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/is-kicking-the-kashmir-problem-upstairs

Is kicking the Kashmir problem upstairs a solution?

APR 27, 2023

Recently, two of India’s top national security experts have had this to say of the manner Kashmir is being handled by the Modi regime.

In an interview, a former intelligence hand, AS Dulat, said that he believes National Security Advisor (NSA), Ajit Doval, ought to be in charge of India’s Kashmir policy. Apparently, ‘Doval understands Kashmir and knows the solution and the way forward.’

In like vein, a former Military Adviser in the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS), General Prakash Menon, informs that,

Right now, it is the MHA that is driving the J&K agenda. Instead, the strategy should be broad-based and driven by the highest rungs of the executive powers that are far better placed to evolve approaches based on an integrated perspective…. A review of the existing approach is warranted…The larger question is whether we can transcend the narrow domestic political considerations.

Both in their own words appear to suggest that Home Minister Amit Shah must be divested of the Kashmir portfolio and the problem be taken over by the governance rung at which an integrated perspective can be conjured up and its implementation supervised.

This despite, Shah, only last October, claiming that his boss Prime Minister Narendra Modi had sorted out the Kashmir problem. Presumably, he was referring to the Constitutional caper of August 2019.

However, for two of India’s leading security watchers and Kashmir experts to independently arrive at the conclusion that all is not right - and also coincidentally proffer a similar answer - shows up the narrative plugged by the regime on normalcy in Kashmir.

Their answer is that the Kashmir - and perhaps India’s Pakistan policy also - be taken on at an appropriately higher level, which can only be at the Cabinet or Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).

While Dulat relies on personalities, plugging for colleague Doval to take over the reins, Menon – with a full term in the NSCS - seemingly calls for a scooping up of the reins at the PMO (“highest rungs of executive office”), using aegis of the NSA and NSCS.

Notable is that these observations are when India is well into the fourth decade of the insurgency in Kashmir; the problem of Kashmir itself dating to Independence.

Recent developments

The timing of their intervention is informed, in part, by to two recent developments.

One was the ambush close to the Line of Control in which five Indian soldiers were killed, and, second, was revelations in Pakistani media that the back channel was so active in 2021 that Prime Minister Modi was supposedly slated to visit Pakistan after the reiteration of the ceasefire in February that year.

The latter is not implausible, since the Pakistan Army had created the conditions by having a ‘selected’ Prime Minister Imran Khan in place. General Bajwa, Army Chief then, had set the ‘Bajwa doctrine’ going, emphasising ‘geoeconomics,’ which necessitated an outreach to India. Bajwa allowed India a bye, when it could have created much more fuss in August 2019.

India might have been game, a temple visit thrown in clinching the issue for its prime minister. Its outreach to Nawaz Sharif had flopped spectacularly, not only at Pathankot but in the Army – not in on the initiative - exiling Sharif.

This time round, it made geopolitical sense for both sides to have their backyards quiescent while each tackled more significant turmoil on respective other border: Pakistan in shepherding a post-Global War on Terror Afghanistan back to quietude, and, India, the Dragon in Ladakh.

In the event, Imran Khan – who had started off his innings by expressing warm sentiments towards India – rightly read the political winds and stymied the initiative.

While - from recent revelations - it appears Bajwa’s doctrine owed to the Army facing up to the fact of power asymmetry between India and Pakistan, Khan proved more tuned in to the continuing disaffection in Kashmir and the political price of looking away.

This begs the question whether the Doval-led backchannel with Pakistan’s military, midwifed by mutually acceptable interlocutors in the Gulf, has been efficacious.

Though a ceasefire is holding along the Line of Control, that incidents continue across it – the latest being the bespoke ambush in Poonch and Pakistani accusations – shows its limitations.

However, India was not entirely wrong in putting its eggs in Bajwa’s basket. It’s been long reckoned that India’s national security establishment needs to engage with Pakistan Army.

The conundrum was how could India’s civilian-led national security establishment engage Pakistan’s military, since it could only be at the cost of Pakistani civilian democratic forces. Abandoning its reservations on this score has evidently been to little avail.

Is the solution realistic?

On their part, the two strategists seem to suggest that ideology is contaminating strategy. Both wish the structure is set right, cauterising the policy domain from the regime’s proclivities.

Since Narendra Modi who has empowered Amit Shah to do his bidding in Kashmir, its not self-evident how they duo can be weaned away from their power trip. The two are legatees of Shyama Prasad Mukherjee.

As is their wont, they’ve carried it rather far. To them, inflicting humiliation on Kashmiris is the ideological imperative. Amit Shah has proved an able instrument.

Doval has obediently done his bit, using his knowledge of Kashmir in providing security oversight. To expect better of Doval is to be unmindful of both the man and his circumstance.

Dulat informs of Doval making a difference in Kashmir when he took over the handling of Kashmir under Dulat’s supervision. Hagiographies credit Doval with the use of proxy groups to neutralise terrorist groups there then.

