India Retold

The surprise is not that the Chinese have done what they have but that, despite ample evidence available in the public domain, we have again been caught napping.

Reports that 11,000 Chinese troops have been deployed in Pakistan-controlled Gilgit-Baltistan area of Kashmir, and the denying of visa by China to the Northern Army Commander who commands troops operating in the state, are not disconnected developments. On the contrary, they are evidently calibrated overt steps that China is beginning to take in furtherance of its overall strategy of projecting its power and protecting its interests in an expanding area of influence.

We should have seen this and more coming, if not earlier, at least when China completed the strategic railway link to Lhasa. With the link enabling quick deployment and maintenance of a large number of troops against India, China has shown increasing aggressiveness about its claims on Arunachal Pradesh and is now revealing its hugely ambitious plans to tap the enormous hydro-electric potential of the Brahmaputra, particularly at the Great Bend before it enters India.

Of greater significance -- and worry for India -- is the 435-mile railway line that China plans to build to Pakistan through Gilgit-Baltistan. That will give China direct access to the Arabian Sea. In Myanmar, a similar railway line and a massive oil and gas pipeline will give China access to the Bay of Bengal. Unlike India, China does not make such huge investments to win friends and then depend on their goodwill. It does so to promote and protect its growing economic interests on its own strength and, increasingly, project its military power in an ever widening arc.

After humiliating India in 1962, China, in utter disregard to India's sensitivities, made Pakistan cede to it the 5800 square kilometer Chaksgam tract in return for support to check and contain India. Now that it is readying to exploit a portion of J&K occupied by Pakistan in pursuit of strategic objectives that are beyond the famous 'string of pearls' around India, it is only logical that it will treat the part with Pakistan as integral to it, and by extension, the part held by India as under dispute.

This is a price any smart nation will willingly pay to a host nation, particularly when the country being adversely affected is a potential adversary, and a toothless one at that. That's probably why, as B Raman tells us, China suddenly started issuing stapled visas to residents of Indian J&K but not to those of POK. The writing should have been seen on the wall then and steps initiated to develop a long-term political and military counter-strategy. Unfortunately, the import of development was, like always, ignored and the matter forgotten after the Foreign Office made a few feeble noises and closed the file, as it were, to be surprised yet again.

PK Singh is of the view that these developments, seen in the light of how China has been hardening its stance towards India in the recent past, indicate that it "is in no mood to accommodate a rising India." R Hariharan believes that the distinct shift in China's policy on J&K has also something to do with the trouble being created by Uighurs in its Xinjiang province and the increased Taliban threat after the Americans leave Afghanistan. Raghavan, pained by China "throwing overboard the heritage of noble tenets and and traditions honed over 5000 years," believes like a true, pacifist Indian that China is doing "greatest harm to itself", while recognising that India's mild but pained response will be "totally lost on the powers-that-be in Bejing."

Former Chief of India's RAW, Vikram Sood, underlines the historical and future importance of Gilgit-Baltistan for China and, after a fine analysis, comes to the the disturbing conclusion that "China is making its presence felt in the sub continent as the next power to reckon with." It goes without saying that if China is 'entering' the sub-continent proper, it is with a definite 'India Plan' in mind. It is also only logical that Pakistan's generals will not host it as a welcome guest and friend in their territory in the manner that they are doing, unless they can extract from it something of great import to them in their ongoing war with India.

Sood is of the opinion that Chinese troops are in Gilgit-Baltistan because Pakistan has sought their support to contain simmering revolt in the area. I find that hard to believe. Which self-respecting nation will invite foreign troops only to quell minor internal rebellion, and that too in an isolated, sparsely populated area in such difficult terrain? To my mind, if Pakistan has already 'given' the area to China by permitting it to deploy as many as 11,000 troops to start with, this cannot be the real reason.

