On PM Modi’s declaration of war
The title phrase originates from the military order “Havoc!” Which was a signal given to the English military forces in the Middle Ages to direct the soldiery (in Shakespeare’s parlance ‘the dogs of war’) to pillage and chaos. This expression is from his play Julius Caesar, 1601. After Caesar’s murder Anthony, in his famous speech after Brutus and his companions have slain Caesar, regrets the course Brutus has taken and predicts that war is sure to follow.
On August 15, 2016, on occasion of India’s 70th Independence Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, astride the ramparts of Delhi’s Red Fort addressing the nation in a 90 minutes tirade against Pakistan, virtually declared war on his western neighbour. He formally announced the support of India in “liberating” Balochistan, Azad Jammu & Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan, which he called POK (Pakistan Occupied Kashmir).
Modi, who began his career as a tea boy at Vadnagar railway station, and later ran a tea stall with his brother near a bus terminus, has not risen above the mentality and thinking of his formative years. Having later joined the ranks of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right wing militant extremist Hindu organisation, which even has the blood of one of India’s founding fathers Mahatma Gandhi at its hands besides millions of Muslims during the partition of India, Modi has been brought up to beget violence. As Chief Minister of the Indian State of Gujarat, in 2002, he oversaw the massacre of over 2000 innocent Muslims, which not only earned him the dubious title of “The Butcher of Gujarat”, but prompted the US and EU to deny issuing visit visa to Modi. Till he was anointed as the Prime Minister of India, Modi’s name appeared in Google’s “ten top most terrorists of the world”. Last year during an address at the floor of the Parliament in Dhaka, Modi admitted his personal and India’s role in dismembering Pakistan through violence and creating Bangladesh.
Announcing that henceforth India would support the “liberation” of Balochistan, Modi has lent credence to India’s involvement in the insurgency in Balochistan. The arrest of Commander Kulbhoshan Yadav, a senior Indian Naval officer and RAW operative from Balochistan earlier this year, provided ample evidence of Indian intransigence and machinations in Balochistan.
Some questions arise as to why Modi chose the location and time of his diatribe against Pakistan. Perhaps he was overwhelmed by straddling the parapet of Red Fort, which was built by the fifth Mughal Emperor Shahjahan in 1648 and is a stark reminder of the humiliation of Hindus and their subjugation at the hands of Muslims for over three centuries. At the time of partition, India’s founding fathers had sworn that they will not rest till Pakistan is decimated and the revenge of the slavery of the Hindus at the hands of the Muslims is not vindicated. India partly avenged itself after severing East Pakistan.
There are three other cogent reasons for Modi’s harangue against Pakistan. Firstly, Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) is burning because of the brutality of Indian Army against the Kashmiris, where sixty five youth have been massacred since July 8, 2016. Nine hundred international academia and littérateurs of the ilk of Noam Chomsky and others have taken cognisance of Indian cruelty and expressed solidarity with the hapless Kashmiris and chastised Modi for his armed forces’ atrocities in the Valley of Kashmir. Modi would like to divert world opinion away from the bloody massacre and genocide of Muslims prevalent in IOK.
Secondly, when Modi led his election campaign in 2014, he promised to build “Shining India”, a paragon of economic development. Two years down the line, having failed to deliver on his promise, Modi would rather distract Indians from his failures by chiding Pakistan rather than face the music of domestic censure. Moreover, the extremist Hindu mentality has so overwhelmed the ruling junta in India that they have started brutalising not only the Indian minorities but the low caste Hindu Dalit. In retaliation, the sensitive intelligentsia of India has returned its awards and medals to the government, seeking an end to the radicalism.
Another plausible cause is the advent of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which has rattled Modi. The development of the port of Gawadar and the fruition of the development projects linked with CPEC, Pakistan’s economy will be propelled to tremendous heights, much to the chagrin of India, which would rather see Pakistan as a failed state and sink into the quagmire of ignominy. Modi had gone to the extent of raising the issue of CPEC with China on the flimsy pretext that CPEC passes through Gilgit Baltistan, which is disputed territory. Chinese President Xi Jinping refuted his argument stating that CPEC was a commercial venture and not a strategic one.
What Modi does not realise is that by admitting the Indian hand in the terror campaign in Pakistan, he has provided formal evidence of Indian intrusion, and secondly, he has set a deadly precedence. People, who live in glass houses, should not throw stones. An estimated 30 armed insurgency movements are sweeping across India, reflecting an acute sense of alienation on the part of the people involved. These range from Assam, Kashmir and Khalistan (East Punjab) to Maoist (Naxalite) and north-eastern states e.g. Laddakh to Tripura, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Manipur, Bodoland Assam and Nagaland to name a few.
By letting slip his own dogs of war, Modi has dared Pakistan to pick up the gauntlet. The gloves are off and if in a tit for tat game, Pakistan fuels even half of these insurgencies, India will not be able to stem the rot and will shatter into smithereens like the USSR broke up in the 1990s.
Indian hawks are bellicose and gung ho at Modi’s declaration of support to Balochistan. This scribe has been a participant in numerous talk shows on Indian TV channels, where the hosts and Indian guests are gloating over Modi’s warning to Pakistan. They are quoting the instance of 1971, where they got the better of Pakistan. In their ebullience, they forget that East Pakistan was adjoining India while over 1400 Kms of Indian Territory separated West and East Pakistan. In January 1971, India machinated to have one of its commercial passenger aircraft a F-27 hijacked to Lahore and set it on fire by its agents. Using the incident as a pretext, Indian cancelled over flight of Pakistani aircraft over its own territory, denying Pakistan the capability to provide logistic support to its beleaguered troops in East Pakistan. Indian intelligence agency RAW instigated insurgency in East Pakistan through its surrogate the Mukti Bahini; in November 1971, India attacked East Pakistan and badly outnumbered, Pakistan lost the war and its eastern wing.
However, the Pakistan of today is a far cry from that of 1971. It is wary of Indian intrigues, is equipped with strategic and tactical nuclear weapons and has ample knowledge of Chanakyan guile and deceit to counter it. India is most welcome to foment trouble in Pakistan but it should be prepared for the consequences.
Modi has stirred a hornet’s nest and will regret the day he cried Havoc! In the words of the bard: “O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason.