The Agenda Behind the 'Hidden Agenda' Cry

(Originally appeared in the 1990s in the Times of India, as published in M. D. Nalapat's book "Indutva", Har-Anand Publications, 1999)

An effective method of concealment is to create a diversion, so
that attention gets deflected. Thanks to the din created by the
many who are talking of the "hidden agenda" of the BJP few are
paying attention to the quiet campaign that has accelerated
sharply since the election results put the saffron formation ahead
of the others. The objective of this is to get the BJP to either shelve
its commitment to the nuclear option, or throw it out via the
enticing of a dozen or more of the present supporters of the
Vajpayee government in Parliament.

That the government was not defeated owes less to the BJP’s
capabilities of floor management than to the realisation within
the anti-nuclear camp that any of its favoured candidates such
as Manmohan Singh is unlikely to be the first choice of the
opposition parties in the event of a snap defeat. Neither Sharad
Pawar nor Rajesh Pilot will be acceptable to this lobby, as both
have nationalist credentials and may be tempted to reverse the
neglect of strategic defence that has been a characteristic of the
Indian political leadership for long. While neither Indira Gandhi
nor Rajiv went as far as Morarji Desai (who evidently felt that his 
favourite liquid refreshment was sufficient to deal with security
threats), both ensured that no further nuclear tests took place,
thus effectively emasculating this country’s deterrent capability.

In 1990, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed helped Pakistan get a
foothold in Kashmir, by his refusal to take preventive action
against many who had been won over by the ISI. Subsequently, 
during the Narasimha Rao period, an organised effort took place 
to starve strategic programmes of adequate funding, and ensure
that Prithvi was capped, Agni rolled back, and the nuclear 
deterrent defunct. Two senior civil servants, with the enthusiastic 
backing of a Cabinet minister, masterminded this effort. However,
India escaped most of the negative consequences of such a
policy, thanks to the mistakes of others. Due to Pakistan's
induction of large numbers of Afghans, Pakistanis and others in
the Valley during 1993, local support for the insurgency waned.
And after the 1995 Brown amendment - that rewarded Pakistan
with key US equipment for continuing its drug and terror war
and its China-aided nuclear bomb programme - bureaucratic
support for this Gang of Three vanished, and even Narasimha
Rao was forced to begin reversing the earlier policy of neglect.
Small allocations once more began to be made to critical
programmes.

Thanks to the realisation that the political class in India has
been spineless when it comes to taking tough decisions, both
China and Pakistan have continued their clandestine war on
India. Beijing has transferred technology to Islamabad, aware
that Washington and New Delhi will do nothing other than
make protests for the record. Pakistan, after its defeats in Punjab
and Kashmir, has extended the covert war to the whole of India.
In a less complacent setup, this would have led to immediate
retaliation in the form of a policy of hot pursuit of terrorists
across the Line of Control in Kashmir. In India, all it has led to
are warmer and warmer references to Pakistan by political
bigwigs. Small wonder that Islamabad believes that the security
risk of its aggressive policy is zero.

In case New Delhi does not have the stomach for a policy of
hot pursuit, the least that needs to be done to convey a message
that it is no longer paralysed in the face of the covert war is to
speed up the Agni programme and the induction of Prithvi. This
needs to be followed by open development of the nuclear
deterrent. Should Washington not make available sufficient
data, there will be no option but to go in for a limited number
of tests to refine the deterrent. As for the threat of sanctions,
should this lead to financial pain, then windows will need to be
found for generating funds through the sale of Indian technology
to countries that will not pose strategic threats to India in future.
Indonesia, Singapore, South Korea, Oman and Bahrain are some
of these states. Even in the event of sanctions, New Delhi needs
to retain a responsible posture towards proliferation of
technology. It cannot adopt the Beijing-Pyongyang approach of 
letting the market decide where technology should be allowed
to flow to.