Since Gilgit-Baltistan is going to become the critical funnel through which strategic rail, road and possibly oil and gas links to China will pass in future, it is more in China's interest than Pakistan's to ensure that the area is protected from internal and external attacks. If a hot war breaks out between India and Pakistan in future, India's first strategic objective will probably be to capture at least part of Gilgit-Baltistan so that the bridge between Pakistan and China is broken. If Chinese troops are deployed there, no matter under what pretext, India will think a hundred times before taking them on out of fear of it escalating into a war against China too, with predictable results considering the our limited military power. In fact, China may not even need such a pretext to launch an offensive from Gilgit-Baltistan to do a much worse 'Kargil'.

What this means is that Pakistan has, in one deft stroke, completely secured Gilgit-Baltistan without committing a single additional soldier or gun. This will give its ambitious and aggressive generals that many more military options, China looming large as a directly involved party to keep India pinned down, to wrest at least a part of Kashmir and then get India to make humiliating concessions on the negotiating table.

Some sort of a deal on these lines may well have already been worked out by Pakistan and China. A country of India's size and potential cannot give to any nation the kind of concession and facilities Pakistan has given, is giving and will give to China in pursuit of national security objectives laid down by its military. India and the US may be cosying up. But let us not be under any illusion, like only weaklings are, that the latter will come to India's direct aid if a war does break out.

Kiyani said something very important a few months back. While acknowledging that the threat from India had receded somewhat, he said what interested him was India's military capacity, not its intention. Capacity take decades to build; intention can change overnight once you have the capacity.

China has already built sufficient capacity to walk into India again when it want to. Pakistan has built enough capacity to deter India from fighting a hot war even as it wages an asymmetric one against it. The two together are now creating a combined capacity of a different order altogether.
If we still let things drift, what is a headache now will become nightmare.
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India seems to have forgotten that when radicals bent upon converting Jammu and Kashmir into an Islamic state forced seven lakh Pandits out of the Kashmir Valley in 1989-90, they had let Sikhs stay on.

They did so not out of any love for secularism or the Sikhs. Then militancy in Punjab was alive and Pakistan was actively supporting, funding and arming some Khalistani groups. Had Sikhs been driven out then, Pakistan's veneer of false friendship would have been exposed, irreparably damaging its plan to continue to do in Punjab what it was and is in Kashmir. So, strict orders were given to jihadis and Kashmiris to fake common cause against India with Sikhs and not harass them in any manner. That is how the Sikhs -- many with significant land holdings -- who were planning to leave too, stayed on.

Even though they have lain low for two decades and not done or said anything to provoke Kashmiri Muslims, things have got worse for them. As Jagmohan Singh Raina said during a discussion on TimesNow last night, as the situation got progressively hostile, they had to leave their villages -- and farms and orchards -- and move to the safety of the towns within the Valley.

But now, the inevitable moment that was postponed two decades back, is staring them in the face. Sikhs too are being asked to either embrace Islam or leave the Valley. How serious the radical Islamist threat is can be gauged from the manner in which a deeply disturbed and scared Jagmohan Raina voiced the deep fears of his community during the discussion on TimesNow. When a man is forced, among other things, to say that Pandits left the Valley in 1989-90 on their own, and that no one forced them to, it means that he knows that if he utters the bitter truth, whatever little hope he still has of staying on in his land will not only be crushed but he will probably land up with a bullet in his head.

20 years back, India watched helplessly as Pandits were thrown out and made refugees in their own country. Then, helped by a media in unbelievable denial about the nature and seriousness of the problem that Pakistan had successfully managed to create in the Valley, India forgot about them because it did not want to face the reality that it could not create conditions for them to return; it was Partition re-done. The acknowledgement of this harsh truth represented such a fundamental failure of the state that the only way out was to pretend as if it either never happened or that Kashmiri Muslims were not to blame for it, that they genuinely believed in Kashmiriyat and did not want India to 'communalise' the 'Kashmir issue' that is founded and grounded in the Hindu-Muslim communal divide that created Pakistan.

