The Secret History of Mumbai Terror Attacks

Fragile Frontiers

Saroj Kumar Rath

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138563537
• eBook ISBN: 9780429942747
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: 21st Century History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Critical questions remain unanswered on the events of the cold-blooded and devastating terror attacks in Mumbai on 26 November 2008. Investigative and introspective, this book offers a lucid and graphic account of the ill-fated day and traces the changing dynamics of terror in South Asia. Using new insights, it explores South Asia's regional dynamics of antagonism, the ever-present challenge to the frontiers of India, Pakistan and the terrorism question, the strife in Afghanistan and the self-serving selective US 'war on terror'.

Including a new Afterword, this second edition will greatly interest those in defence, security and strategic studies, politics and international relations, peace and conflict studies, media and journalism, and South Asian studies as well as the general reader.

1
India's Fragile Frontiers through the Prism of History

India has a rich past, a flourishing civilization and thousands of years of growth behind its present sophistication. Travellers and raconteurs never tired of narrating India’s fables. However, even today, the country is as fragile as it was ages ago in one aspect — demarcation and stabilization of its national frontier. Through its journey up to the 21st century, the frontiers of India have stretched and shrunk on innumerable occasions. The earliest evidence of a boundary for the nation is found in the Vedic texts.¹ As per the ancient text Shalivahana, the grandson of King Vikramaditya, after having defeated foreigners trying to invade the country for the second time and expelling them beyond the Indus, issued a royal decree to the effect that henceforth the Indus should constitute the line of demarcation between India and other nations. The decree read:

[h]aving conquered the irresistible Shakas, the Chinese, the Tartars, the Balhikas, Kamrupas, Romans, Khorajas and Stathas and having seized their treasures and punishing the offenders he demarcated the boundaries of the Aryans and the Mlecchas. The best country of the Aryans is known as Sindhustan whereas the Mleccha country lies beyond the Indus.²

The boundary later stretched up to the Hindu Kush mountains and the Khyber and Bolan passes became the tunnel towards the Western world.³ Since time immemorial, demarcation of the north-western boundary for India has been essential and significant. The northern and north-eastern part, endowed with the geographical gift of the Himalayas, acts as a frontier line for the country. The eastern, southwestern and southern boundaries have always been the Bay of Bengal, Arabian Sea, and Indian Ocean respectively.⁴

The Himalayan range, with its extensions to the east and the west, divides India from the rest of Asia and the world. However, this mountainous wall was not an obstacle for the inhabitants of the country to operate lucrative trade routes. At all periods both settlers and traders have found their ways over the high and desolate passes into India, while Indians have carried their commerce and culture beyond the nation’s frontiers by the same route.⁵ The Silk Route was one such example. Those who traversed the ‘Silk Route’ such as Xuanzang (also known as Hiuen Tsang), Marco Polo, Wilhelm of Rubruck, and other Jesuit priests left behind intriguing tales; tales of romance and adventure so titillating that they make the heart ache for a similar journey.⁶ A question arises here: ‘was the Silk Route a major trading route for India during the early age?’

Recorded history interprets the 2,200 years old Silk Route as the rough road connecting ancient China with ancient India, Afghanistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, and the fringes of Europe.⁷ The existence of a maritime version of the Silk Route predates the overland Silk Route.⁸ Countless authors have written about how lucrative India’s trade with China was on the Silk Route⁹ and how religious traffic on the Silk Route had became a two-way affair with Chinese Buddhists heading for Khotan, Kashmir and beyond in search of texts, relics and spiritual guidance.¹⁰ One Chinese monk, Xuanzang, outshone all in providing clarity on India’s trade. Xuanzang left Dunhuang in 629 CE for a pilgrimage-cum-research trip to the Buddhist ‘Holy Land’ of India.¹¹ In the early 5th century another Chinese monk, Faxian, had gone west overland to India and returned home by sea. He had written a brief account of his travels. Monk Xuanzang had read it and noted the horrors of the sea voyage. Xuanzang opted for the overland mountain-desert route. He returned home in 645 CE from India at the head of a caravan laden with over 500 trunks of statuary and texts with a hundred monks in tow, minus only the elephant provided by Indian King Harsha Vardhana (it had fallen off a precipice).¹²

The size of Xuanzang’s caravan is a testimony to the flourishing trade with India. During his return, Xuanzang was on an elephant and watched helplessly as one boat carrying some of his manuscripts and flower seeds overturned in the swift current of the Indus. He waited over a month in Hund — then a truly great and prosperous city from where, it is said, Panini came so many centuries earlier — for the arrival of fresh copies and new flower seeds and so on.¹³ Xuanzang, by choosing the ‘Silk Route’ through the Pamirs, announced his approach to trade with India to Emperor Tang Taizong and received a favourable reply.¹⁴

