Hooray Henry!
There is now an irrevocable tilt in India’s favour brought on by the imperatives of geopolitics. It is the tried and tested doctrine of “balance of power”, the concept famously used by 19th century diplomat/politician Klemens Wenzel von Metternich at the Congress of Vienna. Metternich, with minute and excruciating rachets of virtuoso diplomacy, tamed the great Napoleon himself.
His great admirer in recent times, Dr. Henry Kissinger, even wrote his Phd. dissertation on Metternich. Later, as US Secretary of State he masterminded the tilt against India in favour of Pakistan, and simultaneously, towards China, to pressurise the USSR, ultimately wiping it out of contention altogether.
But this latest American tilt is a serendipitous blessing for us. That it was also anointed by Henry Kissinger, now an elder statesman and Republican think-tank shaman, underlines the importance the US attaches to it. Kissinger visited us a few months ago to urge India not to miss the chance of global upliftment via the Indo-US Nuclear Treaty. And while here, he shrugged off queries on his previous positions; all those arch anti-Indira Gandhi comments; those veiled threats of invasion during the liberation of Bangladesh. Henry sees those views today as no more than creatures of their times, just no longer relevant.
But have we sufficiently realised that the India specific tilt is because the great powers have decided to create this country into a strategic bulwark against the militant Islam of the jihadists?
That India possesses a large, well integrated, apolitical, multi-denominational and disciplined military has not been lost on the developed world. Our standing army is over a million souls strong. We routinely participate in UN Peace-keeping missions. We are working on a blue water navy sufficient to patrol the vast Indian Ocean. The great powers have visited our military facilities and conducted war games with us. These countries include not only the United States, Britain and France but also potential friend and adversary China.
In addition, our non-proliferation record is indeed spotless. Unblemished, it beats that of a number of western nations not to mention edgy entities such as Pakistan, China and North Korea.
The tilt towards India therefore has much to recommend it. That is why it has been swiftly enhanced into a fait accompli by President George W Bush’s administration and enjoys bipartisan US support.
But the principal reason for making place for India at the high tables of power is because of our overwhelming Hindu majority. It is a demographic virtue, a pacifist influence in a troubled world order. The fact that India is 85 per cent Hindu, and not generally given to sectarian violence, is a great plus. We may be the favourite target of Islamic terrorists, but our refusal to turn provocation into conflagration, is a great temperamental and geopolitical strength. But even though we are a multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-languaged functional democracy, we can, and are willing to defend ourselves. And this reluctance, not inability, to fight, makes us a responsible and desirable ally in the expected long war against terror.
That is why it has become important for every extremity of the Indian political spectrum, particularly the major parties, to both absorb and reflect on the implications of our perceived Hindu identity and make the necessary changes in internal policy to suit.
Things were, after all, very different in a kinder, gentler world, where antagonists fought according to rules, but now, as Metternich once said: “ Any plan conceived in moderation must fail when the circumstances are set to extremes”. Islamic Jihad, that makes war against others, from every religion; governments, but also ordinary men, women, and children, even Muslims who are not extreme enough; has forced the world into resistance. It has forced a reaction everywhere and caused the recasting of plans to contain its mindless and godless menace.
India’s new Hindu-majority-derived status also comes with decided benefits. We won’t, for example, be hearing anymore about the infamous “parity” principle in the sub-continent. In fact, the time may have come to stop worrying about Pakistan as a viable threat altogether. We know that Pakistan cannot win a declared conventional war against us, and a nuclear misadventure will have to result in mutual annihilation.
Internally, Pakistan’s problems of national cohesion are greater than India’s by far, and its general state of affairs, the many divisive and violent cross currents, make its continuance itself precarious. The Pakistanis, particularly their devastatingly effective intelligence services, know this. And that is why they are trying doubly hard to sow internal discord in India. But life for the Pakistani is no longer easy without the same degree of US and broad Western support. And with even Chinese backing not necessarily a given in future, we can gradually afford to bring the curtain down on the Pakistani threat.
