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COMMENT: Albert Ein­stein famous­ly observed on the devel­op­ment of the atom­ic bomb; “Every­thing has changed except our way of think­ing.” Amen! Recent devel­op­ments in India under­score that truth in a fright­en­ing way.

In FTR #795, we detailed the his­tor­i­cal evo­lu­tion of the polit­i­cal ascent of Naren­dra Modi. His polit­i­cal CV is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the oper­a­tions, devel­op­ment and his­to­ry of the RSS, polit­i­cal par­ent to his BJP Par­ty. 

The RSS is a Hin­du nation­al­ist and fas­cist par­ty, one of whose alum­ni assas­si­nat­ed Mahat­ma Gand­hi.

Recent devel­op­ments have clar­i­fied the degree of con­trol and influ­ence that the RSS exerts on Modi.

That con­trol is pro­found and direct. Most alarm­ing­ly, the RSS wants to see India and Pak­istan “reunit­ed!” Now how exact­ly that will be done remains to be seen, giv­en that both are nuclear pow­ers, as well as bit­ter ene­mies.

Fur­ther­more, remem­ber­ing Ein­stein, both coun­tries’ polit­i­cal life is dom­i­nat­ed by reli­gious fas­cists whose enmi­ty toward each oth­er is pro­found and long-stand­ing.

Whether this results in a nuclear war remains to be seen.

“Modi Blows His Cov­er – and the Loss is India’s” by M.K. Bhadraku­mar; Asia Times; 9/10/2015.

India recent­ly wit­nessed a strange spec­ta­cle of Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi and his cab­i­net col­leagues sub­ject­ing them­selves to an intense scruti­ny by the Rashtriya Swayam­se­vak Sangh or RSS, the Hin­du nation­al­ist orga­ni­za­tion, regard­ing their ‘per­for­mance’ in office.

Modi him­self used to be an activist of the RSS. But an elab­o­rate cha­rade was kept so far that Modi was in com­mand of the gov­ern­ment.

The Indi­an media has since report­ed that the RSS even­tu­ally gave ‘thumbs up’ to the gov­ern­ment after Modi and his cab­i­net col­leagues trooped in to meet the RSS boss­es and tes­ti­fied at the hear­ing on their ‘schemes and achieve­ments’ in the gov­ern­ment.

No Indi­an gov­ern­ment has ever been made to look so fool­ish and dif­fi­dent.

Why the RSS decid­ed to sub­ject Modi and his cab­i­net to such a dress­ing down pub­licly is anybody’s guess. Per­haps, it was to project the RSS itself as god almighty in the Modi era. But then, it is an open secret that the Hin­du fun­da­men­tal­ist groups are call­ing the shots in the gov­ern­ment, pen­e­trat­ing all walks of nation­al life sys­tem­at­i­cally and impos­ing their agen­da.

The upshot of the RSS hear­ing is that Modi has blown his ‘cov­er’, which helped him so far as prime min­is­ter to cre­ate an impres­sion that he is a human­ist and a devout fol­lower of Bud­dhism who viewed with dis­taste the excess­es com­mit­ted by the Hin­du zealots on the minor­ity com­mu­ni­ties in India such as the attacks on Chris­t­ian church­es.

Under the Modi gov­ern­ment, inci­dents of com­mu­nal ten­sion involv­ing Hin­dus and Mus­lims have sharply increased, accord­ing to offi­cial sta­tis­tics. How­ever, observers have gen­er­ously absolved the prime min­is­ter him­self of any respon­si­bil­ity in this regard, and are will­ing to sus­pend dis­be­lief. The ‘cov­er’ has now been blown.

The fall­out of this on the India-Pak­istan rela­tion­ship can be seri­ous. Obvi­ously, Modi can no longer main­tain with cred­i­bil­ity his stance that he seeks friend­ly rela­tions between India and Pak­istan.

In fact, fol­low­ing the cross-exam­i­na­tion of the gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, the RSS spokes­men in their media brief­ings inter alia brought up the explo­sive doc­trine of ‘Akhand Bharat’ as the guid­ing prin­ci­ple for the Modi gov­ern­ment as regards the India-Pak­istan rela­tion­ship.

Broad­ly, the RSS’s doc­trine is that the great Par­ti­tion of the sub­con­ti­nent in 1947, which led to the cre­ation of Pak­istan, was an aber­ra­tion that can still be got undone if only India worked toward such an objec­tive.

Pak­istan has always had a lurk­ing sus­pi­cion that there is real­ly no day­light pos­si­ble between Modi and the RSS. What used to be a dark sus­pi­cion is now like­ly to become an arti­cle of faith. Pakistan’s advi­sor to the prime min­is­ter on nation­al secu­rity Sar­taj Aziz (who is the de fac­to for­eign min­is­ter) has been quot­ed as say­ing Wednes­day that in Islamabad’s esti­ma­tion, the Modi gov­ern­ment won the 2014 par­lia­men­tary poll on the basis of ‘anti-Pak­istan plat­form’ and has been pur­su­ing the same pol­icy from ‘day one’.

Aziz said, “They (Modi gov­ern­ment) want bet­ter ties, but on their own terms”.

To be sure, the mutu­al rhetoric makes the prospect of a resump­tion of India-Pak­istan dia­logue a remote pos­si­bil­ity. And it should be a safe con­clu­sion that the India-Pak­istan nor­mal­iza­tion will remain elu­sive as long as the Modi gov­ern­ment remains in pow­er.

Do the RSS big­wigs and their wards in the gov­ern­ment real­ize what colos­sal dam­age they are caus­ing to India’s nation­al inter­ests? The 31 per­cent vote share Modi man­aged to gar­ner in the poll last year to cre­ate India’s first ever RSS-run gov­ern­ment does not give these peo­ple the right to super­im­pose their sec­tar­ian agen­da on the entire nation.

