THE manner in which Chief of Army Staff General M.M. Naravane sprang to action and paid a visit to Kashmir to assess the situation arising out of repeated ceasefire violations by Pakistan can certainly earn him the epithet of Q R Boss -- Quick Response Boss. Just a couple of days earlier, he paid a visit to the forward areas in eastern Ladakh to review the situation and issue fresh instructions to the troops guarding the border with China. Similar alertness is being displayed by chiefs of the Indian Air Force and the Indian Navy as well, in addition to the work the omni-present Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat is doing by moving back and forth in critical areas all the time. But what matters equally is the political and diplomatic responses India is offering particular to the overtures by Pakistan in the past few days. This collective Indian backlash must be described in golden letters in chapters of contemporary history.

 

It is important to note that National Security Advisor Mr. Ajit Doval just stood up and walked out of a meeting in which Pakistani delegation flaunted a doctored map of India. At the United Nations, too, India foiled a Pakistani attempt to mess up with truth. And now, speaking in the Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for External Affairs Mr. V. Muraleedharan blasted what he described as Pakistan’s “obsession with territorial aggrandisement”. The Government has also rejected Pakistan’s repeated attempts to make untenable claims by presenting doctored maps showing altering International Border.

 

Thanks to the consistent Indian rebuff, Pakistan finds itself in a state of confusion about its own position on most points. Whatever it is now trying to do is to keep making thoughtless, off-the-cuff remarks and statements that make no actual sense in the hard ball-game of diplomacy. In fact, whatever Pakistan is doing in only bringing for it an international bad name as an eternal whiner without purpose, its latest overtures at the UN and other places offering good evidence.

 

There are also reasons to suspect that Pakistan is doing all these activities perhaps spurred on the sly by the Chinese. For a while, even Nepal indulged in such nonsensical overtures that only brought it a lot of disrepute. In Pakistan, the trouble is that for a very long time, it has had no coordinated State Policy, and its rulers kept up the practice of nibbling at India without actually serving no purpose of their own.

 

The only worn out tool Pakistan is trying to use all along is that of cross-border terrorism whose effectiveness, too, has gone down tremendously particularly after the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A of the Constitution on August 5, 2019. Splitting of the Kashmir region into two Union Territories also made a lot of difference to the Pakistani gameplan. For, with a better handling of the internal security in Kashmir, leading to elimination of terrorists in good numbers and busting of many of terror modules.

 

The biggest setback Pakistan has received in Kashmir is the decimation of some separatist organisations such as the All Party Hurriyat Conference. With its weakened voice, separatism has almost ceased to be an effective tool in Pakistan’s hand. Those who have watched Kashmir for long now seem to infer that Pakistan’s Kashmir plan has ceased to be effective, thanks to the efficient and no-nonsense response by India on all fronts.

 

Thus having established an upper hand in Kashmir, the Army Chief has now stepped in to have a better assessment of the situation on the ground. It may be completely in tune with reality to expect a tougher approach by the Security Forces while dealing with repeated ceasefire violations and infiltration bids by Pakistan. In the next some months, cross-border terrorism is bound to suffer setbacks. It may also be safe to expect the Government to grant greater freedom to the Security Forces to handle the challenge of terrorism and separatism. All these expectations have come to fore with the latest visit of General M.M. Naravane to Kashmir.