Amid increasing hostilities between India and Pakistan following the Pahalgam terror attack, Islamabad has claimed to have conducted a training launch of the Abdali Weapon System — a surface-to-surface missile with a range of 450 kilometers, as part of its military drill titled ‘Exercise INDUS.’
A statement from Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said the launch was aimed at ensuring the operational readiness of troops and validating key technical parameters, including the missile’s advanced navigation system and enhanced manoeuvrability features.
“The training launch was witnessed by the Commander Army Strategic Forces Command, senior officials from the Strategic Plans Division, Army Strategic Forces Command, as well as scientists and engineers from Pakistan’s strategic organisations,” it said.
The missile’s training launch came days after Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said Islamabad had “credible intelligence” that India intends to launch a military strike within 24 to 36 hours in response to the Pahalgam terror attack.
The missile’s name, Abdali Weapon System, and the military drill’s name, Exercise INDUS, leave no doubt that the missile test-firing is primarily aimed at sending a message to India that Islamabad is prepared and determined to respond forcefully to any Indian military action.
The tactical missile, which can carry both conventional and nuclear warheads, is named after Ahmad Shah Abdali, the 18th-century Afghan ruler who led numerous invasions in the Indian subcontinent, underlining its symbolic significance.
The military drill titled ‘Exercise INDUS’ refers to the river Indus, which has been in the spotlight since India put the 1960 Indus Water Treaty (IWT) in abeyance following the deadly Pahalgam terror attack.
Pakistan has repeatedly warned that it will consider any breach of the terms of the treaty as an ‘act of war.’
What Is The Abdali Weapon System?
The Abdali Weapon System, a surface-to-surface ballistic missile with a claimed range of 450 kilometres, is also known in Pakistan as Hatf-II.
The missile was developed by Pakistan’s Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) and entered service in 2005. It is an upgraded version of Hatf 1, a short-range, solid-fueled ballistic missile.
According to Missile Threat, a missile defense project of the Center for Strategic & International Studies, the road-mobile missile can carry a warhead weighing between 250 and 450 kg.
“It is carried on a road mobile Transporter-Erector-Launcher (TEL) vehicle. The use of solid propellant and the TEL vehicle makes the missile easy to store, transport, and fire,” it says.
The Hatf 2 measures 6.5 m in length, 0.56 m in diameter, and weighs 1,750 kg at launch. The Hatf 2 is equipped with an inertial guidance system with a Circular error probable (CEP) of 150 m. It uses a single-stage solid propellant engine.
The missile test at this critical juncture will certainly worsen an already tense situation between the two nuclear-armed countries.
However, what caught the eye of many security analysts was the peculiar name of the missile – The Abdali Weapon System.
What’s In The Name?
Pakistan naming its missile after an 18th-century Afghan king can sound surprising to many, given the current hostile relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and also because Abdali launched many devastating raids in the geographic boundaries of modern-day Pakistan from his base in mountainous Afghanistan.
In modern-day parlance, this would be akin to Ukraine naming its missile after the Russian empress Catherine the Great, who annexed Crimea and other parts of Western Ukraine and unified them with the Russian Empire in the late 18th century.
However, those who have followed Pakistan and the evolution of its military and security doctrine know that there is nothing surprising here. Instead, this fits in with Pakistan naming most of its missiles after foreign raiders from the medieval period, most of them Turks and a few Afghans.
Several Pakistani missiles have been named after Muslim rulers who invaded India at various points in history.
Among them, Ghaznavi (Haft-III) is named after Mahmud of Ghaznvi, an ethnic Turk who ruled from Afghanistan and, according to legend, invaded India 17 times at the beginning of the 11th century.
Among his most famous or infamous exploits (depending on which side of the border you live on) is his 1025 AD invasion and destruction of the revered and famed Somnath Temple on the Gujarat coast.
Another Pakistani missile is named Ghauri-I and Ghauri-II, named after Mahmud of Ghor, another Afghan ruler who invaded India (and modern-day Pakistan) in the late 12th century.
After losing the first battle of Tarain (1191 AD) against the ruler of Ajmer, Prithvi Raj Chahuan, Ghori emerged victorious in the second battle the following year and laid the foundation of the Delhi Sultanate (1206-1526 AD) or Muslim rule in Northern India.
Similarly, Babur (Hatf-VII) is named after the founder of the Mughal Empire in India. Babur, an ethnic Turk, belonged to the Fargana valley in present-day Uzbekistan and first invaded Afghanistan and then India after his cousins kicked him out of his ancestral lands in a fratricidal war.
One of the Pakistani Navy frigates is named Alamgir, after Babur’s descendant Aurangzeb, particularly known for his cruelty and discriminatory practices against Hindus, such as imposing Jaziya, a religious tax applicable to non-Muslims, and destroying places of worship of Hindus like the Kashi Vishwanath temple and the Krishna Janmabhoomi Temple in Mathura.
Another port in Sindh is named after Muhammad bin Qasim, an Arab commander who conquered the region in the 8th century and laid the foundations of Muslim rule in the Indian subcontinent.
The common theme among all these names is that none of these weapon systems is named after a local hero.
Naming Pakistani weapon systems after these foreign invaders serves a twofold purpose. First, they give the strategic message that all Pakistani weapon systems are targeted towards India, thus naming them after kings and Sultans who invaded India. Second, these names seek to justify the ‘two-nation theory’ that led to the creation of Pakistan in 1947, thus consciously picking those rulers from history who are known for their violence towards Hindus or for destroying the places of worship of Hindus.
