My 20th book compilation
https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:f2b2ffb3-a700-4779-98ab-4b1b02b253e2Interesting Times in Modi’s Second Term
Ali Ahmed
Ali Ahmed, an infantryman once, is a freelance strategic analyst.
Preface
This is the latest of my series of compilations putting together my commentaries on issues in national, regional and international security between one set of covers. The last ebook compilation was South Asia: At a Strategic Crossroads, put out in March 2019, with the hope that its content would influence voters contemplating Narendra Modi’s play for their attention leveraging the Pulwama-Balakot episode. It had covered the strategic scene in the later part of Modi’s first term, the earlier part being covered by a previous ebook, India: A Strategic Alternative, put together in 2016. These two books, together with this one, comprehensively cover security in the Modi era. Along with two ebooks – Thoughts while Lying Flat and India’s Journey to #NewIndia:Through an Asokan Lens - that comprise my Substack writings on Ali’s Version over the past year since March 2022, the five ebooks address the question if India and Indians are safer under Hindutva champion, Narendra Modi. The answer on these pages is a simple and firm, “No”.
The narrative begins where the Balakot aerial surgical-strike-that-wasn’t left off. Though Pakistan’s Operation Swift Retort left an Indian plane down in its wake, India congratulated itself with another victory over Pakistan and voted Modi back to power. Understandably, Modi not only retained his loyalist security adviser, Ajit Doval, but upped his status. But the second term’s opening scene had Amit Shah as its protagonist. Grandstanding in parliament, he evacuated Article 370 of any meaning, proclaiming he would shed blood to regain Aksai Chin and Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, Gilgit and Baltistan. The Chinese, using the opportunity, came knocking soon thereafter, unperturbed by Covid. Dr. Jaishankar, who should have advised better, now has it that the Modi regime stood up to the Chinese by sending troops up into high altitude. Three winters on it is not quite certain what they were sent for. Since the deployment is interminable, the army has now on to give itself fresh blood periodically in the form of Agniveers.
So that no second front opened up, Doval had his contacts in the Gulf midwife an agreement with Pakistan not to make things worse. Pakistan had its own troubles to tidy up, hoping to use the hiatus to get the Taliban – who’d in the interim seen off the Western occupying powers and their hollow puppet regime in Kabul - onboard the international system. Sensibly, even as India throttled its jugular vein in Kashmir, it persisted with the Bajwa doctrine. The seeming quietude in Kashmir enabled Shah-Doval to claim victory in Kashmir, jarred occasionally by killings of the minority Hindu community members by terrorists to make a point to the contrary. Elections there have proved elusive with no Hindu Jammuite fitting the bill as chief minister so far. The Kashmir portion of this book takes forward brings up to date my work on the security dimensions through the liberal prism carried in Kashmir by my Lights and Kashmir: Strategic Sense and Nonsense.
The stability on both borders, where otherwise a Two Front situation was apprehended, time has been bought by the Hindutva-inspired regime to consolidate itself through its second term by expanding the strangle-hold over political culture in India. The aim is to facilitate Hindutva’s capture of societal imagination and state institutions to convert India, a secular, socialist democratic republic, into a majoritarian, capitalist and dictatorial Saffronite state. This is India’s right wing’s answer to India’s diversity that it sees as a national security threat. The answer is sought in an all-pervasive Hindutva, with Hindu nationalism to serve as a nationhood glue holding India together. The project has been on now for over a hundred years, with the mothership, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, centenary due in 2025. By way of celebration, the right wing might wish to get another election victory in 2024, so as to proclaim India in the image of Hindu extremists, a Hindu Rashtra. Akhand Bharat could follow in due course, as India transits Amrit Kaal to developed country status by 2047.
