LAL KRISHNA Advani has belled the cat by criticising the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorist Squad for torturing Sadhvi Pragya Singh and illegally detaining her. Torture and illegal detention have no place in a civilized society, and the voice of the former Home Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and our possible future Prime Minister, is an important one on this issue.
I only wish that Mr Advani’s expression of “shock and outrage” at the treatment of the sadhvi would have extended to all Indians, and indeed anyone who is arrested or detained in India. Torture and illegal detention are themselves illegal, but have been widely practiced in this country with little or no check from the government or the judiciary.
Torture is the start point of other atrocities we should be ashamed of — custodial deaths, disappearances and fake encounters. Torture dehumanizes the person who is at its receiving end, but not many realise that it cannot but fail to do the same for the person who is inflicting it, and the system that is allowing the state of affairs to continue.
Innocent
There is scarcely a day in which we do not hear about custodial violence in the country. People are rightly outraged by this and sometimes react violently. But the onset of terrorism has led to a problem. The ruthless manner in which terrorists operate — blowing up or killing men, women and children without the slightest pity — ensures that there is no sympathy for terrorists arrested or killed.
That is fair enough, there should be no sympathy for the purveyors of mindless violence. But this has a dangerous edge. It has led to a situation where the society is ready to condone illegal acts against terrorist suspects, including torture or their summary execution by the police.
If all those tortured and killed had actually been guilty, this could at a pinch be justified, though not be legally or morally tenable. The fact is that many innocent people end up tortured, detained and killed as well. And this is unacceptable to a society based on the primacy of the rule of law, and which calls itself civilised.
Take the case that made the headlines last week when it was announced that the Andhra Pradesh government would offer compensatory loans of Rs 30- 80,000 each to 15 young men who had been among 70 picked up after the two terror attacks in Hyderabad last year.
They had been in custody for six to nine months and in this period they had been stripped, subjected to electric shocks, hung upside down and beaten. All of them were innocent. But the detention and torture were only one aspect of their suffering. They have been released, but they will bear the trauma all their lives.
Earlier this year, another case made the headlines. In January, Aftab Alam Ansari, an electrician from Kolkata, spent twenty horrific days in custody in Lucknow because of a police blunder that made him out to be a suspected explosive courier. In a bid to make him acknowledge his role in various terrorist incidents, he was beaten black and blue. He was one of the lucky ones — he got away after the police were convinced of his innocence.
In my book, everyone, even those accused of heinous terrorist acts have the right to be dealt with under the laws of the land, which most certainly do not give sanction to the kind of pre-arrest detention that Pragya says she has undergone, leave alone the beatings and abuse she alleges that the ATS has inflicted on her.
India has made great advances as a democratic country. From the outset, it set out to assist the erstwhile untouchable castes to get education and government jobs. The spread of democracy expanded to the point where many of the previously ostracized groups have become important political actors thus empowering themselves and their communities. The need to empower backward classes forms an important basis of our politics and constitution.
But one extremely important area has been impervious to governmental or judicial reform — the manner in which India’s police handles its citizens, especially those who have been taken into custody on suspicion of having committed a crime. In Mr. Advani’s own words, the system is “barbaric”.
Beating of prisoners is routine as are the more “refined” means of torture such as the roller treatment and electric shocks. Some have argued that the current trend towards narco-tests — themselves of questionable value — are a means of lessening the brutality of torture.
One of the important negative consequences of the routine use of torture by the police is that it discourages the use of forensics and scientific investigation by the police. After all it is much easier to beat a confession out of a suspect than to painstakingly build up a fool proof case that will result in the conviction of a suspect. This is why, Mr Advani, right-thinking people oppose the key provision of POTA— the recognition of the legitimacy of a confession before the police.
Failure
India’s political class, bureaucracy or judiciary have made no effort to do something about this. The judiciary understands well what “police custody” usually means. Through a 1997 observation, the Supreme Court directed the government to take all steps necessary to prevent torture in the country. But little has changed. We also have wonderful laws about the need for warrants to enter someone’s house, or the right to a lawyer and so on. Neither courts, nor the national and state human rights commissions have intervened to set the situation right.
India has very reluctantly signed the UN Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) but has not ratified it on the claim that the domestic mechanisms — the independent judiciary, the Criminal procedure code and Indian penal code — are sufficient for preventing brutality and inhuman treatment. But this is a patent untruth.