Apart from fullscale induction of Prithvi, rapid development
of Agni and the improvement of the reliability of the nuclear
deterrent, there is need to change our attitude towards events
across the border. After ten years of absorbing Islamabad’s
intensified terror war, New Delhi needs to adopt a policy of
giving moral and political support to disadvantaged sections in
Pakistan. This is because only after that country becomes a full
democracy, where all regions and communities are treated
equally, will there be a mindset in Islamabad for genuine peace
with India. Thus, associations that support the rights of Shias,
minorities, women, Sindhis, Pashtuns and Baluchis need to be
set up here, that can give non-personnel assistance to the
suffering people of Pakistan. They should be encouraged to
adopt a charter that demands, for example, that not more than
25 per cent of the jobs at all levels in the Pakistan army, judiciary
and administration should be monopolised by the people of a
particular province.

When a general here was courageous enough to suggest that
the pain threshold for Pakistan’s interference should be raised,
the babus in the ministry of defence (some of whom can expect
to be rewarded with overseas jobs for their work in demolishing
morale and preparedness in the armed forces) asked the officer
for an explanation, rather than reward his candour. This is just
a continuation of what has been taking place for decades:
soldiers suffering because of neglect of their needs, including for
example an adequate supply of advanced rifles to face the
terrorists.

Sadly, the Congress party has gone so far away from its
nationalist traditions that Sitaram Kesri recently tried to shift the
responsibility for the Coimbatore bomb blasts away from the ISI.
Today both Pranab Mukherjee and Manmohan Singh are one in
demanding that the nuclear deterrent should be abandoned.

Small wonder that voters are making a beeline to the BJP. No
surprise that powerful lobbies are working overtime to destabilise
it, before the Vajpayee government follows through on the
promise inherent in its manifesto. Those who support China’s
security interests in India can be expected to oppose the deterrent,
but not a party that stood for nationalism till recently. Hopefully,
rather than adopt the hidden agenda of those who seek to
continue India’s weak response to Sino-Pakistan provocation,
nationalist elements in the Congress party will support a special
session of Parliament on National Security, so that measures to
safeguard this country can get debated and approved, just as the
CTBT policy was. Prime Minister Vajpayee, we are waiting to see
you convene a Parliament session that will evolve a consensus
on national security and approve practical steps to deter those
waging a covert war on India.

That there exists a powerful lobby encouraging the external
backers of subversion is no secret. The way to expose the allies
of this lobby in India would be to call their bluff and propose and
implement policies that will guarantee security rather than a
continuation of the slow bleeding that has been inflicted on this
country as a consequence of the timidity of its political leadership.
India needs not only secularism, but also security.

The Red-Herring - Pakistan's Role in Dividing Asia

(Originally appeared in the 1990s in the Times of India, as published in M. D. Nalapat's book "Indutva", Har-Anand Publications, 1999)

In another manifestation of ”planted" diplomacy, the Washington

Post has again been used by the Clinton administration to scare

India away from a nuclear test by invoking the Pakistan bogey.

According to "senior officials" in the United States administration,

Pakistan plans to conduct a test whenever India does, with

technology got from the Chinese.

If the unnamed officials are correct, then they are breaking

US law by refusing to impose sanctions on China and Pakistan.

Thus far the Clinton administration has pretended that there is

no ”clinching evidence" that China has in fact transferred

nuclear technology to Pakistan. If the Washington Post story has

its basis in an actual briefing, then obviously the US administration

has given up this pretence, and has admitted that US laws have

been breached. Then why the refusal to impose sanctions?

Opinion is divided in India on whether, as of date, Pakistan

possesses the capability to detonate a nuclear device. However,

there is unanimity that China has given substantial help to

India’s western neighbour, and that such help is clearly in

violation of US law. While in the 1960s Chinese help to Pakistan

was motivated by a desire to increase the pressure points on

India, by the 1970s Pakistan became important to China as a

route to Washington’s approval. The tacit US encouragement to

the Chinese supply of strategic technology to Pakistan has

obviously been taken as a signal by Beijing that continuation of

such supplies would be welcome, formal protests

notwithstanding.

No Longer Possible 

If the Clinton administration is facing difficulties in conniving at

the breaking of its own laws, it is less because of a desire to

enforce them than the fact that both the US media and Capital

Hill have become less susceptible to the nostrums peddled by the

state and defence departments. Although it is still possible to

plant a false report about South Asia in even a major American

newspaper, it is no longer possible to fob off supplementary

questions about the apparent US impotence in preventing China

from creating a new nuclear power in addition to the six that

have already detonated a nuclear device: India, US, Russia,

France, Britain and China. The passage of the Brown Amendment

has made it clear that Pakistan has become important enough to

Washington for the latter to ignore the former's support to

terrorism and its feverish search for nuclear capability.

