CIAO DATE: 3/00

Ethnic Conflict in South Asia

P. Sahadevan

June 1999

Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies

 

Introduction

A tumultuous region with a common cultural background and shared political experience, South Asia occupies a prominent place in the global map of ethnic conflict. Many groups have fiercely fought with each other, laid siege on the state, frustrated its nation-building efforts, and burnt bridges to capture the larger consciousness of the international community. In comparison, the region is unique in many ways from the standpoint of ethnicity, use of violence and approach to peace. First, it is one of the world’s most complex regions with multi-ethnic societies, characterized by striking internal divisions along linguistic, regional, communal and sectarian lines, but externally linked to one another across national boundaries. Yet, multiculturalism or pluralism as a guiding principle of governance is hardly adopted into the popular political culture of the region. A probable exception is India where different ethnic groups, at least in principle, enjoy ‘equally’ a modicum of political space for cultural and political autonomy. But there, multicultural arrangements are hindered by the Center’s intrusion into the affairs of political institutions, leading to political decay and rupture in center-periphery relations. The manner and the extent of state intervention in promoting the politico-economic interests of groups, therefore, determine the dynamics of conflict.

Second, religion and language as components of ethnic identity are important in dividing as well as integrating groups in strife-torn societies. Thus, in Sri Lanka, language is a basis for intra-group unity amidst an internal cleavage along religious lines, whereas ethnic groups in Pakistan are divided along linguistic lines even though they share a common religion. In Bhutan, Buddhism forms an integrative force among the linguistically divided Bhutanese against the Nepalese speaking Hindu migrants from Nepal. As regards India, language unifies many groups in conflict and religion remains the main source of cleavage and conflict in a few cases—notably in Punjab and Kashmir. Only in Bangladesh, both religion and language provide the basis for inter-group division and intra-group unity.

Third the East Pakistani crisis and many others are only equaled by some of the worst conflicts of the African states as far as the intensity of violence and human and material cost are concerned. Fourth, a rare expansion of ethnic conflict from internal to international also occurred in South Asia. The India-Pakistan War (1971) was remarkable in the annals of post-war history because it led to the first ever secession of a country (Bangladesh) in the world. Fifth, despite the high intensity of ethnic violence and the concomitant large-scale loss of lives, international peacemaking has been the least desired option by regional states, and a low-priority issue on the global agenda. Thus, in each case, the national investment in violence far exceeds investment in peace process. Sixth, the region has some of the world’s most protracted conflicts that continue (for instance, in India’s northeastern state of Nagaland) as a low-key military affair without an end. Seventh, the structural framework of the region—incorporating features such as close geographical proximity, socio-cultural linkages and inter-dependent politico-strategic relations of states—creates internal pressures for regionalization of ethnic conflict as an inevitable part of political life.

Finally, given the intense cross-boundary ethnic linkages, and deep class and ethnic cleavages in most of the societies, each conflict is interlocked with another in a number of ways:

Conflicts converge or nest in social space in a way that groups coalesce as “allies against an adversary or coalition of adversaries.” ₁ Most of the militant groups in India’s northeast have forged operational coordination or strategic alliances against the Central government in their separate fight for their cause. A military nexus between Khalistan and Kashmir militants seemed to have existed during the Punjab crisis. While waging a war against the Sri Lankan Army and the Indian Peacekeeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had allegedly cultivated or developed military network with a number of militant groups in India. At the height of the movement for Baluchistan there was a convergence of Baluch and Pakhtun forces against the Pakistani government. Later, in 1986, the Sindhis joined them to form a common political front. The Chakma rebels of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh maintained military contacts with the insurgents in India’s northeast.

Cross-cutting of conflicts occurs on the basis of “division within and across adversaries or among a set of adversaries allying themselves differently on several issues of contention.” ₂ It has been empirically proved that adversaries in ethnic conflict have weak structures and lack group cohesion. The cleavage, both in the political incumbent’s structure (representing the group which controls the government) and the minority/weaker group, occurs along the lines of personality or ideological or tactical differences, either before the outbreak or during the course of the conflict. This creates a structure of multiple adversaries within and across the group. Each minority/weaker party—focal or splinter—in a conflict, therefore, faces challenges both from within its group as well as the other main adversarial group, and the political incumbent normally tackles the ‘combined’ challenges of all the forces drawn from the weaker/minority ethnic group. In the case of the weaker/minority ethnic group, one party confronts more than one adversary at the intra- and inter-group levels. As far as the political incumbent is concerned, the confrontation is primarily at the inter-group level. Thus, while governments in South Asia have confronted multiple adversaries representing minority/weaker ethnic groups, as shown in table 1, intra-group division itself has caused intense power rivalry and competition among the same clan group members. In the process, a number of militant groups have been either completely decimated or considerably militarily weakened as happened in Sri Lanka (where the LTTE emerged as a formidable force) and India’s northeast and Punjab.

Conflicts concur in the sense that there is a simultaneous involvement of one focal party as an adversary in many conflicts with different groups. India is by far the most notable concurrent adversary as it is engaged, at a time, in multiple contests with several ethnic groups—Nagas, Mizos, Sikhs, Kashmiris, Bodos, Assamese, Tripuris, and Meiteis. Pakistan has also been a concurrent party in conflict with the Pakhtuns, Baluchis, Mohajirs and Sindhis.

Conflicts overlap when demands of two groups, which otherwise have a common adversary, infringe on each other’s core interests, leading to a triangular contest between all three parties. The Bodos’ demand for a separate Bodo state within India is opposed by an ultra-Assamese nationalist group—the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA)—which spearheads a movement for a sovereign state of Assam. Both of the groups consider the Central government as a common adversary. The conflict in Pakistan’s Sindh involves a triangular fight—between the Sindhis, the Central government and the Mohajirs—because the demand for a separate Mohajir province poses a challenge to Sindhi nationalism and the Punjabi-dominated Center has been seen as inimical to the ethnic interests of both the groups.

Contagion of conflict occurs in the process of one ethnic movement becoming an incentive for another group to assert its rights and articulate its demands. The separate state demand of the Nagas provided the political stimuli for many ethno-nationalist movements in northeast India. Also, the moderate Sri Lankan Tamil parties’ demand for a single Tamil linguistic unit in northeastern Sri Lanka has influenced the Sri Lankan Muslims’ claim for a separate Muslim province in the East.

Grievance sharing in an inter-locked conflict situation denotes a simultaneous contest of two different groups against a common adversary arising out of a single cause and for the same goal. The Baluch and Pakhtun movements, for instance, held a common grievance against the Punjabi-dominated Central government and a common goal of federal autonomy, at least at some points of time.

The inter-locking nature of these conflicts makes it easier for them to escalate and spread, and harder to resolve. Many conflicts have become more violent than others, and less amenable to a negotiated settlement; some have been suppressed as a result of the prolonged use of force by the state. Against this backdrop, the present paper seeks to analyze the linkages between ethnic conflict and militarism, and their challenges to peace in South Asia.

 

Creating Conflict: Grievances, Facilitation, and Preparation

The many ethnic conflicts in the post-colonial period reflect South Asia’s complex inter-group interactions. Out of 18 conflicts, within the span of five decades, India witnessed ten, followed by five in Pakistan and one each in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Bhutan (see table 2). The use of violence is not uniform and the structural dimension of conflict has varied in each case, indicating sharp differences in the parties’ goals and strength. Ten conflicts have been secessionist, with six groups demanding autonomy and two groups (Baluch and Pakhtun) having mixed goal preferences, articulated in terms of autonomy, secessionism, and irredentism. At least three secessionist movements—East Pakistan, Khalistan, and Eelam—originated from the mismanagement of autonomy demands, thereby indicating a trend towards conflict escalation. One conflict (in Mizoram) followed a secessionist-autonomist-secessionist cycle.

Sources of Grievance

A group’s grievances and the nature of the state response to its problems determine goal setting and articulation. In South Asia the underlying grievances and interests of groups that characterize an ethnic conflict are multifarious, and the proximate causes of a bitter group contest are entrenched in the political process itself. Grievances of some groups have arisen from the post-colonial process of ‘national territorial formation’ when ‘border minority groups’ found their voice of dissent subdued by the coercive state apparatus. For those who nurtured hopes for a separate nation-state on the ground that they had been autonomous political entities in the pre-colonial period, the national boundary setting on the eve of de-colonization was unjust and arbitrary. In India, as many as five ethnic movements—in Nagaland, Mizoram, Manipur, Assam and Kashmir—are rooted in what may be called the ‘feeling of betrayal’ or the legacy of colonial rule. The mainstream Naga, Mizo, Meitei and Assamese nationalists have questioned the coercive or manipulated integration of their ethnic territories into the Indian union, and made a strong claim for separate statehood. ₃ Although the Kashmir question involves complex interactive-factors linked to national and regional politics the root cause lies in the dissentient way the state was integrated into India. ₄ Similarly, the Baluch minority found its forcible inclusion in Pakistan arbitrary and sought to regain the independence of its ‘nation’ that was lost to the Punjabi-dominated Pakistani State because of the ‘divide and rule’ policy of the British. ₅

In any case, the issue of forcible territorial integration was not the sole source of grievance building for such groups. It provided the base for the rise of more serious inter-related problems, leading to solidification of their grievances. Some groups, which lost their territorial identity to the dominant groups of their region, have even become frightened of their assimilation as the eventual outcome of arbitrary ethnic boundary maintenance. To ensure their survival, they have articulated demands for a territorial complex based on their ethnicity. The Bodo Kacharis, an Indo-Mongoloid group with strong cultural moorings, fear that they will go down the way of many other plain tribes, who have been absorbed over the years into the larger Assamese ethnic fold, if their ethnic territoriality is not clearly demarcated and recognized. ₆ Similarly, fuelled by socio-economic discontent, Meitei cultural revivalism, marked by the group’s desire to shed its Vaishnavist tradition, essentially consists of rejecting Hindu cultural hegemony.

The Sikh community has cultivated a fear of absorption into Hinduism, which provided the necessary impetus to the Khalistan movement in Punjab. It arose mainly from two sources: a perceived decline of Sikh religious and cultural ethos as marked by the growing tendency among the modern educated Jat Sikh youth to dispense with the distinct symbols of their faith, and Hindu traditions which treated Sikhism as a ‘sword arm of Hinduism’. ₇ Thus, the Sikh nationalists sought to link their survival as a separate ethnic group to the vesting of political power in the hands of the community at large. Extinction of the group, they argued, was imminent if it continued to depend on the Center for political power. Similarly, in Bhutan, the strict enforcement of Drupka cultural code on all the Bhutanese and the compulsory teaching of Dzongkha—the official language—in schools have created a fear of assimilation among the Nepalese, ₈ who counter assimilatory pressures.

If the fear of assimilation has mostly haunted those group members who have lived amidst the dominant groups, the fear of marginalization is a result of the out-group domination over the indigenous group. An out-group lacks a historical linkage with the ethnic territory of the indigenous group but has become a part of it as a result of either of the two processes: voluntary migration or state sponsored colonization. The migratory process is unassisted and does not carry, at least initially, the calculated task of dislodging the indigenous group from power and position. Colonization is a political program with strong ethnic considerations; the aim is to neutralize the position of the indigenous group and convert it into a minority in its own territory through an ethnic-oriented, state-sponsored policy of demographic engineering. In both situations, ethnic competition is the inevitable result.

The conflict in India’s Tripura is a direct result of the out-group influx into the state from West Bengal and former East Pakistan, rendering the dominant indigenous Tripuris a minority in their own ethnic territory. Their loss of political power and tribal land to the migrants has been the formidable source of ethnic upheaval in the tribal region. ₉ Meitei sub-nationalism in Manipur has tremendous anti-alien overtones, arising from the group’s economic and political deprivation created by large-scale settlement of Nepalese and Bangladeshi migrants. For Assamese nationalism to attain militancy, the out-group (from Bangladesh) influx into the state played an important role. ₁₀ The Gorkhas of Darjeeling district considered economic domination of out-groups—Bengalis and tribal migrants from Bihar—in the hill region a threat to their interests. ₁₁ As for the conflict involving the Sindhi sons of the soil and out-groups such as Mohajirs, Pakhtuns and Punjabis, the fundamental cause has been the growth of these out-groups to the extent that the indigenous group was faced with demographic, political and economic marginalization. ₁₂ The migrant Nepalese also root the ethnic conflict in Bhutan in the majority Drukpa community’s fear of domination. The 1977 and 1985 citizenship acts attempted to prevent the emergence of any minority ethnic challenge to the Drukpa rule and ensure that power was permanently vested in the majority community. ₁₃ For the Nepalese the stringent citizenship provisions and the cultural policy of the government meant a state-sponsored program to achieve their extinction as an ethnic group.

The Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi governments followed a policy of ethnic colonization that touched a raw nerve among the Sri Lankan Tamils and the tribal people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) respectively. The resettlement of a large number of rural Sinhalese in the Eastern Province was a direct threat to the ‘traditional homeland’ of the Sri Lankan Tamils. ₁₄ In total disregard to the CHT Regulation of 1900, the concerted efforts of successive Bangladesh regimes to colonize the tribal land with large-scale settlement of land-less Bengalis proved disastrous to tribal interests in the region. ₁₅ These groups protect their ethnic territoriality as a necessary indicator of their survival by organizing protest movements against the Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi State.