The Silk Route into India from Chinese Turkestan was by way of the Karakoram Pass that came down to Leh and went via Kargil to Srinagar. From a very delightful book by anonymous authors, titled The Himalayan Letters of Gypsy Dave and Lady Ba, it is ascertained that in Khardung (on the Indian side) at the foot of the Karakoram Pass, there were silks, felts and hashish from Turkestan waiting for southward transport. Of course, India would have exported ghee (Indian butter), spices, cotton and perhaps tanned leather to China using the Silk Route.¹⁵ Pakistani historian Salman Rashid insisted: ‘strictly speaking, the “Silk Road” took the great detour through Afghanistan. But, I am afraid, no silk came that way. Our (India & Pakistan) “Silk Road” was from Yunan province of China through Burma or by the Karakoram Pass’.¹⁶ A lesser known fact about the Silk Route is that the name did not originate because of the trade of silk on this route but because an unnamed Chinese princess smuggled the silk-making technique during her journey through this route in 440 CE. That year a prince of Khotan (today’s Hetian) — a kingdom on the rim of the Taklamakan desert — courted and won a Chinese princess. The princess smuggled out silkworm eggs by hiding them in her voluminous hairpiece.¹⁷

So for India, not only the great mountains, but even its frontiers are significant. Together, their contribution has always been substantial to the cultural, economic and political life of India. From the days of Mohenjo-Daro India came into close contact with the Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, Chinese, Arabs, Central Asians and the people of Europe, the Mediterranean and Britain.¹⁸ The long panorama of India’s history, with its ups and downs and its triumphs and defeats, gave way to the British Raj in the 18th century for a long and uninterrupted 190 years.¹⁹ In 1947, when British rule ended, India became independent and the nation was endowed with 15,106 km of land frontier and 7,516 km of coastline (including island territories).²⁰

India, situated in the southern part of Asia, shares a 4,057 km border with China, 3,323 km frontier with Pakistan and 4,096 km boundary with Bangladesh (part of Pakistan until 1971). With these three neighbours, India’s land dispute is congenital and the frontier-conflict has continued unabated since Independence.²¹ Other smaller neighbours like Nepal, Myanmar and Bhutan share largely friendly borders of 1,751 km, 1,663 km and 699 km, respectively, with India. Apart from this, as per the original government claim, which is still valid in official papers and maps, India shares a 106-km long border with Afghanistan in the north-west of Kashmir, presently under the occupation of Pakistan.

Since Independence, India has fought five pitched battles, four with Pakistan and one with China, to stabilize its frontiers. The numerous wars the country has fought within its short span of independent history have led to the militarization of the rugged border, especially in Kashmir, at enormous cost.²² Most of the debate of Kashmir’s militarization is insurgency-centric and it is normally assumed that only during the 1990s did the militarization of the province begin. The Armed Forces Special Power Act (AFSPA), extended to J&K in 1990, was a protective mechanism for the troops and nothing to do with the strength of the army.²³ However, in 1948, Pakistan had already complained to the UN about the heavy presence of the Indian military in Kashmir.²⁴ The UN-sponsored ceasefire after the 1947 war was operational for 16 years but the UN failed to persuade either side to withdraw military forces from Kashmir. This has given an opportunity to each side to increase their troops in the province.²⁵ Each war reinforces the need to fortify Kashmir with a greater degree of military presence. The Northern Command of the Indian army, whose headquarters are in Udhampur, Kashmir, clarifies the ambiguity of the militarization process. Before Independence, it was housed in Rawalpindi and after partition, the facility was allocated to Pakistan and India created its headquarters for the northern region in Shimla, not in Kashmir. Nevertheless, after the 1947–48 war, military planners felt the need to shift the headquarters to Kashmir. The subsequent three wars in 1962, 1965 and 1971 reinforced the conviction and after 1971, the Headquarters of Northern Command was established at Udhampur. In 1972 two army corps were under its command. Only one corps was added since then and this strength has now increased to three corps.²⁶ When insurgency began in the province, paramilitary forces swarmed the state, where the army presence was already high.

