https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/mms-and-indias-swing-to-the-right?r=i1fws

MMS and India’s swing to the Right

Obituaries emphasise Manmohan Singh (MMS) was a good man.

His achievement was as remarkable as that of Nehru, the making of India 2.0.

That it is being remade yet again – India 3.0 - this time by Narendra Modi, must be ascribed as much to MMS as Modi’s corporate benefactors and the saffron parivar.

Mourning done with, the MMS legacy needs a proper footing in this light.

A commentator has it that MMS “created the fertile ground for the nation to swing to the Right (emphasis added).”

Taken along with the deficits on national security in the MMS tenure, MMS delivered India not merely economically to the Right, but veritably handed it over to the Right wing.

Rightly, MMS is remembered as a good man, but was not quite a strong one.

Laying out the red carpet

MMS precipitated what he himself termed ‘disastrous’: Modi’s advent. He had the State’s resources to pull Modi up short, but for a whole decade did nothing.

To be sure, the remote to his administration was held by Sonia Gandhi and he was merely an accidental prime minister (PM). Therefore, blame for Modi’s striding to Delhi from Gujarat should rightly be laid at her door; but, wholly so?

MMS was the ultimate supervisor of intelligence agencies as PM - even if, as in the case of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) on occasion, mediated through ministers.

On his watch, Narendra Modi charted his way to Delhi with the covert help of right-wing subverted officials in State agencies.

The IB had a new head foisted on it by the right-wing ruling party just prior to and in anticipation of it’s losing the Shining India elections.

Whereas there was no visible reason to axe this gentleman on taking over, it was fairly evident early enough that the incumbent was answering to a different, right-wing drum.

The IB’s supposed provision of the intelligence that led to the killing of Ishrat Jahan and her companions is a case to point.

This was precursor to the spate of purported ‘terror’ attacks in Gujarat, attributed officially, and in the popular imagination thereafter, to Muslim perpetration.

Alongside, there was the suppression of truth emerging on the Gujarat pogrom. Mere noting that someone who "presided over massacre of citizens on the streets of Ahmedabad" shouldn't be PM couldn’t have been expected to trip up Modi.

Even if the judicial system was overseeing the cases, it behooved on the central government to ensure a level playing field for justice through able supervision of its agencies.

Not doing so was dereliction of duty, for which the PM - at the apex of the national security structure – is accountable.

The ‘terror’ attacks soon went national, resulting in hundreds of Muslims being incarcerated in full media glare. The release of most a decade on (longer for some) testifies to the complicity of central agencies, subverted and answering to a ‘deep state’.

A ‘deep state’ is hypothesized as existing in the period, there being no other way to explain away curious happenings, such as:

· the hobnobbing of the former director IB in question with the underworld;

· the killing of Hemant Karkare, in the Indian admixture to the terror attack emanating from Pakistan;

· the impunity of saffron terrorists of the Sanstha and Abhinav variety;

· the kid glove treatment for Amit Shah, though with evidence enough to temporarily incarcerate him;

· and, the lack of traction in the case against Modi on the Gujarat pogrom.

A deep state indicates a weak polity, which in the period was presided over, if in a titular capacity, by MMS.

Of his three national security advisers, the first died in harness fairly early.

Reputedly the second was a Sonia appointee and has much to answer for, particularly since what was churning in the intelligence sphere could not have been without his knowledge, if not imprimatur.

The third was too outward looking to be fully comprehensive of or engaged with internal security, which in his time was handled by a political heavyweight owing only nominal allegiance to MMS.

Consequently, even if Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origins and her need to pave the way for her son compelled her appeasement of Hindutva, MMS must bear responsibility for acquiescing in the outcome in a weakened State.

Right wing in-roads then are by now self-evident in eviscerated institutions. Its not a cross that only Sonia Gandhi must bear, even if her parivar’s is the substantial failure, fortuitously making Modi right on parivarvaad.

Further, Pakistan-origin terrorism was inflated also to take down initiatives with considerably greater and visible MMS investment: ties with Pakistan and Kashmir.

Any revival of the peace process with Pakistan after Mumbai 26/11 was put paid to by the out-of-uniform intelligence czar, Ajit Doval, who from his perch atop a right wing think tank orchestrated a backlash in the strategic community against any feelers.