What we need is the creation of independent groups and commissions that can investigate charges of police high-handedness and violence and obtain judicial redress. Only a zero-tolerance regime, policed by the people themselves can end this tyranny.
Challenge
Terrorism is a fundamental challenge to liberal democracy. Just how much of a challenge is borne out by what happened to the US in the wake of Nine-Eleven when it created the Guantanamo prison, tortured suspects or ensured their torture at the hands of allies. If the citadel of liberal democracy crumbled with the speed that it did, you can imagine the challenge that India faces.
Yet when the Abu Ghraib scandal exploded there was outrage across the US. Guantanamo has become a bad word in the country.
In the US and other liberal democracies, there is a public abhorrence of torture and such degrading punishment. Most actions are seen as being an aberration from the norm.
Unfortunately, in India we are yet to see a consensus around the idea that torture is inhuman and has no place in a democratic and civilised society which we assume we live in.
Leaders like Mr Advani can do signal service by sensitising the people to the illegalities being done in the name of fighting terrorism.
But he can make a difference only if he demands that all Indians — Hindu, Muslim or Christian — be treated equally before the law and with the assumption that they are innocent until proved guilty in
a court of law, not the police station.
This article was first published in Mail Today November 21, 2008
Showing posts with label L.K. Advani. Show all posts
Showing posts with label L.K. Advani. Show all posts
Friday, November 21, 2008
Monday, June 23, 2008
India was saved by Pokhran nuclear tests
The United Progressive Alliance government did not celebrate the 10th anniversary of India’s Pokhran II nuclear tests. May I on behalf of the people of the country, then, raise two cheers for the occasion in this column? Only two, because testing weapons of mass destruction was a dreadful necessity, rather than an occasion for celebration. Just how necessary it was has become apparent in this past week when it has been revealed that Pakistan had by then — with the help of the Chinese — developed a sophisticated and compact nuclear weapon, based on a proven Chinese design that was tested in 1966.
Whether the National Democratic Alliance government had some secret information of this, or whether it was what it inferred from the test of the Ghauri missile on April 8, 1998, it is now clear that we had very little time to lose and fortunately we had a government that acted. Going by the reaction of the Congress and the Left at the time, and their behaviour since, you can be sure that had the UPA government been confronted with the situation today, it would have dithered, and its Left allies would have ensured that India did not become a nuclear weapons state.
Now the deed is done. India’s nuclear arsenal is nothing to write home about, and its missile programme moves at a glacial pace, but as far as deterrence goes, a couple of bombs and missiles are fine, and the political consensus for it is so strong that the Left cannot roll it back.
A.Q. Khan
The news that is of such significance came through a somewhat curious Abdul Qadeer Khan network source. In May, Swiss President Pascale Couchepin had announced that under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, his government had shredded thousands of documents relating to construction plans for nuclear weapons, for gas ultracentrifuges to enrich weapons-grade uranium as well as for guided missile delivery systems which were linked to the AQ Khan network’s Swiss connection. The network was exposed in 2003 and Khan was put under house arrest in Islamabad in early 2004.
But last month, taking advantage of Musharraf’s eclipse and the ongoing political turmoil in Pakistan, he was released and began speaking to the media about how he had been wrongfully confined and that the western parties were themselves guilty of what he had been charged with. In retaliation, as it were, news leaks in the US alerted us to an even more curious point: The documents shredded contained detailed digitised drawings of sophisticated nuclear weapons which were of the type tested by Pakistan in 1998. In other words, Pakistan was actually selling its nuclear weapons design to third countries.
Pokhran II was therefore important from the Indian point of view because while Pakistan had had access to a tried and tested Chinese nuclear weapon design, all that Indian designers had to go by was a single nuclear explosive test of 1974. The test was also important because it signified that India had taken abundant precautions against the Pakistani and Chinese tendency towards irresponsible, and even reckless, behaviour. China’s use of missiles in the Taiwan straits crisis of 1996 is one case in point. Another is the planning of the 1999 Kargil venture with full knowledge of the fact that it could lead to a nuclear war. But the extent of the recklessness became apparent only after the Khan network was unraveled in 2004.
The network was created in the 1970s to acquire enrichment technology from across the world by its founder A.Q. Khan, who had stolen the design from the company he had worked for in the Netherlands. In the 1980s, Khan began to use this network which had an elaborate chain of suppliers and shipping agents in Europe, South Africa, Dubai, Malaysia and Thailand. It then transpired that even while offering complete drawings and components for gas centrifuges, Khan was also offering the design of a nuclear weapon.