Has anything changed? Does the India of today have the capacity and the will that it did not have two decades back to ensure the safety of 60,000 Sikhs living in the Valley? Of course it does not. If anything, criminal inertia to move even a little finger to uproot the problem from its source, Pakistan, has only eroded both, and significantly. So when the Home Minister says that "nobody will be allowed to harm the Sikhs" even he knows that he is lying, that he is helpless, that his government, out of fear of antagonising the increasingly aggressive Muslims of the Valley, will be a helpless spectator once again when, not if, the threats are turned real by the killing of a few Sikhs.

Punjab Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal has warned of "strong reaction" in case any harm comes to Sikhs in the Valley. There is not a great deal that a Chief Minister can do. But he has stated the plain truth that India refuses to face: unless those issuing the threats and the ones behind them are made to pay a price they cannot afford, they will drive all kafirs out of the Valley.

Perhaps his warning combined with the coverage given by a section of the media that is not entrapped in crippling secular constructs floating on bookish rainbows will have the desired effect for now. But, make no mistake: the reprieve will only be temporary. The tactics will change; the threats will become more subtle, the pressure more intense. And eventually, if things continue to drift as they are, they too will have to leave. The 'cleansing' of Islamic Kashmir will be completed.

Sometimes it is difficult to believe that threats to embrace Islam or leave have been and are being made and executed not in a talibanised Pakistan but in a area that India says is its own. We have gone horribly wrong somewhere. Worse, we have learnt no lessons. What will it take to knock us out of this state of denial and self-deception?
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A disease can only be cured if it is diagnosed correctly. We all know that. The odd diagnostic error does take place despite the best available tools but never when the same symptoms keep recurring through the life of an individual. Their should be no exception to this rule. But there is one, albeit in different type of body, and it beats understanding and defies logic. Never in the history of the world has there been a continuum of errors in diagnosing an ailment like this. They first led to an imperfect and incomplete amputation of a substantial part of India's body and later to vicious attacks, still continuing, on the still-healthy main body.

I sometimes wonder whether it is worth the while repeating what I have been saying for long, over and over again. The effort, beyond a point, drains me as very little creative energy is needed to dig out old stuff, spruce it up and pass it off as new. For some of us who pick up a pen to pour out something that energises us from within, repetitiveness becomes a burdensome chore. But, there are some issues which keep hitting you in the face again and again without any loss of force, that refuse to go away or get stale. In fact, the impact actually gets magnified, as does the frustration and dismay, because what seems to be as clear as the proverbial day light to you and many others, inexplicably remains invisible to or unaddressed by the powerful few, not because they cannot see it but because they, in most cases, choose to keep their eyes wide shut.

Kashmir, the fish bone that Nehru mindlessly left in India's throat, is still stuck there, 63 years after he committed his first Himalayan Blunder. And it is stuck there only because at a very fundamental level, we refuse to admit that it is there and why. Despite all that has happened and is happening, we want to keep fooling ourselves into believing that the increasing pain that we are feeling is only temporary and will go away on its own if we keep feeding soothing lozenges to the bone. Over time, goes the asinine argument of the coward couched in comfort in India's capital, it will become part of our body and even strengthen it. But it hasn't and it won't.

Every time there is an upsurge of violence in the tiny Valley of Kashmir by ethnic Kashmiri Muslims, those who frame and influence India's policy masochistically bring it centre stage and engage in astonishing denial and self-flagellation. And come up with outlandish suggestions which they know have never worked and are not going to ever. 64 years of bribing Kashmiris at the expense of other, hard working, non-complaining Indians has only helped the problem and the riches of corrupt Kashmiri politicians and officials bulge. Yet some of us who should know better can do no better than continuing to suggest an increase in what is a glorified 'hafta'. Some others talk loosely of a political settlement, of giving 'genuine' autonomy, whatever that means -- and it means little considering how little the writ of the state already runs in a fully Islamised and purged-of-Hindus Valley. Now even that little it is under threat -- Syed Shah Gilani has decreed that Friday, not Sunday will be observed as holiday in Islamic Kashmir -- but everyone wants to pretend otherwise, even though they can see that his word is law, that he, as MJ Akbar says, is in power while Chief Minister Omar Abdullah is in government.

