What an Angry General's Unwarranted Admonition of Kashmiris Says About the Army and Politics
Are
generals speaking their minds or shooting their mouths off?
At an Army Management Studies Board (AMSB) seminar in Srinagar, the Director General, Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), Lieutenant General KJS Dhillon rhetorically inquired of the Kashmiri muslim community why the silent majority amongst Kashmiri muslims remained silent and did not protests recent killings of minority community members in Kashmir.
He cautioned that the not
only will Kashmiris lose their right to freedom of expression for being
selective on what they protest about but the term ‘Kashmiri’ might end up as a
pejorative, quite like the term, ‘Paki’,
used in a racist context.
To him Kashmiri
muslims’ absence from the streets in protest against lethal attacks on their
fellow Kashmiris of the minority faiths as ‘selective
dementia’. Perhaps he meant ‘selective amnesia’, a more familiar
phrase. Or - uncharitably – he may have meant ‘collective dementia’, wherein
Kashmiri Muslims, maddened by prejudice, did not condole publically enough
their wantonly killed fellow Kashmiri Pandits and Sikhs in this month’s spike
of violence.
The general’s plain speak
is a departure from the standard in civil-military relations and cannot be
allowed to go unremarked. True, precedence has been set by his boss, the Chief
of Defence Staff (CDS), General Bipin Rawat, who has done so repeatedly
over the years since his elevation to army chief. Since that is his trademark
by now, it is somewhat normalised, perhaps leading to his subordinates taking
cue.
The situation has come
to such a pass in public affairs that the first thing that comes to mind in
such instances is the question whether the dignitary making the remarks is to
retire soon. With Supreme Court judges leading
the way, could the military
be far behind? Cynicism has it that personages facing a pensioner’s anonymity may
be tacitly auditioning for a post-retirement sinecure.
It is true the general is
due to retire soon, commissioned as he was in 1983. Also true is that an
earlier incumbent of the appointment he holds now serves as military adviser in
the national security council secretariat. Incidentally, a claim to fame of the
military adviser was that his view that demonetization
would wipe out terrorism in Kashmir by drying up the hawala channels that got stone throwers on to Kashmir’s streets.
However, to give ‘Tiny’
Dhillon (‘Tiny’
alludes to his 6 feet 4 inches height) the benefit of the doubt, he may have
been acting in his official capacity. After all, at the apex of the
intelligence set up of the military, he may well be playing his part since info
war is part of the intelligence domain. That he is practitioner of info war is
evident from his twitter account being made operational just about when he took
over as corps
commander in Badami Bagh, coincidentally right before the
Pulwama episode.
The intent appears to
be to shame the majority in the Valley, Kashmiri Muslims, to register their
disapproval of the change in insurgent tactics to terrorism by targeting
innocent members of the minority community. In strategic
thinking, this would help with deterring the minders of terrorists sitting
across the Line of Control from ordering more such murders since it would set
the majority – the sea – against the insurgents – the fish.
Apparently the general has
moral authority since his last tenure of five
served in Jammu and Kashmir was as commanding general in Badami Bagh. His profile
on his twitter handle claims he ‘worked for peace in Kashmir in Chinar Corps,’
going on to state, ‘(N)ation first
always and every time.’ The two statements together explain his going voluble on
Kashmir, in Kashmir.
However, it bears
considering if a principal staff officer of the CDS can make egregious
statements in regard to an Indian community. Firstly, must be dispelled any
notion of emotional connect between officials and their work with communities
empowering them to air their subjective observations. At a stretch, generals in
command in counter insurgency theatres can arguably have such a privilege as their
mandate includes grappling with insurgency in a multidimensional manner. Others
had best hold their opinions till they retire.
Also, in this instance,
the notion of seeming entitlement with which the general makes his remarks
needs deflating, based as it seems to be on the notion of an affiliation with
Kashmiris for having served there and provisioning of security for them.
When the general was
commanding in Badami Bagh, Operation
All Out was in full swing. The state, rattled by the
protests in the aftermath of the killing of Kashmiri icon, Burhan Wani, had set
its security forces to go about killing militants with renewed vigour.
The figures
for years 2018 and 2019 are of zero surrenders.
This was when those signing up were at best impressionable youth, not quite hardened
jihadis. According to the general,
their lifespan
as militants was less than a year. Sans
training and weaponry they could not have made credible insurgents. So, does a ‘take
no prisoners’ approach
explain the figure of ‘0’ surrenders in years 2018 and 2019, followed by a
meager 9 beginning only later in 2020, after the general had departed Srinagar
for New Delhi? Though credited with having parents persuade sons to return to
the mainstream, resulting in some 50
youth coming back ‘quietly’, this is unverifiable as the
security of youth involved is at stake.
As it turned out,
Operation All Out was the preparation of the cake for icing that was to come.
He lent his credentials of office and the dignity of uniform for the bit of drama
that preceded the launch of the Modi-Shah assault on Article
370.
Knowing that the voiding of Article 370 would set off protests, the security
establishment needed to have Kashmir vacated off soft targets. The general went
on primetime
claiming that the army, finding an anti-tank mine with Pakistani marking on the
yatra route, had uncovered a
Pakistani plot to target the yatra,
leading up to it being called off. White lies in way of national security being
de
rigueur, the general’s performance enabled India
to blame Pakistan for the extensive crackdown that followed, even as India went
about despoiling the Constitutional provision.
With no reasonable locus standi to make his remarks, the
general’s AMSB lecture amounts to victim blaming - Kashmiris have borne the
brunt of counter insurgency for some three decades now. Reminders of their ‘duty’
as a majority can willy-nilly be appropriated by interested forces as another
stick – gaslighting
- to beat them with.
Yet another stick is
whatever Kashmiris may do, it would never be taken as enough. Kashmiri
leaders
have voiced
their
protest,
even though the state has gone out of its way to marginalize
mainstream politicians. In the ‘dirty
war’,
killings cannot
all be attributed to terrorists. Of those killed this month, two allegedly
innocent Kashmiris have been killed by security
forces, who command immunity, and one jailed Pakistani
was killed while scouting for - or being used as a human shield by - the army
chasing terrorists south of the Pir Panjals.
Equally, the state has
failed Kashmiris by keeping the conflict alive indeterminately, allowing for
right wing experimentation with solutions
as the dissolution of the state. It bears asking when the measure was at the discussion
stage, what was the army input from its operational level commander in Badami
Bagh?
Also, now that
statehood is to be restored, but only after elections,
has the DIA – lead in formulating the threat perception for the military - indicated
the security implications of the chronology of the elections: delimitations,
elections and only then statehood? The ongoing legislative constituency
delimitation exercise is to shift the balance of seats in favour of Jammu
region, making it easier for the Jammu belt so advantaged to vote in the Bharatiya
Janata Party. Since scenario building is in his
Agency’s ambit, General Dhillon needs answering what will happen if this
expectation does not materialise. But by then he might perhaps have retired.
Challenging the general’s
remarks is important on a more significant count. These were directed at a particularly
vulnerable Indian community that also happens to be Muslim, a double whammy in
today’s New India. On two
prior occasions,
the army has had an exchange of words with Muslim politicians, specifically:
Asaduddin Owaisi versus
northern army commander Devraj Anbu over Muslim ‘martyrs’ and second, Badruddin
Ajmal versus
Bipin Rawat over the latter’s remarks on the former’s political party. Unless
called out, the trend might become a norm, compounding the structural violence
against Muslims with cultural violence of this kind. Perpetrators need to be
brought down a peg or two, even at the risk of such counters being
mischaracterized as ad hominem, lest
Muslim bashing becomes a passing fancy for itinerant officials.
