E-Book - Mahatma Gandhi

184 Contextualising Gandhian Thoughtof uncertainty and fear for the common citizen, increasing useof torture and barbaric methods of extracting information orconfessions of complicity, and increasing use of anti-socialelements, (smugglers, musclemen and the like) on both sides.The social objectives of the struggle thus move out of focus,and yield supremacy to the needs or strategy and tactics orpsychological warfare.We have also seen that mere increase in the power orlegal sanctions that the government possesses to 'suppress' doesnot lead to victory over terrorism. Apart from the ability thatthe terrorists demonstrate to circumnavigate the legal net that isspread for them, the police often finds it difficult to match thesuperior and more sophisticated arms, tactics, logistics, meansof communication, powerful wireless sets etc. that the terroristgroups have acquired from other countries, ironically, becauseof the incompetence or the Nelson's eye of the government.This leads to the humiliation of the police on the one hand, andthe Government's decision to induct the para-military, and thenthe military in defence of civil authority, to uphold thesuperiority of civil authority. The military also runs into its ownset of problems-inadequate understanding of the mind of thecivil population in the area, difficulty in distinguishing betweenfriend and foe, the consequent indiscriminateness in the use offorce, the possibility of alienating the civil population as aresult of inadvertent excesses, maltreatment of women, thedifficulty that civil authority faces in giving a-blank cheque tothe military, and so on. Moreover, the frequent or large-scaleinduction of the military itself becomes a source ofpsychological ascendancy to the terrorist and perplexity to theharassed citizen. At least in some cases it also tends to have adeleterious effect on the respect for or confidence in civilauthority.Here we have reached a scenario that is not very