What’s in a Name? India’s Role in the Indo-Pacific

The notion of the Indo-Pacific has recently become widely used, particularly in the United States, India, Japan, and Australia, and has almost replaced the earlier term “Asia-Pacific.” In Russia, this change of geopolitical terminology is usually seen through the prism of the U.S.-China confrontation and Washington’s determination to strengthen America’s position in that part of the world by engaging India on its side. Yet India is developing its own conceptual constructs, which may carry the same name, but are based on New Delhi’s view of the world and national interests.  

The term “Asia-Pacific,” which was first coined in the United States, excluded South Asia. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), which staged high-profile annual summits from the 1990s through the 2010s, does not include India as a full member. As for India itself, following the end of the Cold War, it began to come up with new geopolitical concepts that reflected the dramatically changed international environment.

The diplomatic and economic facet of New Delhi’s strategy began with the “Look East” policy of the P. V. Narasimha Rao government in 1991: an effort to cultivate economic and strategic relations with Southeast Asia, in a marked shift in India’s global outlook following the Cold War. It was also seen as an important component of India’s decision to open up its economy and take advantage of the dynamic East Asia region.

India’s strategic thinking was shaped by the fact that it has serious disputes with Pakistan to its west and China to the north, which limits its overland communications and trade with those regions. So on the one hand, India looked eastward, and on the other, toward the Indian Ocean.

The foundations of India’s current Indo-Pacific policy were laid at the turn of the twenty-first century. In the aftermath of the 1998 Indian nuclear tests, the United States began a policy of rapprochement with India, which led to closer Indo-U.S. ties.

The next stage in Indo-U.S. interaction occurred in the wake of the devastating tsunami of December 26, 2004, which killed some 225,000 people in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and India. At the initiative of then U.S. president George W. Bush, the United States, Australia, India, and Japan formed a coalition to provide immediate assistance to those affected. Although the coalition lasted merely a week, it formed the basis of the notion of a quadrilateral grouping: the Quad. A proposal to formalize the group was put forward by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2006, but came to nothing.

Since then, the steep rise of China and its increasing assertiveness—evidenced by developments in the East and South China seas, as well as the growing importance of the Asia-Pacific region as a whole—have triggered a number of policy moves by various countries. To balance China’s growing might and its expanding influence, Washington and Tokyo began to work to bring New Delhi into the strategic equation. To achieve that, they modified their strategic concepts around the notion of the “Indo-Pacific.” 

True, India is not a significant economic or military player east of the Malacca Straits. But to the west of the straits, its geography makes it a major anchor for any strategy that links the Pacific with the Indian Ocean. India shares maritime and land borders with four out of the ten ASEAN states. Jutting out 2,000 kilometers into the Indian Ocean, India also sits astride key sea lanes and dominates the western end of the Malacca Straits.

ASEAN countries themselves remained ambivalent: they welcomed the U.S. presence in the region, but since they also enjoy close economic ties to China, they refused to participate in any confrontation with Beijing. The ASEAN reluctance to directly involve itself in the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy pushed Washington to take another course. In 2017, as U.S.-Chinese rivalry escalated into confrontation, President Donald Trump’s administration dusted off the old Quad format to serve as an instrument of its Indo-Pacific strategy to check China. Trump’s successor Joe Biden regards China as the main challenger to U.S. global primacy, and is busy building a “coalition of democracies” aimed at outcompeting China on a wide range of issues, mainly economic.

The Quad grouping, however, remains an instrument of any U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy. The goal of that strategy, as articulated in a declassified U.S. government document at the beginning of 2021, is “maintaining U.S. strategic primacy” in the region. For that, Washington needs a credible democratic partner on the Asian continent and in the Indian Ocean area. With that in mind, the United States is willing “to accelerate India’s rise and capacity.”

New Delhi may, of course, have a different point of view, and is not committed to these goals. Unlike the other Quad nations, it does not have any formal military ties to the United States. But India will not hesitate to take advantage of the grouping to enhance its own political and economic profile in the region.

