The basic unit of money in Sri Lanka Rupee equal to 100 cents The basic unit of money in Seychelles, Rupee equal to 100 cents The basic unit of money in Nepal, Rupee equal to 100 paisa The basic unit of money in Mauritius, Rupee equal to 100 cents The basic unit of money in Pakistan, Rupee equal to 100 paisa The basic unit of money in India, Rupee equal to 100 paisa
In November 1994, printing of Re 1 note was stopped mainly due to higher cost and for freeing capacity to print currency notes of higher denomination. After a gap of over 20 years, Re 1 note has been released in the country. Let's get to know our currency better. Here are some of the most amazing, lesser-known facts about the Indian rupee:
1) First Paper Currency
The process of issuing paper currency started in the 18th century. Private banks like Bank of Hindustan, Bank of Bengal, the Bank of Bombay, and the Bank of Madras were among the first to print paper money. It was only after the Paper Currency Act of 1861 that the government of India was given the monopoly to print currency. (Image: One of the first Indian bank one rupee note printed in 1917)
2) The highest denomination note ever printed by the RBI was the Rs 10,000 note in 1938 and again in 1954. These notes were demonetized in 1946 and again in 1978
3) The RBI can issue banknotes in the denominations of 5000 and 10,000, or any other denomination that the Central Government may specify. But, there can't be banknotes in denominations higher than 10,000 as per the current provisions of the RBI Act, 1934.
5) Commemorative coinsin India have been issued on various occasions. The first 75 rupee coin was issued in 2010 to celebrate 75 years of Reserve Bank of India. In 2011, 150 rupee coins were issued to commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore. The first 1000 rupee coin [ यह मोदी से कैसे बच गया ] was announced in 2012, issued to commemorate the 1000 years of Brihadeeswarar temple in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu.
7) 15 languages appear in the language panel of banknotes in addition to Hindi prominently displayed in the centre of the note and English on the reverse of the banknote.
In 2010, rupee got a new symbol ₹, designed by D.Udaya Kumar. The symbol was derived from Devanagari letter "र" (ra) and is a combination of the Latin letter 'R' and Devanagari letter 'र'. The parallel line in the symbol is drawn to make it look like the tricolor of the Indian national flag.
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9) For the visually impaired
There is an identification mark (different geometrical shapes) on the left hand side of each note in the form of raised print (intaglio) - a diamond for Rs 1000, circle for Rs 500, triangle for Rs 100, square for Rs 50, rectangle for Rs 20 and none for Rs 10 - to help the visually impaired identify the denomination.
In 2007, an acute shortage of coins gripped the eastern Indian city of Calcutta, which saw shopkeepers begging change from beggars and buying coins at prices above their face value. (Image: A woman selling stacks of 100 rupee coins (USD$ 2.5) for 120 rupees (UDS$ 3), counts notes at a bus stand in Calcutta, India Friday, June 15, 2007)
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11) When Re 1 coin was worth Rs 5
One reason cited for this acute shortage in Calcutta was: coins being melted down and smuggled to Bangladesh where they were turned into razor blades, ornaments, fountain pen nibs, metal idols. The one rupee coin was actually worth Rs 35, for every single rupee coin was being melted into 5-7 blades, as per new reports.
To counter the coin shortage in the East, workers in tea gardens in states bordering Bangladesh, were encouraged by the owners to accept brown-coloured cardboard tokens instead of the metallic coins. The cardboard tokens were made of the same size as the coins they meant to represent, with similar values marked on them.
The 'fact' that had been floating around that the rupee was equal to a US dollar in 1947 is but a myth. At the time of independence (and till 1966), India’s currency was pegged to British pound, (and the exchange rate was Rs 13.33 to the pound). The pound itself was pegged to $4.03. That means, the $ to INR rate would be somewhere around Rs 4.
