India Pakistan Arms Race and Militarisation Watch # 125
17 July 2003
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IPARMW/message/136
The Spirit of Terrorism
December 13th, 2001
by Geoffrey Cook*
"...Le spectacle du tourisme impose le terrorisme du spectacle. Et
contre cette fascination immorale...l'orde politique nepeut rien"
"Le'espirit du terrorisme"
Jean Baudrillard
Le Monde, Paris
November 11, 2001
Three years ago, at a banquet following a symposium on South
Asian nuclear proliferation at the University of Wisconsin at
Madison, I was at a table with the well known expert on
Subcontinental Islamic political science Professor (emeritus)
Theodore Wright from the State University at New York at Albany; the
Director of the W. Alton Jones Foundation in Washington; the expert
and author of India's Bomb, George Perkovitch; Neil Joeck, who at
that time was about the highest ranking expert on South Asian nuclear
matters directly employed by the U.S. government -- then at Lawrence
Livermore Laboratory and now with the U.S. State Department; the
Indian Consul-General Sharma at Chicago and myself.
Professor Wright, who because of his generation, was slightly
baffled by the popularity of the new methodologies in the humanities
and the social sciences, brought the discussion with these men, who
are daily involved with issues of preventing mega-death, to the
subject of Post-Modernism, the current rage in academic America.
Ambassador Sharma, who had previously represented New Delhi
in Hanoi after a career as a military man and had even written an art
history book there about the relics of Hindu temples in Viet Nam,
asked, "What is Post-Modernism?" I responded with a quick repartee,
"There is no bomb." I would like to extend that comment for this
exercise, "There is no Terrorism." That is the précis of this paper.
Everyday as a student of South Asian media, I listen to
news broadcasts from both Radio Pakistan and All India Radio (AIR).
It is interesting to compare descriptions of the same violent
encounter in Kashmir where the identical space is claimed by the
competing powers. The Pakistani announcer describes the Vale as
"occupied Kashmir" while New Delhi as Kashmir. Islamabad talks of
"freedom fighters" and "martyrs". While the Indians describe the
insurgents as "terrorists" and talk in the language of the grim
statistics of death. What we observe is opposing rhetoric. The
tragedy is that solutions are hidden behind the impenetrable rhetoric
of the contending parties. Peace will never be achieved unless this
obfuscating oratory can first be pierced. One of the thickest slabs
of rhetoric is "Terrorism".
This article will ask: "What is Terrorism?" "Is Terrorism
real or is it rhetorical?"
Undeniably, something is real because there is great suffering and
death, what is real (material) what is ethereal (immaterial) in the
concept of Terrorism? This study will be an abstract one to better
understand the phenomenon; and, thereby, hopefully, to successfully
grabble with it. There are great risks in this approach -- that we
lose sight of humanity suffering; and, thus, the point of my vignette
at the beginning of this essay. So, let us proceed with caution.
On November 11th 2001, exactly two months after the Twin
Towers outrage in New York City, a full two page large news-sheet
sized article, "L'espirit terrorisme"
(http//:humanities.psydeshow.org/political/baudrillard/htm) -- i.e.
"The Spirit of Terrorism"
(http://amsterdam.nettime/Lists-Archives/nettime-1-0111/msg00083.html)
by one of the leading living French Post-Modern philosophers, Jean
Baudrillard, was published in the important Parisian newspaper Le
Monde in the French language. For the influence it has generated it
is rather short -- between 5-6,000 words. Subsequently, before the
end of last year, the article was published as a pamphlet under the
same title by Editions Galilee, also, in Paris, and it has been
reported that it has become a best seller there having done much to
generate a great deal of questioning and dissatisfaction with
American foreign policy in Afghanistan and the Middle East and
Southern Asia within Europe.
The essay attempts to get at the symbolic meaning of the
tragedy, and along the way it asks what is Terrorism and its relation
to Globalization and Modernism. It clarifies why it is happening
now, and even makes suggestions on how it can best be fought. Your
author would like to use Baudrillard's original thinking as a
backdrop into the "meaning" of Terrorism or if there is any meaning
in the act at all. Although Baudrillard's work was written with
American and French realities in mind and in complete ignorance of
the South Asian model, I would like to apply his controversial (which
created quite a stir on the pages of Le Monde itself) and unique
ideas to the political realities of the Subcontinent.