India can now afford to move on and realise that the West has, with the same masterstroke of geopolitical diplomacy, created India into a long term counterpoint to China. It is this new positioning that will elevate India’s strategic realities, despite our raucous and near anarchic version of Westminster style democracy juxtaposed simultaneously with the chaotic morcha and the autocratic chaupal.
Perhaps Henry Kissinger in his eighties can be seen as a metaphor for this paradox turned in our favour. Because, who could have imagined Henry turning the page so comprehensively on himself? It is impressive to see him, like a benediction from history itself, to underline its continuity. Henry Kissinger, the flesh and blood of him, is visiting the old theatre of his triumph, China, during the Beijing Olympics.
The opening ceremony cameras showed Henry, still in his trademark black horn-rimmed glasses, that serried wave of kinky Semitic hair gone grey. We saw the hook nose and that bright, cold smile. We saw that powerful corpulence, each chin making a power statement like rings on an old hardwood tree. We heard him speak in that thick Germanic voice and still speaking in his trademark nuanced ellipses.
But Dr.Henry Kissinger, policy elder, Nobel Laureate, master of détente and realpolitik, “nemesis” of the Left and the Right alike, Metternich’s successor in spirit, stands ready today for India to assume its position on the world stage. It only remains for India to realise who she truly is and why she has become important to the world.
(1,050 words)
Gautam Mukherjee
1oth August 2008
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Eyes Right
Eyes Right
India is her own worst enemy because she artificially denies the sentiments and inclinations, if not the rights, of the majority of her people in the name of a bizarre and unsustainable secularism. This has been so from the birth of this nation, 62 years ago, grown out of a desire to differentiate ourselves from Islamic Pakistan, even though we often disguise this arrogant perversity under the guise of robust democratic discourse. But can we afford to go on denying our majoritarian birthright and debilitating our will, because the only ones gaining from our stance are the enemies of the nation?
India must realise, that rescue lies in shifting the entire polity sharp right, standing up and being counted as a Hindu majority country with equal rights and protections for our many minorities. It may well feel akin to moving a very heavy oak conference table. But, making this move to the right, and truthfulness, would change the political tone, tenor and content of debate, and signal, once and for all, that we have had enough of being exploited by fringe elements.
We all realise, patently, every Leftist is not a Maoist, every rough-hewn citizen is not a gangster, and every Muslim is not a Terrorist. But we need to protect the one and destroy the other, if we, the rest of us, want to survive. And we need to get much better at telling one from the other. And also, very importantly, we have to stop subverting the interests of the majority continually in favour of one minority or the other that seem committed, not only to irritating brinkmanship, but, ultimately, to a dark and mysterious self destructiveness.
We have too many permanent burning issues and a much bloodied landscape already. But, with a shift to the right by the demands of common sense, led by the major political parties, we will benefit the economy as well, combining pragmatic policies with an openly majoritarian bias to replace an unsustainable hypocrisy.
Otherwise, in the face of political cant and apathy, it is anarchy, fuelled by the frustration of both motivated and ordinary people, that is inexorably taking over. It is anarchy unchecked that animates all agitations in India nowadays, more so than when VS Naipaul called it “a million mutinies now”; with the law and its enforcers missing in action.
And everywhere, whether it be a land acquisition related or anti-industrialisation agitation at Singur or Nandigram in West Bengal; Maoist mayhem in Jharkhand, Bihar and Orissa; Gujjar self-assertion in Rajasthan, anti-Dera agitation in Punjab, and of course, the mother of all institutionalised ferment, that crown of thorns called Kashmir; no one seems to be the least bit scared of retribution.
If only we were Chinese, we wouldn’t have a Kashmir problem at all. If we were Chinese, we would set about reneging on Article 370 before the ink was dry on the document sanctioning it. The Chinese do not allow previous commitments to get in the way of present expediency, let alone their strategic interest. They have learned their lessons well, from being at the receiving end of their own colonial experience replete with horrendous European and Japanese exploitation and opium addicted slavery. The Chinese have also learned from the solemn treaty-breaking ways of the imperial British Empire, and indeed, the actions of the current king-of-the-world, the unilateral and all powerful United States of America.
