https://open.substack.com/pub/aliahd66/p/rewiring-the-india-pakistan-peace?r=i1fws&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

Rewiring the India-Pakistan peace process

The peace process with Pakistan needs resurrecting. Both its twin tracks - externally with Pakistan and internally with Kashmiris - are now dead.

India’s regime claims the puncturing of Article 370 leaves no problem to talk over with Pakistan, other than – reasonably - Pakistan ceasing terror, and – laughably - its handing back Occupied Kashmir and Northern Areas. (Note lack of any mention of Shaksgam!)

As for the internal peace process, to the regime, elections substitute for one (recall the regime was obligated by the Court).

It now has a Jaishankarism: No talks with terror.

This mantra is self-serving. Peaceable relations with Pakistan are not in the regime’s interest.

Adversarial relations help it conjure up an ‘Other’, in an internal-external Muslim nexus, essential to its majoritarian project of ‘One this, One that and the Other.’

This approach is not merely strategically wanting, but being intrinsic to Hindutva’s revisioning of India, demands refutation.

Here I make the case that the chequered peace process in the Modi period was a tactical gambit to discredit peace and create enabling conditions for the Modi-Shah assault on Article 370.

I go on to show that the non-culmination of the peace process in the preceding period owed to lack of political will, for fear of a Hindutva-laden backlash.

That peace has proved elusive owes to it being treated thus far as a strategic issue.

It must instead be delivered politically; entailing in the present circumstance, first, a wresting back of the Republic.

The Modi period

This period began with Nawaz Sharif showing up at the Rashtrapati Bhawan forecourt for Modi’s coronation. Later, Modi dropped in at his new-found friend’s farmhouse.

The two episodes are presented as India’s outreach, which on rejection by Pakistan, led to India going its own way.

Retrospect suggests an alternative reading: that the aim of the regime all along was to shape the battlefield in Kashmir for August 2019.

For this it had at hand ace spook, Ajit Doval.

Of Doval, former boss Dulat writes that Doval considers himself capable of delivering on Pakistan. Here was Doval’s chance and he grasped it, Doval-style.

Doval’s advance praise for Lambah’s book is forthright on his perplexity over Pakistan’s ‘inexplicable perfidy.’ To him, ‘vexed Indo-Pak relations’ are bound to persist since ‘policy makers will have to deal with a difficult neighbour for a long time.’

Having spent seven years in Pakistan, he is a victim of his prejudices. In regard to Kashmir too, he has a bone to pick with the Kashmiris, having minded the Kashmir desk, as Dulat informs.

Entrusted to this man - ably seconded by Amit Shah on Kashmir - can the peace process have turned out differently?

Its aim was to make of Sharif, a Mir Jafar, to open the door from within.

Notwithstanding his Kashmir antecedents, he’d already established his credentials as amenable to peaceable relations. To him, his personal business interest in improved trade relations didn’t amount to a conflict of interest. Clearly, the Pakistan army seems to think otherwise.

India’s bear-hug of Sharif aroused the suspicions of the Pakistan army. Buying into the logic that only an Indian right-wing regime could make any concessions, it brought in Imran Khan, who, being obligated to it for the elevation, the Pakistan army thought it could control.

Thwarted on Sharif, India proceeded on its course to ‘integrating’ Kashmir.

Returning with a larger majority, Modi, using Shah, went for the kill in Kashmir.

The outreach to Sharif enables the regime to claim that it has done its bit for working peace, especially useful to keep Americans, who were then winding up their longest war nearby, at bay.

The peace process in Kashmir, supposedly conducted by Doval protégé, Dineshwar Sharma, was also timed to dispel fears of the Americans. Any need for a more credible process was dispelled with the unfolding of Operation All Out, in which over 1000 youth were killed. In retrospect it is apparent that Sharma was tasked with stage setting for the Article 370 act.

This, at a time when the Bajwa doctrine – geo-economics - had led to a let up in Pakistan’s proxy war.

That progressively more Kashmiri youth were killed shows the Kashmir conflict to be a home-grown insurgency. Targeting civilians – terror - is a tactic in any insurgency.

