Why India’s Japanese Partnership Must Avoid the Pitfalls of Zero-Sum Geopolitics

At the heart of it, the visit of Shinzo Abe to New Delhi is another step  in the effort by Japan, India and the United States to manage the rise of China in the Asia-Pacific region. It comes in an era when economic interdependence functions alongside inter-state competition and the global environment is characterised by fragmentation, uncertainty and danger. One characteristic of the situation is hedging— states involved are simultaneously engaging each other, even while they are also taking steps to secure themselves against the “other” or a combination of “others.”
In this era, India and Japan complement each other well. India needs Japanese finance and technology for its economic growth. Japan, on the other hand, knows that in terms of area, population and economic potential, the only country in Asia that can offset the enormous pull of China is India. With  India partially countervailing China, Japan gets some breathing space from the hostility it faces from Beijing.



Not surprisingly, some of the most significant aspects of the Abe visit are related to security. The two sides may not have clinched their nuclear deal, or the agreement to manufacture the US-2 amphibian aircraft, but they have set the stage for quick movement in the area of security. In line with Japan’s decision to permit sales of military equipment abroad, the two sides have signed a foundational agreement on the Transfer of Defence Equipment and Technology, as well as another  concerning Security Measures for the Protection of Classified Military Information. Further, India has welcomed Japan as the formal third partner of the Indo-US Malabar Exercise and has declared its intention to press military-to-military ties across the board.
In the Indo-Pacific region, India has emerged as a swing state whose position can strongly influence an issue. The India-Japan Joint Statement providing unambiguous support to the US-Japan position on the South China Sea undoubtedly puts pressure on China. It calls for “a  peaceful resolution of disputes without use or threat of use of force; freedom of navigation and overflight and unimpeded lawful commerce in international waters.” Of course, its call for parties “to avoid unilateral actions that could lead to tensions in the region,” could as much  be addressed to the US as China, in view of the US Navy’s recent Freedom of Navigation Operation (FONOP) patrol. While India is not on the frontline in the South China Sea issue, its position, which is in line with countries like Vietnam, Philippines, Japan and the US cannot be ignored by Beijing.

Softening edges
In the past year, even while continuing to strongly defend its position, China has sought to build bridges to regional states like Vietnam and Japan, and the US. According to the Nikkei Asian Review, Xi Jinping is wooing Japan. Even while cautioning Japan about  “sensitive” issues, Xi has been reaching out to Tokyo. Observers are pointing to the short meeting Xi had with Shinzo Abe at the sidelines of the Paris COP21 conference. According to the report, Xi spoke of “common interests” between China and Japan and the need to deepen the “favourable atmosphere” between them, presumably referring to the steps taken following their first meeting at the APEC summit in Beijing in November 2014.
It is in this context that we must see the India-Japan partnership. Both countries are hedging and both are seeking to maximise their gains, something fairly normal in international relations. Japan and India share an interest in shoring up ties with each other to balance off China, but so acute is the imbalance that even to do this, they need the United States to accomplish the task. Yet, neither New Delhi or Tokyo will underwrite the other side’s border dispute with China, and the US maintains a studied neutrality on the disputes. In some ways, strategic cooperation remains limited to a lot of rhetoric and symbolic moves which are, however, not unimportant.
A lot of it is demonstrative choreography and hedging. So,  India and Japan are creating a “Special Strategic and Global Partnership”, even as the Sino-Indian “Strategic and Cooperative Partnership for Peace and Prosperity,” deepens. Likewise, the US and Japan remain deeply committed to economic ties with China. The US-China relationship may fester over the South China Sea issue. But their military ties have improved significantly in 2015 and so has the cooperation between the two countries on issues like climate change and cybersecurity. In November, the PLA hosted the first Army-to-Army dialogue with the US  in Beijing  and the two countries have instituted important CBMs to manage crises. Even in the recent sail-through by the US Navy in the South China Sea, there seemed to be a relaxed edge with the two navies chatting to each other and the Chinese signing off by signalling to the US destroyer, “Hope to see you again”.
Japan and China, too, are seeking to play down their conflict  and the two countries are involved in working out ways and means to prevent crisis escalation. Incidentally, China has surpassed South Korea to become the largest source of foreign tourists to Japan indicating that official dislike of Japan is not shared by the ordinary people of China.
As for India, it has become the second largest stake-holder in the Chinese-led Asia Infrastructure Development Bank and one of the major partners in the New Development Bank (BRICS Bank) headquartered in Shanghai. More recently, it has been accepted into the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a Chinese-led security grouping focusing on Central Asia.

