muslims in strategic space

Muslim absence from the strategic space

http://www.milligazette.com/print/issue/16-31-october-2013

The competition is already on for the loaves of office once the expected changeover in Delhi takes place next year. It is taken as a foregone conclusion that Luah Purush II, marketed as brand ‘NaMo’, will take over 7, Race Course Road. The recent outburst of the Prince on the ordinance providing politicians a loophole for escaping the long arms of the law notwithstanding, there is little sign of beating the anti-incumbency factor this time. The manoeuvrings by underlings for sinecures as gubernatorial posts and for more consequential ones such as that of National Security Advisor are patently visible.

Those in the running for NSA include at least two from the right wing think tank, India’s own Heritage Foundation, the Vivekananda International Foundation. While it’s director, ex IB chief, Mr. Doval, is in the race, so is Mr. Kanwal Sibal, former foreign secretary, also at the foundation. But there are others outside of its building in Chanakyapuri burnishing their credentials: the TV nemesis of Pakistan, G. Parthasarathy; pseudo-academic, MD Nalapat; Amb. KC Singh, and not a few moustachioed generals. Some with similar proclivities have however burnt their bridges by being supping with the Congress, such as Mr. Shyam Saran. He brokered the Indo-US nuclear deal and has staged a national security comeback his speech earlier this year on ‘massive’ nuclear retaliation, which a critic has called ‘making a hash of it’.  

The last time a policeman held the post, MK Narayanan, there was little to show for national security but for the nuclear deal. This slims Doval’s chances, leaving Kanwal Sibal as frontrunner, not least because the majority of those who have held the post have been from the foreign service. Given this, it is useful to examine his views. The following excerpt on strategic culture, carried by the VIF website, can serve as a start point: 

The Muslim rulers failed to properly assess the European sea-borne threat. The way the rulers of that period allowed an English trading company to steadily conquer large swathes of Indian territory speaks volumes about the lack of any strategic culture in the India of that period.

In stating this, Sibal echoes the dominant position in conservative-realist circles that India does not have a strategic culture. It is a defensive, reactive and weak power with little understanding of the role of force and its utilisation in international power games. This deficit to owes to a historical legacy dating  beyond the colonial period to Moghul times. The usual trope is that Indians lacked a strategic culture that allowed the Muslim ‘invaders’ (Sibal’s term) to conquer India. They in turn lacked the foresight to anticipate the threat from the sea. Though debatable, these are commonplace views and therefore need not detain us overly. Of consequence here is what he goes on to say: 

Independent India could imbibe virtually nothing in terms of strategic culture from the centuries of Muslim rule, especially as Islam became the basis for India’s eventual division and its theology as practised by Pakistan  presents an enduring threat to India’s security today (italics added).

Sibal, careful foreign service bureaucrat that he has been and one who is looking to come out of retirement soon, takes care to caveat ‘its (Islam’s) theology’ by adding ‘as practiced by Pakistan’. This is to stay politically correct by stating that it is not Islam that is the problem, but the manner it is practiced in Pakistan. What Sibal is implying probably is that Islamism or political Islam in Pakistan is a threat to India as manifested by terrorism to which India is sometimes subjected by its adherents. Pakistan is culpable to the extent the ruling establishment condones and participates in such acts inspired by religious extremism.

This is a generous interpretation of Sibal’s comment. One would wish it had come from him, articulate diplomat that he is. That it has not suggests that Sibal has no interest to elaborate on his somewhat cryptic position. Why this is so is a moot question.

Firstly, this could be proof of Sibal being in the run for posts that the new dispensation may hand out as early as next year. What he has to say is intended as music to the ears of cultural nationalists and that of their minders in Nagpur. Endorsement by conservative thinkers propels them in cyberspace with, hopefully, enough ballast to carry them to Raisina Hill. Thirdly, Sibal may believe this himself. This can give a clue to the manner national security will be run over the coming half decade and more. Even if Sibal himself does not get the post he apparently covets, the one who does no doubt has similar views. 

Abstracting from the individual level and moving away from Sibal specifically, is the point he makes among others, on the absence of strategic culture. The narrative is that India has been slave for a millennium and therefore has lost the ability to think strategically. This equates Muslimness with being foreign, casting the period of Muslim dynasties in India as non-India. The fact is that a fusion at the elite level helped run India even in medieval times, making the period as much Indian as any.

