http://www.kashmirtimes.in/newsdet.aspx?q=70289

In defence of Hamid Ansari

The erudite Hamid Ansari, who has served as vice chancellor of a national university, can be expected to defend himself. His delectable drubbing of the Hindutvavadis over their term at the helm of India indicates as much. The crescendo in their attacks on him today shows that they have not really been listening all through. They seem to have woken only last week when while demitting office, the former vice president Hamid Ansari referred to the (in)security of India's Muslims. 

Way back in February in his K. Subrahmanyam memorial lecture he had warned against 'religious majoritariansm'. Perhaps that was a bit cerebral for our Hindutva brethren to catch on to. They sugarcoat their ideology under the term 'cultural nationalism'. He should perhaps have said out loud that it is Hindu supremacism, but that would be reduce himself to their level. After all, not all Hindus are majoritarian and most - though currently in embarrassed silence - are possibly as aghast with the antics of their Hindutvavadi brethren as anyone else. The scholar and diplomat in Hamid Ansari was not quite heard out earlier. 

But he has done a signal service on departure from high office by setting the cat among the pigeons. This was necessary to do since for the foreseeable future the ones in high office are unlikely to squeal, leave alone say a critical word. It is no secret that the president is from the Hindutva brigade and to state this out loud is no longer disrespectful. 

For his part, the vice president has already done a hit-wicket even as he takes stance by being the first to discourteously shout down his predecessor, Hamid Ansari, opining that Ansari's take smacks of a 'political agenda'. It no doubt missed the vice president that keeping silent is no less striking as 'political agenda', and partaking of the majoritarian project - that accounts for his elevation to august office - is exponentially more so - and more dangerous. 

At the death anniversary of Mr. K. Subrahmanyam, once the long standing doyen of Indian strategists, Hamid Ansari had spelt out his fears, stating, 'The operative principle for this [national identity] is 'national-civic' rather than 'national-ethnic,' though a segment of opinion today would want to modulate or amend it and espouse instead an Indian version of 'cultural nationalism' premised on 'religious majoritarianism.'

Hamid Ansari spelt out his view of the dangers further. In his answer to Karan Thapar's question pertaining to the 'mood' among Indian Muslims, posed in a parting interview on Rajya Sabha TV on the eve of leaving office, he said that, 'there is a feeling of unease, a sense of insecurity is creeping in.' This phrase was lit upon by his Hindutva inspired detractors and trolls. 

He connected the thread between majoritarianism and Muslim perception of insecurity in his last speech as vice president, at the National Law School of India University in Bangalore. There he quoted Israeli thinker, Yael Tamir: '…the version of nationalism that places cultural commitments at its core is usually perceived as the most conservative and illiberal form of nationalism. It promotes intolerance and arrogant patriotism.'' 

Essentially, what Hamid Ansari is saying is that 'illiberal nationalism' in the form of 'religious majoritarianism' has created an atmosphere of 'arrogant patriotism', which has led up to the 'insecurity' of various sections of society, including within India's largest minority, its Muslims.

For his pains Hamid Ansari has been characteristically advised by RSS ideologue, Indresh Kumar, to go where 'he feels secure'. After the fashion these days, presumably, Kumar has Pakistan in mind. Or perhaps like they did with MF Hussain, they wish to banish Ansari. It is here that Indresh and his ilk err.

The country Hamid Ansari should head for instead is an India in which such elements are once again marginalized as they were earlier. As a democracy there is no reason to deny them their space, but it needs to be at the periphery and under the constraints of the law. They can be represented by the conservative party of their choice, the BJP. 

However, what has happened over the past decade is that they have emerged behind the chariot of their points-man in politics, Mr. Modi, to take over not only the BJP, but the center-stage of politics. Their minions have spread through society and eaten away at its vitals, including its tolerance, pluralism and diversity. 

The 'Modi wave' does not appear to have exhausted itself, with Bihar only recently falling in his lap. Even the ill effects of demonetization and the indignity and inconvenience it forced on people appears to have been forgiven. Within society, lynch mobs are rampant enforcing their cow related dictates, even at the cost of human lives. 

The country that Hamid Ansari should head towards is an India that shall emerge after the Modi tide has been reversed. It would not be easy. The middle class is still looking for the promised economic dividend. The country is latched down by its two rivals on either side and, therefore, there is always the call for national unity against these bogeys to fall back on. The institutions are being hollowed out. Even the redoubtable Economic and Political Weekly has suffered a setback to its reputation from seemingly tanking in to mere legal notice from a corporate house with links to the government. 

Rolling back this tide of hate would not be possible any time soon. The tide will first have to culminate in some dangerous and self-destructive climax. Arundhati Roy has prognosticated as much in her latest book. Though a work of fiction, she rightly takes India's current and ongoing hardline approach in Kashmir as symptomatic of India in a self-destruct mode and as precursor to such a denouement.

For sure, the insecurity Hamid Ansari refers to can only deepen. This would involve Muslims in their mohallas or in areas where they predominate such as in tracts of Bengal, Assam and in Kashmir. The Muslim predicament posed by lynch mobs across north India is well known. In the Deccan, the selective killing of a body builder was no doubt to send a message. The 'beef ban' law has one unstated aspect to it: that of defanging Muslims, better represented in the meat industry, and, therefore, better able to defend themselves, having the knives, the know how to use these and the stomach that does not turn on the sight of blood. A Muslim student of a premier university continues to be missing a year on. 

The Kashmir story is too well known to the readers of this to dwell on here. In Bengal, the BJP is reportedly growing inroads, using the communal tensions from incidents such as in Basirhat as they best know how. Of Assam, the Director General Assam Rifles, is emboldened enough to write in a respected strategic journal, the USI, thus: 'Districts of Karimganj, Hailakandi and Cachar are likely to suffer mainly on communal lines with noticeable increase in Muslim population, seeping in of fundamental ideas and support for Islamic Fundamental Organisations.' He goes on to say that the Rohingya refugees are falling to ISIS inducement. This perhaps explains India readying to send 40000 of them back, and allowing the refugee agency to cater for only 15000 of them. So much for India as a regional power. 

Ansari's pointing all this out led to a veiled attack on him by the prime minister in parliament. Modi more or less had it that Ansari's roots and professional confines in Muslim related issues and causes had constricted his thinking. Mr. Modi is either India's Nero or its pied piper. Both avatars do not bode well for India's future. Clearly, even though Ansari will not fetch up at an India with religious majoritarianism bottled up once again in this lifetime, it is equally clear that it is in this direction he - and all the rest of us in India - must head. If Muslim insecurity is an index of India's security, we need to heed Ansari.

