India is past the Early Warning phase

ali's version

Dec 03, 2024

https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/india-is-past-the-early-warning-phase?r=i1fwshttps://thewire.in/communalism/india-is-past-the-early-warning-phaseThe Wire, 10 Dec 24

---

Two recent episodes of The Interview With Karan Thapar constitute any Early Warning this country so desperately needs.

Towards the end of both interviews, the interviewees respectively articulate that each is apprehensive of the direction the nation is headed. While one despairs that India is facing an ‘existential crisis’, the other confesses to ‘sleepless nights’ mulling over the future.

An open letter to Prime Minister Modi by a set of former government officials echoes their words.

The letter informs of the ‘extreme anxiety and insecurity’ prevalent in India’s minorities and that the confidence of secular Indians everywhere stands shaken. The trigger appears to be the recent focus on medieval religious places by fringe groups, culminating in their eyeing the Ajmer Sharif Dargah.

The apprehension

The first interviewee says that majoritarians tearing apart the social fabric holding India together will prompt rise of extremism in the minority. Currently, the fear of reprisal is keeping Muslims down, but an explosion of sorts could result from their resisting second-class status foisted on them. He does not see any ray of hope, since no one is ready to take up cudgels on their behalf.

The second interviewee credits Muslims for keeping the faith in the Constitution by not joining co-religionists elsewhere turning out suicide bombers, there having been only one suicide bombing in India - at Pulwama. Should the situation get any worse, it may not remain so and India would be waylaid.

On its part, the missive paints a nebulous picture of the future, restricting itself to ‘disturbances’ disrupting the prime minister’s Viksit Bharat dream.

It appears that the well-meaning conveyers of the early warning believe that Muslims may resort to a violent pushback, causing untold misery, if the right wing - with state backing - continues down a majoritarian path.

On the face of it, the scenario appears plausible - Muslims disrupting law and order in reaction to India’s disruption of rule of law.

One, precedence has it that when pushed to the wall as in the Mumbai riots in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition, Muslims have struck back. They could do so again, when pushed into a corner.

The second assumption takes for granted that terrorism India witnessed in wake of the Gujarat pogrom were largely by Muslims seeking retribution, abetted by an inimical neighbour.

Questioning assumptions

My reservations on the scenario of future Muslim indulgence in political violence bordering on violent extremism flow from questioning the assumptions and from strategic logic.

Firstly, the Mumbai bomb blasts apart, there is enough evidence brought to fore by progressive forces busting the mythology of externally-aided Muslim-perpetration of terrorism. That such evidence is dismissed in national security circles as ‘conspiracy theories’ is part of the manufacture of the narrative, especially done to hide identity of actual perpetrators and motives of their masterminds.

That films need to be made, subsidized and propagated by the highest executive authority, like The Kashmir Files and Sabarmati Express, suggest that a narrative of Muslim villainy is being pushed. Such over-compensation is to compel counter narratives (as here) to trudge uphill in the battle of ideas.

Take my case, I quit being a quarterly contributor on strategic affairs for a well-regarded journal when it twice in quick succession excised my arguing that Muslims were unnecessarily arraigned for terrorism, while masterminds were out trying to make a vote bank out of the majority community by propping up a Muslim ‘Other’.

The expectation that Muslims will fight back against the majoritarian onslaught is therefore based on unconsciously imbibing the right-wing trope of Muslim propensity for aggression. Even some sane people cannot see stone throwing as an act of communication (Kashmir), of desperation (Sambhal) and as self-defence (Jehangirpuri).

Strategic logic

My second argument is that the relative power of the politically emaciated Muslim community when gauged against the capture of the state by the majoritarian forces makes for strategic prudence on its part.

There is consensus that the past ten years have been rather trying for the community:

• Muslims have been subject to micro-terror by cow vigilantes.

• They are ghettoized. This makes them easy prey of both lawless state security forces and empowered majoritarian mobs, as Rahul Bhatia’s The Unmaking of a Democracy brings out.

