Modi can't take India-America ties for granted with US President Trump

President Donald J Trump’s decision to torpedo the Paris Climate Change Agreement is yet another manifestation of the US decision to walk away from the very world order that it constructed and benefited from in the last 70 years.
It comes on the heels of a marked shift in America’s attitude towards NATO — the key alliance the US crafted and led since World War II — believed to be a signal of the changed times.

Antagonising NATO
Since World War II, the US national security doctrine emphasised the importance of preventing the rise of any dominant regional player in either Europe or East Asia. Through NATO, and its alliances with Japan and South Korea, the US maintained its global primacy.
The US still claims to uphold NATO, but Trump’s boorish performance at the NATO summit last month made it clear that things are not the same. He not only berated his fellow NATO members for not spending enough on their defence, but also pointedly refused to endorse its key Article 5 committing the alliance to a common defense where an attack on all.
As for the East, the US secretary of defence, Jim Mattis, who was in Asia to make a major policy address at the annual Shangrila Dialogue, sought to reassure America’s Asian allies about his country’s willingness to stand by them, but he has found himself having to defend his president’s isolationist policies.
Trump’s criticism of NATO and his decision on the climate agreement could not but cut the ground from under Mattis’ feet. This had, in any case, been preceded by the American pull out from the Trans Pacific Partnership which had been designed as the linchpin of the American pivot to Asia.
Trump’s boorish performance at the NATO summit last month made it clear that things are not the same.

Mattis’ focus was on North Korea, because developments there directly threaten the United States through its ICBMs. For the present, this will reassure Japan and South Korea, but it certainly does not answer all the issues that confront them.
True, on the eve of the Mattis visit, the US Navy conducted a patrol past a reef claimed by China. But all Mattis had to say was the Chinese activities in the South China Sea undermined regional stability. It is no secret that the US is not willing to push China beyond a point because it needs Beijing to deal with North Korea.

Assertive China
So Mattis said that not only was conflict with China “not inevitable” but that “our countries can and do cooperate for mutual benefit.” This could hardly have inspired the ASEAN which is, in any case, deeply split over China.
As for Europe, its dilemma is palpable. On one side its trans-Atlantic ties are foundering, and on the other, an increasing assertive China is seeking a closer embrace through its One Belt One Road scheme.
In the process, Beijing is systematically wooing Central and Eastern Europe, as well as seeking to enhance its investments in Europe. Already this had led to a weak European response to its activities in the South China Sea.
Where does India figure in all this?
New Delhi is going through the motions of pretending everything is normal. Even though it boycotted the OBOR summit, it is readying to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a military, political and economic grouping run out of Beijing.
Perhaps one part of India is quite comfortable with the statist and authoritarian model that the principals of the SCO — Russia and China — represent.

India’s role
But India can hardly be comfortable with the sight of the US, upon which it has come to rely on unconscionably in the past decade, behaving the way it is doing. Its embrace of Saudi Arabia and the very obvious push to destabilise Iran are bad news for New Delhi.
There is nothing in Modi’s recent tour to Europe to suggest that there are viable options there. India’s trade with Europe pales into insignificance as compared to China. As for investments, China’s outward and inward investment from Europe is orders of magnitude greater than ours.
Besides, Europe is badly distracted by Brexit, dissonance with the US and the repeated terror strikes by home-grown jihadists. A lot of hope now rest on Modi’s meeting with the US president. Trump’s critique of India’s climate change stand is not a happy augury. It would be a brave man who will argue that the visit will go well.
If time-tested allies like Germany feel that the time has come for them to think of going on without the US, there is little reassurance for India which needs some means of balancing a China which is spilling onto its neighbourhood and the Indian Ocean, and pursuing deep ties with Iran to enhance its energy security and connectivity with Central Asia and Europe.
Mail Today June 5,2017

What Lies Ahead for India After Joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

India’s membership of the SCO is a manifestation of the reality that India’s interests are as much in the Indian Ocean as the Eurasian landmass.

