I will be approaching this topic under four or five heads.

I will begin my talk by presenting to you all some statistics; even at the risk of the statistics sounding dreary, because I think unless one has the basic facts, the basic figures about what is happening in Kashmir today, one will not have the correct idea of the gravity of the threat to national security, which we are facing in Kashmir, and through Kashmir, in the rest of India.

These are authentic statistics and I will be comparing the situation that we are facing in Jammu and Kashmir with the terrorist situation in the rest of the world. Even though I use the word ‘terrorist’, what we are confronted with, in Kashmir and the rest of India is not merely terrorism, or merely militancy, or merely insurgency, but a war.

A war is being waged on us for the last 11 years. Some call it a proxy war, but I call it covert war; we are in the midst of a war in that region since 1989, and as I keep repeating, through that region, in the rest of this country.

In the second part of my talk I am going to be giving evidence on how this war is being waged on us by the army of the State of Pakistan through the Army of Islam, which was raised in Afghanistan in the 1980s, which has been diverted against India and which has been carrying on this war at the instance, under the direction, and on behalf of the State of Pakistan.

I will also briefly identify the components of this Army of Islam, what are the principles and concepts that motivate it etc…In the third part, I wish to deal with the various ideas on the solutions, which are floating around, what the Chinese have been saying, what some of the non-governmental groups in the west have been saying, I will touch upon them in passing, and lastly, not so much as a solution, because personally I am not convinced in my mind that the time to search for this solution has come.

To talk now of any kind of solution to the problem in J&K is premature until we are in a position to effectively control the ground situation there. If we try to force a solution now, we will be, in my opinion, committing a grave mistake.

So what I will be talking about is, "do we have a Pakistan policy, do we have a Kashmir policy" and if we do, what are the pre-requisites of such a policy, and what ought to be the components of this policy.

The first part of my talk, the part that deals with statistics, is as follows:

Between January 1, 1988, and October 31,1998, (subsequent figures not yet available), there was a total of 38,753 Pakistani-sponsored terrorist incidents in Jammu & Kashmir. During the same period, according to the annual reports on the Patterns of Global Terrorism issued by the US State Department, there were 4,411 terrorist incidents in the rest of the world.

CONCLUSION :

There were nine times as many terrorist incidents in J&K as there were in the rest of the world.

These incidents could be categorized as follows:

The majority of those killed in the explosions and arson attacks were civilians.

CONCLUSION :

The security forces were the exclusive victims in 18,064 incidents and in the remaining 20,689 incidents, the victims were either exclusively or largely civilians.

Comparable figures for the rest of the world are not available in the reports of the State Department.

The annual variation of the terrorist incidents in J & K was as follows:

CONCLUSION:

Terrorism reached a peak of 6,043 incidents in 1994 and has since then declined. But, compared to the rest of the world, it is still high with around 2,500 incidents per annum.

During the period between January 1,1988, and December 31,1999, the terrorists killed a total of 11,814 persons, categorized as follows:

CONCLUSION :

The terrorists killed more than four times as many civilians as members of the security forces.

The civilians killed could be categorized as follows:

CONCLUSION :

More than 75 per cent of the civilians killed were Muslims. Pakistani and pro-Pakistani Muslims killing Kashmiri Muslims in the name of jehad. The Muslims killed were either the victims of indiscriminate killings with explosives or of targeted attacks because they refused to support the terrorists.

(The statistics with regard to the religious break-up of civilians killed is indicative the demographic composition of the religious groups in the state - ‘VIGIL’)

Amongst the civilians killed were the following:

More than 80 per cent of the political activists killed belonged to the ruling National Conference, which is committed to J & K always being an integral part of India and opposes Islamic extremism.

Comparable figures for killings by terrorists in J & K and in the rest of the world between January 1,1995, and December 31,1999, are as follows:

The figures for the rest of the world taken from the reports of the US State Department.

CONCLUSION :

Terrorists killed more than four times as many persons in J & K during this period as in the rest of the world.

The year-wise figures of terrorists killed by the Security Forces were as follows:

CONCLUSION :

The number of terrorists killed reached a peak of 1,596 in 1994 and has since then been declining. It is estimated that the number of terrorists operating in J & K has come down from a high of 5,000 plus in the middle 1990s to 2,500 plus. About 45 per cent of the terrorists in the Valley and about 50 per cent plus of those in the Jammu area are estimated to be Pakistani nationals and other foreigners assisting the Pakistanis.

Between January 1,1988, and December 31,1999, the Indian Security Forces captured the following arms and ammunition and other equipment supplied to the terrorists by Pakistan:

NOTES :

* indicates figures for 1999 not available.

Between 1996 and 1999, the explosives seized included 2,075 kgs of RDX.

Figures for the other years not available.

CONCLUSION :

The arms and ammunition recovered from the terrorists would have been sufficient to equip at least one conventional Division of an Army. If one presumes that for every arms and ammunition recovered, there must be at least one more lying unrecovered, the weapons pumped into J & K by Pakistan would have been sufficient to equip at least two conventional Divisions of an Army. However, these seizures were made over a period of 12 years. The average seizures of AK series rifles per annum comes to 1,700--enough to equip at least two battalions per annum.

