Getting practical over an important report

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

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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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Why Ramchandra Guha speaks too soon

http://www.milligazette.com/news/12973-partion-muslim-of-india-why-ramchandra-guha-speaks-too-soon

Ramchandra Guha makes a case for not being ‘nostalgic about undivided India’. He argues that, ‘Had there been an undivided India, the percentage of Muslims would have been closer to 33%, or one in three. The demographic balance would have been more delicate; and prone to being exploited by sectarians on either side.’

Assuming that religious wars have been avoided by the percentage of Indian Muslims being reduced to ‘13% of the population, or one in seven’, he concludes that, ‘the cold logic of history suggests that things would have been far worse for us if Partition had not occurred.’

Since his is a counter factual case, refuting his case is as futile as it is easy.

Nevertheless, it can be argued conversely that had the percentage of the largest religious minority – the subcontinent’s Muslims – remained at about one third, there would have been an element of deterrence in the demographic balance. Guha’s apprehension of a communal bloodbath would then not arise.

In any case, precedent setting Partition would not have occurred and eddies from it would not have persisted through time. The resulting peace could have been used, just as it has been in India as brought out by Guha, for democracy and development for all of South Asia.

Guha exaggerates the problem integrating the 500 princely states posed. Sardar Patel dispatched them into history within a couple of years of independence. That would have been so even in case of undivided India, with the Nizam – possibly the only one to hold out – similarly packed off. Since contiguity would have decided the case for the rest, Kashmir would not have emerged as a bone of contention since.

As a historian Guha should really have been wary of venturing into international relations. To him, India has been spared the frontline status that Pakistan has acquired. This owes to Pakistan lending its strategic location for the purposes of a superpower through the Cold War and in the war on terror. In case Pakistan was part of India, this would not have been so. An undivided India, not warring internally and with greater military, political and moral might, could have kept its periphery peaceful. 

It is not as readily apparent that South Asia is better off divided. Worse, we may yet mourn the passing of an undivided India.

Guha is right in caveating his point that ‘India is not — or at least not yet — a Hindu Pakistan.’ ‘Not yet’ alright, but unfortunately India appears well on its way to becoming one. Guha’s other writings suggests that this possibility has not escaped him. His summary dismissal of Akhand Bharat is on this score a tad too early.  

In an understatement, Guha’s writes, ‘Religious and ethnic violence have not entirely abated’. There has been no bout of religious violence this decade of the order of those that punctuated previous decades: Bhagalpur in the eighties, Babri Masjid demolition aftermath in the nineties and the Gujarat pogrom in the 2000s.

But structural violence based on religious majoritarianism has served as an equally effective substitute. Muslims are remarkable for their absence in office spaces, shared apartment blocks and the military, from the middle classes and from assemblies and the parliament.  

With the demographic balance disrupted by Partition, Hindutvavadis have had a field day on India’s vulnerable minority over the past quarter century. And in doing so have succeeded in manufacturing an electoral constituency, a ‘Hindu vote bank’. So much so that Mr. Modi in refusing to wear a cap that serves as a Muslim identity marker reveals that he does not feel the need to even genuflect towards Muslims.

With minorities better represented it would be difficult for ideological penetration of institutions and of India’s security agencies. India’s Muslims now do not have the comfort of physical security and psychological security in greater numbers of an undivided India.

From the point of view of liberal Hindus, their higher percentage could have served to preserve India from a possible, and certainly problematic, future as ‘Hindu India’. With the prime minister even overshadowing one worthy predecessor, Indira Gandhi, to the extent of provoking a grim warning from Hindutva lion heart Advani of a turn to authoritarianism, to some liberals, India is potentially on the road to ‘soft fascism’.  

Here democracy is increasingly liable to be mistaken for majoritarianism. Modi’s Chanakya, the National Security Adviser, Mr. Doval, speaking on ‘Security, Statecraft and Conflict of Values’, provides a clue.

On the surface what he gives out is unexceptionable: that the majority democratically arrived decides how to exercise power and does so in a constitutionally bound manner in accord with its perception of the national interest.

The problems are, one, in the gauging of the ‘national interest’ and, two, in the adherence to constitutional parameters. The perennial problem remains: who will guard the guardians.

On thinking on national interest, Tarun Vijay, a leading propagandist, has it that Independence was not merely from British colonialists but also from preceding, namely Muslim, rulers and a second independence is in overthrowing current day opponents of the ruling regime.

