The most daunting crisis facing India at present is the unrest in Kashmir. Over a month and a half violent jihadi agitation in the Valley has brought normal life to a standstill. Jihadi voices in the media have made accusations against the Indian state and its law enforcing agencies that would make the shade of Hitler’s propaganda chief Josef Goebbels squirm. Rapes, murders, abductions, disappearances and more have been published on edit or op-ed pages to catch the public eye.
Mainstream politicians, media gurus, invited Pakistani voices on Indian TV nightly programmes , mouth the same rancid platitudes ad nauseam without a glimmer of light on the principal issue at stake. Mirwaz and Geelani, two of the senior-most Hurriyat figures issued a frank and forthright statement in the Hindu newspaper, demandeing that Prime Minister Narendra Modi should look beyond the Indian Constitution for a solution to the Kashmir imbroglio. This, they averred, would entail tripartite talks between India, Pakistan and the Kashmiri Hurriyat movement. They set out the proposal to disabuse the Indian public that the agitation is about jobs, education, computers in schools and more welfare projects in the State.
These to them are irrelevant, utterly abject and beneath contempt. Nothing less than Kashmir’s secession will suffice. If the late 1980s or early 1990s are anything to go by the expulsion of what remains of the Hindu Pandit population will follow in the general scheme of things. The Pandits are Kashmiri in every bone and fibre: Kashmir is also their ancestral homeland, as much as it is to the Muslim community. In the period alluded to above, the Valley was cleansed of its Hindu minority who as internally displaced people sought refuge in camps scattered across Jammu and the environs of Delhi.
Which brings us to two further points: Is the Hurriyat laying claim to Hindu-populated Jammu and Buddhist populated Ladakh, since the State of Kashmir constitutionally includes all three units under a single administrative authority? So, when India’s Home Secretary Rajnath Singh and Prime Minister Modi hold a dialogue – the eternal buzzword – will they be discussing the liquidation of the Indian state itself? Because secession and its likely consequences are what the Hurriyat leadership is prepared to discuss; all other issues being off the table.
Indian politicians have much to gain by being robustly honest with the Indian people. Cease the twaddle on dialogue on jobs and welfare and the rest because they are not worth the candle. Pakistan recently took Kashmir to the United Nations in the hope of witnessing India’s crucifixion. Nothing happened. America and Britain who, not too far in the past, were only too ready to accommodate Pakistan’s wishes on the subject, kept studiously aloof: nobody, but nobody, except a gaggle jihadi sympathizers in the Gulf, would put their imprimatur on the Pakistani resolution because no-one was prepared to underwrite the birth of an Islamic state and risk a cycle of regional and international instability. This is the bottom line, the true message the UN conveyed through its silence.
India must accept that it is in what amounts to an undeclared war by Pakistan. It will require a long haul to respond effectively to the challenge. For all its bluster, the innards of Pakistan are tubercular, afflicted by the delusional mirage of an Islamic Caliphate in the Subcontinent built on the ruins of ‘Hindu’ India. Christine Fair, a distinguished American academic has understood this and explains the psychosis with admirable clarity in herbook, ‘The Pakistan Army’s Way of War.’ It should be read with due diligence and its contents absorbed. There are no short cuts to a satisfactory solution in Kashmir. Bite the bullet and survive. Avoid the truth and perish.
Better coordination on the way
Prime Minister Modi has taken an important step forward in facing the mounting challenges on India’s Chinese and Pakistani fronts. The two powers are bonded in an all-weather relationship pivoted around an adversarial relationship with India. Pakistan’s ties with America frayed at the edges because, says Husain Haqqani, Islamabad’s former ambassador to the United States, Pakistan held unrealistic expectation that Washington would partner its ally to the last mile in its jihadi adventures against India. At that point national interests diverged.
Such considerations do not apply to the Sino-Pakistan strategic alignment. Pakistan is useful to China, which apparently perceives it as its regional ‘Israel’, according to a top general in China’s People’s Liberation Army (Ref: Andrew Small, ‘The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia’s New Geopolitics). It is surely the latest variant of Kipling’s Great Game, with the rider that the 21 st century, with its nuclear weapons and lethal conventional armaments, is infinitely more dangerous than the contest in the 19 th century.
PM Modi has initiated two significant measures as part of India’s ongoing response. His first is the reorganization of his close team of advisers, with the aim of making it leaner, meaner and sharper. His National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval, will henceforth have within his remit intelligence, his area of expertise as a former Intelligence Bureau chief; diplomacy will be the exclusive domain of Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar, a former ambassador to Japan and China, with a wealth of diplomatic experience behind him. The earlier overlap in their responsibilities has been removed in the interests of smoother functioning, coordination and policy implementation.
To this has been added the roving assignment to M.J. Akbar, the newly appointed Minister of State with responsibility for the Middle East. Mr Akbar has a keen intellect and a deft feel for the job. He has done the rounds in the Gulf and set down markers there. The more challenging area is the Levant, whose peace has long been destroyed by sectarian conflicts and great power meddling, principally by the west. Mr Akbar touched down in Damascus for wide- ranging talks with President Bashar-al Assad and senior Syrian leaders and officials, reinforcing Indo-Syrian ties, most significantly in the field of intelligence, where Syria’s unrivalled knowledge of Islamic State activities and plans for expansion into India and Indonesia can help India stay ahead of the game.
With the failed coup in Turkey leading to a Turkish-Russian rapprochement and President Putin hosting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Moscow with Egypt’s warm blessing, the international chessboard has a new and challenging look. President Sisi of Egypt will shortly be making a state visit to India; a new alignment is in bud to confront jihadi terrorism, of which Pakistan is the principal hub. The times are a-changing and India is gearing up to counter existential threats and challenges with renewed confidence and vigour.
The Obama administration is a bystander, having goofed up its policies in the region and beyond. The US President’s domestic and international standing are none too high, as he gets ready to leave the White House.
Women cops rescue minors, bust sex traffickers
Haryana is peopled by a go-getting and dynamic Jat community. No-one who has witnessed their sturdy enterprise can doubt their talents and capabilities. As with most transitional societies there is a dark side too that in recent years has come to the fore. The treatment of young women and girls in much of its rural hinterland and also in urban pockets keep yielding gruesome stories of domestic violence, rapes and murders, plus the abortions of unborn females. Finally, there is the trafficking of young girls for sex or forcible marriage. Police in Howrah, a suburb of Kolkata, arrested a suspect named Mehfizza in early August, who informed her interrogators of the sale of a 15 year-old juvenile to a man from Haryana. Two women police women, Sub-Inspector Piyali Ghosh and Constable Madhumita Das, accompanied by two male constables, set out for Haryana to track down the man and his accomplices. They succeeded in doing so in a remote village, but were confronted by a violent mob and had to run across fields for their lives. They radioed for help and a Haryana police unit arrived and fired in the air to disperse the mob. The brave police women rescued three minors from Bengal and arrested nine traffickers. Back in Howrah, the police party said they were happy to have done their duty. They were warmly appreciative of the help the local force constantly receive from an anti-trafficking NGO, Shakti Vahini. All’s well that ends well - at least for now.
