Sinister Game Behind People’s Back

Harkishan Singh Surjeet

WHILE the government of India has initiated some positive moves to restart the process of Indo-Pak dialogue and received an equally positive response from the other side, it seems the BJP-led regime is busy playing yet another game behind the back of our people. This game is a sinister one as it threatens to turn this country of ours into an adjunct of the US imperialists.

SAFFRONITE POLICY: PAST INDICATIONS

THERE is nothing surprising in all this. For, the BJP, like its predecessor, the Jan Sangh, has been a vocal opponent of the policy of non-alignment and has always been advocating, now openly, now obliquely, that India must give up this policy and join hands with the Americans. It was therefore not without reason that, immediately after Pokhran II, Vajpayee thought it necessary to clarify his government’s viewpoint to, of all world leaders, Bill Clinton who represented US imperialism. Then, his government even okayed the draft of the Clinton-Nawaz joint communiqué before it was actually issued from Washington, even though it meant okaying Clinton’s intention (or threat?) that he would take “personal interest” in the Kashmir dispute.

Further, after Pokhran II, Jaswant Singh, then the foreign affairs minister of India, held a series of parleys with Clinton’s men in several capitals around the globe, and all behind the back of our people. At that time it was widely believed, and there were grounds to believe, that the BJP-led regime had agreed to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty on the dotted line, at an opportune moment. Though the government led by the BJP has not so far found an opportune moment for so surrendering our vital national interests, there is no doubt that the threat remains. Hence the need for constant vigilance on the issue.

All this showed in action the real character of the saffronite foreign policy that threatens to pawn our standing in the world as a freedom-loving, non-aligned, anti-imperialist country. The way the Vajpayee regime refused to condemn the patently illegal US-UK aggression against Iraq and agreed to “deplore” it only, that too under mass pressure, once again showed which way the BJP weathercock would turn vis-à-vis the winds of international events.    

A TALE OF TWO PARLEYS

THE duplicity of the same saffronite foreign policy was once again evident last week when the US deputy secretary of state, Richard Atmitage, first visited Pakistan and then came to India. But while Armitage was busy holding parleys with Pakistani and Indian leaders before ending his visit to the subcontinent on May 10, one of the Vajpayee regime’s key figures was found missing from New Delhi. In fact, even before Armitage set foot on Indian soil, Vajpayee’s principal secretary cum national security advisor, Brajesh Mishra, was closeted with his US counterpart, Ms Condoleezza Rice, in Washington. This was on Thursday, May 8.

And with Ms Rice, what did Mishra talk about? About cross-border terrorism in the main but also about Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, if the press releases issued from Washington are to be believed. But this still leaves one weighty question unanswered. As Armitage was to come to India in those very days to discuss the same set of issues, was there really any need for Mishra to discuss them in White House --- thousands of miles away from our people?

Is this the way a responsible government behaves? One show of parleys in New Delhi, apparently for public consumption, and another round of parleys in Washington, of which no one really knows much?

While in Washington, Mishra also held talks with secretary of state Colin Powell and deputy secretary of defence Paul Wolfowitz. Via Powell, Mishra renewed India’s invitation to Bush to visit the country, and said after meeting Wolfowitz that the defence policy groups of the two countries would very soon meet, in continuation with their joint army exercises and naval patrols. While in Washington, Mishra made a sinister suggestion as well, to which we shall revert later.

But from the BJP’s viewpoint the most significant gain of Mishra’s US visit must have been the talks he held with the US president himself. There were contradictory reports about this meeting. While the Reuters reported that Bush, as if casually, “dropped in” while Mishra was closeted with Rice, The Hindu’s Washington correspondent reported that “Mr Mishra was “taken” to the Oval Office to see the president.” And according to a PTI dispatch (The Statesman, May 11), “Officials said it was not a “drop by” but a “substantive” 15-minute meet.”

STAND ON WAR-TORN IRAQ

IT is thus a biter fact that while much of the content of Indian leader’ discussions with Armitage was given wide publicity, something seems to have been kept secret from our people about the discussions Mishra had had with American leaders in Washington.

