Gary Grappo: Good day, and welcome to FO° Talks. Joining me today is the CEO and founder of 51Թ, Atul Singh, and our discussion today is going to be addressing India as a Rising Global Power. I’m pleased to get into this conversation. But before we get into the subject of global power in India, I think it’s only appropriate, Atul, that maybe we start out with a discussion of the recent crisis between India and Pakistan and what that means. So thank you for joining us, and, Atul, your thoughts on this brewing crisis and what it means?
Atul Singh: Well, Gary, one of the things that we have to look at when we look at places like Israel and Palestine and India and Pakistan is the nature of history and the nature of competing narratives. Now, as far as India is concerned, this was a cold-blooded Islamist terror attack. Twenty-six people are dead, killed after being asked about their religion.
Gary Grappo: This is up in Kashmir in the Indian—
Atul Singh: This is up near Pahalgam, a terrorist spot, yes. And this is part of a pattern. Islam has used terror as an instrument of state policy. Its leaders have admitted to using terror as an instrument of state policy, and they have sought strategic depth against India, in particular since the loss of Bangladesh in 1971. Remember, there was a 1971 India–Pakistan war. Pakistan came up short, and after it came up short, Bangladesh was formed. Pakistan has pursued a strategy of bleeding India through a thousand cuts. It was General Zia-ul-Haq, the Islamist president, who took over in a military coup and hung Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who initiated it. Lest we forget, it was Bhutto who declared the Ahmadis to be non-Muslims in 1974 and said they would eat grass for a thousand years but get a nuclear bomb. So Bhutto was no saint, but Zia was worse. In fact, it was Bhutto’s intransigence that led to Bangladesh. He was racist; he thought the Bangladeshis were dark-skinned for Muslims. So we can go into a whole eddy, but the bottom line is that Pakistan was founded on the idea that all Muslims of the Indian subcontinent are a separate nation. It was founded on the nostalgia of the Delhi Sultanate, which was a garrison state, as Ishtiaq Ahmed — a noted historian or political scientist at the University of Stockholm, professor emeritus, originally of Pakistani origin — has talked about. He’s talked about a garrison state in the context of post-1947 history, and for Pakistan to inflict damage in India, they have fanned many insurgencies. In fact, in the early days, it was Punjab. There was disaffection there. And then after 1989, it was Kashmir. Now, as far as India is concerned, since 2014, India has been ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party — it’s a Hindu right party. And the Bharatiya Janata Party has thumped its chest and, literally, the prime minister has said he’s got a 56-inch chest and claimed to be the great masters of national security. And they have trumpeted that tourism has replaced terrorism. So this is not egg in their face, but blood in their face. And so they’ve lost a lot of face because they had put in a lot of investment, they had built infrastructure, they had liaised with the Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to get investment in Kashmir. Indian tourists have started going to Kashmir in large numbers, and so for this to happen will have a chilling effect on tourism. So there’ll be less money flowing into Kashmir, so there’ll be more unemployment, and that Pakistan will hope to exploit. They’ve killed tourists, and now kill tourism.
Strategic fallout and historic patterns
Atul Singh: And what has happened on top of that is that they’ve been weighed, measured and found wanting. And mind you, since 2023, Pakistan has been following a policy of targeting Indian army and Indian security personnel in Poonch and Rajouri. That’s in Jammu, the other region, because Jammu and Kashmir are, as you know, twin regions.
Gary Grappo: Right. It’s probably useful to note that Kashmir has long been known as a popular tourist destination, dating back even to the early middle part of the British colonial period. Obviously, during that time, it was quite exotic, but Westerners in particular have looked to Kashmir with aspirations of sometime visiting this place that is somewhat reminiscent of Shangri-La, (Atul laughs) with high elevations, the spectacular mountains, gorgeous lakes, lovely weather. It seems to have it all. And so it’s not unusual that the government of India would put that kind of investment into developing the tourism infrastructure in order to drum up not only foreign tourism but, as you mentioned, Indian tourism.
Atul Singh: Massive domestic tourism. Especially, it was pent-up demand — because for decades, people wanted to go but couldn’t. And now the government said, “Everything’s hunky-dory, you can go,” and everyone went. And tourism in Kashmir was not just British times, Gary. It goes back to Jahangir, who came to the throne in 1605 and would wander off to Kashmir to escape the heat of the North Indian plains. And of course, he was a Mughal emperor who liked his booze, and he’s the one who allowed the British East India Company in. So I don’t want to get lost in history, but he’s the father of the chap who built the Taj Mahal.
Gary Grappo: Aha.
Atul Singh: So Akbar, the only great Mughal emperor, apart from his grandfather who conquered India. So Kashmir has long been regarded as this magical Shangri-La place. And during the attack, what transpired is: There was complacency. It was a complete failure of intelligence — we’ll get to that in a bit — on the Indian side. There weren’t security personnel there in the meadow. There should have been; it was a very popular tourist place. And the response time of the security personnel to get to the spot of massacre was quite high. So once again, a terrorist attack happens in India — remember Mumbai, 2008 — and once again, Indian intelligence and Indian security forces are found wanting.
Gary Grappo: This sounds eerily reminiscent of the Hamas attack on the Israelis on October 7.
Atul Singh: Exactly. Yes, it is eerily similar. The scale was smaller, but they have gone far deeper inland. Hamas, they just crossed the border. Here, if you look at where the attack happened, that’s quite a long way away from the Line of Control. So it is a pretty impressive logistical achievement of the Pakistani army to conduct this attack.
ISI, Asim Munir and Pakistan’s terror networks
Atul Singh: Now, what are the incentives? I always—
Gary Grappo: Just a cautionary note: You said, “Pakistani army.”
