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”