The conspiracy angle to the Pathankot episode

http://kashmirtimes.com/newsdet.aspx?q=48483

In the pro-establishment version, the anti-terror operation in Pathankot was triggered by the Pakistani ‘deep state’ unwilling to countenance potential success of the initiatives unleashed by Mr. Modi in his characteristic style of bold leadership. The ‘deep state’ was therefore out to derail it, just as it had truncated the earlier Lahore peace process. While this time the scale of their action was not quite another Kargil, they were messaging their disapproval not only to India but also to India’s interlocutors, in particular Nawaz Sharif, and pro-India constituencies in Pakistan such as business interests. In so far as there were drawbacks in the operational conduct, there was mention of security gaps in the media coverage of the visit of the defence minister accompanied by the army and air chiefs.

There is much to commend the pro-establishment version of the episode. Pakistan’s ‘deep state’ comprising its army and the ISI, while of a piece with Pakistan reaching out to India, are wary of India attempting to set the pace. The army has attempted to retain control by replacing the National Security Adviser with a former military man. Yet, they are worried by initiatives such as Mr. Modi’s stopover in Lahore, evident from the Pakistani NSA keeping aloof from the function. They are also perhaps as confused as ordinary Indians are over the periodic about turns in Mr. Modi’s Pakistan policy, which at last count were on four occasions, with the foreign secretary talks currently lined up in Islamabad being potentially the fifth. For its part, as a preemptive measure, Pakistan was quick in its condemnation and expression of solidarity with India. Even if the ‘deep state’ is not implicated, there are elements, the so-called ‘rogue’ elements, who may want to throw a spanner in the works for their own autonomous reasons and self-interest, including terrorist organizations either hell bent on seeing Kashmir not as a resolvable territorial dispute but a millennial struggle against non-believers or for more prosaic reasons as self-perpetuity.

The plausibility of this narrative aside, there is another version that needs airing, given ballast by the contradictions in the establishment’s story of what happened. While loose ends can be expected in fast developing stories, certain elements in the ‘Pathankot’ story suggest the possibility of a counter narrative. This can be derided as a ‘conspiracy’ theory, but we must not on that account dismiss it overly quickly.

While Ajit Doval is a man of action and has acted true to form and reputation in this case by seizing the leadership of the operation, his alacrity suggests there may be more to it than personality issues alone. The second element that has been noted widely is the mysterious role of the Superintendent of Police of a neighbouring district in the initial and, as it turned out, critical phase, of the operation. The two suggest a critical look at the statist narrative. 

Delivering the tenth Nani Palkhiwala memorial lecture at the Sastra University down south prior to taking over as NSA (his famous ‘you will lose Balochistan’ speech), Ajit Doval had virtually given out his manifesto on how he would tackle national security given the chance. The chance arrived a couple of months later in the form of the Modi wave, which he did much to create such as by energizing the strategic community against the incumbent government being in strategic stupor. Doval’s exposition of ‘defensive offence’ includes a reference to buying terrorists off, exploiting their vulnerability for funds, as he puts it, ‘if they have a budget of 1200 crores we can match it with 1800 crores, they are all on our side’ (1 hr: 3 min). To him they are not ‘great fighters’ but are mercenaries, unemployed and misguided. He wants to ‘match them (Pakistan), with money by money.’  In effect, terrorists can be bought off and employed to one’s own ‘covert’ purposes. Doval beguilingly states, ‘you know the tricks, we know the tricks’.

This implies terrorist organizations across the border can be manipulated into doing our intelligence bidding if the price is right. Terrorist handlers can then dispatch would-be jihadists to gain paradise in India. This is what ‘black flag’ operations comprise of, a stock in trade of the men in ‘the trade’ as intelligence practitioners refer to their craft. There is suspicion on precedence to such operations, including in the parliament attack case which the gratuitous hanging of Afzal Guru has only served to reinforce. If the gambit succeeded in the more visible case of parliament attack, it would presumably be relatively easily to execute in close proximity of the border and of Kashmir, viz. Pathankot.

Even if the possibility of an Indian hand is ruled in, it still leaves us with having to explain the motive, particularly in face of the statist narrative best encapsulated by the Great Communicator Mr. Modi himself in his speech at the combined commanders’ conference as ‘try and turn the course of history’. If India’s Pakistan strategy is being reset for the better, it would be churlish to argue against it or to attempt prove otherwise. Indeed, this article attempts this difficult proposition.

