The officer on whom the ‘defence of India’ rests according to the Constitution is the defence secretary. India’s defence secretary and vice chief of army staff recently supervised the front in which five soldiers including an officer were killed in firing earlier this month. In January, the Army chief had for the first time said Indian forces were firing at Pakistani posts because they were supporting infiltration by terrorists.
Habits die hard for Pakistan’s deep state. For decades, despite reverses, as in Kargil in 1999, it has continued to foster militants. Pakistan’s military has vested interests in this: militants are cheaper to expend than own troops, and the domination of provincial interests within the Pakistani forces is ensured by propping up one outfit or the other—Lashkar-e-Taiba and/or the Jaish-e-Mohammed. Saturday’s attack on Jammu’s Sunjuwan military station is suspected to have been by Jaish militants. So deep is the organic linkage between Pakistan’s military and the militants, and so vehement the encouragement it receives when legislators in the J&K House shout slogans in their favour, that the deep state keeps repeating its actions.
While such attacks are only to be expected, India cannot afford to be habituated to them. Saturday’s attack resembles the raids by terrorists at Kaluchak (2002), Pathankot (January 2016) and Uri (September 2016) following which the Army claimed surgical strikes across the border. The attacks inside J&K have been accompanied by the flare-up in violence along the LoC. In less than a month-and-a-half of 2018, about 20 soldiers have been killed. The 240-plus ceasefire violations on the border means it is still bursting into flames. The big picture requires New Delhi to firefight in J&K in the North, Doklam and Arunachal in the East and in the Maldives in the South. That calls for a policy that can be executed fully, not cherry-picked. The defence of India rests squarely on such a policy that must be framed by the entire apparatus at the Centre.