The act of
expelling diplomats by any country invariably carries political symbolism.
The political message that can be derived from the expulsion of a Pakistani
mission staffer in New Delhi on Thursday is that the Indian government has
slammed the door shut on any sort of normalization process between the
countries in a conceivable future.
The big question is, how
‘conceivable’ could be that future? Can a timeline be put? Logically, it could
be the next four to six month period.
That is
roughly the time needed to get over with the elections in February-March in the
Leviathan north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh (population: 207 million), which
impacts national politics in a profound way and affects the Prime Minister
Narendra Modi’s bid for a renewed mandate in the general elections in Spring
2019.
Equally,
the political crisis in Pakistan which has been below the radar will not blow
over in a matter of days or weeks, and, more importantly, its denouement
remains far from certain.
Red in tooth and claw
Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif is facing political challenges from multiple quarters: a
crisis of confidence between civilian and military leaderships following “media
leaks” on a top secret security meeting; confrontational politics by two
demagogic political personalities; the specter of mob violence; “jihadis”
fishing in troubled waters; allegations of corruption triggered by the Panama
Papers; the appointment of a new army chief and the surge in terrorist
violence.
If Modi’s
mind is going to be preoccupied with the election in UP and how best to chariot
his party to victory in a multi-cornered contestation, Sharif will need to get
out of the approaching tsunami path.
Then,
there is the ubiquitous third factor: transition in Washington. The United
States has traditionally moderated India-Pakistan tensions from spiraling out
of control. But the only foreign-policy enterprise that President Barack Obama
wants to get involved at this point would be the Congressional ratification of
the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement so that the ‘pivot to Asia’ lives for
another day.
All in
all, therefore, a logjam is appearing in India-Pakistan relations, which indeed
has dangerous overtones.
The
security agencies of the two countries will be largely running the show in the
months ahead and the politicians will find it expedient too. The diplomats can
as well go for a sabbatical. This is one thing.
Thus, the
Indian foreign policy establishment would have only advised against
resuscitating the crude expulsion of Pakistani diplomats.
Thursday’s
expulsion bears all the hallmarks of a bygone era: a “booby trap”
painstakingly set up over several months; cops hiding behind bushes with
cameramen to photograph the “spy” just as he touched the dossier of classified
documents; the prompt detention of the spy despite diplomatic immunity; his
release after being gently “manhandled,” and his eventual expulsion under full
throttle publicity.
Having
seen the utter futility of enacting such farcical dramas, the two countries had
shown maturity to come to an inchoate feeling circa 2003 that they’d act like
civilized nations and ask spies to simply walk into the sunset instead of
subjecting them to North Korean methods.
But then,
Delhi probably found it necessary to revive the moribund rituals of a gory past
and return the India-Pakistan relationship to its natural habitat of a violent
natural world, “red in tooth and claw.”
Seamless potentials
The
Indian analysts share a widely-held opinion that the Modi government is
cynically exploiting India-Pakistan tensions to drum up jingoism and to
polarize voters along a Hindu-Muslim divide with the objective of rallying the
electorate on an ultranationalist platform in the upcoming election in UP.
A senior
political commentator wrote last
week that Modi might ‘push for’ yet another ‘surgical strike’
(similar to the one on September 29) by the Indian Army against Pakistan,
closer to the time of the UP election — with or without any Pakistani
provocation.
The point
is, Modi’s record as prime minister has been dismal. The Voice of
America noted in a commentary two days ago that notwithstanding the
bombastic statistics claiming that India under Modi’s watch is galloping away
as the fastest-growing economy in the world, ground realities are actually
quite stark:
Surveys
have shown that thousands of jobs were lost in factories making garments,
leather goods and other products for exports in last year.
A recent
survey by the government’s Labor Bureau says the unemployment rate rose to a
five-year high of five percent.
It is a
surprising statistic for an economy that outpaced China to grow at more than
seven % last year … That is not good news … One million people are added to the
workforce every year. The failure to add employment opportunities for these
young people poses a huge challenge for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose
promise to create millions of new jobs catapulted him to power in 2014.
However,
a tantalizing question arises. What is the certainty that the bad spell of
India-Pakistan tensions would end even after the next 4-6 months when the UP
elections got over?
Paradoxically
enough, whether the BJP wins or loses in UP, the real winner will be its
campaign strategy riveted on Hindu-Muslim polarization.
The point
is, what lies beyond UP is an even more fateful state election in the autumn of
2017 — in Modi’s own ‘home state’ of Gujarat, where BJP is fighting hard to
remain in power overcoming an unprecedented groundswell of mass disenchantment.
Ironically,
Gujarat also happens to be the laboratory where the BJP first experimented with
phenomenal success the seamless potentials of Hindu-Muslim polarization in
Indian electoral politics. And it happened during Modi’s watch as the chief
minister of the state.
To be
sure, the temptation to carry forward the BJP-Modi strategy of Hindu-Muslim
polarization to its triumphal ‘homecoming’ in Gujarat will be simply
irresistible.
The heart
of the matter is that unless the Hindu mind is trained on the Muslim in
antagonistic terms, he tends to lapse into his caste identity.
And, both
in UP and in Gujarat, the specter that is haunting the BJP is that the
marginalized Muslim and the dispossessed Hindu of downtrodden caste may find
common cause as persecuted sections of society unless they are set up against
each other.
Suffice
it to say, under these circumstances, a prognosis of the trajectory of
India-Pakistan tensions through the coming one-year period becomes virtually
impossible to make. By M.K.
Bhadrakumar
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