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India gains new respect in Muslim
world
By Sultan Shahin
NEW
DELHI - Muslim diplomatic circles in Delhi are abuzz
with new excitement. Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee's recent trip to Syria at a time when it is the
target of attack from India's two closest allies, the
United States and Israel, has convinced them that New
Delhi is once again determined to pursue a foreign
policy independent of the American worldview. Throughout
his trip to Russia, Tajikistan and Syria, Vajpayee left
no one in doubt that India has serious reservations
about Washington's new foreign policy orientation of
unilateral and illogical preemptive strikes in the
Middle East.
While breaking their day-long fast
at numerous Iftar parties in the Muslim holy month of
Ramadan, Muslim, and particularly Arab diplomats, are
privately musing with some surprise that contrary to
apprehensions from a Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP)-led government, India's relationship
with the Muslim world has not only not worsened, it has
actually improved. Indeed, it is thanks largely to
consistent efforts made by this government that India
can today count as friends and allies almost all the
countries in the Muslim crescent that constitute the
membership of the Organization of Islamic Conference.
If Arab diplomats are enthused at India's
new-found non-alignment, following nearly three years of
almost blindly following the US's lead in foreign
affairs, they have a reason to be so. Coming as it did
after the US-led war in Iraq and Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon visiting India a few months ago, the visit
acquired particular significance as it triggered a lot
of apprehension about Indian foreign policy orientation
in the Arab mind.
Traveling as he was during
Ramadan, a sacred month of fasting during which the Arab
world comes to a virtual standstill, Vajpayee was
something of a rare guest in Damascus, the Syrian
capital. Naturally, the high point of his visit was a
lavish Iftar banquet hosted by the young Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad. Vajpayee's mere presence in a
Muslim country that the US has designated a sponsor of
terror and Israel had attacked with missiles not long
ago had its own significance. This courageous vote of
confidence by traditional ally India in an Arab world
that considers itself under siege was of tremendous
significance for them.
Vajpayee's Syria visit
affirmed that India and Syria want the United Nations to
play a major role in Iraq, where the priority must be to
restore security. A joint statement issued on Sunday
said it was "vital that the Iraqi people take charge of
their own destiny", and for the UN to "play a large role
in the economic and political reconstruction of Iraq".
India and Syria also called for the "implementation of a
just, global and lasting peace in the Middle East", with
Vajpayee stressing "India's support for the Palestinian
and Syrian causes". The two countries also urged
"effective cooperation in the struggle against
international terrorism", adding that terror must not be
linked to one religion in particular, apparently meaning
Islam.
India and Syria also signed bilateral
accords on technology, industry, culture and education,
emphasizing that they are both keen to facilitate
cooperation in information technology and biotechnology.
The state-run Oil and Natural Gas Commission
(ONGC-Videsh) is expected to collaborate with Syrian
companies to prospect for oil.
Before visiting
Syria, Vajpayee went to Tajikistan on his present trip,
stressing the high significance India attaches to
Central Asia now. His visit has further strengthened
India's strategic ties with Tajikistan. New Delhi's
equation with President Emomali Rakhmanov's Tajik
government is important in dealing with developments in
Afghanistan and countering Muslim extremism in the whole
of Central Asia. The visit follows Defense Minister
George Fernandes' earlier Central Asian visit to build
bridges with Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha, too, was in Tashkent
earlier this month. His brief in Uzbekistan -
spearheading the discourse on Central Asia organized by
government-funded think tank Institute of Defense
Studies and Analysis.
India's strategic foothold
at the Aini air base near Dushanbe, the capital of
Tajikistan, is now confirmed. Fernandes had clinched the
formal agreement on upgrading and use of the air base on
an earlier visit to Tajikistan in April 2002. After Sri
Lanka in the late 1980s, the Tajik facility at Aini is
India's first air base outside its frontiers. It has now
secured contracts in the Trincomalee harbor and Palaly
airfield in Sri Lanka. Vajpayee recently proposed the
extension of the link road from Chabahar Port in Iran to
Kabul and thence via Kunduz in Badakshan (Afghanistan)
to Tajikistan. This would give India additional access
to Central Asia and Afghanistan.