When Rahul Gandhi compelled Farooq Abdullah to abdicate in favour of his son Omar after the elections in 2008, India's national media was euphoric. More than the youth factor that had been exciting them only because Rahul Gandhi was young, it was the PLU connection that set their pulses racing. The beginning of a new dawn, they all proclaimed excitedly, thrilled that India was finally passing into the hands of photogenic, English-speaking, TV studio-friendly, feudalistic politicians who were on their social wavelength.

No one then bothered about the irritating detail that there was no enthusiasm at all where it mattered; the ground had shifted so much in 20 years of terrorism that Omar was actually irrelevant where he should have been relevant. No one thought that it was of any importance that Omar could barely speak Kashmiri and was considered an outsider by the people in the Valley. Also overlooked was the fact that thanks to the Pakistan-injected radicalism and jihad, the Abdullah family had come to be hated by many in the Valley as being stooges of India, that even Sheikh Abdullah's grave was being protected by India's security forces. Omar sounded good on TV and was a good friend of some Delhi journalists. He in a sense represented their victory and for them that was all the qualification that was needed to be a great CM in any state in India.

No wonder they have all been taken by surprise by the magnitude of the latest violence; the myth lies shattered once again. The stones thrown by protestors shouting 'azadi' have hit Omar and India hard. This unexpected development has jolted everyone who was equating tourist arrivals -- a vital economic activity for the Valley -- with peace and was lauding India's 'nuanced' handling -- read criminal inertia -- of the Kashmir issue, and Omar's connect with the youth of the Valley.

But, as always, at the end of yet another boil, nothing has changed. We are back to playing the same games that we have been for years and that have led to this mess. The PM has made an emotional speech that he very well knows will have no takers; there have been the usual, stereotyped discussions in TV studios from which nothing new has emerged because no one wants to confront the problem at the root, even though nearly every single Kashmiri who appears on TV says that it is not autonomy and development that they want but 'azadi'. Knowing fully well that is not an option available through plebiscite under which they can choose either India or Pakistan, everyone knows that azadi from India equals merger with Pakistan. In fact that is precisely what Gilani, the man who is the de facto ruler of the Valley, the one who has once again asked Kashmiris to cheer Pakistan's Independence Day, has been saying openly for decades.

Yet, when the Mirwaiz tells Prannoy Roy that Musharraf's dangerous plan on Kashmir was only an interim one and not the final solution to the issue of self-determination, the latter is surprised and says that Musharraf had told him that it was final. Evidently, even that sell-out deal that nearly went through and its implications have not been given the attention that they deserve, and Musharraf's word, Kargil notwithstanding, has been swallowed with naïve PLU trust. Similarly, when asked about Jammu and Ladakh which are ethnically completely different, even though Lone dismisses the stake of the Ladakhis by saying the population is small and that of the Jammuites by saying 'they', read Hindus, can take two-two and a half districts, and when every leader says that no resolution is possible without involving Pakistan, the likes of Barkha Dutt who are abnormally sympathetic to separatists refuse to budge from the disingenuous liberal line that the problem is political, not religious.

A few sane and informed voices like MJ Akbar and General Shankar Roychowdhuri who have voiced the plain truth that the anger and agitation in the Valley has been precisely orchestrated by a Pakistan which, among other things, wants to take revenge for Bangladesh and which will not let the problem be solved ever except on its terms, have been conveniently drowned out once again. Listening to them means abandoning the disastrous template of inaction that India has been sticking to and adopting a radically different, result-oriented one. That no one is prepared to do.

That is why a pacifist, economist Prime Minister is led to admit almost helplessly that India has no choice but to talk to Pakistan. That is why we keep seeing the sorry spectacle of Pakistan continuing to brazenly prosecute its proxy war and humiliate India at the same time. That is why the Foreign Secretary has to make the dumb declaration, much to Pakistan's joy, that talks are the "most intelligent means" to stop cross-border terror. Surely we must be the only people on the planet who believe that eloquence can defeat the power that grows from the barrel of a gun.