Futility of zero-sum approaches
This said, there are great advantages for India in shoring up its ties with Japan. India needs Japanese investments, expertise and technology to get “Make in India” to work. India must be able to become a part of the global production networks and in relations with countries like Japan and Taiwan are very important.
Whether the $12 billion high-speed train between Ahmedabad and Mumbai will actually synergise India’s rail network is something that only the future can determine. India is  the largest recipient of the Japanese Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) and this year we could expect $ 5 billion funding for a range of infrastructure projects such as the Western Freight Corridor and the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor which are taking shape, as well as a slew of new infrastructure projects including metros for Chennai and Ahmedabad. An important outcome of the Abe visit was the decision by Japan to set up a new finance facility worth $ 12 billion to promote Japanese investment under the rubric of “Make in India.” Japan had committed $35 billion investment in India during Modi’s visit to Tokyo in 2014 and this has already started coming in.
If economic transformation of the country is the main goal of Indian foreign policy, then developing close ties with multiple partners is in India’s interests. India cannot become part of the global production networks if it adopts zero-sum approaches with regard to China, Japan or the US. After all these three countries are closely integrated markets and to make place for itself, India needs to adopt a cooperative approach with all of them. Yet, it is also true that to ensure a secure periphery for itself, New Delhi has to ensure a balance of power in relation to China in view of its border dispute and the latter’s relationship with Pakistan. This balance can only come through cooperation with the US and Japan. If this sounds complicated, it is. But whoever said that living in the world of today was easy?
The Wire December 13, 2015

The siege within

The biggest danger for India today are movements seeking to demean minorities. The project of marginalising Muslims is unworkable. You cannot sweep millions of people away, or compel them to do "ghar wapsi".

 In the spring of 1998, through some osmotic process, more than any-thing else, India Today divined that India was about to test nuclear weapons. As Defence Editor, I authored two major articles in March and April on India's nuclear weapons capacity, but even so was surprised by the tests of May 11-13. This was one of the most momentous events for the country, as well as a person like me, who had worked in the area of national security for a decade and a half.
The India Today coverage was spectacular. I wrote the lead story, but Executive Editor Prabhu Chawla scooped the country through an interview with Prime Minister Vajpayee disclosing that one of the tests was that of a thermonuclear bomb. Later, in October, Deputy Editor Raj Chengappa, already working on a book on India's strategic programmes, had occasion to do a reverse scoop and raise the possibility that the H-bomb test was possibly a fizzle For India, the denouement was quite different. Nukes were supposed to deter the adversary-principally Pakistan. Instead, after their own tests, Pakistan became more belligerent. The bombardment on the Line of Control intensified, as did the terrorist offensive against India directed from Islamabad. All this culminated in the Kargil war of 1999, something theorists said should not have happened between two nuclear-armed states. Today, but for occasional pinpricks, our frontiers are quiet. With a million-plus army, a powerful navy and air force and nuclear weapons, the chances of any combination of external enemies over-whelming us is next to zero. But when it comes to securing ourselves from within, the story is quite different.
Nuclear weapons or no nuclear weapons, the country is buffeted by contrary storms- separatist movements, ethno-linguistic quarrels, caste clashes, communal and revolutionary violence. In the past year, as its heartland is racked by an uptick of communal violence, India's internal unity seems more fragile. Minor incidents, some clearly staged for the purpose, have triggered riot and murder, reopening old wounds.
At any given moment, some part of India or the other faces a siege within.
Not for nothing did Prime Minister Modi's friend, US President Barack Obama issue an unprecedented warning during his January visit that "India will succeed so long as it is not splintered along the lines of religious faith". Whoever has managed to establish his sway over this vast and ethnically and religiously diverse country-think the Mughals-has had his hands full in just keeping control of it.

