No War Memorial. Still. 'Ye Dil Mange More'

One more Kargil Vijay Diwas is here. Another day to briefly remember India’s forgotten soldiers and push them out of sight again. As they have been for the last 65 years. Hard to believe, but the bitter truth is that Independent India has yet not found an inch of land to honour those who have made the supreme sacrifice for their motherland, with a National War Memorial in Delhi.

What is being passed off as a memorial for them is actually a British War Memorial, now called India Gate, to honour every single Indian soldier -- regimental no. and name engraved in stone -- who died fighting for the Empire mainly during the First World War. All we have done for those who laid down their lives for us, is put a rifle upside down, helmet on top, under the arch of this massive Raj memorial, and lit a small flame there. This is humiliation.

For years the military has been trying to convince babus and netas to allot land so that our martyrs too can be honoured and remembered in a dignified manner. Files have moved up and down, but the hearts and minds of the new rulers of India remain frozen. A little over four and a half years back, I had written a post on the subject in the hope that it might stir pride, if not shame, in those who expect India’s sons to do and die, but have callously forgotten to honour their part of the sacred bond that exists between soldier and nation. Unsurprisingly, not a leaf has moved.

On this day that commemorates the valour and sacrifice of India’s young sons in Kargil, it is only befitting that I express my angst again. This time it is in verse:

'Ye dil maangey more!' he exulted,
After he had pounced upon and killed
The enemy raining shells and bullets
Down the  cliff in cold Kargil.

For Sher Shah Vikram Batra,
No opposition was tough, no gradient steep;
Soaring on wings of patriotism,
The brave young man won peak after peak.

Then, like tigers before him and after,
For the flag in which they draped his body,
He rose to a peak higher then Everest
Throating his battle-cry: “Jai Mata Di.”

Again the nation rose as one,
To salute and honour India’s sons;
For our tomorrow, they'd given their all,
No sacrifice big, their Himalayan call.

But in Delhi beneath Imperial domes,
Our leaders remain so ever unmoved,
So what, some argue, if a Vikram dies;
It is what he had willingly signed up to do.

The British had shown a big man’s heart,
For Indians who died in the first great war,
An imposing memorial, each name in stone,
They built when they did their big blue dome.

Their King got a small canopy alone
In the shadow of the martyrs’ gate of stone;
Our leaders rest in vast memorials,
No thought for their own orphaned soldiers.

Not six inches given in six decades,
For the brave who fought and perished for us;
For them there’s a tiny flame that cowers
In the bowels of ’India Gate’ that towers.

They rage unheard, they cry in vain,
Our martyrs dishonoured with plain disdain,
But nothing can shame our leaders vain;
Having never ever lost their kith or kin, they remain,
Untouched by both pride and pain.
--------------------------------------------------

In the dark
Of India’s ravaged Yoni,
Flickers a tiny flame.

In distant haze,
Victor's blue phallus,
Sniggers at the shame.

His ‘India Gate’
Has names engraved;
Each martyr acclaimed.

No home but,
Not even an inch,
For soldiers for us slain.

Alien beast,
He used, honoured:
No shame.

Our beasts,
They use, spit,
No shame.

India’s netas,
Glow enshrined;
Surname.

India’s sons,
Rage in the dark,
No name.

India’s flag
On that phallus
Weeps for their tiny flame.
'

FOR THE TODAY OF A FEW, THE TOMORROW OF INDIA

After weeks of anti-India protests by stone pelters seeking secession from India, Pakistan's flag was hoisted at Lal Chowk in Srinagar by followers of the so-called 'moderate separatist' leader, Umer Farooq, the Mirwaiz -- chief preacher -- of ethnic Kashmiri Sunni Muslims, on Eid in full view of the Indian media. During the same period, a solitary pastor in the United States threatened that he would burn the Holy Quran on the same day which also happened to be America's 9/11. He was, however, persuaded from doing so and publicly made an announcement to the effect too a couple of days in advance.

How did the entire Indian visual media and almost the whole national print media cover both these developments?

The 'spontaneous' protests that broke out in a few towns in the Valley in May were marked by organised stone throwing on the police and burning of government property. The Indian media however, led unsuspecting Indians to believe that this was a secular outburst of a tormented generation fed up of the excesses of security forces and that they had to be assuaged by generating better job opportunities and by measures that would improve the quality of their life. Barring a few informed and educated analysts and professionals whose voices were quickly drowned out, no one was willing to accept that the intifada was being masterminded and executed with precision by Pakistan's ISI and its agents in the Valley.

In fact some almost seditious TV starlets crossed many red lines in justifying, propagating and inciting anti-India hatred and were quick to dishonestly and deviously bury suggestions that behind the histrionics and the fake facades, this was a new and far more internationally palatable show of strength by Pakistan that demonstrated its unshakeable resolve to sever Kashmir from India. No one was prepared to accept that having closely watched how India's weak, aversive-to use-of-force and strategy-blind leaders had been rattled after Kargil and, more recently, 26/11, Pakistan's real leaders had concluded that if more pressure was applied, it was only a question of time before they would capitulate, enabling Pakistan to take the war to another level, just short of the very high Indian threshold for full-scale hostilities.

The hoisting of Pakistan's flag was India's moment to show to the whole world that Pakistan was the mischief-maker and also substantiate earlier reports that the leaders of the stone throwers were being controlled from Pakistan, that many were being paid to throw stones, that small children were being deliberately brought into the line of fire, in some cases even carried on shoulders, to fulfill daily 'martyr' targets laid down by Pakistani handlers orchestrating the sordid drama. In one visual stroke, the lie of those who were made/paid to say that their 'struggle' was not communal and that they wanted Kashmiri Pandits whom they had thrown out two decades back to return to the Valley would have also been nailed. Any other country would have milked such a event to death to its advantage. But not India.

The threat of the pastor in faraway America was, however, not subjected to any censorship or governmental guidance. It was liberally aired and written about by the media almost every day. The pastor was rightly criticised but his threat was skillfully juxtaposed with the mounting opposition to the Ground Zero mosque with visuals that provided enough material needed by extremist leaders to incite angry and misguided Muslims to kill, and the less extreme to unleash arson and violence. The lack of restraint showed that either no lessons had been learnt from the Taslima Nasreen and the Danish cartoon cases or that it was being covered to give a subtle but clear political message to Indian Muslims.

And what has been the result? Even though the pastor changed his mind a few days back, Muslims in the Valley have gone on rampage, burning Christian Missionary schools and public property today, two days after. We are being asked to believe that they have done so because they were led to believe that the pastor had actually burned the Quran. Do you buy that argument? Are you in any doubt about how the media will paper it over?

Why did India's media so cover the pastor, knowing fully well that the situation would get explosive, that violence would invariably break out had he carried out his threat? Why was the flag hoisting incident blacked out as if it did not occur at all?

The answer lies hidden in the reply given by Rajdeep Sardesai to a question about the latter on Twitter. Sardesai, not surprisingly, gave a very morally correct reply, but in the process unknowingly let the cat out of the bag: "is the aim of a channel to exercise restraint, or to inflame passions?"

What appears to be the government's fiat to the media is unambiguous and can be even said to be exemplary. But, if you dig a bit deeper and factor in the incidents and cases in which the media has thrown restraint to the dogs without a thought and wantonly fanned inflammation of passions, the last two words that Sardesai did not utter start will start ringing loudly.

The simple truth, as it appears to me, is that the principal ruling party is petrified of anything, just anything, that might rouse the dead passions of Hindus and bring them together. The fear is not that violence may follow, nor is there a worry that the society will get fractured along religious lines. The dread is that if the Hindu vote gets consolidated and a larger percentage of Hindus start voting as a block, the Congress party's one-basket strategy of relying on the 16% bank of Muslim votes to defeat the huge but hopelessly divided Hindu vote will come to naught and electoral defeat will clutch it, possibly for good.