Atul Singh: Yeah.
Gary Grappo: But it was a terrorist organization.
Atul Singh: Yes, it was, it was. But the reports that we are getting from people in intelligence and also contacts outside India is that, most likely, the Pakistani army was behind this attack. The balance of probabilities — this is including our British friends — and the reason for it is threefold. Number one, we have to talk about the new Chief of Army Staff, Syed Asim Munir Ahmad Shah. As you know, Pakistan has always had “Allah, Army, America.” And of course, Syed Asim Munir is not like his predecessor, Bajwa. You’ll be surprised to learn, Gary, that he went to a traditional Islamic seminary. He went to the Markazi Madarsa Darul Tajweed, and his father was an imam. So this is not your Scotch-drinking Pakistani patrician landlord general, whose top interests are Scotch, Scotch and Scotch. (Laughs) This is more of a General Zia-ul-Haq kind of figure, alright?
Gary Grappo: Yeah.
Atul Singh: And his family is originally from Jalandhar, which is Indian Punjab. And guess what? He was Director General of Inter-Services Intelligence. Surprise, surprise! (Laughs)
Gary Grappo: Which has a rather extensive history of collaboration with extremist Islamic groups, not least of which was the Taliban during the American period in Afghanistan, much to the never-ending fury of the Americans.
Atul Singh: Exactly. So General Asim Munir — and he’s the chap who had the shortest stint as DG, Director General of ISI, apparently because he exposed the corruption of Imran Khan’s wife, Bushra Bibi. Well, hey ho, there we go; that is what it is. He gave a speech recently which was very telling, very Islamist, very targeting of India. I’ll dig it out and send it. In fact, I’ll try to share it with our viewers in analysis. So, the nature of Asim Munir is important, because he believes that Pakistan needs strategic depth and strength against India, and they cannot let Kashmir normalize, because otherwise it’ll slip out of Pakistani hands. Number two is the Pakistani army’s unpopularity. We know that they have locked up Imran Khan, their most popular leader since Ali Bhutto. Of course, Imran’s blamed America, as usual. Everything is America’s fault. Gary, as you know, you’re omniscient and omnipotent. You are the gods, the great Olympians of today’s times — those of you in the State Department and CIA.
Gary Grappo: The world’s favorite whipping boy.
Atul Singh: Exactly. I meet people at the State Department. I sometimes think, “If only they were as people imagine them to be, they really could do a lot of damage.” (Laughs) But as you know, people are people. And the unpopularity of the Pakistani army is owed to the fact that the country is in an economic crisis, a disproportionate share of resources end up with the Pakistani army. And it’s not just the budget — they have prime land, they have golf courses, they have extraordinary benefits, and their top generals tend to be corrupt and amass massive fortunes. Rumor has it that they’ve sold all their shells to Ukraine. So should there be war with India, they’ll run out of artillery shells. So the Pakistani military is not quite the US military, Gary — and it’s certainly not the British military, especially of colonial or imperial times. So the Pakistani army needed a distraction. And remember that recently they’ve suffered in Balochistan. They’ve had demonstrations by large crowds against them for the first time in their history, houses of generals have been sacked. All of this has happened. How do you unify a country? And look at the kafir — India, run by evil idol worshippers who are running an apartheid regime against our fellow Muslims who rightfully belong to Pakistan, i.e., Kashmir. Good narrative, gets everyone worked up. The only thing holding Pakistan together, as we know, is hatred for India, because it is the “Pure Land,” Pakistan. So they needed something to do to boost their popularity again. And indeed, India’s actions have boosted unity in Pakistan and the popularity of the Pakistani army. Insofar as the attack goes, it has served a certain end.
India’s institutional weakness and complacency
Gary Grappo: There has been a claim on the Pakistani side that this is a response to Indian-inspired attacks by separatist groups in Balochistan and Pakistan. How do you assess those claims?
Atul Singh: Well, look — India may have given some money to these groups, but I doubt Indian intelligence is that competent. Because, again, remember that people end up in Indian intelligence — especially India’s R&AW — when they don’t get what they want. The top choice of everybody in India is the Indian Administrative Service. We have one civil services exam. There’s no separate entry, really, for any of the civil services. So you write one civil services exam. So the chap who hates numbers ends up as the taxman in the Indian Revenue Service. The chap who can barely do pull-ups ends up in the Indian Police Service and can hardly run. And the chap who cannot speak ends up in the Indian Foreign Service. (Laughs) So, to put it politely, it is a Kafkaesque nightmare — to use language that my British friends would use, and that includes the Scots and the Welsh — it’s a clusterfuck, you know. And also on top of that, what happens is that people get in at 28, 29. It’s too late to mold them. People go to R&AW initially from the lower civil services — which is not so much of a problem, but the fact that they are going in because they didn’t get any of the top choices, where you have more opportunities for graft — i.e., corruption — and for power. And then the top positions are held by the IPS, the Indian Police Service. And the only IPS officers who join R&AW, which is the Research and Analysis Wing, or even the Intelligence Bureau, are those who are unhappy. I repeat: those who are unhappy with the cadre they are allotted, meaning they’re allotted Tamil Nadu, and they are from Delhi and they are hating the southern heat. Or they’re from Delhi and they’re allotted Nagaland — my previous state cadre — because you’re allotted a state cadre and you want to come to Delhi for your children’s education. So if you don’t like your cadre, your state, or you don’t like your chief minister, or for some reason you fall out with the local state political bosses, then you flee to a central deputation. So the reality is that unlike the Inter-Services Intelligence, which is the crème de la crème of Pakistan, the R&AW is the slough of the Indian system. So their competence is, shall we say, not dramatically high. So Pakistan blames R&AW after it blames the CIA. And just as the CIA doesn’t have Pakistan as a top priority, so does the R&AW not have Pakistan as a top priority. Their top priority is probably stealing money, which is the top priority of Indian bureaucrats when they cannot… And then, of course, it is getting a posting to the US or UK so that their children can go to top universities like Harvard or Oxford on taxpayer money. So no one even learns Balochi in the R&AW. We have such a crisis. You’ll have the odd man who’s extremely determined and is very motivated, and maybe that’s five to 10%, but generally it’s a dysfunctional organization. So to blame a completely dysfunctional organization for all the evils in Pakistan is slightly tall. I would suspect that the Iranians have had more of a hand in stirring the pot. And they certainly do have an intelligence service that is effective. They are motivated. You have talked about the IRGC as well — very motivated is the Iranian intelligence, just as the Turkish intelligence has memory of an empire. We know that the Turks have a great role to play in Syria, and the Iranians have a great role to play in Syria and their near neighborhood. So I would rather, if I had to just do a logical, cool-headed analysis — and I don’t have inside information here — I’d say, hmm, probably it is the Iranians. Yes, the Indians may have given some money, but the operational ability of Indian intelligence to do much is highly doubtful. So I made the first two points: One, it is Asim Munir, then two, it is the Pakistani army. And number three — and I think this is important — is that Pakistan now wants to go back to using the terror groups again, because it faces a new threat, and that threat is Afghanistan. The Taliban has not accepted the Durand Line. The ISI feels that they are in an extraordinary squeeze, with an aggressive Taliban on its border, with a local Taliban conducting insurgency, with an India that is becoming economically mightier, with Kashmir—