While the planned alteration of ethnic landscape is a serious political program that de-links territoriality from the targeted group’s identity, it is not the sole step towards the ethnic extinction of the minorities. In South Asia the hegemonic majorities who control states have resorted to several other deceitful tactics and discriminatory policies against the contesting-minorities, consolidating their position at the expense of the latter’s fundamental interests. Inter-ethnic relations are a state-controlled partisan affair, in that the majority considers itself generous towards the helpless minority whose very presence is, in the opinion of the former, on its sufferance. Discrimination against the minorities is, therefore, a ‘state subject’ and the resultant heightening sense of ‘deprivation’ in the group is the core cause of the conflict.

For a number of South Asian minorities the denial of equal cultural and politico-economic rights is the worst threat to their survival. The majority groups, in the process of establishing their hegemony, have used state power to homogenize the society by imposing their language on the resistant minorities. The Punjabi and the Sinhalese ruling elite of Pakistan and Sri Lanka respectively have gained the notorious distinction of being the first to adopt a policy of homogenization vis-à-vis minorities. The declaration of Urdu as the national language in Pakistan and Sinhalese as the official language in Sri Lanka in the 1950’s sowed the seeds of ethnic discontent and rivalry. ₁₆ Although the Pakistani government was forced to accord parity to Bengali, and the Sri Lankan government made provisions for a reasonable use of Tamil, the grievances of both the groups—Bengalis and Sri Lankan Tamils—did not end there. The rise of militant Mizo nationalism arose from the group’s feeling of cultural alienation from the predominantly Assamese ethnic territory. The minority Mizos remained under the cultural and linguistic domination of the Assamese until 1972 when Mizoram was made a Union Territory.

As a part of the strategy of minority marginalization, some majoritarian governments have openly demonstrated ‘internal colonialism’. Economic exploitation coupled with resource denial governed the ethnic policies of the ruling elite. The East Pakistani conflict is the most pertinent case in which discriminatory resource allocation policies of the Pakistani elite created economic disparity between West and East Pakistan. Economic development in West Pakistan was vigorously pursued at the East’s expense. Access to government position was highly difficult for the East Pakistanis, as the Center restricted their share to less than 30 percent of the bureaucracy and 10 percent in defense services. ₁₇ Following the abortive attempt of the Khan of Kalat to consolidate the Baluch territories on a linguistic basis the Center unleashed economic repression in two ways: discrimination against the Baluch in government service, and allocation of funds for developmental work. Simultaneously, the Center appropriated the lion’s share of profits from harnessing the natural resources of the province. ₁₈ Perceptions of relative deprivation arising from political discrimination caused the conflict in Sindh involving the Mohajirs and the Central government. Once a flourishing community, which held a larger representation among the national elite, the Mohajirs lost their share of government jobs, and public and private enterprise. At the same time, deprived of their language rights initially (until 1972), the Sindhis remained disproportionately under-represented in national life and government institutions, owing to what their leaders called as ‘Punjabi-Muhajir imperialism.’ ₁₉ In Sri Lanka the open discriminatory policies of the Center developed a strong sense of relative deprivation among the Sri Lankan Tamils. Their representation in higher education and bureaucracy dwindled with every passing year since the early 1970’s, and inferior resource allocation to the Tamil-dominated provinces guided by narrow ethnic considerations created greater economic disparities. ₂₀ The Tamil nationalists interpreted this discriminatory treatment as a highly-politicized ethnic policy to create a dependent structure in their relations with the majority-controlled Center.

The sense of relative deprivation among people of the CHT has grown out of the Center’s lopsided development programs that benefited the Bengalis more than the tribal population. The ethnic policy, in the tribal nationalists’ view, subjugated their people to Bengali rule at the Center, in which the government played a partisan role in the resource competition between the two groups. ₂₁ Their political discontentment among the Mizos inter-played with economic deprivation arising from neglected development in the hill region, and heightened by the Center and the State (Assam) governments’ apathy towards their suffering during the 1959 famine. ₂₂ For Assamese nationalism to attain a militant dimension, the ULFA played upon the Central government’s allegedly discriminatory treatment in sharing the benefits of oil, tea and forest resources. New Delhi is, in its view, an exploiter who contributed to economic and infrastructure underdevelopment in the state. A sense of powerlessness arose in people’s mind out of their experience with the Centre, which did not honor its commitment to implement the 1985 Assam Accord. ₂₃ The grievances of the Meiteis arose from unfulfilled economic aspirations linked to the recognition of their ethnic territoriality. The denial of reservation in education and employment coupled with the extension of these rights to the hill tribes, led to their feeling of deprivation. The growing disparity in power and position between the Tripuris and non-tribes caused the Tripuris’ increased sense of relative deprivation. The same issue factored in the Gorkhaland movement; as the problem of unemployment grew in Darjeeling and the West Bengal government continued to concentrate its development activities in the plains, a sense of discrimination and deprivation arose among the hill people.

Minority grievances are a product of competitive ethnic relations, in which ‘power’ is a critical variable. Ethnic conflict is a form of ‘struggle for power’ between one group that controls power and institutions (the majority in most cases) and another that seeks to acquire power (mostly the minority). Each group has a goal of countering the other to capture power and position. The political incumbent group seeks power through its centralizing tendencies and intrusive behavior (into the cultural and political space provided for the weaker minority). The minority group insists on power sharing with the majority as the basis for interethnic amity, because it believes that its weak position in the structure of power relations is the fundamental cause for all its problems. It is therefore, a contest involving the majoritarian ethnic ideology facing a real or perceived threat, from the minority/weaker ethno-nationalist assertion for equality aimed at ensuring its survival from the threat of the powerful majority.

Ethnic power rivalry in South Asia invariably involves two sets of groups—a national majority versus a regional majority, and a national minority (which is otherwise a regional majority) versus a regional minority. The first pair of parties forms the standard set found in most conflicts; only a few conflicts have parties belonging to the second category. ₂₄ The level of threat that each group faces and its capability to undertake offensive or defensive tactics determines the variations in the nature and intensity of power-contest. In Pakistan, where the Punjabis dominate the highly centralized garrison state structure, the rise of provincial power centers was not allowed at all. Nor was the dominant ethnic group prepared for any meaningful power-sharing arrangement with the regional majorities. Punjabis vetoed rule by the national majority (East Bengalis) at the Center, even after the electoral verdict went in the Bengalis’ favor. This display of hegemony by the Punjabi power elite evoked counter-measures and militant defensive postures from minority groups as an assertion of their equality. The East Pakistanis countered the Punjabi hegemony with a demand for federal autonomy and after their right to govern the country was denied in 1971, they demanded a separate Bengali state. The survival of the group in every sense—culturally, economically and politically—was linked to vesting power in the hands of the East Bengalis whom the Punjabi power elite viewed as a threat to their hegemony. ₂₅ The Zulfikar Ali Bhutto government followed Ayub Khan’s ethnic policy and ignored its bitter lessons by stifling the Baluch nationalists’ aspirations for autonomy and intruding too much into their provincial affairs. The dissolution of the National Awami Party (NAP)—Jamiat Ulema-I-Islam (JUI) controlled provincial government in 1973 on partisan grounds, and the withdrawal of powers to the elected leadership set the stage for the Baluch nationalist movement against an intolerant Central government. The Pakhtun nationalists shared the same grievances with the Center for its authoritarian control of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), its use of coercive tactics to frustrate their federal autonomy aspirations, and its strategy of political co-option to divide their movement. ₂₆ The Sindhi nationalists insisted on provincial autonomy and dissolution of the ‘One Unit’ scheme, which perpetrated Punjabi hegemonic rule as much over Sindhis as other minority ethnic groups.

In Sri Lanka, the contest for power is the direct result of the majoritarian thrust of the post-colonial state that left little leeway for local power dispersal. This structural framework evolved from constant tensions and perceptional differences between the Sri Lankan Tamils—who consider themselves a dependent group—and the Sinhalese who have an ingrained feeling of vulnerability and fear of extinction. While the former group places its faith in the federal framework as an effective safeguard against Sinhalese majoritarianism, the latter believes that a powerful Center can alone contain the threatening fissiparous tendencies of the Tamils. ₂₇ The Central government’s intrusive behavior and hegemonic control over the hill tribes in Bangladesh increased their grievances and strengthened their alienation. Treating the autonomy demand of the tribal nationalists as a secessionist challenge to Bengali nationalism and as a conspiracy against the sovereignty of Bangladesh, successive regimes in Dhaka used political and military power to contain autonomy aspirations. ₂₈ The resultant alienation of the tribal minority from the national mainstream provided the source for a calamitous ethnic conflict.

Although the assertion of cultural and religious nationalism formed the mainspring of the Punjab conflict, the political context in which it became a force cannot be ignored. Sikh nationalists believed that the Indian political system was highly centralized because the Union government exercised hegemonic control over Punjab through constitutional subversion. The party in power at the Center made undue partisan political interventions aimed at strengthening its electoral interests and de-legitimizing the claims of Sikh nationalism. ₂₉ Thus a desire for political power vested in the Sikh community arose, as demanded by the Anandpur Sahib Resolution (1973). Secession became the goal of the militant nationalists when the autonomist movement of the Akali Dal did not make any impact on the Center’s lackadaisical approach to their problem. Institutional decay in Kashmir resulting from constitutional subversion and electoral manipulation by the ruling Congress party provided the necessary impetus for ethnic resurgence and the outbreak of insurgency. ₃₀ Even though the Dravidian nationalists emphasized the distinctiveness of Tamil identity as the basis for their secessionist demand, the grievances of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) stemmed from the domination of the Hindi-nationalists over the state. ₃₁ Assam nationalists perceive that India’s democratic process helped the “capitalist forces” in Delhi to exploit their state economically and threatened to destroy their “nation.” A separate ‘socialist Assam’ is, therefore, found in the ideological construction of the ULFA as an essential condition for the liberation of the Assamese from New Delhi’s imperial rule. ₃₂

Thus, grievance-formation that initiates ethnic conflict is a dynamic process in which each group, differing in ethno-ideological and value structures, consolidates and promotes its identity and material interests from the threat or invalidating behavior of other groups. ₃₃ Ethnic conflict is rooted in a situation where one group’s core sense of ‘self’ (identity)-‘interest’ is perceivably or actually threatened by the demands of or denials by another group, thereby eliciting the former group’s defensive response. For each group, the fulfillment and acceptance of the other’s ‘self-interest’ amounts to the annihilation or undermining of its own ‘self’ and eroding of its own ‘interest.’ It is against this competitive framework of ethnic relations that we identify the proximate causes for ethnic conflicts in South Asia.

Proximate Causes

Proximate causes facilitate conditions that interplay with escalating group grievances, in the process leading to the conflict. There are at least five proximate causes of ethnic conflicts in South Asia; not all of them figure uniformly in every conflict.

Partisan Role of the State: In a conflict-ridden multiethnic society, the state behaves more as an agent of the dominant or majority group than as an arbitrator of conflicting interests of groups. ₃₄ This forms a powerful source for group conflict. Indeed, in many cases, the state is taken ‘captive’ by the powerful group to solely serve its ethnic interests while the hapless minority or weaker group faces threat from the same institution on which it relies for protection, equality and prosperity. It is, therefore, a conflict between the majoritarian state versus the minority/weaker ethnic group members who feel completely alienated from the national mainstream due to the ethnicification of the polity. There is not much hope for corrective political action as the majority-controlled state, in the face of minority challenges, consolidates its position through the use of coercive tactics. As feelings of alienation run high, there may be a corresponding increase in the minority group’s determination to fight the strong central government. Thus, mounting ethnic violence is an indication of the state’s failure to maintain order in a plural society, and not necessarily the state’s collapse as far as the experience in South Asia is concerned. ₃₅

In Pakistan, as a prelude to the outbreak of many ethnic conflicts, the state became an instrument of the Punjabis who used state power to achieve their ethnic supremacy. The Sri Lankan State became predominantly Sinhalese-Buddhist, and undermined the legitimate aspirations of minorities to bolster the position of the majority. In the eyes of the Drupka State in Bhutan, the Nepalese are intruders who do not deserve equal treatment by the state. The Bangladeshi State sought to foster and promote Bengali interests at the expense of tribal interests in the CHT. In India, alienation of many conflicting groups arises primarily from the state’s indifferent attitude to their problems and its use of coercive tactics to subdue their dissent and demands. For some, it is not always the state but its “deinstitutionalization”, marked by normative and organizational vacuum, which has led to the growth of conflicts in India. ₃₆

Weak Mediating Structures: When the State becomes captive to dominant ethnic majorities there are hardly any independent institutions to mediate the conflicts between disgruntled ethnic communities and the majoritarian Centers. The relevant intermediary institutions are primarily the representative organs of an ethnicized unitary system; they are either weak or subdued in an ethnicized federal polity. Instead of evolving cooperative relationships between the majority and minority groups, consensus-building among the dominant group members aims to consolidate their position vis-à-vis other groups. There is, therefore, hardly any useful role for ‘quasi-intermediary’ ₃₇ forces in evolving an inter-ethnic compromise because they are either subdued or integrated into the system or group’s ideology. Politics is all about ethnicity and ethnicity is so much politicized that parties do not have a cross-boundary ethnic representative character in many cases, thereby losing an effective method of harmonizing diverse ethnic group-interests. As a corollary, a representative institution like Parliament, instead of providing a mediating structure, in many cases, is a mere rubber-stamp of the dominant group which uses it for ethnic-legislative enactment to promote its interests at the cost of the weaker groups. Such behavior is hardly questionable, as it cannot be subjected to any judicial scrutiny.

