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One-eyed policy poses danger to
India
By Ramtanu Maitra
During the past months of intense diplomatic
maneuvering concerning Iraq, it was distressing to note
that while all major nations were involved in the effort
to resolve the crisis, India could do no more than issue
occasional statements by Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee expressing the nation's desire to have a
peaceful resolution. Despite the fact that a potentially
dangerous situation was developing in India's own back
yard, New Delhi had no ability to participate, and other
nations had no interest in what India had to say.
The present paralytic state of India's
foreign-policy making, and the nation's inability to
contribute in a meaningful way on the major issues that
concern the security and peace of the world, is the
result of a deliberate process that began with the
advent of the V P Singh government in late 1980s. Since
then, India has increasingly abandoned looking at the
world independently, slowly but surely narrowing its
foreign-policy sights.
The explosion of nuclear
devices in 1998 presented a way out of this hole. At
that point, like it or not, New Delhi showed up on the
radar screen of all major countries. There was a growing
expectation that the government's bold step was a mark
of mature self-confidence, and that the declared
nuclear-weapons state would broaden its foreign-policy
outlook and seek a place among the major nations.
What followed, however, was the spectacle of
groveling at Washington's feet. At the end of the 10
rounds of talks, projected in New Delhi as diplomacy,
and after a loud endorsement of the war on terrorism,
India's entire foreign policy appears to be more tightly
wrapped around Pakistan than ever. At the same time, the
country's domestic policy has strayed far from the path
of removing abject poverty and building up the nation,
hurtling down the path of least resistance into the
abyss of exploitation of caste and Hindu-Muslim
conflicts. Ayodhya, Babri Masjid, Ram Janambhoomi,
Gujarat killings, Jammu and Kashmir ... the list goes
on.
Beginning of marginalization
In
theory, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of
the Cold War in the early 1990s took the straitjacket
off Indian foreign policy. But instead of refashioning
an independent direction to meet the nation's needs, the
Indian foreign-policy establishment fell apart. Under
the US-backed V P Singh government in1989, India
abandoned its leadership in the Non-Aligned Movement.
But there has been no hint of a positive step or
direction in India's own neighborhood or beyond.
The South Asian Association of Regional
Countries forum, conceived by India in the early 1980s,
has not been advanced by even an inch. Nor has a finger
been lifted to convince the major nations that India,
with a billion-plus people, has a right to become a
permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.
India remains merely a place on the world map.
The success of Indian professionals in the area of
information technology was a bright blip noticed by
some. The mandarins of New Delhi's South Block have
tried to milk the IT success, but it did not fill many
buckets.
It is not as if nothing of significance
has been happening in the subcontinent since 1989. Sri
Lanka was ravaged by terrorism unleashed by the Tamil
Tigers who were once nurtured by India. Nepal moved away
from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy to
absolute chaos. Myanmar underwent a sea-change. Five new
Central Asian nations emerged on the world map and
immediately drew the attention of all major powers. And
the Southeast Asian nations, bolstered by the growth of
a powerful and stable China in the neighborhood, reached
out to integrate further with the subcontinent.
In the 1980s, it would have been inconceivable
that any solution of the Sri Lankan conundrum, or
Nepal's chaos, could emerge without India's full
involvement in the process. Today, the United States and
even Japan, whose foreign policy is drafted in
Washington, are more involved than India in finding
solutions to the problems in India's immediate
neighborhood.
False moves
Despite
overt invitations from the 10 Association of Southeast
Asian Nations member states, India could not put a firm
foot forward in either the economic area or security
matters to announce a presence commensurate with its
size. External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh, in a fit
of sanity, went to Indochina in 2001 to inaugurate the
Mekong-Ganga development plan, but the initiative
remains stillborn. There are reasons to believe that it
was meant more to counter China's initiatives in the
area than to develop effective infrastructure linkages
between India and Southeast Asia.
BIMSTEC
(Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand
Economic Cooperation), established in 1998, is another
such stillborn project. It could have been the first
step toward cooperation with India's neighbors in the
east, but the Indian External Affairs Ministry showed no
ability, or interest, to make it work. In Myanmar,
India's foreign-policy thrust is directed principally at
thwarting the development of a stronger Sino-Myanmar
relationship - a negative approach that is doomed to
fail.