So if we were Chinese, we would not hesitate to put down the cynical and unruly politics of the Kashmir Valley, pressing it into ruthless submission. We would have no compunctions about disabusing the Valley politicians of their grandiose notions. We would engineer a massive demographic rebalancing, aided, abetted, and incentivised, all over this multi-religious and vast country. We would deliberately and swiftly change the character and dynamics of Kashmir once and for all. There would be no Muslim majority Kashmir anymore than the Dalai Lama and his followers can hope to see a Tibetan majority Tibet going forward.
If we were Chinese, we would set about setting historic wrongs to rights. We would put all the shamefully displaced Pandits back where they belonged, restoring their homes, lands and dignity to them. In addition, we would extract reparations and indemnities for their trauma, suffering and humiliation from their erstwhile friends and neighbours turned usurpers.
We would drive out most, if not all of the rabid Islamic terrorists, and their vociferous supporters across the border. We would drive them into so-called “Azad Kashmir”, where they can savour life on the other side, much closer to their friends, compatriots and benefactors there.
We would let the rest of the Islamists, appropriately reoriented to ground realities, reminded of their duties, as much as their rights, from time to time, to participate in democratic discourse, and hold high office if elected at all by the reformed electorate and the restorative magic of universal suffrage.
But being India, we still allow, even as we may be forced to reconsider, by popular outrage and uprising, a particular dinosaur cum national humiliation enshrined as Article 370. An article and covenant which enables a coterie of fifth-column politicians, openly in favour of Pakistani intervention and influence in the Valley, and veiled terrorists with dangerously high levels of influence, to hold the Indian government as well as the Indian nation to ransom.
The infamous and unfair Article 370 is not only a bizarre historical inheritance today but also at the root of much that is wrong with our national politics of appeasement. Article 370 was an act of capitulation from the start, understandable in the aftermath of 1947, when it was used to assuage the apprehensions of a Muslim majority province in the backdrop of the Partition, but why do we uphold it today? Where were such niceties when we stripped the princes of their titles, lands and privy purses and nationalised banks at will?
Indeed in the face of government paralysis and endemic impotence on issues concerning Kashmir, it is the people of Jammu that are showing the country the way forward. They are likely to get their way on Amarnath soon enough and signal to all of us that the time has come to stop taking the docile support of the majority community in the face of continuous injustice, for granted.
(1,050 words)
Gautam Mukherjee
6th August 2008
India is her own worst enemy because she artificially denies the sentiments and inclinations, if not the rights, of the majority of her people in the name of a bizarre and unsustainable secularism. This has been so from the birth of this nation, 62 years ago, grown out of a desire to differentiate ourselves from Islamic Pakistan, even though we often disguise this arrogant perversity under the guise of robust democratic discourse. But can we afford to go on denying our majoritarian birthright and debilitating our will, because the only ones gaining from our stance are the enemies of the nation?
India must realise, that rescue lies in shifting the entire polity sharp right, standing up and being counted as a Hindu majority country with equal rights and protections for our many minorities. It may well feel akin to moving a very heavy oak conference table. But, making this move to the right, and truthfulness, would change the political tone, tenor and content of debate, and signal, once and for all, that we have had enough of being exploited by fringe elements.
We all realise, patently, every Leftist is not a Maoist, every rough-hewn citizen is not a gangster, and every Muslim is not a Terrorist. But we need to protect the one and destroy the other, if we, the rest of us, want to survive. And we need to get much better at telling one from the other. And also, very importantly, we have to stop subverting the interests of the majority continually in favour of one minority or the other that seem committed, not only to irritating brinkmanship, but, ultimately, to a dark and mysterious self destructiveness.
