India and Pakistan, having fought four wars in the last century and return from the precipice thrice in this, are aggressively poised again.
It is impossible, even futile, to judge who started it, how, why and when. But it is easy to see this as a never-ending fight between two distrustful and frequently violent neighbours. The Kashmir dispute is the cause — or is it just a ruse?
Take the immediate impact of the current round without trying to fix blame. It began after Indian forces killed Burhan Wani, a militant of the United Nations-proscribed Hizbul Mujahideen and the street protests that it triggered.
A terror attack on an Indian army camp killing 18 soldiers exacerbated it.
Indian television channel Zindagi, meaning life, is to exclude Pakistani television soaps, its unique sales proposition after over two years’ successful run.
“There’s no question” of playing cricket with Pakistan, say Indian cricket officials. Bollywood, home to many Pakistani artistes, is pressured to expel them — or else. In a perfect tit-for-tat, some Pakistanis want to send Bollywood films packing.
Lawmaker Rajeev Chandra-shekhar has proposed a bill declaring Pakistan “a terrorist state”, a widely held Indian perception that Prime Minister Narendra Modi reiterated last week.
The 1960 Indus Water Treaty is the only pact between India and Pakistan that has worked. Now, both sides say it is biased and want it altered.
Amidst exchange of words and bullets, the fate of divided families of the subcontinent, traders and the unlettered fishermen on the Arabian Sea who unwittingly stray into each other’s waters, is not difficult to guess.
Pakistanis are no less schizo-phrenic. When temperature rises with India, all pacifists, including Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who hosted Modi last Christmas, have to put on the warpaint for political survival.
Sharif made frenetic calls to the United States and Britain to “intervene” against India’s “human rights violations” in the Kashmir Valley. He was advised to talk to India.
New Delhi’s first-ever counter charge that Islamabad is doing just that in Balochistan province raised the temperatures higher.
Pakistan banks on Chinese support. But Beijing, too, has counselled talks. The Chinese quest for access to the Indian Ocean and its investments, spread over the region, will stand threatened if another war is unleashed.
Pakistani analyst Ayesha Siddiqua writes: “If Pakistan’s intent is to raise the Kashmir issue at international forums and fight the battle diplomatically, it stands little chance as major powers are not convinced that Pakistan is nothing but a hapless victim of terror.”
Alluding to Pakistan’s obsession with Kashmir and the “romance” of its establishment with China, echoed by Army Chief General Raheel Sharif, Siddiqua cites a popular tweet: “The old equation of the army, America and Allah determining life in Pakistan is now replaced with a new one — China, COAS (Chief of Army Staff) and Cashmere.”
Another Pakistani analyst Khaled Ahmed writes: The truth is India’s Narendra Modi is better placed to understand “enemy” China than the Pakistan Army is to understand its “all-weather friend” in the north.
Saner elements in Pakistan concede that global sympathy is with India. Celebrated journalist Najam Sethi writes in his editorial in The Friday Times: “regardless of what Pakistan says, the world is convinced of ‘a Pakistani hand’ in the Uri attack, as in 2001 and 2008.”
See the impact on the region. After verbal clashes at the UN General Assembly, among the harshest since they gained independence and immediately began fighting each other, Modi will likely boycott the South Asian regional summit in November. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, all of whom have problems with Pakistan, the host, may also skip it.
Now see the Indian response. Undoubtedly, Modi is under tremendous pressure, even from his ministers and the party, to give a muscular response to Pakistan. Main opposition Congress has lampooned him for failing to make good his past rhetorical promises.
Many want him to call Pakistan’s “nuclear bluff” by launching “surgical strikes” or “limited action” of attacking the militants’ camps across the border. Blockading Pakistan on the high sea is another suggestion.
“Failing to respond this time would encourage Pakistan… tell the world we have no choice but to take strong military action,” said retired General V.P. Malik, who led the Indian Army in the last conflict with Pakistan in 1999.
Indian analyst Raja Mohun points to the unsavoury: “The real problems for Modi’s strategy of escalation are not external, but internal. The continuing turbulence in Kashmir and domestic constituencies demanding extreme measures could easily derail the PM’s calculation of risk and reward in the confrontation with Pakistan.
“Bringing a measure of calm and renewing political processes in Srinagar to blunt Pakistan’s political leverages in Kashmir is critical for the PM. So is the need to lead and shape the domestic debate on Pakistan rather than be hustled by it into actions that it does not want to take.”
Analysts warn that Modi curbs Hindu chauvinism. Any targeting of the minorities at this juncture could lead to sectarian violence that would prove all critics — and terrorists — right.
Highly circumspect now that he is the prime minister, Modi said India will “never forget” the latest terror attack and that the country would “respond at an opportune time.”
For now, he said, it would be a diplomatic war to “isolate” Pakistan. His “next war” would be to fight poverty and illiteracy.
The party of “Hindu nationalists” that always wants to “teach Pakistan a lesson” would have reasons to be unhappy. Given geopolitical compulsions, Modi seems no different from the predecessors he has criticised. In that sense, for the first time, his personality has come to be questioned.
As it struggles to calm down, a deep perception lingers that India is, yet again, giving in.
It may be appreciated only later that not retaliating militarily means not playing into the hands of Pakistan’s terrorists at one end and the military at the other, both of whom are seen at perennially at war with India.
Mahendra Ved, is NST’s New Delhi correspondent. He is president of the Commonwealth Journalists Association and a consultant with Power Politics monthly magazine