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Asia Times
2 days ago
- Politics
- Asia Times
The silence of icons in hours of need
Two articles–one from The Caravan, the other from The Atlantic–circle around a deceptively simple yet thought-provoking question: Can a global icon, someone capable of shaping the public thought of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people, afford to remain silent during times of political and moral crisis? Take Sachin Tendulkar, cricket's eternal deity and arguably one of India's most venerated public figures. In a searing 2021 piece titled 'Establishment Man: The Moral Timidity of Sachin Tendulkar,' journalist Vaibhav Vats conducted a quiet evisceration. Yes, Tendulkar is humble. Yes, he's famously self-effacing. But Vats doesn't let those qualities mask the deeper absence at the heart of Tendulkar's public life: a glaring moral void. At a time when India was being battered by the second wave of Covid-19 pandemic and its Prime Minister Narendra Modi was aggressively advancing an exclusionary Citizenship Amendment Act, Tendulkar–idol to a billion–offered no comment, no concern, no gesture of civic responsibility. Vats recounts a moment of almost surreal dissonance: as nationwide protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act gripped India, with mass demonstrations, police crackdowns, constitutional questions burning in the public square, Tendulkar took to X (formerly Twitter) to share his preferred chutney ratio for vada pav. 'Red chutney, very little green chutney & some imli chutney,' he wrote, as if utterly insulated from the country's moral convulsions. The Caravan did not mince words. It describes Tendulkar as a man curiously unaware of his own symbolic gravity. He occupies perhaps the highest pedestal in Indian public life, and yet appears incapable–or unwilling–to grasp the ethical responsibility that comes with such cultural elevation. His misreading of his own stature, the piece argues, is precisely why he retreats into the trivial when the moment demands conviction. Even more damning is the article's assertion that Tendulkar embodies the 'worst traits of the Indian middle class' – a trifecta of moral indifference, democratic apathy, and intellectual hollowness. He is a mirror, the piece suggests, not of who we aspire to be, but who we have become: more comfortable with consumer comfort than civic courage. Fast forward to this week's Atlantic piece, titled bluntly, 'Where Is Barack Obama?' writer Mark Leibovich asks a similar question, this time of the man who once embodied hope and change. Yes, Obama did his time–eight grueling years as the leader of the free world. Yes, he's earned the right to decompress, to cash in, to hover above the fray. But as Donald Trump barrels the whole world towards an unchartered territory during his second term–threatening to dismantle democratic institutions and global stability–Obama's detachment does feel a bit irresponsible. Leibovich, in The Atlantic, cuts through the nostalgia surrounding Obama with surgical precision: it would be one thing if Obama had slipped into quiet retirement–taken up oil painting, perhaps, like George W Bush. But that's not what's happened. Obama remains firmly in the public eye, only now his presence radiates curated ease–movies or book recommendations over X and beachside photoshoots–while much of the country and the whole world spirals into democratic anxiety. What makes Obama's absence more than a symbolic lapse, Leibovich argues, is the profound contradiction it exposes. His career was built on the rhetoric of engagement–grassroots activism, community organizing, civic renewal. In 2008, the entire ethos of his campaign was not 'I will save you' but 'We are the ones we've been waiting for.' That message, once electric, now rings hollow in the vacuum of his detachment. His conspicuous silence as Trump mounts a vengeful return and democratic norms buckle under pressure is a betrayal of the very premise on which Obama built his political identity. Leibovich calls it what it is: a dereliction. A man who once inspired millions to believe in the power of collective action now seems content to watch the civic unraveling from the comfort of a higher plane, buffered by wealth, acclaim and a curated brand of chill. The two articles have essentially pointed out that even though both Tendulkar and Obama represent vastly different cultures, different histories and different spheres of influence, the 'apparent moral failure' they share is unmistakable. When the world cries out for moral imagination, for voices that might still command trust and clarity, they evidently retreat. And in doing so, they remind us that silence is rarely neutral. In moments of crisis, it speaks volumes. Yet the underlying question posed by both articles is the same–and it grows more urgent by the day: What is the moral obligation that comes with influence? When someone holds the power to shape public opinion at scale, to steer collective attention and imagination, what does he owe the world in moments of crisis? Is there a duty to speak out? To take a stand? Must influence always be tethered to conscience? Or can the privileged few retreat into apolitical comfort, shrugging off the burden of moral clarity as someone else's job? Faisal Mahmud is the Minister (Press) of the Bangladesh High Commission in New Delhi .