The bonhomie on display between the two prime ministers, mostly driven by Mr. Modi, is in its being counter-productive to India’s Pakistan strategy a key give away that India’s Pakistan strategy is not quite what is made out in the statist narrative. If India is to improve relations with Pakistan, it is not quite Nawaz Sharif it has to embrace as it is doing, but to get the Pakistan army – the ‘deep state’ - alongside. It has failed earlier in relying on Nawaz Sharif and to expect India not to have learnt this lesson at Kargil is to be mean spirited on India’s strategic sense. In other words, Mr. Modi’s very public and effusive embrace of Nawaz Sharif is not so much as to put his eggs in Sharif’s basket as to provoke an internal schism in Pakistan, between the ‘liberals’ – wanting better ties with India to ward of the clear and present danger at their door step - and the ‘deep state’, that could ally with the clear and present danger of extremism if only to get back at India.

Doval has indicated as much in his famous ‘Balochistan’ speech (at the 58 min mark). He wishes to ‘start working on the vulnerabilities of Pakistan, it can be economic, it can be internal security, political… making it difficult to manage internal political balance or internal security ….’ India’s stratagem of reaching out visibly to Nawaz Sharif can be expected to generate a backlash that can only rebound on the strategy’s success. Consequently, the strategy of ‘reaching out’ is not reliant on Nawaz Sharif prevailing over his opposition, but intended instead to divide and thereby generate the desired negative internal political dynamics in Pakistan such as another praetorian tryst. This will create one more front for the Pakistan army to manage, thereby spreading it thin; increasing Pakistan’s vulnerability to the enemy at the gates. The strategy’s intent therefore is for getting Pakistan’s army to its knees, enabling India to set the terms.

The Modi-Doval doctrine cannot be less ambitious or any more benign than this. Theirs’ is not a UPA requiem. The principal problem remains how to manage the Pakistan army and this is the only possible strategy that can be attributed to the duo since in analysis in their case the role of personality cannot be wished away.

This is a counter narrative that must be out there even as we hope and pray that even if plausible it is not true. The fact is that a consummate intelligence man is at the helm of national security and reporting to a seemingly implacable boss. In his lecture, Doval has of the three modes – defensive, defensive offence and offensive - ruled out the defensive mode as that of UPA and the offensive as too military reliant in light of the nuclear threshold. His dispensing with the military in Pathankot indicates he is consciously relying on the intelligence instrument.

The Pathankot episode was to set up a three cornered faceoff in Pakistan. It is to decelerate on talks process by blaming the ‘deep state’ so as to set ‘official’ Pakistan against it and to also perhaps set the ‘deep state’ against extremists to the extent the ‘deep state’ wishes to ameliorate relations with India and is unable to do so due to actions of extremists such as JeM’s Masood Azhar blamed by India for the attack.

This brings one back to the two indicators that the Pathankot episode has an intelligence angle that cannot be wished away. This intelligence angle was facilitated by the SP’s car enabling the access of the terrorists into vicinity of the air base. Doval’s alacrity in handling the episode and use of the National Security Guard – more amenable to such handling than the army – suggests he wanted to ensure an early termination so as to keep the intelligence angle under wraps. To the extent the narrative here is taken as the conspiracy theory, he has succeeded. To the extent it carries any credence it can serve as a check. India – nay, South Asia - cannot afford otherwise. 

Is Mani Shankar Aiyar right?

http://kashmirtimes.com/newsdet.aspx?q=46881

On a Pakistani TV channel debate, irrepressible Congress politician, Mani Shankar Aiyar, is reported as having said, “The first and the foremost thing is to remove Modi. Only then can the talks move forward. We have to wait for four more years. They (panelists) are all optimist and that we can move forward when Modi sahab is there, but I don’t think so.”

To confess, this author was one among whom Aiyar characterizes as ‘optimist’. In an article appraising Mr. Modi’s visit to Kashmir while he was electioneering early last year, the argument expressed was that Mr. Modi would be concentrating on his neo-liberal agenda in case he were to come to power. This would entail a period of stability, with its implications of relative peace with Pakistan. It would also help him further his ideological agenda, by over throwing his anti-minority image and thereby concentrating on a subtle makeover of the rest of India.