The Bhopal episode and the return of the hostage theory

The Milli Gazette Online

Published Online: Nov 19, 2016

http://www.milligazette.com/news/15086-the-bhopal-episode-and-the-return-of-the-hostage-theory

The killings of eight undertrial prisoners after an alleged breakout of a high security prison in Bhopal are a message. This message is internally and externally directed. In its external orientation, it is a message by the security establishment to Pakistan that Indian Muslims are hostage to Pakistani good behavior. In its internal orientation it is a reminder to India’s Muslims that they are at the mercy of the majority and had on that count better stick to the right-wing sanctioned view of the straight and narrow.

This is not the first time in which undertrial prisoners have been gunned down. In fact, there is a well-known culture of police impunity stretching back decades. This goes by the term ‘encounters’. All manner of challenges to the state and criminality have been met with such staged killings, be it in counter-insurgency situations as Kashmir, North East and Maoist areas, but also in law and order situations in which noted criminals are bumped off.

Such killings have included Muslims among victims, such as the case last year in which five undertrial Muslim prisoners in Nalgonda were gunned down in cold blood by their escort party of Telangana police under the implausible excuse that they were attempting to make good their escape. That Muslims are not the sole victims is clear from the incident the same week when 20 alleged red-sanders smugglers were killed by the Andhra police.

From this it might appear that the opening paragraph above is somewhat overblown, resulting perhaps from an emotional reaction to the incident in Bhopal. However, such an observation would be plausible if this article was written in the immediate wake of the incident when the video and audio footage from the scene went viral on the internet. A few weeks on the observation in the first paragraph, that was then at best a suspicion, has congealed somewhat and is worth examining for what it is worth.

In the light of the messaging seemingly immanent in the killings, the hostage theory needs a reprise. The hostage theory was propounded by Jinnah when he became an adherent to the two-nation theory. He was against the vivisection of the two Muslim majority provinces, Punjab and Bengal. He therefore felt that retaining the minorities in the Muslim and Hindu majority parts of India would ensure that the majorities ruling on the other side would mete out fair treatment to respective minorities.

In the event, the minorities voted for Partition with their feet, vacating their traditional homelands in wake of Partition in a wave of violence on both sides. The Nehru-Liaquat pact after the crisis in 1950 stabilised the situation resulting from Partition. Over time, the numbers of non-Muslims in the two Muslim majority states that emerged out of British India became fewer and fewer, mostly due to a perceived insecurity in these states.

In India, the situation was more habitable and Muslims not only chose to stay but have relatively been more secure than their Hindu counterparts in either Pakistan or Bangladesh. However, over the last quarter century, coinciding with the rise of the right-wing in Indian politics, the question of security of India’s Muslims has come to fore. The Gujarat carnage has been the nadir. With the country electing the then chief minister of Gujarat as its prime minister, it is a question that can only continue to linger.

In the official Indian narrative, India has attempted to reach out to Pakistan. The invite to Nawaz Sharif to Mr. Modi’s swearing in ceremony and Mr. Modi’s susrprise visit to Pakistan are taken as evidence. However, since the military calls the shots in Pakistan, India has not been able to make a dent on Pakistan’s policy of proxy war in Kashmir and support to terrorism in the rest of India. This has led to firmer action on India’s part lately, best exemplified by Ram Madhav’s call for a shift from strategic restraint to strategic proactivism. The results are already visible along the Line of Control with the army engaging in surgical strikes and almost daily fire assaults and the paramilitary force, the BSF, also joining in with fire exchanges along the IB in J&K.

If the matter had rested at this, it would have been but a return to the situation as existed in the nineties and restricted to J&K. However, there is the wider Muslim agenda of the right-wing that needs unfolding.  BJP has gone a step further in proposing amendments to the citizenship bill which will enable non-Muslim minorities in the neighbouring countries to gain Indian citizenship. This measure, among others, heralds the creation of a Hindu state in the image envisioned in the Hindutva philosophy adhered to by the ruling party. For the Muslims living in India, the prime minister, recalling the injunction of his ideological mentor Deen Dayal Upadhyay in a speech in Kozhikode this past September, proposed ‘purification’.

It is clear that in the right-wing world view it is at the interstices of India’s external and internal security planes that Indian Muslims are located. The external factor is their association with the two nation theory and with Pakistan. This explains the oft-used term, ‘Go to Pakistan’. The internal is that Muslims are to lead lives as dictated by the right wing. In the words of one of its leading lights, Golwalkar, Muslims constitute an internal security threat, who, in his words, ‘may stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, for less any preferential treatment, not even the citizen's rights.’

This is the context of the Bhopal incident. The killings have come in the backdrop of a worsening regional security situation, with Pakistan’s terror attack in Uri having been responded to by Indian surgical strikes. The killings were on Diwali, when there is a heightened expectation within the intelligence agencies of terror incidents. The killings can thus be interpreted as a warning to Pakistan not to indulge in any terror action in India. Internally, they serve to warn off Indian Muslims who the intelligence community perhaps believes are susceptible to Pakistani overtures for creating trouble in India. In effect, Indian Muslims are to be held hostage to Pakistani good behavior.

This interpretation of the Bhopal encounter killings suggests that the situation is unlikely to improve any time soon. In the near term the ruling party requires the polarization since it is faced with polls. Its latest demonetization misstep indicates that it would be paying a price in the UP elections. Therefore, the status quo on the Indian Muslim security question is likely to persist till the national elections. The unfortunate and inescapable conclusion is that Muslim insecurity can only be alleviated once the nation, in particular our Hindu brethren, show the ruling party the door at the next democratic opportunity. 

Getting practical over an important report

http://epaper.kashmirtimes.in/archives.aspx?date1=9/15/2015&page=6

http://www.kashmirtimes.in/newsdet.aspx?q=44959
Kashmir Times Op-Ed
15 September 2015

Five hundred and thirty nine pages of Structures of Violence: The Indian State in Jammu and Kashmir will unlikely be read in their entirety. At a price of less than a rupee a page, they will hopefully find a readership, not merely within J&K, but in the rest of India. However, that is unlikely to be anytime soon.

That they are read fully or in one sitting was in any case not the aim of The International Peoples' Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian-Administered Kashmir and The Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons, constituents of Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society that have put out the report. Their aim was a recording of what amount to war crimes in J&K and exposure of the state culpability in the individual offences and acts of commission and omission covered by command responsibility (or lack of exercise thereof).