 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Astana, Kazakhstan, to attend the 17th summit of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), in which India and Pakistan participated as full members, does not have the razzmatazz of his visits elsewhere. His encounter with Nawaz Sharif, his speech at the summit, his meetings with the principals like President Xi Jinping of China, were all low key, perhaps befitting our rookie status in the organisation.
Nevertheless in his speech to the summit, he emphasised the importance of upholding the principle of sovereignty and territorial integrity in formulating connectivity schemes (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and Pakistan Occupied Kashmir). He also raised the issue of sustainability and inclusivity and spoke of India’s commitment to the Chahbahar project and the International North South Transportation Corridor, and its desire to join the Ashgabat agreement. He spoke of the importance of the fight against terrorism, as well as radicalisation, recruitment and financing, and said that the SCO efforts in this direction were praiseworthy. In attacking terrorism, Modi was not as direct as he has been in other recent instances when he pointed fingers at Pakistan.
Likewise, Indian official noted that the Modi-Xi meeting was “positive and cordial”. Clearly, Modi did not badger Xi on account of Nuclear Suppliers Group and Masood Azhar, leader of the terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed, this time. He remained content to tell Xi that the two sides should strengthen their coordination and communication in international affairs, respect each other’s core concerns and appropriately handle their differences. This mirrored the Chinese view where, according to Chinese foreign ministry, Xi told Modi that the two states should “appropriately control and manage differences on sensitive issues.” Modi acknowledged in a tweet that his discussions with Xi were about “how to improve and further ties.” China will assume the presidency of the SCO in 2018.
Joining the SCO is a smart move by India that will offer us a long term, rather than any short-term, gain, provided we understand what that means. By itself, China would not have liked to include India in the grouping. But it has done so at the insistence of Russia and has finessed things by insisting on simultaneous membership for its protégé Pakistan.
India’s membership of the SCO is a manifestation of the reality that India’s interests are as much in the Indian Ocean as the Eurasian landmass. Srinagar and Leh are nearly at the same latitude as Kabul and north of Lhasa and Kandahar.
Indian history reflects this duality since it features great maritime empires such as that of the Cholas, as well as the continental ones of the Mughals. The grand strategy of British India, who shaped the identity of India as we know it now, was to maintain total control of the Indian Ocean, even while ensuring no major land power came within striking distance of India.
Independent India has always been friendly with Afghanistan and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it befriended Central Asia. But in recent years, with Afghanistan in turmoil and with Pakistan blocking land access, India had to take the back seat to China, which has used its proximity to not only develop important economic linkages to Central Asia and Afghanistan, but it is now using the region as a junction for its ambitious Silk Road Economic Belt heading to Europe.
The SCO membership offers multiple opportunities to Indian diplomacy. First, it provides a platform for India to engage Pakistan in a wider regional setting. Our ties with Islamabad are not going to be permanently frozen as they are now. In fact, the SCO platform may be a good way to unfreeze them by pushing Pakistan to enable India’s overland access to other SCO countries. It is true that Pakistan can always be counted on to cut its nose to spite its face. But some prodding by other members like China and Russia could help and it is difficult to believe that Pakistan will maintain its blockade forever.
Second, it is an opening for India to reach out to China, bilaterally as well as to deal with Pakistan. China is seeking to promote its China-Pakistan economic corridor. But Chinese investments in Pakistan will not provide the returns they seek, unless the Pakistani economy is integrated with the larger South Asian region. China is not unaware of India’s importance as a market and as a destination of its overseas investment. It is for this reason, it has taken a fairly relaxed stance on New Delhi’s rejection of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Third, it provides India with a hedge for its maritime strategy which emphasises cooperation and developing security networks with the US, Japan, Australia and Vietnam. With the US pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and its posture on the erstwhile Asian pivot uncertain, India needs to shore up its continental strategy. Even Japan is now backtracking a bit and seeking to reach out to China by supporting BRI and considering membership in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
As for India, it is right and proper for the government to emphasise India’s claim over Gilgit-Baltistan, pending the resolution of the dispute with Pakistan. However, there is also something called pragmatism. New Delhi needs to take a pragmatic approach to the projects in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, considering it has lived with the Karakoram Highway that passes through Gilgit-Baltistan since the 1970s. India could negotiate this issue with China, possibly getting Beijing to lift its hold on the funding of development projects in Arunachal Pradesh. Pragmatism, of course, will have to be a two-way street. But it is the only road to what the Chinese call “win-win” formulations in the India-China-Pakistan context.
In this, the presence of Russia in SCO is an important element. Moscow has never been too enthusiastic about China’s goals of closer integration of China, Russia and Central Asia because it considers its former republics as part of its own sphere of influence. Even today, though there is formal cooperation between the BRI and the Eurasian Union, the latter keeps Chinese trade away from Central Asia, to the extent that it can. Russia is an old friend of India because they have a congruence of interests. The SCO will now have a roughly triangular shape with China, Russia and India being three important points and given China’s growing military power and its economic strength, India and Russia may find common cause in shaping the future of Eurasia.
From the point of view of its new members, the most interesting aspect of the SCO will be its military component. It may be recalled that the organisation itself sprang from the Shanghai 5, an outfit that emerged from border demarcation and demilitarisation negotiations between China and the Central Asian republics.
In 2001, it gave way to the SCO, and included Uzbekistan and, in 2002, its charter was fleshed out with the view of resisting the US push in Afghanistan and Central Asia. Its charter spoke of the goals of promoting cooperation in politics, trade, economy, technology and so on and to making joint efforts to promote peace, security and stability. Its two permanent bodies are the secretariat in Beijing and the Regional Anti-terrorist Structure based in Tashkent.
There have been a regular stream of military exercises and in  2007, the SCO also signed an agreement with the Russian-led Central Security Treaty Organisation for closer cooperation and joint exercises. This stoked fears in western countries that it was emerging as a counter-weight to NATO. However, with the American failure and draw-down from both these places, the push towards a closer military integration of SCO has also reduced.
Since then Beijing has moved bilaterally by developing pipelines and railroad routes to shift the centre of gravity of the CARs towards China. In this it has moved carefully so as not to upset Russia, which had created the customs union of the CARs and Russia into an Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), an energy powerhouse holding a significant proportion of the world’s energy reserves. But the relative weakness of the Russian economy and the strength of the Chinese, has resulted in steady gains for the latter, including a proposal announced after a Russia-China summit in march 2015 to link BRI with EAEU. The idea is to move towards an free trade agreement.
For Russia, an Asian pivot is a means of off-setting the economic sanctions of the West European nations, while for China, it is part of a long term project that seeks to integrate Eurasia under Chinese auspices. For the Chinese, Xi in particular, the assumption of the chairmanship of the SCO, which overlaps many important BRI initiatives, will be an important means of positioning Beijing as a leader of globalisation in the Trump era.
It could well be the forerunner of an Asian security system, of the type Xi proposed in 2014 when he presided over the fourth summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence building measures in Asia (CICA), an outfit that fits in well with SCO since it was initially mooted by Kazakhstan. Today, CICA counts as its members countries of SAARC, GCC, China, Russia, Turkey Vietnam, Mongolia and Israel.
As we enter the SCO, we need to look at the larger context of Asian geopolitics, and the inroads China has already made and plans to make through BRI. As Modi hinted, India is not without options such as its Chahbahar scheme and the International North–South Transport Corridor. But this requires resolute leadership, especially since the Trump administration seems determined to rock the Iran agreement boat.
The Wire, June 10, 2017

