The world now feels that India can be pushed around with impunity. This is because the message has gone round that the UPA regime is as abysmally pusillanimous as it is thoroughly corrupt
Understandably, there have been conflicting interpretations of the motives of a unit of China’s People’s liberation Army in advancing 19 km inside Indian territory across the line of Actual Control in ladakh. Whatever the merits of the various nostrums, the fact is that China is doing it because it knows it can get away with it. The message has gone round worldwide that the present Government in New Delhi is as abysmally pusillanimous as it is corrupt. Nothing has contributed more to this more than its policy toward Pakistan, which is an inglorious narrative of appeasement and surrender. Beginning with the retreat from the position of holding no talks until the perpetrators of 26/11 had been brought to book, India has bent over backwards on every issue to propitiate Pakistan. It is hardly surprising then that Pakistan paid little heed to New Delhi’s earlier plea to repatriate Sarabjit Singh to India, and the subsequent request, after the murderous attack on him in a Pakistani jail, to send him to this country for treatment. In the end, his body came home in a coffin.
Even the Maldives, which has always been a part of India’s recognised sphere of influence, has been snapping its fingers at New Delhi. According to a report, the naval exercise Tropex-2013 was shifted from the country’s eastern to western seaboard, to back India’s diplomatic moves to resolve the crisis there, by a display of naval power. One can argue that this ensured that the Opposition leader, Mr Mohamed Nasheed, who was arrested on March 5, a fortnight after leaving the Indian embassy in Male where he had taken refuge, was released on March 6. If so, then the result is rather meagre. Mr Nasheed should not have been the leader of the Opposition in the first place. He should have been the country’s President. India should never have stood by and watched his forcible ouster on February 7, 2012, by a process approximating a coup.
Mr Nasheed is a known friend of India. His tenure as President had witnessed India-Maldives relations rising to a new level through the establishment of a coordinated security apparatus involving the installation of radars in various atolls. These, linked to India’s coastal security system, were to monitor developments in the strategic Indian Ocean area in its vicinity. His Government shared intelligence with India on the activities of fundamentalist Islamist terrorist groups and provided significant investment opportunities to Indian firms.
The naval exercise, which was carried out in February this year, ought to have been conducted at the time of Mr Nasheed’s ouster last year, and followed by stronger action if India’s concerns went unheeded. Indeed, stronger action would most probably have not been necessary. The memory of Indian intervention in 1988 against militants of People’s liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam trying to take over the island country, would have counselled caution among supporters of former President Abdul Gayoom, who were behind the ouster. Far from following any such action, India’s leaders offered “warm felicitation” to the new President, Waheed Hassan Manik, and his Government, even before the sun had set on the day!
Mr Waheed got the message. He refused to honour his promise of protecting an Indian firm, GMR Infrastructure’s $ 500 million investment in developing the nation’s main international airport, and also to hold free, fair and inclusive elections as soon as possible. There was doubtless a dispute over the terms of the contract awarded to GMR Infrastructure, but the peremptory manner in which the latter was dealt with suggested a studied effort to snub India.
It is certainly not without significance that to Pakistan’s growing presence in the Maldives has been added that of China which has recently opened an embassy. Mr Abdul Gayoom, Mr Waheed and their associates will sooner than later master the art of playing the two countries against India, which will then lose a traditional friend in a sensitive region of the Indian Ocean. This will considerably enhance the security threat to it, as will the situation in Bangladesh if the alliance dominated by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, both pathologically hostile to this country, come to power following the election due in several months’ time. Bangladesh will then once again become a haven for North-Eastern India’s secessionist terrorist/insurgent groups and a regional exporter of Islamist terrorism.
The first step towards preventing the emergence of such a situation — or minimising the consequences of it if that proves impossible — is to send out a clear signal that India cannot be pushed around. It can be no sensible person’s case that this should be done by taking a rash military step. But one needs to convey to Pakistan that enough is enough by recalling India’s High Commissioner to Islamabad and freezing all talks until the killers of Sarabjit Singh are given condign punishment and perceptible progress is witnessed in the proceedings against the perpetrators of 26/11. Similarly, one should put on hold all talks and exchanges with China until the issue of the ladakh incursion is settled in a way that does not compromise India’s dignity and interests. Simultaneously, India should reassure its friends that it will stand by them and keep its commitments. Hence the importance of going ahead with the Teesta waters agreement and the accord on border enclaves with Bangladesh.
The question remains as to what happens if such steps yield no result. The first thing is to explore ways in which India can hurt the transgressors’ economic interests enough to make them see reason. The process, which requires careful planning, should begin immediately. The second will be a massive increase in India’s unconventional warfare capability. One needs a state-of-the art and an extremely well-trained conventional military force to defeat any conventional attack should it occur. Unconventional warfare, including terrorism, insurgency, economic offensives and disruption of social cohesion is, however, going to play an increasingly important role in future conflicts among nations.
So will cyber warfare, which can paralyse a country’s economic life and governance and its command-and-control system, including the part relating to its nuclear arsenal, in situations of both peace and war. Even the acquisition of formidable capacity in these areas will not help if the impression continues that India is incapable of taking tough decisions.