One of the
surprises that the Vajpayee administration has thrown at
the diplomatic corps in Delhi is its ability to deal
with Muslims of all hues and establish strategic ties
with them. Be it secular Turkey or fundamentalist Iran,
secular Malaysia or moderately Islamic Indonesia, India
has not had difficulty in establishing and strengthening
close strategic ties. Vajpayee and even Deputy Prime
Minister Lal Krishan Advani have traveled to a number of
Muslim countries promoting India's traditional ties with
them. And so have Sinha and Fernandes, among other
senior ministers.
The ease with which the BJP
leaders have dealt with Muslim leaders in various
countries is astonishing to those who are aware of their
background as alumni of the Rashtriya Swayamewak Sangh
(RSS), the ideological mentor and progenitor of all
Hindu fundamentalist organizations in India. RSS
ideologues have long believed in and have been waiting
for the clash of civilizations. Almost 90 years before
Samuel Huntington wrote his famous essay on the
impending clash of civilizations and later developed it
into a book with the same title, and decades before even
the RSS was formally organized in 1925, Bipin Chandra
Pal, a Hindu nationalist leader of India's freedom
movement, had foreseen this clash among various
civilizations and predicted that Hindu civilization will
side with the Judeo-Christian West in its war against
Islamic and Chinese civilizations.
Pal's essays
and articles written almost a century ago make
fascinating reading. A genuine thinker and visionary,
Pal propounded his theories despite the fact that he
considered the West as the greatest danger to humanity
and was a great admirer of Islam's spiritual values. He
thought that Islam was going to conquer large parts of
the world, through its power of propaganda and not
through war. He considered this inevitable. He was,
however, scared of Islam's political manipulation. He
foresaw the dangers of political Islam, which he
considered an aberration. For, in his view, Islam is not
only "extra-territorial" in its ideology, but also
"extra-political".
In order to appreciate better
the mindset and intellectual training the BJP leaders
have received, we can do nothing better than read brief
excerpts from some of Pal's original writings. Despite
the archaic early 20th century prose style, these
passages are quite exciting. In a collection of his
essays entitled "Nationality and Empire", Pal writes
under the sub-head Pan-Islamism and Pan-Mongolianism:
"This Pan-European combination [that we now call
the West] will be a very serious menace to the
non-European world. It will be bound to come into
serious conflict with both Pan-Islamism and
Pan-Mongolianism. If Europe can settle her internal
jealousies betimes, she will be able to dominate easily
both the Islamic and the Mongolian world. Nothing will
prevent in that case the parceling out of the Muslim
lands on the one side, and of China on the other. But
that is not very likely. It will take, at least, as long
a time for the European chancelleries to forget their
past jealousies and present rivalries, as it will take
for China, now that she has awakened from the sleep of
ages, to put her own house in order and organize her
leviathan strength to hold her own against all the
world.
"The same thing is likely to happen in
the Islamic world also; and the fall of Turkey in Europe
will hasten this combination. It will not be an
organized confederacy like that of China and Japan, but
a far more dangerous, because more subtle, combination
of the hearts of countless hordes who hold nothing so
dear, neither land nor life, as their religion. And the
real strength of this Pan-Islamic outburst will come
from Egypt and India [which then included present-day
Pakistan and Bangladesh], where it will be safe from the
crushing weight of the Pan-European confederacy. England
will not allow her European confederates to interfere
with her own domestic affairs; such interference would
break up the confederation at once. She will have to
settle this Pan-Islamic problem, so far as it may affect
her own dominions, herself."
Then describing
where the danger for India will come from, he writes
under the title "Our Real Danger". "And it is just here
that our safety from this possible Pan-European
combination also lies. Because of the British
connection, India will have nothing to fear from any
possible combination of the European powers. The same is
also true of Egypt, though perhaps in a lesser degree.