The optimist assumption that India could be more responsive to Pakistan since Mr. Modi as a ‘hindu nationalist’ did not have to watch his flanks and back has proven false. Apparently, Mr. Modi’s reference to his 56 inch chest is not enough for him to reach out to Pakistan, despite a promising beginning in bringing over Mr. Sharif to his swearing in the forecourt of Rashtrapati Bhawan. This was seen as a coup for Mr. Doval, his new national security manager. Even so, both felt the need to first flex muscles, so as to suitably impress the Pakistani brass. From a position of strength thereafter, they could presumably then pursue a more placatory Pakistan policy.

The search for this position of strength has proven elusive. The grounds for this had been laid by his predecessor government. By about 2013, recognizing the diminishing marginal utility of stalling talks since Mumbai 26/11, it had been contemplating mending fences but wanted to wait it out till elections. In his very next move - the cancellation of foreign secretary talks last August - Mr. Doval put paid to a promising beginning. Thereafter, the army was given the tacit go ahead to activate the Line of Control. The deterrence message was broadcast loud and clear with two back to back military exercises in early summer, of a pivot corps and a strike corps. The year is to culminate in yet another Command exercise that though unnamed yet, is expected to be the largest this decade.

The casualty in all this has been Nawaz Sharif. He has been the voice of the pro India constituency in Pakistan. However, India having been once bitten is twice shy. Sharif’s credibility has been limited by his showing in the Kargil episode. Therefore, India is attuned to the thinking in Rawalpindi. It may be right on this, since Sharif’s national security adviser is now a former military man. The message is that if there is to be a meeting of national security advisers of the two states, as Mr. Modi and Mr. Sharif agreed to at their meeting on the sidelines of the SCO meeting in Ufa, Russia, then the military there prefers a uniformed interlocutor.

It is clear that the Pakistani brass has been unimpressed by Mr. Modi and Mr. Doval’s show of strength. It has made gains in Afghanistan, so much so that there are reports of Pakistani agents directing the fighting for Kunduz by the Taliban. It has reached out to the new Afghan regime, ending Karzai’s pro India tilt. It has presented itself as useful for a renewed peace process with the Taliban, by offering its assistance. This has made it relevant once again for the US, seeking a way out of Afghanistan, now that the Iraq front has been set alight by the IS. It has taken on the extremists within Pakistan, best evidenced by the reduction in terror attacks in KP. The talk has been for normalizing Pakistan as a nuclear state, with some caveats though. This provides a positive backdrop to the trip to Washington by its Chief Raheel Sharif.

Further, it has faced off with the Indian military on the Line of Control. Its control of the Rangers in Pakistan has enabled it to stand up to the BSF in the abutting border belt. More importantly, Pakistan’s foreign secretary has unmistakably let on that its tactical nuclear weapons are intended to deter India’s launch of ‘cold start’ operations. Drawing on its nuclear cover, it has continued its subconventional operations, expanding the scope mid-year to Udhampur and the adjacent plains in Gurdaspur. That it continues to have a finger the pie in the Valley is apparent from the martyrdom of a colonel.

It is quite obvious that Pakistan is playing with fire. But then little else can be expected from a military dominated polity. It has little to lose, being perpetually poised on the failed state status. With the new kid on the block - the IS – there are portents of worse to come. An analyst who was in the team that had at the turn of the nineties, rightly as it turned out, predicted Pakistani meddling in Kashmir under the semi-fictional scenario, Operation Topac, has painted a grim picture of an IS inclined Pakistani state expanding the scope of meddling to the rest of India.

Manmohan’s cliché that India cannot change its neighbours means that India cannot change its geographical location. It should not be read to mean that India cannot change Pakistan’s military-set self-destructive course. As a regional power with global power aspirations, it needs to first exercise its power in influencing its region. Talking about a united front against terrorism at global for a, such as most recently Mr. Modi’s address at the G20 in Turkey, can only be taken plausibly if India sets its regional house in order first. It can only then think of rushing off to tame the IS.

From the foregoing discussion of Mr. Modi’s year and more in office, it is clear that such an exercise of power cannot be military. Firstly, it has not succeeded for at least thirty years and currently is not succeeding either. Secondly, it is risky. A bunch of terrorists can potentially set of a nuclear conflagration. It would be too late to talk nostalgically of gentlemanly South Asian wars and subcontinental maturity and strategic good sense. Thirdly, the Bihar elections suggest that Mr. Modi is on notice that neither his economic nor his ideological plank is appealing for voters. If he is to have a second innings - and being young enough he can aspire so - he has to change tack.

