Independent Indian: Work & Life of Professor Subroto Roy

I have almost stopped being amazed by the near-imbecility that our English-language TV and print media seem so often to be capable of. Oui mes enfants, Kasab did confess to mass-murder and other crimes in open court today but please do not feign such surprise for commercial reasons — if you had done your homework diligently you would have known that Kasab had confessed quite as fully as he did today many months ago, in fact as soon as he was physically able to do so after being treated in hospital following his capture by Mumbai police. (The BBC proved again it has no institutional memory left by failing to remember these facts too and instead relying on the Indian TV media today. Or, alternatively, the BBC’s dual national Pakistani staffers were quick to get the BBC to veer towards the official GoP line — and the GoP certainly has not wanted to remember the fact Kasab was being truthful from day one of his capture.)

Why was Kasab’s court-appointed lawyer silent and bewildered today? Because Kasab (with his Class 4 schooling) had somehow thought things through on his own during this existential experience and effectively sacked the lawyer peremptorily as was his right to do.  It was the lawyer who had chalked out the faulty legal strategy of starting off by pleading not-guilty instead of plea-bargaining on the basis of Kasab’s initial confessions being the primary source of evidence for the Government of India to be able to indict Pakistan in the Mumbai massacres.

(To the lawyer’s credit though, at least he had taken the case when no one else would and furthermore, he had clearly acted in good faith.)

Had Kasab been killed along with his 9 compatriot fellow-terrorists (and he was the youngest and least experienced which is probably why he was teamed with Ishmael who was the team leader), India would have had almost no hard evidence in creating the dossier that we were able to confront Pakistan with.

Kasab’s correct legal strategy was to accept his guilt and plead for mercy on the basis of having turned State’s evidence, indeed the Government of India’s star witness for the prosecution. There is absolutely no jurisprudential benefit in seeing a tiny pawn like him– the very tiniest of all pawns –hang for his evil deeds. That is why I said back in November-December that if I was the judge sentencing him, I would send him to jail for 20-30 years, for his 20 or 30 victims at CST station, and get him to become a model prisoner who could become a prime spokesman against the terrorists who had sent him.

The right way for India and Pakistan to cooperate against the perpetrators of the Mumbai massacres was via a prompt application of common maritime law and the Law of the Sea Treaty’s provisions against piracy, murder etc on the high seas, followed by some well-publicised hangings at sea, on a Pakistan Navy vessel, of the masterminds. Here is a complete list of what I said here between November 28 2008 and March 18 2009 on all this:

1. November 28, 2008 Jews have never been killed in India for being Jews until this sad day

Jews have never been killed in India for being Jews until today.   For two thousand years, in fact perhaps as long as there have ever been Jews in the world, there had been Jews living peacefully in India.  I used to say that proudly to my Jewish friends, adding that the Indian Army had even had a Jewish general.  Today, November 28 2008, or perhaps yesterday November 27 2008, that changed.  Five Hasidic Jews who had been peaceful residents of Nariman House in Mumbai, came to be murdered by terrorists, merely for being Jews, or died in explosions or in the cross-fire between the terrorists and Indian security forces.   The Israeli Government had offered India their well-known technical expertise in trying to save their fellow-nationals.  I believe the Government of India made a tragic mistake by not accepting it.  Yes certainly our national prestige would have taken the slightest of blows if Israeli commandos had helped to release Israeli hostages in India.  But our national prestige has taken a much vaster and more permanent blow instead, now that we can no longer say that Jews have never in history been killed for being Jews in India.  I am especially sad on this already very sad day to see that proud record destroyed.

2. November 30, 2008 In international law, Pakistan has been the perpetrator, India the victim of aggression in Mumbai

In international law, the attacks on Mumbai would probably reveal Pakistan to have been  the aggressor state, India the victim of aggression.   It is standard law that a “master” is responsible for the misdeeds of his “servant”. E.g., “Where the relation of master and servant clearly exists, the employer is responsible for injury occasioned by the negligent conduct of the servant in carrying out his orders.  And this rule is so extensive as to make the master liable for the careless, reckless and wanton conduct of his servant, provided it be within the scope of his employment”.   President Zardari and Prime Minister Gillani may declare truthfully they had no prior knowledge of the attacks on Mumbai, that these were not in any way authorized by them or their Government.  But it seems likely  on the basis of current evidence that  the young terrorists who attacked Mumbai were still in a “master-servant” relationship with elements of the Pakistani state and had been financed, trained, motivated and supplied by  resources arising, directly or indirectly, from the Pakistani exchequer.   Public moneys in Pakistan came to be used or misused to pay for aggression against India –  in a quite similar pattern to the October 1947 attack on Kashmir, Ayub Khan’s 1965 “Operation Grand Slam”, and Pervez Musharraf’s 1999 attack on Kargil.  And to think that these youth who were made into  becoming terroristic mass murderers were toddlers  when the USSR withdrew from Afghanistan, in primary school when the 1993 WTC bombing happened and adolescents at the time of the 9/11 attacks.

3. December 3, 2008   Habeas Corpus: a captured terrorist mass-murderer tells a magistrate he is not being mistreated by Indian police

A youth who had been a petty thief in Multan, was induced by Pakistan’s terrorist masterminds to  train to  become a mass murderer with an assault rifle and grenades in the Mumbai massacres last week.  He was shot and arrested by India’s police and is now in custody.  He has already been produced before a magistrate who asked him if he was being mistreated, to which he said he was not. This redounds to India’s credit in view of the vast (and yes, probably racist) mistreatment over years of those held e.g. at Guantanamo Bay.  (The argument that the US Constitution and the laws associated with habeas corpus did not apply to the US Government because Guantanamo Bay was not American territory, was always specious.)

4. December 4, 2008 India’s Muslim Voices (Or, Let us be clear the Pakistan-India or Kashmir conflicts have not been Muslim-Hindu conflicts so much as intra-Muslim conflicts about Muslim identity and self-knowledge on the Indian subcontinent) bySubroto Roy

Ill-informed Western observers, especially at purported “think tanks” and news-portals, frequently proclaim the Pakistan-India confrontation and Jammu & Kashmir conflict to represent some kind of savage irreconcilable division between Islamic and Hindu cultures. For example, the BBC, among its many prevarications on the matter (like lopping off J&K entirely from its recently broadcasted maps of India, perhaps under influence of its Pakistani staffers), frequently speaks of “Hindu-majority India” and “Indian-administered Kashmir” being confronted by Muslim Pakistan. And two days ago from California’s Bay Area arose into the Internet Cloud the following profundity: “What we’re dealing with now, in the Pakistani-Indian rivalry, is a true war of civilizations, pitting Muslims against Hindus…. the unfathomable depths of the Muslim-Hindu divide….”. Even President-elect Obama’s top Pakistan-specialists have fallen for the line of Washington’s extremely strong Pakistan lobby: “Pakistan… sees itself as the political home for the subcontinent’s Muslim population and believes India’s continued control over the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley and denial of a plebiscite for its inhabitants represent a lingering desire on India’s part to undo the legacy of partition, which divided the British Indian Empire into India and Pakistan.”

The truth on record is completely different and really rather simple: for more than a century and a half, Muslims qua Muslims on the Indian subcontinent have struggled with the question of their most appropriate cultural and political identity.  The starkest contrast may be found in their trying to come to terms with their partly Arabic and partly Hindu or Indian parentage (the words Hindu, Sindhu, Indus, Indian, Sindhi, Hindi etc all clearly have the same Hellenistic root).  For example, there was Wali Allah (1703-1762) declaring “We are an Arab people whose fathers have fallen in exile in the country of Hindustan, and Arabic genealogy and Arabic language are our pride”. But here has been Mohammad Iqbal (1877-1938), in his 1930 Allahabad speech to the Muslim League, conceiving today’s Pakistan as a wish to become free of precisely that Arab influence: “I would like to see the Punjab, NWFP, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single state… The life of Islam as a cultural force in this living country very largely depends on its centralisation in a specified territory… For India it means security and peace resulting from an internal balance of power, for Islam an opportunity to rid itself of the stamp that Arabian Imperialism was forced to give it, to mobilise its law, its education, its culture, and to bring them into closer contact with its own original spirit and the spirit of modern times.” In an article “Saving Pakistan” published last year in The Statesman and available elsewhere here, it was suggested Iqbal’s “spirit of modern times” may be represented most prominently today by the physicist/political philosopher Pervez Hoodbhoy: in a December 2006 speech Hoodbhoy suggested a new alternative to MA Jinnah’s “Faith, Unity, Discipline” slogan: “First, I wish for minds that can deal with the complex nature of truth…. My second wish is for many more Pakistanis who accept diversity as a virtue… My third, and last, wish is that Pakistanis learn to value and nurture creativity.” He has spoken too of bringing “economic justice to Pakistan”, of the “fight to give Pakistan’s women the freedom which is their birthright”, and of people to “wake up” and engage politically. But Pakistan’s Iqbalian liberals like Hoodbhoy still have to square off with those of their compatriots who sent the youthful squad into Mumbai last week with assault rifles, grenades and heroic Arabic code-names, as well as orders to attack civilians with the ferocity of the original Muslims attacking caravans and settlements in ancient Arabia.