New Blitzkrieg Or No War

The last point made in the controversial interview given by Indian Army (IA) chief General Bipin Rawat was his belief that ‘limited war’ with Pakistan was not likely. In this point at least, the general is not beating the drums of war, though the same cannot be said of some of his colleagues like Air Force chief B.S. Dhanoa, who directed the IAF to be ready for a short-duration war with Pakistan last month. The key and simple lesson of the many wars of history is that it is easy to start them, but very hard to figure out how they will end. Ask the Germans in 1939, the Japanese in 1941, or, for that matter, the Pakistanis in 1965. When it comes to war, there are simply too many independent variables at play.

It is important to reflect on this, considering the rising temperatures in Jammu & Kashmir, where the Indian Army’s corporate belief is that it is involved in a proxy war with Pakistan. The Army may be sanguine that war with Pakistan is not around the corner, but the same cannot be said of the social media or the jehadi anchors who, in the absence of a coherent government policy, influence policy in an unconscionable manner.
On paper, the Indian military vastly outnumbers its Pakistani counterpart both quantitatively and qualitatively. India’s army is 12 lakh strong, compared to Pakistan’s 6,50,000. The IA has 4,000 tanks, including 1,600 T 90s, while  the Pakistan Army (PA) has some 650 MBTs and 1,000 second-line tanks. The difference is even more marked in the case of the Air Forces and the Navies.
 


India’s Cold Start strategy now has little surprise. And the Pakistani Army has focused on stopping and trapping them. India lacks the capacity for precision long-range strike to knock out the Pakistani military in a short war, as, for example, the Americans did with Saddam Hussein or the Taliban. There is nothing in the equipment and organisational profile of the IA today, which indicates it can quickly breach or bypass the ditch-cum-bund defences in Punjab, or make a breakthrough in the mountain terrain, where there are limits to emp­loying forces and firepower. It could do better in the desert, but ‘doing better’ could well mean reaching the Indus, with its attendant escalatory consequences.

India’s military modernisation is a patchy process, leaving key gaps in its force profile. For example, it lacks self-propelled artillery, which would be vital for any armoured thrust into Pakistan. Likewise, its mobile air defence systems are seriously outdated.
There are two aspects to Indian efforts—the first is modernisation, or replacing obsolete equipment; the second is enhancing its capabilities to newer and qualitatively higher levels. As the record shows, it is managing the first task with considerable difficulty. Given the modest increases in its military budget, it is hard put to replace older systems and acquire new equipment.
In any case, even if the Modi government manages to cut through the thicket of delays, it will be a decade before that equipment is meaningfully assimilated into the Indian military to make a difference. Indeed, the present focus of the government has been to make up shortages in ammunition, missiles and critical equipment for the so-called War Wastage Reserves (WWR). So, while there has been an improvement in India’s ability to undertake a war now, it is only in the sense of making existing and, in many cases, obsolete equipment battle-worthy.