From these statistics it is clear that what is happening in J&K is not just terrorism or militancy; it is a covert war being waged against us, against our security forces, since ‘89 by Pakistan through a surrogate army. You must understand, Pakistan has two armies from the 1980s, from the days of the Afghan war.

There is an army of the State, a regular army whose members are recruited, trained and armed by the State, and funded by the defense budget, much like our own army. Their strength is around 500,000. But there is an Army of Islam in Pakistan, raised during the days of the Afghan war, which was raised, trained, armed and funded not only by Pakistan’s ISI but also by the CIA, by the French intelligence and the intelligence agencies of other countries, to fight against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

I am not calling it the Army of Islam, it is Pakistan which calls it the Army of Islam and its total strength is believed to be 200,000, as well trained and as well motivated, in fact more motivated in this cause, than the State army of Pakistan. So it is this army of Islam, which is being used by the Pakistani State to wage this war against us in Kashmir and in other parts of India in order to attain its objective.

We have to constantly keep in mind that this is a war - call it a proxy war, if you will or a covert war, but war it is and not merely insurgency, militancy or terrorism by ‘misguided youth’. One of the reasons why we do not carry conviction and why we are not taken seriously is we have not so far projected in proper terms, or projected adequately the magnitude and the gravity of the problem, nor have we projected to the rest of the world the role of the Pakistan State in the war that is being waged against India, against the Indian security forces.

This army of Islam, which is being fronted by Pakistan comprises essentially of four components -

1. the Lashkar-e-Toiba , which is the armed wing of another organization, the Markaz Dawa-al-Irshad , which came into being during the Afghan war,

2. the second is the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, another outfit which came into being during the Afghan war but in those days it used to be called the Harkat-ul-Ansar. It has been forced to change its name after the U.S. designated it an international terrorist organization.

3. The third terrorist organization in the army of Islam is the Jaish-e-Mohammad , created by Maulana Masood Azhar, a splinter group of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. Masood Azhar, earlier belonged to the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and had fought in Somalia against American troops there in 1993. He was one of the terrorists released in exchange for the safe return of our hostages of the IA flight hijacked to Khandahar in December 1999.

4. The last is the Al Badr group.

These four groups constitute the army of Islam and among these the Al-Badr is of East-Pakistan vintage.

You may all have heard of the slaughter of the intelligentsia in the erstwhile East-Pakistan which is now Bangladesh; this slaughter of the Bengali intellectuals was masterminded by the Al-Badr and the Jamait-e-Islami at the instance of the Pakistan army.

The Pakistan army chief, Gen.Yahya Khan used the Al-Badr group to carry out intimidatory killings of civilians who were in the forefront of the freedom movement. This group laid low for a while after 1971, and their members were later sent to Afghanistan and are presently diverted for terrorist campaigns in Jammu and Kashmir. The other three groups are essentially of Afghanistan war vintage and were raised by the Pakistanis with the full knowledge and support of the Americans and the Saudis to fight the Soviet troops in Afghanistan and are today diverted to J&K.

In the initial years of the trouble in J&K when the proxy war against the Indian armed forces started in 1989, it was the pro-azadi groups like the JKLF, which was in the ascendancy. Pakistan was alarmed over the fact that this group was not under its control and therefore brought in the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, which is the militant wing of the Jamait-e-Islami, a pro-Pakistani group, which is for the merger of the state of J&K with Pakistan.

When Pakistan realized that the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen was as ineffective as the JKLF, it sent in the army of Islam into India who are avowedly jehadi. More than forty-five percent of the terrorists in the Valley and more than fifty percent of the terrorists in Jammu are Pakistanis and constitute the fighting components of the army of Islam. The rest provide logistic support to them. They work as informers, and gather intelligence for these groups, providing them with hideouts, supply them with food and vehicles and so on.

So it is a very real war, which is being waged against us, which has been going on since 1992-93, and groups about which it seemed we were not aware of, which never merited our attention; we therefore never devised policies early enough to deal ruthlessly with these groups.

There is, it seems, much confusion and more ignorance about these groups still, even among the intelligentsia in this country. Recently, after the LeT attacked the Red Fort, there were high profile media men and women referring to this group as a Pro-Pakistani Kashmiri group. This group is not Kashmiri and is not pro-Pakistani. It is a Pakistani organization. The majority of its office-bearers are Punjabis and Pakhtoons and not even Kashmiris from PoK or Kashmiris from the northern areas.

The most unfortunate thing about the intellectuals of this country and with policy makers is that they do not have the interest or the patience to gather or at least listen to facts. If we need to devise effective policies, if we need to present our case effectively, we must have a mastery over facts. Go to Delhi and ask anybody in the establishment to give you a briefing on the Lashkar-e-Toiba, who are its leaders, how are they recruited, its origins, its operations and other details, I can assure you, ninety percent of them would not know anything because people do not have time for details nor do they have the patience to keep abreast of events. Some spokesperson for the Government says pro-Pakistani groups, somebody else says, Kashmiri militant organizations, DD says something else. These are, I repeat, Pakistani organizations, manned to a large degree by Pakistani ex-servicemen.

Now what is the ideology that motivates these groups?