In the early 1980s, US intelligence had got information that China had transferred nuclear materials and a nuclear weapon design to Pakistan. The latter was of a proven Chinese warhead tested in 1966. This information was confirmed after a ship carrying equipment for a centrifuge for Libya was detained in October 2003. As a result of this the country came clean and admitted to its clandestine activities and turned over all the material and documentation to the IAEA. US intelligence which whisked away some of the key documents were in for a shock when they discovered the blueprints of a nuclear bomb in a plastic shop bag of the tailor Khan patronised in Islamabad. The bomb was the one tested by the Chinese in 1966 and the documents included detailed, dated handwritten notes in English taken during lectures given by Chinese weapons experts who were named by the note-takers — obviously Pakistani nuclear scientists — and some of the annotation was in Chinese.
Network
As part of the investigations in 2004, Swiss investigators seized computer files and documents from three of its nationals — Friedrich Tinner and his two sons Marco and Urs. They contained over 1,000 megabytes of information which were encrypted. After considerable difficulty, the Swiss decrypted the information. Though they realised that it related to nuclear weapons, they lacked the expertise to assess its importance and so called the IAEA and the US for help. The IAEA which had been involved in the investigation of the Khan network soon realised that they were the design of the nuclear weapon that had been tested by Pakistan in 1998. It was a compact version of the 1966 design and far more sophisticated because of the electronics. The 1966 design could fit a DF-2 kind of a missile, much heavier than anything Pakistan has. Since the heaviest Pakistani missile at the time was the Ghauri, acquired from the North Koreans by the Khan network, a new design was necessary. This used less uranium, but had a greater explosive force. This design, according to sources cited by The New York Times, could also fit missiles like the Iranian Shahab. Alarmingly, the bomb data was in digitised form, complete with information coded for manufacturing components on an industrial scale.
Pathology
This brings us to the ruckus over Mr. L.K. Advani’s participation in a function to release a book on Benazir Bhutto. The book merely repeats well known truths about Pakistan’s nuclear programme. You can question Shyam Bhatia on the need to put out some revelations of Benazir’s personal life, but his revelation that she carried nuclear weapons data in CDs in her pocket fits in well with the fact that the Swiss files were digitised and thus available for storage in such media. Benazir’s autobiography acknowledges that she did play a crucial role in acquiring missile technology from North Korea, though she insists that the deal was against cash.
Perhaps Benazir was trying to prove that she was one of the boys when it came to Pakistan’s security interests. Or that Pakistan’s insecurity with regard to India is so intense that everyone from politician to general is ready to go that extra mile. But it does provide us with the dangerous pathology of a country that is second only to the People’s Republic of China when it comes to proliferating nuclear weapons technology.
Only the future can tell us about the true implications of Khan’s activities for the future security of the country and the region. In the meantime we should be grateful that Pokhran II has at least provided us a shield of sorts.
This article first appeared in Mail Today June 19, 2008
The subsidence crater at the site of the Taj Mahal shaft where India's tactical fission bomb was tested. The crater appears to be about 80 m across and 15 m deep.
Whether the National Democratic Alliance government had some secret information of this, or whether it was what it inferred from the test of the Ghauri missile on April 8, 1998, it is now clear that we had very little time to lose and fortunately we had a government that acted. Going by the reaction of the Congress and the Left at the time, and their behaviour since, you can be sure that had the UPA government been confronted with the situation today, it would have dithered, and its Left allies would have ensured that India did not become a nuclear weapons state.
Now the deed is done. India’s nuclear arsenal is nothing to write home about, and its missile programme moves at a glacial pace, but as far as deterrence goes, a couple of bombs and missiles are fine, and the political consensus for it is so strong that the Left cannot roll it back.
A.Q. Khan
The news that is of such significance came through a somewhat curious Abdul Qadeer Khan network source. In May, Swiss President Pascale Couchepin had announced that under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, his government had shredded thousands of documents relating to construction plans for nuclear weapons, for gas ultracentrifuges to enrich weapons-grade uranium as well as for guided missile delivery systems which were linked to the AQ Khan network’s Swiss connection. The network was exposed in 2003 and Khan was put under house arrest in Islamabad in early 2004.
