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Dedicated to – Vinesh Phogat

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled the Simha amidst vedic chants atop the then under-construction new parliament building, I had hazarded that was perhaps the inauguration of the Second Republic.

However, Modi’s performance this Sunday suggests that the new quasi-monarchy and proto-theocratic state will date in history to the dedication to the nation of the new parliament building.

Even so, since it is predictable that the forthcoming Ayodhya temple inauguration will be an even grander event - and infinitely more saffron - declaring Hindu Rashtra could perhaps wait till that event.

For now, any claim to this effect could invite a sedition charge. So, Modi is taking his time getting there. While the last time he had bowed to the Constitution when entering Parliament, this time he prostrated himself before a scepter.  

A road bump

Even as he did so, Modi encountered an unforeseen road bump on the road to Hindutva’s Hindu Rashtra with the wrestlers’ protest at Jantar Mantar, ongoing for a month till this weekend, suddenly acquiring momentum.

Unceremoniously dislodging the wrestlers from Jantar Mantar, the Delhi Police lodged a First Information Report (FIR) against them for rioting for their bid to get to the new parliament building for a Mahila Mahapanchayat. 

The Police have so far not followed up with arresting the Wrestling Federation’s chief, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, on the two FIRs filed at Supreme Court behest, one of which is on sexual harassment of a minor. 

A hopeful perspective has it that the regime has finally overplayed its hand.

The wrestlers had originally wished to keep ‘politics’ from appropriating their cause. They suspected that if the liberals, feminists and opportunist politicians were to join them, it would be a red rag for Modi, giving him an alibi to look away. In any case, Modi proved oblivious.

With 1000 plus signatories to a condemnatory letter on police action, it appears the wrestlers might not be left to themselves hereon. Women who were turned away from the aborted Mahapanchayat at the gates of the new parliament, will also be on hand.

They’ve been joined by farmers. As the distraught wrestlers proceeded to consign their medals to the Ganga, leaders of the farmer agitation intercepted them. They’ve given the regime five days to make amends.

The wrestlers might yet take to the promised hunger strike. The Police has dismantled the protest site at Jantar Mantar. It has denied them the India Gate premises. There is the Ram Lila Maidan site available, though too reminiscent of the Anna Hazare protest for Modi’s comfort.

The farmers will likely lay siege to Delhi; not out of an intent, but because the Police will barricade Delhi. As with the Shaheen Bagh protest, the Delhi Police bandobast will be so designed that protestors are blamed.

Modi’s dilemma

Where Modi stands on sexual harassment allegations is clear.

If he had any inclination to woo the wrestlers, time sharing of the new parliament’s first day could have been done, with the wrestlers turning out in the first democratic protest outside its gates after Modi was done with his tamasha – over two sessions - inside it. A win-win solution was not to be.

Modi could yet defuse the matter from snowballing by having Brij Bhushan step down, if not arrested. Bhushan, though continuing in the chair, is keeping off his wrestling-related duties.

Modi has been proved flexible before. He rolled back the farm laws in face of an agitation. His histrionic ability can be put to good use.  

The Delhi Police already has its marching orders from the Supreme Court. They could claim that having conducted their investigation – for which they have been holding out from making arrest – they have enough prosecutable evidence.

It is easier for Modi to be rid of Brij Bhushan. The opinion of middle classes which he potentially stands to lose due to an underperforming economy might resonate to the wrestlers’ cause. The Nirbhaya case had brought them to the streets, which proved precursor for the soon-to-follow anti-corruption agitation.

It is also difficult to clamp down on the region engulfing Delhi, if the wrestlers plight catches popular imagination in these parts - as former Governor Satya Pal Malik claims.

However, compared to the votes Modi stands to lose, Brij Bhushan’s is a Rajput support base, that includes Dozer Raaj presider, Ajay Singh Bisht. Already trolls suggest that the western Ganga-belt Jats want to wrest the Federation from the eastern Ganga-belt Rajputs.

In anticipation, Brij Bhushan, has taken care to cover his flanks. He is to hold a gathering of seers at Ayodhya on 5 June.

He threatens to have the assembly upend the enlightened legislation protecting children from sexual predators. A seer has already piped up in support of such watering down of legislation, arguing that it is being used to target his ilk.

Modi can’t be seen as caving in to an agitation on the lines of an Indian version of the Woke and Western MeToo movement. A few months on he is to be the chief guest in Ayodhya for inaugurating the Mandir. More importantly, there is an election coming up same time next year.

An Indian Spring?

