communal strategists

Ideologues as 'strategists' By Firdaus Ahmed http://www.kashmirtimes.com/newsdet.aspx?q=25731

" It would be entirely fair to intuitively answer the question, 'Are some strategists communal?', affirmatively. There is no longer any field that has not seen the penetration of communal forces in India. The whole project of the Hindutva brigade over the past century has been to take over India from the inside. This they have admirably succeeded in doing, not due to any intrinsic merits of their own, but more due to the partial complicity of the Congress party, itself deprived of any vision since the departure of Nehru. It is therefore inevitable to find communal forces in the seminar rooms of the strategic circuit.  That said it must be admitted that their presence is not easy to detect. The esoteric vocabulary used in discussions of security affairs enables them to hide behind a façade as conservative thinkers. Since conservatism and realism are in a tight embrace in security studies in general, being conservative-realist is perfectly legitimate. This school of thought - incidentally the dominant school in international politics - enables the communalist sanctuary, keeping their extremist inspiration in religious supremacism, sometimes mistaken as 'cultural nationalism', largely in the closet. There is a case to not only to expose them, but also to oust them intellectually since they currently stand poised to take over the strategic space with the possible ascent of their gladiator in the political ring to power in 2014, Narendra Modi. Admitting that subjectivity tends to inform professional judgment is only to acknowledge the human condition that renders academic objectivity only an ideal. Consequently, traces of ideology can be expected to be visible in advocacy. It is possible in certain instances the familial experience of Partition may be operative. Their advocacy then needs being taken as motivated. Currently, the conservative-realists benefit by the presence of their more ideologically inclined fellow travellers and are insensitive to this influence. It helps them in their intellectual fights with the liberal-rationalists. While most conservative-realists are secular and their strategic positions well secured sustainable strategic argument, they are oblivious to their inability to detect and evict the ideological canker in their midst. It is only a matter of time that they will be disabused of their illusions; and much to their surprise. The problem is that this awakening could well be left till too late. The effort here is therefore to highlight the influence of Hindutvavadis in the strategic community with an aim to prevent their contamination of the policy space. Already that is the case. In the policing of the seminar rooms, they have succeeded in marginalising liberal-secular voices who have been relegated to 'activists' from the 'higher' perch of 'strategists'. It is now impermissible to question dominant narratives without bonafides being called into question and the 'anti national' epithet finding its way into the conversation. Their influence, combined with and purveyed by their conservative realist accomplices, has led to 'Indian' strategic culture being defined in a particular way. The consequence is in an advocacy, to which the state is proving responsive, of over-turning a millennium of subjugation to 'foreigners' - a period that includes the Muslim presence in India.  Take for instance the advocacy for 'massive punitive retaliation' in case of nuclear first use by Pakistan. The formulation has eminent pedigree, with strategic heavy weights espousing it. However, their advocacy was informed by strategic insight and sound deterrent logic. The problem is that since their doing so about two decades back there has been an increasing possibility of nuclear first use in conflict. Pakistan threatens tactical nuclear use in case of Indian conventional attack. The latter is very likely as response to a mega terror attack. Resulting nuclear escalation could be witnessed. It is here the extremists come into their own as avid defenders of the 'massive punitive retaliation' logic. They believe that while India will survive, Pakistan will be finished. While for nuclear wonks this only serves a deterrent purpose, their ideologically informed counter parts can hardly conceal their glee when they highlight this asymmetry in nuclear punishment between the two states. 'Wiped off the map', 'cease to exist' etc are the revelatory phrases to watch out for in such writings. That India will be grievously wounded, if not fatally so, to them is not a cause for self-deterrence: self-deterrence being a sign of 'weakness' that needs excision from the Indian (read Hindu) mind and culture. It is no wonder there is a thrust for the 'bigger (thermo-nuclear) bang' since the last one turned out a 'fizzle'.  