The aversion of the Congress and the Left parties to the Centre’s swift and positive reaction to American President Bush’s proposed National Missile Defence Plan is proof that these parties remain in a time warp, and cannot find their way in a vastly changed world order, of which India is destined to be a major pillar.
For a regime that displayed such painful ineptitude during the crisis on the Bangladesh border, this agility is a welcome surprise. Clearly, External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh recognizes that an epochal power shift is already underway in the comity of nations, and has been able to convince the Prime Minister that this time India must choose its friends wisely. Certainly it must never again mindlessly isolate itself in an increasingly difficult world.
Perhaps President Bush sounded Mr. Singh in the course of their apparently unscheduled meeting at the White House last month. Be that as it may be, there can be no doubt, as the American President has bluntly stated, that the Cold War is over, the Soviet-Communist enemy has faded away, and new, more fearsome threats to world peace and stability have arisen in rouge nations driven by Islamic fundamentalism, some of which are armed with nuclear weapons.
India is especially vulnerable in this regard. Yet it is also strategically America’s natural choice of ally in the increasingly inevitable battle with Islamic terror. The shifting international balance of power will, therefore, give India an unique status and importance that no other US ally has enjoyed in the past. This is because India alone can articulate the struggle in terms of dharma (righteousness, morality, justice), and yet raise the level of the encounter from a narrow religious conflict that a clash between the predominantly Christian West and West-Central Asian Islam could otherwise degenerate into.
India can do this because she is a predominantly non-Muslim non-Christian non-monotheistic country whose Hindu majority is engaged in a reaffirmation of her civilizational genius, which has a rare expansiveness and holds values such as religious tolerance and accommodation of extremely diverse groups as integral to its ethos. India is a living civilization, sister to the old Graeco-Roman tradition to which the modern West owes allegiance. As such she has a natural affinity with western values such as liberalism, democracy, secularism, and pluralism, which for her, are part of her way of life (dharma). India also has a large Muslim population with which she has consciously striven to live in peace.
At the same time, Communist China poses a threat to world peace of the kind that the erstwhile Soviet Union never did. By assuming the role of mentor and friend of rouge states, some of which lie in India’s neighbourhood, and aiding and abetting their nuclear weapons aspirations, China has the potential to destabilize various parts of the world with unforeseen consequences. The Soviets, to their credit, were so zealously committed to nuclear non-proliferation that they did not share their knowledge even with their East European comrades, and themselves manned the nuclear weapons stationed in those countries. Nor did they support Islamic terrorism in any part of the globe.
As I see it, therefore, China has already emerged as the principal adversary of the liberal democratic world. The Soviet Union ceased to occupy the slot when it reverted to being Mother Russia and gave up the desire to spread Communism to the third world. Pragmatic nationalism and economic reconstruction are today its guiding mantras. These have brought it closer to the United States and Europe, and also erased its status as the “empire of evil.”
The rest of the world, too, has undergone a transformation, the like of which could hardly be envisaged at the time of the Potsdam Conference. The Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall have disappeared, Germany has been unified, the European Union is a virtual reality, and large parts of the third world have failed to achieve satisfactory levels of economic and political progress. The oil-rich Gulf countries have been unable to blossom into viable democracies, and continue to be ruled by dictatorships of varying hues. This is true of most Islamic nations – they are either under military rule or a hairs’ breath away from it.
But whereas dictatorships once provided a measure of stability in the Muslim world, the virus of fundamentalism now threatens to engulf them. Islamic countries today face a grim situation, and don’t know how to cope. Some keep fundamentalism on a tight leash (Egypt, Turkey, Algeria), some support it abroad but strive to preserve their own power at home (Saudi Arabia, Libya), some openly back terrorism (Pakistan, Afghanistan), while some are not tough enough against it (Bangladesh). All in all, it is not a pretty picture. India, which has suffered much and continues to suffer from Pakistan-funded jehad, not only in the Kashmir Valley, but in virtually every state of the Republic, has much to be concerned about.
With the Soviet Union no longer the alternative pole of a bipolar world, the policy of non-alignment can become utterly redundant, and awaits a decent burial. Its basic raison d’etre was to avoid getting caught up in expensive wars on behalf of either Bloc during the Cold War. In the new situation, India needs powerful and committed friends. Her dharmic traditions are open targets of an openly declared decimation campaign by ISI-backed fundamentalists – witness the vicious assault on the Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan and the gleeful announcement that a hundred cows would be slaughtered to atone for the delay in their destruction. (One does not, in fairness, know if this was actually done, but Hindu sentiment was the obvious target of the statement).
In these circumstances, New Delhi has done well to embark upon a paradigm shift of such magnitude without further ado. For India cannot be neutral against herself. The public outrage against the restraint of the Vajpayee Government in dealing with the atrocities with BSF personnel on the Bangladesh border should make it amply clear that there is a national consensus that national honour and national interests must be protected at all costs.
A defensive umbrella in which a tracking satellite can find and neutralize enemy missiles in mid-air is no small protection for a country physically surrounded by civilizationally hostile forces. The opposition assertion that this would reduce India to a US satellite is jejune, and merits contempt. India would no more be a satellite than France or Germany was under NATO. But she would be allied to the most powerful country of the free world, a country that is fiercely loyal towards its friends, as witnessed by its abiding relationship with Israel.
Russia, no doubt, sees the move as formalizing its fall as a superpower, while China must resent it because it will be unable to match or neutralize its formidable power and reach. India, having prematurely agreed to give up further nuclear tests, is likely to make only slow progress towards establishing a nuclear command and control structure which can effectively counter an attack from either Pakistan or China. As such, we cannot but benefit by being part of the US-led nuclear defensive shield. When US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage arrives in the capital later this week, New Delhi would do well to emphasize some of the issues that are straining bilateral ties between the two countries, so India can join the NMD Plan with honour.
The Pioneer, 8 May 2001