By default then, the Muslim legacy is one commandeered by Pakistan, which ironically, due to its military’s attractions for power, finds enough strategic cultural grist to consummately play the power game. To compensate for this perceived deficit in aggressiveness with Pakistan, Indian strategists of this school recommend greater strategic assertiveness on India’s part. While suggestive of a design to eclipse Muslim contribution to India and its strategic history more than mere default, outcome is in direct pressure on Muslim communities in the country for the contrived linkage with Pakistan and terror, and more directly in Kashmir.

While Indian intellectuals of the liberal-rationalist school do contest such narratives, it also needs greater Muslim involvement in debates and issues of national security to set the record straight. For instance, Seema Alvi could correct the version of history that Sibal suffers from. But getting balance into the narrative will prove an uphill drive. There are but a handful of Muslims on the mainstream strategic circuit. The Vice President was understandably silenced in his elevation to the constitutional post. Former generals, Afsir Karim and Ata Hasnain, Mustafa, Maroof Raza, Amb. Talmiz Ahmed, Gazala Wahab, Amb. Ishrat Aziz and Najeeb Jung come to mind. Perhaps, Asif Ibrahim could join them once he is through with his present appointment as head of IB and later Akbaruddin, the MEA spokeman, in his turn. There is MJ Akbar around too, but editing the Muslim-baiting India Today as he does, it is uncertain which drum beat he marches to.

Muslim contribution to security debates needs also to move beyond community centric issues of terrorism and Palestine. They have the right, and perhaps more importantly the duty as citizens, to exercise their voice on topics such as India’s Pakistan policy, its nuclear doctrine, conduct in Kashmir, maritime ambitions, defence budget etc. A Muslim voice on national security cannot but be beneficial to the debate, even if the critics will have it that it is ‘Muslim’ and not quite national. But that would be to argue that Amb. Sibal and Amb. KC Singh speak the way they do because they are Hindu and Sikh respectively.

Absence of fear of being contradicted due to strategic circles not reflecting India’s diversity enables passing of what is essentially hate speech as security analysis. Deliberate exertion for an informed gate-crashing of strategic debates needs being done lest questionable if not downright communal views become ‘Truth’ itself.

  

Vignettes Of India's Security Culture

By Firdaus Ahmed

03 August, 2009
Countercurrents.org

The rape and murder of two young women in Shopian, the acceptance by the NHRC probe of the Delhi Police version of the Batla House encounter, the killing of a PLA member in custody in Manipur as evidenced by the photos published in Tehelka, and the furore over the mention of Baluchistan in the India-Pakistan Joint Statement tells us something of India’s strategic culture. This article seeks insight into India’s security culture through a snap shot of these four occurrences over the recent past.

That there was an attempted cover up in the Shopian incident implies that there was a ‘felt need’ for the same. Clearly then this was to protect the culprits, implying that the culprits are possibly known. There is no reason to resort to a cover up if there is nothing to be hidden. The unilateral additions made by the police to the report of Justice Jan that enquired into the case are reportedly slanderous about the deceased and their family. The portions disowned by the enquiring judge mention the ‘possibility’ of one of the deceased ‘developing some relation with others.’ The point of the investigation is to bring out who these alleged persons were, for they would have motive in murdering the victims to hide their association. That the police have signally failed to follow up only serves to prove there is a connection to the security apparatus that needs hiding. That the state machinery to include the Chief Minister has thereafter concentrated on the peripheral aspects, such as how much was conveyed up the reporting channel etc, has led to the need to apprehend the culprits being lost sight of. This only reinforces suspicions that the culprits were from the security forces or those having links with the security apparatus in the state, which since its partial outsourcing to the likes of the Ikhwan includes those in plain clothes. That the increasingly politicised debate has now gone back three years to the 2006 sex scandal bespeaks of the security culture in Srinagar.

As a final word on the Batla House encounter, the NHRC report states: ‘We are clearly of the opinion that having regard to the material placed before us, it cannot be said that there has been any violation of human rights by the action of the police party.’ It is quite obvious that any ‘material’ that was to be ‘placed’ before an enquiry could have been worked upon to give it the desired spin over the interim. Therefore, the enquiry was logically expected to go beyond the ‘material placed before us’. In failing to do this, it has set a precedent and devalued the credibility of the NHRC.

