The Deadly Fancy Dress Party

The very ordinary getting cloaked in Radicalism

“First, we destroyed the small statue. It was a woman. Then we blew up her husband.”  Taliban Leader Mullah Mohammad Omar during a press conference March 2001.
The radicals blasted a treasure of their ancient heritage; the moderates defended the radicals.
The Taliban were assisted by Saudi/Pakistani engineers in the destruction of the ancient Bamiyan Buddha statues while Al Jazeera was the only outfit permitted to film the destruction. 

From the Preface of Amartya Sen’s Identity & Violence, 2007

Oscar Wilde made the enigmatic claim, “most people are other people.” This may sound like one of his more outrageous conundrums, but in this case Wilde defended his view with considerable cogency: “Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” We are indeed influenced to an amazing extent by people with whom we identify. Actively promoted sectarian hatreds can spread like wildfire, as we have seen recently in Kosovo, Bosnia, Ruwanda, Timor, Israel, Palestine, Sudan, and many other places in the world. With suitable instigation, a fostered sense of identity with one group can be made into powerful weapon to brutalize another.

Indeed, many of the conflicts and barbarities in the world are sustained through the illusion of a unique and choiceless identity, The art of constructing hatred takes the form of invoking the magical power of some allegedly predominant identity that drowns other affiliations, and in a conveniently bellicose form can also overpower any human sympathy or natural kindness that we may normally have. The result can be homespun elemental violence, or globally artful violence and terrorism.

In fact, a major source of potential conflict in the contemporary world is the presumption that people can be uniquely categorized based on religion or culture. The implicit belief in the overarching power of a single classification can make the world thoroughly inflammable. A uniquely divisive view goes not only against the old-fashioned belief that all human beings are much the same but also against the less discussed but much more plausible understanding that we are diversely different. The world is frequently taken to be a collection of religions (or of ‘civilizations” or “cultures”), ignoring the other identities that people have and value, involving class, gender, profession, language, science, morals, and politics. This unique divisiveness is much more confrontational than the universe of plural and diverse classifications that shape the world in which we actually live. The reductionism of high theory can make a major contribution, often inadvertently to the violence of low politics.

Also, global attempts to overcome such violence are often handicapped by a similar conceptual disarray, with the acceptance-explicitly or by implication-of a unique identity forestalling many of the obvious avenues of resistance. As a consequence, religion based violence might end up being challenged not through the strengthening of civil society (obvious as that course is), but through the deployment of different religious leaders of apparently “moderate” persuasion who are challenged not through suitably refining demands of the religion involved. When interpersonal relations are seen in singular intergroup terms, as “amity” or “dialogue” among civilizations or religious ethnicities, paying no attention to other groups to which the same persons also belong (involving economic, social, political, or other cultural connections), then much of importance of human life is altogether lost, and individuals are put into little boxes.
Above is a a gleaning from the book titled “Identity and Violence’ by Amartya Sen. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-32929-2

The magnificent free-standing statue carved out of a single rock is the tallest Buddha statue in existence today. Following the destruction of similar but much larger statues at Bamiyan in Afghanistan, the Aukana Buddha has gained even greater significance in the Buddhist World.

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India Trains Terrorists

Concrete Evidence of India Training Terrorists

 Indian Intervention in Sri Lanka: written by Rohan Gunaratna

The first concrete piece of evidence that India was subverting Sri Lanka came from a small group youth arrested by the Sri Lanka security forces in Jaffna. However the details of interrogation were not divulged for reason unknown, perhaps political or even diplomatic ones.

When the sequence of events was later reconstructed, this is how it had happened: a specially hand-picked group of youth, who had come to Tamil Nadu as refugees from Trincomalee was taken to New Delhi. There, they were trained in the use of 9mm pistols, AK-47 rifles and the Indian SMG (sub-machine guns) of Indian make; in the manufacture of parcel bombs and the laying of booby traps; the use of radio communication through the Morse Code to secret letter-writing; identification of ranks; assessing the moments, strength of troops and vehicles in a camp; conducting surveillance and counter-surveillance; and in cultivating informants and collecting strategic information.

This group was taken from New Delhi to the Bombay harbor, and taught how to identify ships by flags and by form. They were trained specially in the identification of the destroyers, cruisers, minesweepers, gun boats, missile cruisers, missile boats, torpedo boats, aircraft carriers, submarines, oil tankers and passenger ships. They were instructed as to the manner in which they should pass the information from Trincomalee to Madras. This involved a New Delhi Post Office Box number.
[According to the Thomas A. Marks, a US military analyst, Indira Gandhi was very concerned about the developments in Trincomalee and the Indian RAW responded by training militants to monitor the possible US involvement in Trincomalee.]