Divided we stand
 The British were the exception proving the rule, they politically united this continental sized country and, after 1857, effectively dis-armed it. Their bonus was that they could use Indian troops to further imperial policy abroad and defend the empire in the two world wars. With the British gone and the country divided, the old ethnic, linguistic and religious fissures re-emerged. The external challenges have been minor, leading to some short wars, that have been more akin to border skirmishes. In contrast, since the 1950s, India's military and police forces have been repeatedly called on to fight long campaigns against separatist insurgents in the North-east, Punjab, Kashmir and central India. The North-eastern insurgencies have never been more than an irritant for New Delhi. What really shook India was the Punjab uprising in the 1980s, followed by Jammu and Kashmir in 1990. Not surprisingly, our external adversaries, Pakistan and China, sought to widen the fissures wherever they could.
Using the Kautilyan instrumentalities of saam, daam, dand, bhed (persuade, buy, punish, and divide) India has largely prevailed. Often, it has not hesitated to use the policy of blood and iron, ignoring due judicial process. But its real success has been in its commitment, by and large, to the agreement it made with the diverse people of this country in a document called the Constitution of India. In this it not only promised all Indians equal rights but also, importantly, committed itself to provide cultural space to the minorities to live and worship as they please, maintain their own marital and dietary traditions.
India has been racked by religious violence for millennia because it has been the land of many religions and sects. Following independence, with large Muslim-majority areas hived away, things settled down. But beginning with the Jabalpur riot of 1961, communal violence has recurred time and again in the country.
The causes are many-the friction of communities living cheek by jowl, giving rise to incidents during overlapping religious festivals, love affairs and petty quarrels, more insidiously, the political mobilisation. Unfortunately, there are, more often than not, deliberate efforts to provoke and incite: the flesh of a cow or pig being thrown at a religious place, copies of the Quran/Granth Sahib burnt, rumours of sexual violence- which almost never fail to provoke despite their obvious intent.

Events like the destruction of the Babri Masjid, the Godhra train burning of kar sevaks and the consequent massacre of Muslims in Gujarat have played into those who have sought to use the instrumentality of terror- the deliberate targeting of non-combatants for political effect. Many of these are the handiwork of Pakistani jihadi groups working in tandem with its intelligence agency, the ISI.
In India Today in 1999, we reported on the depredations of Abdul Karim 'Tunda' and his low-intensity bombs terrorising Delhi's environs. Bomb blasts are nihilist acts that do not differentiate between Muslim and Hindu, or Indians and foreigners. Their aim is to weak-en the country, while paradoxically, they have probably strengthened it, and Tunda, arrest-ed just two years ago, is awaiting trial.





 Indian Muslims have been involved in other acts of terrorism such as the Bombay blasts of 1993, the train bombings of 2006 and the 2008 Delhi and Ahmedabad bombings. In most instances, the ISI played a role as a director or facilitator. Even so, the participation of Indian Muslims in terror attacks in India is microscopic. A back of the envelope count will show that the total of Indian Muslims involved in terrorist acts and conspiracies would not exceed 200 in the last three decades. India has ensured that its 170 million Muslims have resisted the blandishments of violent religious extremism which has gripped and overcome many Muslim communities elsewhere across the globe.
The Kashmir insurgency has been sullied by the killings of Kashmiri Pandits in 1990 and massacres of the Hindu community, mainly by Pakistani terrorists. But since 2006, terror strikes on minorities have receded and the current pattern of attacks seek out military or police targets. In Punjab, however, the tactics of Sikh terrorists sought to identify and kill Hindus in buses, trains and the like. Separatist movements in the North-east have by and large sought to fight the state or its instrumentalities.

The new radicalsIn 2015 it is clear that no separatist force, no matter how determined, can break the Indian Union. However, this does not mean that the Union is proof against all threats.
Although there have been no major terror attacks since 2008, the danger of strikes, aided and assisted by Islamabad, has not gone away. The infrastructure-in the form of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, Indian Mujahideen leaders, Amir Reza Khan and Riyaz Bhatkal, Dawood Ibrahim, and some Sikh terrorist leaders-remains intact in Pakistan.
Violent Islamist radicalism remains a threat notwithstanding its negligible presence today. Movements like the Daesh pose threats whose course cannot be predicted. Countering them requires a continued deft handling of Indian Muslims, who have long turned their backs on radicals.
However, this is easier said than done, given the rise of Hindutva militancy through radicals such as the Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Shiv Sena and smaller groups such as the Hindu Sena and the Abhinav Bharat. Their heightened activities have come in the wake of the political success of the Bharatiya Janata Party and is, more often than not, focus on demonising the Muslim community.
The rising tempo of mob violence targeting Muslims in the name of Hindu religious sentiment is truly the road to perdition. If the Hindutva agenda is successful, it would mean the further isolation and backwardness of Muslims, which will make them vulnerable to Islamist propaganda. So far what has kept the Indian Muslims from being swayed by Islamist propaganda is that they are united in their secular aspirations with other Indians and support of the Indian constitutional compact.
Hindutva advocates want to end this and want to push Muslims and other minorities to a second-class status by imposing disabilities on their dietary preferences, social practices and their right to live where they choose. No community will accept a second class status and, if pushed to the wall, will fight back. Given the numerical and geographical spread of the minorities, this time around there will be no partition, but a rending of the social and political fabric of the country.