Internal authoritarianism can only prompt external expansionism. Only, India has a nuclear power with Islamism at its door step. Mr. Dowal lets on that there can be ‘no compromise’ in the use of force where ‘national interest’ is at stake. He has a millennial notion of this, encompassing both past generations and future.

Perhaps Akhand Bharat – democratically and peacefully arrived at - is the direction South Asia must now move. It can checkmate both extremisms that in mirroring each other are indeed one of a kind.

This is not a novel idea. For millennia, India’s enlightened rulers have exerted to unify the subcontinent, a geographic unit into a single strategic and civilisational space.

Regional groupings are the trend across the world; witness EU that brought together rivals UK, France and Germany. South Asia has the SAARC for starters. A negotiated beginning is the next step.

Such visualization is akin to but reverses the divisive vision in Cambridge at which the two nation theory got its impetus. Doing so would make India whole again.

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What is really driving India’s Pakistan strategy?

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

Manoj Joshi is perplexed by India’s Pakistan strategy. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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: Not the moment for a tryst

kashmirtimes.com 1 August 2015

In an article ‘Resentful Kashmiris’, Kuldip Nayar writes of Kashmiris becoming more anti-Indian, both in form and substance. This may be useful in many ways than one. However, one way Kashmiris are better warned not to go down is to challenge the Indian state yet again, not at this juncture at any rate.

Kuldip Nayar forthrightly writes of an exchange in which he warns that Kashmiri cessation could have repercussions on India’s Muslim minority elsewhere in India, to which his Kashmiri interlocutor counter argues, ‘Your  Muslims are your problem.’

This reveals the extent of interface with their Kashmiri brethren of India’s Muslims south of the Pir Panjal. Since the mainstream Indian Muslim opinion was largely coincident with that of liberal Indian opinion on Kashmir, it was generally disapproving of the military template operational in the Valley for the past quarter century and supportive of a solution through dialogue with both Pakistan and with Kashmiris themselves.

Working through, with and within the liberal perspective was useful in that the Kashmir issue remained largely a territorial one in relation to Pakistan and not a religious one entangled in the vexed minority management issues in the rest of India. To recall, majority-minority strains came to fore coincident in time with the outbreak of the troubles in Kashmir in the late eighties, peaking together in the early nineties. That the two issues remained separate was altogether a good thing, since both had the potential to, if taken together, mutually complicate each other.

In the main liberal opinion was not quite an underdog in the years that followed. The element of restraint, such as there was, in the military template in Kashmir was on its account; so much so, that a modicum of normalcy could be said to have returned to the Valley, beginning with the NDA years under the stewardship of Vajpayee.

In effect, Kashmiris owe the rest of India much, including its Muslim minority. To be sure India could have and should have done much more to meet them more than halfway. Indeed, much of the resentment Nayar detects can be laid at India’s door, in the inability of the UPA to convert a position of advantage to sustainable peace.

Nayar hints at a possible reason for this inability and unwillingness. Liberal opinion has been cognizant of its relative strength in respect of the right wing that watched over its shoulder. It therefore confined itself to conflict management rather than resolution. That this apprehension of the right wing stealing a march in case it did otherwise was valid is borne out by the manner the right wing wrested the electoral upper hand last year.

A consideration has always been the possible repercussions of ‘concessions’ towards Kashmiris on the larger national minority. Howsoever unfair, it would have given the right wing another stick to beat not only the minorities, but the liberals as well. Therefore, that the UPA did not chance it was politically sensible. In the event, they were eclipsed anyway.

However, under the current circumstance ‘concessions’ are certainly possible. The right wing is comfortably ensconced in Delhi. It never has had to look over its shoulder. It has over the past year engaged in boundary setting and creating the conditions that enable potential concessions. In Kashmir these include getting itself into the coalition in Srinagar, telling Pakistan where to get off, staring it down at the LC, reducing infiltration to zero, and propping up its Jammu constituency to balance, and potentially cancel out, Srinagar. Outside of Kashmir, Mr. Modi is readying to have the military constituency eat out of its hand by holding on to the OROP declaration till the final moment when perhaps as early as at the 1965 fiftieth anniversary commemoration he grandly hands out the goodies.

If Kashmiris prove patient, they can prove themselves deserving of political ‘concessions’, such as progressing pushing back of the AFSPA to begin with. Mr. Modi can then grandly – as is his wont – bestow them when he builds up the tempo and is sure of pocketing the political dividend. Kashmiris would have got what they need. India’s minority would not bear any fallout. Mr. Modi would have the peace he needs to work his Gujarat model on the rest of India. This is a ‘Win-win’ situation for all, other than Pakistan’s right wingers.   

