Wrong To Call Stern Action Against Extremism ‘Muscular’: Jaitley To Mehbooba

Days after former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti said muscular policy won't work in the valley, Union minister Arun Jaitley on Friday stressed that it is wrong to call stern action against extremism as muscular policy.

“A terrorist who refuses to surrender and refuses a ceasefire offer has to be dealt with as anybody taking law in his own hand. This is not ‘muscular’.  It is the rule of law,” Jaitley said on Facebook, in a note posted the week the ruling BJP pulled out of its coalition with PDP in Jammu and Kashmir, felling the Mehbooba Mufti government in Srinagar.

"We had always said muscular security policy will not work in J&K...reconciliation is key, " Mufti had said at a press conference after submitting her resignation as chief minister of J&K.

 Without directly referring to Mufit’s statement, Jaitley said: “Our policy has to be ‘Save the Human Rights of every Indian—be it a tribal or a Kashmiri,’ from terrorists.”  He sought to explain how a “muscular policy” in the Valley gets people at large “caught in the idioms that we create”, adding that it is virtual misinterpretation of any administration’s responsibility to protect the citizen from terror and provide him/her with a better life.

“To deal with a killer is also a law and order issue. It can’t wait a political solution.  A fidayeen is willing to die. He is also willing to kill. Should he be dealt with by offering satyagraha before him? When he advances to kill, should the security forces that confront him, ask him to sit on a table and have dialogue with them?” Jaitley said. “A terrorist who refuses to surrender and refuses a ceasefire offer has to be dealt with as anybody taking law in his own hand.  This is not ‘muscular’.  It is the rule of law.”

According to Jaitley, who holds the finance portfolio in the Narendra Modi Cabinet, insurgency in the country is primarily driven by two ideological groups: jihadis and Maoists—both of which “abhor democracy” and “indulge in large-scale violence”. While the first group with aid from Pakistan is concentrated in Kashmir along with “some local youth”, Maoists are primarily in some of central India’s tribal districts but with ideological supporters also from other parts of the country, he noted. While jihadis believe that there is space for only one religion, there is none for the Maoists. “Of late, a visible coordination between the two is becoming more and more apparent.”

Substantiating his point after presenting a brief history of Maoists in India, Jaitley said the ultra-Left has in the last few years expanded its strategy and begun coordinating with jihadis and separatists notwithstanding their ideological dissimilarity. “The only thing common between them was violence, overthrow of the constitutional order and secessionism,” he added. “Recent evidence suggests that they are trying to rope in some misguided Dalit activists into their fold.  This became publically apparent after the ‘tukde tukde’ agitation in the Jawaharlal Nehru University (of Delhi in early 2016) and the events which followed in Hyderabad,” he wrote using a term Hindu right-wing groups use to refer to those whom they accuse of conspiring to break the country.

The minister accused pro-Left human rights organisations of being silent about the deprivation of the human rights of the innocent citizens who are victims of Maoist or jihadi violence. “They have never a tear to shed in the indiscriminate killing of the security personnel,” he said. “They have a propaganda policy and have successfully infiltrated their evil idea at two levels,” he added, explaining thus: coordinate with opinion-makers in the western world and earn the sympathy of Rahul Gandhi, who is president of the Congress party that has been historically opposed to Left extremism.