Since the Kargil war, India has explored ways and means of deterring Pakistan’s proxy war. It first theorised on the concept of ‘limited war’ and then, after the Operation Parakram fiasco of 2002, began to think of a Cold Start doctrine, through which it would quickly grab key bits of Pakistani territory in bites small enough to avoid crossing the nuclear threshold.
However, as of now, offensive forces have not been stationed near the border for a quick move, and neither have they been provided weapons and equipment for the task. So, any Indian offensive will tread on the beaten path of a long mobilisation, which would rob Cold Start, or its new version, ‘proactive strategy’, of the  element of surprise.
Rawalpindi believes that it has sufficient forces to blunt any Indian military venture. After the 1965 and 1971 experience, Pakistani war plans no longer dream of planting their flag on the Red Fort. Instead, the PA has been practising ways to halt any Indian ingress and to use ground defences to trap Indian thrusts by counter-offensive manoeuvre.

The Pakistan Army may be half of that of India’s, but it also has half-million strong reserves. India, too, has such res­erves, but the Pakistani advantage is that a significant portion of its Army comes from three districts in Punjab, making mobilisation of reserves a swift and meaningful process. Further, PA formations are located close to the border and and they can be quickly deployed in forward defences.
In reality, the situation has not changed much since 2002, when Musharraf boasted that he had blocked the Indian Army because the forces that Pakistan maintained were well above the ratio required to effectiv­ely counter the Indian Army.
The IAF does have a significant edge over its Pakistani counterpart and can carry out punitive bombardment of targets, but Pakistan will certainly retaliate and with its ballistic missiles it has the capacity to do so. This would put us on an escalator tow­ards a larger, all-out war.
We cannot ignore the new dynamics of the Sino-Pakistan relationship. Indian diplomacy has singularly failed to break this nexus, despite the fact that it has been around since the 1960s. Instead of weakening, it is strengthening by the day and it has important military consequences.

During the Bangladesh War of 1971 and the Kargil conflict of 1999, Beijing studiously avoided supporting Islamabad beyond a point. That situation may not hold this time around, considering the more hawkish overall posture of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, its changed attitude to Arunachal Pradesh and the generally poor state of Sino-Indian relations.

It was only a limited conflict; still Kargil today would cost Rs 2.28 lakh cr (Assuming an average annual inflation rate of 6% since 1999, when the Kargil war was estimated to have cost Rs 10,000 cr a week)​
New Delhi must also contend with the sharper increases in Beijing’s defence spending. It should be clear to everyone that our government cannot provide more money than it does for our defence forces. Indeed, a RAND Study comparing India and China noted that ratio of Chinese to Indian military spending will grow, and in addition “reported ineffectiveness and inefficiencies in the Indian research, development, and acquisition system suggest that, unless India succeeds in major reforms, the gap between China and India in the production of actual defense capabilities—quantitative and qualitative—could  be even larger”. This study was issued in 2011; six years later there are no signs yet that deep reforms are being undertaken to make the Indian military more effective in terms of its equipment and organisation.
The really big question mark relates to the issue of nuclear weapons. A  massive Indian thrust and an imminent Pakistani conventional defeat means that Islamabad’s hand will inch towards the nuclear trigger. And therein lies the danger. China and India are such large countries that even conventional setbacks will not be treated as being a catastrophe, but Pakistan is brittle. Given its geography, it is inherently vulnerable and, more dangerously, it is psychologically insecure vis-a-vis India, and hence the threat of use of nuclear weapons in the face of defeat is a real one.

And it is this danger that would bring external intervention into any war-like  situation, either through the US and its allies, or by China. The US concerns are dual—the first set relates to instabilities that could affect the outcome in Afghanistan, something for which Washington still looks at Islamabad for help. But neither the US nor the world community can stand by if nuclear war clouds gather in the region, because any nuclear conflagration will have global consequences.
There are many chicken hawks in India who say that the Pakistani threat to employ nuclear weapons is a bluff. Perhaps it is, but it is a tough one to call. Dealing with them is not easy, with just four or five weapons and a missile that can only go half way to the US, North Korea has stymied the greatest power in the world.
India may believe that nuclear weapons are merely to deter adversaries, but the Pakistani doctrine is quite clear—they are for ensuring that it does not suffer military defeat at the hands of India. Anyone familiar with the PA’s  hatred for India should know that it would be quite willing to cut Pakistan’s nose to spite India’s face.
Outlook June 12, 2017

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Losing Hearts and Minds in Kashmir, the ‘Innovative’ Way

Tomorrow, the use of human shields could become standard operating procedure. Instead of the difficult process of flushing out militants by armed assault, the army could line up civilians and use them to breach a position.