India’s own policy of self-servingly misconstruing the conflict as a proxy war prompted the militant backlash in Kashmir. To blame Pakistan is but displacement.

To be sure, not only did Doval reportedly participate in secret talks with his Pakistani counterpart, but the chiefs of respective intelligence wings also parlayed. The idea behind the latter in a first of sorts was to engage the Pakistan army directly.

The outcome was a mere reassertion of the unwritten ceasefire on the LC, a lollipop for that army. Bought off, the Pakistani army did not take advantage of either the Article 370 episode or Indian discomfiture in Ladakh.

The regime gained a breather for the Modi-Shah reengineering in Kashmir.

The pre-Modi period

This absence of a genuine peace process is in stark contrast to the approach to peace of earlier administrations. The peace process was along all four tiers: the governmental, Track II, back channel and P2P (people to people).

That the governmental track kept chugging, despite down turn in relations owing to periodic crises or terror attacks, is testimony of relative success. It also produced outcomes – well, almost - such as near agreements on Siachen – thrice over. That Sushma Swaraj rechristened the composite dialogue to make of it a new start point shows its potential.

The Track II processes made many converts of hardline bureaucrats and generals, of both sides. That the people-to-people one these days evokes the most scorn in the right wing is indicative of both success and its limits.

‘Sati’ Lambah informs of 36 meetings of the backchannel interlocutors over the decade 2003-2014. The track is credited with coming up with a comprehensive document, that commanded attention with the leadership on both sides. Musharraf’s four points informing the prospective deal, Pakistan was then closest to clinching what neither its regular military nor irregular proxies could ever hope to deliver.

The internal peace process had substance. Not only did it materialize Vajpayee’s vision of his April 2003 reaching out to Kashmiris, but it also had Manmohan Singh’s weight behind it.

Given the credibility of the peace process – both external and internal - why was its outcome below par?

The elephant in the room

The sole explanation, that the Pakistan army fears an institutional eclipse if peace were to break out, is insufficient. Other than in the Kayani period, there is no obvious evidence of institutional reservations.

Kayani, a former intelligence head, laid low in the Musharraf period, but his extended stay as Chief was in the post Mumbai 26/11, placing a premium on any haste on peace. On the contrary, there was Bajwa, interested in fruition.

Therefore, an explanation must lie on this side of the border.

Tracts that recount the India-Pakistan relations – especially by those from the foreign service bureaucracy – maintain a silence on Hindutva. Bisaria’s tome on the diplomatic engagement with Pakistan carries two references, both on the same page, to the ‘Hindu nationalist movement.’ (When commentators shy away from even using the term Hindutva, it’s a telling elision.)

What amounts to a veritable conspiracy of silence on Hindutva is proof that Hindutva is the elephant in the room.

This is quite obvious of the Modi period, but less so in the preceding period.

Then, the peace process had enough political will for lending it traction but not getting it to a fruition, since Hindutva was by then a hardy monster.

Vajpayee weathered Kargil and Agra, but ran out of time for taking the promise of the Islamabad Declaration to the logical conclusion. His deputy, Advani, was also onboard, deigning sup with the Hurriyet. Advani’s unceremonious exit from politics after his visit to Pakistan, forced by the right-wing mother lode, shows where the ‘remote’ lay.

Manmohan Singh was inclined to ‘breakfast at Amritsar, lunch in Lahore and dinner in Kabul,’ but the ‘remote’ this time was with Sonia Gandhi. For instance, the Siachen deal fell through when national security adviser, ‘Mike’ Narayanan, who genuflected to Mrs. Gandhi, reneged.

Future biographers may tell us whether her foreign origins had anything to do with over-compensating to appease Hindutva, adoption of soft Hindutva being another instance.

The Congress was sensitive to being outflanked and did not wish to give ammunition to Hindutva by anything that could be construed as a concession. In Manmohan Singh’s second term, the Congress espying the ground shifting beneath its feet, over-compensated by being over-cautious.

Not only did it fail to take the internal peace process forward (the four round tables, five task forces and three interlocutors constituted a formidable peace initiative), but, against Pakistan, it firmed up the Cold Start doctrine – compelling military counter measures, including nuclear, on Pakistan’s part.