We have too many permanent burning issues and a much bloodied landscape already. But, with a shift to the right by the demands of common sense, led by the major political parties, we will benefit the economy as well, combining pragmatic policies with an openly majoritarian bias to replace an unsustainable hypocrisy.
Otherwise, in the face of political cant and apathy, it is anarchy, fuelled by the frustration of both motivated and ordinary people, that is inexorably taking over. It is anarchy unchecked that animates all agitations in India nowadays, more so than when VS Naipaul called it “a million mutinies now”; with the law and its enforcers missing in action.
And everywhere, whether it be a land acquisition related or anti-industrialisation agitation at Singur or Nandigram in West Bengal; Maoist mayhem in Jharkhand, Bihar and Orissa; Gujjar self-assertion in Rajasthan, anti-Dera agitation in Punjab, and of course, the mother of all institutionalised ferment, that crown of thorns called Kashmir; no one seems to be the least bit scared of retribution.
If only we were Chinese, we wouldn’t have a Kashmir problem at all. If we were Chinese, we would set about reneging on Article 370 before the ink was dry on the document sanctioning it. The Chinese do not allow previous commitments to get in the way of present expediency, let alone their strategic interest. They have learned their lessons well, from being at the receiving end of their own colonial experience replete with horrendous European and Japanese exploitation and opium addicted slavery. The Chinese have also learned from the solemn treaty-breaking ways of the imperial British Empire, and indeed, the actions of the current king-of-the-world, the unilateral and all powerful United States of America.
So if we were Chinese, we would not hesitate to put down the cynical and unruly politics of the Kashmir Valley, pressing it into ruthless submission. We would have no compunctions about disabusing the Valley politicians of their grandiose notions. We would engineer a massive demographic rebalancing, aided, abetted, and incentivised, all over this multi-religious and vast country. We would deliberately and swiftly change the character and dynamics of Kashmir once and for all. There would be no Muslim majority Kashmir anymore than the Dalai Lama and his followers can hope to see a Tibetan majority Tibet going forward.
If we were Chinese, we would set about setting historic wrongs to rights. We would put all the shamefully displaced Pandits back where they belonged, restoring their homes, lands and dignity to them. In addition, we would extract reparations and indemnities for their trauma, suffering and humiliation from their erstwhile friends and neighbours turned usurpers.
We would drive out most, if not all of the rabid Islamic terrorists, and their vociferous supporters across the border. We would drive them into so-called “Azad Kashmir”, where they can savour life on the other side, much closer to their friends, compatriots and benefactors there.
We would let the rest of the Islamists, appropriately reoriented to ground realities, reminded of their duties, as much as their rights, from time to time, to participate in democratic discourse, and hold high office if elected at all by the reformed electorate and the restorative magic of universal suffrage.
But being India, we still allow, even as we may be forced to reconsider, by popular outrage and uprising, a particular dinosaur cum national humiliation enshrined as Article 370. An article and covenant which enables a coterie of fifth-column politicians, openly in favour of Pakistani intervention and influence in the Valley, and veiled terrorists with dangerously high levels of influence, to hold the Indian government as well as the Indian nation to ransom.
The infamous and unfair Article 370 is not only a bizarre historical inheritance today but also at the root of much that is wrong with our national politics of appeasement. Article 370 was an act of capitulation from the start, understandable in the aftermath of 1947, when it was used to assuage the apprehensions of a Muslim majority province in the backdrop of the Partition, but why do we uphold it today? Where were such niceties when we stripped the princes of their titles, lands and privy purses and nationalised banks at will?
Indeed in the face of government paralysis and endemic impotence on issues concerning Kashmir, it is the people of Jammu that are showing the country the way forward. They are likely to get their way on Amarnath soon enough and signal to all of us that the time has come to stop taking the docile support of the majority community in the face of continuous injustice, for granted.
(1,050 words)
Gautam Mukherjee
6th August 2008
In print in The Pioneer EDIT Page Leader as "Assert India's Hindu identity" and online at www.dailypioneer.com on Saturday August 09, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)