What are the reasons for Pakistan assuming such an

importance? They lie in Pakistan’s willingness to create a red

herring which has the capability of further dividing Asian

countries. Had there been, for instance, an interface between

Indian technology and Gulf capital both sides would have

benefited. India would have got more capital, while the Gulf

countries would have been helped to set up a technical base of

their own that would have ended their current dependence on

Western expertise. In time, this could have created a joint

infrastructure in manufacturing defensive weapon systems, thus

reducing the huge flow of Gulf capital to the West to meet the

cost of arms purchases. Thanks to incessant Pakistani propaganda

of India being an "anti—Muslim" state (a canard greatly helped

by the utterances of the Hindutva brigade), the synergic potential

of India-Gulf co-operation remains untapped.

Two Major Economies

In the East, it is no accident that Benazir Bhutto is targeting

Indonesia and Malaysia with warnings against co-operation

with "Hindu" India. In damaging the prospects for joint action

by India and these two major economies of the region, Bhutto is

fulfilling the agenda of her patrons, who would prefer to see the

major Asian economies linking up with them rather than with

each other. British Foreign‘Secretary Malcolm Rifkind has once

again articulated the policy of using Pakistan to check India by

pretending that both economies (and societies) are equal, and

that therefore Pakistan should be admitted to any forum that

India gains entry to. Apart from the difference in economic size,

Rifkind is apparently unaware of the difference between a

secular society such as Indonesia or India, and a fundamentalist

state such as Pakistan or Sudan. Perhaps he should similarly

equate Ireland with Britain and call for Dublin’s entry into the

UN Security Council, because Britain is a permanent member.

Apart from its utility in preventing closer co-operation

between India and the Muslim-majority states, another way in

which Pakistan is useful to its Western patrons is as a hypodermic

syringe injecting fundamentalist teachings and terrorism into

places such as Chechnya, Afghanistan and Jammu and Kashmir.

The quid pro quo for this is the Clinton administration's refusal

to acknowledge that Pakistan has become the most significant

breeding ground for fundamentalist terrorists.

However, there are two reasons why Islamabad’s willingness

to accept a client status may soon end. The first is the increasing

awareness within Pakistan that the conflict with India is proving

far costlier to Islamabad than to New Delhi. At present rates of

growth, within four years the difference between the two

economies will render obsolete the Western policy of equating

India with Pakistan. At the same time, Pakistan will lose out on

the sharing of the opportunities created by this growth. Should

the two countries co-operate, the benefits to Pakistan would be

significantly greater than to India. Secondly, because of the

Wahhaby Punjabi dominance in Pakistan, it is that country more

than India that is likely to be mired in ethnic strife. The ISI tinder

so carefully being set aside for Delhi and Mumbai may get

kindled in Lahore and Karachi instead.

The realisation that the people of Pakistan are paying a high

price for Islamabad’s refusal to accept the LoC in J and K as the

international boundary may before long create political forces

opposed to Pakistan being used for achieving the foreign policy

goals of western countries. India needs to hasten the climate for

the emergence of such balancing forces by upgrading trade and

cultural ties with Pakistan even while beating back its attempts

at exporting terror. As for China, so long as it believes that to do

so would please the US, it will continue to supply strategic

technology to Pakistan, despite Islamabad’s eagerness to inject

fundamentalism into provinces such as Sinkiang or Inner

Mongolia.

Change of Mind

It would be desirable for the Pakistani elite to change its mind

before its masters do. Within the US and other Western countries,

those mindsets which are locked into Cold War patterns may, in

time, give way to others that accept that the development of a

billion-strong liberal democracy—and one that is English-

speaking, to boot—is far more conducive to international order

than support to a fundamentalist country out to annex a secular

neighbour’s territory. While the Narasimha Rao government has

thus far been very indulgent towards Islamabad, it may yet

respond better to public opinion which is impatient with

Pakistan's attempts to foment separatist impulses in India.