Scroll.in
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Scroll.in
Interview: US claiming credit for ceasefire sets Indian foreign policy back by decades
The ceasefire between India and Pakistan arrived at on Saturday ended three days of the worst fighting seen between the two sides in decades, but the United States publicly claiming credit is a disaster for Indian foreign policy, says defence expert Sushant Singh. The Indian military on May 7 said it launched strikes on terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Pakistan following the terror attack on tourists in Pahalgam in April. This was followed by three days of cross-border shelling that escalated to drone attacks on border towns and missile attacks. On Saturday evening, Donald Trump claimed that the US had helped mediate the ceasefire, but India later said that Pakistan's director general of military operations called up first asking to pause the hostilities. In an interview with Scroll on Sunday, Singh said that whether it was Kargil or other instances where US presidents officials have intervened, they had always been in the background. 'Now, this is completely in the forefront,' said Singh, a lecturer at Yale University and a consulting editor at The Caravan. 'This also negates India's long-standing view that any crisis or issue with Pakistan is a bilateral issue and should not be internationalised,' said Singh. For Pakistan, the entire episode has been a huge victory: first, Trump talked of India and Pakistan together, hyphenating them, contrary to India's emphatic opposition to being clubbed with its hostile neighbour for the past 20 years. Second, Trump succumbed to Pakistan's nuclear threat and third, Kashmir has been made an issue of global concern. 'These are the three things which the Indian government – not just Modi's but governments preceding him going up to Indira Gandhi, Shastri, Nehru – has always opposed,' said Singh. 'It's a major setback for India's foreign policy going back many many decades. This is exactly what Pakistan wanted.' Edited excerpts: The most striking thing was that it was Donald Trump who announced the ceasefire on Saturday, not India or Pakistan. The US is selling this as a US-brokered ceasefire. What does this mean for India's foreign policy and India's strategic objectives? It is pretty embarrassing for Modi to be preempted by Trump and to be shown up as somebody who has compromised under pressure from Trump. Modi, over the last 10-11 years, has tried to project himself as a big global leader who is not bullied by anyone, who doesn't listen to anyone and everybody in the world seeks his advice. But in this case, it is pretty clear that he and his government could not sustain the pressure that came from President Trump and succumbed to it. This also negates India's long-standing view that any crisis or issue with Pakistan is a bilateral issue and should not be internationalised. Over a period of time – whether it is Kargil or else where many US presidents, US officials have intervened – those have always been in the background. Now, this is completely in the forefront. It has put Modi in some kind of an embarrassing position. But knowing the kind of control he has over India's corporate-owned mass media, we should expect that they will try and spin it and get a narrative where this will also be posited as a victory and the role of Trump, the vice president and the secretary of state would be marginalised. Could you expand on what is the reportage of the US role? The reportage of the US role mainly comes from CNN and a bit from New York Times, and is more or less in agreement with each other. The reportage is that by Friday afternoon, US time, it was pretty clear to the Trump administration, particularly to Marco Rubio, that things were escalating at a pretty fast pace and were likely to go out of hand. It is at that point he approached Vance and Trump that they should press on both capitals and all the decision makers to step back. What exactly the intelligence was? Did it relate to Pakistan's nuclear capabilities or something else? We don't know yet. But it was decided that vice president JD Vance – whose wife Usha is of Indian origin; her parents were Indian immigrants – would call up Modi and tell him that things can go completely out of hand and he should step back and start talking to the Pakistanis. Similarly, Marco Rubio spoke to Asim Munir, Shehbaz Sharif and others on the Pakistani side. Meanwhile, [India's National Security Advisor Ajit] Doval, [External Affairs Minister S] Jaishankar and the others were spoken to on the Indian side as well. Eventually it was pressed upon India and Pakistan that they should talk to each other and that is how the two DGMOs [director generals of military operations] spoke to each other and some kind of agreement or arrangement or understanding was arrived at about the ceasefire. The US has always been involved in mediation, but this is public like never before. Trump put it out on TruthSocial and then later tweeted out an offer for mediation to find a 'solution' to the Kashmir crisis. India has always gone against the idea that Kashmir is an international issue. Does this blow the lid on a lot of success that India had over the last couple of decades? The whole idea of Kashmir being