A second category of Pakistani weapon systems is named after heroes from Islamic history, though not particularly related to the history of Islam in South Asia. Thus, the missile series named Hatf, an Arabic term meaning ‘vengeance’ and an appellation for Muhammad’s lance.
Another Pakistani frigate, Zulfiquar, is named after Muhammad’s sabre. Two Pakistani tank codenames, Al-Khalid and Al-Zarrar, pay tribute to famous Arabic commanders under Muhammad.
This serves the role of cementing the identity-making process in Pakistan. It is worth mentioning that the very first time the term ‘Pakistan’ was used was in 1933, when a law student at Cambridge University used it to describe the “Muslim homelands” of western and northern India.
In the four-page booklet “Now or Never,” Chaudhary Rahmat Ali mentioned Pakistan for the first time. Even though Pakistan was founded explicitly in the name of Islam, the country has a vibrant and diverse history, and various religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism, flourished in this land at different points.
However, by naming weapon systems exclusively from Islamic history, the Pakistani establishment is acknowledging its Islamic roots while discarding its Hindu, Buddhist, and Sikh history. It sends a crucial message that the modern Pakistani identity has no space for its Hindu, Buddhist, and Sikh past.
Another common theme is naming weapons in terms taken from Persian and Arabic languages, rather than from Urdu, Punjabi, Balochi, Pashto, or Sindhi, the local languages spoken in Pakistan.
Thus, one of Pakistan’s missiles is named Nasr, meaning ‘victory’ in Arabic. Another one is named Ababeel, ‘sparrow’ in Arabic, and Shaheen, ‘falcon’ in Persian. However, one would be hard-pressed to remember any Pakistani weapon system named after a term in the Punjabi language, spoken by nearly 37 percent of Pakistani citizens.
This is not just a semantic usage but a conscious choice on the part of the Pakistani establishment, which is part of the wider Islamization of Pakistani identity. Apparently, in the Pakistani psyche, even the use of local languages for naming weapon systems is risky, as local languages are dangerously linked to the pre-Islamic identity of Pakistani citizens.
Indian Weapon Systems
A sociological study of the naming of Indian weapon systems compared to Pakistan reveals a crucial difference in the founding ideology of these two states.
India has not overtly named its weapon systems after those Hindu kings who fought Muslim invaders. Though if New Delhi wanted to follow a pattern similar to naming conventions followed by its neighbor, Islamabad, it had many options it could have chosen from, for instance, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, who fought Alamgir Aurangzeb (the name of a Pakistani frigate), or Bajirao, who decimated Mughals and established Marathas as the supreme power in India, or Rana Sanga of Mewar, who fought Babur (the name of Pakistani missile) in the Battle of Khanwa in 1527, or Maharana Pratap, who heroically fought Mughal Emperor Akbar and maintained Mewar’s sovereignty, or Hemu, who defeated Mughals and briefly became the king of Delhi.
The Sikh history is also replete with heroes who bravely fought the Muslim invaders like Guru Gobind Singh and Maharaja Ranjit Singh, who carved out a Sikh kingdom in the heart of Punjab (present-day Pakistan) after defeating the descendants of Ahmad Shah Abdali (the name of the missile Pakistan tested on May 3).
Instead, many Indian army names are taken from Sanskrit, India’s ancient language. Thus, Prithvi, meaning ‘Earth,’ is the name of a surface-to-surface missile. Akash, meaning ‘Sky,’ is the name of a surface-to-air missile. Arihant, meaning’ slayer of enemies, ‘ is the name of an Indian submarine.
Prachand, meaning ‘fierce,’ is the name of a light combat helicopter (LCH). Dhruv, meaning ‘unshakeable,’ is the name of an advanced light helicopter (ALH). Tejas, meaning ‘brightness,’ is the name of India’s latest Light Combat Aircraft (LCA).
Some Indian weapon systems are named after India’s epic literature. Thus, India’s tanks are named Arjuna and Bhishma, popular characters from the epic Mahabharata.
Another set of weapon systems is named after Vedic gods, such as Agni (intercontinental range ballistic missiles), Varuna (the Indian Navy’s first square-rig sail training vessel), and Rudra (an armed version of ALH Dhruv).
India has also named weapons after Hindu kings, but not necessarily those who fought Muslim invaders. Thus, INS Vikramaditya, the Indian Navy’s first aircraft carrier, is named after a Hindu king, who fought and defeated invaders from the West, but Shakas, not Muslims.
Thus, India, as a secular country, has taken care not to name its weapons systems with an overtly anti-Muslim symbolism. Also, notwithstanding Pakistan’s attempts to appropriate the Persian language with Islamic identity, India has also named its weapon systems in the Persian language. Thus, SEPECAT Jaguar, a British-French supersonic jet, was christened Shamsher, ‘Sword of Justice’ in Persian.
Indian Navy ships are also named Bahadur and Buland, Persian terms for ‘brave’ and ‘exalted.’
Thus, the nomenclature of weapon systems in India and Pakistan reveals a lot about the founding principles of these two states and the process of identity formation in these countries after their partition in 1947.
- Sumit Ahlawat has over a decade of experience in news media. He has worked with Press Trust of India, Times Now, Zee News, Economic Times, and Microsoft News. He holds a Master’s Degree in International Media and Modern History from the University of Sheffield, UK.
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- He can be reached at ahlawat.sumit85 (at) gmail.com