Thus, it handed over not only a somnolent peace process to an ideological successor regime, but also an unusable military instrument.

Unable to present his 56” chest, the next best option was ‘surgical strikes’ and propaganda barrages. In the event, for Pakistan, both were water off a duck’s back.

Yet, though stifling of the peace process, the strikes-that-weren’t proved politically handy.

Revitalising peace

Denial of statehood being indicative, the regime continues its vice-like grip over Kashmir. It best knows the situation is fraught; with periodic killings of migrants, minorities and soldiers making for an open secret.

An elected union territory government in place, a beginning can be made with settling with Kashmiris on statehood bolstered with Article 371 privileges.

A new normal will defuse any Pakistani interest and capacity to interfere when done with current day convulsions. An external peace process can extend to untouched aspects as demilitarization, demining and environmental resurrection of the LC, including Siachen.

If Doval can be off talking to Wang, surely India can to begin with a negotiated return of high commissioners and get on with the DIY kit in the last chapter of Lambah’s In Pursuit of Peace.

A liberal-rationalist prescription is a non-starter, but on that count inescapable.

Strategic reasoning apart, at stake is the future of the Republic.

 https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/how-the-world-must-help-syria-help-itself-3311183

How the world must help Syria help itself

The departure of dictator Bashar al Assad for Moscow within two weeks of the offensive by rebel forces, led by the Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), supported by Turkey-supported Syrian National Army and an assortment of rebel forces to the south, has been...

The fighting in Syria has been at a stalemate since 2020, and it was allowed back into the Arab League only last year. Therefore, the timing of the offensive and its rapid success, makes Ahmed observe ‘a deep-seated conspiracy between Israel, Turkey and the United States (US).

For Turkey, it was to get Assad out of the way so that the 3.3 million refugees in Turkey could be returned to Syria. For Israel, the toppling of the Assad dynasty has been a long-standing goal. The regime’s collapse enables the US to further isolate Iran and embarrass Russia.

As in Iraq when the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI) took over Mosul and in Afghanistan when the Taliban defeated the Afghan National Army in double-quick time, the Syrian forces melted away. Assad’s backers were busy elsewhere. While Iran was focused bolstering Hezbollah in Lebanon, Russia was concentrating on the Ukraine conflict.

However, since there is sufficient precedence of regime change collapsing under the weight of its success with rebels fighting each other over time. This has been visible in Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Sudan.

Consequently, Ahmed believes the aftermath of the offensive will likely leave Syria worse off.

The question arises as to how to avert such an outcome by transforming this juncture into a ‘historic opportunity’ and preserving Syria from another bout of civil war in which the rebels contest each other for the spoils and power.

On this count, the situation is not without promise.

The HTS has been preparing for the role of taking over Syria in its strong hold at Idlib. It has over the last few years taken care to distance itself from its Islamist past as offshoot of the ISI. Its leader, Ahmed al Sharaa, reinvented himself as a pragmatic revolutionary. The HTS acquired administrative experience and capacity in running Idlib.

During its operations and since its victory, it has made the right outreach to other stakeholders, including the Syrian government. It has allowed the prime minister, police and officials to stay on. It has signaled Russians on continuity of their presence at their air and naval bases. It has sought to calm minorities fearful of its Islamist past and cautioned its fighters on protection of civilians.

Even so, the international community would do well to assist, in keeping with the long-standing principle of the Syrian peace process: ‘The future of Syria is a matter for the Syrians to determine.’

The peace process was earlier jointly led by the United Nations (UN) and Arab League, witnessing mediation by joint mediators. As of now, the UN Security Council remains seized of the matter and has a special envoy, Geir Pederson, taking stock. In the field, humanitarians are providing succor to the displaced.

The UN has a start point in Security Council Resolutions 2254 (2015) of 18 December 2015 and Resolution 2554 (2020) of 4 December 2020. These call for an interim governance arrangement enabling inclusive governance, drafting of a new constitution and conduct of credible elections, and held to a finite timeline and international standards of accountability.  

