If there is
something that gets the average Indian’s blood boiling, it is the
idea of war. There is something uniquely attractive about war – it
serves to satiate our sense of nationalism, our sense of the need for
quick remedies and of course, the need for violence. Humans are by
nature attracted to violence, which both explains the breathtaking
amount of mental space we expend on trying not to be violent, and
also the number of fuck-ups we end up with for not heeding this ocean
of advice we created ourselves. But not all wars are equal, or
equally winnable.
Take China for
instance. It was our good fortune to have a retired brigadier speak
of India’s foreign relations during a recently concluded course. I
asked him why we can’t deal with our bête noire, China, since
China seems to have the only combination of anti-India interests and
capacity to cause real problems. He answered that China couldn’t be
called our annoyer-in-chief, and avoided the remainder of the
question. Now he is right about the first part (and the only part he
answered), since the average Indian does not consider China to be the
principal problem. Ask the man on the street, and you would at most
get some vague response such as “stop using Chinese goods”. What
else ? Nothing.
So even if China
manages to block India’s attempts across the diplomatic board and
strip away allies from South Asia to Africa, Indians as a whole
aren’t very concerned. This too without China launching a charm
offensive, proof of which can be seen in that while we use Chinese
products, we are still extremely racist and xenophobic as far as real
Chinese are concerned.
But the retired
soldier did not simply avoid my question, he diverted it to his
favourite talking point – the case of Pakistan. We were being given
the standard explanation of why Pakistan is a problem. An
overtly-tolerant Nehru, a hoodwinked Indira Gandhi, Pakistan’s own
weak political establishment, the domination of the Punjabi-army and
the need to maintain the raison d’etre of Pakistan in religious
jihad. Net result was a number of wars, which had been completely
dominated by India, and which led Pakistan to choose its cunning
“thousand cuts strategy” to wear out Indian forces. So we needed
to deal with Pakistan more than China. Period.
I won’t go into
the solutions proposed, since they too are way too textbookish. What
mattered is that he was clear on one thing – war won’t solve the
issue by itself. We had fought plenty of wars with Pakistan, and
these wars had yielded next to nothing due to the lack of political
will. More wars without proper diplomatic follow-up will yield
nothing more than losses. Since the Indian army was completely
subservient to the civilian establishment, more bloodshed without
political machismo would simply bring us back to square one.
Up to this point, I
didn’t have much disagreement with him. It is true that at summits
following major wars, the way we returned land and soldiers to the
Pakistanis is unconscionable. It is also true that more wars would
probably yield even less results because the situation in South Asia
continues to leave less and less room for rapid and decisive action.
War for the sake of war is something we left behind in the trenches
of WWI, and it’s best not to bring those antiquated ideas back.
But he had one last
thing to say. He believed our current dispensation – led by
Narendra Modi – was made of a different material. It was at last
showing the necessary gumption to walk the talk as far as political
will was concerned. Be it a surgical strike or the recent Balakot
attack in response to Pulwama, the PM was finally showing strength of
an order no one previously had. Our enemies would now learn to fear
us, and this itself would act as a deterrent.
I couldn’t
disagree more. Personal political views aside, Modi’s relations
with Pakistan have been vacillating at best, shifting from hugs to
surgical strikes like the weather changes from sunshine to rain in a
matter of moments. But it’s not my intention to look at the whole
history of Indo-Pak relations in the NDA-II years. Instead, I’ll
simply focus on the most recent events, beginning with the attack on
the CRPF convoy in Pulwama.
This attack was
nothing new. For years, nay decades, the Indian forces had been under
attack, with notable incidents like Pathankot and Uri coming to mind
even before we begin speaking of Pulwama. There can be endless debate
on whether we have learnt our lessons or not, but the bigger point
for me is how we respond to these attacks.
