https://www.academia.edu/43510813/The_Indian_Muslim_Security_Predicament

The Indian Muslim

Security Predicament

For a world safe for believers

Foreword

I dedicate this book to believers in Islam. I write of their security predicament in India. I make the case that they have been short-changed by this secular, democratic republic. And this is not only on the time of the current regime in power. It dates back at least thirty years when a virus worse than corona inserted itself into the body politic of this nation. Today, the regime in power is a product and at a grave national security cost.      

The regime has taken power on the back of a Big Lie. It has manufactured the perception of an internal security threat by projecting the largest minority anywhere in the world as one. It has ridden the coat tails of the Islamophobia prevalent abroad. It has presented the Indian Muslim as the Other to build up its vote bank based on Hindus. It has subverted national institutions; thus, even when it was not in power, it was in a position to paralyse the government from within. Now that it in power it is in a position to saffronise at will. This explains the dedication in that saffronsisation is a threat to the safety and well being of India’s Muslims.

I have followed the left-liberal thesis on the right wing ascendance in India. I have seen at first hand the influence of the right wing ideology in the military and within the strategic community. I have recorded this in my writings elsewhere. Here I have put together some of the writings that directly deal with the Indian Muslim security predicament. Since I have covered Kashmir in another book, I have not included the travails of Kashmiris here.

In the process of putting this compilation of writings that have appeared at various websites, I have concluded that it is possible to arrive at a security perspective unique for a minority. While usually national security is taken as indivisible, it is not so in reality. If the state is appropriated by parochial interests, such as of the right wing in India’s case, then the minority at the receiving end has to consider its own security by its own lights.

From a reading of this book, it is possible to conceptualise, that where the state is captured by particularist interests, its usage of instruments at its command constitutes a threat to the minority. This is an important finding from a reading of this book, making the compilation a significant one not only for India’s Muslims, but for the national security establishment, strategic community and the attentive public. 

I thank the publications in which these 76 articles and commentaries have appeared (milligazette.in; thecitizen.in; ipcs.org; countercurrents.org; kashmirtimes.com; indiatogether.org etc). The first one in the compilation did not find any publisher. I trust readers will find the compilation that covers the last fifteen years offering a different, if not a unique, perspective.

I hope it is read also by Hindu friends so that they can see for themselves the premier internal security threat to India stems from the right wing regime’s subversion of democracy and by its supportive formations that want to use their sway in power to fashion a Hindu India. With the hope they bestir to reclaim the republic.

The book is my modest contribution to my community and to my nation of which my community is part. My gratitude to my wider family that inspired the book.   

