PM's Baloch reference only for Bhakts

Independence Day is an annual occasion for celebration — and of reflection — in a sense of summing up the year gone by, and setting benchmarks for the year to come. We don’t have much to celebrate this year; we’ll celebrate the good monsoon only in the coming year.
But there are other downers to ruin the mood. Despite two years of promise, the economy remains bumpy, tensions in the countryside exacerbated by triumphalist Hindutva hard-liners pose a grave risk to the social peace of large parts of northern India, and the situation in Jammu & Kashmir is, perhaps, the worst since the 2008 Amarnath yatra agitation.






Narendra Modi was elected prime minister to transform the economic life and governance of the country. He says he remains committed to those goals though the problems are obvious. Though the economy is on the mend, the recovery process is taking an uncommonly long time and has yet to gain momentum. The persistent refusal of private sector investment to put down serious money in the economic plans of the country is leading to what is being called ‘growth without investment’ which is now accompanying jobless growth.
For the common man, there is as yet no respite from inflation with almost all staples like dal and vegetables selling at astronomical prices. A consumption bump of sorts will come with the release of the arrears of the 7th Pay Commission, but it is well known that this is the worst way of trying to achieve high economic growth.
The problem of governance has emerged with the rise of the gau rakshaks in states ruled by the BJP such as Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, or where the party is a member of the coalition, as in Punjab. The issue, which pits the upper caste Hindus against the Muslim minority and Dalits, has the potential to destroy India’s rural economy and social fabric. Some of this has been recognised by the PM in his Independence Day address; the only problem is that while he senses the political danger of alienating the Dalit community, he sees no need to address the equally dangerous effort to marginalise the Muslim population.
The situation in the foreign policy front is equally dismal. New Delhi seems to have lost the plot in dealing with its difficult customers —Pakistan and China. There is an argument that, given the way that these two countries have pushed around India in the past, the Modi government’s hawkish tit-for-tat approach is a long-needed corrective. But foreign policy is not about satisfying the national ego and assuaging national angst. It is about preserving and extending one’s national interests. It is here that the sheer negativism of the approach stands out. The PM’s references to Balochistan may have gladdened the hearts of his bhakts, but they are likely to achieve little, other than to satisfy our ego. No matter how you look at it, no country in the world questions Balochistan’s accession to Pakistan, whereas virtually no country in the world categorically recognises Jammu & Kashmir’s accession to India.
The border conversation with China or the effort to pin down Pakistan on the issue of terrorism have little to show for themselves. There seems to be alarming subtext in a lot of government declarations that India would not mind a bit of a scrap, if push came to shove. The least that our chicken hawks should consider is the lamentable state of our military which could well land us with egg on our face, were we to seek some ill-advised military adventure.
Indeed, when doing the sums on Independence Day, the one area we find that the plus side of the ledger is empty, is that of the defence services. The much vaunted Make in India is proving to be like the proverbial tale of the blind men and the elephant. Figuring out just what ‘Make in India’ means is proving to be equally problematic. But that is the least of the worries, the bigger ones relate to the delays in carrying out the deep restructuring and reform of the military services themselves.
The performance of the Prime Minister himself has been less than stellar. It took him four weeks to react to the Una incident which took place in a state that he had run since 2002. However, the hopes of the country continue to rest in his leadership. He remains the premier political figure of the country and the citizens continue to place their trust in him. His own inclination is to avoid controversial issues and seek the high ground where he can. He now seems to be adopting a strategy of bashing Pakistan to seize the nationalist high ground with his core constituency at home. The problem is that verbally chastising Islamabad is one thing, but trying to execute those policies on the ground are a recipe for disaster.
As it is, there is a feeling that his effort to consolidate his political position by eliminating as many Opposition ruled governments in states, and winning as many state assembly elections as he can, have detracted from the ability of the government to deliver on its promises of good governance and economic growth. But if in the consolidation of his government the constitutional and social order are damaged, there could be long-term negative consequences for the country.
Mid Day August 15, 2016

Modi's focus on Pakistan in J&K is one-dimensional

At a public level, the Modi government has articulated a desire to deal with the Jammu & Kashmir issue within the parameters outlined by Atal Bihari Vajpayee -  “Insaniyat, jamhuriyat, Kashmiriyat”.But in reality the government is working along quite distinct lines from those taken by past governments.

