Opinion Suhas Palshikar writes: In the aftermath of Pahalgam, India must look at itself again

For the most part, the chest-thumping by the top political leadership, the irresponsible noise generated by the media and the unbelievable crudity of the so-called analyses by sections of retired officers of the armed forces had prepared the general public for something drastic and dramatic. Those wild dreams ended in a whimper. But the three constituencies that were unleashed during the past few weeks will remain with us and will try to mould, distort and divert the popular disappointments generated by the current moment.

First, a juvenile sentiment about war was generated, as if war were a toy game. A retired Chief of the Army Staff had to — though belatedly — remind us that war is not a good, nor the first, option. In those heady days of action by the armed forces, de-escalation suddenly became a dirty word. It is true that war often has a lure among those who do not themselves experience it first-hand because there is a romanticisation of war rather than appreciation of valour. And when one has a convenient neighbour like Pakistan, war becomes the easy remedy for all your problems with the neighbour and with yourself.

Pahalgam and similar dastardly attacks on civilians test the patience of any realist and pose a challenge for the rulers. These instances of deliberate provocation create a craving for revenge among citizens. But even then, the war-mongering India witnessed — not merely in TV studios and in social media — indicated a sizeable pro-war constituency that refuses to acknowledge the slippery slope that a war is. For this constituency, war is not the last resort, nor is it a means to any peaceful end; it is a value in itself. India always had this constituency; the recent developments brought it to the forefront, added supporters to it and legitimised the belief that war is a first and necessary step in furthering national interest and conducting foreign policy.

The second constituency that gained traction recently is the idea that there can be a war-to-the finish. The “end”, according to this imagination, is not to constrain Pakistan, not to create deterrence for terrorists, not to create a bargaining counter, but to undo the “sin of Partition”. Pakistan, in this imagination, is not just a bad neighbour, but a thorn in the flesh that needs to be got rid of. In small part because of 1971, but actually irrespective of 1971, this constituency believes that Pakistan can be simply undone. Clearly, there is no contextualisation of global and regional geopolitics as far as this imagination is concerned. There is a genuine belief that if Pakistan doesn’t implode, India must ensure that its existence is erased. One hopes that this constituency, unlike the first one, has not penetrated the policy-making arena, yet.

But even then, coupled with the first one, this tells us something very awkward about our self-image as a nation — that “we and our nationhood” are predicated on violence, destruction and erasure. The idea that a nation cannot live with its past and present produces a nation that is ill at ease with itself. One section is always at odds with the notion of diversity, inclusion and accommodation because of this imagination that nations require complete erasure of the enemy, of the other, of difference. The official rhetoric all through the current crisis catered to this constituency and actually sought to expand it and make this imagination the justificatory argument in favour of India’s action.

The third constituency that reared its head during the post-Pahalgam weeks was an anti-Muslim mobilisation. Dutifully falling into the trap laid by terrorists and their intellectual designers by the killing of Hindus, social media accounts (and probably actual social imagination in real life) turned against Indian Muslims. Private conversations became openly and viciously anti-Muslim. Pahalgam and India’s strong action against Pakistan gave a fillip to calls for boycott of Muslims that have raised their head in parts of India. Significantly, in the past few weeks, the political leadership did not utter a single word disapproving of this development. That political act of omission cannot be absolved by the empty symbolism of presenting a Muslim officer as spokesperson during the press briefing. The decision to have Colonel Sofiya Qureshi for those briefings was bad diplomacy and it betrayed a guilty conscience but did not help delegitimise the anti-Muslim constituency.

The anti-Muslim sentiment is so ingrained in the public domain that even Colonel Qureshi is seen as a “sister” of the terrorists — as one minister in the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh put it (he has backtracked since). The reason is that in the thinking of this third constituency, there is no distinction between Pakistan and Indian Muslims and the lines blur between the two and the terrorist.

These three constituencies were not born in the wake of Pahalgam; they have been part of India’s social and political order for a long time. It can also be hypothesised that these three are not exactly exclusive of each other. Their overlap has been the recipe of Hindutva nationalism — crafting a national imagination that targets Muslims as the permanent enemy within. It flourishes on the dream that one day Pakistan will be erased from existence and theorises that force (bal) and warfare are the primary arsenal of nations and that violence for the national cause is morally rich, not merely justifiable.

What Pahalgam and its aftermath so far have shown is the very real possibility of these three constituencies occupying the collective imagination. At the moment, it may not be easy to estimate their exact numerical strength. But in the life of a society, moments of crisis erupt when nationhood is overwhelmed by pseudo-national claims; when it is defined by traits that defeat the pro-people or liberating potential of nationalism; when nationalism works for exclusion; when the political leadership has a choice of becoming statesmanlike but the lures of rhetoric lead both the leadership and the collective mind into the traps of pseudo-nationalism as defining characteristics of us or our nationhood.

The writer, based in Pune, taught Political Science