Understanding Indian Insurgencies

[Ray]

Mumbai's Azad Maidan violence: Masterminds still on the run

Fifty one people have been arrested on charges of murder and rioting from various parts of Mumbai, like, Govandi, Kurla, Wadala, Malvani and even Thane.
CCTV footage, mobile footage, mobile tower locations and witness statements have led to these arrests.
But, investigators are yet to nab the ringleaders who co-ordinated and marshalled these groups to execute the pre-planned mayhem.
The questions which remain unanswered are, how can isolated groups of rioters from different parts of Mumbai act in such a well-coordinated manner? And, with many of those arrested having criminal records, were some of the known criminal elements at work?
And why still no action against speakers? Out of the 17 speakers at the gathering, the violence erupted during the 5th speaker's speech. Two of those speeches have been termed 'aggressive'....

Is the police under political pressure to not to act against some elements? And where are the missing weapons?

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/azad-maid...738-3-237.html

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Indeed the police is under political pressure.

Without the Muslim votebank, those in power will not be in power.

That is a well known fact and is known universally in India, as the "Vote-Bank" politics.

[Ray]

On 11 August 2012, a Muslim protest against the riots in Assam and attacks on Muslims in Burma was held at Azad Maidan in Mumbai. The protest was organised by Raza Academy, and was attended by two other groups, Sunni Jamaitul Ulma and Jamate Raza-e-Mustafa.

Amar Jawan Jyoti memorial for martyred soldiers in South Mumbai was destroyed by the mob.

On August 17, 2012, Muslim mobs resorted to large scale violence against mediapersons, bystanders, shops, vehicles and tourists in several cities including Lucknow, Kanpur and Allahabad.

In Lucknow, after the Friday Namaz, a mob of 500 ravaged various landmarks of the city including Buddha Park, Haathi Park, Shaheed Smarak and Parivartan Chowk, and vandalized many statues including those of Gautam Buddha and Mahavira.

30,000 people from North East India have fled Bangalore after attacks and threats of more impending attacks on them after Ramzan. Shiyeto from Nagaland, resident of Bangalore, was attacked by a group of people who threatened to kill him if he did not leave the city before Ramzan which is on August 20.

Cities of Pune, Chennai and Hyderabad also witnessed exodus of people from North East. In national capital Delhi, messages claiming that people from the North-East will be targeted, particularly after Ramzan, have started circulating.

Union Home Ministry has banned bulk SMS, MMS for 15 days to quell rumours and threats.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Assam_violence

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Morphed MMSes showing pictures of the Tibetan Uprising and passing it off as Burmese atrocities against the Rohingyas (Muslims of the Arakan) and riots in Bodo areas and inflammatory SMSes, apart from radical Muslim organisation holding rallies with fiery speech agitated a large section of the Indian Muslim community.

Then the threat SMSes to the North Eastern people in Mumbai, Pune and South India (which is the education hub and IT hub and where there are many NE people) were sent.

Given the aggressiveness associated with the Muslim, the people left and went back to their respective States.

The NE is predominantly Christians, animist and Buddhist. Assam is Hindu.

It is interesting to wonder as to how India is anyway connected to what the Burmese are doing to the Rohingyas of Burma.

This is the type of irrationality that prevails and is employed to engineer riots.

[Dayuhan]

Muslims have grown modestly as a share of Assam’s population (from 24% to 31% in the three decades to 2001). No surge explains the latest violence, although the Muslim population of western Assam is growing faster. In some villages the Bodo are now a minority. They say they feel swamped by Muslim immigrants.

However, the conflict is not primarily about religion. It is about land. The Bodo hold land in common. The Bengali-speakers are settled farmers, anxious to establish private-property rights as protection against dispossession. In 2003, after a long, violent campaign for autonomy, the Bodo got their own Bodo Territorial Council, on whose turf outsiders may not own property. The Bodo consider all Muslims outsiders—hence the dispute at the mosque.

This sounds an awful lot like Mindanao, though of course in Mindanao Muslims and animists were swamped by Christian settlers. These situations can produce extremely intractable conflicts, especially if government is perceived as aiding or siding with the immigrants, and if no action is taken until the settlers are well entrenched and approaching (or have attained) majority status.

If the settlers are in fact illegal immigrants the government will have some basis to act, but I'd guess they'll need to act sooner rather than later.

[davidbfpo]

An Indian journalist writes on the COIN campaign:

Spent Force
Amidst the bullets and bloodshed, what has the government's counterinsurgency program in Chhattisgarh achieved?

This is the conflict with India's Maoists and appears quite different to the thred on Kashmir:

“The insistence on operations, operations and more operations has reduced the entire anti-Naxal operation business to sheer mazdoori—and that’s why it is now done without any heart or mind in it,” said a senior police officer, explaining that most operations had no coherent aim beyond signaling the presence of troops in Maoist affected areas. “Troops are marching day in day out—without any intelligence worth its name… They are just going into jungles and coming back.”

Link:http://www.caravanmagazine.in/Story/...nt-Force-.html

[Ray]

The Army is not involved in the anti Maoist operations.

The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) is involved. They are policemen and have very little military training. Hence, they operate like a police force, treating the matter as if it were a law and order problem.

However, in Bengal, the paramilitary forces and with pro tribal initiatives by the State Govt have been able to achieve some results.