However, whichever government takes office in Delhi, by now

a consensus on national security issues has evolved that will

make it impossible to realise the Bhutto dream of winning

concessions from a future "unstable" Indian government. The

more "unstable" a government, the greater the compulsions

within a democratic system for it to take a tough line against

Pakistan.

India and Pakistan, in common with other Asian countries,

are natural partners. For its own survival, Pakistan needs to free

itself from its client role and enter into a friendly relationship

with its brother nation to the east.

When the Law Becomes a Mischievous Ass

(Originally appeared in the 1990s in the Times of India, as published in M. D. Nalapat's book "Indutva", Har-Anand Publications, 1999)

Ten years ago, the Malayalam newspaper Mathrubhumi ran a

series about rotten apples in the Indian Union Muslim League

basket in Kerala. One of those who had been featured telephoned

the present writer-who was then the editor of the newspaper-

and warned that unless the series was withdrawn, "you will

spend all your time in the courts". On getting a laugh as a reply,

he rang off.

Weeks later, a spate of defamation cases began to get filed.

In a few months, I became familiar with courts across Kerala,

waiting for hours to catch my name—defendant so-and-so—

shouted out for me to appear before the magistrate, who would

usually give a fresh date for this ritual and move on to the next

accused, this time a rapist or a pickpocket.

One of the cases was filed in Badagara, a town in north

Kerala. Almost every month for a year, my appointments diary

would block an entire day for "appearance at Badagara". The

defamation had been the reporting of a taluk-level politician’s

fulminations against another, an act of journalistic impropriety

so gross that the editor himself—though not the reporter—had

to shamble to the dock to make appearance after appearance or

face a warrant of arrest. The Badagara sojourns ended only after

the magistrate got transferred, and the replacement took a

somewhat less apocalyptic view of the report, and excused me

from appearing. With that, the ’defamed’ individual dropped

the suit. The rash of defamation suits disappeared only after the

IUML leader—again in the columns of the Mathrubhumi—was

exposed giving dud cheques, and had to bow out of major-

league politics.

Years later, I attended another hearing, this time in the 

Supreme Court. An elderly relative had been sued for some 

property by other relatives, and after their case had, in the 

remarkably quick time of 12 years, been thrown out of the lower

courts, an appeal by the losers had been admitted in the Supreme

Court, and all property transactions by my relative stayed "till 

the matter was disposed of". As a result, even while paying taxes

on the assets, he could not sell them, nor had he the funds to 

properly maintain them. 

Finally, after years of waiting, his petition for dismissing the 

stay was to come up for a hearing. By then he was nearly 80 and 

in poor health. Chief Justice S. Mukherjee himself took up the

matter. After a glance, he ordered that the matter be listed again

after six months. Not a long time, surely, for a country with a

history going back several thousands of years. As it transpired,

both Chief justice Mukherjee and my relative died within a few

months of that order, the latter without escaping from the legal

quicksand into which he had been thrust by a suit that was, after

his death, dismissed by the Supreme Court, just as it had been

in all the lower courts. Later on, I asked some of those on the

opposing side why they had filed the case. One gave me an

honest reply, "We knew we had no case, but because legal

procedures in India take so long, we thought he would

compromise and give us something". In other words, use legal

action as an instrument of blackmail. 

Those travelling between Trivandrum and Quilon could, for

more than 10 years, see a half-finished bridge on the road to

Attingal. Work had stopped, we were told, because of a court

order. The quickest way to abort a project, evidently, was to go

to the courts and get a stay. Finally it would be seen that the 

grounds for the stay were non-existent, but by then children 

would have become grandparents. In the courts, time is a

concept akin to the vastness of space: six months is an instant.

10 years, incredible speed.

The danger in all this judicial power—to halt, to delay—is 

that in some hands it might get misused. Years ago, when just 

starting out in the newspaper profession, I visited a judge of the

Kerala High Court. Justice Namboodiripad did not call out for

handcuffs when cheekily queried about judicial corruption by a

rookie journalist. "Look, I like orange juice", he replied. "But I

can't afford to drink it except once a week, it’s too expensive.

Therefore, I often wonder how some of my brother justices can

afford to drink liquids far more expensive than orange juice, that

too every day", he added with a mischievous smile.

