https://www.academia.edu/103783627/Indias_Doctrine_Puzzle_Limiting_War_in_South_Asia

Link for my book. 

 https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/has-the-renaming-bug-hit-the-military

Has the renaming bug hit the military?

I learnt that the suite named ‘Akbar’ in the Western Naval Command officers’ mess has been renamed. ‘Akbar’ stood alongside the one named ‘Ashoka’. The two suites were thus well positioned to evoke memory of the two emperors who tried to make India whole. While Ashoka succeeded, Akbar set the stage for his great grandson, Aurangzeb, to succeed.

I wondered if the rooms named ‘Akbar’ and ‘Tipu’ at the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington, that find mention in writings of right-wing general, late General SK Sinha, are still so named. As I contemplated the renaming phenomenon, a rumour reached me that a hall named after Tipu at the Army War College had a new name. I feared verifying this, should it turn out true.

In the confirmed instance above, has the Western Naval Command taken cue from the national education watchdog, which recently deleted portions on the Mughals from the history syllabus? It would also be questionable if the Adjutant Genaral, who had snapped his heels together in response to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call at a Combined Commander’s Conference to decolonise the military mind, approved the unverified mentions here in his rather long list of contemplated changes.

Even so, the military’s buying into the line that India’s slavery lasted 1200 years – the timeline Narendra Modi stipulated in his first address at the parliament on taking over his new job in 2014 – needs cautioning against. If the military does follow suit in such mistaken belief, then it is being political. Departures from being apolitical is unprofessional. To be unprofessional exacts a price in national security.

Cautioning on Hindutva

For Hindutva to wish for an obedient military is unexceptionable. The popularly elected regime deserves as much. However, its expectations appear to be going past the traditional professional mould of subordination. It wishes for a military with an intersubjective understanding – of Hindutva. The alacrity in response of the military suggests it is being obliged.

There is no arguing decolonising the mind and ushering in a measure of authenticity and indigeneity into norms, mores and conduct. However, the assumption behind this push - that Indian military has lagged in this over the past 75 years - is unconvincing. Any continuity owes to tradition having a motivational place in the military ethos. Ideally, change is an organic process, leading to self-renewal over time. In any case, the shift to a technology-oriented military is underway and is of revolutionary proportions, which will bring about cultural change alongside.

To press through diktat for substituting the martial inheritance of the forces by having them dig further into history – and mythology – for inspiration is unnecessary. The military is Indian enough. For motivation, it already has foyers of all training auditoriums carrying iconography drawing on the great epics from the Holy Sermon on the Battlefield, the Bhagwat Gita. Also, thus-far lesser-known heroes from physical and social peripheries have been resurrected, such as Lachit Barphukan and Birsa Munda. When an issue is already in hand, there is little reason for the military to go overboard.

For the regime to have an agenda is understandable – its parochial interest is the consolidation of Hindutva. To elevate this to the national interest requires a national consensus. The military must await this. A national security document could be laid before parliament, which – given the regime’s prioritisation of a cultural makeover - must include a persuasive chapter on cultural change. Sans this, proactivism is to bite off more than it can chew of the Hindutva Apple.

Not only must whats to be discarded be reviewed cautiously but whats displaces must also be subject to scrutiny. Hindutva insists on non-autochthonous influences be repealed, while antediluvian observances included. Neither is desirable. The former negates India’s diversity – geographic, ethnic and cultural – while the latter militates against a modern mind - prerequisite for imbibing the ongoing technological revolution.

The martial legacy of Muslim India

Getting rid of horse-drawn buggies for fetching up inspecting officers to the parade ground is fine, as is jettisoning the sahayak system. However, disregarding Muslim contribution to Indian martial history is however to go a bit too far. Since it is to go against the grain today to point out that Indian Muslims have historically made a nationally significant contribution, it must be belaboured here.

From the ebb and flow of Muslim presence across India’s historical map, it is evident that Muslim entrants into South Asian land mass rightly bought into the prevailing perception that it is a single strategic and civilisational space. They were - to begin with - at separate corners of the Subcontinent (Kerala, North West and Sindh) and with time ensconced within it. Their martial history contribution comprises their march from the periphery lasting centuries and their participation in the strategic affairs, with fellow Indian communities, during and after their spread.