Gary Grappo: Significantly mightier.
Atul Singh: Sorry?
Gary Grappo: Significantly mightier. As I said at the outset, India is now rising to one of the top economies in the world and Pakistan is nowhere near that level. So clearly, they must look on what is happening in India today, particularly with the foreign investment that is now pouring into the country, with great envy and with little, little hope of attracting comparable investment in Pakistan.
Atul Singh: Yeah. So just a wrinkle there: Because Narendra Modi has adopted a policy of Sanatan socialism — I call it Sanatan because the local word for Hinduism is “Sanatana Dharma.” Actually, there was a huge outflow of foreign institutional investors from India last year. The stock market fell, and foreign direct investment was practically zero. So yes, over the last few years, investment has come in, but India will have to correct its path. And should the free trade agreement with the US and the UK transpire — and that will require India to bring in some market-friendly reforms — India will be back in business. But you’re right in over a decade or two-decade or even three-decade span, but not the latest, Gary. There are problems in the Indian economy. And we’ll do a separate issue, separate discussion on that. Very happy to, because that, for me, is the big worry for India: its economics. To go back to James Carville, it’s the economy, stupid. And we have a big population. But still, despite that, we have high growth. Yes, we have local industry. Now we are making a lot of our own missiles, we have a nuclear program that is decent, we are making artillery shells. India will inevitably improve. It’ll never be China. It’ll never be the workshop of the world. But it’ll be significantly better than Pakistan.
Gary Grappo: In their flock with the United States, they are looking at joint production of military aircraft similar to what America has done previously in places like Egypt and in Turkey, including advanced fighter aircraft, radar systems and so forth. And now, with the move of Western technology firms out of China, India is very much in the scope of these companies as a place that is much more friendly, although it obviously faces some challenges, particularly in dealing with the Byzantine bureaucracy of India.
Atul Singh: Exactly.
Gary Grappo: And it has a very capable workforce, very trainable workforce, and so it’s looked at as a place where Western firms, despite some obvious challenges, can do business and be very successful.
Atul Singh: Yes. And certain states of India, in the West and the South in particular, are very market-friendly — the coastal states. So we’ll get to that later. But the third point that I was making was that you have a hostile Taliban in the West — the very Frankenstein’s monster that Dr. Frankenstein created; Dr. Frankenstein being, of course, the ISI — has turned against Pakistan. And you have an India which is strengthening. And the Taliban and India, curiously, are talking to each other. So if you are Pakistan, it is in your imperative to rally people around the Islamic flag. And that attack does that beautifully, because it does upset a lot of the Hindus. Because remember, in the Hindu mind, there is this extraordinary sense of shame and this extraordinary thin-skinned feeling of impotence — because 1192-on, India was first ruled by the Turks, then the Pashtuns, then the Mughals. And of course, Nader Shah from Iran invaded India and slaughtered thousands. I believe it was 1739 — give or take one or two years, 1739 if my memory serves right. And then Ahmed Shah Abdali, a Pashtun, smashed the Marathas in 1761 and allowed the British to take over because they destroyed the most powerful local Hindu power. So in the Hindu mind, there’s this extraordinary sense that we’ve always been beaten. Farsi was the official language of India. We had to pay jizya, we always got defeated, our women always got abducted. We are weak. And now we must turn the clock, and we must be strong. And the Hindu Right takes inspiration from Israel, where the Israelis wanted to create a new type of Jewish man — and indeed, woman — stronger, tougher, aggressive, willing to respond, militarily innovative, with intelligence that was top-notch. And India has never achieved it, because India has many different countries rolled into one. The Tamils have their own script, and the southern Indian languages come from the Dravidian school. The northern languages are Indo-European. Hindi has more in common with German than with Tamil. So India is, in many ways, an ethnic and linguistic zoo. You go to Nagaland, where I served, and it’s basically 99%, if not 100%, American Baptists, and it has prohibition. And then Goa — I was born there — that’s Catholic. And you go to Kerala, and that’s Syrian Christians. And then you go to Lucknow, and the culture is Shia. But then you go to Delhi, and you go to Deoband. And Deoband is Sunni — it’s a theological seminary — and the Taliban follow the Deobandi school. By the time I finish explaining India to your colleagues in the State Department, their heads are spinning, because there are layers after layers after layers. And in such a diverse country, which is fundamentally a colonial state where we’ve inherited everything from the British, and the British created two sets of institutions: one at home in London, and they’re extraordinary; and one for the colonies, and they were to be run on the cheap. So the Indian Administrative Service and the Indian Police Service — they’re relics of the empire. They never created this at home; they created this in India. And the Pakistanis have it, and the Bangladeshis have it. The Pakistanis have the PAS, the Bangladeshis have the BAS. And the reality is that the Indian state is fundamentally a flailing state, to use the words of a political scientist; I think he was American. And the reason is: One day you’ll be running agriculture, the next day you may be running culture, the third day you may be running finance. The economist does not head the Reserve Bank of India, an IAS officer does. So at the top, the IAS is the general management, the elite management, the equivalent of the McKinseys. And they run everything from the Surveyor General of India, which should be a military position because you’re looking at maps, to the Director General of Civil Aviation, which you should probably know something about civil aviation. But the chap going to head it is coming from the agriculture ministry.