A democracy cannot afford official arbitrariness or lack of

accountability. Rather than reach for the bludgeon of contempt

at every comment on their shortcomings, our judicial watchdogs

need to better police—and punish—themselves. Charges of

collusion against the person who gave bail in Madras to a

notorious fugitive and that of manslaughter against the Delhi

individual who in effect ordered the execution of Rajan Pillai,

seem to be the minimum that justice warrants. Mere verbal raps

on the knuckles or transfers—the preferred mode of 'punishing'

judicial misderneanours—are not enough. More deterrent action

needs to be taken to ensure that such unconscionable anomalies

do not recur.

Different Strokes - Relevance of Asymmetrical Responses

(Originally appeared in the 1990s in the Times of India, as published in M. D. Nalapat's book "Indutva", Har-Anand Publications, 1999)

Just as a houseperson takes a while before getting a new recipe

right, the Indian voter may need to experiment with four or five

Lok Sabha polls before settling on a stable mixture. This election

is the fourth general election since 1989. Hopefully, there will not

be another round before 2000 to craft a political structure that

does not crumble midway through its term.

Even while political leaders inhale the dust of the campaign 

trail, the problems confronting the country remain: weak

infrastructure, excessive regulation combined with inadequate

checks on official corruption, a tendency towards ”populism"

and, finally, security, defined as defense against subversion and

blackmail.

In the melee of issues projected by the political parties,

security has been almost forgotten. This is not surprising in a

political culture which believes that piping hot servings of mooli

paratha and sarson ka saag are enough to deter Islamabad from

its policy of trying once again to vivisect India on religious

grounds. As the two Robins (Cook and Raphel) illustrate, such

a policy has strong support in countries that should normally be

expected to back democracy against extremism.

Twin-track Policy

The Pakistan army, whose actual strategic objective is the

maintenance of the domination of one province over the other

three, can be expected to trigger the break-up of its host country

within a decade, thanks to its indulgence of extremist and

regional interests and the money it is raking in from the legitimate,

i.e., non-drugs trade, budget. Thus, as far as Pakistan is concerned,

all that needs to be done is to ignore the bleatings of the Hurriyat

lovers and operate a twin-track policy of strong action against

subversion combined with offers of expanding trade and cultural

contacts with a population that has been distanced from its

Hanafi traditions since 1947.

Non-democratic China is the main strategic challenge India

needs to tackle in the coming decade. And in working out

doctrines capable of self-defense against hegemonism and

blackmail, this country needs to avoid the mistake made by some

western powers in implicitly presuming an equivalence in the

response by China and by them to different situations.

Thus, while on computer screens China may have the

capability merely to destroy two west coast US cities by 2005

while Washington can pulverize the emerging superpower in

retaliation, the fact is that a two-city capability is enough to deter

a US response in all except a direct attack on itself. In effect,

therefore, the US will cease to have an effective retaliatory

capability against Beijing’s hegemonic moves in Asia by that

year. This means that within the next seven years, New Delhi

will need to actualise enough retaliatory capability against

communist China to deter any attempt at blackmail.

Casualty Rate

A second divergence between thresholds is the casualty rate.

While Beijing can sustain fairly high levels of bloodletting,

Washington will need to reconsider its options once the body

bags move into the thousands. The Vietnam standard is no

longer acceptable to US voters and legislators. Thus, once the

Chinese regime crosses a minimum retaliatory capability in a

few years time, US troops in Asia will have mostly a ceremonial

function, just as the US fleet movements in the Taiwan straits

looked good on television but would have been unable to deter

a sustained missile attack.

Fortunately, this country has a much higher casualty threshold

than Washington, at least in Asian theatres. This has been

demonstrated not just in Kashmir but in external theatres such

as Somalia and northem Sri Lanka. Unless there is a fusion

between the different strokes of India and the other major

democratic powers, it will not be possible to patch together a

credible defense against putative hegemonism in Asia.

