Month: November 2022

“Saino Tamashii Utsuwa” and Shekhar Gupta’s Bell Curve theory of insurgent violence in India

Vikram M R, , , 1 Comment

Shekhar Gupta (currently the Editor-in-Chief at “The Print”), a very experienced and eminent (according to most) journalist of India has a theory regarding the lifecycle of violence due to insurgencies. He calls it the “Bell Curve theory”. This theory of his is a part of the inspiration behind this article.

Of course, as the title suggests, this write-up is also inspired by the term “Saino Tamashii Utsuwa”. This was the “Theme of the year” in the Bujinkan system of martial arts, for the year 2009. Saino Tamashii Utsuwa translates as “Expand (or add on to – Tamashii) the vessel (Utsuwa – referring to the capacity of the vessel) of your abilities (Saino)”. In simpler terms it means expand your abilities or skill sets. Considering the Bujinkan is mainly a system of martial arts, this meant, improve your skills or fine-tune your skills, or increase your skill set. It also could mean improve your ability to withstand or endure anything (this could relate to the soul which might represent endurance, patience and other abilities that cannot be objectively measured, but subjectively assessed).

The “Bell curve” Mr.Gupta uses as part of his theory is the normal bell curve used in statistics. He observes, based on his several years of reporting on various insurgencies in India in its different parts that the violence due to these insurgencies follows a Bell Curve. These insurgencies include the ones in the North-East – in Nagaland, Tripura, Mizoram and Assam, in the North – in Punjab and Kashmir and in the South, Centre and East of the country – in the Naxal affected states.

He observes that all these insurgencies start small, when they are not yet a matter of concern for the State (central and state governments). They then grow larger and more violent and eventually a peak of their violence is reached corresponding to the peak of the Bell curve. This is when the State has recognized the threat and trouble of the insurgency but the response to it has not yet reached the peak of its efficiency and effectiveness.

The next stage is when the response of the State, with its military, paramilitary, police, intelligence agencies, media narrative, revenue enforcement and logistics deprivation through all of the above, becomes overwhelming for the insurgents to handle. This forms the falling part of the bell curve, corresponding to the reduction and tapering of the violence. It also corresponds to the State and insurgents beginning a dialogue which eventually results in the end of the bell curve, when violence ends, and a political process begins with a permanent solution taking hold over time.

Sensei Hatsumi Masaaki, Soke of the Bujinkan system of martial arts (he has since handed over the 9 schools of martial arts that comprised the Bujinkan to different and new Sokes) had a system where he would announce a theme for every year. This indicated what the focus of training would be for the next year. This was a practice from around 1993 all the way till around 2016. After 2016, the generic focus has been “Muto Dori” until the pandemic disrupted normalcy.

Some of the themes were tangible and external, like a weapon (Bo, Yari, Naginata etc.) or a style of fighting (taihen jutsu, koppo jutsu, kosshi jutsu etc). But sometimes the theme was more abstract, a concept more than a physical aspect (Saino Tamashii Utsuwa, Rokkon Shoujo, Kihon Happo etc). The theme for the year 2009 was “Saino Tamashii Utsuwa” (sometimes also called “Saino Konki”).

The expectation for the year based on the theme was that the practitioners of Bujinkan improve their skills, in scale and scope. For example, if someone was good with the sword and not the spear, he or she was expected to improve with the spear while fine-tuning their skills with the sword and also to not let it diminish while the other skill is being enhanced. It was also expected that everyone also brush-up on to what they already knew but had lost partially over time. In other words, if the practitioner of Bujinkan is a vessel and that vessel is full to a point with certain skills, they were expected to not only add to the vessel, but also ensure that the size of the vessel increases and is added to, at the same time.

There is an obvious and simplistic observation to be made here. The bell curve looks like a mountain, but when it is turned around, it looks like a vessel. And any vessel is representative of potential or opportunity, as represented by the space in a vessel which can be filled.

This vessel that is represented by the “Utsuwa” in the theme, is also representative of the ability of the Indian State to always increase and improve its own capacity, in its soul and its abilities to deal with challenges of any nature as the State grows, ages and gains collective experience and wisdom. The challenges can be anything; economic, social, political, military or climatic. But here we look at this concept with reference to the insurgencies that Mr. Gupta refers to in his theory.

One should watch the videos on the YouTube channel of “The Print”, where Mr. Gupta explains the bell curve theory. He does a wonderful job of elucidating the same very eloquently. I will try and capture the key points from the theory here.