First off, but for Muslim keenness to make India whole, the British who wrested their empire, may not have had a British Indian ‘empire’, but a conquest quite like colonial mess left behind in West Asia. Muslim instinct for and accepting the received wisdom on the oneness of India accounts for Muslim-led kingdoms from the Sultanate to the Mughals trying to encompass Indian landmass, in the tradition first set by Chandragupta. Therefore, Muslims transmitted through time to the British, the perception of India as a political entity, which – in turn - enthused their subjects to overthrow the colonial yoke. That Independence turned out a ‘transfer of power’ owes to Mughals having first served up a unified polity. 

Secondly, by no means was the spread solely by the sword as Hindutva-tinged history has it, but a product of syncretism – incomprehensible in today’s communalised lens. The communalised template of today serves political forces, who legitimise their ideology and conduct using a medieval scare crow. This has lately been accentuated by displacement: to intoxicate masses with religion lest they talk of equality and economy. It’s Hindutva’s ‘opium war’ on Indians.

Third, Muslim martial legacy is a veritable trove. Littered across India’s landscape are medieval forts, capped by guns of the era in mute testimony of India’s artillery prowess – largely a Muslim forte. Muslims were also at the forefront of cavalries, with horses being imported from areas whence some had come to India’s northern plains. Medieval Indian history is a military historian’s delight and cannot be accessed without empathy for the Muslims of the time. 

Fourth, reaching to ancient times alone for reclaiming pre-colonial legacy can only lead to missing this. A missing piece leads to a negative self-appraisal, that in turn prompts an impulse rooted in an inferiority complex. This is an unnecessary imposition by Hindutva on Indians. Neither the Sultanate nor the Mughals would’ve reckoned in history but for alliances with Indian ethnic groups, even if asymmetric. To denigrate Muslims of the time is to side-line non-Muslim actors, such as among others, the Rajputs and the Purabiya, that included Brahmins. Muslim despots were only products of their time and in political pursuits adherents of Chanakyan Mandala strategic thinking (Richard M Eaton, India in the Persionate Age: 1000-1765, New Delhi: Penguin, 2020, p. 24).

Fifth, going beyond the so-called ‘Muslim period’, acknowledging the legacy renders redundant the call to overthrow the colonial clasp over mindsets. It dates to the period of colonial subjugation, ignoring that the armies were essentially Indian, even if answering to a would-be colonial master. Even under the colonialist, victory could not have been with the Allies in the two World Wars if it hadn’t been for the Indian contribution – both military and material. The Indian National Army too can do without the overhype. It being undivided India, the collective contribution of Muslims was at least a third.

Lastly, since Muslim India’s is a shared legacy, if India does not own up to its martial inheritance, Pakistan cannot but appropriate it. Though it can be expected to use the names Ghauri and Ghaznavi for its purposes – the marauders having held sway over the Indus basin at points in time - reports are that it also is working towards a long-range missile, calling it Tipu. It already has a naval ship named after Tipu. Tipu had little if any to do with the area that now constitutes Pakistan. If New India thinks it can hand over that legacy to the Pakistanis – as some unfinished business of Partition - it must be disabused of the notion.

To wit, the ad-nauseum reiteration of Kashmir’s glorious ancient past must not be at the cost of its medieval connection with India. To emphasize the ancient over the medieval is to allow Pakistan a leeway into staking claim on like ideological grounds using the medieval period as cue instead. Kashmir is Indian not because it was Hindu once. Taking ownership of the medieval period by India would allow for the continuity in claim that it otherwise potentially surrenders to Pakistan by default, using the Hindutva’s religious affiliation as argument to ownership of Kashmir.

Disengaging ideology

If numbers made a country, India’s Muslims could finish fifth – after China, India, United States and Indonesia. Ignoring 15 per cent of the population is hardly inclusive conduct. Since numbers in the military ranks are difficult to come by, that they are less than 3 per cent at the soldier level and 2 per cent at the officer level, shows that there is a serious issue with diversity index of the military. Their absence and - now – any further relegation to the psychological margins is unwary participation in a pet project of Hindutva – invisibilisation of Muslims from national life.

The upshot can well be the military ending up bystander or worse, an active participant in a cultural vandalism as prelude to genocide. Cultural erasure is a preliminary of physical eclipse. This explains the shindig here over Akbar’s nameplate prised out. Since Hindutva is not too keen on the Buddhist emperor either, if given such latitude, tomorrow will be Ashoka’s turn to have his nameplate removed. Initial tentative steps test the waters. Worse inevitably follows.