The experience of South Asia testifies to the above arguments, providing a set of proximate causes for the outbreak of ethnic conflicts. Barring India, the political framework in other South Asian countries evolved either by itself or was constructed by ethno-political entrepreneurs to undermine intermediary structures so necessary for managing inter-ethnic group tensions. The Punjabi-dominated civil-military Pakistani bureaucracy and Parliament, in the process of implementing a dominant ethnic ideology, lost their credibility as impartial institutions. Worse, the frequent breakdown of electoral processes after the military junta assumed power added another dimension to the de-legitimization of otherwise weakened mediatory institutions. Though electoral process has been highly competitive in Sri Lanka, the majority-minority ethic population ratio is such that the dominance of either of the two Sinhalese parties—the United National Party (UNP) or the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP)—in Parliament is always ensured. Instead of operating as genuine mediating structures, the Sinhalese-controlled institutions and mechanisms promote conflicts between the communities. For the tribal people of Bangladesh and the Nepalese in Bhutan, the highly ethnicized and dominant group-controlled government institutions do not hold out any promise for mediation to avert the ethic confrontation. Although a functional federal framework has provided for the emergence of vibrant intermediary structures in India, the Center’s intrusive character and its policy of indifference have undermined their strength. In a number of conflicts involving regional majorities and minorities the central authority did not exercise its legitimate position as an intermediary until ethnic violence broke out. Even this status is denied to the Center in a few secessionist conflicts—Kashmir and Khalistan—because of its direct participation as a focal party.

Problem of Trust: Competing ethnic groups face the problem of ‘mutual commitment’ as a proximate factor in conflict. ₃₈ Since each group perceives the other’s assertions of interest as a threat to its survival, every promise of the dominant group and commitment of the weaker group are mutually suspected. The fear of betrayal haunts the weaker group more than the dominant group; it is based on the premise that one group will renege its obligations under an agreement and exploit the other later. The other way is that any actual violation of ‘ethnic contract’ in the form of agreement or pact by one party or the other can convincingly lead to conflict as an inevitable result.

In South Asia mutual mistrust among groups—majority and minority alike—are intense in states where hegemonic majorities have a cultivated feeling of insecurity and the minorities are highly assertive. The most relevant case is Sri Lanka where abrogation of pacts, backtracking on promises and increased ethnic discrimination by successive governments, led to a complete loss of the Sri Lankan Tamils’ trust in the Sinhalese leadership. ₃₉ The latter is equally suspicious of the former and justifies its behavior on the ground that the minority’s demands would threaten the majority’s survival. Thus, in the sixties, the federal autonomy and linguistic parity demand was seen by the Sinhalese as a cunning Tamil aspiration to achieve a separate statehood in the future, whereas the Sri Lankan Tamils suspected that Sinhalese intransigence aimed to perpetuate their hegemonic rule over the minorities. ₄₀ In Pakistan, built-in mutual suspicion of minorities grew out of ethnic demands of weaker groups and responses (both political and military) of the ruling elite. The East Pakistanis distrusted the ruling Punjabi elite who, in turn, viewed the Bengali culture and language with contempt, disdain and suspicion; the former suspected that the Center’s negotiation tactics on the Awami League’s (AL) six-point program eventually sought to deny them autonomy. Even the implication of their leader, Mujib Rahman, in the controversial Agartala conspiracy case in 1968 was believed to eliminate him. ₄₁ Likewise, the heavy handedness of the Z.A. Bhutto regime in tackling the Baluch movement and the Ayub Khan administration’s intrusion into the political affairs of Baluchistan and North-West Frontier Province created a crisis of confidence among the minorities. The government suspected their loyalty to the nation and perceived their leaders as agents of Afghanistan. In Bangladesh, the tribal leadership did not have faith in the Bengali nationalists who, in turn, suspected their loyalty to the country. The same is true in the case of the native Bhutanese and the Nepalese who suspect each other’s interest and actions as inimical to their survival. The Congress-led governments in India were always skeptical about Kashmiris commitment to the Indian union, reflecting in their legal maneuvers during the 1950’s and the 1960’s to chip away at regional autonomy. This, in turn, eroded the Kashmiris faith in the Indian State.

Mutual Security Dilemma: This analysis cumulatively describes a serious ethnic security dilemma—defined as a situation in which each group’s defensive steps are construed as a threat to the other which, in turn, reacts to make the former less secure; the spiral of measures continues to increase hostility. ₄₂ When the majority captures state power, the insecurity of the minority or weaker groups becomes intense. The state not only deliberately disregards its duty to ensure their security but also threatens their survival to bolster the majority’s security. And when the minority resorts to its own steps, the response of the state becomes harsher. This is clearly evident in every South Asian conflict where the territorially concentrated groups (see table 1) developed political and military strength necessary to keep the spiral of security dilemma moving towards violence. When governments respond more vigorously to the security steps of groups, regions become militarized and the relationship between the conflicting parties is defined in coercive terms. For instance, in East Pakistan, the formation of Mukti Bahini to counter the military buildup of the Pakistani army led to more repressive campaigns. Similarly, if the Eelam groups armed themselves in response to the growing militarization of the Northeast, the Sri Lankan government pursued more vigorous military tactics to protect the Sinhalese Buddhist state from the Tamil militants’ threat. A number of other conflicts in the region follow the same process of military buildup as a result of serious security dilemma.

Inducement of External Patrons: Caught in the security dilemma, the weaker group invariably depends on external support to confront its state-patronized adversary. Its kin group across the border is a trusted patron, whose support for affective reasons (based on ethnic identity, ideology, and reasons of justice) assumes a critical variable in determining its strategic interaction with its adversary. Alternatively or additionally, the groups also find patrons in situations where their governmental adversaries are locked in regional contests for power. A patron of this category is, thus, primarily motivated by instrumental factors; the client’s interest in the internal conflict advances the patron’s interest in the regional conflict. Those groups that do not have a credible commitment from patrons or are not sure of winning external support can hardly initiate and sustain their fight for security. The transnational ethnic linkages are more powerful and reliable channels of mobilizing external support than political networks of groups. ₄₃

In South Asia, almost all the ethnic groups have enjoyed cross-boundary support at varying levels and of differing nature, which has been a critical factor in the outbreak and growth of violence. The Sri Lankan Tamils could not have launched and sustained a secessionist movement at the present scale if the chances of securing the ideological, political and material support of their brethren in Tamil Nadu were remote. In their conflict with the Drukpas in Bhutan, the Lhotshmpas’ hope of getting Nepal’s crucial political and material support has never been belied. India was expectedly the principal source of support for the East Pakistanis, while the Pakistani, Baluch and Pakhtuns relied on Afghanistan. Pakistan’s supportive involvement in Kashmir has been an important factor in insurgency. Whereas the external involvement in these cases has resulted primarily from cross-boundary ethnic linkages, the conflict-groups in India’s northeast and Punjab capitalized on the regional power politics to win foreign patron support, especially from Pakistan and China. ₄₄

Mobilization as Preparations for Conflict

Ethnic grievances assume violent dimensions when, in the process of redefining the pattern of inter-group interactions, the disgruntled group prepares itself for collective action. Preparations essentially begin with mobilization (defined as a process by which a ‘mere’ member becomes an ‘active’ participant in any collective ethnic venture.) when ethnic entrepreneurs play upon such sensitive issues as relative deprivation, fear of ethnic extinction and loss of ethnic dignity. A successful process of ethnic mobilization depends upon both the objective conditions—a deep sense of discrimination and deprivation—and structural attributes of the group such as strong resources (including numerical strength), a territorial base, organizational cohesion, and quality and commitment of the leadership. ₄₅ Any tension or cleavage within the group may affect the success of its mobilization, whereas the repressive tactics of the political incumbents will cement its determination and augment the pool of ethnic activists.

A general pattern evident in conflicts the world over, ethnic mobilization proceeds along one of two inter-related lines. Political mobilization is the first phase under which group members are essentially gathered and motivated to enter as actors into the ethnic political arena; military mobilization involves recruitment and preparation of youth for a sustained military action. Often, the second phase of mobilization is a continuum of the first phase if the group does not achieve its goals, reflecting the failure of the nonviolent tactics. In some cases, both mobilization processes occur simultaneously under different leadership—moderate and militant; and there are a few cases in which either military or political mobilization is pursued alone without sufficiently preparing the group for both collective political and military actions.

The inter-relatedness of both political and military mobilization processes can be seen in a number of South Asian conflicts. Proceeding in a gradual pace since 1966 when the Awami League put forth its ‘six-point program’, political mobilization in the East Pakistani conflict succeeded totally by the end of 1970. This led to a remarkably swift military mobilization under the same leadership. The same pattern occurred in the Eelam movement—the process of political mobilization took nearly twenty years before a militant leadership began a decade-long work of military mobilization. ₄₆ Baluch political mobilization started in the late 1950’s and military mobilization was carried out by the Baluch People’s Liberation Front (BPLF) and the Baluch Students’ Organization (BSO) since the 1960’s. This pattern characterized both the movements for autonomy and secession in Assam, the conflict in Kashmir, the Gorkhaland agitation and the Pakhtun movement. In these cases military mobilization followed a successful political mobilization. In the Punjab conflict military mobilization started under a militant leadership even before the political mobilization reached a moderate level of success. A similar pattern marked the conflicts in Manipur and Tripura, where the United National Liberation Front (UNLF) and the Tribal National volunteers (TNV) respectively carried out the mobilization work. At least in five conflicts—involving the Chakmas (Bangladesh), Lhotshmpas (Bhutan), Mohajirs (Pakistan), Nagas and Mizos (India)—the two mobilization processes occurred simultaneously under a single leadership—moderate in the first three cases and militant in the rest. And, perhaps, only in two conflicts—Sindh and Dravidastan—the nature of mobilization remained solely political.

As the mobilization process varies in each conflict, its level of success is not uniform. Only a few conflicts—East Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Kashmir—are highly mobilized, in that both political and military processes have attained an optimum level of sustained violence and limited possibilities for conflict moderation. This is primarily due to strong grievances and identity awareness, consensual goal-setting by an efficient (if not necessarily, a unified) leadership, and its resistance to attempts at penetration by the adversary. Some of the conflicts—Baluch, Pakhtun, Punjab, Mohajir, and CHT—have achieved only a moderate level of mobilization for a variety of reasons. They include a lack of unified strategy for collective appeal, perceptional differences on grievances, dissension in goal-setting, incapacity to counter co-optive, divisive and coercive strategies of the adversary, and inadequate material base for mobilization. When these problems become acute and compounded by additional constraints—such as weak objective conditions, deep horizontal and vertical cleavage in the group, multiplicity of weak leadership and, above all, highly coercive state apparatus—any mobilization process is bound to reach only a low level. This has occurred in most of the conflicts in India. Conflicts involving highly mobilized groups are difficult to resolve without drastically restructuring inter-group relations; it is not necessarily easy to impose a solution on groups that are not fully mobilized.

 

Counter-Mobilization: A Prelude to Militarism

Mobilization is the work of the weaker groups and counter-mobilization by their adversary cannot be avoided. The latter process involving political incumbents tends to be more institutionalized in its framework and aims to neutralize the effects of the former. Although the level of the weaker group’s mobilization largely determines counter-mobilization process, it is bound to be a success in many cases even if its level remains low. After all, it is the state that sponsors the entire mobilization process of the majority/dominant group, and, when threatened politically, it can resort to violence against any mobilized minority/weaker group. It is this phenomenon that assumes significance in the rise of militarism as a dominant aspect of contending inter-group interactions.

The term ‘militarism’, used first by middle-class liberals in nineteenth century Europe, suggests different meanings. In casual usage it means ‘excessive’ use of violence by warriors, disregarding appropriate professional bounds. ₄₇ Some scholars use the term in a broader sense to include the extraordinary extent of military involvement in social and political processes by controlling civilian institutions and leadership. ₄₈ Militarism, in this sense, is understood as an unauthorized and self-arrogated function of military leaders who intrude into the civilian political arena to determine the social, political and economic decisions. While this definition instantaneously relates the military institutions to political power seized through coups, the value structures and ideology that their rule create in the society is understated. It is proper to view militarism as a “doctrine or system that values war and accords primacy in state and society to the armed forces.” It exalts an institutional structure (the military establishment) which performs an extraordinary function (the application of violence) in national and international contexts. It, therefore, implies both a “policy orientation and a power relationship.” ₄₉

In an ethnic conflict, militarism is an ideology that governs the pattern of inter-group relations. It is an expensive strategy that one desperate group employs against another to protect its interests, whilst undermining the opportunities. Counter-mobilization is a military program in which the state’s response to a minority group’s political mobilization is invariably defined in coercive terms. It provides space, leadership, and impetus for the aggregation of the dominant ethnic group, and undertakes a function of ethnic-articulation by setting goals and strategy for a collective counteraction. As a demonstrated effect, military mobilization of a politically conscious subordinate group becomes intensified, thereby adding a competitive dimension to militarism. The spiral of competing militarism is hard to control and can cause mutually destructive effects, more so because each party is endowed with a minimum capability to withstand and exert pressure on the other. Power potentiality, and not power-balance, is the fundamental pre-requisite for the rise and sustenance of militarism, without which the state’s preponderant counter-mobilization strategies themselves would undercut an adversary’s mobilization process.