a bilateral issue emerges out of the Simla agreement of 1972. In 1965, India came under tremendous pressure from the Soviet Union when Lal Bahadur Shastri had to go to Tashkent for a ceasefire and a peace agreement with Pakistan with [General] Ayub Khan. Before leaving Delhi, Shastri had announced that he would not give up Haji Peer pass at any cost. Haji Peer pass is a militarily important pass on what was then the ceasefire line and what is now the Line of Control. But eventually, under Soviet pressure, he had to give up the Haji Peer pass to Pakistan. Unfortunately, Shastri had a massive heart attack in Tashkentand passed away there. Similarly, after India lost the 1962 border war to China, [US president] John F Kennedy put a lot of pressure because [at] that time the Indian armed forces were being built up by the United States. [India's foreign minister] Swaran Singh and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Bhutto held talks over Kashmir; Bhutto acted haughtily against Swaran Singh because he believed that Pakistan had the upper hand and India will have to roll over after it lost to China. Those talks failed and India didn't concede anything. All through this period in the 50s, 60s, India came under tremendous pressure from the West and from its friends in both in the UK as well as the Soviet Union about Kashmir. That's why, when India defeated Pakistan militarily in 1971, Indira Gandhi was clear that this has to be made bilateral. And this emerges out of the 1972 Shimla accord that the Kashmir issue, or any issue between India and Pakistan, is a bilateral issue and we are not going to go for any kind of international mediation. But in 1999, President Bill Clinton intervened [during the Kargil war]. Nawaz Sharif was in the White House on July 4 but [former prime minister AB] Vajpayee did not go to the White House and whatever Clinton told Vajpayee did not come out in public. The same thing happened in 2008, or 2016 or 2001 or 2019 [but] nothing became public in this blatant manner. Trump's update on Truth Social is not only just [about] Kashmir. There are three paths to it. The first is simply that he is again hyphenating India and Pakistan – he's talking about both India and Pakistan being great nations. In the last 20 years, India has always said, 'pitch us against China, dehyphenate India and Pakistan'. India has said, 'We should not be clubbed with Pakistan'. This is a major emphasis of the Indian government over the last 20-odd years. [Now] this clearly means that India and Pakistan are again hyphenated when Trump talks about those two countries. The second thing is Trump also spoke about millions of lives being lost if things had gotten out of hand. That's a euphemism for nuclear war. In the case of India and Pakistan in South Asia, the only country which threatens to pre-emptively use nuclear weapons is Pakistan. Essentially, Trump has succumbed to the Pakistani nuclear threat, or an implicit nuclear threat that comes from Pakistan. The third thing is internationalising the Kashmir issue, which is what Pakistan has wanted for a long time. These are the three things which Pakistan, the Pakistani army and the Pakistani establishment wanted. These are the three things which the Indian government, not just Modi's but governments preceding him going up to Indira Gandhi, Shastri, Nehru have always opposed. It's a major setback for India's foreign policy going back many many decades. This is exactly exactly what Pakistan wanted. I don't know how serious Trump is and what kind of capacity or power he has to implement this or to push India into accepting this [ceasefire]. But on the face of it, what is out in the public, it doesn't look good for Modi, particularly because he is seen as a master of this kind of public diplomacy and PR and what is put out in the public: pictures of [him] hugging global leaders or back slapping them, putting reels or clips which which show great familiarity with with with various top leaders. Do you think that we need to now go back to what was the UPA [Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government] style which was often attacked, but did it actually have more impact? Did it contain Pakistan better than what we are doing now? It's not exactly true that this is the first time India and Pakistan have fought a war under the nuclear overhang. Pakistan had developed its nuclear weapons in the 1980s and even done formal testing in 1998. The Kargil war, which was a pretty big war – more than 1,000 people died on both sides – was fought under the nuclear overhang. Both India and Pakistan were declared nuclear powers at that point in time. Even in 2001, when Vajpayee mobilised the armed forces after the attack on Parliament and the Kaluchak attack [in Jammu in May 2002 that killed 23 people] – although military operations were not not launched – also happened under the threat of nuclear umbrella. In that sense, has Modi overturned a long-standing policy? No. What the UPA did was different and I genuinely believe that what [former national security advisor] Shiv Shankar Menon wrote in his book [ Choices ] makes a lot of sense: that you took the huge advantage out of not going kinetic against Pakistan. You became the darling of the west. The United States started giving you the