India simply has no Plan B, much less a Plan C or D, to get Pakistan to stop terror in Kashmir and elsewhere. The elementary realisation has not sunk in that unless the cost to Pakistan for waging a proxy war is raised substantially, it will never stop it. Why should it cease fighting a cheap war that is eroding the will of a hapless Indian government that believes that "doing nothing" equals being "most intelligent"? That this is the sorry state after two decades is a humiliation that only India can live with. And still nurse dreams of becoming a super power.

Pakistan's generals and jihadi masterminds in Pakistan are counting the number of those killed in police firing with glee even as India's rulers and opinion makers are feeling sorry and guilty, and rightly, for the loss of precious lives. Once again, the actions and reactions have blown over. But there is no one in any doubt that this is just another lull and that another gale will hit, at an unexpected time and with unexpected fury, and the whole dreary drama will be repeated.

Semantics apart, let us be clear that no solution, even interim, is possible between the now almost totally radicalised Kashmiri Muslim led by Gilani, and India without involving and conceding substantial ground to Pakistan. Going back to the 1953 position of near total autonomy, even if it were possible, is not going to settle the matter; that was a problem even then, as was Pakistan a player, much smaller than it has been thoughtlessly allowed to become now. There is no way that any government in Delhi can get away by making even the slightest of concessions because that will be viewed by Pakistanis as the victory of jihad and the defeat of "Hindu" India, and will lead to impossible demands and much greater violence.

Where does that leave us? Back to where we started. This is a recipe for disaster. The longer the drift, the better it is for Pakistan because it will push India more and more into a corner as the anger and violence and dead count rise, thanks primarily to Pakistan's relentless efforts. What better way for Pakistan to fight its war than by letting a few Pakistani jihadis and ordinary Kashmiris loose against India?

Kashmiris are mere pawns and their leaders are puppets on a Pakistani string. India is fighting the wrong people. The findings of the Chatham House survey on Kashmir substantiate this view. If they are correct then, as I had written earlier, for India it is very good news.

As per the survey, virtually no ethnic Kashmiri Muslim wants to join Pakistan. That is an extremely significant finding because it shows that having seen the way India and Pakistan have shaped up since Partition, Kashmiris realise that being swallowed in and by Pakistan is a far worse proposition than what they have experienced with and as part of India, despite decades of violence sparked and sustained by Pakistan. Most want Independence. So, when Kashmiri separatist leaders, except those for who believe Pakistan is the natural home of Kashmiris, say that talks with India should start with azadi -- secession -- and then worked backwards, the unspoken sub-text is that they want India to not only give them near total Independence but also thereafter become its guarantor!

Thus, at one level, they have a common cause with India against Pakistan. Or at least they want to leverage India's power to protect their Independence from a nation that they see going rapidly down a slippery slope. Paradoxically, if Pakistan is actually weakened to the extent that it can no longer wage a proxy war, the bargaining power of Kashmiri leaders will get substantially eroded and their demands will become realistic.

That again brings us back to the original position that no lasting solution acceptable to India is possible till Pakistan's ability to torpedo it is not totally eroded. Therefore, as long as we do not address this core issue, we will remain stuck in the vortex that we are in and will keep getting sucked deeper and deeper till something gives.

The war over and in Kashmir, as I have said earlier too, is, for Pakistan, the beginning, not the end, a pit stop, not the finish line. India is fighting the Fourth Battle of Panipat there. Loss is not an option; victory is vital. The sooner we understand that, the better. Talks with Pakistan will be the most intelligent option after that, not before.

The Pew Global Attitudes Project report about Pakistan is the latest in a string of quick and unexpected developments that have confirmed what was widely known about Pakistan's tryst with terror and its denial about its duplicity. In fact, if the findings of Pew are accurate, then what they reveal is even more dangerous than what Wikileaks and Headley have.

But before we get to the Pew report, a quick recapitulation of developments during the last couple of years will be useful.