• Many are displaced, through riots (Muzaffarnagar) or demolitions (Bahraich), and the displaced are now being disenfranchised (Assam).

• Psychological war is unabated (Ajmer).

• Cohesion of Muslims is first being cut up for them to be later devoured piecemeal (‘Turk vs. Pathan’ in Sambhal).

• They already have the lowest indicators of social and economic wellbeing among all communities.

• Even in Kashmir, where per some counts the numbers of Kashmiri dead touches six figures, security forces boast that the shelf-life of a budding militant is rather short.

In contrast, the national security establishment is manifestly suborned. National security minders are well able to think through both consequences and unintended consequences.

India is thus in a position to control temperatures, turning up the heat only so much that the frog in the slow-to-boil cauldron does not skip out. If the frog misbehaves, there is always the police and paramilitary that have been militarized over the past decade.

The Shah-Vanzara model of controlling the police has gone national.

Witness the dragnet maintained in Kashmir since the reading down of Article 370 and the insouciance with which a central university campus in the national capital was invaded.

Evidence of a Kashmir-like take-no-prisoners approach (after a lone surrenderee in 2017 after many years, no surrenderees were recorded in 2018-19, with 9 featuring in early 2020) is from the bullet-holed backs of the 10 Kukis last month to one injured security forces’ trooper; and from 31 Maoists killed in one recent instance a month prior to no security forces’ casualty.

Given such power asymmetry, it would be strategic imbecility for a disjointed and widely spaced out Muslim communities to attempt take on the majoritarians.

Recall for the 800 odd Hindu dead by Razakar action prior to Police Action, mobs of Hindu extremists – in instances reportedly even aided by the invading army - exacted a 20-to-40-fold price in its immediate aftermath.

Any violent reaction to forthcoming pressures will only play into the hands of the authoritarian regime, giving it excuse to clamp down further, thereby enabling more pressure – both programmatic and physical.

It is not poor foreign policy that keeps India at odds with its neighbours, Pakistan and Bangladesh. It is also to give fresh life to the hostage theory of Partition, that provides excuse to leash a potential fifth column.

Muslims can at best throw stones defending their dargahs and mohallahs. At worst, a last resort is a Warsaw Uprising.

Muslims have already expended the political capital they had, administering the nation an early warning of their own. Amongst the signatories to the mentioned letter are Muslim gentry (Qureishi, Shah and Jung), who had earlier engaged with the leadership of the right wing parent formation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, urging restraint on its affiliates, militant camp-followers and ideological bedfellows.

Their warnings were two years back, with little changing since. Its now a period of heightened preparatory response.

The battle has to be fought within the majority community, without waiting for the first shots to be fired by Muslims. The interviewees did not dwell on what might transpire after Muslims reach the end of their tether. Articulating that scenario might goad the silent majority to heed Niemöller better.

 

Inadvertent revelations on how Kashmir messed up the army

Book Review: KGAKGG

https://open.substack.com/pub/ali1250760/p/inadvertent-revelations-on-how-kashmir?r=8hepj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

The dust jacket of Kitne Ghazi Aaye Kitne Ghazi Gaye by ‘god’s favourite child’, ‘The KJS Dhillon’, carries the blurb ‘National Bestseller’. Presumably, it touched a chord in its intended audience: ‘young boys and girls aspiring to be part of the Indian Army family…to motivate these young people…to unleash the warrior within themselves…’.

My interest was in a passage that caught my eye as I browsed through it at a bookshop. The anecdote is of my father, then corps commander Chinar Corps - depicted as a ‘strict disciplinarian’ but remaining unnamed in the book - chancing upon a young second lieutenant on the sidelines of a night operation in the Valley. Instead of chewing him out for some minor administrative infraction he’d spotted, father’s motorcade drove off, much to the relief young officer.

That the author includes the incident in his autobiography, though its neither significant nor has him as protagonist, caught my eye. I wanted a closer look at what the author has to say about a strange incident in Kashmir in the period, Kunan Poshpora. His unit finds mention in narratives critical of the army’s showing in Kashmir back then. But, curiously, there is nary a reference to the incident in the book.

