Two unconnected incidents — the killing of the terrorist Burhan Wani by Indian forces in Kashmir and the security lapse at an army camp in Uri — have led to the India-Pakistan relations reaching their lowest point ever in peacetime.
Since both the incidents were avoidable it is possible to speculate that if they hadnrsquo;t taken place the two countries might have been able to talk to each other in the friendly spirit which was demonstrated by Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif in December last year when he told the visiting Indian PM Narendra Modi at his Lahore home: ab yahaan aana jaana laga rahega now the comings and goings will continue.
The two PMs were then evidently in an affable mood which had earlier led to Nawaz Sharif’s presence at Modi’s swearing-in ceremony and which was palpable in the cosy manner in which they were pictured talking to each other in Paris during the climate summit. The excellent opportunity to normalize the mutual relations which these interactions provided has now been lost — perhaps forever.
True it will be naive to read too much into the earlier personal chemistry between Modi and Nawaz Sharif considering that the malign figure of another Sharif — General Raheel — of the Pakistan army has always been looming in the background ready to scuttle any forward movement in India-Pakistan ties as after the Ufa talks in July last year. Only a few months later the Pakistani terrorists attacked the Pathankot air base evidently at the behest of the Pakistan army and the ISI.
Even then it is obvious that if the earlier bonhomie between the two PMs could have been sustained the possibility of a war would not have threatened the sub-continent. Now the situation is on tenterhooks because in an atmosphere as tense and bitter as at present the slightest miscalculations can light the fuse of a conflagration.
But to return to the killing of Burhan Wani and the security failure in Uri it can be argued that if the Hizbul Mujahideen ldquo;commanderrdquo; had been captured and not killed Kashmir would not have seen the kind of frenzied protests which followed the death of the ldquo;young leaderrdquo; in Nawaz Sharif’s view of the Kashmiri intifada.
Pakistan and especially its army and the ISI could not resist taking advantage of the unrest in the Kashmir Valley by fishing in troubled waters with the help of the Hurriyat separatists. That meddling by Pakistan in India’s internal affairs led to Modi upping the ante by meddling back by raising the question of the Pakistani army’s atrocities in Balochistan.
It is also worth noting that if the deplorable security lapse had not taken place in Uri where the Pakistani terrorists were able to cut through the wire fences and walk into the army camp to set fire to the tents in which the jawans were sleeping public opinion in India would not have been inflamed by the deaths of 18 soldiers.
Not since the confrontation between the US and the former Soviet Union during the Cold War has the world faced the possibility of a war between two nuclear powers like India and Pakistan. Modi’s problem is that his party has always taunted the Congress governments for being too soft towards Pakistan. It will be difficult therefore for him to follow the line of ldquo;strategic restraintrdquo; of his predecessors when sections in the BJP like the maverick Subramanian Swamy have called for inflicting a ldquo;grievous hurtrdquo; on Pakistan and rabid organizations like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad want an outright war.
The BJP’s ally the Shiv Sena too has chipped in to ask ldquo;when are we going to give an answer to Pakistan in their own language ?rdquo; The BJP’s supporters have always included a vocal group favouring an aerial attack on the terror camps in Pakistan. Reports suggest that this line has the support of the hawkish National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and the army chief. The so-called surgical strikes by the Indian army across the LoC are patently in keeping with Doval’s and the army chief’s thinking.
India has carried out attacks by the infantry on the hideouts of the north-eastern insurgents in Myanmar. But Pakistan is a different proposition because it is known that a ldquo;short swift pulverizingrdquo; strike on the terror camps as noted by a television commentator carries the possibility of expanding into a nuclear war.
However another commentator has blithely said that even if 500 million die in India during a nuclear war 700 million will survive as Pakistan is wiped out. He prefaced his comments with Mao Zedong’s infamous observation that enough Chinese will survive a nuclear Armageddon to build socialism while capitalism will be extinguished.
Though it is unlikely that such nihilism will guide Modi’s policy the chances of India and Pakistan returning to the negotiating table are bleak in view of the incensed public opinion in India.
Short of a prolonged war therefore India will have to devise ways to gets its own back after the Uri tragedy which has been a hugely demoralizing blow. The ldquo;surgical strikesrdquo; were one of the ways. Of the others a unilateral abrogation of the Indus Waters Treaty is now apparently high on India’s retaliatory agenda despite the possibility of earning international opprobrium.
But India has now become more brazen in view of Pakistan’s continuous provocations as are obvious from the fresh infiltrations near Uri and the sighting of a terrorist group in Mumbai. India therefore may decide to engineer a ldquo;droughtrdquo; in Pakistan by cutting off the river waters.
It can also say that when the treaty was signed in 1960 Pakistan was not a terrorist state. Now the original provisions have lost their relevance in the changed circumstances when as Modi has said blood and water cannot flow together.
The writer is a former Assistant Editor The Statesman.
