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.

kashmir and gaza

The echo of Gaza closer home http://www.kashmirtimes.in/newsdet.aspx?q=34991 http://caravandaily.com/portal/echoes-of-gaza-closer-home/

" By no means is providing the oxygen of publicity to motivated columnists a palatable task. Even the satisfaction of refuting them does not compensate for the gains they make in having their argument aired, albeit only to be debunked. Identifying them as owners of the argument, howsoever flawed, is useful for them, in this age of visibility passing for wisdom. Here one's reservations on this score are given a go-bye to make a passing mention to the article dean of the Jindal School of International Relations in the Asian Age, a paper once presided over by MJ Akbar (http://www.asianage.com/columnists/children-conflict-773). The worthy writes of Kashmiris agitating over a far off war. He notes that one of them got killed in the bargain. He rues this loss of life for an unknown cause, informing of the manner these agitators are paid to go out on the street. To him this is best explained by figures of unemployment of youth close to 50 per cent. It is only natural for him to alight on the stipend as somehow delegitimising the protests since it makes for a cadre of professional agitators, described by one forgettable army general in Badami Bagh as participating in 'agitational terrorism'. The neo-liberal in the intellectual comes forth in this unidimensional economic analysis. Understandably, he goes on to articulate that if these youth had a job, they would not be on the streets. So QED: open up the space to private capital, retire the state administration, and look and behold! Kashmir will be transformed into the secular crown of India. It is also only natural for him to miss that point that a quarter century after the Indian state has faced up to crowds in Kashmir, it has not mastered the art of non-lethal crowd control. This is so despite a defence budget tripling over this century. If it is the paramilitary that is at the spear tip in Kashmir, then a greater proportion of this should rightly have gone to outfitting them. Such a thought may not occur to busy bodies of international affairs and strategic studies faculties. They barter access for their intellectual capacities. For instance, the good dean was enroute back from Gurez, where he was most unlikely to have been hosted by either a local or an NGO. To think the government has declared its intent to dole out more for strategic studies departments and increase their numbers across the country. This can only expand the tribe of those insensitive to such questions. No such largesse is for peace studies departments, such as the one in Awantipore, that could lend some balance to the discourse. The question as to why the Indian state does not care to resort to non-lethal means is easy to answer. It is because it does not need to since there is the AFSPA and the Disturbed Areas Act in force. Next, punitive action such as this helps deter more vigorous demonstrations. It conveys the resolve of the state not to tolerate a repeat of 2009 and 2010. It helps nip a problem in the bud  in that the situation is stabilised before it spirals out of control resulting in more deaths. Also, just as it silenced its parliament from expressing disapproval of Israel, it is not interested in having this disapproval shown on the streets instead. Remember, it is Israel that has given the technology, not a little hardware and perhaps even the tactical ideas on anti-infiltration along the line of control. However, other than commercial reasons, and the fact that India serves as the 'rest and recuperation' base for the Israeli conscripts between their tenures on West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon, there are other good reasons. India too may require to 'mow the lawn' in the neighbourhood as Israel does time and again in Gaza and Lebanon. The expectation of a spill over from AfPak when the US departs informs India's Kashmir strategy. It explains the inaction over the past decade in which violence levels were low enough to justify political resolution efforts. That these remained frozen instead suggests Indian strategy of wait and watch. Now that the wait is over, the 'mow the lawn' strategy may be on the cards. It does not want to have the rationale for this challenged even before it gets to operationalise it. Finally, the state is aware that even if the situation in Gaza does boil the blood of the faithful, particularly as the good dean reminds us after a session in the mosque with the bearded haranguer, the succeeding agitations are less directed at Israel than the state itself. The stone is not intended for Israel. Given the pent up angst and each succeeding Kashmiri generation, rightly termed by the good dean as 'children of conflict', wanting to prove itself against the Indian state, the situation can turn nasty. Magnification of this in the mind of the poor paramilitary soldier peering out of his bunker through the concertina coils at advancing crowds, leads to lethal use of force. It escapes the academic that such demonstrations cannot be for the money that no doubt is also doled out. Facing possible death and certainty of loss of avenues to earn, particularly with the Kashmir police charging agitators so as to make their record untenable for government and other jobs, is certainly not due to the stipend they may receive for their pains. Instead, they pocket the money since they need it and take their chances on the street, again since they need to but for different reasons. It is with good reason that India has ordered the UN mission in Kashmir, the UNMOGIP, out of its building in Delhi. UNMOGIP has been focus of agitations in Kashmir in the early nineties in which crowds would petition the UN. Telling the visiting Ladsous, head of UN peacekeeping, off, is to keep the UN on the defensive. When the time comes for India to 'mow the lawn', it would like the same impunity as Israel, since it would be giving the same rationale: self defence. While political inaction has attended Kashmir, by no means has India been inactive on other fronts. It has topped the table of arms imports, importing more than three times the amount of the next two states - China and Pakistan - combined. Unlike in November 2008, it is better prepared. It is engaged in demonstrating its resolve in, to quote the military, giving a 'befitting reply' to the spate of infiltration attempts this summer, some as the army commander reminds owing to the fallout from the Pakistani operation Zarb e Azb in North Waziristan. It is only hoped that India has not borrowed another leaf out of Israel's book, that of keeping the surroundings unstable. So long as enemies are fighting each other, they remain busy at each other's throats. This strategy no doubt explains the extent to which the nasty turn of the 'Arab spring' has left Israel as seemingly the only stable place in the region, its Iron Dome notwithstanding. By this yardstick, India could pull the plug on Pakistan and allow it to go down the tube. From press hagiographies, its NSA appears easily capable of divining the way. This way it can more easily ward off fallout of implosion in Pakistan, rather than have a stable Pakistan divert its jihadi energy India's way. Kashmir having busted the Fukuyama thesis at its very conception in the early nineties, it is clear that history has not ended yet. The state's preparedness has reduced any incentive for it to resolve the problem. The two foreign secretaries will meet no doubt to arrive at an excuse for further bloodletting: 'Look we tried'. Israel has provided the precedence. Proximity to the US is set to increase with the ongoing Kerry visit and follow up Hegel visit, in the run up to the Modi's US yatra. India will have the cover to proceed to cauterise the restive Islamic crescent at the Neelam, Jhelum, Ravi and Sutlej. More visits of the learned professor can be expected and some gratis advice.