Perhaps the book’s scope as a motivational tract for youngsters lead to its excision, though this risks observations that the author infantalises the youth of today. This may more likely owe to the author being posted out by the time of its alleged occurrence. He didn’t get back to that unit later, since, as with many officers of his generation, he went on to the Rashtriya Rifles (twice it would seem from the non-chronological memoir) and command of another regimental unit in Kashmir.

Since the author prides his six tenures in Kashmir totaling some 12 years of service life, that is a yardstick to measure the book by. Many officers, particularly of infantry, have had multiple tenures in Jammu and Kashmir, making them part of the army’s Kashmir cadre or honorary Kashmiris, as the author jocularly brings out. To the army’s Kashmir engagement can be attributed some of the anomalies, if not quite pathologies, that have come to be associated with the service.

If anyone’s looking for a sophisticated understanding of the Kashmir problem, it would only be fair to expect to find it within the covers of the book. His claim to fame dates to his tenure at the helm of Chinar Corps when the Pulwama incident took place and the clampdown to keep Kashmir from boiling over on the vacation of content of Article 370. And yet, given his creditable academic record at National Defence Academy, where he passed out with a 6.8 grade point average, it is hard to believe that his take on the problem is so limited, unable to tread beyond the official narrative.

There could be two complementary explanations.

One is that the higher military leadership forged in the Kashmir cauldron was of a typical kind. While not all resorted to ticket punching, the army leadership’s immersion in counter insurgency was of such an order that not all its members were able to transit intellectually to the demands at higher operational and strategic levels. At the higher levels, a capability for critical thinking is a must.

It’s possible to infer that the incestuous nature of the army’s Kashmir engagement was all-consuming, hobbling critical faculties of those on the upward career curve. Though the Kashmir cauldron has thrown up credible military leaders (Nanavatty, Panag, Menon, Hooda readily come to mind), there is also a set that has prospered under right wing regime(s) - remaining unnamed here as their self-confession makes them rather well-known.

The author was picked as the perspective planning head, when General Rawat - who superseded two seniors of the mechanized forces on account of his supposed Kashmir expertise - was Chief. He informs of Rawat asking him at the end of one of their sittings together if he’d take over Chinar Corps. Clearly, Rawat knew ‘Tiny’ Dhillon’s 6’4” frame fit the bill for a fast-tracked promotion. To say the least, Rawat’s statements on Kashmir were always shocking. We know a Chief’s speeches are drafted in Perspective Plans – headed by Dhillon then in his fourth tenure in that branch.

Rawat wanting someone to take forward the ‘take no prisoners’ Operation All Out, which since the Burhan Wani phase, had consumed some 600 Kashmiri youth and foreign terrorists, appropriately alighted on Dhillon. (One militant, Adil Hussain Dar, whose gun jammed, was taken alive in the period.) Chuffed up, the author goes on to boast of a 100 killed in the first five months of 2019, including the Pulwama mastermind ‘Ghazi’ within a 100-hours. His illegitimate and illegal warning was, ‘You pick up the gun, you are dead.’ Of those killed, 75 per cent were callow Kashmiri youth. To his credit per his unverifiable claim, he brought over 50 young boys from the militancy.

Even so, it is retrospectively clear that the scene was being set for the evacuation of Article 370 by killing those who might create a ruckus. Quietude in wake of Amit Shah’s 5 August histrionics in Lok Sabha owes much to such setting of the stage, not to mention Ajit Doval’s camping over in Kashmir for a fortnight to control the paramilitary pumped in, lest another Bijbehara occur.

That the general was party to a hoax on the nation is clear from his bit of perception management on national television that an improvised explosive device had been found on the Amarnath Yatra route. That lending of the authority of his uniform to the excuse for the regime’s year-long crackdown across Kashmir, albeit prolonged by the Covid outbreak, is the author’s ticket to infamy.  