The military’s apolitical character that is central to civil-military relations also has a cultural facet to it. It means keeping ideology from colouring the perceptual lens of the military. Whereas conservatism is the usual political vein of militaries, liberalism must equally inform the military ethos of a diverse nation. India’s diversity implies multiple streams feed Indian strategic culture. No stream may be dammed or damned, even if some or other stream is privileged at a point in time.

The military must know that Hindutva adherents self-servingly subscribe to Orientalist historiography, in which the periodisation of history served colonialists well. The British who took over from the Mughals undercut Mughals for legitimising their power grab. Hindutva, left with a feeling of inadequacy by the largely violent colonial take over, bought into the colonial construct of history.

It’s the Hindutva mind that needs decolonising. Unfortunately, no amount of renaming - ‘Kartavyapath’ etc - and cultural jugglery - Sengol etc - can bring it about. It shouldn't take a civil war for it to be dragged back from the fascistic era of the twentieth century, where it has it ideological fount.

The ado over Aurangzeb

In Maharashtra, on the back of Hindutva early-year gatherings on the usual trope against Muslims – love and land ‘jihad’ – the deputy chief minister, Devendra Fadnavis, tried intimidating Muslims by recourse to the invective ‘Aurangzeb ke Aulad’. Backtracking, he tries to nuance Aulads as those with foreign ancestors as against off-springs of converts, hoping the wean off the latter from the former as potential nationalist Muslims.

This is of a piece with Hindutva’s fixation on the Oppressive Muslim, though history has versions aplenty of Muslim contribution – including Aurangzeb’s – being multi-splendoured. That Aurangzeb was incorruptible and pious is lore.

Though four of Akbar’s Navratans, including his army commander, were Hindu, yet he stands deleted; what chance can Aurangzeb the Bigot possibly have? Yet, Aurangzeb, though persona-non-grata for Hindutva, is a prospective military icon, for his tactical bravery and operational finesse, if not for his political overreach.

The southern Muslim sultanates were much against the northern Sultanate and Moghul intrusions south of the Tapti over the preceding three centuries. Their armies comprised inhabitants of the Deccan, both Hindu and Muslim, and indeed also Africans and, on occasion, foreign mercenaries from the proto-colonial presence dotting the peninsular shores. The early Mughals were held off from Deccan, though both the younger Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb respectively tried extending the empire southwards. Maratha Deshmukhs participated in the push back of the three sultanates – Ahmednagar, Bijapur and Golconda. Indeed, both Chhatrapati Shivaji and Emperor Aurangzeb had considerable proportions of respective armies comprising Muslims and Hindus respectively, including in substantive segments of firepower and manoeuvre.

Under the circumstance of defiance of imperial authority, Emperor Aurangzeb had little recourse but to spend the last quarter of his life in the Deccan. To this choice must be attributed the vision behind the controversial mural on Akhand Bharat that graces the newly inaugurated parliament building.

Aurangzeb is an apt warrior model. While Tipu is credited with killing a tiger, Aurangzeb, as a teenager, fought off an elephant. At the operational level, Aurangzeb, as prince, was recalled from Gujarat to recoup the campaign into Uzbek lands that had gone awry. That he managed to do so and win the respect of his superior Uzbek forebears on their home turf testifies to his operational acumen. A vignette from the battle has him dismounting in full view of his enemy and partaking of prayer. This show of cool courage impressed the Uzbeks into a compromise.

As Emperor, his dedication to expanding the empire to cover the Indian landmass shows the singularity of his political aim. A large proportion of his senior commanders being Hindu shows that he was not communal, as the popular version has it, as much as political in his approach. It is unfair to examine him using modern lens, while not using the same lens on what Hindutva is up to since the destruction of Babri Masjid and the Gujarat pogrom 2002. His political avatar need not overshadow his yen for war.

Aurangzeb and his Rajput and Muslims generals proved worthy opponents for Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, the latter’s derring-do has much to do with the challenge Aurangzeb posed. Extolling the Chhatrapati does not need doing down Aurangzeb. Indeed, the Chhatrapati’s challenge put Aurangzeb to camp out in the Deccan, where he was later laid to rest. Fadnavis’s ideological blinkers prevent fathoming how both remarkable warriors can be held in high regard simultaneously. What will escape Fadnavis is that between the two, the Chhatrapati wins out, owing not so much to his sans-peer martial prowess, as much to his evolved secularism and a gender sensitivity much ahead of his times. 