Yet whatever has come out in media about the contents of these two sets of parleys is enough to cause anxiety to all those people who cherish the values like freedom, independence, sovereignty and world peace.

Take the dispatch issued by Agencies France Presse on May 10. It said: “Separately, Armitage said he spoke with Indian leaders about the aftermath of the Iraq war, which had been criticised by New Delhi. “We talked generally about reconstruction,” he said, adding however: we made no specific requests.”

However, this in itself is enough to cause serious doubts about the US intentions and the government of India’s readiness to capitulate. For, the government of India (GoI) took no time to clarify (!) that it could send its forces to the war-torn Iraq only after the UN gives its authorisation about it, and not at the US request. But if there was no “specific request” about it from the US, then what prompted the GoI to issue this clarification?

But still queerer is the GoI’s contention that it may send its forces to Iraq if the UN gives its authorisation for the purpose. But the question is: if the GoI sends its forces to the war-torn Iraq, even after UN authorisation, what will these forces do there? The world people know that the US-UK war against Iraq was a war of aggression, and that it lacked any authorisation by the UN. Even today, Americans are there in Iraq quite illegitimately, as an occupation force, against whom a wave of hatred is gradually building up in the country. In such a situation, if Indian forces go to Iraq, they cannot do anything except defending these illegal US-UK occupiers from the mass hatred and resistance that is taking shape there, even if slowly. Or to put it bluntly, our forces cannot but act as mercenaries in such a situation.

Yet our rulers are not perplexed. Organisations like the CII and ASSOCHAM had said even before the US launched it war against Iraq, that they were quite hopeful of getting a share of contracts the Americans would dole out in the name of Iraq’s reconstruction. Of course there are reason to believe that, if at all, Indians would get only a few crumbs from the spoils of war, but our big bourgeoisie would be quite satisfied even with that. In such a situation, the GoI’s willingness to send its forces to post-war Iraq, though under the façade of UN authorisation, cannot but be a contemplated means of promoting the interests of India’s big bourgeoisie.

But will it be in accordance with the ideals for which India has been fighting all along? The BJP seem to be least worried about it.

In fact, the British seem to be more conscientious on the Iraq issue than BJP leaders are. Quite recently, Ms Clare Short resigned the Tony Blair cabinet in United Kingdom, accusing Blair of “recklessness” on Iraq. She also said “the position the UK is adopting in the Security Council is totally dishonourable and breaches the promises that the UN would have the proper role in bringing into being a legitimate interim authority” (The Times of India, May 13). And with this the number of those having quit the Blair cabinet has gone up to three. All this is in sharp contrast to our own leaders who have no moral compunction in sending forces to defend the occupiers.

CONTOURS OF A NOXIOUS AXIS

THE PTI dispatch (The Statesman, May 11) says: “On his (Mishra’s --- editor) proposal before the American Jewish Committee that the USA, Israel and India should form an alliance to fight terrorism wherever it surfaces, he said the present coalition against terrorism was a heterogeneous one.”

This was the sinister suggestion, referred to earlier, that Mishra made during his latest Washington pilgrimage.

This too is not surprising as the BJP’s and earlier the Jan Sangh’s love for Zionism has been known all along. Way back in 1969, Vajpayee was perhaps the only leader in India to visit Israel as a state guest. Then, when he was the foreign affairs minister in Morarji government, he entertained General Moshe Dayan, former defence minister of Israel, when he came to India on a secret visit. And it was to the same Vajpayee, his party and his government that the Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, that butcher of the Palestinian people and culprit of the Shabra and Shattila massacres in 1982, gave his  --- to the saffron brigade, valuable --- advice. This advice of Sharon’s was that “ethnic cleansing” was the only way to permanently solve the Kashmir problem, just as Sharon has been solving the Palestinian problem in the last three odd years.

It was with these very Zionists with whom the Vajpayee regime has been forging trade, diplomatic and military ties in the last five years. Not surprisingly, the regime did not extend any support to the Palestinian people’s intifada against the Zionist attempts to butcher them after the same Sharon, then in opposition, deliberately created a row in the Al Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem. The BJP’s love for Zionists has been so great that its government even entered an agreement for the purchase of combat aircraft from Israel.

