Is Narendra Modi the first prime minister to order surgical strikes across the Line of Control (LoC) to hit terrorist hideouts or Pakistani troops? I do not know.
Did the Indian Army, the symbol and the source of India’s hard power, conduct similar surgical strikes when the Congress was leading the government at the Centre, as some non-BJP people are claiming and as the ‘Operation Ginger’ scoop in The Hindu recently revealed? I do not know.
But one thing I do know. There have been many surgical strikes in the past, self-inflicted ones, targeting India’s soft power. The most recent is the decision of the Cinema Owners and Exhibitors Association of India (COEAI) to block the screening of any Indian movie featuring artistes from Pakistan.
So, here is an industry platform acting as the super censor board. It, and not the Censor Board or the home ministry, will decide which films Indians should or should not see. How odious.
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‘Soft Power’ is About India’s Cultural Reach
One should not be surprised if the current chief of the Censor Board hails COEAI for snatching away his authority. Sadly, in the current upsurge of jingoism in India, there are few in the governing establishment questioning the legality of COEAI’s action.
Before I proceed, a definitional digression is in order.
At a time when there is so much deafening deification of ‘hard power’ in many countries around the world, including in our own, it’s necessary to explicate here that this curious phrase ‘soft power’ represents the reach, prowess and influence of one nation’s heritage of arts, culture, sports (include spirituality also in it) in other nations near and far.
India’s Soft Power Can Be Effective in Fighting Terrorism
Making this distinction between India’s hard power and soft power does not mean that people like me have no respect for the Indian Army and its sacrifices in fighting the menace of cross-border terrorism from Pakistan.
I support its recent surgical strike. I hail the valour of our jawans. Terrorism must not go unpunished, especially when it has, unfortunately, become our neighbour’s state policy, thereby hurting the people of Pakistan as much as it hurts our people.
However, let this be said loud and clear. Terrorism cannot be defeated solely by India’s hard power.
India’s soft power can be even more effective in this battle in the long run, because, by winning over the hearts and minds of Pakistani people, it builds a robust bridge of mutual understanding, friendship and trust between our two civilisational neighbours.
Pakistan’s Love for Bollywood is Good for India
India may not be the strongest military power in the world, that dubious distinction is proudly held by the US.
But India’s soft power is certainly among the strongest in the world. And its impact in our own neighbourhood, especially in Pakistan, which many of my countrymen falsely regard as our arch and permanent enemy, is simply enormous. Bollywood is immensely more popular in Pakistan than either Hollywood or Lollywood (Pakistani movies made in Lahore).
In fact, Bollywood’s fame and mass appeal are detested and feared by the anti-India forces in Pakistan, who are the mirror image of the anti-Pakistan forces in India.
When I had gone on a morning walk in the sprawling Jinnah Park in Lahore a few years ago and struck a conversation with some locals there, some – not all – of them complained that the popularity of India’s Hindi films in Pakistan was having a malign and corrupting influence on Pakistan.
“Why?” I asked them. Their reply: “Because your films are spreading Hindu culture among Muslims here. Your films show devi-devatas. They propagate Hindu social customs, which are anti-Islamic.”
Notwithstanding the ire of such bigots, a majority of Pakistanis are avid watchers of Hindi movies and Indian TV programmes.
Bajrangi Bhaijaan, in which Salman Khan is shown as a Hanuman bhakt, became as much of a blockbuster in Muslim Pakistan as it did in our own country. And this despite the fact – or is it because of the fact? – that ‘Bajrangi’ Salman Khan plays the role of an unapologetic champion of ‘aman’ (peace) and amity between India and Pakistan in that film.
And yet, when the same Salman Khan had the guts to say, recently, that Pakistani cinema artistes are “not terrorists” – and hence should be allowed to work in Bollywood films – ‘bhakts’ of another kind in India howled at him, saying he is a “traitor”, “anti-national”, and should go to Pakistan if he loved Pakistanis so much.
What a spectacularly self-defeating surgical strike at India’s soft power!
And it is not that only ‘Muslim’ Salman Khan or other ‘Muslim’ Indian film stars are popular in Pakistan. In big and small towns in Pakistan, hair cutting salons – those uncanny barometers of what appeals to the common people – display the portraits of not only Salman Khan, Shahrukh Khan and Aamir Khan, but also of Amitabh Bachchan, Akshay Kumar, Aishwarya Rai and (from a previous generation) Madhuri Dixit.
