Cross-LoC strikes: Why BJP raised the ante

A wag may have got much of it right over the social media: India: We attacked Pakistan across the LoC

Pak: Didn’t

India: Did

Pak: Didn’t

India: Did

The normal adversarial relationship between the two neighbours seems to have gone topsy-turvy. One obvious question: why did the Narendra Modi government publicise and even brag about the Indian attack on the outposts of Pakistan-based jihadis, and why is Pakistan and its media so fervently denying it. Such incursions have happened in the past on both sides — we keep our own incursions a secret and complain about the Pakistani ones, likewise so does our estranged neighbour. So the normal response to the September 18 jihadi attack at Uri, killing 19 Armymen, would have been a similar attack across the LoC on Pakistan-based jihadis. The Pakistan Army would have got the message, and Indian opinion mitigated by claiming the terrorists were killed in a border clash.

So why did the BJP go on the offensive and raise the ante It certainly had the TV channels on its side, and was pushed further by their hyper-nationalism. The coming elections in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Gujarat may have had a lot to do with it. Within hours of the “surgical strikes”, the Sangh Parivar began victory marches and then posters appeared across UP declaring India would beat Pakistan in its own land! BJP leaders, including the defence minister, went on to brag in public. Yet it has wisely decided not to give in to demands that it release videotapes of the incursions across the LoC. If they do show the Indian claim is true, it would only inflame Pakistani opinion and increase pressure on its establishment to respond with a military attack.

The Congress, which initially praised the military action, accused PM Modi of playing on the soldiers’ sacrifices. Other netas like Arvind Kejriwal, Amarinder Singh and even Mayawati joined in the criticism. What was earlier a near unanimous backing of the military action by the political class became divided along party lines as the Opposition didn’t want the BJP to reap electoral advantage. There has thus been a collapse in the traditional political consensus on security matters.

The Pakistan’s refusal to acknowledge an attack across the LoC stemmed from an unwillingness to allow volatile public opinion to be swayed into demanding a retaliatory attack. The generals in Pakistan didn’t want an escalation of the conflict while the civilians wanted the jihadis to be reined in. This was the only sensible option, else the risk of escalation into a war became a real possibility.

War is specially dangerous given the nuclear arsenals of both sides. The war-mongering has increased with competitive media channels drumming up hysteria. While the nuclear arsenals may hold back any immediate escalation, both India and Pakistan are becoming more belligerent. There are unconfirmed reports of over 100 jihadis gathering at the LoC for further attacks. Skirmishes, meanwhile, continue. The danger of escalation is for the moment restraining both sides. Sashank Joshi, a fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, a think tank on international defence, writes: “There is a qualitative difference between a low-level, tactical raid on minor outposts a short distance from the LoC and a large-scale assault on the headquarters of the organisations that continue to attack India. These are deeper inside Pakistan, closer to major population centres, and far larger in size.” Clearly, the low level risks in a raid on the border of the sort that happened at the LoC is very different from the kind of deep raid in which the US killed Osama bin Laden at Abbottabad in Pakistan.

While Pakistan suffered humiliation with Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Bhutan and Sri Lanka, in addition to India, dropping out of the Saarc summit in Islamabad in November, it gained a public relations coup by taking an international media team to the LoC to convince the media that there had been no incursion, but only shelling.

There is the further demand by BJP spokesmen on national TV that the security forces are sacrosanct, and are not to be questioned. Any implied questioning of the Army’s supposed role in the crossing of the LoC is compared to an act of “treason”. In a democracy, the Army should be questioned over its actions by the civil authority and by Parliament. Its actions can also be questioned even if it goes by laws like the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, applicable in Kashmir and parts of the Northeast, and enacted by Parliament. The Army and paramilitary forces have been accused of violating human rights by several activists.

This is applicable to the unrest that began in the Kashmir Valley in July. During the unrest, 87 people were killed and over 8,000 people injured, with more than 800 of them having got pellet injuries in their eyes. Perhaps if the Narendra Modi government was more responsive to the people of Kashmir, the escalation of hostilities between the neighbours need not have happened.

The writer is a Mumbai-based freelance journalist