Why does Pakistan threaten India so often with nuclear attack?

By Shalini Chawla

Pakistan national security advisor, Sartaj Aziz, accused India of acting like a regional superpower and said, “We are a nuclear-armed country and we know how to defend ourselves." 

The scheduled meeting of the NSAs of India and Pakistan was cancelled by Islamabad citing New Delhi's refusal to allow an expanded agenda and involvement of the Hurriyat in the talks. 

Following the cancellation of talks, Aziz came up with a statement threatening the use of nuclear weapons by Pakistan. 

Pakistan has pursued its nuclear missile program in a bid to counter India’s conventional capability

This threat, that of using nuclear weapons against India, from Pakistan, is not new and other members of its establishment have made similar statements in the recent past. 

Why does Pakistan rely heavily on the nuclear threat? 

Why does even something like cancellation of talks, which is an effort towards normalisation of bilateral relationship, result in a nuclear threat by the Pakistani establishment? 

Terrorism 

Islamabad initiated the development of the nuclear weapon program with full rigour after the defeat in the 1971 war and the creation of Bangladesh. 

A deep desire to neutralise India's conventional capability and fear of further disintegration of Pakistan were the most compelling factors for Pakistani leadership to go nuclear. 

The military has pursued terrorism as a tool against India for four decades now and nuclear weapons have served as a shield for conducting acts of terror.

Terrorism in Kashmir and other parts of India such as Punjab accelerated much more after Pakistan acquired nuclear capability in 1987. 

Pakistan has used nuclear weapons to carry on terrorism on the sly and to prevent a conventional war. 

The threat of nuclear weapons has been used rather conveniently and frequently by the Pakistani leadership during times of crisis. 

Since the objective of the nuclear weapons has been to neutralise India’s conventional capability and also to avoid Indian retaliation to Islamabad's acts of terror, Pakistan's penchant for the adoption and excessive reliance on “first use” doctrine was not surprising. 

Although the assertion – that of using nuclear weapons first – has varied with changing strategic scenarios, Islamabad has very often stated that it could and would use nuclear weapons as and when it would feel the need. 

However, it did take a stance during the 2000-10 period that use of nuclear weapon would be the last resort option for Pakistan. What's not clear is what determines “last resort” for Pakistan? 

 Arsenal 

Pakistan has the fastest growing nuclear arsenal in the world with reportedly 120 warheads or even more. 

With Chinese assistance, it has also developed land-based ballistic missiles up to the range of 2,500km, as well as built up the cruise missiles – Babur and Ra’ad.

It is very proud of having developed tactical nuclear weapons (Nasr) to be used in the battlefield to further deter India from any form of conventional retaliation.

Pakistan has excessively relied on nuclear weapons for the last three decades and is likely to continue to do so since it has failed to build other strengths or overcome its fundamental challenges. 

Its most daunting problems include economic stress, power shortage and rising extremism in the society. 

The raging insurgency has been difficult for the military to control.

Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has been launching repeated terrorist attacks, despite military's claim that it has managed to hit the insurgent factions on the borders with the ongoing major operation – Zarb-e-Azb. 

Being crippled with the inherent problems of extremism, unemployment and low growth, Pakistan significantly lags behind India on most of the parameters of national security. Its excessive reliance on nuclear weapons to project its power emerges from its weaknesses within.  It has failed to develop any fundamental strength and support its youth, who seem to be trapped in the culture of violence, terrorism, unemployment and, very importantly so, an extreme identity crisis. 

Until Pakistan focuses on building its economy with consistent improvement and investments over a sustained period, its insecurity as a state is unlikely to go away. 

Threats 

Repeated threats of using nuclear weapons are not an answer to deal with internal weaknesses and challenges.  Also, with India's officially declared doctrine of assured massive retaliation, a nuclear attack by Pakistan would result in a significant retaliatory nuclear strike leading to huge destruction in Pakistan. The use of nuclear threats again and again will also not allow any productive steps in the direction of normalisation of the hostile relationship between the two countries. 

Saint Behind Radiated Vedanta Wisdom Attains Mahasamadhi

Swami Dayananda Saraswati, a seer born in the laps of Cauvery who went on to give rise to a legion of Vedantis over the years, attained mahasamadhi late on Wednesday night.

He was 85 and died of age-related ailments, Ashram officials told Express over phone from Rishikesh. Born as Natarajan on August 15, 1930, at Manjakkudi village in Thanjavur, Swami was a disciple of Swami Chinmayananda, one of the most-respected spiritual gurus of the time. Over the years, Swami Dayananda Saraswati established himself as one of the best scholars of Vedanta — his disciples include Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who had called on the guru only 10 days ago.