Now, again, cross-cultural comparisons can, also, be fraught
with danger, for there are commonalities, but, at the same time
totally different assumptions that are basic to dissimilar cultural
milieus. Too often this has caused political misunderstandings
between New Delhi and Washington and Paris, and hence, unfortunately,
has lead to low level antagonism over the past 55 years.
Most of my readers in South Asia and in the Diasporas are
probably not fluent in French. Therefore, I am using a quickly put
together translation into English by a Dr. Rachel Boll of the School
for Social Sciences at the Australian National University. For the
complete version follow the URL above after the English reference to
the "The Spirit of Terrorism" (the full French text can be found at
the URL after "L'espirit du terrorisme"). There are other
translations appearing on the Internet, but, in my less than expert
opinion, I feel this is the best at this time until a fully literary
and philosophical translation can be made. In reading both, I notice
differences in tone between the original and the translation, and may
at occasion put the French in parenthesis. Your critic has done
three literary translations - but none from the French - so from time
to time he will work to smooth out the flow of the phrasing in the
target language of English.
Post-Modernism is a belief that the world is in a new
historical period from Modernism -- especially in the fully
industrialized world, but most contemporaries cannot put their
fingers on what makes it different. But it is agreed that attitudes
have changed throughout most of the world. One of the most maddening
markers of this attitude is the assumption that there are no firm
eternal truths that people can rely on as in past ages. It is truly
a vision of the world in a constant state of flux and relativity.
With the death of the Second World (Socialist camp) and the
birth of a "unipolar" world, what has arisen to challenge late
Capitalism (Neo-libralismo) on the material plane and Post-Modernist
cynicism on the intellectual level has been fundamentalism(s). And
it is not only Islamic fundamentalism (although there is a historical
reason that it has predominated in certain periods of crisis in the
Islamic world), but it exists in all fundamentalisms - including in
Hinduism, Christianity, Sikhism, Judaism, even Buddhism et al. Your
author might add that Lalita Ramdas, the wife of the former Chief of
the Indian Naval Staff (he is the now the vocal leader in opposing
nuclear proliferation in both India and Pakistan) pointed out -- in a
San Francisco area talk she made with her husband -- that a
fundamentalism need not only be religious.
A close senior professor colleague who teaches at the University of
Texas at Austin in a non-South Asian area studies field wrote to me a
letter of shock at the events at the disintegration of Yugoslavia.
He deemed people would never again fight over religion as an
indicator of difference. But, when the prevailing system of liberal
Communism collapsed in the Balkans, ancient repressed rivalries
re-emerged. So it was in South Asia at Partition, and the horrors of
Partition have not been fully resolved over the past fifty-five years
-- especially brought to our attention this year in the horrid
excesses of Gujarat last February and March. Curiously, competing
fundamentalisms are most antagonistic to each other than liberalism
is to fundamentalism. (Please note that both Osama bin Laden and
George W. Bush are Fundamentalists from different religious beliefs
systems.) The Indian political environment is disturbed by such
fractures and schisms as religion, caste, class, language and
sub-nationality. And similar fissures also, rupture Pakistani
society. Therefore, an understanding of Terrorism on the Subcontinent
is a complex enterprise. It has become a cliché - but true -- to say
that Terrorism is the weapon of the weak and not of the powerful --
especially suicidal terrorism. Or, in Baudrillard's words. "When the
situation is monopolized by powerwith technological hegemony
[pensee unique]the terrorist responds with a definitive act"
Of course, in India, December 13th, 2001 in New Delhi is
uttered in the same breath as September 11th in New York. The attack
on the national Parliament on that date and the attack on the
Kashmiri Parliament of the previous October 1st and the army
cantonment at Kaluchak in the same contested State of May 14th of
that year led to two nuclear showdowns with Pakistan that are still
smoldering just below the surface.