At the outset it can be said that the stated aims of the team of volunteers that have put it together are unlikely to be met. They place the record for action by the ‘international community’. The state system is far from being a ‘community’. If it is the West the authors want to attract, the appetite for intervention there, thankfully, has dried up. If they mean states in general, they will be disappointed. Leftist and liberal circles can be expected to be enthused by the report. Their heft however is limited to the converted. The UN and its agencies figure on their list to lean on the Indian government. The government would point to its improved record over the past decade to say that it is doing what it can under the circumstance of proxy war. It will point to the court martial sentence being promulgated in the Machhil killings case as example. India being the geo-economic cynosure is unlikely to be put upon for its record of a decade and half back. There is far too much of ‘immediate and urgent’ nature on the plate of the ‘international community’ for that.  

The naming and shaming of perpetrators is to put on notice foreign governments and the UN not to give visas and migrant status and employment respectively to alleged perpetrators. This may work in individual cases such as in the case of the BSF officer who was denied a visa by the Canadian embassy. A Nepali military officer with the UN on holiday in UK was in 2013 picked up by authorities there on human rights related charges. Thus, at best, the individuals named will be inconvenienced slightly. The report has  no illusions that legal action will be taken against them in any case, since it lays bare in graphic detail the impunity they have had under the ‘structures of violence’ that unfortunately includes the judicial system. 

Clearly, the report must not be lost as its predecessor of 2012, Alleged Perpetrators, that had examined over two hundred cases of human rights violations and, ‘for the first time’, the role of 500 alleged perpetrators. Its content is far too important to be lost in cyber space or exchanged within the same and restricted solidarist circles. This time it must be made to serve a purpose. Looking beyond borders for that is delusive. It must not also end up proving counter-productive within the borders. So the question is: if it is to be useful, how should it be played?

In this the report itself is not particularly helpful. It covers, in its words, ‘How did/does the Indian State perpetrate this violence? What precisely is the structure, physical and institutional, through which weapons, ammunition, soldiers, officers, camps and battalions inflict violence on the people of Jammu and Kashmir?’ The answer to this is well known. Explicit lay out of the structures is useful at best for peace studies students and shall be for future historians.

The practice of a counter insurgency grid is not going to change in India. It plays to India’s strength of manpower. Insertion of the security forces in an omnipresent grid – while coercive, invasive and intrusive – is doctrinally necessary to cripple the freedom of movement of the opponent and increase chances of engagement in which attrition can bring down their number. Assuming that this advantage of numbers was not there with India, counter insurgency would be more kinetic means reliant, with increased pain to the subject people and society, witness counter insurgency anywhere else in the world. How the operations proceed is essentially dependent on the nature and strength of the opposition. There are periods and areas in which this is significant. Expectedly, this will be met with force with resultant pressures on the population that then should be ascribed to the foreign minders of militants/terrorists.

In Kashmir, there is no denying that the levels of opposition were orchestrated by Pakistan. Therefore, the onus is not so much in India, as elsewhere. There is no denying that whereas the structures of violence were Indian and the perpetrators Indian, the context was of proxy war. When Pakistan drew down proxy war in the late Musharraf period, India too appreciably stood down the militarized template. The report needs balancing by the context of the violence. It cannot be argued that Indian violence led to the opposition – setting up a cycle. Indeed, if India had not applied force or applied it ineffectually, it can equally plausibly be argued that Pakistan would have upped the ante of violence through proxies. The report then would be writing up Pakistani directed violations instead.

In fact, there needs to be a similar report done on the levels of terror that terrorists of foreign origin and Kashmiri militants perpetrated. The support that insurgents enjoy is seldom on ideological basis alone. It is instead as much coerced as voluntary. In effect, what happened in Kashmir can be seen against a narrative framework in which the two belligerents – India and Pakistan – were wrestling over who would dominate the society. It can be hazarded from the manner Islamists conduct themselves elsewhere that had the proxy fighters gained the upper hand, Kashmiris would be much more imposed upon than. In effect, Indian security forces – though they have much to answer for as the report brings out – also have provided a service of keeping Islamism out from Kashmir. It is naïve to believe that Kashmiri nationalism or Kashmiriyat would have survived their arrival.

Since we are on a counter factual trip, it can also be recorded that in such a case the 170 million Muslim Indians in rest of India would have faced the brunt of an implacable Hindutva, feeding on ‘yet another’ Muslim ‘secession’. Vajpayee having Dilip Kumar make this point to Nawaz Sharif in a telephone conversation in Kargil War is an example of the manner Kashmir and India’s minority are intertwined. The second dimension of successful secession or short of it is in the demonstration effect on other ethnicities in India making similar demands. This is a non-trivial prospect. India has potential to be reduced to an African or Balkans scenario in short order. Therefore, there is a case for it to use force. As to whether that force can be measured and respectful of the laws of war is to be seen. The report merely brings out that it was not. It can be argued that India could have done better, but not by much.

This is important to bring out to address the second, perhaps more important, issue the report addresses: ‘Where is the control? The driving motivation of this exercise is, as has always been: Responsibility. Who do we hold responsible for the individual and collected acts of violence?’ The report, though it concentrates on the actors on the ground, addresses this by making clear that the impunity of perpetrators and responsibility for the structures was that of the government. For instance, Advani’s visit to Kashmir in wake of the Panchaltan killings was intended to push under the carpet the massacre at Chhittisingpora, itself designed as a ‘black operation’ to implicate Pakistan in influencing Clinton’s mind during his South Asia visit.  

The report’s ground level focus leaves out the higher echelons that alternatively blessed, connived, allowed and ‘looked the other way’. This cannot be restricted to the military or paramilitary hierarchy, but must include the bureaucrats and the political levels. No bureaucrat resigned, though at least one former bureaucrat presents himself in seminar rooms as the lead whistle blower in the Kunan Poshpora case, thereby unwittingly increasing its long standing propaganda value for one side of the narrative. The governors in the period, with military and intelligence backgrounds, cannot be expected to have done anything differently.  Politicians through the nineties were inattentive, collusive and in the case of Advani’s stewardship in the NDA period active participants. Society in India was in the throes of an LPG induced economic frenzy and a political lurch to the right. Under this circumstance, imagining that alternative measures in Kashmir were at all possible is illusory.

