https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/mms-and-indias-swing-to-the-right?r=i1fws

MMS and India’s swing to the Right

Obituaries emphasise Manmohan Singh (MMS) was a good man.

His achievement was as remarkable as that of Nehru, the making of India 2.0.

That it is being remade yet again – India 3.0 - this time by Narendra Modi, must be ascribed as much to MMS as Modi’s corporate benefactors and the saffron parivar.

Mourning done with, the MMS legacy needs a proper footing in this light.

A commentator has it that MMS “created the fertile ground for the nation to swing to the Right (emphasis added).”

Taken along with the deficits on national security in the MMS tenure, MMS delivered India not merely economically to the Right, but veritably handed it over to the Right wing.

Rightly, MMS is remembered as a good man, but was not quite a strong one.

Laying out the red carpet

MMS precipitated what he himself termed ‘disastrous’: Modi’s advent. He had the State’s resources to pull Modi up short, but for a whole decade did nothing.

To be sure, the remote to his administration was held by Sonia Gandhi and he was merely an accidental prime minister (PM). Therefore, blame for Modi’s striding to Delhi from Gujarat should rightly be laid at her door; but, wholly so?

MMS was the ultimate supervisor of intelligence agencies as PM - even if, as in the case of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) on occasion, mediated through ministers.

On his watch, Narendra Modi charted his way to Delhi with the covert help of right-wing subverted officials in State agencies.

The IB had a new head foisted on it by the right-wing ruling party just prior to and in anticipation of it’s losing the Shining India elections.

Whereas there was no visible reason to axe this gentleman on taking over, it was fairly evident early enough that the incumbent was answering to a different, right-wing drum.

The IB’s supposed provision of the intelligence that led to the killing of Ishrat Jahan and her companions is a case to point.

This was precursor to the spate of purported ‘terror’ attacks in Gujarat, attributed officially, and in the popular imagination thereafter, to Muslim perpetration.

Alongside, there was the suppression of truth emerging on the Gujarat pogrom. Mere noting that someone who "presided over massacre of citizens on the streets of Ahmedabad" shouldn't be PM couldn’t have been expected to trip up Modi.

Even if the judicial system was overseeing the cases, it behooved on the central government to ensure a level playing field for justice through able supervision of its agencies.

Not doing so was dereliction of duty, for which the PM - at the apex of the national security structure – is accountable.

The ‘terror’ attacks soon went national, resulting in hundreds of Muslims being incarcerated in full media glare. The release of most a decade on (longer for some) testifies to the complicity of central agencies, subverted and answering to a ‘deep state’.

A ‘deep state’ is hypothesized as existing in the period, there being no other way to explain away curious happenings, such as:

· the hobnobbing of the former director IB in question with the underworld;

· the killing of Hemant Karkare, in the Indian admixture to the terror attack emanating from Pakistan;

· the impunity of saffron terrorists of the Sanstha and Abhinav variety;

· the kid glove treatment for Amit Shah, though with evidence enough to temporarily incarcerate him;

· and, the lack of traction in the case against Modi on the Gujarat pogrom.

A deep state indicates a weak polity, which in the period was presided over, if in a titular capacity, by MMS.

Of his three national security advisers, the first died in harness fairly early.

Reputedly the second was a Sonia appointee and has much to answer for, particularly since what was churning in the intelligence sphere could not have been without his knowledge, if not imprimatur.

The third was too outward looking to be fully comprehensive of or engaged with internal security, which in his time was handled by a political heavyweight owing only nominal allegiance to MMS.

Consequently, even if Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origins and her need to pave the way for her son compelled her appeasement of Hindutva, MMS must bear responsibility for acquiescing in the outcome in a weakened State.

Right wing in-roads then are by now self-evident in eviscerated institutions. Its not a cross that only Sonia Gandhi must bear, even if her parivar’s is the substantial failure, fortuitously making Modi right on parivarvaad.

Further, Pakistan-origin terrorism was inflated also to take down initiatives with considerably greater and visible MMS investment: ties with Pakistan and Kashmir.

