[Hosabale and the Prime Minister]

Dattatreya Hosabale, General Secretary of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is in the news for suggesting that dialogue with Pakistan be resumed. The statement was met by hosannas from many quarters — other than the Wagah candlelighters, veterans of the Establishment and the like celebrating the event, and welcomed by Islamabad as a “positive call”. In a sense, it marked the approval by the RSS of the Track 2 meetings to-date — four of them since Op Sindoor between retired Indian and Pakistani generals and diplomats. Breaking the ice is never very difficult. Put any Indians and Pakistanis together for any reason and they get along like a house on fire! (Wrong metaphor?)

But this turn in Hosabale’s thinking reminds me of his visiting me at the Centre for Policy Research along with another RSS functionary, sometime between May 16, 2014, when the general election results were declared, and May 26 when Modi was sworn in. They did not reveal the reason for seeking the meeting. But because The Hindu — which likes to think of itself as the “newspaper of record”, had around then published an op-ed speculating the likely appointments in the new dispensation, and mentioned me by name as being considered for the post of “adviser, strategic affairs”, I surmised that Hosabale had scouted me. In the time spent with him, relations with Pakistan dominated the discussion.

I suspect I may have marred my prospects by saying that to conserve national resources for the fight against China, India needed to (1) obtain a pacified neighbourhood, including a friendly Pakistan, with a policy of economic inducements to bind adjoing states to the Indian economy — the first step for the country to attain genuine great power status, and (2) generate trust, in the main, with Pakistan without in the least imperilling national security by removing all nuclear missiles from the western border and rationalising the army’s three Strike Corps into a single composite Corps, and transferring the freed up assets to the China front. And I indicated, these steps in no way prevented India from taking punitive measures in PoK and against Pakistan for any terrorist incidents. These are themes I flogged for a long time. The army has done what I long counselled — hollowed out two of the Strike Corps by deploying their armoured and mechanised units to Ladakh.

Importantly, it is a good thing that the RSS and Hosabale apparently have rethought the value of a rapprochement with Pakistan, and the Indian government maybe rejigging its policy. After all Prime Minister Narendra Modi began his tenure by inviting to his swearing-in ceremony on May 26, 2014, the heads of governments of all adjacent states, including Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. And, a year later, he impulsively broke his return journey from Afghanistan, in Lahore, on December 25, 2015, travelled by road to Nawaz’s estate in Raiwind, partook of the PM’s grand daughter’s wedding and, on meeting her, touched Sharif’s mother’s feet — a gesture that, right there and then, sentimentally disarmed millions of Pakistanis.

It was then the ISI doubtless decided it had had enough of all the bhaichara stuff, and arranged for the terrorist attack in Pulwama on 14 February 2019, souring bilateral relations. The IAF launched a reprisal air raid on Balakot 12 days later. It is another matter that if the idea was to send a strong deterrent message to GHQ, Rawalpindi, the IAF erred by choosing the wrong tactics and weapon. It sent a single aircraft to fire Spice2000, an Israeli precision guided munition, rather than a squadron-strength IAF complement in waves dropping 500 pound bombs to deep-crater not just the Jaish-e-Mohammad training camp but to wipe out that entire hilltop for every satellite to pick up and the media to broadcast.

The ties went further south with the selective gunning down of Hindu tourists in Pahalgam on 23 April last year. This time, it was the Indian army’s turn to foul up. It missed the opportunity to exploit the air dominance achieved (with standoff missile strikes) by 0230 hrs on May 10, to snatch the Haji Pir Bulge. It’d have initiated a new strategy of territory for terrorism — hacking off parts of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir for absorption into the Indian Union for every terrorist incident. The LoC being a ceasefire line, as General Parvez Musharraf reminded us many moons ago, international law allows either side to the dispute to change it by military means! Mindful of the military flubbing it on two successive occasions, Rajnath Singh and various generals on the Sindoor anniversary threatened more dire outcomes for Pakistan “agli baar”. That agli baar never comes.

Pakistani terrorism, although a nettlesome problem cannot be allowed, however, to cloud India’s meta-strategic goal of achieving unitary strategic space in South Asia and for the region to emerge as an extendable economic “co-prosperity sphere” that I have advocated. It is the only way for India to resolve the terrorism issue, and become a meaningful player on the world scene, and for South Asia to transform into a peaceful region. The country is too big to continue to be content with small fights and iffy successes.