Giving Mr. Modi the benefit of doubt even if he wanted the situation to turn out better, his support base has had other things on its mind. As seen over the last year and half, he has squandered an opportunity for taking Manmohanomics a step further – assuming that is the right direction for the economy - by allowing his supporting pseudo-cultural formation having the run of the place. Its affect in Kashmir has been in communal tension in Rajouri and more visibly the arson that led to the death of a Kashmiri truck driver over the ‘beef’ issue. Politically, the BJP half of the coalition in Kashmir has yet to unveil its agenda fully.

Clearly, the direction Mr. Modi’s must head is stark. Rein in Hindutva and concentrate on economics. The latter necessarily involves keeping Pakistan alongside. This by corollary means his next visit to the Valley must be for more than doling out money. He has four years on his side to reset course. But then, as someone has said that would be ask for a change in his stripes. Maybe on that count, Mani Shankar Aiyar unfortunately may just be right. 

What is really driving India’s Pakistan strategy?

http://indiatogether.org/india-s-pakistan-strategy-op-ed

Manoj Joshi is perplexed by India’s Pakistan strategy. 

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEE - http://indiatogether.org/india-s-pakistan-strategy-op-ed

Though Joshi is right about India’s inability to effect a ‘favourable transformation in the behaviour of its adversaries through a mix of strategies’, he misreads the government’s intent. This misreading leads to his otherwise sustainable critique of the government’s Pakistan strategy.

This is the problem with most of the commentary that has attended the recent calling-off of talks for a second time in two years between the two nuclear-armed adversaries.

To begin by being charitable to the government, it can be argued that if the strategy requiring ‘patience and stamina’ has been tried  out since Rajiv Gandhi’s times, as pointed out by Joshi, and it has evidently not worked, it would not be sensible to persist with it.

This can plausibly explain India’s hard power approach to Pakistan involving largely its military and possibly its intelligence instruments. The strategy is to condition the military-intelligence dominated power structure in Pakistan with the explicit message that its ‘terror by proxy’ strategy will not work.

Simultaneously, India has networked with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif twice over – once in an invite to New Delhi last year and this time round in Ufa, indicating its willingness to attend the SAARC summit in Pakistan due next year. In doing so it is holding out an economic carrot to Pakistan’s business-commercial constituency.

Such a strategy is plausible in the conservative-realist framework of strategic thinking. Critiques that originate in the liberal-rationalist and the leftist-radical perspectives cannot but find fault with the strategy.

The differing strategic perspectives rely on different security referents – whether state centric or people centric - and consequently assign different weights to the instruments of state power: economic, political-diplomatic, military and intelligence and soft-cultural. These critiques can at best establish that India’s strategy is wrong-headed in its choice of referent, favoured instrument and strategy.

Whether it is also a wrong one can only be gauged using its very own coordinates, its rationale from within its perspective. Can it be argued that the strategy is wrong in the conservative-realist logic?

In a lecture delivered before he assumed his current position, the National Security Adviser Ajit Doval had indicated his preference for a ‘defensive offence’ strategy. From the choice of three – defensive, defensive offence and offensive – he favours the second. Assuming that Doval, now that he has spent a year in the chair as NSA, has put his strategy into operation, India’s declared strategic doctrine can be said to be one of ‘defensive  offence’.

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEE http://indiatogether.org/india-s-pakistan-strategy-op-ed

What should ‘defensive offence’ look like for India and does this match what India professes?

Firstly, ‘defensive offence’ was long abandoned by India in favour of deterrence at the next rung. India has since moved away from ‘deterrence by denial’, based on a strong defence and counter offensive capability. It has in this century switched to ‘deterrence by punishment’ with a shift to the ‘proactive’ and offensive conventional doctrine – the proactive strategy that is also called ‘Cold Start’ - and in its nuclear doctrine promises ‘massive’ nuclear punitive retaliation.

Since the new government fancies itself as distinct from its predecessor in its reliance and adeptness in the use of force, it cannot also be said that there is continuity in India’s strategic doctrine. The previous NSA Shivshankar Menon’s speeches suggested a liberal orientation, conveying its strategic doctrine of offensive deterrence. Since this government prides itself on being more aggressive, it is, therefore, not in the ‘defensive offence’ portion of the continuum as it imagines, but in the offensive part of it.