Decolonise wisely

The very thought that the third generation from Independence yet requires to ‘Indianise’ – as Fadnavis had it in the presence of General Bipin Rawat at a function at the Bhonsala Military School (for the uninitiated: site of Shrikant Purohit’s Abhinav Bharat escapades) - prompts certainty of it being anchored in extraneous impulse, Hindutva. Decolonisation does not mean disavowing every inheritance, especially those selected for discard by Hindutva. The military has to vet instructions it receives for subtext. At the apex level, the saying ‘theirs’ is not to reason why’ is inapplicable. Perfunctory allusion to a secular military – as late Bipin Rawat did at that function - will no longer do.

If the military avidly participates in Hindutva’s core project – disadvantaging Muslims in the national enterprise – it cannot but be called out. Into the ninth year of Narendra Modi’s term, it is evident that Hindutva is in modern times indulging in bigotry it accuses its bête noire Aurangzeb of. While excusable for Aurangzeb – considering he was a product of medieval times – the anachronism in aping him today is lost on Hindutva.

If bhakts can idolise Modi, Muslims can hold Aurangzeb in nuanced regard and no one can exercise a veto. My grandfather, the first Indian Muslim military staff course graduate in undivided India, surely was master of military affairs. He advisedly named a son after Aurangzeb. Fadnavis ought to know Muslims do not let forebears down, especially those who first exercised their freedom of choice of spiritual oasis, even if under Aurangzeb's allegedly bloody sword.

Military leadership cannot hide behind platitudes to an apolitical military any more: it must live the talk. It must throw out suggestions that it act in a particular, partisan manner. This is easier done on operational matters – such as is hopefully being already done in Manipur.  It must now carry forward its professional independence of thought to spheres that otherwise appear less urgent and important, which, though in the in the cultural realm, are no less salient. The likes of Fadnavis must get to know where to get off, so they don’t need to be told off.

 https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/manipur-smoking-out-the-majoritarian

Manipur: Smoking out the majoritarian agenda

Doungel: The smoking gun

In wake of Home Minister Amit Shah’s four-day visit to Manipur, the Union government has appointed a three-member committee to come up with a report within six months on the ethnic turmoil that engulfed Manipur through May.

One aspect the Committee would not be seizing itself with is the side-lining early in the crisis of the state’s Director General of Police (DGP), P Doungel, an officer of the 1987 IPS batch. Doungel’s younger brother, C Doungel, of the IPS 1990 batch, who - being next senior – should logically have taken over as ‘operational commander’ was also similarly ignored. Both were Union Public Service Commission selectees of their time, with the suffix RR (Regular Recruit) to their designations. Instead, their junior from the IPS 1993 batch, Ashutosh Sinha, heading the intelligence branch, was made ‘operational commander’.

Alongside, the Union government appointed a retired former central armed police force chief, Kuldeep Singh, as security adviser to the state government. Ordinarily, advisers are appointed to assist governors and lieutenant governors run matters as proxies of New Delhi, such as has been the case with Jammu and Kashmir since mid-2018. On occasion, a democratically ruled state could also pitch for the assistance of an adviser, as Assam once did in the late Nineties, using the services of top cop, KPS Gill, an Assam cadre IPS officer, to contend with insurgency.

The Union home ministry elevated an officer of neighbouring Tripura cadre, Rajiv Singh, of the 1993 IPS batch, as DGP Manipur. Rajiv Singh, at the time serving with the central armed police at two steps lower inspector general rank, has been shifted from his parent cadre for a three-year tenure. How Rajiv Singh’s credentials occasioned the move does not find speculation in the open domain. What the two appointments spell in light of the trend of regime acolytes tenanting significant posts is that they have been vetted well for their Hindutva worthiness, professional endowments being only a bonus.

Rumour has it that the two Doungels were marginalised for being Kuki – members of one of two contending ethnicities, the other being the majority Meitei. As per one report, the senior Doungel was ‘shunted’ out to a newly created post, Officer on Special Duty (OSD) (Home) - OSD in babu-speak for no special portfolio. He was kept out of briefings of Amit Shah, though accompanying him to Kuki areas during Shah’s visit from which Chief Minister Biren Singh stayed away.