New Delhi has abrogated its responsibility
in most of the nations contiguous to India, while its
relationship with Southeast and East Asia remains frozen
in hesitancy and uncertainty. In the Middle East, where
Islam rules the roost, India - with its 130-plus million
Muslim citizens and separated from Arabia by just a
short stretch of the Arabian Sea - is becoming
increasingly insignificant, even though oil-producing
Arabia will inevitably become vitally important to
oil-short India in the not-too-distant future.
Only in the region encompassing Central Asia,
Iran and Afghanistan has Indian foreign-policy making
shown a spark of ingenuity. That, too, began only after
the transfer of Jaswant Singh to the Ministry of Finance
late last year after holding the foreign-affairs
portfolio.
Why the lethargy, or worse?
The babus of the South
Block
The answer can be found in looking at
India's foreign-policymaking apparatus - the
babus of the South Block who hijacked India's
foreign policy after the departure from the scene of the
last of the Nehru-Gandhi family members in the
late1980s. The assassination of Rajiv Gandhi created a
vacuum in foreign-policy making. The minions of the
South Block grabbed it with both hands and have since
squandered it.
A present-day Indian Foreign
Office bureaucrat must possess two basic requirements to
reach the top of the heap. First and foremost he or she
must be categorically anti-Pakistan - the more virulent
the better - and simultaneously an anti-China ideologue.
The entirety of the foreign policy of a nation of a
billion-plus flows from there.
Under the
circumstances, one might expect politicians within the
government or sitting on the opposition benches to act
as guides and balancing factors. But, sadly, most of
today's active politicians in India are too ignorant to
have any understanding of an increasingly complex world.
Others are simply not interested.
The
marginalization of India is showing up in every area,
despite the denial of that reality by India's External
Affairs Ministry, and the uninterest of others. India
will soon face a crisis in the form of paying a very
high indirect cost for such policy limitations.
Gross failures
The Jaswant Singh-led
groveling began to flower after the US declaration of
war on terrorism in September 2001. At the time, India
threw its full support into the US campaign - a not
unreasonable move except that it was motivated
exclusively by the hope that the United States would
help India curb Pakistan's support of Kashmiri
militants.
Obsessed with Pakistan and clutching
on to the US promise, India's policy toward Pakistan
became enmeshed with the United States' policy toward
Pakistan. When the Indian parliament was attacked on
December 13, 2001, India could not move against Pakistan
because Washington prevented it. Subsequently, India
assembled some 700,000 troops with armaments along the
Pakistan border, threatening to invade. After six months
and billions of rupees, the troops were brought back.
That, too, was done under pressure from Washington.
It became evident at that point that having made
the Pakistan problem the center of its foreign policy
and latched on to the US to deal with it, India had lost
everything.
New Delhi's failure to extract any
concession from Pakistan in the war on terrorism has
made it more anti-Pakistan than ever. Having come to
realize that Washington will do little to help on
cross-border terrorism, New Delhi feels the need to
prove to the Indian people that it has not given up its
hostile posture to Pakistan. The political decision to
remain obsessed with Pakistan has further distorted
India's ability to play any role in world affairs.
The biggest failure of the Indian policymakers
was in not realizing that Pakistan is the cornerstone of
Washington's global "war on terrorism". It was well
known that the Pakistani army and the Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) had nurtured and strengthened the two
elements that the US was keen to eliminate - the Taliban
and al-Qaeda terrorists. Without Pakistan's help, which
came in fits and starts, Washington had no ability to
achieve even a nominal level of success in this venture.
The US agenda never included elimination of
Kashmiri militants, notwithstanding what Deputy
Secretary of State Richard Armitage promised or didn't
promise. What Washington had in mind was to prevent an
all-out war between India and Pakistan, fearing a
nuclear exchange. The US policy to bring India over to
its side in the "war on terrorism" was to prevent such a
war. This simple fact was ignored by New Delhi.