If you ponder for a moment and reflect on how the media has sanitised, if not sweetened, every development, no matter how serious, that shows Muslims, Indian or Pakistani, in a negative, communal, intolerant, extremist light, this aim becomes clear. Now do the same for Hindus and recollect how similar incidents, no matter how insignificant, that show them and sometimes even their religion in terrible light are blown beyond all proportions negatively. What is the aim here? This is the flip side. This is to ensure that a sufficient number of Hindus continue to vote for the Congress not because it is going to do anything for them but by deviously convincing them that by voting against it they will encourage communalism, religious intolerance and hatred against peace-loving and secular non-Hindus.

That is why Pakistan's flag being hoisted in Srinagar cannot be shown.. That is why the media and elements in the government can go to the unimaginable extent of blaming and cutting the hands of the very Army whose sacrifices have brought terrorism under some control in the Valley for India as well as ordinary Kashmiri Muslims. India's soldiers can be faulted and condemned for a few transgressions but not the ones who have been trained to kill them, not the nation that has for 60 years planned and executed only death and destruction in the Valley and the rest of India. Policemen can keep getting injured and dying unsung saving the state whose rulers have sent them into that hot pit, but the tears of India's real anti-nationals are only for those who get killed by them, no matter that they are striking at the very idea, the very foundation of India, no matter that they are being employed as soldiers by Pakistan in the latest phase of a war that it has been waging against a secular India for decades.

A responsive, nation-first government would have gone to every length to ensure that the whole of India saw that Pakistani flag in Srinagar. It would have roused the passions of every Indian, to give an emphatic message to Pakistan and its lackeys in the Valley that Indians are one against its aggression and that it will be made to pay a price if it continues to wage war against them; it would have told communal separatist Muslim leaders of the Valley that Indians will not accept the crossing of unacceptable lines by them; it would have given confidence to the men fighting for India there that their nation is with and behind them.

But, no, this ruling dispensation is manifestly guided by the effect it thinks its actions will have on its chances to retain political power in Delhi and grab it in states where it does not have it now. With the help of Muslims alone. And it has made sure that the crawling, hungry-for-money-whatever-it-takes business houses who run India's media know it.

A political leadership that places its domestic electoral interest above national interest has no moral right to rule. A political leadership that knowingly or unknowingly indulges in activities that are against the interests of the nation, no matter what the objective, is unthinkable.

I am not sure in whose hands India's destiny is today. But I can't shake off the feeling that its tomorrow is being mortgaged by a few for their today. If as an Indian that thought comforts you, India has much to worry about. As do the few.
--------------------------------------------------------
Readers may also read:
1. Completing cleansing of Kashmir: Sikhs asked to leave
2. Kashmir: after the gale, back to square one
3. India stoned: the enemy is in our midst
4. No answer to Pakistan's formidable force multiplier
5. Dealing with Pakistan: lessons from history

ADMISSION BEFORE ACCUSATION, SURRENDER BEFORE ATTACK

Chinese intrusions into Indian territory are not only increasing disturbingly, they are also occurring in new areas, besides becoming becoming more and more audacious, as if to taunt India. Yet, the response of those who are ru(i)nning India's Ministry of Defence (MOD) continues to be like that of a petrified lamb that has been unexpectedly confronted by a tiger. But even by their standards, the way they have responded to the latest report of Chinese intrusion into India territory is shocking.

In the latest incident, Chinese troops entered nearly 1.5 kilometers into Indian territory, painted rocks with red spray paint, and wrote "China" in Cantonese on them. What makes this intrusion really serious is that this is the first time since Independence that the Chinese have entered this area and graphically claimed it as their own. The 22,420 ft Mount Gya is located at the tri-junction of Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh and Tibet. Its boundary was marked during the British era and regarded as the international boundary between the two countries.

The Chinese, as always, have rejected India's accusation as groundless and about something that has not happened at all, along with a stereotyped statement that China is committed "to seek a fair and mutually acceptable solution through peaceful and friendly negotiation". The Chinese response is perfectly justified because that country has no illusions about the real estate it must grab by force at the right time, to complete the unfinished agenda and humiliation of 1962. So, it has been systematically and relentlessly projecting its national will, and creating "evidence" all along the more than 4,000 kilometer long border. This will be used later, backed by photographs surely, to justify its occupation by saying that these areas always were part of China.

What does India's MOD have to say? "This incursion is not a major issue". That is not all. It has also given the Chinese a completely clean chit on the logic that there is a difference in perception of the Line of Actual Control (LAC). But the icing on this cake of abject surrender is the statement that "incursions happen from both sides". This "proactive" admission has been made even when the Chinese have not accused Indian troops of a violation, just to make sure that they don't bare their real fangs yet. Have we ever heard of China accusing Indian troops of repeatedly intruding into Tibet like India does almost every second day? (It might start now). Is it not Chinese troops alone who keep entering deep into Indian territory repeatedly on the quiet to leave behind tell-tale signs of their presence, to deliberately let the Indians know that, as far as they are concerned, those cold and inhospitable areas belong to China?

No doubt there are some parts in the difficult terrain along the LAC where it is not easy to identify the watershed. But, will anyone answer as to why all doubts and disputes pertain to areas that fall on India's side of the perceived watershed? Have the Indians ever dared to claim even an inch of Tibet that is now China thanks primarily to the fatal strategic blindness of Nehru?

China's latest military doctrine states that "unresolved border disputes would be one reason for going to war". Its southwest border (with India) has also been identified as a potential theater of war. China has 14 neighbours. It had border disputes with most of them, including Russia. But over the years, it has solved its disputes with 12. The only ones that China has doggedly refused to resolve are the ones with India and Bhutan. Unlike Nehru, who simply wrote off "distant" Aksai Chin, the Chinese are unrelenting in their intention to grab even more land in remote and inhospitable areas which are far away from mainland China.

The latest incursion into Himachal Pradesh/Ladakh has never happened before. The decision to intrude so deep into this area surely would not have been taken locally. There is a significant political message in this display of national will. Is it not a major issue that should cause serious concern? One would like to believe that MOD's statement is for public consumption and that privately India is taking necessary steps to ensure that the Chinese do not dare to try a 1962 again.

Unfortunately, that is not true at all. The babus of MOD have already surrendered to the might of China and are seemingly content to patiently wait for it to put India out of the misery of border violations by grabbing Arunachal Pradesh and other claimed areas to settle the dispute once and for all. Which other MOD will actually pay glowing tributes to China as an "important player in global affairs", proceeding firmly ahead on its "well charted out goals"? In its annual report of 2008, the MOD, in fact, not only pretends that there is no threat from China but also lauds that country for "improving bilateral relations with its neighbouring countries at diplomatic, economic and military levels"! Even the Pentagon is concerned about China's military build up. Perhaps that is because it is in the hands of honest, nationalist professionals, and not unaccountable, time serving bureaucrats.

India's military leaders, unfortunately, are little better. They have meekly played along with the babus, despite knowing better as professionals and as leaders on whose command young sons of India are expected to die without asking why. There is a widespread belief within the services that successive Army Chiefs have sold their souls, and their country, out of greed for post retirement rehabilitation as Governors and Ambassadors. Present Army Chief Deepak Kapoor's very guarded statements and the ominous silence of his not-so-illustrious predecessors lends real credence to this belief that would be a cause of concern in any responsive military organisation. Little wonder these guys do not enjoy the kind of respect that real leaders of men do.

Such being the state of India's national security apparatus, does India have real options? A besieged fort cannot be held by firing flower bouquets from its cannons or by waiving the white flag every time a cannon ball hits it. Perhaps there is an unintended point in Chetan Bhagat's juvenile views. The way things are, India will do well to show great "statesmanship" and "good neighbourliness" by unilaterally giving Kashmir to Pakistan, and Arunachal Pradesh and other claimed areas to China.

