Cross-LoC strikes: Why BJP raised the ante...

A wag may have got much of it right over the social media: India: We attacked Pakistan across the LoC
Pak: Didn’t
India: Did
Pak: Didn’t
India: Did
The normal adversarial relationship between the two neighbours seems to have gone topsy-turvy. One obvious question: why did the Modi government publicise and even brag about the attack on the outposts of Pakistan-based jihadis, and why is Pakistan and its media so fervently denying it. Such incursions have happened in the past on both sides — we keep our own incursions a secret and complain about the Pakistani ones, likewise so does our estranged neighbour. So the normal response to the September 18 jihadi attack at Uri, killing 19 Armymen, would have been a similar attack across the LoC on Pakistan-based jiha-dis. The Pakistan Army would have got the message, and Indian opinion mitigated by claiming the terrorists were killed in a border clash. So why did the BJP go on the offensive and raise the ante? It certainly had the TV channels on its side, and was pushed further by their hyper-nationalism. The coming elections in UP, Punjab and Gujarat may have had a lot to do with it. Within hours of the “surgical strikes”, the Sangh Parivar began victory marches and then posters appeared across UP declaring India would beat Pakistan in its own land! BJP leaders, including the defence minister, went on to brag in public. Yet it has wisely decided not to give in to demands that it release videotapes.

The Congress, which initially praised the military action, accused Mr Modi of playing on the soldiers’ sacrifices. Other netas like Arvind Kejriwal, Amarinder Singh and even Mayawati joined in the criticism. What was earlier a near unanimous backing of the military action by the political class became divided along party lines as the Opposition didn’t want the BJP to reap electoral advantage. There has thus been a collapse in the traditional political consensus on security matters. The Pakistan’s refusal to acknowledge an attack across the LoC stemmed from an unwillingness to allow volatile public opinion to be swayed into demanding a retaliatory attack. War is specially dangerous given the nuclear arsenals of both sides. The war-mongering has increased with competitive media channels drumming up hysteria. While the nuclear arsenals may hold back any immediate escalation, both India and Pakistan are becoming more belligerent. There are unconfirmed reports of over 100 jihadis gathering at the LoC for further attacks. Skirmishes, meanwhile, continue. The danger of escalation is for the moment restraining both sides.

Sashank Joshi, a fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, a think tank on international defence, writes: “There is a qualitative difference between a low-level, tactical raid on minor outposts a short distance from the LoC and a large-scale assault on the headquarters of the organisations that continue to attack India. These are deeper inside Pakistan, closer to major population centres, and far larger in size.” While Pakistan suffered humiliation with Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Bhutan and Sri Lanka, in addition to India, dropping out of the Saarc summit in Islamabad in November, it gained a public relations coup by taking an international media team to the LoC to convince the media that there had been no incursion, but only shelling.

There is the further demand by BJP spokesmen on national TV that the security forces are sacrosanct, and are not to be questioned. Any implied questioning of the Army’s supposed role in the crossing of the LoC is compared to an act of “treason”. In a democracy, the Army should be questioned over its actions by the civil authority and by Parliament. Its actions can also be questioned even if it goes by laws like the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, applicable in Kashmir and parts of the Northeast. This is applicable to the unrest that began in the Kashmir Valley in July. During the unrest, 87 people were killed and over 8,000 people injured, with more than 800 of them having got pellet injuries in their eyes. If the Modi government was more responsive to the people of Kashmir, the escalation of hostilities between the neighbours need not have happened.