One of the reasons that India walked into that
foolish trap is the in-built anti-China mindset of most
of the External Affairs Ministry babus. China
considers Pakistan its strong ally and has helped it
develop its nuclear capabilities. China did that for a
number of reasons, and it cannot be the basis for
Sino-Indian relations.
In New Delhi, however,
the Sino-Pakistani entente is projected as definitive
proof that China considers India an enemy and is working
through Pakistan to undermine its stability. India's
External Affairs Ministry has found the Vajpayee
government an easy listener to this atrocious analysis.
The corollary of the anti-China mindset of the South
Block babus is the "soft sell" of the India-US
axis to counter the emerging China. This is sold by a
strong anti-China lobby in the United States and has
been lapped up by a section within the Indian army and
foreign-policy makers.
Dangers
ahead
The Pakistan-centered foreign-policymaking
process has created other distortions. For instance, a
number of members in the present Indian government,
driven by their anti-Muslim obsession, have found a new
ally in Israel. Major-General Uzi Dayan, head of
Israel's National Security Council, visited India last
year for a "joint security strategic dialogue". Former
foreign minister Shimon Peres, during his visit to India
last year, dubbed India "Israel's best friend" in the
region.
For years now, policymakers aided by
oodles of arms deals signed between India and Israel
with the blessing of the United States have muted
India's voice in support of the Palestine nation. In
total, more than $2 billion in arms contracts have been
signed between Israel Aircraft Industries and the Indian
Defense Ministry, with Israel selling surface-to-surface
Barak missiles, pilotless planes and radar systems, and
renovating hundreds of MiG-21 and MiG-29 planes and
Russian-made T-72 tanks. India is also in the process of
acquiring Israel's Arrow Theater Missile Defense System.
Significantly, Israel is also providing consultancy to
India on how to deal with the cross-border terrorist
influx from Pakistan.
Washington's interest in
consolidating India-Israel military relations became
apparent when India sought to purchase three Phalcon
early-warning aircraft from Israel, systems that the US
has prohibited Israel from selling to China. The
Indo-Israeli missile defense system also serves the
Pentagon's goal of advancing an international missile
defense architecture.
The killing of Muslims in
Gujarat last year and the emergence of a powerful
anti-Muslim bloc within the ruling government in India
poses an additional serious threat to India's ability to
play a meaningful role in world events. The longer-term
danger for India is the Muslim issue. There is no
question that the Pakistan situation will not improve in
the foreseeable future. The Pakistani army will continue
to have a firm grip on the nation's foreign policies.
That means that the Kashmir issue will be kept
alive, and the Pakistani policy of bleeding India in
revenge for India's role in breaking up Pakistan in 1972
to create Bangladesh will continue. The BJP's
polarization and the Israeli influence in the country's
policymaking vis-a-vis Pakistan and the Muslim
population will further endanger India's security.
Disgruntled poor Muslims have already become vulnerable
to the machinations of the Pakistani ISI. A further
polarization would bring to the fore the criminal
elements among the Muslims in India.
Israel
wears a very definite anti-Pakistan mask, which helps
Indian Interior Minister L K Advani exercise authority
over the anti-Muslim hawks within the present
government.
A delegation from the Jewish
Institute of National Security Agency (JINSA), a
US-based pro-Israel think-tank that has become
increasingly powerful in light of the war against Iraq,
was in Delhi this year. It included a number of
high-level military Israeli officers. From the United
States came General Wayne Downing and former Federal
Bureau of Investigation counterintelligence chief Steve
Pomerantz, who is known to partner with Islam-bashers.
By directing India's foreign policy to align
with the anti-Islam, anti-Muslim cabal, New Delhi has
set on a dangerous path. India, with a billion-plus
people and a well-developed technological base, may soon
be identified as an anti-Muslim nation - a prospect
India cannot afford. India's future success, and the
nation's stability, will depend on how it interacts
within the region and beyond it. Should India get bogged
down as an anti-Muslim nation, with two Muslim nations -
Pakistan and Bangladesh - to its west and east, the
country will be truly, permanently straitjacketed.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
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