A NECESSARY TRIP - India should indicate that it values its ties with Sri Lanka

BY SWAPAN DASGUPTA

Popular interest in history and even contemporary politics is invariably enhanced by posing the vexed what-if question. To those terribly agitated over the Indian prime minister's participation in the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Colombo later this month, there is a counterfactual question that is worth posing. Had the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam succeeded in their bid to carve an independenteelam out of the Northern and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka, would its supremo, Velupillai Prabhakaran, have chosen to apply for membership of the Commonwealth?

How liberation movements conduct themselves after winning power depends on many imponderables. To that extent it is impossible to be certain about how a victorious LTTE would have conducted itself. However, one thing is certain: the philosophy, the methods and the overall orientation of the Tamil Tigers were always at odds with everything today’s Commonwealth stands for. The LTTE’s unwavering faith in a one-party State, its total intolerance of all dissent within the Tamil community, its targeted assassination of all those it considered its enemies and the ruthlessness with which it conducted its 20-year war against the Sri Lankan State set it apart from other similar movements in South Asia.

Regardless of the fact that a large number of LTTE supporters in the Tamil diaspora located in Europe, North America and Australasia were middle-class professionals and law-abiding citizens of their adopted countries, they bankrolled a vicious war machine that can only be compared with the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia. This apparent contradiction needs to be explained, if not politically, then by using the tools of social psychology.

Yet, whatever complex explanations may be proffered to explain this bizarre schizophrenia, one thing is very clear: the LTTE could not have been defeated with the rules devised by the Marquess of Queensberry. A ruthless and fanatical army that showed scant concern for collateral civilian casualties needed an equally determined response.

That the final months of the war led to unspeakable brutalities and what are called ‘human rights abuses’ is well known. Some of these transgressions have been documented by both propagandists and well-meaning human rights bodies. But it would be a travesty to believe, as is often the case these days, that the departures from a gentlemanly conduct of war was the prerogative of the Sri Lankan army alone. No history of the civil war will be complete if it ignores the fact that the responsibility of the non-State player was far, far greater.

What is interesting is that the whole world was aware of the true nature of the LTTE and quietly encouraged the Sri Lankan government to finish the job as quickly and efficiently as possible. This included New Delhi which, in spite of calling for a peaceful, negotiated settlement of the problem, wanted an end to the LTTE problem once and for all. This was not because there is some residual support for Sinhala chauvinism in South Block. The government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa was given the diplomatic and military space to go for broke precisely because there was a deep understanding of the long-term threat the LTTE posed to both countries. India’s present-day ambivalence has its roots in domestic politics and not in the diplomatic and military assessment of the rebellion.

Those who have mounted a sustained campaign to force the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, to skip the CHOGM in Colombo beginning November 15 have targeted Rajapaksa. This is understandable. Apart from being perceived as the victor of the civil war and the man who re-united the island, the Sri Lankan president has come across as a man who is not amenable to pressure, both domestic and international. A leader with a firm grip on the public pulse, the president is keenly aware that the psychological scars of a long-standing ethnic divide can only be healed by a combination of peace and prosperity. His blunt style and his insufficient personal commitment to a devolution package that was thrust on Sri Lanka by Rajiv Gandhi in 1987 has made him an object of suspicion for those who feel he is instigating Sinhala chauvinism. But his critics forget that governing Sri Lanka democratically calls for a deft balancing act and, in particular, being mindful of the deep Sinhala distrust of weakness. Translated into an ethnic mould, it implies being forever vigilant that the yearning for Tamil autonomy does not descend into a revival of separatism.

Actually, India has little reason to complain about Rajapaksa’s balancing act. Immediately after the civil war ended, New Delhi’s thrust was on the revival of ‘normal’ politics in the Tamil-majority areas through the devolution of power. Fears were expressed that the president would ride the crest of Sinhala triumphalism and dilute the 13th amendment — which New Delhi views as an article of faith solely because it was negotiated by Rajiv Gandhi. It was well known that Rajapaksa personally favoured district councils over provincial councils. However, notwthstanding his personal preference, the president has stuck to the commitment he made to India.

Likewise, fears were expressed that the elections to the provincial council in the Tamil-dominated Northern Province would be put off indefinitely and that any election would be unfair. The September election which produced a conclusive majority for the Tamil National Alliance and the election of a well-respected former judge of the supreme court as chief minister has put an end to these fears. Rajapaksa, it is clear, has stuck to his side of the bargain.

Under the circumstances, it makes no diplomatic sense for India to succumb to the extremist pressure of the Tamil diaspora and the regional parties of Tamil Nadu. A multilateral CHOGM is not the occasion for grandstanding. Neither is it the appropriate forum to raise new issues centred on the internal governance of Sri Lanka. These must await a more relevant occasion, if indeed they have to be pressed. India would have been happy to attend a CHOGM at, say, Islamabad, in spite of the deterioration of bilateral relations with Pakistan. Why should it be different for Sri Lanka?

For a small country that has only just come out of an extremely damaging civil war, the CHOGM is an opportunity to showcase the return to normalcy. For Sri Lanka, India is the big neighbour and Sri Lankans, cutting across the ethnic divide, look to India as a benign presence in the region. Manmohan Singh may not be the flavour of the season within India but he represents India internationally and is the symbol of India. His ungrudging presence will be a major signal to Sri Lanka that New Delhi values its deep ties with the island.

Boycotting the meet would be churlish. Such a short-sighted move will not weaken Rajapaksa politically. Instead, it will be regarded as an affront whose impact will be felt long after Manmohan Singh retires to a Lutyens’ bungalow to pen his memoirs. And, as for the cabinet ministers from Tamil Nadu who are urging New Delhi to be reckless, their unsafe Lok Sabha seats will not be made safe by an impulsive boycott.

For long, Manmohan Singh has been berated for yielding to the line of least resistance. Although rather late in the day and bereft of any wider electoral significance, he can afford to take a stand and do the right thing by travelling to Colombo.

The Telegraph, November 8, 2013

DANGERS OF BURIED STORIES - Forgetting history may harm India’s insight into the present

By Swapan Dasgupta

The extent to which India as a nation lacks a sense of history was driven home to me recently by an account of the Bangladesh Government’s commemoration of the liberation war of 1971.

Anxious to honour those Indians who had contributed the emergence of Bangladesh as an independent nation four decades ago, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina organised a series of events in Dhaka over the past two years. Since most of those who contributed, either publicly or under a cover of anonymity, to the liberation struggle had died, Bangladesh graciously invited their family members to accept the awards on their behalf. Predictably, since most of the non-Bangladeshis who played a role in ensuring the defeat of the brutal Pakistani regime between March and December of 1971 were Indians, the authorities in Dhaka were compelled to seek the assistance of the Government of India to locate the individuals or their families.