The root of the public sympathy for Islamic militants
worldwide lies not so much in Kashmir as in Palestine, for it is the
outrages of the Israeli army that are portrayed on our televisions so
prominently in most of the world. Jean Baudrillard points out "It
is they who did it, but we who wanted it" ["c'est eux qui l'ont
fait, mais c'est nous l'avons voulu"] Now, he is talking about the
French popular response to the American tragedy, but in India the
repressed and wretched probably had similar secret thoughts. "If one
does not take that into account, the event lost all symbolic
[symbolique] dimension the murderous fantasy of a few fanatics, who
need only to be suppress. But we know thatis not so." Notice the
word "symbolic". The World Trade Center was symbolic of the heart of
American Capitalism, but the Parliament was even more symbolic of the
Indian soul. It stands at the heart of Indian democracy itself. And
the act vibrated horror throughout that nation. A psychological
attack at such a central symbol pervades emotional fear throughout
the commonweal, for anyone, therefore, could be a terrorist or, on
the other hand, a victim of one. Shortly thereafter there was
another terrorist action in Calcutta that was criminal and not
politically based. Along with the high profile attacks in Kashmir,
the Indian nation was understandably devastated by the symbolic
suicidal assaults of the Terrorists. Baudrillard's European
Post-Modernist sensibility states that " their death does not prove
anything, but there is nothing to prove in a system where truth is
self-elusive..." ["leur morte ne prouve rien, mais il n'y a rien a
prouver dans un systeme ou la verite elle-meme est insaisissable]"
India, because it is a state that is quickly developing but still is
not developed to the point of the First World, the advance populace's
sensibility is probably more attuned to Modernism than to
Post-Modernism, but the battle lines have been drawn up between the
modern world and the Medieval mindset of the fundamental. "...they
[the terrorists] do not fight with equal weapons if they have the
right to a salvation, we can no longer hope for" ["ils ne luttent
pas a armes egales, puisqu'ils ont droit au salut, don't nous ne
pouvons meme plus entretenir l'espoir"]
After the end of the Afghan War against the Soviets, Arab and other
irregular fighters remained in the Hindu Kush. (Please note the
internationalization of the Kashmir struggle indirectly grew out of
great power rivalry in the region.) After an indigenous revolt,
which had been simmering for some time, began in the Vale during
1989, many of these ideological mercenaries began filtering into J &
K. Some came across the porous Pakistani borders -- whether with
the connivance of the Pakistani ISI or not -- and some through other
more devious routes directly from Afghanistan. They caused
disruption within Kashmiri society itself for they forced their harsh
Islamicist views upon the more Sufic-oriented citizens of the State -
often quite harshly. But, at the same, time, as independent human
rights reports have documented, violent repression against
non-combatants by the Indian defense forces lost the hearts and minds
of Srinagar's State to the Center in New Delhi.
India will very likely become a great world power if she can solve
some grave problems. One of those challenges is the relationship of
the Center with its Peripheries, for violent dissatisfaction is found
mostly at the peripheries. India is the last great Nineteenth
century empire. If it cannot solve these political problems of
geography, insurrection and sub-nationalities, it will go the way of
the Soviet Union. If it can, it will transpire into a mighty
Twenty-first century powerfully unified state by the popular will of
all of its citizens. One of the most disturbing elements to an
outsider is the current administration's abandonment of the nation's
founding principles that made India into a great and inspiring
nation. That is Secularism. As a well-known Dutch anthropologist on
South Asia said at the University of California at Berkeley,
"Secularism is what people do in private." That is difference should
not be forced on an Other. To deny people their rights of lawful
expression is to invite rebellion. And that is what is happening
under the current rightwing regime.
"Suicidal Terrorism was [is] the Terrorism of the poor" ["Le
terrorisme suicidaire etait un terroisme de pauvres"] This purest
symbolic sacrifice opposes all politico-historical models in that it
does not make sense under our [i.e., Western] value system (i.e. the
primacy of life and even brute animal survival), and, thereby, under
"our" rules; i.e., the Terrorist "cheats". Terrorism does not follow
the "moral" axiom of historical (i.e., permissive) aggression such as
the revolutionary. Even though "Terrorism is immoral" ["Le terroisme
est immoral]," his act is not gratuitous, for in his twisted theology
his exploit grants salvation to his soul. That is why it is so hard
to counter his actions and to break his cells and other structures.
