"Surgical Strike" by Indian army on the night of 28th-29th September and government's decision to make it public is not less than a master stroke. I call it a master stroke because it has achieved many desired objectives.
First and the most important achievement is that it has given strong message to Pak that days of soft diplomacy are over. Pakistan's response has been confused. From warning India of dire consequences by non state actors, to complete denial and terming it merely as ceasefire violations. Pakistan's positions is understandable. If it accepts the surgical strike, its army and civilian leadership will suffer credibility crisis both domestically and internationally. However, actions of Pak army and government indirectly confirm the strikes. Moving Hafiz Sayeed into army camp, government convening urgent session of parliament are some of these. Further some newspaper reports have quoted local people and police officers corroborating the strikes.
Next objective has been international support. Almost all big players in the international diplomacy have endorsed India's right to self defence.
Further this strike has satisfied the aspirations of right wing voters. Modi government came into power riding of enormous support of right wing voters. These voters were disappointed by soft diplomatic attitude of Modi government in spite of Pathankot and Uri attacks. Now government has given message to its core constituency that Pak's proxy war will be retaliated appropriately,
Lastly domestic opposition has been rendered into catch 22 situation. Initially they supported the government's action but later adopted varied approaches to trivialize it. But every action of opposition has proved to be counter productive. Firstly they tried to question whether strikes happened or not. Then they asked for video evidence of strikes to substantiate.
In the political fight the most important question is forgotten. Why the opposition especially Delhi CM is asking for video footage? Reason may be purely political one. But another possibility may be more sinister. It is well known fact that countries try to have moles in other countries to fulfill its interests. Video footage may have some classified information regarding strategies of army. Releasing video may help Pak Army and ISI to have access to these. Is demand to release video is strategy to pressurize government politically to help Pak? We as voters need to consider demands of opposition camp from this point of view.
Experiencing failure of above strategy, opposition claimed that this is not the first time strikes have happened but never hyped so much. I fully support such claims. Being right winger it satisfies my aspiration of hard diplomacy. But my question is why didn't Congress make these strikes public? Reasons may be political. Congress enjoys support of people with left of centre inclinations. Many of these people have "soft corner" for Pak . So probably congress didn't want to take political risk of loosing these sympathizers by making these strikes public. Another possibility may be fear of international backlash. May be Congress government was apprehensive of international reaction to these strikes. In such scenario, it is failure of diplomacy of the government to the day to convince international partners of one's sovereign right to defend. Therefore these strikes are different that previous ones in the way that we are not afraid of conveying it to the world.
Again losing opposition adopted next strategy of "crisis of credit". The opposition camp said that these strikes are done by army not Modi, so Modi should not be given credit. This is the most absurd argument. It can not be denied that such strikes can not happen without bravery of jawans. However political leadership of the day is to be credited for all good or bad. In last two years opposition has blamed Modi for every trivial issue whether suicide of a frustrated "student" at UoH, or actions of censor board, though Union government has nothing to do with these things. However decision to conduct surgical strikes need decision from the highest quarters so it must have been final decision of Modi to give go ahead. History is witness that political leadership is credited for everything. Hitler is credited for everything Nazi soldiers do not the individual soldiers. Similarly Indira Gandhi is credited for BD freedom, not the individual soldiers. Gandhiji is credited for satyagrah not the individual satyagrahis. Therefore it is not wrong to credit the political leadership for the day for surgical strikes.
