Surgical strikes and befitting replies

Here is a dilemma: Just how far Modi will go to bully a militarily smaller neighbour who also has nuclear weapons?

Modi has been congratulated by his minions on the success of his surgical strikes against Pakistan. Across the western border the generalissimo said there were no surgical strikes and that the Indians had been fibbing. Obviously the word surgical means different things to different people. I might be a little naive but I have always associated the word surgical with incisions. I conjure up a picture of a masked man in a white coat, a shower cap on his head, wearing gloves, surrounded by a flock of Florence Nightingales in gloves white coats and shower caps handing over to the man in the white coat mean looking instruments, while some poor sod strapped to a hospital bed is hitched to a number of gadgets that light up in the colours of the rainbow.



There is not a scintilla of doubt that Modi would like to demonstrate to Pakistan India’s dominance in conventional weapons. But at the same time, he is trying to build up his country economically. So here is his dilemma. Just how far is he prepared to go to bully a militarily smaller neighbour who also has nuclear weapons? He can isolate Pakistan. While he has been spewing a lot of seductive pap to the masses, he also knows that a major military conflict would damage his plans to make India an Asian tiger. But this is also an achingly awkward moment for Modi. He has suddenly realised he is not the only one who speaks in riddles. It has been reported that one of his deep digging porcine and humourless senior civil servants asked another of his deep digging porcine and humourless senior civil servants if the prime minister knew what the army chief from across the western border meant by a befitting response. Perhaps, the phrase means different things to different people. Anyway, let Modi worry over what it means. I haven’t yet received a call on my green telephone which is hidden between copies of Ulysees and a little known work by an Austrian doctor on how he cured himself of insomnia. Nevertheless, I think I know what our generalissimo has in mind. The prime minister who appears to be totally unfazed is our own man of Iron (with apologies to Andrej Wajda) who appears to be on a glob trotting journey. First there was Belarus, a landlocked country east of Poland. Now it is Azerbaijan. I don’t think he is going to do the Musharraf and take planeloads of sycophants to Brazil and Argentina unless he wants to import carnival dancers who look like peacocks and female tango dancers to spend a week in the National Assembly to cheer up the overworked members who recently passed a joint resolution condemning Indian atrocities in occupied Kashmir. The chief inquisitor who of late and leaping over the sharks has indulged in a lot of hand-TV again off-again on-again urge to do the Mao, has finally fixed October 30 for the Long March — with adequate arrangements for the ladies to spend a penny. Even if he manages to make a dent and gives newspaper columnists and the news readers on the Urdu TV channels whose voices are so shrill they could compete with the birds in the Parana area of Paraguay something to say. But as a disciple of Leon Trotsky once said unless there is a complete change of the political structure one corrupt system will replace another. I can’t see anything like this happening in my grandchildren’s time.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 16^th, 2016.

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