14) Notes are printed at four printing presses located at Nashik, Dewas, Mysore and Salboni. Coins are minted at the four mints at Mumbai, Noida, Kolkata and Hyderabad
16) A rare 5-rupee note, dated January 5, 1916, issued by the Government of India in Karachi was sold for £3,100 ($5,297 U.S.) in a London auction conducted by Spink last year. (Source: Spink) Karachi was then part of India, until 1947.
17) During the British rule, and the first decade of independence, the rupee was divided into 16 annas. Each anna was subdivided into 4 paisas. In 1957, decimalisation occurred and the rupee was divided into 100 naye paise (Hindi/Urdu for new paisas). After a few years, the initial "naye" was dropped.
21) A one-rupee coin and above can be used to pay/settle any amount or sum. However, a 50 paise coin cannot be used to pay/settle any amount above Rs 10.
22) Ever wondered how the old notes are destroyed?
According to the data obtained by RTI activist Manoranjan Roy, 11,661 crore notes lost their usable value (between 2001 and now) and were shredded to bits, to be later balled or gummed together, and be reborn as coasters, paper-weights, pen stands, key chains. In 2010-11 alone, 1,385 crore notes worth Rs 1,78,830 crore were destroyed.
23) In 2013, a Mumbai-based jewelry chain launched Sachin Tendulkar gold and silver coins on the occasion of 'Akshay Tritya.' The cost of a 10-gm was Rs 34,000 (US$620) (Image above) In 2014, Britain’s premium luxury goods brand East India Company issued an exclusive legal tender gold coin worth 12,000 pound sterling (about Rs 12 lakh) in honour of Sachin Tendulkar
24) The tooled one rupee coin (with the portrait of King George VI, i.e., the Head on both the sides) in the 1975-cult classic 'Sholay', was bought by a Bollywood fan for Rs 26000 at an auction last year.
The Pakistan Army continues to follow the principles of irrationality and deniability as essential aspects of its military doctrine.
Through my years as a senior commander in the Indian Army, there was an annual feature which never escaped my attention. The yearly war game of my formation would invariably begin with a presentation by a new team each time on the psyche and mindset of the Pakistan Army. I considered it mandatory for all to know as much about the mind as about the weaponry or the tactics of our western adversary. The Pakistan Army has invariably taken the initiative and risked escalation to attain what it may perceive as the national interest of Pakistan. However, its claims of advancing that interest are more than dubious in the eyes of most of the world. There is, however, much difference in the translation of what most of the world believes and what it officially puts out as its belief. This has been the Pakistan Army’s major achievement brought about by a deep strategy of denial, subterfuge and management of perception. It has mastered all these and been helped to a great extent by the importance of the geostrategic real estate that Pakistan occupies. This real estate is in effect the confluence of five civilisations with competing interests of each of them. These civilisations are the Indian, Chinese, Central Asian, Persian and Arab. The Pakistani strategic leadership, consciously or unconsciously, ascribes far greater significance to this aspect and attempts to wrest advantage due to it. Any attempt to examine the mindset of the Pakistan Army and its deep set psyche has to take into account a few specifics. The partition of the subcontinent, the wars—1947-48, 1965 and 1971, the polity which allowed unbridled growth of aggressive self-aggrandisement, the dabbling in religion and the perceived sense of insecurity arising from the geographical comparison of the size of India and Pakistan. These are just some of the events and trends which shaped the strange mind of the Pakistan Army but may need examination to arrive at other characteristics which form the Pakistani national mindset too. Perhaps the one most significant aspect which has contributed to the mindset of the “holier than thou” and “we know it all” attitude is a social one. When feudal practices persist and a social hierarchy prevails, those at the higher rungs become more authoritarian. The making of the plan for intrusion into the Kargil sector, as described by Pakistan’s Air Commodore M. Kaiser Tufail in his seminal article confirms this assumption. The temptation in such analyses is to proceed sequentially with historical perspectives and arrive at deductions of what we find useful when related to the current situation. I am consciously reversing the approach by first stating what my observations are on the psyche and mindset of the Pakistan Army and then drawing a historical connect to those aspects which need it.
