Somewhere somehow something went terribly wrong with India.
As it snarls and growls at Pakistan, and as its clownish studio warriors hyperventilate on screens, none seem to realise that when it comes to strategic geo-political heft, India is losing the plot. Perhaps this is the price you pay for taking yourself more seriously than others do.
The tragic Pahalgam terror attacks have brought India’s this particular weakness into sharper focus. Jingoism and war mongering serve little purpose unless they are calibrated to sync with larger strategic objectives. They can act as instruments of power projection if the power to be projected has required kinetic potency needed to achieve desired outcomes. Untethered from clear policy, jingoism can have the opposite effect: it can throw the government into a commitment trap.
This is exactly what Indians are subjecting themselves to. By talking the big talk without the ability to walk it, New Delhi has raised its people’s expectations to a level that can never be fulfilled. It is a folly that Indian policymakers – and their clowns in TV studios – commit again and again. Frothing at the mouth, shouting insults, hurling threats and generally being a nuisance – these are not traits that big powers display.
The real problem with India then is that it acts like a child trapped in a man’s body.
This I say in a very specific context. India has done some things remarkably well. It has persisted with its democratic structure despite its failings; it has reformed its economy and fueled its growth with prudent policies; it has leveraged its size and soft power to garner global attention and build a successful national brand. This is impressive.
And yet…
Yet, the problem with India is that its economic growth seems to outpace its intellectual growth; and that its technological evolution is faster than its social evolution. To paraphrase an old saying, India has great potential – and it will always have great potential. Period.
Exhibit A: the current self-inflicted crisis with Pakistan.
Imagine the predicament. Bigger, richer, stronger by many times, India today has no good options against Pakistan. None. Tactical ground incursions along the LoC? Meant for optics only. And Pakistan will reciprocate against Indian military targets across the LoC. Air strikes? After Balakot, that option is a non-starter. Pakistan already has targets marked in Indian Occupied Kashmir and also in India. Our retaliatory capacity through aircrafts, missiles and drones guarantees the infliction of proportional pain to India. Attack from the sea? Pakistan will hit Indian harbours in return. Ground invasion? This would trigger full scale war. Can India risk that under a nuclear overhang?
To add insult to injury, any conflict larger than a tactical and localized one will severely impact the Indian economy in terms of flight of capital and exodus of investors. Every which way you look at it, India must choose options that range from bad to worse.
There’s more.
India’s economic heft is real, not so its strategic heft. That’s delusional. Officially sanctioned assassinations on foreign soil are an offshoot of such delusions of grandeur. India believes it can go after dissidents across the world and terminate them at will. It did so in Canada and tried to do so in the USA. In Pakistan there is documented evidence that it has ordered the killings of more than two dozen people.
But there comes a time when your ambitions start to outweigh your capabilities. India got caught in Canada, got a diplomatic drubbing, and suffered the humiliating ouster of its officials. It got caught again in the US before it could actually carry out the assassination.
In Pakistan, India has planned, financed and executed a series of killings and terror incidents. This kind of blatant cross-border, and cross-continent, violence you can indulge in if you’re the USA, not if you’re India. If you’re India, you end up being reminded of your inadequacies. And your place.
Pakistan is braced for a conflict it did not choose. India has yet again trapped itself in the web of its poor choices. Its march to folly proceeds along a dangerous route. The folly would transform into a blunder, and such blunder could easily trigger an escalation that none can control. Yet there may be a sliver of hope that decision-makers in New Delhi will switch off their TV screens, or mute those studio clowns in Noida, turn to their professional colleagues, demand a cold, dispassionate and rational assessment of the military situation, take a strategic pause, digest the unpleasant reality, and step back from the brink.
But even if they manage to achieve this, they will still need to re-look at their national predicament of obsessing with Pakistan. That child trapped in a man’s body, he will need to be rescued sooner or later. For durable peace in South Asia, India really needs to figure out what that something is that, somewhere sometime, went terribly wrong.
Author: Fahd Husain