In South Asia the complex counter-mobilization process in various conflicts provides the context for the rise of competing militarism. Its normal course in most cases involves two integrated processes: while the ethnic entrepreneurs mobilize the dominant group against minority demands, the government renders support to their program under pressure as a “true” custodian of the former group’s interests. In response to the movement of the Sri Lankan Tamils, both the SLFP and UNP leaders competed to use the Sinhalese-Buddhist ideology as the idiom for political mobilization. If the ethnicized political process benefited them in electoral terms, it has also contributed to the intensity of the ethnic conflict. It is pertinent to note the role of the Buddhist Sangha, a formidable force that provided the overarching structure for protecting Sinhalese interests and exerted pressure on their parties to undertake counter-mobilization. ₅₀ Any attempt at reaching an inter-ethnic compromise was decried and every effort to weaken the assertive Tamil movement gathered the widespread support of the majority. The use of coercive state power and violence as an important strategy of counter-mobilization were widespread, which caused frequent riots since 1956, and the militarization of the Northeastern Tamil society since the mid-eighties.

Hegemonic Bengali nationalism formed a formidable counter-mobilization force under the aegis of the Bangladeshi State. The Islamisation policy of successive regimes made the counter-mobilization process against the tribal movement in the CHT swift and successful. Thus the majority Bengalis have been mobilized not only in the name of Islam but also on the interpretation that the demands of the tribal people constituted a threat to their ethnic hegemony. Those Bengalis who have been resettled in the CHT were active participants in the entire conflict process. The deployment of armed forces in the CHT, even before the autonomy movement gathered its momentum, was part of Bangladesh’s broader counter-mobilization strategy, similarly implemented in Bhutan where its forces were mobilized much more than the people whose interests it has come to represent and uphold.

In Pakistan counter-mobilization of the dominant ethnic group has been a three-way process. At the institutional level the Punjabi-dominated Center mobilized military and civil bureaucracy to hinder the mobilization of the weaker conflicting groups. Ethnic entrepreneurs embarked on a mobilization drive by using their hegemonic ethnic ideology that constituted a threat to the majoritarian interests. The third process peculiarly involved the dominant elite’s use of one weaker group as a force to counter the mobilization of another. The Sindhis and Mohajirs countered each other to the advantage of the Punjabis; the Paktuns countered Mohajirs in Sindh.

The diverse pattern of counter-mobilization in India is mostly the work of the central elite, even though their relations with regional conflict groups are not defined in competing ethnic terms because of the ethnic diffusion at the Center. Considering the mobilization of various groups at the regional level as a challenge, the central elite chose three counter-mobilization strategies. First, at the institutional level, it encouraged the regional power elite to deploy a paramilitary force against the mobilization of weaker groups. Wherever the Center is directly involved as a focal party, its forces are used for counter-mobilization in the first instance (e.g. Kashmir). Second, in many cases, the central leaders co-opted the regional power elite from the same group as a part of their counter-mobilization strategy. It is mostly executed through ideological connection or political power-sharing arrangement, as was done during the Congress rule at the Center. Third, the central leadership used the dominant regional group to counter the conflicting weaker group. For instance, the Assamese have mobilized themselves against the Bodos, and the Bengali dominated non-tribal community has been encouraged to contain the mobilization of Tripuris.

 

Enforcing Militarism: Actors, Forms and Effects

As militarism engulfs a strife-torn society and mobilized groups resort to violence, inter-group relations undergo a drastic change, under the pressure of winning. In the process, both groups invariably pay an unbearably heavy cost. A changing “conflict behavior” ₅₁ based on the militaristic strategy involves a new set of actors—militants and government forces—who engage in retributive violence at large. Space for moderate opinion and leadership to influence and guide inter-group relations shrinks; and their complete marginalization is noticeably the precursor to the rise and wider use of calamitous militarism in its varied forms. The consequent effects of violence on a strife-torn society are so serious that they can wreak havoc with the life of people across the spectrum of the divide, as well as established institutions and norms.

Groups and Agents as Enforcers

Militarism is a tough bilateral counter-interactive program. Whereas the enforcers from the weaker group are those who have been mobilized militarily by their ethnic entrepreneurs, the government forces largely engage in violence on behalf of the political incumbents. Dominant group members are instigated to become an unorganized militant force to strike at the other group. Violence by an ethnic group member constitutes ‘civil militarism’ and operations by the security forces at the behest of their government testifies to ‘state militarism.’ In comparison, the latter form is more intense and costly than the former.

A notable feature of militarism in South Asia is that the contest for ethnic power is a multi-pronged affair because the weaker group-actors in many conflicts are deeply divided. Thus, as shown in table 1, except for a few conflicts, multiple ethnic warriors representing the same minority group have carried out the fight against the same adversary in all of the region’s conflicts. Multiple fronts of attack are opened, between the active civil and state militarists from the opposite side and between the civil militarists belonging to the same group as a result of internal cleavage. Violent attacks by the militarists of the dominant group against the unarmed weaker group members and vice-versa constitute another front. State militarists in all conflicts, except in India, have been mostly or totally drawn from the dominant ethnic group. Bengalis dominated the Bangladeshi army, the Sinhalese dominated the Sri Lankan army, the Drukpas dominated the Bhutanese army, and the Punjabis dominated the Pakistani army. In India, the military is a multi-ethnic force whose deployment for any specific counter-action against the militarists belonging to the weaker group is done under an ethnically integrated command structure. This is contrary to the classical “alien troops” system that the government used in waging counter-insurgency warfare in the1970’s. ₅₂

Demonstrating Militarism

Enforcement of militarism is conducted in a number ways: collective mob violence, selective revenge killing, general military crackdown, and internal warfare. Table 4 illustrates that each form specifies a peculiar strategy that the groups adopt while encountering each other militarily, and the differing process of enforcement is determined by the length and intensity of use of force which, in turn, depends upon the relative strength of the adversaries.

Collective mob violence is an important part of civil militarism enacted by “civilian crowds,” which are “mobilized for public action,” in response to religious, cultural, ethnic, and emotional stimuli. Riots account for a particularly predominant collective violent program involving arson, destruction of property, and physical injury (including homicide and rape) to a designated enemy group. ₅₃ The rioters are invariably civil militarists of the dominant group and the victims are the weaker ethnic group members. If the dominant ethnic entrepreneurs organize the riots, the government’s inaction in preventing violent events amounts to crucial support to the miscreants.

Larger scale collective violence has recurred in Sri Lanka, India and Pakistan since their independence. It struck Sri Lanka first in 1956, when the Sri Lankan Tamils resorted to a political agitation for linguistic parity and autonomy, and the last in July 1983, following the killing and mutilation of thirteen Sinhalese soldiers in an ambush by the Tamil militants in the Jaffna peninsula. In the interim period, as many as three riots with limited ferocity took place (in 1958, 1977, and 1981); since 1983 the nature of violence has changed into an internal ethnic war between the army and the militants. Both 1956 and 1983 riots originated in Colombo and then spread to other parts of the island. The worst victims were Tamils who lost about 3,000 lives and property in large-scale: it was estimated that there were 8,077 cases of arson and 3,835 cases of looting. ₅₄ In the 1983 riots, there was a wide-range of participants—Sinhalese chauvinistic politicians and paramilitary forces, militant Buddhist monks, and local thugs—who played a critical role in hatching, organizing and directing the course of the riots. The government’s alleged complicity in the entire event could be gauged from its inaction in restraining the rioters and arresting the spread of violence immediately.

The most gruesome collective violence that broke out in India was against the Sikh minority in Delhi in 1984. Following the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh security guards, the entire community became the target of a massive orgy of violence by the local thugs in connivance with Congress politicians and criminals. The five-day long mayhem claimed a toll of about 3,000 lives and caused extensive damage to property. Criminals had a field day; they looted Sikh business establishments in broad daylight. As in the 1983 Colombo riots, the Delhi administration was accused of dereliction of duty in protecting the Sikh community by failing to immediately call the army to contain violence. ₅₅ It must be noted that the anti-Sikh violence was the only prominent collective ethnic violent event in India and none of the other ethnic conflicts have developed into large-scale mob fury. ₅₆ Even in regard to the Delhi riots, unlike the Colombo riots, it is erroneous to bestow a particular ethnic identity on rioters and describe the entire event as the one between the Sikh minority and the Hindu majority.

Many collective ethnic riots have occurred in Pakistan; the major ones have been the anti-Pakhtun riots of 1965, the Sindhi-Mohajir riots in 1972-73, 1988 and 1990, and the Pakhtun-Bihari Mohajir riots in 1985-87. All of them took place in major urban centers (Karachi and Hyderabad) of Sindh Province, between two different ethnic groups with competing interests. If ethnic antagonism remained the root cause, certain circumstantial local issues and clash of group interests triggered off riots. Both the dominant and weaker groups appeared to be the initiators of riots on different occasions and the damage to their lives and property was extensive. The demographic distribution is such that the Sindhis invariably suffer in Karachi, the Mohajir bastion of power, who cannot resist violence by Sindhis in Hyderabad. In many cases the local police force openly displayed its ethnic loyalty by unleashing terror against the rival ethnic groups, whereas the army overreacted out of desperation to control the situation. ₅₇ This complex pattern of periodic violence has brought untold misery to people across the entire spectrum of ethnic groups in Pakistan.

Selective revenge killing as a form of militarism in South Asia involves three sets of actors—civilians, militants, and government forces. While militants and state forces adopt this tactic against each other and rival civilians, its use denotes the horrifying manner in which militants within the same ethnic group target each other and engage in violence against their own civilian population. Both the militants and state forces carry out murderous attack on hapless civilians. Sri Lanka presents a classic case of a strife-torn society where the actors—Tamil militants and state security forces—have followed these patterns of militarism. The civilian victims include not only the two contesting ethnic group members but also the Muslims and many prominent political leaders of the island. Thus, the army has carried out periodic murderous attacks on the Sri Lankan Tamils, and the LTTE made military reprisals against the Sinhalese, Muslims and, worse, even Tamils. The army’s onslaught has been either in retaliation to the LTTE’s killing of the Sinhalese civilians and soldiers (wounded or captured) or against the Tamils’ support for the LTTE. The LTTE’s violent campaigns against its own clan group members sought to eliminate dissent (both from the rival militants and civilians) in the Northeastern society and to achieve the Tamils’ support under coercion. The Tamil Tigers believe the Eastern provincial Muslims, a vulnerable group whose demographic position holds the key for determining the viability of the rival ethnic claims, are pro-Sinhalese and anti-Tamil. ₅₈ The LTTE has targeted a number of civilian leaders of Sri Lanka and India; the list of its victims is quite impressive, and the most notable ones are Sri Lankan Prime Minister R. Premadasa, TULF leader A. Amirtalingam and Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

In India, revenge killings have been a part of intra-group rivalries, army reprisals against the militants and their supporters, and the militants’ acts of revenge on political leaders. Punjab, Kashmir, and Northeast India witnessed this form of militarism. The worst case of any revenge killing was the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. All rival ethnic militarists—Sindhis, Pakhtuns, Mohajirs and security forces—are known for their revenge killings in Karachi. The Baluch militants killed a number of their clan group leaders who collaborated with the military regime of Zia ul Haq or extended political support to the Pakistani Army’s strategic plan to encircle Baluchistan since 1973. Unlike Pakistan, Bangladesh and Bhutan have not witnessed any serious revenge killing of prominent political leaders by ethnic rivals, but civilians have been the targets of cruel attack. For instance, the Shanti Bahini carried out periodic attacks on the Bengalis settlers who, in turn, retaliated with the tactical support of the Bangladeshi Army.

Crackdowns on ethnic activists—militants and moderates alike—is a handy militaristic tactic that the government forces—police, paramilitary and military—adopt in response to the growing ethnic challenges. It is a unilateral counteractive strategy of the majoritarian governments, which resort to arbitrary arrest, detention, torture and killing of the agitating ethnic group members. Thus, peaceful demonstrations are beset with violent reprisals by the state, innocent civilians are rounded up, and youth are tortured to death in custody for alleged terrorist activities. Every repressive act is sadly justified and the legal framework that the besieged governments evolve for this purpose introduces an authoritarian streak into the democratic structure. Hence, democrats behave in an authoritarian way towards the agitating ethnic group members.

Armed with a variety of legal frameworks listed in table 5, all the troubled regimes in South Asia have resorted to military crackdown on militants and moderates on a varying scale. In every country, large-scale para-military and military operations have brought about gross violations of human rights, raising serious local, national and international concerns. In India, a number of civil liberties groups and organizations sponsored or supported by the militant or moderate groups themselves have reported indiscriminate arrest, detention without trial and torture of innocent people and militants alike in Kashmir, Punjab, and Northeastern states. ₅₉ Many moderate leaders were also imprisoned. Much before the onset of large-scale militancy in Kashmir in 1990, the Center arrested the National Conference leader, Sheikh Abdullah, several times in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Under the draconian Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) more than 50,000 people were held until March 1993.

