https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/armed-forces-special-powers-act

Armed Forces Special Powers’ Act

AFSPA is part of the problem

The Home Ministry makes a virtue of a necessity in the withdrawal of the Armed Forces Special Powers’ Act (AFSPA) from some areas of its extant across North East. That this is a response to the Oting killings in Mon District of Nagaland last December is self-evident. Had that botched operation not taken place, periodic routine extensions to AFSPA would have continued, just as was the case in Assam only last month. Since AFSPA is part of the legal landscape in the North East and Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), the Act is center stage when there is some or the other egregious violation of human rights. The remainder of the time it whirrs away in the background, covering up violations that do not clutter headlines.

It is not as if AFSPA has not been consigned to the dustbin when warranted. The legislation for Punjab was jettisoned when it outlived its utility sometime late nineties with the passing of the Khalistani insurgency. The one in Tripura was wrapped up in mid 2010s by the Left administration there when its enlightened policies brought peace to tribal areas. However, it has continued unabated in the North East and J&K, even where the indices of insurgency have been negligible. This has been the case not only in areas in J&K, such as south of Pir Panjals, more or less all through, and also in Assam since the insurgency there abated in the early 2000s. That AFSPA continues in place by mere genuflection to an unsettled situation, rather than any rigourous due process by way of which it is extended, shows it up as a tool of centralized control over the periphery; a colonial instrument, if you will.  

The Courts have twice-over taken a deeper look at it. In the late 90s, the challenge to AFSPA on constitutional grounds was laid to rest in the Courts decreeing it as constitutionally compliant. The judgment was sugar-coated with homilies to be applied by the armed forces during operations, which in the event proved to be lip-service to a set of commandments, themselves revised soon thereafter. Then in the mid 2000s, there were the upheavals in Manipur, stemming from wanton disregard by some armed forces elements of the provisions that Supreme Court had required be kept in mind during operations. The government of the day - bearing a liberal orientation - sought to quieten the backlash by appointing a commission. As with most such reports, the Commission’s otherwise enlightened report was confined to dusty file cupboards. The then home minister later ruefully recalled – referring to another report by three interlocutors dealing with the effects of the AFSPA in Kashmir - that an opportunity was passed up to rectify matters.

The highest Court continues to be ‘seized of the matter’ – in ways typical to courts – following up with an investigation of some 1500 cases of disappearance in Manipur. Of the six sample cases investigated at its behest by a central agency, all deaths were found to be in fake encounters. Premises vacated by a departing military unit threw up human remains, testifying to an effort a clandestine disposal. In J&K, unmarked graves number up to some 3000, while the number of disappeared are pegged just short of 5-digit figures.

While wheels of justice clank on, their din has forced at least two counter insurgents to commit suicide. One Avtar Singh, on the run for killing a human rights activist in Kashmir, killed his family before shooting himself, way out in California where he was hiding out. A Pakistani author provides a fictional account of the murder-suicide. In the other case, the major allegedly involved in the alleged rape and murder of Manorama Devi allegedly died in a firearm ‘accident’ on the field firing range. This is not how it was envisaged in the AFSPA to deal with violations of its provisions. Poetic justice after a fashion, but this should have, first, been deterred by the State; and, second, it should have deployed its disciplinary powers instead.

Indeed, AFSPA does confer disciplinary powers. These have been remarkable only for absence of will to use them. The Act would have perhaps had less ignominy had the Article that confers these powers on the Central government been exercised as envisaged, when and where warranted. That power under this Article has been deliberately ignored, while powers under other Articles have been abused tells its own story. Not a single prosecution has been initiated since the Union government has declined to sign off on its approval for such action, even when warranted. Where the army’s judicial system has stepped up, justice delivery has been casualty. Machhil and Pathribal are cases to point. This puts the onus on the government, but with two ministries involved – Defence and Home – there is little chance of decisions emerging.  

This owes to a division of labour in which the bureaucrat-assisted political level of military control has abdicated its responsibility of oversight altogether. The lessons of 1962 were over-learnt. Both doctrinal and operational aspects of military affairs are taken to be the realm of the military brass, while it is kept out of the higher order decision making. This is a symbiotic relationship, with the brass not unhappy to have a field-day operationally. Lately, cosmetic strides have been made to get the military on the high table, though mostly this is high on propaganda than substance.

As a result, counter insurgency has been largely unsupervised, with the military being only self-regulating only up to a point. The doctrinal cover it has is that a kinetic resort is only to bring down levels of insurgency to manageable levels. This is compounded by a definition of insurgency that has it that insurgency is only if unassisted from outside. This puts the troubles in Kashmir into a proxy war basket, whereupon militant action is taken as terrorism, inviting a liberally-dispensed wrath of the State.

