The Enemies Within

THEY COME IN various shapes and sizes. Some are veteran primetime television anchors. Others are crafty defence experts. Many are retired rent-seeking bureaucrats. It matters little whether the rent comes from across the western border in Pakistan or the eastern border in China.

India’s internal enemies are equal-opportunity traitors. Their treason is ideology-agnostic. They sell to the highest bidder.

So a defence analyst will eviscerate the Rafale deal and push the case of a rival fighter jet. Fugitives from Indian justice like arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari live in London, protected by British courts. Last month, a court refused to extradite Bhandari because of the decrepit state of Tihar Jail. Bhandari’s influential dynastic political friends in Delhi heaved a sigh of relief.

Media is a notorious conduit for Indian quislings. Multiple news portals sprang up after 2014 to amplify the message that India was now a majoritarian state. Foreign media, always resentful of a prime minister who did not fit into the postcolonial model of the fawning Indian, flattered to be interviewed by British and American media despite the hectoring and condescension.

Indian clones abounded. One veteran anchor copied BBC’s Hard Talk formula but, as devils have often advocated, Anglo-Saxon journalism doesn’t travel well in India.

These, however, are merely media megaphones. The real enemies of the Indian state reside in politics and academia. The reaction to the Pahalgam attack by Pakistani terrorists unmasked several Indians.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was forced to gag his party whose members had begun to parrot the Pakistani line on the Pahalgam attack.

Pakistan is an insecure state. It seeks equivalence with India but gets contempt in return. Terrorism is its answer. India will pay it attention only if it kills Indian tourists and migrant labourers in J&K.

Re-hyphenation with India is the collateral benefit of Pakistan’s terrorism. But Islamabad has let desperation get the better of reason.

Under former army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa (2016-22), the LoC had fallen silent. Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in J&K, despite the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019, decreased steadily. In 2018, there were 228 terrorist incidents. In 2023, the number of terrorist incidents fell to 43.

Pakistan’s current army chief General Asim Munir took office under controversial circumstances. Munir was due to retire on November 27, 2022. A former director-general of ISI, Munir was appointed army chief on November 24, 2022, three days before retirement.

Activists and academics in India with an axe to grind have meanwhile multiplied like self-replicating amoeba. Their treasonous agenda: block any project that strengthens India’s economic or military capability. For example, the ₹72,000-crore Great Nicobar Project has come under relentless attack by a small but vocal group of activists who pass themselves off as environmentalists.

Fortunately, their propaganda has been unsuccessful. The Great Nicobar Project will give India a large transhipment port at the heart of the Malacca Strait, just 100 miles from the tip of Indonesia. Half of China’s sea trade passes through this strait.

Along with the port in Nicobar is a newly furbished military and naval base as well as a civilian airport. In one stroke, Nicobar becomes India’s eyes and ears in the Indo-Pacific.

This gives India leverage with both the US and China. For Washington, India’s Nicobar is a formidable additional arsenal in its Indo-Pacific strategy against China. For Beijing, it is a warning of India’s rise as a maritime power in its backyard.

India’s enemies within are deeply unsettled by this development. They have commissioned foreign NGOs to denounce the Great Nicobar Project. In the past, such help was forthcoming from the bureaucracy in the Joe Biden administration. FBI Director Kash Patel and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard have largely neutralised this foreign network, orphaning India’s enemies overseas.

In India, it is easy to identify bylines which act as British-era drain inspectors. One belongs to a former governor of RBI, another to a former chief economic advisor. Many others find their way to news portals and even to some deracinated legacy newspapers.

The enemies within are like cockroaches. They are the first to survive a nuclear holocaust. It’s impossible to eliminate them completely and that should not even be India’s aim. The best medicine for enemies within is to sequester them into irrelevance.

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