NEW YORK – A noted Indian journalist says he holds Prime Minister NarendraModi’s “militaristic approach” responsible for the increasing killings inoccupied Kashmir, and accused him and his Hindu nationalist party of nowexploiting the deaths of paramilitary soldiers in Pulwama for politicalgains ahead of the national elections.Over the past five years, Hartosh Singh Bal, Political Editor of TheCaravan, a New Delhi-based magazine, wrote in an article published in TheNew York Times Sunday that Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has governed Indiaand been part of the local government in occupied Kashmir as well, thuscontrolling India’s policy approaches to the “disputed, conflict-tornregion.””Mr Modi embraced a militaristic approach and shunned a political processinvolving dialogue with the separatists in Kashmir,” Bal wrote in theop-ed, entitled: ‘After terror, polarizing politics in India.'”Consequently, the number of civilian and security personnel killed in theregion have increased, and a growing number of young Kashmiris, like AdilDar, the 19-year-old suicide bomber, joined militant groups,” he said.The Indian journalist wrote: “These are inconvenient facts for Mr Modi,who has continually attacked India’s opposition parties for being soft onterror and compromising national security. As the deaths of the soldierscome three months before a general election, an honest evaluation of MrModi’s failed policy should have led to him to being held accountable.”Such questions, naturally, receded into the background in the immediateaftermath of the Kashmir bombing, in a national outpouring of grief. Beforethose pertinent questions would return to the national conversation, MrModi spun the bad news to his advantage by turning the grief into anemotive and prolonged commemoration of the deaths of the soldiers.”As Indian television networks followed the coffins of the slain troopsdraped in the Indian flag on their final journey home, Mr Modi’s partydirected its senior leaders to attend the cremations, which were telecastlive. The funerals became occasions for patriotic avowals, some genuine,some orchestrated, as politicians sought to ensure they were part of theframe.”Mr Modi ratcheted up the rhetoric against Pakistan and suggested thatIndia would retaliate militarily. ‘Security forces have been given completefreedom, the blood of the people is boiling,’ he said.”On social media and television networks, retired military generals, suchas G.D. Bakshi, echoed Mr Modi’s words and described the bombing in Kashmiras an act of war. ‘They started it but we will finish it,’ he said.”The venerable Cricket Club of India, a colonial institution founded in1933, decided to do its part by draping a portrait of Pakistan’s primeminister, Imran Khan, which had been put up to honor his cricketing featsin the last century.”The mourning took on a more sinister note as gangs of young men startedparading the streets of many Indian cities, including New Delhi, shoutingslogans directed at Pakistan and ‘anti-nationals’ — the preferred term ofthe Hindu nationalists for perceived foes and undesirables ranging fromliberals to Muslims.”Several Hindu nationalist affiliates of Mr Modi’s party led a campaignthat targeted students from Kashmir studying in educational institutionsacross India. They managed to extract promises from a few colleges thatthey would not admit Kashmiri students.”The tone and tenor of the marches and the threats to Kashmiri studentswere not lost even on Mr Modi’s own allies. In an editorial in its partynewspaper, Shiv Sena, the Mumbai-based Hindu nationalist party, cautionedthe prime minister that ‘there were political allegations that PrimeMinister Narendra Modi could wage a small-scale war to win elections …. Therulers should not behave in a manner that these allegations gain credence.'”Mr Modi’s political use of the deaths of ‘martyrs’ is not new to India,but we haven’t seen it at such a scale since India and Pakistan fought alimited war over Kashmir in 1999. In the past two decades, Indian securityforces have periodically been targets of violent insurgent attacks, somecausing even larger numbers of casualties, but the grief has run its normalcourse.”Mr Modi and his party seem to be working on a template of exploitingcalamitous deaths that they have used before. In February 2002, soon afterhe took over as chief minister of the western Indian state of Gujarat, atrain carrying Hindu religious volunteers was allegedly set on fire in thetown of Godhra by a group of Muslims. Fifty-nine people died.”Mr Modi ensured the bodies of the dead were taken to the Ahmedabad, thelargest city in the state, and paraded through the city. Violence broke outsoon after. Hindu mobs fueled by incendiary rhetoric from leaders oforganizations affiliated with the Bharatiya Janata Party, targeted homesand businesses owned by Muslims. Over a thousand people were killed, over700 of them Muslims.”In his campaign for the state elections held a few months after theviolence, Mr Modi barely disguised his hatred and contempt for the Muslimminority, describing them as a demographic threat to India and seeking toconnect them with Pakistan.”The insurgency in Kashmir, which is the only Muslim majority state in thecountry, is often invoked in the same fashion by Mr Modi’s Hindunationalist party.”Mr Modi is at his political best with an electoral campaign run onsectarian and polarizing themes. Before the attack in Kashmir, he wasfacing an opposition campaign dominated by questions about unemploymentbeing the highest in 45 years and distress in Indian villages. His partyhad already lost state elections in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, partly asa result of an acute farm crisis in India.”This was the campaign that the Congress Party and other opposition partieswere looking to fight; this is the campaign that Mr Modi is seeking toavoid with the emotive call of martyrdom. Ironically, a vast majority ofthe soldiers who died were drawn from India’s lower and middle castes withlargely rural backgrounds, a far cry from the upper-caste, urban Hinduvoters who are Mr Modi’s most ardent and hawkish supporters.”What has largely gone unspoken in the aftermath of the Kashmir attack isthat the C.R.P.F., the paramilitary force these young men joined, isheavily understaffed and under-equipped, a stark contrast to Mr. Modi’sbluster on national security.”In 1999, I was working as a reporter in the northern state of Punjab. Icovered the cremations of soldiers who had died in Kargil in the warbetween India and Pakistan. Each body draped in the Indian flag wasaccompanied by a soldier from the fallen man’s unit.”Those men were angry with the government and willing to speak on recordwith their names and ranks about being been sent to battle in the icyHimalayan mountains without proper equipment to shield them from the coldand the snow. When I wrote their stories, my editors refused to publishthem and argued that it was not the time to report such things because theywere damaging to the ‘national interest.'”In the rhetoric of martyrdom that prevails in Mr Modi’s India, editorsacross the country are making similar calls and leaving out inconvenientfacts and questions. It may or may not be in the national interest, but itcertainly is in Mr Modi’s interest.
PM Modi war rhetoric against Pakistan may not be in India s national interest but certainly is in Modi’s elections interest: NYT Article