They may instigate Kashmiris to an untimely and possibly futile Round II. The army commander has in his Kargil Day interaction with the press let on that there is concern with educated youth signing up with militancy. Whereas this figure is still in the two digits, it reinforces Nayar’s observation of continuing disaffection.

In case this disaffection translates into confrontation then Mr. Modi’s hands will be as tied as any preceding Indian government’s. Just as with any other government, the suppressive template would be operational once again.

The legitimacy for this will be easy to create. Already there is disinformation abroad on the proximity of the Daeash to South Asia. A report has an opportune discovery of a Daesh plan to attack India and trigger an India-Pak Armageddon.  This will expectedly prove handy, even if time were to prove that it is a transparently motivated report put out by organizations and media outlets with right wing sympathies in the US. Mr. Modi’s foreign travels will ensure that his interlocutors there will give him the benefit of doubt. India will project itself as containing the Islamist threat, a cause that attracts the big three: US, Russia and China.

Thus, there is little that Kashmiris going militant at this stage can hope to wrest. Besides, Kashmiris can only expect to hurt to the extent they are ‘successful’ in inconveniencing India. As Nayar warns, the repercussions for India’s Muslims will be immediate and direct. They are now also hostage to Kashmiri good behavior.

The past year of Hindutvavadis running riot with state culpability hints as much. Alongside, the home ministry’s intent to busy itself with a counter radicalization program suggests they are already identified as Pakistan’s potential fifth column and an attractive constituency for the latest bogeyman, Daesh.

It appears that the earlier distance between Kashmir and India’s other minority question has eroded. Further convergence between the two can come about were Kashmir to improbably ignite yet again. That would create conditions for the perfect storm, benefiting the right wing on both sides of the erstwhile Radcliffe line and with no benefit sighted for Kashmiris. This analysis suggests that while flirting with black flags and green flags is romantic, expressive and cathartic, that is where the matter should end.

‘Concessions’ appear to be Mr. Modi’s Plan A. The somewhat limp Dinanagar attack and zero-infiltration this year indicates that Pakistan’s cards are down. It is yet to receive India’s retribution by proxy. That will likely be timed with the forthcoming NSAs meet, intended as a reading out by India of the Riot Act to Pakistan. If it fails, Plan B has been in place in Kashmir incongruous with its improved security indices for a decade in any case.

It’s therefore better to let Mr. Modi have his cake and await the outcome.  

 

 

India-Israel: Increasingly Birds of a Feather        

26 July, 2015

Countercurrents.org    

http://www.countercurrents.org/ahmed260715.htm

India-Israel: Increasingly Birds of a Feather        

26 July, 2015
Countercurrents.org    

India's abstaining from a vote censuring Israel at the Human Rights Council on its conduct in last year's Gaza war recently raised eyebrows. The ostensible reason for abstaining according to India's spokesperson was mention of the International Criminal Court - to which India is not a party - in the resolution. The real reasons are perhaps Netanyahu's phone call to Modi prior to the vote and Modi's impending visit to Israel, the first for an Indian head of government.

The visit is the coming-out of the India-Israel relationship that goes a quarter century to the early nineties course correction by Narasimha Rao on just about everything beginning with the economy. That the Cold War had ended and India needed to rethink was reason enough to recalibrate polices.

Now, it is easy to see one link by way of which Israel assumes importance in India's world view: the defence front. Israel is the second largest exporter to India of defence products of which India is the world's largest importer.

That India needs such ballast is evident from its cancelling of the close to half-a-billion-dollars-worth tender for supply of small arms for its army. That India cannot design and mass produce even small arms tells much of its arms industry and explains India's Israel link to an extent.

If the story ended there, there would be little to quibble about as Modi heads for Tel Aviv. It is instead more troubling.

A PhD student at Cambridge University informs of his meeting in Lucknow for a discussion along with some others of Lucknow's elite, presumably of Shia persuasion, with a retired Brigadier General from the Israeli Defence Forces and a retired colonel from its intelligence agencies accompanying an Israeli think tank head. Accompanying the Israelis was a Saudi delegation headed by a retired major general.

The meeting organized by a New Delhi think tank was supposedly for the two delegations to get a measure of that region's ‘syncretic culture'. It turned out instead to be a fishing expedition on how India's Shia's react to the ongoing Israel-Saudi squeeze of Iran. (In the event, the nuclear deal with Iran has led to both states receiving the US Defence Secretary to placate them with compensatory and balancing arms transfers from the US.)