Why wait for lakhs of Indians to be slaughtered when you know that defeat is certain whenever the besieger decides to launch an assault? Admission before accusation must logically lead to surrender before attack. No?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Readers may also like to read:
1. Facing the challenge of China's military modernisation
2. China and India:winning wars vs defending the country
3. India's 'Power': weakness=virtue, strength=immorality
4. China and India: bully and forever bullied
5. Democracy, morality and national interest
6. Myanmar lost to China: India's encirclement complete
7. Diplomacy cannot counter China's challenge
8. China gets dangerous, but nothing can move India

CHINA GETS DANGEROUS, BUT NOTHING CAN MOVE INDIA

The posture is getting increasingly aggressive and the objectives more and more dangerous.

China, as India should have understood decades back, but has manifestly not till now, is not mindlessly keeping alive its border dispute with India, particularly over Arunachal Pradesh or Southern Tibet as China calls it. It is the perfect and ready excuse that China needs to switch from dialogue to military attack whenever it chooses to. All it has to do is to suddenly claim that the Indians are being unacceptably difficult on the negotiating table, and have left China with no choice but to liberate Southern Tibet through use of force.

This is such a straightforward deduction that it is unbelievable that India's politicians and babus have colluded to keep India as vulnerable as it is today, that too in the light of the stinging lesson of 1962. This failure is inexcusable. But it seems that the buck does not stop anywhere in India. India's security apparatus has been systematically hijacked fraudulently by generalist, department hopping babus, even though they do not have even a remote understanding of what they are dealing with. Add to this the fact that they are not in any manner accountable to anyone for the colossal price that India will undoubtedly have to pay for their blunders, and you have a perfect recipe for a national disaster of frightening proportions. Tragically, that is not what concerns them. The nation can go to hell for all they care, as long as they can hold on to every single lever of power and decision making in the MOD, MEA and NSA.

In March last year, Chinese President Hu Jintao asked the People's Liberation Army of China (PLA) to enhance its capabilities to win hi-tech regional wars, respond to security threats and accomplish a diverse array of military tasks. Almost in tandem, Chinese military journals started, without any provocation, to talk tough against India and accused it of going on the "same old path of confrontation with China as it had in 1962", and warned that China "will not pull back 30 km" as it had in 1962.

That belligerence and hostility should have, but did not shock officials in the NSA and MOD, who simply don’t seem to care, or in the Foreign Office, who have made it a national policy to crawl when China says "walk". That is the one and only way they have found for India to ensure that the Chinese are kept looking good and the illusion of "friendship" is maintained. Why? One, because they have no expertise in matters related to strategy and security and, two, because they do not want to spoil their cozy status quo party; their "West" fixation and cadre supremacy depend entirely on it.

But, did anyone else sit up and take notice? Did anyone else join the dots and tell the political leadership that the military gap between India and China had become uncomfortably large and that India needed to do something about it on a war footing, if it did not want to face a debacle worse than 1962? You know the answer. Everyone in the know knows the answer.

So, while the Chinese kept officials in the MEA happy and the babus in the NSA and MOD in comfortable slumber by cooperating with India on insignificant issues in various international forums, where it mattered they kept getting and talking tougher, and did not blink before responding in a hostile manner, when needed. At the NSG meeting in Vienna last year, for example, they tried their best to sabotage the clean waiver without which the Indo-US Nuclear Deal would have been useless. But for Bush, they would have succeeded too. Subsequently, they also officially blocked a $ 2.9 billion assistance program from the ADB only because some of that money was to be used in Arunachal Pradesh. All this was accompanied by tirades against India's economic progress, its relations with Pakistan, its response after 26/11 etc. Did it cause even a drop of sweat to appear on the brows of those in charge of India's national security apparatus?

Emboldened by its military might and India's expected zero response, China has now dropped the bombshell that even the totally blind cannot ignore. A recent article in a quasi-official Chinese web site has, for the first time, echoed the objective that Pakistan has been pursuing almost since its inception. It says that India must be broken into 20-30 pieces and that it is in China's interest to do so. To make this a reality, it goes on to say, China should " bring into its fold countries like Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan, support Ulfa in attaining its goal for Assam’s independence, back aspirations of Indian nationalities like Tamils and Nagas, encourage Bangladesh to give a push to the independence of West Bengal and lastly recover the 90,000 sq km territory in southern Tibet".

China has also just launched its biggest ever military exercise to improve its capacity for "long range projection" . It involves 50,000 troops, some of whom will use trains moving at 350 kmph and civilian passenger and cargo aircraft, to move thousands of miles.

So, now we have not one but two strong neighbours who want to break India up in their national interests. They both see an emerging but pacifist India that has no territorial ambitions whatsoever, and that looks only inward, as a threat to their countries, for different reasons. And to counter what Indians know is an imaginary threat, they are speaking of dismembering this country.

India, on the other hand, refuses to see any country as as a threat at all, no matter what the provocation, no matter what the historical background. Its army of ignorant and disinterested politicians and babus wants to keep pretending that all will be well eventually if India walks more than half the distance, even if it is to effectively surrender, and if it engages in "proactive diplomacy". This inexplicable foolishness despite the nasty experiences of 1947, 1962, 1965 and the ongoing proxy war that Pakistan launched in 1989, is something that cannot be grasped by anyone save the few Indian "analysts" who are on the government's page either due to sheer ignorance or some sort of political convenience.

That is perhaps why Naval Chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta has been forced to publicly warn the nation a few days before his retirement that "In military terms, both conventionally and unconventionally, we neither have the capability nor the intention to match China force for force…”. No capability, no intention. There is no capability presently because there never was an intention in the past; there will be no capability in future too because there is no intention even now. That is precisely why the gap has become "too wide to bridge and is getting wider by the day".

No matter how dangerous China gets for India, India's response will not change. Nothing can move its leaders. They will keep helplessly parroting that India's ties with China are fundamentally healthy. And do nothing at all to even narrow the gap that they have mindlessly allowed that country to create in just a few decades.

For years, China quietly but furiously developed its conventional and nuclear military capability and did not make any threatening noises, to lull a very willing India into complacency. Even during that period, it did not stop regular and increasingly deeper incursions into Indian territory, without drawing a befitting and respect-generating response from an India that has remained scared to death thanks to the 1962 debacle.

Having successfully created the minimum military gap that it had deliberately set out to, the tiger has cast away the sheep skin that it was wearing. Having done that, it is now threatening to attack the petrified lamb called India by blaming it for drinking and soiling the water that is actually flowing downstream from him to the poor creature.

The lamb in the original story had no hope and was eaten by the tiger, even though it was not at fault, because it really was no more than a weak, defenceless lamb. India is no born lamb. It has been turned into one by its security blind politico-bureaucratic machinery that has obdurately refused to learn any lesson from history, ancient or contemporary, and has put in place a structure that has reduced this huge nation to such a pitiable state that not just China but Pakistan - even Bangladesh and Nepal - treat it without fear and with a contempt that would shame any self respecting nation.

An insecure, ignorant, arrogant and paralytic mindset is not capable of listening to professional advice or acting on it. Worse, it is not even confident of allowing professionals to take the lead in doing whatever is needed to prevent other nations, big and small, from taking it for granted and humiliating it repeatedly. That is why a slightly bigger China has become much bigger and stronger, and a much smaller Pakistan has become bigger than it should ever have and strong enough to force India to unilaterally give concessions in the brainless hope that it will put an end to its proxy war.

If things continue to drift as they are, India is going to face an outcome worse than it did in 1962, whenever the Chinese exercise the military option they are talking louder and louder about. Should both Pakistan and China decide to join hands to break India up, as China has begun to say, it will simply be a no-contest and the dismemberment of India will be accomplished quickly and with minimum force. China, as should be evident to all now, has not been cultivating Pakistan for all these years just to keep India tied down: whenever they get a real chance, they will do much worse.