A critique of the legalistic and human rights up front approach that informs the report cannot but bring in politics and the context. Doing so is not to denigrate the report or effort. It is to ensure that the report goes further than it would otherwise go. How to make it palatable to those who need to see it? Relying on New Delhi would be to be innocent of politics. The ruling party was there at the helm earlier. Since nothing in its agenda suggests that it is out to ‘resolve’ Kashmir any time soon, it would not disown an instrument that it might have to resort to itself. The judicial system, that moves glacially, at the best of times, is not about to change: witness the cases related to Gujarat pogrom. The liberals are already in the midst of a fight for their lives: against rampant Hindutva.

The report has already made an important contribution in allowing space to the victims, their families and witnesses to voice their story. It ensures that the ‘lived’ experience of Kashmiris is captured, and history, currently being rewritten in the rest of India, cannot erase the Kashmiri narrative of pain endured inflicted by a state that was supposed to be protecting it. The report will serve as the take off point for initiatives, possibly a decade away, by when India would have seen the back of Hindutva. That’s when perhaps it will make the desired difference. For the moment the middle classes looked the other way when all this was happening in Kashmir. They are currently politically more consequential and looking at an economic promise.

Obviously, leaving it to the future is not enough. A report such as this must be made to go further and in the moment. One area is in an appeal to the military to take its content seriously. Since the paramilitary are doctrinally challenged, for no fault of their own, but that they come under the home ministry and are run by the IPS cadre not particularly known for intellectual integrity, this report would not find any takers there. That leaves the military. Even in this, the report cannot be ambitious.

A military that prides itself on professionalism should be hassled that it has not followed through on cases where its own army commander said it would, for instance the Lolab killings of 2004. It should be worried that a person named in the report for alleged sexual violations is currently in the NCC that has Girls battalions. It cannot overlook the fact that an officer named in connection with a massacre that  left a score dead gains an award  in the same year, and goes on to  win a second a few years on, the latter with privilege of free train travel lifelong. Such officers, even if not shown the door, should have been ‘fixed’ in military parlance. If a quick google search can bring forth such information, surely the military’s personnel branch and care for spoken reputation must be able to forewarn it better.

It is clear from the report that there was a command environment that accepted - nay encouraged – transgression with the excuse of aggressive junior leaders with initiative. What appears neglected was appropriate oversight of such ‘aggressive’ officers. It is also clear that the military has under the changed indices of violence changed its ways. What the military needs ask itself is should the situation recur or be witnessed elsewhere, say in Nagaland, would it resort to similar means, such as for instance the discredited strategy of using turned militants. Besides such doctrinal questions, it also needs to rethink its input to the political leadership. Instead of soto voce suggesting a ‘political solution’, as chiefs ‘Paddy’ Padmanabhan onwards rightly have, when will it thump the table or recommend limited war instead of being parasitical for an indeterminate duration on an Indian ethno-social group? Can it be inferred from the report that it was nursing its institutional interest using Kashmir as opportunity, quite like the Pakistan army? Does this account for its mantra 'AFSPA'? A professional military should be engaging with such questions post conflict.

The report does need airing outside Kashmir and among the usual (liberal) suspects. It is unlikely it will get the forum in ‘mainland’ India, until the electorate is disenchanted with the LPG and its current champion Mr. Modi. It is then India will revert to rethinking what it wishes to be and how from its current vision of being the next superpower.

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A Viewpoint: Home Minister Brings ‘Saffron Terror’ Back on the Agenda

http://www.thecitizen.in/NewsDetail.aspx?Id=4715&A/Viewpoint:/Home/Minister/Brings/%E2%80%98Saffron/Terror%E2%80%99//Back/on/the/Agenda

10 August 2015

Pakistan is at the cusp of an official response on the dates of its National Security Adviser’s visit to India consequent to the agreement at Ufa between the two prime ministers that the two NSAs meet. What is troubling the Indian side is Pakistan’s stated intent to bring to the table what it sees as a Indian hand behind some of the terrorism it has been subject to. 

Pakistan can be expected to be on the offensive, so as to deflect India from raising its own list of grievances against Pakistan, most evident in the two recent incidents, one of a terror attack in Dinanagar and the other an attack on a Border Security Force convoy in Udhampur. India’s list will be topped by its complaint against Pakistan’s ‘go slow’ in the Zaki-ur-Rahman conviction. 

It is in the context of the NSAs’ agenda that the recent fulminations of the home minister in the parliament must be seen. In a debate, he raised the issue of ‘Hindu terrorism’, excoriating the opposition for coming up with such a label in its previous tenure. He took care to direct his ire against the use of the pre-fix Hindu, since obviously a religion cannot, and should not, be tagged to terrorism. 

However, that was no one’s case to begin with including Mr. Sushil Kumar Shinde, the previous home minister, who is credited with conjuring up the term. He was referring to ‘saffron terrorism’, a term that acquired currency on account of its accuracy and use by Mr. P Chidambaram, his predecessor. 

What Rajnath Singh was perhaps riling against was that in directing attention to terrorism perpetrated by Hindus, that alternatively goes by the term ‘saffron terror’, India had in his view diluted its case against Pakistan. The timing of his remarks suggests as much, since Pakistan could well say that at least a proportion of the terror India claims Pakistan as origin is homegrown, of Indian provenance. India’s charges of being subject to Pakistani terror by proxy will be less credible. 

Pakistan’s ammunition on hand will be its claim of Indian inspiration behind some of the terror it has been subject to, seeking to establish that it is a worse victim of terror, exacerbated by Indian intelligence operatives. 

Pakistan has been seeking such endorsement. At Sharm el Sheikh it succeeded in getting Manmohan Singh to put this into the joint statement. The equivalence it establishes will help it obfuscate its own policy of terror by proxy and proxy war. It will help rationalize such terror by making it appear as though it is part of the intelligence game the two sides indulge in and is not policy as such. 

India for its part has been attempting to downgrade the terror perpetrated by majoritarian extremists of the Abhinav Bharat variety. As seen its doing so has utility in India’s case of cornering Pakistan. Showing up Pakistan as state sponsor of terrorism can help deter it, place it at odds with world opinion, under-cut support of its allies and create divisions within Pakistani polity by pitching the civilian political domain with reservations against such terrorism against the ISI and military that back it. 

However the foreign policy angle only partially explains Rajnath Singh’s attempt to becloud terrorism perpetrated by Hindutva extremists. Singh’s concerns were less foreign policy or Pakistan strategy driven, even if these led up to his recent remarks. More importantly, the attempt must be seen for what it is. Foreign policy angle merely provides a rationale.