Even though there is a great deal of activity around the Quad, it is clear that New Delhi is in no position to play a significant military role outside its neighborhood. Confronting China somewhere in the Western Pacific, 5,000 kilometers away, is not credible when the Chinese are sitting along a large chunk of India’s land borders. In any case, India lags behind China in almost all elements of comprehensive national power, including its military. East of Malacca, India can at best play a symbolic role as an ally of the United States and Japan, and seek a payoff in pushing its own economic growth agenda amid the U.S.-Chinese estrangement. It could play a strong security role west of the Malacca straits in the Indian Ocean, where it has considerable natural advantages.

India recognizes the centrality of ASEAN to its Indo-Pacific strategy, but in the region, its key political and economic ties remain anchored in the city-state of Singapore. It has failed to build significant ties with other ASEAN states, even Vietnam, with which it had long had an important relationship. In that sense, it is unable to play a larger role of counterbalancing Chinese power in the region. As of now, India’s role in the Western Pacific region remains symbolic, and in the Indo-Pacific context, confined to the “Indo,” or the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). Even here it is feeling the pressure from China, which has made significant inroads into South Asia and the IOR. India’s neighbors, such as Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar have developed strong ties with Beijing, which has already developed substantial trading links with the IOR as a whole.

India’s future ambitions depend on the trajectory of its economy. By opting out of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership free trade agreement, New Delhi has forfeited an opportunity to participate in a vital new economic grouping that could have added zest to its Indo-Pacific strategy. This has already begun limiting its naval ambitions and the ability to play the role into which many expect the Quad is hoping to evolve: that of an informal military alliance or pressure group. 

Carnegie Moscow Center 20 July 2021

https://carnegiemoscow.org/commentary/85000

All not lost in Afghanistan

The US walked away from Afghanistan in the dead of the night. That was an understandable manoeuvre to prevent any Taliban grandstanding attack on them. Instead of the dramatic photos of the evacuation of the Saigon embassy, all we have as a visual is a frame of the detritus of the American civilisation left behind in Bagram, their biggest base.

The developments in Afghanistan pose an agonising challenge for India. Since 2001, it has operated in the country, mainly in executing development programmes under the US/NATO security umbrella. Now the latter have walked away, and we along with many others are scrambling for a strategy.

India would be advised to measure its steps carefully. Minus security, it cannot, obviously, operate the way it did for so long in Afghanistan. India hardly has the capacity to take up the US burden. Indeed, there could be a good argument for simply walking away from the whole mess. It would be a cold-hearted decision, but the situation there is not of our making, and we have been tertiary players anyway.

For more than a decade after defeating the Taliban, the US discouraged any Indian military involvement in Afghanistan, deferring to the primacy of Pakistan in its calculations. By the time the US got around to accepting the need for Indian military assistance, the situation had deteriorated significantly.

The Afghan National Security Force (ANSF) was constituted in the early 2000s and in the first decade, the US and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was careful in limiting its size and capabilities so as not to offend Pakistan. Unlike regular militaries, they were deliberately kept deficient in artillery and air power. They were viewed as a support element whose primary task was counter-insurgency.

Since 2012, when President Obama spent just six hours on a visit to Kabul, it has been clear that the US would leave Afghanistan. Even though it signed a strategic partnership agreement with Kabul at the time, it did not quite spell out what that meant in terms of financial and military commitments.

In 2013, President Karzai turned to India to provide artillery and military transport aircraft, but New Delhi, too, balked, not wishing to annoy Pakistan. As per a strategic partnership agreement signed in 2011, India had promised to assist in the training, equipping and capacity building of the ANSF, but hesitated in supplying the equipment. In 2015, India did begin a programme that led to the Afghan Air Force getting eight Mi-35 attack helicopters.

In the past decade, however, the US and the ISAF put in a systematic effort to build up the ANSF. But their goal was to train a force with counter-insurgency capability, and not the capacity to militarily disrupt or block the Taliban supply chain leading to Pakistan.