Whereas the military has projected that it is loath to be involved in aid to civil authority in tackling internal security, the circumstance has been rather beneficial for the military. It has expanded its footprint across J&K in particular, raising a whole Force, the Rashtriya Rifles (RR), to enable it do so. Thus, when calls, impelled by ‘healing touch’ sentiment, come up for rewinding AFSPA, these are promptly shot down by the military, the custodians of expertise on insurgency and national security. No national level politician can second guess that, while provincial politicians can be derided as having an axe to grind. Thus, AFSPA acquired institutional stakeholders interested in its longevity.

There are institutional checks in place, such as a human rights cell at the headquarters level. Recently, a police officer stands posted to the headquarters with a remit to oversee processes dealing with violations. However, the interpretation of the mandate is such by the military appointees that they think their job is to preserve the military from external scrutiny. This is of a piece in a system where the apex human rights body organizes debates with topics such as: "Are human rights a stumbling block in fighting evils like terrorism and Naxalism"?

In such milieu, not only will AFSPA be willfully misinterpreted, but its tenets stretched. For example, it allows for destruction of hideouts. However, that was apt for when it was promulgated: when in jungles hideouts could be destroyed so that these were not reused. These days it is interpreted to mean any place militants are found, including houses they take shelter in. Thus, there is a virtual policy for destruction of houses in which militants are found. This replicates what Israel does, hardly apt for a country dealing with its own citizens. AFSPA provides benign cover for turning India into a softer copy of that Apartheid state.  

Though the government, known for milking military-related measures for its political purposes, will go to town over the retraction of AFSPA from certain areas in the North East, it is unlikely to be replicated in J&K any time soon. This could be done easily if violence indices are the only barometer. That it needs being done is not so much as to stay compliant with the Court’s requirements, but to be strategic. The AFSPA feeds resentment and high-handed actions under it, alienation. If partially withdrawn, it would serve as a useful confidence builder and gimmick to initiate a peace process. Retracting AFSPA can do more for J&K peace, than divisions-worth of RR. But the government, having shot its bolt with Article 370 voiding, is hardly likely to be looking at politically-driven conflict resolution. It is instead election oriented. It could well give indicators of turning back the AFSPA clock if the ruling party gets elected in the forthcoming elections. Reaping the harvest in installing a Bhartiya Janata Party-led government under a Hindu chief minister, it can rescind its promise at will or remove it selectively. AFSPA, thus, is plenty-faceted, to be juiced at will.

One thing it certainly does is to hand over – figuratively – the situation to the army. For the vast majority of counter insurgents doing a professional job of a distasteful responsibility - not an infanteer's primary job but only an infanteer can do it - they would soldier on regardless of the Act; so don’t quite need it. What the Act does is makes it business-as-usual for politicians and bureaucrats. There is thus no urgency to resolve matters politically. The Naga peace process is to observe its silver jubilee soon, with not comprehensive peace agreement in sight as yet. As a result India has been criticized – for instance by David Smith - for being a soft state, unable to wrap up insurgencies for decades on end. The critique, though taken amiss by the military and its veterans, bites.

What escapes the military is the cost it pays for maintaining the cover of AFSPA. It remains a ‘mass’ military – a grid-based counter insurgency being manpower heavy. This has impacted its financing; the revenue budget eating up the capital budget. It is also not conventional war oriented enough, having been caught flat-footed at Kargil and, most recently, in Ladakh. That courage has bailed it out is at best a back-handed compliment. Thus, AFSPA has a price the military is unwilling and/or unable to see.

Even so, AFSPA does serve the purpose of providing cover for deploying the army in circumstance of straitened internal security. That the enabling provisions are also available in other legal instruments has not made a dent on the army’s adamantine stand. Its powers could also be inserted into a revised Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). Since the much reviled UAPA is applicable across India, it does not suffer arraignment as AFSPA does of being discriminatory.

Nevertheless, AFSPA is not going to go away. The only purpose it can perhaps serve someday is that it can provide cover for army deployment elsewhere. No, not in Maoist areas - though it’s discipline might protect the tribal communities there better than that afforded by the central police forces - but across India if and when right wing extremists - whose political violence is the primary threat to the Republic’s Constitution - are to be rolled up and wrapped away.

 

https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/indias-china-predicament-and-no-first?s=w

India’s China predicament and No First Use

Engaging with Bharat Karnad

As usual, Bharat Karnad has set the cat among the pigeons. In his, ‘Ukraine in mind, India needs a nuclear option against China,’ he takes aim at India’s nuclear doctrinal pillar, No First Use (NFU), calling for it to be jettisoned in relation to China. His has been a longstanding recommendation that atomic demolition munitions (ADM) be emplaced along Chinese ingress passes, thereby deterring it. It would implacably demonstrate Indian resolve, since these would ab initio be embedded to deny use of those approaches either for intrusion or logistics support thereafter. At a minimum, the implicit threat that they could be triggered in face of a Chinese onslaught would keep China from chancing any invasion. For good measure, Karnad conjures up a Doom’s Day machine: the array of ADMs to be backed by a tier of Agni missiles, well forward enough to take out Beijing, the Three Gorges Dam, the Lop Nor weapons complex and China’s eastern seaboard.   