The actual impetus is to obscure that some of the terrorism India was subject to since mid 2000s was by majoritarian extremists. Not only were they responsible for some of the blasts directly, but indirectly in setting up a chain of revenge attacks with minority extremists, added to the terrorist incidents and charged atmosphere of those years. While already implicated directly in the more obvious attacks such as the Mecca Masjid, Malegaon and Samjhauta Express one, at least some of the less prominent attacks presently attributed to Muslim extremists must be laid at the door of these elements. 

This possibility is important to acknowledge in order that, firstly, the truth is not swept under the carpet, and, secondly, at sometime in future the cases can be reopened to implicate not only who perpetrated these attacks, but to gauge if those who stood to gain politically had any connection with the handlers. 

The actions of state agencies as revealed by prosecutor Rohini Salian in respect of the National Investigation Agency and the letting off of the likes of DG Vanzara and PP Pandey suggest these cases are being put off. The alacrity in pursuing the likes of Yakub Memon, Atif and Afzal Guru, has been sorely absent in punishing Sadhvi Thakur, Major Purohit, Maya Kodnani and Babu Bajrangi. Instead, the unashamed hounding of Teesta Setalvad suggests that the aim is to silence not only that doughty lady and her NGO, but anyone seeing her as a model. 

Clearly, all this is not merely to bolster foreign policy. If these were only rogue elements, the state could well allow justice to grind on. Instead, the criminal-politician connection is clear, but one more salient and damaging than earlier ‘Congress era’ versions restricted to corruption and money making. This time it is a more significant and dangerous terror-political connection with subversion of democratic politics. 

From the manner the saffron terror campaign played out to implicate the minority, it is apparent that it was to create a vote bank of the ‘besieged’ majority, besides showing up the ruling UPA as weak and offering up a ‘strong’ alternative. This possibility as a linkage needs to be kept alive as a direction of investigation once the majority realizes it has been duped. 

Minister Rajnath Singh has inadvertently drawn attention to India’s domestic underbelly. The foreign policy implication is relatively insignificant. While India can rightly point a finger at Pakistan for several major terror attacks it has been subject to and be demanding of Pakistan, scoring on foreign policy cannot be at the cost of pursuit of justice, truth and democratic principles

Look who’s doing yoga now!

05 August 2015 -

http://indiatogether.org/government-military-relationship-op-ed

Normally, it is only at the Republic Day celebrations that one would expect to find India’s three military chiefs (along with troops) at the centre of the national capital’s Rajpath, the main road that witnesses the annual march past. However, when last spotted on the Rajpath the three chiefs were with a brigade worth of troops arrayed behind their prime minister in breaking the world record for the highest number of participants at a Yoga event.

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEE - http://indiatogether.org/government-military-relationship-op-ed

The army’s association with such initiatives of the government illustrates a deepening proximity between the government and its army. This is a departure from the earlier practice of a dignified distance between the two that has served India well enough so far.

Such association with government ‘events’ is easy to spot, since the military has publicised such participation. The Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India campaign) too witnessed cadets at the Officers Training Academy, being duly photographed cleaning up Elliot beach in Chennai on World Environment Day, when they really ought to have been at training.

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEE - http://indiatogether.org/government-military-relationship-op-ed

Other such ‘events’ include commemoration of the sixteenth anniversary of Kargil War in New Delhi this month, when army bands reportedly regaled mall-visitors in Delhi to military music.

Earlier, local army formations would observe such anniversaries, some involving locals who helped win the war, with a modest celebration at the regimental level meant to be motivational for units that had taken part in the operations.

Where a mere sixteenth anniversary of a small border war is being marked in such a manner, it is easy to understand month-long celebrations for the 1965 War on its fiftieth anniversary. This is largely an attempt by majoritarian political formations to militarise Indian society, seen in their world view as relatively placid and inert. Unfortunately, the event places the military at the centre and therefore can been seen as a potential avenue of politicizing it.

From a narrow political perspective, it is perhaps to form the backdrop for a grand announcement by the prime minister of his government acceding to the One Rank One Pension demand, a raging current controversy in India in which military pensions are set for a hike.  A narrow political perspective also perhaps explains participants of the first operation that was carried reportedly inside Myanmar against Naga rebels who ambushed a military convoy being hosted to tea by Mr. Modi in early June. This is surely overkill in exultation over a controversial raid with questionable provenance and results. 

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEE - http://indiatogether.org/government-military-relationship-op-ed

There also appears to be a change in the government-military relationship. The military has been favouring this for long, resentful of the insertion of what it saw as a bureaucratic layer between it and the political master. The ruling party however is apparently using the defence as yet another prop in its refashioning of India.

Increasing incidence of instances raises the question: Is there a movement in Indian civil-military relations in which civilian control of the military is shifting from objective military control to subjective military control?

Otherwise notorious, Samuel Huntington was most credible in his first foray into theorising. He had it that military professionalism was expertise in the management of violence. Since the military was a profession, they were best left to manage themselves but under civilian oversight.

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEE - http://indiatogether.org/government-military-relationship-op-ed

It is clear that thus far objective civilian control has been at play in India, even if partially so, in so far as the military has remained outside the decision-making structure by unnecessary insertion of a bureaucratic layer between it and the political level.

However, since the BJP’s coming to power there appears to be a putative shift away from what the military called bureaucratic control towards subjective civilian control. Leveraging its defence initiatives for political mileage and the government’s use of its military muscle to embellish the 56’’ chest of its head is unexceptionable. However, the incipient tendency worth cautioning against is the proximity emerging between the government and the military.

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEE - http://indiatogether.org/government-military-relationship-op-ed

However, this joint subscription to an otherwise worthy political tradition, conservatism, increases the likelihood of the military going further down the route of cultural nationalism alongside. Amartya Sen has blown the whistle on the manner in which institutions, in particular academic ones, are facing the full weight of government interference as part of the long term reset of India. Can it be that the army will be eventually spared similar attention?

It would not do for the military to be bought off by governmental largesse such as the seventh pay commission in lending itself to governmental jamborees. Late realisation of the fact that subjective civilian control is here to stay will not augur well either for military professionalism or for national securit

Kashmir and India’s Muslims

http://www.kashmirtimes.in/newsdet.aspx?q=41976

Kashmiris as an Indian Muslim community differ in great many respects than other Muslim communities across India. They are territorially compact and constitute a majority in their state. They are also at odds with the Indian state and have been for close to a quarter century subject to its military attention. The Kashmir question also has an international dimension as a territorial dispute with Pakistan. Theirs is therefore a special case and has been treated as such in discussions on the Indian Muslim issues.