Right off the bat,
it must be said that the response to Uri was somewhat novel. Even if
we discount the romanticized exaggeration of Bollywood, it can be
said without doubt that the surgical strikes which followed clearly
managed to do significant damage to the terror infrastructure within
PoK. It was not so much the action itself, but its scale and efficacy
that remain as indelible marks of success for both the military
establishment and their political masters.
Fast forward to
Pulwama, and our first target wasn’t so much the Pakistanis, as the
Kashmiris. All over India, Kashmiri traders, students and journalists
came under attack from their fellow Indians. This was nationalism
masquerading as xenophobia, finding enemies within to compensate for
attacks from separatists. To make matters worse, people seen
defending innocent Kashmiris were hauled up and beaten as well,
marking a clear Balkanisation of the Indian psyche which had not
existed as recently as 2016.
The government, for
its part, bided its time, arguing that the army had been given
complete freedom to choose where and how to attack. One wonders
whether this wasn’t the politicians simply insuring themselves
against the backlash should anything go wrong. After all, if the army
messed up, then the army was to blame. And you couldn’t blame the
army without being anti-national. So no one would be blamed.
Eventually, we did
get the tit-for-tat response. Our jets flew into Gilgit-Baltistan
(beyond PoK) and bombed a place called Balakot. It was declared that
we had attacked and destroyed one of the main staging areas for
terror attacks in J&K. Blank spaces remained, but we assumed
these would be filled up in due course. In the meantime, everyone who
had been rooting for a punitive war against Pakistan celebrated their
and their uncle/aunt’s victory over Pakistan. The media outlets
waxed eloquent (if screaming at a high volume be eloquence) about the
success of India in dealing with Pakistan and how the latter had been
taught a lesson. As if we hadn’t already been completing the
syllabus every time the truants attacked us in the past.
All this was
expected, but what happened thereafter was not. For one thing,
confusion deepened. Information did not come out, and questions
raised received questions in return. How many terrorists were killed
? Did we stop to count the number ? Okay, then what about Pakistan
saying we bombed a forest ? Did Pakistan pay you to say this ? The
questions and the jingoistic counter-questions dominated the media
relentlessly, providing TRPs and noise which drowned out the actual
achievement of the air force. Questions remained and remained
unanswered in the minds of people who took a moment to think about
it.
Before this storm
would settle, Pakistan counterattacked. Except we didn’t learn that
it had counterattacked until much later. All we learnt was that there
was a dogfight in the skies and two of their planes had been shot
down. Alright, good for the IAF. But then we learnt that only one
plane had been shot down. Another plane that had been shot down was
our own, and it had landed in Pakistani territory. Great, so it
wasn’t that clean a victory after all. But when did this all happen
? Did we attack again ? Did they attack us ? Counterattack ? Oh,
okay. But they were pushed back right. Some nationalist pride was
salvaged.
But then we learnt
that Wing Commander Abhinandan had been captured by the Pakistanis.
Would we go to war against them ? Musn’t we ? The odd thing here
was that the TV channels, which had been celebrating the success of
Modi’s warlike strategy, cooled down to argue for a measured
approach. Not caution, because caution doesn’t garner TRP, but
maybe leave it to the actual leaders to take the call instead of
braying for war ? The goal was now to get the man with the big
moustache back.
Before anyone could
decide how to get him back, Imran Khan (Pakistani PM) simply said he
would be returned. No questions asked, he would be returned as a
gesture of humanity. Our political leaders quickly tried to spin this
as Pakistan being forced to return the Indian officer. But there
appeared little sign of compulsion. Pakistan – after all – had
returned Abhinandan on its own, before (and therefore without) any
major diplomatic or military sparring. The “bound to” argument
had to be stretched to its limits in the case of the POW.
In the meantime,
focus had been shifted to how Abhinandan had been a great officer,
who had shot down a F-16 with a MiG-21. Technicalities aside, this
was indeed something admirable, since the MiG-21 was far older. But
whose job was it to ensure that Abhinandan had a better plane than
the flying coffin ? In our euphoria at getting the POW back, this
question was conveniently forgotten. We were back to celebrating the
army – and by unjustified extension, Modi’s – success against
Pakistan.