According to the officials in Bangladesh handling the commemoration, there was a distinct lack of enthusiasm in Delhi over Sheikh Hasina’s gracious gesture. In particular, Bangladeshi officials were stumped over the complete blank that greeted their inquiries of two individuals. One was an Indian Foreign Service officer managing the Pakistan desk in South Block, the only non-military Indian official present at the surrender of the Pakistan army in Dacca; and the other was a more shadowy figure, the right-hand man of R&AW chief R.N. Kao, operating from Calcutta. Inquiries about the first gentleman produced no results from the Ministry of External Affairs and the intelligence community in Delhi were unaware of the existence of one of the early stalwarts of R&AW.

At one level, the entire episode reeked of official indifference to anything that was not in the normal line of duty. Far more important, it seems to me, was the confirmation of a huge lacuna in ‘official’ India: the complete absence of institutional memory. The collapse of East Pakistan and the formation of Bangladesh was one of the most important chapters of India’s post-Independence history. It continues to define Pakistan’s attitude towards India and, as such, has a direct contemporary bearing. Yet, it is astonishing that absolutely no organised attempt is made to disseminate the history of that crisis to a new generation of diplomats who will be managing India’s relations with its neighbours in the future. This wilful disregard of history can be contrasted to the exacting importance the Pakistan Foreign Service and, for that matter, the Pakistani military establishment attaches to learning the lessons of its greatest national humiliation.

The publication of Gary J. Bass’s eminently readable The Blood Telegram: India’s Secret War in East Pakistan is as good an occasion as any to revisit the events of 1971. Based almost entirely on official US Government documents, the White House tapes pertaining to the presidency of Richard Nixon and the papers of Indira Gandhi’s Principal Secretary P.N. Haksar and the then Foreign Secretary T.N. Kaul, the book provides a gripping insight into the calculations of policy makers in Washington D.C, New Delhi and Islamabad. Although much of the narrative now belongs to the realms of history, there are important strands that have a direct bearing on the contemporary relations between India and Pakistan.

Bass’s most crucial revelation is one that was well known in official circles in India but was quite consciously hidden from public view and, consequently, is insufficiently factored in contemporary Indian assessments of Pakistan. The Pakistan army’s crackdown in erstwhile East Pakistan began as an offensive against Bangladeshi nationalism and the Awami League. This involved murderous action against students, political activists and the paramilitary forces staffed by Bengali speakers. However, once the Pakistan army entrenched itself in the towns it initiated a parallel campaign of ethnic cleansing of the minority Hindu population. So much so that by the time the Indian army began its military offensive against Pakistan in December 1971, nearly 80 per cent of the 8.5 million refugees who were camped in India were Hindus.

This attempt to ‘purify’ Pakistan of non-Muslims was well known to both India and the West, particularly the US. On July 19, 1971, Henry Kissinger, President Richard Nixon’s amoral Secretary of State, had remarked that President Yahya Khan of Pakistan had loved the cloak and dagger arrangements surrounding his ‘secret’ visit to China, adding: “Yahya hasn’t had such fun since the last Hindu massacre.”

The remark may have been characteristically tasteless—and the White House tapes resonate with Nixon and Kissinger outdoing each other in showering profanities on Indians and Bengalis—but it indicates that the viciously sectarian character of the Pakistan military regime was well known. It is a different matter that India deliberately underplayed the denominational details of the refugee problem to avoid any diversion from the fact that the crisis had stemmed from a Bengali uprising against Pakistani domination. However, in allowing the real story to remain buried for more than 40 years, India lost sight of a larger reality. It also glossed over the fact that Pakistan was not normal. A state that couldn’t countenance any deviation from its Islamic identity and, in fact, was fanatical enough to lose more than half the country on this count, cannot be judged by the accepted standards of international statecraft.

What emerges from the Nixon-Kissinger private exchanges is that Pakistan’s foremost ally was clear in its mind that Yahya had embarked on a path of self-destruction. Pakistan, they knew, couldn’t win a war against India in the East. At various point they even tried telling this to the “big, honourable, stupid man” that was the Pakistani President. However, as Kissinger was to confess later, Yahya “was oblivious to his perils and unprepared to face necessities. He and his colleagues did not feel India was planning war; if so, they were convinced that they would win. When I asked tactfully as I could about the Indian advantage in numbers and equipment, Yahya and his colleagues answered with bravado about the historic superiority of Moslem fighters.”

Ayub Khan too had believes that one Pakistani soldier was equal in worth to 20 Hindu fighters. This was the basis of his war to occupy Kashmir and even reach Delhi in 1965. In both 1965 and 1971, Pakistan failed to live up its exalted self-esteem. Yet the belief in its superior national character has never waned. There is a big section of the Pakistan establishment that believes that the country was “betrayed” in all its wars against India. Consequently, the belief that unflinching Islamic nationalism is the only way to realise Pakistan’s manifest destiny (in Kashmir or elsewhere) is deep-rooted and widespread.

For India this implies permanent danger on the frontiers. The threat is doubled by Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine that is premised on the understanding that the adversary in India is somehow a sub-human whose elimination is also a religious duty.

Beginning with Indira Gandhi and P.N. Haksar who felt that Pakistan must be allowed to recover from Dacca debacle with an iota of self-respect, to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh whose perception of the Pakistani national character is coloured by pre-Partition nostalgia, India has tried its best to couch neighbourly relations with civility and the lure of good economics. After each disappointment, India has tried to begin afresh, believing that pragmatism will mark every new generation in Pakistan. Each time history has hit back. 

In dealing with Pakistan, India cannot eschew institutional memory. We may have changed, become more cosmopolitan, more global and more post-national. Across the Radcliffe Line, however, the mindset of 1971 is alive and dreaming of revenge. 

The Telegraph, October 25, 2013

We’re better off minding our own business, really

By Swapan Dasgupta

There was a brief period in the mid-1990s when Indian newspapers suddenly began carrying front page reports of a conflict in the Balkans that few readers understood and fewer were interested in. The reason was quirky. Those were the days when cable TV enabled us to view CNN and BBC but domestic regulations prevented the entry of Indian TV channels—apart from DD. Consequently, impressionable chief subs imagined that the hierarchy of news that resonated among the editorial classes in Atlanta and White City, London, had to find reflection in India.

Mercifully, that era was short-lived and the G-20 summit with its preoccupation with the impasse over Syria attracts the inevitable yawn from a readership that is too preoccupied with domestic concerns. Mercifully too India is represented by a PM who is naturally taciturn. Imagine the plight of the global leaders if, in addition to the cold stares that Obama and Putin have exchanged, it was subjected to a moral sermon on global iniquities by a Jawaharlal Nehru who had an opinion on everything and never made a secret of them.

One of the more positive contributions to post-Cold War foreign policy by P.V. Narasimha Rao—a canny, old fox—was that India stopped being preachy and confined its focus to matters that directly affected it. Of course, an escalation of the civil war in Syria following possible US air attacks to punish President Bashar al-Assad for his alleged use of chemical weapons against the rebel army will have a direct bearing on India’s limping economy by driving up oil prices and unleashing another wave of jihad. Yes, India has a direct interest in keeping the conflict localised. But the more pertinent question is: are we in any position to influence the course of events? Do we have the capacity to wag a finger at either the US, France and Russia or, for that matter, the theocrats in Iran who are itching to take advantage of an enlarged conflict?