What the extremely strong Pakistan lobbies within the British and American political systems have suppressed in order to paint a picture of eternal Muslim-Hindu conflict is the voice of India’s nationalist Muslims, who historically have had no wish to have any truck with any idea of a “Pakistan” at all.  Most eminent among them was undoubtedly Jinnah’s fiercest critic: Maulana Abul Kalam Azad whose classic 1946 statement on Pakistan is available in his India Wins Freedom, the final version published only in 1988……

5.  December 6, 2008  A Quick Comparison Between the September 11 2001 NYC-Washington attacks and the November 26-28 2008 Mumbai Massacres (An Application of the Case-by-Case Philosophical  Technique of Wittgenstein, Wisdom and Bambrough) bySubroto Roy

In my book Philosophy of Economics (Routledge, 1989) and in my August 24  2004 public lecture  in England  “Science,  Religion, Art and the Necessity of Freedom”, both available elsewhere here, I described the “case-by-case” philosophical technique recommended by Ludwig Wittgenstein, John Wisdom and Renford Bambrough.  (Bambrough had also shown a common root in the work of the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce.)   Herewith an application of the technique to a contemporary problem that shows the “family resemblance” between two modern terrorist attacks, the September 11 2001 attack on New York and Washington and the Mumbai massacres last week.

Similarity:  In both, a gang of motivated youthful terrorists acted as a team against multiple targets; their willingness to accept  suicide while indulging in mass-murder may have, bizarrely enough, brought a sense of adventure and meaning to otherwise empty lives.

Difference: In the 9/11 attacks, Mohammad Atta seemed to have been a single predominant leader while each of the others also had complex active roles requiring decisions, like piloting and navigating hijacked jumbo-jets.  In the Mumbai massacres, the training and leadership apparently came from outside the team before and even during the operation  – almost as if the team were acting like brainwashed robots under long-distance control.

Similarity:  Both attacks required a long prior period of training and planning.

Difference: The 9/11 attacks did not require commando-training imparted by military-style trainers; the Mumbai massacres did.

Difference: In the 9/11 attacks, the actual weapons used initially were primitive, like box-cutters; in the Mumbai massacres, assault rifles and grenades were used along with sophisticated telecommunications equipment.

Difference: In 9/11, the initial targets, the hijacked aircraft, were themselves made into weapons against the ultimate targets, namely the buildings, in a way not seen before.  In the Mumbai massacres, mass-shooting of terrorized civilians was hardly something original; besides theatres of war, the Baader-Meinhof gang and the Japanese Red Army used these in the 1970s as terrorist techniques (e.g. at Rome Airport  Lod Airport; Postscript January 26 2009: I make this correction after reading and commenting on the RAND study which unfortunately  did not have the courtesy of acknowledging my December 6 2008 analysis) plus there were, more recently, the Columbine and Virginia Tech massacres.

Similarity: In both cases, Hollywood and other movie scripts could have inspired the initial ideas of techniques to be  used.

Similarity: In both cases, the weapons used were appropriate to the anticipated state of defence: nothing more than box-cutters could be expected to get by normal airport security; assault rifles etc could come in by the unguarded sea and attack soft targets in Mumbai.  (Incidentally, even this elementary example of strategic thinking  in a practical situation may be beyond the analytical capacity contained in the tons of waste paper produced at American and other modern university Economics departments under the rubric of  “game theory”.)

Similarity: In both cases, a high-level of widespread fear was induced for several days or more within a targeted nation-state by a small number of people.

Similarity: No ransom-like demands were made by the terrorists in either case.

Similarity: Had the single terrorist not been captured alive in the Mumbai massacres, there would have been little trace left by the attackers.

Difference: The 9/11 attackers knew definitely they were on suicide-missions; the Mumbai attackers may not have done and may have imagined an escape route.

6. December 10, 2008 Congratulations to Mumbai’s Police: capturing a terrorist, affording him his Habeas Corpus rights, getting him to confess within the Rule of Law, sets a new world standard

The full statement to police of the single captured terrorist perpetrator of the Mumbai massacres is now available. It tells a grim story. But Mumbai’s Police, from ordinary beat constables and junior officers to the anti-terrorism top brass, come off very well both with their heroism and their commitment to the Rule of Law.   In comparison to the disastrous failures of the Rule of Law in the United States and Britain since 9/11 in fighting terrorism, Mumbai’s Police may have set a new world standard.

The prisoner was several days ago afforded Habeas Corpus rights  and produced before a magistrate who asked him if he was being mistreated to which he replied he was not – though there might not be any Indian equivalent of America’s “Miranda”  law.

7. December 12, 2008  Kasab was a stupid, ignorant, misguided youth, manufactured by Pakistan’s terrorist masterminds into becoming a mass-murdering robot: Mahatma Gandhi’s India should punish him, get him to repent if he wishes, then perhaps rehabilitate him as a potent weapon against Pakistani terrorism

The crime of murder is that of deliberate homicide, that of mass-murder is the murder of a mass of people.  There is no doubt the lone captured Mumbai terrorist, “Kasab”, has committed mass-murder, being personally responsible for the murder of probably 20 or 30 wholly innocent people he had never met.  He killed them by machine-gun fire and grenades at CST/VT railway station on November 26 2008 before being shot and captured by police.  He is also a co-conspirator in the mass-murders carried out by his associate at the railway station and those elsewhere in Mumbai.  There is no doubt he should serve rigorous imprisonment for life in an Indian prison for his crimes.

And yet…. And yet…

If the Government of India is sensible, it needs to describe and comprehend the moral subtleties of the circumstances surrounding Kasab’s life, especially during the last year.  Here was a stupid, ignorant, rather primitive youth misguided by others first into becoming a petty robber, later into becoming a terrorist-trainee in hope of advancing his career in thievery!

Bakri-Id 2008 has just occurred – it is on Bakri-Id a year ago in 2007 that Kasab reportedly first ventured into volunteering for terrorist training as a way of learning how to use firearms!  It is almost certain he had never met a Hindu or an Indian in his life before then, that he knew absolutely nothing about the subcontinent’s history or politics, that he would be ignorant about who, say, Iqbal or Jinnah or Maulana Azad or Sheikh Abdullah or Mahatma Gandhi ever were.  Within less than a year, that same youth had been brainwashed and trained adequately enough by Pakistan’s terrorist masterminds to become a robotic mass-murderer in Mumbai’s railway station.  Now having been caught and treated humanely by his captors, he has confessed everything and even expressed a wish to write a letter to his father in Pakistan expressing remorse for his deeds.

If I was the judge trying him, I would sentence him to a minimum of twenty or thirty years rigorous imprisonment in an Indian prison.  But I would add that he should be visited in jail by a few of India’s Muslim leaders, and indeed he should be very occasionally allowed out of the prison (under police supervision) in a structured program to offer Namaz with India’s Muslims in our grandest mosques.  He should learn firsthand a little of the lives of India’s Muslims and of India’s people as a whole.  Perhaps he will become a model prisoner, perhaps he may even want to become in due course a potent weapon against the terrorist masterminds who ruined his life by sending him to murder people in India.

It bears to be remembered that in an incredible act of Christian forgiveness, the widow of the Australian missionary Graham Staines forgave the cold-blooded murderers who burnt alive her husband and her young sons as they slept in a jeep in Orissa.  The family of Rajiv Gandhi may have done the same of those who assassinated or conspired to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi.  This is the land of Mahatma Gandhi, who had woven a remarkable moral and political theory out of the Jain-Buddhist-Hindu doctrine of ahimsa as well as Christian notions from Tolstoy and Thoreau of forgiving the sinner.

Of course there cannot be forgiveness where there is no remorse.  Kasab’s behaviour thus far suggests he will be remorseful and repentant; there are many other thieves and murderers in the world who are not.

Subroto Roy

Reported statement of Mohammad Ajmal Amir ‘Kasab’, 21, to police after arrest:  “I have resided in Faridkot, Dinalpur tehsil, Ukada district, Suba Punjab state, Pakistan since my birth. I studied up to class IV in a government school. After leaving school in 2000, I went to stay with my brother in Tohit Abad mohalla, near Yadgar Minar in Lahore. I worked as a labourer at various places till 2005, visiting my native once in a while. In 2005, I had a quarrel with my father. I left home and went to Ali Hajveri Darbar in Lahore, where boys who run away from home are given shelter. The boys are sent to different places for employment.  One day a person named Shafiq came there and took me with him. He was from Zhelam and had a catering business. I started working for him for Rs120 per day. Later, my salary was increased to Rs200 per day. I worked with him till 2007. While working with Shafiq, I came in contact with one Muzzafar Lal Khan, 22. He was from Romaiya village in Alak district in Sarhad, Pakistan. Since we were not getting enough money, we decided to carry out robbery/dacoity to make big money. So we left the job.