kind of support which had historically not been available to India – in terms of technology, in terms of intelligence sharing, in terms of diplomatic support. India's geopolitical rise is linked to India's great restraint. Pakistan became a pariah nation across the world whereas India was seen as a mature country which takes responsible responsible decisions. It worked out very well for India, even economically even with respect to China. And India got that opportunity to grow faster. This is the period when growth has just been going on for four-five years. That economic growth continued under the UPA government because it did not have to divert its energies towards a military conflict. Let's also not forget the fact – and this is Shiv Shankar Menon again quoted in [journalist] Rajdeep's book which comes after the 2019 election – that the military chiefs in 2008 really did not give any options on the table. Nobody came up and said let's do this. So, it was not that India had many military options, but I think the UPA government [and the late] Dr Manmohan Singh made the best use of the circumstances. Somebody who served in the [US president Barack] Obama administration at that time in the White House, at a very senior position, told me that the orders from President Obama to him were to give everything that the Indians want but make sure there is no war between India and Pakistan. India took huge advantage of the policy that it followed. When we come to Modi and in 2015 and 2016, after Pathankot, he tried to actually even involve ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] in an investigation in an Indian air base. It is not that he did not try to go down that path, but clearly those motives did not work out, that methodology did not work out. Then, in 2016, we had these very small special forces operations across the Line Of Control which were hyped up as a surgical strike before the Uttar Pradesh elections. Then you have Balakot in 2019 where a military failure became a major political success. Post-2019, India has boxed itself into limited options. Rather than increasing the kind of options that it has as part of state craft – whether diplomatic options, economic options, people-to-people contacts, in case of India water sharing, energy, other kinds of pacts – you have taken all of them off the table and boxed yourself into only a punitive military option. Even in that punitive military option, you have to do something more than what you have already done earlier: what you have done in 2016 you have to do more in 2019; what you have done in 2019 you have to do much more in 2025. Any statesman, any leader has to increase the options that are available to them and use both – a carrot and stick at the same time – to reward the adversary. If Pakistan does something right, you reward him, you give him the carrot. If he does something wrong, you use this stick. Do you think it will be wise for India, at least in some small ways, to start talking to Pakistan again? Definitely – if India's strategic threat and challenge is coming from China and Pakistan is not the strategic challenge. No country can fight two fronts at the same time. The biggest and the most powerful countries in the world have not been able to take on two fronts. India cannot afford to fight on two fronts. You can't talk to China because China is a strategic threat. It's a huge challenge. It wants a unipolar Asia. You will have to contest China in any case. The only country with which you can clearly have peace among these two adversaries is Pakistan. If you were to manage and engage with Pakistan, you don't box yourself in this manner. I'm saying this as a realist: you need to engage with Pakistan so that you take one of the adversaries off the table. There has been a lot of chatter around specifically the jets. We've read reports in which Pakistan claims that it used Chinese jets. Pakistan has Chinese jets – J10, JF17 that is well known. What the Pakistanis are claiming, and which has not been reported in the Indian media – and whenever it has tried to be reported has been pulled down, whether it was the case of The Wire where their whole portal was taken down or The Hindu where [journalist] Vijaita's [Singh] story had to be pulled down – is that using Chinese weaponry and Chinese platforms, like the J10 and the Air 15 missile, they have been able to take down India's Rafale aircraft. Their claim is that they brought down five Indian aircraft – three Rafale planes, one Sukhoi and one MiG29 – on the first night of conflict. The Indian side has not denied this claim but it has not confirmed the claim and no Indian media house has reported it. But all the global global media houses, including CNN, BBC, New York Times, Washington Post, Le Monde – everybody has reported and confirmed, using satellite imagery and other video images, that India lost two fighter jets that evening – at least two if not more and at least one of them was a Rafale. This would be the first time in the modern era that a Chinese weapon on a Chinese platform has taken down a high-end western Western platform. Chinese weaponry has never been used earlier. When China fought in the Korean War against the United States in the 1950s, it was using Soviet equipment. It is only in recent years that