India’s nation­al inter­est lies in cre­at­ing a peace­ful exter­nal envi­ron­ment in the imme­di­ate neigh­bor­hood that enables the coun­try to focus on the devel­op­ment chal­lenge through the nar­row cor­ri­dor of time of the next 15–20 years.

Yet, what India is wit­ness­ing is a ratch­et­ing up of ten­sions in the rela­tions with Pak­istan. The past week alone began with India’s army chief Gen­eral Dal­bir Singh shed­ding his fab­u­lous rep­u­ta­tion for being a strong silent sol­dier of dis­cre­tion and reserve – pre­sum­ably, on instruc­tions from the polit­i­cal lead­er­ship – to under­score the readi­ness of the armed forces to wage a ‘swift, short’ war with Pak­istan.

It was an incred­i­bly tact­less state­ment to have been made in the present tense cli­mate of bilat­eral ties with Pak­istan. Besides, the bril­liant gen­eral should cer­tainly know that the only way he could ensure that a war with Pak­istan remained ‘swift’ and ‘short’ would be by nuk­ing that coun­try in the dead of the night.

You don’t need a Clause­witz to explain that the ‘kinet­ics’ of war with Pak­istan (nuclear pow­er with big­ger arse­nal than India’s and with sec­ond-strike capa­bil­ity) will ulti­mately depend on a vari­ety of fac­tors that are way beyond the con­trol of any­one in New Del­hi, civil­ian or mil­i­tary.

Now, it is into this com­bustible mix of rhetoric that the RSS boss­es pre­sented their stark reminder to Pak­istan that India has nev­er real­ly rec­on­ciled with the cre­ation of that coun­try in 1947.

...

As for his Indi­an counterpart’s dire warn­ing, Gen. Sharif was plain­ly dis­mis­sive: “Armed forces of Pak­istan are ful­ly capa­ble to deal all types of inter­nal and exter­nal threats, may it be con­ven­tional or sub-con­ven­tion­al; whether it is cold start or hot start. We are ready!!”

Are we hear­ing the beat­ing of drum pre­sag­ing the begin­ning of anoth­er bloody round of ‘low inten­sity war’ (read vicious cycle of cross-bor­der ter­ror­ism), which cost India heav­ily in human and mate­r­ial trea­sure? Or, could it be that India and Pak­istan are inch­ing toward anoth­er full-fledged war? Time only can tell.

Most cer­tainly, peo­ple in respon­si­ble posi­tion should be care­ful about what they say in pub­lic. What Gen. Dal­bir Singh said about ‘short, swift’ war was prob­a­bly fit for a closed-door meet­ing with the Direc­tor-Gen­er­al of Mil­i­tary Oper­a­tions at the Army Com­man­ders Con­fer­ence but not as the stuff of grand­stand­ing.

Equal­ly, while the RSS boss­es may not be pub­lic offi­cials, they hap­pen to be extra-con­sti­tu­tion­al author­i­ties wield­ing more pow­er than many erst­while emper­ors in India’s medieval his­tory – and they tend to be tak­en seri­ously. Sim­ply put, they should know that the notion of ‘Akhand Bharat’ has no place in the 21st cen­tury world order.

India is not pre­sent­ing a con­vinc­ing pic­ture as a respon­si­ble mem­ber of the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity when the so-called movers and shak­ers in the coun­try behave like hol­low men.

The point is, India is keen to secure a seat in the UN Secu­rity Coun­cil as a per­ma­nent mem­ber on the plea that it wants to con­tribute to inter­na­tional secu­rity and world peace and devel­op­ment. Fun­nily, yoga, which Modi has begun prop­a­gat­ing under the UN aus­pices for the good of the soul and body of mankind, is itself all about self-con­trol.

And, yet, in its own region, India choos­es to pre­oc­cupy itself with sly thoughts about wag­ing a ‘swift short’ war with its unfriend­ly neigh­bor and har­bors delu­sion­ary notions of doing away with a sov­er­eign inde­pen­dent nation that came into being 68 years ago.

The Jekyll-and-Hyde split per­son­al­ity does not do good to India’s image. The coun­try would have been far bet­ter off if Modi hadn’t blown his ‘cov­er’ as a human­ist and a mod­ern­iz­er.

...
India’s nation­al inter­est lies in cre­at­ing a peace­ful exter­nal envi­ron­ment in the imme­di­ate neigh­bor­hood that enables the coun­try to focus on the devel­op­ment chal­lenge through the nar­row cor­ri­dor of time of the next 15–20 years.

Yet, what India is wit­ness­ing is a ratch­et­ing up of ten­sions in the rela­tions with Pak­istan. The past week alone began with India’s army chief Gen­eral Dal­bir Singh shed­ding his fab­u­lous rep­u­ta­tion for being a strong silent sol­dier of dis­cre­tion and reserve – pre­sum­ably, on instruc­tions from the polit­i­cal lead­er­ship – to under­score the readi­ness of the armed forces to wage a ‘swift, short’ war with Pak­istan.

It was an incred­i­bly tact­less state­ment to have been made in the present tense cli­mate of bilat­eral ties with Pak­istan. Besides, the bril­liant gen­eral should cer­tainly know that the only way he could ensure that a war with Pak­istan remained ‘swift’ and ‘short’ would be by nuk­ing that coun­try in the dead of the night.

You don’t need a Clause­witz to explain that the ‘kinet­ics’ of war with Pak­istan (nuclear pow­er with big­ger arse­nal than India’s and with sec­ond-strike capa­bil­ity) will ulti­mately depend on a vari­ety of fac­tors that are way beyond the con­trol of any­one in New Del­hi, civil­ian or mil­i­tary.
...