Keen to preserve the Vedic vision and traditions, Swami established a string of centres where Vedanta was taught in the tradition of instruction passed on from Adi Sankara. Among these, the most prominent centres in India are Arsha Vidya Ashram in Rishikesh and Arsha Vidya Gurukulam in Coimbatore, while the Arsha Vidya Gurukulam at Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, is an internationally renowned centre of spirituality. In the 1960s and 1970s, as the world worried about existentialist questions, Swami gave them ideas from Vedanta, the insights passed on by the seers, but in a contemporary approach.

He was informal but erudite, a treasure trove of wisdom who wore it lightly.

In the later part of his life, Swami began a social movement called All India Movement (AIM) for Seva, that reached out to the rural masses, offering them a helping hand in medical educational and infrastructure which were lacking.

He also sought to bring together the various schools of thoughts within Hinduism under the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha (Council for the Teachers of Hindu Tradition), a first of its kind effort in the thousands of years history of the religion.

In the recent years, Swami was reportedly troubled by kidney  ailments, for which he was undergoing treatment in the United States. He had returned to India only less than a month ago, apparently deciding that he did not want to undergo the treatment anymore.

However, gentle persuasion from his disciples including Prime Minister Modi managed to convince him to continue it.

Netaji and mystery of the secret files:Mohan K. Tikku

Now that Mamata Banerjee has served the appetiser, everybody is hungering after the big meal. The 64 Netaji files running into 12,744 pages that the West Bengal CM declassified on September 18 seem to indicate that Netaji had survived the air crash. The rest is mostly marginal, just a few missing sentences in the papers that deepen the mystery without revealing much.

The real story though, one assumes, rests in the files with the Centre. All one can do at the moment is hope that the West Bengal disclosures will act as the thin edge of the wedge and help raise questions that would make it imperative for the Centre to reveal more. Apparently, it is not an easy decision to make for whoever is in power at the Centre. The BJP, which used to be so vociferous on the demand to release the Netaji files while in the Opposition, was not very forthcoming when it came to power under Vajpayee. Whether Prime Minister Modi will act remains to be seen.

The version that has been officially peddled so far is that Netaji died in an air crash at the Taipei airport, and his ashes are lying at the Renkoji temple in Japan. But there are at least two other versions. One, that he was alive and returned to India incognito and spent the rest of his days as a sadhu in UP. The other theory is that he ended up in Stalinist Russia, was subjected to torture and died in custody.

Though there have been some differences of opinion among sections of the Bose clan, there is near unanimity on one point: Everybody wants closure. Netaji’s daughter Anita Pfaff told me during an interview way back in the Nineties, while she was here in connection with Netaji’s birth centenary celebrations, that she was realist enough to realise that her father would no longer be alive. But she wanted to know the circumstances in which he spent his last days. She shudders to think, she said, if her father was really tortured in a jail in Siberia.

During the 1990s, I was following the progress of the Mukherjee Commi-ssion, appointed to take a fresh look at the subject. I also used to be in touch with Professor Purabi Roy of Jadavpur University who was helping the commission in getting at the truth. The Mukherjee Commission report — like the West Bengal disclosures now — only hinted at possibilities, letting the mysteries persist.

At one point during those years, I happened to meet the then minister of state of external affairs at a party. During the conversation I broached the subject of the Netaji files. He sounded very cooperative, and promised to let me see the papers. It was agreed that I shall call upon the minister in his office on Monday morning. I turned up at the appointed hour. The minister asked for the officer dealing with the subject. He was told the officer was on tour and would be back in two or three days. Accordingly, the minister asked me to come back in a few days time.

When I went again a few days later, the minister called for the concerned person, a joint secretary-level officer. The officer spent about 20 minutes with the minister while I waited in the PA’s room. I was ushered in as soon as the officer had finished. The minister this time sang a different tune. He said there were no Netaji files, and there was not much in the ones there.

Obviously, he had been advised against letting me access Netaji’s files. I tried a different route some time later. I used to know a New Delhi-based Russian correspondent quite well. He would sometimes drop in at my office for a chat. One day I asked him if he could check some details with his embassy on my behalf. I briefed him about who Netaji was and the story of his having spent his last days in a jail in Russia. He promised to help. He turned up a few days later wearing a glum face. He said that he had been advised by his embassy that it was in nobody’s interest to ask these questions. He had been told that seeking answers to these questions would do no good to anybody.

Considering that the Russians had been quite open about the KGB papers after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was a bit surprising. The Russians, in fact, had sold many KGB papers to the Hoover Foundation at Stanford University as they were hard up for foreign exchange after the collapse of the USSR. I, personally, had seen some of the papers at the Hoover Foundation. The ones that I had accessed — for example — had indicated that the Soviets were funding the CPI, and that both Stalin and Mao knew about it.