The Pakistani security forces are notorious for their extra-judicial operations. The East Pakistani conflict gathered greater political and military momentum because of widespread repressive tactics, leading to massive human rights violations in the country. The Yahya Khan regime accused Sheikh Mujib of treason and arrested him along with other Bengali nationalists and outlawed the AL. The army crackdown of March 1971 turned out to be, in the words of Z.A. Bhutto, a “nightmare of fascism”. ₆₀ In Baluchistan and North West Frontier Province (NWFP), both the Ayub Khan and Bhutto regimes adopted repressive tactics. In the 1960’s, even before the Baluch problem became a large-scale movement, many Baluch nationalists were imprisoned for a long time (1962-69). Khair Bakhsh Marri was one of the first Baluch leaders whom Bhutto imprisoned in 1973; others included Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo and Ataullah Khan Mengal. After the assassination of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader Hayat Khan Sherpao in Peshawar in February 1975, Bhutto banned the NAP and ordered the arrest of its leader Wali Khan and sixty others. Later, a special court, the Hyderabad Special Tribunal, tried them on charges of treason and sentenced them to imprisonment until 1978. ₆₁ Similarly, Sindh has witnessed a large number of military operations against both the moderate and militant Sindhis and Mohajirs. In 1973 the Bhutto government arrested G.M. Syed, the founder leader of Jia Sindh movement, and subsequently the martial law regime of Zia used about 45,000 troops for over six months against the ill-organized militants. Since the early1990’s, military operations against the Mohajirs intensified and a large number of MQM activists and their leaders have been arrested. ₆₂ Under the recently enacted Pakistan Armed Forces (Acting in Aid of Civil Power) Ordinance, the army has assumed the power to try civilian offenders and even sentence them to death.

As a part of counter-insurgency operations in the CHT the Bangladeshi Army reportedly carried out general crackdowns not only against the militants but also the noncombatant civilians. Several incidents of rape, forced religious conversion and persecution, eviction, arrests, tortures, kidnapping and massacres of civilians marked the army’s strategy. ₆₃ The situation is not different in Bhutan. Amnesty International (1994), the Geneva-based International Movement Against all forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR) and the US State Department’s country report (1993) have reported gross human rights violations by the army. In the recent years, no other country in the region has embarked on such a massive military crackdown against its population than Sri Lanka. The Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) and the Emergency Regulations have been widely used for arrest, detention, torture, and inhuman treatment of Tamil militants and civilians alike. Since 1983, Amnesty International (AI) has regularly documented hundreds of such cases; ₆₄ the International Commission of Jurists’ missions in 1981 and 1984 noted the growing human rights violations under the coercive state apparatus, ₆₅ and independent Tamil groups have publicized extra-judicial and arbitrary killings in the island. ₆₆ Sri Lanka is known for ‘disappearances’ of people while in the custody of security forces. AI reported 680 cases of disappearance during mid 1983-July 1987; in 1990 when the LTTE lost territories to the army, thousands of people reportedly disappeared. The number declined for a few years until 1995-97 when about 650 people disappeared in the Jaffna peninsula. ₆₇ In 1999 the Presidential Commission on Disappearances received 10,135 complaints.

The most advanced form of militarism is internal war. It is a ‘large-scale, prolonged military engagement between insurgents and security forces’. In South Asia, as many as 12 ethnic conflicts have attained an internal war dimension with varying intensity: eight of them have erupted in India, two in Pakistan and one each in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. ₆₈ Only a few of them have lasted for a short duration. Most turned out to be major wars marked by heavy loss of lives and destruction of property. The East Pakistani war was by far the most gruesome in the region with the death toll crossing about three million; around 5,000 militants and 3,000 security forces were killed in hundreds of armed encounters in the Baluch war, and the human cost of the Eelam war is about 30,000 people. Although government forces in all the wars possess superior firepower, many militant groups enjoy a capability to sustain military pressure on their adversary. Most of the wars have experienced direct or indirect intervention of external patrons, either in support of the militants or the government forces or both. The Mukti Bahini became a regular militant force against the Pakistani Army because of India’s massive military assistance. For the Baluch militants, Afghanistan’s military support was crucial to wage a war against the Pakistani State which, in turn, mobilized assistance from Iran. India’s supply of arms and extension of sanctuary to the Tamil militants and the Sri Lankan government’s procurement of arms from various countries and involvement of mercenaries led to internationalization of the Eelam war. All militant groups in India have enjoyed different scales of patron support from either Pakistan or China or Bangladesh. ₆₉

Effects of Militarism

Mutually competing objectives of parties guide the extensive use of militarism in any ethnic conflict. The government seeks to either defeat the weaker group to end the conflict without negotiating a settlement with their moderate leaders, or subdue them to the extent that they will accept a negotiated peace. Likewise, the weaker group-militarists aim to subdue their adversary so that it will seriously negotiate for a settlement, or to impose a solution on the intransigent government. In the process, there arises a ‘shared monopoly’ of violence that causes several striking ill effects on society in South Asia.

A prolonged and intense use of coercion has led to violence becoming a popular culture in many parts of South Asia. It is a part of everyday life of the people in the strife-torn societies where abnormality and chaos become a norm of the society. The culture of violence is reproduced when the victims turn against the perpetrators of violence to make them victims in the same manner. The powerful and the powerless alike live under a constant fear of death and destruction. The militarists have, through their intense exchange of violence, brutalized the civil society—especially in Sri Lanka’s Northeast; Pakistan’s Baluchistan and Sindh, and India’s northeast, Punjab and Kashmir—where a new community of ‘unfortunate people’ (comprising of widows, orphans, destitutes and refugees) has emerged out of the agony. Battered communities find no solace and the de-humanizing behavior of militarists has completely destroyed the sanctity of family life among a large portion of the population.

The culture of violence means civil society itself is thoroughly militarized. A number of regions in the South Asian countries have been under military control for many years. The military has conducted both civil and military functions in the absence of a civilian administration in strife-torn regions like Sri Lanka’s Northern Province and the CHT of Bangladesh. The military has provided crucial support to the civil administration in a number of conflict zones in India and Pakistan. India and Sri Lanka have never experienced military rule at the national level but a large portion of their population have constantly lived under army control. Many civil societies have been thoroughly weaponized. The proliferation of small arms and their availability to civilians is the new reality emerging from ethnic militarism in South Asia. ₇₀

Ethnic militarism created a strong community of refugees and displaced people in the region. South Asian refugees totaled about 250, 000 in 1997, ₇₁ all of them in India and Nepal. ₇₂ Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Pakistan, Bangladesh are refugee generating countries. ₇₃ In India and Sri Lanka, about one million displaced persons form a new category of people who lead a dependent life outside their home. All 800,000 displaced people in Sri Lanka are Tamils. The Kashmiris constitute most of 200,000 internally displaced persons in India. The refugee problem has attained bilateral political dimensions between India and Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan and between Nepal and Bhutan. Internal security among the refugees in host countries has been precarious in many cases. ₇₄

The wider significance of ethnic militarism lies in the experience that the armies of the region have gained from their operations against the militants. Only two armies—Indian and Pakistani—have had the distinction of fighting external wars in South Asia. All others are peripheral forces growing out of the internal security situations. The rise of ethnic militarism has given them the chance to demonstrate their firepower, not against an external adversary but against their own dissident population. Internal war is a new experience for the Sri Lankan and the Bangladeshi armies. At the same time, the frequent and prolonged deployment of regular Indian and Pakistani troops for internal security duty has two strategic effects. Their use may lead to a breakdown in military training and readiness for confronting an external threat. ₇₅ There is a growing concern in some of the countries over the inordinate reliance of the state on the army to ensure its survival and maintain civil order. The fear is that the army will perniciously destroy democratic principles and institutions, and usurp power. This fear is strongly prevalent among segments of Sri Lanka. In India, the mutiny of Sikh troops following the Indian Army’s entry into the Golden Temple in Amritsar in 1984 to flush out the Khalistani militants was a cause for serious concern.

Militarism has deeply impacted the domestic economies of South Asia. Destruction of property and infrastructure, breakdown of production process and large-scale military expenditures have created an ‘internal war economy’ in countries where militarism assumed a critical strategy. In Sri Lanka, for instance, the cost of the war is mounting every year. ₇₆ The Bangladeshi government spent $125 million per annum on the maintenance of the army in the CHT. ₇₇ In India and Pakistan, military build-up for internal war is largely integrated into a strategy of external security preparedness and, as such, any separate enumeration of the cost of the war is difficult.

State sponsored violence leads to a complete alienation of the people from the national mainstream. Inter-ethnic divisions deepen so much that a viable national integration process becomes more difficult to accomplish even after reaching political accommodation and reconciliation between the conflict groups. In South Asia minority alienation is a deep-rooted problem because of their ill treatment at the hands of powerful groups. Alienation is high among the people of India’s northeast and Kashmir, among the tribal population of the CHT, Nepalese in Bhutan, the Tamils in the Northeastern part of Sri Lanka, and almost all the non-Punjabi population in Pakistan.

 

Patterns of Ending Militarism

The conventional wisdom is that ethnic conflicts are intractable and intrinsically zero-sum. Using the most comprehensive data set of ethnic conflicts, Ted Gurr suggests that some form of accommodation between ethnic groups and states is always possible through effective peace strategies. ₇₈ Corroborating this argument, Licklider’s statistical study finds that despite the high level of hostility, identity-based civil wars are as amenable to negotiated settlements as class-based civil wars. ₇₉ The alternative viewpoint is that many ethnic conflicts end in military victory or are suppressed and only a few reaches negotiated settlement. ₈₀ Even the negotiated settlements are, as Licklider’s study points out, less likely to be stable than military victories: “Seventy-nine per cent of the identity wars that ended in military victory were not followed by violence until 1994, as compared to only 33% of identity wars that ended in negotiated settlements”. ₈₁

What is the impact of militarism on the conflict processes in South Asia? Has it led to containment or suppression or ending of conflicts in the region? Containment or suppression of conflict does not mean that it is ended; settlement of conflict is a long drawn-out process that comes as a sequel to a sustained, successful peace process.

In South Asia, the choice of militarism as a strategy has produced mixed results (see table 6). Despite the minority group’s armed resistance, the dominant state militarism has ultimately led to suppression of some ethnic conflicts. In these cases there is absolutely no use of any form of violence by the weaker-group militarists to promote their ethnic goals; nor is there any great scope for revival of political movement by the moderate leadership though the fundamental grievances that gave rise to the group’s militarism remain unresolved. In Pakistan, the highly repressive tactics against the Baluchis, Pakhtuns and Sindhis worked to the advantage of state militarism. The Baluch war (1973-77), predictably dealt a severe blow to the insurgents, and inflicted a demoralizing effect on the movement itself. Moderate political campaigns in the absence of armed pressure of the militants, who fled to Afghanistan, surrendered to the army, or were killed in operations, became totally subdued. The continued detention of the NAP leaders (until 1977), the prohibition on political activities in the province, and the army’s effective control of the Baluch areas during the Bhutto’s rule weakened the ambitious movement. Although the Zia regime (1977-88) reversed Bhutto’s policies towards Baluchistan and apparently embarked on a conciliatory approach, its manipulative ethnic policies, reflected in its strategies of coercion and co-option of Baluch nationalists, further contributed to the demise of the nationalist struggle. ₈₂ This made a strong impact on the Pakhtun movement. Political differences between the Baluch and Pakhtun leaders emerged since 1977, leading to the end of their tactical cooperation that had challenged Bhutto’s coercive policies. Sustained military crackdown in the NWFP, co-optation of the Pakhtun nationalists, and economic rewards to the province brought a semblance of political order in Islamabad’s terms. Although Bhutto’s Sindhi ethnic identity and affirmative action policies temporarily arrested the Sindhis’ feelings of alienation, the use of military force by the Zia regime led to the weakening of the Sindhi movement. ₈₃

While these movements primarily experienced military suppression, the Indian government’s combined politico-military strategy proved effective with the Khalistanis. The strategy proceeded in two separate tracks: the army and the state police hit hard at the militants so that they tired out, their militancy had been dampened, and normalcy began to return by 1995. Concurrently, the Central government adopted a conciliatory approach and engaged the moderate Akali leaders in negotiations: in 1982 the government released 25,000 detainees and undertook to promote cultural aspirations of the Sikhs; in 1983 it appointed a commission under Justice R.S. Sarkaria to look into center-state relations. Subsequently, in 1985, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi negotiated a peace accord with the moderate Akali leader, Harcharan Singh Longowal. ₈₄ Although the accord appeared as a major concession to the Sikhs, the cumulative gains accrued were small due to its non-implementation. ₈₅ The Center gained hegemonic control over the state as the militants lost their strength to conduct armed campaigns and the moderate leaders lacked power to pressure the Center to implement the accord. The conflict is effectively suppressed without much hope for the Sikhs to realize their ethnic goals.

The Dravidastan movement stands out as a unique conflict that was easily suppressed by limited coercive actions coupled with strong legal measures. The use of force was low because the movement remained purely political, led by the DMK; there was no militant formation born to pursue armed campaigns to advance the ideal of the party. The easy collapse of the movement occurred much due to the DMK leadership’s “dilemmas of reconciling secessionist goals with electoral politics” ₈₆ and the 16^th amendment to the constitution that the Center adopted in 1963 to prevent fissiparous tendencies and protect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country. ₈₇

In this and other cases, coercive state power worked well as a major suppressive strategy for various reasons: a low level of mobilization among minority group members, the absence of credible and sustained support for the militants, and cleavages in the group that the political incumbents used to their strategic advantage. The Khalistan movement failed because the militant movement did not institutionalize itself into the normal political process by forging a permanent link with a legitimate, competitive political party. The party system remained intact even in the worst days of militancy, and the Akali Dal maintained ideological congruence with the Congress at the Center. ₈₈ Suppression of the conflict amounts to a military victory for the dominant militarist. This does not mean that minority group’s abandon their goals, for which they have sacrificed both in terms of lives and materials. Revival of the lost movement may be a difficult proposition. Nevertheless, many groups entertain interest without determination and concrete actions to achieve their ethnic ideals. ₈₉

The East Pakistani conflict is distinct from all others in the region. It was the only conflict that ended after a military victory for the weaker ethnic group members because the hegemonic state militarism against a weaker group paved the way for the war between India and Pakistan in 1971.