Mr. Doval as NSA

Analysis

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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

military at the high table?

The Military At The High Table?

The military needs to be taken on board and its sense of alienation needs to be allayed to avoid its politicisation

FIRDAUS AHMED

October 2, 2013

http://www.tehelka.com/the-military-at-the-high-table/?singlepage=1

General VK Singh, now retired for over a year, is fully within his rights to share the dais with a political personality of his choice. That he is energised by a grouse against the incumbent government for not granting him an extension is plausible. Additionally, it has been reckoned by watchful security commentators that this has come to pass as yet another episode in the sorry civil war on in South Block between the brass and the bureaucrats.

The perception is that national security structures are so awry that the security prescription of the military is not taken on board. Further, military veterans have been kept from receiving their due in the form of ‘one rank one pay’ by a heartless bureaucracy. Given their perceived marginalisation, veterans are courting the opposition that in turn wants their endorsement to best the ruling party at the forthcoming polls. This could lead to politicisation of the military due to an existing beltway of intellectual and cultural traffic between the veteran community and themilitary.

The argument begs the question: Is the military really outside the defence policy loop? From the army’s stonewalling on the issue of AFSPA in the Northeast and in J&K and on Siachen, it would appear that not only does it have a voice, but also a veto. A defence budget of over Rs 250 thousand crores spells that the military has the outlay it could possibly bid for. This suggests that even if the military is not sitting on the table, its position has not been ignored; perhaps because it cannot be ignored. So what more can the military really want?

The military’s acquisitions suggest that all that is demanded by its doctrine is being met. All it can possibly ask for additionally is a chance at working the doctrine in practice when terrorist push comes to conventional shove. This is a policy decision that the government keeps the military out of, reserving the policy choice and decision space for itself.

This is unexceptionable since the military is only a tool and the government is the one empowered to use it or not as per its rationale. At best the military can input such a decision but it cannot arrogate the decision for itself or demand that it be as per its lights. The government fears that it may be stampeded into decisions it could come to regret, overawed by the argument and stature of the military professional. It may require arguing its case against that of the military, which in the circumstance of a conflict, would put it in a less favourable position. The upshot could well be a decision based on military logic rather than the overriding political logic.

While in theory the political coordinates of a conflict situation must supersede themilitary perspective, in practice this may not happen. Firstly, a government would be shy of going against professional advice. Any government would hate to have a national security decision labelled as politically motivated out of parochial ends. The usual scepticism with which political actions are greeted in the country, it would be difficult for a government to persuade the people that it was acting on the political compulsions of the situation rather than thinking of its own longevity.

Secondly, the military’s input need not always be professional. While the military is apolitical, it has corporate interests that influence its input. It does exert for having its perspective heard, sometimes using indirect pressure on decision makers by manipulating public opinion. For this purpose it has a two-star headed public information cell and is increasingly resorting to the military intelligence directorate.

General VK Singh’s revelations on the army making payments to politicians in J&K must be seen in this light. The leaked on the internal inquiry of the doings of the now defunct military intelligence outfit, the Technical Support Division, during VK Singh’s tenure allege that a bid to topple the J&K government was also on the cards during the troubles in 2010.

It is for these reasons that the military is only invited to participate in militaryrelevant decisions, rather than figuring in the National Security Council organogram. The service chiefs though part of the strategic planning group along with the secretaries of relevant ministries, feel that, due to this clubbing with bureaucrats, their input is stifled.

They also perhaps have reservations on retired three star officers as advisers in the secretariat. This arrangement harks back to the Curzon-Kitchener controversy, with Kitchener objecting to his security input being second guessed by a serving major general in the viceroy’s council. As a result, the military is wary of ending up implementing decisions it is not party to.

There is danger in neglecting this structural deficit further. Yet a bigger problem is in the political moves of the veteran community that can be read as another indirect attempt by the uniformed fraternity to press for change. Such moves prove the point that the military is a political player that can skew decisions that are essentially political. The military at the high table is a greater danger, especially one that is a political player.

On this count, there is a case for keeping the military alongside in the room, rather than outside it or on the high table. If General VK Singh’s latest controversy is to have something positive come of it, then innovation on these lines is it.

letters@tehelka.com