If even the Russians were being so secretive about the subject, it suggests that the facts may be far more critical than we imagine them to be. And the story, that the files had been kept under wraps just to protect Nehru’s role in the episode, may be far from the truth. If that be the case, it is doubtful that the Centre would be any forthcoming than before.
The writer has been a  foreign correspondent based in Colombo. He is the author of Sri Lanka: A Land in Search of Itself.

IB knew Netaji was alive, wanted to track him down:Kingshuk Nag

Nehru's Trusted IB Czar BN Mullick Sought MI-5 Help To Find Bose, Reveals Ex-IB Man

The Intelligence Bureau (IB) was snooping on the relatives of Subhas Chandra Bose because while it did not know his whereabouts, it knew for sure that he had not died in any air crash. “We knew he was not dead, but were not sure where he was. We suspected he was in the Soviet Union or Japan,“ a retired top official of IB told TOI.

The entire operation was scripted by Bhola Nath Mullick, who was director of IB during 1948-68, the retired official revealed. He further said that Mullick had tremendous hold over the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and was snooping on Netaji's relatives to serve the political interests of the latter. “We were aware that if Netaji made an appearance suddenly , he would have given Nehru a run for his position. This was the compelling reason why it was imperative that Subhas Bose's whereabouts be found out. But in the end we could never find out where Netaji was,“ the official said, refusing to be identified.

When asked why it was suspected that Subhas Bose was in Japan, which had lost World War II, the former sleuth said that was because Netaji was last officially heard of being in Japanese territory -in Saigon.

For the purpose of tracing Subhas Bose, Mullick had also taken the help of MI-5, the British Intelligence agency . Intelligence gathered by the IB was shared with the British agency and sometimes help was taken from MI-5 to develop the leads further, the former sleuth said. In fact, an MI-5 liaison office was allowed to be operated from New Delhi. Often data about financial help given by the USSR to the Communist Party and other agencies was forwarded to MI-5 so that it could be analysed by the British agency .

London was interested in what was happening behind the Iron Curtain because the Cold War had begun almost immediately after the conclusion of World War II.

“It was for the yeoman's service rendered to Nehru that Mullick continued in his position for two long decades. Nehru could not think of allowing him to go,“ the retired sleuth, who later served in the Research and Analyses Wing, said.

Incidentally, Mullick belonged to Calcutta, the same city as Subhas Bose, but had cultivated an anti-Netaji sentiment because that is what worked in the Nehru regime, said the IB official who now lives in quiet retirement. He worked in India's Intelligence outfits from the 1950s through to the 1990s.Although an IPS officer, he spent his entire career in Intelligence. “We reasoned that Subhas Bose, wherever he was, would try get in touch with his close relatives -like nephews Amiya Nath Bose and Sisir Bose. That is why their correspondence was intercepted and they were snooped upon. Since we averred that Bose could have been in Japan, the IB tried hard to figure out the agenda of Amiya Nath Bose when he visited Japan in 1957,“ the ex-IB official told TOI. The interception of the mails of Bose family members was organised by the IB office in Calcutta, the head of which was a favourite of Mullick.

It is interesting to note that even while IB was trying to find Netaji, the Nehru government, in its public utterances, kept on insisting that Subhas Bose had died in the air crash.Even an official committee under Shah Nawaz Khan was set up in 1956 -which insisted that Netaji had died in the air crash. The report was accepted by the government, although Netaji's brother Suresh Bose filed a dissent report stating that he could not have perished in the crash.

Khan, a former Indian National Army (INA) officer had, by the time he had been appointed head of the committee, become a member of the Nehru establishment and a deputy minister at the Centre.In fact, for starters, the committee was to be a citizen's committee and was slated to be headed by Justice Radha Bi node Pal. But the moment Justice Pal's name came up, the Nehru government swung into action and converted it to an `official' committee, headed by Shah Nawaz Khan.

Justice Radha Binode Pal was a member of the international war tribunal for the Far East that tried the Japanese after World War II. The tribunal sentenced many , including the then Japanese Prime Minister H Tojo, to death. But Justice Pal wrote a dissent report saying that the Japanese were not guilty and that a victor's justice was being meted out to them. This implies that Justice Pal, if he were to be the head of the Netaji Inquiry Committee, would have done a proper job.

