India isn’t fighting a half-front war — it’s fighting twenty at once. This Kashmir LitFest panel diagnoses the real threat.

Senior military veterans and strategic thinkers examine how Pakistan’s information warfare, active since 1947, continues through media manipulation and diaspora radicalism. The panel broadens beyond Kashmir to address Manipur’s Meitei-Kuki tensions, Central India’s unrest, and the ripple effects across South India — arguing that what happens in Tripura impacts Kashmir and vice versa. A key insight: the “half-front” military concept is insufficient because the real threat is internal societal fracture. The solution, panellists insist, must be fundamentally political — with the military as only a holding instrument.

About the Speakers:

General Devendra Pratap Pandey, PVSM, UYSM, AVSM, VSM is a retired general officer of the Indian Army. He was the Commandant of the Army War College, Mhow and has previously served as the General Officer Commanding of the Srinagar based Chinar Corps. He also served as the first Director General of Territorial Army of the Indian Army.

Ramnik Singh Mann, is a hard-core Gursikh and nationalist, a scholar, observer & speaker on socio-political-religious-policy matters. He comes from the Army background and is known for not mincing his words. A civil engineer and MBA from one of India’s top colleges, he heads a Chandigarh based construction company.

Shiv Kunal Verma is a journalist, a filmmaker, and a writer. Verma began as a journalist before producing acclaimed military documentaries like Salt of the Earth and The Standard Bearers. As an author, his notable works include 1962: The War That Wasn’t, 1965: A Western Sunrise, The Long Road to Siachen, and Yodha.

Raja Muneeb is a journalist, columnist, and geopolitical observer from Kashmir, specializing in national security and South Asian affairs. His work appears in outlets like Firstpost, CNN-News18 and he also contributes to India Foundation.