The early part of the bell curve is one where the State is not reacting to the insurgency as it does not seem much of a problem. But the problem and violence grow in brutality and in the number of incidences of violence. Eventually it reaches a peak when it seems that there will be no end to the increase in the violence. When things are at this peak, the State has already started responding, but while successful in many instances, it does not seem to be successful in reducing the instances of violence or mitigating the cause of the insurgency. This is true in all the following examples of insurgency against the Indian State.

The militancy in Punjab started in the early 1980s and was unabated all through that decade and it peaked in the years of 1991 and 1992. But it waned to being insignificant in the years after 1993. The militancy in the erstwhile J&K state started in 1989 and was unabated through the early 1990s. After this, the violence has diminished greatly. While it still exists today, it is a single burning home (a tragedy nonetheless) compared to the conflagration of the early 1990s.

The insurgencies in the Northeast started in late 1940s and are not yet completely over. But each state in the region had separate peaks and mitigation of the violence. Each state in the region also dealt with the local issues differently and at different periods of time. The insurgency in Mizoram peaked in the 60s and 70s and ended in the 80s. The same in Tripura ended in the 2000s. The insurgency in Assam was at its peak in the late 1990s and early 2000s and has abated to a large extent since. The insurgency in Nagaland has timelines similar that in Assam.

The greatest internal security threat as described by Dr. Manmohan Singh, the activities of Naxals, is also still going on, but is much diminished from the last decade. Though extremely brutal acts still do occur against CRPF personnel, these are reducing in number. The scale of the Naxal problem is vastly greater than the other insurgencies. It encompasses several states. In the words of Mr. Modi, Naxal activities extend from Tirupati (in Andhra Pradesh) to Pashupati (the Pashupatinath temple in Nepal). But the number of districts affected by Naxal activities has reduced significantly in the 2010s.

Mr. Gupta explains that all of these have followed the bell curve and are at various stages on the downward trend currently. The reasons for this are many. Mr. Gupta explains a few of the reasons and some are evident from various media reports over the last few decades, which show the strategies deployed by the Indian State.

In many insurgencies, the Army was deployed initially to deal with the surging violence. The army itself was not trained to deal with insurgents as against conventional enemies. The Army itself had to learn the skills to deal with the problems and also put in place procedures and mechanisms to deal with the problem in different geographies of the country. This also meant they had to start schools in different parts of the country to train troops to deal with the different types of scenarios, in some cases learning from and sharing knowledge with Armed Forces of other countries. Overtime, State Police forces learned specialized skills to deal with the different types of insurgencies and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) also gained a lot of the skills to free up the Army for their more conventional roles.

All of this was backed by learning, building and putting in place structures and resources for continuously improving Intelligence Agencies which led to reducing casualties in the armed response units and reducing collateral damage in any operation. This also led to a greater understanding of what steps could be taken to mitigate the causes of the militancy and also open channels of communication with the insurgents.

With this started a virtuous cycle. The Indian State started with better transport and communication infrastructure which not only helped the armed units but also started off development opportunities in the areas affected by insurgencies. It helped affected communities, specifically tribals (adivasis), interact more with their fellow citizens. It brought better primary education to areas previously left behind. And this led to a greater understanding of the causes of the militancy and a fine tuning of the strategy to counter the same.

With better infrastructure, education and out-reach came the opportunity for more commercial development in underdeveloped areas, especially in the case of Naxal areas, where mining was always a huge opportunity. With development came the challenges of equitable distribution of the benefits, which is still a work in progress, but definitely forward progress.

Another area of the fight (skill set if you will) that the Indian State had to learn and fine tune all the time was the narrative battle and the response to it on many fronts (now there is a stream of economics called “Narrative Economics”!). The State had to firstly counter the narrative of grievances that the insurgency was peddling in almost all examples. This was to break the support the militant received from the locals, who would only do that if they saw examples of development and bought into the path of progress promised by the State. Also, the State had to convince its other citizens, who lived far away from the insurgency affected areas and were not affected by violence, that they were firstly not the villains of the story and that they were taking the right steps as the situation warranted.

An aside – Could the entire arena of narrative combat be akin to the concept of “Kyojitsu Tenkan Ho” that we train in the Bujinkan?

 Once the State had better prepared armed units, intelligence gathering, infrastructure and narrative combat skills, it could choke the logistics of the militants, mainly because the support of locals in the supply chain diminished.