Since 2014, the US began providing some artillery, helicopters and armoured vehicles, but the ANSF’s biggest weakness is in the air force. The US has limited their close air support capacity to some 20 A-29 Super Tucanos and 10 AC-208 Cessna. These are light fighters and can be lethal for the Taliban, without worrying Pakistan. However, there are simply not enough of them. The bigger problem the ANSF faces is in maintaining this equipment.

There is little point in crying over spilt milk. The US and ISAF could have done better, and so could India. All is not lost. If the ANSF is crumbling in parts, the Taliban, too, are not the kind of force that fought in the 1990s. The surge of attacks we are seeing are essentially psychological warfare, aimed at paralysing the ANSF and the government in Kabul. It is important for everyone to keep their nerve and take on the challenge.

It would be foolhardy to underestimate the Taliban. But the ANSF are numerically superior to the Taliban, and perhaps through trial and error, they will find their own set of strategy and tactics and let go of those taught to them by the Americans and the NATO. What they need is unambiguous support.

As of now, the US has promised to provide $3 billion to support the ANSF, which is about 75 per cent of its requirement. The Europeans, too, need to spell out their commitment. Countries like India can play an important supporting role in assisting the Afghans in ensuring the serviceability of their equipment and training their personnel.

Geopolitically, too, things are not bleak. All the Central Asian countries are standing by the Afghan government. The Chinese, too, have cautiously expressed their support for Kabul. Turkey has said it is willing to have its forces defend the Kabul airport.

Perhaps the most important player here can be Iran which shares a large border with Afghanistan, and through whose Chabahar port, India can access the country. The recent visit of External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar to Tehran is not without significance here.

A Taliban Afghanistan is not a threat to Kashmir. Afghan jihadis have been there earlier and failed. India needs a strong, stable and independent Afghanistan to prevent Islamabad from being tempted to use the country as its ‘strategic depth’ area.

Contrary to the popular adage, history does not usually repeat itself. There is no certainty that the Taliban will prevail in Afghanistan. If the US and NATO countries step up with financial assistance, which they can easily provide, effective regional diplomacy and Afghan determination can lead to another, more positive outcome for the unfortunate country.

The Tribune July 20, 2021

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/all-not-lost-in-afghanistan-285623

A Force to reckon with

There is considerable alarm in India’s strategic community as to whether the moves towards restructuring the armed forces to create theatre commands have been sufficiently thought through. A great deal of it arises from concerns that the man chosen to lead the task in 2017, Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat, has never really had the intellectual heft to handle it. He proved this spectacularly last week in declaring at a seminar that the Indian Air Force was merely ‘a supporting arm to the armed forces, just as artillery support or the engineer support the combatant arms in the Army.In one sentence, he negated the advances in warfighting that have taken place since World War II, and raised huge question marks about the intellectual underpinnings of the process he and his team are planning to put the Indian military through.

It doesn’t take a genius to know that the next conventional war will, in all likelihood, be initiated by cyber attacks, followed by air strikes on the land and sea. To be successful, the Army, Navy and the Air Force will have to use the Indian variants of the American AirLand and AirSea battle doctrines. There will be no room for single service ego trips here; ignore the compulsions of fighting on an integrated war plan, and you lose the war.

The purpose of creating a theatre command is the need for a structure that can fight an integrated battle. This is not about ordering a platoon on parade to make a right or a left turn. It is about taking a million-and-a-half-strong, somewhat archaic, war machine and putting it through new paces. The danger is that bits and pieces of that machine may fall off, be forgotten, or be incapable of meeting the new demands.

The IAF has categorically made it clear that it has very different views from those expressed by General Rawat. These were put forward at the same seminar by Air Chief Marshal RKS Bhadauria. In such circumstances, it would be foolhardy for the military to undertake the leaps being envisaged.

