Narendra Modi came to power mocking Manmohan Singh for “writing love letters” to Nawaz Sharif after every bomb blast in India. Sushma Swaraj had asked for ten Pakistani heads on a platter for every two Indian soldier heads that Pakistan’s terror-aiding troopers had cut.
It was easy for them to breathe fire and brimstone when they were on the opposition benches. Now that they are in the hot seat, they know where it singes. After Pathankot and Uri, they have realised that even when you are in the line of fire, you can’t always return fire.
As Winston Churchill who won the bloodiest war in world history said, it is better to jaw-jaw than war-war. Poor Ram Madhav got that wrong. He asked for “a jaw for a tooth”. The gent has since been untoothed. Last spotted, he was on Kozhikode beach talking of lok kalyan.
Two things, apart from the beach air of Kozhikode, seem to have helped cool down the many hotheads in the BJP. One was the PM’s statesmanly address. He ruled out the military option and challenged Pakistan to race with him on good governance.
That was a tough call. For, it is easier to orate like Mark Antony and mobilise a nation to war, than to stand in the line of fire and preach peace. Only statesmen can do that. Modi has, and deserves kudos.
Give credit to the opposition, too. They have been dignified in this hour of crisis. All of them—Rahul Gandhi to Sitaram Yechury—resisted the temptation to score brownie points by mocking the government.
That was the best message gone across to Pakistan —that in India’s democracy, the opposition behaves as responsibly as its government.
Illustration: Bhaskaran
Now comes the real challenge. How to hit Pakistan where it hurts, without using force?
Withdraw the Most Favoured Nation status? Phew! The two are hardly trading. And MFN is a misleading WTO term. It only means we will tariff their goods at the rate at which we tariff goods from other countries. Stop Indus waters? Easier said than done. It will take years to build dams upstream in Kashmir. Isolate them in SAARC? They wouldn’t mind; they have never been serious about SAARC, except to use it as an India-bashing forum.
There is only one way. Hurt their military, without going to war.
Pakistan is a state that exists for its military. As was said about old Prussia—every state has an army; in Pakistan, the army has a state.
The state’s other organs exist to feed its army.
Pakistan’s generals have been fattening themselves by raising bogeys. In the 50s and 60s, they talked of the Soviet threat and got Patton tanks and Sabre-jets. In the 1970s, they raised the India bogey and got F-16s. In the 1980s, they talked of the Soviets in Afghanistan, and got Kalashnikovs and Stingers. In the 1990s, they created the Taliban and raised the Al Qaeda-Taliban bogey to get funds and arms from the US.
It took a decade for Vajpayee and Manmohan to make the Americans wiser, and cajole them into cutting aid. Their last straw was 26/11. US military aid to Pakistan came down after that—from $3.5 billion five years ago to $600 million now. Not coincidentally, terrorist attacks, especially in Kashmir, too, came down correspondingly.
Why are they striking now? Simple! The generals have found new friends. The Chinese are giving them Chengdu J-10B warjets, AWACS systems, Al-Khalid tanks, and JF-17 thunder fighters, in return for letting them build roads, ports and factories, some of them in occupied Kashmir. Colin Powell’s “major non-NATO ally” is now Wang Yi’s “irreplaceable, all-weather friend”.
What should Modi do? Just as Vajpayee and Manmohan engaged Washington, Modi should now engage Beijing and make them wiser—that the same terrorist can also hit the China-built roads, ports and factories in PoK, Baltistan and Balochistan.
prasannan@theweek.in
