The true source of terror, writes Amish

This article was triggered by an interesting conversation with a correspondent for a Western newspaper recently. He spoke of Hindu terror in India, which had risen, apparently, in retaliation to Islamic terror. And of course, there was pious concern for our “fragile republic”. Let us leave the pious concern aside. India is a strong country. We are not going to break up. But this constant trope of Hindu terror, and Indian Islamic terror needs the sunlight of data. Fortunately, data is available. A Global Terrorism Database is maintained by the US-based National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. And in this global database, there is detailed information on terror attacks in India as well. This database extends all the way back to 1974 from the present. Some 10,000 unique terrorist incidents have been recorded there. It has been analysed by Rupa Subramanya, whose work I am quoting in this article. There is another database, the South Asian Terrorism Portal, which lists 20,000 terror attacks. Their definition of terrorism is broader. The analysis of both these databases is enlightening. The numbers make the story very clear.

Firstly, the so-called Hindu Terror charge is utter nonsense. Of the 10,000 terrorist attacks in India, only 0.6 per cent can be classified as ‘Hindu terror’. Considering that Hindus make up nearly 80 per cent of India’s population, I think it can be safely concluded that there is no problem of Hindu terror in India.  

Now let me address what most opinion-makers speak of: Islamic terror in India. Many people, both right-wing and left-wing, allege that radical Islam is the biggest cause of terror in India.  But what does the data say? Well, if you remove terrorism in Kashmir, Islamic terrorism makes up just a little over 3 per cent of terrorist incidents in India. That is it. Three per cent. While I do admit that there is a radical Islamic element in Kashmir (the Kashmiris carried out the only ethnic cleansing in independent India; that of Kashmiri Pandits), it cannot be denied that there is also a geography-based independence element to terrorism in Kashmir. Furthermore, while there is a higher probability of Islamic than Hindu terror acts in India, we must acknowledge that a large part of what is called Islamic terror is actually planned and executed by the Pakistani export-oriented terror industry. Admittedly, the Pakistanis find a few collaborators in India, but policemen I have spoken to acknowledge that many of these terrorists are caught due to the support of the Indian Muslim community. This is patriotism. I do strongly hold that we can only stop Pakistani terrorism when we have the moral, intellectual and ethical clarity on the ghastly nature of the Pakistani State, and are not lost in delusional hopes of peace with them. But I will debate with anyone who tries to tar Indian Muslims with the same brush. Indian Muslims are, in vast majority, as patriotic, peace-loving and inclusive as their Hindu brethren.

So, what is the biggest source of terrorism in India? To the knowledgeable, it will not be a surprise that Leftist terror is by far the biggest of them all. You can call the ideological grounding of this terrorism by many names: Marxism, Communism, Maoism. But the fact is that 30 per cent of terrorist incidents in India, in the past 40 years, were the result of this ideology. In fact, in the last decade, the proportion of Leftist terror has gone up to nearly 50 per cent. There needs to be a calm, rational analysis of Marxism/Communism/Maoism in the marketplace of ideas. What is it in this ideology that seems to encourage violence? French historian and scholar Stéphane Courtois, in his The Black Book of Communism, had documented that over 90 million people died under Communist regimes in the past 100 years through man-made famines, mass murders and ethnic-cleansing.

Even in India, anecdotal evidence suggests that political violence seems to be the highest where the ideology of Communism/Marxism is strong: in West Bengal and Kerala. I am not suggesting that we collectively blame all Communists and Marxists personally; for they too are victims and prisoners of this ideology. But I think the ideology needs  careful and calm analysis, and perhaps reformation. Communists/Marxists needs to explicitly give up violence and hatred for the other. Differences are fine. There is no way that all of us can have the same point of view. And we are India. We celebrate different points of view. We celebrate questioning everyone, including God. Vedic Sanskrit had no translation for the English word blasphemy. But using violence to settle differences with other Indians is not okay. That is obvious.

Amish is the bestselling author of the Shiva Trilogy & Ram Chandra Series (upcoming book is Sita – Warrior of Mithila). Twitter: @authoramish