London; New York: Routledge, 2015. xix, 226 pp. (Illustrations, maps.). ISBN 978-1-138-89252-1.
A leading military historian, Kaushik Roy has produced a finely crafted work on the interrelationships between colonial making of frontiers, state formation, and small wars conducted by the British in South Asia. The book contributes substantially to writings on protracted armed conflicts in South Asia, drawing extensively on archival sources to analyze small wars and counter-insurgency (COIN) operations in South Asia. Roy argues that the origins of insurgencies and counterinsurgency operations of contemporary states in South Asia can be traced back to British policies of managing the border regions in the North-East of India, in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), and in Baluchistan, all of which have experienced long-standing insurgencies. Frontier management policies and COIN in South Asia are traced back to the politics of limited warfare “fought by the British with limited military assets for limited political aims” (159). The author writes, “the British Small Wars against the Nagas, Kukis, Lushais, and the Pathans were limited conflicts from imperial perspectives, but appeared as Total War for the stateless frontier societies” (161).
British policies in the NWFP (circa 1800–1913) and the North-East (1772–1913), as the author argues, were largely motivated by military-strategic interests, for example in the NWFP, where COIN operations were driven by the threat of possible attacks from Russia in Afghanistan. According to British ethnographic accounts, the NWFP was described as “the traditional highway of conquest of the sub-continent” (11). The tribesmen in this region, such as the Pathans, “existed in a state of ordered anarchy” (15). Further, he notes, “[t]he possession of firearms became a symbol of prestige and allowed individuals to engage in feuding” (15). British policy towards the NWFP was based on two different approaches, one that focused on economic concessions and diplomacy and the other mostly led by military officials, focused on “punitive actions against the recalcitrant tribes” (83). The latter approach prevailed. The British imposed fines and made inroads into Waziristan by constructing roads and stationing troops in the “troubled regions” as part of its Small War campaigns in the NWFP (87).
Small wars were also conducted to maintain peace in the North-East frontiers where the British encountered guerilla uprisings led by the Naga and Kuki tribes. Chapter 3 discusses how the British faced these encounters and how borders were managed during the two World Wars (1914–1945). In the North-East sector, four battalions of Assam Rifles, including a Gurkha regiment, were deployed to contain the Kuki rebellion in 1917. Similarly, in the NWFP, as the author notes, “[i]n 1915, the British GOI [Governor of India] deployed 22 infantry battalions, 21 cavalry squadrons, eight batteries of 48 guns and two sapper companies (equivalent to two divisions) in order to deter the North-West Frontier tribes and Afghanistan” (70).
What implications do these frontier management policies have for postcolonial state formation processes, and the integration and management of frontier lands into the “national mainstream?” Roy argues that frontier policies in postcolonial South Asia, particularly in India and Pakistan, were shaped by British policies of management and integration. Road building, used as an important COIN technique, allowed the postcolonial polities to “integrate the marginal borderlands within their national mainstream” (95). The author, however, rejects the views held by previous scholars that postcolonial states, particularly India, simply inherited the COIN of British India. Roy argues that unlike Pakistan, the Indian army adopted a “sophisticated COIN doctrine where military aspects are subordinate to political aspects. Minimum force remains the operative principle of post-1947 India’s COIN. Unlike Pakistan, India in its COIN operation never uses anti-personnel mines, artillery and airpower. This is partly due to democratic governance, vigorous public media and a strong middle class” (162).
Chapter 4 analyzes how the Indian army implemented its COIN operations during the India-Pakistan war in 1947–1948, and then how the continuation of conflict in the border region throughout the 1980s and 1990s, engaged the Indian army “along and across the LOC, involving exchanges of intense artillery, missile, mortar and automatic fire with the Pakistani army, along with almost daily clashes between border patrols and mujahideen attempting to infiltrate into the valley. The other war was the counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism in the hinterland of the valley against Islamic tanzeems and their overground organizations” (108). The COIN operations in Kashmir were characterized not only by “small scattered actions” but also by nation-building exercises, where the army functioned as a facilitator for the civil state machinery, especially in the post-Kargil war in the late 1990s. Chapter 5 continues the discussion on COIN operations in the Naga Hills, and in this context, the author reveals that besides armed operations, co-option of surrendered rebels into the Indian army, Border Security Forces, and Nagaland state police was an important COIN technique used by India.
These COIN strategies are different from the methods of extreme repression used by the Pakistani army in Baluchistan and East Pakistan. Chapter 4 describes how armed bands like Hemayat Bahini carried out guerilla operations against the Pakistani army. The latter used “aerial artillery against the insurgents” but was unable to crush the insurgency (119). The author argues that the absence of “nation-building” or the absence of “winning the hearts and minds” approach of the Pakistani army was one of the major drawbacks of their COIN operations, and shows how the Awami League gained in the form of support for independence not only from the local Bengali population but also from the security forces across the border on the Indian side.
Archival evidence that the author presents in the book provides a wealth of original information to the reader. Historical analysis in the book sheds interesting insights on the roots of the organized violence of the stateless communities in the borders and the small wars conducted to pacify these communities in the frontier regions of South Asia. Barring these contributions, the book is limited in its analysis of the origins of the insurgencies—for instance, the insurgencies in Northeast India analyzed in chapter 5. The author also adopts a reductionist view while claiming that the “Assamese insurgency is the product of the Assamese Hindu middle class antipathy towards Muslim immigration,” whereas the insurgency has roots in profound socio-economic grievances discussed elsewhere by scholars like Udayan Mishra in The Periphery Strikes Back: Challenges to the nation-state in Assam and Nagaland (IIAS, 2000). The author claims that “India’s COIN includes both military and non-military elements” (156). However, it is not clear how this is applicable in the case of India’s Northeast and the frontiers in FATA region. Despite these lacunae, the book makes an important contribution to the existing literature on the disturbed “marginal” borderlands in South Asia.
Pahi Saikia
Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati, India
pp. 187-190