Decisions taken without careful study could unbalance the armed forces which, in India’s case, are half-mobilised all the time. For this reason, the Naresh Chandra Task Force of 2011-2012, recommended that a CDS-like figure be appointed immediately, but the process of creating theatre commands be carefully fleshed out through experimentation based on paper studies and joint exercises to debug issues relating to command and control and joint logistics.

There are other reasons for caution as well. In 2001, India created the Andaman & Nicobar joint services command, hoping that its experience will show the path towards more geographic joint commands. Few will deny that the experiment has been a failure.

India has a long history of dysfunctional jointness of its military. Even though combined arms operations were a legacy of World War II, the Indian military never quite took to them. One of the biggest fiascoes of the 1965 war was when the IAF was not even informed that the Army was launching an attack towards Lahore. The Army’s designation of the 1999 Kargil operation as ‘Op Vijay’ and the IAF’s nomenclature as ‘Op Safed Sagar’ in 1999 tells their own story.

It is easy enough, and General Rawat intends to show us, to issue the orders and create the theatre commands. But it will be quite another level of challenge to get these to work as intended. The process of taking forces that have been used to fighting their individual battle and getting them to work with others is not easy. It requires not just paper orders, but large-scale war gaming and simulation, training and exercises on the ground at various levels of complexity. Only when a certain structure becomes viable should it be incorporated into the war plans. The issue is not theatre commands but their shape and the sequential timeline of their creation.

The structure of a theatre command also requires a foundation of jointness in a range of other areas. For example, the need for seamless communications between fast moving combat aircraft, slower armoured and ground force units. It may be a better idea to first put in place a series of functional commands — a joint logistics command, aerospace command, a cyber warfare command — to lay the groundwork for the geographic theatre commands.

Even greater is the need to establish their intellectual underpinning through joint operations doctrines. One such document was issued in 2017, it was widely criticised for its shortcomings. Just as you need a map to figure out the best and easiest way to reach your destination, so, too, you need a doctrine to first set a goal, then provide a guide that will enable the many parts of the system to work along the commonly agreed path. For practical reasons, doctrines are the intellectual product of collaboration of the different component services. To work effectively, they must be consensual documents, rather than adiktat.

The making of all these military moves without first articulating a national security strategy (NSS) is truly to put the cart before the horse. A changed military posture must be based on a larger politico-military guidance from the political leadership as to what is expected of the military. The task of crafting an NSS was assigned in 2018 to the National Security Adviser, as the chairman of the powerful Defence Planning Committee. Since then, there has been radio silence.

The Tribune July 6, 2021

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/a-force-to-reckon-with-278746

100 Years in Power: Challenges Before Xi & China's Communist Party

The Communist Party of China (CPC) is 100 years old. This is quite an achievement for any political party especially one that has wielded supreme power continuously for 70 years. It has overcome many near-death experiences—Mao’s Great Famine, his Cultural Revolution, the Tiananmen uprising as well as what should have been a destabilising development— the most explosive economic growth in history.

This ruthlessly authoritarian party led by Xi Jinping, today runs a nation with well-run cities, vibrant economy, a huge academic and science & technology establishment in a market where more than a million foreign companies operate. It commands vast resources and with its rapidly modernising military, and is recognised as a global power second only to the United States.

The trajectory of the country under Xi could lead it to world power status, or place it in a middle-income trap. The CPC’s standing in China is related to its ability to deliver economic growth decade after decade, economic stagnation of the kind that hit Japan in the 1990s, could destabilise its rule with consequences for the rest of the world.

From Deng to Xi: The Changing Worldview of the Chinese Communist Party

And, instead of loosening its hold as China has grown as a middle-class urbanised nation, the CPC has tightened its hold on power and seeks to regulate every aspect of the life of the country, aided by advanced communications and surveillance technologies.China owes its current standing to one man, Deng Xiaoping, who reoriented the self-destructive and factious CPC towards a market-led economy. More important, he sought to check the power of national leaders by introducing term limits and collective leadership. Vitally, he also provided a framework for China’s world view, wherein he advised his CPC colleagues to “hide our capacities and bide our time and be good in maintaining a low profile.”

