In recent times, the traditional North versus South political divide has worsened in India, with certain disturbing trends bringing fresh difficulties for the BJP-run Central Government. Chief among these is a revival of a common Southern grievance among five States, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra and Telangana, claiming Delhi exploits them financially to subsidise the inefficient Hindi-speaking States. Secondly, South India has turned into a regional hub of international Islamic extremist activity.
Elsewhere in Asia, the extremist challenge posed by the IS/ Daesh organisation may be weaker than before, thanks to current developments in Syria and Iraq. Bangladesh also has a good record of combating religious extremism. But in South India, the appeal of such forces remains considerably strong.
To deal with second of these problems first, there is as yet little information about most of the 88 youths who left India in recent years to join the IS camps/ operations in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. At least 53 recruits went from Kerala and 9 from Karnataka among them. Despite putting Indian Embassies on high alert in West Asia, officials have so far confirmed the death of only 25 of these recruits for the IS.
With anti-IS mopping- up ops continuing in parts of Iraq and Syria, getting reliable information about individuals is near impossible. Given the rising tempers in several States against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), even the handling of sensitive information has turned dicey. The latest example: the delayed confirmation by the GOI (Government of India) of the long suspected death of nearly 30 labourers in an attack by Iraqi troops against extremists at Mosul.
By the end, 2017, there had occurred 21 IS-sponsored acts of terrorism in India. In the most serious incident, 10 persons were seriously hurt in a bomb explosion on March 17 last year aboard the Bhopal-Ujjain Passenger train near Jabri, Madhya Pradesh. During a follow-up raid by the Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS), one Mohammad Shafiullah was killed in a shoot-out the following day near Kanpur. Nine others were also arrested.
Officials of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) said his handlers had tasked Shafiullah to set up a terror module in Uttar Pradesh. Mostly their activities had been restricted to setting off bombs, purchasing explosives and drugs, attacking banks and ambushing security personnel. So far 65 people have been arrested in connexion with such incidents, with 38 named in 14 charge sheets. The figures include activists who used arms as well as people who sheltered/protected them. However, 33 remain untraced.
All over India, till October last year, 111 persons with a record of Islamic extremist activities/ links had been arrested. In security operations abroad...25 people died, most came from South India, 21 out of 25. Out of 21 again, 15 came from Kerala including women and two children, all killed during a US drone strike against militants in Afghanistan.
The question arises, why should the fact that more people from South Indian states are turning to militancy abandoning their normal lives and prospects, seriously bother the GOI? Recruits have also joined militant Islamists albeit in fewer numbers, in UP, Bihar, West Bengal and Maharashtra as well.
Security analysts feel that Delhi has been wise to pay special attention to take the challenge of extremism from the South. ‘It cannot be forgotten that the Tamil separatists of Sri Lanka, led by the outlawed LTTE were described as the world’s toughest insurgents unit during their struggle against the Sri Lankan Government, to achieve ‘Tamil Eelam (homeland),’ recalls former Col Sabyasachi Bagchi. .’Far more than the Kashmir insurgents, the Tamils used their suicide squads unhesitatingly, really hurting the Lankan army, which prevailed only by using excessive force. The Dravidian militancy is in a class of its own.’ No wonder, Delhi would feel concerned about any outbreak of Dravidian militancy, (especially in an Islamic extremist form) anywhere in India.
The allegation of financial exploitation of the South by the essentially north Indian Hindi-speaking political establishment based in Delhi also strikes a deep emotional chord among large segments of non-Hindi speaking people. Recently, politicians from southern states, cutting across their regional and national party lines, unitedly protested against the allegedly divisive and exploitative norms pursued by the Central Government is allocating State plan resources.
The policies of the centre, they pointed out, clearly favoured the five/ six more populous mostly Hindi-speaking states in the north, because of existing formulas pursued by planners to accord more weight to population than other factors, in allocating resources. The five southern states with their better family planning programmes, smaller populations, better mass education and human development indices, were in effect made to pay for and subsidise, the failures of other, less productive States.
It was pointed out that during the next four years, unless the existing norms pampering the weaker performers by penalising the stronger were tweaked, the five Southern states would be deprived of over Rs 35,000 crore in terms of financial allocations alone!
Such lop-sided policies, it was convincingly argued, clearly protected long utterly inefficient, economically unproductive, vote banks for narrow political opportunism. This could help a few political parties to cling on to power briefly. But in consequence, the entire country suffered as its economic progress got stalled.
It may be recalled here that the argument does not stop here. Even earlier, there had been dissident voices in the south (especially in Tamil Nadu) going further and calling for ‘a southern secession’ from the rest of India, in view of the ever-increasing gap between the fast progressing south and the economically weaker, laggard States in India’s North and East.
Economists had also examined the phenomenon of unequal economic development and widening disparities between different parts of India. Their finding: the Western and Southern Indian States including Gujarat and Maharashtra combined, had achieved a standard of living comparable to middle classes in Europe for the people.
But economic conditions prevailing in parts of West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar, UP, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, MP and Rajasthan were reminiscent of the arid sub- Sahel regions of Africa!
Naturally, for the ruling BJP, such issues could not have cropped up at a worse time. It is the BJP that has its strongest base in the Northern states, with its pockets of strength also in the West.
But in the South, it has hardly a presence. In the East, its record is a little better. Despite having displaced the Indian National Congress as the country’s biggest political party, the ruling BJP still remains a work-in-progress entity still groping for a truly national footprint.
No BJP leader has commented publicly on these issues yet, but this silence may have to be broken sooner than later, the 2019 Lok Sabha elections are not far away and common people are certainly asking the ruling party some tough questions already.