At the conventional level, their engagement is with use of conventional forces imaginatively in order to undercut Pakistani nuclear threat and avenge terror attacks utilising India's conventional advantage. While this is ordinarily understandable and is a favoured pastime of the military for instance, what distinguishes those with communal propensities is an avidness to get back at Pakistan and a pronounced blindside to India's vulnerabilities and the dangers of doing so. To them exercise of Indian strategic maturity, such as in restricting operations on this side of the Line of Control during the Kargil episode and maintaining strategic restraint in the face of the Mumbai terror attack, are signs of Indian pusillanimity. Such 'weakness' is to be exorcised in a bloody tryst, the end of which sees Pakistan felled. The favoured phrases are 'taking the battle to the enemy', 'decisive victory', 'proactive', 'offensive' etc.  It is in sub-conventional discussions that they are easiest to spot. While force is an intrinsic part of a state's repertoire against a challenge to its monopoly of force, it is widely accepted that the exercise of such force has to be cognisant of the law. The realists would employ the argument that not doing so will only exacerbate a state's predicament. The communalists on the other hand go a step further. They wish to use force to demonstrate the state's power and overawe those so subject to its power and glory. They accuse that anything less is debilitating for the forces; the 'one hand tied behind the back' thesis. Their reification of the state as an embodiment of cultural power narrowly defined makes even a secular challenge to the state incomprehensible and unacceptable. This provides the ideological impetus to subcultures in the military and paramilitary to go beyond the pale in counter insurgency operations. Such a thesis alone can explain the proliferation of unmarked graves across the Kashmiri landscape. It is not the doings of a largely secular and professional military, but is evidence of episodic dominance of subcultures subscribing to the communal virus within it. It can be hypothesised that such subcultures predominate in the paramilitary, given the acculturation into (north) 'Indian' mores, including for instance the propagation of Hindi. However, it is in intelligence games that the communal strategists are most active. This has virtually been a cottage industry ever since Messrs. Vanzara and company, in Vanzara's own confession, were put to enhancing the image of a provincial politician as Iron Man II, the self-appointed saviour of the majority against terror intimidation from across the border and from within. To communal strategists, India's Muslim minority is a fifth column harbouring, in one fevered imagining, over 800 sleeper cells. They can be credited with making this canard a home truth. The latest instance of their cackle has been over the reference by the Congress scion of an intelligence operative accosting him with evidence of Muzaffarnagar's riot-affected Muslims turning to the bogeyman next door, the ten-foot-tall and no less, the ISI. One former foreign secretary with ambition to succeed the current National Security Adviser in the next dispensation in open forum said that India must not sabotage its case against Pakistan by referring to home grown, 'saffron' terror. A major development in the strategic circuit has been the acceptability of communalists in seminar rooms. They are up front and unapologetic. They even have think tanks of their own with periodic events advertised as 'vimarsha'. This is useful in that there is no need to be hypocritical anymore. Secularism being to them pseudo secularism and given the intrinsic tolerance in Hinduism, they can only but be secular, there is no need for them to hide in the closet or hide their ideology as a skeleton. The advance is that a dialogue can now be joined with the credentials on the table. The enlightened public can then judge the debate.  By and large they can be spotted in their rather 'tough' approach to neighbours, Pakistan in particular, Kashmir, 'Bangladeshi immigrants', Indian Muslim 'terrorists', Congress' nimble-footedness, 'pseudo-secular' strategists etc. The danger is that the debate is liable to get much less democratic in case the elections rustle them onto centre stage. Since they would hold the commanding heights of security policy, they would be averse to be shown up as emperors with no clothes. It can be hazarded that commentators pointing this out, both now and later, will be among the first to be frog-marched into silence. To pre-empt this, let naming and shaming of communal strategists begin. When ideology colours strategy, India cannot expect to be safe and secure. News Updated at : Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Modi And The Military: Not Quite An Innocent Beginning