State militarism effectively contained the conflict in Bhutan. The Lhotshampas have sufficient political determination to fight for their cause, but lack the military strength to challenge the Bhutanese State. They are a militarily weak group with a weak ethnic patron (Nepal) whose constrained strategic support is insufficient to achieve its goal.

Neither dominant state militarism nor a negotiated peace strategy has worked well in many conflicts. Despite large, sustained military operations by the Sri Lankan Army (since 1983) and the Indian Peacekeeping Force (1987-90), India’s mediation that led to a bilateral agreement in 1987, and various peace talks between the government and militants, the intensity of the Sri Lankan conflict has not declined. ₉₀ The LTTE remains a powerful force to frustrate the government’s military tactics, but is incapable of registering a victory against the army. In India’s northeast, all but the Mizo conflict fit into this mode, of which three conflicts—Naga, Tripuri and Bodo—have been negotiated for peace though the agreements have failed to end violence. Beginning in the mid 1950’s, the Naga conflict has seen a protracted peace process involving mediators who tried in vain to negotiate a deal between the government and the Naga National Council (NNC) in the1960’s. Then came the famous Shillong Agreement of 1975, which sought to enlist the NNC’s commitment to the Indian Constitution, disarmament and restoration of normalcy, but it did not assuage the Nagas’ feeling of deprivation. The NNC was split on the issue of accepting the agreement and a section of its leadership decided to continue the armed struggle, which the Indian security forces are unable to end. ₉₁ The government’s sustained military pressure on Tripuran militants paved the way for a negotiated agreement with the Tribal National Volunteers (TNV) in August 1988 and with the Tripura Tribal Force (TTF) in 1993, ₉₂ but peace has not returned there. Splinter groups have emerged out of disagreements over the peace accords to carry on the fight. The struggle for Bodoland was also inconclusive. The Bodo Security force (BSF) and the Bodo Volunteer Force (BVF) survived the military onslaught and continued to deny a victory to the army. The 1993 Accord between the Assam government and the moderate Bodo leaders and various initiatives of the Central government in the recent years did not restore peace and normalcy in the state. ₉₃

The conflicts in Kashmir, Sindh (Mohajir), Manipur and Assam (ULFA) form another category in which coercion has remained the principal strategy, yet has had little success. There have been no serious and structured negotiations between the government and the militants because of the constraints in developing a common framework for the peace process. Governmental initiatives and preliminary talks at the lower leadership level or with peripheral groups have been inconsequential. Unilateral steps by the governments to advance the economic and political interests of the groups have hardly moderated the conflicts between the Mohajirs and the Pakistani government. Thus, containment as a strategy has failed in these conflicts because some groups have strong organizational structure that has sustained their spirit and strength to carry on the fight. The level of mobilization has been high in many conflicts and external patron support has remained high in a few conflicts. Interlocking conflicts and the operating terrain have worked to the militants’ strategic advantage. At the same time, peace agreements have failed because of the feeling of entrapment and the low level of war fatigue among minority group members. In some cases, the lack of group cohesion has created the essential conditions for the failure of the peace process.

Only a few conflicts have ended though negotiated settlement. Finding military engagements futile, the parties in the Mizo, Gorkha, and CHT conflicts have successfully negotiated peace settlements. Since the government’s strategy in Mizoram was to use military pressure to bring the Mizo National Front (MNF) to the negotiating table, the Center held peace parleys with its President, Laldenga, in 1976 and 1980. Though the talks proved abortive due to the intransigence of the MNF, the Center continued to capitalize on the military weakness of the Mizo National Army (MNA) to work out a settlement. With the local population and church leaders throwing their weight in the peace parleys, the government and the MNF chief signed the Mizo Accord in 1986. ₉₄ The accord has an enduring effect in Mizoram as the state is now the most peaceful in the northeast region. Similarly, the Gorkha conflict showed its ripeness for settlement when the Center offered its good offices between the West Bengal government and the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF), leading to a peace accord in August 1988. The GNLF compromised its demand for a separate Gorkha state within the Indian union and accepted the establishment of a Hill Council in the Darjeeling district. ₉₅ The competing militarism ended and normalcy returned to the hills. Even though the accord worked smoothly it has not satisfied the GNLF. The desire for achieving its original conflict goal is still articulated by its leadership without, at the same time, resorting to any organized political or military actions.

Apart from India, Bangladesh is the only other country in the region where a negotiated settlement has ended an ethnic conflict. The peace process started in 1977, amidst continued military operations, and proceeded sluggishly until June 1992 when the Bangladesh National Party (BNP) government worked out a cease-fire and held six rounds of unsuccessful negotiations with the tribal leaders until 1995. Nevertheless, the cease-fire was extended 35 times until December 1997 when the Awami League government negotiated a landmark agreement with the Parbatya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samity leader, J.B. Larma. ₉₆ Despite strident opposition from the BNP and the delay in implementing the accord because of the disagreement between the contracting parties, there is no resumption of violence and the prospect for enduring peace is quite high. There seems to be general satisfaction among the tribal people, a positive sign of ending the conflict from their side. In this and other two cases, agreements were possible because there seemed to be a hurting stalemate in the conflict processes, the external patron support for the weaker groups became insufficient to carry on the conflict, and there was a general trend towards de-mobilization of group members.

What does ethnic militarism in South Asia offer? It is quite evident that the regional trends in the outcome of militarism are both similar to and distinct from global trends. Contrary to the general findings globally, negotiated settlements of militarized ethnic conflicts are very few in South Asia. The cases of total military victory (and not mere suppression) are far less in the region than the global ratio. Fewer than 50 per cent of the conflicts continue without any end, half of which have not even seriously attempted negotiated political settlement. The fact that the state militarism has suppressed only half a dozen conflicts and the weaker ethnic group militarists registered a decisive military victory in only one conflict indicates that militarism, as a strategy, is unworthy and unproductive because its operational cost is atrociously high. Then why do groups and states believe in the wretched strategy? The answer lies in the general monopolistic tendencies of the hegemonic ethnic groups which, out of fear, prejudice, and a strong position, invariably choose to repress political protests militarily and not negotiate politically. Also, the weaker/deprived ethnic groups, out of fear, a weak position and failure, adopt militarism as an alternative to inconsequential political agitation. In effect, both the sets of militarists are weak and losers; they underestimate each other’s strength and overestimate their own power. In the course of losses suffered from militarism, both parties develop interests in political negotiations. This explains why some of the competing militarists finally opt to negotiate their differences and give up violence. Sadly, such realizations develop slowly and what makes them change ultimately is their understanding of the conflict process itself—their strength and weakness and gains and losses.

 

Conclusions

The paper has addressed a complex subject on which different perspectives—state-centric and group-centric—can be found. Quantification of death and destruction caused by militarism reveals the primitive mentality of ethnic groups who place their particular interests far above the general interests of the society at large. One group’s readiness to kill another as demanded by its ethnic ideology causes repulsion in any normal human mind. But ethnic passions and intolerance, as the South Asians have shown, create demeaning and dehumanizing tendencies in societies. Ethnic militarism has developed hypersensitivity in each group about its own interests and survival, but the same group is insensitive to other’s needs and difficulties. This behavior severely erodes time tested human values and principles based on religion, culture, and political traditions ingrained in the South Asian societies. Ethnic militarism spreads quickly and easily adds competitive dimensions. The states in South Asia have actively propounded the ideology of militarism and practiced it against their own people who are not equal to their strength and position. But, in some cases, the limitations of states have been exposed by the rival ethnic militarists.

If the persistence of ethnic militarism without an honorable end in South Asia is a cause for concern, its suppression implies future use. The concerns are well founded. India’s Kashmir and northeast are two danger spots having greater strategic values due to the direct interest of Pakistan and China. The new strategic environment marked by nuclearization of the region presents new challenges and strengthens the existing fear. The ‘dangerous spots’ may provide strategic space and depth for China and Pakistan against India, leading to bilateral or trilateral contests or confrontations. One possible scenario of regional conflict escalating into nuclear war in South Asia arises from “the conduct of varying degrees of proxy wars across international frontiers as in Indian Punjab or Kashmir, or as alleged in Pakistan’s Sindh province." ₉₇ This cannot be dismissed as pure academic speculation, but a serious possibility that may strike the region. The imperative for serious political initiatives to end militarism in India’s border region is, therefore, reinforced by the recent strategic developments in the region.

Table 1: Weaker-Group Militarists

Table 2: The Nature of Conflict

*Autonomist conflicts turned Seccesionist.
Pak: Pakistan
Bhu: Bhutan
Bang: Bangladesh
Ind: India
SL: Sri Lanka

Table 3: Source of Grievance

Table 4: Enforcement of Militarism

Table 5: Legal Bases of Militarism

* The operation of the Act was not extended by Parliament in 1995. However its provisions continue to cover all those who have been detained or charged under the Act, prior to the lapse date.

Table 6: Outcome of Militarism

 

Notes and References

Note 1: Louis Kriesberg, “Interlocking Conflicts in the Middle East”, in L. Kriesberg, ed., Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, vol. 3, 1980 (Greenwich, Connecticut: Jai Press Inc, 1980), p. 101. Back.

Note 2: Ibid. Back.

Note 3: See B.G. Verghese, India’s Northeast Resurgent: Ethnicity, Insurgency, Governance, Development (New Delhi: Konark Publishers, 1996), pp. 55-82, 83-165; Subir Bhaumik, Insurgent Crossfire: North-east India(New Delhi: Lancer Publishers, 1996); V.I.K. Sarin, India’s North East in Flames(New Delhi: Vikas Publishing Pvt. Ltd, 1980); R. Gopalakrishnan, Insurgent North-Eastern Region of India (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing Pvt. Ltd,), and Nari Rustomji, Imperilled Frontiers: India’s North-Eastern Borderlands (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983). Back.

Note 4: A huge volume of literature is available on this issue. The noteworthy ones are Alistair Lamb, Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy, 1846-1990(Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1992); Prem Shankar Jha, Kashmir, 1947: Rival Versions of History (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996); V. P. Menon, The Story of the Integration of the Indian States (Madras: Orient Longman, 1961). Back.

Note 5: For details see Khalid B. Sayeed, Politics in Pakistan: The Nature and Direction of Change (New York: Praeger, 1980), pp.113-38; Inayat Allah Baloch, “The Baluch Question in Pakistan and the Right of Self-determination”, in Wolfgang Peter Zingel and Z.A. Lallemant, eds., Pakistan in the 80s: Ideology, Regionalism, Economy, Foreign Policy (Lahore: Vanguard, 1985), 335-67. Back.

Note 6: The Bodos’ fear of assimilation is explained in Chandana Bhattacharjee, Ethnicity and Autonomy Movement: Case of Bodo-Kacharis of Assam (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1996); Sudhir Jacob George, “The Bodo Movement in Assam: Unrest to Accord”, Asian Survey (Berkeley), vol.34, no.10, October 1994, pp.881-82. Back.

Note 7: See Rajiv A. Kapur, Sikh Separatism: The Politics of Faith (London: Allen and Unwin, 1986); Sumit Ganguly, “Ethno-religious Conflict in South Asia”, Survival (London), vol. 35, no.2, Summer 1993, pp.88-109. Back.

Note 8: Called Driglam Namzha (traditional etiquette), the cultural edict sought to relate the Drupka identity to the Bhutanese national identity by prescribing a dress code for all the citizens—the gho for men and the kira for women. See A.C. Sinha, Bhutan: Ethnic Identity and National Dilemma (New Delhi: Reliance Publishing House, 1991); Kapileshwar Labh, “Ethnic Factor in the Himalayan Kingdom”, International Studies (New Delhi), vol.32, no.3, July-September 1995, p.291. Back.

Note 9: See S. Mahmud Ali, The Fearful State: Power, People and Internal War in South Asia (London: Zed Books, 1993), pp. 48-52; Verghese, n.3, pp.166-94. Back.

Note 10: Sanjoy Hazarika, Strangers of the Mist: Tales of War and Peace from India’s Northeast (New Delhi: Viking, 1994), pp. 137-235; Jaswant Singh, “Assam’s Crisis of Citizenship: An Examination of Political Errors” , Asian Survey , vol.24, no.10. October 1984, pp. 1056-68; Alfred T.Darnell and Sunita Parikh, “Religion, Ethnicity, and the Role of the State: Explaining Conflict in Assam”, Ethnic and Racial Studies (London), vol.11, no.3, July 1988, pp. 263-81. Back.

Note 11: See Thanka B. Subba, Ethnicity, State and Development: A Case Study of Gorkhaland Movement in Darjeeling (New Delhi: Har Anand, 1992) Back.

