Exorcism of Modi’s hardline ideology is essential for regional peace and Indian secularism itself
Never before in its entire history has Pakistan faced such multiple perils and grave dangers as are casting their dark shadows over it now. The complexity of the general situation must be giving the strategic planners sleepless nights and will test their competence and nerve to the limit. But they must rise to the occasion. The consequences of a major blunder can be shattering. Lapses in judgment or putting off difficult decisions are no longer an option but a luxury.
The meteoric ascent of Narendra Modi, the Gujarat mass murderer, religious bigot and internationally declared terrorist to the post of a ‘sanitised’ (US State Department clearance certification!) prime minister of India, constitutes the most lethal threat to the stability, territorial integrity and sovereignty of Pakistan. It also clearly highlights the ‘civilised’ world’s double standards on moral and ethical issues when confronted by an irresistible economic clout or its own interests. The country must therefore eye this development with grim foreboding. Modi has the confidant and determined air of a man with a mission when it comes to Pakistan. The goal is not the ‘good neighbour’ policy but something much more sinister. He only last week ordered that the deal for 36 state of the art French Rafale fighter aircraft which had been dragging on for years be concluded within ten days! The aircraft carries a $300 million price tag per unit, but the Indians are holding out on $200-220 million per aircraft in a deal worth about eight billion euro! His antics in Bangladesh and instant filling of the United Arab Emirates breach should give our Foreign Office officials some food for thought.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its fascist sidekick, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) are even now in the process of casting secular India in their hardline Hindutva mould. They are altering the educational textbooks and changing culture to make it conform to a uniform Hindu identity and ideology. Where, one might well ask, are the Congress Party, the Communists and other leftist parties of India at this defining moment? Where is Track II diplomacy and why are its otherwise vocal protagonists keeping a deafening silence? And where is the Indian media, or at least the sensible part of it? Have they been beaten (only politically so far) and terrified into hushed submission?
This ‘oneness’ and the hated ‘others’, forced regimentation and imposed uniformity are the essence of the fascist ideology and, disturbingly, something along these lines is happening in India
The para-military cadres of the RSS are its version of the Nazi Sturmabteilung (Storm Troop), the hooligan’s army. A contemporary eyewitness of the Nuremberg Rally in 1929, marked by parades, speeches and much Nazi pageantry writes: ‘Sixty thousand of the elect (the SA) marched in columns. A foreigner, bewitched by the stiff arms and thundering boots said to Hitler, How wonderful; it seems as though all these 60,000 men had the same face… to which the latter replied: That is the great thing about our movement, that these men have outwardly become almost a unit, that actually these members are uniform not only in ideas, but that even the facial expression is almost the same. Look at those laughing eyes, this fanatical enthusiasm, and you will discover how in these faces, the same expression has formed, how a hundred thousand men in a movement become a single type’.
This ‘oneness’ and the hated ‘others’, forced regimentation and imposed uniformity are the essence of the fascist ideology and, disturbingly, something along these lines is happening in India.
When such bigots talk of ‘peace’, they mean peace strictly on their own terms, a ‘brigand’s’ peace in other words, or else, it will be the peace of the graveyard. So, even when they cry ‘peace’, beware, their generals may already be poring over the war maps.
The heightened external threat posed by the increasingly confrontational Modi-led BJP government now looms ominously alongside our numerous internal troubles. Pakistan’s isolation and encirclement is the immediate aim of the megalomaniac and gloating Indian prime minister. The Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin in a moment of clear sightedness said of his ruthless and power-hungry disciple Joseph Stalin that ‘this cook will serve us nothing but over-peppered dishes’. Likewise, the former Indian tea stall boy also promises to cook a brew, but it might well turn out to be a ‘witches brew’, unpalatable for the two countries, the region and the world at large.
Despite the dangers, our weak and vacillating political leadership appears to be in a state of semi-paralysis. Be bold, be bold, but not too bold, is its feeble battle cry. Allowing things to drift aimlessly is its particular forte.
The Pakistani prime minister in his wisdom, or otherwise, stubbornly keeps the pivotal post of the foreign minister vacant. There are two superannuated experts, the odd couple, apparently with no love lost between them, who are performing this function singly or jointly at different times. The advisor on foreign affairs who is also the national security advisor is an octogenarian. Despite his past distinguished career, he must be feeling his age in a sharp and fast-changing scenario demanding instant action. A Washington wit once remarked of President Ronald Reagan, who was the oldest US president in office (at age 77 years and 349 days) that he was ‘a tribute to the embalmers art’. Our two Otto von Bismarcks are also past their professional shelf life. They may be well meaning, patriotic and experienced, but they are the worst possible choices at this particularly thorny time in our foreign relations. Every day that passes without a decision on this and other key issues can turn into a calamity that will come back to haunt the rulers. Time is fleeting, time is running out… and they cannot hold the plea that ignorance is bliss.
