PM avoids key issues, tries to deflect focus

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s radio address on Sunday characteristically tried to deflect attention from the main issue -- the Chinese Army’s occupation of terrain adjoining the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh previously patrolled by India -- in favour of self-serving political polemic. On the 21st anniversary of the Kargil Vijay Diwas, the PM heaped oppobrium on Pakistan, the evergreen easy target, calling it wicked, and for whom “enmity with one and all comes naturally”. No doubt, the 1999 Kargil intrusion was deceitful, but in international relations one moves on. Hardly anyone reminds Germany any more about the Third Reich’s crimes during the 1940s.

However, our creative PM always has a method and that was evident when he moved rhetorically from Pakistan to the “battles (that are) fought within the country too, on many fronts simultaneously”, and the occasions when “without paying heed to the essence, we encourage certain things on social media that are detrimental to the country”. He was specifically referring to the Congress Party’s Rahul Gandhi, who on Monday released another video on the social media holding the government to account for the Chinese land-grab in Ladakh. “If you want me to say that the Chinese have not entered our country, I’m simply not going to lie,” Mr Gandhi said. “I don’t mind if my whole career goes to hell, but I’m not going to lie.”

The Congress leader, unlike other Opposition leaders who obviously don’t want to expend political capital by attacking the teflon-coated PM, was referring to Mr Modi’s June 19 statement to political parties where he said that China had not entered Indian territory. He obviously did that to reassure his core constituency; it is a pattern that whenever the PM states something, no matter how economical with the truth he is -- it is a commonality between strongmen leaders around the world that their primary tool of consolidating support is nothing more than mendacity -- the public laps it up and as the final word.

However, former soldiers in the print media, experts abroad, and private satellite imagery all show that the Chinese are dug in, after having ingressed as deep as 16 km into Indian territory. Defence minister Rajnath Singh nearly a fortnight back visited Ladakh and admitted that there was no guarantee that the matter would be resolved, nor how long the disengagement would take.

But rather than address these grave matters, the PM as usual has flipped the matter on its head. He has lumped Rahul Gandhi — and anyone else who questions the government on what is going on in Ladakh — with “wicked” Pakistan. Mr Modi disingenuously warned that “whatever we say or do has immense bearing on the morale of the soldier” — but nowhere has Mr Gandhi questioned our troops, much less sought to lower their morale. It is the PM’s usual tactic of deflection and changing the subject when his government’s competence is called into question. His “Mann ki Baat” shows that if anyone’s morale is fragile, it is his own.

He has lumped Rahul Gandhi and anyone else who questions the government on what is going on in Ladakh with “wicked” Pakistan.