The outline of the Modi strategy rests firmly on the belief that without Pakistan there would be no problem in Jammu & Kashmir.

Modi's strategy in Jammu & Kashmir rests firmly on the belief that without Pakistan there would be no problem in Jammu & Kashmir.(Pictured: A masked Kashmiri holds up the Pakistani flag during a protest in Srinagar, J&K)

So, the government’s focus will be on Pakistan’s misdeeds.

Terrorist actions will get a tough response. The government will seek to isolate Pakistan across the world as an irresponsible state sponsor of terrorism.

Confusion

There were some confusing moments during Modi's recent speech about the need to talk about all its four parts - Jammu, Kashmir Valley, Ladakh, and POK.

Just why this should be done, considering there are no real problems in Jammu and Ladakh is not clear.

If the PM is signalling the need to focus on regaining POK, then he should say so - it is a perfectly legitimate aim.

It would give India a huge geo-political leverage, although I am not sure whether the BJP would be happy to see the proportion of Muslim voters rise sharply in the state and the country.

At some level, it seems the issue is of “Kashmir” - the real estate - in opposition to Kashmir - the place - where millions of people live, the majority of them Muslims. 

Holding on to the real estate is fine but when it comes to the people, especially the ones who are agitating, there is less clarity.

The PM is unhappy, as he noted in his speech that - “children are not able to study, apple produce is not able to reach to the mandis, shopkeepers are not getting their daily income and government offices are not able to implement works of public interest”.

But who are the agitators? Are they dupes of the Pakistanis? Overground workers of the jihadi organisations? Or, to use the favourite phrase of our politicians, “misguided youth”?

We don’t know how they will be dealt with, because we don’t know how the government classifies them.

Sure, as a senior security official told Mail Today on Tuesday - there will be restraint “in dealing with citizens”, though “terrorists will not be spared”.

The problem is that neither the PM, nor the security official, gave any indication as to whether those involved in the current agitation fell in the “citizen” or “terrorist” bracket - and herein lies the real problem. 

Complexity

Once again, the PM spoke of the Vajpayee path. But that path was much more complex than the one we are seeing unfold under Modi and Doval.

Pakistan-origin violence was far more intense in the Vajpayee years, yet he reached out to Islamabad and succeeded in obtaining a ceasefire on the LoC in 2003.

This had a huge impact in reducing the casualties of service personnel and civilians in the border zone and took away a crucial cover under which the militants infiltrated from Pakistan.

Importantly it enabled India to build a border fence which has curtailed the movements of men and weaponry.Another key effort of the Vajpayee government was to seek a ceasefire with the Hizbul Mujahideen.

Kashmiri protesters throw stones towards Indian government forces

The government took the bold step of declaring a ceasefire to facilitate the process in 2000.

Just why and how this was sabotaged is another story, suffice to say, the opponents of the efforts do not live only on the other side of the LoC.

All this enabled the first genuinely fair elections to the J&K Assembly in 2002.

What we have today is a one dimensional policy of focusing on Pakistan as the sole cause of the problems in Jammu & Kashmir.

So, the government seems determined to take the war to the Pakistani camp.

Whether or not it can succeed is another matter.

+5

The Modi government plans to isolate Pakistan across the world as an irresponsible state sponsor of terrorism. (Pictured: Masked Kashmiri protesters throw stones at police).

Few results

The thinly-veiled anti-Pakistan edge of the Modi government’s global anti-terrorist campaign has yielded few results in the past two years.

Far from being isolated, Pakistan has succeeded in rebuilding its American ties, strengthened its Chinese ties, and established a new bridge to Russia.

Since Modi is the Prime Minister of India and the head our government, he is fully entitled to take a new approach to a chronic problem.

A caveat that emerges from his approach is whether the government have thought through the end game in relation to Pakistan and J&K - or are they merely retailing slogans under the guise of policy.

