By Ajai Shukla
Business Standard, 26th Sept 16
In a nuanced and careful speech on Saturday
that had components of both pragmatism and jingoism, Prime Minister Narendra
Modi skilfully created a narrative for deflecting war hysteria in India, redefining
the burgeoning confrontation with Pakistan in terms of a Lagaan-style contest for eliminating poverty, illiteracy and
deprivation in the two countries.
In Lagaan,
a Hindi-language, Oscar-nominated 2001 motion picture, a land tax dispute
between pre-independence British administrators and residents of a small,
central Indian village was settled through a cricket match between the two
sides (the Indians won!). On Saturday, with an inflamed India looking to Mr
Modi for his first statement after Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba jihadis killed 18 Indian soldiers in
Uri, Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) Mr Modi appropriated former Pakistani
premier Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s threat of a 1,000-year war with India, challenging
Pakistan to a 1000-year war to whittle away poverty, illiteracy and child
mortality.
Mr Modi’s speech, delivered to a Bharatiya Janata
Party gathering in Kozhikode, was a masterly balancing act. With the national
temper at fever-pitch after Uri and the media resounding with anti-Pakistan warmongering
--- such as BJP leader Ram Madhav’s threat to extract a jaw for every tooth ---
Mr Modi had to placate public anger in India, while simultaneously defusing a
situation that could only escalate if India extracted vengeance through
cross-border military strikes on terrorist infrastructure or the Pakistani Army
(numerous Indian commentators see little difference between the two). As it
turned out, Mr Modi delivered a carefully crafted message that favoured peace,
while delivering enough tough talk to placate Indian anger.
Mr Modi led, as expected, with a frontal attack
on Pakistan for being the global leader in exporting terrorism. He followed up
by apparently repeating, but actually toning down the promise of retaliation he
had delivered just after the Uri attack. On that day he had tweeted: “I assure
the nation that those behind this despicable attack will not go unpunished”,
raising widespread expectations of retaliatory military action. On Saturday, he
thundered: “The sacrifice of our 18 soldiers will not be forgotten. We will
ensure that the international community works to isolate you.” This suggested
that working to make Pakistan an international pariah would be sufficient
retribution. For those in Pakistan who carefully parse the New Delhi tealeaves,
the juxtaposition of cause and effect was significant, “the sacrifice of 18 soldiers”
being the cause; and “the isolation of Pakistan” being the effect. Nor did the PM
mention or endorse his military’s earlier threat to retaliate at “a time and
place of [its] own choosing”.
Mr Modi’s layered messaging will take time
to be clearly understood within Pakistan. Given the prevailing climate of
confrontation, even the moderate English-language media in Pakistan interpreted
the speech in the light of the threats it contains, not the outreach. The headlines
in Daily Times say: “Modi vows
campaign to ‘isolate’ Pakistan”. Dawn
headlined: “Modi says India will work to ‘isolate’ Pakistan internationally”.
Only the relatively sophisticated Express
Tribune headlined its coverage: “India backs off after frenzied war rhetoric”.
Pakistani audiences would also be keenly attuned to Mr Modi’s taunts about unrest
in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK), Gilgit-Baltistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and
Baluchistan, so not much can be expected in terms of immediate win-over. Only
when the dust settles on the current confrontation will the Pakistani media and
the populace take note of the Indian PM’s ground breaking outreach. Towards
that day, Mr Modi differentiated between Pakistan’s leaders and the people of that
country; a radical departure from New Delhi’s customary lumping together of
Pakistan’s political class, the public and even its terrorists. But the most
important component of Mr Modi’s speech was to de-escalate current tensions.
Policy analysts in Rawalpindi (Pakistan Army headquarters) will immediately
note that the battle Mr Modi is talking up is not military, but a long-term
developmental campaign relating to the uplift of the masses.
When Mr Modi borrowed the inspiring
phraseology of one of his predecessors, Atal Behari Vajpayee, about dealing
with Kashmir in the ambit of “insaaniyat,
jamhooriyat aur Kashmiriyat” (humanism, democracy and Kashmir’s syncretic
culture), it carried little conviction, making Mr Modi seem like a peacock in
borrowed feathers. But his rousing call from Kozhikode --- “I want to tell the
people of Pakistan. We are ready to fight you, if you have the courage. Come,
we'll fight poverty in our country and you fight in yours. Let's see who
eradicates poverty first” --- could become his signature initiative in
India-Pakistan relations.
This depends on whether and how Mr Modi
instrumentalises this rhetoric to resurrect India-Pakistan relations, which are
currently in the deepest freeze since the 26/11 Mumbai strikes. Sceptics are
already declaring that the Pakistani deep state --- the military-bureaucratic
syndicate that call the shots in that country --- does not particularly care
about development. That, however, is an outdated argument. With Washington’s
funding to Islamabad becoming increasingly conditional and New Big Brother
China far less munificent than Uncle Sam, the Pakistani establishment
recognises fully that a sickly and under-developed economy can no longer afford
a military that is capable of warding off India.
As the contours of Mr Modi’s new direction
come more clearly into view, he will face flak from opposition parties for
back-tracking on his strident campaign rhetoric about how toughly he would
handle Pakistan, and about what a strong PM he would be in contrast to Manmohan
Singh. The Congress Party will heckle him for citing India in his speech as a
globally-respected, well-developed state that “exports software to the world
while [Pakistan’s] leaders export terrorism”; with this modern India presumably
having been built during the “60 years of Congress misrule” that Mr Modi routinely
slams. Even so, the PM has done well to de-escalate the current crisis. It
makes little sense to confront Pakistan, for benefits that are not readily
apparent, only because of a hard line taken earlier.
Anti-Modi sceptics are already voicing fear
that domestic politics might induce the PM to balance his conciliation of
Pakistan by doubling down on domestic intolerance and galvanising campaigns
like the beef ban and love jihad, perceived as anti-Muslim. It is incumbent on Modi
to alleviate these fears. Finally, Pakistan can be managed only up to a point;
beyond that remains in the hands of that country’s unpredictable leaders. What
Mr Modi does have full control over is his management of Kashmir and the initiating
of a calibrated, all-of-government campaign to defuse tensions and address
long-standing problems in that state. That would not just solve a major
internal problem for New Delhi, but snatch away from Pakistan its most potent
instrument for meddling in India.