But such celebration
was muted, not because the leaders didn’t spend enough on news
channels or firecrackers (or garlands) but because to many Indians,
and the world at large, the spectacle of the latest Indo-Pakistan
sparring had left an impression different from the ones earlier. For
the first time, India seemed to be more eager than Pakistan to prove
the latter was evil. For the first time, the dearth of data and
confusing narratives was coming from the Indian side rather than the
facetious Pakistanis. Finally, for the first time, it was the
Pakitanis who were making a humane gesture instead of India. We may
or may not have won the dogfight, but we lost control of, and
eventually lost, the narrative through our overexertion to prove our
vision of a strong government and a strong nation correct.
If we suffered a
defeat in the domain of public perception, we also suffered in our
other actions with Pakistan. We removed Pakistan’s Most Favoured
Nation (a trade term) status and warned that we would stop water from
our rivers to theirs. But going beyond this, we stopped their
shooters from participating in international games being held in
India. This earned us a stern warning from the international bodies,
the message being that India’s applications to host future
international events would be in jeopardy. Given that our
sportspersons and sports administrators are no less nationalistic
than our soldiers or Modi himself (more so in all likelihood), it
seems patently unfair to make them suffer so we can show our
vindictive side.
But it was not just
sports that suffered. The biggest sufferers were those who spoke out
against this patent mess that occurred. Questions were raised from
day one, regarding matters as technical as diverging satellite
imagery of Balakot, to the very simple question of why the details
were not released completely in an organized manner. These questions
were not only brushed aside for being anti-national, but their owners
were also punished. Case in point is a professor in Orissa who was
dismissed for raising critical questions. In my own city of Kolkata,
no less than three people were actually beaten up for casting doubt
on the course of events and the veracity of the many claims made by
both sides.
Obviously, none of
this affects Pakistan in any way. If the monolithic image of Pakistan
be the one we truly subscribe to, it should be assumed that the civil
society in Pakistan has no voice, and regardless of what they say or
we say, the army would not be moved. They being deceitful, would use
everything we say against us without any moral compunctions. So does
it really matter what we say ?
It does, for us. We
are a democracy and a country with a vibrant public sphere that even
the emergency could not suppress. From nationalistic journalism to
sting posts, our press does anything and everything, and we must be
proud of that. Our intellectuals – teachers, professors, lawyers,
activists and students all included – are respected the world over,
and this respect comes not because we like or dislike Pakistan, but
because of what we say for ourselves and about the world at large. To
question these pillars of free speech would be to take our country
backward toward colonial times, since democracy and free speech go
hand in hand.
In fact, the
willingness of a section of the populace – both the paid trolls and
goons and the silent spectators – to condone hooliganism and
enforced silence in the name of nationalism, is a sign of fascism. As
is xenophobia. Plurality of language, opinion and religion cut across
all “dominant” narratives, and domination can only be secured
through violence in the last resort. Once secured however, it creates
and perpetuates a sense of self-censorship and further silence that
allows this narrative to become hegemonic i.e. to enter the minds of
people and control them from within. Support for, and compliance
with, the proponents of the narrative becomes a compulsion against
which we gradually stop thinking because thinking leads to speaking
and speaking is pointless if we only get beaten up and lose our jobs.
In a sense, then,
the call for unity against anything – terrorism, Pakistan or
fascism – must not be at the cost of suppressing cross-currents of
thought and opinion. Our country does not need the weakness of
Pakistan, nor would our opinions weaken India and make Pakistan
strong. Instead, we stand to lose our democracy and freedom by
relentlessly searching for the “enemies within”. It’s time we
held the vigilantes for the war against “enemies within” to
account, or prepared to be crushed within our own minds.