Mail Today August 14, 2016

Modi Will Not Get Very Far in Kashmir By Pretending the Problem Doesn’t Exist

The Modi government’s strategy for what are, with some understatement, called “law and order” issues, work on three tracks. The first is of  delivering homilies,the second of being relentlessly tough in all circumstances, sometimes more in words than in deeds. Union home minister Rajnath Singh’s statement blaming Pakistan for the Jammu and Kashmir disturbances appears to have created a third track, where the government holds Islamabad responsible for the ongoing crisis.
So, the prime minister’s response to the “gau rakshak” rampage was the homily on the necessity of differentiating between  fake gau rakshaks and, presumably, the good ones. And in his over-the-top style, Modi made a grandiloquent declaration that “if you have to shoot, shoot me, but not my Dalit brothers.” No one is about to take up Modi at his word, but he knows that. It is another addition to the list of his famous jumlas, or false promises. On Kashmir, he carefully spoke about the national love for Kashmir – not for Kashmiris though – and somewhat unconvincingly repeated the Vajpayee formula for dealing with the issues through “insaniyat, jamurihat and Kashmiriyat.”
The government’s tough track has been visible in dealing with Pakistan, the Patidar agitation in Gujarat and the Maoists of Chattisgarh. And now it is showing up in the handling of Jammu & Kashmir, where over 55 persons have been killed and 1,000 injured and there has been a continuous curfew in many parts of the state for over a month in the face of what are essentially violent civil protests. The only answer the government seems to have is more of the same, and now there is talk of handing over parts of the state to the Army.

 

The third track was on display on Wednesday when the government got the National Investigation Agency to put out the confession of a captured Lashkar-e-Tayyeba terrorist, Bahadur Ali, in order to suggest that the whole agitation in the Valley is being run out of Pakistan  and that LeT cadres have been asked to throw grenades at security forces while mingling among civil protestors. Actually, till now there has been no recorded instance of a police officer being killed through firing from the mob or grenade attacks. Confessions are not even considered evidence in Indian courts, so the whole purpose of the NIA’s exercise was part of a political theatre to back up the home minister’s performance on Kashmir during the debate in the Lok Sabha.

What’s missing is statecraft
Anyone familiar with Kashmir knows that there are at least 150 hard-core militants – about half the number being Pakistanis, probably belonging to the LeT – in the Valley at any given time. Also, that July, August and September are months of high infiltration when Pakistan sends its replenishments in terms of men and material into Kashmir. A Bahadur Ali by himself means little; there have been scores, if not hundreds before him. We have killed many, caught a few and in that scale he is not particularly significant. Pakistanis do use sleeper assets, but at a time of their own choosing and there are no indications – except claims by the authorities – that the disturbances are being masterminded by Islamabad.
All this is surprising, considering that the government Modi heads traces its DNA to the sages of ancient India, none of whom is more revered than Chanakya,  whose niti (policy), they believe is the cure all for India’s sorry modern-day plight.  Both India’s adversaries and its votaries attribute to the legendary Mauryan adviser, the strategy of handling politically difficult issues by an amalgam of  saam (persuasion), daam (purchase), dand (punishment), bhed (division).
Even a cursory survey of the past 69 years of the history of the republic, most of them under the rule of the Congress party, will show that these have, indeed, been the principal means through which this famously diverse nation has been kept as one.
It was persuasion that ended the separatist threat in Tamil Nadu whose residue is still visible in the state’s opposition to the GST. In the North-east, military means have been combined with generous largesse to the elite and in a region replete with tribal identities, sowing division, based on these identities has not been difficult. New Delhi’s response to the Mizo rebellion was harsh, but it quickly changed tracks and resorted to a successful strategy of purchase and suasion, in an operation that gave current NSA Ajit Doval his reputation.
Separatism in Punjab was scary, if only because it was so close to the heartland. But fortunately it did not have much political support because of its use of terrorist tactics and so a policy of relentless punishment finished off the Khalistani movement.
J&K, being a big headache, has seen all four strategies being liberally employed at all times. The huge dand (punishment) component does not require much elucidation;  suffice to say it numbers hundreds of thousands of soldiers and policemen and it has, in the past, seen the extensive use of torture and extra-judicial executions. The bhed part has been manifested in the successful, if dangerous, strategies of raising counter-militant forces in the mid-1990s to take on the militancy.
Suasion has been forgotten in the mists of time when Pandit Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah signed the Delhi Agreement in 1952, or when Mirza Afzal Beg and G. Parthasarthy worked out an accord in 1974 under the auspices of Indira Gandhi and the Sheikh. Note, both the agreements were not between individuals, but between the Union of India and the putative representatives of the state of Jammu & Kashmir.
Daam has wide currency across the state and was actually confirmed by no less than the minister of state for external affairs,  General V.K. Singh who acknowledged, after an initial “misunderstood” statement, that money was paid to some politicians “to win hearts and minds of people.”  Subsequently, A.S. Dulat, who headed both the R&AW and the Intelligence Bureau,  bluntly disclosed that no one was immune to bribes in J&K, not the militants, not politicians and not the separatists. “Over the years, they have all been paid by intelligence agencies.”
The strategies employed by the first NDA government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, are both instructive and illuminating. Even while seeking to engage with Pakistan, despite obstacles like the Kargil back-stab, Vajpayee remained focused on the need to fix the Kashmir problem. The most dramatic manifestation of this was the 2000 ceasefire negotiated with the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, which could have led to an end of Kashmir’s armed militancy. Unfortunately, here too, there was an element of back-stabbing from within the system and without, and the initiative failed.  Yet, Vajpayee captured hearts and minds in J&K so effectively that today, a decade and a half later, people, including Modi, still swear by his policies – located as they were, within the bounds of insaniyat (humanity).

