Creativity , imagination, interpersonal skills and manual dexterity are the qualities of a good comic writer. Interestingly same attributes are required by a leader to create a narrative of a nation. So all leaders are comic writers and all narratives are political comics(at least till the history shove them aside). Unfortunately if a leader is unpartisan, myopic and downright deceitful, then all the above qualities will be used to accrue a narrative of false grandeur, hatred, jingoism and number of other political incorrectness. Modi did this all single handily. His manual dexterity first resulted into the demolition of Babri Masjid and now the same is being used to build Ram Mandir with 1400 crores collected from Hindus. He is also convincing Indian people through his interpersonal skills that not the poverty, the daily rapes in every obscure street of cities, the stunted growth of 14 million children, the open defecation by millions, the suicides of Indian farmers and the number of separatist movements are the issues, but the real problem is Pakistan. It seems Indian people are now being only driven by political comics rather than the policy based on strategic narratives, a dangerous trend not only for the region but for the world. It all actually started in 1923 when Damodar Savarkar wrote an essay “essentials of Hinduism”. In 1939 Golwalker wrote a book expanding the thesis of Hindutva. RSS, which was already created in 1928, earnestly adopted the same as its manifesto. In late 50s, fifty three organisations based on the concept of Hindutva got affiliated with RSS. There were rumours then that the ford foundation of USA is supporting the effort, which RSS denied. BJP became the political wing and the political trajectory begins in 1960s. Vajpai as prime minister was an Indian face, a precursor to a Hindu face, which was soon found in Gujrat and climbed the Hindutva iconographic ladder by a massive massacre of Muslims .On social front the Shuddi movement is focusing on reconverting people to Hinduism, “ghar wapsi”, and those who won’t will be told to leave India. Isn’t the history of RSS is also like a comic in whom caricatures are first drawn, given words and then enliven to rule. Interesting times indeed. Now the 16, 15 and 14 corps in Indian held Kashmir are trying to blend military tactics with the Hindutva tactics. What ever happened in last couple of days is a stark reminder that we are living in a post truth era, where it is more important to manufacture truth rather than speaking it out. The synthesis of truth and fact is the way to reach out to the reality, because truth can be manufactured but facts are universal constants. Most astounding fact is that nothing remained same between India and Pakistan, what happened? As for India many things changed. The concept of Indian nuclear deterrence and second strike capability was primarily based on Indian air force. SU 30s and mirages were specially altered for the job as the missile based delivery system has lot of snags. In Prithvi missiles from series 1 to 5 war head mating with the rocket is the issue, same way there are not all Agni missiles which are serviceable due to number of technical issues. Indian strategic thinking in the realm of nuclear politics is therefore based on Airforce ( rather than the missiles) which Pakistan Airforce has shredded into smithereens. 36 Rafeals at a high flyaway cost will not make much difference. India also lacks the MIRV systems for second strike, agni-5 has limited MIRV capability, agni-6 is fully MIRV based, but is under development. Alphabet soup of Indian military agreements is also a different story. USA wanted India to buy THAAD air defence system, instead India went for much cheaper S-400 which is both endo and exo- atmospheric. Indian Brahmos hypersonic cruise missile can not have a field day either, already there is a controversy of Nishat Agarwal leaking the secrets. Numerical strength in modern warfare does not matter a lot, it is the application of appropriate force at a time and place which is most astute. Lawrence freedman in his book, “the future of war”, wrote that attacking enemy population is now part of the military strategy. Only technology cannot accrue victory and even as nature of war changed, strangely the theories of war remain the same. Pakistan Airforce and army at LOC displayed that simplicity of engagement with skill is the best form of surprise. Any society which become radicalised is actually bound to suffer strategic atrophy. Due to Hindutva , Indian strategic thinking has ossified. Strangely this all is happening under the retreat of Westphalian system. The world has to realise that the ossified strategic thinking, the Kashmir issue and nuclear overhang is a recipe of disaster. Dr Strangelove is already riding the wave of extremity. Pakistan is left with only the Hobson’s choice, i.e. to respond in coin. India has to learn many lessons from last few days, what could be those are left to their strategic thinkers. Pakistan has to learn one lesson , the defence of the mother land lies not in the east nor in the west, it rests in well being of the people of Pakistan. 21st century is not the century of AI, deep thinking, bioinformatics etc, it the century of rediscovering of social theories to combat the effects of latest technology on human beings, who are losing their sense of touch, thus suffering the strategic atrophy. China realising, is now following the strategy of three warfare, one the psychological war fare, second influence warfare and third the legal warfare. Amongst all three, kinetic warfare is not included, though the state has to maintain the adequate levels of military preparedness. That is the lesson which the comic book of Pakistan’s narratives should have on its every page.
The writer is a free lance who contributes regularly on security related issues. He is also a Ph.D Scholar who can be reached at [email protected]
Twitter: @Abid_Latif55
Published in Daily Times, March 10th 2019.