Wittingly or unwittingly, Union defence minister Rajnath Singh is raising the temperature vis-a-vis India-Pakistan relations – and straining it further. The first statement he made a few days ago was that India might not necessarily stand by its “no-first-use” pledge vis-a-vis use of nuclear weapons against neighbours. The policy, he said, could change as per emerging situations. Both India and Pakistan have adopted a similar policy when they entered the nuclear club, which was in part a reassurance to the world that a critical scenario would be avoided.
Notably, Pakistani generals have often warned India that if a militarily difficult situation arose, they would unilaterally use nukes against India irrespective of whether India did it first or not. Admittedly, Rajnath Singh was giving it back to Pakistan in the same coin. At the same time, considering the clout that India enjoys at the international level, the minister should rather have avoided speaking in the same vein as the Pakistani generals did in the past. Pakistan has a perpetual fear India would attack it. The threat from the generals was more of a kind of chest-beating. At the same time, fact is also that India has put Pakistan on notice through the defence minister’s statement.
Rajnath Singh raised the temperature further when he said later that if Pakistan wanted to engage India in a dialogue on Kashmir, it could be not about this side of Kashmir, but about Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. Even when Pakistan played all the games in Kashmir Valley through use of terrorist outfits for the past many years, India was largely silent on PoK, other than making just a few references about human rights violations there. With the defence minister reasserting India’s right over PoK, and declaring that talks on Kashmir Valley was a closed chapter, the Pakistani civil and military establishments are bound to be fretting and fuming. Add to this Pakistan’s failure to draw the UN into the Kashmir issue – which was only to be expected in view of the global opinion heavily weighing against terrorism.
To have a neighbour in desperation is not a happy thought. The Modi government’s bold actions in Kashmir vis-a-vis abrogation of Article 370 etc won huge support in the country, and first indications are that there is less chance of an upheaval. This is time to make a success out of what was done there, rather than indulging in big talk or other provocations to further tense up the neighbour. An over-kill is in bad taste.