Terrorists and militants are not the same
What is striking is that the Modi government’s only response  has been “dand”. True, ministers have decried the havoc caused by shot-guns, but police-bureaucrats have opined that there is no alternative to these weapons. More forces have been rushed and there is talk of giving the Army a larger role in policing the Valley. And now we have the NIA suggesting that the whole thing is actually being run by Islamabad. No doubt Pakistan is fishing in troubled waters, but it doesn’t have to do much; the shoddy handling of the issue by New Delhi is doing the needful.
The main way of doing this is to refuse to acknowledge that the issue has local roots. Another is the insistence that Burhan Wani was a “terrorist” and not a “militant”. Clearly,  the government does not want to give any quarter to the sentiment that has caused the state to be in a state of turmoil for the last 30 years. The problem with using emotive  rather than analytical categories is that you usually end up with the wrong answers.
Like it or not, there is a difference between a “terrorist” and a “militant”. The latter fights against the state and its symbols – the police, army etc – while the former targets innocents. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the Mumbai attacks of 2008 where men, women and children were targeted was an act of pure terrorism. Whereas the Pathankot attack, which targeted a military facility comes under the category of militancy. There is no evidence that Wani targeted, or intended to target, non-combatants. Terror is not an “ism” as such but a method – where the perpetrator, by attacking unarmed and helpless people, aims to overawe them, and thus the state.
Both the terrorist and the militant live by the sword, and they must be defeated by the sword, just as Wani was. There is, however,  a difference: You cannot negotiate with a terrorist, but you can with a militant, just as Vajpayee sought to do in 2000.
Indeed, Chankaya niti suggests that the sword alone cannot be the instrumentality. A wise state uses a mix of strategies depending on the situation and common sense suggests that the most drastic is adopted only when there is no option. Unfortunately, in the current situation, daam is not working. You can buy off politicians and militants, but you cannot buy off a mob. Neither will bhed work with the centrists and mainstream politicians scared to speak given the current public mood.
The problem of persuasion, or saam, is more complex. The fact that the BJP as a party believes in closer integration of J&K with the Indian Union makes the use of saam even more complicated. Indeed, a key ideological shibboleth is its belief in the need to delete Article 370 from the constitution – the one that gives J&K a unique relationship with the Indian Union. So there can be no question of addressing the sentiment of the separatists and their supporters that they lack something by way of self-governance. This despite the fact that the same government is willing to address the sentiment of an equally important group – the separatist Nagas led by the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah).
So this leaves dand, then, as the only way out. Home minister Rajnath Singh is in any case always inclined to give a “muh torh jawaab” (‘jaw breaking’ response)  to adversaries. Brilliant tacticians like Doval have no strategy except to declare that India would exercise utmost restraint with  “our own citizens”, even while coming down hard on “terrorists” –  a distinction that does little or no justice to the situation obtaining in Jammu and Kashmir. So we seem destined to live with the self-defeating, self-destructive option of dand, and more dand.
The Wire August 11, 2016

Rajnath's visit to Islamabad

The outcome of the Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh’s visit to Islamabad to attend the 7^th ministerial conference of SAARC home and interior ministers last week was predictable. Given the hostile climate in Pakistan, nothing much was expected from the visit, which Singh may have well decided to make to deny comfort to terrorist leader Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and Kashmiri separatist Syed Salahuddin who had said that they would prevent him from setting foot in Pakistan.On the other hand, it is possible that Prime Minister Modi, who would have ultimately taken the decision on sending Singh, took a chance in doing so, with a view of  signaling to the world that India will not be found wanting in reaching out to Pakistan, despite the  somewhat difficult conditions prevailing. 

