Why Hasn’t India's ‘Enemy Number One’ Changed This Election Season?

It is Pakistan and not China (the real ‘enemy number one’) that fits the bill for the template of majoritarianism. 

(Photo: Namita Chauhan/The Quint)

Why hasn’t the ‘enemy number one’ changed this election season? 

‘Enemies’ are important for countries and their competing politicians. They legitimise the sovereign underpinning and the justification for the politicians to be the preferred ‘person for the job’, to protect the country.

The United States, as the purported ‘land of the free’, naturally militated against the highly centralised and illiberal Soviet Union where ‘the state knew what’s best for you’, making them the perfect ideological ‘enemies’ during the Cold War. The similar foundational ‘enemy’ for India with its inclusivist and secular anchorage was in the form of the ‘land of the pure’ i.e., Pakistan, which was borne out of a supremacist and exclusivist rationality of the ‘two-nation theory’. 

Further, the fact that the creation of India and Pakistan brought with it a wounded partition (with geographical contiguity), unsettled claims, waging wars at least four times formally (1947- 48, 1965, 1971 and 1999) and routinely blaming each other for supporting secessionist insurgencies – ‘enemysing’ each other was easy and logical.

India tore Pakistan into two pieces with the creation of Bangladesh in 1971 and Pakistanis swore to “eat grass, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own (Atom Bomb)…”. Politicians on both sides kept blowing bugles of war and revenge. Finally, Pakistan did manage to get the bomb (and attempted to bleed India ‘with a thousand cuts’), though literally leaving them to eat grass if today’s socio-economic condition is anything to go by.  

Neighbouring China Eventually Replaced Neighbouring Pakistan as 'Enemy Number One'

Relatively speaking, India kept including more relevant and topical enemies to its sovereign imagination e.g., a suffocatingly controlled economy, literacy challenges, over-dependence on the agriculture sector etc., Whereas Pakistan remained steadfastly focused on ‘India’ and kept that pot boiling, ad nauseum. The resultant fixation had generated so much hate and bigotry within that it started backfiring and began eating into its own vitals.

Today, Pakistan is struggling desperately to extricate itself from the metastasised swamp of religious extremism to such an extent that there are far more deaths from its ‘own’ across the Durand Line (read, Afghanistan) than from across the Line-of-Control (LoC). Data shows that the total number of Pakistani soldiers killed in all wars with India collectively is far less than the Pakistani soldiers killed by militants from across Afghanistan – the ‘enemy number one’ for Pakistan now is indisputably sitting in Afghanistan.

India, after the Kargil War (1999), got busy with its own internal recalibration of the political landscape and impulses. It’s focus on Pakistan yo-yoed with many Track-2s, Aman ki Ashas and multiple reneges (e.g., Pathankot, Pulwama etc) with Islamabad still acting incorrigibly. But slowly and steadily, Pakistan was retreating from practical threat perceptions as it underwent an implosive narrative of its own and has been in the ICU (intensive care unit) owing to its own mismanagement of domestic affairs, leading to real questions about its economic survival.

The summer of 2020 jolted India from over-focusing on internal politics to the sudden arrival of a new ‘enemy number one’, and that was unmistakably the expansionist — China. Delhi soon readjusted its security oars to cater to the new winds from China, as opposed to those coming in from the side of its erstwhile ‘enemy number one’ i.e., Pakistan. While Pakistan was busy digging its own grave and diminishing (certainly not disappearing) from Indian security radars, the Indo-Sino borders became the cynosure of principal threats.

But inexplicably the dangers from the new ‘enemy number one’ i.e., China, remained largely unnamed and unmentioned by the highest executive offices and it was left to the voluble mandarins in the Ministry of External Affairs or the Defence Ministry to posit mealy-mouthed reassurances. Wordsmithing of replacing ‘entered’ with ‘intrusion’ notwithstanding, it was China and not Pakistan that needed to be handled and called out, first and foremost. The Chinese had forced themselves as the ‘enemy number one’ and Delhi reacted by banning some Chinese sites and platforms, and not much more. 

The age-old wisdom by the English author and philosopher, GK Chesterton who stated, “The Bible tells us to love our neighbours, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people”, was still true, as neighbouring China had replaced neighbouring Pakistan.

Why Don’t We Love to Talk About the Chinese as Much as We Are Made to Hate the Pakistanis?

However, the hyper-nationalistic times had bred ‘muscular’ narratives and definitions that neighbours only needed to be firmly ‘taken to task’ or ‘put in their place’ and not metaphorically ‘loved’, which was more speaking than action. The Chinese continued to do trade and increase the imbalance of trade, substantially. Whereas the ‘muscular’ spiel from Delhi did bear some reactions but not what was intended, or where it should have been directed. Murmurs on the streets of Kathmandu, Dhaka, Colombo, and Male have hardly been comforting towards India.

However, domestic politics and discourse of competitive partisanship refused to accept the evolved change of China, as opposed to Pakistan as the ‘enemy’. It was perhaps for a very practical reason – China as an ‘enemy’ disallows beating down some of our own, but Pakistan affords the same. Calling some of our own as ‘Chinese’ or ‘Go to back China’ does not have the same bite, resonance, or acidity, as threatening someone by saying, ‘Go back to Pakistan’. Evolved security threat notwithstanding, Pakistan seemed irreplaceable as the currency of hate, in domestic politics.

Even the Indian Left parties are so distant from Chinese aspersions and irrelevance in the modern context, that China cannot be used as an effective bludgeon, even on them. There is however some shrillness in the accusation of ‘China-funded’, and therefore that accusation is occasionally used. But as far as domestic/electoral politics are concerned, Pakistan still rules! 

The ensuing election season has seen the return of ‘Pakistan’ to its inglorious and inappropriate best. Sadly, it is Pakistan and not China (the real ‘enemy number one’) that fits the bill for the template of majoritarianism. Any loose and unwarranted comment, even by a former and ‘has-been’ minister of an ousted party in Pakistan is theatrically showcased as conclusive proof of Pakistan retaining a handle in Indian politics. Words like Razakaars (paramilitary militia in erstwhile Hyderabad State who fought against integration to India),

Vikas-versus-Jihad, etc. are dug out to insinuate what isn’t. The bogey of Pakistan-centric allusions still has a powerful impact. Religion seems to be the guiding force in the 2024 Indian elections, as regrettably, it was for the Pakistanis in 1947. Why aren’t there enough conversations about China? The only muted and occasionally propped ‘agreement’ ostensibly signed by an opposition party and the Communist Party of China (CCP) remains confined to social media, with no action from the current dispensation to table the same. Why isn’t any challenge facing the nation attributed to China?

Why aren’t any thunderous announcements to retake lost ground a la Akhand Bharat made? Why is it that an almost failed state surviving on doles is still able to galvanise the public mood, when the threats from the real ‘enemy number one’ remain obfuscated, undiscussed, and even unnamed - especially when the discourse has reached the specificities and granularity of mangalsutras and the wholly unwarranted analogies from an American of Indian ethnicity? Why don’t we love to talk about the Chinese as much as we are made to hate the Pakistanis? 

The fact that Pakistan rules the roost and not China, says a lot about the deflections, distractions and manipulations that beset Indian politics. We must surely stand guard against a manipulative Pakistan that has inflicted so many wounds, but we have reached a stage where we must allow it to dig its own grave, and that needs no further nudge or mention. But China is the starting ‘enemy number one’ and that needs to be the centre of gravity and passion in the elections, but it tellingly isn’t. This too, obviously is for a reason.

(The author is a Former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)