The Indians’ mounting aggressive postures and tough words point ominously towards some kind of an adventure against Pakistan at some stage. In this calculation, they must be factoring in the country’s daunting internal problems: its ongoing operation against militants that has over-stretched the army, the weakness of its economy, its inept and indecisive political elite, the adverse Balochistan and Karachi situations, divisive sectarianism, the disillusionment among its minorities, the demoralisation of the ordinary citizens, as also the waning of its ties with the Americans, the Saudis and the Gulf states. The Indians would be keenly aware that ‘war in the last analysis is won or lost at home. The battlefield is the test ground for the forces that build up the inner life of a nation’.
But the sweetest music to Modi and the Indian military’s ears must be the vicious things said and the toxic comments made by some of our own senior political leaders against the national army. This is indeed ‘the most unkindest cut of all’, providing extra free ammunition to the gleeful enemy. It is not surprising then that the most common argument of the Indian analysts nowadays harps on the theme of the civilian-military leadership in Pakistan being at loggerheads with each other. Who actually governs Pakistan, they mockingly ask in all the television debates? Unfortunately we have ourselves handed them this propaganda tool. And for this, many thanks to the two Khawajas, the last-will-and-testament PPP leader (whom few follow and that too, out of fear), and a handful of others who can hardly be said to have acted after ‘ice-cold reflection’ on a sensitive matter! Certainly, the full formal title of the defence minister should rightly be minister for war (against his own army and all dharna wallahs). The other offender in this sphere, Altaf Hussain, of course stands in a league of his own. His public persona and oft-repeated army-phobic taunts must be worth a couple of infantry divisions to the enemy.
For the Indian planners, the Pakistan army too must appear to be on the back foot from the purely military viewpoint. Some of its elite units, formerly deployed on the eastern border, are battling the Taliban. Its inventory of certain kinds of weapons (and that of the Pakistan Air Force) must be severely depleted and in need of urgent replenishment. The troops involved in the battles may have become tough and battle-hardened, but they can also be prey to war-weariness, a most debilitating condition.
The wartime British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once declared in Parliament that if ‘Hitler invaded Hell, I would be obliged to put in a good word for the Devil in the House of Commons!’
For us, China of course holds the key, and it will have to play a much more proactive role in the sub-continent, perhaps even some sort of an ‘umbrella’ pact with Pakistan, similar to the Twenty Years Treaty of Peace and Friendship (!) between Moscow and New Delhi signed before the 1971 war. This was no less an opportunistic ‘devil’s alliance’ than the notorious Nazi-Soviet (or Molotov-Ribbentrop or Hitler-Stalin) Pact of August 1939 which paved the way for the joint invasion and break-up of Poland and started World War II. One observer famously said of the Pact that ‘it turned all our –isms (he meant the basic enmities existing between communism, capitalism, Marxism, fascism, Nazism, Socialism, totalitarianism) into –wasms’. But the Pact did provide the weaker Soviet Union with two valuable years in which to build up its military strength for the inevitable showdown to come.
Pakistan also desperately needs to spring a diplomatic surprise or rather shock on our nemesis which would send him reeling. The wartime British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once declared in Parliament that if ‘Hitler invaded Hell, I would be obliged to put in a good word for the Devil in the House of Commons!’ Such an ‘inventive’ cynical opportunism (or pragmatism) is the mother of survival, and essential if we are to escape the real and present existential dangers. So, it is now or never for China to come to the aid of the party, in a big way, diplomatically, economically, and militarily, the latter perhaps by an arrangement of the Lend-Lease type.
Considering our continued deficiencies in the leadership department, what should be the ideal credentials of any future national politician? First of all, he should be an only child, belong to any caste/race except Kashmiri and preferably also be a vegetarian. The last two somewhat conflicting qualities would silence all the culinary rumours and ensure clear headedness in affairs of state by way of a simple diet, while the first requirement would do away with the nepotism scandals invariably associated with an extended First Family. Finally, the offspring should be of a shy, retiring and private disposition, instinctively inclined towards painting and the fine arts rather than considering themselves as divinely anointed dynastic heir-apparents in the family political-business profession.