Contents

1.    Terror Redux : A Minority Perspective

2.    The Fiction Of ‘Minority Terror’

3.    The Missing Muslim Army Officers

4.    The Army: Missing Muslim India

5.    Nailing the lies in name of national security

6.    Consequences for India’s minority of the gathering war clouds after Pulwama

7.    George Fernandes keeps his date with Gujarat carnage martyrs

8.    The minority security problematic

9.    Finally, the IS bogey laid to rest 

10.  PM Modi's version of Rajdharma

11.  The army’s robustness in aid to civil authority: Lessons from the Gujarat Carnage

12.  On the Strongman myth

13.  A national security mess

14.  Noting the spokesperson-minister’s remarks

15.  An officer and gentleman: Worthy of a Muslim's ambition    

16.  The 'incident': Nothing but political

17.  Is there an Indian 'deep state'?

18.  The dissident terror narrative

19.  Kashmir's scenery makes its way to the 'hinterland'

20.  Terror: More serious than most know

21.  Dark side of Army’s social media groups

22.  The army officer corps: Missing Muslims

23.  A problem wider than Kashmir

24.  After left-liberals, Muslim are next

25.  The Paris attacks and India’s Muslims

26.  Whither Modi, and, at one remove, India?

27.  Why Ramchandra Guha speaks too soon

28.  A Viewpoint: Home Minister Brings ‘Saffron Terror’ Back on the Agenda

29.  Kashmir and India’s Muslims

30.  How deep does our prejudice run?

31.  Contesting the Mushrif thesis

32.  Deconstructing Mr. Modi’s speech

33.  Strategy for the Modi era

34.  What is a moderate Indian Muslim to do? @Chetan_Bhagat

35.  Mr. Modi's next stunt

36.  Messiah Modi: What to make of him?

37.  The Fear That Does Not Speak Its Name

38.  Majoritarian terrorism: The resounding silence

39.  Normalisation of the terror narrative: The response

40.  The relevance of Vanzara's letter

41.  A good school for Maqbool

42.  The importance of being Asif Ibrahim

43.  A secure minority, for a secure nation

44.  Shall we imprison everyone?

45.  An indirect response to terror

46.  How deep is the rot?

47.  In Muslim India, an internal battle

48.  Internal security agenda for the new year

49.  Muslim headcount: A useful controversy

50.  Life Under Modi

51.  Strategising for the Modi Era

52.  The Next Polls and Beyond

53.  Muslim Absence from the Strategic Space

54.  Doing More with the Military

55.  Elections 2014: The Worst Case Scenario

56.  What if Modi Makes it to Race Course Road

57.  Afzal Guru: The Man Who Knew Too Much

58.  Taking on Mr. Modi’s Chief Cheerleader: Chetan Bhagat

59.  The Unfolding Gameplan of Majoritarian Extremists

60.  More than just a visit

61.  Not So Easy, Mr. Modi

62.  Chetan Bhagat: Caught at it Again

63.  Catching up with the SIT Chief

64.  Mr. Bhagat: Please Get Off Our Backs, Will You!

65.  A Reply for Mr. Narendra Modi

66.  An Open Reply to Modi’s Open Letter

67.  Blasting the Terror Narrative

68.  The Gujarat Revelations

69.  Blast from the Past - The Varanasi Explosion

70.  Muslim India: A Security Perspective

71.  The Counter Narrative on Terror

72.  Understanding Minority-Perpetrated Terrorism

73.  Haldighati II: Implications for Internal Security

74.  Widening the Discourse on Terror

75.  Muslim India as ‘Threat’

76.  Terrorism’ and Intellectual Responsibility

See the last 300 tweets on @aliahd66 for my take on the India-China crisis, besides its framing within the liberal national security perspective. 

Unpublished article - June 

Information war as India’s default strategy
(abridged and updated)

Introduction

The current day India-China faceoff in Ladakh that has exacted a toll of 20 Indian soldiers has put into spotlight the phenomenon of control of information by the state for its ends. This article examines this in an India-Pakistan context, highlighting that information operations directed by the state at the citizenry is now almost a default state strategy. The article focuses on implications for democratic control of the state, the agent, by the principal, the electorate, in a democracy. If the state manipulates the information domain in a manner as to impact enlightened understanding of citizens of their choices and options, including those that impact electoral verdicts, such manipulation in terms of its extant and extent needs examination.

Information war as default strategy

Though China is the new primary threat, power asymmetry compels placatory behaviour, such as settling for talks with an unattainable aim of reversion to a status quo ante in Ladakh. Compensating for and obscuring this appeasement, would entail greater vigour, if not aggression, in pursuit of strategies elsewhere.

Counter intuitively, in democratic India, information operations must be acknowledged. The famed troll army of the ruling party is well known. The trolls succeeded handsomely once before when the economic downturn that foreshadowed elections was papered over by recourse to the Pakistani bogey in the Pulwama-Balakot-Naushera episode, allowing Modi to sweep back into power. Therefore, for it to be a strategy in the repertoire of the regime is sensible from regime stability and perpetuation point of view. The diversionary drumbeat keeps attention away from significant national priorities, such as the lockdown brought-on migrant crisis and the tanking-in of the national security edifice in face of the Chinese challenge in Ladakh.

That it is a preferred strategy can be seen from the manner it has approached the two crises this year, COVID-19 and the one with China in Ladakh. Tactics in the COVID-19 diversionary strategy were the beating utensils, lighting lamps, showering petals on hospitals from helicopters, aerobatic displays with no spectators under lockdown conditions and band concerts in hospital silent zones. From the Ladakh crisis, an example is the alleged number of Chinese casualties, put at a tidy 43, by intelligence sources, to reassure Indians that India had the upper hand in the Galwan skirmish.