The internal security fallout of this has been borne over last 30 years by Indian Muslims. They have been Othered, a phenomenon analysed in my The Indian Muslim Security Predicament. Whereas earlier false-flag operations were used to castigate Indian Muslims as terrorists – taking advantage of Islamophobia unleashed by the West’s Global War on Terror - and marginalise them, lately micro-terror is in vigilantes setting upon Muslims to keep the cauldron boiling. For now, with Muslims pushed suitably into a corner, there is an outreach alongside to elements within the community to get them to pre-emptively reconcile to the shift to Hindu Rashtra, the assumption being that Muslims may be less than enthusiastic on its advent. This book brings up to date the Muslim quest for space in Modi-curated, Hindutva’s New India.
However, the push against Hindu Rashtra – that is overly a north Indian phenomenon with both Hindi and Ayodhya, that are central to the enterprise, being Gangetic anchored - will likely be from other quarters. One is in a possible ethnic backlash. The assumption is that the spread of Hindutva votaries and Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) governments across India will get all Indian ethnic groups onboard, precluding pushback. Hindu nationalism, that has been trotted out to allay the fears of an ethnic fracturing of India, could spark off such sentiments in ethnic groups that make up the Indian mosaic. Indian political federalism and societal salad bowl had accommodated India’s diversity. This is being undone by Hindutva.
To Hindutva’s national security minders, the fissiparous potential of self-regarding ethnic groups is less of a worry than casteism. Voting along caste lines was seen as keeping Hindutva from political power, grabbing which is a prerequisite for its reset of India. Therefore, the BJP propped up Muslims as an internal Other to instil in caste-privileging Hindus a notion of self-hood in Hinduness, superseding caste identities. It’s not negated caste as much as deftly used it to its own purposes to manufacture an artificial majoritarian consensus. This internal contradiction can only persist – caste being as old as Vedic India, inspirational fount of Hindutva. It can yet prove Hindutva’s undoing. It has merely handed over reins to another set of dominant caste groups in the hierarchy, which can only be contested by those disadvantaged or deprived, particularly as and when the economic promise of a capitalist-governance fusion model slowly comes apart at the seams.
The undoing of the Rule of Law and undercutting of Constitutional verities could at some point constitute the Achilles heel of the Hindutva regime. The other dragon heads of the hydra could consume their fellow heads in a fratricidal anarchy at some point. The hydra-like structure can be imagined as three overlapping circles. There is the political front of the BJP; then there is the RSS and affiliates; and finally, are the rabid vigilante groups. The latter is provided a loose rope, with the assumption that it could be reeled-in when necessary. There is uncertainty if the first circle – political front - is entirely within the control of the second – societal front - since Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a known narcissist streak that may impel him – dutiful pracharak or otherwise – to hog all credit. A plausible scenario by decade end could well see the three circles at odds with each other – aspirants to prime ministership egging on the third circle to take on the first, while the second tries to ride out the fratricide.
Hindutva is thus the primary national security threat. Externally, this is so since Hindutva’s interests are seen as the national interest by the Modi regime, allowing for sacrifice of imperatives as territorial integrity – as in Ladakh. Internally, an Indian ‘deep state’ has delivered India to Hindutva clutches and currently serves to deepen the grip of its claws. Hindutva is not only dismantling the institutional structures inherited by the Republic, such as the Indian Army, but also inclusive Constitutional pillars: civic nationalism and fraternity.
As the first circle fails in delivering on the hoped for capitalism-powering growth figures, distribution shortfalls might not get papered over by diverting unrest in the third circle on to the minority anymore. Dissent might initially be put down with a heavy hand, but in due course can only fan the flames. The Modi-Shah duo can at best last this decade. Fears are, they might appear moderates in face of who takes power in the following decade as India gets less governable, Rule of Law having been Gujaratified in Amit Shah’s term.
Given the dire possibilities, Election 2024 is critical. Moderating Hindutva and delivering a democratic blow to its proponents is important. This book is an attempt to join forces with those already making headway to this end. The book shows up how national security is ill served at present, and as described above, to where the trends tend. Its commentaries, taken cumulatively, argue that Hindutva as a political philosophy is legitimate, but its methods – arbitrary, undemocratic and opaque - are much less so.