Chinese equipment has come into play. This is the first time we are seeing Chinese weaponry being used against high-end Western equipment. A Rafale is a 4.5-generation fighter and not many had expected that the Chinese weaponry and Chinese platforms would be successful against it. Therefore, this Pakistani claim has significance which goes beyond the subcontinent. It has significance for Taiwan. It has significance for defence companies. It has significance for geostrategy. There is huge global interest in how this actually played out and India's silence is adding to the discomfort around it. What does this mean for India's Rafale fleet? Rafale is a good aircraft. It is a very modern aircraft. Aircraft can come down for various reasons. The airforce has to first go and destroy radars and the air defence mechanism before it gets deployed. But if you are using aircraft in a tactical manner for anti-terror operations, you are leaving them vulnerable to being quickly monitored, because you are not taking out the air defence in the first go. That, plus the kind of other enabling platforms – from AVAX to electronic warfare equipment and other things – enable this kind of environment. This is not the 1960s, 70s or the second world war where you are going to have a dog fight. This is a very electronic environment; think of it as a video game where somebody is seeing everything and all the engagement and all the firing that happens is beyond visual range. In this case, it's not just the aircraft or the pilot. There is the whole enabling environment which has to be there. There could be weaknesses in operational deployment, there could be other weaknesses. It necessarily does not mean that there is a problem with Rafale aircraft. Moreover, we still have to get confirmation from the Indian side that they lost some Rafale aircraft – one or two or whatever the reality is – before we can actually discuss and debate this in any great detail. You had written that Balakot was a political success. Do you think something similar will happen with this ceasefire or do you see it going alright with the BJP? My own sense at this point is that it is too early to tell. Initially, what seems to me is that there is huge discomfort in the right-wing ecosystem of the BJP about how things have played out. Unlike 2019, even amongst the media or journalists or an analyst, there has not been unanimity about what has gone on. There have been more disturbing questions that have emerged this time about the political leadership, their decision making, their deployment of the military. The fact that at least two retired army chiefs – General Ved Malik and General MM Naravane – have expressed their disappointment publicly about this ceasefire shows that even in this very nationalist military constituency of retired veterans, there are questions being asked about what Modi has done and particularly Trump's public antics and the way Pakistanis have responded to it. It's not a very pleasant scenario and it is not as one-sided as it seemed in 2019 to me. We saw the role of 'Godi' media in the last three days. What does it mean to have such a media for India's military and strategic aims as well India's international image. If you take out some of the independent platforms, the rest of the media, including some of India's most reputed newspapers, have been shameful in their coverage. Either they are lying or they don't show or they don't give context. Particularly television journalists and television editors, their reportage and conduct on social media has been absolutely pathetic, for want of a better word. What it means strategically is firstly they mislead the country. Secondly, they create a hype and a pressure which can compel the government to either tell lies or cover up things or do things it may not be wanting to do, but because it feels under pressure that it has to demonstrate boldness and aggressiveness and the 56-inches kind of a behaviour. The third thing is that they completely destroy the credibility of whatever is being put out by the Indian side. It makes me extremely sad that for the first time I am witnessing something amongst neutral observers where they are willing to consider Pakistani media and reports as having greater credibility than what Indian television media and electronic and so-called journalists are putting out. That is really sad and shameful. In 1999, it was India's media which helped India win the war. A very senior Pakistani official at that time told me that the reason [General Pervez] Musharraf, when he took power after the military coup post-Kargil, started private television channels in Pakistan was because of the experience of Kargil. He believed Indian television channels, post-Kargil, were a battle-winning factor and therefore he created independent channels in Pakistan – not out of a love for democracy or freedom of speech. He thought they were strategic tools. That strategic tool which India used beautifully in 1999 has been completely destroyed. It has become poisonous, it has become venomous and it has become detrimental to India's national interest. We were not winning the narrative war this time, which we should have easily, considering that Pakistan has a very poor reputation and doesn't carry much global standing uh in any case.
