With its military strike in territory controlled by Pakistan and constant drumbeat of jingoistic rhetoric, the Bharatiya Janata Party has made good on the promise of its general secretary, Ram Madhav, that the "time for strategic restraint is over". Another credo, meanwhile, has been summarizing military strategy and spilling over into campaign speeches, news headlines, and celebrity gossip. It is the signature phrase of our increasingly vengeful times: the "befitting reply".
The least ambiguous use of "befitting reply" in the press relates to the perpetual exchange of gunfire and bombs along the India-Pakistan border, each potentially murderous volley a "befitting reply" to the last one. Following the recent attack on the Nagrota army base, Vikas Chandra, Inspector General of the Border Security Force, told a gathering of reporters, "Ceasefire violations take place and we have given befitting reply." When I asked him to elaborate on what he meant by the phrase, he had a limited definition in mind: "If they are firing rifles, we respond with rifles," he said. "If they are firing by mortar, we will reply by mortar. We are not escalating things. Whatever they are firing, we are responding accordingly."
Yet this code for retaliation also functions as a more diffuse cliché. "Priyanka Chopra Gives A Befitting Reply When Asked If She Knew English When She First Came To US", "Priyanka Chopra gives a befitting reply to Aamir Khan's haters", and "Priyanka Chopra gives a befitting reply to her armpit trolls" have all been news headlines in the past 12 months alone. As much as this use of the idiom may seem to be a polite remnant of British English, "befitting reply" is a translation most English-language publications - including, for example, The Hindustan Times, The Indian Express, and The Telegraph - have used for muh tod jawab, the Hindi phrase for "face-smashing reply". This equivalence is a stark example of the violence "befitting reply" connotes.
It is a threat that lurks behind two euphemisms. When the "reply" in question is military or political, it is more physical than verbal. Why exactly such "replies" are "befitting" tends to go unsaid. This word might refer to proportionality, or deterrence, or some other basis for moral or strategic reasoning, but it might just as well refer to spite and resentment. By ignoring these distinctions, the speaker can assert that he doesn't really care about them. What he's after is revenge, pure and simple, through any means necessary.
It is this implication of "befitting reply" that India's elected leaders find so potent. "Its increased use," Siddharth Varadarajan, founding editor of The Wire, said in an email, "reflects the growing salience of vengeance as substitute for politics, policy, diplomacy, strategy." After one recent round of firing from across the Line of Control, Sat Sharma, an MLA in Jammu and Kashmir and the president of the BJP's state unit, assured his constituents that the "Indian army and security forces are strong enough to give a befitting reply to Pakistan". He wrote me later explaining, like Chandra, that "befitting reply" referred to administering an "appropriate Deterrence for Pakistan", but also added that the phrase "will look like appropriate punishment to enemy to instill confidence of masses".
Sharma is only one of many Indian politicians to be consciously goading the "masses". The latest adherents to the school of the befitting reply come from the Trinamul Congress. Speaking recently in Delhi and Lucknow, far outside her base of support, Mamata Banerjee urged voters to deliver a "befitting reply" to the government's demonetization of high-value currency and compared Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Adolf Hitler. It is no surprise that Banerjee is fearmongering as she asserts herself on the national stage. Persuaded that we are all under siege, we might just be united.