The pre-COVID-19 and pre-Galwan incident targets are ready on hand: Pakistan, Kashmir and India’s Muslims. The regime’s self-congratulatory list of ‘achievements’ inevitably comprises three points, indicating the collapsing of the three targets into one: the triple talaq bill; rendering Article 370 vacant; and surgical strikes. India’s favoured Kautilyan framework, has Pakistan as the external abettor of an internal – Muslim-centric - threat, considered as most dangerous.

There is a pre-existing decades-long narrative of the Indian Muslim minority as an internal security threat in Hindutva canonical texts. The Indian Muslim as target of the narrative acquired further impetus under conditions of the COVID-19 lockdown; the Tablighi Jamaat episode is evidence. Take for instance, an example is of an article on bio-warfare on the website of a military think tank under the headquarters reporting to the Chief of Defence Staff, General Bipin Rawat, the Center for Joint Warfare Studies (CENJOWS). Seemingly innocuously timed with the Tablighi Jamaat episode, the article egregiously notes, “the terrorist with fidyan (sic) mind set on getting infected will try spreading it to the target groups by intermingling with them….He however, may take care not to infect the group / community whose support or sympathy he continues to seek in achieving his larger aim (Sharma 2020).” In another instance, the Kashmir police’s director general implausibly averred that Pakistan was sending in COVID-19 inflicted to spread the disease in Kashmir. Though not as explicitly, the corps commander in Srinagar also made a similar allegation.

In relation to Kashmir, information war is the much-in-evidence complement to security operations internally. Take for instance Ram Madhav’s view that, “the people of J&K decided to give the new status a chance. That is the reason why the region has been largely quiet in the last nine months. The detractors would attribute this calm to the excessive presence of security forces and arrests of leaders.” The heavy deployment of troops and COVID-19 are competing explanations why, “people are not on the streets pelting stones and shouting azadi.” That these do not find mention is dead give-away of the information war underpinnings of his observation, that papers over the intensified operations there accounting for some 100 militants this year.

Ram Madhav also attempts to portray normalcy, writing, “The most significant change that has been brought about by the Narendra Modi government was to stop looking at Kashmir from a Pakistani or a terrorist prism.” Evidence of information war obfuscation is in the next steps he projects: taking back Pakistan Occupied Kashmir for fulfilling the Akhand Bharat concept. Information war is to distract from the reality within, targeting concerned Indians as much as India’s external interlocutors distressed by human rights violations.

Information warfare targeting citizen-voters will likely continue to divert attention from the uphill economic battle ahead. Policy missteps, such as the return of migrant labour to home states, will need obscuring, as will the differentiation in the shouldering of the pain of recovery in favour of the corporates as against the masses. The ongoing scapegoating of Muslims, including calls for an economic boycott, can be expected to worsen. Marginalising the minority, a prerequisite for normalising a non-secular, ‘Hindu India’, requires intensification of information war. The ramifications have heightened in light of the set back to the regime in Ladakh, requiring greater diversionary operations, and therefore, the probability of an intensified focus on scapegoating an existing target, India’s Muslims including Kashmiris.

Implications for democracy

The reservation here is that what is good for the right wing is not necessarily good for the country. Even though in the constitutional scheme a democratically elected government can exercise its mandate of setting the national agenda, it cannot be taken as self-evident that it would do so in the national interest. Instead, political interests prevail in national policy and decision-making, in this case, the need for a majoritarian hold on polity and governance in perpetuity.

India’s Pakistan strategy has little to do with the arguments of Realists: that strategy determinants are balances of power and the constellation of forces and threats. Instead, the under theorized perspective, that national security strategy emerges from internal wellsprings in domestic politics, is pertinent in India’s case. Factors in the external environment, such as an inimical neighour, Pakistan, at best provide a rationale for strategies that are instead predominantly internally motivated and directed, with the dividend also being sought in the internal political domain.

In strategic circles, there is a marked absence of sensitivity to the primary internal security threat faced by India - Hindutva extremism - that has hollowed out national institutions. For instance, a security think tank lists only Jammu and Kashmir, North East and Left Wing Extremism, as internal security challenges. Since Hindutva extremists are not listed as a threat, and, instead, what Hindutva extremism takes as threats constitute the internal threat perception. The agenda of the security discourse is thus a doctored one.