At first sight, army chief Bipin Rawat’s comment in an interview to PTI – “I wish these people, instead of throwing stones at us, were firing weapons at us. Then I would have been happy. Then I could do what I (want to do)” – makes it seems as if the general is eager to shoot protestors.
What he is actually saying, in a somewhat convoluted way, is that he would rather not shoot at unarmed people. But in seeking to give his reiteration of the army’s long-standing position a somewhat macho touch, he has ended up making a statement that can, at best, be called confused.
This confusion represents his frustration at dealing with the phenomenon of violent civil protest riding on the back of a violent separatist insurgency.
But instead of directing his ire at the protestors, the general should reflect a bit on his – and the Indian army’s – predicament.  Military intervention, as Clausewitz pointed out a long time ago, is only a means to achieve a political end. “War is nothing but the continuation of policy with other means” implies that war or armed action cannot be divorced from the political context. The logical extension of this is that the government gives the direction as to the end state it desires, and the military provides the means of achieving that end.
The problem here is that the politicians, and this means the Peoples Democratic Party-Bharatiya Janata Party-coalition government in Jammu and Kashmir, and the Union government at the Centre, have created a situation and dumped the problem on the lap of the armed forces.
There is a PDP-BJP government running the state and presumably directing the security forces operations but we see no signs of any political direction. Defence minister Arun Jaitley has declared that there is a “warlike situation” prevailing, but the Union government has not yet imposed martial law and given the Army a free hand that Gen Rawat says he would like to have.
Rawat should be wary of a “free hand” because it will bring grief not just to the state but the army whose morale the general says he is worried about. The big problem actually lies with the army’s  assessment of the J&K situation. The corporate view, bought by a large section of the government, is that there is a proxy war going on there. In other words, a conflict entirely directed, financed and armed by Pakistan. This is simply not true. The Kashmir situation is a mix of proxy war, indigenous separatism and Islamism layered by local grievances. This requires a sophisticated politico-military response, something that is absent and the army is, unfortunately, being forced to bear the brunt of this lack.
In themselves, Gen Rawat’s remarks are a classic Sunday-for-Monday news item. Editors know that if you want column space, the best day to push a story is on a Sunday. General Rawat wanted to make a point to the critics of his action in rewarding Major Gogoi, but he need not have worried: he made so many controversial remarks in that one interview to PTI that they have hit the headlines any way.
Take for example his belief that “your people must be afraid of you [the army].” This statement is completely over the top. First and foremost, the army must command the respect of the people; the word “fear” is inappropriate and ill-advised. This is why, when the army comes in aid of civil authority, the very first thing it does is to conduct a flag march – aimed at using its prestige to calm a situation.
The army chief has spoken of “innovative” means of dealing with the situation. He is probably right, since the situation in Jammu and Kashmir is itself quite complex and unique. But if the use of hostage taking is part of the innovation, then there is a problem.
His explanation for awarding Major Gogoi a commendation even while a court of inquiry into the legality of his action is on holds no water. As chief, he must uphold army procedure, which he clearly did not because he acknowledged that he had decided to award the major based on a general sense of the direction in which the inquiry is going. Given the way the army works, Gen Rawat virtually foreordained the outcome. There can be no excuse for what Major Gogoi did, and it would have been better if the chief had left the issue alone, instead of condoning what was an illegal act.
Tomorrow, the use of human shields could become the standard operating procedure (SOP). Instead of the difficult process of flushing out militants by armed assault, the army could simply line up a number of civilians and use them to breach a position they are hiding out in. This would also be “innovative” but it would also be a violation of the laws of war which Indian forces have upheld till now.
In much more trying conditions in the early 1990s, the army acted against its personnel for wilful abuse of civilians. As I have documented in my book, Lost Rebellion: Kashmir in the Nineties, an officer was cashiered and given a seven-year prison sentence for stealing Rs 8,000 in a search operation; a soldier of the 9th Field Regiment was dismissed from service and given six months in prison for molestation; punishment for rape was draconian and usually quickly delivered through a court martial. Three officers responsible for arresting and interrogating a journalist received severe reprimands. The Army has largely kept quiet about the punishment it meted out for excesses, but that does not mean it did not act. Army officers are aware of just how counter-insurgency situations undermine the good order of military units unless soldiers are kept within the straight and narrow.
It is because of this attitude that the security forces were able to defeat the militancy and bring sufficient peace to restore an elected government in the state by the late 1990s. Virtually all specialists will tell you that winning the hearts and minds of the people is an irreplaceable component of any counter-insurgency strategy, especially one such as we are witnessing in J&K today – where there are just a handful of armed militants operating in ones and twos, but a large pool of disaffected people sheltering them.
The Wire 29 May 2017

