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Asian Angle | ‘Surgical strikes’: As Modi plays politics with Indian army, soldiers pay with their lives
More soldiers are dying as the prime minister fetishises the army and draws political capital from military operations while resisting peace efforts and doing little to actually strengthen defence
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During the Kargil conflict in 1999, the Indian Army was mounting costly uphill attacks to evict Pakistani infiltrators from our side of the Line of Control (LoC), which divides the disputed state of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K). Tempers were running high in the formation in which I then served. To make the Pakistan Army pay a price too, we staged a carefully planned raid on one of their forward positions one night, overrunning it and inflicting heavy casualties on the defenders.
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Inevitably, Pakistani retaliation followed, and then Indian counter-retaliation, but New Delhi stayed silent. These were small-unit, tactical operations that good armies conduct in wartime as a matter of course. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, led by Atal Behari Vajpayee at the time, did not believe it proper to politicise them for electoral benefit.
How things have changed. This weekend, Indian colleges and universities will celebrate “Surgical Strikes Day”. Ordered by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP government, this will tom-tom a one-night operation two years ago, when Indian commandos raided four Pakistani forward positions across the LoC and returned unharmed. The commandos credibly claim to have killed 40 separatist militants and two Pakistani soldiers. The Pakistan Army says the raids never happened.
The Hindu nationalist BJP, which faces crucial state elections this year and a general election in early 2019, clearly believes this is the time to play the nationalist card and remind voters of how it has taught Pakistan and militant Kashmiri separatists a lesson. This also fits neatly into the BJP’s anti-Muslim politics. Just months after the surgical strikes, Modi rode a wave of jingoistic fervour to sweep the elections in Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest and most politically consequential province. The BJP believes this gift will keep on giving.
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