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Diehard in Kashmir

It's tempting to advocate that the Indian army do a General Custer on the intruders in Kargil.

The veteran of the Indian wars believed that if the Apaches scalped the Anglo Saxons, then the Anglo Saxons should do one better and flay the Apaches alive.

It was a simple prescription and it turned the Apaches into sheep-herders.

Or maybe we should emulate our contemporaries, the Israelis, who when dealing with the Druze militia and numerous other foes in neighbouring Lebanon rain rockets in response to sniper fire.

It is possible that the Afghans, to whom the torture and mutilation of the six Indian soldiers is being attributed, did it out of desperation. It is even more possible that the Afghans are not involved at all.

It could well have been the calculated handiwork of the Pakistani military. The pattern of Pakistani responses in the Kargil conflict reveals them to be alternately blowing hot and cold as a means of sending conflicting signals and catch India on the wrong foot.

They shot Squadron Leader Ahuja in cold blood, but returned Flight Lieutenant Nachiketa in the best traditions of the Geneva Convention.

To return to the Afghans, it is, of course, politically expedient to call them, the Kashmiri exiles and assorted West Asians (a few Sudanese too, as some reports suggest), supporting the disguised regulars of Pakistan's Northern Light Infantry in the mountain fastness of Kargil, as mercenaries.

The label, however, doesn't explain the resistance they have put up for almost a month now despite the forbidding terrain, near absent logistics and, above all, the might of the world's fourth largest fighting machine.

A combustible mix of personal resentments and the political traditions of Islam offers a plausible explanation for the fortitude -- credit has to be given where it is due -- of these diehards.

In Islam, it's not the jihad alone that exhorts the true believer to become a shahid (martyr). The centrality of the Quran is a pointer to the implacable nature of the allegiance it seeks.

Unlike the Torah and the Bible, which too belong to the Abrahamic tradtion, the Quran -- or The Book or the Reading -- is considered not a product of revelation but an event, ''uncreated, eternal and consubstantial with god.''

It's the prototype of the patriarchal text, incorporating quasi-divine language and, as the Zaharite tradition dating back to tenth century Andalusia has it, immutable and not to be interpreted.

But hidden in this implacability is an invitation for the individual to realise himself fully. Whereas Christianity in its deepest sense recognises only one martyr -- Christ who died for the sins of the world and to imitate whom in this respect is a sacrilege -- Islam on the contrary challenges all its adherents to be martyrs.

Simply put, it implies that godhead resides in each individual and that his supreme destiny is in his own hands.

A practical fallout of this, especially in the more militant versions of Islam, has been to eroticise death.

Eroticism is synonymous with the recovery of innocence and freedom from repression. It represents the morality of 'living for the moment,' which holds the ever present danger of annihilation and the willingness to face it squarely.

Thus, in the mental makeup of the intruders in Kargil, there is no altruism but simply a kind of fascination that, figuratively speaking, makes them jump off a ridge not to help but to merely follow those who have already leapt to their deaths.

The allure of such a tradition -- with its powerful motifs of 'the chosen people', 'apocalypse', 'promised land' etc -- by itself, however, doesn't explain the fervour of these so-called Islamic militants. They are equally the product of modern prejudices.

Consider then this profile of a typical Mujahideen or Lashkar-e-Toiba frontranker.

He is certainly of above average intelligence -- even a half-baked understanding of political philosophy requires that. But because he believes himself to be more intelligent than he is and possessing deep intuition he scorns methodical study.

The school he has attended most probably has served the same educational purpose as a prison -- the most brutal and those who can subvert the system best are the role models.

By the time his education is over he has picked up a little learning the way a magpie picks up bright objects.

He goes out into the world expecting a lot, but not finding it causes a deep wound to his flattering conception of himself.

His relation with women are problematical. The only person for whom he has any genuine regard is his mother. He's not at ease with any human contacts that are not based on domination and subordination.

If he ventures into a love affair it soon either turns tepid or leaves him morbidly jealous and vindictive.

He prefers the company of men but this homo-erotic element causes him to hate gays with an exaggerated hatred that is supposed to prove his manliness.

At this stage the to-be militant is an abscess of resentment waiting to burst.

To explain it all he imagines a conspiracy against him. And he hijacks the relevant traditions of his religion to give it a respectable gloss.

Since the world has given him so little, it in turn, he concludes, deserves even less from him.

He commits himself, joins a vanguard, some shadowy organisation. At last, he is relieved to find acceptance of his imperative to act out his fantasies.

Soon his acts of sabotage begin: either by planting bombs in a bar or by inflicting retribution in a remote hamlet along with a group of guerillas.

One thing leads to the other. Each act of violence, necessarily, gets incorporated into a larger campaign or else the original outrage becomes a common crime.

Henceforth, for the 'freedom fighter' the road can only be downhill -- from Kandahar to Khartoum, from Khartoum to Kashmir.

Anil Nair