Gary Grappo: Perfectly logical!
Atul Singh: Yeah, perfectly logical! The Archaeological Survey of India is, of course, headed by an IAS officer, too — and that’s a punishment posting. But they don’t let go of any of the fiefdoms, because the principle that you can have a specialist in charge, a domain expert in charge, is a particularly despicable one. It’ll challenge the top caste that rules India, which is the IAS — the modern caste system. So India is not a professional state. And therefore, neither is Pakistan, nor is Bangladesh. And so, therefore, you have this inability to respond to crises, because people look up, they don’t take decisions at the grassroots: the top-man culture. And under Modi, the Prime Minister’s Office is all-powerful. It has expanded to a historic high. And it’s an open secret in India that if you don’t want to take a decision — an IAS officer wants to screw you over — they send the file to the PMO, the Prime Minister’s Office. It will never come back. So for years now, everybody in intelligence has been telling me that human intelligence in Kashmir has collapsed. And especially the young officers: “Sir, we rely too much on technical intelligence. Sir, things are really bad. No one is talking about it.” There’s a l’affaire du meta in the Indian media, because we are supposed to tell the story that everything is wonderful in Kashmir. We’ve hosted G20 in Kashmir. There are rivers of milk and honey flowing in Kashmir. And the reality is that in Kashmir, number one, the intelligence, especially human intelligence, had collapsed. The Intelligence Bureau was doing a shitty job. The R&AW, many of its agents were, in fact, double agents who were helping get Indian Army officers killed. They didn’t have a clue. The military intelligence as well had — they were marginally, probably arguably, a little bit better, but they don’t have the resources. But they weren’t doing great either. And every paramilitary or every central police organization has its own intelligence… well, yeah, they were complacent. The lieutenant governor is reputed to be incompetent. India has changed Article 370, in which Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh — three different regions — were one state. Now Ladakh is Union Territory, separate. Jammu and Kashmir is one Union Territory, separate. And the lieutenant governor came from Uttar Pradesh. He is a BJP man — a Bharatiya Janata Party man — but he does not have a good reputation within the BJP as someone competent. And he comes from my state, UP — Uttar Pradesh. So, from what I know from my family and my contacts, he wasn’t terribly competent, he likes sycophants and he’s in charge of law and order. And fundamentally, they merged the cadre. Jammu and Kashmir was a separate cadre. Once it became a National Union Territory, there was a general cadre, and you had officers who had served in Delhi suddenly popping up in Jammu and Kashmir. Officers who’d served in Goa, suddenly in Jammu and Kashmir or Ladakh. And they didn’t understand local conditions. So there was a weakening of the state machinery. So all in all, there was institutional decline and complacency over many years, and the government ignored it — just as there were weaknesses on October 7, remember, in Israel. It happened because a lot of reservists were not on duty. Israelis had become complacent. They had automated everything. They never thought that Hamas would be able to manage such a concerted attack. So just as there were many failures there because of complacency and incompetence, the Indian side displayed both as well. And at some point, there has to be a reckoning.
Geopolitical leverage: water and naval power
And this then, you know, takes away the scab of this inferiority complex that Indians have had — that we are militarily inferior, we have been beaten and we never respond in a muscular way. We never did in Mumbai. Before that, in Kandahar, we just went and released extremists who went on to found jihadi organizations that killed thousands. We never crossed the Line of Control in Kargil in the 1999 border conflict. We could have surrounded the hills and starved them, but we didn’t even dare to do that. We sent young men to die. So there’s a lot of this angst and heartburn. And in a way, Modi is now a prisoner of the popular outreach and this sensibility of having been on the losing side of history, culturally and civilizationally.
Gary Grappo: That, Atul, from the perspective of an outsider presents a very dangerous alignment of conditions, because it would appear almost inevitable, based on what you have said, that not only is there going to be an armed response on the part of the Indians, but a pretty forceful one to reassert an image of strength — which they have to project internally, but also externally to the Pakistanis and to the rest of the world — because they do have aspirations of being a global power. And being victimized by this extremist group demonstrates a certain vulnerability, particularly when it has its origins in Pakistan. So what do you anticipate will be the response of India, and what happens after that?