KPS Gill (1934-2017): The man who finished Khalistani terrorism in Punjab

In the annals of Indian policing, Kanwar Pal Singh Gill has a unique place of his own. And that is largely because of the leadership role played by this tall and imposing 1957-batch Indian Police Service officer of the Assam cadre in eliminating Khalistani terrorism in Punjab.
The story, however, is not as straightforward as that. There were ‘collateral casualties’ and controversies along the way. But the fact remains that terrorism in Punjab, which was at a peak when he began his second term as Director General of Police in November 1991, was completely stamped out, by the time he demitted office in December 1995.
It needs to be pointed out, however, that the Khalistani movement in Punjab never went beyond the level of small groups and, sometimes, individuals carrying out attacks on the minority community – Hindus. But it should also be remembered that he was brought to Punjab as Inspector General of Punjab Armed Police at a most difficult time in the state’s history. In September 1984, Punjab was still nursing the wounds of Indian Army’s Operation Blue Star in June to remove militant religious leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale from the Golden Temple in Amritsar. The army’s use of tanks, artillery, helicopters, armoured vehicles and tear gas had left hundreds dead and caused damage not only to the Sikh’s holiest shrine, the Akal Takht, but also the Sikh pride.
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination on October 31, 1984, that followed as a direct consequence, and the widespread anti-Sikh riots that followed in its wake in Delhi and other parts of the country, added to the state’s problem. As Gill was later to note, the two most significant victories for the cause of Khalistan were not won by the militants, but inflicted – through acts both of commission and omission – upon the nation by its own government.

Image: Hindustan Times

Four stints

His first stint in Punjab till 1985 elections in August which saw Surjit Singh Barnala’s faction of Akali Dal assume power with him as chief minister, was rather uneventful and the second one followed in 1986 when he was sent back as Inspector General of Central Reserve Police Force and IG Border Range, Punjab Police.
But Gill’s success must be carefully deconstructed because it wasn’t success all the way. He came to prominence as Director General of Police, in what was his third stint, replacing Julio Ribeiro as the chief of Punjab Police, who sums up Gill thus:

When KPS first approached me with his offer to serve with me in the troubled state, I immediately agreed. I had asked many others but none was prepared to risk life or limb. KPS was a master in the operations field. I knew I did not possess that expertise or even the intrinsic ability to hunt down the desperadoes. I could motivate men under my command but not guide them in specific details of intelligence gathering that was essentially required to neutralise the miscreants. KPS was the man for that task. That job I left entirely to Kanwar Pal. He did the job with verve and panache. He really enjoyed it, even enjoyed being harsh at times though on that score I would often differ. I certainly differed from him on the core issue of how this ‘nationalistic’ form of terrorism could be put to rest.

“The turban must always be held high,” he told Harinder Baweja. Image: Hindustan Times

Gill was brought into office as DGP for the first time in May 1988 as the killing of civilians hit double digits (per month) at the beginning of the year and peaked at 343 in May. His immediate and great success was Operation Black Thunder which liberated the Golden Temple from the militants without the kind of devastation and killings of Operation Bluestar.
It ensured that the Gurdwaras were not used by the militants thereafter. Here, Gill displayed his talent for counter-terrorism, combining force with psychological operations and dynamic leadership.
Ribeiro noted in his memoirs, Bullet for Bullet:

He had spent many sleepless nights and had been working almost without any rest for the past five days. His energy was tremendous, his presence imposing. The foreign media persons were very impressed with his control over the situation, his command of the English language and his demeanour. Despite [then minister in charge] Chidambaram’s misgivings, Gill had given ringside seats to television crews, and the entire operation was relayed live to the world.

Harinder Baweja recalled the operation in the Hindustan Times:

He ordered water and electricity to be cut off and finally forced the terrorists to surrender in the full glare of television cameras. The sight of ‘khadkus’ walking out with their arms up broke the proverbial back of the Punjab militancy... Gill walked ahead of us and as we went in tentatively – stepping on glass shards and ammunition empties. He made most of us crouch as we approached the Harmandar Sahab – the sanctum sanctorum – for fear that some terrorists may still be in hiding... Gill walked straight, without once crouching and a few evenings later, when I met him again, for a one-on-one chat, he said, “The turban must always be held high.”

