MUST READ-Major Gaurav Arya Writes An Open Letter To Prime Minister Narendra Modi PART 1

Major Gaurav Arya Writes An Open Letter To Prime Minister Narendra Modi

To,

 Sri. Narendra Modi

 Prime Minister, Republic of India

 7, Lok Kalyan Marg

 New Delhi

Respected Pradhan Mantri ji,

As I write these lines, I am fully aware that you may never read them. Also, I have nothing new to say. You have the nation’s intelligence services at your beck and call. The Director Intelligence Bureau briefs you every day. The Secretary R&AW awaits your command. The NSA is on speed dial. A phone call with the three Service Chiefs along with ISRO, and you have access to the kind of information daily, that all the news channels of India combined, will not have in a lifetime.

At the snap of your fingers, India can launch a nuclear strike from the unknown depths of the oceans. Or, you can send flowers of peace to an adversary. What you do is your decision. But as an American author once said about India’s missile program… Agni does not mean Chrysanthemum. It means fire. Dr. Kalam knew exactly what he was building.

So, what can a former junior army officer tell you that you don’t already know? Absolutely nothing. But it is this very insignificance of mine that makes this letter different. I see dark clouds above and difficult times ahead. I seek your intervention.

And this is why I say this.

To our East, Xi Jinping has probably been crowned Emperor of China, even if they still call him President. They say that he will rule till he breathes, with all the power of the Party, Politburo and the PLA concentrated in his hands. This simply means a far more aggressive China led by a man who, in real terms, is not accountable to anyone. While we are still figuring out how to respond, China’s encirclement of India is complete. From bases in South China Sea to the 99-year lease of the Hambantota Port, from PLA warships in Gwadar to the One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative, we are hopelessly surrounded.

To our West, we are dealing with a rouge nuclear-armed army that actually owns a nation of 200 million luckless souls. This army is not accountable to anyone. In 1999, it launched an attack on Kargil, without so much as informing its own Prime Minister. In 1965, it did not deem it necessary to inform its own sister services, the Pakistan Air force and Pakistan Navy that it had launched Operation Gibralter and attacked India in Kashmir. Both the Pakistan Naval and Air Chiefs suspected something was wrong, but their worst fears came true when they heard Madam Noor Jehan singing patriotic songs on radio. That, in Pakistan, usually means war. Or a coup.

Pakistan will supposedly issue, though some say it already has, tens of millions of long-term visas to Chinese nationals to settle in Balochistan for the China Pakistan Economic Corridor projects. According to the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI), by 2048 the majority population of Balochistan will be Chinese. Mandarin is already being taught to Pakistani children, not that they were learning anything useful earlier…and the Yuan will soon be legal tender in Pakistan.

Earlier we had China to the East and Pakistan to the West. We now have China to the East and China to the West. The dragon is moving its tail.

Closer home, there is massive radicalization in Kashmir. From the pulpit of mosques to social media accounts, the Valley is turning Wahhabi with a fierceness not seen earlier. ISIS flags are waved at funerals and clashes.

Sheldon has started writing in Kashmiri.

It is important that an urgent narrative around Kashmir is created and pushed. There are a lot of fence sitters in Kashmir. They overtly support the terrorists, but privately hate them. Such is the cost of living in Kashmir. We must give these fence sitters a story; a narrative so powerful and true that it blows away everything in its path. This narrative exists. It is structured around the truth of the UN Resolutions of Kashmir, the truth about the Hurriyat, the truth about the lavish lifestyles of those who scream “azaadi”. Shopping malls, private jets, luxury hotel stays, foreign holidays in Spain and Malaysia…while the hapless population is mired in misery, Asiya Andrabi’s son is found in a 5 star resort in Bangkok, posing for photographs with Hulk Hogan. For the separatists, the blood of the Kashmiris is a credit card with no limit. Keep swiping. Keep killing.

Many Kashmiris support the Hurriyat not because of love or respect, but because Kashmiris have a long history of supporting whoever they perceive as the victor. Kashmiris see Hurriyat winning against the Indian state. They don’t care to know or acknowledge that the Hurriyat exists because the Indian Constitution allows space for dissent. Had Hurriyat tried in Pakistan, a minuscule percentage of what it does in Kashmir, Geelani would have disappeared and the Mirwaiz would have been found under some culvert in a very small gunny sack. In Kashmir there is a very fine, almost invisible, line between fear and respect. Some say there is no such line at all. We must understand these nuances.

Geelani and his cohorts are doing a very fine balancing act. They are indispensible to the Pakistanis and have, somehow, convinced the Indian government that they speak for the Kashmiri people. That credibility must be damaged, not just by NIA raids but also in the heart of the Kashmiri people. This is not difficult to do; the Hurriyat’s credibility is based on falsehood. All we need is to be constant and consistent in cracking the mirror, with truth.

India is plagued by many other challenges. The North East is still simmering. The Left Wing Extremism (LWE) areas, or the Red Corridor, are perhaps India’s greatest internal security challenge. This is a long list. The list will remain long because the people responsible for shortening of this list are bureaucrats.