Can India hit Pak where it hurts

Diwali, otherwise the festival of lights, happiness and good cheer, has been several shades darker this year, with an extensive stretch of the international India-Pakistan border as well as the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir ablaze, not with the traditional “diyas”, but trans-border machinegun and mortar fire. Pathankot to Jammu and beyond are now war zones, where the population on the Indian side spent their Diwali either sheltering from Pakistani mortar and small arms fire in ad hoc bunkers in their villages, or as refugees under the open skies in depth areas outside the range of Pakistani mortar fire, 82mm of the paramilitary Pakistan Rangers periodically intermixed with heavier 120mm mortar bombs, unmistakably of the Pakistan Army, the latter an unmistakable indication of the active involvement of the Pakistan Army.

The Indian forces are responding in kind, and in progress now is a linear, middle-intensity, standoff exchange of fire in J&K, along the international border as well as the LoC, involving the paramilitary Border Security Force on the Jammu border and the Indian Army on the LoC. There are reports that the Indian Army has also stepped in and destroyed four Pakistani border outposts in a “fire assault” after an infantry patrol of 17 Sikh clashed with fidayeen infiltrators in the area, and lost one of its members, injured and “mutilated” (in this particular instance beheaded), after capture by intruders fleeing back to sanctuaries inside Pakistan. The whole incident, particularly the cold-blooded savagery of beheading a wounded prisoner, was typical of the Pakistan Army.

Conceptually, these attacks with their emphasis on ferocious brutality towards a “kafir” opponent are in consonance with the basic philosophy of the “Quranic Concept of War” enunciated by Brigadier S.K. Malik of the Pakistan Army, in his book of the same name, which prescribes “frightfulness” to terrorise the enemy, and is said to be recommended reading encouraged in the armed forces of Pakistan. The civil population in the border areas of J&K are experiencing this “frightfulness” at first hand, which at last count has killed and wounded over 100 Indian inhabitants of border villages in the Jammu region, including women and children. Indiscriminate violence against non-combatant civilians on the Indian side of the border will remain a feature of the “hot peace” in J&K, and has become a permanent feature of India-Pakistan relations. This seems unlikely to change in the foreseeable future, as Chanakya, national security adviser to first Mauryan emperor Chandragupta, might have mused 2,000 years ago when faced by attacks of barbarian tribes coming out of Central Asia — “Atah Kim (What now)” The answer visualised at that time in the distant past would perhaps have been the same one which remains applicable and operative even today — immediate and vigorous punitive retaliation, a policy which must remain unchanged in today’s age.

Active confrontation with Pakistan along the LoC in Kashmir during the “hot peace” is neither new nor unprecedented, and dates right back to Independence and the Partition. But what has been a new feature in J&K this time has been the extension of the free-fire zone hitherto restricted to the LoC held by the Indian Army to a belt along the international border in the Jammu-Sialkot region held by the BSF. Under normal circumstances, the international borders are held by border-guarding forces and not the military, but circumstances in Kashmir are far from normal now after the killing of “terror poster boy” Burhan Wani of the Hizbul Mujahideen, and the accelerating cascade of events thereafter from the Pakistani ingress at Uri and the “surgical counter-strike” by Indian Special Forces across the LoC. From experience and long-term institutional memory, India is aware that this has always been the correct policy to deal with a Pakistan controlled by a radicalised amalgam of military-jihadi forces. Every attempted fidayeen infiltration, or hit-and-run raid by Pakistani composite “border action teams”, has to be hit and hammered hard, whether on Indian territory, or, by India’s “hot pursuit” actions into Pakistan, so that the “terror of war” is injected into that country in equal measure. But, as matters stand, India lacks the appropriate “fire and forget” type of irregular forces with which to carry out “reverse fidayeen” strikes from India into Pakistan, a revealing commentary on a socio-political culture that appears hesitant to ruthlessly stamp out pro-Pakistan terrorist movements inside this country like the “Indian Mujahideen” or “Students’ Islamic Movement of India”, but lacks the will and the motivation to create an “Indian fidayeen”, if necessary by “ideological reverse engineering”, to give Pakistan a dose of its own medicine by turning the knife-edge of “death by a thousand cuts” onto its originator.

The “fidayeen” concept of religion-crazed zealots embracing martyrdom as suicide-bomber or active shooters resonates throughout the history of political Islam, from drug-crazed “Hashishin” whose targeted killings held the Islamic world to political ransom in the 11th century. However, this presents complex philosophical and ideological contradictions in the secular Indian socio-religious environment. The philosophy of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan in his The Hindu view of life diverges entirely from the “kafir” — centric exposition of The Quranic Concept of War of Brigadier Malik. Developing the ideological software for information warfare against a fanatical enemy radicalised almost since childhood by rigid adherence to the scriptures of his faith requires appropriate ideological moorings. Many of these are already enshrined in the Bhagavad Gita, and many more in the “shabads” of the Guru Granth Sahib. India requires to formulate its own ideological “pathway to paradise” for motivation of its own fidayeen on missions to Pakistan.

The writer is a former Chief of Army Staff and a former member of Parliament