriots like Surendra Nath Banerjee, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Aurobindo Ghosh, Veer Savarkar, Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Ram Prasad ‘Bismil’, Chandra Shekhar and many others are revered in Indian homes even today. The British authorities were concerned with the acts of terrorism that occurred during that period, especially in Bengal and Punjab. In December 1914, The Lieutenant Governor of Punjab, Sir Michael O’Dwyer, wrote to the Viceroy, asking for the enactment of an Ordinance to deal with the Ghadrites and the Komagata Maru returnees who had become very active in the Punjab. He wanted a law on the lines of the Frontier Crimes Regulation and Frontier Murderous Outrages Regulation of 1901 that were in force in the North West Frontier province. The draft of the Ordinance forwarded by Punjab envisaged arrest without warrant and trials by special tribunals against which there was no appeal.

Before taking a decision on the Ordinance, the Viceroy asked for it to be circulated among the members of the Executive Council. Except for Sir R.H. Craddock, the Home  Member, the other five members, including the Commander-In-Chief, General Sir Beauchamp Duff, were against the Ordinance. One of the members, Sir Harcourt Butler, wrote: …”  I learnt from the ablest administrators under whom I have served, Sir Charles Crosthwaite and Sir Anthony Macdonald,  that in periods of disturbance the wisest remedy is to strengthen your police, and not to tamper with the law or the courts. My own experience is that specialist tribunals rarely fulfill the object with which they are set up.”

On 16 January 1915, Lord Hardinge ordered that that the Ordinance in its present form was not immediately desirable, but another on the lines of the Ingress of India Ordinance should be prepared. Conditions in Punjab deteriorated and there were several dacoities in banks, attacks on police stations and murders of government officials. In March 1915, O’Dwyer again wrote to Calcutta, giving instances of terrorist attacks to buttress his arguments. Finally, the Viceroy relented. But he did not approve the Ordinance that O’Dwyer wanted. Instead, he ordered a Bill to be introduced in the Council to enact a law on the lines of the Defence of Realm Act that had been enacted in Britain shortly after the commencement of World War I. The Bill for enactment of the Defence of India Act was introduced  in the Legislative Council on 12 March 1915. During the debate, it was strongly opposed by Madan Mohan Malviya and Surendra Nath Banerjee, but their voices did not find much support from the official members, and the Bill was passed on 18 March 1915. However, the Defence of India Act was made applicable to three divisions - Lahore , Jullunder and Multan – and not the whole of the Punjab. Later, it was also made applicable to Meerut and Benares districts of the United Provinces. After  the end of World War I in 1918, the Defence of India Act was repealed. To fill the void, the Official Secrets Act was passed in 1923, but that is a story in itself.

The mandarins in the Home Ministry would do well to study the methods adopted by their predecessors to fight terror. The advice of Sir Harcourt Butler is specially relevant - strengthen the police, instead of making new laws or tampering with existing ones. The police of those days would include what are today known as intelligence agencies. Strengthen does not mean more men or more money - there is more than enough of both. A large percentage of the police is employed on non-policing duties such as guarding politicians, a job that can be dispensed with or outsourced. As for the intelligence agencies, my impression is that they are overstaffed and top heavy. There is no shortage of money either. B Raman, a retired additional secretary of RAW, in his book THE KAOBOYS OF RAW, mentions that PV Narsimha Rao, who was then the Foreign Minister, once remarked that officers of RAW and IB posted in foreign embassies could be easily recognised because they had the largest and most expensive cars. “How do they manage to find the money,” he asked. It does not require much imagination to guess the answer.

 The primary reason for the pathetic performance of our intelligence agencies is their almost total dependence on technical intelligence, to the neglect of human intelligence. During the  British Raj, the CID had only one source – human intelligence - which enabled them to come out with flying colours. Technical intelligence is much easier to obtain than human  intelligence, which needs hard work.  It takes ingenuity and years of effort to develop agents and spies, who have to be paid a lot of money to give information. The money is there but apparently the hard work is lacking.  The only way to remedy the state of affairs is to make the intelligence agencies accountable. Success should be rewarded but failure must be ruthlessly punished. If we do not choose to sacrifice the heads of the intelligence czars, we should be prepared to sacrifice the lives of innocent tax payers who pay for their upkeep. 

(Published in New Indian Express, 04 Nov 2008)