Earlier this week, during the Australian election campaign, Liberal Party leader Tony Abbott (who may well be PM next week) advised his country to exercise exemplary caution on the Syrian crisis. Australia shouldn’t, he said, “be getting ideas beyond our station.” This is probably the most pragmatic and wise thing any politician has said in recent times and it is one that, quite fortuitously, India must use as its guiding principle in foreign policy.

This is not to thereby imply that Damascus and Delhi are bound together by a ‘special relationship’ centred on dynastic rule. That there is huge internal dissatisfaction against the Assad regime is undeniable. The exasperation with one-party autocratic rule that began in Tunisia two years ago has proved extremely contagious. But the outpouring of resentment has also taken a direction that doesn’t correspond to enlightened values. Democracy and human rights are not absolute principles as some Western leaders seem to imagine; they are grounded in a political and cultural context that often defy those very ideals.  

The post-9/11 interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq had a greater measure of support throughout the world. But this tacit endorsement of intrusive and, very often, drone diplomacy, have today bred greater scepticism. Perhaps this has got a great deal to with what historian Niall Ferguson detected as America’s lack of an Empire mindset. Whatever the reasons, India’s western neighbourhood is in a state of turmoil. More important, the ‘baddies’ Washington sought to eradicate—partly as an extension of its own homeland security—have regrouped and are likely to create problems for India in the not-too-distant future. The only other country that is likely to face even more serious consequences of the West’s inability to cope with ‘foreign’ problems is Israel. But political correctness has deemed that it is ‘not done’ to be so forthright about the natural convergence of interests between India and Israel.

The sight of India as an inconsequential bystander in the G20 summit may offend national pride. But that is an incidental price to pay for our larger failure to live up to our allegedly awesome economic “fundamentals” and our wooliness over securing our immediate neighbourhood. The time to identify our national priorities couldn’t be more pressing.

Sunday Times of India, September 8, 2013 

Time to let go of a bigger line of control?

By Swapan Dasgupta

For once it is difficult to blame the media for getting into a tizzy over events on the Line of Control. If enemy action resulted in the killing of five Indian soldiers, the matter cannot be shrugged off with the lament that ‘these things happen’. Nor can we be so heartless as to suggest, as a silly minister in Bihar did, that men in uniform have to be prepared for the ultimate sacrifice. No doubt the incident will be forgotten by the time Parliament re-convenes on Monday and shifts its gaze elsewhere, but the anger at a truculent neighbour will persist.

What will add to the hurt is the realisation that the those who have been entrusted with national security view human lives as a statistic in the larger game of ‘nuanced’ and ‘calibrated’ diplomacy. The national outrage that led to Defence Minister A.K. Antony modifying his initial statement about ‘men in Pakistani army uniform’ was not another example of sloppy drafting—recall how the Sharm-el-Sheikh joint statement of 2009 was similarly explained.  When it comes to Pakistan (and, for that matter, China) the ruling establishment is guilty of political and diplomatic cringe.

Whether this stems from the cultural inferiority of those who continue to believe that life begins and ends in Lahore or from the dissimulative skills of time-servers adept in telling political leaders what they want to hear is for historians to ascertain. The point is that Indian foreign policy has yet to come to terms with a curious question: how do you make peace with a neighbour whose sense of nationhood is centred on an enduring hatred of India? If this was merely a civilizational tussle, India could have lived with this dilemma. Unfortunately, the problem has extended to armed conflict: the “war of a thousand cuts” is a doctrinal facet of Pakistan which will not go away whether Zia-ul-Haq, Pervez Musharraf, Benazir Bhutto or Nawaz Sharif rules in Islamabad.

For just too long India has been clutching at straws, trying its best to strengthen the ‘good’ Pakistani vis-à-vis the ‘bad’ guys in the seminaries and cantonments. There is no harm in giving a helping hand to those Pakistanis disturbed by the country’s drift away from Jinnah’s political exclusivism. If collective appreciation of cricket, Bollywood and Manto could ensure that outstanding boundary disputes are left to another generation, India can encourage many more Pakistani writers and artists to attend literary festivals and mushairas. In pure economic terms, it makes more sense to dish out junkets to starry-eyed, American-educated, Pakistani women journalists who are active on twitter than re-equip entire artillery divisions with expensive military hardware. There is also little harm in allowing Pakistani traders to develop a stake in the Indian market because commerce has the ability to temper aggressive designs.

The problem, unfortunately, is far larger and many times more sinister. What Indian foreign policy seems to be underplaying is that the Pakistan of our imagination doesn’t really correspond with the Pakistan of 2013. The mismatch has been evident for some time, even when Zia-ul-Haq charmed the Delhi elite with presents of carpets and onyx ashtrays. But we have pretended otherwise.

Pakistan’s strategic doctrine rests on the belief that a weakened and, hopefully, fragmented India is in its national interest. This conviction was born after the General Niazi’s humiliating surrender in Dacca in 1971, was reinforced following the Kargil war of 1999, the collapse of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2002 and the global hype over India’s economic achievements.

These setbacks have, however, not derailed the larger strategy. Pakistan successfully harassed India with the Khalistani movement, the insurgency in Kashmir and by nurturing terrorism. Today, it is sensing the re-conquest of Afghanistan and is emboldened by the religious radicalism in the Arab world. It also detects openings from a weak and fractured government in Delhi.

It is too late in the day to inject cement into the spine of the present Indian dispensation. This government seems a passing show. The time has come for India to ask a question that goes beyond the Prime Minister’s overdue visit to his ancestral village in Pakistan. Is a united Pakistan any longer in India’s larger national interest? The answer will suggest long-term strategies.

Sunday Times of India, August 11, 2013 

SRI LANKAN DIASPORA POWERS TAMIL POLITICS

Last week, I sent a twitter message from Jaffna town which I was visiting after 25 years. “There are more sandbags and police pickets in south Delhi”, I observed, “than there are in Jaffna town.”

This terse message based entirely on my observation provoked howls of protest. Various individuals responded denouncing me as “anti-Tamil” and a stooge of Sri Lankan President Rajapaksha, the latest whipping boy of the morally indignant. It is entirely possible that a brief 24-hour visit to a town where it was once common to find gun-totting members of various para-military factions walking with a swagger, does not qualify me to pass judgment on the totality of the situation in Sri Lanka’s Northern Province.

Yet, it would be fair to say that the Jaffna I returned to was a very different place from the war-torn but sleepy town that existed in the late-1980s. What I encountered was a mid-sized town with good roads and lots of new buildings, bustling with activity. The Nallur temple looked as grand as ever and the Jaffna library whose burning in the 1990s had created so much tension was a picture of old-world serenity. The stadium named after Alfred Durriapah, whose murder was among the first of the LTTE’s ‘hits’ seemed well maintained and there is even an Indian Consulate in place in a carefully renovated bungalow. Yes, there were the occasional signs of the bitter war that had ended barely four years ago; but anyone who didn’t know that this town was once in the frontline of one of the most ugly civil wars of all times would never have guessed.

