Pakistan is not likely to be impressed either by Chandra Shekhar’s search for better relations with it, or by his warning against ‘nuclear adventurism’.
Pakistan does not, indeed cannot, care for friendly relations with this country and it does not need to engage in any kind of military adventure. Its strategy of bleeding India in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir is working pretty well. It is, therefore, under no obligation to revise it.
India could possibly have compelled Pakistan to agree to leave her alone at the time of Operation Brasstacks, the military exercise in the winter of 1986. The military advantage then clearly lay with India so much so that the Pakistani establishment lived in terror of the possibility of a strike by us. But Rajiv Gandhi threw away that opportunity. Since then, we have been at the receiving end and so we are likely to remain for quite some time.
In the given circumstances there is not much any Prime Minister can do beyond what Chandra Shekhar is doing, or possibly planning to do, to restrain Pakistan. He has already strengthened the military presence on the border and he should be planning to step up measures to detect and check movements across the border. These measures cannot be fool-proof. But that cannot be helped for the time being. The consequences of blunders of over four decades cannot be overcome quickly.
The rulers in Islamabad are convinced that India is in deep trouble internally, that she does not possess a government in New Delhi capable of mounting military pressure on them, and that they can, therefore, continue to play merry hell with her. Unfortunately, their assessment is not too wide off the mark.
India is in deep trouble. Her political system is in a shambles; she may have to go to the polls any time; even that may not produce a viable government with a clear mandate in the shape of a significant majority in the Lok Sabha. Our economy is in an equally poor shape. The additional burden of an armed conflict with Pakistan can prove too much for it to bear.
It is possible that we are witnessing the beginning of a significant and durable shift in the US approach towards Pakistan and therefore of a change in the correlation of forces which would be to our advantage. But we must not rush to conclusions.
The causes – end of the cold war, US concern over Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme and involvement in the narcotics trade – and signs – suspension of military aid and insistence on the validity of the Shimla agreement – have been discussed by other commentators. So I need not go over that ground, except to say that it is premature to draw firm conclusions.
Meanwhile, we have to cope with the situation in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir as best we can. We have to assume that we cannot persuade the secessionists to come to the negotiating table so long as Pakistan continues to provide them arms, training and money. As it also happens, the secessionists in the two states do not possess a leadership which can conclude a deal with New Delhi and make it stick.
All this can, however, serve a useful purpose if it helps us recognise clearly that Pakistan is a long-term adversary who would not leave us in peace. This fact should have been obvious to us all along for the simple reason that Partition could not be anything more than a truce in the civilisational struggle for hegemony and that Pakistan’s leadership could not accept the Indian concept of a synthetic Hindu-Muslim culture and, therefore, of peaceful cooperation between the two states. But, unfortunately, it has not been.
On the surface, the desire to undo the evil consequences of Partition is understandable, even laudable. But in reality, it is an expression of lack of recognition of the deeper civilisational conflict that led to Partition, and of the fact that human relations are determined not so much by the presence or absence of goodwill as by the correlation of forces, and that, indeed, the presence or the absence of goodwill itself is the result of a given correlation of forces.
As I see it, this non-awareness of the centrality of power in human relations on the part of the Indian intelligentsia almost as a whole has been its single biggest weakness for well over a century and there is no evidence to show that this fatal weakness is beginning to be overcome. There are, of course, exceptions. But these exceptions only prove the rule.
While I cannot possibly do anything like justice to this crucial issue, I can make a few points. The problem goes back to the consolidation of British power in India in 1858. Before that it would not have been easy to find a serious-minded Indian who would have regarded power as dispensable. The Indian peasantry was then armed. According to the Ain-i-Akbari, 4.5 million armed men were available for military service in North India in the 16th century and possibly a similar number below the Vindhyas, judging by the fact that the Vijaynagar empire could field up to one million soldiers.
The British disarmed us just as they destroyed our industry and took over our profitable external trade. Thus they made us poor and powerless at the same time, obliging us to rationalise both as a measure of psychological self-defence. Through their education system, they also created an intelligentsia which believed that issues could be settled solely on the strength of arguments. It was not by accident that lawyers came to dominate our political life when it revived towards the end of the 19th century. The legacy has persisted after Independence. I may add in passing that Muslims were not psychologically disarmed to the same extent as Hindus.
Mahatma Gandhi, of course, sought to generate another kind of power; his satyagraha may be translated as soul-force or truth-force. But he could not possibly have succeeded, for truth, consciousness and power can never be a mass phenomenon, not just in this age we Hindus call Kaliyug but in any age. Even our avtars (incarnations of Vishnu) have not attempted it. Rama engaged in a regular war with Ravana and Krishna urged Arjuna to do the same with the Kauravas. Gandhi had to fail, and he failed. His re-interpretation of the Gita certainly reinforced him in his conviction in the efficacy of non-violence but it made little impact on the Indian people.
