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print versionIT is axiomatic that rightwing Hindu and Muslim groups dominating India and Pakistan consolidate each other’s constituencies. But both together have wreaked economic havoc on their people by consolidating neo-con politics and its economic worldview, although they publicly pretend to disagree with such policies. On the other hand, in Pakistan, the fight against Muslim extremism means you fall into the lap of the PPP. In India, opposition to Hindu extremism takes you into the embrace of the Congress. Both the PPP and the Congress will deliver you kicking and screaming to their economic patrons in Washington. There seems to be no other choice, no respite from the pattern.
In Pakistan, the religious parties have honed a split strategy. They proffer Nawaz Sharif as an economic model to entice the West, and in India, they have the BJP. (The religiously inspired RSS projects itself as seriously ‘pro-swadeshi’ group, euphemism for anti-consumerist, anti-West economic policy, but on Friday it gave the BJP, which has cast itself as pro-corporate, ‘India Shining’ party, a free hand in the next elections).
There is a consequent third dimension to this equation. The liberal-left middle ground is presented with two choices if they can be called that. You support communal politics of the Hindu or Muslim mullahs or align with American stranglehold on your respective economic and political intellectuals who dominate the discourse in public life and on TV channels in both countries. In other words, the Congress and the PPP, which present the secular face of India and Pakistan, are aligned with neo-liberal policies. But they are also seen as offering the best bet to consolidate a secular polity. In the jumbled skein of ideologies you could detect that both sides the secular liberals (PPP and Congress) and the religiously aligned groups (BJP and Muslim League of Nawaz Sharif) both take you to the same cleaners.
In this algebra of religious, political and economic fundamentalism it doesn’t matter any longer whether the BJP or the Congress rules India, or the PPP or Nawaz Sharif govern Pakistan (with or without the army’s backing). They are not for you if your main worry is political and economic surrender to the West. Which is a shame. India is in such a unique position as the principal country in South Asia to influence the course and destinies of all its neighbours, provided it offers an equitable endeavour with equal stake for everyone, including the fight against religious terror. But going by Home Minister P. Chidambaram’s planned visit to Washington this week, it is going to be another case of ‘running to mummy’, as a wag said in India’s Rajya Sabha the other day. Both countries are foolishly wooing American support, almost behind the backs of their people.
Therefore, the Mumbai outrage (not to speak of the failure of the West’s economic model) could not prevent the Indian government from pushing a controversial insurance bill through parliament, which will expose this sensitive sector to the vagaries that have visited every part of the globe as financial tsunami. Terror thus provided air cover for economic subterfuge by the Indian state. The rightwing in Pakistan knows when to strike for maximum benefit to Indian rightwing.
Between Kargil and Mumbai there have been countless attacks on, and in, India, including two devastating episodes of train blasts. Each drew an angry response from India. The Mumbai train blasts were even followed by a suspension of peace talks, but the issue was settled when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met President Pervez Musharraf in Havana. The will of the state is the prime factor in these decisions. When it suits the state every TV channel starts singing paean to peace, visas start flowing, movies with messages of peace are released. And it is not as though the state has always responded to apparently grave provocations with equal vigour. Some 16 Hindus were killed in Kashmir on the eve of the Lahore summit in February 1999. The then Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee uttered not a word on this during that successful visit. The Indian state clearly did not want to destroy the advantages that would accrue from the visit after the politically disastrous nuclear tests when Mr Vajpayee’s party lost Delhi, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh to Congress. That belied the macho appeal of going nuclear.
The Kargil war has been described as a consequence of an intelligence failure by India to detect Pakistani camps on the heights earlier on. This sounds strange. A book released by the BJP’s national security adviser around the time of the standoff describes the event differently. It says Pakistani shells were falling 20kms inside Indian administered Kashmir from across the Kargil heights much earlier, in fact, precisely at a time when Indian and Pakistani prime minister were holding a failed summit in Colombo in July 1998. That summit was held barely weeks after their nuclear tests. It is difficult to digest that Kargil was in turmoil in July 1998, but the Indian prime minister made no mention of it during the Lahore talks in February next year. But suddenly, when J. Jayalalitha withdrew support to the Vajpayee government in parliament, and it lost its majority by one vote, the issue turned into a major military standoff and became an election platform. The Kargil war was fought by a minority government in India, which refused to call a single session of the Rajya Sabha. The state does not like uncomfortable questions even from its own MPs.
Whether it was Gen Musharraf who carried out the Kargil fiasco or it was the handiwork of rented mujahideen, the net effect was a second innings to a rightwing government in India. How could the Mumbai episode have produced a different response? The only way for the centre-right Congress (with a fading liberal veneer) was to turn further to the right to thwart a more entrenched rightwing takeover. Whether it will succeed is for the voters to decide. But the government moved quickly to enact a dubious anti-terror law and of course – not to be forgotten – the insurance bill. There is another move underway. It has been the demand of Indian entrepreneurs to be given paramilitary protection. In fact, as far as I can remember there was a demand to place anti-aircraft guns in a major private distillery in Gujarat more than a year ago. It was turned down. The Mumbai attacks have paved the way for this move to succeed. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the move will be in fact used to good effect to manage the notoriously controversial and potentially volatile special economic zones (SEZs).
Was there any other way to deal with Mumbai? Yes, by not doing everything to fall into the trap of the Pakistani rightwing, and by perhaps listening to Farooq Abdullah, the former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir. In a compelling analysis of the affair, The Hindu gave the following clues: “If the principal reason for a high voter turnout during the recent assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir was the absence of militant violence, to what extent was Pakistan responsible for ensuring that extremist groups operating from its territory did not disrupt the polls? The question is important because this ‘non-interference’ – for which no less a person than Farooq Abdullah…thanked Islamabad on Sunday – seems to be at variance with New Delhi’s understanding of what Pakistani policy vis-a-vis India is in the wake of last month’s dramatic terrorist attack on Mumbai.â€
Dr Abdullah told reporters: “I think Pakistan did put pressure on (the militants) that they should not do anything to affect the elections.†Says The Hindu: “What makes this policy of ‘non-interference’ even more counter-intuitive is that it came at a time when US President-elect Barack Obama and his South Asian advisers have given ample indication of their desire to play a ‘mediatory’ role between Pakistan and India on the Kashmir issue. A low turnout, which is what a spurt in militant violence would have accomplished, might well have placed the Indian government on the back foot. It would have also allowed the separatist political leadership in the Valley to claim a victory and more credibly establish their continuing relevance. Why would the ISI, which was prepared to authorise so audacious a terrorist outrage as Mumbai as a means of reminding the world that South Asia remains ‘a nuclear flashpoint’, pass up the opportunity to heighten international interest in the ‘core issue’ bedevilling bilateral relations with India?†So who has benefited from Mumbai if not the religious rightwing on both sides?
Let’s think together, and logically.