To Karnad, a differentiated doctrine is required on the Pakistan front, since Pakistan is a manageable foe. To him, it is at best an irritant, with which the power asymmetry between the two can be suitably leveraged to deter. His overall pitch has been that India proffer friendly overtures to Pakistan, weaning it away from China. This would make conflict recede, leaving India with only one front to take care of: China.

To him, India is in China’s weight, but adverse power equations require India to apply its nuclear capability in a different manner. While doing without NFU does not necessarily mean first use of nuclear weapons, Karnad does not merely want to instill dissonance in the mind of the adversary that these ‘may’ be used, but a surety that these ‘will’ be used. Karnad is no nuclear minimalist, believing in a tous azimuts nuclear capability, with warheads numbering in mid-three digits figures. What it does to the other doctrinal pillar, ‘minimum’, does not detract him, since for the capability to be ‘credible’ is more important.

Elsewhere, I made a case for a rescinding of the NFU in face of a crisis or in conflict in order to demonstrate that China either desist from crossing a threshold or retrieve. In my mind’s eye, this was not so much to avoid a fight than to keep from losing one. There was space in my visualization for a conventional tryst, even a bloody-nosed, broken-jawed one. It is only if and when Chinese aims are self-evidently over the top – such as a bid to take Tawang or make a break for the Chicken Neck – then India could, as a first step publicly step back from NFU. Though not advocated by me, if nuclear weapons are to at all to be introduced into a conflict, it’s best done at the lowest possible level of destruction, provocation or opprobrium.    

Thus, there are three nuclear use options: ‘maximalist’ (Karnad); ‘minimalist’; and, the in-between ones clubbed into a third, ‘graduated’ option.

There is little doubt that the maximalist option – Karnad’s potion - should make China think twice. However, the danger is, having given their prospective military actions a second thought the Chinese may yet undertake these. In short, the maximalist option might fail to deter. This owes to operation of self-deterrence. Whereas it might be reassuring to have the capability to see the rubble bounce on Chinese seaboard, it may take a while to get there. India does not have the reach for now or the numbers of warheads and missiles. Even when it does, self-deterrence will remain, since India and China would be in a state of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). Self-deterrence will thus attend all nuclear decision making, given the inevitability of India suffering like damage.

Maximalists like to believe that resolve is all it takes to overcome self-deterrence. Resolve requires not only bolstering incessantly but demonstrating periodically. This is persuasive, but not wholly so. It does take resolve to commit suicide, but political decision makers in a democracy have no mandate to take a call on national suicide. No political aims or military objectives can be met by such an action. Preventing Chinese from taking Arunachal makes little sense if there is no India left to retain Arunachal. 

The maximalists argue that the aim being deterrence, it can be met by a convincing show of irrationality – after all only a mad (wo)man will chance a ‘MAD’ situation. ‘It can happen; therefore, it will, so let’s not provoke it,’ should go the refrain. The higher the provocation – such as a bid to take Ladakh or breakout from Doklam for the Teesta plains – the more likely the house will be brought down on both heads. Threat of an irrational reaction prevents an irrational action. However, this does not prevent – deter – the more likely Chinese military actions: salami slicing.

For this, Karnad has his ADMs in place. In a ‘graduated’ option, ADMs going off do not necessarily trigger off the Agnis. The Agnis are in case of retaliatory strike(s) which get ugly, or, if in the aftermath of ADM demolishing hillsides, China still proceeds downhill. In-conflict deterrence through escalation control should kick-in.

However, competent commentary exists that escalation control beliefs are wishful. At one time, Subrahmanyam, and lately, Prakash Menon, reflected on inevitability of escalation in their dissuading theology on escalation control. This implies that the graduated option has a higher probability of tending towards the maximalist option in short order. Even if a chimera of sorts, not having a graduated option makes a maximalist option the only option left.

This leaves one with the third - minimalist - option. This involve letting go of NFU at a crunch, to deliver an unmistakable message. Lack of NFU does not mean inevitable first use. However, a reluctant stepping up to the graduated option can be countenanced by climbing the ladder: nuclear tests, a green-field explosion, tactical nuclear strike(s) or taking out an operational level target. The assumption is that a nuclear weapon going off can even make the deaf hear. A war that’s gone nuclear has existential portents for the planet. It is liable to bring in unprecedented external pressure to bring home to belligerents the start of a wholly new ball game: use of nukes by both sides.