Consequently, Indian Muslims have been wary of commenting on Kashmiri issues, confining themselves largely to urging respect for human rights of their Kashmiri brethren. Even so, Kashmir has figured in the wider Indian Muslim predicament in more ways than meets the eye and on that count there is a case for a greater interest of Indian Muslims in the resolution of the Kashmir issue.

The primary principle that must inform any consideration of the Kashmir issue is ‘Do no harm.’ Kashmiris are in the midst of improving their security situation. This is true from the national security perspective also in that the situation has seldom been as calm. Therefore, nothing done and said south of the Pir Panjals must upset prospects of further improvement in any way. That said, are there ways in which Indian Muslims can engage productively with the Kashmir question?

It can be plausibly speculated that the Kashmir situation has contributed in part to the pall over security of India’s largest minority, its Muslims over the past three decades. Whereas most ‘mainland’ Indian Muslims security issues have a basis and origin in the Ganga-Brahmaputra basin, such as say the Babri Masjid destruction and its aftermath, the Kashmir situation has impacted these to the extent it has negatively. Consequently, can it be inferred then that a resolution of the Kashmir question can help mitigate the minority’s security situation in some measure? If so then, engaging with and urging resolution in Kashmir is a valid exercise for Indian Muslims, if somewhat unprecedented thus far.

But first to ascertain if indeed the Kashmir question has contributed to insecurity of India’s Muslims. There was an unrelated coincidence in rise of Kashmiri militancy and the Babri Masjid issue. The Kashmir issue set the context for Pakistani meddling after the fall of the Masjid and the pogrom in Mumbai that accompanied it. In the later part of the decade Kashmir related bombings occurred in Delhi, a significant one being in Sarojini Nagar. Even as late as the Parliament attack most minority related terror attacks in appeared to have a Kashmir provenance. There were fleeting reports of the outfit SIMI flirting with the Pakistani intelligence establishment, leading to its ban as a terrorist organization in 2001. This indicated that while Pakistan was looking to exploit India’s vulnerabilities, it really did not gain a significant handle, other than in Kashmir where it already was long intrinsic. Despite the spike in violence in Kashmir over the turn of the century with the Kargil War and Pakistan’s induction of ‘fidayeen’ tactics, there was little spill over. 

It was however with the 2002 pogrom in Gujarat that the security indices of India’s Muslims nosedived. The context was framed by the parliament attack and India’s military mobilization thereafter in Operation Parakram. It is at this juncture that the wider Indian Muslim security question connects with the Kashmiri question. The impunity of the Gujarat government and its police owed to the war atmosphere that prevailed and that in part stayed Vajpayee’s hands in progressing his rhetoric regards rajdharma. While questions persist over the parliament attack, it is quite clear that the burning of the bogie of the Sabarmati express was accidental. Nevertheless, that it could set off a pogrom suggests planning and direction that as has been pointed recently by Harsh Mander in his new book cannot have been without Mr. Modi playing Nero. The war atmosphere attributable to Kashmir related events enabled space for the pogrom to play out.

Whereas there were instance of Pakistani abetting a few revenge attacks, as is by now well established most such allegations were instance of ‘black operations’ intended to malign the minority. The aim was to ensure an extension of right wing governance at the Center. This explains the ‘encounters’ such as the Ishrat Jahan case. In the event the India Shining campaign failed spectacularly. Nevertheless, this only led to a greater reliance on the narrative of a nexus between extremist elements in the minority with Pakistan’s ISI. The subtext was that with the relative stability returning to Kashmir after the November 2003 ceasefire on the Line of Control and talks between India and Pakistan 2004 onwards, ISI had shifted its cross hairs to the hinterland. Subverted elements in the security establishment and motivated scribes manufactured this, no doubt with the intention of once again using the ‘India in danger’ and ‘Muslims as fifth column’ bogeys. It was also useful to project the weakness of the UPA government and in contrast the strength of the emerging champion of the right, Mr. Modi. The direction of the international discourse post 9/11 proved handy. Islamophobic narratives were liberally deployed to push the minority into a corner. This persisted through the decade.

It is curious that the periodic terror attacks that were so readily attributed to the minority have suddenly been discontinued. It only strengthens the suspicion that these were ‘black operations’ being done covertly to malign the minority for political purpose of interested parties. In the event of the spectacular victory of the right wing, it does not take a genius to put two and two together.

What emerges is that India’s minority has proven largely immune to supposed Pakistani inroads, barring a handful high profile cases as the Bhatkal brothers and earlier, D Company. Even the spillover from the Kashmir conflict into the northern plains has been episodic. However, motivated elements, with a reach into the state and in the media, have used the Kashmir issue as yet another stick for minority bashing. This was to create a constituency within the majority based on fear and prejudice. That it succeeded is testimony to the nature of the current government and need for continued watchfulness on part of India’s Muslims, including Kashmiris. If in opposition, they could manufacture such a false narrative, in support of this government they can be credited with ability for a more ambitious, and flagrant, projects.

It follows that if the Kashmir events have had negative fallout on minority security, as depicted here, there is a case for mitigating security by urging a resolution to the Kashmir question. This is along two lines: one is an internal settlement between India and its Kashmiris; and, second, is a wider reconciliation with Pakistan. This is in keeping with the government’s policy plank in that its joining in government in Srinagar is indicative  of a desire to end the troubled times there and its overall Pakistan policy, the tactical aspects of cutting off talks, firing on the LC, notwithstanding. Therefore, if India’s Muslims were to voice an opinion and lend their voice and shoulder to a resolution in Kashmir and with Pakistan it would not be out of place. It is firstly in their own interests, which as seen are aligned with that of India. Therefore, there is no cause for Muslims to tread softly on Kashmir as hitherto.

The possible agenda items are easy to arrive at. Kashmiris need being warned against flirting with violent extremists in light of the ill winds blowing from West Asia. Pakistan is proving to be dysfunctional and it is time that Kashmiris reconsider their political interests. This will incentivize the Indian state towards a peace with dignity. Clearly, Kashmiri Pandits cannot be left out of this. If this is the message for Kashmiris, so must pressure be applied on the government to be responsive. Getting past Kashmir is necessary since other ‘fights’ loom ahead, such as over the ‘Bangladeshi infiltrator’ question. Such constructive intervention will be useful precedent setting for Muslim political action in the national interest.  

http://indiatogether.org/anti-muslim-prejudice-bias-in-society-and-military-op-ed

How deep does our prejudice run?