As first step, review of the HTS on the terror sanctions list would need to be done against its claim of not being associated with any extremist entity. While exercising caution in support of the Taliban has proved warranted in its treatment of women, the UN could be more forthcoming in the case of HTS, lest it miss an opportunity in Syria. 

The promise of reconstruction helps incentivise moderation, since accessing external assistance will only be possible if there is a modicum of stability, which is, in turn, predicated on an interim power-sharing arrangement amicably arrived at.

The European Union’s offer of reconstruction assistance is timely on this count. Such assistance can be expected from the Arab states too, enabling a proportion of the USD 200 billion to be raised over time.

India, being a long standing friend of Syria and having widespread regard in the region, must push for the UN’s lead in political and humanitarian support, lest extremism find roots in another ungoverned space. 

 

 https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/how-the-world-must-help-syria-help-itself-3311183

https://substack.com/@aliahd66/note/p-152834647

Buckle up for the ride to Viksit Bharat

A seasoned commentator has it that a future scenario could be “a 100-year long simmering civil war.” Another senior journalist admits to being troubled by the “very dangerous situation” created by the manner “(M)inorities are ghettoized and Hindus (are) seemingly almost triumphal at times.” He laments that people laugh off cautions such as, “Democracy khatre mein hai.”

Given this apprehension of what the future holds, there is a need to articulate possible scenarios ahead. In my last substack post, I reasoned: “(A)rticulating that scenario might goad the silent majority to heed Niemöller better.”

Currently, in the battle of narratives, the dominant scenario is that of Viksit Bharat. Scenarios conjured by the unpersuaded are not only marginalized, but are deliberately throttled. This suggests that the Viksit Bharat scenario’s dominance is not quite organic, but potentially delusionary.

Clearly, contending scenarios need foregrounding. Doing so here, I first engage with the Viksit Bharat scenario, and then present the alternative(s).

The Viksit Bharat scenario

Bharat goes on to rival superpower China. Bharat’s benefactor along the route, United States, fell by the way side after the American Civil War II in wake of Trump II. Bharat has managed to tame its largest minority, its Muslims. In a sometimes-enforced gharwapsi, those with ‘Babar’s DNA’ were offered a choice: fall in line or be administered Israel’s Gaza potion. At the centenary of Independence the official declaration of Viksit Bharat, included in its observance the release of Umar Khalid et al and the surviving members of the Bhima Koregaon case from anda cells.

Akhand Bharat now notionally straddles the subcontinent. Client states, Pakistan and Bangladesh, imploded in their bid to keep up with Bharat. The economic model of national champions succeeding, governance has been outsourced to corporates. India’s military, though decolonized and politicised, has the Indian Police Service occupy some posts at the army’s apex, since it is ‘not an era of war.’ The defence budget was given to start-ups and big corporates that make up the new military-industrial complex under Atmanirbharta. The demographic balance in Kashmir stands redressed by settling non-Kashmiris in the satellite towns along the new ring road. Adivasis have been suitably Sanskritised for sacrificing their forests and way of life for national (read A-A) economic benefit. The non-savarnas forewent the reservation policy, buying into ‘ek hai toh safe hai’. Ashoka’s Simha was replaced with a saffron-coloured bull-dozer. Tourist guides at Ajmer Sharif and Taj Mahal go on about temples beneath. The wrongs of history were finally corrected with Bollywood blockbusters covering up the tracks and finger prints of Hindutva lugging Bharat to Viksit status.

The originator of the vision had a set of sants anoint himself President-for-Life. During yoga sessions atop Raisina Hill, he takes in the Vedic-reminiscent view of a redone Central Vista. Ongoing is construction at Godhra of the statue of the Hindu Hriday Samrat, to be taller than the Statue of Unity. His successor, Amit Shah, on demitting office, joined the rejuvenated marg darshak mandal. To prevent succession wars, Messrs Bisht and Sarma alternate between heading the government and heading the home ministry. Jaishankar stepped down, his work done with Bharat taking its rightful place in the ‘P’ club of the Security Council, after has-been United Kingdom was given the sack. India’s 50-million strong diaspora – resulting from plentiful illegal outmigration – helped with arguing Hindi’s case for inclusion as official language of the United Nations. Rattled by Rahul Gandhi’s pet project upsetting caste and power equations, judicial acrobatics in the ‘dual nationality case’ led to the judgment from a master-of-roster favoured regime-friendly judge of disqualification from politics for life. Parties peddling soft Hindutva merged into the Parivar, allowing for a Congress-mukt Bharat.