But last month, taking advantage of Musharraf’s eclipse and the ongoing political turmoil in Pakistan, he was released and began speaking to the media about how he had been wrongfully confined and that the western parties were themselves guilty of what he had been charged with. In retaliation, as it were, news leaks in the US alerted us to an even more curious point: The documents shredded contained detailed digitised drawings of sophisticated nuclear weapons which were of the type tested by Pakistan in 1998. In other words, Pakistan was actually selling its nuclear weapons design to third countries.
Pokhran II was therefore important from the Indian point of view because while Pakistan had had access to a tried and tested Chinese nuclear weapon design, all that Indian designers had to go by was a single nuclear explosive test of 1974. The test was also important because it signified that India had taken abundant precautions against the Pakistani and Chinese tendency towards irresponsible, and even reckless, behaviour. China’s use of missiles in the Taiwan straits crisis of 1996 is one case in point. Another is the planning of the 1999 Kargil venture with full knowledge of the fact that it could lead to a nuclear war. But the extent of the recklessness became apparent only after the Khan network was unraveled in 2004.
The network was created in the 1970s to acquire enrichment technology from across the world by its founder A.Q. Khan, who had stolen the design from the company he had worked for in the Netherlands. In the 1980s, Khan began to use this network which had an elaborate chain of suppliers and shipping agents in Europe, South Africa, Dubai, Malaysia and Thailand. It then transpired that even while offering complete drawings and components for gas centrifuges, Khan was also offering the design of a nuclear weapon.
In the early 1980s, US intelligence had got information that China had transferred nuclear materials and a nuclear weapon design to Pakistan. The latter was of a proven Chinese warhead tested in 1966. This information was confirmed after a ship carrying equipment for a centrifuge for Libya was detained in October 2003. As a result of this the country came clean and admitted to its clandestine activities and turned over all the material and documentation to the IAEA. US intelligence which whisked away some of the key documents were in for a shock when they discovered the blueprints of a nuclear bomb in a plastic shop bag of the tailor Khan patronised in Islamabad. The bomb was the one tested by the Chinese in 1966 and the documents included detailed, dated handwritten notes in English taken during lectures given by Chinese weapons experts who were named by the note-takers — obviously Pakistani nuclear scientists — and some of the annotation was in Chinese.
Network
As part of the investigations in 2004, Swiss investigators seized computer files and documents from three of its nationals — Friedrich Tinner and his two sons Marco and Urs. They contained over 1,000 megabytes of information which were encrypted. After considerable difficulty, the Swiss decrypted the information. Though they realised that it related to nuclear weapons, they lacked the expertise to assess its importance and so called the IAEA and the US for help. The IAEA which had been involved in the investigation of the Khan network soon realised that they were the design of the nuclear weapon that had been tested by Pakistan in 1998. It was a compact version of the 1966 design and far more sophisticated because of the electronics. The 1966 design could fit a DF-2 kind of a missile, much heavier than anything Pakistan has. Since the heaviest Pakistani missile at the time was the Ghauri, acquired from the North Koreans by the Khan network, a new design was necessary. This used less uranium, but had a greater explosive force. This design, according to sources cited by The New York Times, could also fit missiles like the Iranian Shahab. Alarmingly, the bomb data was in digitised form, complete with information coded for manufacturing components on an industrial scale.
Pathology
This brings us to the ruckus over Mr. L.K. Advani’s participation in a function to release a book on Benazir Bhutto. The book merely repeats well known truths about Pakistan’s nuclear programme. You can question Shyam Bhatia on the need to put out some revelations of Benazir’s personal life, but his revelation that she carried nuclear weapons data in CDs in her pocket fits in well with the fact that the Swiss files were digitised and thus available for storage in such media. Benazir’s autobiography acknowledges that she did play a crucial role in acquiring missile technology from North Korea, though she insists that the deal was against cash.
Perhaps Benazir was trying to prove that she was one of the boys when it came to Pakistan’s security interests. Or that Pakistan’s insecurity with regard to India is so intense that everyone from politician to general is ready to go that extra mile. But it does provide us with the dangerous pathology of a country that is second only to the People’s Republic of China when it comes to proliferating nuclear weapons technology.
Only the future can tell us about the true implications of Khan’s activities for the future security of the country and the region. In the meantime we should be grateful that Pokhran II has at least provided us a shield of sorts.
This article first appeared in Mail Today June 19, 2008
Thursday, April 03, 2008
What will it take to make Indian mouse into a tiger?