In his appraisal of the Ukraine conflict – that prompted his latest foray on his favourite nuclear hobby horse - Karnad observes that the Ukraine predicament was brought on by the fear in its supporters that their involvement in the conflict may make it go nuclear – a fear fed by Russia’s unambiguous nuclear threats. Consequently, Karnad thinks that states subject to attack by nuclear weapons powers have to resort to their own devices, unromantically expect no one to come to the rescue. This is true in the Russo-Ukraine case, but not tenable in a case of two nuclear powers in a MAD situation, such as India and Pakistan or, in due course, with progressive nuclear armament, India and China. Even in the interim, nuclear ordnance exchange between India and China would lead to curtains for Planet Earth.

Consequently, the maximalist option should not figure at all and every sinew strained to ensure that the graduated option does not tend towards the maximalist due to absent or ineffective escalation control measures and mechanisms. Compared with the graduated option, the minimalist option is sane. The logic that irrationality deters is undeniable, but sanity – nuclear weapons made thinkable by a reasonable doctrine - does equally well.

The minimalist option does not take Karnad’s fears of a conventional reverse to heart. Karnad - perhaps rightly - believes that the conventional equation is against India. China is indeed better positioned on the Himalayas in terms of geography, and is doctrinally and materially ahead. However, better armies have been checked all through history. We don’t need to go as far back as Alexander by Porus, but use the Ukrainian example itself. Ukraine has given a good account of itself in a situation of greater asymmetry than India versus China.

Therefore, recourse can be taken to the Draft Nuclear Doctrine that Karnad helped write up. It desired that a higher order conventional capability be maintained in order that Indian nuclear threshold is at a reasonably high level. Even if much improvement is needed, there is no call for substitution of conventional firepower with nuclear firepower.

Significantly, credible commentary – as by HS Panag – has it that when, in 2020, China spooked India, it was only asserting its claim to the areas up to its 1959 claim line. Having done that – and over stepped it slightly at an odd spot – I believe it is satiated in Ladakh. Though this does not hold for Arunachal, there is a consensus that 1962 cannot be replicated by China. This underscores conventional deterrence.

Therefore, NFU has continuing utility for India. NFU serves India’s purposes, since it incentivizes China to likewise maintain an NFU. It’s only if China gets too hot to handle conventionally, when a declaratory move away from NFU need be made. Whereas Karnad wishes for an up-front first use doctrine on the China front, he takes care to build in a buffer – having ADMs triggered by what China does, rather than having India hurl Agnis right away. So it’s a caveated first use of sorts, the onus on China. From his piece, it cannot be inferred that he is for raining down the Agnis at one go. Thus – much to his chagrin (!) - Karnad’s can also be taken as a nuanced, graduated option.

Even so, NFU rescinding does not necessarily mean first use. The ambiguity is enough to deter. I go so far as to say that even a conventional set back should not prompt first use. Even if playing with a weak hand, India must counter China conventionally. While a near-MAD situation compels this, it’s also because - to quote Barack Obama out of context - ‘Yes, we can.’

 https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/indias-strategic-doctrine

India’s strategic doctrine

Does Hindutva provide an answer?

The question in the title should not have been needed. By now, the answer should have been provided by the National Security Advisor (NSA)-led Defence Planning Committee. Set up to bring about coherence in the defence sector, it was also tasked with writing up the national security strategy - the bedrock of national security. Reportedly such a strategy has been written up. As to whether it has received the political nod, at the level of the Cabinet Committee on Security, is not known. (It is another matter that when the cabinet system is itself at an ebb, if such a formality matters.) What’s certain is that it is not in the open domain. So it is uncertain if such a strategy at all exists.

Though the Narendra Modi regime is known to be sensitive to defence matters and is in its self-image strong-on-defence, it is perhaps replicating the policy of the Congress of some thirty years back that had it that India has a national security doctrine; only not in a written out form. In effect, though ruled by the most self-consciously national security-oriented government, Indian analysts continue to be arrayed blindfolded before the national security elephant, casting about for the national security doctrine from any feature of the elephant touched. Given that it remains a well-kept national secret, to infer that none exists cannot also be convincingly refuted.

So, is there an Indian national security doctrine? ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. A political culture has an attendant down-stream strategic culture, the fount  - in turn - of strategic doctrine. With Narendra Modi and his protégé, Yogi Adityanath aka Bisht, having each been sworn in twice-over - despite the known governance deficits in their respective first term - it is clear that political culture is now indubitably Hindutva dominant. Hindutva is the Hindu majoritarian lens through which to view India. It helps paper over the diversity that is said to constitute India by imposing a uniform colour, saffron. That Hindutva calls the shots is clear from other parties being pale imitations of the ruling party, evidenced by being referred to as the ‘B Team’ or professing ‘soft Hindutva’, or,  if with a non-Hindu membership, stooges of the ruling party out to dig into the minority vote.

