M D Nalapat
Terror groups would get time to replenish stocks of personnel, weaponry and cash, all of which would be running low after setbacks against security forces.
Whenever terror
organisations go on the defensive as a consequence of effective action
against them by the uniformed forces, those sympathetic to their cause
call for an immediate ceasefire by the security forces. This would give
the terror groups time to replenish stocks of personnel, weaponry and
cash, all three of which would be running low after sustained setbacks
against security forces. The LTTE in Sri Lanka was expert in such
tactics. Each time the Tamil Tigers were on a losing trajectory against
the Sri Lankan military, their international supporters would lobby
Colombo to declare a cessation of hostilities, always succeeding in such
a quest until Mahinda Rajapaksa took over as President of Sri Lanka and
defeated and destroyed the LTTE, defying global calls to give the
organisation an extra life through a ceasefire. Rajapaksa was different
from other South Asians, who having emerged from three centuries of
European domination, took advice coming from that corner as gospel, even
when it was damaging. This South Asian propensity to swallow without
restraint suggestions from the continent which colonised them applies
also to guidance given by those in North America. Talk within the
Lutyens Zone is that it was hyper-billionaire Bill Gates who took upon
himself the cause of persuading the Narendra Modi government to make
1.26 billion Indians go cashless through a shock demonetisation. If it
was Gates who first sounded the DeMo bugle, the refrain was soon picked
up by some in the most consequential posts within the Modi government,
all of whom championed the measure to the Prime Minister. The
consequence was the 8 November 2016 demonetisation that set back growth
in India through its aftershocks. Bill Gates is not reported as having
weighed in on the issue of a Ramzan ceasefire, so hopefully there will
not be a rush within the Lutyens Zone to urge the Prime Minister that
such a measure be implemented, as indeed it was during the period when
A.B. Vajpayee was Prime Minister. Vajpayee’s ceasefire in Kashmir gave
terrorist groups there a welcome pause in actions against them by the
military. This was used to recoup their strength. Despite or because of
such a show of governmental restraint, the Pahalgam and other massacres
took place during Vajpayee’s tenure.
Later, PM Vajpayee created a perception
within the pro-Pakistan lobby of being ready to move beyond the
Constitution of India. He promised to settle the Kashmir problem not
wholly through law but via the diffuse concepts of “jamhooriyat” and
“insaniyat”. These terms were interpreted by Pakistan-controlled
elements as code indicating that Vajpayee would accept a change in the
status quo that would get created through an intensification of the
“Azaadi from India” movement. What the then Prime Minister ought to have
done was to make it clear to each and every individual in Kashmir that
its accession to India was final and irreversible, and that the
Constitution of India was the inescapable basis of any negotiation,
rather than poetic phrases such as those used by Vajpayee. Not
surprisingly, the first BJP Prime Minister of India failed to overcome
the problem of insurgency, which remained severe throughout his six
years in office. As for Vajpayee’s Lahore journey of 1999, this show of
one-sided goodwill was met with the perfidy of Kargil, besides countless
other thrusts by the ISI and its proxies in India. Given that the
central mission of the Pakistan army is the attempted disintegration of
the Union of India, efforts to cast the potential for India-Pakistan
relations in dreamy poetry rather than harsh prose is an errand doomed
to failure from the start. In such a context, Chief Minister Mehbooba
Mufti’s constant efforts to show generosity and forgiveness to
Pakistan-directed groups have predictably made them even more
intransigent and determined to delink Kashmir from the rest of the
country. Given the failure of Vajpayee’s numerous peace initiatives, it
is a mystery as to why the lady believes that similar gestures on PM
Modi’s part will create outcomes different from those that faced
Vajpayee. The Kashmir CM appears to be fixated on a policy of
appeasement of anti-India groups, a line of action that has been
directly responsible for the substantial deterioration in the internal
situation in Jammu & Kashmir since the BJP installed her as the
Chief Minister of the state through its incomprehensible alliance with
the PDP.
Responsibility for the murder of a
tourist from Tamil Nadu in Kashmir by stone pelters can be directly
ascribed to the policy of amnesty for such elements that
was—surprisingly for a party claiming to take a tough line on national
security—meekly acquiesced in by the BJP. If the Union Home Ministry is
in any way concerned by the tango being danced by the PDP in association
with pro-Pakistan elements, that venerable if hardly venerated
institution has kept such feelings to itself, barring a few ineffective
disapproving clucks from Home Minister Rajnath Singh. Those who voted
for Narendra Modi in 2014 did not expect just words from his government,
but action. However, in Kashmir, the BJP seems to be a passive
spectator to the systematic way in which the PDP is giving oxygen to
pro-Pakistan elements by its permissive policies towards those seeking
to once again drag the state into the same cauldron of hate and violence
into which it was thrown during the period when Mufti Mohammad Sayeed
was Home Minister of India. Let it be admitted that on Kashmir, Manmohan
Singh’s record was stellar when compared with the follies of the
present government in handling the state. It is time for those in thrall
to the Vajpayee years to remember that voters threw out his government
in 2004, and that the BJP won in 1999 only because the country had just
recently been at war. A war that was caused by the neglect of the
Vajpayee government in protecting the country’s borders from nibbling by
the Pakistan army, but which its superior PR skills passed off as a
great victory. India needs real victories, not make-believe ones. And
these can come only when realism replaces romanticism in policy.
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