It has not worked before and it won’t work in the future. let there be no mistake that nobody in Pakistan really likes India, writes BRIG DARSHAN KHUllAR. Excerpt:
PAKISTAN
Author: Darshan Khullar
Publisher : Vij, Rs 850
Islamic terrorism in India is three dimensional. There is the Pakistan dimension, the mastermind with meaningful prodding by China. It provides manpower, sanctuary, training, operational planning, weapons, explosives and material support. Bangladesh too had been increasingly involved till Sheikh Hasina became its Prime Minister and reined in the official support. The second is the Indian dimension, the Muslim angst that has given rise to home grown terrorism with active support of Pakistan. The third is the global spread of Islamic fundamentalism brought about by the forces of Wahhabism and Islamic Brotherhood. None of these can be dealt within isolation as the three have now enmeshed into a complex web, but one thing is certain that should we be able to remove the Pakistani dimension, the remainder task will become that much easier. How then do we tackle PakistanIJ
A study of all Indo-Pak conflicts (except the 1971 war) would show that it is Pakistan who started them and enjoyed the initiative and the initial advantage. They have always launched bold and audacious operations with strategic implications. India has often been caught off-guard if not unprepared. If Pakistan has mostly failed, it’s not because of just poor execution, but also because it has underestimated India’s strength and resolve. It has also been a tad unlucky.
How should India go about to defeat this sinister war being waged by PakistanIJ It’s an incorrigible Indian failing that we keep talking of a dialogue and the need to engage Pakistan. It has not worked before and it won’t work in the future. let there be no mistake that nobody in Pakistan really likes India, even the so-called liberals seek parity and eventually the leadership of the Islamic world which includes the Indian Muslims. We say that they are duping the Americans in Afghanistan but the Americans will finally depart by leaving Afghanistan in Pakistan (Taliban’s) hands. A rogue Pakistan will do for them as long it serves their strategic interests.
The best deterrence against Pakistan is a militarily strong India with much more than just an edge. We must be in a position to overrun certain strategic parts of Pakistan including destroying vital economic and military assets, by achieving an overwhelming all round superiority. We simply have to modernise our armed forces to make them lean and mean; one of the best in the world. Obviously it cannot happen suddenly. We must give ourselves a dateline. We have lost valuable time because of the indecisive and scam ridden UPA 1 and 2. If this leads to an arms race, so be it. It will hurt Pak economy much more, it might even prove ruinous to it. More pertinently we can only ignore the Chinese threat at our great peril. It may even do a Russian Crimea on us in Arunachal Pradesh. India’s China threat indeed needs a separate study and urgently at that.
We have done it before from 1966 to 1971. We didn’t rush into Bangladesh, we prepared ourselves meticulously. We must help Pakistan to self destruct itself if that be the course that it takes. There is a common saying that one must never threaten because the very act of threatening betrays a hidden weakness which becomes only too apparent when the threat is not carried out. It is also not wise to make it into a prestige issue and get (self) cornered into carrying out the threat because it invariably leads to disastrous consequences as for instance Nehru’s precipitation of the 1962 Sino Indian War. It is always better to act decisively from a position of strength.
India is a far superior country economically and enjoys an edge militarily but war is not an option at present though it may be the final one at some stage in the future if Pakistan does not mend its ways. It might even force India’s hands if it uses the ultimate terrorist weapon, the suitcase nuclear/chemical/biological bomb to blow up one of our major cities. It may be the last desperate act of a fanatically deranged military mind and you can bet somewhere in the process there will be the Chinese hand master minding it.
India must remain wary of pontification. There will be many who will say that this will never happen forgetting that history is full of examples where similar pontification has led to defeat and disintegration.
The Muslims of India barring the urban middle class have been exploited and have generally frittered away their votes without getting anything substantial in return. India in fact has failed to modernise its Muslims and get them into mainstream. To say that the Indian Muslims are a persecuted lot is totally false but that they are socially discriminated against is generally true.
India is too religious for comfort and this has skewed up our secularism. In a way like our cinema and democracy, our secularism is a class by itself. You can’t compare Bollywood with Hollywood or our democracy with the one in the West. Similarly our secularism is not only chaotic but we have perverted it good and proper. Most of us go wearing religion on our sleeves and are more concerned about our identity than basic human values. Intellectuals and theocrats go on splitting hair, inventing hidden meanings and interpretations and falsifying history and causing sense of insecurity amongst the masses. Why does a man who converts become a different person when he disowns his past and so readily accepts an alien cultureIJ Religion herein plays a very villainous part whereas deep down we are so like each other. We definitely need to bring down religion’s temperature in our country. We were a very tolerant society before the British Raj and even in the 1950s when Islam was in its quietist phase, communalism had met its temporary demise till dirty politics and Wahhabi resurgence resurrected the monster. It is amazing that in a diverse and plularalistic country like ours we have permitted fundamentalists to rule the roost and lay stress on a single identity ie the religious one to the exclusion of all others. This needs to be undone by re-emphasising our multiple identities that we ought to be proud of.
What we need is not only freedom of religion but alongside freedom from religion for those who wish it that way. Too much of religion not only impedes flexible thinking but creates narrow minded bigotry and emotional instability. lifelong indoctrination kills the conscience making the mind irrational and wicked. Hence you have your countless pursuers of immortality agenda; dreaming of houris, perfumed gardens and unlimited sex with virgins. India has suffered immense indignities because of a Gandhian approach to its security problems. What we need is wholesome modernisation of the Indian society. We have the example of the Japanese and our own Parsees and Christians. They have embraced all good aspects of the West but retained their rich cultures and are proud of it.
In most cases where the terrorist acts have been foiled, the heroes have been the ordinary policemen or security personnel even as they are inadequately armed and ill equipped. They are the ones who have delivered whether it was the Parliament attack on December 12, 2001, the Red Fort strike, the attack on Ram Janam Bhumi and the RSS Headquarters in Nagpur. The real hero of 26/11 was Sub-inspector Tuka Ram Omble who gave his life for capturing Kasab.
Our best bet against terrorism is an efficient well equipped police force. It is our local policemen or the beat or the traffic constable who has his head to the ground who will supply us with the low level immediate intelligence which can lead to big breakthroughs. On the minus side he is presently corrupt, lacks motivation and is involved with the shady elements in the society and there is lot of political interference. Even with these negatives he mostly delivers. Imagine how much more is the potential if we could improve his salary and living conditions, make him physically fitter and armed with the best weapons. We definitely need more Muslims in the police.
Excerpt taken from Pakistan our Difficult Neighbour And Islamic Dimensions, published by Vij Books