A recent perspective has it that anarchy prevails in the country. There are several unconnected zones of dissent bubbling away. The agitation last year at the introduction of the Agnipath scheme shows unemployed youth are restive. Evidently, there is much tinder out there, for which the wrestlers could provide a spark.

It is with reason that pedagogy on civil movements has been excised from the syllabus of political science. Modi’s security minders are wary of Colour Revolutions that have upstaged regimes elsewhere. The Arab Spring led to a coalescing of anti-establishment opinion across the Arab world. Indian security minders have drawn their lessons. The regime invective for George Soros shows as much.

Only if the wrestlers manage to spark off a sentiment in Indian public will Modi remove his patronage of Bhushan. The Intelligence Bureau and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) will be able to communicate to Modi when this stage is reached.

The RSS would not like its champion going under at the cusp of Hindu Rashtra. Though miffed by Modi’s narcissism, it is tolerating it since there is no other warhorse in sight, pretenders mounted on dozers notwithstanding.

Modi’s utility for the RSS is to use his political authority to make change indelible. Threatened in Karnataka, the gains made by the regime so far cannot be allowed to be rolled back merely by the voting public exercising its choice.

Modi has not disappointed. In his Karnataka showing, he has kept his flock together, the Congress managing to poach on the regional party’s dissident voters.

Modi has unambiguously shown what New India stands for. He remains unfazed by liberal notions at odds with beliefs of his regressive client base. Political correctness may require a go-bye. Perception management needs at best a sheaf from the hoax, Mother of Democracy.  As for the mouthing, Beti Padhao-Beti Bachao, Love Jihad can be commandeered, with a little help from Sahil, son of Sarfaraz.

Modi has also to show his grip on power. This has been tested and found loose in the external plane, with both China and Pakistan stealing a march on India, the contrary being but propaganda.

Modi’s forte, from his Gujarat days, is internal intimidation. Remember former state minister, Pandya; late Central Bureau of Investigation judge, Loya; and Indian Police Service officers Bhatt, Sharma and Verma; the ongoing plight of eye-witness in the Sohrabuddin case, Azam Khan; the detention of Father Stan Swamy and his comrades; and the false cases against the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act activists.

He could use the opportunity to crack down on dissent, with a dictatorial flourish. Whereas earlier the weak and vulnerable of the marginalized were scapegoats – Muslims and, more recently, Kukis - lightning appears to have struck closer home this time.

The end justifying the means, furthering Hindutva allows for use of a heavy hand.

He may have to replicate Emergency. Unlike with the Emergency, this would not be subject to a rethink. As it is, what obtains has been characterized as an undeclared Emergency, with India topping the internet downtime charts and investigative and enforcement agencies vectored on opposition.

RSS participation through its proxies in jackboots can be expected. Videos from opposition ruled Rajasthan on training and parading around by civilian paramilitary, including women, are viral.

Black operations can serve to manufacture the enabling public consent to crimes against humanity. For illustration, take for instance, the unexplained deaths by burns in a train in Kerala by a perpetrator from the north, who reportedly had never earlier travelled South; amateurish bombs going off prematurely in Coimbatore and Mangalore, conveniently though for a diplomatic meeting on international terrorism in Bangalore; and the killing of a tailor in Udaipur by two Muslim assailants protesting the anti-Prophet invective of the ruling party spokesperson.

Could Modi’s diplomatic engagements, that can be marketed domestically for his Vishwa Guru profile, persuade Modi to get back from ‘2023 BC’? Incidentally, these include an invited state visit to Washington, DC.

International opinion is bestirring, with the international governing body of wrestling taking a view. However, Modi has Quick-Gun Jaishankar on his side, who can undo the damage on social media and YouTube.

The first hint of the regime intent is the Shanghai Cooperation Organisaton summit going online. This cannot merely be due to China and Pakistan likely staying away.

Modi also would not want an international audience have a closer exposure to domestic discord. The G20 tourism meeting at Srinagar last month that turned out a hit-wicket of sorts, was a wake-up call.

When the farmers say they will ‘do something big’, they cannot be allowed an international spotlight. Recall, the farmer agitation was a year-long. Modi needs to wrap up the matter by when the G20 top guns troop down to Delhi.

The next series of state elections is due end-year. He requires nipping it in the bud this summer, lest it queer the pitch for whats seen as a dress rehearsal for the national elections next year. If Erdogan can, Modi shall.

When the going gets tough…

The wrestlers have provided India an opportunity to cast off the Modi-induced trance. Will their agitation prove a road bump or a road block on the road to Hindu Rashtra?