In a strange twist of history, he is a product of Globalization. He
has made good use of Globalism to build worldwide configurations of
confraternities that can strike at many points at any time or at
once. That is the secret of his thinking and his success and that is
what we must understand to counter him.
We should be heading towards bringing these ideas fully into a South
Asian context, and how we can lessen the popular support for these
militants, and make our political process more inclusive in so doing.
Sadly, the political evolution in both the United Sates and the
Indian Union have grown more exclusive - not only to its own
marginalized, but to those beyond its borders. Both the States and
India are hegemons. The U.S.A., a less than humble world power, and
India has gained hegemony within South Asia, and, if we are to
believe the Prime Minister's boasts after the 1998 nuclear blasts,
there are those aiming for hegemony from the China Sea to the Persian
Gulf within his Government! In one sense, though, India
underestimates the power of its nemesis in Islamabad that was so
dramatically dramatized last spring.
The terrorist act makes the system itself suicide. ("L'hypothese
terroriste, c'est que le systeme lui-meme se suicide") In
democratic societies such as the United States, the United Kingdom
and India such draconian measures as the Patriot Act, POTO and POTA
are put forward to protect the society from these allusive asuras,
but at the same time these measures attack the very democratic values
of the societies themselves. These incorporating principles are
subsumed in trying to save the commonwealth itself. Thus, the
Terrorist has won the battle leading the system into a collapse. The
power of the terroristic adversary has humbled the hegemon. Yet,
most importantly, for the counter-insurgent to hold in mind is that
repressive action travels the same road of unpredictability as
terrorist actions ("L'acte represif parcourt la meme spirale
impevisible que l'acte terroriste")
The Terrorist could not have the power he has over the minds of a
population without the unconscious collusion of the media. The image
consumes the event of the sacrificial suicide, and the media hands it
back as a consumer good with an unprecedented impact. "The real and
fiction are inextricable["Reel et fiction sont extricables"].
Especially in the Parliament incident, when the Real was added to the
Image, mass terror and anger were created. What followed were two
(this observer feels there were two separate crises - one set off by
December 13th and the other by May 14th) nuclear confrontations -- in
disproportion to the threat -- with their nuclear neighbor Pakistan.
The potential nuclear reaction came from a perceived violation of
symbolic space.
What can we extract from Baudrillard on how to apply
counter-insurgency in the South Asian environment, and what would be
the most effective methods of action. He has said above that we are
destroying our values in protecting our societies from the terrorist
challenge. For the ten days immediately after the World Trade Center
attacks a constant barrage of Talking Heads (no nothing "experts")
were paraded across American television screens. The only comment
that made any sense was "You can't protect yourself from Terrorism,
you can only change policy." For Terrorist action is not a totally
destructive action in the terrorist mind, and it mirrors the violence
of the hegemonic power he is attacking. That is to say, the
terrorist has a point from his perspective, and if we are to counter
it, we must see it, and understand it. We must not underestimate it.
The adversary of the State has humbled the Union in both India and
the United States. It is not simply enough that the terrorists be
eliminated as in previous insurgencies - they must be made to lose
face in the hearts and minds of the people who secretly support them.
"this cannot be obtained by pure force and by suppression of the
Other" ["Et cela on ne l'obtient jamais par la force pure et par la
suppression de l"autre"]
It was said above that the ideology of contemporary Islamic militancy
was born in the Middle East, and has traveled to South Asia. India
like America has become suicidal (to ourselves/themselves) in our
unbearable power over the powerless. For India, this is certainly
true with Kashmir. In the last fifty-five years there has been
opportunities to reach a win-win solution. But this author feels
that the biggest obstacle has been New Delhi. Every time that three
(or better yet a fourth partner so each side has a negotiator that it
can trust) way discussions are suggested, India proclaims the Simla
Agreement. Well, the Simla Agreement has not worked. The
Subcontinent was too close to war just a few short months go.
Kashmir must be discussed with the wishes of the State's people
participating as well as the two contending nation states.
Otherwise, terrorism will only continue, and nuclear war is only a
matter of time. Another crisis must not be allowed to arise. But
how can the preconditions be established for serious negotiations?