I wonder if any of you have heard or read the statements of Abdul Ghani Lone of the Hurriyat Conference. He has been saying of late that the original, political character of the war in Jammu and Kashmir has now been changed completely into becoming a religious agenda of these Pakistani groups. Whenever he says this, he is referring to the army of Islam, which is now controlling and masterminding the anti-India activities in J&K. Their political and territorial agenda are not ends in themselves. They are intrinsically a part of the Islamic religious agenda.

You have to read their literature to really understand what drives them. They are saying that wresting Kashmir from India is not an end in itself; and that Kashmir is only a gateway to India. Yes, we want to capture Kashmir, they say, and then go on to liberate Hyderabad and Junagadh, which in 1947, should rightly have been given to Pakistan. We are therefore creating a network in these places, they say, to ultimately create two more Pakistans in India - one, for the Muslims in north India and another for the Muslims of south India. This is not a figment of my imagination or anyone else’s for that matter. If you were to pick up the training and instruction manuals which have been captured from them, if you were to read what these terrorists themselves are saying in their journals and their websites, it is clear that these Islamic jehadis have a very definite purpose for their activities in India, and that is to create, besides the already created Pakistan, two more Islamic homelands in India by fragmenting this country. They have an ideological agenda, they have a political agenda and both agendas work for the ultimate Islamic political agenda. Some of us refer to them as pan-islamic groups while I refer to this trend as international Islamism.

I believe all of us have enough reasons to be seriously concerned about these groups and their agenda for the world, and for India in particular. Recently, in November, I had occasion to attend a seminar on Islamic terrorism and I spoke on international Islamism. I spoke about their ideology, their concepts, their thinking, their mindset, their attitude to nuclear weapons, and I spoke at length specifically on what these Islamic terrorists have been saying and writing about nuclear weapons, and about what they have been saying about the need for a Muslim to use nuclear weapons in the cause of Islam.

A professor from the Middle-east Forum from the U.S, who was also there asked me to put all this in writing, because, he said, there is really no knowledge and certainly no facts and figures about these groups and that he would like to put it all in print in their journal, the ‘Middle-east Quarterly’.

The point I made in the course of my talk at the seminar was that there are three concepts underlying the activities of these groups, which should cause concern to any nation with a sizeable muslim population or any nation confronted by, or with the possibility in the future of a confrontation with, Islamic terrorism. I compare international Islamism with international communism.

Before the disintegration of the Soviet Union, when there was a Communist International based in Moscow, western countries, and third world countries tilted to the west, perceived this ‘Communist International’ as a major threat to their national security. This may not be common knowledge but even during the days of Jawaharlal Nehru, even during the days of India -China bhai bhai, India -USSR bhai bhai, international communism was identified as India’s number one threat to national security, number two Pakistan, number three China The reason why this was so is not that we had anything against communist philosophy.

Personally I think communism has several very good aspects to its philosophy.

We considered the political agenda of communism to be a threat because of three dangerous, pernicious concepts, which it propagated - the first is the concept of extra-territorial loyalty.

1. A communist’s first loyalty is towards Moscow and not to the country of which he is a citizen or the country where he resides.

2. The second - whenever there is a conflict between ideological solidarity and national solidarity, the ideological solidarity gains precedence.

3. And thirdly, for the communist, there is no national border. You would have noticed that Islam, like communism makes exactly the same demands upon its adherents.

The army of Islam, which claims it represents Islam in its truest form, advocates extra-territorial loyalty. The first loyalty of a Muslim, it holds, is to the umma and only then to his country. It also propagates that wherever there is a conflict between Islamic solidarity and issues calling for national loyalty, a Muslim has to surrender himself to Islamic solidarity. And thirdly, Muslims do not subscribe to the sanctity of national borders. Wherever there is a so-called threat to Islam or Muslims, be it India, Indonesia or Malaysia, they consider it their religious duty to go to these parts and undertake jehad for the cause of Islam and Muslims.

Here I wish to point out that jehad is undertaken by Muslims, not just against non-Muslim States and peoples but also against Muslim States and peoples if these groups think that Islam is not being implemented or followed true to its tenets. And that is why even Islamic States like Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria and even Saudi Arabia are worried about the threat posed to their States by Islamic extremism. When the interests of the umma require it, these Islamic extremist groups defy national borders and boundaries and go to any corner of the globe to fight in the cause of Islam.

These then are the three fundamental concepts upon which are based the activities of the army of Islam. And if as a State, we do not understand the mindset and the ideology of Islamic terrorists and devise policies to counter them, the problem of Islamic terrorism is only going to aggravate more and more within our borders in the years to come.

Unfortunately for us, there is not a deep understanding of these groups and their ideology or nature of their activities. Here I wish to dwell briefly on what these groups have been saying about nuclear weapons. While everyone is monitoring what the Pakistani State is saying about nuclear weapons, few of us have paid attention to what these groups of the army of Islam have been saying in this regard in their ideological journals consider the nuclear weaponization programme to be that of the umma’s and that.

1. Firstly, they are saying a good Muslim is not only a pious Muslim but that he is also a nuclear Muslim.

2. Secondly, they say that the nuclear weapons which Pakistan now possesses, belong not just to the State of Pakistan but to the Muslim umma and that Pakistan has no right to surrender the right or dilute its agenda to produce and/or acquire nuclear weapons under pressure from the U.S or any other world body.

3. Thirdly, they are also very determined not to allow Pakistan under any dispensation to sign the CTBT because they say Pakistan has no right to negotiate or surrender that right to the disadvantage of the Muslim umma.