Atul Singh: Well, the most significant thing to remember is that the current government has weakened the military tremendously. And it has weakened the military by bringing in a new policy called Agnipath, the Agnipath scheme, which is that you recruit everyone in the Army, Navy and Air Force for four years, and only a quarter will be retained — supposedly the best. Now, why is it a problem? You may say it’ll create a meritocracy. It is a problem because every other government service offers a permanent job. And because of India’s socialist history and still-feudal society, people crave government jobs. You’ve been in such societies, Gary, so you understand this much better than people who’ve grown up just in America and have just seen American capitalism. And so what this has signaled to the army is that, “We are bottom priority. We don’t matter. We are just armed guards.” And so morale is rock bottom in the Indian military. Right now, in a village, the top priorities go to the local police, then to the central police organizations. And if you don’t get in, then you come to the military, which is frightening. And also the training period is just six months. So what happens is that often people commanders will wait four years to see if someone can be sent for an advanced gunnery course or technical course. Because if you send a soldier away and invest in that person, and that person is not retained; it’s a waste of investment. Luckily, the scheme is new. And so there are lots of old, time-tested and battle-hardened soldiers around. But morale is low and there’s a shortage of officers, too, because ultimately, civil services have all the power and all the glamour, and they can steal money hand over fist. So in Indian society, except for very idealistic people or people who really care about the military, or who just think they won’t get into the civil services, no one really wants to be a military officer. And that is a challenge many militaries are facing — the shortage of officers — not just India. So is the Indian military ready to fight? Well, we don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. India has not increased its investment in the military as it should have, especially given the threat of China on one side, Pakistan on the other and now Bangladesh, which has turned Islamist. And Myanmar, which is up in flames. Every border is active. I don’t think most American viewers and listeners appreciate it. India lives in a very rough neighborhood, right? So now, let’s then get to the other response: the Indus Waters Treaty, 1960. It survived the 1965 war, it survived the 1971 war, it survived the 1999 Kargil border conflict. It has survived all sorts of insurgencies. It survived the Mumbai attacks, which were spectacularly brutal, in 2008. It has survived all these tensions. But now, earlier threatened, the government has said, “We are suspending participation.”
Gary Grappo: And just for our viewers, explain why this agreement, this understanding is so critical to both countries.
Atul Singh: It gives the use of the upper three rivers — I could go through the names of the rivers, but we’ll keep it very simple. The Indus has five tributaries. Punjab literally is the land of five rivers. Some of them begin in China, and they flow into Pakistan. And Pakistan lives off the water of these rivers. The British built canals, and that canal system ensures that Pakistani agriculture produces enough grain to feed a lot of its people. Pakistan’s population has grown fivefold since 1960. And so the waters are very crucial for Pakistan. There’s always been a fear that India could build a dam and start using the water, because India’s population has grown threefold and Kashmir’s population has grown dramatically, too. They need more water. And a lot of people on the Indian side think that this treaty is overly generous to Pakistan and it releases far too much water to Pakistan. It’s like feeding milk to a snake. That’s an Indian metaphor — that snake drinks that milk and then bites you all the time. And so they say, “You know what? Just stop the milk.” And there has been this thinking, but no one has acted on this. And I think India now is at that stage where it says, “Okay, you keep hurting us. What can we do to hurt you?” It’s like, “Maybe we can build a dam in the future. We suspend the water treaty. We can increase and decrease the flow of water — increase it when you have floods, decrease it when you have droughts, build dams, choke you out. And then what? Then let’s see if you conduct terror. Because if you won’t stop, we have to do something.” That is the thinking of the Indian side.
Gary Grappo: That climbs a very dangerous ladder of escalation, because when you threaten the livelihood of a nation, which is what you’re describing in the case of Pakistan and its need for water to sustain so much of its population and its agricultural sector, then—
Atul Singh: It is a feudal society living off agriculture.
Gary Grappo: Yeah. So then you’re talking about casus belli.
Atul Singh: Yes, and so Pakistan says, “Then we’ll treat this as an act of war.” And the reality is that India thinks, “You know what? You’re inflicting war on us anytime at a time and place of your choosing. So we have to do something now.” Ironically, the suspension of this treaty is really popular in Kashmir, because they’ll get more water from the Indus. (Laughs)
Gary Grappo: It’s not ironic at all. It makes perfect sense.
Atul Singh: Yeah, from Chenab, from Jhelum. So yes, it is a ladder of escalation. It will take a lot of time to really make a difference — to build the dams, to build the pipes, divert water. They can pipe it out, actually. That’s the cheapest way. But the reality is that India is embarking on this because it is militarily less expensive and less risky for the government. Yes, it could also use its navy, which is far superior, to blockade Pakistan. And that is a scenario, too. That’s scenario two. Scenario one: Choke off the water. Scenario two: Use your navy to block off energy imports and just block off their exports. Just do something higher-impact, lower-casualty. That is the new thinking in India. And number three, which is the Israeli suggestion — and you will laugh at this — the Israelis say, “Why don’t you start conducting selective elimination of the top leadership of the Pakistani military?” Which is what they do in Iran. (Both laugh)
Gary Grappo: They have the intelligence and precision to carry it out in the fashion Israelis have.
Atul Singh: Exactly, exactly! So maybe we’ll say, “Why don’t you do it for us, and we’ll give you the money?” (Both laugh) So Israel keeps marveling at the fact how, “If Asim Munir is a problem, you can kill his child.” This is literally what an Israeli friend suggested. “You can take a pistol — you have to inflict damage, after all, and establish deterrence.” You can see the Israelis think a little bit quicker than the Indians. (Gary laughs) And the reality is that all of these three might be on the cards, but India is not in a position to conduct targeted assassinations. We do not have the capabilities. The state is flailing; the structure of the state, that needs reform. We can’t do that. The Navy — possibly, yes, definitely. And the first two retaliations under the Narendra Modi government were by the Army and Air Force. In Balakot, for instance, when the last attack happened. And maybe it’s the Navy’s turn. That could happen. And I’m sure that the Pakistanis have their own scenarios to inflict pain. And they need the war more than us.
