The New India-Pakistan Equation and the Challenges Ahead for the Republic of India;
29th September, 2016, was the day when the equation between India and Pakistan changed forever and for good. The two countries have been involved in conflicts that have lasted for over half a century, and in all probability, will last for another half. However, today, their relations have graduated to a whole new level.
As we wake up to a new dawn, we wake up to a reality where our brave personnel, our leaders, and our nation are no longer content with talks and diplomatic channels.
Pakistan has been answered in a language it understands best, but this is just the first answer in what is going to be a very long examination of our armed forces, our government, and our nation. With a single announcement made in public, the prevalent stagnation from the UPA era in the minds of our people is gone, the otherwise shackled hands of our Armed Forces have been freed, and most importantly, the wrong people on both sides of the border have been pissed off for the right reasons.
A couple of hours after the news of surgical strikes was made public, the villages in Punjab along the Line of Control were evacuated. The experts called it precaution.
The common people saw it as a precaution. However, the unsolved mystery that remains is what had our armed forces achieved last night in the operation that the evacuation became indispensable? What was so glorious and powerful about that operation? Perhaps, the number of killed militants exceeds our imagination. We shall never know, and we don’t have to. This is where our faith in the armed forces and government comes into play.
However, this evacuation alarmed many liberals on our side of the border. For them, the evacuation was the call for a complete war, or as they imagined within their minds, annihilation.
This brings us to the first challenge ahead of us, the liberals. These liberals exist in many forms. Some wear the cloak of a professor, some have garnered the support of public to become CMs, some walk around with a guitar, and some are reputed journalists with some flawed books to their name.
In another word, they are the intellectuals we should isolate, because they have a single resolve, the elimination of Narendra Modi from New Delhi’s politics, and they’ll go to any limit to have it done. They have tried it before, and they’ll try it again in 2019, and this time, they’ll be better and revamped.
Should we see these intellectuals for whom they were today, the nationals and proud countrymen? Absolutely not! They hate the idea of India. They detest the PM more than they care about the nation, and soon, they are going to flood your newsfeed and evening news with fake stories that will make you question your own faith in the existing government.
When it comes to news, it seems our reputed intellectuals are looking to give a tough competition to the much acclaimed ‘Faking News’. We’ll return to this aspect later. For now, we must recognize these intellectuals as proxies of our enemy.
From the CM of Delhi to eminent journalists like Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai, and many more, they all are here to break the nation. The followers of these proxies are either dumb or blinded by the idea of being the proxy for a proxy.
Whatever they might be, they are dangerous to our nation, and in the days ahead, they are going to cause a lot of trouble. Within a week, the Delhi CM is going to call for a press conference to blame the PM for something else.
Barkha Dutt and Rajdeep Sardesai, accompanied by other Pakistani proxies are going to try hard to convince you that the idea of a surgical strike was bad, uncalled, and dangerous. They won’t do all this because they hate Modi, but because they hate the idea of a united India, the one you celebrated with on 29th September.
How are the intellectuals and proxies going to achieve this? Well, the battle between the masses of India and Pakistan is now going to aggravate on all fronts of social media. Upon us is the ‘Age of Information’, and these proxies are going to use this ‘Age of Information’ to manipulate you, confuse you, and distress you to an extent where you see no hope in NDA. All this is going to be done through fake stories.
On odd days, it’s going to be an imaginary security lapse, a fake story about our personnel being killed, ceasefire violations, and even riots. News is going to be fabricated to create fault lines in the name of religion.
On even days, stories about Modi’s failed promises, poor economy, and so on. They won’t read the Global Competitiveness Index to see our nation’s progress, or the positive implications of GST in the next financial year.
Proxies and intellectuals are going to thrive on the fake news they are going to serve you. In this pursuit, they’ll be accompanied by their professional counterparts from Pakistan.
Yesterday, ‘Dawn’ from Pakistan published a story about 8 of our men being killed, and educated idiots circulated it on their pages, citing the prospects of war a reason for the misery that existed between the two nations.
These are the stories that are going to be fed to the Indian population from now on. To complement it, the social media army from Pakistan is going to spam these posts with comments that would be amusing at first, irritating after, and confusing later.
A fake story led to the inception of World War-1, and in today’s age of digital media, countless fake stories spread over a period of months can certainly bring the downfall of a leader, and after what we have suffered from 2004-2014, we don’t want this downfall.
While the challenges for the Indian public come from the shallow intentions of intellectuals, proxies, and rampant social media manipulation, the game is tougher for the ones running the country from New Delhi.
The diplomatic channels, an arena where India held the ‘moral’ higher ground stands deserted. However, it is not an arena that is going to be eliminated anytime soon. An escalation is dangerous for everyone, even China and US who have heavy investments in the subcontinent.
Already, US has issued a statement, asking India and Pakistan to show restraint. However, even when we have given up the idea of ‘only’ using diplomatic channels, we still control its direction. Tomorrow, hypothetically, if India and Pakistan resume these diplomatic channels, the latter is going to ask for an assurance of no more surgical strikes.
This is where the PM must register another win. From now on, any diplomatic game must be played to our convenience. To begin with, the PM could invite all the SAARC leaders sometime next year to New Delhi.
Alongside, if tensions along the LOC decrease by then, he could make a public invitation to the then leader of Pakistan, asking him to choose either development or terrorism.
Yes, this would be a lot of theatrics, but on a global stage, this would assure people that India means peace and if provoked, would continue its war on terrorism and its harbor. The PM would need to make countless diplomatic masterstrokes from now on to keep our enemies on the edge.
The good thing that he has already got a start, and now he needs to convert it into a match winning innings.
