No one wants India-Pakistan war more badly than news studios
An extremely hawkish defence policy is shaping up against Pakistan in our TV studios. Or at least a false national narrative is being constructed, the essence of which is that the doctrine of strategic restraint has lost all relevance. The troubling aspect is that BJP spokespersons are part of this orchestrated half "battle cry".
So, on our TV channels, in the sitting rooms of millions, a new defence paradigm is being discussed under which India will not be inclined to keep the border hostilities confined to minor incisions. Rather, deeper, more incisive forays will be made, unmindful of the strategic response it may elicit across the border.
That there is an inherent risk in such a matrix of "controlled" hostilities escalating into a conventional war is another matter.
That both India and Pakistan are "stuck" with the strategic doctrine, which has kept conventional war at bay since 1971, is also another matter. That the new "defence doctrine" does not factor in the nuclear parity also matters little to the talking heads in TV studios.
Because for the Modi government the more compelling need is to send a political message to the nation that we are indeed calling the Pakistani bluff and that the surgical strike was not a flash in the pan.
The thrust of the entire narrative is political — that the previous regimes had taken refuge in "strategic restraint" to gloss over their lack of spine, even in the face of the most provocative terror attacks.
Two, the lack of spine has been an endemic problem with all the previous regimes, with matters getting out of hand under the likes of IK Gujarat and Manmohan Singh, who seemed to suffer from a Pak fetish.
The lack of grit is also given a historical dimension and it is drummed into us that we as a people always reconcile with the "enemy" sooner or later; and that the "enemy" is emboldened by the fact that there are some secular-liberals among us who have sympathy for people across the border.
We are also told time and again that there is no difference between the civilian and defence establishment in Pakistan, and that there is no question of durable people-to-people contact and so on and so forth. "Aman ki Asha" is all bunkum.
All this seems to provoke some of us at the base level, especially when it is suggested that the repeated terror attacks and the recent beheadings have hurt our national self-esteem.
But this carefully crafted sense of victimhood seems to serve the purpose of the RSS more than the BJP; the saffron mentor essentially wants to build this false national narrative, so that the BJP has no qualms about taking on Pakistan, in a conventional war, if need be.
The BJP government may look at a short and snappy war as a distraction: the first two years were lost to rhetoric and the third to grandstanding. Now they must deliver and cannot afford to squander the fourth year to war; the fifth will be lost to populism, in any case.
But the RSS looks beyond governance and elections; and its own larger ideological agenda is sometimes not aligned with the myopic tunnel vision of the BJP.
At another mundane plane, too, the RSS is not just content with telling us what to eat, which animal to worship, and what to study in school. It also wants to have a say in our foreign and defence policy. Vajpayee had kept them at bay but this time they don't want to miss the bus. The strategic restraint is an unfinished business of the Vajpayee-era that has to be given a decent burial.
Islamabad’s deception and sophistry on the issue of terrorism needs no repetition in TV studios; but when these allegations are played out ad nauseam, it prevents us from evolving a political strategy in Kashmir. That is the real danger of doing the death dance in TV studios.
Also, it scuttles whatever modicum hope some of us may nurse of a sensible opinion coalescing within Pakistan against the use of terror.