The offensive diplomatic action in cutting off talks twice over suggest as much. The government’s boast on its first anniversary was that it has cleared Rs 160 lakh crores worth of defence projects. Both the NSA and the defence minister have obliquely hinted at intelligence operations underway. At the level of ideation, military history is being rewritten – even to the extent of projecting what is widely regarded as a draw, the 1965 War, as a victory!

In other words, India is not on the ‘defensive offence’ as Doval puts it, but closer to compellence.

Two problems follow. One, India’s delusional self-image that is distinct from reality is likely leading it to launch actions that could prove counter-productive, since compelling a nuclear power is ambitious and risky. The second is in the impulse that is leading to such actions.

The impulse for such an ambitious undertaking cannot merely be ‘strategic’, defined in terms of an ‘ends-means balance’. It is instead grander, millennial. The well springs of this are not in rational strategy but in ideology, specifically that of cultural nationalism.

It is the marriage of cultural nationalism and hyper-nationalism that nests at the far edge of the conservative-realist perspective that best explains India’s Pakistan strategy. Therefore, strategic rationality cannot explain India’s actions such as cutting off of talks a second time round. Most commentators err in assuming this is so, making the prescriptions redundant.

Recognising that India’s new security paradigm is one of offensive-compellence is a precursor to bringing strategic rationality back into India’s security calculus.

Mr. Doval as NSA

Analysis

   ShareThis

What Mr. Doval as NSA means for Indian national security

http://www.milligazette.com/news/10521-what-mr-ajit-doval-as-nsa-means-for-indian-national-security
Jun 01, 2014

http://caravandaily.com/portal/the-spy-who-came-in-from-the-cold/

http://www.kashmirtimes.com/newsdet.aspx?q=33006

With Mr. Ajit Doval poised to take charge as national security adviser, India has placed its cards on the table. After a lifetime in the “trade”, as intelligence practitioners affectionately call their craft universally, Mr. Doval cannot be expected to change his spots. He can therefore be expected to concentrate on what he is best at: covert operations.

Breathless biographies in the media suggest he has had a hand in outmanoeuvring Mizo and Sikh extremists. He is also credited with Kuka Parray turning coat in Kashmir. He had a role in the Kandahar exchange. In retirement, he has run a well-funded think tank that came up in the heart of Delhi’s diplomatic enclave.

What these hagiographies don’t tell is also equally significant. The think tank organised “vimarshas” that began with vedic recitations in Sanskrit. It has been linked with helping organise the BJP campaign that has swept it to power. There is little to take amiss in this. Conservative think tanks can be expected to help steer conservative parties to power. That Mr. Doval did this successfully is to his credit. However, as any cyber denizen knows, the BJP campaign gained speed with a cyber disinformation campaign, especially thinly disguised “black propaganda” directed at discrediting in particular the Gandhis. This suggests a masterly intelligence hand well-versed with “dirty tricks” behind it. By no means does the needle point to Mr. Doval. But then the jury needs to stay out longer on this. And, in all fairness, in contrast to Mr. Amit Shah’s doings in UP, that  in one commentator’s well argued case, have resulted in the communal polarisation in UP and Bihar that buoyed  the BJP to power, this is almost benign.

But the main reservation here is on the role of the top leadership of the intelligence fraternity in the early and mid-2000s. Since Mr. Doval was part of this august grouping, he cannot escape accountability and in that a share of the blame.

The fact is that the nefarious strategy of painting India’s minority as a fifth column lending itself to the expansion of the Pakistani proxy war from Kashmir to the Indian hinterland was thought up and implemented at a time when Mr. Doval was in the chair first as Special Director IB, under the first NDA regime, and later as Director IB under the first Manmohan Singh tenure.

Since Intelligence Bureau cannot but know the truth, even if Mr. Doval did not think up this strategy, to what extent did he exert to end it in first place and second to reverse it by putting behind bars the Hindutva activists, such as Aseemanand, who participated in it is a moot question.