But the man who is presiding over the 100^th anniversary celebrations, Xi, has upended the Deng dictums. He has crowned himself the leader-for-life in the style of Mao. He has also upended China’s strategy of engagement with the West for unbridled strategic competition.

And, instead of loosening its hold as China has grown as a middle-class urbanised nation, the CPC has tightened its hold on power and seeks to regulate every aspect of the life of the country, aided by advanced communications and surveillance technologies.

What Xi Jinping has Accomplished & His Plans for the Future

The big question is whether Xi’s way will prevail and China will attain greater heights of material achievement by the time in 2049 when the CPC celebrates the centennial of the state it created—the People’s Republic of China. Or whether his mistakes, especially that of disregarding Deng Xiaoping’s dictums will prove to be his and his party’s undoing.

Xi’s economic plans for the future are ambitious. Indeed, as J Stewart Black and Allen J Morrison have pointed out that “decoupling” is not something the Americans thought up to deny China technology, it is something central to the CPC’s long term plans for China.

It was the CPC that walled off the Chinese internet developing an extensive system of censorship and control, even in the seemingly free-for-all that prevailed in Weibo (equivalent of Twitter). It kept out Amazon, Facebook and Twitter, freeing Chinese companies to develop their own alternatives resulting in the rise of giant companies like Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei and TikTok.

Xi has doubled down on the strategy. His Made in China 2025 and Internet Plus strategies are geared to a massive aatmanirbharta plan. Through a range of strategies like strategic acquisitions, subsidies and funding, forced transfer of technology, theft, China is seeking to eliminate its dependence on foreign countries for critical technologies and products, promote domestic dominance for indigenous firms, and using that to offer globally competitive products.

Xi's Challenges: From Corruption to the Army

Yet, there is a crisis like situation confronting Xi arising from strong demographic headwinds and a structural economic slowdown. Added to this is the emergence of a high-tech denial regime that has emerged in the West.

But in China’s mastery of the new digital technologies and the relative decline of US power, Xi senses opportunity. As is well known, the Chinese ideogram for the word “crisis” is a compound one which emphasises “danger” as well as an “incipient moment”. That moment could be the time when things could go awry, or, move in your favour. Xi, the great risk taker, has bet all to move forward and grasp what he thinks is China’s moment.

Xi has earlier proved to be the man of the moment for the CPC when he assumed power in 2012. Even though China had a huge wind in its sails as a result of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis that laid the West low, by the time XI came to power, the CPC was drifting.

First and foremost, there was a huge problem of unchecked corruption in the country which had even infected the People’s Liberation Army, where ranks were being bought and sold. Factionalism had become almost routine in the Party, which looked confused and directionless under the colourless Hu Jintao.

Xi initiated an anti-corruption campaign that spared none. From Zhou Youngkang, an erstwhile member of the all-powerful CPC Politburo Standing Committee and the security chief of the country, to Generals Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou, who had occupied the topmost rungs of the PLA, all were brought low.

Unlike other militaries, the PLA is unique in that it is the armed wing of the CPC and, in that sense, its ultimate weapon. Xi’s second major effort was a comprehensive overhaul of the PLA. The reforms initiated in 2013 have restructured the way it is run by the Central Military Commission, as well as the way it is deployed in theatre commands. Xi’s constant exhortation to the PLA has been, first, the need for it to be loyal to the CPC, and second, to transform itself into a war-winning force.

China's Worrying Shift Towards Becoming an Aged Country

Xi is a man in a hurry because despite its huge achievements, the Chinese per capita income is still a quarter of that of the high-income countries and there are sharp regional variations within the country. There may be many Black Swans ahead, but the obvious Grey Rhino is China’s rapid demographic shift towards becoming an older country.