China, drones and the manufacturing squeeze
Atul Singh: And there’s another dangerous scenario: Remember that China does not like the stock of manufacturing going from China to India. You wouldn’t if you were China, Gary. You would come up with your own response. It’s a chessboard with many players moving pieces, and even the chessboard itself changes. (Gary laughs) So let’s say you’re an ambitious People’s Liberation Army general. Let’s say you go to Xi Jinping and say, “You know what? The Indians are bothering the Pakistanis. We can give them 10% of our drone production” — not even other stuff. China is the factory of the world. The Chinese can arm Pakistanis. If the Chinese put troops on the Line of Actual Control — LAC — they put troops because both borders are contested with Pakistan and with China. So let’s say they put troops on the Line of Actual Control — boom. Alright, India will have to put troops there. And let’s say they supply Pakistan with drones, not even artillery. Let’s assume it’s just drones. That’ll be a huge problem for Indians, because India cannot match the production — 70% of the drones, apparently, according to some reports, are produced by China. China produces an extraordinary number of drones. And if they arm Pakistan, they could trap India within the subcontinent, because they don’t want India to emerge as a power in Asia. Just as the US fears the rise of China, China fears the rise of India. So Graham Allison’s Thucydides Trap applies in the global context to the US and China, and in the Asian context to China and India. And that would be a nightmare, because the Pakistanis could conduct strikes. And Islamic radicalization within India has created a number of what you call sleeper cells. And remember, there are radical Muslims from Kerala, the most educated state of India, who ended up in the Islamic State — volunteered and went to the Middle East and fought. Remember — I think it was just a few years ago — there was an entire Love Jihad gang busted. The chap is in jail now. And the whole idea was that Muslim men, who tend to spend more time in the gym in India — you look at all the film stars: Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Saif Ali Khan — they’re all basically of Pashtun origin. They’re all short, they are two feet tall. They are not like the tall Pashtuns of Afghanistan or northwest Pakistan. They don’t look like Imran Khan. But they have Pashtun origins. But they all tend to marry Hindu women, because the middle-class Hindu boys are too busy cracking competitive exams. They are geeky, they are weedy. And Muslim women are kept under wraps — they don’t come out, in the Indian social setting in particular. But the Hindu women are professionals — they are doctors, they are nurses, they are out and about. And the taxi drivers, the mechanics, the motorcycle riders, the gym boys with their tight T-shirts and big muscles often tend to be Muslims. Often they end up seducing and then marrying these women. And then, once women are involved, they will say, “Yeah, if you convert, it’s just nominal.” But before you know it, they convert. And I heard a tape of this person who’s now in jail talking about, “Oh, you’re converting — you’re just targeting girls of lower caste. I need you to convert girls of Brahmins and the other upper caste.” Because remember, the Indian social system, being such that if you marry outside your caste — in urban areas, that’s happening a lot — but even that is frowned upon, at least in rural areas. So one community doesn’t want you to marry out, and the other community — and I was told this by a very dear friend of mine — that the maulvi gives you a prize if you marry out and you get someone to convert. So that is also going on. That’s not huge, but that touches upon the insecurity of a lot of the Hindu middle class — that we are girly boys, we are vegetarian surrender monkeys, and the Pashtuns are more manly, taller, handsome, fairer than us — and they get our girls. Of course, it goes back to Alauddin Khilji. And Khilji is a derivative of “Zalkhai,” which I was told means “the abductor of women.” And he literally went around abducting or kidnapping all the beautiful local Rajput princesses for his harem. So this goes back 800 years ago. So again, there are layers within layers and memories.
Gary Grappo: The historical roots of the animosities between the two religious groups, Hindu and Muslim, and the two countries—
Atul Singh: Not just two! The Sikhs have an even worse experience of Islam, because their gurus were killed. So Islam has, shall we say, a rocky past, a rocky relationship with other communities everywhere, but especially in the subcontinent. But then amongst Muslims, there’s this feeling that, “The BJP has pushed us out. We don’t matter. They don’t have a single Muslim Member of Parliament. We are excluded politically, and we have to hit back.” So there is this strong animus. And so the ISI has built a number of small cells which it could activate, and in fact, this is what the Mossad keep talking about. They say, “You could have a five-front war. You could have Pakistan. You could have China. You could have attacks on your coasts, which the Bombay and Mumbai attacks proved are very vulnerable. You could have an insurgency.” Let’s say you have 200 million Muslims. Let’s say 1% of them are radicalized — that’s just two million. And let’s say 1% of that 1% actually can do stuff — that’s 20,000. But 20,000 is still a big number.
Gary Grappo: Very big number.
Atul Singh: So if they blow up power plants, if they derail your rail tracks, if they poison your towns’ water supply, you’ll be stretched. You’ll be at breaking point. And we are not even talking about Bangladesh, which has turned against India recently, after Sheikh Hasina has left. It’s now far more radical than it was, the current government doesn’t really have control. Nepal, which has fallen into the communist arc of influence; Bhutan, where the king and I were at Oxford together — a very good chap — but he’s having to gingerly navigate both India and China; Maldives, which has turned more radical Islamic — that is not far from us; Sri Lanka, which, yes, also in the recent past allowed the Chinese to build a port at Hambantota. And so India is scared of the “String of Pearls” that may be used to choke it. The Chinese are scared of the Indians fighting for Anglo-Saxon masters, as they did. Remember the sack of Beijing and Lord Elgin II. Lord Elgin I brought back the Elgin Marbles from the then-Ottoman Empire, and they are in the British Museum proudly — as the British will tell you, they’ve preserved them well. And Lord Elgin II, the son — a Scotsman indeed — went off to Beijing with his Indian troops and sacked the Summer Palace. And the Chinese have not forgotten that. (Laughs) So the Chinese are scared that the Indians may yet again fight for Anglo-Saxon masters.
