Radical Socialist
THE INDIAN ARMED Forces have launched “Operation Sindoor,” which has carried out strikes in as many as nine places spread over three cities in Pakistan occupied Kashmir and Punjab province. A counter-strike by Pakistan, also to be condemned, has led to lives lost in Poonch.
All this is an extremely worrisome development, though not entirely unexpected. After the Pahalgam terror act [the murder of 26 mostly tourists in Kashmir —ed.], which deserves to be universally and unequivocally condemned, the Modi government should have made public and transparent the information it has as to who the likely perpetrators are, and accepted the call for an international investigation in which Indian involvement would be necessary and central, and demanded that the Pakistan government participate in uncovering the complete truth so that the culprits can be caught and punished in the name of justice.
A Pakistani refusal to cooperate in this manner would have put it in the dock internationally and then justified various actions that could be taken diplomatically and materially by India against the government, but not against the welfare of the general Pakistani public. Indeed, the most sensible approach and the one most damaging to the Islamabad government is precisely to drive an ever greater wedge between the Pakistani public and a government that is already deeply unpopular.
Instead, by illegally holding the Indus Waters Treaty(1) in abeyance and calling on all Pakistani citizens in the country (except non-Muslims with Long Term Visas) to immediately leave, this Hindutva government is pursuing the path of endorsing the collective economic suffering of the Pakistan public as well as endorsing the principle of the “collective guilt” of all Pakistani Muslim citizens.
First, this only reinforces anti-India jingoism within Pakistan and enhances public support for the military establishment which rules and seeks to drown out all progressive and dissident voices, thereby eroding efforts to move towards greater democratic freedoms desired by the vast majority of Pakistan’s citizens.
Second, these two steps by New Delhi are also taken with the aim of domestically whipping up a hyper-nationalistic frenzy (also the purpose of the pan-national civic military drills) that can benefit the ruling BJP(2) for the coming Bihar elections and more generally beyond this.
In carrying out these cross-border assaults by its official Armed Forces, New Delhi has entered the terrain of committing internationally illegal “acts of war.” This is the second time after Balakot that this has happened. It sets the precedent for this to happen again and again, only at an increasingly high military level should similar such terror acts by groups (i.e. non-state actors) take place which is all too likely despite our hopes.
Escalating Danger
Also, since the dawn of the nuclear age in 1945 it is only in South Asia that two nuclear powers have assaulted each other with conventional military weaponry, creating a frighteningly real possibility of escalatory retaliation that can reach the level of a nuclear exchange.
There is a large proportion of people in India, and a very bellicose, communal and loud right-wing media, that have been baying for blood since the ghastly act in Pahalgam. This creates conditions for much stronger calls for war both externally — with Pakistan and internally — against the imagined enemy within, namely Muslims in general and Kashmiris in particular.
Pahalgam has pushed almost all political parties to stand behind the BJP. Leading members of the Congress(3), not unexpectedly, have been urging military action. Regrettably, the statements issued by both the CPI(4) and CPI(M)(5), after the launch of Operation Sindoor, have refused to oppose such military action.
A similar situation arose in 2019, when India escalated the stakes and struck targets within the borders of sovereign Pakistan. We were lucky that the situation did not then escalate out of control. But there is no guarantee now that Pakistan will act in a manner that might allow both India and Pakistan to claim victory and then let matters rest. If that does not happen, and if we go down the path of war, this will only mean further loss of lives on both sides of the border, and intense suffering on the part of those people who want war the least.
Radical Socialist opposes these military strikes because such acts do not go to the heart of the underlying political crisis of Kashmir, which has been exacerbated by the Modi regime since 2019. We condemn fanning the flames of Islamophobia by large sections of the media and organized right-wing forces, and the culpability that the government has shown on that front.
Such military exchanges, apart from the loss of innocent lives (state terror by each side), strengthens religious and political hatreds in both India and Pakistan. We hope that ordinary workers and people in both countries will stand on the side of peace and a political resolution of the Kashmir conflict, instead of seeking military solutions.
Notes
- The Indus Water Treaty, signed in 1960 between India and Pakistan, is a water-sharing agreement that divides the waters of the Indus River system. The treaty divides the six major rivers of the Indus system into eastern and western rivers. India is granted the exclusive use of the eastern rivers (Sutlej, Beas, and Ravi), while Pakistan receives exclusive use of the western rivers (Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab). Permanent Indus Commission, composed of commissioners from both countries, was established to oversee the treaty’s implementation and resolution of any disputes. It has helped to ensure the water security of both countries, particularly in Pakistan, where the Indus River system is a vital source of water for agriculture and irrigation. Holding the Treaty in abeyance is not something that can be immediately implemented in full, but it can be initiated, and will have serious negative implications for Pakistan, especially for farmers.
back to text - The Indian National Congress, or in short just Congress, is the historic bourgeois nationalist party in India. Traditionally relatively secular, in recent years it has shrunk, and the old Nehru ideology of secular nationalism and state led capitalist growth with a range of small scale benefits for the economically and socially deprived layers (a public distribution system for all, commitment of the state for education for the people, the formal rhetoric of providing jobs, etc.) first gave way to full turn to neoliberalism, and when that opened up a contradiction between its class orientation and electoral base, it yielded ground to the RSS, so that the RSS hegemony of Hindutva ideology has overtaken the Congress, and it often plays a soft Hindutva politics in opposition to the BJP’s aggressive Hindutva.
back to text - The Communist Party of India (CPI) was founded by M. N. Roy and his associates in Tashkent in 1920 and in India in a conference in 1925. In the 1930s it came fully under Stalinist control. Critical forces that left the CPI would go on to form the Revolutionary Communist Party of Idia, and the Bolshevik Leninist Party of India (Indian Section of the fourth International). The CPI took the twists and turns of Stalinism. In the aftermath of the 20th Congress of the CPSU, one wing became closer to China, because they rejected the very limited denunciations of Stalin. There was also a dispute between the best bourgeois ally for the “democratic revolution”. One with felt such allies were inside the congress, and the other, they were in the opposition bourgeois parties. The India-China war saw the beginning of a split., formalised in 1964. The old party was initially bigger in the all India level, and continued with the name CPI. In the1980s and beyond, it has become less powerful, much more openly class collaborationist, and at the same time, much more obedient to the CPI(M)’s terms. This is because the electoral fortunes of the CPI(M) were to become more significant.
back to text - The more Stalinist wing of the CPI, together with all Maoist elements, split in 1964 to form the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Between 1967 and 1977, the CPI(M) showed itself electorally stronger in west Bengal, Kerala and Tripura, forming a CPI(M) led Left Front government in west Bengal from 1977-2011. It was a tighter Stalinist party. Maoists split from the CPI(M) between 1967 and 1969, forming the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), and other organisations. The original CPI(ML) split into many organisations. Since 1991, the year of India openly turning all out to neoliberalism as well as the collapse of the USSR, both the CPI, but even more the CPI(M) turned to an all-out social Democratisation of politics, though retaining a residual Stalinist organisational practice. Both parties consider India’s takeover of Kashmir as the final word, neither accept the right of the people of Jammy and Kashmir to self-determination. Both have issued national chauvinist statements after Operation Sindoor.
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2.The Bharatiya Janata Party, an extreme nationalist fascistic party (tied to the fascist organisation Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh), is the biggest partner in the current ruling coalition. For detailed studies see Achin Vanaik, The Rise of Hindu Authoritarianism, Verso, 2017. For short discussions, see https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article3697 and https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article6114
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