US naval call gives India sinking
feeling By Praful Bidwai
NEW DELHI - The port call of a US
nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to Chennai in
southern India has provoked strong protests from a
spectrum of political parties, trade unions, peace
groups and environmentalists.
It has also
exposed a yawning gap between India's stance of
non-alignment and foreign-policy independence and
its practice of cultivating a close military and
political relationship with the US.
The
carrier USS Nimitz arrived on Monday for a
five-day "friendly"
call
to Chennai at the invitation of the Indian
government.
Indian leftist and centrist
parties such as the All India Anna Dravida
Munnettra Kazhagam, the main opposition in Tamil
Nadu, held demonstrations in the state capital
Chennai on Monday. So did transport and port
workers' unions and civil-society organizations,
including the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament
and Peace (CNDP), a broad-based umbrella
organization of more than 250 groups.
The
carrier arrived in India's territorial waters from
the Persian Gulf region, where it had been
dispatched two months ago as part of a 50-ship
armada.
"It is entirely possible that the
aircraft carrier carries nuclear weapons on
board," said Deepak Nayyar, a distinguished
economist and, until recently, vice chancellor of
Delhi University. "In that case, it would
flagrantly violate India's well-established,
often-reiterated policy of disallowing foreign
nuclear weapons into its territorial waters."
Nayyar is one of 11 public intellectuals
who last week signed a statement protesting the
ship's visit, including celebrated writers
Arundhati Roy and Mahashweta Devi, former civil
servants S P Shukla and Sudeep Banerjee, and
social scientists Romila Thapar, Prabhat Patnaik
and Amit Bhaduri.
The statement points to
the contradiction between the Indian government's
claim that the Nimitz is "not known to be carrying
nuclear weapons" and the United States'
well-reiterated policy neither to deny nor confirm
the presence of nuclear weapons on its warships
under any circumstances. The statement expresses
dismay at the fact that New Delhi "gratuitously
granted this certificate to the US, when
Washington itself does not do so", and said this
speaks poorly of India's foreign and security
policies.
If it indeed carries nuclear
weapons, the Nimitz' port call marks a reversal of
India's past policy opposing the transit of
nuclear weapons in its neighborhood. In the 1970s
and 1980s, India campaigned against the United
States' naval base at Diego Garcia in the Chagos
Archipelago and wanted the entire Indian Ocean to
be declared a "zone of peace".
New Delhi
has rationalized the carrier's visit by saying
that at least 10 other nuclear-powered foreign
warships have called at Indian ports in recent
years. These include five other US naval vessels,
four French ships and one British ship.
"These precedents cannot justify the
present visit," argued Anuradha Chenoy, a
professor of international relations at Jawaharlal
Nehru University. "It is deplorable that India
allowed these port calls in the first place
without sharing the reasons for the underlying
policy shift with Parliament or the public.
Besides, the Nimitz is visiting India just when
public opinion in West Asia is highly polarized
because of the occupation of Iraq and the US's
threatening gestures towards Iran."
The
carrier's visit has special symbolic significance
because of its role in the Iran crisis. The US has
been mounting pressure on India to drop a proposed
natural-gas pipeline from Iran to India through
Pakistan.
There is a good deal of lobbying
on Capitol Hill in Washington to get the US
administration to drop the nuclear-cooperation
deal with India, which was initiated two years ago
and is under negotiation. Last week, The Hill
newsletter reported that several senators and
congress members want the nuclear deal, which
would make a special one-time exception for India
in the global non-proliferation regime, to be made
conditional on a cancellation of the
Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline project.
"The
visit of the Nimitz is clearly no routine or
innocent affair," said Chenoy. "India is aware of
and has always been sensitive to the importance of
symbolic gestures, including subtle and
not-so-subtle forms of US gunboat diplomacy."
During the Pakistani civil war in 1971,
the US dispatched another aircraft carrier, the
Enterprise, to the Bay of Bengal. This was widely
seen as signaling Washington's opposition to the
continuation of the war after the Pakistan Army
surrendered to Indian troops in Dhaka and East
Pakistan became independent as Bangladesh.
"The political message of the current
visit of the Nimitz is unmistakable. It is to
tighten the India-US strategic embrace at a time
when the US is engaged in its disastrous
occupation of Iraq, which has destabilized West
Asia," said N D Jayaprakash, a CNDP activist.
"India-US relations have turned a full
circle," said Jayaprakash. "Now India is willing
to indicate its uncritical support for the US
military and to enter into an unequal strategic
relationship with Washington. This is a shameful
departure from India's independent strategic and
foreign-policy orientation. It also means that the
India-US strategic partnership is being
strengthened at the expense of third countries."
Jayaprakash is appalled that some of the
Nimitz' 5,000-plus personnel will engage in a
public relations exercise by doing community
service in Chennai, including visits to people
affected by the tsunami of December 2004.
"This is sanctimonious posturing," he
said. "After committing horrendous crimes in Iraq,
US military personnel are trying to pretend that
they have a humanitarian mission as well." (In
fact, such community-service work has long been a
routine part of every US naval port call to
virtually any foreign country and predates the
Iraq war.)
Trade unionists and
environmentalists have also objected to the
carrier's visit on the ground that it is liable to
present another hazard, in the form of radiation
from its two nuclear reactors. The Indian
government said it will periodically monitor
radiation levels; in any case, the Nimitz is
anchored 2 nautical miles outside Chennai port
proper.
However, the protesters are not
satisfied given that India's own nuclear program
has a poor safety record and its navy's ability to
monitor radiation hazards is not independently
established.
"What is galling is that
Indian officials are bending over backwards to
speak on behalf of the US and allay the public's
apprehensions," said Jayaprakash. "That is
completely out of order."
In recent years,
the US and India have held high-level military
exercises, including some that involved US nuclear
submarines. But the Nimitz visit even lacks such a
strategic rationale.
"The docking of USS
Nimitz is not a neutral or normal affair, but a
strong political-strategic statement," said
Chenoy.
The statement runs counter to the
promise of the ruling United Progressive Alliance
to correct the strongly pro-US bias in India's
policy under the previous government led by the
right-wing pro-West Bharatiya Janata Party, and to
fight for a balanced, multipolar world free of
nuclear weapons.
IPS correspondent
Praful Bidwai is a committed anti-nuclear
activist and the author of several books on peace
and disarmament.
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