Did India's freedom fighters fight for Independence so that in just over a generation our leaders would make us so relatively weak that our very existence as a nation would be under threat? Can India afford to let its leaders keep hurtling it towards a disaster of such proportions? What will it take to make the blind men who are leading India to open their eyes and act as they must to safeguard the freedom of a billion people who have placed their trust in them? Or are they just not capable of keeping soon-to-be superpower India secure and Indians safe?

Picture source: Xinuha

UPDATE: The Beijing based Chinese website that published the " Break up India" article has, predictably, claimed that it does not reflect the views of any government think tank. It also wants India to believe that the article was a web posting by an anonymous internet user whose identity and credentials have not been verified. Such a denial was expected. Had it been acknowledged that it represented the views of the state, it would have been tantamount to an declaration of war.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Readers may also like to read:
1. Facing the challenge of China's military modernisation
2. China and India:winning wars vs defending the country
3. India's 'Power': weakness=virtue, strength=immorality
4. China and India: bully and forever bullied
5. Democracy, morality and national interest
6. Myanmar lost to China: India's encirclement complete
7. Diplomacy cannot counter China's challenge

KARGIL AND POLITICAL DEBATES: NAUSEATING INDEED

More than 62 years after Independence, a former Chief of the Army Staff has had the courage to publicly voice what the whole nation has been feeling for a long time and what a lot of citizens and lower ranked soldiers have been saying for years. Taking part in a debate on CNN-IBN on July 24, 2009, on the issue of the present government having forgotten the martyrs of the Kargil War of 1999, General Shankar Roy Choudhary, who is not known for using strong words in a debate, took everyone by surprise by saying something that politicians across parties should be ashamed of.

After listening to a third-rate political spat between Jayanthi Natarajan of the Congress and Rajiv Pratap Rudy of the BJP in which both tried to score cheap political points on Kargil, the General was compelled to say what the whole nation feels: "It is a political debate which must be buried along with political parties...These nauseating, disgusting, shrill, vituperative debates have no meaning for the Indian Defence Services." Ever the officer and gentleman, he later apologised to Natarajan since she took his criticism to heart, but maintained that he stood by what he had said.

It may be recalled that it was Congress MP Rashid Alvi who first gave a sickening political twist to the Kargil victory by saying that it was only the NDA which may celebrate it, not the nation. Minister of State for Home Sri Prakash Jaiswal fuelled the outrage further: he could not even remember when this war was fought and won. Little wonder, then, that for the first five years that it was in power, the UPA government chose not to commemorate the heroes of this war.

This year it has decided to commemorate 10 years of the victory only after intense opposition pressure. That it is a very reluctant honour being given to those brave sons of India who fought for their motherland is evident from the fact that the President, who is the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, has refused to travel to Kargil to pay her homage. The Defence Minister too has backed out. That is why General Choudhary was forced to utter the bitter truth that "The soldiers do not think about what the politicians think about their acts. They have been serving their country bravely since 1947". That is possibly why he also called Natarjan's bluff that there were no political reasons for not commemorating Kargil by pointing out that while all heroic acts of the soldiers from 1947 onwards need to be celebrated by the nation, the only day being commemorated is when India's military created Bangladesh.

Something is indeed seriously wrong with India's politicians. And it is getting worse. The amount of energy they spend in trying to run political opponents down and the level that they sink to, to do so, is disgusting and nauseating indeed. They will readily embrace the architect of Kargil, Musharraf, fall into his military commando trap like ignorant fools and nearly get tricked into a shocking deal with him to all but sell Kashmir to Pakistan. But when it comes to political opponents who are Indians, they will behave as if they are dealing with arch enemies who have to be defeated by all means, even if Pakistan benefits in the process. What else can one make of a garrulous politician and security-blind former career diplomat like Mani Shankar Aiyar getting into the gutter to dishonestly defend "his" government's Baluchistan Blunder at Sharm-el-Sheikh by saying that that it would not put it in the dock "unless Mr. Jaitley's government was doing funny business in Baluchistan"?

Politics has now become big business, an easy path to undreamt of pelf for many. It is for this reason alone - forget that deceitful talk of ideology, secularism etc - that political fights have become more and more unscrupulous, vicious and petty. No one wants to yield even an inch to another party out of fear of losing power.

That is why we have this disgraceful response to remembering the heroic deeds of soldiers who died for their country and not for a political party. That is why the only concern about the Baluchistan Blunder is not India's mindless surrender to a focused and aggressive Pakistan, or its serious long term impact, but the possibility that it will give a political advantage to the BJP, however small. That is why the BJP opposed the Indo-US Nuclear Deal, knowing fully well that it would have grabbed it with glee had it been in power. That is why the latest surrender to potentially useful politicians on the issue of the obscene amount of security that they have been given at the tax payers' expense.

Jayanthi Natarajan may arrogantly not want a General Choudhary who, as per her, believes that "every party comes from the gutters", even though he did not say so. Sure some politicians may individually not like the manner in which the political class is collectively bringing more and more disgrace upon itself. But it will be hard to find someone who can place his hand on his heart and say that the General's words were misplaced.

General Shankar Roy Choudhary needs to be complimented for speaking a truth that would have given great comfort to lakhs of serving and retired soldiers who have for long felt that their military leaders have been letting them down since 1947 because of their inability to find their voices when handling politicians and bureaucrats. He has now shown the way with remarkable candour.

The Indian Army is no longer a colonial fighting machine. It is now a people's army. It is also apolitical. That, however, does not mean that its leaders, past and present, should keep looking only inward within the organisation.

In an increasingly vitiated political atmosphere where politicians are behaving the way they are, India's top military leaders who are no longer in service must realise that still they have another big national responsibility. When and where the political leadership errs or fails in matters related to defence, strategy and national security, including aspects of foreign policy that impacts them, they must speak up, educate all Indians and bring pressure to bear upon the government of the day. They owe it to the country. There is simply too much at stake to be lost foolishly on negotiating tables time and again.

The blood of India's sons must not flow in vain.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A nation forgets? A must read for every Indian. The most powerful words ever written about Kargil and the sons of India whose blood has given us our tomorrow.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DIPLOMACY CANNOT COUNTER CHINA'S CHALLENGE

G Parthasarathy, a well-meaning retired career diplomat, is considered a hawk by a lot of woolly-headed analysts. They continue to blindly believe that the interests of a nation as big and as potentially economically powerful as India will be best served by being a harmless dove in an international environment where the power of a large nation needs to be projected and protected by its military strength. While Parthasarathy does represent the somewhat more realist face of the foreign policy establishment that is trapped in a compartmentalised and Nehruvian mindset, there is little doubt that even he is somewhat stuck in the same dysfunctional mould that has prevented India from properly activating what it needs to, to even reactively face the challenges that it must successfully deal with.

Parthasarathy's column in the Times of India of June 29, 2009, exemplifies the deep-rooted disease that has enervated the Foreign Office which, like most other government departments, functions in splendid isolation and with a misplaced arrogance. Thanks to a colonial legacy, career diplomats, like their counterparts in the IAS, have placed themselves at a hierarchical rung at which they will not be found in any other modern nation. With most politicians of today having a zero or at best a unifocal world view, foreign policy formulation and response has fallen into the laps of career diplomats who themselves are not trained or equipped to holistically address all issues intimately connected to it. To make matters worse, they are focused on preserving and promoting their turf even at the cost of national interest.

China, as Parthasarathy brings out correctly, is of late displaying a "new aggressiveness" in its approach to India, including issuing of "not too thinly disguised warnings about its territorial claims to Arunachal Pradesh which it refers to as Southern Tibet". Even more ominous is the fact that it has now begun to display its proactively developed military might openly, going to the extent of asking the US to recognise that Indian Ocean is a "Chinese sphere of influence". It has also unilaterally extended its maritime boundaries with Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines. There are other areas too where China is now aggressively working against India's interests. It may be recalled that last year it had tried very hard to prevent the Nuclear Suppliers Group from giving the required unanimous clearance for the Indo-US Nuclear Deal.

