One of the more uncomfortable experiences I have had in reporting across the world was in March 2006 when I got a rare Pakistani visa stamped in my passport and travelled to that country on business. One day in Lahore, with some time on my hands, I visited Gurdwara Nankana Sahib, which marks the birthplace of Guru Nanak, whose anniversary or Gurpurab fell on the day I wrote this column. The gurdwara itself, al-though well-maintained, was deserted of devotees, with only a handful of granthis and ragis from Peshawar to be found in its vast marble courtyard. Of note was a solid-gold palki or palanquin ‘donated’ by Captain Amarinder Singh, the current Congress member from Amritsar: But to the uncomfortable moment. From Nankana Sahib I drove to Wagah on the Pakistani side of the border crossing with India, past lush wheat fields, to witness the sunset ceremony of lowering the flags. A souvenir shop did brisk business. Loudspeakers blared ‘patriotic’ songs, quite a few of them sounding familiar to ears used to Indian film music. Hundreds of Pakistanis bussed in, raucous and in picnic mood. As the ceremony got under way, giant seven-foot-tall Pakistani Rangers began a stomping, goose-stepping march towards the border gate; on the Indian side, similarly towering Indian Border Security Force jawans performed mirror histrionics, with blood-curdling yells and glares. A small, wizened man waving a Pakistani flag scurried to and from the gate, while the crowd lustily yelled ‘Hindustan Murdabad’ (death to India) and ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ (long live Pakistan). I felt very alone in that crowd and wished I were a few hundred feet on the other side of no man’s land, sitting on the bleachers and listening to my fellow Indians roaring full-throated imprecations against the Pakistanis. 

My Minority Report day came to mind when I saw news of the suicide bombing on the Pakistani side of the border crossing last Sunday, probably just a few hundred metres from where I stood eight years ago. At least 61 people have died so far, but the attack sends out a wider signal: of terror at India’s doorstep, terror of the kind that has turned daily life fraught and fragile in Baghdad, Kabul and cities across Pakistan. I do not want any Indian city to look like a map I saw of suicide bombings across Baghdad over the past decade. Each bombing was marked by a glowing red spot, and the map seemed strewn with deadly pomegranate seeds. 

Our leaders are not blind to the urgency of the situation. On October 17, speaking to armed forces commanders, PM Narendra Modi warned of future wars that would be shorter but deadlier, where domination of both space and cyber-space would be as critical as control of land, sea and air borders, and where “we are facing a future where security challenges will be less predictable; situations will evolve and change swiftly; and, technological changes will make responses more difficult to keep pace with”. On Wednesday Home Minister Rajnath Singh spoke at an Interpol meeting in Monaco in similarly stark terms (predictably, most Indian news sites focused on the fact that he spoke in Hindi). “The world is also witnessing some cata-clysmic changes as lethal non-state actors fired by toxic ideology [are] turning into State themselves,” he said, in obvious reference to ISIS, or the Islamic State. He said Interpol was best suited to monitor the Internet and “dark areas of Internet independently to track potentially harmful websites aiding terrorist activities”. Not a moment too soon, Modi seems finally to be on the verge of enlarging his under-staffed team, although, like that old typewriter test line “Now is the time for all good fit men to come to the aid of the party” it has taken its time click-clacking across the paper. Our daily staple of politics has been spiced by the punitry on who is going to be in the cabinet if Modi expands it early next week. Note the ‘men’. Modi had seven women in his 44-member cabinet, but that ratio seems likely to go down, unless a regional star like Vasundhara Raje of Rajasthan is dragooned into New Delhi. As has been evident for six months now (yes, this government is about to complete one-tenth of its term) there is a clear scarcity of talent, which is why Modi seems poised to pluck Manohar Parrikar from Goa to be his defence minister. 

It is really high time we had a full-time defence minister. The red flags are going up across the peninsula. The setting up of al Qaeda’s ‘Indian’ branch and growing signs of its collaboration with terror groups like the Indian Mujahideen, and the sightings of ISIS flags in the Kashmir valley all point up the urgent need for a confident, even assertive, foreign/defence policy. It does not help that India has more than 15,000 km of land borders and a coastline of over 7,500 km. It does not help that years of misgovernance and colonial-era Big Stick attitudes have nurtured Maoist and separatist groups across the length and breadth of our country. It does not help that India’s threat response, especially over the past few years as UPA 2 went into a death spiral, has been feeble and flaccid. It also does not help that the Shahi Imam of Delhi’s Jama Masjid, Syed Ahmed Bukhari, pointedly invited Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif and not Modi to the lavish anointment of his younger son as his successor later this month. With more and more sectarian fires being lit around the country, the last thing we need is more kindling being added to the tinderbox. 

Talking of lavishness, the BJP’s head and tail do not seem to connect some times. How else do you explain the huge song-and-dance tamasha at Wankhede Stadium to crown Devendra Fadnavis as Maharashtra’s new CM (with the BJP itself providing a TV feed) when the Modi government has burnt through 83 per cent of its full-year fiscal deficit target in six months and can only murmur about the need for abstinence and austerity? 

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