While it would be interesting to know what sort of visa these visitors were on, it is easy to reckon which think tank the doctoral student omits to name organized the visit. The Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF) on its website lets on that hosted the Israelis mentioned in the article at one of its events early this year.

Given the think tank's connection with the National Security Adviser, getting a visa or getting on without a visa for research purposes for the visitors is indeed a small matter. However, having the Israelis and Saudis combine take a measure of so sensitive a topic and so much a matter of internal affairs in India is not quite a small matter.

The VIF website seminar report has it that the discussion in New Delhi was ‘essentially aimed at finding ways to broaden the scope for strategic cooperation between India and Israel, two countries sharing common values and common threats, each surrounded by regions of instability.' Irrespective of shared values and threats, it begs the question as to why the two states are being facilitated to intrude into the sensitive social space of India's largest minority?

This is perhaps easy to answer. Both being India's friends were perhaps pressuring India to lean on their side in the equation with Iran. India aware that it has an aware and active Shia community may have allowed the two states an insight into the mind of the community by facilitating the interaction. This way it could easily explain its equidistance between the two sides.

On the surface, this appears excusable. However, what it reveals is the level of strategic proximity between India and Israel. The danger in such proximity is in India painting itself into the same corner with Israel.

India already apparently believes that it is in the same corner. A former head of its Strategic Forces Command on a ‘lecture tour' of the US has in his exposition on India's nuclear doctrine at a leading US think tank gives a clue. Enumerating the nuclear threats to India, he let his audience know that there are three countries on the list of foes of Islamists: US, Israel and India.

Placed in august company, India presumably has to naturally take counter measures and these of necessity would require being in league with those in the same boat, the US and Israel.

How real is this threat?

In his inaugural speech calling for recognition of himself as Caliph, Al Baghdadi, now reportedly paralysed if not dead, included a mention of India along with other areas where rights of Muslims were being given short shrift referring to Kashmir. It can be expected of one trying to overthrow the Al Qaeda for the mantle of global terror-in-chief, attract recruits and spread terror.

At last count, about a dozen Indians of its 172 million Muslims responded. A few black flags were spotted at protest rallies in Kashmir, rightly played down by the administration as an attention seeking exercise.

But this is apparently enough of a threat for the Home Ministry to busy itself with a counter radicalization strategy to preserve India's Muslims from the extremist threat. If the so-called threat is so negligible, why so much smoke without any fire?

Clearly, realism alone does not prompt India's Israel policy. Cultural nationalism also needs factoring. It's warped perspective of the minority serve as blinkers and can be expected to have strategic fallout.

One, the danger of strategic proximity is in India grafting on to its ‘neighbourhood first' policy, Israel's strategy of keepings its surroundings unstable in order to be the unrivalled regional power.

Two, in positioning itself as a ‘leading power', India can end up containing one end of Muslim badlands while courageous Israel keeps up the other.

VIF got it right. India and Israel today have ‘common values' as can be expected of majoritarians and Zionists. The danger is in the strategic fallout for India and the region.

DISPROPORTIONATE RESPONSE DOCTRINE

The seeds of India’s ‘tough guy’ image

http://indiatogether.org/seeds-of-india-s-tough-guy-image-op-ed

Early in June, retaliating to an ambush that accounted for eighteen of its comrades in Manipur, the Indian army struck two militant camps along India’s border with Myanmar killing an indeterminate number of militants.A day earlier, the central police and Jharkhand police claimed a rare success against Maoists when they killed twelve alleged Maoists. Of the seven identified casualties, six turned out to be youth with no criminal record.

In early April, the anti-red sanders smuggling task force of the police in Andhra Pradesh killed twenty alleged smugglers in what was later revealed to be a palpably staged ‘encounter’.

In the same week, the Telangana police killed five ‘Islamists’ in custody, in retaliation for the deaths of three policemen in an encounter with alleged members of the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) in Nalgonda, an encounter that incidentally had also taken the lives of two SIMI members.

So, what do these otherwise unrelated incidents from various areas in India have in common?

The link between all three is the adoption of what is being termed as a doctrine of ‘disproportionate response’. 

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEE - http://indiatogether.org/seeds-of-india-s-tough-guy-image-op-ed

Accused of going to the press with unprecedented details of the Special Forces operations on the Myanmar border, media friends of the government have let on that it was by design, for ‘messaging’. Deterrence we are told requires ‘communication’ to the other side of ‘resolve’. This is best demonstrated, rather than merely said. What the instances recorded here have in common, therefore, is that they fall in the category of ‘messaging’ through ‘doing’ – the government’s version of ‘propaganda by deed’ - with deterrence being the purpose stated out loud.

