COMMENTARY / SECURITY

Green Herring
Why India’s political leadership is bragging about winning a war with Pakistan

SUSHANT SINGH

26 December 2022

In October 2022, Narendra Modi donned battle fatigues and boasted of military preparedness while spending
a few hours with soldiers in Kargil, where India and Pakistan last fought a limited war in 1999.
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The questions are about China. The answers are about Pakistan. That
seems to be the case when it comes to the Narendra Modi
government’s designs for India’s security challenges. Even as the
Chinese army clashed with Indian soldiers at Tawang’s Yangtse Ridge,
in December, the Modi government was more focussed on issuing
diplomatic statements against Pakistan. The charge was led by the
minister of external affairs, S Jaishankar, in New York, using India’s
turn at the presidency of the UN Security Council to converge
attention towards countries harbouring terrorism—a thinly guised
euphemism for Pakistan. That terrorism is a priority when no major
terror attack has taken place in India since the 2019 Pulwama suicide
bombing while the Chinese continue to militarily threaten India along
the border makes this direction incomprehensible. That too when the
Modi government is robustly engaging with the Taliban regime in
Afghanistan, a dispensation seen to be synonymous with terrorism.

The incessant focus on Pakistan has been on for a few months now. In
October, Modi donned battle fatigues and boasted of military
preparedness while spending a few hours with soldiers in Kargil, where
India and Pakistan last fought a limited war in 1999. That same month,
on Shaurya Diwas, commemorating the day the Indian Army landed in
Kashmir in 1947, the defence minister, Rajnath Singh, said that the
unfinished agenda of 5 August 2019—when Article 370 was abrogated
—is to wrest back Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Gilgit–Baltistan. In
November, responding to a question during a media interaction,
Lieutenant General Upendra Dwivedi, the chief of the Northern
Command, stated that the army was ready to take back PoK whenever
such orders are given by the government. In fact, he did not go as far as
the late Bipin Rawat who, as the army chief in September 2019, had
said that, should the union government decide, the army would be
ready to “retrieve PoK and making it a part of India.”

India’s claim over parts of Kashmir emanates from the instrument of

accession signed by the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir on 26
October 1947. At the peak of the Kashmir insurgency, in February
1994, parliament passed a unanimous resolution stating that PoK is an
integral part of India and that “Pakistan must vacate the areas of the
Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir, which they have occupied
through aggression.” That is not very different from the unanimous
resolution on China passed on 14 November 1962, where the same
parliament affirmed “the firm resolve of the Indian people to drive out
the aggressor from the sacred soil of India, however long and hard the
struggle may be.” Any such resolve on China today is unlikely to be
invoked by the current dispensation. Pakistan, caught in its own
whirlpool of economic disaster, political turmoil and social strife, is a
much more convenient target for Hindutva ideologues. However, such
noise may be pushing India towards a dangerous precipice.

It is easy to ignore the hyper-nationalistic rhetoric of political leaders,

but harder to disregard the claims of senior commanders indicating
their intent to take back PoK. According to a survey by the Stimson
Center, ninety percent of Indians believe that India “probably or
definitely would” defeat Pakistan in a war, and now the Indian media is
reporting claims of taking back PoK with great sincerity. These claims
must, therefore, be clinically examined. Senior military officers,
serving and retired, have told me that there are no actual plans to start
a war with Pakistan to take back PoK. It is not a military aim that has
been given any serious consideration within the armed forces. The
terrain is very tough and, as the military dictum goes, “mountains eat
troops.” Further, the current force levels would rule out any such
endeavour.

SUSHANT SINGH (/AUTHOR/38785) is a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research and a
visiting lecturer at Yale University. 

KEYWORDS: indo-china relations(/tag/indo-china-relations) Pakistan(/tag/pakistan)

POK(/tag/pok)

COMMENT You are logged in as Siddharth Joshi

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READER'S COMMENTS
SIDHARTH TIKU Dont understand wats in miond of author, he looks bit biased and
04 Jan, 2023 hates Modi. In fact India India has risen sharply in recent time,
specialy India now commands respect at Global level is evident
with special treatment given by Europe/US and being at helm of
SCO & G20. Well author may be looser and may be cribing or may
be Chinas darling or favouite of some loosing political party in
India. He does not matter until we 1.4Billioin Ppl r with GOI &
rising India. Jai Hind
 Shivkumar Mohite Not only Indians can bear the cost of war, the environment
02 Jan, 2023 damage a war creates makes the whole world suffer. It is already
happening in Ukraine - Russia war, the effects of which will be
calculated later. Volcanoes are already disrupting whatever was
achieved in containing the greenhouse gases emissions from the
vehicles. A nuclear war can permanently damage everything but
these jingoistic selfish leaders will save themselves to have
another go later on. Why the general public and the armed forces
of both countries should endure all these?

Yusuf Ejaz Nice.

02 Jan, 2023

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