Some countries, including Pakistan, had a national security advisor (NDA). India did not have one. It was not needed in the constitutional scheme of things. It was the late Atal Bihari Vajpayee who first thought about the need to have such an advisor.  Actually, he wanted to give a job to the late Brajesh Mishra.

Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar once said that disgruntled bureaucrats got attracted to the BJP. Mishra was a case in point. He was the son of Dwarka Prasad Mishra, considered a Chanakya, when he was the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. For any diplomat, the ultimate post that he or she aspires to get is Foreign Secretary.

Brajesh Mishra was not considered fit enough to be given this post, though he had become a secretary-rank officer in the External Affairs Ministry. It was to accommodate this retired officer that Vajpayee created the post of NSA. Because he had the support of the Prime Minister, he became very powerful and began to pontificate on everything under the sun.

The late JN Dixit was later appointed NSA. He wrote a regular column for the Indian Express after his retirement and I was in regular touch with him. He was a brilliant strategist and his column bristled with fresh ideas and clever thoughts. He confessed to me that the remuneration he received from the newspaper was his main source of income, not his pension.

When MK Narayanan, who once headed the intelligence bureau and was personally loyal to the Nehru-Gandhi family, had to be given a sinecure, he was accommodated as an NSA. Then came Shivshankar Menon, who like his father, retired as Foreign Secretary.

Narayanan remained clueless about geopolitical reality for his job in the IB was as a spy.

When Narendra Modi came to power in 2014, he caused a surprise when he chose Ajit Kumar Doval as his NSA. Ten long years had passed since he retired as Director, Intelligence Bureau. Born in Pauri Garhwal in Uttarakhand in British India, two years before India became independent, he had impeccable credentials as a Hindutva person.

There are many stories, of course, cooked up, about his sleuthing abilities. How he worked as an auto-rickshaw driver in Pakistan while gathering intelligence for India. While leaving a mosque after prayers, a Pakistani accosted him and told him that he was not a Muslim. Because he had a pierced ear! 

To that he replied that he was a Hindu Brahmin who converted to Islam. The Pakistani took him to his house. There, the “Muslim” opened a cupboard and showed him an idol he kept to worship secretly. 

There are better stories to read on the Internet about Doval’s exploits. Before he became the NSA, he was heading a so-called think-tank associated with the Sangh Parivar.

Doval is a colourful officer. Modi trusts him so much that he was given the status of a Cabinet Minister. When Modi became PM, he introduced a rule that no official post would be given to anyone who crossed 75. This was done mainly to keep Lal Krishna Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi at bay. 

If Modi had followed this principle, he should have given Doval a much-deserved send-off more than a year ago. The irony is that he continues to call the shots, though his post has no constitutional sanctity.

The 1968-batch IPS officer caused flutters in academic, political and non-government sectors when he addressed the police officers at the passing-out parade at the Police Academy in Hyderabad on November 11. He talked about a new kind of war, less expensive and more effective, that the enemies of India have been waging against the country and the police officers’ duty to protect the national interest. 

He should have known that an honest citizen who pays his taxes correctly and obeys the laws of the land has greater interest in protecting the national interest than a paid officer.

Let me quote the NSA, “The new frontiers of war, what you call the fourth-generation warfare, is the civil society. Wars have ceased to become an effective instrument for achieving their political or military objectives. They are too expensive and unaffordable and, at the same time, there is an uncertainty about their outcomes. 

“But it is the civil society, that can be subverted, that can be suborned, that can be divided, that can be manipulated, to hurt the interests of a nation. And you are there to see that they stand fully protected.” 

He also added: “Quintessence of democracy does not lie in the ballot box. It lies in the laws which are made by the people who are elected through these ballot boxes.” However shocking Doval’s theory was, I did not doubt its paternity which, in any case, is a belief while maternity is a fact.

My friend and former colleague at the Indian Express Bharat Bhushan has in an article in the Business Standard headlined “Frontier of warfare? Wrong to securitise civil society discourse” picked holes in his argument and pointed out that Doval was merely repeating a Western theory, found worthy of rejection.

“Fourth generation warfare is a theory developed by William Lind and others in an article written for the Marine Corps Gazette in 1989. According to them, first generation warfare was defined by the use of massed manpower, second by firepower; third, by manoeuvre, and now the fourth generation, by insurgency using political, economic and social network to demoralise the adversary.

“Critics of the concept such as Antulio J. Echevarria II of the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College, have pointed out that the concept of  fourth generation warfare is bogus with no analytical value. He argues that the several forms of warfare have always coexisted. For example, insurgency predates second and third generation warfare (firepower and manoeuvre) suggesting that there is no evolved fourth generation quality about it.

“He argues that throughout history, terrorists, guerrillas and other insurgents have tried to erode the opponent’s will to fight through non-military means. The only difference today is that with access to information and communication technologies and global travel, terrorists and insurgents can strike wider and deeper into society”. Thus, Doval’s theory has nothing original or new about it.