Note 12: The demographic change to the disadvantage of the Sindhis is strikingly quite drastic. In view of the fact that the out-group flows have been to the urban centers, the native Sindhis have become minority in two largest cities of Sindh--they constitute the fifth largest group in Karachi and the second largest group in Hyderabad. See Charles H. Kennedy, “The Politics of Ethnicity in Sindh,” Asian Survey , vol. 31, no.10, October 1991, pp.938-41. Back.

Note 13: Apart from the proficiency in Dzongkha, the 1977 citizenship act stipulated a residential qualification of 15 years for the grant of citizenship to the government servants and 20 years in the case of others. Finding this act ineffective to check immigration of the Nepalese, the Citizenship Act of 1985 laid down stringent provisions by fixing 1958 as the cut off year for application for citizenship by registration. Back.

Note 14: See Chelvadurai Manogaran, “Colonization as Politics: Political Use of Space in Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Conflict”, in Chelvadurai Manogaran and Bryan Pffaffenberger, eds., The Sri Lankan Tamils: Ethnicity and Identity (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994), 84-125. Back.

Note 15: The extent to which the Bengali colonization has disturbed the demographic character of the CHT could be gauged from the figures. The Bengalis accounted for about 10 per cent of the total hill tracts’ population in 1951, which rose to 26 per cent in 1974 and 40 per cent in 1981. Amena Mohsin, The Politics of Nationalism: The Case of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh (Dhaka: The University Press Limited, 1997), pp. 219. Back.

Note 16: On the language problem in East Pakistan, see Urmila Phadnis, Ethnicity and Nation-building in South Asia (New Delhi: Sage, 1989), pp. 165- 69. For a succinct account of the language issue in Sri Lanka in the 1950s, see W. Howard Wriggins, Ceylon: Dilemmas of a New nation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960), pp.169-269, and Robert N. K.earney, Communalism and Language in the Politics of Ceylon (Durham: Duke University Press, 1967). Back.

Note 17: See Rounaq Jahan, Pakistan: Failure in National Integration (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), pp.42-49 Back.

Note 18: Selig Harrison, In Afghanistan’s Shadow: Baluch Nationalism and Soviet Te,ptations (Washington, D.C: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1981), pp. 161-68; Sayeed, n.5, pp.122-23. Back.

Note 19: Kennedy, n. 16, pp. 941-47; Charles H. Kennedy, “Policies of Redistributional Preference in Pakistan”, in Neil Nevitte and Charles H. Kennedy, eds., Ethnic Preference and Public Policy in Developing States (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1986), pp. 63-93; Iftikhar H. Malik, “The Politics of Ethnic Conflict in Sindh: Nation, Region and Community in Pakistan”, in Subrata K. Mitra and R. Alison Lewis, eds., Subnational Movements in South Asia (Boulder, Colorado, Westview Press, 1996), pp. 68-103. Back.

Note 20: See chapters of K. M. de Silva, C.R. de Silva, S.W.R. de Samarasinghe, Neelan Tiruchelvam, in Robert B. Goldman and A. Jeyaratnam Wilson, eds., From Independence to Statehood: Managing Ethnic Conflict in Five African and Asian States (London: Frances Pinter Publishers, 1984). Back.

Note 21: See Mohsin, n. 15, pp. 120-37; Syed Nazmul Islam, “The Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh: Integrational Crisis Between Center and Periphery”, Asian Survey , viol. 21, no. 12, December 1981, pp. 1218-9. Back.

Note 22: Phadnis, n.16, pp. 152-55. Back.

Note 23: For details see Madan P. Bezbaruah, “Cultural Sub-Nationalism in India’s North-East: An Overview”, in Mitra and Lewis, n.19, pp. 171-90; Sanjib Baruah, “The State and Separatist Militancy in Assam: Winning a Battle and Losing the War?”, Asian Survey, vol.34, no.10, October 1994, pp. 864-70. Back.

Note 24: The first category includes conflicts involving the East Bengalis, Sindhis, Mohajirs, Baluch and Pakhtuns as separate parties against a common adversary--the Punjabi dominated Central government in Pakistan; the conflict between the Bengalis and tribal people of the CHT in Bangladesh; the Drukpa-Lhotshmpa conflict in Bhutan, and the Sinhalese-Sri Lankan Tamil conflict. In India, due to the ethnic diffusion at the Centre, the character of adversary changes in every conflict. For instance, in the Dravidian movement the Tamils considered the Hindi nationalists-dominated Central government as their adversary, and for the Sikhs it was the Hindu nationalists-dominated Central government. For the Nagas, Mizos, Meiteis, Tripuris, Kashmiris, and Assamese, the adversary was Hindu and Hindi nationalists-dominated Central government. Under the second category, the conflicts between the Gorkhas and Bengalis-controlled West Bengal government, between the Sindhis and Mohajirs, and between the Bodos and Assam government can be considered. Back.

Note 25: For a comprehensive exposition on power-denial to the East Pakistanis, see Mohammed Ayoob and K. Subrahmanyam, The Liberation War (New Delhi: S. Chand &Co, 1972), Chapters 2-5. Back.

Note 26: Vernon Hewitt, “ Ethnic Construction, Provincial Identity and Nationalism”, in Mitra and Lewis, n.19, pp. 43-67; Robert G. Wirsing, The Baluchis and Pathans , Minority Rights Group Report no.48 (London: MRG, 1981), pp. 8-12; 15-16. Back.

Note 27: On the federal demand of the Sri Lankan Tamils see Robert C. Oberst, “Federalism and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka”, Publius (Denton, Texas), vol.18, Summer 1988, pp.175-94. Back.

Note 28: The articulation of autonomy demands in the CHT and the response of successive governments are analyzed by Amena Mohsin and Bhumittra Chakma, “The Myth of Nation Building and Security of Bangladesh: The Case of Chittagong Hill Tracts”, in Iftekharuzzaman and Imtiaz Ahmed, eds., Bangladesh and SARRC (Dhaka: Academic Press, 1992), pp. 295-315; Mizanur Rahman Shelley, ed., The Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh: The Untold Story (Dhaka: Centre for Development Research, 1992), chapter 6. Back.

Note 29: Gurharpal Singh, “The Punjab Crisis Since 1984: A reassessment “ in Mitra and Lewis, n. 19, pp. 104-24; Jugdep S. Chima, “ The Punjab Crisis: Governmental Centralization and Akali-Center Relations”, Asian Survey , vol.34, no.10, October 1994, pp. 847-62; Yogendra K. Malik, “The Akali Party and Sikh Militancy: Move for Greater Autonomy or Secessionism in Punjab”, Asian survey , vol. 26, no. 3, March 1996, pp. 345-62, and Murray J. Leaf, “The Punjab Crisis”, Asian Survey , vol.25, no.5, May 1985, pp. 475-98. Back.

Note 30: For an excellent exposition on the political decay as a factor in the Kashmir insurgency, see Sumit Ganguly, The Crisis in Kashmir: Portents of War, Hopes of Peace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press and Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1997). Back.

Note 31: See Robert L. Hardgrave, The Dravidian Movement (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1965). Back.

Note 32: Bezbaruah, n. 23, pp. 181-82. Back.

Note 33: For an interesting theoretical perspective on this argument, see Terrell A.Northrup, “The Dynamics of Identity in Personal and Social Conflict”, in Louis Kriesberg, Terrell A. Northrup and Stuart J. Thorson, eds., Intractable Conflicts and their Transformation (Syracuse University Press, 1989), pp Back.

Note 34: A number of theoretical and empirical studies deal with the role of the State in ethnic conflicts. A noteworthy ones are: Paul R. Brass, Ethnicity and Nationalism: Theory and Comparison ( New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1991), chapter.7; Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Ethnic Conflicts and Nation-State (London: Macmillan, 1996). Back.

Note 35: This is in contrast to a general formulation that “state collapse causes ethnic conflict”. Pauline H. Bake and John A. Ausink, “State Collapse and Ethnic Violence: Toward a Predictive Model”, Parameters , vol.26, no.1, 1996, p.25. While it is empirically undisputed, the same is not universally applicable. None of the states of South Asia have collapsed to cause ethnic conflict but violence has engulfed the societies even though the states maintained a strict control through their strong central governments. Some of the South Asian states are at best ‘weak states’ or ‘anemic states’, which the ethnic rebels are targeting at to achieve their collapse. Back.

Note 36: The normative and organizational pillars of post-independence Indian State are secularism, socialism, and nationalism of the Nehruvian type. Amrita Basu and Atul Kohli, “Introdution”, in Amrita Basu and Atul Kohli, eds., Community Conflicts and the State in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp..2-3. This argument may be relevant to communal clashes but not ethnic conflicts in India. Back.

Note 37: A “quasi-mediator” is someone who is a member of one of the conflicting groups who seeks to work for inter-group reconciliation and harmony. For the conceptual clarification see Louise Kriesberg, “Formal and Quasi-Mediators in International Disputes: An Explanatory Analysis”, Journal of peace Research , vol.28, no.1, February 1991, pp.19-28. Back.

Note 38: For an excellent conceptual exposition on this factor, see David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild, “Containing Fear: The Origin and Management of Ethnic Conflict”, in Michael E. Brown, et. al., eds., Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict: An International Security Reader (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1997), pp. 104-108; James D. Fearon, “Commitment Problem and the Spread of Ethnic Conflict”, in David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild, eds., The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict: Fear, Diffusion, and Escalation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), pp.107-126. Back.

Note 39: The Sri Lankan Tamils’ feeling of betrayal has started with the abrogation of the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayagam Pact of 1957, which recognized Tamil as the language of a national minority and undertook to establish Regional Councils. It increased when the government refused to implement the Senanayake-Chelvanayagam Pact of 1965, which offered to devolve powers initially at the Provincial level and later at the district level, and accept the Tamil demands in the 1972 and 1978 constituent assemblies. Back.

Note 40: In 1976, a Tamil United Liberation Front resolution stated: “the Republican Constitution of 1972 has made the Tamils a slave nation ruled by the new colonial masters, the Sinhalese, who were using the power they had wrongly usurped to deprive the Tamil nation of its territory, language, citizenship, economic life, opportunities of employment and education thereby destroying all the attributes of nationhood of the Tamil people”. Quoted in Robert Kearney, “Language and the Rise of Tamil Separation”, Asian Survey , vol. 18, no.5, May 1978, p.532. Back.

Note 41: Phadnis, n , 16, pp. 168-171. Back.

Note 42: Derived from the realist framework of international relations, the concept is first applied to ethnic conflict by Barry R. Posen, “The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict,” Survival (London), vol.35, no.1, Spring 1993, pp.27-47. Back.

Note 43: See Ted Robert Gurr and Barbara Harff, Ethnic Conflict in World Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994); Manus I. Midlarsky, ed., The Internationalization of Communal Strife (London: Routledge, 1992); Alexis Heraclides, The Self-Determination of Minorities in International Politics (London: Frank Cass, 1991); Astri Suhrke and Garner Noble, eds., Ethnic Conflict in International Relations (New York: Praeger, 1977). Back.

Note 44: For a succinct analysis of external patron support to the groups, see P. Sahadevan, “Internationalization of Ethnic Conflicts in South Asia: A Conceptual Enquiry”, International Studies (New Delhi), vol.35, no.3, July-September 1998, pp. 317-42. Also see, Rajat Ganguly, Kin State Intervention in Ethnic Conflicts: Lessons from South Asia (New Delhi: Sage, 1998). Back.

Note 45: See Milton J. Esman, “Political and Psychological Factors in Ethnic Conflict”, in Joseph V. Montville, ed., Conflict and Peacemaking in Multiethnic Societies (Lexington, Mass: Lexington Books, 1989), pp. 53-63; Ted Robert Gurr, “Why Minorities Rebel: A Global Analysis of Communal Mobilization and Conflict Since 1945”, International Political Science Review , vo.14, no.2, April 1993,pp. 161-201. Back.

Note 46: The first organized protest movement was the 1956 language agitation by the Federal Party, and the mobilization of youth for armed struggle started with the formation of the Tamil New Tigers in 1972 which re-christened itself in 1976 as the LTTE under the leadership of Velupillai Prabhakaran. Back.

Note 47: International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences , vol. 10, p.300. Back.

Note 48: For instance, see Kenneth Fidel, ed., Militarism in Developing Countries (New Brunswick, N.J: Transaction Books, 1975). Back.

Note 49: International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, n.47. Back.

Note 50: See Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah, Buddhism Betrayed? Religion, Politics, and Violence in Sri Lanka (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992) Back.

Note 51: Conflict behavior is defined as “actions undertaken by one party in any situation of conflict aimed at the opponent [to] abandon or modify its goals”. C.R. Mitchell, The Structure of International Conflict (London: Macmillan, 1981), p.29. Back.

Note 52: Thus, for instance, the Sikh Light Infantry and other north Indian units were fielded against the Naga and Mizo groups in the northeast. Raju G.C. Thomas and Bharat Karnad, “The Military and National Integration in India”, in Henry Dietz, et. al., eds., Ethnicity, Integration, and the Military (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991), pp.139-40. Back.

Note 53: Stanley J. Tambiah, Leveling Crowds: Ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in South Asia ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), p.28. Back.

Note 54: See Jonathan Spencer, “Collective Violence and Everyday Practice in Sri Lanka” , Modern Asian Studies, vol.24, no.3, 1990, pp.603-23; T.D.S.A. Dissanayaka, The Agony of Sri Lanka (Colombo: Swastika Press, 1983), chapter 4. Also see the chapters of Sunil Bastian, Amrit Srinivasan and Valli Kanapathipillai, in Veena Das, eds., Mirrors of Violence: Communities, Riots and Survivors in South Asia (New Delhi: OUP, 1990); Tambiah, n.53, pp. 82-100. Back.