This ebook is to inform the electorate on this shortfall in national security, in order that the Voter makes an informed and reasoned choice. Her doing so will caution Hindutva into taking up its due space in national endeavour – at the right edge of the conservative spectrum short of religious extremism where it belongs. Hindutva cut to size, it would not be too long before genie of religious extremism, masquerading as Hindu nationalism, is put back into the bottle.
The book is laid out in four parts. First is the national security scene, with commentaries arranged mostly chronologically knitting together the political and strategic levels. Commetary on Kashmir has been included in this section, rather than taking up a section of its own, since Kashmir is a national issue, with efforts to displace the secular crown on India’s map with a Hindu one. The second part dwells on what changes in political culture spell for strategic culture and the military’s place in it. It also talks of civil-military relations as Hindutva coils around the military. The third part lifts the sights to the regional scene, including a look at India-Pakistan relations stemming from the fallout of the ignominious and long delayed departure of Western military forces from Afghanistan. The book stops short where I shifted my writings to Substack with the onset of the Ukraine War.
The ebook completes the collection of compilations of commentaries going back two decades, that can be accessed at Academia and my two blogs, which provide both overview and detail of the national security trajectory of India in the period. The writings are a contrarian view of mainstream strategic discourse. Since the strategic discussion was in large proportion in the realist mode, I contested it in the Ashokan tradition in both print and on the web. However, these days it is driven by cultural nationalists. Wiser strategists are pulling their punches. Some find the first circle repulsive, while impressed with the selflessness of the second. Most abhor the third. Seeing all three as One precludes the luxury of waiting out the regime. All must join battle: digging trench lines, raids and counter attacks, no quarters given – though no heads be carted away.
For Editor Truth Tellers
Acknowledgements
I thank editors at the sites at which commentaries in this book appeared: Economic and Political Weekly, Milligazette, The Citizen, Countercurrents, Center for Land Warfare Studies, moneycontrol.com, The Wire, South Asian Voices, Kashmir Times and Indian Defence Review. But for their patronage, this book would not have been possible, though I take full responsibilities for shortfalls therein. I hope their perseverance in Truth is appreciated by students, faculty and practitioners in the fields of defence and strategic studies on the one hand and peace studies and conflict resolution on the other. The book is dedicated to Editors who have stood up to the test of the time.
Contents
Part I - National Security
1. Cultural nationalism as a national security threat - 10
2. Securitisation of cultural nationalism - 14
3. Book review: A Life In The Shadows: A Memoir by AS Dulat - 17
4. Jammu and Kashmir: It is in national interest to conduct elections soon - 19
5. Sino-Indian Entente–A Distant Dream? - 21
6. How Partition Shaped One Family - 23
7. India-Pakistan: A missile misfired opens up opportunity - 23
8. India needs a national security doctrine for furthering jointness - 25
9. General Rawat’s legacy in civil-military relations - 28
10. A problem from hell in India’s civil-military relations - 31
11. There’s a political opportunity in Kashmir. Will the Centre grab it? - 33
12. Punishing future Pakistani terror provocations - 35
13. India’s ‘deep state’ no longer secret - 38
14. A reading list for the defence minister - 40
15. Reform intelligence agencies in the national interest - 43
16. Civil war fallout on Kashmir - 45
17. The Escalatory Risks of India’s Integrated Battle Groups - 47
18. An assessment of new ‘strategies’ for Pakistan and China - 50
