Daily Times

Twenty years ago, addressing a Pakistani audience in Lahore, then Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee showed none of his BJP successor’s eagerness for war. “Hum jang na honay dayenge” (we will not permit war) was then the popular refrain. The audience were spellbound and nobody complained about his long extempore speech.

Today, Narendra Modi who’s campaigning to get re-elected to the office is beating war drums. His rhetoric risks pushing South Asia to the brink of a nuclear stand off. The so-called strongman has been spreading fear and hatred in his traditional constituency, the majority Hindus, of threats he sees from the country’s Muslims and from next-door Pakistan.

In his re-election bid, Mr Modi has not tried to persuade the Indian voters to elect him and his party on the basis of his government’s record or by presenting a compelling vision for India’s future. He is once again seeking the votes by doing what he does best: raising fears of Muslim minority among the Hindu majority.

As chief minister of Gujarat, he had built political capital upon religious violence in 2002. The popular perception of Modi as a strongman, comparable to Indira Gandhi, has not been dented even though he has failed to address the Rafale deal graft allegations amid jeering from the opposition and brewing controversies following the Pulwama attack.

Given the poor economic track record since 2014, the BJP has rightly decided to focus on what most Indians perceives as its strength: its management of national security and defence

It is ironic that in the 2014 general elections, the BJP’s main campaign plank was ending corruption and ensuring development across India. It had also lured Hindu voters by promising them a Ram temple on the ruins of the 16th-century Babri mosque, demolished by Hindu zealots in December 1992.

Today, the BJP appears to have softened its stance on both issues only covertly promising support to hard line Hindu allies demanding the construction of the temple. Instead, it is running on a national security narrative, using the 2016 ‘surgical strikes’ and the 2019 Balakot strikes. They want to take the voters’ attention away from the anger over demonetization, GST, and governance issues.

The context of Mr Modi’s remarks on national security in election rallies matters, of course. Given its poor economic record since 2014, the BJP has rightly decided to focus on what most of the Indian people see as its strength: its management of national security and defence. Mr Modi’s decision to use conventional air power for a strike on Pakistani territory after the February 14 Pulwama attack was widely popular in India. However, once an Indian MiG-21 was shot down in a dogfight, Mr Modi became a source of embarrassment.

The Indian prime minister has said that he went ahead with the air strike in Pakistan believing that cloudy skies would help India’s air force avoid radar detection although experts had advised that the operation be delayed until the weather cleared up. He said he used his “raw wisdom” in deciding the timing of the operation for the benefit of Indian air force.

The fact is that the radars use radio waves to detect objects that may be obscured by fog. So, the clouds over would not have given Indian jets any advantage. The BJP twitter account has since deleted the interview clip, after it became a source of embarrassment internationally.

India’s staggered national elections are currently under way. Prime Minister Modi might as well be re-elected to the office. The recent polls show the BJP in the lead, although with a thin majority. In a recent development Prime Minister Imran Khan’s statement that Mr Modi’s re-election might lead to a settlement of Kashmir issue, has allowed the Indian opposition to question his hawkish credentials. “A vote for Modi is a vote for Pakistan”, some of the campaign posters warn, the “secret is out”.

In the event that Modi wins a re-election to the office of the prime minister, India will have failed.

Mr Modi must in that case be taught Harold Nicolson’s observation that an “exchange of insults is not the best method of conducting relations between sovereign states”.

The writer is a freelancer