There are two imponderables: one is if their agitation will take on the proportion of a movement; and, two, if the regime preemptively caves-in or takes it head-on.

Whichever way the cookie crumbles, the coming week evokes the phrase, ‘A week is a long time in politics.’

India: three scenarios out to 2030

http://www.milligazette.com/news/16848-india-three-scenarios-out-to-2030?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mgindia+%28The+Milli+Gazette%3A+India%2C+Muslim%2C+Islamic+News%29

The Kashmirisation of India, a phrase coined by Pratap Bhanu Mehta, is well underway. The mayhem by the police on the campus of Jamia Millia Islamia finally brought home to Indians in the mainland what Kashmiris might be undergoing on a routine basis, flooded as Kashmir has been with security forces for some thirty years. Alternatively, from events in Uttar Pradesh, with its chief minister out to emulate the prime minister in his initial days in the sun, it could be well be that Gujratification instead. The prime minister complimented the police for its handling of the unrest that resulted in over-a-score deaths. Taking inspiration from the approach to rule of law in Kashmir and Gujarat, three possible scenarios lie ahead for India.

The first is the visualization by the Hindutva-vadis in which they gain their ends through polarisation. The second is a contested one, in which the Hindutva rampage is checked by democratic means resulting in one-sided violence. The third is a benign one in which the largely Hindu support base of the right wing rethinks its ways, resulting in democratic displacement of the regime at the next elections.

Scenario 1 - A Hindutva triumph

The Bhartiya Janata Party’s eagerness to have a Congress-mukt Bharat owes in part to its reframing of the idea of India in saffron colours. It is also to defang the opposition, whereby there is no political fight-back to its Hindutva project. The reconfiguring of the environs of the central vista along the Rajpath is symbolic of the change to be brought about by the 75^th anniversary of the Republic and the centenary year of the mother ship, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, both in quick succession.

With most institutions (including – to its critics - the judiciary) already defanged and netted, a definition of majoritarian democracy will be deployed to justify further depredations such as the onrushing nationwide National Register of Citizens (NRC).  The vulnerable and defenceless minority will only be further trampled down. If the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) faces such ruthless implementation, what might be the rigour with which the NRC Citizens shall unfold? With the articulate and aware segment of the community - its student cohort - disarmed through ruthless means, the defences of the multiple Muslim communities clustered around the country will be inexorably breached. The final knocks administered would set in a flood of ghar vapsi, the choice being detention centers or a return to the Hindu fold. Eventually, quite like Andalusia is without memory of the Moors – which in the Hindutva imagination is a model for India - India too would be free of the blood of invaders of the last millennium.

A minority community divided within and unable to protect its pockets of habitation across the country will be unable to answer the call for peaceful non-cooperation against the NRC. There are several reports of Muslim readying their documents to present, preparing for the worst. The saffron tide shall enhance to tsunami by several gimmicks of the ‘triple talaq’ variety as the Uniform Civil Code, restriction to prayer venues and methods, sporting of identity markers etc. The ‘Go to Pakistan’ will currency with the argument that since India offers sanctuary for persecuted non-Muslim minorities from its Muslim neighbours, Muslim neighbours could do the same to Indian Muslims.

Scenario 2 – Hindutva contested

A contested ascendance of Hindutva has the possibility of going either way, with the degradation of Hindutva being as probable as its displacement. To preempt this, Hindutva minders may resort to the patented Chanakyan tactics of subterfuge, dissimulation, divide and rule, strong-arm policing, rationalization, propaganda, managing of the external environment, inducement within etc. Ahead it can be imagined that there would be instances of terror incidents of uncertain provenance, including bombings, to enable a security blanket to be put in place before the rollout of the NRC.

If the CAA launch has been greeted with such angst, the NRC aftermath will likely be more volatile, necessitating anticipatory measures of an escalated order on part of the state. Tried and tested ‘black operations’ will be back in use. The dividend for Hindutva perpetrators has precedence, including possible elevation to parliament as compensation for their pain and risk run. The energy on display on streets over the past few days after Mr. Shah rung up the curtains on the CAA-NRC in parliament indicates that Muslims may be less than accommodating to the one-sided brutalisation. There could be alliances forged in the struggle between the underclass, including a Muslim-Dalit one, symbolized by the firebrand leader of Bhim Army turning up at the steps of Jama Masjid.

This foregrounding of security would help the regime with diverting attention from a tanking economy, making for a self-reinforcing loop. The prime minister implied as much in his campaign speech in Dumka, Jharkhand, when he referred to arsonists in clothes making them easily identifiable as Muslims steeling his determination to follow through with the two-punch combo: CAA-NRC. A tactical pull back followed with Modi denying any thought of NRC, even though his government pushed through the NRC by the backdoor by doubling the budget for the National Population Register.