Any revival of the peace process with Pakistan after Mumbai 26/11 was put paid to by the out-of-uniform intelligence czar, Ajit Doval, who from his perch atop a right wing think tank orchestrated a backlash in the strategic community against any feelers.

Even if the Pakistan talks stalled, there was little reason for the Kashmir peace process to end up as collateral damage. MMS lacked heft to see it through to a culmination of sorts in an internal settlement acceptable to Kashmiris, while Pakistan was out, hit-wicket. His home minister’s belated enlightenment on azadi is post-August 2000 entirely inconsequential.

For an unwillingness to stand up to jibes from the new Hindutva champion, MMS as PM must stand arraigned.

The nuclear deal

The only instance when MMS put his political capital on the line was in the Indo-United States’ nuclear deal.

That this has not resulted in any additional electricity suggests that the aim was narrowly to be ushered into the nuclear club by its principal gatekeeper and more broadly getting into bed with that declining power.

Neither seem to have done India a fat lot of good. For MMS to have expended his political capital and exhausted himself – he later had a heart procedure – for this meagre outcome shows a lack of judgment.

What it certainly did was to eliminate Leftists from the political spectrum, a keenly felt absence in the circumstance of India’s economic and political ‘swing to the Right’.

What it possibly did was to enhance India’s nuclear bomb making capacity, which some observers say has since transitioned offensively to contemplating first use that can logically only be in the form of first strike.

This capability in the hands of strategic simpletons that constitute the political council of the Nuclear Command Authority today is but recipe for firing these off in anger, panic or/and inadvertence.

Consider this, the Raksha Mantri, who occupies a chair in that council, recently required an assistant to nudge his recall of where he was: visiting the Army War College. Perhaps his trip was actually to a temple in Ujjain, under cover of an official visit.

Cognisant, MMS’ last official speech was at a national security think tank - now named after a forgettable predecessor of the defence minister (who could not have amounted to much given his health issues) - was to warn, not so much the world, but his incoming successor, not to breach the much hallowed, unenforceable and therefore incredible, No First Use pledge.

On his part, the successor in question once promised a neighbor, a Diwali night.

Military politicization

It’s not a delegative style alone that led MMS to leave critical issues to hands of ministers, but also lack of political punch.

Take the case of somnolent Pope Antony presiding over defence. The military proceeded to make the best of the doctrinal autonomy devolving on it.

Bequeathed with the Cold Start doctrine at the start of the MMS innings, the military transitioned to operationalising it. Even though it could not pull it off at Mumbai 26/11, confidence against Pakistan by the MMS second term allowed it to shift sights onto China and posit a two-front threat.

In respect of China, this set off a self-fulfilling prophecy, the results of which are with us today.

Against Pakistan it set up India to potentially a nuclear first strike – prompting fantasies in the then national security adviser of a second strike by India of splendid first strike proportions, thereby enhancing the threat of India receiving a preemptive splendid strike.

This grand strategic disarray was in keeping with the known policy paralysis of MMS II.

The insidious fallout was in the politicization of the military visible in an Army chief taking up cudgels with the government, to the extent of attempt to spook it using forces under a general related to him in a marriage alliance. Worse was the (deliberate?) leaking of his letter (designed to embarass?) to the government, promptly on his losing his date of birth case.

The lack of gumption to sack that general opened up the military to the Hindutva invasion of the its intellectual spaces, through veteran channels (remember a moustachioed general!) and use of then nascent social media.

The legacy then?

MMS obituaries observe decorum in recalling a good man. It does not take a Chanakya to know, its not enough to be good.

His successor’s tenure makes clear that it is important to be both good and strong.

The take away from the reprise of the MMS tenure(s) is that responsibility and accountability must rest on one shoulder.

Split, these serve as precedence such as for now, when the remote is held with unaccountable and – worse - unknown Hindutva zealots.

Finally, what’s true for the military is true for politics too. Good staff officers do not necessarily make good commanders. Good technocrats don’t necessarily make good political leaders.

Looks like Sonia Gandhi knew this all along.