Will Arming Civilians in Jammu Secure Its People?

On the evening of January 1 this year, terrorists barged into three houses in Dhangri, a village in Rajouri district, close to the Line of Control (LoC) between India and Pakistan in the Jammu region of Jammu and Kashmir. 

After confirming the Hindu identity of the residents, the terrorists sprayed them with bullets. Before retreating, they planted an IED outside the house of one of the victims. It exploded the following morning, killing two children. 

Over a span of 14 hours, seven civilians, all of them Hindus, were killed and 15 others injured. 

The targeted killing of Hindus in Dhangri village revived memories of the many massacres that took place in Jammu in the 1990s and 2000s. It has triggered a tidal wave of fear and insecurity in villages across the region. 

Amid a rise in terror attacks in Jammu over the last couple of years, the government last year revived a decades-old program in Poonch and Rajouri districts for arming civilians to defend themselves against militants. Following the Dhangri killings, the government has accelerated the arming and training of Village Defense Guards (VDGs).

Unlike the Kashmir Valley, which is 96.4 percent Muslim, Jammu’s population is more mixed. Hindus comprise 62.5 percent of the population of the region overall, but the proportion of Hindus to Muslims varies from district to district. Rajouri district, for instance, is 62.71 percent Muslim, but Dhangri, which has a population of around 5,000 people, is 70 percent Hindu.

Under pressure from Indian counterinsurgency operations in the Kashmir Valley in the 1990s, militants began shifting focus to the Jammu region. Their strategy involved targeting Hindu civilians. The first of the targeted massacres of Hindus was at Kishtwar in Jammu’s Doda district on August 14, 1993, when militants lined up bus passengers, identified the Hindus among them, and shot 17 of them dead. Hindu-Muslim clashes erupted and authorities had to declare a curfew and rush in security forces to restore normalcy.  

Amid the rising insecurity, villagers clamored for weapons to protect themselves. In 1995, Village Defense Committees (VDC) – the forerunners of today’s VDGs – were set up in villages that were badly hit by militancy. 

A VDC comprised around 10-15 “volunteers,” including ex-servicemen, ex-policemen, and able-bodied men. It was headed by a special police officer, a semi-official appointment, who was paid a small honorarium. Other VDC members being “volunteers” received no remuneration. Initially, some 5,000 VDC members were provided with rifles. This number rose to over 28,000 by 2016. 

The Jammu region suffered many massacres for at least a decade thereafter. A particularly gruesome one happened on the night of April 17, 1998, when terrorists used axes and scythes to behead 28 villagers in Prankote and Dakikote in Udhampur district. There were other massacres too at Prankote and Chapnari in 1998, Chittisinghpura in 2000, Kot Charwal in 2001, Qasim Nagar in 2002, and Doda in 2006.

So, what role did the VDCs play? 

A retired officer of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) who contributed to crafting the VDC strategy of the 1990s described the VDCs as “the first line of defense against jihadist terrorism.” The VDCs were set up in remote hamlets in the mountainous parts of Jammu, which were accessible only with “an arduous trek of 2-8 hours.” When militants attacked these villages, it was difficult for the security forces to reach them immediately. “The VDCs filled the gap before the forces arrived,” he recalled.

The VDCs contributed in “a small but significant way to the retreat of jihadists” from the Jammu region, a major general of the Indian Army who served at Poonch told The Diplomat. If previously terrorists would enter a village without fear of being countered, subsequently they began avoiding areas where the VDCs were in place.

It brought relief to villagers in the Jammu region. A special police officer in Banjala in Doda district told me in 2005 that people in his hamlet “were now sleeping well.” And it was not just Hindus who were doing so. Muslims, who had earlier seen their sons and daughters being abducted by jihadists “whether for fighting or forced marriages,” were relieved with the VDCs guarding them. 

With the militancy winding down in Jammu by the mid-2000s, the VDCs became irrelevant. Some members surrendered their weapons; many stashed them away.

In August last year, the government decided to revive the VDC program, albeit with a new name. The Dhangri killings have sped up the recruitment, arming, and training of VDG members. Old .303 rifles are being replaced by self-loading rifles and this time around, all VDG members will be paid. 

The VDGs, like the VDCs before them, may play an important role in fighting off jihadists. They may even deter terrorists planning to strike villages.

However, the arming of civilians is deeply controversial. It militarizes society. A human rights activist in Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, described the VDGs as “civilian militias with government backing.” He drew attention to VDC members using their weapons to settle scores and engage in crime. 

Indeed, in 2016, the Jammu and Kashmir government admitted before the state legislative assembly that 221 criminal cases had been filed against VDC members. These include serious crimes like rape, murder, and rioting.

An important shortcoming of the VDCs was that they were overwhelmingly Hindu, even in Muslim-majority areas. 

It is unlikely that in today’s India, where the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is in power and Hindutva forces are ascendant, the Hindu composition of these civilian militias will be diluted. Indeed, they are likely to function as militias affiliated to Hindutva groups.

In the past, VDC members were powerful men not only because they were armed and largely unaccountable but also because they were linked to politicians and often carried out the orders of their political masters, especially during elections. Today’s VDG members will be even more powerful given the fact that a party that is distinctly anti-Muslim is in power today.

Communal polarization in India is serious, and Jammu is a veritable tinder box. Hindu militias armed with SLRs and empowered by their masters in Hindutva organizations will be a grave danger to society. The threat of mass communal violence looms over the region.  

Arming civilians to take on heavily armed terrorists is not a solution to the problem. It could in fact trigger new and far more complex problems for society. 

The security situation in Jammu does not warrant the arming of civilians. This raises a pertinent question – is it security considerations or political motivations that are driving the VDG program in Jammu?