Ensuring National security of the highest order was a major resolve of Narendra Modi
By Sushil Kutty
Threats to national security were at the core of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 12th Independence Day speech. He highlighted both external and internal threats to India’s national security. From Pakistan’s wayward military and from the burgeoning crowds of “illegals” from Bangladesh and Myanmar. Modi called the latter “changing the demography in the border areas”.
National security was top of Modi’s mind when he took to the ramparts of the Red Fort, the headquarters of the Mughal Empire for nearly a couple of 100 years before the British took over and left India poorer and yearning for freedom. Independence came and we’re still arguing who got it for us, the movement called the ‘Congress’, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose with his INA, Bhagat Singh and his band of freedom-fighters or Veer Savarkar and his ilk whose view of India differed starkly from the rest? Prime Minister Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party wasn’t even born but its ideological font, the RSS, turned ‘100’ this year, which Modi celebrated from the Red Fort.
Listening posts across the dead Wagah/Attari border must have been summing up Prime Minister Modi’s speech and his advice to warmongering Pakistan, the message stripped to the bone: Stay within your Trump-given limits, there’s a ‘new normal’ and ‘Op Sindoor’ continues to pulsate. Prime Minister Modi made no bones of what he thought of Shehbaz Sharif, Bilawal Bhutto and Gen. Munir’s rhetoric on the Indus Waters Treat1y.
He dismissed Pakistan’s wayward Pakistan army chief, the madrasa-educated “jihad mullah’s” ‘Surah’ and ‘Elephant’ analogy directed at India.
Modi spoke of Pakistan, the country of 250 million, born of British machination and the two-nation theory. Modi warned Pakistan that India wouldn’t bow to “nuclear blackmail”, which happens to be Pakistan’s energy drink when down in the dumps. Gen. Munir’s recent outburst that Pakistan will “take down half the world” with it if forced into an existential position elicited a cautionary advice.
Munir’s nuclear sabre-rattling from Tampa, Florida, was heard in New Delhi but didn’t quite reach the ears of President Trump in the White House. Did Prime Minister Modi give notice to President Trump, who reiterated his lie that it was he who brought India to her knees and forced a ceasefire with Pakistan before the military confrontation took on a nuclear tone and tenor all its own?
Is President Trump a national security risk for India? Trump’s brand of sabre-rattling emits an indecent sound. Trump is an irritant, an American bee in Modi’s bonnet. But what can be done? Trump and Munir are both pulpit warriors, one a “jihadi mullah” and the other, a freshly minted born-again Christian evangelist. But Modi has promised to build a “Sudarshan Chakra” to take on India’s enemies, a “multi-layered security framework to integrate advanced surveillance, cyber protection, and physical safeguards to protect Indian citizens and infrastructure from enemy strikes.”
It will be similar to Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’ and President Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ , a US version of the ‘Iron Dome’. ‘Sudarshan Chakra’ sounds defensive in nature but hidden within its folds will be aggression in multifolds. Broken down, it will be a missile defensive shield. Modi spoke of India already having an air defense system and how it decimated “1000s of Pakistani missiles and drones” fired at India’s military establishments, civilian population and religious shrines.
India’s indigenous ‘Integrated Air Command and Control System’ was an unbreachable barrier and Pakistan’s load of Turkish and Chinese-made missiles and drones stood no chance. Except for President Trump’s slippery tongue. Gen. Munir’s waywardness goes beyond what’s kid’s play and is a headache to be handled with kid-gloves. Both Munir and Trump are more damaging to India than the “pav-pav ke atom-bomb” that Pakistani politicians and common Pakistani citizens keep hurling at India from ‘X’ and other social media platforms.
India’s national security cannot and should not be allowed to be trifled with by Trump or Munir or anybody yet to ascend the nuclear escalation ladder. Gen Munir hasn’t so far not reacted to Modi’s Lal Qila promise of the Sudarshan Chakra. What can Pakistan do other than yak-back with more venomous nuke-talk? Munir also threatened India with a barrage of missiles if India squeezed Pakistan into a dry waterless corner, saying if India built a dam on the Indus water system, Pakistan has no dearth of missiles.
It was like a Bollywood movie unfolding. Gen. Munir’s sabre-rattling is an example of Pakistan’s brand of scientific temper with the approval of President Donald Trump stamped on it. It will always be a mystery why Trump and Munir hit it off and why Trump and Modi also hit it off? What’s in common between Modi and Munir that both of them got to become Trump buddies?
Prime Minister Modi’s counter threats haven’t so far elicited a response but Pakistan will respond and so shall the President. Both these power-centres have another thing in common, their friendship with Bangladesh’s power-centre Mohammad Yunus, who has his own agenda tied up with their agendas. Modi took note of Bangladesh when he spoke of the national security threat emanating from Bangladesh by way of “illegal aliens”.
Modi called it forcing a “demographic change” along India’s borders with Bangladesh. He took note of the demographic sword of Damocles hanging on India’s head if steps were not taken immediately. This is the first time that Prime Minister Modi has spoken so firmly on Bangladeshi infiltrators and why and how they were a threat to India’s national security. Modi’s refreshed stance on illegal aliens and demographic change cannot be dismissed, especially at a time when the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) has half of India up in arms and there is a counter-movement against it, nicknamed ‘Vote Chori’.
Without doubt, SIR’s core aim is to remove Bangladeshi and Rohingya “voters” from India’s voters’ lists. There’s a SIR in Bihar and there will be a SIR in West Bengal besides more SIRs in other states going to polls in the months to come. Prime Minister Modi spoke of “mission-mode drive” to rid India of illegal aliens who have used India’s unique identification system to get hold of electoral Aadhaar and electoral cards to shape India’s electoral outcomes and government formation.
Prime Minister Modi said Bangladeshi infiltrators are a clear and present danger to the national security of India. There is a counter-narrative in which there are no illegal aliens in India and there are no Bangladeshi infiltrators but only “Bengali-speaking Indian citizens.” The INDIA bloc, the country’s opposition parties’ alliance, led by LoP Rahul Gandhi’s Congress and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, is dead against SIR and the drive against “illegal aliens”. The West Bengal Chief Minister has challenged Prime Minister Modi to prove his stance that India sat on a time-bomb of illegal aliens threatening India’s national security? (IPA Service)