4. And fourthly, they are also saying that Pakistan should not consent to any export control regime with regard to nuclear or missile materials or components because Pakistan as a Islamic State has the religious duty and obligation to transfer nuclear and missile technology to other Islamic countries on demand.

The Harkat-ul Mujahideen has been writing consistently on this theme and the Jamait-e-Islami has also been quite vociferous in this regard and so has the Lashkar-e-Toiba. But no one in this country has studied the ideological positions of these groups on important national and international issues and events nor do they read the Pakistani newspapers to know what these people are saying, what they are discussing. But the Americans watch them very closely and so do the British and the French. The Russians are worried and so are many Islamic States facing the threat of Islamic fundamentalism.

Islamic fundamentalism, as I said a while ago, does not target merely non-Islamic States. Iran is faced with it, and so is Egypt. The kind of Islamic fundamentalist literature coming out of Pakistan, you will not find anything comparable to similar literature coming out of other countries where these groups operate. You read the Islamic fundamentalist literature coming out of Turkey, or out of Indonesia, or Algeria and compare it with the kind of arguments and the kind of perverted thinking which informs this literature from Pakistan and the danger is there for all to know. The groups, which constitute the army of Islam, do not command much support from the people of Pakistan who make a distinction between soft Islam and hard Islam.

The practitioners of soft Islam believe Islam is a religion of mercy and compassion and also that their religion is a matter of personal faith confined to the home and the mosque. But the advocates of hard Islam hold that they alone will interpret the tenets of their religion and they alone will decide on the correct understanding of the words that Allah spoke to Mohammad. They also believe that they have the religious duty to take Islam to those countries which have not been islamised yet. And if need be, they are fully prepared and equipped to do so through jehad. The vast majority of the people of Pakistan are soft islamists. And this is best reflected in their election results.

Whenever there is an election in Pakistan, no candidate from an Islamic party has won the election without the support of other mainstream parties; but these Islamic parties have the power to intimidate the people with the support they enjoy of large sections of the army. And this is so because Gen.Zia-ul-Haq had made it a policy to recruit only islamists into the army and all these people have now risen to senior positions within the hierarchy of the Pakistani security forces. Of the twenty-seven Lt.Generals in the Pakistani army, three are hard islamists - influential people who subscribe to all the pernicious concepts of international Islam. As the years go on, by the year 2010, of the twenty-seven Lt.Generals, there may perhaps be ten such hard islamists. Therefore even though these Islamic parties do not have ground support of the people of Pakistan, they have a strong support base in the Pakistani army, and this gives them the power of intimidation and street power.

Now, coming to the idea of talibanization of Islam. What is talibanization?

The Taliban is a small minority in Afghanistan and it never represented the thinking or the way of life of the vast majority of the Muslims of Afghanistan. This minority, with the weapons given to it by Pakistan, by the U.S., and through the power of intimidation, managed to seize 95% of the territory of Afghanistan and imposed its will on a hapless nation. Is there a possibility of a Taliban-like minority, of Taliban-like hard islamists from the army of Islam seizing control of Pakistan with the help of the hard islamists in the army? The Lashkar-e-toiba has declared that it is working towards establishing a caliphate in South Asia, where the Muslims of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka will constitute themselves into a caliphate. This factor has to be kept in mind when we are dealing with these groups in J&K. Treating the problem merely as terrorism or militancy, and even worse as dissatisfied or disgruntled youth, is only going to prolong the agony for India.

What is the attitude of China with regard to Islamic terrorism? Needless to say, China is deeply concerned because it is faced with these groups in its XinJiang province. It is facing this problem since 1992 and this partly explains its change of attitude to both India and Pakistan. Before Jiang Zhemin’s visit to India in 1996, China always supported Pakistan, right or wrong on any issue, including Kashmir, which was essentially a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan. But since 1996, it has begun to adopt a neutral position and does not, as a matter of course, support Pakistan over the Kashmir issue and in fact had advocated restraint to Pakistan at the time of Pakistan’s intrusion into Kargil.

Chinese analysts have been monitoring the decade-long problem of Islamic terrorism in J&K and have come to the conclusion that no problem can be solved effectively ahead of time. They believe that the time must be ready for any action to be effective and if we rush towards a solution when the time is not ready, the problem only becomes more intractable, more complex. The Chinese therefore think that the time is not propitious to resolve the Kashmir problem because no government in India and Pakistan today, will be able to convince their people into accepting any solution to the problem. So what the Chinese have been telling Pakistan is ‘freeze the problem and unfreeze the mindset’ with regard to Kashmir. But Pakistan has not heeded the Chinese advice for restraint or for freezing the problem in Kashmir.

In the case of the U.S., the government itself has not assumed any position but there are several organizations in the U.S, which have; I will mention only two of them.

The first is ' The International Commission of Jurists' , an organization not very well known in India. I think it was in 1993 when Shri Narasimha Rao was the prime minister, this organization wanted to send a team to Kashmir, ‘to study the human rights situation there’, they said, and prepare a report. This was discussed at the highest levels in the government and we decided that it might be good for us to have this team reporting on the human rights situation and so we allowed them free run of the state.