Bhagwat's Advice Merits Debate

RSS Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat’s suggestion that an apolitical committee could be formed to review the reservation policy has been blown out of proportion by the likes of Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Lalu Prasad Yadav. His advice should be seen in the context of reservations people have about the existing quota policy, which has led to a situation where even a prosperous community like the Patidars in Gujarat insists on having state crutches. Bhagwat did not say, let alone demand, that the reservation for government jobs and seats in educational institutions for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and educationally and socially backward classes, popularly known as the Other Backward Classes, should be scrapped. Few can question him when he says that a committee of experts should review the policy.
Several political parties favour quota for the poor, irrespective of caste or creed, though they do not openly speak against caste-based reservation for obvious reasons. Even a party like the Congress has changed its stance. Now, it also supports reservation for the poor. The Supreme Court has already put a cap on reservation — it should not exceed 50 per cent. There are some parties like the RJD, JD (U) and the Samajwadi Party, which want the present 27 per cent quota for OBCs to continue, despite the fact that a sizeable number of the beneficiaries have long since ceased to be backward.
When the founding fathers of the Constitution thought of reservation to provide a level-playing field to those who had been suffering social inequities for centuries, they could not have foreseen that it would be used by political parties to form vote-banks. Though reservation was thought of as a stop-gap arrangement, politicians have been vying with one another to extend it for 10 years every time it was to end. Some of them consider the policy unalterable as the law of motion. This does not show the political class in a good light. The RSS chief’s suggestion should be taken in the right spirit and the parties, instead of chest-thumping and getting into a preaching and slanging match, would be well advised to debate the pros and cons of the quota policy objectively. It’s essential if India, set to be the youngest country, is to achieve inclusive growth.

96-year-old Air Marshal Honoured for Heroics in 1965 War

Ninety-six-year-old Air Marshal Arjan Singh was certainly the show-stopper at the President’s felicitation for 1965 war veterans on Tuesday. As his name was called and he walked ram-rod straight towards President Pranab Mukherjee to take a salute, it was a sight in itself.

In a short but impressive function, the President also feted the three others who were martyred — Company Quartermaster Havildar Abdul Hamid, Lieutenant Colonel Ardeshir Tar­apore and Chaman Lal, a fireman who saved a goods train and several lives by detaching burning bogies. Their relatives received the honour from the President: Rasoonan Bibi, wife of Havildar Hamid, Zarine Mahir, daughter of late Lt Col Tarapore, and Asha Rani, wife of Chaman Lal.

An exhibition-cum-fare has come up on India Gate lawns as part of the golden jubilee of the 1965 war — an occasion partly been marred by boycott calls from another set of veterans, agitating over the One Rank, One Pension demand, many of whom boycotted the felicitation.

Singh is the only Indian Air Force officer, who was promoted as Five-Star General. As he walk­ed up to the President, with a sti­ck in hand, all pride intact, and offered a salute, the ceremonial hall at Rashtrapati Bhavan broke into loud applause. As a squadron leader during World War II, Singh was involved in the Arakan Campaign against the Japanese in 1944 for which he received the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Vice-President Hamid Ansari, LS Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, former PM Manmohan Singh, BJP leader L K Advani, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and three services chiefs were present.

Quota juggernaut

By questioning expanding reservations, Bhagwat and Prasada draw fire but point out the obvious

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s call for a non-political committee to examine and determine which categories require reservation benefits and for how long has stirred a political hornets’ nest. Coming ahead of Bihar assembly elections BJP’s opponents – particularly RJD supremo Lalu Prasad – had a field day slamming Bhagwat. Given the atmosphere in poll-bound Bihar where every party is trying to get its caste calculations right, BJP quickly issued a clarification.

But political calculations aside, Bhagwat’s take on the reservations system isn’t without merit. Few can argue against his assertion that reservations have been politicised and aren’t being implemented in the spirit of their original intention. In fact, only last week Congress’s Jitin Prasada asked his own party to rethink the reservations policy and urged it to champion a new mechanism for social justice that focusses on the most backward castes and the poor among upper castes. This is an implicit admission that quotas have come to be cornered by a few powerful OBC castes that dominate the administrative machinery.
With parties across the political spectrum rushing to legitimise the reservation demands of different caste groups in the hope of cultivating vote banks, they have kicked off a race to the bottom. As a result, even influential communities are demanding a share of the reservations pie. This is precisely what the recent Hardik Patel-led Patidar agitation in Gujarat represents. Besides touching off caste conflicts, the fallout of this great reservations game has been the slow strangulation of meritocracy. This in turn has disastrous consequences for administration. The Yadavisation of the UP police force, wherein one particular OBC caste has come to dominate that state’s law and order machinery even as crime rates soar and communal riots break out, exemplifies this point.
The need of the hour is not just to reimagine the reservations policy but also create a new paradigm for social justice. One of the reasons for the reservations rush is the lack of adequate job opportunities elsewhere which makes government postings extremely lucrative and highly prized. This clearly isn’t sustainable. Boosting job creation in the formal sector, and not just economic growth, will enlarge the pie for all communities. Economic reforms along with sufficient investments in quality school education will create a level playing field and mitigate the need for quotas. It’s time to enact policies that lift all boats.

 

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