The latest agreement that China has signed with Myanmar for a 20 million tons oil and a 100 billion cubic meters gas pipeline, has not even been mentioned by Parthasarathy even though this is one deal that will not only take Myanmar firmly into the Chinese orbit, but will also, without a doubt, lead to the establishment of a Chinese military base in that country and open up an all weather route to the Brahmaputra Valley, making annexation of Arunachal Pradesh and a lot more easier for them. Having secured the deal with Myanmar, they have already started showing "growing aggressiveness" in their claim to the entire state of Arunachal Pradesh.

Was the Indian Foreign Office sleeping for all these years when China was working on Myanmar? Why was India looking west to that disastrous gas pipeline from Iran through Pakistan when it should have done every possible thing to get the Myanmar pipeline and more that the Chinese have got, knowing fully well that China was aggressively expanding its military influence in the region and had been claiming an Indian state for decades?

The blame for this new game-changing threat rests solely on the shoulders of the Foreign Office and the NSA, both of which have to date shown little or no understanding of the strategic security threat that India faces from China. This absolutely straightforward and unbelievable deduction is based on the simple truth that India has neither developed a credible reactive response - proactive is not even on the horizon - nor has shown any intention of doing so till now.

See the irony which no one wants to even whisper about because it exposes this country's security apparatus completely? At the time of Independence, Tibet and Myanmar were India's buffers and its spheres of influence. In the background of the experience of the Second World War, India should have not only done whatever was needed to keep them in its fold, but should also have actively developed a naval capability to make the Indian Ocean it sphere of influence too. Tragically, India forgot it all. But the Chinese up north did not. So, 62 years down the line India has lost all three and they are now are almost firmly in the bag of a China that never forgot to see far ahead.

There will perhaps be no parallel in the world where such a tectonic shift has taken place in the balance of power with the adversely affected nation doing absolutely nothing about it at any stage. For this criminal neglect, one day we will have to pay.

These developments are serious enough to give sleepless nights to those leading India. But, thanks to the sedating advice they seem to be getting from India's babus, they are not even concerned. What, for example, is the solution being offered by Parthasarathy to "deal with the strategic challenge that China poses in our Indian Ocean neighbourhood"? Proactive diplomacy. Period. What else does he say? He advises Indian service officers that "mature nations do not speak strongly or publicly about military deployment on disputed territories"! The Chinese don't think so; they speak aggressively about their military ambitions and intentions and openly call Arunachal Pradesh "Southern Tibet".

Is Parthasarathy's advice meant for a "mature" nation or a "weak" one that obdurately refuses to learn lessons from its own history, thanks to its security and diplomatic structures being in the vice-like grip of strategy-blind babus? Come to think of it, is their anything else that he can suggest? No. His expertise as a career diplomat ends there. But the nation's interest does not. Unfortunately that is something that no one wants to admit and that is something that has not ever been holistically dealt with in a government that works in water-tight compartments stifled by generalist babus. That is why India has a cop as its NSA and, yes, a cop, in a global first, heading an elite military commando outfit called the NSG. The disease is very serious and terribly deep-rooted indeed.

Can a nation be really so dumb as to believe as a national policy that the growing might and aggressiveness of China can be contained merely by talking and writing papers high in moral content with no hard power to back them? Was 1962 not lesson enough? Why is the better informed and equipped military leadership quiet about this hijacking of the nation by a few timid and self-serving generalist babus who are intent only on increasing the power of their own cadres to the exclusion of all others, nation be damned?

With every passing day, the Chinese are tightening the noose around India, the one country that they think will be in a position to challenge their dominance in the long term. Could they have ever done, or even thought, what they have, had they had civil services cadres of the type that India has and pushed the PLA out of the highest decision making loop, as these services have in India to create their own empires?

India is on the verge of becoming a super power. We may not be able to see it but the Chinese saw that a long time back. And they took proactive steps to be in a position to counter our rise. That is why China is only going to get more aggressive in the months and years ahead and will, without any doubt, use its military to humiliate and put India back and into an inferior position as it had done in 1962, at a time of its choosing.

The only way, as even a child should know, to prevent that from happening is not through something as ridiculous and meaningless as proactive diplomacy but by enhancing something as real and substantial as military strength. Only that can make the Chinese understand that the result of 1962 cannot be replicated. Will India wake up to this reality before it is too late, or will it allow its nose to be put to the ground by amateur generalists who cannot see and do not know?

Image source: Social Earth
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Readers may also like to read:
1. Facing the challenge of China's military modernisation
2. China and India:winning wars vs defending the country
3. India's 'Power': weakness=virtue, strength=immorality
4. China and India: bully and forever bullied
5. Democracy, morality and national interest
6. Myanmar lost to China: India's encirclement complete

MYANMAR LOST TO CHINA: INDIA'S ENCIRCLEMENT COMPLETE

Forget the threat from the Taliban or Pakistan. The real threat upon India is not from the West. It is from the forgotten, far away East. The Chinese have just signed a deal that will complete the encirclement of India on land and sea from all sides. The Chinese Army will soon be within breathing distance from India's border with no Himalayas to stop its march into India whenever China wants, as one day it certainly will, to bag claimed Arunachal Pradesh.

The latest development, facilitated by decades of neglect of Myanmar by India, may well prove to be an even more colossal a blunder than was the "gifting" of Tibet to China by Nehru in the fifties. At that time, in one fatal stroke, Nehru blindly converted India's buffer against China into that nation's buffer against India, without securing India's interest in any manner whatsoever. That enabled China to move its troops forward by more than a couple of thousand kilometers to sit right on India's head and inflict on it, in 1962, a humiliating defeat, a rout so complete that any self-respecting nation would have vowed never to forget and allow to happen to it again. Not India, which, instead of learning any lessons, chose to simply bury its head in the sand and pretend as if China did not exist.

The Chinese have just signed an agreement with Myanmar's military junta to build an 1100 km long oil and gas pipeline from Kyaukryu on the West coast of Myanmar to Ruili in the Yunan province of China. Construction will start as early as September this year. The pipeline will transport 20 million tons of crude coming from the Middle East and Africa annually to China. The gas pipeline, which will be further extended by another 1700 kms within China, will transport 12 billion cubic meters of gas annually, to be increased to 100 billion cubic meters in a few years. Compare this with the 29.2 billion cubic meters that will flow eventually from the KG basin gas wells of Reliance Industries and you will get an idea of the enormity of the deal. There is also talk that later more oil, not just for China but for Korea and Japan too, could flow through this pipeline. This agreement comes on the heels of China beating India to win a 30 year concession from the military junta besides launching construction of hydroelectric projects in that country.

For long, as India has known too well, China has been eyeing a shorter trade route to Europe via Myanmar because not only will it reduce the transportation route by over 1200 km and cut shipping time to Europe by over a week, it will also enable it to avoid the pirate infested and strategically significant Malacca Straits. The signing of this pipeline agreement is only going to accelerate development of this trade route.

China's National Road 320 presently ends at the border town of Ruili. The construction of the pipeline to that town will certainly be followed by a road from there to a sea port on the Myanmar coast. Once the railway line between Kunming and Mangshi is also ready, Myanmar railway, which ends at Lashio, will be only 143 kms away from China. It will then be only be a matter of time before the two networks are linked, enabling Chinese freight to be carried right up to and from a Myanmar port to China without any transhipment. Myanmar has also proposed a tri-nation road network between China, Bangladesh and Myanmar, which China is much interested in setting up.

The security and strategic implications posed by these developments for India are so grave that it is a wonder that there has been virtually no national debate and no media interest. The focus of the nation has not been allowed to move beyond the Tailban and Pakistan, both of which pose not even a fraction of the danger that these developments will in the next few years. If things move at the speed Chinese have shown recently, within a decade or so, a large percentage of Chinese freight traffic from other ports further east will get diverted to least two Myanmar ports that will then perhaps handle more Chinese freight than any other port. This freight will move to China through the entire length of Myanmar by road and rail. More oil and gas will also start flowing along the pipeline.