But the situation in the state did not really improve. That period coincided with political instability at the very top in New Delhi where the Rajiv Gandhi government got embroiled in the Bofors case and lost the 1989 General Elections. The succeeding VP Singh government was unstable, as was that of Chandrashekhar. The country was wracked by the Mandal and Mandir agitations and came to the brink of economic collapse. The country’s army was involved in the Sri Lanka operations, besides trying to cope with the challenge from Pakistan and the ULFA in the North-east.
After a relative decline in 1989, the figures again started rising in 1990, reaching a monthly peak of 364 in November. Gill was transferred to Delhi by then Prime Minister Chandrashekhar to facilitate negotiations with Khalistan groups in December 1990. The first term was thus clearly not all success.
The shift came with the election of 1992, which was probably the peak of the Punjab militancy. This was the time when the nation’s fortune’s were at an all time low and the army stretched in Kashmir, North-east and Punjab had to finally deploy its vaunted strike corps for election security duty in February 1992.
In the Indian Express, Praveen Swami quotes Dinkar Gupta, now Additional Director General of Police in charge of intelligence in Punjab, as saying that what truly distinguished Gill was his ability to think big.

 “Faced with the 1992 elections, he decided, more or less by himself, that we’d get a platoon of police to secure each and every candidate. It was a preposterous idea – but that preposterous idea was implemented, and the end result was we didn’t lose a single candidate”.

The election of Beant Singh as Chief Minister and the confirmation of Gill as Director-General was important. But the key catalyst was the Indian Army at that time. The Army had learnt from the fiasco of Bluestar and regained its prestige in the minds of the Sikhs who did not care much for the Punjab Police. It was only when the Army was deployed that information began to flow in leading to the elimination of a succession of terrorists. It must be mentioned, as an India Today story of the time noted, Gill had experience of working with the Army in Assam and, with his aggressive personality and general air of informality, struck a good rapport with Lt General BKN Chhiber, former corps commander at Jalandhar. The Army played a careful role in letting the Punjab Police take the credit and contented itself in providing the outer cordon in search operations. Killings began a downward slide through 1992 and by September came down to double digits and January to one digit.

Later Gill was resentful at suggestions that the Army played any major role. But by this time he had become the “Super Cop” and the “Lion of Punjab” and the myth of his invincibility was built. Gill’s free hand to the police also meant excesses on an epic scale. And sure enough the Punjab Police was accused of all manner of crimes from torture to custodial killings. Some of these were simply extortion enterprises that had nothing to do with terrorism or terrorists, many of the excesses came after the real danger of terrorism was over and the anti-terrorism machine ran out of control. The most notable of the killing was that of Jaswant Singh Khalra, a human rights activist who listed the disappearances of people in the state.
Gill himself, however, offered no remorse over any of the allegations, writing:

The ‘liberal’ mind has always remained ambivalent when confronted by the fact that the State, among other things, is a coercive instrument, and that it must, from time to time, exercise its option of the use of force – albeit of judicious, narrowly defined and very specifically targeted use of force – if it is not to be overwhelmed by the greater violence of the enemies of freedom, democracy and lawful governance. To fail to exercise this legitimate coercive authority is, thus, not an act of non-violence or of abnegation; it is not a measure of our humanity or civilisation. It is, rather, an intellectual failure and an abdication of responsibility that randomises violence, alienating it from the institutional constraints of the State, and allowing it to pass into the hands of those who exercise it without the discrimination and the limitations of law that govern its employment by the State. In doing this, it makes innocents the victims of criminal violence, instead of making criminals the targets of its own legitimate and circumspect punitive force.

However, there should be no doubt that while Gill did not finish off Punjab terrorism single-handedly, the winning strategy was his. And it came from his mind, rather than the force he commanded. Because he was able to take the demoralised Punjab Police force, give it that crucial aggression and direction that eventually took care of the kharkus, as Sikh militants of the time were called. He had never formally studied counter-insurgency, but was a well-read and educated person with an enormous sense of certitude, and he successfully transmitted this to his force making him the great leader that he was. As Ribeiro puts it:

He was not convinced and hence, not concerned with winning over hearts and minds, which was and still remains the classical method of ending this form of terrorism, as opposed to the ideological form. Yet, KPS will always be remembered as the principal terminator of Khalistani terrorism.

A proud Sikh

Gill had clear ideas about the cause of Khalistani terrorism and the way it should be dealt with. He believed that though the preachers and leaders of the Akali Dal had played a key role in distorting the Sikh faith and injecting a needless sense of grievance in the minds of the Sikhs, the key role in the militancy was played by Jat Sikhs, and to defeat it required the iron resolve of the Jat Sikh police force, and a knowledge of the tough Jat Sikh ethos, which of course, he was familiar with, coming from that community himself. As Ribeiro recalls,

“He once ventured to tell my wife that I was too soft to be a policeman in Punjab! Only a Jat Sikh, like him, knew how to handle other Jat Sikhs, who incidentally formed the bulk of the terrorist cadres we were fighting.”

