Influential Warfare

What is Influential warfare? It is just another name of psychological warfare which comes with tonnes of National security threat or we can say which is ignited to dent the image of the particular individual/group/country. It’s a more covert and subtle approach that aims to create a narrative before unleashing psychological instruments to alter the thinking and cultural values, so that they willingly offer themselves to subjugation. It involves the subjugation of the minds of the people and their leaders.

The weapons and strategy of this kind of war are totally new and the country that can deploy these at the earliest will be the future power of the world. Hard weapons have been replaced by weapons of the mind and information. The narrative of the war itself will be the most lethal weapon and the technological advancements has given them a great push and all the involved persons (speaking in context of India) are enjoying the Right to Freedom of speech but at the same time Article 19(2) is smoothly sidelined which is again for personal or political gains.

While learning the examples of influential warfare the first comes to mind is Pakistan and it’s madrassas & ISPR. They have excelled in this skill and have done a mastery in it. Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, who said, “If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes accepted as truth.” Pakistan is influenced by this quote and we must bow down to them and learn from the master how to speak lies. Though they have been successful many times in this but they are in the notion of being progressive towards Ghazwa-e-Hind. Yet the demonstration of this war by Pakistan can be seen by the number of minds it controls in Kashmir and how it is capturing the minds of radical Muslims in other parts of India.

Pakistan is now fighting the ‘war’ in India’s hinterland and making use of the fault lines that exist within the country to destabilise it internally and the recent systematically targeted civilians (especially of Kashmiri Hindus and Sikhs) killings in Kashmir by Pakistan backed terrorists whether be Local Terrorist (LTs) or Foreign Terrorist (FTs) it shows how the intensity of the proxy warfare can be controlled by Pakistan.

The often phrase used by them to radicalise says it all “Yaha kya chalega Nizam-e-mustafa Kashmir me rehna hai toh Allah-hu-akbar kehna hoga, Ae kashmir ke musalmano hindustan se aazadi ka matlab Al Jihad Al Jihad” and the catch that I would like to highlight is in 2021 out of 26-27 unarmed civilians killings 16 or 17 were Muslims that were killed so see the hypocrisy. They propagate to safeguard rights & safety of Indian Muslims while they themselves target Muslims contrary to this they say Indian Muslims are unsafe because of Armed forces and the Political representatives. This is the narrative being served by Pakistan for a long time in which there are periods where they have been unsuccessful while there are unfortunate events where they were successful.

India’s stand-

Deradicalization and rehabilitation. The Indian Government says their surrender cum Rehabilitation policy has given fairly positive outcomes especially in J&K which means it needs to be done more often. The Indian armed forces and their programmes deals with issues such as healthcare, clergies and financial stability In Kashmir, military-led counterterrorism and/or counterinsurgency acts as the country’s largest open-air theatre for education on terrorism and counterterrorism.

For example, military leaders in Kashmir approach madrassas with bridge-building activities. This has shown good results and on wider level programmes led by the Government have also given good results but the problem here is the ideas, policies, methodologies are based on implementations and experiences of other nations. We have different problems of Radicalization while they have different it’s necessary to the government and agencies to build programmes according to India’s societal, cultural and security contexts i.e more India centric.

And one crucial aspect of deradicalisation is the building of counternarratives and stories that can deter those considering extremist ideologies and groups. No doubt the government is already showing their side of the story i.e the Truth(in counter of narrative spread by Pakistan and Terror organizations) and many independent journalists, groups, former officers/Personnel are voluntarily contributing in showing the ground reality and actual causes. But it’s not in a simplistic manner it should be in, many don’t understand the technical terminologies, not all read and understand various articles or debates. This responsibility is of the government to bring transparency and lessen the communication gap.

The stats of successful deradicalization programs, the development plans, opportunities to get integrated with mainland India proposals should be brought to light of the civil society through all mediums and reach the groups/communities that are vulnerable to radicalization. As Pakistan has already got into this new warfare according to the changing dynamics we need to shift our policy framework from Reactive to Proactive as well as Holistic approach taking care of right wing extremism too.

Lord Curzon in 1905 brought the concept of divide and rule by creating Hindu Muslim riots leading to communal disharmony. This gap needs to be filled through research and dialogue between various stakeholders. Religious communities and it’s heads should be brought on board and bridge building exercises and discussion should be carried out which will bring harmony between ethnics groups and communities as this will unite us to fight against the foreign forces that use religion as a powerful weapon to bring instability in India.