Pakistani army soldiers adjust a tank (A MAJEED/AFP/Getty Images)
In a nation where the Army has contrived to create a legitimacy for its control over major aspects of governance and which is not even answerable to the highest judicial authority, a certain sense of disdain develops for all others. It is tremendously morale-boosting for the uniformed community; decisions can be taken without having to bear the responsibility for them; there cannot be a headier empowerment than that. So the Pakistan Army’s leadership continues to thrive with a dominant mood of antipathy towards India and the Indian Army. It means that all issues concerning defense and foreign affairs are its domain as the political leadership, intelligentsia, academics and diplomats cannot truly understand military threats. This is the old and the currently prevalent mindset which prevents the leadership from deep thinking on implications of its decisions. Two classic examples need to be quoted. First there was Kargil, where Pervez Musharraf kept the other services and the government of the day outside the ambit of planning and even basic information, as described earlier. His disdain for the Indian civilian leadership made him take an unethical decision of not saluting India’s Prime Minister in 1999 during a visit to Lahore. He followed that by initiating a conflict in the Kargil theatre. However, he had not thought through his strategy which would lead to conflict termination and the contingency planning was terribly weak. This happened in 1971 and 1965 too. In 1971, Yahya Khan should have anticipated the potential intervention by India if a humanitarian crisis was created in former East Pakistan. Yet he went ahead and acceded to the genocidal elimination of intellectuals and imposing the wrath of the Army on the hapless citizens in the rural areas, forcing them to flee across the border. In 1965, Ayub Khan’s terrible hurry to instigate a conflict before India’s refurbished Army came into shape got the better of Pakistan. What makes the Pakistani Generals the world’s finest conflict initiators and the worst terminators? When you belong to a service which is so dominant and can take credit for success while ascribing failure to others, decision making becomes easier. Yet, it leads to a brasher mindset. To conclude that the Pakistan Army has learnt something from its errant ways would be a mistake. It continues to follow the principles of irrationality and deniability as essential aspects of its military doctrine. The decision to strike at Pathankot air base with sponsored terrorists in order to upset the gains of the initiatives in India-Pakistan relations is reflective of this. The Pakistan Army’s major force multipliers over the last 30 years or so have been two agencies, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), and India-focused terror groups such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM). Together they form the “deep state”, the diffused leadership which runs Pakistan’s anti-India campaign. The ISI gained its experience in Afghanistan in the 1980s and 90s as the lead intelligence agency while simultaneously pursuing a low-key proxy war in India’s Punjab in the 1980s. In 1989, as conditions presented themselves, the Pakistan Army was confident of making a successful switch from Punjab to Jammu & Kashmir. The risk of escalation was huge and the nuclear parameters of either side were still ill-defined. Yet Pakistan took the risk and its intent was partially achieved; the risk-taking business is part of the Pakistan Army’s “caution be damned” attitude.