Nevertheless, these five battles could not resolve India’s boundary disputes. Kashmir remains the world’s largest and most militarized disputed area with portions under the de facto administration of China (Aksai Chin) and Pakistan (Azad Kashmir and Northern Areas).²⁷ It is not that the mountainous terrain of Kashmir and the Himalayas are the only disputed frontiers. The frontier boundary in between India and Pakistan in the western part known as Sir Creek in the arid estuary of the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat is also disputed and fragile.²⁸ The Pakistan government’s official map not only includes the whole of Jammu & Kashmir but also it continues to show Junagarh, deep inside Gujarat, as part of Pakistan.²⁹ Discussions with Bangladesh on the frontier issue remain stalled to delimit a small section of river boundary, to exchange the 51 Bangladeshi exclaves in India and with the 111 Indian exclaves in Bangladesh.³⁰

India’s frontier has been continuously threatened and challenged by Pakistan and China. While China is emerging as a power centre along with India, the rank and eminence of India and Pakistan in the comity of nations is a striking study in contrast.³¹ The nearly seven decades of independence has quadrupled the population of India and transformed the country from a poor, neglected, ‘snake charmer’s country’ into the world’s newest economic superpower.³² A rising military power, India, with its sheer strength of economy, is now challenging the economic might of the US and other developed nations. Nevertheless, the same seven decades have diminished Pakistan from its promising origins as the the world’s largest Muslim state into an almost failed fragment of itself, more than half of its population having broken away to form independent Bangladesh in 1971.³³

Immediately after Independence, while India remained committed to its cherished destiny, its national need, its national growth and its international ambition, Pakistan remained fixated with India.

Nevertheless, the fixation continued in 2008 and there is a doctrinal as well as symbiotic connection between the events of the past and the Mumbai attacks.³⁴ This has made it inevitable, at the outset, to take a closer look into those historic events. It is significant to know details of the four wars with Pakistan, India’s maiden fight with China, and the country’s fight and policies vis-à-vis the militants before moving to the Mumbai terror attacks. Explanations and deliberations in the subsequent chapters require prior knowledge, clarity and a ringside view of the country’s fragile frontiers and India’s delicate terror policies in the past.

First Frontier Fight

Even before the ink of the India Independence Act 1947 had dried, Pakistan plunged into a border conflict with India. The Muslim peasants of Poonch refused to pay their land taxes to Hindu landlords and fled to Pakistan in October 1947 to complain about their alleged exploitation to their co-religionists. They were not only complaining about their landlords’ atrocities but also dissenting from Hindu rule.³⁵ Poonch shopkeepers were unfurling Pakistani flags to indicate their intention. They had also acquired guns from Pakistan to challenge the Kashmir maharaja’s troops.³⁶ Inflamed by their tale, newly independent Pakistan’s Muslim and British officers packed thousands of tribal frontier Pathans into trucks that headed down into Kashmir to wrest the valley from Hindu control.³⁷ Nevertheless, Pakistan’s aggression was not merely based on the complaint of the Poonch peasants. Rather, the complaint acted as the provocation, which culminated in the first Indo-Pak war. There was a long and frenzied history behind the war. With India acquiring freedom, many princely states in India also got independence and the British government left the option open to them to join either of the two countries — India or Pakistan. Six states gave trouble to India before their accession — three before 15 August 1947 when India became independent and three after Independence.³⁸ Travancore, Bhopal and Jodhpur refused to sign the Instrument of Accession and required calibrated persuasion to sign the document before 15 August. Hyderabad, Junagadh and Kashmir refused to join India even after 15 August. Hyderabad and Junagadh joined the Indian Union subsequently and Pakistan could not do much about it.³⁹ By contrast, as of 14 August 1947 (when Pakistan became independent) not a single ruler of the 10 princely states of Pakistan had acceded to the new nation.⁴⁰ However, because of geographical proximity with Pakistan and because of the composition of the population of the state, Kashmir remained a bone of contention between India and Pakistan. Kashmir’s Hindu Maharaja Hari Singh remained neutral and independent when the Poonch peasants’ crisis arose.⁴¹ Persuaded by his Prime Minister Ramchandra Kak, Maharaja Hari Singh wanted to sign a ‘standstill agreement’ with both the countries. Pakistan signed the agreement, but India said it would wait and watch.⁴² Vying for a permanent solution on the issue of the Muslim majority province Kashmir, Home Minister Vallabhbhai Patel even thought of allowing Kashmir to join Pakistan. But his mind changed when the Pakistan government accepted the accession of Hindu-majority state Junagadh.⁴³

Openly encouraged by the Prime Minister of NWFP, Abdul Qayyum, Pathan raiders crossed the borde...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Glossary
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Maps
• Introduction
• 1. India's Fragile Frontiers through the Prism of History
• 2. The LeT: From Regional to Global
• 3. Prelude to Mumbai
• 4. Mumbai Outraged
• 5. The After Effect
• 6. The Motives behind Mumbai
• 7. The Prosecution
• 8. The Afghan Conflict, Pakistan Conundrum and India's Future Security
• Afterword to this Edition
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• Index