Viksit Bharat under threat

The alternative(s) comprise the many ways, individually and in combination, by which Bharat can potentially be derailed. Alternative scenarios are disruptive of the Viksit Bharat journey. Such threats, either stand-alone and in combination, emanate from multiple fronts - political, social and geopolitical.

The Viksit Bharat scenario formulation is cognizant of the threats and Bharat’s security minders seek already to preempt and overcome these. This explains Bharat’s grand strategy, unwritten for most part but for the new bestsellers: Jaishankar’s speech compilations.

Hindutva’s endeavor will be to mitigate risk by appropriate projection of the advanced guard, covering of the flanks and bringing up of the rear. Old tricks in the Hindutva book – deception, distancing, denial, tactical reverse gear, sucking-up, use of proxies, propaganda, lies and black operations - will be much in evidence.

Clearly, it’s not going to be a pleasant, linear quarter century.

A popular alternative scenario has prompted the mentioned early warnings from the progressive elite. It has Muslims - subject for a decade to micro-terror as lynchings and statist intimidation in the form of demolitions, torture, over-zealous application of illegitimate laws - fighting with their backs to the wall.

The assumption has it that precedence of some Muslims participating in terror acts will prompt imitation. The assumption fails to explain how the terror incidents miraculously stopped with the advent of the Modi era - whereas logically the number ought to have heightened. In effect, the latter part of the Vajpayee – a ‘moderate’ – belief is untrue: “Some Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim.”

If this scenario holds water, then the evidence should have been visible in renewed domestic terrorism. That it is not so is not quite testimony of Doval’s effectiveness, but that Muslim terror was a canard to begin with, bringing to fore alternative scenarios.

Alternative scenarios

Scenarios anchored on political factors include the collapse of the Hindutva enterprise with the inevitable, if not imminent, departure of its protagonist - claims to divine origin notwithstanding. All national institutions hollowed out, including the judiciary, makes for a brittle State. History of Hindutva’s favourite period, the medieval era, provides a clue. Though at its territorial zenith, the departure of authoritarian Aurangzeb led to the Mughals biting the dust. The mother ship, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), may be unable to run India through proxies less charismatic than Modi. The denouement will be more a fusion than fission.

Secularism and socialism already junked – never mind judicial rear-guard action – federalism is another political frontier to be tackled. The strategy to escape this is to have the RSS make inroads where it is less prevalent, as in South India and Bengal. The book-long denigration of the Lion of Mysore, Tipu, and exaggerating Bangladesh’s troubles to polarize Bengalis on this side, are respective strands of strategy. The idea is that Hindutva’s advance will pave the way for the ruling party, thereby easing Muslim-bashing, spreading Hindi, enabling inroads of A-A etc, but more importantly, the South’s acceptance of a 800-seater Lok Sabha. As Chandrachud put it, a saffron flag on every house keeps India together.

The social threat is not only from the national fabric tearing apart along religious lines; that’s only the visible part. Other fissures are papered over for now with slogans as ‘batenge toh kitenge.’ That socio-economic threats are elided is clear from Rahul Gandhi’s idea of a social audit through a caste census given short shrift. Debate shied away in parliament on growing inequality and India’s would-be Chaebol being caught out, a social tsunami - an Indian Arab Spring – is a constant threat. That a Spring is swirling close at hand is possible to infer from events in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The potential is clear from abject revelations on the reservation status in the elite institutions and withholding of the jobs data from central government positions. Further divestment and corporatization will ensure the breathing space reservations have reservations provided thus far is given up. Absent an Equal Opportunities policy, the failure on demographic dividend will only be compounded if Bhagwat’s advice - ‘more Hindus, the merrier’ - is taken. The regime’s appropriation of Ambedkar can only serve to defer.