By Firdaus Ahmed

http://www.ummid.com/news/2013/September/21.09.2013/modi-and-military.html

21 September, 2013

Countercurrents.org

Mr. Modi’s political sense was on display at the very first rally on his nomination as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate. Addressing ex-servicemen at Rewari he laid out his security agenda that would no doubt have been music to the ears of the gathering. Declaring an intent to make Pakistan behave, China back off, the civilian defence sector deliver and have the coffers cough up ‘one rank one pension’, he suggested that since all this would require a ‘strong’ leader, he was the best man for the job. Missed in the deconstruction of his speech has been the more significant aspect: that of politicisation of the military.

Flanked by General VK Singh of the DoB (‘date of birth’) fame, a score of retired generals and an Olympic silver medallist to boot, Modi was not merely playing to the gallery. He was instead attempting to gain the military’s endorsement on two counts. The more obvious one is that it would be useful to have the military alongside as he goes about resetting India in the Hindu nationalist image. With their longed for goodies, both in terms of military toys and seventh pay commission largesse, close at hand, the military can be expected to go about their business with redoubled intensity since the security environment would simultaneously be vitiated by worried neighbours reacting to Hindu India flexing its muscles.

But more important and urgent for Modi is that politicisation timely may prove useful if his past was to catch up with him in the Gujarat related cases that are yet unspooling in various courts. If judicial push comes to policing shove, he could ‘Cry foul!’, citing Congress chicanery, and, having the military’s weight behind him, deter any deflection from 7 Race Course Road.

Given the apolitical image of the army, it does appear counter intuitive that a dais heavy with the brass as witnessed at Rewari could amount to this. However, that conservative parties universally carry the military’s vote is a verity in military sociology. The BJP therefore has the advantage and doubly so, on account of the uninspiring defence minister the Congress, fearing another Bofors, has foisted on the army over two terms. As a senior minister, his political engagements meant the hijack of the policy agenda by the bureaucrats. A resentful military can be expected to take its civil war with bureaucrats in South Block into the political arena.

The military, no monolith, is internally differentiated. It has subcultures, some of which are at variance with its public image that can make a bid for dominance. While the majority in the military is apolitical, secular and professional, it could in this circumstance end up as the silent majority. It would be the politically alive element that would set the military’s position on what promises to be a momentous run up to elections over the coming year. Evidence of its existence and of precedence is in the manner this segment had dominated the military’s counter insurgency campaign, leaving the Valley littered with unmarked graves.

This politicised segment could firstly perform the function of keeping the military inert to the goings on in politics brought on by the right wing’s philosophy of ends justifying the means. The cover of being apolitical will sit easy in such a circumstance as the right wing attempts steal the election with its communalisation of the political and discursive space. Muzaffarnagar is a mere trailer.

Secondly, it could even prompt an intervention in case Modi falters at the last hurdle, even as the majority looks on nonplussed. There is precedence in which General VK Singh is alleged to have moved mechanised formations in the dead of the night ostensibly to check if they can react to contingencies in the midst of Delhi’s winter fog, but, to some, to influence any government decision to sack him for taking the government to court over his date of birth controversy. Such innocuous movements can be resorted to by formations with commanders subscribing to the reactionary political subculture as messaging to the government against any moves to permit the judicial noose from tightening around Modi’s neck.

The fact that the government vets the military’s chain of succession very carefully was very obvious from the accusations and counter accusations during VK Singh’s ‘date of birth’ episode. This suggests that apprehension of the military going political is not as far-fetched as the popular image of the military suggests. Predisposed to conservatism and desiring a turn to realist foreign and security policies, this segment could delude itself into believing it is acting in national interest. Absolving itself thus, it could seek to install Modi to power irrespective of the election verdict and perhaps because of the returning to power of a dynastic order revolting to the segment’s sense of self-worth.
The military’s views are set by its officer cadre that increasingly identifies with the middle class. The reactionary discourse of late in the middle class is well known and finds resonance in officers’ messes. Ex-servicemen serving as a right wing catchment and their increasing beltway into the consciousness of the military through cyber space, defence periodicals and presence in cantonments, strengthens the politicised subculture.

The BJP had attracted several generals, including respected ones such as Jacob and Sinha, in its earlier foray. The difference then was that Vajpayee was at its helm. This time round not only are the generals on the BJP bandwagon of dubious standing, but the BJP is led by a figure no stranger to controversy. Therefore, the relationship is no longer an innocent one but is one pregnant with forebodings not only till the elections but also beyond them.

Firdaus Ahmed is a freelance writer on security affairs. His blog is Think South Asia:http://www.subcontinentalmusings.blogspot.in/

This article was filed before news reports emerged that "Ex-Indian Army chief VK Singh accused of masterminding coup to topple J&K state govt"