Stop the hysteria, let saner voices prevail

Anurag Kashyap initially tried to be a brave filmmaker but Karan Johar never went beyond being a smart businessman engaged in filmmaking. The former put a question to the Prime Minister on Twitter on October 16 at 9.12 am. He forgot that no one who isn’t a politician can have the gumption to use such impertinent language for “THIS” PM. It read: “Sir, you haven’t yet said sorry for your trip to meet the Pakistani PM. It was Dec 25th. Same time KJo was shooting ADHM? Why?” He followed up with a series of tweets starting with another provocative line: “Btw Bharat Mata ki Jai Sir”. Mr Kashyap clearly crossed the line in the judgment of rampaging Hindutva trollers. By afternoon, he began writing conciliatory tweets. Later, he took off the offensive tweet from his timeline. But continuing harangue forced him into more atonement. He then put out a Facebook post whose operative part read: “No, Anurag Kashyap did not ask the PM to apologise.” He ended up showing that bravado off-screen isn’t as easy as on it. Eventually he lost face in both camps.

Karan Johar was smarter — he didn’t utter a word initially and when he did, it was after deciding that in the prevailing jingoistic mood in the country, it was better to swim with the tide and not with those resisting ban on actors and singers from Pakistan. The maker of Ae Dil Hai Mushkil displayed his keen business sense by releasing a video message declaring his consonance with the rabble-rousers. He expects that after his “nationalistic” turn and given that the film stars Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, the controversy over the film will eventually subside and it will be released as per plan. The narrative involving the two filmmakers shows two things. First, how increasingly it is becoming difficult for voices of reason to stay afloat in an atmosphere of nationalist sectarianism. Second, the government will do precious little to protect those being targeted by unlawful means because it serves the party’s political cause.

It is ironic that on the day Mr Johar recorded his message, India’s foreign secretary S. Jaishankar, while briefing members of the parliamentary standing committee on defence, stated India had engaged with Islamabad after the September 29 strikes on launchpads but there was no “calendar” for future engagement and its level. By the top diplomat’s declaration, the government had not put an end to all forms of engagement with the Pakistan government. He also said categorically there was no proposal to stop people-to-people contacts between the two countries. In contrast to the government’s stance, the spokespersons of the BJP have been beating the war drums at least within the film industry and coercing the likes of Mr Kashyap into submission. Such doublespeak is typical of the BJP and Modi bhakts who found Mr Jaishankar’s briefing discomforting as he spoke the language of reason and not hyperbole.

Hours after the details of the briefing by the foreign secretary, defence secretary, Army vice-chief and the special secretary (internal security) in the home ministry, party propagandists put pressure on the Press Trust of India, which put out the initial report on the meeting, to clarify that the foreign secretary hadn’t said surgical strikes were carried out during UPA rule. The clarification quoted a government source saying the “key issue is that we went public after conducting the surgical strikes, which conveyed a politico-military message. Whether any previous crossing had been done, only the Army would know.” No one is clearly asking the Army to come public with further details. It is, however, time to leave this debate behind us, even the one that the coinage of surgical strikes is contentious as some dictionaries define it as “a military attack, specially by air, designed to destroy something specific and to avoid wider damage”; while others don’t specify if the attacks were aerial, or involving airdropping special troops or even a ground operation. The moot point at this stage is that after having called Pakistan’s bluff of instant retaliation, where do we go now? Is it enough for the nation to bask in military glory and tom-tom that we have left strategic restraint behind? Any sane person would say that while such reactions may yield political benefits specially in an election season, it would be imprudent to argue that we can continue to prosper when national energy and resources are diverted in securing the frontiers.

On a long-term basis, India needs to engage with people of Pakistan, to who Mr Modi reached out in his Kozhikode speech. The PM must remember that his call to “the people of Pakistan to come forward, (to) fight a war on who defeats unemployment, poverty, illiteracy first” was a timely one and the strategy must be continued despite the surgical strikes. Similarly, his vision for India founded on three principles — peace, unity and harmony — is the precise prescription that the nation needs. Mr Modi’s commitment to replace poverty with well-being, discrimination with equality, dirt with cleanliness, corruption with transparency and so on was so evocative that it would be a Herculean tragedy if his speech was relegated to the dustbins of history.

India must strengthen those forces and sections of Pakistani society who are not exactly favourites of either the military regime or the civilian government. In the past decade or more, civil society across the border has acquired greater vibrancy than previous decades. As the recent episode involving journalist Cyril Almeida — incidentally a part of the micro-minority Goan Catholic community in Karachi — demonstrated, a voice of dissent exists within that country and this group looks forward to peace and harmony with India. Calling for suspension of any form of people-to-people engagement or refusing to engage Pakistani artists in Indian films would weaken this section in its opposition to the jihadists and their backers. The Indian establishment may now be peddling the argument that the India-Pakistan conflict is an eternal reality and backing forces in India who mirror Pakistan’s jihadists, but encouraging them will only depict Mr Modi in poor light as he will be seen as a global leader who is not true to his word. For his sake and for growth and prosperity he must rein hysterical groups while not compromising our nation’s security.