Even if the Pakistan talks stalled, there was little reason for the Kashmir peace process to end up as collateral damage. MMS lacked heft to see it through to a culmination of sorts in an internal settlement acceptable to Kashmiris, while Pakistan was out, hit-wicket. His home minister’s belated enlightenment on azadi is post-August 2000 entirely inconsequential.

For an unwillingness to stand up to jibes from the new Hindutva champion, MMS as PM must stand arraigned.

The nuclear deal

The only instance when MMS put his political capital on the line was in the Indo-United States’ nuclear deal.

That this has not resulted in any additional electricity suggests that the aim was narrowly to be ushered into the nuclear club by its principal gatekeeper and more broadly getting into bed with that declining power.

Neither seem to have done India a fat lot of good. For MMS to have expended his political capital and exhausted himself – he later had a heart procedure – for this meagre outcome shows a lack of judgment.

What it certainly did was to eliminate Leftists from the political spectrum, a keenly felt absence in the circumstance of India’s economic and political ‘swing to the Right’.

What it possibly did was to enhance India’s nuclear bomb making capacity, which some observers say has since transitioned offensively to contemplating first use that can logically only be in the form of first strike.

This capability in the hands of strategic simpletons that constitute the political council of the Nuclear Command Authority today is but recipe for firing these off in anger, panic or/and inadvertence.

Consider this, the Raksha Mantri, who occupies a chair in that council, recently required an assistant to nudge his recall of where he was: visiting the Army War College. Perhaps his trip was actually to a temple in Ujjain, under cover of an official visit.

Cognisant, MMS’ last official speech was at a national security think tank - now named after a forgettable predecessor of the defence minister (who could not have amounted to much given his health issues) - was to warn, not so much the world, but his incoming successor, not to breach the much hallowed, unenforceable and therefore incredible, No First Use pledge.

On his part, the successor in question once promised a neighbor, a Diwali night.

Military politicization

It’s not a delegative style alone that led MMS to leave critical issues to hands of ministers, but also lack of political punch.

Take the case of somnolent Pope Antony presiding over defence. The military proceeded to make the best of the doctrinal autonomy devolving on it.

Bequeathed with the Cold Start doctrine at the start of the MMS innings, the military transitioned to operationalising it. Even though it could not pull it off at Mumbai 26/11, confidence against Pakistan by the MMS second term allowed it to shift sights onto China and posit a two-front threat.

In respect of China, this set off a self-fulfilling prophecy, the results of which are with us today.

Against Pakistan it set up India to potentially a nuclear first strike – prompting fantasies in the then national security adviser of a second strike by India of splendid first strike proportions, thereby enhancing the threat of India receiving a preemptive splendid strike.

This grand strategic disarray was in keeping with the known policy paralysis of MMS II.

The insidious fallout was in the politicization of the military visible in an Army chief taking up cudgels with the government, to the extent of attempt to spook it using forces under a general related to him in a marriage alliance. Worse was the (deliberate?) leaking of his letter (designed to embarass?) to the government, promptly on his losing his date of birth case.

The lack of gumption to sack that general opened up the military to the Hindutva invasion of the its intellectual spaces, through veteran channels (remember a moustachioed general!) and use of then nascent social media.

The legacy then?

MMS obituaries observe decorum in recalling a good man. It does not take a Chanakya to know, its not enough to be good.

His successor’s tenure makes clear that it is important to be both good and strong.

The take away from the reprise of the MMS tenure(s) is that responsibility and accountability must rest on one shoulder.

Split, these serve as precedence such as for now, when the remote is held with unaccountable and – worse - unknown Hindutva zealots.

Finally, what’s true for the military is true for politics too. Good staff officers do not necessarily make good commanders. Good technocrats don’t necessarily make good political leaders.

Looks like Sonia Gandhi knew this all along.

https://open.substack.com/pub/aliahd66/p/rewiring-the-india-pakistan-peace?r=i1fws&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

Rewiring the India-Pakistan peace process

The peace process with Pakistan needs resurrecting. Both its twin tracks - externally with Pakistan and internally with Kashmiris - are now dead.

India’s regime claims the puncturing of Article 370 leaves no problem to talk over with Pakistan, other than – reasonably - Pakistan ceasing terror, and – laughably - its handing back Occupied Kashmir and Northern Areas. (Note lack of any mention of Shaksgam!)

As for the internal peace process, to the regime, elections substitute for one (recall the regime was obligated by the Court).

It now has a Jaishankarism: No talks with terror.

