Saffron Nation Theory
By Ashok Mitra (The Telegraph, Wednesday 7 July 1999 (Calcutta - India)
What about a few words of caution for the crowd gone gaga over Kargil?
The Nawaz Sharif setup had its own reasons to foment trouble along and
across the line of control in Kashmir. As long as the hapless people of
Pakistan could be persuaded to forget their daily woes because, didn’t
they know, the infidel Indians were about to run over their country and
enslave them, it was easy for the Islamabad regime to identify the item
to occupy the top of its agenda.
This regime presides over a bankrupt economy, it does not know from
which source the next lot of foreign exchange crucial for its sustenance
is to come. These matters, experience has told it, have a way of taking
care of themselves; the principal task is to steal a march over the
Bhutto daughter and ensure that she fails to take advantage of the
people’s discontent. Destabilizing the status quo along and beyond the
LoC in Kashmir, it concluded, served that objective beautifully.
Quite by coincidence, the Islamabad line was manna from heaven for the
caretaking stragglers in New Delhi. It fitted in snugly with both their
short term interests and long term ideology. The war psychosis would
yield, in their judgment, millions and millions of extra votes in
September. At the same time, giving a bloody nose to Pakistan would be
in essence according to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-Vishwa Hindu
Parishad vision of the future.
Whatever helps rouse the non-thinking masses of this country against
Pakistan will duly lead, the assumption goes, to the crystallization of
a collective prejudice against Islam. Nothing is dearer to the cause of
the revivalists, all this constituting the preliminary steps towards the
full reconquest of the Hindu territories the Congress leadership had
gifted away to Mohammed Ali Jinnah.
Those greatly concerned over the prospect of fundamentalists wresting a
permanent lease on the administration in New Delhi had a wonderful
opportunity to take a principled stand on the issue of Kargil. The
Bharatiya Janata Party government – they could have gathered the courage
to state it openly – had no business to blow up the skirmish in Kashmir
into a situation with the trappings of a fullscale war. The defence
minister – once a formidable trade union leader, who was also a major
functionary of that charming, fraternal sounding body, the Socialist
International – choosing to toe the rabid communal line, of course, did
present a spectacle. This should have caused no surprise though. Second
Internationalwallahs, the history books proffer evidence, have a
reputation for flexible morals.
It is, however, the total endorsement the BJP comrades received from the
left that boggles the mind. There was hardly any reason for ideologues,
who have always taken pride in holding high the flag of secularism, to
surrender so meekly to the patriotic demagoguery unleashed by the
BJP-RSS-VHP regime. By doing what they did, the secularists rendered
hollow the claim of their main concern, at present being the containment
of the fundamentalist threat.
The left could have proved its credentials by not falling into the
Kargil trap set for it by the BJP-RSS-VHP triumvirate. Instead, it fell
for it prodigiously. The procession of leaders of the so called secular
opposition trooping into South Block with ponderous faces to listen, in
the manner of obedient students, to the briefings of the prime minister
was a bizarre sight. It was as if by some magic the fundamentalist line
had been transformed, courtesy Kargil, into a secular one. The latest
turn of events contributed to the suspicion that Kargil was perhaps a
marionette dance sponsored by the Americans; by their demeanour, the
Indian left proved to be very much a part of that ensemble.
Should not the secularists, even at this late hour, engage in some soul
searching? It is 50 odd years since the Kashmir problem reared its head.
The Indian administration has spent over this span of time several
billions of rupees in order to establish the point that Kashmir is an
integral part of India. Our politicians, civil servants and hired
propagandists have pontificated day in and day out: no power on earth
could detach the valley from India. The assertion has had no resemblance
with ground reality. Not even one per cent of the valley’s population,
it is possible to lay a wager, is going to agree with the proposition
that it comprises, honestly, the darlingest children of Bharatmata. To
be unhappy with the so called international community if it too nurtures
a healthy scepticism with respect to the Indian claim is pointless.
The recognition of what is what, in fact, ought to proceed further. The
details are well known; we have not exactly covered ourselves with glory
by the manner we have gone about in the valley in the half century since
1948: the saga of the Bakshi Ghulam Mohammeds and the Gul Mohammed Shahs
encapsulates the Indian record.
There is now very little to show as an achievement against the billions
of rupees spent in the effort to maintain Kashmir as an inalienable part
of India. No genuine democrat would go along with the view that you
cling to a territory even when the entire resident population dislikes
your presence. Why not be brutally frank, India’s presence in Kashmir is
only as an army of occupation. The cost of this forcible occupation has
been incalculable for a poor country such as ours.
Leave aside for a moment the consideration of the state of affairs in
the valley. Even otherwise, this is altogether an unquiet country. Signs
of incipient insurgency are rampant in the Northeast. Conditions of
anarchy prevail over large stretches of Assam. People’s War Groups of
different shades are active in Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and parts of
Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh as well. Our integral security
arrangements are so wobbly that a sandalwood poacher has been operating
unhindered for more than a decade along the Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border.
Caste warfare, often assuming violent forms, is the staple political
activity in many states. Corruption has corroded the polity from top to
bottom. Should we not move to even more basic issues? Despite half a
century of independence, close to one half of the population remains
functionally illiterate and one third of the population subsists below
the line of poverty The quality of nutritional intake, particularly for
women and children, beggars description.
It is not being suggested that were the billions of rupees sunk in
Kashmir instead put to use for purposes of development in the other
parts of India, all the ills the nation is suffering from would have
been instantly removed. But the permanent crunch on resources,
inhibiting development activities on the part of both the Centre and the
state governments, would without question have been substantially eased
if the white elephant of Kashmir were not there.
A hypothetical example of what could have resulted from careful
alternative uses of the money poured into Kashmir may be taken note of.
Way back in the mid-Eighties a Reserve Bank of India report, much
concerned at the persistence of monocrop farming in most parts of the
eastern and northeastern regions of the country, had suggested a string
of irrigation works to blanket the area. These works, if implemented,
were expected to turn the agricultural tracts in Assam, West Bengal,
Orissa, Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh following the completion of the
Bhakra-Nangal and similar other irrigation projects. The committee had
endorsed an irrigation investment programme of this nature for the
eastern states because of the possibility of the petering out of farm
production in the country’s northwest consequent to the exhaustion of
the irrigation potential there; the need was to open up new areas if the
tempo of farm growth were to be maintained.
The aforementioned report had proposed an outlay of several tens of
billions of rupees, to be spread over a number of years, to convert the
irrigation dream for eastern and northeastern India into a live reality.
New Delhi would not, however, touch the report even with a barge pole.
Honey, where was the money, has been the standard response from the
powers that be. The opportunity cost of not spending this amount where
it ought to have been spent is, one dares to say, the near anarchy now
fast spreading over large parts of the country, the caste, sect and
ethnic riots not excluded.
So what, national integrity uber alles, life is apparently not worth
living for the secularists unless they join the bandwagon of Hindu
revivalism. The cost is no consideration, even if it be wholesale
national disintegration.
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