RE: Counterpoint: Is India a soft state?

[dipen <Dipen.Chakraborty@unilever.com>]

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IPI_Marker

Very rightly pointed out Mr Narayanan

We Indians have been taken for granted for so many years that anybody
comes
and shits on us and in return we tell ourselves to be patient.
It is better to be killed than to forsake our respect. It is like my
mother
is being raped and I am being told to remain "patient"...What a
abnoxious
idea. Our leaders should come out in open and declare (if they do not
have
the capability to make Pakistan silent) that we Indians do not have the
technology or power to go for war with Pakistan, that we have failed to
bring in Americans in our fold in our fight towards terrorism.

-----Original Message-----
From: Ram Narayanan [mailto:ramn@adelphia.net]
Sent: Saturday, December 22, 2001 11:18 PM
To: debate@indiapolicy.org
Subject: Counterpoint: Is India a soft state?


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Please help make the Manifesto better, or accept it, and propagate it!
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[moderator]: thanks for the post Mr. Narayanan

IPI_Marker


One of the most insightful pieces on India and Indian foreign policy
ever written. A MUST reading for all thinking Indians and Indian
Americans.

Ram Narayanan


http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/231201/detfea04.asp

THE HINDUSTAN TIMES, DECEMBER 23, 2001

COUNTERPOINT: ARE WE A SOFT STATE?

Vir Sanghvi

Just before the Agra summit, the Foreign Secretary hosted a small lunch
for editors and columnists in her South Block office. The idea,
presumably, was for the mandarins of the Foreign Office to tell us what
to expect in Agra. But because Chokila Iyer is such a gracious,
well-mannered hostess, the mandarins never really got a chance to say
very much at all.

Instead, the journos hijacked the lunch and told the diplomats how to do

their job. (Do not be surprised. This happens all the time). For the
most part, this consisted of familiar peacenik advice - it is up to us
to make Agra a success, to give poor dear General Musharraf something he

can take back to his people etc. - so the foreign office mandarins, who
had a more realistic assessment of what to expect, switched off.

During a brief lull in the lectures from the lunching journos, our High
Commissioner in Islamabad, Vijay Nambiar, did manage to get a word in
edgewise. It proved to be the most perceptive thing that anybody said at

the lunch.

The big revelation for him during his stint in Pakistan, he said, was
that Pakistanis and Indians had very different attitudes. For the
Pakistanis, truth was simple and one dimensional. For Indians, truth was

a complex commodity. We always accepted that there were many points of
view and many dimensions to the truth. Pakistanis, on the other hand,
regarded the truth pretty much as what they wanted it to be.

The consequence, he suggested, was that the Pakistani position always
came across as straight-forward and forthright. But ours came across as
too complex for simple arguments.

I have thought a lot about Vijay's distinction over the last week. Every

newspaper and every TV channel has been considering India's response to
the attack on Parliament. There have been notable exceptions (chiefly
Brahma Chellaney whose piece in the HT five days ago appears to have
become the basis of government policy) but most Indian journos have
spent their time humming and hawing.

Yes, of course, terrorism is bad, they say. But you know, we need to
understand Musharraf's compulsions. Perhaps we should give him another
chance. Or: Bush is really on our side, you know, but he's got this
Afghan operation going so we need to understand his compulsions. Or: the

international community is united in the war against terrorism but, you
know, we are both nuclear powers. So naturally they will be concerned
and we need to understand those compulsions.

Curiously, nobody talks about the need to understand India's
compulsions.

Contrast this it-is-a-complex-issue-and-we-need-to-consider-everything
approach with the Pakistani position on the Parliament attack. It is as
straight-forward as ours is complex.

Basically, all the Pakistanis are saying is this: we didn't do it and
let's see if you can prove otherwise.

As usual, it is the Pakistani position that is more effective. Of course

we can't provide proof of the kind that will satisfy Pakistan. Even when

the terrorists themselves go on TV and say that they were backed by
Pakistan, these confessions are dismissed by the Pakistanis as being
secured through torture.

The point is that nobody can ever provide strong legal proof of the kind

that the Pakistanis are demanding. Even the Americans, who have now
taken up the share-the-evidence-with-Pakistan position, had no proof at
all of Osama bin Laden's involvement when they began bombing
Afghanistan. They didn't even have the kind of confessions that we have
now secured. But they launched their attack anyway - and Pakistan
supported them.

The understand-everybody's-compulsions-except-our-own position embraced
by the Indian intelligentsia demonstrates a fundamental weakness in our
view of the world, at least in relation to terrorism. Two examples will
show what I mean.