Nay, the GoI recently gave a marching order to Palestinian ambassador, an old friend of India, simply because he attended a Hyderabad meeting that was organised on the question of Gujarat.

As expected, GoI spokesmen have been vehement in denying any plan for such a noxious axis. But who will be convinced by such denials when our national security adviser is on record advocating a “strategic partnership between India, US and Israel to fight international terrorism”? Moreover, even before 9/11, there were talks of Indo-Israel cooperation against terrorism, implying that the Palestinian freedom fighters were terrorists in the eyes of Zionists as well as saffronites.

AMERICAN DUPLICITY

AS for Kashmir that has been discussed in these columns in the last three weeks, there are indications about US indicating readiness to mediate. Even though India’s foreign ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna “ruled out suggestions that Mr Armitage had come here with a message or a mediation offer” (The Statesman, May 11), his tone and tenor were far from convincing.

What latest plan the US thinktanks have evolved for Kashmir, only time will tell. But one thing is clear  --- that the GoI has not yet realised (or does not want to realise?) the duplicity the Americans are practicing in regard to Indo-Pak relations. Only about two weeks ago a state department report accused Pakistan of promoting cross-border terrorism but said in the same breath that Pakistan has been cooperating in the global war against terrorism and therefore no action could be taken against it. Then on May 7, just a day before Armitage landed in the subcontinent, a US Congress committee unanimously accepted an amendment to be recommended to the Congress for adoption. It said Pakistan would face increased pressure if it did not dismantle the terrorist training camps on its soil, if it did not stop infiltration into India and if it continued to proliferate the nuclear technology to the “rogue” countries. Yet, apart from praising Pakistan for its role against terrorism, the proposed amendment refused to specify what pressure it contemplated in case Pakistan did not comply with the three conditions.

The meaning is clear. While US imperialists want to draw India into their sphere of influence, they are not ready to give up Pakistan or annoy it beyond a point, as Pakistan has been their trusted ally in the subcontinent. But this is precisely what the GoI refuses to learn, in the vain hope that the US would back India in its tussle with Pakistan if only we prostrate before Washington in a 180-degree pose.

REGIME’S MYOPIA

IN fact, this very keenness to enlist the US support against Pakistan is what lies behind the suggestions of a US-India-Israel axis against terrorism. If Mishra said “the present coalition against terrorism is a heterogeneous one,” it is because it includes not India but Pakistan. To Mishra, throw out Pakistan and include India, and the coalition would become a homogeneous one!

In sum, even the proposed “coalition against terrorism” has anti-Pakistan and anti-Islam as its motivation, to the exclusion of all the niceties and complexities of international politics today.

And now that L K Advani has consented to go to Washington as the US vice president Dick Cheney’s guest, one will be watching as to what he does to give Brajesh Mishra’s homogeneous axis plan a practical shape.

Yet, suppose the Americans throw cold water on this fond hope entertained by the GoI! Then, will it not be what we call gunaah-e-belazzat (a sin without rewards)?

But there is only one problem with this approach of the GoI --- that it goes against the tenets of our consensual foreign policy that always stood India in good stead. Whatever may have been our differences on other issues, all sections of Indian public opinion barring a few stray groups were at one on issues like anti-imperialism, support to national liberation movements, total disarmament and world peace. This was what brought India immense prestige in the world. After Mandela came out of jail, India was the destination of his first trip abroad, and Indian leaders were valued guests at the celebration of Namibian independence in Windhoek. But all that is in peril now. New Delhi today has the most unabashedly pro-imperialist regime in independent India.

However, our people are not asleep either and, consciously or instinctively, realise the perils to our international standing. Along with other countries, India too witnessed widespread protest against the US-UK war on Iraq. The surveys newspapers conducted on their websites, the opinions they invited in their columns, the programmes various TV channels organised, and the like, gave enough testimony to the people’s sense of abhorrence over the GoI’s capitulation before imperialists.

Will the democratic forces come forward to channelise this sense of disgust pervading our people?