Before I tell you all what happened subsequently I would like to recall that in the post-Watergate enquiries, during the congressional testimonies, it came out that the International Commission of Jurists was a an NGO based in Geneva and funded and promoted by the CIA in their ideological and psychological warfare against the USSR and other communist countries and they were funding several American lawyers’ organizations which were in turn funding the International Commission of Jurists.

Let me say this again, there are various lawyers’ organizations in the U.S., which are funding this Geneva based ‘International Commission of Jurists’ and these organizations are being reimbursed this money by the CIA, which in effect only means that this NGO is being funded and supported by the CIA.

The Narasimha Rao government allowed a team of this International Commission of Jurists to visit Kashmir. After six months, the report was shown to the government of India to obtain its clearance before releasing the report. The government of India was totally shocked when it read the report prepared by the International Commission of Jurists. Only a very small part of the total report dealt with the human rights situation, the major part of the report actually dealt with what should be the nature of any future political solution to terrorism in J&K. The report said, yes it agreed with India that the plebiscite as specified in the U.N. Resolution will not work now and therefore they were advocating separate plebiscites - one in the valley, one in Jammu and another in Ladakh and that whatever may be the results of this plebiscite should be accepted by both India and Pakistan. Their calculation was in the event of such a plebiscite, the majority in the valley would opt for azaadi and the valley would become independent, and even if Jammu and Ladakh opted to remain with India, there would now be an independent Muslim State located right on the borders of the Indian state.

The purpose of this report, it was evident, was to direct public opinion in the U.S. towards this solution. The International Commission of Jurists tried persuading the government of India to allow it to publish this report. A team was sent by the government of India to Geneva to interact with the NGO, I was a part of this team too, but ultimately, while they consented to tone down the shrillness of the report, they did not agree to modify the solution they were proffering.

Since then, a region based solution - divide Kashmir into three regions and seek separate and independent solutions for them, is gaining ground among the several American and other international NGOs busying themselves with finding a solution to India’s problem in J&K. The Kashmir Study Group is proffering a similar solution - the trifurcation of Kashmir, and allowing the components to decide their political future for themselves.

This morning Shri Narasimhan talked of emotions, emotive issues and the total repeal of TADA. I would like to narrate an incident that occurred in this regard. One of the members of the Kashmir Study Group, which visited India and Pakistan, sent word to me that he would like to meet me. He came to Chennai and he and I had a long discussion in the course of which he asked me, "in the U.S., we have the impression in the State Department that people in South India are not emotionally involved with the issue of Kashmir or about the threat posed by Pakistan, and that they seem indifferent about the future status of the state of J&K with regard to the Indian union. Is this true?" When I asked him how he had arrived at this conclusion, he told me that this was what was conveyed by various reports on the issue, which he had read. The State Department has been getting these kinds of reports from the American diplomatic missions in South India. I spent nearly an hour with him trying to correct his perception that we in the south do not really care about what happens in the north.

I can’t stress enough here, how important emotions are in nationalism. Emotions are very, very, very important. Emotional involvement of the people with the nation is the primary requisite for nationalism. It is no longer just the question of Kashmir, it is a question of the future of India, the unity of India, the territorial integrity of India, the secular fabric of India, the kinds of threat that this nation is facing. So, there has to be an emotional involvement.

Why do you think that the ISI has scored more successes in its activities in India with little or no public outcry against it or Pakistan?

Why is Pakistan succeeding where India is seemingly failing?

Because every government servant in Pakistan, serving or retired, every army officer, every intelligence officer feels emotionally involved in the cause. They all feel that their country’s defeat in 1971, which created Bangladesh, has to be avenged and India has to be made to pay a much bigger price. And all of them are committed to tearing apart Jammu and Kashmir from the rest of India. They think it is their national and patriotic duty to do so. Total and complete emotional involvement in their work - that is the driving force of the Pakistanis.

And let us admit it, that kind of emotional involvement, that kind of single-minded devotion to the national cause in palpably lacking among us.

Before we look for ways to resolving the problem, before we look for solutions, we have to be emotionally motivated in the national cause and then make a sustained attempt to mobilize the emotions of our people.

In India unfortunately, we look down upon emotions and advocate detachment in everything. But some things are best achieved only by emotions and Kashmir is a good example of it.

Two days ago I witnessed a seminar by college students on the same issue. I was shocked when student after student projected Pakistan almost with a halo around its ahead. They were quoting statistics from some Pakistani propaganda pamphlet according to which, India is spending twice as much on defense expenditure as Pakistan, and that Pakistan was spending twice as much as India on health and medicare, and education and so on and so forth.

This trend among sections of our so-called intelligentsia, to deprecate and fault our country, our leadership, our history and our politics discourages any emotional involvement with the nation. This emotional involvement is pervasively absent at the political, administrative levels and even at the level of our people. And if we are not careful, we will find that over time, we will lose the national will, political will and people’s involvement in resolving the Kashmir problem.

Therefore it is important that there should be a continuing emotional mobilization of the people on this national issue, and a continuing process of educating them on what Islamic terrorism bodes for the future of this country. We have to unite emotionally on this issue if there has to be a national will and determination to withstand this terrible situation and ultimately resolve it.