19. In Kashmir, the GD Bakshi way - 53
20. Eschewing and (Not) Manipulating Escalation - 56
21. Talk: India’s Growing Strategic Capabilities: Dynamics And Consequences - 61
22. The long-term implications of India’s do-nothing response in Ladakh - 64
23. Why India Did Not Go to War with China - 67
24. Book Review: TP Sreenivasan, Modiplomacy: Through a Shakespearean Prism - 72
25. India-Pakistan: The price of information warfare - 74
26. The portentuous India-Pakistan escalation dynamic - 79
27. Modi must sack those misadvising him on national security - 84
28. What should Shaheen Bagh stalwarts do now - 86
29. India — The coming anarchy - 88
30. The crisis in the Indian deep state - 91
31. Gujaratification as the foremost national security threat - 93
32. India: three scenarios out to 2030 - 95
33. Kashmir is in a state of churn. Will 2020 mark a new dawn? - 98
34. The options conundrum for Kashmiris - 100
35. CAA-NRC: Those Who Voted for this Regime Need to Wake Up - 102
36. Approaching Kashmir through Theoretical Lenses - 104
37. Fallout of Article 370’s Withdrawal inKashmir: The Indian Military’s False Optimism? - 109
38. How will New Delhi react to the civil disobedience in Kashmir? – 112
39. Decoding India’s recent rhetoric on PoK - 114
40. India’s Kashmir caper has given Pakistan reason for war - 115
41. Kashmir: Calling Out Strategic Irrationality - 117
42. Kashmir and the abrogation of Article 370: An Indian Perspective - 119
43. Kashmir | India has prepared well, but Pakistan is unlikely to remain quiet - 124
44. Kashmir: Unsolicited advice for Pakistan - 126
45. War Dead Ahead - 128
46. The improved situation in Kashmir is but a mirage - 130
47. UN likely to continue its focus on India’s Kashmir policy - 132
48. Agenda for the next defence minister - 133
49. The Modi Era; Impact on Strategic Culture - 136
50. Modi 2.0 | Where is India’s Pakistan policy headed? – 141
51. Toting up Ajit Doval’s final score card - 143
52. Kashmir: A first cut analysis of the just-concluded parliamentary elections - 145
53. Options for addressing the Kashmir issue - 147
54. The divergent prescriptions for Kashmir – 152
55. Has Mission Shakti made India safer? - 154
Part II – Military Matters
56. Right Wing Ascendance In India And The Politicisation Of India’s Military - 158
57. Agni Prime and the Two-Front War - 176
58. Operational Risks and Societal Militarization: Agnipath’s Entrenched Challenges - 179
59. Book Review: Vijay Singh, POW 1971: A Soldier’s account of the Heroic Battle of Daruchhian - 181
60. Nuclear Command and Control: Locating the Strategic Forces Command - 184
61. Defence Reform: Giving teeth to the new Chief of Defence Staff - 189
62. Defence reform: Jointness and command and control - 192
63. What Will Be General Bipin Rawat’s Place in India's Military History? - 194
64. Is the military brass transgressing the diplomatic LAC? - 197
65. What an Angry General's Unwarranted Admonition of Kashmiris Says About the Army and Politics - 199
66. Lessons from the commemoration season - 202
67. Book Review, Vipul Dutta, Making Officers out of Gentlemen: Military Institution Building in India, c. 1900-1960 - 205
68. Front-specific theaterisation is not the only way to jointness - 207
69. Whither Northern Command? Getting theaterisation right - 210
70. A consideration of options for the northern theatre - 213
71. Civilian faculty at Professional Military Education institutions - 216
72. Counter insurgency is not a policeman’s job - 218
73. Cohesion in the army: The battle winning factor - 221
74. A case for ceasefire in Kashmir - 224
75. Book Review: Military Musings: 150 Years Of Indian Military Thought From The Journal Of The United Service Institution Of India, ed. R Chhina - 227
76. An Assessment of Strategic Options post Uri Attack - 229
77. ADC to General MA Zaki Recalls the Chinar Corps Commander in early 90s in Kashmir – Capt (later Lt Col, Retired) AP Kumar, 22 MARATHA LI - 233
78. A fake encounter, yet again? - 236
79. Book Review: The Indian Army: Reminiscences, Reforms and Romance - 238