29 May 2015 

In his new book, Looking Away: Inequality, Prejudice And Indifference In New India,Harsh Mander writes how commonplace anti-Muslim prejudice is in middle class households these days: 

Since my father-in-law served in many senior positions in the armed forces, several of his friends who visit our home are senior defence officers. Without over-generalizing — and there are, indeed, thankfully, some wonderful exceptions — I find among them a high degree of anti-Muslim prejudice, converging seamlessly in their minds and hearts with a nationalist-militarist hostility towards Pakistan. I recall one particular discussion with a senior naval officer. ‘All Muslims are anti-national, you have to accept this,’ he declared with conviction. I had to ask, ‘Sir, what is the empirical basis of your belief?’ ‘They created Pakistan,’ he thundered, ‘what more proof do you require?’ For a while, I was stunned into silence. 

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEE - http://indiatogether.org/anti-muslim-prejudice-bias-in-society-and-military-op-ed

However, since one popular narrative on Partition says that it was brought on by Muslim intransigence, at least some defence officers of that generation cannot but be expected to carry their personal - and incidentally very human - reservations against Muslims. Since Muslims were earlier a minuscule percentage of the military, there would have been little positive interaction with peers to help dispel these images. However, the army is categorical that as a professional force it is thoroughly secular.

Is the army immune to society?

There is no obvious reason to probe the army’s self-image further. A quarter century or thereabouts since the permeation of prejudiceinto drawing room conversations, as Mander brings out, is time to take stock. Especially so, since the extent of the bigotry is such today that a Muslim MBA job aspirant has been denied a job in a leading jewellery company in Gujarat on account of his religious affiliation.

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEE - http://indiatogether.org/anti-muslim-prejudice-bias-in-society-and-military-op-ed

Outlook magazine recently revealed a military link to the Hashimpura massacre of 1987 by the Provincial Armed Constabulary. This nebulous link perhaps led to the perpetrators being let off by the courts. In the late nineties, a Rear Admiral, while complaining against his Chief over a promotion-related issue, referred to the Chief’s ‘half-Muslim’ wife. Admiral Bhagwat was later sacked over his defiance of the Ministry over the case. The 2000s has its Major Purohit episode in which the military intelligence officer had reportedly indulged in an intelligence overreach, keeping tabs in a domain usually left to the Intelligence Bureau.

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEE - http://indiatogether.org/anti-muslim-prejudice-bias-in-society-and-military-op-ed

It is perhaps the deepening of its involvement in counter insurgency in J&K in the nineties that could potentially have had a graver impact on the army. However, the proxy war angle meliorated this somewhat since there was a territorial aspect to the dispute with Pakistan. The army also prevailed over terrorism with the help of Kashmiris working in proxy groups controlled by it and the largely Kashmiri police.

Nevertheless, the levels of revivalism in larger society, that took political form in the emergence of a right wing government at the Centre by the end of the nineties, did find expression. The idiom for military motivation acquired cultural roots. The introduction of Yoga and Art of Living discourses for stress busting, ornate decors to increasingly visible temples in cantonments, and acceptability of religious markers such as vermillion on foreheads, rings and wrist threads even in uniform are examples of the gradual permeation of religious practices into a secular space. The latest instance is of a report of the Chief leading a Bhumi Poojan for an officer’s institute in a retiree community.

It is apparent that these changes do not constitute evidence of anti-Muslim prejudice. They are merely instances of the more visible religiosity in society creeping into the military. More fitting perhaps would be the army’s refusal to part with its figures for Muslim representation for the Sachar Committee’s use. However, that too would appear to be more to hide its abysmal record as an equal opportunity employer. It was not so much an act of commission as of omission in that there were no prior calls for minority representation orallegations of its recruiting policies benefittingonly a set of ethnic groups advantaged by its regimental system.

A season for caution

In the broader context of the discourse in society, the army would do well to keep watch. This century has witnessed a rise in Islamophobia. Increased military interaction with the US and Israel, exposure to virulence on the Internet, and conditioning by media-fanned stories of Muslim-perpetrated terrorism indicate continuing dangers. It is good that militancy in Jammu and Kashmir had subsided considerably by the time Islamism was getting to be a force to reckon with – around the mid 2000s.

It must also be noted that there has been a steady expansion of the officer cadre. This is of largely lower middle class origin and from north India, where Hindutva has had a vociferous presence. It is more than likely that products of ‘nationalism’-oriented schools and colleges – Shishu Mandirs and DAV Colleges – could be more inclined towards a career in the army.

Moreover, if the current government’s policies in the educational sphere are any guide, the military will not remain outside its long term agenda for a socio-cultural transformation of India. This is not in itself problematic since militaries are conservative-realist institutions. But with a change in the definition of India, of the very ‘idea of India’, this may have implications that the army needs being alive to.

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEE - http://indiatogether.org/anti-muslim-prejudice-bias-in-society-and-military-op-ed

Nevertheless, the military’s doctrinal wares suggest a greater offensive-coercive content. The impetus behind this could come from several quarters. A higher defence budget, greater self-assurance as a regional power and a raised geopolitical and economic profile make India’s incline towards proactive shaping of its security problematic. However, realism requires sensitivity to the context, the most salient factor being the nuclear age.

The set of exercises this year witnessed a strike corps exercising together with a pivot corps. This suggests an intention to prevail rather than merely to deter. While strategy as distinct from doctrine can be expected to be different and indeed there are many exit points on the escalatory ladder, if religion driven hyper-nationalism penetrates into the military, it would not know when to stop. 

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEE - http://indiatogether.org/anti-muslim-prejudice-bias-in-society-and-military-op-ed

Harsh Mander’s observation, therefore, needs to be taken seriously. Anti-Muslim prejudice may yet manifest itself internally, for instance when the sensitive ‘Bangladeshi immigrant’ thesis acquires security overtones in the North East. In any case, however, it is already manifest in the military’s approach to Pakistan. 