Prabhu Chawla's revelation (in Mail Today March 31, 2008) that the Communist Party of India (Marxist) played a role in canceling the Dalai Lama's scheduled meeting with the Vice-President Mr. Hamid Ansari tells us a lot about India’s foreign policy. Beyond the issues of non-alignment, independence and its new orientation is the reality that it is unusually timid.
I am reminded of the Russian poet Evegeni Yevtushenko's 1960s work “Monologue of a Polar Fox On An Alaskan Fur Farm”. The poem is an allegory on the subject of freedom in the erstwhile Soviet Union. A blue fox being bred for its fur in an Alaskan farm finds its cage door open. It leaves the cage for a while, revels in his new found freedom, dreams of the future life outside, and then he returns into the cage because as the poet notes, “A child of captivity is too weak for freedom.”
India is like that poor blue fox. For 60 years it has been in a cage, not always of its own making. And now when the door has opened, it is unable to cope, and finds greater comfort in remaining in its prison, rather than risking the joys and uncertainties of freedom.
Jawaharlal
It is no use blaming the communists for this predicament. The larger Indian intelligentsia, political formations like the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party must take responsibility for the state of affairs. As for the Left, its attitude is not remarkable. Through their history, they have set one standard for themselves, and another for the others. Their foreign connections, including funding, is seen by them as being part of socialist internationalism; similar activities of others are attributable to machinations of imperialism. China's policies — be they expressed in Mao's homicidal sweeps like the Great Leap Forward and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution — are regrettable “errors” of a great man, while the mild pragmatism of our Congress party in seeking to maintain good ties with the United States is a sell-out to, what else, imperialism.
Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's idea of non-alignment was to create space in the power blocs that emerged in the wake of the Cold War. But it came with a price, for example on Kashmir. Beginning 1953, after a war and many tortuous sessions with the United Nations mediators, India and Pakistan came close to resolving the Kashmir issue through bilateral talks. The protagonists were Pandit Nehru and the Indian government and the Pakistani governments, headed first by Khwaja Nazimuddin, and then by Muhammad Ali Bogra. Despite Sheikh Abdullah’s arrest in June of 1953, talks between the two countries were undertaken, with Nehru indicating his acquiescence, probably for the last time, for a plebiscite to decide the issue. But, the US decision in February 1954 to begin large-scale arms aid to Pakistan put paid to this.
But notwithstanding the paranoia of the Left, India was never important enough for the US to directly involve itself in our affairs. When Pakistan was ready to do their bidding, why would they have wasted their time on an argumentative and self-important basket-case that this country was till the 1990s?
Speaking to a TV channel last week, CPI(M) elder Jyoti Basu charged the United Progressive Alliance government with being far more pro-US than Jawaharlal or Indira were. Nehru may have been critical of America, but faced with a challenge across the Himalayas in 1962, the country he turned to was the US. The letter Nehru wrote to John F. Kennedy asking for a military alliance with the US in mid-November 1962 is still classified, but its summary prepared by S. Gopal reveals that for the father of non-alignment, the concept was both strategic and flexible.
For 20 years after she swept the elections of 1971 Indira Gandhi's world view dominated that of India. Both in her domestic and foreign policies, she followed a highly personalised style, one that tended to privilege personal over the national interest. So instead of depending on institutions like Parliament, Cabinet and Ministries, she worked her policies through chosen advisors. Little wonder, then, that the decision to conduct India's first nuclear test in Pokhran in May of 1974 was not based on any detailed assessment of why it was to be undertaken and what the government expected to do after the event.
Indira
What the Left finds so attractive about Indira Gandhi, reviled by many of them in her lifetime, is a selective reading of her foreign policy — her decision to hold back formal condemnation of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, her friendship with Cuba and Palestine, and her anti-American posturing. It ignores the fact that India's policy of détente, and then entente, with the United States was initiated by Indira Gandhi — the first during the Emergency itself and the second beginning with her second coming in 1980. Everything that has happened since — the economic liberalisation, the defence cooperation with the United States and indeed the Indo-US nuclear deal, have their origins in decisions taken between 1980 and1984.
The consequences of these policies have been far reaching. We already know what economic liberalisation has wrought, notwithstanding some carping criticism of “neo liberalism”. It has brought closer relations with the United States, which in turn has paid enormous dividends in terms of lubricating India’s political relations with a slew of countries ranging from Europe, the ASEAN and Japan.