The most recent census of China says that in 2020 just 12 million babies were born, compared to 14.65 million in 2019. China’s fertility rate— the average number of babies a woman will have in her lifetime—now stands at 1.3. While the replacement rate, through which the population will remain stable is 2.1. Japan’s fertility rate was 1.36 last year, while that of the EU is around 1.5.

The demographic shift will mean a smaller workforce, as well as a much bigger social welfare and pension bill. As it is, the rise in China’s wage rate is pushing many global companies to shift their plants abroad to Vietnam or MalaysiaChina has ambitions of emerging as a high-tech manufacturing country, but as of now it seems to have major road blocks because the census reveals that the average age of schooling of people aged 15 remains less than 10 years. So, Chinese universities may churn out highly educated and competent engineers and researchers, but the industrial workforce could be found wanting.

The Undeniable Centrality of CPC to the Chinese People

The CPC has been central to the lives of the people and now, as China pushes forward towards a high-tech future, you can be sure, that they expect it to remain at the vanguard.

For most Chinese, it is the all-powerful and authoritarian CPC that had uplifted hundreds of millions of citizens from poverty, undertaken large-scale infrastructure construction, and made China the manufacturing centre of the world. For a moment last year, when COVID struck, the CPC was a bit shaken. But it quickly shrugged it off and undertook an aggressive strategy helped bringing it under control, even as it rampaged uncontrolled elsewhere in the world.

Contrary to what many expected, the CPC remains central to Chinese life and intends to stay that way. As Rana Mitter and Elspeth Johnson have recently put it, is not an authoritarian state wanting to become liberal, but an authoritarian state wanting to be successful politically and economically.

The Quint July 1, 2021

https://www.thequint.com/voices/opinion/100-years-ccp-challenges-before-xi-jinping-china-communist-party#read-more

A Patch-Up Attempt on Kashmir Will Not Restore What Is Lost

The tragedy of  Jammu and Kashmir today can be expressed by that dark nursery rhyme:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the kings horses and all the kings men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

The Kashmiri Humpty was, of course, wantonly pushed off the wall, the chances that the various Kashmiri political actors, represented at the meeting convened by the Union government on Thursday, can undo the damage inflicted do not look good.

For the Opposition, after having faced mass incarceration and repression, the trust levels are understandably low.

As for the Union government, there is no cause to believe that, given its propensity to use Pakistan, and hostility towards the Muslim community,  for electoral purposes, it will strike a different course.

Reports of the three-and-half hour meeting between Modi, the Union Territory leadership and the Kashmiri leaders are necessarily fragmented. But they are agreed on the point that the government is committed to, in Amit Shah’s words, “Restoring statehood as promised in parliament.” Prime Minister Modi has noted, “Delimitation has to happen…so that polls can happen and J&K gets an elected government.”

Given the rollercoaster Jammu and Kashmir has been on, some skepticism is warranted because even now we do not have a clear idea as to why Prime Minister Modi has changed course. But what the meeting, and the seeming walk back by the government has done, is to check the dangerous political drift between the Union government and the Kashmiri political opinion.

You can also take at face value the Union government’s claim that District Development Council and Panchayat elections have given new meaning to grass-roots democracy in Kashmir.

No extravagant claim was made about its economic transformation at the Thursday meeting, because none has occurred.

And neither has direct rule generated any special goodwill for New Delhi. Violence has not abated, terrorist strikes continue, as does the security forces’ heavy-handed response. More alarmingly, the recruitment of locals into the militancy continues apace.

National Conference (NC) president Farooq Abdullah, PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti and other members of the Gupkar Alliance during a media address in Srinagar, June 22, 2021. Photo: PTI/S. Irfan

Perhaps, in keeping with its governance style, the Modi-Shah duo acted first on August 5, 2019, and began thinking through the implications of its actions only later, and now want to walk back a bit.

Also read: Kashmiris Sees Modi’s Invitation as Climbdown But Absence of Agenda Leaves Valley Leaders Wary

Or maybe, they are worried about that other joker in the pack: The Supreme Court has been remarkably laid back in handling the numerous petitions before its five-member bench. But when they do get around to it, they may find it somewhat difficult to uphold the government’s actions.