With Hindutva acquiring a pole position in political culture - equivalent to the Congress system of the sixties and seventies - it can be reasonably inferred that its national security verities can be bundled together to constitute a national security doctrine. One would have expected the regime to profit from this as yet another national security initiative taken in contrast to their lotus-eating predecessors. In my view, the national security strategy is signed off only tacitly and cannot be allowed into the public domain lest its Hindutva-imparted tenets stir up criticism, if not derision itself. The regime being particularly sensitive to the latter, would like to duck, instead using its drum beaters in the strategic community to kick up an information war din targeting the voter that it has the national interest at heart.

So what’s the national secret? The national secret is the conception of national interest. In theory, national interest - as the term suggests - must have the nation’s interest at heart. In the case of Hindutva-defined national interest, the national interest is what is in the interest of Hindutva. Even though it now colours political culture, it is not steady on its feet enough to self-confidently come out on this score. Democratic accountability requires the government to aggregate national interest from the myriad parochial interests at play, even if it uses an ideological lens to finally arrive at the national security nector. It cannot outright say that the national interest currently is consolidation of Hindutva. Hindutva is the essence of the right wing. It cannot be mistaken as the national interest in a diverse polity as India, even if the dominant strain. Admitting to its consolidation as the national interest would bring forth an avoidable backlash in its period of consolidation. It must remain unsaid, with strategists making of national interest what they will and assuming that the government has the national interest at heart. It won’t do to admit that the parochial ideological interest of a political party is the national interest. They have learnt from the tripping up of the Congress system that to admit ‘Indira is India’ is precursor to a fall.

Thus, if Bhartiya Janata Party and affiliates-defined Hindutva is the national interest, what does Hindutva signify for national security? A Hindutva-dominant political culture can be expected to yield up a particular conception of strategic culture; whence can be inferred the strategic doctrine. Another way to go about getting to the strategic doctrine is to see the actions of the Hindutva-led State and divine the doctrine working backwards from the actions.

Majoritarian political culture has it that India is a millennia-old civilization that has been trampled upon by successive invaders. It has finally discovered its essence. Its essence is not quite diversity imposed on it by invaders for their self-interested purposes of ‘divide and rule’. Instead, the essence is in traditional and scriptural texts, preserved by a institutionalised body of bearers of such texts at the apex of the societal pyramid. The uniformity this lends militates against the conception of diversity. What needs doing is to instill the reverence of our common, shared and inherited culture and extend it to the geographical frontiers of the ancient land, Bharat qua Bharat Mata. That the frontiers do not coincide with the current day national borders – Akhand Bharat having a subcontinental scale - can be tackled at a later date.  For now, consolidation of Hindutva is the national aim, with New India as a regional hegemon, a great power and Vishwa Guru, as end state.  

Thus, from a political culture that eschews diversity, the strategic culture that emerges is one that takes diversity as threat, demanding it be papered over till it is subdued and cast out. The stratagem is to reiterate that India has never been expansive. This is making virtue of a necessity in that through history India has expended its energy in accordion-like expanding to its natural geographic frontiers and then collapsing in on itself. This time round it would be different in that Hindutva will not only provide the energy to recoup national frontiers but also furnish the glue to keep together thereafter. Hindutva is thus the panacea that Indian national security has been missing through history. India has finally found its mojo.

Hindutva’s arrival center stage was in the period when the subordinate castes bid for power and pelf in relation to their numbers. The Mandalisation of polity evoked a response in Hindutva gathering steam. It sought vertical integration of Hindu society through invoking Hinduism, Hindutva defined. The Ayodhya movement provided a focus. The destruction of Babri Masjid and the Muslim backlash it provoked set up the Muslim Other as prop for Hindutva propagation. Globally, the withdrawal of the Cold War led to instability that witnessed the falling apart of diverse polities as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Insurgency challenges beset India simultaneously in Punjab and Kashmir, attenuating the premium on unity based on uniformity. Hindutva, a readily available right wing doctrine with a century or so of existence in various forms – a nineteenth century milder revivalist version to a sterner twentieth century fascism inspired one – was served up as answer to fissiparous India suffering a like fate.

An observation made about then by an analyst, George Tanham, looking at India’s strategic culture – that India does not have one - provided a useful peg. Hindutva’s encroachment on and occupation of political cultural space led to strategic cultural products predicated on oneness and strength from such oneness. Globally, the strategic cottage industry on Islamism, impelled in part by Islamophobia, served as backdrop to a self-serving manufacture of a Muslim Other. Using the leverage of a narrative of a Muslim-perpetrated terror challenge within – made credible by the friendly neighbourhood bogeyman, Pakistan, and the Kashmir suppuration – a convergence was sought between ‘India in danger’ and ‘Hinduism in danger’. (Not belaboured here, but in the view of this analyst the Muslim tenancy of terror in the 2000s as the popular narrative has it, is untenable. Instead, in my view, these were black operations incited and conducted by the right wing, aligned with elements of the Indian deep state, in order to manufacture Hindutva as answer to Indian security predicament and propel its icons to power. But we shall leave that for another post.)