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEE - http://indiatogether.org/seeds-of-india-s-tough-guy-image-op-ed

A doctrine has origin at four levels; these lie in a state’s strategic environment, the politics at the state level, institutional level dynamics within the state, and, finally, at the individual level in doctrinal entrepreneurs.

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEE - http://indiatogether.org/seeds-of-india-s-tough-guy-image-op-ed

The resonance of global strategic culture can be traced in its military doctrines. It readily borrowed from the US expansive doctrine of preemption as it was first trotted out by ‘Dubya’ Bush, with George Fernandes and Yashwant Sinha arguing that India had a more plausible case for preemptive strike against Pakistan.

India’s  nuclear doctrine of February 2003 emulated President Bush’s National Security Presidential Directive 14 of June 2002 in which he had explicitly extended nuclear weapons response to cover chemical and biological weapons use against the US. This put a caveat on India’s No First Use pledge, diluting what it trots out usually to prove that it is a responsible power.

Finally, India’s deep and growing Israel connection – now visibly flaunted in the visit of the Israeli defence minister – cannot but find doctrinal expression. Israel’s action in Gaza resulted in a Palestinian death toll 30 times higher than the Israeli casualties. The ‘disproportionate response’ inflection in doctrine can thus easily be traced to the influence of the current day drift in global strategic culture.

At the second level, that of the state, the receptive environment in India has been created by the return to power of the NDA, this time led by Modi. 

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEE - http://indiatogether.org/seeds-of-india-s-tough-guy-image-op-ed

The hyper-nationalist strategic plank has merged with the Hindutva worldview, resulting in a revision of India’s supposedly ‘reactive and defensive’ doctrine to one that is ‘proactive and offensive’ and now headed towards ‘disproportionate response’. In their view, it helps overturn a thousand years of humiliation and returns India to the front ranks of world powers. Besides, hopefully, the accompanying bombast will yield electoral dividend in the upcoming Bihar elections. ‘Acche din’ not much in evidence, national morale requires buoying by other means.

Within the ‘box’ of the state, is the bureaucratic level at which the military is increasingly salient. While a strong military reply to an ambush is entirely unexceptionable, traces of Americanism can be seen in its press statement: ‘any threat to our security, safety and national integrity will meet a firm response’.  It is not apparent from the statement whether the ‘safety and security’ refers to that of the state or the army.

This is suggestive of a psychological slip wherein the army’s concern for safety of its members – a post Vietnam American fixation - precedes that of its fellow citizens from whom a threat is perceived to emanate. It also completes the loop, tying the third level – organizational - with the first – international – in the military’s increasing interface with the US and Israeli militaries. The difference that seems to escape the army, however, is that these two militaries are not fighting fellow citizens.

Finally, there is the individual level, at which Ajit Doval, the National Security Adviser (NSA), figures 

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEE - http://indiatogether.org/seeds-of-india-s-tough-guy-image-op-ed

For the first time, Pakistan’s army has already expressed its annoyance with alleged Indian fingerprints over its Baloch predicament. It is no wonder then that though the army raids were in Manipur, the bombast was directed more towards Pakistan. It will not take ISI long to figure out that an opportunity exists for payback.

China has also figured among the alleged benefactors of the militants, identified by Mr. Doval way back in 2011. With two adversaries potentially advantaged by a downturn in security in the North East, strategic sense is to deny them a handle.

It was easy to see that the breakdown of talks with the NSCN (K) in April would have had military repercussions. It would have been strategic to keep the Naga negotiations on course. The previous government’s inability to cap a decade and half of talks after eighty rounds of talks is easy to understand, given its ineffectual record on almost everything else.

The current government relying on its nationalist credentials had intended late last year to wrap these up in eighteen months. Instead, it appointed a known sceptic of the talks, R N Ravi – former Kerala police cadre and IB colleague of the NSA – as lead negotiator.

India’s capacity to tackle any further unravelling of the cessation of operations processes can only be at the cost of its assiduously created mountain strike corps, that can willy nilly get sucked into counter insurgency even if intended for the China front. More significantly, it will be at a price that only the common man in the North East shall pay.

TFOR FULL ARTICLE SEE - http://indiatogether.org/seeds-of-india-s-tough-guy-image-op-ed

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.