BJP's Pakistan policy: A trail of disasters

The party neither has the capacity to think up a mature policy nor the ability to correct course

During the Korean War, the American military, led by a deranged Douglas MacArthur, considered nuclear strikes on China and Korea. (Those who think North Korea behaves in irrational fashion should consider its historical experience). MacArthur also thought the United States should pre-emptively attack the Russians, their ally against Hitler, before they developed nuclear capability.

This was briefly the background to Pokhran I under Indira Gandhi in 1974, abusing agreements with the Canadians who had supplied the technology and material on the assumption that these would not be used for weapons. Indira called it a peaceful explosion but that meant nothing: No explosion can be peaceful. However, at least there was pretence, and it came because that was a genuinely dangerous world and we could convince ourselves our hand was forced.

No such pressure obtained the second time when the Hindutva government under Atal Bihari Vajpayee made the Indian capability overt, without adding to actual capacity. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) distributed sweets on this national ‘achievement’ as though we had found the solution to our poverty and illiteracy.

Vajpayee gave an interview to India Today boasting that he had a “big bomb”. Though on tape, this quote was withdrawn overnight after Brajesh Mishra told Vajpayee it was immature in a world where nuclear weapons strategy and communication were sophisticated.

Unfortunately for India, the BJP compounded its naïvete with needless posturing and chest-thumping. LK Advani was taken aback, while making bombastic claims in Parliament, to be told that Pakistan had announced five tests in Balochistan.

It dawned on India at that stage that our Pokhran detonation was not a Diwali firecracker and we may have done something which actually had consequences.

The fact is India forced Pakistan to weaponise its nuclear programme. It was our fault and it changed things for us. First: That year was the only one in the last two decades that foreign investment into India was net negative. Why? Capital is a coward and flees uncertainty.

The second consequence of encouraging Pakistan to weaponise was that it established a stalemate. The BJP surrendered our conventional superiority to Pakistan, an anti-national act by definition. We could not punish Pakistan for acts of terror any longer unless we wanted to gamble with our populations.

The third consequence was that by taking the subcontinent nuclear we internationalised the Kashmir dispute, something we never wanted. The world became more interested in our dealings with Pakistan because its safety was at sake.

None of this was thought through by the individuals who do the BJP’s strategic thinking (assuming someone does). This has not changed from Vajpayee to Narendra Modi. The prime minister doesn’t have the capacity to grasp complexity. I am not revealing a secret: He himself accepts he cannot read long documents and requires his officers to condense material into short oral briefings. (See an earlier Business Standard by the writer on the subject, ‘Mr Modi’s unique style’, February 16, 2017).

Illustration by Binay Sinha

Along with this lack of personal capacity, he also lacks sage advice in this area, in my opinion. The national security advisor may be many things, including, at least according to himself, a sort of fantastical John le Carré figure on the field, outwitting the ISI with his brilliant disguise. But Henry Kissinger Ajit Doval is not. This may explain the incoherent strategic response India has had to Pakistan under Modi. Let us now bring in the events of recent days. Does the same level of thoughtlessness seen above inform our current Pakistan policy?

It is not easy to figure out what the structured policy is, because it hasn’t been articulated, but it is generally expressed in two ways. First that we will not talk to Pakistan till it stops cross-border terrorism. Second that we did a surgical strike on them in September 2016 to counter their terror. Who exactly did we kill? How many were they? Did the strike erode Pakistani capacity? State or non-state? By how much? These questions have not been answered. Indeed they have not even been asked.

The data shows what effect the surgical strikes had as a deterrent: Nothing. Manmohan Singh left with violence in Jammu and Kashmir at all time lows, with fatalities under 200 annually. This has crept back up to 267 in 2016 and 349 in 2017. So the benefit of the surgical strike, if it had any use at all, remains to be explained to Indians. Let us look at the not-talking strategy.

This week PTI reported Pakistani sources revealing a ‘secret’ meeting between Doval and Pakistan’s NSA Nasser Janjua in Bangkok on December 26. Who was it a secret from? Us. Why is it secret? Because the Modi government is embarrassed to admit it engages with the enemy. Doval cannot meet Janjua in India because our posture is that we are not talking to Pakistan, even though we are. If this seems childish, it is because it is childish.

Writing in rediff.com (‘What is Modi’s Pakistan policy really?’, December 31), former ambassador M K Bhadrakumar said: “The domestic audience feels utterly confused — as if we live in an Orwellian animal farm — because the Bangkok meeting took place hardly a fortnight after PM Modi alleged a Pakistani plot to hijack the electorate in Gujarat out of the BJP orbit — and, in fact, coinciding with our ‘surgical strike 2.0’.”

What was this ‘surgical strike 2.0’? On December 23, Pakistan killed four Indian soldiers. Two days after that, India killed three Pakistani soldiers (this was ‘surgical strike 2). But six days after that five more Indians were killed in an attack on a paramilitary camp. Our surgical strike is not a solution. It is not even a strategy. So what is it and how does it fit into the broad response for how to get what we want out of Pakistan?

Nobody asks. The Congress is afraid because it feels it is vulnerable to the accusation of being anti-national. The media is unhinged on the issue of Pakistan. The BJP alone is authorised to articulate national interest but it has neither the capacity to think up a mature policy nor the ability to correct course.