We went to Rawalpindi, where we rented a flat. Afzal had located a house for us to loot… We required some firearms for our mission… While we were in search of firearms, we saw some LeT stalls at Raja Bazaar in Rawalpindi on the day of Bakri-id. We then realised that even if we procured firearms, we would not be able to operate them. Therefore, we decided to join LeT for weapons training.  We reached the LeT office and told a person that we wanted to join LeT. He noted down our names and address and told us to come the next day.  The next day, there was another person with him. He gave us Rs200 and some receipts. Then he gave us the address of a place called Marqas Taiyyaba, Muridke, and told us to go to there. It was an LeT training camp. We went to the place by bus. We showed the receipts at the gate of the camp. We were allowed inside… Then we were taken to the actual camp area. Initially, we were selected for a 21 days’ training regimen called Daura Sufa. From the next day, our training started.

The daily programme was as follows: 4.15 am — Wake-up call and thereafter Namaz; 8 am — Breakfast; 8.30 am to 10 am — Lecture on Hadis and Quran by Mufti Sayyed; 10 am to noon – Rest; Noon to 1 pm – Lunch break; 1 pm to 4 pm – Rest; 4 pm to 6 pm – PT; instructor: Fadulla; 6 pm to 8 pm – Namaz and other work; 8 pm to 9 pm – Dinner

After Daura Sufa, we were selected for another training programme called Daura Ama. This was also for 21 days. We were taken to Mansera in Buttal village, where we were trained in handling weapons.  The daily programme was as follows: 4.15 am to 5 am – Wake-up call and thereafter Namaz; 5 am to 6 am – PT; instructor: Abu Anas; 8 am – Breakfast; 8.30 am to 11.30 am – Weapons training; trainer: Abdul Rehman; weapons: AK-47, Green-O, SKS, Uzi gun, pistol, revolver; 11.30 am to Noon – rest; Noon to 1 pm – Lunch break; 1 pm to 2 pm – Namaz; 2 pm to 4 pm – Rest; 4 pm to 6 pm – PT; 6 pm to 8 pm – Namaz and other work; 8 pm to 9 pm – Dinner.

After the training, we were told that we will begin the next stage involving advanced training. But for that, we were told, we had to do some khidmat for two months (khidmat is a sort of service in the camp as per trainees’ liking). We agreed. After two months, I was allowed to go to meet my parents. I stayed with my parents for a month.  Then I went to an LeT camp in Shaiwainala, Muzaffarabad, for advanced training…  We were taken to Chelabandi pahadi area for a training programme, called Daura Khas, of three months. It involved handling weapons, using hand grenade, rocket launchers and mortars.

The daily programme was as follows: 4.15 am  to 5 am – Wake-up call and thereafter Namaz; 5 am to 6 am – PT; instructor: Abu Mawiya; 8 am – Breakfast; 8.30 am  to 11.30 am – Weapons training, handling of all weapons and firing practices with the weapons, training on handling hand grenade, rocket-launchers and mortars, Green-O, SKS, Uzi gun, pistol, revolver; trainer: Abu Mawiya; 11.30 am to 12 noon – rest; Noon to 1 pm – Lunch break; 1 pm to 2 pm – Namaz; 2 pm to 4 pm – Weapons training and firing practice; lecture on Indian security agencies; 4 pm to 6 pm – PT; 6 pm to 8 pm – Namaz and other work; 8 pm to 9 pm – Dinner

There were 32 trainees in the camp. Sixteen were selected for a confidential operation by one Zaki-ur-Rehman, alias Chacha, but three of them ran away from the camp.  Chacha sent the remaining 13 with a person called Kafa to the Muridke camp again. At Muridke, we were taught swimming and made familiar with the life of fishermen at sea… We were given lectures on the working of Indian security agencies. We were shown clippings highlighting atrocities on Muslims in India.  After the training, we were allowed to go to our native places. I stayed with my family for seven days. I then went to the LeT camp at Muzaffarabad. The 13 of us were present for training.   Then, on Zaki-ur-Rehman’s instructions, Kafa took us to the Muridke camp. The training continued for a month. We were given lectures on India and its security agencies, including RAW. We were also trained to evade security personnel. We were instructed not to make phone calls to Pakistan after reaching India.

The names of the persons present for the training are: n Mohd Azmal, alias Abu Muzahid  n Ismail, alias Abu Umar  n Abu Ali n Abu Aksha n Abu Umer  n Abu Shoeb n Abdul Rehman (Bada) n Abdul Rehman (Chhota) n Afadulla  n Abu Umar. After the training, Chacha selected 10 of us and formed five teams of two people each on September 15. I and Ismail formed a team; its codename was VTS. We were shown Azad Maidan in Mumbai on Google Earth’s site on the internet… We were shown a film on VT railway station. The film showed commuters during rush hours. We were instructed to carry out firing during rush hours — between 7 am and 11 am and between 7 pm and 11 pm. Then we were to take some people hostage, take them to the roof of some nearby building and contact Chacha, who would have given us numbers to contact media people and make demands.  This was the strategy decided upon by our trainers. The date fixed for the operation was September 27. However, the operation was cancelled for some reason. We stayed in Karachi till November 23.  The other teams were: 2nd team: a) Abu Aksha; b) Abu Umar; 3rd team: a) Abdul Rehman (Bada); b) Abu Ali; 4th team: a) Abdul Rehman (Chotta); b) Afadulla; 5th team: a) Abu Shoeb; b) Abu Umer.

On November 23, the teams left from Azizabad in Karachi, along with Zaki-ur-Rehman and Kafa. We were taken to the nearby seashore… We boarded a launch. After travelling for 22 to 25 nautical miles we boarded a bigger launch. Again, after a journey of an hour, we boarded a ship, Al-Huseini, in the deep sea. While boarding the ship, each of us was given a sack containing eight grenades, an AK-47 rifle, 200 cartridges, two magazines and a cellphone.  Then we started towards the Indian coast. When we reached Indian waters, the crew members of Al-Huseini hijacked an Indian launch. The crew of the launch was shifted to Al-Huseini. We then boarded the launch. An Indian seaman was made to accompany us at gunpoint; he was made to bring us to the Indian coast. After a journey of three days, we reached near Mumbai’s shore. While we were still some distance away from the shore, Ismail and Afadulla killed the Indian seaman (Tandel) in the basement of the launch. Then we boarded an inflatable dinghy and reached Badhwar Park jetty.  I then went along with Ismail to VT station by taxi. After reaching the hall of the station, we went to the toilet, took out the weapons from our sacks, loaded them, came out of the toilet and started firing indiscriminately at passengers. Suddenly, a police officer opened fire at us. We threw hand grenades towards him and also opened fire at him.  Then we went inside the railway station threatening the commuters and randomly firing at them. We then came out of the railway station searching for a building with a roof.  But we did not find one. Therefore, we entered a lane. We entered a building and went upstairs. On the third and fourth floors we searched for hostages but we found that the building was a hospital and not a residential building. We started to come down. That is when policemen started firing at us. We threw grenades at them.

While coming out of the hospital premises, we saw a police vehicle passing. We took shelter behind a bush. Another vehicle passed us and stopped some distance away. A police officer got off from the vehicle and started firing at us. A bullet hit my hand and my AK-47 fell out of my hand. When I bent to pick it up another bullet hit me on the same hand. Ismail opened fire at the officers in the vehicle. They got injured and firing from their side stopped. We waited for a while and went towards the vehicle.  There were three bodies in the vehicle. Ismail removed the bodies and drove the vehicle. I sat next to him. Some policemen tried to stop us. Ismail opened fire at them. The vehicle had a flat tyre near a big ground by the side of road. Ismail got down from the vehicle, stopped a car at gunpoint and removed the three lady passengers from the car. Since I was injured, Ismail carried me to the car. He then drove the car. We were stopped by policemen on the road near the seashore. Ismail fired at them, injuring some policemen. The police also opened fire at us. Ismail was injured in the firing. The police removed us from the vehicle and took us to the same hospital. In the hospital, I came to know that Ismail had succumbed to injuries.  My statement has been read to me and explained in Hindi, and it has been correctly recorded.”