Third, the government of India may have calculated that in sending the Union Home Minister to Pakistan at this juncture, they would send a signal to the separatist agitation in the Valley that notwithstanding their passion, it was business as usual for New Delhi and Islamabad.

But for this very last-listed reason, Islamabad would not have wanted the visit. At a time when Jammu & Kashmir is rocking with civil protest and there is a chance that this will aid the revival of the militancy, Pakistan would not want to show that it was conducting business with New Delhi. As the SAARC chair, Pakistan could not ask Singh not to come, but it could show that it would deal with  India in a minimalist fashion.  

In any case, whatever may have been Nawaz Sharif’s desires and calculations, the Pakistani military appears to be clear that they do not want any thing to do with India. On one hand, they are focusing on the developments in Afghanistan, on the other, they believe that India (read Ajit Doval) is trying to light little fires in their backyard, given the uptick of activities of the Sindhudesh Liberation Army and the violence in Karachi.  

As for Kashmir, they probably believe that everything was going for them in the situation where the waning militancy had taken on a new life without much effort on their part. So, it was important to signal to the separatist constituency in the Valley, that Islamabad, if not Rawalpindi, was firmly behind them, ready once again to fight to the last Kashmiri.

So, even the minumum courtesies were not offered the minister’s visit was blacked out by the Pakistani media on instructions from above. So, the Pakistani media did not give coverage to the visit or the Singh’s speech. The Pakistani Interior Minister took the bizzare position of boycotting the lunch that he himself was hosting for the gathered delegates so as not to be seen dining with an Indian minister. In any event, Singh decided to skip the event as well

Singh did what he could under the circumstances which is to use the opportunity to needle Islamabad. “Terrorism,” he declared in his plenary speech, “remains the biggest challenge and threat to our peace.” He did not name Pakistan, but no one would have doubted who he was alluding to when he said that “Those who provide support, encouragement, sanctuary, safe haven or any assistance to terrorism or terrorists must be isolated.” In case, people didn’t quite get it, he added,  “Strongest possible steps need to be taken not only against terrorists and terrorist organisations but also those individuals, institutions, organisations or nations that support them.”

The gulf between India and Pakistan was obvious from the fact that in his remarks, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif claimed “remarkable gains” in Pakistan’s fight against terrorism through Operation Zarb-e-Azb and the implementation of the National Action Plan against terrorism adopted last year. Pakistan, he said remained committed to “jointly work with the SAARC member states in fighting terrorism, corruption and organised crime, among others.”

Singh’s indirect response was contained in his speech and also the next day Friday, on the floor of Parliament when he  pointed to the fact that Pakistan’s commitment to regional cooperation on terrorism was questionable. He noted  that Pakistan was yet to ratify the SAARC Convention on Mutual Assistance on Criminal matters, or give its concurrence on setting up of SAARC Terrorist Offences Monitoring Desk (STOMD) and the SAARC Drug Offences Monitoring Desk (SOMD). There was a touch of exasperation in his tone when he declared that despite repeated efforts by Indian leaders this neighbour refuses to mend its ways (yeh padosi manta hi nahi hai).

The Modi government’s Pakistan policy has seen a great deal of ups and downs. It began with Prime Minister Sharif accepting the invite to participate in Modi’s inauguration in 2014. It peaked when Modi made a surprise visit to Lahore to greet his counterpart Nawaz Sharif on his birthday on December 25 last year. The two leaders walked hand-in-hand and interacted with Sharif’s family on the occasion of the marriage of Sharif’s grand-daughter.

Then came the low of the Pathankot attack a week later and somehow things have not quite been normal since, the long promised comprehensive bilateral dialogue has simply not got underway. In the meantime, Prime Minister Modi has ranged through the world denouncing terrorism with a passion that did not quite match up to the lowered levels of Pakistan-origin violence that India has faced since 2008. His repeated and loud denunciations of terrorism, appeared designed to diplomatically isolate Islamabad. Now, with the ongoing Jammu & Kashmir agitation, and Pakistan attacking India on account of alleged human rights violations, the relations seem to be in a free-fall.