Why shoot them when you can starve them? The PM of India should look to bring Pakistan to its knees by weakening their economy.
We don’t release our movies there, their multiplexes shut down, we don’t play Cricket with them, their board loses $100mn, and if we revise the MFN status, we are alarming the investors there.
Even if the Indus Water Treaty was revised, it would take years before the country could do something with that water. Hydroelectric projects aren’t built within a day, or even 3-4 years.
We cannot contain the water flowing through the Indus, but it would be a while before we figure out what to do with, and therefore, till then, we must inflict losses on their economy. This could make them more desperate, and historically, that has resulted in an escalation, but to fight a war one needs a stable economy.
Moving on to the next challenge for our PM; the prospect of an escalation. Pakistan, on all fronts, denied the surgical strikes yesterday. This was either to save their pride or because they would be expected to retaliate almost immediately.
With Pakistan’s economy being in a position where they have to beg China for loans to improve their existing railway lines, escalation is the last thing they want. With the CPEC investment coming in to change the fate of Pakistan, an escalation could mean the end of all that as China would want to ensure peace before initiating any trade across the corridor.
If a situation like Kargil were to arise, India must back its armed forces and the government. While the chances of that happening are debatable, the government must not let down the guard, and instead, up the ante.
With festive month beginning from tomorrow, one can assume that the security agencies, armed forces, and every other relevant arm of the government must be working overtime to ensure nothing goes wrong.
Also, if we are indeed looking at an escalation, we need to have China onboard. CPEC is just an idea for now, with large investments being made without any assured returns. However, the trade with India is thriving.
Come Diwali, and Chinese items are going to witness the usual surge in sales. For the ones worrying that China would back Pakistan in the conflict, the worrying is needless as it would like to have a neutral position, or maybe a certain inclination to India.
Lately, even China has been worried about the looming terrorism across the CPEC corridor, and they have even conveyed their thoughts regarding the same to the authorities in Pakistan. If India were to go to war with Pakistan tomorrow, China would be more concerned about its money, given the volatile position of its economy.
Yes, it wouldn’t like to lose its investments in CPEC, but it’s not going to risk trade with India as well. For the PM, the challenge lies in countering the prospects of escalation with a proportionate response, and continue with such responses till the time diplomacy doesn’t become the sole option again.
If we are discussing the prospects of an escalation, let us also drift towards the idea of a Nuclear War. Firstly, no, it’s not going to happen.
If the Cold War, that lasted for 45 long years, did not result in the use of Nuclear Weapons, I doubt the current situation would. However, it’s not history but logic that can be used to dismiss the idea of nuclear war.
If Pak nukes us first, we shall wipe them out, but the nuclear waste in the air would be transferred to our side through wind and rain. One has to be dumb to think that nuking Lahore won’t have consequences in Amritsar.
If a nuclear strike happens, it is going to damage the Ozone, is going to touch the life of at least a billion people on both sides of the border, would have vast consequences for agriculture, and most importantly, open the Pandora’s box. Nuclear deterrence is then going to become history, and eventually the world is going to be over.
Fortunately, all this is cheap fiction. China, US, and even Russia for that matter would never allow the use of nuclear weapons, and given we have a policy of not attacking first, the pressure is going to be more on Pakistan than India. So, as much as anyone shouts about nuclear war, it’s never going to happen.
Deterrence is not going to be a challenge for our PM, but one hopes that sufficient investments have been made to enhance our sources on the other side of the border. (For the ones who think Nuclear War is a joke as shown in many Hollywood movies, I recommend a reading of the ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’.)
Pakistan, along with its proxies in India, is going to look for methods to remove Modi for 7 LKM.
This could be through information manipulation as discussed above. For us, the nation, the duty is to be more active, not be careless, and not gloat or boast about news that hasn’t been verified.
Yes, as nationalists, as countrymen, we tend to be carried away by our feelings, but we need to have a rational outlook towards every bit of information out there. Pakistan is going to want Modi to not be the PM in 2019, and Congress with its stooges would attempt to do the same through a giant coalition, but we must not fall for it.
It is upon to us to be more active on all fronts, be it offline or online. It’s not about being inclined towards the cause of a party, but the cause of our nation, and if PM Modi serves the cause of our nation, as evident, we must do all we can to keep the proxy war at bay.
Many intellectuals, artists, and idiots are now propagating the idea of peace. There is a dumb petition online for citizens of both the nations against war.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want a war. I don’t think that the life of any single Indian personnel is unworthy, but it’s not about what I want, or even what my nation wants, it’s about the war that can come to us.
Did Poland ask to be invaded in the Second World War?
Did America invite a Pearl Harbor even though it had been striving hard to work out things with Japan through diplomatic channels?
To all the liberals criticizing the surgical strikes because it could bring war; when the war comes to you, it won’t ask if you support it or not. 26/11 victims weren’t asked if they supported war or not, and tomorrow, if you stand before a 21 year old Jihadi, he won’t ask if you support war or not, he won’t care if you lean towards the left or carry the red flag.
You will be shot dead without your opinion being asked for regarding the war. The surgical strike was not meant to create a war, it was meant to end one.
The surgical strike was not a call for war, but a long awaited reply to the terrorism that was being bred to break our nation. You don’t run an antivirus on your system after it has consumed your data, and therefore, you don’t wait for terrorists to strike before taking any action.
Yesterday, India stood behind its forces and its government as one nation. Today, we are beginning to move on, and tomorrow, we will move one to other trending events, but these challenges are going to remain. A surgical strike won’t end terrorism along the LOC or cease the liberal propaganda.