With all the above additions to a State’s abilities, the insurgency was now on the receiving end. This opened the door to creating amnesty and rehabilitation opportunities for militants that would surrender, give up arms and revert to the mainstream of the nation’s citizenry. Once the option of giving up arms without consequences was opened, the virtuous cycle gathered pace and led to greater interaction with inhabitants of the insurgency affected areas, and gave greater momentum to back channel communications which became full-fledged talks to end the insurgency. *This is like allowing an Uke the option of ukemi and disengagement from the fight.

Now that bringing people back from militancy has been mentioned, Mr. Gupta makes a very interesting observation. Apparently, the Indian state avoids killing the top leadership of an insurgency. It does eliminate lower level operatives when necessary, but does not go after the top leadership, because they are the ones who can be negotiated with and convinced to join mainstream politics. This method has apparently resulted in insurgent leaders in the North East, J&K and Punjab joining electoral politics and becoming ministers or even chief ministers in rare cases. Once this happens, the insurgency ends and political processes can take over. When a political process takes over, leaders are held responsible for development. This apparently leads to a populace getting addicted to peace, so long as there is a “peace dividend”.

The “peace dividend” refers to development that improves the quality of life and increases prosperity for a populace over time. This requires actions of the State that are not specific to countering an insurgency, but activities that are of great benefit to all the people in the country as a whole.

This includes activities where schemes of the State are delivered with not much leakage of benefits, and to the sections of a population that need them most. And if there is specific development like mining in an area with Naxal influence, the benefit from the mining should be visible and reach the locals of the area specifically. Of course, if this sounds like a welfare state, then the State needs continuous and large economic growth to have the resources to distribute. This should go hand in hand with protection of local cultures and the inhabitants should not be inundated with a migrant population, to alleviate fears of a way of life being threatened. This is true whether it is the North East, Punjab or J&K, for all parts of the country have a lot of pride in their respective ways of life.

These general development activities bring to mind two other concepts from the Martial Arts. One is “Rokkon Shoujo”, which means “clear laughter is the greatest reward”. This essentially means the focus should be on happiness, and the focus of a State’s activities should focus on the happiness of a populace. So, this is not specific to counter insurgency, but to general development as a whole.

The second is “Kaitatsu Gairoku”. This means “doing things indirectly”. It refers to a feint in the martial arts that could lead to creating an opening against an opponent. So, The State focuses on economic development, and its equitable distribution and this weakens insurgencies by its very nature. This is weakening an insurgency by focusing on something else. This is a classic example of defeating an insurgency with indirect actions.

Of course, Rokkon Shojo and Kaitatsu Gairoku are deeper concepts that need to be explored with separate articles with more clear examples. Nevertheless, these actions of the State go on to show that a State not only adds to its learning and experience with specific aspects relating to dealing with a violent insurgency, but also incorporates concepts that affect the solution to the violence without direct measures. This is similar to learning a concept in the martial arts as against a technique and applying it with any other weapon or technique.

In conclusion, each of the above points, is an ability learnt by a government, expanded upon with the past experience and knowledge (of previous administrations), by successive governments. To simplify, the Indian State can be considered the budoka and each of the strategies applied against an insurgency represents an increase in its Utsuwa of responses. The soft and hard strategies are the Saino, both of which are always being increased (tamashii).

Of course, all the learnings and techniques of the Indian State is not to imply that these are the only ones out there. Several countries have faced and either defeated or mitigated armed insurgencies of varying scales in the last century. These insurgencies were of both right and left wing extremists, a small number of examples of this are the Red Brigades in Italy, the Red Army Faction (Bader Meinhof Group) in West Germany, the OAS in France and the Provincial IRA in the UK. But the scale and number of violent insurgencies faced by the Indian State is vastly greater, as is its resolve (more space in the Utsuwa) to never give in, take all hits it has to (in lives, in the media, narratives, economy growth etc.) but always survive and emerge stronger – a much larger and accommodating vessel. Just living in this country, and knowing this history is a great walk through the concept of “Saino Tamashii Utsuwa” and motivation enough to practice the same, at least in the dojo.

*As mentioned in the article “Ahimsa and the Martial Arts – Part 3”

Ahimsa and the Martial Arts – Part 3

Vikram M R, , , , 1 Comment

Indian Independence & the Revolutionary Movement – The Gift of Ukemi

Artwork by Shushma N

In the previous two write-ups in this series I have opined that Ahimsa is about not letting the opponent realize that he/she/they are being countered and making them retreat or just give up the fight/aggression that was initiated by the opponents’ side. I also opined that this concept can be applied not only to a one on one fight, but also to a large scale conflict spread across a vast geography (the example used was the Indian Freedom Struggle).