Clearly, the problems between India and Pakistan are deeper than the pappi-jhappi of the Modi drop-in on December 25 can resolve. Pakistan’s refusal to act against the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and the Jaish-e-Muhammad are a major problem for India, but so is the Kashmir issue. We may argue that Jammu & Kashmir is an internal issue of India, but that does not convince anyone else in the world. In any case, issues relating to human rights are today everyone’s business. From earlier claiming that J&K was a part of Pakistan, Islamabad now says that all they support is the idea of self-determination for the Kashmiri people, but it has seriously undermined its own standing on the issue by supporting armed proxies and terrorists to attack India. The result is that the international community is agreed that that the only resolution to the issue is through a bilateral dialogue between India and Pakistan.

Earlier, the two countries took this up through what was called the Composite Dialogue process, but this ran out of steam after the fall of Pervez Musharraf. Its considerable achievements included the sharp fall in cross-border militancy and terrorism aimed at India and the emergence of a four-point formula which could have resolved the Kashmir issue.

However, since the Mumbai terror attack of 2008 derailed the process, the two countries have not been able to get back on to the track of a meaningful dialogue. The big problem is the refusal of the Pakistan Army to support the four-point formula on Kashmir, or to act against the terror proxies it maintains in Pakistan. It has successfully prevented Pakistan’s civilian governments of Asif Ali Zardari and now Nawaz Sharif from taking any significant step towards India, or responding to an Indian initiative. So where do we begin ?

The next step in the relationship between the two countries will be at the summit meeting of the SAARC in Islamabad in November. The last time the summit was there, the Vajpayee-Musharraf bilateral meeting opened up an era of good relations between the two countries that lasted till Musharraf’s ouster. It would be a miracle, indeed, if the two countries were able to give a positive turn to their relationship this time around. The problems between the two are unlikely to be resolved any time soon, but there is no reason why a step by step approach is undertaken, rather than the one we see today which fluctuates wildly between euphoria and despair.

Prime Minister Vajpayee once famously said in the context of Pakistan that you cannot choose your neighbour. If the neighbour refuses to be agreeable, you have to keep on trying. You are not doing this as a favour to anyone, but acting out of self-interest.

We have already fenced and floodlit the border and found it doesn’t quite work. We could build a wall like Israel has done with Palestine, but that is not likely to be a workable proposition. In any case given India’s porous borders in Nepal and Bangladesh and open coastline, it is unlikely that we can keep out undesireable elements. We can do a tit for tat, which the Pakistanis believe we are already doing, but that will only enhance instability in our neighbourhood and may blow back on us.

A return to the 2004-2007 process is the best, perhaps, the only option. The conditions are the same: Nothing that Pakistan or the separatist movement can do will persuade India to alter its border. On the other hand, peace will enable India to allow greater self-governance in the Valley and eventually a great measure of demilitarisation. In the meanwhile more crossing points in the LOC will reduce the friction it creates today.

 But that requires committed and skilful political leadership in Islambad and New Delhi. Currently it would appear that the Modi government is not very clear and what it wants from Pakistan and what it thinks it can achieve through diplomacy or coercion. Needless to say, Modi’s loud denunciations of terrorism have not quite isolated Islamabad, nor rallied the world community behind India. On the other hand, the Pakistani government’s position is even more incoherent with the weakened Nawaz Sharif showing little appetite for taking or responding to initiatives and the Army saying little, but refusing to budge on the point of acting against armed militants who it shelters and launches against India.

Of course, this  process also requires important and synchronised initiatives in Jammu & Kashmir because, like it or not, the internal situation there plays an important role in the India-Pakistan stand off. Again, as in the case of Pakistan, New Delhi does not seem to be clear in its mind as to what it wants in Jammu and Kashmir, and how it will achieve it. As of now, the entire focus is on crushing the protests. But, in the ultimate analysis, what happens in J&K, and with J&K, is a function of the India-Pakistan relationship. If the latter is dysfunctional, so will the former be.

Gaffe-Prone Parrikar’s Latest Blunder Exposes Centre’s Efforts to Stifle Dissent

The fact that we have a bombastic, and some may say boorish, defence minister is common knowledge. Manohar Parrikar’s bouts of verbal excess are now fairly well known. But the latest instance – where he apparently referred to the Aamir Khan “patriotism” controversy – has the elements of the sinister as well.
 