Authoritarianism may deepen and make academic the distinction between fascism and the complexion of the regime. However, as the counter CAA-NRC agitation shows, this is not a Muslim-only show. Most are out to defend the Constitution. The non-cooperation strategy can be expected to kick-in, if it does not cause a dent to the ruling party’s fortunes in the next elections, any repression could invite backlash. That national security miinders are not unmindful of this is evident from Modi’s reference to ‘urban Naxals’ at Ram Lila Maidan, a scaremongering on Maoists-at-the-wings set to grow if the repression-alieanation-backlash cycle takes off.

Scenario 3 – Benign exit of Hindutva

Neither of the two scenarios above are edifying for a secular democratic republic, as being noted in most capitals round the world. This should brighten prospects for the third scenario: of a democratic displacement of the Modi-Shah combine at the next elections. There are four years for the electorate to get its act together. The prospects have brightened with the set back to the ruling party in Maharashtra and Jharkhand. Returns from recent elections suggest diminishing marginal returns for the ruling party’s tactics of polarisation. The post election farce in Raj Bhawan Mumbai makes it possible to outflank them even at their Kautilyan best. If they are administered a defeat in West Bengal and Delhi, It would keep India safe from an authoritarian turn. However, this hopeful moment can prove as chimerical as that at the Delhi and Bihar elections in Modi’s last term, since the Modi-Shah-Doval combine can pull a Balakot act from its electoral hat any time.

The electoral strategy foregrounding the state of the economy, unemployment, farmer distress, state pullout from education and health etc was undercut by Balakot last time. Communalism and manufactured national security concerns remain handy for the regime. A worsening economy can well be blamed on deteriorating security. However, in this scenario, Hindu consolidation into a vote bank proves a chimera. Modi’s antics around the coming up, through this term, of the Ram temple at Ayodhya draw a blank with his development constituency. It’s very first promise of the current tenure of a $5 trillion economy has already fallen flat. The middle classes desert Modi for betraying his development pledges and making India look small on the world stage due to demise of secularism and democratic credentials on his watch. 

What next?

The juncture of Muslims expressing their reservations across India on a matter of community interest after a quarter century is pregnant with possibilities. The threat posed by the regime’s policies privileging its ideology over national interest is the primary national security threat and must be securitized by being recognized as such. The counter that its policies then instigate thus cannot instead be vilified as the significant national security concern. In fact, the counter must be seen as preserving the nation and state from a majoritarian take over.

Which scenario emerges as a result would depend on how the Muslims take forward the counter CAA agitation in face of the regime’s covert sabotage and vilification of the same. Muslims standing up to the regime to preserve the republic could over time help the Hindu brethren shed their blinkers. While Modi-believers cannot be expected to reform, the Hindus who voted for Modi for his development promises have now seen through his game. The Gujarat model is not so much in terms of Gujarat’s economic gains under Modi as much as its manner of authoritarian rule and policing extended to rest of India.  Muslims then, with students - and women students at that – at the vanguard, can emerge as the heroes of the second struggle for freedom, this time from an authoritarian and majoritarian threat to liberal, secular democracy.

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https://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/4/18021/CAA-NRC-Those-Who-Voted-for-this-Regime-Need-to-Wake-Up
UNEDITED version
CAA-NRC: Those Who Voted for this Regime Need to Wake Up

The entry into the library and mosque of a university campus in New Delhi by the police and its proceeding to beat students, including women students, is a plunge by this nation into the dark. The ostensible reason given is that resort to stone throwing and arson by anti Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) processionists led to the police attempting to round up anti social elements.

Contrary to the police version, videos on social media indicate that the police set fire to the buses as a precursor to their heavy handedness that followed on campus. At the time of writing the police were shown on national television vandalizing vehicles on the campus of Aligarh Muslim University where sympathetic demonstrations broke out in solidarity with their student colleagues in Jamia Millia Islamia. This makes it easier to suspect the police version of events in New Delhi. 

The credibility of the police has never been high. It took a deep dive recently with a commissioner of police claiming that the law had done its duty while explaining the ‘encounter’ in which the police killed four alleged rapists in Hyderabad. Even if the police version is true, for the police to enter into a university campus in the national capital and rough up students in their search for the anti social elements who resorted to violence is the regime going overboard.

Only a perception of impunity in the armed police could have led to such high handedness. This can only be a result of their action being taken under orders. This line of thought begs the question: Whose orders?