8. December 13, 2008  Pakistan’s New Delhi Embassy should ask for “Consular Access” to nine dead terrorists in a Mumbai morgue before asking to meet Kasab

After two weeks of pointblank denials that Pakistan had anything to do with the Mumbai massacres (”the  Mumbai incident”, “the Bombay event” as Pakistan’s social butterflies put it), Pakistan’s diplomats are now asking for Consular Access to Kasab, the lone captured terrorist!   The cheek of it!   Would they please request Consular Access instead to the nine dead terrorists who were Kasab’s companions, and who are presumably in a Mumbai morgue at present because India’s Muslims have denied them a burial?   It is certain the Government of India would be relieved and delighted to hand over  full custody of the mortal remains of these nine Pakistanis to representatives of His Excellency the High Commissioner of Pakistan to New Delhi for transfer back home to Pakistan.

As for Consular Access to Kasab, the Government of India will doubtless inform His Excellency that His Excellency may appreciate that in present circumstances in which the individual Kasab, not to put  too fine a point on it,   is singing like a canary, the Government of India deems the security of India could be jeopardised by any possibility of such a song becoming jeopardised.  The Government of India will however doubtless assure His Excellency that Kasab is being well cared for in custody and has reported as such to the magistrate.

9. December 19, 2008 An Indian Reply to President Zardari: Rewarding Pakistan for bad behaviour leads to schizophrenic relationshipsbySubroto Roy

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari’s recent argument in the New York Times resembles closely the well-known publications of his ambassador to the United States, Mr Husain Haqqani.  Unfortunately, this Zardari-Haqqani thesis about Pakistan’s current predicament in the world and the world’s predicament with Pakistan is shot through with clear factual and logical errors. These  need to be aired because true or useful conclusions cannot be reached from mistaken premises or faulty reasoning.

i.  Origins of Pakistan, India, J&K, and their mutual problems

Mr Zardari makes the following seemingly innocuous statement:

“…. the two great nations of Pakistan and India, born together from the same revolution and mandate in 1947, must continue to move forward with the peace process.”

Now as a matter of simple historical fact, the current entities in the world system known as India and Pakistan were not “born together from the same revolution and mandate in 1947”.  It is palpably false to suppose they were and Pakistanis indulge in wishful thinking and self-deception about their own political history if they suppose this.

India’s Republic arose out of the British Dominion known as “India” which was the legal successor of the entity known previously in international law as “British India”.  British India had had secular governance and so has had the Indian Republic.

By contrast, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan arose out of a newly created state in international law known as the British Dominion of Pakistan, consisting of designated territory carved out of British India by a British decision and coming into existence one day before British India extinguished itself. (Another new state, Bangladesh, later seceded from Pakistan.)

The British decision to create territory designated “Pakistan” had nothing to do with any anti-British “revolution” or “mandate” supported by any Pakistani nationalism because there was none.  (Rahmat Ali’s anti-Hindu pamphleteering in London could be hardly considered Pakistani nationalism against British rule.  Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s Pashtun patriots saw themselves as Indian, not Pakistani.)

To the contrary, the British decision had to do with a small number of elite Pakistanis — MA Jinnah foremost among them — demanding not to be part of the general Indian nationalist movement that had been demanding a British departure from power in the subcontinent.   Jinnah’s separatist party, the Muslim League, was trounced in the 1937 provincial elections in all the Muslim-majority areas of British India that would eventually become Pakistan.  Despite this, in September 1939, Britain, at war with Nazi Germany, chose to elevate the political power of Jinnah and his League to parity with the general Indian nationalist movement led by MK Gandhi.  (See, Francis Robinson, in William James and Subroto Roy (eds), Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s.)  Britain needed India’s mostly Muslim infantry-divisions — the progenitors of the present-day Pakistan Army — and if that meant tilting towards a risky political idea of “Pakistan” in due course, so it would be.  The thesis that Pakistan arose from any kind of “revolution” or “mandate” in 1947 is  fantasy — the Muslim super-elite that invented and endorsed the Pakistan idea flew from Delhi to Karachi in chartered BOAC Dakotas, caring not a hoot about the vulnerability of ordinary Muslim masses to Sikh and Hindu majority wrath and retaliation on the ground.

Modern India succeeded to the rights and obligations of British India in international law, and has had a recognized existence as a state since at least the signing of the Armistice and Treaty of Versailles in 1918-1919.  India was a founding member of the United Nations, being a signatory of the 1945 San Francisco Declaration, and an original member of the Bretton Woods institutions.  An idea put forward by Argentina that as of 1947 India and Pakistan were both successor states of British India was rejected by the UN (Argentina withdrew its own suggestion), and it was universally acknowledged India was already a member of the UN while Pakistan would have to (and did) apply afresh for membership as a newly created state in the UN.  Pakistan’s entry into the UN had the enthusiastic backing of India and was opposed by only one existing UN member, Afghanistan, due to a conflict that continues to this day over the legitimacy of the Durand Line that bifurcated the Pashtun areas.

Such a review of elementary historical facts and the position in law of Pakistan and India is far from being of merely pedantic interest today.  Rather, it goes directly to the logical roots of the conflict over the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) — a state that itself originated as an entity in the world system a full century before Pakistan was to do so and more than half a century before British India did, but which would collapse into anarchy and civil war in 1947-1949.

Britain (or England) had been a major nation-state in the world system recognized since Grotius first outlined modern international law. On March 16 1846, Britain entered into a treaty, the Treaty of Amritsar, with one Gulab Singh, and the “State of Jammu & Kashmir” came to arise as a recognizable entity in international law for the first time. (See my “History of Jammu and Kashmir” published in The Statesman, Oct 29-30 2006, available elsewhere here.)

Jammu & Kashmir continued in orderly existence as a state until it crashed into legal and political anarchy and civil war a century later.  The new Pakistan had entered into a “Standstill Agreement” with the State of Jammu & Kashmir as of August 15 1947. On or about October 22 1947, Pakistan unilaterally ended that Standstill Agreement and instead caused military forces from its territory to attack the State of Jammu & Kashmir along the Mansehra Road towards Baramula and Srinagar, coinciding too with an Anglo-Pakistani coup d’etat in Gilgit and Baltistan (see my “Solving Kashmir”; “Law, Justice & J&K”; “Pakistan’s Allies”, all published in The Statesman in 2005-2006 and available elsewhere here).

The new Pakistan had chosen, in all deliberation, to forswear law, politics and diplomacy and to resort to force of arms instead in trying to acquire J&K for itself via a military decision.  It succeeded only partially.  Its forces took and then lost both Baramula and Kargil; they may have threatened Leh but did not attempt to take it; they did take and retain Muzaffarabad and Skardu; they were never near taking the summer capital, Srinagar, though might have threatened the winter capital, Jammu.

All in all, a Ceasefire Line came to be demarcated on the military positions as of February 1 1949.  After a war in 1971 that accompanied the secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan, that Ceasefire Line came to be renamed the “Line of Control” between Pakistan and India. An ownerless entity may be acquired by force of arms — the erstwhile State of Jammu & Kashmir in 1947-1949 had become an ownerless entity that had been dismembered and divided according to military decision following an armed conflict between Pakistan and India.  The entity in the world system known as the “State of Jammu & Kashmir” created on March 16 1846 by Gulab Singh’s treaty with the British ceased to exist as of October 22 1947.  Pakistan had started the fight over J&K but there is a general rule of conflicts that he who starts  a fight does not get to finish it.

Such is the simplest and most practical statement of the history of the current problem.  The British, through their own compulsions and imperial pretensions, raised all the talk about a “Lapse of Paramountcy” of the British Crown over the “Native Princes” of “Indian India”, and of how, the “Native Princes” were required to “accede” to either India or Pakistan.  This ignored Britain’s own constitutional law.  BR Ambedkar pointed out with unsurpassed clarity that no “Lapse of Paramountcy” was possible even for a single logical moment since “Paramountcy” over any “Native Princes” who had not joined India or Pakistan as of August 15 1947, automatically passed from British India to its legal successor, namely, the Dominion of India.   It followed that India’s acquiescence was required for any subsequent accession to Pakistan – an acquiescence granted in case of Chitral and denied in case of Junagadh.