In this part of this series, the last one for now, I shall express a few of the remaining thoughts I have had over time with regard to Ahimsa in the martial arts and how the same is also evident ( at least to me) in the struggle for Indian independence from the British Raj. Of course, I need to reiterate here, the application of martial arts concepts is from my own perspective and with the benefit of hindsight.

When we train in the Bujinkan, after a considerable amount of training, we begin to realize that a lot of the times we support the opponent. This is very true in the Nage Waza or “throwing” related movements. “Support the opponent” here means that the opponent is not only being held up by the tensions in one’s (defender’s) own body, but also by being able to sense where the threat to him or herself is likely to come from based on the same. Here, “tensions in one’s own body” refers to the strength all of us use in defending against or resisting the attack of an opponent. Specifically, with relation to the Nage Waza and related concepts (maybe movements), when an opponent is being thrown, he or she can stop him or herself from falling by sensing (feeling) the resistance from the person executing the throw and latching onto the person based on that feedback. This is why we are taught that in the Nage Waza, we need to learn to “let the opponent fall” and how that should be enabled by gravity, not individual strength.

Once we understand (or at least say/accept) that a lot of throwing of opponents happens by letting the opponent fall, we need to learn what position and space we need to occupy in relation to a specific attack from an opponent. A specific set of movements might be needed to occupy the space and posture in relation to an attacker to take his or her balance and make them fall. This is the whole purpose of Nage Waza training.

Now, when seen from the perspective of an attacker, when he or she is falling, he or she will fall in a manner that will be least painful and causes least bodily harm due to the same. This is what we call Ukemi or “receiving the ground”. In common parlance, an attacker executes a break-fall or a roll while falling to come out of the fall unhurt or at least with minimal injury.

Consider a situation where an attacker either cannot perform a good ukemi or has only the option of an ukemi that will result in significant physical injury (or worse). This situation delays the attacker (Uke) from performing an ukemi to retreat from the attack he or she initiated. Often enough, in the absence of a good fall-back option like a break-fall or roll, the attacker will fight harder and try to force a tension in the defender’s body to latch on to, thus mitigating or nullifying the need for an ukemi. Therefore, the defender (Tori), by disallowing an ukemi for the attacker, might extend the fight by not allowing the Uke to retreat with an ukemi.

An aside – It can also be argued that the Tori becomes Uke in such a situation (denial of ukemi), especially if the Tori has to resort to use of physical strength that reverses the gained advantage with the earlier movement. Of course, very skilled practitioners can deny an ukemi and also prevent a fightback from the uke (this is a deserving discussion for different time). Here, at least in a practice scenario, the tori physically stops uke from falling, thus gaining the gratitude of the uke for the life-saving move. This “saving the uke” is an act of benevolence and also results in the ending of the current attack.

With this introduction in the background, I would like to recall a sentence I had read in a newspaper op-ed back when Operation Parakram was going on. This was the massive military build-up that India had used to retaliate against the attack on the Indian parliament back in December 2001. I do not recall the newspaper name, but I think it was The Hindu. The sentence said that one of the things that the Indian Government and the Military leadership was cognizant of was that they did not want to push the then Pakistani Dictatorship to think they did not have any wriggle room in the discussions with India. This feeling along with a belief that a massive invasion was imminent would push them to the wall. And the knowledge that Pakistan would not be able to win a conventional war against India along with no faith in negotiations would drive them towards the nuclear option in the war. This was something that India did not want, for it would adversely affect India and also not result in the scaling down of terrorism which was the objective of the military mobilization in the first place. In hindsight, India succeeded, to a limited extent, in getting Pakistan to act on terrorism emanating from its soil and there was no war. Op Parakram was called “gun-boat diplomacy” as well by some, for this reason.

But the key here is that the option of negotiation was the ukemi that the attacker could use to disengage and end the fight. The lack of this option would have resulted in a military conflict with unforeseeable consequences which need not have been favourable to either the attacker or defender.

I have used the above example because it perfectly encapsulates the use of diplomacy with military capabilities to achieve a strategic or geopolitical objective, with minimal or no use of the kinetic military option. And all this in a short time frame of less than a year.

