Read hereunder an interesting study of the mindset of those hawks of India who are controlling the policies of the BJP Government.
India’s new policy is being orchestrated by Ajit Doval, a decorated former intelligence official renowned for his role in dangerous counter-insurgency missions. He has long advocated tough action against Pakistan-based militant groups, Reuters said.
“In conversations with Reuters as head of a right-wing think tank in New Delhi before he joined the new government, Doval said India must lay down core security policies, one of which was ‘zero tolerance’ for acts of violence.”
In August, after days of cross-border firing between India and Pakistan, Doval attended a meeting at the Home Ministry along with the head of the para-military Border Security Force (BSF) and a decision was taken to give a free hand to the ground commanders in Jammu, a top security official in the region told Reuters.
The aggressive tone and tenor makes perfect sense if we look at the combination that currently leads India’s civilian security apparatus; a) the nationalistic BJP with an unprecedented mandate in national elections, and b) Ajit Doval, the national security advisor known for his extremely hawkish views on Pakistan.
Doval, a former IB director, has also been part of India Today’s the Board of Experts on Security and Terror (BEST), consisting of a dozen retired Indian military, intelligence and civilian officials – available on the India Today website – that was set up in early 2009 to discuss growing security threats to India -from China and Pakistan.
Some of the recommendations made by the 2009 panel were:
“There are lessons that India should learn from the 1971 conflict that was a result of careful strategy and planning. What the current situation calls for is a similar massive effort with a clear end goal in sight. If the 1971 objective was to dismember Pakistan, then the 2009 game plan should be to neutralize Pakistan so that it can no longer pose a threat to India,” the document says.
“We have our leverage in Balochistan and in some other parts of Pakistan. What we really need to convey to Pakistan is that if they commit a blatant anti-India act on the ground, a military act or otherwise, it will have to bear the repercussions,” said Ved Marwah, former governor of Jharkhand.
“Covert and over actions need to be essential ingredients of India’s policy. India must exploit fault lines within Pakistan,” said G Parthasarthi, a former high commissioner to Pakistan.
Let us also recall that in 2013, former Indian army chief General VK Singh found himself in thick soup when the Indian media reported that, using funds allocated for Kashmir operations, Singh had created a Technical Services Division (TSD) for covert operations in Pakistan – going after the alleged mastermind of the Mumbai terrorist attacks and Jamaatud Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed. A Hindustan Times report chronicled this venture, and quoted a former TSD officer as saying: “Our main task was to combat the rising trend of state-sponsored terrorism by the ISI, and we had developed contacts across the Line of Control in a bid to infiltrate Hafiz Saeed’s inner circle.”
During the BEST discussions Ajit Doval suggested India should shatter “the bogey of threat (to Pakistan) from our army” which he said the Pakistani Army has created.
“We want to have a dialogue over Kashmir and people in Pakistan should not worry about anything that the Indian Army will do. We secured Bangladesh and handed it over to them to run their own country. Let the people of Pakistan believe that there is no threat from the Indian Army.”
Although it was an altogether private media panel discussion, yet it seems that some of the recommendations Doval and other experts made in 2009 have apparently been in practice, and the latest events possibly also offer a reflection of that. Following his appointment as the national security advisor, Doval got a golden chance to translate some of the recommendations.