This has had a noticeable impact in India’s relations with China. In Bush's first term, and till 2005, at least, the Chinese wooed India eagerly. The breakthrough decision to provide a political input on border negotiations in 2003, and the Agreement on Guiding Principles and Political Parameters, signed in April 2005, were part of this trend. They feared that the US was bent on “encircling” them by creating an alliance of democracies — Japan, Australia, India, Russia and the new Central Asian republics. But once they found that the Left had effectively stymied the Indo-US entente, the tone and tenor of their relations with India changed. When Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani visited Arunachal in 2003 we did not hear any protests from Beijing. But when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited the state in February 2008 the Chinese issued a formal protest.
What the Left has achieved is much more than torpedoing the Indo-US nuclear deal. Its stranglehold on the government has prevented any meaningful reform of the public sector, which includes the stultifying bureaucracy. It has succeeded in delaying India's steady incorporation into the higher tier of the comity of nations. The process began in the NDA period when India was invited to participate in a Group of Eight meeting in Evian and was followed by moves to accommodate New Delhi into the United Nations Security Council. The nuclear deal was a major detail that needed to be taken care of. The leading countries of the world could not have had India in the UNSC or the G-8, even while it remained a pariah in terms of nuclear and high-tech trade.
Choice
Our cage door did not open because the Americans pressed some lever. It did so for two reasons. First, after 1991 the Indian business class has discovered that outside the open cage door were not threats, but vast opportunities. The second was that India surprised the world by bucking against the US-led efforts to freeze its nuclear status as a “have not”. The Pokhran II tests of 1998 cut through the self-imposed prison constructed by our own rhetoric of disarmament.
Today those who push the so-called “independent” foreign policy for India, are actually seeking to persuade us that the prison never existed. They want to neutralise India by creating an association in the mind of the people with the now obsolete concept of non-alignment. The Left’s ambition runs deeper towards signing the country up with the alliance of autocracies — Russia, Iran, China, Venezuela and Cuba.
India is being offered a choice today. Hitherto, Indian policies were often determined by the actions of others. Today, New Delhi’s views and policies make a difference. India’s growing economic and military power, combined with the soft power that only a flourishing democracy and an open society can exercise, provide it with the wherewithal to become a truly global player. But while the US can offer us one option of faring forward into the new world, there is also the other— of going back into the cage.
The article was first published in Mail Today April 2, 2008
I am reminded of the Russian poet Evegeni Yevtushenko's 1960s work “Monologue of a Polar Fox On An Alaskan Fur Farm”. The poem is an allegory on the subject of freedom in the erstwhile Soviet Union. A blue fox being bred for its fur in an Alaskan farm finds its cage door open. It leaves the cage for a while, revels in his new found freedom, dreams of the future life outside, and then he returns into the cage because as the poet notes, “A child of captivity is too weak for freedom.”
India is like that poor blue fox. For 60 years it has been in a cage, not always of its own making. And now when the door has opened, it is unable to cope, and finds greater comfort in remaining in its prison, rather than risking the joys and uncertainties of freedom.
Jawaharlal
It is no use blaming the communists for this predicament. The larger Indian intelligentsia, political formations like the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party must take responsibility for the state of affairs. As for the Left, its attitude is not remarkable. Through their history, they have set one standard for themselves, and another for the others. Their foreign connections, including funding, is seen by them as being part of socialist internationalism; similar activities of others are attributable to machinations of imperialism. China's policies — be they expressed in Mao's homicidal sweeps like the Great Leap Forward and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution — are regrettable “errors” of a great man, while the mild pragmatism of our Congress party in seeking to maintain good ties with the United States is a sell-out to, what else, imperialism.
Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's idea of non-alignment was to create space in the power blocs that emerged in the wake of the Cold War. But it came with a price, for example on Kashmir. Beginning 1953, after a war and many tortuous sessions with the United Nations mediators, India and Pakistan came close to resolving the Kashmir issue through bilateral talks. The protagonists were Pandit Nehru and the Indian government and the Pakistani governments, headed first by Khwaja Nazimuddin, and then by Muhammad Ali Bogra. Despite Sheikh Abdullah’s arrest in June of 1953, talks between the two countries were undertaken, with Nehru indicating his acquiescence, probably for the last time, for a plebiscite to decide the issue. But, the US decision in February 1954 to begin large-scale arms aid to Pakistan put paid to this.
