WE have the authority of India’s learned pundits of Sanskrit to posit that there is no word in Hindi or Sanskrit to define shaheed, a martyr. The word Balidaan, or gift of sacrifice, comes as close to the word as any in Hindi or Sanskrit expression, but no closer. Brahmins prescribed aahuti, but it could be anyone being sacrificed, not excluding your neighbour. Is there a word for the one who gives that aahuti of himself? Also, balidaan in common parlance need not necessarily entail death. But before the paranoid West begins to see hope in India’s aloofness from martyrdom of the kind sought by the folks of Sept 11 notoriety, it would do well to pause. Look again and you will find that Bhagat Singh, an Urdu-speaking Sikh, became Shaheed Bhagat Singh nevertheless, so did the Hindus, Shaheed Rajguru and Sukhdev, all hanged together for alleged terrorism against the British.

There have been two Hindi films, both huge hits, titled Shaheed, about freedom-fighters against colonialism who were summarily hanged by the British. In the older version of the 1950s film, Dilip Kumar, a legend himself, played the character of an Urdu- speaking Hindu rebel Ram, who robbed trains to fund the freedom struggle until he was sent to the gallows. He became shaheed. In the second version Manoj Kumar played Bhagat Singh, the terrorist or freedom-fighter, depending on your point of view, who was defended by Mohammad Ali Jinnah in the still British-managed national assembly in 1929. He too was hanged and became shaheed. His memory continues to taunt millions all over the world about Gandhi’s pacifism, but that’s another sad story.

So Urdu is not a language of Muslims alone, but it would not have been there without Muslims either. Hence shaheed, shahaadat, etc, began with a religious connotation. But as it turned out, they spread the notion rightly or wrongly to other cultures that have all produced self-styled martyrs in India and in its neighbourhood. You would notice that Tamil is the only non- religious category in this community of potential martyrs. True and ironical, the Tamil people in Sri Lanka who glorify martyrdom are Hindus and Christians, definitely not Muslims. Tamil speaking Muslims for some reason have been given a religious category in Sri Lanka, they are Sri Lankan Muslims, not Tamil Muslims. And not being Tamil they have no reason to favour shahaadat for a non-issue with them.

America’s celebrated Gen Patton — some Pakistanis and Indians would recognize him for the Patton tanks of the 1965 war fame/notoriety — evidently did not believe in martyrdom although his forebears did and we’ll come to that in a moment. There is a famous line ascribed to Gen Patton: “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He always won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.” That’s what Rambo would say too. But it’s not true.

The logic of Patton’s argument attempts to steal the halo of valour from his soldiers, since it implies that an American soldier killed in action had died in vain and had not really won the war for his country, including the one the Americans hope to win in Afghanistan, for example. But the sad truth is that the whole wretched doctrine of armies, not just American armies or Bin Laden’s militia, but the military doctrine all over the world is based on the foot soldier’s willingness to lay down his life for his country, or for a great non-negotiable cause, whichever comes first.

As for the American media which regards the notion of martyrdom as peculiarly Islamic, was it not Patrick Henry, the legend who fought the British masters to get freedom for the modern United States from debilitating colonialism, who had cried — Give me liberty or give me death? Death? That Henry got liberty for his adopted country is laudable. If you must quibble, you could question Patrick Henry’s concept of liberty for which he was ready to die. That liberty for many years thereafter would continue to count the vote of five black slaves as equal to three ballots.

Sure slaves were given the right to vote, but only as slaves, and with a little bit of fudging too. It’s a mystery though how in the absence of pocket calculators those votes were divided up in the House of Representatives. It took Martin Luther King to lay down his life for some more and as yet incomplete advance to be made in the realm of American civil liberties. Had the revered civil rights leader strayed even a bit from his Gandhian pacifism, he would have run the risk of being branded by the same people who eventually empathized with his assassin, as a terrorist.

Prof Noam Chomsky has been speaking in New Delhi on the subject of terrorism and its narrow definition as proffered by the United States. “In the Reagan years alone, US-sponsored state terrorists in Central America left hundreds of thousands of tortured and mutilated corpses, millions of maimed and orphaned, and four countries in ruins. In the same years, Western-backed South African depredations killed 1.5 million people. I need not speak of West Asia, or much else.”

According to Prof Chomsky, terrorism like most terms of political discourse has two meanings: a literal one and a propagandist one.

“A literal meaning can be found in official US documents, which instruct us that terrorism is ‘the calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious, or ideological in nature (carried out) through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear’. But the literal definition cannot be used, for one reason, because it is a close paraphrase of official government policy, called ‘low-intensity’ war or ‘counter- terrorism’. Another reason is that the definition quickly yields conclusions that are wholly unacceptable, such as those I mentioned, a tiny sample,” Chomsky told a large meeting in Delhi.

The propagandist version of terrorism, says Chomsky, is as clearly defined by the United States, its friends and allies. Only its underlying philosophy is not entirely untainted by completely anti- democratic influences. “The Nazis, for example, bitterly condemned terrorism and conducted what they called ‘counter-terrorism’ against terrorist partisans,” says Chomsky. “The US basically agreed. It organized and conducted similar ‘counter-terrorism’ in the post-war years. And it drew from the Nazi model, which was treated with respect: Wehrmacht officers were consulted and their manuals used in designing post-war counter-insurgency programmes worldwide, typically called ‘counter-terrorism’”.

Recent anti-terrorist measures taken in India are equally worrying, if also a bit ironical. The government wants a new anti-terrorist law but continues to blame much of the suffering on Pakistan — cross-border terrorism is the refrain. If that is a fact, India will need a lot of help from the department of posts to deliver summons across the border. If it is only a ploy to mobilize consent for the rightwing Hindutva that the leadership advocates, it is a cynical violation of civil liberties. Still, however, if there is indeed a serious domestic problem of homegrown terrorism, then it is precisely that — a serious problem.