While we may brush aside the failure of the Pakistan Army in 1965 and 1971, its ability to conceive a hybrid strategy for retribution against India as a nation and the Indian Army in particular, and then pursue it for close to 40 years is in itself a reason to bring about a mindset. In all these 40 years, it has never been chided internationally, thus emboldening it even further. The understanding and recognition that the core centre of radical Islam lies in the Af-Pak region has never been denied by the international community, but the Indian intent of having Pakistan declared a rogue state sponsoring transnational terror too, has never been given the seriousness it deserved. This supposed moral victory has given the Pakistan Army the confidence and the perception that the world rarely sees threats in unison. It can, therefore, continue to target India through its hybrid variety of proxy war without fear. Where did the idea of proxy war come from and how did it take shape? To understand this, it is necessary to go back to 1972 and the Shimla Agreement. The devious Pakistani mind was on display and so was the trusting Indian attitude. Ninety-three thousand prisoners of war were handed over without an attempt to seek a permanent solution to our border problems. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto guided Pakistan’s destiny for close to six years. It was the period in which the Pakistan Army was licking its wounds. In the interim came India’s Pokhran nuclear test, forcing the decision on Pakistan to also seek the bomb. In 1977, Zia-ul-Haq struck, unseated Bhutto and assumed power. Zia then conceived his diabolical plan for seeking retribution. The plan was twofold. The first was all about neutralising India’s conventional superiority through acquisition of nuclear weapons capability. This was earnestly and illegally pursued through the 1980s and 1990s. The second was to seek opportunities or create them to exploit India’s apparent fault lines. The history of the Af-Pak region through the 1980s is all about the experience that Pakistan Army’s senior and middle leadership gained in Afghanistan leading the transnational mujahideen and acting as the US and Saudi Arabia’s frontline state. They also ran a side show in India’s Punjab. It is this that apparently convinced the Pakistan Army leadership that religion/faith were powerful tools of motivation which created fervour and passion and could be exploited for strategic gains. The 1980s also saw the advent of the Saudi clergy into Pakistan making a beeline for the seminaries set up in the refugee camps; the radical ideology of the Salafis found unresisted advocacy here. It was the beginning of the radicalisation of the Pakistan Army and the use of faith as a strategic weapon, something Pakistan continues to reflect in its larger thinking. The opportunity did not need to be created. It came faster than anticipated and right where the Pakistani military leadership wanted it; in the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir. The runaway success in Afghanistan in forcing the Soviet withdrawal came to be associated with the last nail in the coffin of the Cold War. Pakistan became the favoured partner of the US-Saudi combine.
Pakistani army soldiers in a search operation at the Bacha Khan university (A MAJEED/AFP/Getty Images)
It was heady, and the taste of success with the hybrid form of warfare in Afghanistan gave the generals the confidence to try the same against the Indian Army, then stuck in the quagmire of Sri Lanka. It’s a measure of the confidence of the Pakistani military leadership that it did not flinch when the opportunity was sensed in spite of the fact that Zia-ul-Haq, the chief advocate and strategist, died at the threshold in August 1988. Weaker leaderships may have succumbed, but General Mirza Afzal Beg, a mohajir cavalry officer along with Lt Gen Hamid Gul, a Punjabi, again from the cavalry, and experienced in conduct of covert operations as Director General, ISI, took the required decisions. Institutionally, both ISI and ISPR have been the Pakistan Army’s mainstay in the execution of its strategy against India. The ISI has done the dirty work of getting the jihadi elements on board, as well as recruiting, financing and launching them, while the ISPR has managed the perception, information and strategic communication game. The leadership continues to believe in the infallibility of its strategy despite the Kargil setback and the near-war situations which emerged in 2001-02 and later in 2008. On both occasions, the threshold of India’s tolerance for proxy war was crossed, but it did not progress into a full showdown. India’s advocacy of seeking all options is likely to have given the Pakistan Army a mistaken perception that it (India) was far too obsessed with its economic progress for it to risk a confrontation which would probably set it back by many percentage points in the economy charts. In many ways, the ISPR, the lesser known of the two sword arms of the Pakistan Army, has been far more effective in its ventures and contributed greatly to the Pakistani strategy. Denial is its responsibility, besides the whole gamut of psychological operations. But it has been the joint effort of