It bears recall that the strategy was in full play in the run up to the “Shining India” campaign of the BJP. The idea was to suggest an India under siege from an expansion in Pakistan’s proxy war and BJP as the only party capable of pulling it out. Since the unwritten ceasefire of November 2003, cemented in an agreement at Islamabad in January 2004, signified a positive start in J&K, the ISI bogey was then redirected to place India’s minority on the defensive.  In Gujarat, it is by now well-established that the campaign, under the tutelage of Mr. Amit Shah, was aimed at embellishing the “56 inch” chest of the provincial strongman there: Mr. Modi. Since the strategy was carried out by Hindutva footsoldiers, including those in khaki such as Mr. Vanzara, as a masterly “black” operation, it also bears an intelligence stamp. The Gujarat IB head then who went on to hold Doval’s chair later as special director in IB, has been linked with the operation. Mr. Doval at the apex of the intelligence community then cannot but have known of the authorship. That the IB did not distinguish itself in the period, suggests not so much incompetence, but, at the least, indifference, and, more dangerously, complicity.

As far as Mr. Doval’s intervention in Kashmir is concerned, media hype has it that it helped turn round the insurgency. Kuka Parray was the epitome of a “divide and rule” initiative in which the “Ikhwan” was created to undercut the pro-Pakistan Hizbul Mujahedeen which by mid-nineties had successfully displaced the Kashmiri nationalist JKLF. It cleared the way for the dominance of Pakistani groups such as Lashkar thereafter. The advantage for India was to discredit the insurgency as externally inspired and therefore legitimised Indian political inaction. Further, once the proxy war dimension had been crucially established, it could be expanded by intelligence operations that expanded the “ISI footprint” into the rest of India. That the shadow of intelligence operations continues over certain episodes such as the Ansals Plaza killings and, more critically, the Parliament attack, is suggestive of an intelligence-led Indian strategy. This was to enable a shift to a hard line that included diplomatic coercion through a military mobilisation in case Pakistan proved unresponsive to India’s diplomatic initiatives such as the ill-thought out Lahore peace initiative. In the event, the intelligence-dominant strategy succeeded, not only externally but also internally, in boxing in Pakistan and India’s minority respectively.

Given that the only link between the two, the external and internal “Other” created by the strategy, is Muslimness, it is clear that at heart the strategy was anti-Muslim. It benefited from the Islamophobia that marked the times coinciding with the Bush years at the White House. Such a strategy cannot only have non-state actors at the core and at helm. It is not one that was thought up and implemented with such aplomb without state knowledge. That the state remained in stupor, in particular its IB, indicates state inaction at best and state complicity at worst. Since Mr. Doval is now termed as an intelligence czar, even if he had nothing to do with it, it is clear that he as a leader and “intelligence legend” did have a hand in setting the internal political and ethical compass of the institution and indeed can be taken as a protagonist in determining its institutional culture. In this Mr. Doval has failed spectacularly.

This background is necessary to understand which direction Indian security can now be expected to head. Mr. Doval was IB head in the first UPA government. His ambit was likely then to have been considerably restricted from what it might have been under a second NDA regime had the information operation, that the “Shining India” campaign essentially was, worked. Incidentally, it was the NDA that  had nominated Doval to IB directorship by easing out the incumbent then, ensuring that he went on premature leave pending retirement, so that Mr. Doval could take his place prior to the UPA getting into the driving seat and upsetting the applecart. In the event, Mr. Doval was ushered in by the UPA among its first actions when it came to power. As an aside, the BJP’s election time barbs over the nomination of the current chief designate by the previous government is therefore a bit rich, given its own actions on Mr. Doval’s behalf just recounted. Returning to the point, without the checks and balances that the UPA placed on him then, not least in the form of yet another intelligence man, MK Narayanan, in the NSA chair, Mr. Doval today will have the run of the place.

India by forthrightly nominating Mr. Doval has thrown down the gauntlet to Pakistan externally and has sent a message to its minority currently cowering under majoritarian triumphalism. The message for Pakistan is that it had better take India’s hand outstretched at the Rashtrapati Bhawan forecourt or else India will turn the tables on the ISI. Afghanistan offers a ready theatre for proxy war. If Pakistan hits back in Kashmir then onus for the fertility of the space can only be with Indian political inattention over the past decade. In case India’s intelligence stupor on the internal front continues, and indeed it will since even the Congress when in power could not turn the tide even by appointing and giving an extension to a Muslim as IB chief, then the Hindutva programme for India’s cultural reset can be expected to proceed without check. Clearly, Indian security is in for interesting times.

The author blogs at www.subcontinentalmusings.blogspot.in