From the archives, 2 Sep 2003

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

 An article in a recent Pratividrohi (March 03, p. 51) gives out ‘Pakistan’s future strategy’ as under:

 “Pakistan has dovetailed its support to its insurgency in Kashmir with other sinister machinations in the interiors of our country. Its future aims are:

• Force violent right wing reaction by engineering communal clashes.
• Coerce the Muslim population to instigate insurgency in other parts of the country.
• Destabilise Indian polity through espionage, urban terrorism, sabotage, communal discord and economic manipulation.
• Culminate in the break up of the Indian Union into numerous smaller states.”

 

In the author’s perception this ‘strategy’ is doubtless a culmination of the present

 

“game plan to escalate trouble in Kashmir…and simultaneously exploit insecurities of the Muslims of our country to create communal incidents across the length and breadth of the nation and thereby apply the ‘Kashmir formula’ elsewhere.”

 

If this formulation were merely an individual’s perception, it would not have been remarkable. The fact is that it has acquired the status of ‘common sense’ within the Service as evidenced by similar expression in other service journals. The troubling issue that the critique here deals with is the underlying assumption that Muslim India is subvertible, if not already subverted. The assumption, however widely held, is untenable and on that account downright derogatory.

 

There is no denying that in the games State’s play, ‘insecurities’ of one are exploited by the other. Pakistan is no exception if it were to ‘exploit’ Indian vulnerabilities in terms of an ‘insecure’ minority. It must be unapologetically remembered that India has played a like hand with vastly greater finesse elsewhere. Therefore the answer clearly lies in introspection and preemption. Notions that Op Topac (a semi-fictionalised piece of scenario writing by an Indian Defence Review Research Team) was Pakistan’s ‘Kashmir Formula’, and it is repeatable ‘across the length and breadth of the nation’, militate against such an exercise.

 

The author also appears to subscribe to the idea that ‘violence’ perpetrated by the ‘right wing’ is ‘reactive’. It accounts for his understanding that to Muslims can be attributed ‘communal incidents’. Three points emerge. One is that greater agency is accorded to the minority than warranted, while denying the same to the ‘right wing’. Secondly, while a whole community is being implicated for the violence, only the ‘right wing’ is deemed as a other participant. Like disaggregation of the minority community is not thought to be relevant or necessary. Lastly, sensitivity to the possibility that such a perception favors the political agenda of the ‘right wing’, and therefore, could well have been fostered by it, escapes subscribers to the formulation.

 

The article also errs in giving Pakistan an unrealistic capacity for manipulation. Not only is its ISI deemed to be able to ‘force the muslim population to instigate insurgency’but also ‘coerce the right wing to violence’. It can be conjectured that Pakistan has a more reasonable self-assessment, based on which it would set itself attainable ends, rather than vainly countenance the farfetched ‘break up of the Indian Union’. As with Pakistan’s case of 1971, such an outcome would only be the result of implosion brought on largely by unchecked prejudices such as the one at the center of the formulation discussed here. Therefore the first step to avert the unlikely scenario is a timely and uncompromising rebuttal as attempted here.

 

It is important that the respectability acquired by the formulation through repetition, rather than rigorous argumentation or research, be dissipated by contestation thus. Failing to do so would widen its influence to the extent as to render any meaningful security analysis awry. More importantly it would render the ‘apolitical’ status of the service questionable - an unthinkable and irretrievable fallout.