Pahalgam as Ajit Doval’s cross to bear
The press release on Ajit Doval’s appointment as national security adviser has it that his tenure would be coextensive with that of Narendra Modi as prime minister. Both are now into their third tenure in respective appointments.
Doval helped with Modi’s image-building as a strong-man at various junctures of Modi’s political journey. Evidently, Modi continues to need Doval for upping his political game.
With Pahalgam, Doval has delivered another Pulwama-sized opportunity to buoy Modi’s political persona and pitch on the cusp of campaigning in the forthcoming elections in Bihar.
With elections in Bengal to follow next year, the scene is being set for gaining a majority in both houses for the ruling party.
Coming as the Pahalgam outrage did close on the heels of the Jaffar train hijack incident and Pakistan Army Chief Asim Munir’s fulminations, Pahalgam is laid squarely at Pakistan’s door.
However, Doval must be arraigned for creating the conditions that led to Pahalgam. Clearly, intelligence operations went overboard on his watch.
Modi has reiterated the ‘harshest response’. Doval is presumably dutifully busy with whistling up a Modi-era Lightning Campaign for ‘unimagined’ punishment.
Just as Pulwama was rather aptly timed for Modi’s political trajectory, Pahalgam may in retrospect turn out to be equally so – if all goes well for India’s military.
It bears reflection that such a momentous decision could stem from a few jihadi terrorists striking lucky at an unguarded meadow.
It should instead be a logical step up from preceding contingency planning, exercises and equipping effort.
Such gigantic national efforts are not predicated on triggers outsourced to the enemy or its proxies.
In other words, a conspiracy theory on Pahalgam cannot be ruled out.
The opportunity has been seized by the military, knowing it would prove cathartic for its showing at Balakot and over Rajauri; and indeed, also in Ladakh.
Since Balakot, its readied itself with the S-400 and Rafales; the latter was sorely missed in the skies over Rajauri by the then Air Chief. It is already softening up Pakistani defences along the Line of Control to also keep Pakistan guessing where the impending blow will fall. It’s started an energetic exercise with the portents of an Exercise Brasstacks.
Though intended for such contingencies, Cold Start – formally termed Proactive Strategy (PAS) - has been a non-starter.
It’s uncertain if the military dithered or if Doval got cold feet, but the fact is that the non-initiation of PAS allows for extended preparation time with the logic of attacking at ‘a place and time of own choosing.’
The upshot is a longer duration revving up for war.
The hiatus furnishes the right-wing ecosystem time to deepen the communal divide, an opportunity for which it never needed any beckoning – though the leisured terror attack was a specifically crafted invite.
For Modi, it could prove useful to pocket the hold-out states along the Ganga waterway – Bihar and Bengal – where tactics deployed in Haryana and Maharashtra may not work since the state governments are not double-engined.
Such a windfall for the right-wing political agenda suggests an alternate truth.
If Baisaran could attract the attention of an itinerant forest-ensconced jihadi outfit, that it missed security scrutiny is inexplicable in any other terms than as an open invitation.
That the jihadis hewed so closely to a script that would gladden right-wing hearts invokes suspicion on who exactly was the script writer.
Consequently, a conspiracy theory on Pahalgam needs to be ruled in.
After all, recall the Pulwama blast was on a convoy that should not have been there in first place.
If Pakistanis had done the outrage at Chattisinghpora, why the elaborate cover-up at Pathribal and Barakpore; not to forget the judicial calisthenics thereafter?
Consequently, given Indian propensity for plausibly deniable intelligence operations and in light of the immense political dividend for the right wing from the Pahalgam strike, Pahalgam cannot readily be taken as a solely fortuitous occurrence.
For now, allowing for Pahalgam as Pakistan’s doing, it’s evident that Pakistani intelligence minds have divined the Indian reality masterfully. Their script for the jihadis ensures India reacted exactly in the manner they wished.
What does this bespeak of India of today? What is Doval’s complicity in the creation of such an India?
That is Doval’s cross to bear in history.
If and since Doval is currently readying the security establishment for a war with potential to go nuclear, he should be faulted for going down this route at jihadi behest.
In other words, if Pahalgam was not a black operation, it really ought to have been one.
And, if it wasn’t, Doval is eminently sackable for being enticed into a war, the end game of which can only be talks in which the status of Munir’s jugular will prominently figure.
The good part is that the opposite number is Asim Munir. Though not a Yahya - he is no drunk - he may instead be high on what was opium to Marx.
Even so, the military must be cautioned that capriciousness of war outcomes can only be tempered by strategic wisdom.
If the military falls short on the latter, poetic justice will catch up with Doval and mentor Modi. But that cannot be any patriot’s wish.