Echoes of this narrative of danger going back to the early to mid eighties continued in the strategic discourse through the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) period, when one would have imagined that the liberal security discourse should have predominated. The liberality in polity in the period was somewhat defensive, since in the background whirred Hindutva and an increasingly closely and self-consciously aligned conservative-realist security discourse. In the period of UPA stupor through its second term, Hindutva bid for power, reached out and seized it, with considerable support from the national security community persuaded by the national security promise of Hindutva.

Hindutva went center-stage unapologetically with Narendra Modi taking Delhi by the storm. It consolidated its support base in strategic circles with cosmetic initiatives as national memorial, military museum and a seemingly increased political interest in matters military, evidenced by the prime minister taking to celebrating Diwali with troops. It was dubious over fraught promises it could not keep, not least due to economic mismanagement, such as One Rank One Pension. It allowed the military a feel-good opportunity in seeming departures from an earlier policy of strategic restraint with conduct of the landward and aerial surgical strikes. Even so, these were largely chimerical, with little strategic effect, but great internal political dividend.

The parameters – or terms of reference – for both strikes evacuated each of any potency. This can be seen in the admittance of the prime minister that he did not want any casualties: troops were to return by first light in case of the landward surgical strikes and the planes conducting the aerial strikes were not to be overly venturesome in crossing over into Pakistan. This puts paid to any propaganda that there is indeed a departure from the strategy of restraint of Modi’s predecessor. Cultural nationalists within the strategic community stepped out of the closet for narrative dominance to the contrary. Instead, the continuity is proof that the period is one of consolidation of Hindutva, one that is not permissive of instability and uncertainty generated by military action. Military action is at best to be profitably used to firm-in Hindutva.

Thus, both strands of argument – one looking at discontinuities in political culture and strategic culture between the UPA period and Modi era and the second looking to see strategic cultural change through actions of the Modi regime – draw a blank. There is more continuity than discontinuity between the two periods. This can be accounted for by the UPA period being one in which the government continually looked over its shoulder at Hindutva breathing down its neck. The Modi period has not been one of significant change – as against what’s advertised – since Hindutva is in consolidation and cannot afford to be accosted by strategic uncertainty. Even as cataclysmic a strategic event as the Chinese intrusion did not force the Modi regime to budge. It continues to further Hindutva – seen in its delivering on its promise on Article 370 with due security precautions in place such as a preceding years-long Operation All Out and a thickening of interminable deployment in Kashmir – but not at any appreciable risk – such as by confronting China in the national interest of sovereignty, territorial integrity and balance of power.

This reading suggests that the strategic doctrine is therefore not one of assertion on national security as the complimentary discourse would have it. That there continues to be no written doctrine is because the regime would hate to admit to being little different on the national security front than its reviled predecessor. It would be loath to admit to Hindutva being its centerpiece national interest – rather than arrived at through a democratic aggregation of national interest. Admitting to a conflation of Hindutva and national interest may alert and invite opposition at a time when Hindutva prefers stability for ideological usurpation for a future Constitutional overhaul. 

 

 

 

 

 https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/the-kashmir-files-upturning-the-box?r=i1fws&s=w&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

The Kashmir Files: Upturning the Box Office

Returning Kashmiri Pandits to the Valley with honour and affection

As is the fashion, let me start my inevitable piece on The Kashmir Files by acknowledging that I have not seen the film nor do I intend to. To echo what another writer said, “I don’t watch propaganda.” So this piece is not so much about the film, as much as whats it's about. Apparently, it depicts Kashmiri Muslims in poor light, adding them to the long list of villains who are responsible for the exit of the Kashmiri Pandits from the Kashmir Valley that so far included Pakistani terrorists, Pakistan affiliated Kashmiri terrorists and Kashmiri Islamists. Now it includes the common Kashmiri qua Muslim.  

I use the term ‘exit’ for the Kashmiri Pandits moving out of the Valley, as against the preferred description elsewhere as genocide and ethnic cleansing, since there is at least one interpretation of those events out there that has it the Kashmiri Pandits were temporarily relocated outside the Valley for their security. It is said that the then governor, Jagmohan, assisted their exit with provision of transport and encouragement. The expectation perhaps was that they would be able to return to the Valley soon enough when the problem that had exploded there over the turn of the last decade of last century settled down. In this version of events, Jagmohan had been sent to be firm with the Kashmiris, which may have resulted in a backlash against vulnerable Kashmiri Pandits. So he was not averse to seeing their backs in order to get on with being tough with the Kashmiris who had taken to the streets in protest against long standing Indian mishandling of politics in Kashmir.