Whereas for Pakistan, information war is largely external-foe centric, in the Indian security discourse, purveyed by a subverted media suitably embellished, the external and internal foes are increasingly being collapsed into one: Pakistan and India’s Muslims, including Kashmiris. This makes the Indian information war more dangerous than the one conducted by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies. The targeting of Indian citizens, through a pliant media, with information war is not in the national interest but is in the interest of the right-wing political formations.

Finally, examples abound of instruments of state being appropriated as information war conduits. In instances akin to propaganda by deed are the manner the investigations and prosecution proceeds against Muslim activists in the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests and, in relation to leftists, in the Bhima Koregaon case. In the latter, the information war gambit, that some were in a conspiracy to kill the prime minister, is stark.

Conclusion

The stakes of falling to information operations of the state’s instruments are high for India. It can imperil liberal democracy, constitutionalism, secularism, federalism, unity in diversity and its freedom and equality. A check on the ruling formation’s agenda from within the government is unlikely. There is little incentive for a government with a parliamentary majority and an agenda for national transformation into a majoritarian state, to change course on ways and means that have yielded political dividend so far. Citizens as enlightened voters must reckon for themselves whether they consent to continue as targets of information war. If not, then they need to use their vote appropriately to push back.

An unpublished article - April 2020

India-Pakistan: The price of information warfare

The death of a commanding officer of a Rashtriya Rifles battalion, followed by the killing of the Hizb ul Mujahedeen (HM) chief, indicates that the usual summer insurgency and counter insurgency is well into its thirtieth year. On the Line of Control (LC), in a fierce hand to hand fight, ten perished, five of whom were India’s Special Forces’ troops. The war of words continues with Pakistan’s prime minister tweeting out his concern over escalation resulting from, in his words, a possible Indian ‘false flag’ operation. For its part, India protested Pakistan’s closer embrace of Gilgit-Baltistan when Pakistan’s Supreme Court ruled on elections there and has since begun coverage of the Pakistan occupied areas in its weather bulletins.

All this was altogether predictable with the change in status of Jammu and Kashmir mid last year into a union territory and persistent lock down conditions since. It can reasonably be said that had the corona virus (COVID-19) pandemic not occurred, the situation could well have bordered on war. A provocation-surgical strike crisis could have escalated in the circumstance of an increasingly isolationist United States - the usual crisis-manager in South Asia - distracted by the challenge posed by China, and busy with creating the conditions for exiting its longest war, in Afghanistan. COVID-19 has aborted a plausible scenario this summer in Kashmir.  

Even so, the situation is serious enough to prompt an establishment leading light, Ram Madhav, to warn. “It will be in Pakistan's own interest to change its actions in (the) emerging new world order and India knows how to handle such nations (Madhav 2020a).” Since the strategy currently unfolding appears to be one of coercion, how that helps ‘handle’ Pakistan remains to be seen. This article deals with what could be the outcome for India.

Within Kashmir, suppression of dissent is in evidence. The COVID-19 pandemic led to easing of detentions of politicians and political workers, held since August last year. The security forces are busy with neutralizing the militancy. India pushed in the paramilitary in significant numbers last year in anticipation of the outbreak of a rebellion. The paramilitary troops have been used in strengthening the counter insurgency grid. It has empowered the central armed police forces to the extent of impunity for routine transgressions on human dignity, such as by not affording a decent burial by families not only of militants, but also victims of security forces’ retribution. Highhandedness in operations is much in evidence (The Citizen 2020). With the courts looking on, India, using the security card liberally, has restricted freedoms such as of speech and expression in its control of internet and by pursuing cases under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act such as against photojournalist Masrat Zahra. 

Against Pakistan, the strategy of deterrence remains in place. The strategy calls for surgical strikes of differing magnitude against provocations, supplemented with the promise of retribution by conventional military means to deter escalation by Pakistan. However, in the post COVID-19 situation, a consensus is building up that deterrence is liable to dissipate (Menon 2020). The past few years have seen a decline in defence budgets relative to the proportion of the gross domestic product. The economic consequences of COVID-19 have put paid to any thought of diversion towards higher defence spending. The operationalization of the integrated battle groups has been setback (Hindu 2020). This implies that India stands to lose its swagger over dampening the Pakistani threat of escalation in case of India’s surgical strikes.