Just as New Delhi should adopt a two-step strategy towards

Islamabad, it needs to do so vis-a-vis the US and the EU. Within

the latter grouping, France has moved the farthest from the

standard British position of seeking to equate India with Pakistan

in all security matters. Hopefully Germany will follow. However,

overt development of India’s deterrent will lead to sanctions

from many countries. This is not as negative as it sounds, in view

of the reality that near-maximal technological sanctions have

already been imposed on New Delhi by the US and the EU, even

while the China window ensures that other "target" countries

such as Pakistan escape the effects.

While refusing to accept the Neville Chamberlain option of

unilateral disarmament in a developing threat scenario, New

Delhi needs to adopt business-friendly policies to ensure that

lobbies are created against the indiscriminate extension of

technological sanctions against business. While the insurance

sector needs to be opened to Indian players, infrastructure

projects can be made friendly to foreign investment. Also, while

speculation needs to be protected against in the equity and

currency markets, genuine overseas investors need to be given

incentives on par with domestic interests.

While the Narasimha Rao government made significant

progress in dismantling the legacy of colonial restrictions, it

implicitly accepted the Pollyanna scenario of the Raphels on

external threats. As a result, it continued the underfunding of

strategic programmes that were begun in 1984, and almost

crippled work on Agni and its warhead. The impact of this will

become evident only in the coming years, once Beijing puts in

place sufficient retaliatory capacity to ignore the US in the Asian

theatre. From that point, India, APEC and ASEAN will be at risk

to putative hegemonism, unless New Delhi has by then created

an adequate defensive capability.

Security Issues

New Delhi needs to follow policies that promote the expansion

of its pitiful per capita economic base. Sadly, too many politicians

are succumbing to the 1947-89 mantra of abusing and restricting

those with initiative and enterprise, rather than encouraging

them. Externally, while continuing bridge-building efforts with

other major democracies, work on missile and warhead

programmes needs to be accelerated. This should go parallel

with efforts at promoting trade and cultural links even with

Islamabad.

Hopefully, the new government will begin the process of

institutionalising security policies, not just by setting up boards

that are, in effect, sinecures, but by encouraging the web of think-

tanks and institutional interfaces that this country needs to

generate and getting defensive measures implemented.

Otherwise, 2005 may repeat the shock of 1962.

Crossroads: India's Tryst with the Future

(Originally appeared in the 1990s in the Times of India, as published in M. D. Nalapat's book "Indutva", Har-Anand Publications, 1999)

Across Asia, there are two broad tendencies. The first is the West

Asian model, the second the East Asian. Afghanistan and Pakistan

reflect the first, while Indonesia and (as yet) Malaysia practise

the second.

The West Asian model postulates a society where one

community is supreme, the others being given inferior status.

Women are part of the underprivileged group, and the use of

violence to achieve political and foreign policy objectives is

encouraged. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, one segment of society

has been given the monopoly of power, with the rest condemned

to servitude. In Saudi Arabia there are no churches or Buddhist

viharas. In Pakistan, Shias, Sindhis, Baluchis and the religious

minorities are discriminated against. As an Islamabad satellite,

the Taliban-controlled regime follows its master’s model in its

own country.

The West Asian model promotes feuds and confrontations,

and allocates a low score to orderly economic development. It

rejects the concept of a plural society that slowly evolves a

composite culture. Within India, its most ardent followers are

the activists of the Viswa Hindu Parishad and the Jamaat-I-

Islami, which would like to adapt the Pakistani model to this

country by relegating ”unbelievers” to second-class status. The

VHP would like to destroy places of worship the way temples

have got demolished in Pakistan. Those who promote caste and

regional divisions also fall within this category.

The East Asian model puts the highest premium on economic

growth, and on the development of private initiative as a means

of ensuring this. Progress requires social - as distinct from

political - stability, and this means a polity where no group feels

discriminated against. In both Indonesia and Malaysia the

minorities are treated on a par with Muslims, though in both

countries certain politicians are now trying to promote the

Pakistan model against their own. However, till today they have

not succeeded, with the result that communal harmony still

prevails.

