Capital suggestion: The India doctrine

On December 25, 2015, Ram Madhav, the BJP’s general secretary, said, “India, Pakistan and Bangladesh will one day reunite….” In Bharatiya Ganarajya (Republic of India) Akhand Bharat or ‘Undivided India’ is not just a political slogan but Hindutva’s cultural-cum-religious belief. In 1989, the ruling BJP “adopted it as its official ideology”. In Bharatiya Ganarajya, Akhand Bharat has a thousand proponents, among them Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Akhand Hindustan Morcha, the Hindu Mahasabha, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Hindu Janajagruti Samiti.

According to Ravi Rikhye, ‘one of India’s most distinguished and highly regarded defence historians’, “My belief is that India should at the earliest opportunity incorporate Pakistan into the Republic…” M B I Munshi, the author of ‘The India Doctrine’, writes: “There was a third course of action other than peaceful or aggressive reintegration…that would be to foment subversion within the country to be reintegrated. This method would gradually wear away the control of government authority and paralyse the state machinery which would force the country to seek accommodation with India”.

To be certain, there are a hundred indigenous violent secessionist movements fighting to rip India into pieces. According to South Asia Terrorism Portal (satp.org), there have been 65,980 terrorist-related Indian fatalities between 1994 and 2017 (apart from the more than 87,000 Kashmiris killed over the past 25 years).

Within Bharatiya Ganarajya there are a hundred active secessionist forces. In Punjab, the hyperactive secessionist forces include the Khalistan Commando Force, Babbar Khalsa International and International Sikh Youth Federation. In Arunachal Pradesh, the most active secessionist force is the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland. In Assam, the Communist Party of India-Maoist, Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh and the Muslim United Liberation Tigers of Assam.

In Manipur, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland, People’s United Liberation Front and the Manipur Naga Revolutionary Front. In Mizoram, the Bru National Liberation Front. In Nagaland, the Naga National Council, the Federal Government of Nagaland and the Non-Accordist faction of the Naga National Council. In Tripura, the National Liberation Front of Tripura and the All Tripura Tiger Force.

Within Bharatiya Ganarajya, the Naxalite-Maoist secessionist insurgency is an ongoing bloody conflict that began some 50 years ago (ongoing since May 18, 1967). For the record, 16 of India’s 29 states have an active secessionist movement-that’s more than 50 percent of India.

Henry Kissinger, the 56th US secretary of state, had predicted that India has “centrifugal tendencies”(centrifugal: ‘moving or tending to move away from the centre’). The Press Trust of India, the largest news agency in India, once argued that “unless these negative and divisive trends were immediately arrested and firmly reversed, India could face the prospect of reverting to its pre-independence status of splintered territories, principalities and fiefdoms ruled by feudals and their private militias…”

On June 26, Soutik Biswas, BBC’s India correspondent, wrote, “Is India descending into mob rule?”, adding that “many are wondering whether India is hurtling towards ‘mobocracy” under Mr Modi’s watch”.

India’s strategic thinkers argue that “India would require an extraordinary amount of military power to keep the nation state as one single entity (Indian Defense Review April-June 2007).”

India’s strategic thinkers assert that “If India does not expand to fill its natural borders, then the centrifugal tendencies inherent in the situation get the upper hand and the country starts disintegrating inwards. No matter what the cost, we must start the process of reintegration. The later we put if off, the more the eventual cost. Because Pakistan is second only to India in terms of wealth and power, the reintegration process must start with that country.”

The writer is a columnist based in Islamabad.

Email: farrukh15@hotmail.com Twitter: @saleemfarrukh