Some sections of our intellectual elite are the worst enemies of the Indian nation. I wonder how many of you read the atrocious article written by Anitha Pratap in the ‘Outlook’. She says in this article - the Indian government has been saying that the militants and terrorists fighting in Kashmir are Pakistanis and other foreign mercenaries but now Gen. Musharraf has called India’s bluff because after the declaration of the ceasefire not only has firing across the LoC been reduced but he has pulled his troops back from the LoC and that the Indian army Chief has also admitted that infiltrations across the borders has come down. But in spite of all these ‘positive’ steps by Pakistan, she says, if there is no let up in the attacks against Indian armed forces and civilians in J&K, it only proves Musharraf’s contention that there are no Pakistanis and mercenaries in Kashmir, only indigenous ‘freedom fighters’. This lady was working for the CNN let me add, and Musharraf has made millions of copies of this article and has had it circulated around the world.

When I read this kind of nonsense from our own journalists about our country, I feel utterly and completely depressed. We must feel outraged from the depths of our being and we must all come together with the determination to protect this country from the designs of this army of Islam.

I come now to the last part of my talk and will touch upon our national policy in this regard.

Do we have a policy, I am compelled to ask. We have been independent now for fifty-four years. I have served in the Government of India for thirty years and I am now a retired government servant for the past six years and let me tell you, we do not have a Pakistan policy. We never had one and we still don’t have one. It only goes to show we do not consider Pakistan, even now, to be a threat to our security and integrity.

We do not have a Kashmir policy and we do not have a national policy to deal with terrorism.

And we do not have a policy to deal with Islamic terrorism, even in the year 2001.

It is not as though we do not have the facts.

We want to close our eyes to them because we do not know how and we do not have the will do deal with them. We continue to experiment, we continue with trial and error, always reacting, never proactively dealing with the facts and the ground situation. The first step is to put down and put down resolutely the activities of these Islamic terrorists. How are we going to do this?

Let us be very clear, this is nothing short of a war, a covert war, if you will. Recently, a good friend of mine, a U.S. government official, had come to Delhi on a personal visit and expressed a wish to see me. We met and he told me we are losing our case with the international community because we are not putting across our case effectively. Not that alone, he wondered if our loud thinking on invoking TADA to deal with Islamic terrorism would make Musharraf quake in his shoes. He also wondered why the Indian government was so unwilling to acknowledge that this was a war waged against the Indian State by Pakistan and act accordingly. He also remarked that it is because we were not declaring this to be a war, that we were unable to mobilize national opinion on the question of Islamic terrorism. Similarly, he observed, we were also not sensitizing international opinion to our point of view on Pakistan and Islamic terrorism. The second thing he mentioned with regard to our State policy was that it lacked consistency. One day, we want to declare Pakistan to be a State sponsor of terrorism and on another we want to extend our hands in friendship and silence bitter critics of Pakistan and Pakistan sponsored Islamic terrorism. One day we denounce them in the strongest language and the next day we romanticize them by saying we eat the same food, we listen to the same ghazals and so on.

What I admire most about Pakistanis is their consistency. They have consistently hated us, hated the Indian nation, the Indian civilization, the Indian people. They see us as their bitterest adversaries and as a nation, which is obstructing their emergence as a strong and prosperous country. They have been consistent, since ’47, in their attempts to undermine the Indian State - politically, economically, militarily and diplomatically.

Do we, as a nation, have a consistent policy to deal with Pakistan? We blame the intelligence agencies, we blame the counter-terrorism units, and we blame this or that organization, but the truth is that we do not have a national policy to deal with Pakistan or Islamic terrorism in spite of having been victims of both repeatedly for the past fifty-four years.

People will exert themselves, and organizations will tackle their job, their assignment confidently, only when they know that the policy today, will remain the policy tomorrow and the day after. If they are not sure of the policy today or if there are apprehensions that there may not be consistency, then we cannot blame them for playing it safe, for not exerting themselves to the utmost in their operations to deal with terrorism.

One of the reasons for Pakistan being intractable and unheeding of any pressure is the confidence that India would never declare conventional war against it for fear of reprisal with nuclear weapons and the possibility of a full-scale nuclear war. This may be true, but there is another reason for their brazenness too. Pakistan has been allowed to wreak havoc in India with no cost to itself. The Indian government has not made it pay for its adventurism in Indian territory. Yes, people have been killed, some 8000 persons or so; but these have been the mullahs waging jehad and their students, eager to die for the cause. These people think it is glorious to kill a non-muslim in jehad and even more glorious to be killed when killing a non-muslim. The concept of martyrdom, and so there is no dearth of mullahs and their students willing to die in their attempts at stoking terrorism in India. There has been almost no casualty within the Pakistani armed forces, whereas the 2000 persons killed from our side have been our soldiers, our policemen and our para-military forces.

Thus there has been no cost to the Pakistani State, its armed forces or its civilian population. Pakistan sends its jehadis to fight us and perhaps to get killed in the process; but there is little or no problem from this to their society. To deal with covert war, it is obvious we must have counter-covert war capability, counter-covert war doctrine. To deal with terrorism you need a counter-terrorism capability, a counter-terrorism doctrine. We have a nuclear doctrine but in spite of the fact that for several decades now we are faced with terrorism and insurgency, the Government of India is yet to devise a counter-terrorism or counter-insurgency doctrine. Things are discussed and executed in an ad hoc manner. There have been calls for hot pursuit in dealing with terrorists who hit and run. Let me tell you hot pursuit would never work. If any of you has been to J&K and know the terrain, will also know that it is impossible. A sagacious counter-covert war strategy would be for us to choose our terrain. You should not operate against Pakistan in a terrain, which suits them, you must choose a terrain where there are people sympathetic to India, who may be considered allies and supporters, or choose a terrain which will cause the most damage to the Pakistani State and people.