80. Why the déjà vu over the Shopian killings - 240
81. Information war as India’s default strategy (abridged and updated) - 243
82. An Army Day resolution for the new chief - 245
83. Many a Chink in India’s Nuclear Chain of Command - 248
84. Why Gen Rawat’s Political Statements Should be His Swan Song - 250
85. Welcoming the new army chief - 253
86. An agenda for the new chief - 256
87. Military consequence management in Jammu and Kashmir - 258
88. Why Pak Spin Doctors are Zooming in on Gen Rawat - 260
89. Nuclear winter before this winter? - 263
90. National Defence Academy and Societal Representativeness - 266
91. Explaining the military’s new found penchant for political partisanship - 267
92. Military Professionalism and Effectiveness - 269
93. Cautioning the military against being politically gullible - 274
94. No First Use - Escalation Scenarios - 277
95. Rewarding Army Chief for Political Assistance? - 279
96. The Chief of Defence Staff appointment: An inauspicious beginning - 281
97. The military’s ethical imperative in the here and now - 283
98. Kargil Vijay Diwas: 20 Years on, Has The Army Learnt its Lessons? - 285
99. Consequences of operational decisions – 288
100. What would a military of Hindu India look like? - 289
101. Recontextualizing The Escalation Debate - 291
102. Reframe the Kashmir conflict from terrorism to insurgency - 293
103. The Coming Politicisation of the Military – 295
104. Viva Presentation: India’s Limited War doctrine: Structural, Political and Organisational Factors - 297
105. PhD synopsis - 302
106. Thesis Proposal For Direct Phd At Cipod, SIS, JNU - Jul 2008 - 313
107. IDSA Project Synopsis: Reconciling Military Strategies As Prerequisite To Peace In South Asia - 315
Part III- International Security
108. Operational Art in Peace Operations: Balancing the Peace Triangle - Case study of Somalia - 320
109. Operational Art in Peace Operations: Balancing the Peace Triangle – Case Study of UNISFA in Abyei - 326
110. MONUC And India’s Peackeeping Concerns – 2004 - 334
111. Out Of Area Operations Capability For The Indian Armed Forces - 338
112. For The Honour Of India: Rimcollians and UN peacekeeping - 354
113. UN Peace Operations: Protection of Civilians - 358
114. In Pakistan, Imran Khan faces a challenge fiercer than the World Cup – 363
115. 9/11 Anniversary | The global war on terror has done little to help India tide over its security issues – 365
116. Indian soft power as the missing ingredient in returning peace to Afghanistan - 366
117. Afghanistan Crisis | India must deploy its economic soft power - 369
118. What a civil war next door means for us - 371
119. A peace strategy for Afghanistan - 374
120. JMI Lecture on "Current Juncture in the Afghan Peace Process: An Appraisal from the Lenses of Peace Theory” - 377
121. Try UN peacekeeping in Afghanistan - 379
122. Book Review: Democracy And Authoritarianism In Pakistan: The Role Of The Military And Political Parties By Shiraz Sheikh - 382
123. Book Review: Yelena Biberman, Gambling with Violence: State Outsourcing of War in Pakistan and India - 383
124. A suggestion for India on the Afghanistan peace talks - 385
125. The Iran-US spat has resonance for the region – 387
126. Book Review: Army Of None: Autonomous Weapons And The Future Of War By Paul Scharre - 389
127. A lesson from crisis management in South Sudan - 390
128. For constructive Indian engagement in the Afghanistan endgame - 397
129. Afghanistan endgame | Options before India after Trump cancels talks - 399
130. Book review: Vortex Of Conflict: US Policy Toward Afghanistan, Pakistan And Iraq, By D. Caldwell - 401
131. Peoples Power in Sudan Throws Out Omar al-Bashir After 30 Years - 403
Part IV - The Muslim Matters
132. Whose army is it anyway? – 409
133. What 5 August spells for India’s Muslims - 411
134. Questioning afresh Indian military’s social representativeness - 413
135. Modi 2.0: Indian Muslim survival kit - 416
136. Will Pakistan be happy if Modi returns to power? – 418
Further reading - 421