This is not to say that everything is hunky dory. At a gathering of members of Jaffna civil society, there were voices raised against the acquisition of “Tamil lands” by the Sri Lankan army in its security zone adjoining the airport. There were complaints about “Sinhala colonisation” of areas in the southern regions of the Northern Province. And in Colombo, MPs belonging to the Tamil National Alliance presented us (a five-member team invited by the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies) with a well-written account of Tamil grievances. Its leader, the 80-year-old Rajavardayam Sampanthan, who resembles a majestic Roman senator both in appearance and eloquence spoke about the Sri Lankan Government’s underlying desire to make the Tamil people “extinct” from the Northern and Eastern Provinces.

Yet, at a lunch hosted by businessmen of Indian origin in Colombo, I asked a Chettiar businessman how many Tamils there are in the capital city. “About 30 per cent of the city” he replied. “And do you control 60 per cent of the business?” I asked smilingly. “Only 60 per cent”, he retorted with a tinge of disappointment. “It’s more like 70 per cent” he said with a hearty laugh. Clearly, the noble Sampanthan’s theory of Tamils being an endangered breed in Sri Lanka doesn’t have too many takers south of the Elephant Pass.

The ‘Tamil problem’ that provides livelihood to the global human rights industry and provokes indignation in some circles in India seems essentially a Jaffna problem, and should be renamed as such. At the heart of the problem is the term devolution which was recommended to the Sri Lankan Government as a possible solution to the problem by the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) set up by President Rajapaksha in the aftermath of his famous military victory over the murderous LTTE.

For India, which still takes a needlessly gratuitous interest in the internal affairs of a sovereign neighbour, ‘devolution’ basically means implementation of the 13th amendment which formed a part of the embarrassment called the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord signed by Rajiv Gandhi and JR Jayawardene in 1987. This amendment promised two things: the merger of the Northern and Eastern Provinces, the so-called Tamil homelands, and the formation of Provincial Councils, akin to India’s State Governments.

But two problems have arisen. First, the merger of the Northern and Eastern Provinces was set aside by the Sri Lankan Supreme Court on procedural grounds. Sampanthan calls it a “dishonest judgment” but the de-merger is now a reality. Secondly, it would seem that apart from the Northern and Eastern Provinces, the Sinhala areas aren’t terribly enthused by the idea of Provincial Councils. Yet, elections to the Provincial Councils have been held in all provinces barring the Northern Province. At one time it seemed that the Government was having second thoughts about holding Provincial Council elections in the Northern Province but President Rajapaksha has categorically announced that the democratic exercise will be undertaken in September. The TNA, which is certain to win the election, now says that the powers of the Provincial Councils are inadequate. It wants the local Government to control land and the police. The Government may concede the first point but there is no way it will relax its control over all aspects of security in the North.

Who can blame Colombo for its reluctance? It’s just four years since the LTTE was decimated and it’s just too early for the Central Government to let down its guard. It is not that there is a desire to militarise the province. The Sri Lankan Army is present in large numbers in the Northern Province but it operates well below the radar. Logistically, the army wants to insulate itself in the security zones, build strategically located cantonments and operate as a rapid response force just in case insurgency resurfaces.

Ideally, the TNA should have no problem with this arrangement because its members were also murderously targeted by the LTTE. Moreover, it has declared, perhaps under Indian pressure, that it is committed to the territorial integrity of Sri Lanka. It may still believe in emotional separatism but it has formally abjured political separatism and abandoned the erstwhile TULF’s call for ‘self-determination’.

At the same time, its actions suggest that it wants to keep tensions and the ethnic conflict alive. It doesn’t make sense until you realise that Tamil separatist politics derives its main impetus not from the ordinary people of Jaffna who are desperate for a breather but by the Tamil diaspora, the ones who bankroll the seemingly respectable, ‘moderate’ politicians. With a view of the island that is frozen in time, it is the diaspora that is proving to be the biggest impediment to Sri Lanka getting over its troubled history.

Sunday Pioneer, June 9, 2013

SLEEPING TIGER, CREEPING DRAGON

By Swapan Dasgupta

Since the Indian Parliament is lucky enough to have a quizmaster among its members, it would be instructive if he posed a perplexing question to a Government minister, preferably one whose answer is likely to be taken seriously. The question is this: If 19km of Chinese incursion into Indian territory leaves both the government and society completely unruffled, how much territory does Beijing have to occupy before the country feels well and truly shafted?

Maybe this question need not be confined to representatives of the UPA Government and the presiding deities of the so-called “strategic community” that are so visible in seminars and international airport lounges. This Saturday’s Delhi editions of the English language dailies were conspicuous by their perfunctory treatment of this official admission by the Defence Secretary to the parliamentary standing committee on defence. Only one publication chose to place this news on its front page; the rest chose to give greater play to the newest version of a mobile phone produced by Samsung.

Whether the relegation of the border tensions have anything to do with discreet suggestions from (what are quaintly described in media-speak as) ‘sources’, is a matter of conjecture. But as I have long maintained, the newshounds on the South Block beat have for long adjusted to their new role as stenographers to the Ministry of External Affairs. No wonder readers are compelled to digest a lot of gobble about “perceptional mismatch”, “calibrated” overtures and “nuanced” approaches to an opaque and inscrutable dispensation in Beijing. Thank God the TV channels are little less squeamish.

China, to its eternal credit, has very successfully created a mystique around itself. India’s China experts—with some honourable exceptions—have, by and large, devoured the piffle that is routinely dished out by its post-Confucian mandarins and, in fact, added their own sprinkling of soya sauce. Those who were exposed to China studies in the Indian Universities in the 1970s may recall the gush-gush endorsements of crazy schemes such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The post-Mao U-turn should, ideally, have left them red-faced by the inclination to be Sinophiles, rather than Sinologists, had struck such deep roots that the shifting sands of China had little impact.

I recall attending a lecture by the notorious fellow-traveller Han Suyin at the London School of Economics sometime in the late-1970s where she held forth on the treachery of the Gang of Four, particularly Mao’s widow Jiang Quin. It was all very erudite and convincing until an insolent Briton stood up to remind her that barely a year or so ago she was singing praises of those very people she was now denouncing with gusto.

Actually, for the China-watchers, it is a simple case of access. Their profession demands frequent visits to China and it just doesn’t do to get on the wrong side of the present dispensation. And remember, China isn’t just another country: it is the most powerful nation of Asia blessed with an unflinching determination to restore its place as the Middle Kingdom. To many of China’s policy makers, India is a upstart that must periodically be shown its place. Certainly, Zhou Enlai was miffed by Jawaharlal Nehru’s condescension and waited for an opportune moment to deliver a tight slap in 1962.