Firdaus Ahmed

Contesting Mushrif's thesis — "Other side of Modi Muslims should know"

http://www.milligazette.com/news/12328-contesting-mushrif-s-other-side-of-modi-thesis-indian-Muslims

The Milli Gazette Online

Published Online: May 07, 2015

Mr. Mushrif is right (www.milligazette.com/news/12196-the-other-side-of-modi-muslims-should-know), but unfortunately only partially so. We wish that he were entirely right. That would have helped dispel any reservations over Prime Minister, Mr. Modi. However, Mr. Modi has himself made it difficult to go along fully with Mr. Mushrif. Nevertheless, we could give Mr. Mushrif and Mr. Modi the benefit of doubt, but to ‘bail him out and allow him to breathe freely,’ as Mr. Mushrif would have it, would be naive. Only a call to generosity of spirit can help Mr. Modi past the barriers he has himself assiduously, demonstratively and self-interestedly built. After all, his party built a vote bank of the majority by using the minority as a ‘bogey’.

Mr. Mushrif’s well-argued and well-intentioned thesis is that a political reading of Mr. Modi in his decade and a half sway over Gujarat and a year in New Delhi suggests that he has put a distance between himself and the extremists within the Sangh Parivar.

Mr. Mushrif’s thesis brings to fore the pleasant possibility that Mr. Modi being his own man, and not a creation or puppet of the Sangh, would not necessarily follow the dictates of the Sangh’s ideology, Hindutva. There is, therefore, scope for interfacing with, if not influencing, the Modi agenda. The agenda itself is much wider than ethno-religious triumphalism, but encompassing economy-based rise of India as a political, economic and military power at the global stage.

Mr. Mushrif’s view is very persuasive and, as a credible anti-Hindutva figure, his espousing it indicates that it needs to be reckoned with seriously. If, indeed, India is on an upward trajectory under Mr. Modi’s leadership, it would be very foolish indeed for India’s Muslims not to be on the bandwagon and get left out yet again. Giving Mr. Modi a chance is the subtext. There can be no argument with that. If he succeeds, the gainers must include Muslims.

The question is: Should we put our eggs into his basket?

The Mushrif thesis is contrary to the popular view that the Sangh is his support base and he is their champion. He is, therefore, providing the conditions for implementation of the Hindutva agenda. Many actions of his government – not repeated here for the sake of brevity and knowledge that these would be familiar to the readers of this journal – suggest as much. In fact, his government is but a year old and there is much negative ground that it can yet traverse over the next decade it intends to stay in power at a minimum.

In this more critical view of Mr. Modi, he is in a period of consolidation and can afford not to antagonize the minority any further. His government’s periodic reminder to all of the patriotism of India’s Muslims is a case to point. This belated recognition of objective reality can only be considered remarkable in the highly prejudiced view of Hindutvavadis. This means that it is a political ploy to seemingly retract claws so as to lull those observing the moves of the government into a false sense of complacency.

There are strategic reasons for the Muslim policy of the government. It would not like to have a disaffected minority in addition to the problems that can easily be foreseen ahead. The churning thrown up by the land bill, changes in labour laws, the legal regime surrounding conversions and beef eating etc. are indicators that there are emerging constituencies that are less enamoured of Mr. Modi’s economic and social agenda than his electoral victory implied. Even if Mr. Modi is not held hostage by extremist Hindutva forces, but is instead hostage to the agenda of large corporates, India will not have as untroubled an ascent as Mr. Mushrif might imagine. Anticipating this, Mr. Modi is into preemption mode, building bridges with otherwise suspicious constituencies such as Muslims.

There is also another angle from which the Mushrif thesis needs to be approached. There is an incipient cult phenomenon Mr. Modi is building himself up. He has personalized governance by centralizing government power in his office and indeed in his person. So much so that no government mention of India’s relief operation in Nepal is without reference to the leadership provided by Mr. Modi. While this may be political, intended to set him apart from his predecessor, the somnolent Dr. Manmohan Singh, and the opposition leader in absentia, Rahul Gandhi, it is more likely that Mr. Modi is subverting parliamentary democracy by projecting a presidential image. Mr. Modi has snatched the TINA factor from the Congress.

Mr. Mushrif alludes to the extensive travel schedule of the prime minister, his anti-terrorism international stance and regional outreach to underscore his secular credentials. Firstly, the foreign tours amounting to about 50 days in the year also undergird the personality cult thesis since these are at the cost of the institutional strength of the foreign ministry. Secondly, the international anti-terror stance of the government is not new. His recognition of Indian Muslims as out of international terror ambit is only acknowledgement of facts. Also, India in this will continue to be influenced by its partners, US and Israel. Already evident of Israeli pug marks is India raising an original point in a UN debate contesting the credibility of international organisations based on religious affinity, perhaps alluding to the OIC, as UN partners in international peace and security! Thirdly, the regional outreach is a chimera, with Mr. Nawaz Sharif lamenting that his initiatives have not been reciprocated by India.

Mr. Mushrif argues that there is an extremist portion within the RSS with which Mr. Modi is in an internal battle. He also seems to suggest that there is a schism within the IB, with the extremist side anti Modi.

Mr. Mushrif is guilty of using the extremist RSS portion as a bogey to argue that Mr. Modi, being the better of the two, should be given a second chance. His IB related argument has an internal contradiction. Though he suggests that the extremists within IB have been anti Modi and yet their actions, in particular black operations depicting Muslims as terror perpetrators, have provided the conditions that help the political ascent of Mr. Modi.

Mr. Mushrif, while making an otherwise plausible case for engaging with the government, resorts to avoidable contortions that put paid to the ‘absolutely secular agenda’ Mr. Mushrif credits Mr. Modi with.

The good news from Mr. Mushrif is that many of the initiatives of Mr. Modi appear to distance him from the Parivar and are in the interests of Muslims. After all there can be no arguing against madrasa modernization. These must be profited from and Mr. Modi incentivized to persist down this path by positive engagement by Muslims at all levels with the government he heads. By no means does this mean that Mr. Modi be conceded political or ideological ground. His ascent to and from a regional power base to New Delhi shows him as a consummate political actor. His Muslim outreach is, therefore, at best strategic. Consequently, the response to Mr. Modi cannot be dictated by the heart. Sure, allow Mr. Modi ‘development’, but await the lead of India’s ‘have nots’, that include its Muslims, have on this by end decade.

Even so it must not be forgotten that once Mr. Modi is beyond the reach of impunity of his office, he and the likes of Mr. Shah and Vanzara, require answering for the events of 2002 and subsequently in Gujarat. His ‘change of heart’ since is not self-evident from the ongoing hounding of the likes of Ms. Setalvad. It would be unfortunate for Indian democracy if Padma Vibhushan Advaniji’s getting away for 1990, 1992 and 2002 end up as an indelible precedent against the rule of law.