They were returned to Tamil Nadu and then sent to Jaffna with few rupees. Most of the members of this group were from Trincomalee. The operation failed because Jaffna was new; an alien land to them. Within a few hours, before they could return to India or get back to Trincomalee, the security forces received information that there were strangers in Jaffna who did not know their where about-they were soon apprehended and interrogated, and the information extracted was passed onto Colombo. Interestingly, the captured militants had identified a sign board in New Delhi as a landmark where the initial training was conducted. When Colombo informed the Sri Lanka High Commission in New Delhi to locate the board, the Indians promptly removed it. [Sri Lanka High Commission, New Delhi, 1986; diplomatic source]
Initial training was made available at three locations- Chakrata near Dehra Dun in Uttara Pradesh, Ramakrishapuram in New Delhi, and at a location near the Delhi International Airport.

The location of Chakara was the most secretive. Previously, it was a top secret military complex code named “Establishment Two Two” (written as ‘Establishment 22’) where RAW with CIA jointly trained Tibetan Kampas to subvert Chinese occupied Tibet. This was later converted into a base exclusively for the Sri Lanka Operation. After, the number of locations within India reserved for training Sri Lankan Tamil militants grew, and several other military and paramilitary institutions were co-opted for this purpose. Eight camps in three north Indian locations which were managed by RAW trained 350 TELO cadres, 200 EROS cadres and 70 PLOTE cadres.

Above is an extraction from the book title “Indian Intervention in Sri Lanka” written by Rohan Gunaratna in the year1993. [ISBN 955-95199-0-5]

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India bombs Sri Lanka with Dhal

India bombs Parippu Dhal to Sri Lanka with a view to Invade- year 1987

Following is a gleaning from the book titled ‘Tigers of Lanka: From Boys to Guerrillas” by the Indian journalist M. R. Narayan Swamy ISBN 81-220-0386-9

On June 3, that intervention took the form of a flotilla of 19 fishing boats loaded with 38 tonnes of pulses, bread, vegetables, milk, rice, salt, kerosene and match boxes which set sail for Jaffna from Rameshwaram, in Tamil nadu, flying Red Cross flags. On board were nearly 100 journalists. But the Sri Lankan navy barred the way, and the flotilla returned to Tamil Nadu after six-hour sea odyssey.

The next day, giving Colombo a bare 35-mintue notice, five Indian AN-32 transporters took off from Banglore and, with a protective ring thrown by
four Mirage fighters, air dropped 25 tonnes of relief material over Jaffna. It was Gandhi’s response to the Sri Lankan refusal to entertain the
flotillas. The Indian government made I clear that any shooting a he aircraft would be met by force. A livid Athulathmudali, his ‘Operation Liberation” now in limbo, said some of the Indian food was eaten by crows after they fell into the Jaffna lagoon.

The Indian intervention marked a new chapter in the ethnic conflict and culminated within two months in the historic India Sri Lanka accord. The air drop was also the most explicit warning Gandhi administered to Jayawardena about Indian intentions vis-à-vis Sri Lanka. The Tamil Times of London claimed that India was no more a mediator in Sri Lanka. ‘She (has) chosen her side in the Sri Lankan conflict,’ the journal said. ‘She has identifies herself with the Sri Lankan Tamils… Sri Lankan Tamils all over the world... can only entrust their fae in the hands of mother India.”

Although the June 4 air drop was portrayed as a hastily devised response to the Sri Lankan blockade of the Indian relief flotilla, it was not so. The military Intelligence (MI) had thought of tit well in advance as a contingency. A day before the drop, the MI –which had got sucked into Sri Lankan affairs in 1986-was ready with a map of Colombo marked with offices and residences of President Jayawardena, Prime Minister Premadasa, Athulathmudali, Joint Operations Command (JOC) chief Nalin Seneviratne, Sri Lankan Police chief Ernest Perera and three service chiefs. In the case of Athulathmudalai, the MI also had the address of a Burgher woman he was known to be friendly with and whom he reportedly visited in the evenings accompanied by a lone security guard. The grandiose plan was to seize all the VIPs-including the president and prime minister-if the Indian planes were shot down by the Sri Lankans.

The MI also found out the strength of all police stations and military garrisons in and around Colombo and location of open grounds where Indian troops could be conveniently paradropped or landed to carry out the blitzkrieg. These included the St. Peters College ground, the sports ministry playground, the S.S. C. cricket ground, the C.C.C. playground, the Galle Face green, the Campbell Park, the St, Joseph’s College ground, the Zahira College ground, the St. Benedicts College ground and the Sugathadasa stadium.

To prevent any possible backlash on the Indian community, the Indian high commission asked its diplomats and staff and Indian nationals in Colombo to move into luxury hotels ahead of June 4. But fortunately, the air drop passed off peacefully. No wonder, Dixit later called the so-called mercy mission, “ operation Poomalai” (Garland), India’s ‘first military projection into Sri Lanka short of actual violence” What he did not say was that had Colombo reacted violently, it would have end up as “Operation Red garland”.

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