It is in the nature of military triumphs that they are frequently short-lived. After the nationwide celebration/endorsement of India’s air strikes on targets in Pakistan yesterday, the country is confronting that reality.
With Indian Air Force pilot Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman in Pakistan’s custody after his jet was shot down during a dogfight over the border, the thumping triumphalism has become muted. Pictures of his bloodied face have come as a sobering reminder of what any military action can lead to.
Varthaman has the potential to become a bargaining chip for Pakistan and its new Prime Minister Imran Khan but at the same time it presents Islamabad with a powerful opportunity to calm things down. Khan could unilaterally decide to return the wing commander to India without any conditions to reinforce his rhetoric of wanting genuine peace with India.
The shooting down of Varthaman’s fighter jet and his subsequent capture, although part of exigencies that military planners always anticipate, is a clear setback to the otherwise efficient action by India yesterday. One can argue away Varthaman’s capture as an acceptable consequence of any significant military engagement but in the climate of some embarrassing political grandstanding during the run-up to India’s parliamentary elections the plight of a single individual has the power to concentrate and shift the national mood.
It is predictably a tit-for-tat phase between India and Pakistan since the latter also claimed that its air force had struck “non-military targets” in response to India’s strikes. I am not sure what Pakistan means by “non-military targets” unlike India’s matching claim referring to the training facilities of the terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM). Whether or not India actually hit and destroyed JeM targets, its intent was demonstrable. I don’t know what Pakistan was trying to hit inside Kashmir because India has no terrorist training facilities.
India has denied that any targets were hit by Pakistan and instead said it had shot down a Pakistani fighter jet as part of its air defense readiness.
These claims and counterclaims will go on for a while among the two countries' leaderships partly aimed at their own domestic political constituencies.
On a separate note, it never fails to amuse me that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s risible assertions of possessing a “56-inch chest” during the 2014 election campaigning to project a barrel-chested masculinity still remain part of the discourse. In the immediate aftermath of the Indian strikes, some newspapers made metaphorical references to his “56-inch chest” and how he had lived up to its promised masculinity. Of course, there is no relation whatsoever between sheer physical courage by anyone and size of their chest but this ludicrous narrative endures in India’s politics.
There is also some weird transference of valor and glory to Modi personally after the Indian strikes as if he was one of the air force pilots who carried out the strikes himself. Such glorification of a leader on whose watch a successful military action takes place is a common phenomenon around the world. That does not make it any less ridiculous.
There is no way to predict where the current tensions between India and Pakistan might lead to even though the fears of an all-out war are overstated. I seriously doubt if either Modi or Khan wants it to rise to that level. I come back to my point that Khan could make a unilateral gesture by releasing Wing Commander Varthaman unconditionally.