It’s time to uphold national interest 

Pulwama, virtually cold-blooded mowing down of nearly fifty security personnel in minutes, was traumatic and left a scar that only time may heal. There was understandably outrage across the nation and public uproar against Pakistan’s continued patronage of terrorist groups to carry out a proxy war against India. Not surprisingly, the national mood was one of anger and people across the spectrum felt, enough was enough. Pakistan had patronised terrorist groups in Afghanistan, provided sanctuary to Osama Bin Laden after 9/11 and offered launch pads to terrorist groups to strike at India. There was exasperation and almost every Indian after the Pulwama tragedy, wondered how long India would have to bleed and suffer the cuts that Pakistan had vowed to inflict on India. After all, India has been at the receiving end of Pakistan’s diabolical designs for the past three decades. The picturesque and serene valley of Kashmir during these three decades turned into a valley of attrition, death and destruction. Thousands of Kashmiri youth died and hundreds of our security personnel lost their lives and limbs in the prime of life. All because of an insecure Pakistan army which placed its faith in the insurance offered by the terrorists.

It has been a zero-sum game once Pakistan decided to engage the Indian army in a proxy war and egged Kashmir’s youth to take up the gun in the name of jihad against India. The then Pakistan army chief and head of state Gen. Zia ul Haq, as is now widely known, built a terror infrastructure to needle both India and Afghanistan. Balakot camp was the part of that infrastructure that the IAF destroyed on February 26th. It was a brilliant operation that the IAF carried out. A dozen Indian Air Force aircrafts went inside Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region and in a precision attack destroyed the training camp and hide out maintained by Jaish-e-Mohammad. Pakistan clearly did not expect an air strike and was caught napping even as our Air Force fighter pilots did their jobs and returned safely without the ‘mighty’ Pakistan army getting even a whiff of it. The entire Indian political top brass, including Congress President Rahul Gandhi, saluted Indian forces for risking their lives and performing their duty in the national interest.

So far so good. We celebrated our victory in India while Pakistanis seethed in anger. But soon there was an uproar against Prime Minister Imran Khan in his own country questioning him for letting Indian planes get away without any resistance. Naturally, the Pakistani Prime Minister was under public pressure to retaliate. Pakistan, experts argued, could not afford to target Indian military installations. And India does not have terrorist camps which could be targeted. Pakistan, therefore, did what it believed would not invite even harsher retaliation from India. Its planes, by its own admission, did not violate Indian air space but fired at non-military and ostensibly non-civilian targets from across the Line of Control. It also engaged in heavy shelling across the Poonch sector. Imran Khan needed a breather and he appears to have received one when an Indian pilot bailed out and landed in Pakistani territory.

One hopes, however, for de-escalation now that things seem to be getting out of control. It’s becoming a tit for tat game. A minor slip may push the two nuclear armed neighbours to a full-scale war. A war in the 21st century is a juvenile idea and at the same time a nightmare. Because there are no winners in this game of death and destruction as the world has seen in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Modern weaponry is deadly enough to turn large cities into ruins in no time. A war between India and Pakistan can be unimaginably destructive with nuclear weapons destroying each other. So, peace is a compulsion for both the countries. An eye-for-an-eye policy could be a very dangerous game for the two neighbours.

Yet war can well be a tempting option for politicians in certain situations. A war can build-up a wave of emotions and drive people into a nationalistic frenzy that politicians have used in the past to win elections. There is clearly enough temptation for the BJP at this point of time to indulge in such a game. After all, the 2019 parliamentary elections are barely three months away. The BJP finds itself cornered in the run-up to the elections, having messed up the economy and having failed to generate jobs or even address the rural and agrarian crisis. Issues like demonetisation, unimaginative implementation of GST reform, joblessness and rural distress have significantly reduced the party’s chances to repeat another term in power. Therefore, any ruling party in this situation may be tempted to go for the kill.

BJP’s is rooted in nationalist sentiments. It is a party which claims to believe in the ‘country first’. If that is indeed so, then any decision to go to war must be based on national interest and not on electoral considerations. The Prime Minister, we hope, will surely keep the national interest in mind before taking recourse to the last resort.

Pakistan’s history on the other hand has been the history of dangerous misadventures. Its military establishment loves wars. From 1947 till date it has unleashed almost half-a-dozen wars against India. Its policy of terror is an asymmetric strategy of permanent war against its perceived adversaries, India and Afghanistan. But its passion for engineering wars and spending large public funds on arms and weaponry ruined its economy and the misadventures reduced it to the status of a rouge state. Its economy continues to survive on doles from the IMF, the US and Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia. Pakistan has not shown any inclination so far to grow into responsible and modern nation state and a democracy. It is possibly the only country in the world which continues to nurse an appetite for war even after having lost East Pakistan.

India is a different story all together. It is a modern nation with the third largest economy of the world. We aspire to lead the global story of growth and development. A war is not in its interest or in its DNA. India has not been an aggressor ever since its independence in 1947. It has not been our civilizational ethos, either. A war means not just death and destruction but also slowing down our progress. And, we cannot afford to slow down.

Yet India cannot afford to compromise on its sovereignty and territorial integrity. When leaders of the 21 political parties at the Congress President’s initiative met in Delhi on February 27th, they kept national interest in mind and rising over their political considerations virtually authorised the government to take whatever is best for the country in the prevailing circumstances. It’s now the duty of the government to take everyone along in this hour of national crisis and do whatever it deems necessary.