What the Republic of India means by saying today that boundaries cannot be redrawn nor any populations forcibly transferred is quite simply that the division of erstwhile J&K territory is permanent, and that sovereignty over it is indivisible. What Pakistan has claimed is that India has been an occupier and that there are many people inhabiting the Indian area who may not wish to be Indian nationals and who are being compelled against their will to remain so ~  forgetting to add that precisely the same could be said likewise of the Pakistani-held area. The lawful solution I proposed in “Solving Kashmir, “Law, Justice and J&K” and other works has been that the Republic of India invite every person covered under its Article 370, citizen-by-citizen, under a condition of full information, to privately and without fear decide, if he/she has not done so already, between possible Indian, Iranian, Afghan or Pakistani nationalities ~ granting rights and obligations of permanent residents to any of those persons who may choose for whatever private reason not to remain Indian nationals. If Pakistan acted likewise, the problem of J&K would indeed come to be resolved. The Americans, as self-appointed mediators, have said they wish “the people of the region to have a voice” in a solution: there can be no better expression of such voice than allowing individuals to privately choose their own nationalities and their rights and responsibilities accordingly. The issue of territorial sovereignty is logically distinct from that of the choice of nationality by individual inhabitants.

ii.  Benazir’s assassination falsely compared to the Mumbai massacres

Secondly, President Zardari draws a mistaken comparison between the assassination last year of his wife, Benazir Bhutto, and the Mumbai massacres a few weeks ago.  Ms Bhutto’s assassination may resemble more closely the assassinations in India of Indira Gandhi in 1984 and Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

Indira Gandhi died in “blowback” from the unrest she and her younger son and others in their party had opportunistically fomented among Sikh fundamentalists and sectarians since the late 1970s.  Rajiv Gandhi died in “blowback” from an erroneous imperialistic foreign policy that he, as Prime Minister, had been induced to make by jingoistic Indian diplomats, a move that got India’s military needlessly involved in the then-nascent Sri Lankan civil war.  Benazir Bhutto similarly may be seen to have died in “blowback” from her own political activity as prime minister and opposition leader since the late 1980s, including her own encouragement of Muslim fundamentalist forces.  Certainly in all three cases, as in all assassinations, there were lapses of security too and imprudent political judgments made that contributed to the tragic outcomes.

Ms Bhutto’s assassination has next to nothing to do with the Mumbai massacres, besides the fact the perpetrators in both cases were Pakistani terrorists.  President Zardari saying he himself has lost his wife to terrorism is true but not relevant to the proper diagnosis of the Mumbai massacres or to Pakistan-India relations in general.  Rather, it  serves to deflect criticism and condemnation of the Pakistani state’s pampered handing of Pakistan’s terrorist masterminds, as well as the gross irresponsibility of Pakistan’s military scientists (not AQ Khan) who have been recently advocating a nuclear first strike against India in the event of war.

iii.  Can any religious nation-state be viable in the modern world?

President Zardari’s article says:

“The world worked to exploit religion against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan by empowering the most fanatic extremists as an instrument of destruction of a superpower. The strategy worked, but its legacy was the creation of an extremist militia with its own dynamic.”

This may be overly simplistic.  As pointed out in my article “Pakistan’s Allies”,  Gregory Zinoviev himself  after the Bolshevik Revolution had declared that international communism “turns today to the peoples of the East and says to them, ‘Brothers, we summon you to a Holy War first of all against British imperialism!’ At this there were cries of Jehad! Jehad! And much brandishing of picturesque Oriental weapons.” (Treadgold, Twentieth Century Russia, 1990, p. 213).   For more than half of the 20th century, orthodox Muslims had been used by Soviet communists against British imperialism, then by the British and Americans (through Pakistan) against Soviet communism.  Touché! Blowback and counter-blowback!  The real question that arises from this today may be why orthodox Muslims have allowed themselves to be used either way by outside forces and have failed in developing a modern nation-state and political culture of their own.  Europe and America only settled down politically after their religious wars were over.  Perhaps no religious nation-state is viable in the modern world.

iv.   Pakistan’s behaviour leads to schizophrenia in international relations

President Zardari pleads for, or perhaps demands, resources from the world:

“the best response to the Mumbai carnage is to coordinate in counteracting the scourge of terrorism. The world must act to strengthen Pakistan’s economy and democracy, help us build civil society and provide us with the law enforcement and counterterrorism capacities that will enable us to fight the terrorists effectively.”

Six million pounds from Mr Gordon Brown, so much from here or there etc –  President Zardari has apparently demanded 100 billion dollars from America and that is the price being talked about for Pakistan to dismantle its nuclear weapons and be brought under an American “nuclear umbrella” instead.

I have pointed out elsewhere that what Pakistan seems to have been doing in international relations for decades is send out “mixed messages” – i.e. contradictory signals,  whether in thought, word or deed.  Clinical psychologists following the work of Gregory Bateson would say this leads to confusion among Pakistan’s interlocutors (a “double bind”) and the symptoms arise of what may be found in schizophrenic relationships.  (See my article “Do President-elect Obama’s Pakistan specialists believe…”; on the “double bind” theory,  an article I chanced to publish in the Journal of Genetic Psychology, 1986, may be of interest).

Here are a typical set of “mixed messages” emanating from Pakistan’s government and opinion-makers:

“We have nuclear weapons

“We keep our nuclear weapons safe from any misuse or unauthorized use

“We are willing to use nuclear weapons in a first strike against India

“We do not comprehend the lessons of Hiroshima-Nagasaki

“We do not comprehend the destruction India will visit upon us if we strike them

“We are dangerous so we must not be threatened in any way

“We are peace-loving and want to live in peace with India and Afghanistan

“We love to play cricket with India and watch Bollywood movies

“We love our Pakistan Army as it is one public institution that works

“We know the Pakistan Army has backed armed militias against India in the past

“We know these militias have caused terrorist attacks

“We are not responsible for any terrorist attacks

“We do not harbour any terrorists

“We believe the world should pay us to not use or sell our nuclear weapons

“We believe the world should pay us to not encourage the terrorists in our country

“We believe the world should pay us to prevent terrorists from using our nuclear weapons

“We hate India and do not want to become like India

“We love India and want to become like India

“We are India and we are not India…”

Etc.

A mature rational responsible and self-confident Pakistan would have said instead:

“We apologise to India and other countries for the outrageous murders our nationals have committed in Mumbai and elsewhere

“We ask the world to watch how our professional army is deployed to disarm civilian and all “non-state” actors of unauthorized firearms and explosives

“We do not need and will not demand or accept a dollar in any sort of foreign aid, military or civilian, to solve our problems

“We realize our economic and political institutions are a mess and we must clean them up

“We will strive to build a society imbued with what Iqbal described as the spirit of modern times..”

As someone who created at great personal cost at an American university twenty years ago the book Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s, I have a special interest in hoping that Pakistan shall find the path of wisdom.

10. January 1, 2009 A basis of India-Pakistan cooperation on the Mumbai massacres: the ten Pakistani terrorists started off as pirates and the Al-Huseini is a pirate ship

One of my finest teachers at the London School of Economics many years ago had been Professor DHN Johnson, a pioneer of the Law of the Sea Treaty; reflecting upon the aftermath of the Mumbai massacres, it occurs to me that the Law of the Sea Treaty may provide the most expedient and lawful recourse in present circumstances, as well as a proper and clear basis for cooperation between the Government of India and the Government of Pakistan in the matter.

Both India and Pakistan have signed and ratified the Law of the Sea Treaty which reads at  Article 101

“Definition of piracy

Piracy consists of any of the following acts:

(a) any illegal acts of violence or detention, or any act of depredation, committed for private ends by the crew or the passengers of a private ship or a private aircraft, and directed:

(i) on the high seas, against another ship or aircraft, or against persons or property on board such ship or aircraft;

(ii) against a ship, aircraft, persons or property in a place outside the jurisdiction of any State;

(b) any act of voluntary participation in the operation of a ship or of an aircraft with knowledge of facts making it a pirate ship or aircraft;

(c) any act of inciting or of intentionally facilitating an act described in subparagraph (a) or (b).”

From the captured Kasab’s confession, it is clear he and his companions began their criminal activities within Pakistan (by training as terrorists and engaging in a conspiracy to commit mass-murder) and this continued outside Pakistan at sea:

“On November 23, the teams left from Azizabad in Karachi, along with Zaki-ur-Rehman and Kafa. We were taken to the nearby seashore… We boarded a launch. After travelling for 22 to 25 nautical miles we boarded a bigger launch. Again, after a journey of an hour, we boarded a ship, Al-Huseini, in the deep sea. While boarding the ship, each of us was given a sack containing eight grenades, an AK-47 rifle, 200 cartridges, two magazines and a cellphone.  Then we started towards the Indian coast. When we reached Indian waters, the crew members of Al-Huseini hijacked an Indian launch. The crew of the launch was shifted to Al-Huseini. We then boarded the launch. An Indian seaman was made to accompany us at gunpoint; he was made to bring us to the Indian coast. After a journey of three days, we reached near Mumbai’s shore. While we were still some distance away from the shore, Ismail and Afadulla killed the Indian seaman (Tandel) in the basement of the launch.”

Pirates in law are Hostis humani generis or “enemies of mankind”.    As signatories to the Law of the Sea Treaty, India and Pakistan may act jointly against the Al-Huseini and others associated with the acts of  piracy including the maritime murders of the Indian fishermen that preceded the Mumbai massacres, thus solving the question of jurisdiction before it arises.  The remains of the nine dead Pakistani terrorists presently in a Mumbai morgue  can be buried at sea in international waters by whatever funeral procedure is due to dishonourable sailors and pirates.  (The fish will not refuse them.)  Kasab can be tried as a pirate too — though he really needs an American defence attorney to plea-bargain for him as he turns State’s evidence against the real masterminds of the plot, some of whom may be presently in the custody of the Pakistan Government.