Our real menace will come not from Europe but from Asia,
not from Pan-Europeanism but from Pan-Islamism and
Pan-Mongolianism. These dangers are, however, common,
both to India and Egypt and Great Britain. To provide
against it, Great Britain will have to find and work out
a satisfactory and permanent settlement of the Indian
and the Egyptian problem, and we, on our part, will have
also to come to some rational compromise with her.
British statesmanship must recognize the urgent and
absolute need of fully satisfying the demands of Indian
and Egyptian nationalism, and India and Egypt will have
to frankly accept the British connection - which is
different from British subjection - as a necessary
condition of their national life and freedom. To
wantonly seek to break up this connection, while it will
only hurt Great Britain, may positively kill every
chance and possibility of either Indian or Egyptian
nationalism ever realizing itself."
Predicting
and pleading the need for the alliance of the West and
India, he writes under the sub-head "Our True Safety".
"Indian nationalism in any case, has, I think, really no
fear of being permanently opposed or crippled by Great
Britain. On the contrary, the British connection can
alone offer its effective protection against both the
Pan-Islamic and the Pan-Mongolianism menace. As long as
we had to consider Great Britain alone or any other
European Power for the matter of that, while thinking of
the future of Indian nationalism, the problem was
comparatively simple and easy. But now we have to think
if China on the one hand, and of the new Pan-Islamic
danger on the other. The 60 millions of Mahomedans in
India, if inspired with Pan-Islamic aspirations, joined
to the Islamic principalities and powers that stand both
to our West and our northwest, may easily put an end to
all our nationalist aspirations, almost at any moment,
if the present British connection be severed.
"The four-hundred millions of the Chinese empire
can, not only gain an easy footing in India, but once
that footing is gained, they are the only people under
the sun who can hold us down by sheer superior physical
force. There is no other people who can do this. This
awakening of China is, therefore, a very serious menace
- in the present condition of our country, without an
organized and trained army and a powerful navy of our
own - to the maintenance of any isolated, though
sovereign, independence of the Indian people. Even if we
are able to gain it, we shall never be able to keep it,
in the face of this Pan-Islamic and Pan-Mongolian
menace. And when one considers these terrible
possibilities of the world situation as it is slowly
evolving before one's eyes, one is forced to recognize
the absolute need of keeping up the British connection
in the interest of Indian nationalism itself, for the
very simple and sufficient reason that there is
absolutely much greater chance of this nationalism fully
realizing itself with rather than without this
connection."
That politicians trained in this
paranoid school of thought are finding it possible to
come to terms with not only the Muslim world, but also
China, is a tribute to their flexibility and
adaptability. What has happened in the last year to
bring about this metamorphosis in BJP leaders' mindset?
Until last year they were pursuing a policy dictated by
their political philosophy - wary of China and the
Muslim world, they were simply kowtowing the West.
I do not presume to know the answer. But I can
hazard a guess. What may have apprised them of the
reality of the situation and expunged the influence of
ideology is the world's reactions to the events in
Gujarat. About 2,000 Muslims were killed and a 100,000
rendered homeless, the whole of central Gujarat cleansed
of their presence, following the killing of 59 Hindus in
a train compartment that was burned down, presumably by
Muslims. From all accounts these anti-Muslim massacres
were either organized, or at least encouraged by the BJP
government of Gujarat.
This was the first
large-scale mass murder in India in the age of
electronic media and human rights activists. Word and
images wend around and the world came to know of it. A
strange thing happened. From the RSS point of view,
neither China nor a single Muslim country protested. BJP
politicians had to face a lot of flak. But all of it
came from the West, either European governments or
Western and Third World liberals trained in the West.
This may have shattered in the Hindutva mind the
myth of a Muslim ummah, a world Muslim community.
This myth had persisted in their mind against all
evidence to the contrary presented to them by scholars
from around the world. This may have also removed from
their minds the fear of a clash between an alliance of
Islamic and Chinese civilizations on the one hand ranged
against the Hindu and Judeo-Christian civilizations on
the other. If this is indeed what has happened, Gujarat
may well have served a good purpose. Good can indeed
come out of evil too.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times
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