Writing last week, I wondered if my imagination had the escape velocity to leave behind the ongoing tensions between India and Pakistan. It turns out that the mind's ability to travel fast is pointless when your body is firmly planted in the middle of the rapidly unfolding drama.
Whilst I am thrilled by the mere thought of existing as a being of pure consciousness, I am a flesh-and-bone mortal who cannot escape the harsh realities of my immediate surroundings. Still, I would have resisted the temptation of succumbing to the inanities of a conflict if I could.
Conflicts do not bring out the best in people, as we shall soon see. I don't like them. And this is my happy place. A space where I vanish once every week to check my brain's vitals and assure myself that it is still alive. With me so far? Good.
Two impressive developments, however, took the matter out of my hands. No, not any let-up in personal ordeals. During the Bajwa era, a pattern emerged: whenever India got angry, something in the system doubled the torments on independent-minded Indian watchers. India was angrier than usual last week.
So, my trials also correspondingly quadrupled. Nothing personal. The first development was about the remarkable way in which everyone rallies behind the national cause. From self-deprecating but exceptionally charming memes to an absolutely unwavering collective narrative, it was a sight to behold.
The second baller move, on which I want to dedicate some part of this discussion, came from India's Narendra Modi, which has the potential to renegotiate the very fabric of Indian society and do away with the negativities we have witnessed in the past decade. If nothing else, it has dramatically changed his image in my eyes.
But first, the story so far. When the Pahalgam incident took place, Indian mainstream and social media immediately ratcheted up its anti-Pakistan rhetoric to DEFCON 1, the highest level. I immediately condemned the attack on unarmed civilians, being an ordinary citizen of a country that has endured countless terror attacks.
On such occasions, one does two things: wait for the other party to present some evidence and contact your own to get some reaction. When no evidence was forthcoming from the Indian side despite the long wait, I turned to the people in the know on our side. They asked me to examine the map, Pahalgam's distance from the LoC, and India's force deployment in the region. Then they asked how any potential infiltrator could travel this deep into the territory without being accosted by the Indian forces and without active collusion by powerful quarters within the country.
This made sense, but I still waited for India to react. When, without producing any smoking gun or apprehending the actual perpetrators, India took ostensible punitive measures like suspending the Indus Waters Treaty and expelling Pakistani diplomats and ordinary visitors, and the news emerged that in its briefing to foreign diplomats, New Delhi had failed to produce any implicating proof, one instinctively knew that India had jumped the gun.
Pakistan had already condemned the attack and indicated its readiness to cooperate if pertinent evidence was produced. But the noise and hate machine in Indian media was baying for blood. It was simultaneously playing the Hindu-Muslim card and demanding the obliteration of Pakistan.
Even the most moderate voices were convinced that a replay of the 2019 tit-for-tat strikes, where the downing of an Indian plane and the catch and return of an Indian pilot had accidentally saved the day, was on the cards. This absolute unhinging of the media was another huge mistake. Such irrationality in plain sight does not do any service to your diplomatic position.
It is unfair to expect Pakistan to lower its guard whenever India's domestic environment compels it to want to strike Pakistan in order to externalise its internal problems. In case you haven't noticed, there is an inherent incrementalism to this madness.
Reality or spin, from the 2016 surgical strikes and the 2019 aerial strikes to today, India wants to keep hitting deeper and deeper into Pakistan and with more force without starting a full-scale war or triggering a nuclear spiral. No sovereign nation with a conventional or nuclear defence doctrine would allow you that.
Perhaps Indians did not factor in the change of army command in recent years. And that is precisely why the Indian media hates the guts of Pakistan's incumbent army chief.
Thinking that India may inhale its propaganda and start a war that it cannot control, I turned to modelling and simulation. After running multiple simulations and scaling up the 2019 Toon-Rabock model of climatic impact of a nuclear war, I found this: any limited war could easily turn into a full-scale one and go nuclear in no time. If it came to that, India would want Pakistan to use a tactical bomb in defence of its formation in Azad Kashmir in order to circumvent its no-first-use doctrine.
Once it began, 70 million Indians and 50 million Pakistanis could die immediately, and 100 million more would limp away, burned, irradiated, scarred for life. With 50 cities gone, 7 teragrams of soot would choke the stratosphere, cooling Earth by 2°C, causing nuclear winter and leading to the starvation of 2.5 billion globally. If you even mention it to an Indian expert, it is dismissed as nuclear blackmail. Oh, the irrationality, the madness!
In the middle of all this, PM Modi has pulled off the utmost feat of imagination. After meeting the RSS supremo, he announced a caste census in India. Caste accountability is the reason why the BJP took a dark turn in the early nineties. Until then, it was the voice of righteous dissent against the injustices done by Indira's emergency.
The Babri Mosque controversy was a convenient distraction from the caste accounting by the Mandal Commission. Since then, both the BJP and the RSS have changed. Dalits, the Other Backward Castes (OBCs), and Adivasis are all represented within their ranks. Mr Modi himself is from an OBC family. Technically, it shouldn't have any problem in embracing unrepresented castes.
If the government walks the talk, and Indian institutions become more inclusive, India no longer needs to externalise its problems or tolerate hate on the streets. This manoeuvre not only snatches the most effective weapon from the opposition and strengthens his position within his party but also makes him an agent of genuine reform in India.
And don't forget that it is an important enough development to knock the war hysteria out of the news cycle. An India in harmony with itself can be a beacon of hope and peace in the region and outside. If successful, this might be one of the greatest transformations in history.
#Short #fuse
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