I. DOCTRINES OF DECEIT
Nanak, such are the blasphemers,Who set themselves up,As the leaders and rulers of the world;They consume daily the forbidden fruit of falsehood,And yet they preach to others,What is right and what is wrong;Themselves deluded, they delude others also,Who follow in their path.1The people of Punjab are still struggling to come to terms with the terrifying memories of a tragicdecade-and-a-half of turbulence and terror; but already, strange and unsettling reverberations of thatmalevolent past can be heard again..If we cast our minds back to 1981 and 1982, when terrorism in Punjab was already being perceived as aserious threat to the authority of the State, we discover that 13 persons were killed by the terrorists ineach of these years. 1983, which was described by contemporary commentators as "The Year of theArmageddon"2 saw the number of deaths inflicted by terrorist violence rise to 75.Almost four years after the terrorist scourge had decisively been eliminated, there was a sudden rash of terrorist incidents: between March 14 and July 10, 1997, fifty-five persons lost their lives to the militantbomb and bullet in Punjab.When does terrorist violence cross the threshold at which it is recognised and confronted in its trueguise - as terrorism? Recently, the World Health Organisation issued a statement to the effect that evenone case of polio constitutes an ‘epidemic’. It would be immeasurably beneficial if we were to applythe same definition to incidents of terrorism. A single terrorist act, if it does not meet with theappropriate State response, will reflexively multiply itself till the point where it attains the objectives of its perpetrators; or the point at which these perpetrators are comprehensively defeated in their purpose.Unfortunately, certain inveterate delusions that preclude the possibility of a fitting response to militantviolence have established themselves in the minds of the political leadership of Punjab. A group of ‘interested’ politicians and activists, whose role during the period of the ascendancy of terror was morethan ambiguous, are now vigorously projecting, and seeking to popularise, a myth that terrorism wasdefeated in Punjab, not by police action, not by the force of arms, but because it simply ‘lost popularsupport’. This fable has been repeated so often, at every available opportunity and forum, that itsadvocates, if no one else, now appear to place all their faith in its explanatory efficacy. But are we tounderstand, on this argument, that terrorism ‘returned’ to Punjab because it had, in the first few monthsof 1997, inexplicably regained ‘popular support’?There are several dangers inherent in this manifestly specious argument. The first of these is theinsidious suggestion that terrorism did, at one time, enjoy overwhelming ‘popular support’ in Punjab.Despite the comprehensive disruption of the entire machinery of the State, and of the normal lives of the people that the terrorists successfully engineered for over ten years, there is no reason to believethat a majority, or even a substantial proportion, of the common people, were ever behind them.Certainly, there was a measure of support in the area along the borders of Pakistan. This was largelyrestricted to what is referred to as the Majha region, comprising mainly the tract lying between the river
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