‘Do We Want Our Troops To Get Stuck Like The Americans In Afghanistan?’

HARINDER BAWEJA ASKS KPS GILL, THE AUTHOR OF PUNJAB’S VICTORY OVER INSURGENTS, WHAT THE APPROACH TO THE NAXALS SHOULD BE

HE WILL always be referred to as the man who brought peace to Punjab; as the security strategist who wiped out terrorism in the border state a few years after it had claimed the life of Indira Gandhi, the country’s serving prime minister. Few thought they would see a solution to the escalating Punjab insurgency till Gill pulled it off. After spending close to 25 years — and earning his spurs — in the insurgency-ridden state of Assam, he was brought to Punjab in 1984. Gill got down to the task of dealing with the khadkus (terrorists) soon after Operation Blue Star, an ill-advised armoured attack on the Golden Temple — the most revered Sikh shrine — that only added to the ranks of the AK-47 brigade.

The full-blown insurgency in Punjab was changing the face of Indian politics and it was at this crucial juncture in the mid-80s that Gill was brought in as the Inspector General of Police in charge of operations. Just four years later, in 1988, he was made the troubled state’s top cop. The tall, often impatient sardar led from the front, motivating a force that was not just scared but one that found the militants’ fight for Sikh identity seductive. Under Gill, the same force took the battle straight into the terrorists’ camp; the terrorists soon returned to the safe environs of the Golden Temple for a second battle. But this time, Gill authored the plan with then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. In what was recognised later as a turning point, Gill brought about the open surrender of the terrorists in full view of the media.

Arms and the man Gill receiving weapons from a surrendered militant in Punjab Photo: INDIA TODAY

Gill succeeded in turning Punjab around, but not without dubious sobriquets of killer cop coming his way. He became a national hero, but Gill’s methods remain mired in controversy. This well-read, erudite man who was happy to make time for interviews in the evenings and who often quoted from different books was, you knew, the same man who had, in the daytime, taught his men how to dress up fake encounters as daring, close-shave battles. Stories about this counterinsurgency expert are legendary and his success in Punjab has been the main reason why this man has been personally invited by chief ministers Narendra Modi and Raman Singh to their trouble-torn capitals.

In 2006, Gill, 71 years old by then, went to Chhattisgarh to advise the state government on how to combat the threat from the Naxals. It is a subject he has long paid thought to. None of his proposals were heeded by chief minister Raman Singh, but Gill is forthright in admitting that unlike in Punjab — where his emphasis was on operations — in Chhattisgarh, the strategy has to be multifaceted and the tribal, the principal stakeholder. And yes, this Padma Shri awardee and man of letters also recommends a must-read for Home Minister P Chidambaram: Green Mansions, WH Hudson’s 1904 novel of a man trying to come to terms with an indigenous civilisation.

You are known as the man who sorted out Punjab. What, in your view, is the best way to tackle Naxalism? Is a security-centric response — where the State actually ends up battling its own people — the only solution?
You cannot reduce it to such simple terms, that ‘you are battling your own people’. The Naxalite ideologues feel that they have an alternative political model for the country. That they will help the oppressed and the dispossessed find a voice. Unfortunately, the truth is entirely different. The Naxalites are one of the biggest extortion mafias in the country, probably bigger than Dawood. Dawood was set up, I think, by certain political groups and then they found him uncomfortable. And when he tried to develop an independent existence of his own, he was allowed to go away. But despite all that, he maintains his network in India. Politics itself is an extortion network – more so now, in the name of development and industrialisation; land acquisitions and SEZs. When you have political leaders saying that development should be part of the response mechanism, ask them what they mean by development in Chhattisgarh. How does a good road affect a man who has no transport whatsoever? Of what use is the road for a tribal with two bare feet? I remember having a debate with one of the officers in Chhattisgarh and I said, if I, as a youngster, find a job at the end of a bad road, I wouldn’t mind a bad road. We are in a great, vicious circle of violence because today development is corruption-driven. So how is the government going to face what is called the challenge of the Naxalite?