With so much of its economic activity becoming dependent on Myanmar, China will get the perfect excuse to expand its military presence in and around that country. That will, first of all, lead to deployment of Chinese Navy in considerable strength in the Bay of Bengal, within handshaking distance of the Andaman Islands and a little more than shout away from the West Bengal coast. Let no one be in any doubt that it is only a question of time before China gets Myanmar to give it a permanent Naval base on its soil. On land too, the Chinese will get proactively involved in protecting the pipeline and the rail and road traffic, necessitating the stationing of at least some military personnel in Myanmar.

In any case, thanks to these excellent lines of communication, the Chinese Army, known as the People's Liberation Army (PLA), will be in a position to roll straight into the Brahmaputra Valley through Myanmar, bypassing the harsh and high Himalayas completely. Winter will cease to India's friend against China, forcing it to physically deploy a large number of troops in Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram to meet this new threat. What the Chinese might do to inflame insurgency at that stage or get into some sort of a military pact with Bangladesh is anybody's guess. One thing is sure: they will do whatever it takes to hem India militarily and make it easy for China to simply lop the North East off.

It is not an accident that China has supported the military junta since it came to power 21 years ago and vetoed all Security Council resolutions against it. It foresaw long back that it needed Myanmar in its national interest and stuck to the task of securing that without wavering. India, on the other hand, has remained completely confused, as always. It has been gripped and weakened even more by vague but "supreme" moral pangs that have caused it to place democracy and Aung San Suu Kyi above all else. That is why, it has done nothing except resorting to a weak "engagement" with the junta that has got it nothing and has allowed Myanmar to fall right into the lap of a Dragon that is fully alive to its strategic interests that dictate that it should build and display its military might in the region.

The Chinese may have given up Mao's disastrous economic and social policies but they have not for a moment forgotten his immortal quote: power grows through the barrel of a gun. India, on the other hand, despite having foolishly placed itself at the business end of that barrel once, still hates power as being something "immoral". As a result, over the last 47 years, as China has grown stronger, India has meekly allowed itself to grow comparatively weaker.

This had to happen and will continue to unless India completely overhauls, professionalises and contemporises its national security set up which has been hijacked by selfish and greedy generalist career bureaucrats who advise politicians who themselves have not even a clue of this complex subject. They have proved time and again over the last 62 years that they are no more than ham-handed amateur middle-men who are more interested in asserting their "superiority" over the military - usurped deviously after the British left, thanks to ignorant politicians - than letting accountable professionals and political leaders respond with alacrity to meet the nation's security needs.

Myanmar never wanted to go into the arms of China; it was always wary of the dragon. It wanted India to be its partner. But India, as one Myanmar leaders said, did nothing and just "sold" it to China. The same India that has been embracing a series of military dictators in Pakistan because its national interest demanded it, found it very difficult to apply the principle to Myanmar, ostensibly because of democracy. More disturbingly, however, it seems that it is the obsession of India's career diplomats with the West and its glamour, coupled with their continuing strategic blindness, that has ensured that India's far away East has always remained neglected. The mindset that led Nehru to quickly bid goodbye to the people of the region from India when Chinese troops reached the outskirts of Tezpur in 1962, remains essentially unaltered.

That is why, while China is securing deal after deal in Myanmar and making the country increasingly dependent on it, India which had a large number of Indians living and working in Myanmar till the fifties, initially only helplessly watched them being thrown out, and has since done the same as China has shown increasing interest in that country. As a result, focused and result oriented Chinese government officials working with a clear strategic vision, have beaten India comprehensively to acquire not just a foothold but what is going to turn out to be near complete control over Myanmar.

See the irony? China is going to start building pipelines, highways and railways through the length of Myanmar soon. India, on the other hand, has not yet been able to finalise a contract for a gas pipeline from there either overland through Bangladesh/Assam or across the Bay of Bengal. Now that the Chinese have beaten them to the contract, they will undoubtedly buy up any spare gas that Myanmar might think of selling to India, killing India's project completely. While the Chinese have been making inroad after inroad into Myanmar, some Indians led by former Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar, once a career diplomat, have been pushing for a gas pipeline from Iran through Pakistan to India, despite the fact that it will prove to be a huge security disaster. Criminal neglect of the East by India continues.

The British had envisaged Tibet as India's buffer to the North. In the East, that role was to be played by Myanmar (then called Burma). In the fifties, India lost Tibet to China. Almost half a century later, the same script is being written in Myanmar. India's obsession with a much smaller country, Pakistan, its puppy love for all things Western and its inward looking mindset that has cost it heavily all through history have led it to lose Myanmar too to the Chinese. India's encirclement is now complete.

The price for this inexplicable and absolutely inexcusable strategic blunder is going to cost India so heavily that 1962 will pale into into insignificance. India's failure to prevent Myanmar from going into the Dragon's mouth will ensure that Bangladesh will also follow suit soon, and very willingly. Even the thought of what the situation will be 20 years hence is disturbing.

Will India's leaders and their generalist, colonial henchmen learn any lesson and do what it will take to keep India secure, no matter what the cost of this near-Himalayan blunder? A leadership and bureaucracy that have not got for India new artillery guns for over 25 years and that routinely take decades to provide weaponry required to meet even huge existing shortages, can hardly be expected to start being visionary, proactive and quick in decision making. Thanks to them, India, now surrounded by hostile powers from all sides, is more vulnerable than it ever has been since Independence. And the way things are, the situation is only going to get worse.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Readers may also like to read:
1. Facing the challenge of China's military modernisation
2. China and India:winning wars vs defending the country
3. India's 'Power': weakness=virtue, strength=immorality
4. China and India: bully and forever bullied
5. Democracy, morality and national interest

WHAT WILL INDIA DO AFTER THE NEXT 26/11?

India is likely to face another Mumbai 26/11 type of attack in the near future. That is the assessment of Startfor, a US intelligence think-tank. Really, do we need anyone to tell us that this is something that is inevitable? Or do we naively believe/hope that the US is going to protect us against such attacks with the power of the dole that it is giving to a sinking Pakistan? Or that the Pakistanis have been sufficiently sacred by the shrill "all options are open" war cry and empty threats of surgical strikes that Indian leaders unleashed after Mumbai was attacked?

Nearly five months after India faced its deadliest terror attack, everything is back to normal. Everyone has forgotten about the horror that the country faced for three days. Everyone, almost, is relieved that the 'foolish hawks' who were irresponsibly talking of war with a nuclear Pakistan have become quiet. Also everyone, well not quite, has also heaped praise on the government for the very mature manner in which it has handled the crises and defused tensions.

All that is fine. But, no one is asking the two critical question that need to be asked: What has India done since then to deter state/non-state actors - call them what you like - from Pakistan from launching more such attacks? What is India going to do when, not if, another such attack does take place?

Narendra Modi has been ridiculing the government for running to Obama after the Mumbai attacks rather than doing something tangible to sort Pakistan out. Stratfor is also of the view that the UPA government was too soft and that India is likely to deliver a more forceful response should the BJP come to power after these elections. Is that really so? Yes, the general view is that the UPA has been ignoring the increasing threat of terror that India faces from Pakistan. But, would a BJP government have really responded very differently to Mumbai 26/11, and will it do so if it comes to power?

