An Old Game
of Thrones
Narendra Modi has only two diversionary options before him
By Jawhar Sircar
(Published in The Telegraph, 25.03.19)
Those who are wondering what happened on
February 26 at Balakot and how an Indian air force pilot fell captive soon
after may recall the game of kabaddi. It is the only indigenous game of India
and Pakistan that remained alive in spite of the takeover by colonial sports
like cricket, football, hockey, tennis or badminton. Not only did it survive,
but it also staged a remarkable comeback. Both Indians and Pakistanis enjoy
that surge of adrenaline every time ‘their raider’ sneaks into enemy territory
and ‘tags’ or knocks out one or more targets — even as the entire opposing team
tries its best to grab the raider and pin him down. Unintelligible sounds mark
the lightning-fast game, much like the din that was raised by several Indian
television channels — the Pakistanis must have gone through similar excitement.
But the striking difference between kabaddi and the air raid at Balakot is that
in the latter nobody could make out who knocked out whom.
Patriotism invariably rises to abnormal
levels every time the home side goes to war or is attacked, and the nation
state invariably capitalizes on this social psyche to consolidate its grip over
the populace. But the depths to which ‘patriotic television anchors’ took the
discourse — posturing belligerently, demanding immediate retribution, accusing
people of being ‘anti-national’ — were unprecedented. They declared that 250 or
even 300 Pakistanis had been killed, although the Indian regime was shrewd
enough not to mention any number. Narendra Modi and his men seemed to have
outsourced the whipping up of frenzy to a new breed of obliging media. The idea
was to stun a disturbed nation with overdoses of fake news that would breed
hatred. The social media pumped in suspicious footage of mass burials to prove
that India’s greatest leader had indeed killed so many.
And that is precisely the point. The leader
needs to face his people before the polls with some awe-inspiring message — his
record is rather pathetic. People have not forgotten the economic devastation
that resulted from Modi’s Tughlaq-style demonetization and the hastily
implemented goods and services tax. Together they managed to drag employment
down to the lowest level in 45 years, and so miserably is the regime faring
where gross domestic product growth is concerned that new rules had to be
declared to establish the leader as infallible. There are other failures, as in
agriculture. Even Modi knows that these post-truths may not be gulped down
easily by voters and, therefore, there are only two diversionary options to
retain Delhi.
The first is to go in for a full-fledged
war with Pakistan, which, anyway, is being fought in daily instalments along
the border for years. The second option is to ensure that riots take place, for
they would be likely to incline the majority community towards the leader and
the Hindutva brand. As if on cue, the Pakistani establishment — which is
certainly not coterminous with the Pakistani people — presented the Indian
regime with the perfect alibi — at Pulwama, on February 14. An Indian Kashmiri
suicide bomber killed 40 members of the paramilitary forces. No responsibility
was fixed for the gravest security lapses and no heads rolled. Fundamentalists
who dominate Pakistani politics and the army need the belligerence of religious
zealots in India to sustain their own hegemony. There has been no looking back
since Zia-ul-Haq demonstrated in the late 1970s that the hate-India campaign
could be effective in invoking Islamic extremism and terror. The purveyors of
this attitude must have been delighted when India ushered in its first Hindu
Right government in 2014, for it could represent similar principles of
religious intolerance. The lynching of Muslims or the situation in Kashmir
could provoke hatred for India, which strengthened the establishment.
Tragically, increasingly larger sections of otherwise peace-loving citizens
moved closer to the extremists.
Returning to the war option, Modi knows
that he cannot pull it off: China would flash the red card, Russia the yellow
card and even Trump would intervene. The Modi government’s anti-minority stance
and its policy in Kashmir have alienated him from every international leader.
The hatred for minorities that the Hindu Right has injected into the Kashmir
debate and the army’s high-handedness in quelling civil unrest have shocked
sane people everywhere, including in India.
The possibility of communal riots looms
over us.
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