Kuki social media activists went to lengths to point out the asymmetry in the power structure and relations that resulted, that then endangered their community. Though risking plausibility, they went so far as to point out that if Doungel has been benched by the state administration, so should Meitei military officers participating in humanitarian operations. For its part, the Army went ballistic, denouncing any notion of partisanship on its part. However, it missed the point that it was merely caught in social media crossfire. The good part is that in doing so it tacitly undercut the state government’s action over Doungel.

The dubious manner the police is subordinate to political bosses in India is well known. Examining how Doungel was de-facto superseded at the crunch would reinforce the truism that professionalism and merit within the police stand to suffer if the chain of command is trifled with. Besides, Doungel’s potentially wise counsel not having a forum for ventilation and his good offices with Kukis left untested, the majoritarian agenda of the ruling party found full play.

What the Committee will not uncover

The august Committee is unlikely to uncover reasons for the disruptive decision of Chief Minister Biren Singh at the very outset of the crisis and to what extent was it responsible for the inability of the state to regain control in an early timeframe – assuming it wished to. If Doungel was found incompetent, the Committee would unlikely want to prove how within a day of the crisis outbreak the officer forfeited the trust of his political masters, though he had been in the chair for over a year. The Committee will certainly not be asking after whether his ethnicity played a role, as rumour has it. Did any action of Doungel smack of parochialism?

It will not answer the question: Was the sacking an anticipatory one to allow the majoritarian agenda to unfold without any embarrassing witnesses? A coverup can certainly be expected about a more damaging question: Was the chief minister - who was also his own home minister - acting of his own accord or being dictated to by New Delhi? Surely, Nagpur’s role will not be broached at all.

It is naïve to expect a Central government-appointed committee to come up with meaningful findings in the Modi era. Since Manipur has been subject to the ‘double engine’ treatment, with the ruling party at the Center also holding the reins in Manipur. As with the expectation from the committee probing the recent train crash at Balasore, the Committee would likely sweep the truth under the carpet, in the best tradition of Indian committeeship since Independence. The Modi era is no different. The Balasore accident case being handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation, even prior to the Railways coming up with its findings, pre-suggests a finding of sabotage. This explains Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s grandiloquent end-of-visit quote when he ‘vowed’ those responsible will be punished.

There is no record of a search for accountability by this regime in its numerous shortfalls and missteps. The only one that can be recalled is the return to cadre of the officers in charge of national security adviser’s security detail, when his house was gate-crashed by a mentally disturbed person. In the security sphere, lapses that have not seen accountability include Ladakh, Balakot, Pulwama, Amshipora, lynchings, the mini-pogrom at North East Delhi and the outrages on university premises in the national capital.

This is of a piece with its overall policy on coverups, witnessed in the case of sexual harassment of national level wrestlers, Covid deaths and the warning-less lockdown provoking a mass migration that rivalled Partition in magnitude. This is part of information warfare of a government in perpetual election mode, governance being a matter of perception management, with budgets for publicity being higher than achievement being advertised.

Instead, witnessed is a white-wash exercise. Examples include elevation of a terrorist to parliament, terror perpetrators’ sentences being remitted, mob violence agents being let off and terror tag being put on activists.

It is well-regarded in security circles that should the government so will, no civil unrest can last more than 24 hours. Manipur’s has gone on for a month, and there is no certainty it is at an ebb. It witnessed periodic bouts of instability, some incidents taking place even as Amit Shah was on ground. Beginning 1 June, combing operations are underway to disarm the two communities.

Critics, particularly with insight into the Kuki side, have it that, to begin with, the government was not serious to bring unrest to an end. If it was evident Biren Singh was not up to the job, then Amit Shah should have stepped up. But Shah had the usual alibi of being busy elsewhere, in this case with elections in Karnataka. Kuldeep Singh clarified that Article 355 - that allows the Central government to take over internal security – was not in force in Manipur. Since accountability would devolve on the Central government should it have stepped up, Shah wisely remained distant; notably even making a trip to Guwahati but not Imphal while violence continued.

There is no escaping the conclusion that the problem was being kept alive for other aims, quite the way violence has been used elsewhere to put Muslims ‘in their place’. So long as the cycle of violence continued - with the Kuki village defence guards rising to the occasion in a credible show of self-defence - the impression that an ethnic contest through violent means was touted. Such an explanation is both obfuscatory and self-exculpatory.  

