In 2017, the now late General Bipin Rawat had spoken of India facing war on two-and-a-half fronts. The extra half referred to external forces looking to weaponise what they see as fault-lines within India. Last month, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval also spoke of the new frontiers of war emerging within our borders.
Conventional warfare is costly, unpredictable and therefore increasingly obsolete. The wars of the future will not be fought on land, sea, or air, or even space. Not even in cyberspace. The wars of the future will be fought through subversion.
The first challenge of subversive war is how to detect it. The enemy does not announce itself by sending tanks or planes. So how do you know that the war is even happening? One way is to discard individual events and look at patterns instead.
For instance, the only common thread between the anti-farm law protests in Punjab and the anger against sacrilege is a certain grievance that Sikhs in India are not getting a fair deal. Why did anger against farm laws surface only within Punjab and not anywhere else? Why were the protests so focused around one religious community, even in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh? Surely there is an external factor, trying to provoke the community against India.
Second, the agents of subversion are very good at wrapping themselves around legitimate political expression. Whatever the economic rationale behind the now repealed farm laws, people were certainly within their democratic rights to oppose it.
The vast majority of farmers from Punjab sitting on the borders of Delhi were certainly not Khalistanis. They were also joined by aspiring caste leaders from western Uttar Pradesh. Then, there were the so called civil society elements, out of favour and out of funding (through official channels) since 2014, looking for a way to undermine Modi Sarkar by any means necessary.
But the Khalistanis were also there, building connections with people. They were helping with the logistics, arranging funds, lobbying foreign governments and rallying foreign media to support the cause. They were not there to recruit armed terrorists. Their objective was to soften up people just a little towards their point of view. In future, they will build upon these friendships to push further against the Indian state.
The agents of subversion are not fighting a traditional war, nor do they have traditional objectives. They delay, obstruct and play for time. Each decimal point shaved off India’s economic growth is a win for them. Could they really manage to break up India? Probably not. But every bit of energy that India uses to maintain its territorial integrity takes away from resources we could have used elsewhere.
If India is building say a dam, or some piece of infrastructure, a traditional military response from an enemy would be to blow it up. The agents of subversion don’t work like that. Their response would be to mobilize a group of people to stop the dam. If they manage to stop the dam, that is great for them. But if nothing else, they can delay the project by say six months.
Take the Char Dham road of strategic importance near the China border. India is going ahead with it, but after numerous bouts of struggle with “civil society.” Each additional day gives the Chinese a chance to press their advantage.
In other words, agents of subversion focus on the opportunity cost. For the last one year, the government was focused on defending these new agricultural laws. This took away time from policy making in other spheres, and made all future governments fear reform even more than they already do. And all this during the pandemic.
One helpful way to think about subversion is to piece it together like a murder mystery. Who had the motive to trip up India? Who has the most to gain if Punjab turns into another Kashmir?
Another problem with the subversive war is that democratic societies such as India are at a structural disadvantage. They can use our legal and political systems that permit freedom of expression; we can’t use theirs. They have full access to our media, academia, art world, entertainment and all other institutions that influence the public. The subversive war is one-sided to a terrifying degree.
This is not an argument against freedom of expression. It is a mature acknowledgement of the full cost of being a democratic society. But you can see how the same agents of subversion will seize upon it and spin it. That is why the government has faced charges of heavy handedness any time it has tried to push back in any way, even verbally. That is how we ended up with images of our policemen being beaten to pulp by “peaceful protesters” on Republic Day. If we fight back, we lose. If we don’t fight back, we lose anyway. Didn’t I just say that the subversive war is one-sided to a terrifying degree?
They want you to believe that Khalistanis are not a threat. They want you to believe that Pakistan is not a threat. Or at least not a big threat. This is a mistake. In the last 20 years or so, Pakistan has been tottering almost constantly. It is a pauper State, a universal target of ridicule. This has led many Indians into a false sense of security. Yes, we know Pakistan hates us. But if they can barely keep their own lights on, what could they really do to us?
The problem here is that we are still thinking like Indians, not like Pakistan. A desperate pauper State can still do immense harm. For instance, there is no greater power disparity in the world than that between the United States and Communist ruled Cuba.
And yet, all through the 1960s and 70s, the Cuban government was able to sponsor a wave of subversion across American society, from college campuses to Hollywood.
As a side note to those who belittle the Khalistan threat, one should mention that the highest number of bombings by any internal terrorist group in the United States was due to left wing Puerto-Rican separatists. They were inspired by Cuba of course. Even though support for Puerto-Rican “independence” from the US has always been minuscule.
We Indians are a happy, optimistic people. We tend not to hold on to grudges. There has been almost no bitterness, for instance, between India and our former colonial oppressor. This is a good thing, but it comes at a cost. We are all too quick to turn the page on history. We tend to believe that people have the best intentions. But it has been just two decades since we got the Khalistani threat under control. And in an age of subversion, we cannot go around taking people at their word.
Does it really feel like there is no freedom of expression in India? Have you noticed that those who complain the most about having no freedom always happen to live much wealthier, more well-heeled lives than you do? We cannot say for certain that any particular individual is an agent of subversion, but it would be foolhardy to dismiss the coincidence.
Like they say, it is not paranoia if they are really out to get you.
Abhishek Banerjee is a mathematician, columnist and author. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.