Pak will soon pay for Jammu: Army chief
‘Will honour ceasefire the day Pak stops sending terrorists across LoC’
NEW DELHI: The Indian army will give Pakistan a reply “sooner rather than later” for the February 10 terror attack on a military camp in Jammu, General Bipin Rawat said.
Six soldiers and a civilian were killed in the fidayeen attack in Sunjuwan by Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terrorists. Soon after the incident, defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said that Pakistan, which she accused of backing the attackers, would pay for its “misadventure”.
“Pakistan thinks it is fighting a war that is paying them dividends but we have several options, including surgical strikes,” the army chief said in an interview on Wednesday, without giving details that would compromise India’s tactical and strategic response.
Rawat said that he would order a ceasefire at the Line of Control (LoC) as soon as Pakistan stops sending terrorists to India. “The Indian army will honour the ceasefire and de-escalate tensions the day Pakistan stops sending terrorists across the line of control,” Rawat said, referring to the 2003 agreement put in place as a confidencebuilding measure.
Ceasefire violations at the LoC have spiked over the last year. There were 860 such violations recorded in 2017 from either side, as compared to 271 the previous year, according to government data.
Asked about the January 27 firing in Shopian, in which three protestors were killed by army bullets at a time when the PDPBJP government had withdrawn cases against first-time stone-pelters on the suggestion of the Centre’s interlocutor Dineshwar Sharma, Rawat said: “The cases were withdrawn as a goodwill gesture but what goodwill are they (the stone pelters) showing? The pelting continues.”
He defended the military action, saying stone-pelters were hampering military operations. “The army has a job to do. We don’t want collateral damage but what do you expect us to do when we get surrounded by a stone pelting mob? Even in Shopian, we fired in the air first.”
Referring to the controversial incident when Major Gogoi tied Kashmiri shawl weaver Farooq Ahmad Dar to the bonnet of a jeep last year, “Let me tell you, we honour local sentiments and don’t conduct operations during janazas (funeral processions) even though terrorists come there and fire in the air. What do you want me to do, have a seat in front of all jeeps. We got flak even for that.”
The Jammu & Kashmir police had registered an FIR against the army after the Shopian firing. Asked if he had given permission to the father of Major Aditya (named in the Shopian FIR) to approach the Supreme Court to get the police complaint quashed, Rawat said, “The father has a right to defend his son. If a girl (Kerala actress Priya Varrier) can approach the court because her wink has offended people can’t a father do the same if he apprehends that his son would be arrested?” The General also had a piece of advice for the media: to not show visuals of grief-stricken family members of martyrs. “Because the media only focuses on soldiers killed by Pakistan, they build a narrative on how they have managed to inflict a blow on us.”
› ON STONEPELTERS The cases were withdrawn as a goodwill gesture but what goodwill are they showing? The pelting continues. ›
ON SHOPIAN FIR ROW If a girl (Kerala actress Priya Varrier) can approach court because her wink has offended people, can’t a father do the same if he apprehends that his son would be arrested?
The Chief of Army Staff’s remarks on February 21 at a seminar co-organised by the HQ Integrated Defence Staff have triggered a flurry of responses. To understand why his comments are problematic, we need to unpack their content and place them in a wider context. Start with his analysis of the problem of illegal immigration from Bangladesh into the northeastern states.
General Rawat acknowledged that such movement of peoples happens owing to two reasons. The first is the sheer demographic pressure on the land in Bangladesh. The second, which he emphasised, is “planned immigration” taking place owing to the machinations of Pakistan with the support of China. Pakistan, he argued, was waging a form of proxy war: “they will always try and ensure that this area is taken over”.
Each of these assertions is open to question. The point about demographic pressure is well taken, though it is surprising that the army chief chose to use the word “lebensraum” to describe it: apparently he is unaware of the deeply distasteful association of the word with the policy of the Nazis in eastern Europe. More importantly, large-scale movement of people from Bangladesh is a long-standing trend going back to the late 19th century.
During the colonial period, the integration of rural eastern Bengal into global circuits of commercial exchange led to increased agricultural production — not because of better technology or higher productivity but by the sheer extension of the land under plow. By the end of the 19th century, this process had reached its ecological limits. It was in this context that migration of eastern Bengal began not only to Assam and Tripura, but also the Arakan (Rakhine state in Myanmar). This secular long-term trend has not been easy to control or regulate for the states in the region. To suggest that we are witnessing “planned immigration” overseen by Pakistan and China appears to be an absurd overstatement.
It is casts an unwarranted aspersion on the sovereignty of Bangladesh. The current government has made strenuous efforts to root out the ISI’s activities in the country and maintained a balanced posture towards China. Such observations could lead to avoidable diplomatic friction with China as well as Bangladesh. If the army chief does feel so strongly, it better to raise it within the councils of government rather in a public forum.
Equally surprising was General Rawat’s statement that the AIUDF was growing even faster than the BJP, particularly in the light of what he previously said. The claim that Pakistan wants this area to be “taken over”— seemingly by Muslim immigrants — is a serious one for the army chief to voice, as anyone familiar with the history and politics of Assam will recognise. The suggestion that a regional political party is the direct beneficiary of the “planned immigration” by Pakistan is a significant observation — especially in the context of the bubbling unrest over the preparation of the National Register of Citizens and incendiary claims that Assam is fast turning into a Muslim-majority state. Surely the Army Chief was not unaware of this political context?
This is not, of course, the first occasion when General Rawat’s remarks have occasioned criticism. The army chief is welcome to express his views on military and operational issues, but he has to be mindful of the domestic and international audiences that will interpret his statements and of the need to avoid venturing into the terrain of domestic or foreign policy. At a time when the credibility of our public institutions— ranging from the Supreme Court to the RBI—is under question, it is imperative that the army chief’s statements should comport with the apolitical character of his office.