The trigger was the provocative burning of a symbol at a historical site associated with the Kukis. This had as backdrop Kukis rallying peacefully against a Meitei bid, using the judicial route, to get to Scheduled Tribe status. A finding that ethnic fissures are at root distracts from the proximate cause: Who stands to benefit from violent conflict?

Cadences of the Gujarat Model

Conflict management in Manipur is resonant of the Gujarat Model. Whereas the Model itself has come into disrepute in the economic sphere - with which it is most associated – there is a less remarked security aspect of the Gujarat Model. One facet of this is that an internal security situation be allowed to continue till the ulterior aim is achieved. This proved successful in Gujarat in February 2002 when majoritarian extremists were given two days by then Chief Minister Narendra Modi to go about committing crimes against humanity on their Muslim neighbours.

From the preliminary statistics in terms of deaths, internally displaced people and on destruction of property and religious places, it appears Kukis have been worse off. The Kukis - having the self-defence means and largely inhabiting a defined locale - were able to fend for themselves, making for a civil war of sorts. On their part, they have victimised the Meiteis in their midst. Ethnic cleansing now seems to be complete, quite like in Gujarat where ghettoization of Muslims resulted.

Another facet of the Gujarat Model operational is seen in the castigation by Biren Singh that security forces were contending with ‘terrorists’ referring to self-defence groups of the Kukis. These ad-hoc groups comprised common citizens and Kuki militants who were disarmed in the longstanding Suspension of Operations (SoO) process. Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) Anil Chauhan repudiated the notion, categorising the crisis as an ethnic conflict. He undercut Biren Singh’s attempt to put the minority community in the dock, so as to legitimise violence against them by state security elements in league with militants of nonstate armed groups of the majority community, the Meiteis, namely Arambai Tenggol and Meitei Leepun. In Gujarat too, the state security apparatus was an active participant not only in the pogrom, but afterwards when it manufactured the myth of Muslims as terrorists.

Superficially the problem was ignited by the attempt to take a judicial route by Meiteis to gain Scheduled Tribe (ST) status. Though the Supreme Court clarified to the High Court that the judiciary is not the appropriate forum for conferring ST status, using the judiciary to its advantage has been a Hindutva forte. The Ayodhya temple, reopening of temple-mosque issues and obscuring Hindutva fingerprints on terror attacks show its tendency to justify its position using likeminded elements in the judiciary. Hindutva invests in judicial luminaries on the lookout for sinecures, though in this case there has been no hint of the judicial complicity – only of judicial incompetence or over-reach.

The lack of peacebuilding suggests that - as in Gujarat - ethnic enclaves are likely to be the shape of the future – as is not unusually the case in disruptions of social harmony of this level. This is another facet of the Gujarat Model, allowing for the minority to be kept under closer surveillance and disciplinary pressures.

Hindutva overlordship has emboldened Meitei extremists. A leader of the Meitei Leepun is seen donning a saffron scarf in a recent interview, showing the connect. It is clear from the expectations of impunity with which extremists invaded the armouries. While this was replicated in the Kuki areas, the well-stocked armouries were mostly in the Imphal Valley. Apparently, the weapons in SoO lockups in Kuki areas tallied. The complexion of the state armed police and paramilitary that stood by and, in cases, as seen in social media posts from the Kuki side, supported the Meitei militants, is majority Meitei. The dangers of lack in the diversity index in security forces is that majoritarian myths get normalised for want of a counter narrative.

Hindutva as proximate cause

Hindutva is averse to Christianity, as much as it is Islamophobic. The continuing violent template in Central India owes in part to the Hindutva penetration of the forested tribal belt, in a manner of religion following the flag. Likewise, in the North East, Hindutva, has made inroads with the Meiteis and Ahom, and the effects can only be similar. In Manipur, it puts the Kukis in the same position as the Adivasis and Bengali Muslims elsewhere.  

Hindutva disapproves of diversity. It prefers a monolith national identity with Hinduness as leitmotif. It has a security rationale, believing that fissiparous tendencies can be managed better with a uniform national identity. Majoritarianism then naturally comes to fore as answer. It has therefore sought headway in the North East, site of India’s older insurgencies. Since diversity cannot be done away with, being a function of geography as much as history, it is reconciled to accommodating other identities but in a hierarchical framework. The holdup over the matter of Flag and Constitution of the Nagaland Framework Accord is a case to point. The Naga tribes are unwilling to reconcile to the levels of assimilation that the Hindutva-answerable Indian security minders desire.