In December 1999, when the hijackers took IC 814 to Kandahar, it should
have been staggeringly obvious to everybody that the Taliban were hand
in glove with the terrorists. To be fair to our security services, they
reported as much to their political masters and pointed out that no
commando rescue mission was possible because the Taliban had placed
stinger missiles on the runway to blow up any Indian plane that
attempted to land such commandos.

Despite all this, our Foreign Minister decided to go to Kandahar to take

custody of the hostages. He was humiliated even before he got off the
plane. Maulana Masood Azhar, the terrorist we released in return for the

passengers, was the first to alight and the Taliban received him with
hugs and kisses. By the time Jaswant Singh descended from the aircraft,
the Taliban reception party had departed, taking Azhar away in a huge
carcade. Jaswant was left to cool his heels on the tarmac for a quarter
of an hour.

No matter. He still managed to hold hands with the Taliban Foreign
Minister for the TV cameras and paid fulsome tributes to the Afghan
government for its 'help' during the hijacking. Those pictures - of
Jaswant and the Taliban hugging each other - will haunt the Vajpayee
government forever.

Why did he do it? Well, he thought that once he was there, he should be
nice to his hosts. And why was he there in the first place? Ah, well,
that's a complex question to which there is no simple answer.

A second example. Shortly after the September 11 attacks, it was clear
that the Americans would have to retaliate. It was as clear that they
would ask the countries of South Asia for help. The sensible thing to
have done would have been to express sympathy for those who lost their
lives in the attacks (including hundreds of Indians) and to have waited
for the American request.

Instead, Jaswant Singh (yes, him again) shot his mouth off and told the
press that India was ready to offer operational assistance - even before

it had been requested. Of course, the Americans didn't need our
assistance. But in their minds, we became the kind of country they could

take for granted.

Contrast our over-eager foolishness with the shrewdness of General
Musharraf's response. He expressed sympathy but offered nothing.
Instead, he engineered anti-American and pro-Taliban demonstrations.
When the American request came, he said that he would like to help but
the public mood was against it. At this, the Americans offered him
billions of dollars and began an extensive courtship that persists to
this day.

You don't need to be a genius to work out which approach has yielded the

better result. We understood America's compulsions and eagerly offered
assistance. Our reward is to be isolated in our fight against terrorism.

Musharraf made America understand Pakistan's compulsions. His reward is
to be America's new pin-up boy.

I mention these two examples because it seems to me that we are in
danger of making a third mistake. Instead of concentrating on what steps

we will take to stop the menace of cross-border terrorism, our
intelligentsia is busy finding reasons to do nothing. Understand Bush's
position, they say. Give poor Pervez another chance. Let the world
community finish with Afghanistan, then maybe they'll have time for us.

Contrast this it-is-a-complex-situation response to the position taken
by the American intelligentsia after September 11. Did the US media say
"we should wait till we get proof against bin Laden"? Did intellectuals
say, "if we attack Afghanistan, we will turn the world's Muslims against

us"? Did the intelligentsia warn, "wait a while because if we attack
now, we may destabilise Musharraf"?

Of course, they did not.

It was not as though the Americans were blind to these considerations.
They knew they were short of proof, they knew they risked alienating
Muslims and destabilising Pakistan. But they also knew that these were
risks worth taking.

When a country is attacked by foreign terrorists, it must first fight
back and defend itself. Everything else is secondary.

Our problem is that Pakistan - and perhaps the rest of the world - sees
us as a soft state. We give the impression of having a mouth of steel
and a fist of plasticine. We will not consider any compromise on
Kashmir, but we will not go to war to defend it. We say we will fight
all terrorism but Jaswant Singh will fly to Kandahar to cuddle the
Taliban. We will condemn cross-border terrorism but we will not cross
the border to fight it.

If we are to act firmly against the terrorist menace then we must
abandon our humming and hawing. We must stop thinking about other
people's compulsions and worry about our own. If we believe that
Pakistan is behind the terrorists, then we must treat it as the enemy.
We must forget about confidence building measures, about poor Pervez's
problems and about candles on the Wagah border.

It is not my case that we should necessarily go to war. All war is bad
and should be avoided as much as possible. But it is also true that if
you rule out war even before you begin taking any kind of action, then
nobody will take you seriously. For your protests to make any
difference, your enemy must know that you are both willing and able to
fight.

On Friday, our government was so angered by President Bush's clean chit
to General Musharraf that it recalled our High Commissioner from
Pakistan. It only took a few hours for the message to hit home. By that
same evening, Washington had changed its stance and asked Musharraf to
take action against terrorists operating from Pakistan.

The way ahead is to keep up that kind of pressure. The lesson of the
US's Afghan operation is that finally, you don't need summits and you
don't need bus rides. If you are to fight terrorists, then the only
things that work are courage, might and determination.

It is time for India to show that we will not be pushed around any
longer.




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