So the dispossessed tribal finds the Naxal attractive?
Not attractive, but the tribal believes their propaganda. Who are the sufferers in this? The tribals. Who are the people who are being killed? Most people who are killed there are being killed by Naxalites as well as by those trying to defend the tribals from the Naxalites. Both ways, it’s the tribal who suffers. The Naxals have no ideology. Where is the ideology? The forests where the tribals dwell have the maximum resources, but are the tribals the stakeholders of these resources? Do the Naxals consider them stakeholders? No, Naxals are extortionists who take protection money even from the beedi mafia for the extraction of tendu leaves. And the beedi mafia is not even in Chhattisgarh, but in neighbouring states. If you say the Naxals have zero ideology, why does the common tribal trust the Naxal more than the State? Is it because the State is absent?

If there is any support for the tribal, it is out of sheer fright. You have the apologists, the so-called intellectuals talking about State violence. They justify Naxalite violence because the Naxals get arrested. It’s the typical chicken and egg story. Which comes first? Yes, the Constitution allows freedom of speech and all of that, but under the same Constitution, there is also a whole framework of laws and these laws are being tested.

But let’s return to the tribal in Chhattisgarh. Tribals don’t live only in four states. We have a large tribal population in the Northeast, in Arunachal Pradesh but why Naxal violence in Chhattisgarh and not in the other places? You cannot say that the state is more efficient there and less efficient here.

Take the mineral-rich Bastar area, for instance. It’s a huge area. I have travelled through the whole of Chhattisgarh by night and for Bastar, I used to be told to change my route and take another route. What was the State response there? In that whole Bastar area, the total number of policemen (after their number was increased) was less than 3,000. They were not equipped to fight the Naxals. Nor are the paramilitary forces equipped to fight them because if you want to confront the Naxals, you have to have a multi-pronged approach. There has to be a law and order quotient and a development quotient. But it’s important that development is specific to the needs of the area. How can the bureaucrats sit in Delhi and decide what the development model for the Chhattisgarh tribal will be?

The Planning Commission is not geared to target a certain community or a certain area. It takes an overall view. I remember we had this situation in Punjab when we found out that 125 villages alone accounted for 75 percent of the terrorists. I said address the villages, why can’t you address the villages? The Planning Commission said it can’t.

That’s interesting. Seventy-five percent terrorists from 125 villages and Delhi said they couldn’t even look into it?
I said, target these villages. They said we can’t do it. Why can’t we tailor the tools to make them area-specific? It’s not just about flying in commandos and battalions. What about the communities? In Chhattisgarh, it is about the Baniya-tribal relationship. It is as exploitative as was the Jat Sikh-Baniya relationship in Punjab. You need protection laws.

A recent law took away the rights of the tribals. Now, restoring the rights of the tribals is taking long time. Why is it taking such a long time? Why can’t you restore the rights?

The Fifth Schedule is very clear on the rights…
It exists merely on paper.

You are making a forceful argument, then, that Operation Green Hunt devised by the Home Ministry is a bad idea?
First of all, the nomenclature is wrong. There is no hunt. I’m sorry; it should not be referred to as a hunt. Who are you hunting? The human beings living there? That’s why people start talking about human rights violations. It’s a vicious cycle. Whether it’s the Naxalite response or the State response, both are equally stupid. And it’s only the tribal who is suffering and he is suffering very badly. The responses have been absolutely ridiculous.

I remember Mr LK Advani once made a statement that they will give rubber shoes — slipper-type things to the tribals — so that their feet are covered when they climb a tree for forest produce. They know how to live in the forest, but that is not the life they want to continue living. They want to change their lives, through education, through permanent settlements. Property ownership is very very important, but the State can’t seem to find ways to give tribals property ownership in this huge forest.

Instead, you have Operation Green Hunt. Can you elaborate why you think its ridiculous?
You see, there are different responses to Naxalism. One of them is the Andhra response. The Andhra response has been a mix of development and law and order. Although their development model is not what it should be, the law and order response has been very good and has continued for a number of years. They built up a force and did not have troops parachuted in. The Andhra DGP used to visit us in Punjab to understand what we were doing – our tactics and strategy. In contrast, Chhattisgarh has no response whatsoever. I was there for one year as an advisor and after three or four days, Chief Minister Raman Singh told me to relax and enjoy my stay.