But notwithstanding the paranoia of the Left, India was never important enough for the US to directly involve itself in our affairs. When Pakistan was ready to do their bidding, why would they have wasted their time on an argumentative and self-important basket-case that this country was till the 1990s?
Speaking to a TV channel last week, CPI(M) elder Jyoti Basu charged the United Progressive Alliance government with being far more pro-US than Jawaharlal or Indira were. Nehru may have been critical of America, but faced with a challenge across the Himalayas in 1962, the country he turned to was the US. The letter Nehru wrote to John F. Kennedy asking for a military alliance with the US in mid-November 1962 is still classified, but its summary prepared by S. Gopal reveals that for the father of non-alignment, the concept was both strategic and flexible.
For 20 years after she swept the elections of 1971 Indira Gandhi's world view dominated that of India. Both in her domestic and foreign policies, she followed a highly personalised style, one that tended to privilege personal over the national interest. So instead of depending on institutions like Parliament, Cabinet and Ministries, she worked her policies through chosen advisors. Little wonder, then, that the decision to conduct India's first nuclear test in Pokhran in May of 1974 was not based on any detailed assessment of why it was to be undertaken and what the government expected to do after the event.
Indira
What the Left finds so attractive about Indira Gandhi, reviled by many of them in her lifetime, is a selective reading of her foreign policy — her decision to hold back formal condemnation of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, her friendship with Cuba and Palestine, and her anti-American posturing. It ignores the fact that India's policy of détente, and then entente, with the United States was initiated by Indira Gandhi — the first during the Emergency itself and the second beginning with her second coming in 1980. Everything that has happened since — the economic liberalisation, the defence cooperation with the United States and indeed the Indo-US nuclear deal, have their origins in decisions taken between 1980 and1984.
The consequences of these policies have been far reaching. We already know what economic liberalisation has wrought, notwithstanding some carping criticism of “neo liberalism”. It has brought closer relations with the United States, which in turn has paid enormous dividends in terms of lubricating India’s political relations with a slew of countries ranging from Europe, the ASEAN and Japan.
This has had a noticeable impact in India’s relations with China. In Bush's first term, and till 2005, at least, the Chinese wooed India eagerly. The breakthrough decision to provide a political input on border negotiations in 2003, and the Agreement on Guiding Principles and Political Parameters, signed in April 2005, were part of this trend. They feared that the US was bent on “encircling” them by creating an alliance of democracies — Japan, Australia, India, Russia and the new Central Asian republics. But once they found that the Left had effectively stymied the Indo-US entente, the tone and tenor of their relations with India changed. When Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani visited Arunachal in 2003 we did not hear any protests from Beijing. But when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited the state in February 2008 the Chinese issued a formal protest.
What the Left has achieved is much more than torpedoing the Indo-US nuclear deal. Its stranglehold on the government has prevented any meaningful reform of the public sector, which includes the stultifying bureaucracy. It has succeeded in delaying India's steady incorporation into the higher tier of the comity of nations. The process began in the NDA period when India was invited to participate in a Group of Eight meeting in Evian and was followed by moves to accommodate New Delhi into the United Nations Security Council. The nuclear deal was a major detail that needed to be taken care of. The leading countries of the world could not have had India in the UNSC or the G-8, even while it remained a pariah in terms of nuclear and high-tech trade.
Choice
Our cage door did not open because the Americans pressed some lever. It did so for two reasons. First, after 1991 the Indian business class has discovered that outside the open cage door were not threats, but vast opportunities. The second was that India surprised the world by bucking against the US-led efforts to freeze its nuclear status as a “have not”. The Pokhran II tests of 1998 cut through the self-imposed prison constructed by our own rhetoric of disarmament.
Today those who push the so-called “independent” foreign policy for India, are actually seeking to persuade us that the prison never existed. They want to neutralise India by creating an association in the mind of the people with the now obsolete concept of non-alignment. The Left’s ambition runs deeper towards signing the country up with the alliance of autocracies — Russia, Iran, China, Venezuela and Cuba.
India is being offered a choice today. Hitherto, Indian policies were often determined by the actions of others. Today, New Delhi’s views and policies make a difference. India’s growing economic and military power, combined with the soft power that only a flourishing democracy and an open society can exercise, provide it with the wherewithal to become a truly global player. But while the US can offer us one option of faring forward into the new world, there is also the other— of going back into the cage.
The article was first published in Mail Today April 2, 2008
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