Hooray Henry!

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