Windjammer
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India has been quick to blame elements based in Pakistan for a wave of recent communal tension between Muslims and northeasterners.
But turning the spotlight on Pakistan only serves to distract from what is a domestic issue.
Since July, violence between ethnic Bodos and Muslim settlers in the northeastern state of Assam has caused scores of deaths and sent hundreds of thousands of people from both sides into squalid refugee camps.
The violence has rippled across India, where hundreds of thousands of northeasterners have fled cities like Bangalore and Pune, fearing reprisal attacks from Muslim groups.
New Delhis main response, widely reported in the Indian media, has been to blame Pakistan. The exodus of northeasterners came after Pakistan-based elements uploaded doctored images to the Internet that purported to show violence against Muslims in Assam, the Indian government says.
These images enraged Muslims and provoked attacks on northeasterners in a number of Indian cities, so this narrative goes.Indias Home Ministry put out a statement at the weekend saying it had asked for Pakistans help to close sites that were attempting to whip up communal sentiment inIndia.
India has blocked 250 sites it says have carried such material, 40% of which it claims are based in Pakistan. Telecom minister, Kapil Sibal, told the Times of India that he would ask social networking sites like Google and Facebook to find a way to prevent their services carrying such material in the future.
It also has limited the number of SMS messages that Indian cell phone users can send from their devices to stop people from spreading threats against northeastern communities.
There are two problems with this approach. First, India has not yet provided evidence that Pakistans role in hosting these sites is crucial. A report in the Hindustan Times today points without much evidence to Muslim groups in the Indian state of Kerala and in Bangladesh as behind the SMSes, showing how cloudy the picture remains.
They havent supplied anything approaching evidence, says Sadanand Dhume, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, who follows the issue closely.
More importantly, he adds, blaming Pakistan detracts from focusing on the issue at hand: violence in Assam. The fighting there has laid bare tensions between Bodos and Muslims settlers that date back decades. Muslim radical groups in cities like Mumbai have protested the fighting, and in some cases, as in Pune, northeasterners have been attacked. Its clearly a domestic Indian problem, he says.
In coming days, theres likely to be debate about what Google and Facebook and other sites should do to stop this violence. And Pakistan will come increasingly under the spotlight. But as in the past, when Indias government has blamed others for its problems, this all appears to be missing the point.
Blaming Pakistan for India Violence Easy Way Out - India Real Time - WSJ
But turning the spotlight on Pakistan only serves to distract from what is a domestic issue.
Since July, violence between ethnic Bodos and Muslim settlers in the northeastern state of Assam has caused scores of deaths and sent hundreds of thousands of people from both sides into squalid refugee camps.
The violence has rippled across India, where hundreds of thousands of northeasterners have fled cities like Bangalore and Pune, fearing reprisal attacks from Muslim groups.
New Delhis main response, widely reported in the Indian media, has been to blame Pakistan. The exodus of northeasterners came after Pakistan-based elements uploaded doctored images to the Internet that purported to show violence against Muslims in Assam, the Indian government says.
These images enraged Muslims and provoked attacks on northeasterners in a number of Indian cities, so this narrative goes.Indias Home Ministry put out a statement at the weekend saying it had asked for Pakistans help to close sites that were attempting to whip up communal sentiment inIndia.
India has blocked 250 sites it says have carried such material, 40% of which it claims are based in Pakistan. Telecom minister, Kapil Sibal, told the Times of India that he would ask social networking sites like Google and Facebook to find a way to prevent their services carrying such material in the future.
It also has limited the number of SMS messages that Indian cell phone users can send from their devices to stop people from spreading threats against northeastern communities.
There are two problems with this approach. First, India has not yet provided evidence that Pakistans role in hosting these sites is crucial. A report in the Hindustan Times today points without much evidence to Muslim groups in the Indian state of Kerala and in Bangladesh as behind the SMSes, showing how cloudy the picture remains.
They havent supplied anything approaching evidence, says Sadanand Dhume, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, who follows the issue closely.
More importantly, he adds, blaming Pakistan detracts from focusing on the issue at hand: violence in Assam. The fighting there has laid bare tensions between Bodos and Muslims settlers that date back decades. Muslim radical groups in cities like Mumbai have protested the fighting, and in some cases, as in Pune, northeasterners have been attacked. Its clearly a domestic Indian problem, he says.
In coming days, theres likely to be debate about what Google and Facebook and other sites should do to stop this violence. And Pakistan will come increasingly under the spotlight. But as in the past, when Indias government has blamed others for its problems, this all appears to be missing the point.
Blaming Pakistan for India Violence Easy Way Out - India Real Time - WSJ