The corollary is that Pakistan can be more venturesome in fueling the Kashmiri insurgency. The recent spike in violence in Kashmir suggests that it has taken cue. Adequate tinder exists to keep the insurgency going for another generation, with new, seemingly indigenous, outfits such as ‘The Resistance Front’, at the vanguard. In short, the option that India appears to be exercising sustains the suppression-alienation cycle, but under conditions of decline in efficacy of deterrence. 

The status quo is sustainable for India. It has the security forces for suppression in Kashmir and to keep deployment along the LC indefinitely. Forced by an adverse economic circumstance even prior to COVID-19 advent, it abandoned the intent to stare down China by doing away with the intended Mountain Strike Corps and instead invoking the ‘‘Wuhan spirit’’ (Print 2018). Downplaying the two-front threat, it can afford to focus on one front, further attenuated to only the Kashmir theatre. It would mean a reversion to the nineties when internal security operations continued in Kashmir, with conventional deterrence then at low ebb.

Such a strategy is not an implausible from the lights of Ram Madhav, a leading right-wing intellectual. Kashmir fits in well with the decades-long narrative of the Indian Muslim minority as an internal security threat. This narrative acquired further impetus under conditions of the COVID-19 lockdown, with the Tablighi Jamaat episode as evidence. It serves to keep up the diversionary drumbeat away from significant national priorities as the lockdown brought on migrant crisis in the near term and that of revival of the economy over the long term. The diversionary strategy succeeded handsomely once before when the economic downturn that foreshadowed elections was papered over by recourse to the Pakistani bogey in the Pulwama-Balakot-Naushera episode, allowing Modi to sweep back into power.

The diversionary strategy is now a default one in the repertoire of the regime. Tactics used in diverting the attention of the middle classes during the COVID-19 crisis included beating utensils, lighting lamps, showering petals on hospitals from helicopters, aerobatic displays with no spectators under lockdown conditions and band concerts in hospital silent zones. Another illustration is the regime’s resort to anodyne protestations of good faith in relation to minorities when confronted with ire in West Asia at the Islamophobic epidemic in India. The prime minister led India’s diplomatic damage limiting exercise with a tweet, joined by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leader, Mohan Bhagwat, belatedly intoning similar sentiment.

In relation to Kashmir, Ram Madhav, has it that, “the people of J&K decided to give the new status a chance. That is the reason why the region has been largely quiet in the last nine months. The detractors would attribute this calm to the excessive presence of security forces and arrests of leaders (Madhav 2020b).” There being no mention of COVID-19 in explaining why, “people are not on the streets pelting stones and shouting azadi,” is dead give-away of the information war underpinnings of his article.

India’s strategy can thus be taken as being information warfare led, which in India’s favoured Kautilyan framework has Pakistan as the external abettor of an internal threat, considered in the framework as most dangerous. The point is that what is good for the right wing is not necessarily good for the country. Even though in the constitutional scheme a democratically elected government can exercise its mandate of setting the national agenda, it cannot be taken as self-evident that it would do so in the national interest. Instead, political interests prevail in national policy and decision-making, in this case, the need for a majoritarian hold on polity and governance in perpetuity.

India’s Pakistan strategy therefore has little to do with the arguments of Realists, that balances of power and the constellation of forces and threats in the external environment are strategy determinants. Instead, national security strategy in the India-Pakistan case emerges from internal wellsprings in domestic politics. Factors in the external environment, such as an inimical neighour, Pakistan, at best provide a rationale for strategies that are instead predominantly internally motivated and directed, with the dividend also being sought in the internal political domain.

This is truer for India’s Kashmir strategy, that is doubly damned, linked as it is with Pakistan and, lately, with the downward trajectory of India’s Muslims. That Ram Madhav attempts to delink Pakistan and Kashmir, writing, “The most significant change that has been brought about by the Narendra Modi government was to stop looking at Kashmir from a Pakistani or a terrorist prism (Madhav 2020b),” is evidence of information war obfuscating the linkage. Else why would he project next steps as being to take back Pakistan Occupied Kashmir for fulfilling the Akhand Bharat concept (PTI 2020).