the two in bringing the struggle in Kashmir to the streets. Retrieving a tactical or operational situation involving terrorists, intrusions, infiltration or incidents of the Hazratbal and Charar-e-Sharif variety, is never a major challenge for the Indian Army as has been proven many times. However, the Pakistan Army has done its research well on the effects of an Intifada movement, the like of which was seen in 2008-10 and is continuing even now in 2016 after it was triggered by the death of Burhan Wani. Recovery from such a situation needs a transformational change as was attempted in 2011. In a private discussion with the Indian defence attaché in 2011, Shuja Pasha, the high-profile ISI chief is believed to have referred to the 2011 initiatives of the Indian Army. He reportedly admitted that the Pakistan establishment watched with wonderment how the Indian Army deftly switched the situation around with a change of strategy in the approach to the people. The Pakistanis know it and have read our weaknesses too. They are aware of the civil-military divide, the media obsession, the inability to focus on the Kashmiri alienation and the woeful quality of the information game. Can it all be defeated this time? Perhaps, the Indian government’s ownership of the surgical strikes may have surprised them. If anything, some pragmatism about the limits of Pakistan’s interference in Kashmir and elsewhere in India may have dawned on the Pakistan Army. That India can choose to execute non-escalatory actions and be brazen enough to not even produce evidence to the world is a noticeable departure from the past. Having tasted success and got the passionate support of the public behind it, the Indian government’s actions could be also perceived by the Pakistan Army as no longer predictable and may therefore impose some caution. However, it is also entirely believable that irrationality continues to rule the Pakistan Army’s mindset. A self-belief that tactical nuclear weapons are the guarantee against India’s proactive strategy may continue to prevail and that could be the reason for brazenness. The Pakistan Army’s belief in the strength of its relationship with China is also a major factor in promoting its errant ways. The coming of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has enhanced the mutuality of that relationship. As the US-India strategic partnership emerges, the China-Pakistan equation will only strengthen, adding further weight to the mindset that the Pakistan Army can get away with some irrational acts to keep the pot boiling in Kashmir and elsewhere in India. Finally, has anything changed due to the surgical strikes? It would be unfair to deduce that these have had no effect. At the same time, to state that they have changed the mindset of the Pakistani military leadership and forced it to retract from its avowed policy of interference in Jammu & Kashmir would also be incorrect. What they have definitely achieved is the conveyance of a strategic message that India’s political leadership can and will take decisions and take them early enough; and that it is quite capable of playing a diplomatic game to isolate Pakistan. The combining of options is a lesson being slowly realised. However, India would do well to take precautions against a possible unpredictable and irrational act which will cause much dismay, emotive public response and pressure, and leave it with even lesser options than what it had after Uri.
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India's army said its forces attacked on 29 September - but gave few details
India made headlines in late September after carrying out "surgical strikes" on militants across the de-facto border in disputed Kashmir.
Days earlier insurgents had attacked an army base in Indian-administered Kashmir, killing 18 soldiers. Tensions spiked as India blamed Pakistan. Supporters of the Indian government said the army's strikes had taught Pakistan a long-awaited lesson - but Islamabad dismissed the reports as an "illusion". The BBC's M Ilyas Khan visited the border area to find out what actually happened.
Despite the use of the term "surgical strikes", the Indians definitely did not airdrop commandos to hit "launching pads of militants" inside Pakistani-held territory, or conduct ground assaults deep into the Pakistan-administered side. But they did cross the Line of Control (LoC), in some cases by more than a kilometre, to hit nearby Pakistani border posts. Police officials on the Pakistani side privately concede that such a ground assault did occur in the Madarpur-Titrinot region of Poonch sector, west of Srinagar, where a Pakistani post was destroyed and one soldier killed. In Leepa valley to the north, locals said that the Indians crossed the LoC and set up their guns on ridges directly overlooking the village of Mundakali. A Pakistani border post located at some distance east of the village was hit. Two other posts higher up in the mountains were also hit. At least four Pakistani soldiers were injured in the attack, which lasted from 05:00am until 8:00am, locals said.
The Leepa valley. A route across the centre of the mountain-top shown was previously used by militants to cross into India, until the border was fenced.