One of the ways he instilled courage into his men was through Operation Night Dominance, in which he led the process of moving around Punjab at night in his convoys, daring the militants to attack. The result was that the police who had earlier barricaded themselves into their police stations at night, ceding the ground to the terrorists, quickly regained their elan and made life difficult for the bad guys. Ambassador cars with jugaad armour fitted out in the workshops of Ludhiana became a prestige symbol in Punjab. Swami notes:

The preposterous ideas piled up. Faced with terrorists hiding in high sugarcane fields, which made locating them dangerous business, Gill’s in-house research unit invented the armoured tractor, a crude but effective armoured vehicle that could drive into the slushy fields. Forensic tools and jammers were built from scrap.

Gill had very clear ideas about the nature and origins of the terrorist challenge in Punjab which he outlined in his book Knights of Falsehood. The background lay in the competitive religiosity and distortion of the Sikh faith by militant preachers and writers of the Akali movement through the early part of the 20th century who seized control of the shrines. “I saw what secularism could have been and what communalism did”, Praveen Swami recalled Gill saying, referring to Partition, “and I was determined not to let it happen in Punjab”.
In the 1980s, the Akali Dal was led by the Parkash Singh Badal, Gurucharan Singh Tohra and others. In other words, these men sowed the dragon’s teeth that led to the militancy of the 1980s and 1990s. A lot of this was not far from the truth – the Akali Dal’s shameful role in the events of the 1980s is now conveniently forgotten, but it should be an ever-present reminder of what happens if you mix religion with politics.
Scroll.in May 27, 2017

Rise of war porn: The hyper-nationalism being unleashed today has electoral rather than strategic considerations

By its excesses of display and stimulation, pornography is doomed to failure. Aimed at sexual arousal, it gratifies, but fails to satisfy. That’s the way it is, whether it is food porn, with lustrous displays that never quite fulfil, car porn, or travel porn. Those addicted can never have enough, but the end consequences are a constant sense of frustration, akin to neurosis.
There is another dark category that this country is exploring these days – war porn. Hour on hour some TV channels loop clips of jawans charging through the pine studded landscape at the enemy. Rocket and guns are fired at distant targets, all bound together by a narrative suggesting that war is the best way of resolving our problems with Pakistan.
Some of the clips are clearly training videos; no videographer would have had the courage to take the angles presented if live bullets had been flying around. Others are old releases of the army’s PR team.
War porn, like the regular thing, gratifies but never satisfies. It indulges the fantasy of those who think that war is the solution to the many problems they confront, personal and social. Its empowerment works the way quack pills advertised to promote vigour do – entirely in the mind.
Why has this affliction come to us today? Because some politicians believe that talk of war – not war itself – is a ticket to deliver votes. Bashing Pakistan, and, to an extent, China has played well with the electorate and could do so over the next two years.
So, war porn featuring our western neighbour and his perfidious activities has become the chosen narrative.
The narrative of porn is always contrived. It does not tell you the real story, indeed, it does not tell any story, all it does is to provide vicarious gratification. And that is what makes war porn dangerous.
It all began with the so-called surgical strikes, which was touted as a military victory at par with Waterloo. As long as this war is fought on TV screens, the worst it can do is to promote a certain phobic behaviour.
The danger arises when it enters the realm of reality which is always more complicated and less prone to manipulation. This is the stage we are at today.
The air force chief has warned his personnel to be ready for action, the army is releasing videos of Pakistani posts being blown up and says it is conducting area domination operations in the Valley and aggressive domination in the LoC.
The defence minister says that the army must have a free hand in a war-like zone, and he is right to say that. But then the government must declare martial law, as it did in the case of Operations Bluestar and Woodrose in 1984.
All this appears somewhat unreal. The last major terrorist attack in India – one aimed at unarmed civilians – took place in 2011. There is no obvious casus belli today, figures show that cross-border violence is actually down. One can only conclude that the hyper-nationalism being unleashed has electoral, rather than strategic considerations.
But the politicians should beware. History has shown that it is easy to start a war, but very, very difficult to figure out how it will end. Ask Nehru.
We do not have to use the N-word, modern conventional weapons are destructive enough and their effects are very different from the TV fare we are getting. India has not known a real war since 1857, featuring large-scale indiscriminate killing and widespread destruction. It should not know it, ever. This fantasy lust for war must end.
The Times of India May 27, 2017