Despite 26/11 and the subsequent efforts of the Pakistani establishment to brazenly protect those involved in carrying out the attack, many of India's numerous Pakistan experts and leading journalists have been telling India that it is in India's best interest to continue to talk to Pakistan and also give it concessions so that the democratic government there can be strengthened. If we fail to do that and don't trust its civilian leaders, so has been the warning, that nation could be overrun by the Talibanis who will then flood into India and create mayhem.

This line of argument has, unfortunately, for long conveniently glossed over the fact that jihadi extremists, no matter which group they belong to, have not emerged on their own; they are also not thriving -- at least those who have not turned against the state -- despite an establishment that is against them: the military that effectively rules Pakistan actually treats them as their frontline troops. It has also ignored the fact that the radicalisation of Pakistan is a direct consequence of an obsessed-with-India establishment deliberately promoting a radical version of Islam, violent extremism and hatred for "Hindu" India, not just through Saudi-funded Wahhabi Madrassas but also through education being imparted in regular schools. One reason for pursuing this path is that, as Thomas Friedman says pithily, Pakistan "exists not to be India".

The Pew report confirms that the results of this assiduously pursued ideological transformation of the society have been spectacularly and, for India and possibly the rest of the civilised world, disturbingly successful. And almost irreversible.

At the time of Partition, both India and Pakistan inherited secular laws that the British had laid down. Pakistan, like India, still follows the same criminal justice system. But, thanks to decades of efforts put in by the state, most Pakistanis now want the same medieval laws that the Talibanis have imposed in areas under their influence to be implemented in the whole country: "Pakistanis overwhelmingly support making segregation of men and women in the workplace the law in their country (85%), and comparable percentages favor instituting harsh punishments such as stoning people who commit adultery (82%), whippings and cutting off of hands for crimes like theft and robbery (82%), and the death penalty for those who leave the Muslim religion (76%). Support for gender segregation and for severe punishments is pervasive across all demographic and regional groups." This finding is corroborated by the finding that "Pakistani Muslims overwhelmingly welcome Islamic influence over their country’s politics. Nearly nine-in-ten (88%) of those who see Islam playing a large role say that is a good thing. Similarly, 79% of those who say Islam’s role is small say that is a bad thing for their country. This pattern is true across all demographic groups."

The other significant finding, as far as India is concerned, is that although half or more Pakistanis hold and 'unfavourable' view of various militant groups like the Al Qaida, Afghan Taliban and the Pakistan Taliban, the picture with regard to the anti-India LeT is quite different. It enjoys the highest 'favourable' rating of 25%, the lowest 'unfavourable' rating of 35% and, most importantly, the highest 'Don't Know', 40%. More importantly, in Punjab, the state that defines Pakistan, with 40% of its population and 90% of its military, the LeT gets its most positive ratings with an equal number, 34%, expressing a positive and negative view. Seen in conjunction with the startling finding that only 8% of Pakistani Muslims consider suicide bombing justifiable, possibly because Pakistan has recently been hit by such attacks, it can be said that favourable views about terror outfits, particularly the LeT, would have been much higher but for the overwhelming opposition to such attacks. This deduction is further strengthened by the the finding that against a national average of 71%, 95% Punjabis and 91% Mohajirs consider Kashmir a very big problem. Kashmir, let there be no doubt any longer, does "flow in the blood" of the Pakistanis who really matter.

As everyone knows in Pakistan, the LeT is the military's sword arm as far as India is concerned, and not just with regard to Kashmir. Pakistanis have also seen decades of military rule and are experiencing one now behind a civilian façade. Liberal wisdom, often elitist, tells us that people love democracy and hate dictators because of the oppressive restrictions they place on their freedom etc; India rejected the Emergency, did it not? Do Pakistanis confirm that view? The surprising answer is, no. 84% of them, in fact, have positive views about their military; not just that, they think it is better than all other institutions of the state. Compare this to only 25% who think well of the national government and the multi-dimensional significance of this result will hit you in the face.

