Daily Times

Indians have put on their war paint. The faint echo of beating war drums has reached a crescendo so deafening as to muzzle a few voices of sanity in the largest democracy of the world. All cataclysmic wars in the world’s history have been started by populist tyrants masquerading as democrats. World War II was a consequence of Nationalist Socialists’ ratcheting up of pent up German grievances, articulated by a demagogue in the shape of Hitler. The present Indian leadership that is hell bent on taking the subcontinent to a self- annihilating nuclear war is rapidly climbing the 44 rungs of Herman Kahn’s escalation ladder. What will come of this madness? Or better still what has got into Indian war planners’ mind to take this slippery route to deathly hollows?

Hubris they say was one of the seven ancient sins amongst the Greeks. Indian leadership’s hauteur that has landed them in a cul de sac situation has been sedulously cultivated under the veneer of Hindutva. It was as exclusivist ideology pandering to the antiquated and caste-ridden weltanschauung of the xenophobic Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership. Unfortunately, the poison packaged in the sugary cover of Indian nationalism presented to the world as “Rising India” caught the imagination of the Indian masses too. With a complaisant media muzzled into submission through a heavy dose of Hindutva nationalism, there was nothing left to challenge the march of hubris. The false belief in the manifest destiny of Hindutva and hatred towards those outside the pale of Hinduism led Indians to a mental state of superciliousness vis vis minorities within India and the smaller neighbours out of India.

The brutal repression in Kashmir that has unleashed the pent up frustrations of Kashmiris in the shape of political agitation and armed violence is indicative of the Modi Doctrine that believes in imposing a uniform Hindutva code on all religions and communities. A convenient scapegoat in the shape of Pakistan was found to externalize the Modi government’s political failures. A nation weaned on a heavy diet of Pakistani support of terrorism was roped in a hate campaign against Pakistan to divert attention away from governance failures. There are times the leaders having misled the nations become the victim of their own lies. Prime Minister Modi is one such example. Having convinced the Indian populace of the Pakistani perfidy he left no space to climb down from his accusatory rhetoric vis a vis Pakistan.

A country that claims to be the largest democracy and still remains hostage to the whims of a vote-hungry megalomaniac is one of the greatest contradictions of modern democracy

Come the election time. Modi Government needed a jingoistic war hysteria to boost the sagging electoral fortunes of BJP. Having lost the political space in its political strongholds of Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, and Madyapradesh the BJP needed a black swan event to accuse Pakistan. Pulwama proved to be one such event. Whipped into a nationalistic frenzy, as if on cue the Indian media started baying for Pakistani blood, right from the word go. The Modi government upped the ante and raised the retaliatory expectations of the Indian population to a fever pitch. The declarations of cross border attacks to take out imagined terrorists’ camps inside Pakistan territory served as self-fulfilling prophecies as the Indians launched a stealth attack from North of Kashmir on 26 Feb to enter Pak territory to drop bombs at Jabba near Balakot in KP. The bombs did no damage and the Indian aircraft scurried out.

What followed, however, was a fatuous pantomime of celebratory gloating by Indians while the Pakistanis wondered what mad bug bit the Indians to undertake such a risky manoeuvre? The public in Pakistan clamoured for revenge and the revenge was exacted by Pakistan Air Force on 27 Feb when they shot down two Indian aircraft after making their presence felt near Indian posts in Kashmir. To rub salt in the Indian wounds the Pakistani media paraded the captured Indian pilot of the Mig in the media as a war trophy. The cacophony of Indian media concocting stories of last day’s air raid lost most of its sound while a pall of gloom descended over them. What will they do next? Considering the Indian elections and the Modi’s inability to think beyond his nose there is a danger of escalation of the conflict into a general war.

What begs an answer is the nature of Indian democracy. A country that claims to be the largest democracy and still remains hostage to the whims of a vote-hungry megalomaniac is one of the greatest contradictions of modern democracy. Whither the institutions to rein in the excesses of one mad man? I am sure there are saner voices in India that understand the possibility of the present scenario getting out of hand. Those voices should assert now or face a nuclear holocaust. The leaders on both sides of the borders have a very heavy responsibility i.e to lower the temperatures and analyze the situation rationally. The national interests and political objectives, instead of personal interests and party agendas, should drive the policy vehicle of the governments. Indians should carefully examine their national interests and cull their political and military objectives from those interests. A little introspection would point out that the war with a nuclear-armed adversary is not in India’s short or long term interest.

A similar analysis needs to be done by our decision makers. The first question to be analyzed is if Pakistan’s national interests are best served by fighting and winning a war or preventing war. If the answer is the prevention of the war then all our subsequent political and military objectives should reflect that fact. If prevention of war indeed is in our national interest as a weaker protagonist in the subcontinental conflict equation, then a whole new response regime is required in the current situation. Now if our security strategy is to prevent war we must do certain things immediately. The first thing to do is to muster international support through aggressive diplomacy highlighting the irresponsible behaviour of a nuclear hegemon that threatens a nuclear Armageddon in the subcontinent. We must keep our vigil up and powder dry on LOC and respond with maximum strength and celerity against any ground attack but no knee jerk playing to the gallery type retaliation to Indian war dance.

Pakistan must start nuclear signalling through calculated leaks and make some moves to lend credibility to its capability and resolve to use the weapons in self-defence. A de-escalation strategy to be formulated and track II diplomacy should be put into effect immediately. Simultaneously the big three i.e China, Russia, and the US should be engaged and requested to play their part in de-escalation. Unlike Kargil, the moral high ground rests with Pakistan this time. Our media and diplomats should rise to the occasion to operationalize our war prevention strategy. And lastly, it is the diplomatic acumen of the leader at the helm that prevents war. Musharraf shook hands with a reluctant Vajpayee in 2001to defuse a war like situation while Nawaz Sharif relied on Mishra-Naek diplomacy to cool the temperatures during Kargil. The present leadership is in better circumstances to wean the Indians away from their war dance.

The writer is a PhD scholar at NUST

Published in Daily Times, March 1^st 2019.