Scroll.in
26-04-2025
- Politics
- Scroll.in
Interview: ‘Pahalgam shows Balakot did not create deterrence'
Welcome to The India Fix by Shoaib Daniyal, a newsletter on Indian politics. As always, if you've been sent this newsletter and like it, to get it in your inbox every week, sign up here (click on ' follow '). A horrific attack in Pahalgam, Kashmir, in which 26 people were killed, has left South Asia on edge as India has blamed Pakistan and its support for cross-border terrorism. Delhi has said that it would hold the Indus Waters Treaty 'in abeyance' and Modi promised that India would soon 'raze whatever is left of the terror haven', a thinly-veiled reference to Pakistan. To understand Delhi's military options at this time, how the Modi government overstated its claims that 'normalcy' has returned to Kashmir and the risky business of de-escalating conflict between two nuclear powers, I spoke to former military officer Sushant Singh, a lecturer at Yale University and one of India's foremost security experts. Do you think India can do another Balakot [striking across the border as it did in the wake of the Pulwama attack of 2019]? It depends on what you mean by Balakot. The question is what did Balakot achieve? As this particular incident has shown, Balakot did not create deterrence which stopped militants or Pakistan from undertaking another terror attack in Kashmir. That's one thing. Secondly, Balakot, as I wrote in The Caravan, was not a military success. It was a political success because it happened just before elections, and it worked for them [the Bharatiya Janata Party]. Thirdly, Balakot did escalate up to a point. As you know, [Mike] Pompeo, who was [United States] Secretary of State at that time, in his memo mentioned the nuclear escalation between India and Pakistan. So, I really don't know what we mean by another Balakot. If the idea is that India would do a kinetic operation against Pakistan, yes, that possibility definitely exists, particularly going by the rhetoric we're seeing from the government. I want to go to your reporting on Balakot, especially your piece in The Caravan. You've taken a view which is at variance with much of the Indian mainstream media. You say Balakot was actually not a military success. Do you think that will inform what is happening now? Will it reduce India's options? Let me put it this way. The political leadership in India would want to do something that would assuage the heightened emotions of their supporters at least, if not the Indian people. They have already set a bar because of what they claim to have done in 2016 with the surgical strikes across the LoC [Line of Control] and then in 2019 with Balakot. Once you've done that, you can't do anything lesser than that. If you claim that you achieved so much, then you need to do something bigger. That's one big constraint. The second constraint, of course, is the military failure of doing Balakot and the escalation that happened. Balakot is not just about what the Indian Air Force tried to do in Balakot; it's also what happened thereafter – when [Indian Air Force pilot] Abhinandan [Varthaman] was captured, when the Indian MiG-21 was brought down, the threat of missile launches from both sides. That, too, is part of the Balakot episode. The question isn't what India can do, it's how do you de-escalate from there. Anyone can order a ground-based missile, an airborne strike or a drone swarm attack. The point is, will Pakistan retaliate? Yes. After Pakistan retaliates, what do you do? Do you take it lying down? Do you say, 'thank you, 1-1' and go back home? Or do you escalate further? How do you de-escalate? The political leadership has to answer how it intends to prevent serious escalation between two nuclear weapon states and how to de-escalate after you have taken the first step. The military leadership must answer what their constraints are, whether they can honestly tell the political leadership that they are operating within limitations: shortage of soldiers, deployment at the China border, modern equipment shortages and so on. These two considerations – political of de-escalation and military – will come into play. I want to go back to the horrific terrorist attack in Pahalgam. Do you think there was a security lapse there? Definitely. There were two CRPF [Central Reserve Police Force] battalions until a year or two ago. One of them was moved out. Armed men fired for more than 20-30 minutes, and no security forces came. The family of one of the dead naval officers said no help came for 90 minutes and her husband died. Clearly, there was a security lapse. There was also an intelligence failure. You have militants in the area, roaming around with weapons, clearly embedded in the area with local support. It's not like the militant came that morning itself and suddenly did this. The intelligence failure is that you didn't have any idea of all this happening. Security failed on two levels. First, you left the place completely unguarded – probably believing that tourists wouldn't like to see soldiers and that would belie claims of normalcy. There was also the belief that militants wouldn't do anything to attack tourism, which is the lifeline of the Kashmiri economy – so therefore we can leave it unguarded. Second, the response during the attack was very poor. Unless you are buying your own Kool Aid of normalcy having returned, there was no reason to have no forces present in that spot. There were three failures: intelligence, and two levels of security – before and during the incident. Let's dig a bit deeper on your Kool Aid point. What does this incident say about the Modi government's claim that Kashmir is now normal and militancy has ended after the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019? This incident shows that these claims are untrue. In fact, even