Speaking at a book release function on Saturday, Parrikar said that “anyone speaking against the country must be taught a lesson the same way that an ‘actor’ and an ‘online trading company’ were.”
To quote the entire paragraph as it appeared in the Indian Express report:

“Actorne jeva hey kela, thehva jya company la toh advertise karat hota… online trading company hoti. Aple log thoda jaste hoshar ahet. Mala mahite ahey there was a team which was working on this… They were telling people you order and return it… The company should learn a lesson, they had to pull out his advertisement… (When the actor did this… then the company which he was endorsing was… an online trading company. Some of our people are very smart, I know. There was a team which was working on this. They were telling people you order and return it… The company should learn a lesson, they had to pull his advertisement).”

Parrikar did not name Khan nor Snapdeal, of which the actor was brand ambassador. But the November 2015 incident and Snapdeal not renewing its contract with Khan are too well known for there to be any ambiguity about who Parrikar was referring to.
He also took an oblique swipe at JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar, saying that “such people who speak against the country need to be taught a lesson by the people of this country”.
After the controversy erupted, Parrikar on Sunday declared that he was not referring to anyone specific, going on to add that although he was not opposed “to the freedom of expression” he “feels that country is supreme.”

No stranger to a blunder
Parrikar’s verbal gaffes have now become a legend. Just two months ago he claimed that the Indian army did not get the respect it deserves because for “40-50 years , we have not fought a war.” Egregiously he added that he was not advocating a war, but that “because we haven’t fought a war, the importance of the army in our minds has dwindled”.
A war, it was said, was too important a matter to be left to the generals. So, across the world, it became the norm that the best military was that which remained firmly under the command of the civil authority, otherwise known as politicians. But Parrikar’s swagger has turned the logic upside down. In Kashmir, where even the generals say that there is a limit to what the military can achieve, having, in any case, brought down the militancy to a near zero status, Parrikar was ready a while back for an eye-for-eye tooth-for-tooth battle, declaring that “kaante se kaanta nikaala jata hai” (A thorn can only be taken out by another thorn).
Returning from the US last year, he expressed his readiness to get the Indian military to fight ISIS, were the UN Security Council to pass a resolution.
And once, he even accused an unnamed former prime minister of compromising the nation’s security.
Surely, such a serious charge should not have been made in passing and if Parrikar knows about a former prime minister compromising national security, he should inform the relevant authorities because such an act counts among the highest levels of treason.

The citizen is supreme
There are important issues that come from Parrikar’s most recent statement, regardless of his clarification. First, that the attack on Khan and Snapdeal were executed by a ‘troll army’, which used this kind of cyber attack to teach them a lesson. That India’s defence minister is privy to this information and has done little about it is alarming. Parrikar should not complain when Chinese cyber armies run amuck on his ministry’s computers.
Second, is Parrikar arrogating to himself or to his parivar the right to decide who is to be condemned for speaking against the nation? If so, he betrays lamentable ignorance and also his oath as an MP and union minister. The union of India most certainly does not belong to either Parrikar or to the Sangh parivar entities. Indeed they, if you recall, had opposed its formation.
Third, Parrikar is wrong in saying that the nation is supreme. The physical nation is just land, rivers, lakes, trees and shrubs. It is the people who give it the character that it has and they are supreme.
Their supremacy is not something abstract, but laid out in a compact called the constitution of India. As a consequence of avowing this document, the people get inalienable rights, the most precious of which is the right of dissent. Just when dissent or resistance becomes “anti- national” is not for the politicians, policemen and sundry Hindutva outfits to decide, but for the courts of the land, who do so through the due process of law that springs from the constitution.
It is, of course, well known that the curriculum of our IITs, which produced a Manohar Parrikar, is seriously deficient in teaching these political science basics. But surely, the politician Parrikar should have by now learnt these things, considering he has taken a solemn oath to protect the constitution and has been given the important charge of being the union minister of defence.
By himself, we all know that Parrikar is a fairly decent and well-meaning man who is the victim of a half-baked educational system, which results in half-baked words, ideas and actions. Parrikar is not unaware of the problem; recall last year he had promised to take a six-month break from making comments before the media.
But what is more worrisome are his revelation of the organised nature of the effort to stifle dissent in this country. We all know that some rationalists were killed in Maharashtra and Karnataka allegedly by a splinter Hindutva group; in New Delhi, JNU dissenters were physically attacked in the very premises of a high court, again allegedly by some wayward individuals; and gau rakshaks are already patrolling the heartland to tackle those who have a different dietary preferences.
Now, however, we are getting a hint that things may actually be more organised, since it turns out that the alleged anti-nationals were being taken down by a secret cyber team, presumably with links to the Sangh parivar. Tomorrow such teams could actually be tasked to physically take down so-called liberals and “sickulars”, all in the name of nation.
The Wire August 1, 2016

