The government of India must possess an extraordinary capacity for being surprised if it is indeed surprised over the Pakistan government’s protest over Mr. PV Narasimha Rao’s and Mrs. Gandhi’s statements over current developments in the neighbouring country. Normally it should have anticipated the reaction. It is, in fact, unlikely that it did not. So its own response to the Pakistani protest can be treated as pro forma.
Mr. Rao’s statement in Parliament last Thursday was followed by a fairly extensive reference to events in Pakistan by the prime minister in her address to the Congress (1) parliamentary party on Friday. This could leave little room for doubt that Mr. Rao’s statement was deliberate and that the government of India had decided to take a public position on the current agitation in Pakistan and Islamabad’s handling of it.
Reports in newspapers on Mrs. Gandhi’s address were, as usual, based on briefing by a party spokesman. But they were denied and an official release was issued on Saturday to clarify what the prime minister had said. It reads: “She said India had always disapproved of violence and injustice. That was why she had criticized the execution of Mr. Bhutto, the treatment meted out to Begum Bhutto and Miss Benazir and the arrest of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan.
Support For Democracy
“The people of Pakistan had long been demanding democracy and struggling for it. While we were sad at the total situation in that country and could not close our eyes at what happened (there), we had no desire to interfere. Shrimati Gandhi hoped that (a) solution would be found which would enable (the) people (of Pakistan) to live in peace.”
This version is significantly “milder” than the one attributed to her the previous day. But in substance it is not very different from the earlier one. Her moral support for the cause of democracy and all that it implies by way of human rights and treatment of opponents of the regime comes out as loud and clear in it as in the allegedly inaccurate one. This clinches the issue. Mrs. Gandhi has decided to take a stand in favour of democracy in Pakistan.
It would be naive to suggest that this does not represent a significant departure from our policy as we have generally interpreted it. Not many people will buy such a proposition even in our own country. Indeed, a lot of Indians are convinced that Mrs. Gandhi has committed a blunder because she has made it legitimate for Pakistan to condemn New Delhi whenever there is a communal trouble in India and in fact to support demands that are made from time to time on behalf of various minorities.
Let us fact it, the statements on Pakistan do represent a shift in our policy as it has been understood both at home and abroad. It can, of course, be argued that our policy has not been properly understood. We can say that after all we have espoused the cause of the blacks in South Africa and of the Tibetans, of the former consistently and of the latter in the late fifties. But the white supremacist regime in South Africa is an international pariah, and at the official level we have been fairly careful over Tibet both before the flight of the Dalai Lama in 1959 and after the Chinese aggression in 1962.
To be precise, the shift in our approach to the countries in the region found expression first in respect of the anti-Tamil pogroms in Sri Lanka. The Tamils there had been victims of racial violence earlier, though on a much smaller scale. India had kept quiet on all those occasions. And in 1971 the Sri Lankan government asked for and secured military assistance from a number of countries to cope with an uprising. The statements on Pakistan represent an extension of the stand on Sri Lanka.
But before discussing the logic and the tenability (or untenability) of the new policy, it may be in order to deal with the concept of non-interference by one country in the affairs of another country. Some of us sincerely believe that it is an absolute concept which New Delhi should not infringe under any circumstances. This is a mistaken view which blocks clear thinking. The fact of the matter is that every government that can interferes in the affairs of another. It cannot be otherwise in a world that is rapidly becoming one vast village. Examples abound.
The Soviet Union maintains close ties with scores of communist parties all over the world. It has a great deal of say in the formulation of their policies towards their governments. These parties, including the CPI, openly proclaim allegiance to the concept of proletarian internationalism which is, as it has always been, a euphemism for loyalty to the Soviet Union. On its part, the Kremlin makes no secret of the fact that it operates at two levels – it maintains state-to-state relations and party-to-party relations. This constitutes open interference in the affairs of other countries.
Intervention Usual
The US intervenes in the life of other countries in a different manner but it does so equally and perhaps even more effectively. It lays down policies for governments which receive substantial aid from it and depend on it for their security. It also operates through the IMF and the World Bank. Though it no longer dominates these institutions to the extent it did earlier, it can and still does block aid from them if and when it so chooses. Then there are the ubiquitous CIA and not so ubiquitous agencies which are fairly effective in brainwashing influential individuals.
Intervention is a fact of life in international relations. We have intervened in Pakistan’s “internal affairs”, for example, in the very act of being and staying a democracy and in trying fairly successfully to build a modern and secular society. For we have set an example which a lot of people in Pakistan have wished to follow. The rulers there have sought to prove that our claims to secularism are ill-founded precisely because as a democracy we have been a great attraction for their people. The people have also found our economic policy of self-reliance and our foreign policy of keeping out of power blocs highly attractive. In his own way Mr. Bhutto tried to imitate both.
It can be said that this subtle influence is not what most people refer to when they talk of interference and that the reference is to explicit aid to opponents of the government. By that criterion India has not been guilty of interfering in Pakistan’s internal affairs. But by that criterion Pakistan has also not been guilty of doing so whenever it has attacked us on the communal issue. So intervention or no-intervention is not the real issue. The issue is different – whether it is desirable for us to intervene and whether it is within our capacity to intervene.
The answer to the first question depends on our assessment of the Zia regime. Its military character and its Islamic pretensions (or convictions) are of interest to us if it is our assessment that the people in Pakistan find both these aspects highly offensive. For the resulting unrest leads to instability on our borders. Perhaps Mrs. Gandhi has reached the conclusion that this is the case. For us, however, the central issue is not so much the nature of the regime and the popular response to it as its reliability or otherwise in its dealings with us.
Hate Campaign
In his pronouncements General Zia has been quite friendly. But he has brought back the United States as an active force in the region and secured highly sophisticated weapons from it which have made it obligatory for us to modernize our armed forces in a big way at the cost of straining our resources. While he talks as if he accepts the situation that emerged in 1971, he acts as if he is determined to restore the status quo ante in Bangladesh. His nuclear ambitions also underscore the second point.
As for our capacity to intervene in Pakistan’s affairs, it depends above all on whether or not the people there will be influenced by a hate India campaign Islamabad may launch. Visitors have brought back stories of Pakistanis being so fed up with the military set-up and its efforts to force down their throats the so-called Nizam-e-Mustafa (Islamic order based on the Shariat) that they would want India to overthrow it. But no one in his senses can base his assessment on such stories. For all we know, an anti-India campaign may still sell in Pakistan. If this is the case, Mrs. Gandhi will be well advised to be more cautious. In her desire to promote the cause of democracy in the neighbouring country, she should not hurt it.
Since its independence India has had a view of the region in terms of foreign policy which it has articulated with great consistency. It has wanted countries in the region to keep external powers out and shape their destinies according to their own genius and requirements on the one hand and in cooperation with one another on the other. Pakistan has opposed this approach and brought in outside powers – the US and China – into South Asia. Now Mrs. Gandhi has articulated a view of the region in terms of political institutions. The Pakistani ruling elite is bound to challenge it as well. It can be depended upon to use all means at its disposal to say in power. This need not deter us provided we have good reasons to be sure that the Pakistani people have become mature enough not to fall into the religious-communal trap which the regime is bound to lay for them once again.
The Times of India, 30 August 1983