By now it is evident that the regime is incapable of following through with implementing its hard-nosed, ideology-driven decisions with any finesse. The economic fallout and consequences on livelihoods of demonetization and Goods and Services Tax decisions is now fairly evident. The surgical strikes failed to deter the Pulwama terror attack. The Balakot aerial attack failed to hit its intended target. It is equally clear that no F-16 fell out of the sky in the aerial duel that followed. Kashmir is waiting to explode with each passing day of lock down adding to the potentially calamitous consequences when it does. The outcome of the register of citizens’ exercise in Assam can be visualized from the condition of detention centers there.

And now we have its failure to anticipate the anti CAA sentiment in the north east and in the Muslim communities across the country. Needing to divert attention from over reach and to delegitimize the emerging blow-back, it has resorted to its time-tested Gulf of Tonkin tactics. (The reference is to the incident engineered by the United States to enable and legitimize its intervention in the Vietnamese civil war on the side of its lackeys in the mid sixties.) Using the arson and stone throwing as excuse it has tried to paint the counter to the CAA in dark colours. It has already conditioned the media to loyally depict any violence as Muslim initiated and perpetrated.

The intent is to reinforce its narrative on the CAA cum National Register of Citizens (NRC) – its twinned answer to fool-proof homeland security. The Muslims objecting to the CAA-NRC pose a threat because they have much to hide, including some 20 million illegal infiltrators, in their mohallahs and qasbas. Tough handling at the outset of the demonstrations would help deter and divide Muslims. Else they may heed calls for non-cooperation by the community against the CAA-NRC. Besides, the strong arm would need to be much in evidence in case the ‘termites’ are to be accorded a burial at sea in the Bay of Bengal; Bangladesh, having cancelled the visits by its home and foreign ministers last week, being in no mood to welcome them back.  

The necessity of firmness is easy to swallow for believers; they believe anything including that their prime minister is a graduate. The wider public has also been worked on for over a decade during which the notion of convergence between terrorism and Muslims was fostered by the media and fanned by the strategic community. Perpetrators of the black operations that depicted Muslims in poor light were set scot free and at least one now graces parliament. Therefore, the expectation in the security minders who passed on the orders for mayhem on campus was that the rationale would be swallowed.

As with other implementation failures of misconceived policies, this time the regime has come up short. It has been exposed by the swirling social media clips that have found their way into mainstream media coverage of the incidents. Accountability is not with the khakhi clad superiors of the communalised armed police. They have received their marching orders and - being supine - have in carrying these out, have botched it.

Despite its inauspicious rollout of the CAA-NRC, the question still needs answering: whose orders? The deep state, comprising national security minders, is merely a link in the chain of command. Who does the deep state answer to?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech at a mega rally the same day on the campaign trail in Dumka, Jharkhand, is a dead give-away. Modi in his inimitable style said that it is possible to make out who those setting the nation on fire are by the clothes they wear. This is of a piece with his long standing dog whistle politics. In a piece of immaculate coincidence the demonstration in Okhla unfolding even as he delivered his address in early afternoon, culminated in arson a little while later, with the nearby campus being invaded by the police shortly thereafter.

Modi’s home minister during his performance in parliament warned that the NRC was coming. The CAA is but stage setting. The Muslim community is left with little recourse but peaceful demonstrations by its articulate members – its students – to register its reservations. The two – Modi and Shah - responsible for setting off the counter to the CAA-NRC are out to manage the pushback with the only methods they know: Kashmirisation of the rest of India, to borrow a phrase.

That the counter has acquired such dimensions owes to the urgency and significance of the juncture. The government for its part is not averse to the rigour of the counter since it helps it project the necessity – in its narrative – of the CAA-NRC double whammy and paper over the widening cracks in the economy.

The take away from witnessing the aftermath of the first act of its folly is that the largely Hindu support base of the ruling party needs to wake up timely. Only a shifting of the sands below the feet of the Chanakyan duo will enable institutions play their part in the system of checks and balances that constitutes democracy. The accountability for controlling Modi-Shah is with those who elected the two. The agent-principal relationship that underpins democracy implies that Hindu brethren who voted Modi into power need inclusion in the answer to the question: on whose orders. They can yet make amends

http://epaper.kashmirtimes.in/index.aspx?page=6 


http://www.kashmirtimes.com/newsdet.aspx?q=85786

Kashmir: Towards peace with dignity

The November end update of statistics from the bean count in Kashmir was intended, as usual, to embellish Operation All Out, ongoing in Kashmir in its second iteration beginning mid-year. The detail has it that some 233 militants have been killed this year, overtaking with a month to go the count of last year.