Subroto Roy

11. January 2 2009  How to solve the jurisdiction problem in prosecuting perpetrators of the Mumbai massacres: let the Pakistan and Indian Navies try them (and hang them) at sea as pirates

Should Pakistan hand over the terrorist masterminds now in its custody to India for trial for mass murder?  Should India hand over the captured Mumbai terrorist Kasab to Pakistan for trial as a mass murderer?   Such questions can lead to endless legal wrangling, no action, and no justice for all the many victims of the Mumbai massacres.  It is far more expeditious for both countries to instead hand over all these characters in their custody to their respective navies for trial and punishment as pirates who have violated the Law of the Sea.  The Pakistan Navy Chief and the Indian Navy Chief can agree to have their admirals meet with their respective prisoners for a rendezvous at sea in international waters.   A joint trial under maritime law can be conducted on board, say, a Pakistan naval vessel in international waters.  Pakistan’s terrorist masterminds can be hanged at sea on a scaffold aboard a Pakistan Navy vessel in international waters for crimes of  piracy, murder and conspiracy.  Kasab, if he turns State’s evidence, can plea-bargain for a lesser sentence;   if he does not turn State’s evidence, he can join his handlers on the scaffold (assuming he is of adult age and sane).  Pakistan’s terrorist training institutes, incidentally, will see a rapid decline in their admissions and recruitment figures once there are some well-televised hangings at sea.

Subroto Roy

12. January 16, 2009 Memo to the Hon’ble Attorneys General of Pakistan & India: How to jointly prosecute the Mumbai massacre perpetrators most expeditiously

A criminal conspiracy was hatched within the Pakistan Republic by persons known and unknown affiliated with an unlawful organization. The plot was to commit kidnapping, murder, robbery and piracy on the high seas, to be followed by illegal entry, criminal trespass, mass-murder, kidnapping, grievous bodily harm, arson, robbery, dacoity and multiple similarly heinous crimes in the Indian Republic, amounting to waging war against the Indian Republic and the Indian people. The conspirators commissioned services of at least 10 identified persons to be trained and indoctrinated as willing instruments in these multiple crimes, inducing them with money and other incentives.

Nine of these 10 persons came to be killed by Indian law enforcement authorities during the execution of their crimes; their mortal remains have remained in a Mumbai morgue now for more than one month and a half.

The tenth person,  one Kasab, was captured alive and is in custody. He has been a willing witness for the prosecution of these multiple crimes and it is principally due to his testimony that the precise sequence of events in the commission of these crimes has been able to be reconstructed by law enforcement authorities (as contained e.g. in the “dossier” submitted by the Indian Republic to the Pakistan Republic.)

Both the Pakistan Republic and the Indian Republic have jurisdiction to prosecute these crimes. The jurisdiction of the Indian Republic is obvious.

Pakistan’s jurisdiction arises from the Pakistan Penal Code which states

2. Punishment of offences committed within Pakistan: Every person shall be liable to punishment under this Code and not otherwise for every act or omission contrary to the provisions thereof, of which he shall be guilty within Pakistan.3. Punishment of offences committed beyond, but which by law may be tried within Pakistan: Any person liable, by any Pakistani Law, to be tried for an offence committed beyond Pakistan shall be dealt with according to the provision of this Code for any act committed beyond Pakistan in the same manner as if such act had been committed within Pakistan. 4. Extension of Code for extra-territorial offences: The provisions of this Code apply also to any offence committed by “[(1) any citizen of Pakistan or any person in the service of Pakistan in any place without and beyond Pakistan];…. (4) any person on any ship or aircraft registered in Pakistan wherever it may be. Explanation: In this section the word “offence” includes every act committed outside Pakistan which, if committed in Pakistan, would be punishable under this Code…”.

Furthermore, both the Pakistan Republic and the Indian Republic have jurisdiction from the Law of the Sea Treaty which both have signed and ratified and which states at Article 101

“Definition of piracy(b) any act of voluntary participation in the operation of a ship or of an aircraft with knowledge of facts making it a pirate ship or aircraft;

Piracy consists of any of the following acts: (a) any illegal acts of violence or detention, or any act of depredation, committed for private ends by the crew or the passengers of a private ship or a private aircraft, and directed:

(i) on the high seas, against another ship or aircraft, or against persons or property on board such ship or aircraft;

(ii) against a ship, aircraft, persons or property in a place outside the jurisdiction of any State;

(c) any act of inciting or of intentionally facilitating an act described in subparagraph (a) or (b).”

From Kasab’s testimony, it is clear he and his companions began their criminal activities within Pakistan (by training as terrorists and engaging in the conspiracy to commit mass-murder in India) and this continued outside Pakistan at sea:

“On November 23, the teams left from Azizabad in Karachi, along with Zaki-ur-Rehman and Kafa. We were taken to the nearby seashore… We boarded a launch. After travelling for 22 to 25 nautical miles we boarded a bigger launch. Again, after a journey of an hour, we boarded a ship, Al-Huseini, in the deep sea. While boarding the ship, each of us was given a sack containing eight grenades, an AK-47 rifle, 200 cartridges, two magazines and a cellphone. Then we started towards the Indian coast. When we reached Indian waters, the crew members of Al-Huseini hijacked an Indian launch. The crew of the launch was shifted to Al-Huseini. We then boarded the launch. An Indian seaman was made to accompany us at gunpoint; he was made to bring us to the Indian coast. After a journey of three days, we reached near Mumbai’s shore. While we were still some distance away from the shore, Ismail and Afadulla killed the Indian seaman … in the basement of the launch.”

Traditionally, pirates are Hostis humani generis or “enemies of mankind” in law (as are international terrorists).

In view of the competing jurisdictions to try and punish all these crimes, as well as in view of the regrettable historical circumstances of grave conflict and deep misunderstanding and mistrust between the Pakistan Republic and the Indian Republic, it may be most expeditious for there to be a joint investigation and prosecution under maritime law by the Pakistan Navy and Indian Navy of this entire set of crimes, assisted by civilian legal authorities in both countries. As signatories to the Law of the Sea Treaty, the Pakistan Republic and the Indian Republic may act jointly against the vessel Al-Huseini and all the others associated with the whole conspiracy including the acts of piracy and maritime murder of the Indian fishermen and the trawler-skipper Solanki preceding the massacres in Mumbai.

Both countries would hand over all the accused in their custody to their respective navies for trial and punishment as pirates who have or have conspired to violate the Law of the Sea. The Pakistan Navy Chief and the Indian Navy Chief can agree to have their admirals meet with their respective prisoners for a rendezvous at sea in international waters. A joint trial under maritime law can be conducted on board, say, a Pakistan naval vessel in international waters. The masterminds who conceived and plotted these crimes and who are presently in the custody of the Pakistan Republic can be hanged at sea on a scaffold aboard a Pakistan Navy vessel in international waters for piracy, murder and conspiracy. Kasab, if he turns State’s evidence, can plea-bargain for a lesser sentence; if he does not turn State’s evidence, he can join his handlers on the scaffold. The remains of the nine dead criminals presently in a Mumbai morgue can be buried at sea in international waters by whatever funeral procedure is due to dishonourable sailors and pirates.

Incidental consequences may be that future admissions and recruitment figures of terrorist training institutes would decline, and of course Pakistan-India tensions would be reduced once clear justice is seen to have been done expeditiously in this complex case.

Subroto Roy

13.  January 25, 2009 RAND’s study of the Mumbai attacks by Subroto Roy Kolkata

The conspicuously good thing that can be said about the RAND Corporation’s study of the Mumbai massacres (”The Lessons of Mumbai”, RAND January 2009) is that there is no sign of it having been affected by the powerful Pakistan lobby.  Far too many purported studies emerging from American or British “thinktanks” cannot say the same.

If anything, the ten American authors of the 25-pages of the RAND text have among them two prominent advocates of better US-India relations.  This is helpful to truthfulness because of the simple fact India has been in this case a victim of aggression that originated in Pakistan. Whether elements of the Pakistan Government were involved is almost the wrong question – if some retired underemployed former soldier drawing a Pakistan Army pension helped the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s commando training of the Mumbai terrorists, the existence of Pakistani state involvement is proved. Commando training requires technical skills of a sort that can only originate with a military.

In Pakistan as in any other large populous country including India, the state tends to be a hydra-headed monster and it may be foolish to imagine instead a rational, unified, well-informed or even a benevolent political entity.  State involvement in Pakistan, India, China or elsewhere is something hard to isolate when there is so much mixing of private and public property or misuse of resources arising from the public exchequer.