Rather than the West Asia model conquering South and East

Asia, there is need for the Eastern model to spread to the other

parts of the continent, so that societies there can avoid the

bloodshed that sectarian policies generate. An example is Sri

Lanka, where the 1950s-1960s attempt to make the Sinhalas

dominate over the Tamils led to the rise of the LTTE. Today there

is an effort to reverse anti-Tamil policies to damp down the roots

of the rebellion. In India, despite pressures from Hindu, Muslim,

Sikh and Christian extremists, the East Asian composite culture

has prevailed, as illustrated by M. F. Husain, a Muslim painter

proudly depicting scenes from the Rumuyana and the Mahabharata.

As an Indian, Husain has as much proprietorship over these

epics as Uma Bharati has. Sadly, however Homer’s epics are

given more prominence in Indian classrooms than home-grown

epics. An example of West Asian thinking where epics too are

given religious connotations rather than historical ones.

There are numerous individuals in India who follow the

West Asian model while parading as liberals. These are the

people who ban the teaching of Indian epics and who downgrade

most manifestations of local culture. Thanks to them, the word

"secular" has acquired an anti-religion character, when in fact

the truly religious are the most secular. The phoneys are the

individuals who seek to banish international languages from

Indian classrooms and who are opposed to large-scale industrial

projects allegedly on environmental grounds. At the same time,

they claim they want to abolish poverty. Presumably this will be

done the Stalin way—by finishing off the wealthy. The "Left"

and the "Right" appear to share the common goal of diverting

public attention from the need to focus on economic development

by throwing up red herrings in the shape of demolition of

minority houses of worship or the banning of investment even

from friendly Asian countries.

The battle for establishing the East Asian model - while

harmonising it with the imperatives of political democracy -

needs to be won in India. Thereafter, this country has to serve as

a disseminator of a development-friendly and moderate cultural

paradigm to the region, especially the western and central

reaches, where fanaticism reigns. One way of helping this task

would be the beaming of more Indian programmes to the region,

through strategic alliances with Asian programmers. If there is

an improved constituency within Pakistan for better relations

with India, some of the credit must go to the numerous Indian

television programmes that are getting aired within that country.

These sitcoms show that people of other regions and faiths are

not monsters but very similar to oneself.

Lal Krishna Advani is a politician this writer admires, hence

the sorrow when he gives the impression of believing that the

destruction of places of worship in Varanasi and Mathura are of

greater importance to the 900 million dirt-poor Indians than

orderly development that can change their lives the way it has

happened in Korea or Malaysia. Why does the BJP look towards

Pakistan and Afghanistan for inspiration, rather than to these

two countries? As for the "secularists", should they keep putting

roadblocks in the efforts of the Gujrals and the Chidambarams

to free the economy from Nehruvian chains, the people of this

country will remain poverty-stricken. The country has yet to

forget Pranab Mukherjee demanding higher taxes from the

middle class or Sitaram Yechury opposing foreign investment in

any Indian state except of course Bengal, or any move to inject

competition into key sectors such as banking and insurance. Of

course, funds from well-off businessmen profiting from their

monopoly positions may dry up if sensible policies get pursued.

But surely Mukherjee and Yechury want the rest of us to enjoy

the standard of living that they themselves are used to.

Unfortunately, the Gujrals and the Chidambarams are not

doing much to checkmate the Mukherjees and the Yechurys.

Rather than expose their double-talk, the politically correct path

these days is to play along with the fiction that the Mughal-

British-Nehru framework was good for India. By down-grading

the importance of economic issues this school focused attention

away and on to regional, caste and communal issues.

India has the ingredients in place to become a world power.

However, it lacks a political class that has confidence in its own

people. Hence the pussyfooting on developing a nuclear deterrent

or the avoiding of policies that would increase investment from

Asia and from those EU members not dominated by US-UK

perceptions about the subcontinent. Jaswant Singh, Madhavrao

Scindia and Palaniappan Chidambaram step forward. It's your

turn to try and free the Indian people from the colonial web of

restrictive laws fused to a legal system that takes a hundred

years to decide on cases. Do that, and your fellow-countrymen

will do the rest.

Make no Concession to the Terror Network

(Originally appeared in the 1990s in the Times of India, as published in M. D. Nalapat's book "Indutva", Har-Anand Publications, 1999)

The Cold War might have ended seven years ago with the fall

of Soviet Union, but since then a new archipelago of terror has

taken shape, in Asia and Africa, with spottings in Europe. This,

the Archipelago of Terror, has been created by religious

fundamentalists to promote their agenda of separateness. Here,

in the camps of the network, recruits are taught that it is

irreligious to live peaceably alongside other faiths; that it is a

holy duty to use the AK-47 and the plastique explosive against

"non-believers".

