keep our resolve

Summoning anger or swearing revenge, as we recall the horrible day in Mumbai a year ago when our equilibrium as a nation was shattered by Pakistani terrorists, offers a less fruitful way to look ahead than calm resolve and measured preparation to brace ourselves against unsettling eventualities. A country retaliates to the extent of its capabilities. The United States went first into Afghanistan and then into Iraq to avenge itself for the attacks of September 11, 2001. After the expending of men and materials for eight years, the American people now wonder if that was the best way to have gone about meeting the imperatives they faced. Had we too given vent to our natural feelings in response to 26/11 and privileged the military course of option, it is worth reflecting on the unforeseeable costs, which are not only financial in such matters, that might have accrued. The likely gains, of course, could only have been a matter of speculation. On the other hand, what has been the past year like in the context of the actions we chose? We are pulling out of the world economic recession relatively unscathed, with our development and growth trajectories more or less steady. This would have been an unlikely outcome had we preferred war. Jihadists, or for that matter the Pakistan Army, cannot take on India in an open military encounter. That question has been long settled if it ever needed settling, whatever the claims on behalf of nuclear weapons undoing the asymmetry in conventional power between the two countries. It is this which has given rise to the intensified implementation of the unspoken Pakistani doctrine of a “war of a thousand cuts” against India, and the numerous variants of the notion of sub-optimal or proxy war. The underlying aim of such thinking is to disrupt India’s unity by seeking to exploit presumed communal or religious cleavages which are portrayed as being so deep as to cause havoc if only a prairie fire can be lit. By sticking together in times of trouble, Indian society has made a mockery of such “war-gaming”. When Indian Muslims gave the 26/11 desperadoes and their mentors social and intellectual hot chase, it became clear that the designs made in Muridke or Rawalpindi had been stillborn. That was our seminal reply. Shorn of that basis, it would have been hard to construct further political and diplomatic responses. Those, in part, caused a set of circumstances to come into being that obliged the Pakistani armed forces to militarily confront sections of the ISI-fuelled jihadi establishment, causing schism and mistrust between partners. Our political and diplomatic response has also produced confusion and rethinking among sections of Pakistan’s society and state that see themselves as being under threat from extremist thought and terrorist actions, although it is early to gauge the extent of this new phenomenon. Showing forbearance in the face of extreme provocation has also earned India goodwill in the international community. In the event of an episode like 26/11 being re-enacted, considered military action on India’s part will be deemed to be politically and morally valid. Using the vocabulary of the security professional, Army Chief Gen. Deepak Kapoor has pointed to this recently. Several steps of an institutional and systemic nature have been taken by the government in the past year: setting up of the National Intelligence Agency, establishing NSG hubs, and revitalisation of the Multi-Agency Centre. These need to be coaxed into a higher level of efficiency. But India’s morale remains high on the anniversary of a national tragedy.