In effect, India is increasingly aping its neighbour, Pakistan. Just as the Pakistan army has appropriated the national agenda to serve its interests, the Indian state has been captured by the right wing for its own purposes. Since both profit from the status quo, it is set to continue. In both cases, information warfare directed internally shall be the main line of operations of this strategy, besides a relatively low-cost proxy war and its counter.

In case of Pakistan, the hit Pakistani tele-serial, Ehd e Wafa (You Tube), produced by its propaganda arm, the Inter Services Public Relations, provides a clue. The climax is picturised on the LC with the uniformed hero depicted as getting the better of his Indian opponents in a tactical level engagement. Healing from his wounds, he gets a hero’s welcome at his alma mater. In his speech to wide eyed school boys, he says, “I believe I cannot perform my job until the entire country’s prayers and backing are not with me…When all of us come together, only then the nation will progress.” The Urdu serial has an actor comically depicting Abhinandan Varthaman, the Indian fighter pilot, who was shot down in the skirmish over Rajauri-Naushera post Balakot. India serves the Pakistan army well as an increasingly credible bogeyman, enabling that army’s ostensible aim of furthering national cohesion, as also its covert purpose of perpetuation of its institutional interest.

In India, information operations must be called out for what they are. The famed troll army of the ruling party is well known. Information warfare targeting citizen-voters will likely continue to divert attention from the uphill economic battle ahead. Policy missteps, such as the return of migrant labour to home states, will need obscuring, as will the differentiation in the shouldering of the pain of recovery in favour of the corporates as against the masses. The ongoing scapegoating of Muslims, including calls for an economic boycott, can be expected to worsen. Marginalising the minority, a prerequisite for normalising a non-secular, Hindu, India, requires intensification of information war.

Information war is also a facet of India’s transforming into a national security state. The glorification of martyrs, as battle casualties are unreflectively referred to in the media; the militarisation of the police; and ubiquity of police brutality, best displayed on the library precincts of a central university in the national capital, Jamia Millia Islamia, are illustrations. Rather than politically ministering problems under the cabinet system, the national security adviser, operating out of the prime minister’s office, eclipses relevant ministers. The intelligence background of the national security adviser foregrounds perception management, making information war a favoured instrument.

Examples abound of instruments of state being appropriated as information war conduits. Take for instance, an example is of an article on bio-warfare on the website of a military think tank under the headquarters reporting to the Chief of Defence Staff, General Bipin Rawat, the Center for Joint Warfare Studies (CENJOWS). Innocuously timed with the Tablighi Jamaat episode, the article egregiously notes, “the terrorist with fidyan (sic) mind set on getting infected will try spreading it to the target groups by intermingling with them….He however, may take care not to infect the group / community whose support or sympathy he continues to seek in achieving his larger aim (Sharma 2020).”

In another instance, the Kashmir police’s director general implausibly averred that Pakistan was sending in COVID-19 inflicted to spread the disease in Kashmir. Though not as explicitly, the corps commander in Srinagar also made a similar allegation (Scroll 2020). A third illustration is the arrests of left wing and anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act activists on trumped up charges of sedition, unlawful activity and, in case of the former, improbably conspiring to assassinate the prime minister.

In strategic circles, there is a marked absence of sensitivity to the primary internal security threat faced by India - Hindutva extremism - that has hollowed out national institutions. For instance, in a security overview, CENJOWS, lists only Jammu and Kashmir, North East and Left Wing Extremism, as internal security challenges (CENJOWS 2020). Since Hindutva extremists are not listed as a threat, and instead, what Hindutva extremism takes as threats constitute the threat perception, information war sets the agenda in the security discourse.

Whereas for Pakistan, information war is largely external-foe centric, in the Indian security discourse, purveyed by a subverted media suitably embellished, the external and internal foes are increasingly being collapsed into one: Pakistan and India’s Muslims, including Kashmiris. This makes the Indian information war worse than the one conducted by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies. The targeting of Indian citizens, through a pliant media, with information war is not in the national interest but is in the interest of the right wing political formations. Therefore, information war that makes this possible and the extent of security institutions’ participation in such information operations is ‘anti-national’, rightly defined.  