Anarchy or order?With India becoming the most populous nation in the world, there will be opportunities, as well as great hazards. A large proportion of working-age people up to 2050 is our historic opportunity, provided we can make our young better educated and productive. A failure to reform our rotten education system resulting in unemployed-and unemployable-young persons, or leaving entire communities and groups behind, could give a fillip to the Maoists and radicals of all kinds, both Hindus and Muslims.
As it is, the transformation process of an overwhelmingly agrarian nation to an urban, industrial power is loaded with stress. Historically, such a process leads to dislocation and disorientation of communities everywhere in the world. Yesterday's winners could become tomorrow's losers, and women, Dalits, Muslims and tribals could find it hard to keep up with the others, because they are already much further behind. Anger and frustration could lead the losers to violence. Given the many existing fissures of India, it is all too easy for politicians-and external adversaries-to stir up troubled waters.
Importantly, by 2050, India will also be the country populated by the largest numbers of Muslims in the world. According to Riaz Hassan of the University of South Australia, the population of Hindus will rise 36 per cent-from 1.03 billion in 2010 to 1.38 billion in 2050-but that of Muslims will rise 76 per cent from 176 million to 310 million. So while Hindus will remain a majority at 77 per cent of the population, the proportion of Muslims will go up from 14 per cent to 18 per cent in 2050.
Clearly, the biggest danger that India confronts today are movements seeking to demean minorities and making them feel as though they are not quite "Indian". In practical terms, the project of marginalising Muslims is unworkable-after all, you cannot sweep hundreds of millions of people away, or compel them to do "ghar wapsi".
There is a certain vanity that India was always a nation-state and will endure as such. That's simply not true, and it discounts the enormous efforts made by a succession of leaders who fought for our independence and helped shape and preserve the country that came to being in 1947. As in Europe, there has been a certain civilisational area-call it Indian or Indo-Islamic-but that did not necessarily have to yield a single nation, and it did not, because today there are already three states in what was British India.
An alternate vision of what we may have been comes from the plan that the British government approved in May 1947 envisaging the transfer of power to individual British provinces and partitioning Bengal and Punjab. The 560-odd Princely States could join any of these units and eventually, they could work out a way of reconstituting themselves as a single, or five or ten Indias.
As is well known Nehru blew his top when he was shown this plan on the eve of its announcement and compelled Lord Mountbatten to revert to the older Partition proposal that led to the creation of an India and Pakistan on August 14/15 1947.
India is a young nation, just 67 years old. It has taken hard work to maintain its physical and conceptual integrity. The battle has not quite been won. Challenges remain in the North-east, J&K, and the jungles of Chhattisgarh, and newer ones are emerging.
It is fashionable today to diss the Congress party's leadership in the post independence period. But were it not for Sardar Patel's leadership of the Union Home Ministry we would not have had the physical India of today. And were it not for Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's intellectual catholicity, we would not have managed to shape the sense of nationhood that has transcended ethnicity, caste and religion. His gift of secularism was not just an intellectual conceit, but the key ingredient in fabricating and preserving the modern Indian nation.
India Today Anniversary Issue December 10, 2015

Friends Again ?

The resumption of high-level dialogue between India and Pakistan ends a period of discontinuity in the relations between the two countries which have been marked by a steady process of engagement since the mid-1980s, despite periods of estrangement, such as after the nuclear tests of 1998, the Kargil War of 1999 and Operation Parakaram in 2002.