Gary Grappo: Well, they’re not quite Anglo-Saxon, but it’s not too far-fetched when India now looks at this new relationship — the so-called Quad — that includes the United States and India, Australia and Japan.
Atul Singh: But the US is seen as an Anglo-Saxon power, although—
Gary Grappo: Of course. And I’m sure Austria is as well. And so that leaves Japan, which now has a very cozy relationship with so-called Anglo-Saxon nations, particularly the United States and Australia. And now there’s India, that’s in the mix again.
Atul Singh: It grates on Chinese sensibilities. Please finish your point.
Gary Grappo: Well, the point is that this is a very new development in South Asia. I say “new” in terms of the longer stretch of history, where you have four disparate countries coming together, not yet in a military pact, although three of the four do have a military pact—United States, Japan and Australia. And the Indians, increasingly warming to a quasi-soft, technology-oriented military relationship with the United States, appreciating the superior technology that they’re going to get from the US and the rest of the West, which they’re not going to get — certainly from Russia, which can hardly afford to export even bullets these days, and of course, nothing from China. And so this is a critical relationship, but it hasn’t moved into the traditional Western alliance that the United States has with Japan, with Australia, with its NATO allies. Although, I think deep within the heart of many Americans — and now I’m thinking of the traditional — this administration is hard to predict — would probably love to see that kind of a security relationship with India.
Atul Singh: Yeah, absolutely. And that makes China insecure. So when the Chinese are acting — and remember, India is in a bind with China, as is the US — because India imports a lot of stuff from China.
Gary Grappo: Absolutely.
Atul Singh: It’s economically dependent on China. So, so many of the things India makes, from solar panels to electric cars, the ingredients are all coming from China. So India is in a bind. China is a frenemy in some ways. But China then is propping up Pakistan. The CPEC — China–Pakistan Economic Corridor — and the port in Gwadar. The idea for China is to tie India down in South Asia so that India doesn’t get too big for its boots. So we are in a very tricky geopolitical cocktail, where everyone feels the squeeze in a different way. And I’ve already explained the squeeze Pakistan is feeling. So you’ve got a lot of cats on a hot tin roof. It remains to be seen what transpires. (Laughs)
Gary Grappo: And summer’s not even here yet!
Atul Singh: Exactly, exactly.
US mediation in the face of nuclear danger
Gary Grappo: Well, to close out this subject of this recent rise in tensions when it looks like military action is imminent, is there a role, and is there a mediator? Like, is there a role that a mediator can play in lowering tensions, at least at the moment — the most proximate cause of tensions — to avoid something truly no one would want to contemplate? And if so, who might that be? If you look at the major powers, it ain’t going to be China. The Europeans probably don’t have the heft — they certainly have the interest in seeing this conflict moderated — so who’s that going to be? And can a mediator be helpful here?
Atul Singh: So, two things. India is traditionally averse to mediation between India and Pakistan because of the history. Because it was banned by the United Nations when it took the matter in 1948 to the United Nations instead of finishing the military operations, which it could and would have won at that stage. They could have taken all of Kashmir. They didn’t. And Pakistan changed the demography of Kashmir. And in Kashmir, what happened is that Pakistan-inspired Islamist jihadi terror groups changed the demography of Kashmir, and, in fact — I forgot to say this — they have been changing even the demography of Poonch and Rajouri, the border districts, over the last two, three years in a very concerted way. They target Hindu and Sikh minorities, then they flee. Over a period of time, the district becomes completely Muslim. So ironically, the Indians didn’t do that, and they felt they were always blamed, despite the fact that they had acted in a far more equitable manner than the Pakistanis in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. So Indians lost complete faith in Europe. They saw Europe and, of course, the US, partly because of Cold War alliances, as too beholden to Pakistan.
Gary Grappo: Yeah.
Atul Singh: And the narrative in Europe, even the use of language — that “militant groups” attack — that upsets the Indians. Because, come on, it’s an Islamist terrorist attack. People have been asked whether they are Muslim or not, and if they cannot recite the Kalma — or Kalima, as you would call it in traditional Arabic — they are shot. And in fact, a Christian said, “I’m a Christian. Don’t kill me. I’m not Hindu. I’m not Sikh. I’m not Buddhist.” And they said, “Well, look at what you’re doing in Palestine,” and they shot him anyway. So the reality is, Europe has absolutely no political perches in India at all. If the Europeans say, “We’ll mediate,” the Indians will say, “You can go fuck yourself,” — not in as many words. But there’s a real animosity to European mediation. With the US now changing its policy — and I have a friend who’s Republican, who says that India is the new frontline state against Islamism and communism. And he thinks that the US — obviously, he’s Texan, he’s a Republican — should get India to act robustly. And that is one end of the spectrum. The Pentagon and others, they want closer security ties, you said, with India to counter China. So with that, there are perches. And the US has the ability to mediate, but it’ll have to be a bit deft, and it will have to offer a sweet trade deal to have leverage in India, because India needs a trade deal. And now, with the tariffs, India could hurt very badly. So the US has the ability to mediate, but it would have to be deft and make sure that it understands Indian sensibilities.