The stakes of falling to information operations of the state’s instruments are high for India. It can imperil liberal democracy, constitutionalism, secularism, federalism, unity in diversity and its freedom and equality. A check on the ruling formation’s agenda from within the government is unlikely. There is little incentive for the government with a parliamentary majority and an agenda for national transformation into a majoritarian state, to change course on ways and means that have yielded political dividend so far. Citizens as enlightened voters must reckon for themselves whether they consent to continue as targets of information war. If not, then they need to use their vote appropriately to push back.

References

Madhav, Ram (2020a): “India knows how to handle countries like Pakistan: Ram Madhav,” 3 May, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/75519345.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

Menon, Prakash (2020): “Dealing with adverse impact of COVID 19 on India’s military planning,” United Services Institution of India, 9 April, https://usiofindia.org/publication/cs3-strategic-perspectives/dealing-with-adverse-impact-of-covid-19-on-indias-military-planning/

Hindu (2020): “Roll out of Integrated Battle Groups delayed due coronavirus pandemic: Army chief,” 10 May, https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/roll-out-of-integrated-battle-groups-delayed-due-coronavirus-pandemic-army-chief/article31550377.ece

Print (2020): “Indian Army puts Mountain Strike Corps aimed at China in cold storage,” 12 July, https://theprint.in/defence/indian-army-puts-mountain-strike-corps-aimed-at-china-in-cold-storage/82319/

Madhav, Ram (2020b): “It is time to allow J&K full-fledged political activity,” 21 May,  https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/jammu-kashmir-article-370-abrogation-kashmir-4g-services-internet-restoration-domicile-certificate-ram-madhav-6419914/

Hum TV: “Ehd e Wafa (Last episode),” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGGN_HLJ2g0

PTI (2020): “Taking back PoK is next step towards achieving Akhand Bharat,” Times of India, 22 February,https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/taking-back-pok-is-next-step-towards-achieving-akhand-bharat-objective-ram-madhav/articleshow/74258970.cms

Sharma, GD (2020): “Bio terrorism: A non-traditional threat,” 6 April, https://cenjows.gov.in/article-detail?id=257

Scroll (2020): “Covid-19: Pakistan ‘trying to push’ infected persons into Kashmir, says J&K police chief,” 23 April, https://scroll.in/latest/960017/covid-19-pakistan-trying-to-push-infected-persons-into-kashmir-says-j-k-police-chief

CENJOWS (2020): “Future ready India: Structures to meet non traditional security challenges/ threats,” 23 April, https://cenjows.gov.in/article-detail?id=268

The Citizen (2020): “Havoc in Kashmir,” 21 May, https://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/4/18769/Havoc-in-Kashmir

Yelena Biberman, Gambling with Violence: State Outsourcing of War in Pakistan and India, New York: Oxford University Press, 2019, pp. 220, ISBN 9780190929978

The book is an outcome of the dissertation of the author, Yelena Biberman, at Brown University, under tutelage of Prof. Ashutosh Varshney. Varshney is also series editor of the Modern South Asia series of which the book is the fifth product. The slim volume encompasses work of eight years, covering field work in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and archival research in three continents. The book was completed at Skidmore College, where the author currently teaches. Her inspiration appears to be her family’s experience as refugees fleeing persecution from her place of origin where even discussion of politics in private could prove fatal. For these reasons, the book’s simple and honest coverage of the illicit activity that attends counter insurgency needs taking seriously in our part of the world, the focus of the book.

Two of the in-depth case studies on the use of irregulars by the state security forces are centered in South Asia: by Pakistanis in East Pakistan in the run up to and during the 1971 War and the employment of the Ikhwan in Kashmir against Pakistani proxies in the nineties. Two further case studies are dwelt on in one chapter: the resort to lashkars by the Pakistani army to roll back the Taliban and Islamist intrusion into the areas along the Durand Line and the use of the Salwa Judum by India to combat the Maoist insurgency in Central India. To highlight that such manner of resort to local fighters in an armed group affiliated with the state is not a typically South Asian counter insurgency innovation, the author also touches upon the experience of the Turkish military in deploying irregulars in their containment of the Kurdish insurgency and of the two rounds of Russian military intervention in Chechenya wherein the Russians liberally employed Chechen fighters with allegiance to them against their compatriot Chechen insurgents.