The irony is that the greater the rebuff, the more India seems to come crawling. Nehru was probably the intellectual originator of the silly ‘Chindia’ thesis that subsequent fellow travellers such as Jairam Ramesh have taken such pains to propagate. Nehru’s anodyne Panchshila was located in a romantic version of post-colonial Asian resurgence. The tragedy was that lesser Nehruvians who were involved in Sino-Indian relations took exceptional care to ensure that ground realities were presented in such a way as to fit a grand theory. Sardar K.M. Panikkar who served as India’s Ambassador to China at a critical juncture may have been an erudite scholar but his total misreading of the fledgling Maoist regime owed a great deal to dissimulation. He presented a picture of China that Nehru wanted to hear.

This tradition of tailoring the message to suit the recipient appears to be continuing and, as usual, being packaged within a so-called strategic doctrine. Some of those entrusted with safeguarding India’s national security appear to be more concerned with getting their Mandarin pronunciation right when ordering Shark’s Fin soup than in penetrating the political fog that is allowed to engulf the Chinese establishment.

Yes, India cannot afford a military misadventure against a country that has larger capacity and depth. Ideally, it should avoid a second front. But that is no excuse to turn a blind eye to the demographic transformation of Tibet, the cyber terrorism that is periodically unleashed and China’s encouragement of Pakistan. Worse, in today’s context, there is no logic to replicating Nehru’s casual dismissal of the loss of Aksai Chin on the ground that “not a blade of grass” grows there.

There are a lot of little things India can do: lending a shoulder to countries such as Japan, Vietnam and even Singapore who are fearful of China’s hegemonism is just one of them. Maybe India has done these things in fits and starts. But all half-hearted initiatives have been overshadowed by the fact that whenever the Chinese dragon breathes fire, we run for cover, tail between legs. In the past week, India has exposed itself well and truly as a paper tiger. 

Sunday Pioneer, April 28, 2013

LANKAN TAMIL ISSUE SNOWBALLING OMINOUS

By Swapan Dasgupta

The silly blow-hot-blow-cold games involving the Congress and the Samajwadi Party have, perhaps naturally, agitated the political class and prompted endless speculation over the timing of the next general election. The political turbulence has affected the capital markets and given rise to fears that the sense of drift which has affected economic decision-making will make a mockery of Finance Minister P.Chidambaram’s attempts to talk up the economy and prevent a further loss of investor confidence.

The concerns are real but the Congress-SP spat pales into insignificance compared to the larger implications of the one-upmanship games that are beginning to plague Tamil Nadu. The past week has witnessed a deliberate attempt by both the AIADMK and DMK to up the ante over the Sri Lankan Tamil issue. The Tamil Nadu Assembly has passed a resolution pressing the Centre to harden its stand against Sri Lanka, view it as an unfriendly country and insist on a referendum in the Tamil-dominated provinces. A spate of orchestrated demonstrations throughout the state has led to Sri Lankan cricketers having to opt out of the IPL matches in Chennai; and the MDMK leader Vaiko has demanded the prosecution of Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner to India on charges of sedition for a purported email that suggests that the island nation has historical links not merely with the Tamils but with the people of Orissa and Bengal.

To view these developments as bouts of seasonal madness that affects different parts of India at the onset of summer is, of course, tempting. In a more serious vein, however, the developments in Tamil Nadu are more ominous and need to be viewed far more seriously.

For a start, there is a blurring of lines between human rights and political aspirations. I don’t think there is anyone in both Delhi and Colombo who can deny that the last phase of the civil war in 2009 was particularly grim and bloody. However, it is also conceded that excesses were committed by both sides, and not least by the LTTE which gambled on being able to extract a cease-fire by using Tamil civilians as human shields. The meddlesome human rights industry in the West may like to paint the civil war as a one-sided offensive by the state but those familiar with Sri Lanka know that the real forces of darkness were led by V.Prabhakaran.

Whether four years after the conflict, a so-called independent inquiry into human rights abuses will resolve anything is a matter of debate. If such an inquiry helps in the larger process of ethnic reconciliation it would be welcome. However, if it becomes an instrument for the surreptitious political rehabilitation of the fascist LTTE, it must be avoided.

In any case, the issue of “war crimes” is about the past. What is more relevant at the moment is the larger question of the political accommodation of the Tamil minority in the Constitutional structure of Sri Lanka. This is a problem that has dogged Sri Lanka since its Independence in 1948 and has been complicated by the somewhat irrational paranoia in the Sinhala community over a ‘federal’ Constitution. Equally, there has been a lot of intransigence on the part of the Jaffna Tamils—a privileged community during British rule—which has veered from provincial autonomy to secessionism. The Jaffna Tamils have pressed for the merger of the Northern and Eastern provinces as the ‘Tamil homeland’, something that it totally unacceptable to the Muslims and Sinhala people of the Eastern Province. Today, they are pressing for the full implementation of the 13^th amendment which gives the Northern and Eastern provinces exceptional autonomy, including control over education and land. Colombo’s hesitation is based on its reluctance to transfer full police control to the provincial governments.

The wariness is understandable since there is still insufficient confidence in the ability of the Tamil National Alliance to prevent the LTTE from regrouping. Four years is still too little a time to be absolutely certain that the one-party Eelam the LTTE espoused and even succeeded in translating into reality for some time, has been totally uprooted.

What is clear is that the debate over the 13^th amendment is an internal debate of Sri Lanka. It is of no business of either India or other members of the UN. Yes, New Delhi can privately encourage the Sri Lankan Government to hasten the confidence-building process. But ultimately it is for a democratic government in Colombo to grapple with the problems posed by differentiated citizenship.

The recent agitation in Tamil Nadu, bankrolled in many cases by those who earlier sponsored the LTTE, have a clear purpose: to transplant the remnants of a defeated secessionist movement in Sri Lanka into India. There is a calculated attempt to suggest that the rest of India doesn’t care about Tamil interests and that Tamil Nadu must chalk its independent foreign policy route, if possible with the Centre’s help and if necessary independent of New Delhi. Those who made Eeelam their life’s only mission now see opportunities to link Jaffna and Chennai in a common endeavour.

We are witnessing, for the first time since the Dravidian movement abandoned separatism after Independence, an attempt to sow the seeds of a new separatism that links Northern Sri Lanka, the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and the overseas Tamil diaspora. The threat can’t be left to acquire a menacing dimension. 

Sunday Pioneer, March 31, 2013

Burning Lanka doesn't always work out well

By Swapan Dasgupta

Diplomacy, it has been said, essentially involves lying for your country. By that logic, there is likely to be widespread sympathy for the complete loss of face for India’s representative to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Just about a week ago, India’s envoy was busy engaging with the US and other countries on the draft of a resolution which, while paying token obeisance to Tamil victimhood, would not trigger a ferocious xenophobic reaction in the rest of Sri Lanka. The objective was laudable: to soften the blow on Colombo while accommodating some of India’s domestic concerns.

When he returned to Geneva for last Thursday’s crucial session, he was armed with a new brief: to impress upon the DMK and the global Tamil diaspora that India’s sympathies lay with those who have trying unceasingly to secure the partition of Sri Lanka.