This mantra is self-serving. Peaceable relations with Pakistan are not in the regime’s interest.

Adversarial relations help it conjure up an ‘Other’, in an internal-external Muslim nexus, essential to its majoritarian project of ‘One this, One that and the Other.’

This approach is not merely strategically wanting, but being intrinsic to Hindutva’s revisioning of India, demands refutation.

Here I make the case that the chequered peace process in the Modi period was a tactical gambit to discredit peace and create enabling conditions for the Modi-Shah assault on Article 370.

I go on to show that the non-culmination of the peace process in the preceding period owed to lack of political will, for fear of a Hindutva-laden backlash.

That peace has proved elusive owes to it being treated thus far as a strategic issue.

It must instead be delivered politically; entailing in the present circumstance, first, a wresting back of the Republic.

The Modi period

This period began with Nawaz Sharif showing up at the Rashtrapati Bhawan forecourt for Modi’s coronation. Later, Modi dropped in at his new-found friend’s farmhouse.

The two episodes are presented as India’s outreach, which on rejection by Pakistan, led to India going its own way.

Retrospect suggests an alternative reading: that the aim of the regime all along was to shape the battlefield in Kashmir for August 2019.

For this it had at hand ace spook, Ajit Doval.

Of Doval, former boss Dulat writes that Doval considers himself capable of delivering on Pakistan. Here was Doval’s chance and he grasped it, Doval-style.

Doval’s advance praise for Lambah’s book is forthright on his perplexity over Pakistan’s ‘inexplicable perfidy.’ To him, ‘vexed Indo-Pak relations’ are bound to persist since ‘policy makers will have to deal with a difficult neighbour for a long time.’

Having spent seven years in Pakistan, he is a victim of his prejudices. In regard to Kashmir too, he has a bone to pick with the Kashmiris, having minded the Kashmir desk, as Dulat informs.

Entrusted to this man - ably seconded by Amit Shah on Kashmir - can the peace process have turned out differently?

Its aim was to make of Sharif, a Mir Jafar, to open the door from within.

Notwithstanding his Kashmir antecedents, he’d already established his credentials as amenable to peaceable relations. To him, his personal business interest in improved trade relations didn’t amount to a conflict of interest. Clearly, the Pakistan army seems to think otherwise.

India’s bear-hug of Sharif aroused the suspicions of the Pakistan army. Buying into the logic that only an Indian right-wing regime could make any concessions, it brought in Imran Khan, who, being obligated to it for the elevation, the Pakistan army thought it could control.

Thwarted on Sharif, India proceeded on its course to ‘integrating’ Kashmir.

Returning with a larger majority, Modi, using Shah, went for the kill in Kashmir.

The outreach to Sharif enables the regime to claim that it has done its bit for working peace, especially useful to keep Americans, who were then winding up their longest war nearby, at bay.

The peace process in Kashmir, supposedly conducted by Doval protégé, Dineshwar Sharma, was also timed to dispel fears of the Americans. Any need for a more credible process was dispelled with the unfolding of Operation All Out, in which over 1000 youth were killed. In retrospect it is apparent that Sharma was tasked with stage setting for the Article 370 act.

This, at a time when the Bajwa doctrine – geo-economics - had led to a let up in Pakistan’s proxy war.

That progressively more Kashmiri youth were killed shows the Kashmir conflict to be a home-grown insurgency. Targeting civilians – terror - is a tactic in any insurgency.

India’s own policy of self-servingly misconstruing the conflict as a proxy war prompted the militant backlash in Kashmir. To blame Pakistan is but displacement.

To be sure, not only did Doval reportedly participate in secret talks with his Pakistani counterpart, but the chiefs of respective intelligence wings also parlayed. The idea behind the latter in a first of sorts was to engage the Pakistan army directly.

The outcome was a mere reassertion of the unwritten ceasefire on the LC, a lollipop for that army. Bought off, the Pakistani army did not take advantage of either the Article 370 episode or Indian discomfiture in Ladakh.

The regime gained a breather for the Modi-Shah reengineering in Kashmir.

The pre-Modi period

This absence of a genuine peace process is in stark contrast to the approach to peace of earlier administrations. The peace process was along all four tiers: the governmental, Track II, back channel and P2P (people to people).