Other shortcomings have been pointed out by those following the case closely such as the Jamia Teachers Solidarity Group. However, even as the ‘material placed’ before the enquiry is reported as bringing out the group as carrying out a series of terrorist crimes, that the police party leader did not wear a bullet proof jacket while attempting to arrest them is explained away that the reason cannot be second guessed by the commission. The commission records that, ‘there is ample and sufficient material before us which leads to the irresistible conclusion that there was imminent danger to the life of members of the police party.’ All the more reason one would think warranting a bullet proof jacket.

The Indian Mujahedeen is described in the ‘material placed’ as a group ‘found to be involved in terrorist activities in different parts of the country for the last several years.’ It is fairly well known that the IM came into the limelight for the first time only last year with the blasts targeting the larger cities. This shortcoming in the ‘material placed’ has apparently not detracted from its credibility in the eyes of the commission. The commission refrains from dwelling on the issue of whether those killed were terrorists; yet explains police party actions as self defence. In case the commission was to play a mental game and take them as innocent for the sake of an intellectual exercise developing the scenario, then action as going in without a bullet proof jacket makes sense. Therefore, there was reason enough even from the ‘material placed’ for the commission to take a proactive route and go beyond the ‘material placed’ in its enquiry. That it failed to do so constitutes the evidence being marshalled in this article on the India’s security culture.

The Tehelka photo feature of the killing of alleged insurgent Chonghkhum Sanjit in Imphal by Manipuri police commandos is chilling in the extreme. That this was done in broad daylight speaks of a culture of impunity. In the logic of the security forces this display is perhaps explicable. The message to the insurgent underground watching is that there are no holds barred in the contest; a message that would no doubt be lapped up by the insurgents. The Punjab model is being played out in the North East. Those doing the killing appear Manipuri. One set of natives is set on another in a version of divide and rule. The nadir of this strategy has already been reached in the silent killings of relatives of ULFA insurgents in Assam. There is a subtext to the picture that has perhaps escaped the planners. In this the message to people is that the judge and executioner have been conflated. The implications are stark for the culture of protest that has been perfected in Manipur by the sacrifice of icons as Irom Sharmila and actions as the women who stripped to shame the Assam Rifles out of the Imphal Fort. Two inferences can be drawn from the pictures. One is that the state has lost control over its security apparatus. Worse is that this is a demonstration of the level of its control. The latter is most likely truer. It can be wagered that the enquiry that will no doubt follow, forced by the unrest presently on in Manipur, will not be able to trace those who ordered this. What happens in a provincial capital can only draw on what transpires in the national capital.

Lastly, is the contrived breast beating partially over the mention of Baluchistan in the Joint Statement emanating in Sharm es Sheikh. This also involved a march by opposition MPs led by the leader of the opposition to the Rashtrapati Bhawan. The Prime Minister has clarified on the floor of the Lok Sabha that he agreed to the mention knowing that ‘India’s hands are clean’. This is difficult to accept at face value; since, he – though honest - had earlier opined that Mr. Bush was a much ‘loved’ US President in India! The criticism was however not on this account but that Pakistan had managed to highlight its version on India’s intelligence managed covert role in the Baluchistan insurgency. In the security logic, it is entirely understandable for India to fuel Pakistan’s fires to sensitise it that it too lives in a glass house. Talking about the issue gives India a handle to bring this home to Pakistan and force a mutual winding down of this propensity of both states to interfere in each other’s internal affairs. But to insist that India ‘has nothing to hide’ either implies naivety or a loss of political control over India’s external intelligence agency. With the furore greeting the mention, it is unlikely that India would countenance talks on this issue, implying that the covert operations designed to hurt Pakistan in retribution for its well recorded proxy war in Kashmir will continue. This war by intelligence agencies would not be in the interest of either Baluchis or Kashmiris or indeed the other subcontinental nationalities, but is of a piece with the adults-only games played by states.

Clearly, India’s security is gravely threatened by insurgency and terrorism. India’s response as witnessed in the four cases does not recommend itself. It is no wonder then that India continues to be beset with problems of state consolidation. It is as yet a developing state still transiting through the state making and nation building stage. It would do well to recognise that it cannot skip the stage of national consolidation in its haste to becoming a great power.