It is fortunate that procedures prevented India from rehabilitating the LTTE before the international community. Yet, this cynical grandstanding, aimed exclusively at preventing Congress stalwarts from losing their Lok Sabha seats at the next election, made India a laughing stock in the region. The ire of Colombo will not be directed at the US which sponsored the resolution. Washington is too powerful and too remote for Sri Lanka to even attempt any meaningful retribution. The blow will fall on India which, ironically, was more than happy when the fanatical Tigers were militarily decimated in 2009. India’s economic and strategic interests in Sri Lanka will suffer and the beneficiary will be China. More to the point, India’s foreign policy will be perceived as wildly erratic and susceptible to sectional pressures, even of the disreputable variety.

It is mildly reassuring that this self-defeating misadventure in Geneva wasn’t accompanied by a resolution in Parliament pillorying Sri Lanka for “human rights abuses” and “genocide”. Mercifully there were enough MPs who prevented this needless bullying of a small country with which India has a deep civilizational relationship.

Nor are these links confined to the Jaffna Tamils and Tamil Nadu. The Sinhala people too look up to India as a pilgrimage centre for the land of the Buddha. And, to stretch the point further, the Sinhala people also trace their ancestry to Orissa and Bengal, the home of the legendary Vijaya who established the first Sinhala kingdom around 543 BC. Sri Lanka’s India connection is clearly not confined to Tamil Nadu.

And, if civilizational links determine diplomatic posturing, would the Government have dared contemplate a resolution attacking China for its assault on Tibetan identity? Why did Parliament contemptuously repudiate the Pakistan National Assembly’s gratuitous resolution on Afzal Guru? Consistency may be the virtue of small minds but wildly erratic conduct doesn’t behove a country that has pretensions of emerging as a global player.

There are times when it is politically rewarding to rise above sectional pressures and do what is in the larger national interest. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh did precisely that in 2008 when he called the Left’s bluff over the Indo-US nuclear agreement. It was his resolute stand for a larger purpose that gained the UPA considerable goodwill and was a factor in its re-election in 2009.

That the UPA leadership chose to unsuccessfully placate the DMK which used the Sri Lankan Tamil issue as a ruse to sever an alliance that had otherwise become a liability is revealing. It suggests that there already weak central command structure of the Government has become almost non-existent. The Government gives the appearance of being a replica of the later-Moghul Empire where a nominal badshah in Delhi lacked authority and was buffeted by different regional pressures—a situation deftly exploited by the East India Company.  This incoherence has, quite predictably, affected India’s foreign policy—a field that is the sole responsibility of the Centre. Our think-tanks can pontificate endlessly over a foreign policy ‘doctrine’ and dissect the nuances and calibrations but the reality is cruel. India has lost its capacity to be a meaningful global player. Today, national security merely implies a game of transfers and postings.

Elections may be a year away but more than ever India needs a government with a mandate. And, if possible, a Prime Minister with clout.

Sunday Times of India, March 24, 2013 

A Scapegoat for Political Games

By Swapan Dasgupta

Since issues and ‘causes’ are most often a fig leaf for other hard-nosed calculations, there is an understandable reluctance to take the formal pronouncements of political parties at their face value. This is particularly true of the Dravidian parties of Tamil Nadu. Although the main Dravidian parties trace their political ancestry to the pre-Independence Justice Party and the anti-Brahmin social movement launched by E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker, there is precious little in their present day actions to suggest that they are guided by lofty ideas. Having alternated control of the state government since 1967 and having become stakeholders at the Centre since 1996, Dravidian politics has conveyed an unmistakable impression of being guided by venality alone.

Given this backdrop, it is hard to completely discount the suggestion that the DMK’s dramatic withdrawal from the UPA last Tuesday morning—a move that has left the Congress completely at the mercy of two Uttar Pradesh-based parties who can barely tolerate the sight of each other—was guided by a touching concern for the plight of the Tamils of Sri Lanka. Had that indeed been the case, the DMK (which always had a soft corner for the separatist Eelam movement) would have exercised its clout to force India to join other Western countries in 2009 and press for a cease-fire across the Palk Straits. True, DMK chief M.Karunanidhi did go on a symbolic fast to highlight his concern over the military elimination of the dreaded LTTE. But it is an open secret that despite nominal appeals for restraint, New Delhi was not unhappy that the LTTE was roundly vanquished and its leader V.Prabhakaran eliminated.

Yes, there was some concern at the high civilian casualties during the final stages of the bitter civil war. At the same time, New Delhi, through its bitter experience of the IPKF misadventure, knew very well that LTTE showed scant respect for the Geneva Convention and other rules of military engagement. The use of civilians and particularly children as a human shield was a recurring feature of the LTTE’s military strategy. Indeed, the reason Prabhakaran’s last stand turned out to be such a bloody affair was precisely because the LTTE had gambled on the fear of collateral damage forcing the Sri Lankan army to stall. If Colombo refused to blink, it was due to a corresponding realisation that it was confronting one of the most brutal and fanatical armies ever raised. Those familiar with Ian Kershaw’s The End, a masterly study of the final five months of the war against Nazi Germany in 1945, will see parallels with what happened in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka four years ago.

Of course, the term ‘human rights’ hadn’t entered the vocabulary of international politics in 1945—a reason why the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Poland and erstwhile Czechoslovakia has been erased from Europe’s collective memory. In any case, the application of human rights to a regime that organised the Holocaust would have been laughable.

Likewise, the invocation of human rights to a dispensation that combined brutality with unwavering fanaticism and which controlled the Tamil areas through efficient intimidation seems as out of place today as it would have in Germany 1945. There has been a brutalisation of Sri Lanka ever since the civil war began in 1983. But the hardening of the Sri Lankan military—which used to be a ceremonial force—is in direct proportion to the blood-thirstiness of the LTTE. The efficacy and wisdom of Tamil separatism in Sri Lanka may occasion legitimate debate. But there can be no debate over the fact that the LTTE personified evil.  

The irony is that the pundits in New Delhi and the political class in Tamil Nadu are fully aware of the real face of the LTTE and even the danger it posed to India. It is relevant to recall the LTTE’s calculated, cold-blooded murder of Rajiv Gandhi during the election campaign of 1991. It is also pertinent to refresh public memory of the Congress Party’s dissociation from the United Front Government of I.K. Gujral in 1998 after the Jain Commission reported the cosy relationship between the DMK and LTTE. True, the imperatives of coalition politics may have forced the Congress to enter into an alliance with Karunanidhi’s party after 2004. But domestic expediency is no reason to forget the past entirely, particularly the unhappy chapters relating to the manner in which Prabhakaran did a Bhindranwale on a cynical regime.

There are a lot of forces and individuals who were responsible for Sri Lanka’s nightmare years. The Bandaranaike family cannot escape responsibility for triggering the process of ethnic polarisation in 1956; other Sinhala politicians cannot disown their roles in the marginalisation of moderate Tamil politicians; and even the Buddhist clergy had a role in stoking a regressive majoritarian outlook. But among those responsible was also India. Would the LTTE have emerged as a force had it not been for New Delhi’s covert support?