What Pakistan’s PR campaign has done after Mumbai is not so much raise the Kashmir dispute as to obfuscate things by shedding crocodile tears and pretending to share victimhood saying, oh we sympathise with you but please sympathise with us too as we have been victims of even bigger terrorist attacks by the same kind of people, we have lost Benazir, we have lost many more people than you have, therefore  cooperate with us and we will try to do what we can to help you in this matter.  English-speaking liberals educated at places like Karachi Grammar School have then appeared on Indian TV stations (owned by Delhi people from places like Doon School) purporting to represent Pakistan on “the Mumbai incident”; none of them can have much credibility because the real India-haters in Pakistan might cheerfully make them murder victims too given half a chance.

The RAND study deserves credit for avoiding all misleading Pakistani rhetoric about the Mumbai massacres and at least intending to try to get to the bottom of things in a systematic manner.  Beyond that, unfortunately, it has made logical and factual and methodological errors which cause it to fail to do so.

The key logical error made by the RAND authors arises from combining a central front-page statement

“Evidence suggests Lashkar-e-Taiba, a terrorist group based in Pakistan, was responsible for the attack”

with assertive suggestions about Mumbai’s police being backward, incompetent, cowardly etc (”passive”).  Yet how precisely did evidence about LeT culpability come to light?  Only because Mumbai’s police and the Railway police engaged, injured and then captured Kasab using their antiquated equipment the best they could.  There is no evidence of police cowardice at CST Station; to the contrary, it took courage to aim .303’s at adversaries firing back with assault rifles.  Kasab received his first hand injury there. ATS Chief Karkare and his fellow-officers may seem foolhardy in hindsight to have been driving in the same vehicle but they did engage their unknown enemy immediately they could and died doing so, crippling Kasab badly enough that he could be captured in due course at Chowpatty.  [Correction: it appears that though Kasab was fired upon by the police at CST Station  he  received both his hand injuries from the firing by the ATS squad.] And the Chowpatty police action showed obvious bravery in absorbing injury and death in order to kill Ishmail and capture Kasab.  (Kasab, among the youngest, had been paired with Ishmail, the apparent leader of the group.)

Furthermore, Kasab upon capture was treated humanely and lawfully.  His injuries were treated, he was produced before a magistrate within a week who asked him if he was being mistreated to which he said no.  Slumdog millionaire may get undeserved Oscars portraying torture of a British actor by Mumbai police but it is ridiculous fiction – Kasab the captured Pakistani terrorist mass murderer was not tortured by Mumbai’s police.

Contrast such Indian police behaviour with the “enhanced interrogation techniques” the Bush Administration used with negative results in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib – which President Obama has now started to end.  Kasab, an ignorant misguided youth, was grateful enough for the humane and civilized treatment to start singing like the proverbial canary.  The result of that has been precisely all the evidence the Government of India has now presented to the world and Pakistan about the LeT’s culpability.

As for the anti-terrorist actions of the Indian Army, Navy and NSG, the RAND study is right to point to multitudinous errors and it is useful to have these listed in orderly fashion.  But many of these errors were obvious to millions of lay Indian citizens who watched events on TV.  The central fault was the scarcity of trained NSG officers and men, and the failure to apply standard emergency management protocols.

The RAND study, by relying overly on government sources, has failed to point to what ordinary Indian citizens already know – the NSG is being utterly wasted protecting our politicians.  India has no proper equivalent of the US “Secret Service”, and even if we did, we would probably waste that by spreading it too thinly among politicians.  As it happens if almost any politician in India today did happen to be unfortunately assassinated, the main mourners would be family-members and not the general Indian public.  Despite politicians constituting rather “low-value targets” for terrorists, India’s scarce anti-terrorist and police resources have been misallocated to protecting them.

Finally, the RAND study makes the lazy-man’s methodological error of supposing outfits like the LeT think and behave in a manner explicable by American political science textbooks, or ought to do so.  What Western analysts may need to do instead is learn from the old Arabist and Orientalist traditions of how to think and see the world from Eastern points of view.    But that may require greater self-knowledge than the modern world tends to permit.

Postscript:

My December 6 2008 analysis here titled “A Quick Comparison Between the September 11 2001 NYC-Washington attacks and the November 26-28 2008 Mumbai Massacres (An Application of the Case-by-Case Philosophical  Technique of Wittgenstein, Wisdom and Bambrough)” is republished below.  I have corrected “Rome Airport” with “Lod Airport” on the basis of  reading the RAND report, though may not have received the courtesy of acknowledgment for the reminder of the  Japanese Red Army attack….

14. February 9 2009, Pakistani expansionism: India and the world need to beware of “Non-Resident Pakistanis” ruled by Rahmat Ali’s ghost

The Government of Pakistan is said to be due to release its initial report on the involvement of Pakistanis in the Mumbai massacres.  It is reportedly expected that the G o P will partly if not mainly or wholly attribute responsibility for the planning of the massacres to expatriate  Pakistanis  in other countries, perhaps in Europe and Britain.  If so, a fact the Government of India might find prudent to recall is that the Government of Pakistan in bygone decades did deny citizenship to Rahmat Ali himself    (who invented the acronym “P, A, K, I, S, T, A, N” ) and even deported him back to Britain from where he had carried out his vituperative and bigoted campaign against Hindus.

Rahmat Ali’s British grave has become a site of pilgrimage for expatriate Pakistani extremists and his ignorant hate-filled ideology from the 1930s has been inspiring their modern manifestos.  I said this in an article published in Karachi’s Dawn newspaper in 2005, which also pointed to Iqbal and Jinnah’s disdain for Rahmat Ali’s views (see “Iqbal and Jinnah vs Rahmat Ali” republished here).  American nationals and  British subjects of Pakistani origin inspired by Rahmat Ali’s  ghost are spreading theories of Pakistani territorial expansionism at the cost of the destruction of the Indian Republic and many other countries.

The fact that at one such website recently I myself, presumably because of my Hindu name and Indian nationality, have been referred to as a “monkey- or donkey-worshipper” may speak to the somewhat  rabid nature of such ideologies.  (Drat! And there I was expecting some elementary Pakistani courtesy and acknowledgment let alone gratitude for having created, at great personal cost at an American university twenty years ago, the volume with WE James titled Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s with its mundane chapters on agriculture, macroeconomics, education etc!)

Incidentally, British newspapers are reporting today that America’s  CIA has been deeply concerned about British subjects of Pakistani origin being a source of international terrorism. It may be pertinent to recall  that terrorism in India’s Punjab had much support among numerous Sikh expatriates and immigrants in North America and Britain, and the same kind of thing may be true of Tamil expatriates from  Sri Lanka.  Being isolated and alienated as immigrants in a foreign country may lead to psychological conditions that contribute to such phenomena, whereby political and other events in the faraway country-of-origin take on exaggerated proportions in an individual’s mental make-up.   Certainly Rahmat Ali himself was a rather tragic lonely figure who wasted his own potential to properly contribute to Pakistan’s political history  through his own self-blinding hatred of Hindus.

SR

15. February 11, 2009 Kasab, the young misguided Pakistani mass-murdering terrorist, needs to be given political asylum in India! (Matt Damon, Will Smith: here’s a real-life case!)

Life imitates art or rather Hollywood again as young Kasab, the misguided primary-school dropout Pakistani mass-murdering terrorist caught by Indian police after the Mumbai massacres,  becomes a kind of Jason-Bourne/Enemy-of-the-State character who is said to be being targeted now by Pakistan’s terrorist masterminds for not being dead already! There have been all kinds of weird assassinations by and of government agents using poisoned umbrellas and radioactive pills etc in real life, and who is to say that young Kasab is not going to be given a small cyanide capsule along with a letter of farewell from his parents when His Excellency the High Commissioner’s consular agents receive access to him?

Shortly after Kasab’s remorseful confessions (which flowed from his natural gratitude at having survived and having been treated humanely by Mumbai’s police), I said here that if I was the judge trying him, I would send him to an Indian prison for 20 or 30 years (given his 20 or 30 murder victims), but I would add that he should be occasionally, say once a year, permitted to offer namaz at India’s grandest mosques. He could become a model prisoner,  possibly a potent weapon against Pakistan’s terrorist masterminds who have ruined his life and now wish him dead.

(Message to Matt Damon, Will Smith and assorted Hollywood cinematic personalities:  there is a confessed, remorseful mass-murdering 20-year old Pakistani terrorist in an Indian prison who is being targeted by the very people who sent him on his vile mission.)

In present circumstances, young Kasab needs to seek political asylum in the Indian Republic as his life in his own Pakistan Republic is as good as over for political reasons. He would become the first person ever in history to receive political asylum in a country that he attacked despite being a confessed terrorist mass-murderer.   But Mahatma Gandhi would have approved and smiled at the irony of it all!  Ahimsa paramo dharmaha in practice.

