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.