The six case studies between them cover most conceivable issues that arise from a political, strategic and human rights perspective. The book is on this count a recommended read for both practitioners and academics since it elaborates on a topic usually touched on in hushed tones and of which little is known. It is significant for the light it casts on both major militaries in South Asia – the Pakistani and Indian military and security forces – in revealing perhaps for the first time in one set of covers their use (and abuse) of proxy armed groups. Clearly, the foremost take away from the book is that the practice of raising, deploying and employing such armed groups is a bad idea and must be struck of the counter insurgency repertoire at least in India, a self-regarding democratic state. That the practice is shady and the knowledge of which leads to these groups being abandoned after use is at variance with democratic ethic. The tactical and short term gains accruing on the security front – a questionable proposition - are at a cost of induction of anti-democratic biases into a military’s organizational culture.

The case study on the Ikhwan illustrates this point. The army was in a bit of a fix rolling back Pakistan’s proxy war in Kashmir. It wanted to keep its redoubtable infantry free for a conventional retaliation against Pakistan in case it failed to keep the proxy war below a certain threshold of tolerance. Therefore, it raised a new counter insurgency force, the Rastriya Rifles. Though the force is now institutionalized to an extent, in the days when the idea of the Ikhwan was thought up and acted on, it was a fledgling, rather ungainly force. The army therefore had to resort to unorthodox means to take on the Pakistani challenge. It turned to turn coat militants, the Ikhwan, who were then let loose on the Pakistani sponsored groups, over ground workers and the population in general. The state terror they inspired over time enabled a semblance of stability, wherein assembly elections were held for the first time after outbreak of troubles. Eventually, the proxy group were merged into the police as the notorious and dreaded, special operations group. The leader of the group tried his hand in politics and was later assassinated. The sorry story has a telling climax in the stronghold of the group, Hajin, currently a hotbed of Pakistani proxy groups.

The story of India’s resort to the Salwa Judum is even more sordid. The author makes a significant point in highlighting the link between India’s attempt at opening up the Central Indian forests to exploitation by corporate entities and the displacement of the vulnerable tribal populations from their lands. The Salwa Judum was at the forefront of this bit of unacknowledged ethnic cleansing by India. It is only later when the Supreme Court stepped in at the behest of concerned academics and activists who petitioned it and pursued the case, that the state changed gears. Even then, it merely transferred the illiterate fighters, usually recruited as child soldiers, into new forces, colourfully called Koda Commandoes etc. It has continued its strategy of appropriating tribal lands for capitalist penetration under a larger deployment of a paramilitary of questionable capability for jungle operations and a deafening media silence. The author informs of poetic justice catching up with the founder of Salwa Judum.

The Pakistani, Turkish and Russian experiences are instructive in only reinforcing the point that the tactic is unsuitable for democratic militaries, particularly since the three are the best company to be in for a liberal democratic state as India. The Russian experience is decidedly the most repulsive. The Russian military was at its lowest ebb in the nineties when it ventured to retake Chechenya from the rebels. It eventually got its act together, but succeeded in gaining control of the rubble that its military resort, supplemented by proxy fighters, left behind. The case study from Turkey indicates how a secular Turkey associated with Islamists to cow down Kurdish fighters.

The lesson for readers here is that if a military route is not possible without the sacrifice of democratic credentials then it should not be taken, but substituted by political means involving where necessary, suitable concessions. This observation has bearing on the current day lock-down – at the time of writing - ongoing in Kashmir. Underlining this is necessary since the use of proxy groups figures in the first iteration of India’s subconventional operations doctrine as force multipliers. Under the current dispensation, when India is turning to a harder strategic line, it can be easily inferred that the state will not be chary of going to any lengths in the name of security. Proxy fighters will therefore remain as an enticing option, but the military – and other security forces - need warning off. Towards this end, the book is timely. The author’s revelations help debunk the understanding, held in sections of the military, that the use of proxies is a replicable tactical innovation. This explains the apt title of the book. For a nation with a robust military, national security cannot be gambled away for questionable tactical gains enabled by proxies.