Gary Grappo: And how would Pakistanis see an American mediation effort?
Atul Singh: I think the Pakistanis need the International Monetary Fund. You have a lot of leverage against the Pakistanis. (Laughs)
Gary Grappo: Oh yeah — 25% of the vote. (Atul laughs) If they want that next IMF bailout, yeah, they’re going to have to have the Americans.
Atul Singh: Yeah. And remember, all their kit is American. You can just stop upgrading kit and stop sending them spares. So you have a lot of influence. Asim Munir may still offer namaz — or prayer, salah — five times a day, and might remember his imam father preaching jihad against the infidels, and may still resent America and, of course, the Indians. But at the end of the day, he’s become chief. He knows the realities of his army. He’s not going to stand up to the Americans. And the Chinese cannot bail Pakistan out. Ultimately, it is the IMF. So the US has a lot of leverage in Pakistan and can use it. And the US has some leverage against India. And the US, despite all the decline, despite everything, is the only player that can mediate. But it has to be deft about it and not trample sensibilities.
Gary Grappo: And this is where the current US administration would be challenged. You really have to have an appreciation for the nature of this conflict. Yes, there was a devastating terrorist attack by jihadists, with which Americans, of course, can sympathize greatly. But the level of tensions are far, far deeper, and the complexities you’ve just outlined over the course of this discussion are virtually infinite. And that’s where I think this deftness is really critical in understanding that this is just not another conflict; this is something very different. And kid gloves are going to be necessary if you’re going to be able to successfully ratchet down tensions here and avoid an ugly military confrontation.
Atul Singh: Yeah. And one more thing we have to remember is that the reality is that neither side wants all-out war.
Gary Grappo: Correct.
Atul Singh: And so they want — what’s the term — an off-ramp. They want a ramp they can take and something that’ll save face for both parties.
Gary Grappo: Absolutely.
Atul Singh: Do you think Narendra Modi wants war? Absolutely not. After the Agnipath scheme, a war may be tricky. And Asim Munir knows he runs a bankrupt country.
Gary Grappo: Yeah. And it’s important to remind all of our viewers that we are talking about two nuclear-armed states.
Atul Singh: Yep.
Gary Grappo: And there is no individual on either side who wants to see this escalate to a point where one side may feel pressured, so threatened, to resort to the use of a nuclear weapon. And both sides understand that very, very clearly. This is—
Atul Singh: On that note, maybe I will differ a little bit. Because I think Pakistan’s nuclear threshold is really low.
Gary Grappo: Oh, yeah. Their thresholds are different.
Atul Singh: And India has a no-nuclear-first-strike doctrine. So India is not going to use nuclear weapons first. But Pakistan keeps threatening to, because that’s what gives it leverage. And fanatics in Pakistan — the graduates of the madrasas who have now infiltrated the army — the top man has gone to a madrasa, right?
Gary Grappo: Yep.
Atul Singh: So they, unfortunately, are talking a lot about using tactical nukes. So it’s not that both sides don’t want to use it. One side, increasingly, is open to using nukes, at least tactical nukes — and that is something to throw in the calculus. Because the old assumption, when you had the Scotch-drinking generals running Pakistan — let’s say Pervez Musharraf, right? The chap liked tennis. His top priority was Scotch, Scotch and Scotch, and then tennis came a distant second, okay? He certainly didn’t want nuclear weapons. Yeah, he wanted an advantage, he took the Kargil heights and yada ya. But I think what you said held absolutely true then. Now, we are not so sure that there aren’t people who are willing, and who make this assumption that, “Yeah, we have nothing to lose,” because Pakistan has gotten poorer, it’s gotten more desperate. Its population has increased, it is an extremely fractious society. The most popular leader, Imran Khan, has been locked up. The Pakistani military now has put the Sharif family and the Bhutto family in charge, both of whom are extraordinarily corrupt. The Sharif family is notorious for making tons of money. They are businessmen. The Bhuttos, the less said, the better. Bilawal Bhutto was known at Oxford for sex, drugs and rock and roll. There are tabloid reports of orgies that he used to conduct back in the day — that may or may not be true, who knows? But the point is that he speaks Urdu with an English accent; he’s completely not credible. So what the military has done to Pakistan is that because the democratic escape valve isn’t there for the tension to get out, because the state has not provided things like schools, hospitals, basic services, the population has swung and turned to the mullahs and the madrasas. And there’s a millenarian element in Pakistan. And Pakistan could very easily, in five, ten, 20 years — if it doesn’t implode — go the Iran way. So the calculus doesn’t hold that neither side wants nuclear weapons. I think if it’s an American diplomat, if it is an American politician, if it is anybody in Europe who’s thinking about these issues, or elsewhere in the world — even if it’s someone Chinese listening to our conversation — they have to bear in mind that the risks here are really high. And remember, because India is nationalist now, India will respond. In an earlier era, India would have restrained. And I think in India, their preferred response is as little war as possible. Because remember, Modi is Gujarati and his home minister is Gujarati: Amit Shah. They don’t come from military backgrounds, they don’t come from military families. No one in their family has ever served in the military, as far as I know. They are not geared for military conflict. But they understand water because they come from an arid region. So their favored method would be: stop the water.
Gary Grappo: Good point. Well, I think we’ve come up on our time here before we got into the great power discussion. And we’ll save that for a part two. But thank you so much for giving us these insights, sharing these insights. Confrontation between these two very, very large, heavily armed countries has great import — not only within the region, but globally.
Atul Singh: Thank you, sir. Thank you for the conversation.
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