The regime has sensibly stepped most gingerly in the strategic sphere. It is aware of the outcome of Nehru punching above his weight. Its avid deployment of spin doctors and a lap-dog media imply there is much to hide – such as effects of surgical strikes and Chinese incursions. It avoided a similar moment by lying over the latter and has not revealed what’s being given up for accommodating Chinese interests. This tender-footing around the most significant strategic challenge it has faced shows it prioritises Hindutva consolidation within over national self-regard, reputational risk and, indeed, the age-old national sovereignty marker: territorial integrity. This is made further clear from the regime’s most serious take on the Urban Naxal threat. It knows where the cookie will start its crumble.

Viksit Bharat as threat

This look at possible futures shows that both the success of Viksit Bharat and its running aground are fraught. Taken together – its success and the backlash this prompts – will make for instability. Indian history is replete with upheavals – Nadir Shah’s invasion, the Mutiny, Partition. The quakes we’ve had since – 1984, 1992, 2002 – shall prove mere forerunners. The scenario of rebellion-suppression increases with the State’s policy propensity for instigating the former and its capacity for the latter. At present, we are witness to both, a tendency towards policy over-reach incentivized by militarization. With Modi seemingly losing charisma, Hindutva might be hastened by panic. People may yet prefer the stick to the carrot of deferred gratification of a Viksit Bharat.

The ride will not be a quarter century long.

 India is past the Early Warning phase

ali's version

Dec 03, 2024

https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/india-is-past-the-early-warning-phase?r=i1fwshttps://thewire.in/communalism/india-is-past-the-early-warning-phaseThe Wire, 10 Dec 24

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Two recent episodes of The Interview With Karan Thapar constitute any Early Warning this country so desperately needs.

Towards the end of both interviews, the interviewees respectively articulate that each is apprehensive of the direction the nation is headed. While one despairs that India is facing an ‘existential crisis’, the other confesses to ‘sleepless nights’ mulling over the future.

An open letter to Prime Minister Modi by a set of former government officials echoes their words.

The letter informs of the ‘extreme anxiety and insecurity’ prevalent in India’s minorities and that the confidence of secular Indians everywhere stands shaken. The trigger appears to be the recent focus on medieval religious places by fringe groups, culminating in their eyeing the Ajmer Sharif Dargah.

The apprehension

The first interviewee says that majoritarians tearing apart the social fabric holding India together will prompt rise of extremism in the minority. Currently, the fear of reprisal is keeping Muslims down, but an explosion of sorts could result from their resisting second-class status foisted on them. He does not see any ray of hope, since no one is ready to take up cudgels on their behalf.

The second interviewee credits Muslims for keeping the faith in the Constitution by not joining co-religionists elsewhere turning out suicide bombers, there having been only one suicide bombing in India - at Pulwama. Should the situation get any worse, it may not remain so and India would be waylaid.

On its part, the missive paints a nebulous picture of the future, restricting itself to ‘disturbances’ disrupting the prime minister’s Viksit Bharat dream.

It appears that the well-meaning conveyers of the early warning believe that Muslims may resort to a violent pushback, causing untold misery, if the right wing - with state backing - continues down a majoritarian path.

On the face of it, the scenario appears plausible - Muslims disrupting law and order in reaction to India’s disruption of rule of law.

One, precedence has it that when pushed to the wall as in the Mumbai riots in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition, Muslims have struck back. They could do so again, when pushed into a corner.

The second assumption takes for granted that terrorism India witnessed in wake of the Gujarat pogrom were largely by Muslims seeking retribution, abetted by an inimical neighbour.

Questioning assumptions

My reservations on the scenario of future Muslim indulgence in political violence bordering on violent extremism flow from questioning the assumptions and from strategic logic.

Firstly, the Mumbai bomb blasts apart, there is enough evidence brought to fore by progressive forces busting the mythology of externally-aided Muslim-perpetration of terrorism. That such evidence is dismissed in national security circles as ‘conspiracy theories’ is part of the manufacture of the narrative, especially done to hide identity of actual perpetrators and motives of their masterminds.