If we can look back towards the Indian Freedom Struggle with the above example and the use of ukemi in mind, some wonderful revelations are likely. This is especially true if we consider the work of a lot of new historians who are beginning to opine that Indian Independence from the British Raj was not just due to the Ahimsa (supposedly “non-violent”) and movement of the Indian National Congress (INC), but also due to the work of the armed Revolutionary Movement, the pinnacle of which was the Indian National Army (INA) under Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.

It is well documented, and these days, pretty widely mentioned, that Clement Atlee, the PM of Britain when India won independence, stated that Gandhiji and the movement led by him (I suppose we could say the movement spearheaded by the INC?) was of very little relevance in the final British decision to leave India and acquiesce to Indian Independence. This statement is supposed to have been made when he was on a visit to India in 1956, when he was staying at the residence of the then Chief Justice of Bengal. Further, Clement Atlee is supposed to have credited the British decision to leave India to the spark lit by Netaji and the rebellion in the then Royal Indian Armed Forces (the greatest of which was the rebellion by the Royal Indian Navy in 1946).

So, Indian Independence was a consequence of the well-known Freedom Struggle and also loss of control of the armed forces in India. The rebellion in the armed forces after the end of the Second World War itself was triggered by the trials in the Red Fort of the prisoners of the INA. The INA being a product of the armed revolutionary movement, it is clear that the objective of this movement was always to turn the British Indian Army against the British. With the Army being staffed mostly by Indians with British leadership, the loss of control of the army was always going to be the end of the British Raj.

This idea of throwing the British out by subversion of the British Indian Army had been the same since the First War of Independence in 1857, which also occurred due to troops of the then East India Company (EIC) rebelling against the Company. After the failure in 1857, the idea was revived in the early 20th century with many events working towards the same goal, during the First World War which were not successful. Eventually, the same idea came to fruition after the Second World War. In the interim when the idea of subverting the army was on the back burner post the failed Mutiny of 1857, the INC was born in 1885 and initiated the parallel struggle for freedom through a political process, which is the better known “non-violent” movement.

For greater details about the revolutionary movement, I strongly suggest looking for and watching the talks given by Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal*. There are several of those on YouTube, all very interesting. This is one of my own main sources of knowledge about these aspects. There are others out there as well sharing the happenings of these times in differing ways**.

So, the armed revolutionary movement was instrumental in taking away the Indian Armed forces from the British, while Gandhiji and the INC were responsible for breaking the British moral high ground and belief in their own responsibility to civilize India after a Western model.

I have mentioned my thoughts on the use of the Ahimsa movement in using British moral superiority against themselves in a previous article***. In that article I have also mentioned that the Ahimsa movement provided a safety valve and a face saving exit out of India, for the British. This is exactly like keeping negotiations on during Op Parakram. In other words, the Ahimsa movement was the Ukemi allowance to the Nage Waza of the armed revolutionary movement.

The British were financially weak after the Second World War and the training and knowledge of weaponry they had imparted to Indian troops during the same had mitigated their technological superiority. And thus, with the loss of the Indian Armed Forces, their last tool to hold the country they had occupied over the last two centuries was taken away from them. This was them being subjected to an absolute bad-ass Nage Waza, a literal being “thrown out”!

This left them with taking the Ukemi option provided by the INC, for a face saving retreat, thus ending the struggle India had not asked for. The British were forced to negotiate earnestly with the INC about complete Independence and not just spare concessions like they had in the earlier decades. This allowed them to survive the “fall” due to the “Nage” of the revolutionary movement. They could hold on to the face saving belief in being civilized by acquiescing to the call for Indian Independence and over time sweep from the mind the fact of being “thrown” out.

So, the twin use of the revolutionary movement and the political movement of the INC were the Nage Waza and “allowed” Ukemi that showed the British the path of retreat, and nullified the aggression that led to the Freedom Struggle in India****.

Notes:

*Mr. Sanyal is the Principal Economic Advisor to the Govt. of India and a member of the PM’s Economic Advisory Council. He is also a wonderful historian who has written multiple books.

**One very recent book called “True to Their Salt” by Ravindra Rathee comes to mind. I have not read this book, only watched an interview with the author, about the book.

***Ahimsa and the Martial Arts – Part 2

****Does this have a parallel in the IRA / Sinn Fein tandem movement? Perhaps this is something to look at, for if true, would be a second use of the same Nage – Ukemi combination against the same colonizer.