The response of the government of any sovereign state to an act of war depends mainly on two related and somewhat interdependent factors: its tolerance threshold and the relative combat power of the states involved. While there is certainly a difference between the tolerance threshold of the Congress and the BJP, they both have the same military at their disposal. The weakness of latter is what has made repeated terror attacks on India an almost zero-risk option for Pakistan for decades. As Pakistan knows better than all armchair analysts, that is going to make it virtually impossible for India to exercise a limited military option even in the future. Why? Because should the war escalate into a full blown conventional affair, India's defence forces are not in a position to give an iron-clad guarantee of success. And, failure - even a stalemate - is simply unacceptable for a country that has seven times the population of its adversary and wants to believe that it is about to become a super power.

There is a lot of uninformed talk that the era of wars is over and that it is economics and not military strength that matters in the 21st century. Those who talk on these lines are obviously blind to what the Americans and the Chinese are doing. China is not much larger than India. It has a border dispute only with this country and faces no threat from any of its other neighbours. If the Chinese leaders were Indian, they would probably have taken the Nehruvian route and almost mothballed their defence forces. But, being realists who know history and the role that power will continue to play in shaping it, they have done exactly the opposite. As a result, their military might has grown to a level that even the Americans are beginning to see a real threat to their uni-polar dominance of the world.

India, on the other hand, despite having been invaded and humiliated by the Chinese in 1962, have simply done nothing to match China's military might. And now the asymmetry is so great that whenever the Chinse decide to use force to annex Indian territories claimed by them, as indeed they will at a time of their choosing, it will be an almost no-contest.

Worse is what we have done vis-à-vis a much weaker and smaller Pakistan. We have allowed that country to militarily match up to us to a point where it can deter us from using the military option. India has the economic strength to simply make it a no-race for Pakistan that cannot spend beyond a point on defence. This would have happened on its own had India's sights been fixed on a maintaining a similar balance with China. But our leaders, devoid of any strategic vision, chose to ignore the role and relevance of the military as a key instrument of state policy. As a result, this is the only nation in the world that is happy maintaining an edge over a far smaller neighbour while pretending that a slightly bigger one, who has consciously chosen to become very powerful, does not exist!

It is because of this thinking that rather than India deterring Pakistan from launching and sustaining a proxy war, it is Pakistan which has successfully deterred India from reacting militarily in a manner that puts the cost-benefit ratio indisputably in India's favour. And Mumbai 26/11 was not the first time that India was provoked, almost taunted. Kargil and the attack on Parliament should have woken up a drowsy security establishment to the realisation that Pakistan was going to keep at it as long as it was sure it was going to get away. And how was it going to come to that conclusion? The cowardice of India's leadership, as former ISI chief Hamid Gul called it, coupled with the continuing absence of an unbridgeable military gap. Since India is even now simply not interested in doing anything about it, its tolerance threshold is per force very high. And Pakistan is going to test it to the limit. It knows only too well that the "zero tolerance" to terror that its politicians loosely talk about is just gas.

When there was serious talk of war after 26/11, the realisation hit that India's military was not ready for it. There were critical shortages of combat equipment due to which the military was perhaps weaker than it was at the time of Kargil. No wonder military commanders refused to go to war; you can't fight a real war with words.

Has anything changed nearly five months later? Major shortages of combat aircraft, air defence systems and artillery guns still exist. May be changes and preparations have been made, where they can be within limitations, to give a swift riposte to Pakistan should another attack be launched. But my sense is that the moment Pakistan gets to know through its intelligence network that India has both the political will and the military wherewithal to defeat Pakistan in a limited conventional war below the nuclear threshold, it will change tactics and opt for less spectacular attacks or go in for attacks carried out by Indian citizens only. If Startfor is to be believed, that has clearly not happened.

Narendra Modi might ridicule the Congress; the BJP may arguably display greater political will to retaliate. But the hard fact is that even if there are 10 more Mumbai 26/11s, no government will be able to make Pakistan pay in the only manner that will compel it to abandon its present course. This is the price this nation has paid and will keep paying for the failure of all governments to build and use the military as the cutting tool of coercive diplomacy and deterrence.

So, when the next 26/11 takes place, India will still be found running helplessly to the US, crying "Obama, O ba, O ma", as Modi has been saying to ridicule the Congress. Even if Modi himself is the Defence Minister then.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Readers may also read:
1. Making India safe: cosmetic changes will not stem rot
2. Mumbai 26/11: will India use the miltary option?
3. Kashmir and Afghanistan are two sides of the same coin
4. India and Pakistan are not victims of the same terror

INDIA AND PAKISTAN ARE NOT VICTIMS OF THE SAME TERROR

Remember the "We are also victims of terror" rant of Pakistani leaders and analysts when, thanks to the capture of Ajmal Kasab, it was no longer possible for them to deny Pakistan's involvement in the terror attack on Mumbai on November 26, 2008? Remember how after admitting that "part of the conspiracy" was hatched in Pakistan and arresting a couple of Lashkar-e-Toiba leaders, Pakistan defiantly let the terror trail go cold, despite the loud protestations of a weak India faking belligerence? Remember how many of our analysts, their faculties numbed by the VIP treatment and kebabs they get in Pakistan, bought the Pakistani line that rogue "non-state actors" were solely responsible for the attack and that the state of Pakistan was actually India's good friend?

In March 2009 came Pervez Musharraf to India at the invitation of the India Today group. And what did he tell India? Solve Kashmir or there will be many more Kargils; if there are more terror attacks by Pakistanis in India, don't threaten use of force, you are not strong enough; Pakistan will react militarily if you try to take out any terror camps in Pakistan and the Kashmir under its control by carrying out surgical strikes.

This was followed a couple of weeks later by a five day encounter in Kupwara between Indian security forces and militants who were sneaking into Indian territory in Kashmir. 17 terrorists and eight Indian Army personnel, including a Major, were killed in this long operation. Sure enough, Lashakar-e-Toiba (LeT) claimed responsibility for the attack and warned that more such attacks would be launched in future. The detention of its chief Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi by the Pakistani authorities and their "crackdown" on the LeT and its training camps in the wake of Mumbai 26/11 had obviously made no impact on the ability or the motivation of the terror organisation to launch attacks on India.

The recent terror attacks on the Sri Lankan cricket team and the Police Training Centre in Lahore are fresh in the minds of all. Unfortunately, some of us in India believe that the fact that terror attacks are taking place both in India and Pakistan means that both India and Pakistan are now equal victims of jihadi terrorists and therefore have to fight this war together. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Unless this is understood clearly, we will continue to make errors of judgment and will nor be able to develop a coherent response without which the scourge of terrorism in India cannot be defeated.

India and Pakistan are not victims of the same terror.

General David Petraeus, commander of the US Central Command, has put the whole terror picture in the correct perspective. This should leave no Indians with any romantic illusions about the challenge India faces from Pakistan. As per the General, although Pakistan faces an existential threat from terrorists, many of its leaders consider India as its principal threat and regard Islamist extremist groups a potential strategic asset against India.

Simply put, it means that Pakistan is a "victim of terror" no doubt. But the terror threat it faces is solely to kill Jinnah's version of Pakistan and replace it by a Wahhabi version that was functional in Afghanistan before 9/11. This internal Islamic war is not against Pakistan; it is only to re-cast the state ideologically. This terrorism has no connect whatsoever with the proxy war that the state of Pakistan launched against India in 1989. That is why if there is a war between India and Pakistan, all the jihadis, including Taliaban, fighting against Pakistan presently will fight with it against India. Baitullah Mehsud, who has claimed responsibility for the latest Lahore attack and warned that the next attack will be in the US, said as much when tension was building up between the two countries post 26/11.

India remains the principal adversary of the state of Pakistan whose basic objective of bleeding India to death by inflicting on it a thousand cuts remains unchanged. So, no matter which ideology prevails in Pakistan, its terror war against India will continue unabated till it is conclusively defeated. This is something India needs to get into its DNA. There is no room for complacence or confusion.