SR

16.  February 12 2009, Thanks and well done Minister Rehman Malik and the Government of Pakistan

The Hon’ble Rehman Malik and the Government of Pakistan have done very well, all things considered, in taking forward the criminal investigation into the Mumbai massacres, based on the evidence provided by Indian authorities that arose from the cooperation and testimony of young Kasab, the captured  Pakistani terrorist.   I am hopeful the Government of India will provide a serious well-considered response too, though our private TV channels continue frequently to be rather juvenile, sensationalist and inflammatory caused by their overall lack of editorial competence.

As foreseen here over the last two months, a very serious problem of international  law  still arises  due to the competing jurisdictions in the prosecution of this complex case,  since both the Indian Republic and the Pakistan Republic have jurisdiction.   I continue to believe that a joint prosecution  by the Pakistan Navy and the Indian Navy under the Law of the Sea in international waters (conducted on board, say, a Pakistan Navy vessel) may be the most expeditious way to bring this whole tragic and awful matter to proper closure.

In the meantime, the Government of Pakistan has done well and deserves Indian thanks.  Recall, by way of contrast, that investigations of many of Pakistan’s major political assassinations, from Liaquat Ali Khan and Dr Khan Sahib to Zia ul Haq and Nawab Bugti and Benazir Bhutto herself, still remain in the dark.   We in India tend to solve our political assassinations better but in recent  times our police have failed  woefully to solve several ghastly and notorious personal murders.

Subroto Roy, Kolkata

17. March 18 2009. Pakistan’s progress

Nine months ago, on June 9 2008, I wrote but did not publish the op-ed article below “Pakistan’s progress” intended for an Indian newspaper.   When the Mumbai massacres took place, I was rather glad I had not come to do so  because its cheer and optimism contrasted too starkly with the vileness and viciousness of the massacres.  Instead I turned to the legal, moral and political implications of the massacres, and several articles are to be found here on Kasab, competing jurisdictions in international law in prosecuting the crimes, and application of the Law of the Sea Treaty (which both countries have ratified) to jointly try and hang the masterminds at sea in international waters.  Pakistan’s initial criminal investigation into the massacres received praise here, and I can only trust that both the Government of India and the Government of Pakistan will remain forensically focussed on that case of mass-murder and other heinous  crimes until its appropriate conclusion.

Meanwhile, recent political events in Pakistan have made the article below relevant again; when it was written Pervez Musharraf had still not departed from office but the more abstract constitutional question raised in the article had to do with the relative powers of the Head of State and Head of Government in the new Pakistan.  With the peaceful restoration of the Chief Justice to his high office, I am glad to say that the question I raised  but did not publish nine months ago, namely, “A rare constitutional consensus might be developing – can it last long enough?”, seems to be headed at present to being answered in the affirmative.

Subroto Roy, Kolkata, India

“Pakistan’s progress: A rare constitutional consensus might be developing – can it last long enough?  Subroto Roy, dated June 9 2008

The dynamic evolution of politics in Pakistan should be judged not against Indian politics (rotten or exemplary as our politics can be at different times) but against its own initial conditions.   It is an unimaginable luxury that Pakistanis in recent months have been discussing such sweet constitutional questions as how to restore judges unseated by soldiers having entered the Supreme Court, what to do with judges who took an oath despite such an abomination, how to maintain diplomatic relations between the PPP and PML(N),  and most important of all, whether the military with its nuclear assets should report to the PM or President – in other words, is the Head of Government or Head of State the Chief Executive?   It is a luxury too that Pervez Musharraf has become almost a distraction in Pakistani politics, that he himself indicates he may be running out of dramatic lines and may be getting ready to exit his country’s political stage, that the Pakistan Army is shocked by its realisation of its loss of prestige in society, that the Ex-Servicemen’s Society thinks Musharraf deserves punishment for having caused such a state of affairs.  Dr Ayesha Siddiqa has pointed out that every Pakistani military strongman has been eventually removed, and has been removed not by democratic forces alone but by intra-military pressure.

It is likely we are at present witnessing such a critical moment, and it is naturally fraught with danger for any civilian prime minister and parliament because any intra-military conflict can descend into mutiny or worse.  Pakistan Army officers have been deeply divided for years over Islamicisation already — onto which is now compounded the issue of loyalty to Musharraf (mostly paid for in American dollars) versus the urge to remove him in the best future interests of the military.  Musharraf himself, with his usual braggadocio, has been claiming fealty to constitutional principles as well; so at least there is agreement on all sides that matters should proceed in an orderly and dignified manner and not by nefarious means.

The relevant comparison of the present situation is with the recent past.  Let us look back just a few years, say to the autumn of 2005 when the initial post 9/11 Western backlash against Pakistan had been renewed after the London Underground bombings.  On 1 September 2005, during the scheduled Islamabad visit of the Indian Foreign Secretary, the PAF launched massive month-long war-games against an assumed Indian enemy.  It involved “the entire fleet, including US-made F-16s, French Mirage fighter aircraft and Chinese-built jets” and “using all assets” in an exercise “closest to war you can get in peacetime”; from the Hindu Kush to the Arabian Sea “8,200 operational sorties” would be flown, Shaukat Aziz witnessing the start, Musharraf the finish.  Hardly had this orgy of militarism concluded when northern Pakistan and parts of J&K were hit by the devastating earthquake; Musharraf visited quake-hit areas still dressed in battle gear down to his para wings.

Pakistanis of all classes were appalled at the ineptitude of their government in face of the earthquake and it was inevitable the military would be held responsible.  What had been the opportunity cost in fungible resources of those “8,200 operational sorties”?  The military’s extremely expensive “assets” were designed for war with India and had bankrupted the country but ordinary people had been left utterly helpless in a natural calamity.  Future historians of Pakistan may well see the 2005 earthquake as a critical turning point in their political development just as the 12 November 1970 cyclone was in the history of Bangladesh.

A modern war between Pakistan and India, even a non-nuclear one, would be like a hundred earthquakes.  Indians have not been so jingoistic as to contemplate such an exchange of destruction but less than a decade ago Gohar Ayub Khan, as Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, was boasting how India would surrender within a few hours in the next war – which was presumably a threat to unleash missiles, even non-nuclear ones, as a first resort against Indian cities and civilian populations.  That such abominable Pakistan-India tension has today come to vanish might have been indicated during the recent IPL cricket final when Kamran Akmal jumped onto Yusuf Pathan or crashed into Mohammad Kaif as commercially driven team-mates led by an Australian captain and associated with what used to be Hindu Rajputana.  So much for the “Two Nations Theory” in the 21st Century.  Maulana Azad seems to have been proven right and MA Jinnah proven wrong after all.

The Pakistani state had become an oppressive war-machine solely guided by anti-Indian paranoia even while ordinary Pakistanis, through modern communications and technology, knew fully well India and Indians were not nearly as bad as the Pakistan Government was making them out to be.  From an official Pakistani point of view, a nuclear bomb (even a purchased and assembled one) was needed out of fear India intended to destroy what remained of West Pakistan – a theory that could arise only from the delusion that Bangladesh had been caused by Indian intrigues.  The Pakistan Army has been reluctant for more than a generation to face up to the reality of its behaviour in East Pakistan and the consequences that resulted; it has been far easier to blame India instead.

Yet Pakistan’s national hero, AQ Khan himself, born in Bhopal and extremely bitter at modern India as many former Indian nationals tend to be, has now said “Never! Never!” will there be an exchange of destruction in nuclear warfare between India and Pakistan.  It may be a wise Indian diplomatic move to invite Dr Khan, stricken with cancer as he is said to be, to make a quiet private visit to his place of birth if he wished to (perhaps followed by a courtesy luncheon at BARC on the way home).

Of course Indians cannot forget the destruction that has been wrought in this country in recent years by our old Bogeyman, the ISI.  Yet it is a fair bet that not only do we not comprehend the workings of that particular bureaucracy, nor do Pakistanis themselves,   indeed the ISI itself may not comprehend itself in the sense that different ISI sections have been and may remain at cross-purposes or conflict with each other as has become apparent in the ongoing official attempts to suppress the new “Taliban”.  Proper civilian control of the ISI is part of the same process as the proper civilian control of the Pakistan military as a whole, and what we are witnessing is nothing less than the first serious constitutional attempt in Pakistan’s history for that to take place.  The whole subcontinent is hopeful and watching Pakistan’s transition.  In the meantime, a milestone was certainly reached on 25 May when Pakistan’s young and brilliant sufi rock band *Junoon* performed in beautiful Srinagar to the delight of thousands of Kashmiris.   The “United Jehad Council” and Syed Ali Shah Geelani had denounced them; in reply the band’s lead guitarist Salman Ahmed had the courage to say: “I want them to join us in the musical *jehad* for peace and ring the bells of harmony.”  For peace to break out will of course require India’s participation and willingness as well.”…