The Mahatma was personally the very quintessence of courage, and he managed to instill a measure of courage among the Indian people who had been terrorised and emasculated by the British and earlier by Muslim rulers. But I think it is about time we begin to recognise the limited nature of the success he achieved.
Gandhi’s was an exercise in will power, he was born with it and his tapasya reinforced it. This enabled him to dominate and mesmerise those who drew close to him: His Christ-like personality had an appeal in Britain as well in view of the awareness of the horrors of modem civilisation among certain groups there. But he came a cropper when he confronted Jinnah.
Similarly, his ability to mobilise the people came to naught in dealing with the furious passions unleashed by Jinnah. He could bring under control mobs on the rampage, as in Calcutta and Noakhali on the eve of and in the wake of Independence, but only temporarily and superficially. He talked of ahimsa as the weapon of the strong which in truth it is because only the utterly fearless can be truly nonviolent. In the political realm, however, it could not but remain the weapon of the weak.
It has been argued, and with justice, that mass mobilisation only on the basis of abjuration of violence was open to Gandhi. But, as he emphasised again and again, he did not take such a limited view of his efforts. Indeed, there is little to suggest that he recognised the central role of power in the determination of independent India’s relations with the world. He endorsed the use of military force for the defence of Jammu and Kashmir against Pakistan-backed marauders. But he never explained his reason (or reasons) for this dramatic shift. Remember that he advised the British not to resist Hitler with the use of weapons.
It is no lack of respect for Gandhi’s followers to say that his legacy has been rather disturbing: For one thing, no one can ever offer adequate solutions to complex issues, especially when they involve three diverse civilisations as in our case. For another, the concept of legacy itself is flawed in the secular realm. Nehru knew that to be the case in respect of the Mahatma. He was not a Gandhian. Yet he was deeply influenced by the Gandhian approach on the crucial issue of the significance of power in the determination of India’s place in the world, particularly in her dealing with Pakistan. Nehru was a pacifist at heart.
Endless justifications have been offered by the participants in what may legitimately be called the Nehru industry in support of his decisions to offer a plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir, order a ceasefire there just when the Indian army was well set to clear the state of the Pakistanis, acquiesce in the Chinese occupation of Tibet and then acknowledge its legitimacy, incur US displeasure by espousing China’s cause, and to turn down President Eisenhower’s offer of military assistance even after Pakistan had gone in for a full-fledged security alliance with it. These actions could not withstand careful scrutiny even then, not to speak of today when the consequences stare us in the face.
The details, however, need not detain us right now. For it is more pertinent to analyse the psychology behind these and other related decisions. And there cannot be much doubt that the psychology at work has been one of escapism and incomprehension, not of escapism from personal power in the sense Jayaprakash Narayan symbolised it; and not of total incomprehension of its requirements as in the case of many other Gandhians, but of escapism from power for India and incomprehension of its requirements for India. If the concept of secularism has meant the moral disarmament of Hindus, as argued in this space earlier, non-alignment has meant the isolation of India from true centres of power in our era.
Nehru, it is an established fact, did not accept the twin concepts of power vacuum and power balance. He did not acknowledge that a power vacuum could result from the end of certain existing arrangements; the end of the British empire in South Asia, for example, or that peace depended on the existence of a power balance between adversaries.
I do not believe he was feigning. He believed in what he called ‘moral force’, though he never told us how this was generated. He was not at all embarrassed when as Prime Minister of militarily and economically weak India, he took the lead in the anti-nuclear weapons campaign. As expected, it all ended up in nothing more than causing irritation to potential friends and providing legitimacy for communist peace-mongers.
Indira Gandhi represented a break from this psychology, as would be evident from her role in the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971, the Pokharan nuclear test in 1974, merger of Sikkim in 1976 and the augmentation of the country’s armed strength throughout her tenure of office as Prime Minister. But the morally disarmed intelligentsia was not ready to see India emerge as a great power and back up moves towards that goal.
Indira Gandhi’s own personality was flawed in that she suffered from an intense sense of insecurity. But more crucially, she had to function in a political climate which was badly vitiated. Her landslide victory in 1971 in the wake of nationalisation of leading commercial banks on the garibi hatao slogan should tell us something about that climate.
When the consequences of this ‘radicalism’ in the shape of weakening of the economy and aggravation of corruption became evident, the pincers of moralism and adulation of powerlessness closed in on her. The intelligentsia turned on her with a ferocity peculiar to the weak and uncomprehending.
Rajiv Gandhi is another story. It is a story of an often correct and even bold instinct marred by lack of intellectual understanding and political competence. It deserves to be treated separately.
But VP Singh, with his negativism, disruptionism and self-righteous moralism, is part of the inheritance of the Raj.
Chandra Shekhar is elusive and difficult to categorise. Anyway, he has taken over in extremely difficult circumstances and such battalions as he commands are a source of weakness rather than of strength. India is truly trapped.
Sunday Mail, 13 January 1991