Looking to India for a sea change

With the dust uneasily settling down following the stunning verdict on the South China Sea (SCS) arbitration, questions are being asked about what New Delhi’s stakes are in the outcome.
The SCS issue does not impact directly on India’s security. However, it is an important waterway for Indian trade and commerce with South-East Asia, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and China. New Delhi has routinely signalled its world order concerns by strongly urging the importance of safeguarding the freedom of navigation of the seas, the right of overflight and the importance of peaceful settlement of disputes within the ambit of international law — read United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS). These have come out in several joint statements with countries like Vietnam, Japan and the US. New Delhi’s position has been further burnished by the fact that it has accepted a negative ruling by an UNCLOS tribunal relating to its maritime boundary with Bangladesh.


India’s stand has been sufficiently ambiguous for China to declare on the eve of the Tribunal verdict that New Delhi was supporting its case when it agreed during the Russia-India-China trilateral meeting in April 2016 that even while the UNCLOS formed the basis of the legal order of the seas, “all related disputes should be addressed through negotiations and agreements between the parties concerned.” This was with reference to the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), which the Chinese claim had committed the Philippines to direct negotiations, instead of which it went in for arbitration.
Yet, India’s position is more nuanced. Over the years it has built up an important relationship with Vietnam, both because of an identity of interests, as well as a kind of pay-off for the Chinese activities in South Asia. Since 1988, India has been involved in oil exploration in the seas off Vietnam and has developed a low key, but important, defence relationship that is mainly focused on capacity building, training and maintenance of equipment. Indian war ships routinely visit Vietnamese ports and conduct exercises with their counterparts. India has also offered Vietnam a $100-million loan to purchase Indian-made defence equipment.
The Indian Navy had a brush with the South China Sea issue when, in 2011, its warship INS Airavat was warned over the radio to stay off ‘Chinese waters’ by a voice claiming to speak for the Chinese Navy, just 45 nm from Vietnamese coast. No vessel was actually visible and the Indian ship continued on its path unhindered.
ONGC Videsh has several deals for exploring blocks in the Phu Khanh, Nam Con and Lan Tay basins. In September 2014, India and Vietnam agreed to expand their cooperation in oil and gas exploration, overriding objections by China. The Indian view was that they had been exploring some of the blocks well before the Chinese decided to place them on their list of blocks for bidding.
Since 2013, India has made its concerns over the issue of freedom of navigation explicit through Joint Statements in summits with Japan, Vietnam and the United States. The India-Japan Joint Statement of 2013 first spoke of the commitment of the two to the freedom of navigation and unimpeded commerce “based on the principles of international law, including the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).”

The Modi government went a step further in 2014, when, in an Indo-US Joint Statement during the Prime Minister’s visit to Washington, it was noted that the two sides “expressed concern about rising tensions over maritime territorial disputes” and affirmed the importance of “ensuring freedom of navigation and over flight throughout the region, especially in the South China Sea.” This formulation, adding the South China Sea, was repeated during President Obama’s January 2015 visit, but has since been dropped.
Countries of the ASEAN have privately expressed their desire for India to play a greater (read balancing) role vis-à-vis China in the region. But just how India should do so is not clear. ASEAN itself is a house divided and, in any case, its constituent nations have much more important economic ties with China than with India. They are therefore cautious in their outreach to India and their policy is often one of hedging, rather than seeking any deeper relationship with us.
But, as part of its ‘Act East’ policy, India needs to boost economic ties with the region and can do so it if it can participate in the global production chain into which ASEAN countries are deeply enmeshed and which are controlled by companies in the US, EU, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. At the same time, India needs to build up strategic networks that do not quite have the status of alliance, with a host of countries like Vietnam, Singapore, Australia, Japan and the US with a view of advancing our political interests in checking overbearing Chinese behaviour, and shoring up our world order concerns relating to the freedom of navigation and overflight.
Mid-Day August 2, 2016