earlier, incidents in Poonch and Rajouri already disproved that claim. Let's be clear: the violence isn't at the level of the early '90s or just after Kargil. But violence had already come down when Omar Abdullah was chief minister [2009-2015]. In 2011-2012, there were a lot of street protests, a lot of stone pelting, but militancy was already down. Then PDP [People's Democratic Party] formed the government with BJP [in 2016], and young Kashmiri men began joining the militancy. Violence was artificially suppressed, but the anger against the Indian state and the lack of political redress remains, creating fertile ground for militancy – even if you take Pakistan away from the equation. One of the claims for abrogating Article 370 was better security, which you're saying has not come through. Do you think India's security apparatus is actually now weaker because local Kashmiri parties have been destroyed and Kashmir is now ruled directly from Delhi? Absolutely. Remember, during demonetisation [in 2016], it was claimed that the terrorism's back has been broken in Kashmir. The same was said after surgical strikes and after abrogating Article 370. In all cases, security has not improved. We've lost even the limited support we had among Kashmiris. You could generate local intelligence, you had sympathisers. All that has been broken down by the kind of politics pursued in the rest of India and by Delhi in Kashmir: hardcore Hindutva politics, demonising Muslims and Kashmiris, TV debates running horribly anti-Kashmir content nightly. You can't expect sympathy when you've done what was done after August 2019: shutting everything down, taking away the internet. It is a very oppressive environment in Kashmir. Even tourism, though economically vital, has become a tool of humiliation and oppression. Could you expand on that? What do you mean by tourism being a tool of humiliation? Many tourists from the mainland, influenced by the current Islamophobic political climate, behave in obnoxious ways – sometimes unknowingly, sometimes knowingly – acting as if they sustain Kashmir. Even non-Kashmiri friends have observed this when they travel to Kashmir and have felt embarrassed. The way tourism is conducted doesn't foster healthy ties between Kashmir and the rest of India. It's often perceived as an extension of the politics India has seen since 2014. Let's zoom out to geopolitical security. If India launches any kinetic operation now, what are Pakistan's options? It depends on whether India launches a covert or overt operation. A covert operation can be denied by Pakistan, and meanwhile India, using its godi media channels, can run a propaganda campaign. That's easier – since there is no escalation. If India does something visible that Pakistan cannot deny, Pakistan will have to retaliate. General Khalid Kidwai, a key figure in Pakistan's nuclear policy, lays out a very clear line: QPQ+. If India does something, Pakistan will have to do quid pro quo plus. Something additional will have to be done when Pakistan retaliates. Because the Pakistan military can't afford to lose face. If they acknowledge India's action, they must retaliate. Then the question becomes, what does India do? Retaliate again? Escalate? Step back? Does a third party – Americans, Saudis, UAE, China – intervene and say, 'guys, this is enough'? Or do intelligence agencies start talking like after Balakot and find a way to de-escalate? The political leadership in India must think through this before taking any step. You said the Pakistani army must retaliate. Last week, Pakistan Army chief Asim Munir gave a provocative speech saying Kashmir is Pakistan's jugular vein. Do you think there's any connection between that and what happened in Pahalgam? It's hard to say. Asim Munir is not the first to use such rhetoric. Ayub, Zia, Kayani – many have said similar is a long-standing belief in a large section of the Pakistani military. There is nothing new in this. Whether there's a direct link between Munir's speech and Pahalgam is hard to say. My sense, not based on any input, is that it was a soft target which was left unprotected. The attackers saw it as easy to hit and escape. Militants, unless they're fidayeen, want to hit and get out. They don't want to be caught up in a pitched battle. My gut feeling is that it doesn't seem directly connected to Munir's speech, but it's hard to say for sure. Your own writing has shown that Modi actually managed domestic perception really well after Balakot, no matter the military assessment. Do you think something similar will happen or do you think that there will be some hard questions asked of the security lapses in Pahalgam? I don't think that India's corporate-owned media, the television channels, and newspapers, where a lot of our friends work, are going to ask any tough questions whatsoever of Mr Modi or Mr Shah. They didn't ask those questions after Manipur. They didn't even ask those questions even when the then governor of Jammu and Kashmir, Satyapal Malik, went public about everything that happened in Pulwama during the suicide bombing of the CRPF convoy. Those questions were not asked then. I doubt that the people who call themselves journalists and editors have the courage or even the capability to ask those questions. It will be incumbent upon some analysts, some commentators, and independent platforms like Scroll, Caravan, Wire, Newsminute, Newslaundry to ask those questions. Yes, and I think that really leaves the country weaker as these incidents show. If you do not ask questions of the government, then the government performs worse. Absolutely. I'll say only one more thing before I end. Demanding accountability is extremely important if you want to fix things for the future. If you don't demand accountability in a democratic setup, then you are sowing seeds for future disasters.