Finance Minister P.Chidambaram has sought to send a “resolute” message to Colombo. Perhaps President M. Rajapakshe could do with some softening. But will New Delhi show the same resolve in attacking China for its treatment of its Tibetan minorities? Is Colombo being targeted because it is a small player? Are the principles of ‘constructive engagement’ determined by the electoral calculations of Tamil Nadu? Let’s not make Sri Lanka a scapegoat for the political games we play at home. 

Asian Age, March 22, 2013

Who governs this nation?

By Swapan Dasgupta

Those familiar with the political history of India since the decline of the Moghul Empire in the 18^th century will easily detect a common thread that runs through to the present: the weaker the regime the greater the levels of intrigue and conspiracy in the courts. In Bengal, for example, the levels of intrigue reached colossal heights in the courts of Siraj-ud-Doulah, Mir Jafar and Mir Qasim—nawabs who combined impetuousness with eroding authority. And in western India, the term “Peshwai intrigue” became a stereotype for displays of purposeless cunning so much so that Veer Savarkar lamented the great Vedantist Baji Rao II’s inability to distinguish between a kingdom and a pension.

It may seem far-fetched to extend the mystical charms of oriental intrigue to the India of Manmohan Singh. Yet, occasionally, such a temptation is irresistible.  

Last Wednesday morning—before the Prime Minister intervened in Parliament to inform Italy of “consequences” if it persisted in harbouring the two fugitive marines—a bizarre story began doing the rounds of the political towns of Delhi. The PM had, the previous day, met agitated MPs from Kerala and had placated them with the message that he too felt found the attitude of Italy completely unacceptable. The PM’s assurance soon found its way into the newsrooms and some of the next morning’s newspapers even had a mention of it. Yet, it seems that late at night some media people were contacted by a Race Course Road functionary and told that there was no need to over-interpret the PM’s displeasure.

When the PM got to know of this spin-doctoring the proverbial excreta, it is said, hit the ceiling. According to those who claim to be in the know of the innards of the system, he posed a fundamental question: who controls the Prime Minister’s Office? It’s a question many have privately asked and now, it seemed, the PM had stumbled on the same query.

It is a matter of some solace that the PM did not budge from his original displeasure with the proverbial ‘nation-in-law’. His intervention in Parliament may have lacked delivery but its larger message was quite forthright.

At the same time, the question persists: why was there an attempt to dilute India’s outrage over Rome giving a new twist to the concept of “most favoured nation”? Was this a unilateral gesture by a courtier who was trying to second-guess the ‘real’ power centre? Or, was there some basis to the thwarted revisionism? In that case, from where did it originate?

These are questions that will never be satisfactorily answered. When it comes to the intrigues of the court, no absolute verification is really possible. What is important, however, is not whether an attempt was made to underplay the significance of Italy’s hostile action—if it was, you can be rest assured that Indian diplomacy will not pursue the issue relentlessly and, instead, allow it to fade away from public memory. To my mind, the significance lies in the fact that even in matters that involve national sovereignty and India’s place in the world, the preoccupation of the court is factional one-upmanship.

Those who narrated the supposed sequence of events to me were gleeful that the PM had “asserted” himself. But the mere fact that the PM did what the occasion demanded invoked a celebratory mood among those who still retain a soft corner for him is itself revealing. It suggests that the mind of the government is in a haze and systemic dysfunction so deep-rooted that the movements of the left and right hands are wilfully uncoordinated.

India’s stock in the world has fallen so alarmingly in the past year that Rome doesn’t think twice before flashing two fingers at New Delhi and Islamabad is brazen enough to pass a provocative resolution on Afzal Guru in its National Assembly. Nor does it stop here. Even Maldives doesn’t feel that Indian counsels amount to very much. In the game of international politics, India is precariously poised to become the football—an object that can be kicked around merrily because its rulers are busy settling factional scores and its functionaries are gleefully taking advantage of a prevailing power vacuum.

It is wrong to believe that the state of drift we are witnessing today is a function of incoherent economic policies. That one wing of the government wants to end its term with a colossal display of fiscal profligacy while another wing is pondering over the judgment of history is only part of the problem. The unpalatable truth, that we as Indians must recognise, is that we are confronted with a lame duck government that has lost both the will and the authority to function.

One pillar of notional authority is concerned with the legacy question; another, and more formidable, pillar is preoccupied with the question of inheritance; and the third is self-absorbed with evolving management information systems. Last week, on Times Now, a belligerent retired Pakistan Admiral mocked India for its hollowness. It made a lot of us very angry but there was a ring of truth behind his sneer.

The question is: who governs India? This is a puzzle that is awaiting a solution. From yearning to be a regional superpower, we have been left celebrating that we are at least better off than Pakistan. Some achievement! 

Sunday Pioneer, March 17, 2013

Policy is foreign to Government

By Swapan Dasgupta

At a time when the governance of the country is in total disarray, foreign policy is the least of India’s national preoccupations. Yet, thanks to a blundering government that has lost its balance, India has committed one astonishing blunder and may be on the verge of another diplomatic boo-boo.

The first, predictably, centres on Pakistan, a country which is internally beleaguered and externally short of credibility and friends (barring China). Last week, in an astonishing show of cynicism, the Union Home Secretary accused forces in Pakistan of disseminating fraudulent and inflammatory propaganda aimed at inciting communal troubles in India. The purpose was charmingly blunt: to suggest that the tensions all over India flowing from the troubles in Assam’s Kokrajhar district were the creation of the proverbial ‘foreign hand’.

It is no one’s contention that forces in Pakistan, both official and non-official, are not inimical to India. For a very long time, official thinking across the Radcliffe Line has salivated over the likelihood of an eventual break-up of India. The war of a thousand cuts that General Zia-ul Haq launched in the early-1980s was aimed at encouraging every separatist trend in India, be it in Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab or the North-east. Since 1993, Pakistan has also been hyper-active in fermenting Islamist terrorism and its role in the Mumbai attack of 2008 has been extremely well documented. Even to this day, the promoters of the notorious Lashkar-e-Tayiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed are allowed a free run within Pakistan to disseminate their hateful anti-India message.

That certain Pakistani websites run by extremist elements (with or without official backing) did their bit to promote and nurture a sense of Muslim victimhood over events in Assam and Myanmar isn’t in any doubt. Some jihadi elements within India also echoed these themes in their websites.

However, it is one thing to be alert to the dangers of cyber disinformation. It is a completely different matter for the Centre to argue that the mobs in Mumbai, Lucknow and Allahabad were instigated by Pakistan.

The argument that otherwise good Muslims were cynically misled by dark forces may be good for TV chat shows. The problem arises when the Government starts touting this as the official explanation. Naturally Pakistan has demanded proof. And never mind supplying evidence that would leave Islamabad squirming in embarrassment, the Home Ministry has failed to satisfy colleagues in the Ministry of External Affairs. Indeed, India’s diplomats are themselves shamefaced over this ham-handed bid to pin the responsibility for our internal failings on Pakistan. Apart from everything else, this amateurish buck-passing has ended up putting needless question marks over the credibility of the evidence on Pakistan’s culpability in the Mumbai attacks. If there was a well-directed self-goal, this was it.