The Modi government came to power in New Delhi pledging a muscular approach to relations with Islamabad, which meant drawing new red-lines, such as the refusal to allow the Hurriyat to talk to Pakistani representatives, as well as a ferocious response to Pakistan’s ceasefire violations on the Jammu border. The Modi government seemed determined to isolate Islamabad by refusing to have any diplomatic contact, except on its own terms.

However, the government has realised that while it can control the narrative at home and be seen by all as a tough and nationalist-minded government, it cannot do so abroad. Most countries saw New Delhi’s actions as somewhat over the top. As for the border firing, they could not understand why India, which is the prime beneficiary of the ceasefire, was going out of its way to deliver a response that could lead to its breakdown.
More important, in 2014-2015, Islamabad re-emerged in the calculations of the big powers as the key to peace in Afghanistan. The US and China looked to Islamabad to ‘deliver’ the Taliban to the peace process, and even Russia, India’s old friend, began building bridges to Pakistan. This is as much a consequence of Pakistan’s geopolitical location, as the skill with which it has conducted its diplomacy.
Just a few years ago, Pakistan was being written off as a failing, if not failed, state. But ever since it picked up courage to take on the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and build bridges to the government in Kabul, it has returned into global favour. The key factor in this has been the arrival of Raheel Sharif as the Chief of Army Staff. Not only has he pressed home the battle against the TTP, but also taken up the challenge to restore order in Karachi. After initial tension arising out of Nawaz Sharif’s desire to go after Pervez Musharraf who overthrew his government and imprisoned him in 1999, the Pakistan Army and Nawaz have worked out a modus vivendi, and function more like a coalition government than autonomous, conflicting institutions. The Army chief defers to the Prime Minister, but in turn, Nawaz leaves matters relating to security to Raheel and focuses more on the economy and related issues.
The sequential visits of the two Sharifs to Washington DC, in October and November this year, were instructive. Nawaz went first and was feted by the White House, itself a sign of how the US is once again looking benignly at Pakistan. He was followed by the General in November. Raheel met Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry and Defence Secretary Ashton Carter.
Clearly, far from being isolated Pakistan is being seen as a counter-terrorism partner and the lynchpin in the making of peace in Afghanistan. There have been carefully placed rumours about Pakistan-US nuclear deal.
The Americans have agreed to sell eight new F-16 fighters to Islamabad, and will probably resume military aid.
The one country that failed to see the signs of the shift in Islamabad’s standing in the international community was India. The government and Prime Minister Modi kept up a loud drumbeat on the need to combat terrorism through the past year. The rise of the Islamic State, and the attacks in Paris and elsewhere, ensure that terrorism is a major issue of concern to the world. However, the international community knows well that when Indian leaders talk about terrorism, it is really a means of hectoring Pakistan. When they look at the figures, they cannot but see that the incidence of terrorism and militancy originating in Pakistan and targeting India has gone down sharply in recent years.
It is for this reason, India’s friends abroad have pressured the Modi government to modify its hard-line Pakistan policy. A warning of sorts was visible in the inclusion in the US-Pakistan Joint Statement in the wake of the Nawaz Sharif visit that called for “a sustained and resilient dialogue process between two neighbours aimed at resolving all outstanding territorial and other disputes, including Kashmir.”
New Delhi can be content with the fact that in the last couple of months there have been other tectonic shifts which buttress its ability to engage Islamabad. The announcement of the death of Mullah Omar and the resulting power struggle has put a question mark on Pakistan’s ability to deliver the ceasefire in Afghanistan. The heightened Taliban bomb campaign in Kabul and the attack in Kunduz have brought home the limits of the Pakistani capacity to manage the Taliban to President Ghani. He has very pointedly moved to balance his earlier approach which was tilted towards Islamabad by reaching out to New Delhi.
India and Pakistan need to have an adult conversation on Afghanistan. By now, Pakistan should know that the idea of gaining ‘strategic depth’ by meddling in Afghanistan is not just a fool’s errand, but downright dangerous policy. By virtue of its long land border, Pakistan has important interests in the stability of Afghanistan. New Delhi should reassure Islamabad that it will not use Afghanistan to destabilise Pakistan, provided Islamabad does not return to a policy of using Afghan territory to set up training camps for terrorists targeting India.
It is in the interests of India and Pakistan, as well as other regional states that Afghanistan’s long agony is ended. The Heart of Asia Conference, which will be held in Islamabad on December 9 and which New Delhi will host next year, provides an important multilateral platform in which win-win solutions can be found.
Mid Day December 8, 2015

Afghanistan is the real challenge: With the new thaw in Indo-Pakistan relations, thoughts turn to the next point of contention

THE meeting between National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and his new Pakistani counterpart Lt Gen (retd) Nasir Khan Janjua, marks the beginning of a thaw in India-Pakistan relations. 