That the Pakistanis trust their military much more than they do their politicians is not surprising considering that shorn of the cloak of religion, the sub-continental dna is the same. But what should be a cause of some concern to India is that this means that there is serious public support for the hawkish anti-India policy that the military has adopted almost right from the time Pakistan was born, and that the radicalisation of society has now reached a critical mass, possibly close to a tipping point. Add to this the finding that they view India as Pakistan's biggest threat and Kashmir as its biggest problem, and you cannot, no matter how hard you try, escape the dreadful deduction that there is no way that Pakistan is either going to back off on Kashmir or wind up the LeT and other terror outfits employed by it to wage war against India.

Our analysts, journalists and spooks have, evidently, been talking to the wrong people, lapping up the wrong answers and pushing India's leaders on the wrong path.

An Arvind Adiga is not asked his religion, not nationality, on landing in Pakistan accidentally. The coffin of a Hindu member of Pakistan's Youth Parliament killed in an air crash near Pakistan's capital is not marked "Kafir" absent-mindedly. The moderate Pakistani that we have been led to believe represents the silent majority in Pakistan is heading the dodo's way. Charmed by hugs and smiles and song and drama, some of us continue to believe that all is well in mainstream Pakistan, that Karachi is just like Mumbai, that we are the same people. Concerned about the rise of terror groups, we innocently even warn Pakistan that it faces a grave danger from these elements and that unless they are reined in and de-fanged, they will run over and ruin the country.

There is no chance of Pakistan being run over by a few thousand men, most under tight control of the ISI, and armed with light weapons. A half-million men army that has not hesitated to employ maximum force, including artillery and air power, against it own people that it considers armed and dangerous, is not going to be run over like this. But, sooner rather than later, it will be run over by -- compelled to adopt if you like -- the very anti-change and regressive ideology it has employed to define Pakistan's identity as well as motivate its people to become jihadis.

When 80% of a country's citizens want a change that its leaders have themselves been encouraging, its time can be said to have come. That is real message that is coming out of the Pew report, one that should wake India's leaders up.

Will Pakistan collapse when that happens? Of course it will not. It will travel back in time along many dimensions. But it will not go under. At least not immediately.

What happens within Pakistan should normally not be of any concern to any country. But, as developments over the last few decades have shown, if the whole country is clothed in the colours that now only adorn militants, the terror threat to India will increase manifold. Worse, it is likely to spur some Indian Muslims to follow the same path, considering the fact that Pakistanis themselves draw ideological sustenance from the Deoband seminary. One has only to read the resolution adopted last year by the Jamaat Ulama-I-Hind to get an idea of the direction that Muslim religious and political leaders are giving to India's Muslims. The banning of co-education in Madrassas in UP, the cutting off of the hand of a Kerala professor and the hounding of a lady professor in West Bengal for refusing to wear a burqa while teaching are pointers to the dangerous growth of intolerance, fundamentalism an isolationism in India's secular society.

Tavleen Singh, one of the few Indian journalists who has the courage to say what needs to be, is on the dot with her warning: "Of all the fanatical religious movements that have come and gone in this country, there is not the faintest shadow of a doubt that the Jihad is the most dangerous. If jihadi organisations are allowed to spread their poisonous propaganda...it is only a matter of time before the situation becomes as uncontrollable as it has in Pakistan...turn India into a breeding ground for the Taliban. We cannot allow the jihad in India because its ideology is the antithesis of the idea of India."

A strong and extremist Pakistan cannot be in India's interest. Whichever angle one may look at it from. That such a Pakistan will self-destruct, as Fatima Bhutto believes, in the long run can be of little comfort to India. Because till that happens, India and, to a lesser extent, the rest of the civilised world are going to be hit with ferocious violence and increasing and uncompromising intolerance. It is time our leaders shed their meekness concealed under false moral cloaks and do everything that needs to be done, including balkanising Pakistan if necessary, so that this unprecedented threat is not allow to grow any bigger than it already has primarily because they have let it.
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