Note 55: For an excellent exposition on the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi, see Tambiah, n.53, pp. 101-62; chapters of Veena Das, Ashish Banerjee and Sudhir Kakar, in Das, n.54. Back.

Note 56: This is not to say that India has not witnessed other forms of collective violence. Caste and communal riots strike various parts of the country in regular intervals and their causes vary from localized economic or political competition to religious issues. See M.J. Akbar, Riot After Riot: Reports on Caste and Communal Violence in India (London: Penguin, 1988); Asghar Ali Engineer, Communal Riots in Post-Independent India (New Delhi: Sangam, 1984). Back.

Note 57: See Akmal Hussain, “The Karachi Riots of December 1986: Crisis of State and Civil Society in Pakistan”, Farida Shaheed, “The Pathan-Muhajir Conflicts, 1985-6: A National Perspective”, in Das, n.54, pp.185-214. Back.

Note 58: The Muslims are pitchforked between the Tamils and Sinhalese in the East. While the Tamils account for about 42 per cent of the total population in the East, the Sinhalese and Muslims constitute 21 per cent and 32 per cent respectively. Back.

Note 59: See People’s Union for Democratic Rights, Endless War: Disturbed Areas of the North-East (Delhi: PUDR, 1983); PUDR, TADA Judgement: A Critique (Delhi: PUDR, 1994); Naga Peoples’ Movement for Human Rights, A Background on Armed Forces Special Powers Act (1972) (New Delhi: NPMHR, n.d); National Campaign Committee Against Militarisation and Repeal of Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, Where ‘Peacekeepers’ have Declared War (New Delhi, 1997). For academic and journalistic analyses on this issue, see Sumanta Banerjee, “The Politics of Violence in the Indian State and Society”, in Kumar Rupesinghe and Khawar Mumtaz, eds., Internal Conflicts in South Asia (London: Sage, 1996), pp. 81-95; Manoj Joshi, “Combating Terrorism in Punjab: Indian Democracy in Crisis”, Conflict Studies, No.261 (London, 1993); Balraj Puri, Kashmir: Towards Insurgency (Delhi: Orient Longman, 1993). Back.

Note 60: Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, The Great Tragedy (Karachi, 1971), p. 50, quoted in Ayoob and Subramanyam, n. 25, p.133. Back.

Note 61: Sayeed, n.5, p.129; Selig S. Harrison, “Nightmare in Baluchistan”, Foreign Policy (Washington), No.32, Fall 1978, pp. 136-60; Amnesty International, Islamic Republic of Pakistan: An Amnesty International Report Including the Findings of a Mission to Pakistan 23 April-12 May 1976 (London, 1977). Back.

Note 62: See Malik, n.19, pp. 86-94. Back.

Note 63: Mohsin, n.15, pp.177-188; Amnesty International, Bangladesh: A Summary of Human Rights Concerns (London, 1993); Amnesty International, Unlawful Killings and Torture in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (London, 1986); Anti-Slavery Society, The Chittagong Hill Tracts: Militarization, Oppression and the Hill Tribes , Report No.2 (London, 1984). Back.

Note 64: For instance, the 1997 Amnesty International Report stated that about 1,600 people were detained under the PTA or the emergency Regulations; 600 of whom were held for more than a year. Back.

Note 65: International Commission of Jurists, Ethnic Conflict and Violence in Sri Lanka, Report of a Mission to Sri Lanka in July-August 1981 on behalf of the International Commission of Jurists by Professor Virginia A. Leary (Geneva: ICJ, 1983); Sri Lanka: A Mounting Tragedy of Errors , Report of a Mission to Sri Lanka in January 1984 on behalf of the International Commission of Jurists and its British /section, JUSTICE, by Paul Sieghart (London, 1984). Back.

Note 66: See two reports by P. Rajanayagam, Sri Lanka: Human Rights Violations--Extrajudicial and Arbitrary Killings; Arrest, Detention and Torture (London: Tamil Information Centre & Human Rights Council--SCOT, 1987). Currently, the University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) regularly brings out reports on human rights violations both by the state security forces and the militants. Back.

Note 67: Figures are from Elizabeth Nissan, “Integrity of the Person”, in Law & Society Trust, Sri Lanka: State of Human Rights Report 1997 (Colombo, 1997), pp. 13-19. Back.

Note 68: They are East Pakistan, Baluch, the CHT, Eelam, Khalistan, Naga, Mizo, Meitei, Tripuri, Bodo, Assamese, and Kashmir wars. Back.

Note 69: This theme forms a subject for an ongoing study by the author under the Kodikara Award, granted by the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies, Colombo, Sri Lanka. Back.

Note 70: See Tara kartha, Tools of Terror: Light Weapons and India’s Security (New Delhi: Knowledge World, 1999); Chris Smith, The Diffusion of Small Arms and Light Weapons in Pakistan and North India (London: Brassey’s for Centre for Defence Studies, 1993). Back.

Note 71: Figures compiled from the US Committee for Refugees, World Survey 1998 (Washington, D.C, 1998) pp. 118-32. This excludes about 300,000 expatriate Sri Lankan Tamils who have taken asylum or refuge in various European and North American countries. Back.

Note 72: India received around 10 million refugees from East Pakistan in 1971, 110,000 from China (Tibet), 100,000 from Sri Lanka, 53,000 from Bangladesh, 15,000 from Bhutan. Altogether it hosted more than 320,000 refugees (both from South Asia and outside the region) by the end of 1997. India’s status as a refugee-receiving country has now been changed by the influx of some 13,000 refugees from Indian-controlled Kashmir into Pakistan. Nepal had around 93,000 refugees in the same year. U.S. Committee for Refugee, ibid, p. 122 and 129. Back.

Note 73: While Pakistan and Bangladesh exported refugees to India at various points in time, they have also received refugees from outside the South Asian region--the former from Afghanistan (about 3.6 million in 1990 which dropped to 1.2 million in 1995) and the latter from Myanmar (about 250,000 Rohingyas). Ibid, pp. 118 and 124. For succinct account of refugee problem in South Asia in historical context, see Aristide R. Zolberg, Astri Suhrke and Sergio Aguayo, Escape from Violence: Conflict and the Refugee Crisis in the Developing World (New York: OUP, 1989), chapter 5. Back.

Note 74: See S.D. Muni and Lok Raj Baral, eds., Refugees and Regional Security in South Asia (Delhi: Konark Publishers, 1996). Back.

Note 75: Thomas and Karnad, n. 52, p.140. Back.

Note 76: Sri Lanka is the best example of a country whose military development is linked to ethnic militarism. A ceremonial outfit until 1983, the Sri Lankan Army has grown up by about 600 per cent in 15 years, from a mere 16,000 men in 1983 to about 115, 000 in 1997. Defense spending constituted about 1.5 per cent of the GDP in 1983 (4 per cent of the total government spending). It rose to over 5 per cent of the GDP in 1987-88 (almost 18 per cent of the total government spending). During 1985-95, the expenditure increased by 4.9 per cent of the GDP. The actual amount of increase was from Rs. one billion in 1981 to 46 billion in 1996. Now, the running cost of the war is estimated at Rs.2.4 million per day. P. Sahadevan , “Security of Sri Lanka: Concerns, Approaches and Alternatives”, in Dipankar Banerjee, ed., Comprehensive and Cooperative Security in South Asia (New Delhi: Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, 1998)166-206. Back.

Note 77: The CHT Commission, Life is Not Ours’: Land and Human Rights in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh (Netherlands, 1994), P.2. Back.

Note 78: See Ted Robert Gurr, Minorities at Risk: A Global View of Ethnopolitical Conflicts (Washington, D.C: United States Institute for Peace press, 1993), chapter 10. Back.

Note 79: Roy Licklider, “The Consequences of Negotiated Settlements in Civil Wars, 1945-1993”, American Political Science Review, vol. 89, no.3, September 1995, p. 686. Back.

Note 80: Data compiled by Kaufmann suggests that out of 27 ethnic conflicts that have attained civil war dimensions, twelve were ended by complete victory of one side, five by de jure or de facto partition, and two have been suppressed by military occupation by a third party. Only eight ethnic civil wars have ended through a negotiated agreement. Chaim Kaufmann, “Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars”, in Michael E. Brown, et.al., eds., Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict: An International Reader (Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1997), pp.288-89. Back.

Note 81: Licklider, n. 79. Back.

Note 82: See Phadnis, n. 16, pp.184-90. Back.

Note 83: See Samina Ahmed, “Centralization, Authoritarianism, and the Mismanagement of Ethnic Relations in Pakistan”, in Michael E. Brown and Sumit Ganguly, eds., Government Policies and Ethnic Relations in Asia and the Pacific (Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1997), pp.107-9. Back.

Note 84: The accord stipulated inter alia that Chandigarh, the shared capital of Punjab and Haryana, would be transferred to Punjab and a commission would determine the Hindi speaking territories for their transfer to Haryana in return; the issue relating to sharing of water between the two states would be referred to tribunal; and the Sarkaria Commission would decide autonomy demands of Akalis as a part of the larger issues in center-state relations. See the text of the accord in The Indian Express (Delhi), 25 July 1985. Also see, Rajiv A Kapur, “Khalistan: India’s Punjab Problem”, Third World Quarterly , vol.9, no.4, October 1987, pp. 1214-24. Back.

Note 85: See Gurharpal Singh, “The Punjab Crisis Since 1984: A reassessment”, in Mitra and Lewis, n. , pp. 104-22 Back.

Note 86: Phanis, n. 16, pp.141-4. Back.

Note 87: While prescribing punishment for any individual who question the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country, the amendment requires all the candidates contesting Parliamentary and state legislature elections to take an oath of allegiance to the sovereignty of India. Back.

Note 88: Jugdeep S. Chima, “Why Some Ethnic Insurgencies Decline: Political Parties and Social Cleavages in Punjab and Northern Ireland Compared”, Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics (London),vol. 25, no.3, November 1997, pp.1-25. Back.

Note 89: The conflicts in Pakistan provide the best illustration. In October 1998, a conference of regional national parties in Islamabad questioned the Punjabi domination in the polity and demanded for autonomy and sovereignty to provinces. It asked the Center to restrict its powers to three subjects: foreign affairs, communications, and defense. See the news analysis of M.B. Naqvi in Times of India (New Delhi), 11 October 1998. Back.

Note 90: See Sinha Ratnatunga, Politics of Terrorism: The Sri Lankan Experience (Belconnen, Australia: International Fellowship for Social and Economic Development, 1988), pp. 318-409; S.D. Muni, Pangs of Proximity: India and Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Crisis (New Delhi: Sage, 1993); Dayan Jayatilleka, Sri Lanka: Travails of a Democracy, Unfinished War, Protracted Crisis (New Delhi: Vikas, 1995); P. Sahadevan, “The Internalized Peace Process in Sri Lanka”, BIISS Journal (Dhaka), vol. 16, no.3, July 1995, pp.325-45. Back.

Note 91: See Y.D. Gundevia, War and Peace in Nagaland (Dehra Dun, India: Palit & Palit, 1975); “Army in Nagaland”, Economic and Political Weekly (Bombay), vol.31, no.34, 24 August 1996, pp. 2284-7. Back.

Note 92: Under the trilateral agreement involving the Central and State governments and the TNV in 1988, the militant group agreed to end all underground activities; the government promised to extend resettlement facilities, increase tribal representation in the legislature through reservation, protect the tribal interests in land alienation, and develop agricultural and irrigation facilities in tribal areas. See the text of the agreement in The Frontline (Madras), 17-30 September 1988. The 1993 Agreement broadly incorporated the provisions of the 1988 agreement and provided safeguards to the tribal culture. Back.

Note 93: The 1993 accord provided a Bodoland Autonomous Council, which is far less than the Bodos’ desire for a full-fledged Bodo state within the Indian union. For details on the accord, see Bhattacharjee, n.6, pp. 139-53. Also see Partha S. Ghosh, “Ethnic Conflict and Conflict Management: The Indian Case”, in Iftekharuzzaman, Ethnicity and Constitutional Reform in South Asia (New Delhi: Manohar, 1998), pp.63-65. Back.

Note 94: Under the accord, the MNF promised to cease violence and ensure the surrender of insurgents; the Center undertook to accord statehood to Mizoram and provide constitutional guarantees for religious or social practices of the Mizos. For the text of the accord, see P.S. Datta, Ethnic Peace Accords in India (New Delhi: Vikas, 1995). Back.

Note 95: For the text of the accord and its analysis, see Ibid. Back.

Note 96: The accord sought inter alia to establish a Regional Council by combining three hill district local government councils; create a separate ministry for the CHT affairs headed by a tribal minister; give priority to tribal people in government appointments in the CHT, and set up a land commission to resolve the dispute over land. See the text of the accord in The Daily Star (Dhaka), 3 December 1997. Back.

Note 97: Professor Raju G.C. Thomas of Marquette Univesity, USA, made this point during his presentation on “Security Politics and the Military Balance in South Asia”, at the international conference on “Cooperation in South Asia: Resolution of Inter-State Conflicts”, organized by the South Asian Studies Division, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, on 29-30 March 1999. Back.