That films need to be made, subsidized and propagated by the highest executive authority, like The Kashmir Files and Sabarmati Express, suggest that a narrative of Muslim villainy is being pushed. Such over-compensation is to compel counter narratives (as here) to trudge uphill in the battle of ideas.

Take my case, I quit being a quarterly contributor on strategic affairs for a well-regarded journal when it twice in quick succession excised my arguing that Muslims were unnecessarily arraigned for terrorism, while masterminds were out trying to make a vote bank out of the majority community by propping up a Muslim ‘Other’.

The expectation that Muslims will fight back against the majoritarian onslaught is therefore based on unconsciously imbibing the right-wing trope of Muslim propensity for aggression. Even some sane people cannot see stone throwing as an act of communication (Kashmir), of desperation (Sambhal) and as self-defence (Jehangirpuri).

Strategic logic

My second argument is that the relative power of the politically emaciated Muslim community when gauged against the capture of the state by the majoritarian forces makes for strategic prudence on its part.

There is consensus that the past ten years have been rather trying for the community:

• Muslims have been subject to micro-terror by cow vigilantes.

• They are ghettoized. This makes them easy prey of both lawless state security forces and empowered majoritarian mobs, as Rahul Bhatia’s The Unmaking of a Democracy brings out.

• Many are displaced, through riots (Muzaffarnagar) or demolitions (Bahraich), and the displaced are now being disenfranchised (Assam).

• Psychological war is unabated (Ajmer).

• Cohesion of Muslims is first being cut up for them to be later devoured piecemeal (‘Turk vs. Pathan’ in Sambhal).

• They already have the lowest indicators of social and economic wellbeing among all communities.

• Even in Kashmir, where per some counts the numbers of Kashmiri dead touches six figures, security forces boast that the shelf-life of a budding militant is rather short.

In contrast, the national security establishment is manifestly suborned. National security minders are well able to think through both consequences and unintended consequences.

India is thus in a position to control temperatures, turning up the heat only so much that the frog in the slow-to-boil cauldron does not skip out. If the frog misbehaves, there is always the police and paramilitary that have been militarized over the past decade.

The Shah-Vanzara model of controlling the police has gone national.

Witness the dragnet maintained in Kashmir since the reading down of Article 370 and the insouciance with which a central university campus in the national capital was invaded.

Evidence of a Kashmir-like take-no-prisoners approach (after a lone surrenderee in 2017 after many years, no surrenderees were recorded in 2018-19, with 9 featuring in early 2020) is from the bullet-holed backs of the 10 Kukis last month to one injured security forces’ trooper; and from 31 Maoists killed in one recent instance a month prior to no security forces’ casualty.

Given such power asymmetry, it would be strategic imbecility for a disjointed and widely spaced out Muslim communities to attempt take on the majoritarians.

Recall for the 800 odd Hindu dead by Razakar action prior to Police Action, mobs of Hindu extremists – in instances reportedly even aided by the invading army - exacted a 20-to-40-fold price in its immediate aftermath.

Any violent reaction to forthcoming pressures will only play into the hands of the authoritarian regime, giving it excuse to clamp down further, thereby enabling more pressure – both programmatic and physical.

It is not poor foreign policy that keeps India at odds with its neighbours, Pakistan and Bangladesh. It is also to give fresh life to the hostage theory of Partition, that provides excuse to leash a potential fifth column.

Muslims can at best throw stones defending their dargahs and mohallahs. At worst, a last resort is a Warsaw Uprising.

Muslims have already expended the political capital they had, administering the nation an early warning of their own. Amongst the signatories to the mentioned letter are Muslim gentry (Qureishi, Shah and Jung), who had earlier engaged with the leadership of the right wing parent formation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, urging restraint on its affiliates, militant camp-followers and ideological bedfellows.

Their warnings were two years back, with little changing since. Its now a period of heightened preparatory response.

The battle has to be fought within the majority community, without waiting for the first shots to be fired by Muslims. The interviewees did not dwell on what might transpire after Muslims reach the end of their tether. Articulating that scenario might goad the silent majority to heed Niemöller better.