A similar advance by the Indians in the Dudhnial area of Neelum valley further north was beaten back by the Pakistanis. At least one Pakistani soldier was injured - reports of a dead soldier could not be independently verified by the BBC. The Pakistani army described the exchanges as nothing more than cross-border firing, albeit in a more co-ordinated fashion and all along the LoC. Officials said two soldiers were killed in the attacks -one in Poonch, and one in Bhimber sector,further south. Defence minister Khwaja Asif later said a total of nine soldiers were injured in the assault. Indian troops could not have hit a target and returned alive as the climb required was too steep, officials said. Nor could helicopters have been used to drop special forces given the difficult terrain and because Pakistan would have shot down the aircraft. There is no conclusive evidence to prove either side's claims - the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.
Eyewitness: Ali Akbar, Mundakali village resident, Leepa Valley
I normally wake up at 4:30am. As usual I did my chores - and just then I heard small arms fire, about 100 rounds. I waited a few minutes and then I heard four bombs [mortars] land near the village. We have been in a state of war for a long time, so I knew that heavy guns meant trouble and that the village might get hit. I was standing there when four more bombs came. Then four more, after a few minutes. The first shells had landed in the forest near the village [where a border post is located] and I saw flames and smoke rising. My wife called to me to get in. We have built a bunker in the basement with 24-inch thick walls. She said everybody was inside, and wanted me to get in too. By now they had started targeting another one of our posts higher up on the mountaintop in front. Then the next round of shells hit another post further back. Small arms fire also continued. This was surprising for me. They had apparently crossed over from the LoC and had set up their guns at the top of the cliff. I could heard the bullets whizzing overhead, through the treetops, snapping twigs and leaves that were falling to the ground. The firing continued until about 6am. After that, the heavy guns fell silent but small fire continued. We remained in our basement until 10am. No one had had time to eat or drink that morning. Later, we heard that the Indians had crossed the LoC and hit our posts from positions overlooking the valley. I don't understand why they didn't try to reach our post where we have the local company headquarters. They could have done it. It's walkable, and is easier for them because they occupy higher ground. Perhaps our people detected their movement and fired at them which pushed them back. This is the first time since the war on the LoC began nearly 30 years ago that they have fired from this position.
How did the Pakistanis Respond?
In many areas the attack came as a surprise. Accounts of villagers gathered in Leepa suggest that Indian soldiers first opened fire in the valley at around 0500, hitting the post near Mundakali village and blowing up a mosque adjacent to it. A soldier who was preparing for pre-dawn prayers was hit and injured, they said.
This border post in Mundakali was said to have been hit by Indian fire
An Indian post in Keran-Lawat as seen from the Pakistani side Fire was also directed at two other posts higher up in the hills, one of which served as the forward headquarters in Leepa. Locals say bunkers at these posts were partly destroyed and their communication system was paralysed for some time. This meant that troops stationed down in the valley and at the brigade headquarters took a while to realise what was going on. The soldier who was injured at the Mundakali post was given first aid by villagers, and then transported to the military-run hospital in Leepa on a motorbike. Nearly two dozen villagers helped put out the fire that had engulfed the mosque. The Pakistanis did not take long to get their act together and fired back from the remaining bunkers, pushing the Indian guns back from the ridges overlooking the valley. In Dudhnial in Neelum valley, the action took place further up in the mountains, away from the village. A few villagers were awakened by gunfire.
The bazaar in Dudhnial village An official familiar with what happened that morning said the Indians had advanced well beyond the LoC when their movements were detected. "The Pakistani fire sent them scurrying back to their bunkers," he said. Down south, in Poonch, Kotli and Bhimber areas, it was more or less the same story: Indians coming forward from their positions on the LoC, taking unsuspecting Pakistani soldiers by surprise both due to the suddenness of the attack and the intensity of the fire and then pulling back once the Pakistanis had a chance to respond. Unprepared, and having a numerical disadvantage generally, the Pakistanis made use of their firepower to the fullest, exhausting their ammunition. Locals said that in the days following the attack, hundreds of villagers were pressed into service carrying artillery shells and other ammunition to border posts to replenish their supplies. Were Any Militants Hit? Kashmir-focused militants have had a strong presence in Pakistani-administered Kashmir for years. During the 1990s they crossed the LoC in droves to ambush troops on India's side. Their activities became less visible after the 2003 ceasefire agreement between India and Pakistan, but their proficiency in suicide raids and other attacks kept them relevant to Pakistan's strategy in its dispute with India, despite denials from Pakistan's military.