This new Terror Archipelago has its strongpoints in Saudi

Arabia and Pakistan, with smaller bases in Libya, Iraq, Sudan,

Palestine and Iraq. There are scatter of cells in several countries,

including several on the Indo-Nepal border, as well as in the

Philippines and recently in Marseilles in France. Xinjiang in

China is a new focus of attention. There are two broad streams

within the system, one centred in the Saudi-Pakistan link-up and

the other in Iran. Smaller sub-systems, with linkages to other

countries, also exist.

In the countries where the network is based, there exists a

dual system of authority: the regular government, and the

shadow entity of the Archipelago. The first has almost no control

over the second, while the latter has a great deal of leverage over

the former. Thus a Syed Mohammed Khatami in Iran will have

as little control over the elements of the Archipelago in his

country as Nawaz Sharif will have over the ISI-druglords combine

in Pakistan, or King Fahd will have over dozens of Saudi

nationals who finance subsystems of the network in locations as

far separated as France, India and the Philippines.

While much of the expenses needed for running the system

comes from the drug trade, Saudi nationals provide the bulk of

the rest. Pakistan is home to the largest number of training

camps in the network, beating Sudan by a wide margin if one

includes the training camps in Afghanistan that are Lahore-

controlled. Indeed, Afghanistan has been sought to be recreated

by the Terror Archipelago as the first country to fall totally

within its grip. However, this is being resisted by two contrary

tendencies. The first is Pashtun nationalism, which is chafing at

the Sunni Punjabi strings controlling the Taliban; the second is

the large number of non-fundamentalist Afghans, who do not

want to be part of a network.

The significance of the Archipelago for the policies pursued

by democratic states towards countries that are home to it lies in

the fact that concessions given to the network weaken not just the

country making them but democratic tendencies in the host

countries. Thus the 1972 Shimla agreement, which handed back

all the gains of the 1971 war, did not protect democracy in

Pakistan from getting subverted, initially by Z. A. Bhutto and

later by Zia-ul-Haq. While concessions to the democratic

superstructure - such as trade concessions and people-to-people

exchanges - are welcome and necessary, concessions that are

designed to feed the demands of the Archipelago are futile. The

democratic superstructures have no way of forcing the terror

network to adopt democratic ways. Instead, concessions will

embolden the warriors of terror.

Thus the acceptance by India of Kashmir as an "area of

concern" may in fact have an effect which is the reverse of that

hoped for by those who agreed to this demand. It may embolden

the Archipelago to make further attempts at establishing its hold

over major parts of the state. Until the likely recruits to the terror

war realise that the sovereignty of New Delhi over at least the

parts of Kashmir now governed by the National Conference is

final, they will continue to pump oxygen into the war. Just as at

Shimla in 1972, at Murree in 1997 the Indian negotiators forgot .

about the Archipelago when agreeing to important concessions.

There are several problems in Pakistan that affect the security of

India, the genocide in Sindh being an example. Another is the

second-class status given to minorities in Pakistan. Had these

questions been included along with Kashmir as an "area of

concern", it would have been a fairer exchange.

Just as in 1972 the ground situation was overwhelmingly

favourable to India, and yet the Shimla Accord that was signed

continued the fiction of the Kashmir "dispute", today once again

the ground situation is in India’s favour, at great human cost. Yet

once more New Delhi has given life to a ghost, by agreeing to

discuss a single Indian state rather than generalised principles

over clusters of territories in both countries. The least that can be

expected after such a step is to withdraw the foolish 1948

application to the United Nations. That august body needs to be

told that for years it has failed to vacate aggression and now

India will settle the problem itself. Secondly, the UN Observers

Group, all relaxing at the expense of the international community,

need to be sent packing. Thirdly, the counter-measures against

the Terror need to be maintained.

After a few more years, slowly the economic ruin caused by

the wars indulged in by the terror network will embolden the

people of Pakistan to come out against the fundamentalists and

demand peaceful ties with India.