Lately, he intrumentalised the Army, putting in place Army Chief General Bipin Rawat to set the stage for the August 2019 Constitutional blood-letting. That there was no uprising owes to his able crafting of the security grid. He took ownership of the measures with a televised biryani repast on Kashmir’s empty streets.

It is not known if Doval represented against the regime going too far in its reengineering of Kashmir’s ‘integration’, as a truncated Union Territory. It’s difficult to buy Satya Pal Malik’s version – he was then governor - that fear of a police rebellion required that statehood be discontinued to allow internal security be directly handled by Delhi.

In Dulat’s profile of Doval in his book, Doval comes across as a practitioner merely lending his expertise to political incumbents. Dulat neglects that Doval exerted every sinew to get the present dispensation into position during the Manmohan Singh interregnum.

Even relatively mild Sushma Swaraj is credited with sotto-voce suggesting to Pakistani interlocutors to hold out from clinching a deal with Manmohan Singh, holding out better prospects when her party came to power.

Doval was the de-facto shadow NSA. As intelligence czar, it is unbelievable that he was not privy to the actuality behind the terror that India witnessed in those years, both in the hinterland and behind the fake encounters in Gujarat where Narendra Modi’s built his image as a strongman.

He, and his right-wing cohort, outflanked national security minders as they went about sabotaging the Manmohan Singh’s national security establishment efforts at rapprochement, incidentally an initiative inherited from Vajpayee.

Doval is not merely an opportunist - as Dulat makes him out to be - but a Believer.

Besides, in the rumoured institutional strains between Shah and Doval, Doval is a distant second. While knowledge of Modi’s secrets explains the relative proximity of each with Modi, Shah’s delivery of electoral dividend makes his hand stronger.

Modi is not about to chop off his right hand, Shah, by empowering Man Friday, Doval. National security is not about to displace parochialism. 

Secondly, politics determines policy. A majoritarian polity impels a policy of a particular kind, in this case visiting deprivation on the minority. Doing so in its demographic strongholds is particularly satisfying.

In concertina-ridden Kashmir, the vulnerable populace is easy prey; and where the right wing has the electoral upper hand, as in Assam and Uttar Pradesh, fixers inflict damage with impunity. Bengal and Kerala are out of reach, but not for want of trying.

Externally, even the touted diplomatic and strategic wizard, Dr. S Jaishankar, admits to finding dealing with Pakistan ‘difficult’. If proficiency is in delivering results under extraordinary circumstance, Jaishankar falls short.

Surely, cross-border terrorism is not holding up Jaishankar as much as is ideological encumbrance, a salient a political factor. Afterall, he famously coined the regime’s legitimising phrase: the correcting of historical wrongs.

Effects of the structural deficit

Though wishful in expecting policy to be sanitised of politics, the two national security experts are right in one sense: their pointing to the structural weakness undermining India’s Kashmir policy.

The problem predates the regime and has always been compounded by the political factor.

The outbreak of insurgency in Kashmir saw India with neither structure for nor a culture of rational policy making.

With Mandal embroiling politics, the VP Singh government and its successor, was ill-placed to measure up to the challenge. The response to the Rubaiya Sayeed kidnap and Governor Jagmohan’s over-reaction in late January, against the advice of his Adviser Ved Marwah, is a case in point.

At the Centre, the shenanigans for personal and political reasons of successive Kashmir focal points are well known, be it George Fernandes and later Rajesh Pilot; the latter often upstaging his senior minister.

To an interview question posed by me while on an academic field trip, the joint secretary on the Kashmir desk in North Block rued lack of a Kashmir policy in New Delhi.

Not only was India on the backfoot in the proxy war, but the simultaneous turn to liberalisation took precedence. The right wing, gaining traction on the back of the Ayodhya agitation, restricted any thought of negotiated settlement, either externally or internally.  

At the ground level, the structure in place was for coordination, not unity of command. A Unified Headquarters (HQ) under the Adviser Home at best served for information exchange, rather than operations; the army sending a colonel from the Sub Area to attend its meetings.

With a return to elected government, the Unified HQ continued in place but with two security advisers, the Corps Commanders north and south of the Pir Panjal respectively, who reported up their channel to an Army Commander headquartered within the state.

Even then, the structural deficit persisted, with the security buck stopping with the Home Ministry, even though the lead counter insurgency force was the Army that reported to the Defence Ministry.

This was compounded by a factor typical to Indian civil-military relations, in which the doctrinal and operational space is ab-initio conceded by civilians to the military. The role of ministries was merely to ensure the human rights issue did not get to fore-front.

The Vajpayee years saw dialogue and peace initiatives rolled out, recounted in another book by their protagonist, Dulat, then adviser on Kashmir in the PMO. But, prime minister-in-waiting LK Advani scuttled these in respect of Pakistan at Agra, though he did follow up dutifully on the internal one later, holding a couple of rounds of dialogue with separatists.

Manmohan Singh took the openings he inherited forward, but with circumspection. He did not bring the energy to bear on Pakistan and Kashmir that he brought to mating with the United States (US).