Recall that the removal of Article 370 was done through patent constitutional chicanery – the President first declared that  instead of the constituent assembly, the revocation could be done by the Jammu and Kashmir state assembly, and since this assembly was itself dissolved, it would be assumed that the governor, a representative of the Union government, would decide.

The Kashmiri people and their representatives had no say.

As for the demotion of the state to the status of Union Territory, it is unprecedented in democratic practice around the world to deprive a people of a legislature, instead of conferring it on them.

It was done through a gross misreading of Article 3 of the constitution which gives that parliament power to create new states, divide or unite states, increase or decrease their area, and alter their name. But the article says nothing about extinguishing a state.

Also read: Does Modi’s Meeting With Jammu and Kashmir Parties Signal a Thaw or a Trap?

In addition, any bill arising from Article 3 is also expected to have the view of the legislatures of the states concerned. Here, as we noted, the legislature stood dissolved.

The demotion of the state is a dangerous precedent which could allow any Union government with a majority in parliament to downgrade and take control of any state ruled by the Opposition.

India is, famously, a ‘union of states’ – entities which have considerable autonomy in the matter of public order, police, public health, agriculture, water and communications. Unless there is a breakdown of the constitutional machinery, occurred in the 1990-1995 period in Jammu and Kashmir, the Union government has no business to interfere with the powers reserved to states.

In 2019, as is well known, there was no constitutional breakdown, the assembly had been dissolved in 2018, and fresh elections should have been held as a matter of course, instead of the dubious  and drastic remedy used by the Union government.

There is a stream of thought which suggests that the developments relating to Kashmir arise from some secret negotiations that the Modi government is conducting with Pakistan. Contacts between the two governments have been going on through the period of the Pulwama bombing and have been pushed by the United States which has been keen to stabilise the region before it pulled out from Afghanistan.

Security personnel stand guard on a street during restrictions imposed in the wake of the first anniversary of the Article 370 move, in Srinagar, Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020. Photo: PTI

India-Pakistan history is even more tortuous than that of New Delhi and Srinagar. In fact publicity to the talks could well lead to a blow-back in the form of a terror strike. This has happened all too often in the past and we can see things going back to square one again.

At this juncture, having faced extreme repression in the past two years, the mainstream Kashmiri parties are unlikely to directly challenge the Union government. Besides the possibility of a court ruling, there is nothing to compel the government to a particular course. No timelines have been offered, statehood could be restored in one year or five.

As for Article 370, it is more of a shadow than substance, but even then the BJP, whose founding father Syama Prasad Mookerjee, fought against it, is unlikely to bring it back.

Having enjoyed total authority in the past two years, the Modi government would prefer to give shape to a new hybrid Jammu and Kashmir state, something like Delhi, which has its own legislature, but few powers. But there is no room in the constitution for such a monstrosity. But that  will not deter the government from trying. They are not impressed by the letter or spirit of the constitution since their political forbears had nothing to do with the freedom struggle or the creation of the constitution.

For their part, the Kashmiris will continue to fight for their identity and rights and pay the price. There is nothing in the current political discourse that suggests that Modi and Shah can lead to a new politics of reconciliation in the state.

In history, as in life, there is no going back. Those who think there can be status quo ante will be disappointed.

A huge gulf that separates the motives and actions of the Union government and the expectations of the Kashmiri parties in the erstwhile state. You can patch up the Kashmiri Humpty Dumpty, but it’s unlikely ever to be the same again.

The Wire June 25, 2021

https://thewire.in/politics/narendra-modi-amit-shah-kashmir-article-370

‘Juneteenth’ for black lib

The Biden administration’s decision to declare June 19 or ‘Juneteenth’ as a national holiday, on a par with Independence Day (July 4), Christmas, Veterans Day (November 11) and New Year’s Day is yet another hallmark of the unfinished socio-political agenda of American democracy.

