India must fight the enemies within. Media or the Opposition isn't one of them
If PM Modi does not deal with the insidious saboteurs within, he will remain a one-term prime minister.
National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval is a man of few words. He rarely speaks in public. When he does, people listen.
Delivering the annual Sardar Patel Memorial Lecture last month, Doval warned of a threat to the nation from forces “more within than outside”.
He added: “Weakened democracies can tend to make a country a soft power. India cannot afford to be a soft power for the next few years. It will be compelled to take hard decisions. India will need a strong, stable and decisive government for the next 10 years to achieve our national, political, economic and strategic objectives.”
Maoist forces
Doval argued that a strong government can secure India’s national interest better than a ragtag coalition government, pulled in different directions by the regional, caste and community interests of its alliance partners.
That may be an obvious political comment, but it is nevertheless true with one caveat: not all coalition governments are weak; and not all majority governments are strong.
Leadership at the top is the determining factor.
India is especially benighted in having a plethora of enemies within.
Some operate in the open — for example, Maoists and Islamist terrorists who target both security forces and civilians.
Others operate behind a veil.
It’s important though to differentiate between “enemies within” and those strongly critical of government policies.
In a democracy, the media must take an adversarial position to the government. Its job is to hold public servants — including the Prime Minister — to account. Indeed even bias in the media should not worry the government.
False narratives will not survive the scrutiny of the public and the marketplace. To counter false narratives, all the government needs to do is regularly and professionally provide information on key issues.
Bad journalism and motivated activism will be found out and punished, the former by the market, the latter by public opinion.
The Narendra Modi government has failed to communicate swiftly and interactively. It has deservedly suffered as a consequence with false narratives allowed to go largely unchallenged.
When Doval warned of the “enemy within”, he didn’t mean the media or even the Opposition, both of which should have — and do have — full freedom to criticise, pillory, excoriate and condemn the government.
That is the contract India signed with democracy.
Activists too are an essential ingredient of democracy as long as they do not incite violence and are not complicit in inciting violence. The enemies within we need to fight are underground forces like Maoists and terrorists as well as overground forces that provide Maoists with legal, financial and logistical support.
Over the years key elements of Indian society have been subverted: bureaucrats; journalists; activists; diplomats; intelligence officers; and former armed services officers. They are not hard to spot.
On nationalism
A group of Indian journalists, for example, will be taken by agents of the Pakistani military’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) for a choreographed visit.
Within days, specific bylines in Indian newspapers will appear praising living conditions in PoK.
The messaging is subtle, but damaging to India’s security interests.
Simultaneously, ISI front organisations will sponsor Track 2 meetings at overseas locations with former armed services officers and ex-RAW personnel, subverted journalists in dutiful attendance.
Books and columns emerge from these choreographed meetings.
Meanwhile, activists and academics will offer up narratives of India’s “brutal occupation” of Kashmir, which are lapped up by the viscerally anti-India foreign media.
At an event, in the context of anti-India forces, I was asked by the moderator whether nationalism had more than one interpretation.
I pointed to two.
The first was Adolf Hitler’s nationalism in the 1930s which led to World War II and was menacingly jingoistic.
The second was Mahatma Gandhi’s nationalism, also in the 1930s, which was inclusive, non-threatening, non-expansionary and aimed at protecting India’s national interest.
Celebrate diversity
India’s right wing errs by playing the grievance card.
It calls for Hindu revivalism. As an 80 per cent majority, though riddled with caste and regional divisions, it should display greater self-confidence.
A sense of grievance leads to anger that is destructive and defeatist, unworthy of a rising great power.
A self-confident nation embraces, even celebrates diversity. It recognises the real enemies that lurk within, behind the veil.
In short, it fights the right enemy. In his Sardar Patel Memorial lecture, Doval echoed how Patel, the great unifier, would have dealt with the enemies within by “taking hard decisions which are good for the people but are not necessarily populist.”
Doval must be painfully aware how close to the government the “enemy within” operates.
The battle between the CBI’s top two police officers is the tip of the iceberg.
The Prime Ministers Office (PMO) has been unable to deal with this cancer at the heart of India’s anti-corruption agency.
The finance ministry is another warren of competing interests. Chargesheets in sensitive cases like Aircel-Maxis have been delayed by the “Indian hand” that has replaced the much maligned “foreign hand” of the Indira Gandhi years.
The Indian hand is often more dangerous. It is supple and vulnerable to financial inducement. If PM Modi does not deal with the insidious saboteurs within, he will remain a one-term prime minister.
(Courtesy of Mail Today)