In my view, this was a very sensible step in the context of the times. The explosion in Kashmir was not a surprise. The indicators were there for some two years. There were bomb blasts and killings had already started, including those of Kashmiri Pandits. The troubles exploded with the State succumbing to the demand of Rubaiya Sayeed’s kidnappers for release of their jailed compatriots. Another date of consequence is the reinstallation of Governor Jagmohan, in the following month. Police action in Srinagar on his arrival in Jammu, followed by the Gow Kadal incident, led to a worsening. The crowds swelled on the back of a communication revolution then unfolding that brought to television screens the fall of the Berlin Wall and the retreat of communism from Eastern Europe. This caught the imagination of the people, some of whom were not particularly keen on how history had turned out in welding Kashmir to India. Consequently, thereafter, the situation was punctuated by mass processions of a deluded people and repression by a beleaguered State.

Using the tumult, terrorists advanced their agenda. Some were independentist and some affiliated to Pakistan. The former, being insurgents, would have been mindful of cutting off information flows to the counter insurgent State. Therefore, their preference for Kashmiri Pandits leaving, to stanch such information flows. The latter preferred a Hindu-less Kashmir, at the behest of their minders in Pakistan. Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ubiquitous ‘ISI’ (Inter-Service Intelligence), had capitalized on India’s mishandling of provincial elections in late 80s and subverted those alienated. They provided training and arms and re-infiltrated the disaffected youth back into the Valley. Some of these youth targeted Kashmiri Pandits in killings and intimidation designed to force them to leave.

As the mass movement caught on, many locals too joined in the pressure on the Kashmiri Pandits. The loudspeakers system in mosques, used for the call to prayer, was abused instead to broadcast the imminence of ‘freedom’ and intimidatory messaging directed at Kashmiri Pandits. Selective killings of Kashmiri Pandits were witnessed, not all necessarily related to their religion. Their women folk were threatened and some unspeakable atrocities committed, including torture and rape, in the context of violence that rent the air at the time. This forced Kashmiri Pandits to leave, for the sake of their families and wellbeing. Their security could not be guaranteed in the various mohallahs and bylanese. While many Kashmiris did assist, expressed empathy and even protected them, this was not enough to convince many to stay, though a few did stay on.

The State was considerably challenged. The State government had resigned and Jagmohan busied himself holding the reins. A account of these difficult days is in his book, My Frozen Turbulence. Avoidably, the State police – with Kashmiris in its ranks - came under a cloud for its sympathies. The central police forces looked askance at the uprising, and, brought in post-haste, were not sufficiently situational aware or self-regulating enough to care against inciting further alienation amongst people through their actions taken in fear and anger.

The Army had been alerted and deployed in aid to civil authority, but its numbers were insufficient at the initial stages. In any case, it is never the right force to be employed to control mass protests, which is how the initial phase of the Kashmir troubles turned out. It concentrated on controlling the insurgents, even as there was apprehension of Pakistan capitalizing on the outbreak of insurgency by a swift conventional action to ‘liberate’ Kashmir. An Indo-Pakistan crisis followed, forcing the Army to be alert to developments at the conventional level and in counter insurgency. Its numbers could not readily be boosted as the Army was rather stretched at the time, only just about de-inducting from its peace enforcement operation in Sri Lanka. It also privileged its deployment in Punjab, considering that State more sensitive to Pakistani interference.

Under the circumstance of security forces being considerably stretched, the relocation of the Kashmiri Pandits was sensible. Alternatively, in my view, their presence and vulnerability in the localities could have made them more readily available as insurgent targets, thereby worsening their plight and heightening pressures on security forces. Their more extensive targeting by insurgents, Pakistani proxies and Pakistani terrorists would likely have led to a worse clamping down on Kashmiris, heightening violence levels. Since it was a mass uprising, a violent repression may have led to more deaths, reprisals and a downward spiral making a bad situation worse. International opprobrium would have been swift, complicating India’s hand and advantaging Pakistan.

There was a political outreach of sorts, once the Kashmiris had largely departed. George Fernandes was deputed as pointsman for the government, followed by Rajesh Pilot. Prem Shankar Jha informs that seven interlocutors of Fernandes were successively murdered by Pakistani proxies. Thus, normality could not be returned to the Valley through political engagement. Though Jagmohan was boarded out after a massacre at a burial procession by central police forces, the situation settled into a long drawn insurgency. Enactment of the Armed Force Special Powers Act was the State’s acknowledgement of this. Though, over time, deployed military numbers went up, the Kashmiri Pandits could not return as such numbers were insufficient to assure security at the dispersed habitations. The Pakistanis had considerably upped the insurgency, having toppled the independentists and put in place their affiliates. Over time, Pakistani terrorists and Afghan veterans ensured deterioration of the insurgency into a terrorism-dominant proxy war.