This is likely to be followed by the participation of External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj in the Heart of Asia Conference in Islamabad on December 8. 

The meeting between the two NSAs, accompanied by their respective foreign secretaries, marks the resumption of a constructive discourse between the two countries, which had been derailed by needless controversy over the agenda in September this year. 

According to a joint statement, the NSA discussions covered all issues including Jammu & Kashmir. The carefully staged meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his counterpart Nawaz Sharif at the side lines of the Climate conference in Paris last week was the first indicator of the changing India-Pakistan scenario. 

Ties 

Parallel to this has been the improvement of New Delhi’s ties with President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan. Minus these developments, Modi would have found it difficult to meet his commitment to attend the SAARC summit in Islamabad.

This will be the first prime ministerial visit by an Indian leader since 2004, when PM Vajpayee went to Pakistan for a similar purpose, but which led to a major bilateral process in its side lines. 

 It would also have damaged India’s efforts to play a significant role in Afghanistan which include hosting the 14-nation Heart of Asia Conference in New Delhi next year. Stabilising Afghanistan and peace with Pakistan form a continuum for Indian policy makers because failure in either country has the potential to destabilise the ties with the other. 

The challenge for India and the global community is to persuade Pakistan to deliver a ceasefire in Afghanistan by pressuring the Taliban. Kunduz attack in September showed that the Taliban had not changed. 

According to the Amnesty International, the short Taliban occupation resulted in mass murder, gang rapes and house-tohouse searches by Taliban death squads targeting women activists. While the US and NATO have extended their mission till the end of 2016, they cannot guarantee peace there. As it is, Taliban infighting is making the process difficult for Pakistan as well. India’s activities in Afghanistan, especially its development work has been under the security umbrella of the US-NATO-Afghan forces. 

India has committed $2 billion in aid to Kabul and its annual trade is around $680 million which can increase manifold if the Afghan-Pakistan Trade and Transit Agreement (APTTA) is worked out to permit India-Afghan trade through Pakistan. Improved ties with Islamabad can lead to a breakthrough here which has the potential of transforming the India-Pakistan- Afghanistan relationship. 

Wishlist

Before Kunduz, President Ghani reached out to Pakistan and there were reports of deep engagement between the two states at the cost of India. However, after Kunduz, there is a chill in Pakistan-Afghanistan ties. 

The NSA of Afghanistan Mohammed Hanif Atmar recently travelled to New Delhi and had extensive talks with Doval and also put up a wishlist that includes Kabul’s request for military supplies. 

Actually the Heart of Asia process does offer a window of convergence for India and Pakistan to work together. Likewise New Delhi and Islamabad may cooperate in combating terrorism and easing trade barrier through their new membership to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a China-led security initiative. 

There are things that Pakistan would be willing to do in a wider multilateral framework with India which it will resist doing bilaterally. One example of this is the TAPI project. 

Refugees 

Given its long land border, the existence of the Pakistani Taliban and the huge number of Afghan refugees it hosts, Pakistan has great stakes in the Afghan peace process. 

We need to recognise this, as well as understand that our stakes are comparatively smaller than those countries which have land borders with Afghanistan. 

This means Islamabad also has big responsibilities, principally in dealing with the Taliban and regaining the trust of the Afghans and letting the peace process be Afghan-led, and not manipulated by Islamabad. 

India’s principal interest is to ensure that Afghanistan does not resume its role as a staging area for groups like the LeT to stage attacks on India. 

Accompanying this is our desire for longer term peace and stability in the AfPak region which can only come through closer economic integration of SAARC states. 

The NSAs and foreign secretaries meeting in Bangkok signal a new direction for Indian policy which was getting needlessly securitised by privileging terrorism over all other issues. The Modi-Nawaz and the Bangkok meetings signal the return to a more balanced approach which will, no doubt, be challenged by forces who seek to disrupt India-Pakistan relations. This is something we must be prepared for at all times. 