The militants continue to maintain safe houses in bigger cities like Muzaffarabad, located some distance from the border area. But they now mostly set up camps near military deployments along the LoC and away from villages where there is a growing sense of fatigue among locals towards the insurgency
Since the 2003 ceasefire, Neelum has raised a generation of college boys and militants have mostly moved out of villages and closer to military camps Despite the claims in the Indian media, the BBC could find little evidence that militants had been hit. There were no reports of any of the camps in the Samahni area of Bhimber or in the Poonch-Kotli area having been hit. They are mostly located behind ridges that serve as a natural barrier against direct Indian fire. In Leepa, some five or six wooden structures housing militants between the villages of Channian and Mundakali had not been targeted. A ridge that runs along the east bank of the nearby stream covers them from military positions on the LoC.
Likewise, in Neelum, most militant camps - such as the ones at Jhambar, Dosut and in the Gurez valley area further east - are located in the valleys below, at a safe distance from the LoC. The BBC also could not confirman Indian media report that Lashkar-e-Taiba campsin the Khairati Bagh village of Leepa valley and the western end of Dudhnial village in Neelum valley had been hit on 29 September.
However, in Dudhnial some locals who helped carry military munitions to forward posts the weekend following the Indian strikes said they had seen one or two damaged structures close to a Pakistani post near the border. They thought those structures might have been hit on the morning of 29 September. But they were reluctant to discuss whether those structures had been occupied by militants, or whether five or six men had died there, as the Indian media had claimed. The BBC asked the Pakistani military about militant activity in the area, but there was no immediate response.
High in the hills. Nearby, the road descends into the Leepa valley
What is the Mood Now?
Since 29 September there has been no let up in tension in the LoC area. Locals in Leepa told the BBC that following the attack, there had been an increased influx of militants in the valley. Are they in the area to help the army in case border skirmishes with the Indians get worse? No one is sure. In Neelum, a top official of the district administration called a meeting and advised locals earlier this month to start digging bunkers in or near their houses in case border tensions escalate. A local school teacher who was at the meeting said the official was told that removing militants from the area would be a simpler and less costly option to protect villages from Indian shelling. The strategy was a confidential matter, the official responded. It would be up to the government to decide CLICK TO READ
It's traversing a familiar political arc we saw most recently with UPA-2.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi attends the G20 Summit in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China, September 4, 2016. REUTERS/Mark Schiefelbein/Pool
Until recently, the attacks on liberals and the opposition came with plausible deniability for the Narendra Modi government. They could be blamed on non-state Hindutva actors, such as "fringe" RSS-aligned activists or state governments, even BJP-led state governments.
So how could you blame the Modi government for a lynching in Dadri? Wasn't Dadri in Uttar Pradesh, and law and order a state subject? How could you blame Modi for the gau rakshaks? How was it Modi's fault if ABVP activists had enough clout with the HRD ministry to ruin the life of a Dalit student in Hyderabad, making him embrace death? How could you blame the Modi government if leftists in JNU were advocating azadi for Kashmir and Delhi Police arrested the wrong guys for it? How could you blame the Modi government if lawyers were beating up teachers and journalists inside a Delhi court and the Delhi Police looked away? As for the arrests of Aam Aadmi Party MLAs, the law was taking its own course.