The recent years have made no secret of the fact that the US is a divided society. There are large segments of the population who are denied equal political and social rights and exist as an economic underclass, minus educational or financial equity. A strong current of US political opinion has been able to prevent through legal, monetary and social means, the fulfilment of America’s own vision, put out in its Declaration of Independence in 1776, that ‘all men are created equal.’

Juneteenth commemorates the emancipation of Black Americans, most of who were slaves in the US till the middle of the 19th century. The Emancipation Proclamation, signed by President Abraham Lincoln in the midst of the Civil War (1860-1865), had declared all slaves free as of January 1, 1863. But it was only when the victorious Union Army reached Galveston that some 2.5 lakh black slaves in Texas learnt they were free through an order issued by Union General Gordon Granger on June 19, 1865.

For the record, black Americans had arrived in the US at the same time as the whites in the 1620s, only they had come as captured slaves shipped across the Atlantic to labour in the American colonies.

Thereafter, black Americans celebrated this date as their independence day, because July 4, the traditional American independence day, had meant little to them. The deep divide that these two dates represent continues to this dayIt took exactly one more century after Juneteenth to August 1965 when the blacks got the legal right to vote, some 15 years after all Indians did. This was a century of enormous suffering that saw a migration of freed slaves to ghettos in the northern cities. Blacks were barred in many places from buying property, permitted limited access to legal processes, prevented from voting and their children sent to segregated schools. Businesses did do well in black enclaves like Tulsa, Oklahoma and east St Louis, only to be destroyed by white mob violence. Thousands of blacks were lynched often for no cause — lynching was a means of controlling and dominating the blacks.

As the US rose to become the richest and most powerful country in the world, a substantial proportion of its citizens were socially and politically handicapped and denied the ability to generate equity as the whites were, in the form of property and savings or educational attainment comparable to the white community. Recall that fully 25 per cent of all Americans were black at the time of independence, most of them slaves. Today, they number 13 per centIt is difficult to sum up the historical injustice that black Americans suffered. Or the extent to which they helped to enrich America. The labour of black slaves in cotton plantations enabled the US to become an economic power in the 19th century. Since they were bought and sold in the market, it is possible to estimate that their value in 1860 was ‘three times greater than the total amount invested in (US) banks’. And it was seven times the total value of currency circulating in the US at the time.

Home ownership rates for black families are around 44 per cent compared to 74 for white families. A Washington Post analysis found that a typical middle class black household in 2016 had $13,000 in wealth, compared to the nearly $1,50,000 for the median white household, and that the gap had actually increased since 1968.The US has seen periods where it has overcome the divisions to meet enormous challenges — World War II was one of them, as was the competition with the Soviet Union. Sending a man to the moon was a huge scientific exercise, but it came in a political era that saw a slew of social security measures like healthcare for poorer and older Americans, reforms in education, rural education, the environment, public broadcasting, transportation and it was not surprising that it also provided the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to bring blacks into the political mainstream.

But now, as the American demographic profile becomes less white, we see a last-ditch stand of the conservatives. They detest where America is right now and are afraid where it is headed. Across the country, right-wing politicians are passing laws to restrict voting by the poorer and less educated black community.

The principal competitor of the US, China, simply wiped out its social divisions by executing several million people at the time when the People’s Republic was founded and in the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Homogeneity is something that is intrinsic to the Hans who have a history of assimilating diverse peoples and cultures. You can see the effort being made now to do so in Xinjiang and Tibet and the turmoil makes China that much weaker.

In President Biden’s recent European tour, the central message was that of competition with China and the virtues of democracy over autocracy. Yet, Biden knows that the root of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, and the refusal of large numbers of the opposition to acknowledge him President, is racism, which not only weakens him, but the country and all its institutions.

For countries like India, who are relying on a strong US to meet their own geopolitical goals, this is not good news.

The Tribune June 22, 2021

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/juneteenth-for-black-lib-271985