When the American political scientist, the late Samuel Phillips Huntington argued in an article, rewritten as a book in the nineties, that future wars would be fought not between countries, but between cultures, there were many in India who jumped on to his bandwagon and argued that the Hindus would have to fight the Muslims. The theory has been proved as hollow as Doval’s latest theory copied from an American journal of 1989.

Modi’s government is a National Democratic Alliance government. It is just a name. It is a BJP government as the party enjoys a majority on its own in the Lower House of Parliament. Every BJP minister has someone from the RSS attached to him or her in some capacity. That person vets all the political decisions taken by the minister concerned. The minister cannot even attend a function without the clearance from the RSS.

This being the case, it can verily be said that the Modi government is the first national government controlled by the RSS. And what is the RSS? It is a non-government organisation (NGO), which has a hastily-written constitution, mainly to bluff Sardar Patel and lift the government ban on it. 

Democracy is not practised in the organisation where the supreme commander, Sarsanghchalak, is nominated by the outgoing sarsanghchalak in a sealed envelope. 

In other words, India is, perhaps, the only country ruled by an NGO, indirectly though. Yet, this government has been the most vocal against the civil society organisations, also called NGOs. After Doval’s speech at Hyderabad, apologists of the Sangh Parivar have been using the media to distinguish between foreign- funded, anti-national NGOs like Amnesty International. 

Incidentally, there are hundreds of NGOs affiliated to the Sangh Parivar, including the Vivekananda International Foundation, founded by Doval.

His own son Shaurya Doval is the founder of another Foundation, called India Foundation. These foundations are also NGOs. I do not want to go into allegations that his son’s company has Pakistani and Saudi Arabian persons as his partners. What can be said with certainty is that the Modi government is the most NGO-unfriendly government.

Whatever Modi and his ilk say, there are tens of millions of people in India who do not have two assured square meals a day. True, some foreign agencies have been sending money to some NGOs. The beneficiaries include even NGOs run by persons like Mata Amritanandamayi and in the name of Satya Sai Baba. The large hospital built by Satya Sai Baba was with the money given by an American.

I do not question the good work they do. What did the government do? According to a report in The Guardian, the foreign remittances received by the NGOs fell from US$2.05 billion to $884.50 million between 2014 when Modi came to power and 2017. 

The Foreign Contributions Regulation Act (FCRA) has been amended to the disadvantage of the NGOs. Modi promised minimum government and maximum governance. In the case of the FCRA, all the NGOs in the country which have an FCRA account can receive foreign money only through their FCRA account maintained in one bank on Parliament Street, New Delhi. Isn't this over-centralisation?

Doval talked about the fourth-generation war. The Ramayana tells the story of how Hanuman as an emissary of Rama caused damages to the Capital of Ravan.  His understanding of the Constitution, civil society etc are flawed, as pointed out by his batchmate MG Devasahayam, who was posted in Chandigarh when the Emergency was declared, in an article in theprint.in. I had a long meeting with him when I joined The Tribune.

As I mentioned, Doval was born as a British subject. He does not realise that India has gained Independence and India is now a Republic and the people are citizens, distinct from subjects. He says the “quintessence of democracy does not lie in the ballot box. It lies in the laws which are made by the people who are elected through these ballot boxes”. 

His understanding of the rule of law is wrong. Indira Gandhi did not introduce any new law when she imposed the Emergency and arrested persons like Morarji Desai and LK Advani. She merely used the existing provisions of the law. That did not make her action legal.

Today, the BJP has a majority in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha. That is why it was able to have the three controversial farm laws drafted, approved and enforced so quickly. Finally, Modi had to make a climbdown and promise to withdraw the laws.

Indira Gandhi got her regime extended by one year but she had to hold elections in which her government was rejected by the voters. Doval would have played a major role in the scrapping of Article 370. Did it yield any results? Has the situation in Kashmir normalised?

Of course, he thinks that power is what matters. If power was the issue, the IPKF in Sri Lanka would not have returned with a bloody nose and the Americans from Vietnam and, now, Afghanistan.

In a democracy, the citizen is paramount. The citizen authorises the elected government to enact laws but the laws cannot alter certain principles enshrined in the Constitution like equality, liberty and fraternity. The Supreme Court once said that the basic structure of the Constitution cannot be altered.

Doval’s boss had to suspend operation of the farm laws on the orders of the Supreme Court. That is the beauty of democracy. Ultimately, Modi and Company are the servants of the people, not masters. I wish Doval understood his limitations and stopped waging a war against the NGOs. If any of them is doing anything wrong, the law of the land is capable of dealing with them. There is no need for a war. 

At Jallianwala Bagh in 1919, the British officer ordered the Indians soldiers to fire against the innocent people who could only run against a wall. Today, if an officer gives such an order, his subordinates have the right to disobey it. Because they are citizens, not subjects!

ajphilip@gmail.com