Hindutva ideologue Ram Madhav acknowledges been active in Manipur. In a recent piece, he admits, ‘I have worked in the Northeast for many years and am familiar with the fault lines there.’ To him, ‘(C)ontrary to the propaganda (with which this post will presumably be clubbed with to him (italics mine)) that it was Hindu-Christian violence and the Christians are victims of a Hindutva project, it is only a resurfacing of the Kuki-Meitei rivalry that dates back to the time of independence.’ He would like us to believe that, ‘(A)ttempts (that to him no doubt include this post) at linking the violence in Manipur with Hindutva are mischievous.’ Elsewhere he claims, ‘Everybody must understand that the issue in Manipur is not a religious conflict as some are trying to project it.’

Hindutva’s potion for national security has been found wanting in Kashmir. It has influenced the national security attitude and posture in that benighted region for as long as the internal conflict there. The onset of Hindutva and the rise in travails of Kashmir were coincident. If Hindutva has been unable to return normalcy to its flagship national security enterprise despite playing its ultimate card, the voiding of Article 370, it is presumptuous for the likes of Madhav and his acolytes in the national security woodwork to think that Hindutva is the answer for the North East.

Its derailment of Manipur is a red signal. That Madhav thinks this owes to historical ethnic ‘faultlines’ begs the question what then has been Hindutva about. He admits that, ‘(O)ver the last several decades, the cadre of Hindu organisations like the RSS, Vivekananda Kendra and Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram strove relentlessly in that direction (educational and economic development) through schools, hospitals and other social development activities.’

Hindutva cannot be exonerated. As the fount of Hindutva, the role of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) needs a probe, quite like the role of Muslim extremist organisations – such as the Popular Front of India - is scrutinised elsewhere. In a telling slip of tongue, Madhav writes of when, ‘we were establishing the first-ever BJP government in the state in 2017 (emphasis added).’ What its ideological penetration has wrought amidst the Meiteis must be put under the scanner. Even if Meiteis had pre-existing and long-standing differences with their neighbours in the hills, the extent to which Hindutva’s inroads account for the violent turn in the relationship should not be elided.

To Ram Madhav, the issue is about land. Madhav rationalises that the Meiteis wish for ST status in order to be hold property in the hill tracts. The Hindutvised national security discourse has been at pains to highlight illegal immigration of kin-groups from Myanmar and a spill over of the conflict economy there, manifest in poppy cultivation. To recall, Hindutva security minders have been complicit with the Myanmar regime, dating to the visit of Narendra Modi, in the immediate wake of which Myanmar cracked down on the Rohingya, that in due course unhinged that country. As is the case for demographic change in Kashmir, to control the fallout of their policies, national security decision makers assume that a suitable garnishing of an area inhabited by Christians with Hindus would help.  

Noting that, ‘(T)he two communities Meiteis and Kukis have become great enemies...’, Madhav says, that we, ‘don't know how long will it take to get things back in place.’ This provides the RSS an opening, the lesson, put by Madhav, as requiring, ‘the Hindutva campaign become(s) more inclusive, clean and development centric.’ Though Shah on departing Manipur called on civil society organisations to play their part, it can also be read as a carte blanche to the RSS to up its act. Quite like the well organised Jamaat in Pakistan takes advantage of societal disruptions to make its organisational presence felt and advance its aims, the RSS can be expected to step up. Leading figures of other non-governmental organisations are persona-non-grata for the government, so it is unlikely the spiel will be countered.

Back to Doungel

The focus on ethnic conflict as the root cause – by the CDS and the home minister – removes the spotlight from Hindutva as proximate cause. Theory has it that though there may be differences between social groups, the instrumental use of these differences is what facilitates violent conflict. Since Hindutva was a principal driver in Manipur - given the conflation between the pseudo-cultural organisation, the RSS, and its political front, the ruling party – it cannot be absolved of responsibility.

Madhav’s notion that tribes have been fighting for ages is colonial and patronising. Crimes against humanity and against international humanitarian law have been witnessed in Manipur, as were witnessed on a larger scale in Gujarat once. It would be naïve to expect Amit Shah’s Committee to go about answering as would Poirot and Holmes: Who had the motive? Doungel’s unceremonious removal has the answer. Don’t expect the Committee to report on that.