That the governmental track kept chugging, despite down turn in relations owing to periodic crises or terror attacks, is testimony of relative success. It also produced outcomes – well, almost - such as near agreements on Siachen – thrice over. That Sushma Swaraj rechristened the composite dialogue to make of it a new start point shows its potential.

The Track II processes made many converts of hardline bureaucrats and generals, of both sides. That the people-to-people one these days evokes the most scorn in the right wing is indicative of both success and its limits.

‘Sati’ Lambah informs of 36 meetings of the backchannel interlocutors over the decade 2003-2014. The track is credited with coming up with a comprehensive document, that commanded attention with the leadership on both sides. Musharraf’s four points informing the prospective deal, Pakistan was then closest to clinching what neither its regular military nor irregular proxies could ever hope to deliver.

The internal peace process had substance. Not only did it materialize Vajpayee’s vision of his April 2003 reaching out to Kashmiris, but it also had Manmohan Singh’s weight behind it.

Given the credibility of the peace process – both external and internal - why was its outcome below par?

The elephant in the room

The sole explanation, that the Pakistan army fears an institutional eclipse if peace were to break out, is insufficient. Other than in the Kayani period, there is no obvious evidence of institutional reservations.

Kayani, a former intelligence head, laid low in the Musharraf period, but his extended stay as Chief was in the post Mumbai 26/11, placing a premium on any haste on peace. On the contrary, there was Bajwa, interested in fruition.

Therefore, an explanation must lie on this side of the border.

Tracts that recount the India-Pakistan relations – especially by those from the foreign service bureaucracy – maintain a silence on Hindutva. Bisaria’s tome on the diplomatic engagement with Pakistan carries two references, both on the same page, to the ‘Hindu nationalist movement.’ (When commentators shy away from even using the term Hindutva, it’s a telling elision.)

What amounts to a veritable conspiracy of silence on Hindutva is proof that Hindutva is the elephant in the room.

This is quite obvious of the Modi period, but less so in the preceding period.

Then, the peace process had enough political will for lending it traction but not getting it to a fruition, since Hindutva was by then a hardy monster.

Vajpayee weathered Kargil and Agra, but ran out of time for taking the promise of the Islamabad Declaration to the logical conclusion. His deputy, Advani, was also onboard, deigning sup with the Hurriyet. Advani’s unceremonious exit from politics after his visit to Pakistan, forced by the right-wing mother lode, shows where the ‘remote’ lay.

Manmohan Singh was inclined to ‘breakfast at Amritsar, lunch in Lahore and dinner in Kabul,’ but the ‘remote’ this time was with Sonia Gandhi. For instance, the Siachen deal fell through when national security adviser, ‘Mike’ Narayanan, who genuflected to Mrs. Gandhi, reneged.

Future biographers may tell us whether her foreign origins had anything to do with over-compensating to appease Hindutva, adoption of soft Hindutva being another instance.

The Congress was sensitive to being outflanked and did not wish to give ammunition to Hindutva by anything that could be construed as a concession. In Manmohan Singh’s second term, the Congress espying the ground shifting beneath its feet, over-compensated by being over-cautious.

Not only did it fail to take the internal peace process forward (the four round tables, five task forces and three interlocutors constituted a formidable peace initiative), but, against Pakistan, it firmed up the Cold Start doctrine – compelling military counter measures, including nuclear, on Pakistan’s part.

Thus, it handed over not only a somnolent peace process to an ideological successor regime, but also an unusable military instrument.

Unable to present his 56” chest, the next best option was ‘surgical strikes’ and propaganda barrages. In the event, for Pakistan, both were water off a duck’s back.

Yet, though stifling of the peace process, the strikes-that-weren’t proved politically handy.

Revitalising peace

Denial of statehood being indicative, the regime continues its vice-like grip over Kashmir. It best knows the situation is fraught; with periodic killings of migrants, minorities and soldiers making for an open secret.

An elected union territory government in place, a beginning can be made with settling with Kashmiris on statehood bolstered with Article 371 privileges.

A new normal will defuse any Pakistani interest and capacity to interfere when done with current day convulsions. An external peace process can extend to untouched aspects as demilitarization, demining and environmental resurrection of the LC, including Siachen.

If Doval can be off talking to Wang, surely India can to begin with a negotiated return of high commissioners and get on with the DIY kit in the last chapter of Lambah’s In Pursuit of Peace.

A liberal-rationalist prescription is a non-starter, but on that count inescapable.

Strategic reasoning apart, at stake is the future of the Republic.