The Government, it would seem, is so caught up with obfuscation that it can’t tell its rear from its elbow. This week, the Prime Minister is going to take a break from ‘coalgate’ and other domestic headaches and travel to Teheran for a completely useless Non-Aligned Movement summit. I am no kill-joy and would not like to deprive junketeers of the opportunity of buying Persian carpets at bargain prices. Yet, there is a compelling case for the PM to cite domestic preoccupations and despatch External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna to shake hands with President Ahmadinejad and other representatives of the Iranian theocracy.

That India and Iran has deep ‘civilizational ties’ is a cliché that often rivals the ritual boasts of us being a 5,000-year-old civilisation. No doubt both contain grains of truth which are supplemented by material interests. India still needs Iranian oil and needs Iran for an overland access to Afghanistan. The strategic importance of both should not be underestimated. If he doesn’t, it will be shameful. (END)

At the same time, there are some features of the Indo-Iran bilateral relationship that could do with some clarification. The most important of these is the question of Iranian involvement in international terrorism.

It is understandable, though not morally defensible, that India chooses to look the other way (and at times even condone), Iran’s activities in Lebanon, Syria and Israel. As a country that has a glorious track record of preachiness, India has chosen to keep remarkably silent about Ahmadinejad’s repeated threats to wipe out Israel from the face of the earth—the latest one being his Quds Day address on August 17. But why has India chosen to be silent when Iran exports its terror to New Delhi?

The Delhi Police, after an uncharacteristically unpublicised inquiry, has gathered enough evidence to indicate that three Iranian nationals, along with one Indian, were involved in the explosion that left an Israeli diplomat seriously injured in February this year. Despite the evidence linking the Delhi bombing with the Bangkok bombing where Iranian nationals were also involved, Teheran has chosen to brazen it out, in the understanding that India is powerless to do anything.

The issue is not merely that Iran must not be allowed to export its terror, but that India must make it clear that it will not countenance any physical harm to the representative of a friendly country—which is what Israel unquestionably is.

For too long, India has allowed its policy to be guided by spurious sectarian concerns. If the Prime Minister does go to Teheran at this inopportune moment, the least we can expect is for him to tell Ahmadinejad to lay off.  

Sunday Pioneer, August 26, 2012

The war of poses

By Swapan Dasgupta

In the world of Punjabi humour, Nattha Singh and Prem Singh may well be the same thing (or Singh), but it was a cruel joke that Islamabad inflicted last Tuesday night when it clarified that Sarabjit Singh had in fact been mistaken for Surjeet Singh. The sheer insensitivity of this wilful mix-up apart, the incident, however, served to confirm once again—as if further confirmation was needed—that when it comes to the bilateral relationship with India, the last word doesn’t belong to either the President or the Prime Minister.

This unfortunate reminder of the quirks of Pakistani democracy is, however, timely. For the past year or so, an influential section of India’s foreign policy establishment has made the strengthening of Islamabad’s civilian government one of its main objectives. More than that, they readily believed that the war-like situation along the Durand Line and growing frostiness in US-Pakistan relations had actually helped tilt the balance against the military. Last Tuesday’s midnight clarification should help to inject a much-needed dose of realism into the official Indian perception of Pakistan.

President Asif Ali Zardari may indeed be a jolly fellow, a man who genuinely believes that cross-border trade is better than costly trench warfare. Unfortunately, neither he nor the well-meaning cosmopolitan set that frequently travel to India to preach aman ki asha, count for too much in Pakistan’s power equations. True, a military establishment that has been shown to be quite helpless against the repeated violations of Pakistan’s sovereignty by US Special Forces, isn’t quite what it was in the heydays of General Zia-ul Haq and General Pervez Musharraf. It has shown itself to be quite ragged round the edges. Yet, in a country replete with multiple power centres—that include the US-hating, India-loathing Islamist radicals—the cantonments still have a nominal upper hand. And when the military combines with the Islamists—as they did on the Sarabjit Singh issue—they become all-powerful.

This is a fundamental truth that India has been trying to impress upon world leaders from the day Osama bin Laden’s suicide bombers destroyed the twin towers in New York and attacked the Pentagon in September 2001. Last May, after the Abbottabad operation confirmed the presence of Osama in the heart of the Pakistan military establishment, the US has come round to the view that what India and, for that matter, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, have been saying for so long is right. It is now recognised in Washington that far from being a part of the solution, Pakistan is central to the problem.

When President Barack Obama assumed power in 2008, there was nervousness in New Delhi that the cosy relationship established with President George W. Bush would be unsettled. Indeed, some of Obama’s early utterances triggered concern in India over the future direction of US policy in the region. Today, all those misgivings have been dispelled—at least as far as Pakistan is concerned. If President Bush, despite his long-term commitment to a rising India, was still willing to give Pakistan an extraordinary amount of leeway, President Obama has shown himself to be completely exasperated with Pakistan. The sheer ferocity of the drone attacks is, for all practical purposes, tantamount to a US declaration of war against Pakistan.

What has been witnessed in the past couple of years is the unravelling of a US-Pakistan alliance that had been forged in the early days of the Cold War. Having been made suckers for long, the US attitude towards Pakistan is distinctly vengeful. Washington, it would seem, is out to punish the Pakistan military for its duplicity and treachery. The quiet role played by the US in nudging Saudi Arabia to extradite Zabiuddin Ansari, alias Abu Jundal, to India earlier this week, would suggest that the pusillanimity evident in the A.Q. Khan controversy may be a thing of the past. The US now wants Pakistan’s dirty linen to be exposed to the world—even if that involves admitting the earlier gullibility of the State Department and CIA.

Even if it is bad form to gloat over the misfortunes of a neighbour, India can afford to take a we-told-you-so attitude. Yet, it is inexplicable that a section of the Indian establishment seems to be deeply embarrassed at Pakistan’s embarrassment. Having an independent foreign policy is always a noble goal. Keeping an arm’s length from the US and other NATO forces has earned India tremendous goodwill and secured some leverage in Afghanistan. Is there now an attempt to tell a worried Islamabad that India will keep its distance from the US-Pakistan divorce proceedings? That India will do its bit to prevent Pakistan from being engulfed in a siege mentality?

Obviously there is. Why else did the Cabinet Committee on Security feel obliged to repudiate yet another attempt to secure the demilitarisation of Siachen? What explains the concern in South Block that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s anxiety to visit Pakistan before 2014 with some grand gesture of reconciliation may result in some foreign policy missteps?

Fortunately for India, the scope for unilateral action on the part of a beleaguered Government is very limited. The UPA Government no longer has the capacity to take bold initiatives. Pragmatism should deem that India should confine itself to modest, baby steps in its Pakistan policy. Bold initiatives necessitate a Pakistan at peace with itself. That, tragically, is a distant hope.  

Asian Age/ Deccan Chronicle, June 29, 2012