Mail Today December 6, 2015

Modi versus Terror

What’s with Prime Minister Narendra Modi ? In the past two weeks, in various speeches, he has raised the standard of combating terrorism. True, this is the period in which horrific attacks were carried out in Paris, Bamako and Beirut, but nothing unusual has happened in India. Indeed, there has been no major development on the terrorism front in India since 2008 which saw the Mumbai attacks and the bombing campaign of the so-called Indian Mujahideen.

Wherever he goes, his emphasis, at least as reported in Indian  newspapers, seems to be on fighting terrorism. Speaking at the 18-member East Asia Summit (EAS) in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday, he called for “a new global resolve and new strategies” to combat terrorism. Later addressing the diaspora, he termed terrorism as “the biggest threat to the world.”

Even before the Paris attack,  Modi had flagged the issue when he told British parliamentarians that “The world must speak in one voice and act in unison to combat this challenge of our times” and called for the adoption of a comprehensive convention on international terrorism at the United Nations “without delay.”

Following the Paris attack, the Prime Minister joined world leaders in condemning the attack and in an intervention during the G-20 working dinner on November 15, he spoke out emphatically against terrorism. Referring to the rise of the IS, he pointed out that “old structures of terrorism [read Lashkar-e-Tayyeba] remain” and that “there are countries that still use it as an instrument of state policy [read Pakistan]”.

This is  surprising because in the last seven years Pakistan-backed terrorism has actually declined sharply.  A look at the statistics in the South Asia Terrorism Portal show that the bulk of what passes off as terrorist violence in India is related to the Maoists in central India and the various insurgents of the North-east. In Jammu & Kashmir, violence aided by Pakistan is down sharply. As compared to 103 security personnel killed by Maoists and in the North-east, the total is 38 in J&K and 8 in other parts of the country.

 The story was similar the year before, in 2014. Some 110 security personnel were killed in central India and the North-east, as compared to 51 in J&K and zero in other parts of India. Those killed in other parts of India is an important category since this usually includes terrorists who operate under the direction of Pakistani parties. But the last time this category meant something was in 2008 when 337 people died in other parts of India, with 166 being killed in the Mumbai attacks and others in bombing campaigns in New Delhi, Jaipur and Ahmedabad.

Now, it is well known that the Maoist violence and North-east issues have domestic origins and are not quite connected to the global terrorism that the PM seems to be talking about. J&K is a category in itself, but it is just last week that K Rajindra, the Director General of police said at a press meet that both crime and terrorism were declining in the state and that the instances of Islamic State flags were more an attention grabbing stunt than any indication of the spread of the Daesh ideology.

So, what accounts for Modi’s over-the-top attempt to become a world leader  in  fighting the terrorist menace everywhere ? In all fairness, one part of it has to do with the events of the times, notably the Paris attack. But while it is one thing for New Delhi to condemn the attack, there is little India can do to assist France and the international community to fight the Daesh, since India is itself not affected by the Islamic State phenomenon. Modi’s prescription, made in the speech to the East Asia summit, that there was need to delink terrorism and religion is misleading, because the Daesh, indeed, has everything to do with Islam, or an interpretation of it. It is important to understand the challenge of Islamism, given the nature of Islam as a faith which adheres to a book which is considered the word of God and which does contain statements and declarations that have encouraged the Islamic State to enslave and behead people and visit all kinds of barbarity on them.

One answer that comes to mind is that terrorism is proving to be a convenient handle for Modi to bash Pakistan. Terrorism has clearly become the most important filter through which the Modi government views Pakistan.   As we have indicated that this seems a bit odd given the decline of Pakistan-backed violence. Indeed, this fact could have served to engage Islamabad, instead, a loud campaign has been launched which does not seem to be getting much traction anywhere.

The other is that it helps Modi to paper over his other failures, notably in carrying out the transformative reforms he had promised the country and the world. Given his outsize self-image, he therefore seems to be keen to use it to establish his standing as a global leader of consequence. But he is ploughing a path which has been well trod, especially on the issue of terrorism. The global convention on  terrorism that he has been raising time and again recently is a measure that India has been pushing in vain since 1996 and we are no nearer to it today, than we were then.