I wanted to strengthen the police station. The first responder is always the police station. Now, if the first respondent is weak and doesn’t have the manpower or the equipment, how is he going to respond? I remember calling for a meeting in Chhattisgarh — not in the HQ but in the interiors — and many officers came in civvies and in unmarked vehicles. They were trying to pass off as civilians. This is not a response that is going to raise the confidence of the people. Policemen can only die in such a situation.

On the other hand, the Naxal keeps changing his tactics. Similarly, take Jharkhand, where you have a governor whose foremost achievement is corruption. I have always maintained that corruption and operations against organisations of this nature cannot go together. An honest response is critical. I know what the police officer in charge of Bastar was doing. He was taking Rs 35,000 per man to transfer them out of Bastar. This was in the knowledge of everyone. And do you know who transfers constables? The state secretariat does. The chief minister would say he was taking the advice of the sub-inspectors on how to tackle the Naxalites. I am sorry, but the state and its leadership do not have the required mental calibre or an intellectual grasp of the ground situation. Everyone is telling lies from the ground level up. It is for the commander responsible to assess the situation on a daily basis.

Delhi cannot tailor a response while sitting thousands of miles away The paper submitted by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) has now become the bible. Try and change anything and you’ll be told, oh, this is the paper of the CCS. But you need a modulated response everyday. Where did we go wrong yesterday? What should we do? What should we change? Are you going to fly to Delhi daily? I know the central police forces. They are very hide-bound.

You think Op Green Hunt should be stalled?
This is not the way to do operations. You were there during Black Thunder. These fellows — MK Narayanan and Ved Marwah — claim they conducted the operation. Did they even know what was going on? When I called Rajiv Gandhi, he called it the Gill Plan. Operation Black Thunder was named 20 days after it happened. Operation Green Hunt is going to be a big failure. Who is the State hunting? And once an operation fails, it is a very difficult task to repeat it. This is what the American forces are facing in Afghanistan. We need to consider: do we want to be in a similar situation?

It’s been very interesting listening to you today because I was based in Punjab as a reporter and you spoke a very different language then. Your reputation was that of a killer cop. Why the shift in your own thinking on Chhattisgarh as opposed to the way you handled Punjab?
I doubled the strength of the Punjab Police and trained the men to fight because the local force has to lead the fight. The BSF, CRPF and Army were there but only as adjuncts. Delhi has a large number of theorists. I don’t know who is advising Home Minister P Chidambaram, but he is clearly not on the right track. He should read Green Mansions by WH Hudson to understand Chhattisgarh.

You haven’t answered my question. Why is the man accused of severe human rights violations speaking a totally different language today – one of non-violence?
Punjab and Chhattisgarh are very different. Punjab was a developed society even then. In Chhattisgarh, we are talking about a society that is in the process of development. You know, Punjab has been a settled state for many many years and even during the insurgency, was the second most industrialised state.

But even people living in a developed state will object to State violence and protest against it.
You see, the question is about change and violence. You want to change the society, but you want to change it through violence. And for that you want a dictatorship — or, going back to Marx and Engels, the dictatorship of the proletariat, or whatever — but Chhattisgarh is not an industrial society. It is a preagricultural society; how are you going to bring it up? Of course, in this, you will make mistakes, but these mistakes have to be honest mistakes. When development is corruption-driven, it will not reach the people you want it to. And it is imperative to have a political consensus on development and terrorism. Today, there is a lot of politics. If something happens in a Congress-ruled state, the response is different from one being ruled by the BJP and so on. In fact, we are creating a fertile field for Naxalite propaganda even in urban areas because of youth unemployment.

What do the tribals in Chhattisgarh want? They want education, they want good drinking water, two square meals a day and protection from diseases like malaria and proper ownership rights. They don’t want Operation Green Hunt. Governments should not be falling into intellectual traps devised by the Naxals. The government should be spending time devising a proper development model for the tribals. Till then, the Naxals will be in a position to expand their areas of influence and operation. If there was any compelling ideology, the Naxals wouldn’t have to use violence to convince their subjects that they are right.