The presence of the US in the region and its enormous ability to see and hear what Pakistan has been successfully hiding for decades has placed some constraints on the elements of Pakistan's establishment that are involved on strategising and implementing it proxy war in India, including Kashmir. What was being done earlier openly by the state is now being done covertly. That is why we now hear about "rogue elements" in the establishment, particularly the ISI, "non-state actors" and "freelance jihadis", as Musharraf calls them, on whom the blame is being dishonestly passed on for all terrorist activities. This enables the leaders of Pakistan to keep professing "friendship" with India, falsehoods that gullible analysts lap up willingly and then mislead policy makers and the public.

Therefore, whenever Pakistan claims that it too is a victim of terror to pretend innocence about its involvement in terror attacks in India, we must not let it get away. Going by the clear but largely ignored threats made by Musharraf in Delhi, India must know that Pakistan will continue to use the tool of terror to wrest Kashmir as well as weaken India to a point where it can be taken by overt military action in conjunction with internal communal conflicts that divide and weaken it irrevocably.

More Kargils and Mumbai 26/11s will take place. Have no illusions about that. India's lack of a decisive conventional military edge coupled with the legendary uninformed and cowardly response of its political leadership will ensure that Pakistan will be tempted to test and taunt this country again and again.

A Pakistan, stable or unstable, democratic or Islamist, will continue to do what it has been for decades if India continues to lay out the red carpet for a zero-cost war to be waged on its territory. It is time for India's military thinkers to come up with and implement a strategy that makes Pakistan pay dearly for any further misadventure in India. Dialogue with a meek mindset and a weak military is not going to deliver the desired results.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Readers may also read:
1. Zakaria's Afghanistan strategy: salvage or surrender?
2. Understanding and defeating the ideology of terror
3. India needs to ready itself for a post-Pakistan scenario
4. Kashmir and Afghanistan are two sides of the same terror coin
5. Tackling Islamic terrorism: What India needs to understand

COWARDOG 'SUPERPOWER'

Mumbai 11/26 is not going to be the last terror attack launched by terrorists inspired or sponsored by Pakistan. Prepare yourselves for many more. No, I am not reiterating what I have been saying for long but am citing what Brian Jenkins from RAND corporation and Ashley Tellis have told the US Senate's committee on homeland security. "India will continue to face a serious jehadi terrorist threat from Pakistan-based terrorist groups. However, India lacks military options that have strategic-level effects without a significant risk of a military response by Pakistan."

Why does India continue to lack that vitally required military option? Why did Pervez Musharraf have the audacity to occupy large chunks of Indian territory in Kargil without being afraid of a response from India? Why did India, even when it discovered what had been done, limit its response to fighting the 'war' within its own territory and not take the battle across the LOC to make Pakistan pay a humiliating price for its misadventure? Why did India let Pakistan get away so lightly and still claim victory? Why did Pakistan follow up Kargil by an attack on India's Parliament that, had things gone according to plan, would have found hundreds of MPs held hostage within the precincts of its symbol of democracy followed by the setting free of hundreds of terrorists held in Indian prisons and other humiliating concessions to secure their release? Why did Mumbai 11/26 take place?

The two American experts mentioned above think that "India has turned out to be a terribly soft state neither able to prevent many of the terrorist acts that have confronted it over the years nor capable of retaliating effectively against either its terrorist adversaries or their state sponsors in Pakistan." The bitter truth is that India is not just a "terribly soft state", it is a cowardly state that is mortally afraid of exercising the tough options without which it cannot become secure.

Bharat Karnad has quoted erstwhile ISI chief Hamid Gul telling him years ago that India would never counter Pakistan's strategy of creating disruption in India by adopting a similar strategy in Pakistan because of its "buzdili" (cowardice). Karnad believes that that Pakistanis have the measure of the risk-averse Indian government. So is anyone under any illusion that all the diplomatic theatrics that we are seeing post Mumbai 11/26 will scare Pakistan into ensuring that India does not face any further terror attacks by terrorists coming from Pakistan or by the many of its "sleeper cells" that are in position within Indian territory and about whom the Indian state does not have a clue?

This buzdili that Hamid Gul and other Pakistanis speak tauntingly about is born out of an attitude of helpless resignation that got into India's bones in 1962 when China routed it militarily. The Indian state has somehow become so "power-averse" that not only is it not concerned about the huge leap in comparative strength that China has taken post 1962 but is comfortable with allowing a small country to fearlessly execute its plan of bleeding it to death by inflicting on it "a thousand cuts" knowing that India will just not build a military capability that will enable it to exercise the option that has "strategic-level effects".

After terrorism erupted in Kashmir in 1989, the response of the Indian establishment, both military and civil, was bizarre to say the least. Those days there was great talk that the era of open wars was over and that in future there would be "low intensity conflicts" only. There was not even a thought then of taking the fight into Pakistan to make it pay for the zero-cost option that it had adopted to get India out of Kashmir. It was generally thought that terror would be worn out over time, just like insurgency had been in the North East.

In fact, the thought of war had so been dismissed even from the minds of a myopic military leadership that when Musharraf sprang the Kargil surprise, the Indian Army found itself naked to conventional ground and air assaults because it had no camouflage nets. It appears that the Army had stopped procuring them because they were not needed to fight terrorists and a conventional war was not foreseen. Such was the fatalistic acceptance of the proxy war launched by Pakistan that a response was never thought of, nor was an escalation of that war by Pakistan.

Has anything really changed after Kargil and Parliament 2001? Not at all. Not only has nothing been done to build the much needed capability that can allow India to deliver that strategic-level counter-punch should Pakistan not mend its ways, the Army is actually weaker today than it was 10 years ago. It has taken Mumbai 11/26 for the babus in the Ministry of Defence to clear purchases of anti-tank missiles that are critically deficient. No artillery guns have been procured since 1986, some air defence weapons are of almost Second World War vintage and there are critical shortages of combat equipments across the spectrum.

Is it, therefore, any surprise that army commanders refused to launch an attack on Pakistan, as desired by the political leadership, after Mumbai 11/26? Does not Pakistan know the sad state of affairs that India has willfully landed itself in? Can it ask for a better environment to continue to prosecute its asymmetric proxy war in India, without any fear of a costly response? Does it not know that this nation that is dreaming of becoming a superpower is a coward-dog that will put its tail between its legs and run, if not lie on its back in surrender when challenged?

Who is responsible for creating this mess? Who will be accountable if something goes really wrong tomorrow, as it surely will if things continue like this? Is anything still being done to holistically address the security requirements of this about-to-become-superpower? You can be rest assured that little will be done. The national security apparatus and the ministry of defence are in the vice-like grip of generalist babus who have no clue or accountability to anyone, and are trained to question and endlessly delay, not deliver. The politicians to whom they notionally report to are disinterested/even more clueless.

Has India ever had a Defence Minister with any professional knowledge or background? Have there been any posts in the ministry of defence headed by serving military professionals who are accountable? The blunder that India made on the economic front till the then PM PV Narasimha Rao gave charge to professionals headed by Dr Manmohan Singh is continuing to be made on the defence and national security front. This is a recipe for a colossal disaster which may hit the country any time.

India's aspiration of becoming a superpower is fundamentally linked to its ability to secure itself against the now almost inseparable internal and external threats that it faces and is likely to confront in future. Scorching economic growth and a drastic improvement in living standards have to be matched by a corresponding rise in safety levels of individual citizens, businesses and the nation as a whole. And that is not going to happen on its own. Nor is it going to happen as long as the Indian state continues to be perceived to be a 'cowardog' by its enemies. And changing that perception is going to take some doing and a strong political and national will. Otherwise, India is going to miss that superpower bus that China got into four decades back, once again.

A slumdog can become a millionaire; can a nation that is a cowardog become a superpower? Ask Hamid Gul.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Readers may also read:
1. Facing the challenge of China's miltary modernisation
2. China and India: Winning wars Vs defending the country
3. India's "power": Weakness=virtue; strength=immorality
4. War on terror: Will it take God's wrath to undo the rot?
5. Wake up to Islamic terror, this is just the beginning