We learn all the wrong things from the U.S. See how the Reagan administration dealt with communism and the erstwhile USSR - with the policy of confrontation and engagement. Reagan engaged Gorbachev in talks, he held talks with the USSR at various levels but he also told his policy makers and the executors, never to relent in their efforts to destabilize the communist society and nation. Keep talking to them at the table but also keep hitting at their knees under the table, was what he told them.

And this is what we must do with Pakistan - send strong signals that if they remain intractable, if they continue with their covert warfare against the Indian State, they will be made to pay a heavy price. We must bleed them economically, bleed them politically and in other ways. Just because we are talking with Pakistan should not mean that we let our guard down. Far from it, we must keep hitting them at the knees like Reagan did with the Gorbachev administration. Unfortunately for us we have not had any decisive, coherent and consistent policy with regard to Pakistan or Kashmir. It has been an on again, off again, on again methodology that we have adopted to deal with Pakistan and Islamic terrorism.

Before we start talking of a lasting solution to the Kashmir problem, we have to put an end to the war decisively. We must begin with devising a concrete doctrine with regard to Islamic terrorism, Pakistan and insurgency. We also need to create agencies within this country, which will carry on the counter-covert war against Pakistan. There are any number of instances of nations which are victims of covert warfare, waging relentless counter-covert warfare against the aggressors. And we should remember, no matter what the solution may be for the problem and no matter that India and Pakistan agree to some solution, whatever it may be, it will not have any meaning, it cannot be implemented unless it has the support of the people - the people of Jammu, Ladakh and the valley - of all the Muslim denominations, of the Hindus and the Buddhists. But before the government talks to the people of the State, the government must be in a position of strength and must have the confidence that it can succeed in implementing the solution. And any government, which arrives at a solution, must create a consensus with all the major national political parties - the National Conference, the BJP, the Congress, and the Communist parties.

So the first requirement in the search for a political solution is to evolve a national consensus on how to deal with the problem on the ground, how to deal with it politically, what should be the modality for talks with our people in the state, what should be the modality of the talks which we may want to hold with Pakistan in the future, and what should be the contours of any possible solution. As I said before, the NC, the Congress and the Communist parties have a very strong presence in the valley. Now if you take the National Conference, its influence in the politics of the state, particularly the valley, is pervasive. Those of you who know Farooq Abdullah, know him to be a very courageous man. He may have his faults but I will narrate only one incident to illustrate not only his courage but also his loyalty to India.

In October 1993, the European Union held a round table conference on Kashmir to discuss, as usual, the human rights situation there. The government of India was keen to have someone present India’s position on the issue, to counter the propaganda of Pakistan, which was represented by the Hizbul-mujahideen, and the Al Badr group. When Farooq Abdullah, who was in London at that time, heard about this, he caught the next flight to Brussels and strongly countered and refuted all the arguments put forth by the Pakistani Islamic extremists. He was abused and heckled by the Pakistani groups and the groups from PoK but he stood his ground. In 1994, the human rights convention took place in Geneva. The present prime minister was a part of the Indian delegation and so was Salman Khursheed of the Congress. The Government of India felt that the team should also comprise of a Kashmiri who may speak on behalf of the Indian government and we therefore approached Farooq Abdullah who was then in New York. He flew to Geneva immediately and once again he was abused and heckled by the groups from Pakistan, PoK and pro-Pakistan Kashmiri militants. He stood firm in Geneva too and strongly defended the Indian government’s stand on Kashmir. He is one man in Kashmir who has consistently stayed loyal to the Indian union and we must therefore guard ourselves against being manipulated by Pakistan or the Hurriyat into sidelining Farooq in Kashmir or minimizing his standing in the politics of J&K. Doing so would be a major catastrophe because there are few leaders of his stature in J&K today who will stand firm on J&K being an integral part of India and who will be partners with the Indian government in finding a political solution to the problem. We have to do everything to strengthen the position of Farooq Abdullah and the National Conference in J&K, because as of now, there is no other nationalist alternative with comparable strength, to it in the state.

Last year he had a resolution passed in the J&K assembly demanding autonomy for the state but within the provisions of the Indian Constitution. We may not agree with the demand but there is nothing wrong in his making the demand on behalf of the state. You show infinite flexibility in dealing with Pakistan, you show flexibility when dealing with the Hurriyat, you show flexibility in dealing with Pakistani and pro-Pakistani organizations operating against the Indian State, but we are seen to be inflexible in dealing with a man who has consistently declared that the state of J&K will remain an integral part of India. Not that alone, when people who have no stake in the country or the country’s affairs like Anitha Pratap and her ilk, people who are the star performers in any anti-India conference held abroad, it is Farooq Abdullah who has been the staunchest supporter of the Indian government and the Indian security forces. When he is talking of autonomy, sit down and talk to him about autonomy. Because whatever presence the NC has in the valley, it is in the national interest to strengthen their presence and make them integral to any move or solution that we adopt to end the problem in J&K.