So what should the State be doing?
Does the government in Chhattisgarh want to fight the Naxal? Actually, I wouldn’t use the term fight. If they want to respond to the challenge then they need to ponder the local factors. No point in Chidambaram the home minister trying to be a field marshal. The response has to be in the shape of a small commando war. Who fought the war in Punjab? The sub-inspector, the inspector, the havaldar. I only provided the conditions for this.

You were talking of Punjab being a developed society as opposed to Chhattisgarh, which is a pre-agrarian society. Why did your law and order approach succeed there and why will it not succeed in Chhattisgarh?
The peace dividend in developed Punjab was strong but Chhattisgarh has neither the skills nor the finances. The Punjabi animal is different from Chhattisgarh’s adivasi. Now, a response like the NREGA would not succeed in Punjab, because nobody will work for a 100 rupees a day or whatever. And unfortunately, development today seems to mean building a lot of bridges, roads and stuff like that. Employment generation among younger people is just not there and our education programmes do not envisage employment generation. What is a matriculate? A fellow who has spent 10 years in school. What is he fit for? To become a clerk. Whereas there is a shortage of plumbers, good carpenters, masons, people of that nature. For that, our education system has nothing.

Why did Chief Minister Raman Singh ask you to relax after a few days, having invited you to be his advisor?
Violence doesn’t touch Raipur. It touches the tribals and the security forces. I think the state government lacked the political will.

Would you say that at the heart of Kashmir’s insurgency lies the deep-seated alienation of the Kashmiri from the Indian State? That 20 years of ‘occupation’ have not worked?
In Kashmir, you have to respond with maximum force.

You are back to the Punjab line. Why can’t the Kashmiri be addressed like the Chhattisgarh tribal?
You take China and you take India. You take Tibet and you take Kashmir. Obama refused to meet Dalai Lama and got a Nobel Peace Prize. You see the hypocrisy of the two situations. All these years, the propaganda machine of the US and Great Britain was oriented in the favour of the Kashmiri separatist. Now you see how the US wants Pakistan to respond to the Taliban. Heavy artillery bombardment and UAVs. They simply bombard a place and kill 60, 70, 80 people and no one in the media is raising a question.

But you don’t think Kashmir’s answer may lie in greater autonomy?
I don’t know whether you will publish this or not. Jaswant Singh held a meeting recently where I was present and so were others like [former IB chief] AK Doval. [Chief Information Commissioner] Wajahat Habibullah came and addressed us and told us that while the Jammu situation is a law and order problem, Kashmir is a political problem and has to be addressed politically. The next day we had someone else — I forget his name, he was a Hindu — who said that the Srinagar situation is a law and order situation and the Jammu situation is a political one. So when you have such extreme thoughts, how do you find a solution?

Let me put it differently. Jawaharlal Nehru did promise a plebiscite. Why does the Kashmiri grievance merit the use of force?
The Kashmiri grievance is that because we are Muslims, we should join Pakistan. No civilised society can accept this demand. The latest is the Organisation of the Islamic Conference asking for a commissioner for Kashmir affairs. If you turn religion into politics, well, it’s a wrong way of looking at democracy.

Why can’t New Delhi look at greater autonomy for Kashmir just as you want the tribal to be the ultimate stakeholder in Chhattisgarh?
In Kashmir, India should do what China has done. Settle non-Kashmiris in Kashmir. In Chhattisgarh, the tribal has to become a stakeholder in a big way. Even now, don’t think the Naxalite has got hold of his mind. The tribal is totally scared. They have some armed cadres, but that is not how you create a revolution.

Last question. Do you think the government should have a dialogue with the Naxals?
Dialogue can be done if the Naxalites are sincere about it. The Naxals, unfortunately, are not sincere. They have a worldview which is at odds with reality. They want the whole world to accept that worldview. You can’t perpetuate that worldview by killing tribals. Don’t make them your cannon fodder.

INTERVIEWER’S EMAIL
shammy@tehelka.com