Lata Mangeshkar and Kishore Kumar are as admired in Pakistan as is Mohammed Rafi. Just as Mehdi Hassan and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan bring as much joy to music lovers in India as in Pakistan. Fawad Khan, it must be emphasised here, is admired by millions of Indians, and so are Pakistan’s TV serials, which are generally superior to those made in India.
Wankhede, Ghulam Ali and My Book: Surgical Self-Strikes Against India
Let’s look at other episodes of surgical self-strike against India’s soft power. When some saffron guerilla warriors dug the pitch at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai to declare their opposition to an India-Pakistan cricket match, their target was sports; not some terrorist haven across the border. The fact that cricket, like Bollywood, is one of the strongest soft power bonds between India and Pakistan is something they care two hoots for.
When the same saffron warriors coerced the organisers of a concert by Pakistan’s famous ghazal singer Ghulam Ali (that he is equally famous in India attests to Pakistan’s soft power) to cancel the event in Mumbai, their target was music, the most sublime and universal of all art forms, and not a terrorist training camp in Pakistan.
And here is a pertinent point. Ghulam Ali may be a Pakistani, he may be a Muslim, but he had no hesitation in singing, a few months after the Mumbai incident, at Varanasi's Sankat Mochan temple, one of the most famous shrines in the holiest city for Hindus.
At another programme in Kolkata, he also praised Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge and arts. But such illustrations of Indo-Pak spiritual and cultural syncretism mean little to the self-appointed guardians of Hinduism and Indian nationalism.
Last year, these saffron warriors conducted another surgical self-strike. This time their target was a book – and me. The book they targeted was Neither a Hawk nor a Dove by Pakistan’s former foreign minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri.
The fact that this book by a patriotic Pakistani, who is also a genuine friend of India, actually criticises successive Pakistan governments’ support to “non-state actors” carrying out terrorist attacks in India, and argues that Pakistan’s image has been negatively affected because of this policy, made no difference to these warriors.
They threatened to disrupt the function, organised by me, to launch this book in Mumbai simply because its author was a Pakistani. “We shall not allow any Pakistani to set foot in Mumbai,” they thundered. In a case of surgical strike which the warriors’ leader later eulogised, they blackened my face.
In spite of this, we went ahead with the book launch in Kasuri’s presence – and in the presence of hundreds of patriotic Indians desirous of peace through dialogue between India and Pakistan.
Awareness of this socio-cultural syncretism, and affirmation of these countless mutually overlapping and mutually strengthening bonds of the soft power of India and Pakistan, can be potentially far more potent in defeating terrorism than all the guns and tanks and nuclear weapons our armed forces possess.
Making this distinction between hard power and soft power is necessary because it is not only the army that defends the interests of a nation. Artists, film makers and film stars, musicians, writers and poets, sports icons and, of course, spiritual leaders also advance fundamental national interests.
When Vajpayee Was a Messenger of Peace
Moreover, unlike the armed forces, whose appeal and service is exclusively limited to their own country, the wielders of soft power have an influence on the minds and hearts of people worldwide. Proof? Just look at these lines from the song “Blowin in the wind’ by Bob Dylan, who won this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature a few days ago.
Yes, how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
These lines are no different from the ones penned by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who represents India’s soft power insofar as he is one of our greatest living poets, and who also controlled India’s hard power when he was our Prime Minister.
When he went as a messenger of peace to Pakistan in 1999, riding a bus from Amritsar to Lahore (I travelled with him in the same bus), and later addressed a large gathering of Pakistani elite at the Governor’s House in Lahore, he recited his famous poem ‘Jang na hone denge’ (We shall not allow a war to take place) in the presence of the then and present Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
भारत-पाकिस्तान पड़ोसी, साथ-साथ रहना है,
प्यार करें या वार करें, दोनों को ही सहना है,
तीन बार लड़ चुके लड़ाई, कितना महँगा सौदा,
रूसी बम हो या अमेरिकी, खून एक बहना है।
जो हम पर गुजरी, बच्चों के संग न होने देंगे।
जंग न होने देंगे।
Here is a free-wheeling translation:
India and Pakistan are neighbours. We are destined to live together.
Whether we love each other, or go to war against each other, we both have to bear the consequences.
We have fought three wars; how horrible was the outcome!
Be it the nuclear weapons of Russia or America, the blood that will be spilt will be same.
What we had go through, we shall not allow that to happen to our children.
We shall not allow a war between India and Pakistan to take place.
The applause Vajpayee received from his Pakistani audience was thunderous. Yes, I witnessed it. That is the power of India’s soft power. Let’s defend it from the surgical strikes of our own misguided patriots.
(Sudheendra Kulkarni was an aide to former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He tweets at @SudheenKulkarni. )
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