It’s no wonder then that he, fixated as he was with Kashmir, missed the wood for the trees as the Chinese marched up to their claim line in Ladakh. As Chief of Defence Intelligence Agency he ought to have read the tea leaves, since input had been received of Chinese headed onto Tibet during their winter exercise. This is yet another elision - proving the baleful effect of the army’s Kashmir obsession that cost the nation 20 Galwan brave-hearts.

The monotonous regurgitation of the official narrative in the book, right from the inception of the problem in Kashmir to how the autonomous state was defenestrated, can also have an alternative explanation. The second one gains plausibility from the author in the acknowledgements informing of encouragement to record his memoirs from a former major and star of the right-wing lapdog media, Gaurav Arya.

This suspicion is reinforced by the ingratiating account of the author’s meeting with Amit Shah, the all-powerful home minister, during his visit to Kashmir when Shah was contemplating voiding Article 370. Dhillon egregiously recalls opining to his wife on return from a one-on-one working breakfast meet: ‘Bees yuvraj mil kar bhi iss bande ka mukabla nahin kar sakte.’ What can be more sickeningly cloying than that?

For his pains, he has so far only been rewarded with the chairmanship of the board of governors of Mandi Indian Institute of Technology, the director of which - on Dhillon’s watch - has been the butt of memes. But then, the market is rather full with generals – and sister service equivalents – falling over each other to attract the attention of India’s ruling duo – national interest and institutional integrity be damned. Though subtitled My Life Story, expect a sequel.  

 

 

 https://substack.com/home/post/p-152354915

Disengagement to de-escalation

Military lessons-learnt alone won’t do

ali

Nov 30, 2024

https://kashmirtimes.com/disengagement-to-de-escalation-in-ladakh/ Disengagement to de-escalation Military lessons-learnt alone won’t do Kashmir Times, 2 Dec 24https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/disengagement-to-de-escalation

---

An early bird, the best National Security Adviser India never had, General Hooda, lists four military lessons from the recent step back in Ladakh: one, get intelligence analysis right; two, get contingency planning in place; three, get a realistic fix on relative capabilities; and, four, ‘rebuild’ deterrence against Chinese military coercion by communicating that redlines will be met by a ‘decisive and visible’ response.

Cumulatively, these steps could presumably defuse into the future the four possible explanations of the Chinese intent behind the provocation in Ladakh: one, to snap back against Indian infrastructure developments; two, to gain territorial control; three, to broadcast regional dominance; and, four, to influence India’s strategic relationships.

Here I undertake a reality check on Hooda’s unimpeachable case for a rebuilding of deterrence.

The four lessons reconsidered

The first on the (wish)list is sound intelligence analysis. As with the Kargil intelligence debacle, information did trickle in but did not inspire a scramble. However, this time round no intelligence review has been done. Sans any effort at accountability, even if a better look onto the Tibetan plateau and beyond - with a leg-up by a strategic partner - strategic intelligence will likely continue to be hobbled. Operational level intelligence - necessary to trigger preemptive or responsive action - will therefore unlikely be spurred.

Contingency plans are likely in hand, given additional troops and information periodically put out on exercises. The problem however is not with readiness as much as resolve.

Surely, Fire and Fury corps, as it was configured pre-Galwan, had the wherewithal to spring a counter grab action. The same could have been conducted anywhere else along the eastern front (then under the current Chief of Defence Staff). Covid outbreak is but a fig leaf, since Ladakh was in any way winter cut-off and had is integral resources in place.

So, it’s not so much capability, but delegation that is a problem.

The problem will likely remain. General Naravane’s recall of the hotspot atop Kailash range is a case to point. Extracts from his memoirs – since held up in the works – have him reaching for the defence minister, when the Chinese reactively clambered uphill from their side. Apparently, the answer he received was ‘jo ucchit samjhe, karo’ (‘do as your wont’).

Clearly, preparedness can incentivize action only up to a point. Will to shoulder the consequence and unintended consequences must be demonstrated by matching delegative power with redlines.