How do you produce a law that stops people from blowing themselves up in your face. The only certain antidote to modern terrorism can come with a fair degree of awareness of the minds of people who are willing to die, not for the promise of an uncertain paradise as a few mocking journalists would have us believe, but a willingness to die so as to be able to demonstrate and redress their raging anger.

The human mind is a peculiar thing. A few hundred years ago, John Milton’s Satan said in Paradise Lost: The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” How could Mrs Indira Gandhi have known that her own bodyguard would turn upon her? How could John Lennon have divined that the glint in the eyes of an avowed fan was that of his own assassin?

Prof Chomsky told us the other day that a few million innocent people in Afghanistan face death by starvation and cluster-bombing in a vendetta for the outrage of Sept 11. Will the survivors of the American wrath become good citizens of a modern new world, or will they perpetually bear a grudge against the world’s most powerful democracy, awaiting their turn to get even?

BALOCHISTAN has no other option but to accept and, finally, accommodate the Afghan refugees, as many of them as manage to reach any part of the province. The government is taking half-hearted measures only to pacify the local population, on the one hand, and to mount pressure on international agencies and the world public opinion, on the other hand, that it had sealed the borders with Afghanistan.

On the contrary, the borders are wide open. The unfrequented routes are used, with the Afghans flooding the neighbouring districts and tehsils in large numbers after the United States has intensified bombing in regions close to Balochistan. Even the Chaman border is not sealed as claimed by the government. There is hide-and-seek between the border security people and the Afghan refugees crossing the barrier at will. Only a hundred or so are caught and pushed back into Afghanistan in the late afternoon.

There is no truth in the government claim that borders with Afghanistan have been formally sealed and the entry of refugees into Balochistan is checked. In fact, the entry of the Afghan refugees into this province is ignored wilfully. Similarly, a transit camp has been established where the refugees are being registered by the UNHCR at the centre before they are shifted somewhere else. The transit camp was established at Killi Faizu in Chaman and closed to the Afghan borders. It is done on the pressure from the UNHCR and the world community as a whole.

The local population is bitterly opposed to the policies in regard to the Afghans as they were given preference over the local people for political reasons in the past. A sizable population or a section of public opinion opposed the Afghan policy in the past as the “Afghans were considered defenders of Pakistan while a section of the local population was dubbed ‘unpatriotic or less patriotic’ by the decision-makers.”

The main reason was the different perceptions on the Afghan war following the induction of Red army contingents of the defunct Soviet Union. The past government interfered in the internal affairs of Afghanistan at the behest of the Americans and its allies. They put at stake the destiny of the people by provoking the Red army contingents. It was opposed by leaders of public opinion in this province and thus called ‘unpatriotic’. Double standards were visible by two different organs of the state, the foreign office and those managing the covert operations inside Afghanistan.

Since the Afghans were best suited to the second category of the decision-makers, they gave preference to the Afghans allowing them to carry into Pakistan their weapons, do the gun- running and find market for their finished product of heroin in Balochistan and other provinces of Pakistan.

Once again, Pakistan is back to square one, with additional refugees entering Balochistan and the NWFP. Last time the Soviets were bombing Afghanistan. This time the Americans are bombing the Afghan territories. The difference is that the defunct Soviet Union was a hostile and unfriendly country while the United States is an ally and “we are a partner in the coalition against terror”. The bombing by the Soviets was condemned while air strikes by the US are condoned.

The main issue is how to compensate the people of Balochistan for their unwarranted sufferings for the past quarter of a century. Balochistan has been a frontline province since the overthrow of monarchy by Sardar Daud. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had invited Gulbadin Hekmatyar, Prof Burhanuddin Rabbani, Ahmed Shah Masud and others as guests, given them weapons, shelter and money to wage a war against the nationalist government of Sardar Daud. Since then, the territory and resources of Balochistan have been used for destabilizing the situation in Afghanistan as the Kabul government is considered unfriendly.

In the backdrop of these facts, the people expect some relief in economic terms as they have no say in foreign policy issues. It is simple that all the range land destroyed by the Afghans with their herds of cattle be restored and adequately rehabilitated. The water resources have remained under severe strains for the past many decades in the presence of a million or more refugees. The water resources should be developed and more water made available for drinking, domestic uses and agriculture.

The Afghans are competing for every job in Balochistan. Since they are ready to work as cheap labour, they have destroyed the delicate balance between the nature of work and wages in a given environment. Thousands of push-carts and donkey-carts owned by the Afghans are operating in the main cities and townships, almost chasing away the local workforce. According to one estimate by independent economists, the Afghans have captured over 50,000 jobs in this provincial capital alone.

The same is the case with the pressure on health care in Balochistan. The Sandeman Hospital of the provincial government is the biggest hospital. It is consuming more than 60 per cent health budget of the province.

A visit to the hospital will confirm that more than 60 per cent patients are from neighbouring countries, mainly Afghanistan.

In other words, the Afghans are taking away over 50 per cent annual budget of the provincial health department. The government of Pakistan and its Afghan policy should be blamed for most of the problems for the people of Balochistan.

The Afghans, mainly the Taliban, have huge dumps of heroin and weapons. They can export it to Pakistan only. It is not possible to sell heroin in Iran which has lost over 3,000 soldiers fighting the drug mafia but did not allow the free or open sale of heroin.

Before the Afghans become a security risk to Pakistan itself, the government should keep all the refugees in the camps fenced with barbed wire near the Afghan borders, restrict and regulate their movements, denying them contacts with the local people.