That plausible deniability, that isolation Modi pretended from these actions, is now going away. The mask is coming off. In becoming openly authoritarian, suppressing the opposition and the liberal media, the Modi government is making a huge mistake
Like UPA-2, it is letting the arrogance of power come in the way of sanguine politics. It is only going to hurt itself in the process, just like UPA-2 did. The anti-democratic nature of the Modi government's actions may not be comparable in scale to the Emergency, but certainly comes from the same instinct of protecting power with suppressing voices of opposition and dissent. Ultimately, this path leads only to self-destruction, as both Indira Gandhi and UPA-2 eventually found out.
After the "surgical strikes", the Modi government was on an all-time nationalism high. Nationalism has been the defining sentiment of this government. So powerful is nationalism that it can hide everything: from cultural Hindu majoritarianism to questionable GDP data to scuttling the rural employment guarantee law for the drought affected.
Which is why the Modi government panicked when a veteran soldier committed suicide over unhappiness with the government's failed promise of one rank-one pension (OROP). The Modi government appearing to be letting down veteran soldiers immediately changed the perception it had built for itself.
With just one news break, the Modi government's claim of standing one with our soldiers, for their dignity and honour, rang hollow. The BJP was using images of soldiers in its Uttar Pradesh election campaign to tom-tom its surgical achievement of having given Pakistan a 'reply'. Suddenly, it seemed like hypocrisy. The BJP had exploited the OROP issue even in the 2014 elections, earning the support of ex-servicemen.
The surgical strike narrative suddenly turned. The Modi-led BJP discovered deshbhakti can be a double-edged sword. Nationalism's tables had turned.
Just like the UPA-2 government erred in arresting Anna Hazare and helping the Lokpal movement become much bigger, the Modi government acted in haste to have Rahul Gandhi, Manish Sisodia and Arvind Kejriwal detained. In preventing them from meeting the family of the veteran who took his own life to protest against the government's inaction on OROP, the Modi government only helped give more life to the opposition. Weak, fragmented, disunited, even scared and co-opted, the opposition needs fresh energy that only the Modi government's mistakes can give it. The slow pace of implementing OROP, leading to the ex-servicemen's suicide, and police detention of opposition leaders, was exactly such a political mistake.
At this point the Modi government needed something to deflect attention, shift the debate. As we have consistently seen, the government and its apparatchiks blame liberals for everything. The opposition is too weak, the comatose Congress party dying a slow death--it is the handful of Delhi liberals who need to be silenced. Nothing personifies Delhi liberals like NDTV, an old punching bag of the Hindu right, whose credibility makes up for the TRPs the "nationalist" editors have taken away from it.
The issue of Hindi channel NDTV India's coverage of the Pathankot operation, allegedly compromising the operation as it was taking place, has beenlive since January 2016 itself. But the timing of the Information and Broadcasting ministry's order asking NDTV India to go off air for 24 hours is suspect. The need to deflect attention away from the OROP suicide row could have been a factor in the timing of the decision.
Instead of debating whether the government has been negligent in looking after veterans, we are now debating whether a day's ban on NDTV India is fair. Is it political censorship or did NDTV India compromise security? The answer doesn't matter, though if you care, NDTV has argued that it broadcast only what other channels were broadcasting, and the newspapers had also published the same stories with the same level of detail. The government, the ruling party and its online warriors have been able to deflect the issue from the OROP suicide.
Discrediting NDTV and showing it up to be anti-national is an additional gain for the government. Yet, the government is in net loss. With every passing day, the Modi government is helping create an opposition where there was none. Having already co-opted the media, it is provoking the media, almost daring it, to go against the government. NDTV was already willing to bend over backwards, as we saw in its dropping of a P. Chidambaram interview. But apparently that's not enough.
Playing with the fire of nationalism is risky, and the OROP suicide was only a small trailer of that. What if there's another big terrorist attack the Modi government finds itself unable to respond to with the same level of political astuteness as it did with the "surgical" strike?
High on power, the BJP government is willing to take such risks. It is willing to do anything to try and topple Congress governments in small states and stop the Aam Aadmi Party in its tracks. Such aggression by a single-party majority government could just as well be the beginning of its self-destruction.
