Why Pahalgam response poses a challenge

Since Independence, India has witnessed innumerable mass killings. At one time, caste-based militias in Bihar had made the massacre of defenceless villagers their pastime. During the Punjab troubles of the 1990s, armed Khalistanis intercepted long-distance buses, segregated Hindu passengers from the rest and gunned them down. In August 2000, terrorists shot 36 people undertaking the Amarnath yatra, an outrage repeated, albeit with lesser casualties, in July 2017. Nearly every one of these tragedies resulted in political convulsions and threatened to escalate into something far bigger. Yet, while the assassination 1914 of one Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo led to a horrible world war that killed anywhere between 15 and 22 million people and reshaped global politics unrecognisably, other tragedies have been turning points when history refused to turn. Since the prospect of two nuclear powers slugging it out fills the global community with dread, it is possible that the aftermath of the Pahalgam tragedy will stop short of a full-scale war. The daunting challenge before Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to give the terrorists and their backers a fitting reply without at the same time getting dragged into a larger regional conflict. Pakistan’s sense of national purpose is, by contrast, distorted. Like at the start of the Afghan war in 1980 and the 9/11 attacks in 2001, its strategists are probably considering ways of leveraging the global wariness of conflict to extract a price. In their scheme of things, the Hamas copy-cat ‘Resistance Front’ is both a prize asset and a dispensable irritant, depending on circumstances. Unlike Pakistan where public opinion is a plaything and where the elite has hedged its bets with dual nationality, democratic accountability has made decision-making less flexible in India. It is almost inconceivable that Jawaharlal Nehru’s generosity with the Indus Waters Treaty in 1960 or Indira Gandhi’s show of misplaced magnanimity in Shimla 1972 can be repeated in today’s India. The reason isn’t merely the ferocity of electoral politics but the modification of the Indian personality. The past decade has seen important shifts, marginalising those whom Swami Vivekananda deprecated as the ‘patient’ and ‘mild’ Hindu who had become accustomed to subordination. 120853949There are specific features of the Pahalgam massacre that may shape the overall Indian response. First, the killings weren’t a result of indiscriminate firing, as happened during the Mumbai attack of 2008. They were preceded by crude acts of humiliation and assertions of Islamic triumphalism. In an earlier age, the details of non-Muslims being singled out would probably have been underplayed in the media. It took many months before the magnitude of the ethnic cleansing of Hindus from the Kashmir Valley in 1990 was realised by the whole country. In Pahalgam, the gory details of what happened was known nationally within a few hours. Second, most of the 26 people who were mercilessly killed before the eyes of their wives and children had travelled to Kashmir from almost every region of India. Additionally, they were all middle class, and their murder unsettled those who had either recently visited Kashmir as tourists or were planning to do so. The thought that ‘it could have been me and my family’ has resonated throughout the middle classes. Their collective cry for justice and retribution is a force multiplier the BJP cannot ignore. Arguably, many of these pressures were also at work in determining India’s response to the 2008 Mumbai attack that dragged on for four days and led to 175 deaths. There are, however, two important differences. First, the Manmohan Singh govt over-invested in the ability of global diplomacy providing justice to an angry nation. The prevailing wisdom of the Modi govt is that fanatical Islamists sponsored by Pakistan cannot be confronted with niceties alone. The unstated influence of Benjamin Netanyahu’s scorched earth policy against terrorists in Gaza among decision-makers in the Modi ecosystem should be noted. Although this doesn’t mean India has the luxury to emulate Israel’s war, it does suggest that the armed forces and other agencies will not be constrained by extraneous considerations. Finally, had the surgical strikes and the Balakot retaliation in 2019 not happened, public expectation from Modi would have been measured. Unfortunately, the popular mood—fuelled by media sabre-rattling—is one of rising impatience. If this is allowed to persist, there will be a backlash that could lead to damaging taunts by the Opposition of the PM as a paper tiger. Alternatively, there could be a temptation among hotheads to enhance national security through action against the real or imaginary proxies of Pakistan. For its political sustenance, the BJP, it must be remembered, depends on Hindu consolidation. In view of how the Waqf Amendment Act has been painted before ordinary Muslims, communal relations on the ground are quite strained. Its fragility is apparent from a spate of localised disturbances in different states. Unless Middle India feels that its anger has been addressed by effective action, the govt could become busy quelling fires on the home front.