Since criticism has long had it that martyrdom creates its own attraction for social media savvy youth, the statistics take care to preempt it informing that this November for the first time there were no fresh recruits to militant ranks, contrasting this with the figure for October that had been pegged at 30.

The other positives we are given to understand are that stone throwing episodes are down; interference by bystanders in military operations has declined; and mass attendance at funerals of ‘martyr’s’ has dwindled. Some half of those figuring on the list of 14 ‘most wanted’ have been dispatched, including a few hardcore Pakistanis terrorists in high profile operations.

This is attributed to the synergy between the intelligence grid and operations, with terrorist high handedness – such as kidnaps and killings of policemen, their relatives and alleged informers - reportedly increasing skepticism and intelligence inflow from people. 

In short, the November update caps Operation All Out at the end of the traditional campaigning season in Kashmir. The year end is on an upbeat note in Kashmir. There are 300 odd militants still out there to keep the counter ticking through winter, with intelligence led operations through winter setting the stage for the wrap up of the militancy in summer.

The security establishment then can report ‘all clear’ to the lead national security minder, the National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval, who put them to Operation All Out a couple of years back. He can in turn apprise his boss, Prime Minister Modi, as he takes to electioneering hoping to gain a second term tenancy of 7 Lok Kalyan Marg and its garden-track inspired by the five panchtatvas (elements of nature).

Experts have it that Operation All Out now has its aim violence free elections to both the assembly and the parliament in summer. Since people vote in the state government to keep the administration going even as the militancy continues, the elections turnout is unlikely to need any exceptional vigilance. Elections are an excuse to keep the operations going.

Since the summer will be around by then, the campaigning season will kick in. The bean count reflecting success in Operation All Out indicates that the militancy would need a Pakistani injection soon enough.

Pakistan, that has self-servingly held off, this year, may be tempted by the reopening of passes come summer for taking to its old tricks. This year it had been put on notice by Trump over its support to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

On delivering the Taliban for talks with the US it may be off the hook, allowing it to get back to business in Kashmir. With India ignoring Imran Khan’s outstretched hand, reportedly with his army’s backing, Pakistan will have an excuse.

The new governments in Delhi and Srinagar, even if either is reelected, would take time settling in. Worsened security indices, reflected in the statistics, will stay their hand at changing tack. If Modi is reelected, in part on account of his showing in keeping with his 56-inch chest, he may have Doval continue.

For his part, Doval has taken care to kick off electioneering in his Sardar Patel lecture calling on the electorate to keep his boss in saddle for another ten years. So, Doval, having assured himself continuity in office, persistence in the hardline can be expected.

Doval acolyte, General Bipin Rawat, would be happy to oblige in order to earn his tag as counter insurgency specialist, that got him his elevation to his appointment over heads of two of his seniors. He has till next year end, when he retires, for firming in his legacy.

Ideally, such a legacy would be if he is able to bring about an end state in keeping with the army’s counter insurgency doctrine. The doctrine has long had it that kinetic operations can at best create the conditions for political initiative.

This has usually been misinterpreted with elections turning in a provincial government. It is no wonder then operations continue, as does the facilitating cover of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, even as state administrations extend it indefinitely. What needs doing instead are peace talks initiation, as in Nagaland.

The general’s challenge is in bringing this about. He gave voice to his quandary, lamenting recently, “If separatists don’t want to approach the interlocutor, then I don’t know what further can be hoped.”

He was referring to the low-profile representative of the Union government, Dineshwar Sharma. Dineshwar Sharma missed the boat during the mid-year month long ceasefire. Flat-footed Sharma had not taken cue from the Chief’s words during the Ramzan period of suspension of offensive operations, “Talks must happen. The issue is that a lot of locals are joining militancy. We kill them and more would join. Infiltration can be controlled, but this cycle of recruitment of local youth can go on and on. So…let’s give peace a chance and see.”

Sharma continues to be missing in action, outflanked most recently by the initiative last month of the controversial godman Ravi Shankar, who organised the visit of a former Norwegian prime minister, who now heads a typically Scandinavian peace think tank, to the Valley for meetings with Hurriyet stalwarts.

Sharma is probably waiting for Ajit Doval’s cue. Therefore, besides his official pitch in the relevant forum, Bipin Rawat needs working his direct line to Doval arguing for a turn to doctrinal compliance, with initiation of peace talks on the backs of a successful operational showing. Rawat would only be urging the government to toe the doctrinal line.