This was designed to put a political solution out of reach. The fallout was in Kashmiri Pandits remaining out of harms’ way outside the Valley. That not enough was done to rehabilitate them elsewhere is another matter. That some through their own volition and civil society help resettled elsewhere is to their credit. The few who stayed on in the Valley faced fear and periodic terror incidents, but were not without support from sympathetic neighbours. That the State used their plight for its purposes of keeping Pakistan on the backfoot in its political wars was only to be expected.

There was also internal political utility of the Kashmiri Pandit circumstance for right wing political forces in India in their bid for political power. Their ‘Hinduism in danger’ narrative from Islamist depredations used the example of displacement from Kashmir as prop. Some Kashmiri Pandit organizations, sensing support from the right wing, allowed their cause to be used for wider political purposes by the right wing. They hoped for a better dispensation once the right wing was in power. A hoped for symbiotic relationship was largely belied, with Kashmiri Pandits mostly left out in the cold by all manner of dispensations both in Srinagar and in Delhi.

The State, though not insincere, was ineffectual in resettling them. It was unable to organize durable and sustainable returns as the insurgency situation did not let up in the Valley to extent enough to lend confidence that Kashmiri Pandits could make their way back in safety and with dignity.

The Pakistanis took care to reinforce hesitance by periodic outrages as the Wandhama and Nadimarg episodes of killings of Kashmiri Pandits. The intelligence game in the Valley was also vitiated by incidence of black operations using proxies, even by the Indian security establishment trying to put the negative spotlight on Pakistanis and to turn international opinion on the proxy war and away from Indian human rights violations. This brought in information war into the picture, thereby complicating alighting on perpetrators of violence, such as in the Nadimarg incident.

In my view, this inability and unwillingness - to the extent the latter exists - amongst Kashmiris to countenance a Kashmiri Pandit return, amounts to ethnic cleansing, not the prior ‘exit’ per se. To the extent Pakistan remains a factor and India is unwilling to come to terms with its presence and demands, the responsibility for the ethnic cleansing is with both States.

Pakistani violence keeps Kashmiri Pandits away and Indian unwillingness to create the conditions for ending of this violence through political engagement with Pakistan is where the ethnic cleansing accountability lies. This does not exonerate the factions in the Valley that are acting on Pakistani behest and seek to profit from absence of Kashmiri Pandits, such as Islamists. These elements have to be accosted by Kashmiris themselves, socially embarrassed and brought round through political action. Kashmiris have heroically faced to violence to tame such elements earlier. They must suitably use the resources of the State to counter such violence and prevail. To their credit, mainstream politicians have voiced this aspect of their limitations, but have received less credit than is their due. 

A combination of State and civil society has to welcome Kashmiri Pandits back. Many have created alternative sustainable solutions for themselves. Even so, some 50000 remain marginalized. Theirs must be a prioritized return, while those better settled elsewhere make a symbolic return and retain their continuing claim on access and resident privileges in Kashmir.

This is the more challenging enterprise, much more difficult than violence and destruction. It requires equal strategizing. There is plentiful theory available in peace studies literature, profitably tried out elsewhere. Such initiatives have not been absent in Kashmir. The 2000s and 2010s did see much civil society action on reconciliation and collaboration on this score between mainland India and Kashmiris. Besides, Kashmiri traditional resources and syncretic culture have wellsprings that don’t really require inspiration from outside. Deploying these is not so much a State-led effort, but societal and non-state. There is no deficit of such resources in mainland India, including incidentally – in my view – suitably approached right wing organizations. There is no dearth of Pakistani liberal opinion that can be tapped and mobilized on the other side.

The potential of such activity was stark in the period of Indo-Pak proximity. Putting it all together once again in a post Article 370 environment is a case of who will bell the cat. Perhaps a non-state Truth and Reconciliation Commission of sorts can sit initially and at some point in the future, an official Truth and Reconciliation Commission can undertake more formal proceedings to put the sorry incidents of 1990 behind the two communities and the nation.

The State cannot but be expected to act along a realist, power oriented direction. That is how States are. Enlightened State support can however be incentivized if the project is taken off the ground in first place. From the developments on the India-Pakistan front, it seems that the two are not averse to turning a new leaf. The Indian State is unlikely to stand in the way. The Statist reaction to the film in question, The Kashmir Files, which also so the prime minister weigh in, suggests that the State needs bailing out. Even so, the opportunity of a focus on the issue that the film has brought about can be used to energise a campaign to return Kashmiri Pandits. Whereas there are sporadic killings designed to keep Kashmir on the brink, the rather low violence indices are not without some promise.

The longer the Kashmiri Pandits stay out and are not ushered back with affection and pride, the more credible the allegation of ethnic cleansing against Kashmiris. The onus is on Kashmiris. They have the potential to rescue not only their kin of different religion, but their coreligionists elsewhere in the country, targeted tacitly but equally by the film’s invective. If the opportunity is seized appropriately, the film can yet prove counter-productive for its makers and their covert supporters in the right wing establishment and State.