Did we just hear the Mother of all conspiracy theories?

In his recent podcast interview, Prime Minister Narendra Modi makes the case that preceding terror incidents at the Srinagar legislative assembly and the parliament, amongst others, created a milieu in which the deaths from burns in a railway coach at Godhra provoked a pogrom.

He said, "Within just eight to ten months, these major global terrorist attacks took place that led to bloodshed and the loss of innocent lives. In such a tense environment, even the smallest spark can ignite unrest."

In seeming justification of the pogrom, he concentrates on the ‘spark’ thus:

It was a tragedy of unimaginable magnitude, people were burned alive. You can imagine, against the backdrop of incidents like the Kandahar hijacking, the attack on parliament, or even 9/11, and then to have so many people killed and burned alive, you can imagine how tense and volatile the situation was.

He sotto voce has it that Muslims owe responsibility for the terror attacks and must bear the consequences.

The instant consequence was of course the pogrom. Over the long term, consequences include cultural genocide, minority marginalization and crimes against humanity in the form of lynchings and ethnic cleansing witnessed by demolitions.

Black operations as conspiracy

Black operations are in which responsibility is attributed to an entity other than the perpetrator.

Narrowly, the aim of the mentioned black operations was to dig ourselves out of the hole we found ourselves in Kashmir after the Kargil War, by - at best - deterring Pakistan and at worst administering its army punishment.

Thereafter, with intelligence fraternity appetite whetted and expertise honed, we witness black operations get more venturesome and ambitious.

There were a spate of terror incidents claimed to be Muslim perpetrated. There were also some two dozen incidents in Gujarat with Muslims implicated for vengefully targeting Modi.

These black operations were used by Hindutva forces to create and sustain Hindu unity on the back of Muslim Othering, in pursuit of the Hindu Rashtra project.

Alongside, they helped create the myth around the new Hindu Hriday Samrat, Modi, as a strong man.

Black operations are endemic to proxy war, such as India’s longstanding one with Pakistan. If today it squeals at being target of Indian ‘sponsorship of terrorism’, plausible deniability requires Indian diplomats’ to riposte that Pakistan oughtn’t throw its garbage over the fence.

Arguably, such intelligence face-offs externally are par for the course.

However, black operations spilling over into the domestic social and political space as seems to be the case in India is to take the doyen of ancient strategists, Chanakya, too seriously.

These show up intelligence operations without Constitutional guardrails.

Taking Modi’s conspiracy theory apart

Strategic discussion politely circumnavigating conspiracy theories and pussy footing around black operations amounts to a feature of Indian strategic culture.

Perspectives contradictory of the popular strategic narrative, deemed conspiracy theories, are confined to obscurity.

The very term ‘conspiracy theory’ is used as ammunition in the battle of narratives. In the Cognitive battlespace, narratives substitute for artillery salvoes.

However, with the prime minister himself taking to conspiracy theories to rewrite history, these must be retrieved for attention afresh.

Let’s take the Modi referenced terror incidents one by one.

Beginning with Kandahar, neither the hijackers nor their handlers had Kandahar in mind when the plane pulled up from Kathmandu. As for the Red Fort attack, a critique of the judgement in the case shows up an effect of the ‘global war on terror’, of empowering intelligence agencies to get away with just about anything.

More pertinent is the Srinagar assembly attack. An earlier post carried a reference to Op Kabaddi, making the point that it is too much of a coincidence that the legislative assembly blast in Srinagar was the same day as the re-slated D-Day, 1 October.

The perspective in Northern Command was that a realignment of the Line of Control, envisaged in Op Kabaddi, could only get a political ‘go ahead’ if there is a trigger event of a sufficient magnitude. The legislative assembly blast provided the handy trigger, which in the event, could not be followed up since the aftermath of 9/11 was unfolding in the region.

While the military operation could be aborted in light of the changed regional reality, the intelligence operation understandably could not. Interdicting it would have let the cat out of the bag.

The attack was allowed through to perhaps protect a source. That such sources exist is clear from the forewarning received on 26/11.

As for the parliament attack, that it’s a ‘strange case’ is no secret. If hapless Afzal Guru is to be believed, it was a facilitated operation. Ending in coercive diplomacy, it left behind a lesson learned.

Instead of the traditional D-Day heralding start of an operation, the military in the period substituted D-Day with the term, I-Day or Incident Day. A manufactured incident makes for military sense than one sprung on it by a wily Pakistan.

In any case, the four incidents purportedly were Pakistani handiwork.

By clubbing the burning of the bogie with these, Modi appears to suggest Pakistani orchestration. However, since the Indian army was sitting on the borders then, Pakistani provenance can out-rightly be ruled out.

To him then, Gujarati Muslims are a fifth column and were administered their just desserts. Modi thus preens in his Sangh antecedents, a cradle he goes on to praise in the interview.

To be sure Muslim perpetrated terrorism has been incident, some of which was part of Pakistani proxy war, both in Kashmir and in the mainland.

However, the jugal-bandi of terror between the two was instigated by perspicacious intelligence hands for purposes of a Hindu ‘awakening’.

Mainstreaming conspiracy theories

Strategic analyses must factor in intelligence agency adeptness and their politicization.

Official and indeed judicial investigations being what these are - a fig leaf - facts end up as what the official version makes them out to be.

Too often the official narrative is the conspiracy, meant to obscure Truth.

Modi’s interview dignifies conspiracy theories. Globalizing the Godhra incident by referring to it in the same breath as 9/11 makes of an accident, a terror act – a conspiracy theory.

Clearly, conspiracy theories are no longer the preserve of the left wing.

Their mainstreaming can be seen in the first information reports filed in the Bhima Koregaon cases and against Muslim youth leaders of the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests. The black operation in the former is for all to see, the hacking-in of ‘evidence’.

Imitation being the ultimate form of flattery, the right wing establishment appears to have helped itself to a leaf out of a left wing ‘toolkit’.

This does not detract any from validity of conspiracy theories.

That such narratives are also pointed to and held by adversaries – as Pakistan on the train hijack - does not mean alluding to these makes one anti-national; anti-‘nationalist’ perhaps, but never unpatriotic.

Getting to the Truth has its uses, accountability for one.

It is a strategist’s duty to unpack reality so that the information in the public domain is taken up by the electorate for accountability.

The actual conspiracy is to prevent Truth from coming out.

‘All is fair in love and war’ is only a simpleton belief. The excuse that a higher call is being answered, such as creating a Hindu Rashtra, is sedition.

Such ideological cover could well cover up a personal power bid, as may well be ongoing in India. Self-regarding institutions must cease being party to this to the extent they are.

A cautionary tale

Troubling is Modi’s narrative building going on to target those who searched for justice, such as late Zakia Jafri, who - in his words – levelled ‘false allegations’, later found wanting by the courts.

Instead, conspiracy theorists - as this writer - would have it that the courts too have been taken over.

Even more concerning is Modi’s view – not spelled out as such by the master of double speak and the spiel - that the pogrom brought lasting peace to Gujarat.

The logic of this line of thought is being played out across India. A politics of appeasement of the right wing is in place.

Modi appropriates the meaning of appeasement – restricting it to only mean as he wishes, placating the minority.

Appeasing the baser instincts of the majority is wicked populism.

Resultantly, the State has lost the monopoly of violence.

Kapil Mishra’s elevation testifies to appeasement, while the demand that the last Grand Moghul, Emperor Aurangzeb’s remains be shifted out of Khuldabad, just because a recent Bollywood product got lucky, shows the State is cowering.

It is only a matter of time – perhaps by when Viksit Bharat is slated to get here – that the chickens will come home to roost.