Daily Times

Hubris being one of the seven deadly sins leads to twin maladies of megalomania and misanthropy. The Indian government, having led the Indian population up the cloud cuckoo land of Hindutva glory is finding hard to come to grip with ground realities of the subcontinent. Having crafted a black swan event in Kashmir on the eve of elections to shore up BJP’s sagging fortunes the Modi government hoped to see Pakistan genuflecting to the combined pressure of accusatory rhetoric of India and the international community. Instead, the blame ruse boomeranged on Indians. They are having a hard time acknowledging the extent of their embarrassment. For far too long the Indians due to their strategic congruence of interests with the US have been misleading the world about Kashmir and Pakistani collusion with militants. A fact that was lost in the process due to the cacophony of shrill noises by a bought and indoctrinated Indian media was the slow but sure transformation in Pakistan Army’s strategic thinking at the leadership level. The transformation was apparent in the way Pak Army jettisoned old baggage to disown and fight religious militants and extremists.

Interestingly it was the civilian leadership that hemmed and hawed and dragged its feet after the 2014 APS massacre in Peshawar, while the Army boldly decided to enter FATA to fight the TTP militants. The foot-dragging politicians followed suit reluctantly only after seeing the national mood that was seething with rage against the terrorists’ depredations. The efficiency and speed with which the Army conducted operations in the tribal areas exacted heavy costs in terms of precious human lives, but the job was done and now the remnants of the militants in FATA await their final extermination after the completion of the border fence. The civilian component of the state however lagged behind. There was a considerable delay and reluctance to take action against sectarian and other militant organizations due to political considerations. Pakistan Army instead of encouraging non-state actors has actually reined in several tribals from entering the Kashmir fray during the recent standoff with India, relying instead on their own professionalism and courage to give a bloody nose to Indian aggressors. The trouble with Indian media is that the state has sedulously nurtured a narrative for them which was bought internationally too due to better strategic communications and large Indian diaspora, parroting the old refrain of Pakistani collusion with militants.

The Modi administration has turned India into a revisionist state that is trying to rewrite history to promote the Hindutva narrative of Hindu supremacism

The hard and cold reality stared them in the face when the chips were down. IAF sneaked in like a harried cat and dropped few pickings in jungles of Balakot before beating a precipitate retreat across LOC. They were not shot down just because Pakistan Air Force was busy focusing on Center and South on Eastern borders against any Indian adventurism. The next day the showdown occurred; two Indian aircraft were shot down while a pilot was captured. The entire world witnessed Indian humiliation except for the blindingly self-deluded Indian media. Pakistani leadership has displayed maturity and restraint indicative of statesmanship that the Modi government lacked. The international community has to understand the changed reality of Pakistan and act accordingly because the Indian leadership under Modi will not see the light of reason. Will the international community understand the reality of present Indo-Pak standoff? It depends on the prisms it uses to understand the changing security dynamics of the subcontinent.

It is time the international community understood that the security dynamics have changed in the subcontinent. With nuclear deterrence firmly in place an elusive Indian quest to discover space for conventional war in order to utilize its vastly overmatched land, air, and naval force has underscored the truth of ageless maxim attributed to famed nuclear theorist Bernard Brodie i.e “Thus far the chief purpose of our military establishment has been to win wars. From now on its chief purpose must be to avert them. It can have almost no other useful purpose.” The nuclear deterrence, alternative security alliances like China-Russia-Pakistan, economic corridors, and the end game in Afghanistan have all lined up the stars in a favourable configuration for Pakistan. Henceforth India will have to bear heavy costs for playing regional gendarme for her strategic partners. These costs include the elimination of Indian presence from Afghanistan after US withdrawal, regional economic isolation, and internal implosion due to a blind pursuit of particularistic agenda.

Indians need to understand that confrontation and wars have a cost. The partial closure of the Indian air space must have given Indian businessmen and investors a foretaste of the economic devastation caused by the conflicts. India is trying hard to sell an image of an aggrieved state at the receiving end of religious militancy. The lustre is wearing off the Indian narrative however due to the sheer determination of Kashmiri people who have refused to bow down to Indian irredentist claims on Kashmir. Even such Kashmiri leaders as Mehbooba Mufti of PDP who were reputed to be the Indian acolytes have started to speak out against Indian attempts to revoke Article 370 that accords a special status to Kashmir vis a vis Indian state. The Indians need to think out of the box to cement the fissiparous cracks emanating out of their estranged ethnic communities because of denial of basic rights.

The Modi administration has turned India into a revisionist state that is trying to rewrite history to promote the Hindutva narrative of Hindu supremacism. According to David Zionts’ model of revisionist states, India comes out to be an unreasonably revisionist state that fails to moderate its failed policies due to an extremist ideology. Domestic politics and elite ideology are two factors that determine a revisionist state’s reaction to policy failures. Modi’s Hindutva ideology and politics of exclusivism define Indian foreign policies vis a vis smaller neighbours, all of which are at the receiving end of Indian hegemony. While the international community slowly comes to grip with the Indian unreasonableness it is up to the saner segments of Indian polity to step up and challenge the suicidal war hysteria of present Indian leadership.

As pointed out by Zionts’ model that there is little chance of present Indian leadership’s amending of state policy, Pakistan must remain vigilant till May 2019 when the elections are over in India. Keeping up the border vigil, rallying international support, media blitz, and perception management through concrete steps to rein in home-based extremism is de rigueur to keep the Indian hubris in check.

(The writer is a PhD scholar at NUST; e mail rwjanj@hotmail.com)

Published in Daily Times, March 19^th 2019.