He didn’t have the political heft to supersede kinetic means with non-kinetic measures, relying on economic incentives to sugar-coat political paralysis. Political inattention led to the Special Interlocutor model failing, in both its single (NN Vohra) or committee (three interlocutors) format.

As a result, the possibilities were overtaken by circumstance – that witnessed Pakistani President Musharraf wobbling and the outcome in the Mumbai terror attack. India’s Pakistan policy hasn’t recovered since.

The current impasse

In the Modi era, the multiple chains of command persist. Malik now says that had he been approached, he would’ve prevented Pulwama by providing an airlift to the central police. It begs the question why his Adviser Home was not sacked for not stepping up.

In its Dineshwar Sharma iteration, the Special Interlocutor model was decisively wrecked by the duplicity with which it was set up – to fob off the US then engaged in disentangling from Af-Pak.

At the Centre, vacillation over an outreach to Pakistan continues. Learning the hard way that merely networking the civilian side in Pakistan was not good enough, India has had Doval engage the Pakistani Army.

The structural factor has undercut what Doval might have promised in the backchannel. If Malik is right, Modi does not bother much about Kashmir, leaving it to his chief lieutenant, Shah. The home minister holding the keys, Doval is left out in the cold.

Pakistan has – not unreasonably - held out for restoration of statehood in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), something the regime can only countenance if its ambition of installing a Hindu Jammuite in power materialises.

The latest gambit towards this end having self-destruct – Ghulam Nabi Azad with the release of his autobiography passing into history – the regime stands stumped on next steps. Further, Malik has thrown the cat among the pigeons, linking an aspirant for the post - long resident in the PMO - to corruption.

The ‘solution,’ isn’t

A problem of privileging the way out of the strategic cul-de-sac proffered by the two well-meaning strategists – kick the problem upstairs - is that it undercuts the Constitutional cabinet system of governance by placing an unwarranted onus on an NSA.

While the first incumbent juggled advisory and operational streams in his position by retaining principal adviser post along with being NSA, the current NSA has gone on to displacing the Cabinet Secretary from the National Security Council (NSC) structure, styling himself as head of the Strategic Policy Group.

Even so, the NSC cannot displace the Cabinet Committee on Security, the hats worn by the membership – even if identical - being different. Accountability requires working the self-given structures.

Inability or unwillingness to do so should reflect on the leadership quotient of the incumbent prime minister. Gujarat cadre chelas and Hindutva-sanitised busybodies are reminiscent of the ‘committed’ bureaucrats of Emergency yore.

Therefore - though not spelt out in the recommendation of General Menon - the higher body that requires stepping up should be the CCS, with the Cabinet Secretariat – currently displaced by the centralised PMO - playing its part.

It is well-nigh possible India had given itself a Westminster cabinet system it has since been unable to work. To be sure, remedies required must be found. It cannot however be upended by willy-nilly supplanting it covertly with a presidential system.

Any alternative reliance on a sub-par national security establishment – as demonstrated in the case study above on Kashmir – shall prove untenable.

What’s to be done?

Firstly, the advisory aspect to the NSA and NSCS must be leveraged for drawing up strategy, policy advocacy within the system and coordination. To compensate for an inability to strategise, it cannot attempt substitute ministries. It must instead displace coteries, kitchen cabinets and extra-Constitutional influencers, such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

Secondly, India could review the Malaya model in which there was unity of command in counter insurgency. Over preceding decades, the Governor or the elected government in J&K – which ever was in saddle - could have been vested with the mandate and resources to deliver peace, including through compassionate dialogue.

Even if the proxy war element was not present, the model has proved useful in Assam, Tripura and erstwhile Andhra Pradesh. By over-emphasising proxy war in Kashmir for self-exculpatory reasons (as Jaishankar continues to do), India has shot itself on both feet - internally (it won’t talk to ‘terrorists’) and externally (it won’t talk to terrorist sponsors).

Thirdly, Prime Minister Modi just has asked bureaucrats to keep check on politicians; in his mind’s eye, only those differently persuaded. The corollary is that institutions of governance are free to balance ministers like Shah and an overzealous PMO.

It’s a wonder that a couple of personages from an economic advisory position to their eternal credit resigned on a point of policy divergence. But, no one in the national security system has taken cue, be it over missteps as the Constitutional sleight of hand over Article 370, Citizenship Amendment bill, impunity for Hindutva’s lackeys, Ladakh, Kashmir, Rafale or Agnipath.

If Doval was indeed a suitable substitute for Shah, the sound of his thumping the table for a different policy plank on any of these has been remarkably muted.

Fourthly, personalities matter. But making a fetish of this has pushed India down the road to authoritarianism. A compliant national security system has acquiesced in the usurpation of authority, spin doctoring the coup for public consumption. Recall also, the Pegasus was bought with intelligence funds. Reverting to democratic good health requires resuscitating institutional strengths, not relying on personalities.

Finally, politics cannot be wished away from policy sphere. The voting public can take note of the effects. It will strengthen democracy if we recognise and boot out unworthy incumbents. If we don’t, we can only deserve who and what we get.