He could sugar coat his pitch arguing that it would look equally good at election time in case Modi follows through on his promise from the ramparts of Red Fort this year that he would resolve the Kashmir issue by embracing people. With the state elections results hardly enthusing for the ruling party, it appears Modi would need all the innovative ideas he can get. He can claim to be taking advantage of the success of his hardline.

The appropriate juncture is at hand. The winter’s operational respite, that is in terms of operational intensity akin to a period of non-initiation of offensive operations since only intelligence led operations are usually launched, can be taken advantage of. Pakistan can be put on notice that its bona-fides in its peace overtures are under test in the peace initiative succeeding, even as it continues for now under US pressure.

Operation All Out, an operational success, can prove a strategic failure if India yet again foregoes a peace opportunity brokered by its security forces. It must reach out to the remaining Kashmiri militant leadership rather than strike them off one by one from that list. 

A two-track peace initiative can be visualized, one to the Hurriyet and one to Kashmiri militants. Sharma can set the conditions for a dialogue, with operations continuing against Pakistani terrorists and any Kashmiri camp-followers. The timeframe should be to have a process in place by end winter, so that a full-throated summer campaign resumption is precluded.

A third track involving Pakistan can kick in as the internal political track begins to show promise and the outreach to Kashmiri militants matures into a ceasefire of sorts.

With 86 member of security forces dead this year – the highest figure for the decade – both militants and their supporters in the Pakistani establishment can claim to have forced the talks on India through military action, thereby justifying to themselves a turn to the table.

The national and regional parties in their manifestos need to be incentivized to come out with how they respectively conceive of talks going forward. A competition in peace mongering can develop, ensuring the longevity of talks and momentum.

The party or coalition that comes to power in the Center, in consultation with the regional parties or coalition in power in Srinagar, can appoint a political level interlocutor of national eminence to take the process forward.

Radha Kumar’s recent book, Paradise at War, mentioned that an idea for a high-level political initiative was dashed early in the Manmohan Singh years when she had been a conduit with Singh’s predecessor Vajpayee carrying Singh’s offer for Vajpayee to be the lead negotiator. That history could have been different had he been allowed by his party to take up the offer reveals the potential in a purposeful peace process.

One name suggests itself for now, Gopal Gandhi, as patron, with the former adviser to chief minister Amitabh Mattoo for the heavy-lifting. This does not upset the current governor’s rule, that restricts itself to the administrative detail, as would any post-elections state government.  

Needless to add that all this would be wishful without contending with the naysayers, who will be potential spoilers. They are crawling all over in the strategic community, foreign policy establishment, veteran’s community, Hindutva brigades, media lobbies and national security corridors. The national security institutions are also actors with a stake in the troubles, on both sides of the border. A peace strategy will have to view how to neutralize them.

The Kashmiri Pandits must be central. Their return in security and dignity must be the ultimate benchmark. An lobby worth tackling initially will be the hardliners in them, some of whom - in perhaps justifiable vengeance - prefer the troubles.

A beginning is to engage in a theoretical debate on ripeness without a hurting stalemate and practical possibilities, such as opened here. Fleshing out alternative pathways such as this is necessary to energise thinking peace. Strategic thinking needs leavening by peace studies insights to get India and Kashmir out of a cul-de-sac. Peace with dignity is an attainable pathway.

  

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http://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/4/14087/What-Normalising-the-Sangh-Means-for-National-Security

What normalising the Sangh means for national security
Taking cue from old soldiers once under his ceremonial authority, a former supreme commander would have done well to fade away. But just as some retired generals these days attempting to prolong their fifteen minutes of fame, the former supreme commander in question, Pranab Mukherjee, early this month chose to reenter the limelight by gracing a passing out function of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) at Nagpur.

A skeptical interpretation has it that he was positioning himself for 2019, when, with the Modi wave expended, he might emerge as a consensus candidate in the prime ministerial musical chairs for the divided opposition. Unflattering biographies have it that he has nursed a repeatedly-thwarted prime ministerial ambition. The commentary detected an octogenarian lining up for his last chance. Be that as it may, Mr. Pranab Mukherjee’s foray has implications beyond his political future.

His is but the latest attempt at mainstreaming the RSS. So far, the Sangh has inveigled its way into India’s imagination, almost Chinese-like in biding its time. While Pranabda’s favour has been rather up-front and visible, quite like the evening ritual of talking heads at the idiot box constantly pitching its line, less intrusive, innocuous methods are constantly at play. Such as for instance the confabulations of the male lead with his shakha mates on over the innocent topic of a hefty wife-to-be in the national award-winning film, Dam Lage Ke Haisha.