Now coming to the issue of talks with other Kashmiri groups and organizations about the future political dispensation in the state, there are two aspects to it.

The first - talks with Pakistan. We have to talk to Pakistan because Pakistan is claiming the territory for itself and even if we are not going to concede any further partitioning of this country, Pakistan is treating the problem as one of territorial dispute. And for it is worth, except for Iraq and Russia, the rest of the world, including some of the S.E. Asian countries, even if they do not say so openly, look upon Kashmir as disputed territory. So we have to deal with Pakistan on this issue, one way or the other. But the present time is not propitious for these talks. It will be counter-productive now to talk to Pakistan on Kashmir. But we must stick to our stand that we will restart our dialogue with Pakistan only after Pakistan stops this cross-border covert warfare and reigns in the army of Islam. Until such time it is not for us to talk of ceasefire. It is Pakistan, which will have to ceasefire and convince us that it is willing to talk to us without the shadow of Islamic terrorism hanging over the Indian State and her people.

The Indian government should not dilute its stand on this issue and while it may resume dialogue with Pakistan on other bilateral issues, we must be adamant about not discussing Kashmir with Pakistan until it has stopped exporting terrorism into our territory. We must make some things very clear to all parties concerned. The local Kashmiri groups have no locus standi to influence in any way the dialogue between the governments of India and Pakistan. Similarly, Pakistan or any other country has no locus standi and cannot influence the nature of the talks or the nature of any talks that the Indian government may undertake with the local Kashmiri groups or influence the nature of any future political solution that we may seek to bring about. And we must declare our stand firmly to the rest of the world - no matter what the pressure they bring to bear on us, no matter what the threat they hold over our heads, India’s national security and territorial integrity are India’s concern alone and we cannot allow the rest of the world to tell us how we should go about it.

Now I will come to the very last part of my talk - the mindset of Pakistan, the mindset of a nation that was created by partition, a partition based on demography, religious demography, to be precise. I have been observing this country for several decades now and I have dealt with this topic for many years.

I have met every political leader in Pakistan except Nawaz Sharrif, I have sat across the table with them to talk, I have held discussions with them over tea and coffee and over drinks, and all of them, without exception, including Wali Khan, son of the venerable Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, all of them, are past masters in the art of dissimulation. They will make you feel that you are a long-lost brother, they will hug you and shower you with warmth and affection, and then they will stab you in the back. All of them. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was like that, Zia -ul-Haq was like that and Musharraf is twice as wily as the rest of them. They may say anything to our faces but it will be the grossest mistake to accept anything any of these leaders may say at face value. We have to be very careful about how we deal with them.

A word about the Pakistani army, I would like to conclude with - their mindset. There are some six or seven points that I would like to make in this regard.

The Pakistani army collectively, every individual soldier included, believes that a Muslim soldier is better motivated and a better soldier, any day when compared to a Hindu soldier. And this, notwithstanding all the defeats that Pakistan has suffered at India’s hands in every war that it has provoked, including the war of 1971. They believe, and they are conditioned to believe, that in any prolonged war or a battle of nerves, a Muslim army will ultimately prevail over a Hindu army.

When Zia-ul Haq was the head of the Pakistani establishment, the conventional military doctrine which they inherited from Sandhurst, and which we too inherited and have since modified, they now call it the Islamic military doctrine.

There are two important components to this doctrine.

1. The first - religious motivation as a force multiplier in the armed forces.

2. The second - the use of jehad, which is an accepted mode of warfare for any Islamic State.

All the previous military rulers of Pakistan, Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, and Zia-ul-Haq believed jehad to be a legitimate mode of warfare for Pakistan as an Islamic State. They all subscribed to this Islamic military doctrine although none of them spoke openly about it. Gen.Musharraf is the first ruler of Pakistan, civil or military, to ever openly justify the use of jehad for achieving Pakistan’s objective against India. And the military establishment has convinced itself that it was the successful application of this doctrine against the Soviet troops, which led to the defeat of the Soviet army in Afghanistan. And they believe that if they apply the Islamic military doctrine long enough against Indian security forces and make them bleed there, they too, like the Soviet troops, will one day become wearied enough, demoralized enough to vacate Kashmir and that the state of J&K will be handed to them on a platter.

They also believe that because they now have the nuclear weapons capability, India will never retaliate by starting a full-fledged conventional war against them for fear of a nuclear retaliation by Pakistan and they believe that Hindu India does not have the stomach to initiate or withstand a nuclear war. And that is the reason why Pakistan, behind the firewall of nuclear capability has been allowed to wreak this havoc on the Indian State with impunity, with no cost at all to its country or its people.

Musharraf has also been saying that we can afford to wait for Kashmir to drop into our laps. What is more important is to keep the Indian security forces bleeding in Kashmir and in other parts of India. While the intellectual elite in India is talking about normalizing relations with Pakistan, what Musharraf has been saying is, even if we ultimately manage to tear Kashmir away from India, it is not in Pakistan’s national interest to allow India to rest in peace. ‘We cannot allow India to emerge as a regional power, economically, politically or militarily. So we have to do everything to keep India in a continual state of instability’. And because it is not in China’s or Japan’s interests to have India