Hooda’s third lesson carries two examples of the Indian perception of Chinese capability. Apparently, pre-Galwan, there was a belief in an Indian advantage in the air and adeptness in mountain warfare. The two should have instigated a vigourous response to Chinese provocation. In effect, the assumptions turned out as vapid as General Ayub Khan’s pre-1965 views of the Indian military.

Now that Chinese have caught up on both counts, and are amply ahead on parameters as infrastructure, advantaged as they are by terrain, and technology – if Pravin Sawhney is to be believed - India is left without comforting assumptions. When it couldn’t take the cue of wishful assumptions, why will a better fix on relative capability today spur action?

On to General Hooda’s fourth ask: ‘a successful deterrence strategy rests on three critical pillars, often called ‘3C’s - capability, communication and credibility.’ Credibility is based on resolve. Resolve is but synchronized military capability and political will.

That the counter in 2020 - though a great logistic feat - was operationally reactive, shows that though adequately poised (it had a decade of military buildup in Ladakh behind it and a nationalist government into its second term), India was not able to deliver a credible counter. Neither parameter – military capability and political will – having changed relatively since, how can deterrence find itself ‘rebuilt’?

Deterrence of what?

Deterrence is to prevent harm on oneself by creating the perception that the action will prove futile or will invite like or disproportionate hurt on the perpetrator. For now, self-evident is India’s potential for deterrence by denial.

Having achieved its objective of having India respect its territorial claims through springing the crisis and the gambit of interminable talks, China is satiated territorially. Since it has no further territorial intent in Ladakh, a capability for deterrence by denial has only a limited benefit, restricted to preserving an ability to protect existing infrastructure, and that yet to come up if not effected by unrevealed compromises at the parlays.

Contrarily, India needs a capability for deterrence by punishment, a better heft on tackling the other three explanations of the crisis and likely to persist into the future.

India has exerted a capability for deterrence by punishment - or ability to up the military ante - to bring home to the Chinese that disengagement is in the interest of both states. Its showing on Kailash range amounted to this.

It may yet need to show military muscle to influence talks to go beyond their current enabling of patrolling access at merely two of the friction points. There are three other friction points where buffer zones have to be rolled back to open up patrolling points.

A deterrence by punishment capability serves to deter Chinese adventurism in search of regional dominance. With 17 Corps coming into its own, and the Uttar Bharat Area being converting to an operational corps, and incipient steps to theaterisation in the works, China must be wary. At the cusp of super-powerdom it would unlikely wish to be defrocked.

The third explanation is regards Chinese messaging India against too close a relationship with the United States. The latter might be more pronounced as the Trump Presidency kicks in, wherein, to cosy up to the Russians, he is liable to be more assertive with the Chinese. Given India’s past propensity (‘Ab ki baar, Trump Sarkar’, ‘Namaste Trump’), it is liable to fall in line, with a need for external balancing as cover. This would necessitate preparedness at a higher notch.

By this yardstick, the step after disengagement - de-escalation – must only be selective and partial. The ‘new normal’ must see India’s capability for deterrence by punishment in place, with its contingencies well practiced. Even so, a military doing its bit is never enough.

Realistic?

The problem with intelligence setup is set to remain. The military can expect to be let down with a recurring lack in strategic intelligence. Recall how the hype around two rounds of personalized diplomacy – Wuhan and Chennai – failed miserably to pick up signals of Chinese reneging. With the same narrative employed yet again before Kazan, the intelligence subsystem of national security will likely fall in step with the political narrative, stemming ostensibly from need for an economic reopening to the Chinese behemoth.

The larger problem is with political reluctance in reconciling with playing second string in global affairs. It does not go well with the ideological beliefs of the regime in place and its domestic posturing. Yet, it cannot afford being upended, like was Nehru, during its national majoritarian project. Consequently, it would unlikely countenance a military distraction, whatever the cost in national interest. It follows that expecting delegative authority for activating contingency responses is mite too much. Expect instead dilution in deterrence by appeasement: much fury, no fire.