Increasing comfort levels with the RSS and its ideology among people and its insinuation into our lives and consciousness as an unremarkable – if not positively enticing - entity is underway. The strategy is three-pronged: usher the RSS to respectability while out-shouting those calling this out, even as a smoke-screen is built in the form of Maoists and jihadists as primary threats to national security.

Alongside cooptation (as with Mr. Mukherjee), every effort is made to deter and threaten those who reveal the effort and the not-so-hidden agenda. Trolling and motivated law suits are perhaps the least dangerous manner of going about this. The killings of rationalists down south and the threats to life and intimidation of journalists, intellectuals and activists - the ever-growing list which includes Barkha Dutt, Rana Ayyub, Umar Khalid, Teesta Setalvad, Arundhati Roy – is a more direct method.

This also explains the social-media assault on Rahul Gandhi. He was spot-on in his wiki-leaked conversation with a US diplomat citing the threat from the far right as the more significant one, picked over Manmohan Singh’s famous reference to the Maoists as such. This prompted the undercutting of Mr. Gandhi’s credibility by the troll brigade, using by the now all-too-familiar memes and themes, such as ‘pappu’ (in contrast to the seemingly masterful communicator, Mr. Narendra Modi).

The RSS’s effort to move centerstage from the fringe is understandable. It is also explicable that affiliated organisations, such as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), that stand to profit electorally from the RSS ballast as footsoldiers at election time, would be party to the effort. Given that the RSS-BJP relationship is no secret, it is not unreasonable anymore to expect six central ministers going into a huddle with the RSS samooh (group of RSS wings) as happened last month. The message is that the RSS is not untouchable but is instead the fountainhead of wisdom on governance.

Normalising of the RSS thus is to be unmindful of its concept of nation and nationhood and the dissonance it brings into India’s sense of self. Importantly, it upends democracy, making it synonymous with majoritarianism. Inability of India to keep extremist ideologies from electorally taking over the state is evidence of a deficit in its national security.

The danger is not only from the close and present danger, but from the deliberate deletion of this threat from discussions in the strategic community. It is as though by design that there is no mention of the threat that saffron extremism poses in India’s mainstream strategic publications. Though the threat is registered in liberal and leftist circles, they are long marginalized. The strategic community not only does not sound the alert, but actively obfuscates.

The inability to distinguish between an unexceptionable conservative-realist perspective – as can be expected to dominate in strategic discourse in India as elsewhere - and ideology-contaminated strategic penetration compounds India’s national security predicament. This indicates, as with other institutions and discourse spaces, the right-wing reigns in seminar rooms and think tanks.

Evidence is in the more prominent best-funded think tanks are but platforms for propagation of cultural nationalism. The official - autonomous - think tanks, that are government money funded, have on their rolls ideological warriors who drive out and tamp down debate. Many of these ‘strategists’ – mostly veterans of the armed forces - hop between think tanks taking their vile wares with them. This writer has over the past three months had to write in to three such think tanks reminding them of their editorial duty as gate keepers of professional opinion and knowledge spaces, to keep the strategic discourse uncontaminated by extremist trope. A result is in a paradigm dominance of sorts and a monocular strategic discourse.

The threat is kept under wraps from citizens, fed on the inanities on the sometimes combined jihadist and Maoist threats. The mere 47-odd adherents from India of the Islamic State are projected as a national security calamity. The arrest last week of five Maoists of an urban cell is hyped, in this case, with the implausible finding of a letter on gun-running from one of them.

The resounding silence on the Hindutva threat in national security terms is music to the ears of the national security establishment. Currently, it is headed by a national security adviser with well-known affiliations and reputation of being the right-hand man of a prime minister who was once an RSS pracharak. The establishment can be trusted to be oblivious to the threat and can be expected to be unwilling to hear otherwise.

A simple illustration on the implication of selective listening by those charged with national security is the letting-off of saffron terrorists in terrorism cases, no doubt by a whisper from the investigation agency to willing listeners in the judiciary. These put paid to India’s long standing global advocacy against terrorism and its Pakistan-targeted distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ terrorists.

Graver implications may arise in 2019, when power will be up for grabs. The national security threat from the far right at the juncture, possibility mediated by elements within the state, bears watch. The strategic community needs reappraising its complicity so far, while minders within the national security system need standing up to power. An intention to stare down intimidation – even if emanating from within the system - can deter, prevent, and, at a pinch, retrieve the situation. It is precisely for this reason the Sangh is playing footsie and personages who should know better playing along.