If Modi wants the attention and adulation he received in the past year to continue, he has to avoid the short-cuts of ringing declarations and slogans. He needs to buckle down to the self-same reforms that made India--and he Modi as its leader-- attractive to the global community in the first place. 

Mid Day November 24 2015

The lesson from Bihar

Elections in India are always wondrous things. Almost everyone comes a cropper predicting outcomes. But there are some underlying lessons that no one, especially a politician, should never forget. The first among these is that the Indian voter has an infinite capacity to surprise.
Second, and equally important, he/she does not like to be intimidated. For the average Indian, voting is a form of empowerment. Election day is just about the only time he/she gets to tell off politicians who, otherwise, treat them cynically. Anyone who seeks to undermine this feels the voters’ wrath. Indira Gandhi learnt it the hard way when she lost every seat in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in 1977. Through some osmotic communication, electors decided that the Congress party’s tyranny,  was simply not acceptable. Something similar seems to have happened in Bihar, where within the space of a year, the National Democratic Alliance strategy of frightening the voter with a barely concealed anti-Muslim message.

The electorate has very clearly told the BJP was that they had elected the Modi government not to bring some version of Hindutva Raj, but to bring economic and governance changes that would enhance the quality of their economic and personal lives.  

A subtext of the outcome is that the electorate, especially the  majority Hindus,  will not accept violent religious extremists of their community  disrupting the unity of their country. There were several reports of attempts to fan communal violence in Bihar, with the typical stratagems of throwing body parts of cows and pigs into temple and mosque premises. The target district was Bhagalpur which had seen horrific communal violence in 1989. But this time around the people would have none of it, they refused to get provoked.

Hopefully some of the calmness shown by Biharis when confronted with efforts at communal provocation will also be visible in Uttar Pradesh. According to Home Ministry figures, there has been a sharp uptick in communal violence across the country in the first six months of this year. Most 68 of the 330 incidents  were in UP and 41 in Bihar, and it does not take a genius to figure out just why this is happening. The 2013  communal violence in Muzaffarnagar brought out the manner in which the BJP and its fellow Parivar—the Bajrang Dal, Vishwaa Hindu PArishad and RSS-- successfully used a combination of tactics  to deepen  Hindu-Muslim friction to polarize the electorate.

The very obvious consequence of the Bihar outcome is that the BJP and the Modi government are at a fork in the road. They can, if they wish pursue the path they have taken in the past year of trying to deepen divisions in the country, marginalizing minorities and stifling dissent. The RSS has long believed that their best opportunity lies in polarizing the Hindu community and thus providing the BJP the massed votes of the overwhelming majority of the country’s population. However their version of Hinduism is not the Sanatan Dharma as we know it, but a mirror of Pakistani Islam, where some self-appointed mullahs dictate what is kosher, and where violence is used to enforce their diktat (fatwas). Just as Pakistani mullahs are obsessed with India, so, too, are the advocates of Hindutva driven by Pakistan and Pakistanis.

It is not so hard for Modi to find his way because it has  been shown earlier by a leader much taller than him—Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Though both were products of the RSS machine, Vajpayee had a much longer period in which to carve out a distinct identity for himself which positioned him very cleverly at a place where the Sangh needed him more than he needed them. And when required, he simply ignored them. Unfortunately for Modi, his temperament is quite different from that of Vajpayee, and this becomes manifest in combative self-obsessed personality and inability to reach out and reassure minorities that he means what he says when he insists that his holy book is the Constitution of India.

He needs to understand that upholding the Constitution is not just some legal compulsion that he has, but also a practical one. Those who drafted the Constitution that has served us well for 65 years understood that this continental-sized country with numerous religious and ethno-linguistic divisions could only be kept together through the compact they devised. If the Indian Union is going to be about giving primacy to Hindus, why should states like Arunachal, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Jammu & Kashmir and Punjab remain in it ? And why should millions of other Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists and Christians accept this ?

Modi will have to work hard to reclaim his original mandate which is in danger of being pulled apart by his friends and enemies. This,  to repeat, was to bring about transformational changes in the country’s economy and governance. It was to attack corruption, reform ministries and provide the leadership to give the country  sustained and high rates of economic growth.

Setbacks are not unusual in politics. But what marks a successful politicians is what he makes of his defeats, rather than how he celebrates his success. This is testing time for Modi, but he alone holds the power to determine how he will fare. 

Mid Day November 10, 2015