Pulwama and After: Should India go to war with Pakistan?
Mature foreign policy should be proactive, not reactive. To react is to hand over the reins of one’s own destiny to the adversary. To be reactive is to be predictable, which enables rogues to control us at will.
As a person whose vocation is spiritual, I would look beyond the compulsions and stereotypes of realpolitik.
My limited sense of history and human experience convinces me that the advantages gained through violence are illusory — no problem has ever been solved through violence. Wars, big and small, have been fought for establishing enduring peace — but peace continues to elude us.
It is infantile, besides, to deal with events of any magnitude driven by the heat of the moment. Human progress and welfare are secured through a purposive application of reason. Passions, when allowed to run riot, obstruct the use of reason. It happens, therefore, that one comes to regret what is done in the heat of the moment.
As an Indian, I feel deeply hurt by the senseless loss of precious lives in Pulwama. It hurts that more than 40 households have lost their breadwinners. Families are broken, homes wounded, perhaps never again to heal.
The heartbreaking thing in events like this is that those who perish have no hand in creating the conflict. The authors of confrontation are never hurt or inconvenienced. If anything, they gain — at least, politically.
Warmongering is an electoral goldmine. This, to me, is immoral and unjust.
If the consequences of waging wars were to visit on those who whip up war hysteria, peace would have rested on surer foundations. This is the universal truth — though it is politically incorrect to even allude to this.
I am opposed to the use of violence as a remedy, as I believe it is worse than the malady. Of course, there is the harsh reality that we have a neighbouring country with which our relationship has been friction-laden in the best of times.
Pakistan is de facto a military state. We are a democracy. Apart from the baggage of wounded memories both countries have inherited, this systemic incompatibility in our political establishments is at the root of our present woes.
Pakistan should be a lesson for us. The plight of that country is a commentary on the horrendous implications of building nationhood on military might alone. Where violence is valourised as a national cult, citizens become pawns in never-ending political turmoil and intrigues.
The worst thing about Pakistan is not that its democracy is illusory, but that it has to keep its people — degraded and impoverished through internal strife and corruption — entertained through violence directed against India.
It has nothing else to show for itself. The diversionary, reckless saber-rattling by proxy against India is a policy compulsion for Pakistan — it has no religious flavour to it.
I have had many an opportunity to enjoy the hospitality and goodwill of the people of Pakistan. I have felt at home in their midst. I am convinced, therefore, that Pulwama or the many acts of violence masterminded against India in the past do not reflect the attitude of the people of Pakistan towards the people of India.
The curse under which they are doomed to live is that state policy has no point of contact with the will of the people. Pakistan is a ‘democracy’ in which the will of the people shall be as dictated by the Pakistan army, which knows no alternative to the outdated doctrine of ‘killing with a thousand cuts’.
Today it is indistinguishable from ‘committing suicide with a thousand cuts’.
It is not my argument that we have to stand hand-tied and watch atrocities being perpetrated on us. But it is certainly my conviction that we may prove ourselves immature by playing into the hands of the military hotheads in our neighbourhood.
Ironically, we are paying the price for the failure of democracy in Pakistan.
The long-term remedy for our woes lies, therefore, in enabling the people of Pakistan to establish a true democracy. This may seem a pipe dream, given the stranglehold the army has over that country. But, being a democracy, we have to believe that the power of the people will prevail someday. By playing into the hands of the Pakistani military oligarchy, we disempower the people of Pakistan all the more. That can only prolong, not end, our chronic, cross-border bleeding.
But, in the short-term, messages have to be sent across to the misguided elements in Pakistan. Life is precious. No state can stand by and watch impassively the periodic elimination of its citizens, including the members of our military and para-military outfits.
No state, at the same time, should allow internal fissures to fester for long, as we have done in Jammu and Kashmir. Regretfully, the Kashmir situation has deteriorated a great deal under the present dispensation. The strong-arm approach flaunted by the Modi government has clearly backfired. Alienation of hearts and minds in the Valley is at an all-time high.
To my mind, it is not honest to configure the post-Pulwama scenario discounting this reality.
We pay little thought to the plight of both of Kashmiri Pandits and the Kashmiris caught in the cross-fire between the militants and the forces.
To keep a people caught in a situation of chronic, seemingly never-ending, terror, alienation and hopelessness is to throw the youth in that region to the wolves — they will be radicalised.
Guns are not an answer to this problem. It tests our sanity and maturity as a modern state as to how we deal with this issue, which has poignant humanitarian overtones. For better, for worse, Kashmir is in the eye of the international community as well.
Violence must stop. Already our fellow citizens in this region have suffered inordinately. It does not stand to reason that Kashmiris don’t want to live in peace; that they don’t want their children to see better days, that they don’t want to go to sleep in the assurance that they will wake up alive and refreshed. They too are human, like the rest of us. Regrettably, in what I hear about the Kashmir imbroglio, I hardly ever catch even a casual concern of this kind. It is always “us” vs “them”. It doesn’t help.
There is a good reason why Kashmir has deteriorated since 2014. The political strategies of the present government, I regretfully submit, appear to many to be predicated on kindling an anti-Muslim sentiments nationwide.
This is similar to George Bush (Sr) using anti-Muslim hatred as a pivot of his foreign policy. The global turbulence we witnessed during the Presidency of Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. resulted from this policy bias.
In the present context too, we must have the honesty and the courage to see the linkage between policy twists and the aggravation of violence in the Valley.
We have to, therefore, evolve a response strategy that steers clear of war on the one hand and passivity on the other.
If we believe in democracy at all, and if we agree that the ‘right to choose’ is the essence of democracy, if we are sincere about treating Kashmiris as our fellow citizens, it becomes incumbent on us to create a situation in which Kashmiris will choose to be loyal to India.
Cynicism in this regard stems from equating the people of Kashmir with separatists — which is a terrible mistake. It is true that as things stand now, anti-India sentiments are rife and strong among Kashmiris. An emotional breakthrough in favour of the republic of India may, therefore, seem an outlandish dream. But stranger things have happened in history, including the disappearance of the British Empire on which, it was believed, the sun would never set.
One thing is absolutely clear to me. Any attempt to politicise the Pulwama episode in order to turn it into an electoral goldmine is blatantly immoral and cynical.
It is subhuman to want to convert the suffering of one’s fellow human beings into personal or political profit. Army operations must be kept as they are, and not dressed up as political boxing matches to appeal to sentiments, ever ready to flare up into mass hysteria.
That must be avoided at all costs.