THE electoral debacle faced by the BJP in the state elections held in late February has been followed by the worst communal violence in India since the riots after the destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992. As Prime Minister Vajpayee himself conceded, the carnage wrought by the Hindu extremists in Gujarat constitutes a blot on India’s international image.

With the death toll steadily mounting owing to the continuing violence by Hindu mobs in a state ruled by the BJP, the credibility of India in its much touted stand against terrorism and religious extremism is in tatters. The results of the elections held in four Indian states constitute a rout for the ruling BJP that will have major repercussions internally and abroad.

The party, which was in control in the two major states, namely Utter Pradesh (which is the largest state of India with a population exceeding that of Pakistan) and Punjab, has been replaced by the Congress in Punjab, and may have to share power with Mayavati’s Bahujan Samaj Party in UP. The Congress also has a majority in the newly created state of Uttaranchal, and will have the most seats in Manipur. Clearly, the tactics of creating war hysteria against Pakistan and of playing the communal card have not worked for the ruling party.

Some other aspects of the result also need to be mentioned before the internal and external repercussions are examined. The dual personality of the BJP is known, with the L.K. Advani faction representing the hardliners, and Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee projecting the moderate line. Since the September 11 terrorist outrage, Mr Vajpayee had virtually abandoned the secular line and more or less joined the Hindutva forces, to the extent that he even stated at Varanasi that the BJP did not need the Muslim vote to win.

State election results do not have a direct impact on the government at the centre, since the Indian Constitution clearly demarcates the powers and roles of the Centre and the states. Therefore the Vajpayee government is in no immediate danger of losing power. However, there are several ways in which the national government would be inevitably affected. The first effect is to undermine the authority and credibility of the government, of which the largest component from the BJP has clearly lost popularity. Secondly, its coalition partners may become more difficult, especially as some of them have done better in the state elections. Whether any of them quit the coalition would depend upon the post-election politics, which in India can become quite complicated, with so many personalities and interests involved. But for a revolt by some major partners, the glue of power may keep the 22 constituent groups of the coalition together. Lastly, the tensions within the BJP itself may come to a head, with the militant Vishwa Hindu Parishad threatening to go ahead with the construction of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya after March 12.

There is another dimension of the resulting scenario that is of interest both internally and abroad. The militant wing of the BJP, led by L.K. Advani, which was calling the shots since September 11 is clearly in disarray. A controversy is in evidence within the BJP about the relative merits of militancy and moderation in garnering public support. There are those who maintain that the communal approach at the expense of secular values became a liability. On the other hand, people like Bal Thackeray of the Shiv Sena maintain that the government was not sufficiently militant in advocating Hindu causes and alienated the Hindu vote by its soft approach.

Objective observers believe that the vote reflects two underlying concerns of the Indian electorate. One is a certain fatigue over the communal issue, and a realization that the primacy given to Hindu extremism does not fit into an emerging pluralistic world order. In other words saffronization is seen as being incompatible with a world where progress demands a global vision. More importantly, the results showed that the voters are concerned primarily with issues affecting their life, notably those pertaining to poverty and the rights of the lower castes. The electorate was not swayed by fears about national security or by religious sentiments — the two themes stressed by the BJP.

Many Indian analysts believe that the crest of Hindu extremism, that had been finding expanding support, has passed. Even in the 1999 elections, the BJP was able to capitalize on the Kargil episode and kept its electoral strength, though it suffered a loss in popular support. The percentage of votes it polled in 1999 went down from 25.59% in 1998 to 23.07%. Indeed the BJP’s position has been eroded constantly since 1999. The BJP lost control of Delhi in state elections after having won convincingly eight months earlier. The rout the party has suffered in the recent elections, will compound the government’s difficulties, as there is already criticism of the government’s performance, and the re-induction of George Fernandes as defence minister has drawn considerable resistance from the Opposition.

The situation that has emerged in the country’s biggest state, UP, is being viewed with concern. The political campaign there tended to focus on divisions of caste, subcaste and religion. Groups and parties sought to appeal to narrow sections of the population. The Samajwadi Party of Mulayam Singh Yadav relied on the backward classes, while the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) depended heavily on the Dalits. In the words of senior columnist K.K. Katyal, writing in The Hindu of February 25, the country’s biggest state is “moving inexorably towards disintegration.”

The politics of UP is also creating other uncertainties. the Samajwadi Party (SP) has emerged as the largest party in its assembly. Being a regional party, SP may not be able to muster sufficient support to form a government. The national Party, which has had the most success in these polls, is the Congress. However, it has captured only 24 seats in the state and cannot form a government there, which removes, for the time being, any chances of the Congress recovering its former all-India status. It is expected that the BJP and the BSP may form a coalition government, with Mayawati claiming the chief minister’s slot.

Considerable soul searching will be going on within the main political parties. The BJP, in particular, would be re-assessing its strategy and tactics. As a result of the riots sparked by the activities of the Hindu extremists who have been pressing for the construction of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, the real face of the champions of Hindutva has been exposed. The view held by the likes of Bal Thackeray and his Shiv Sena who believe that the BJP has suffered by a failure to stick to its Hindu militancy will not command much support.

The BJP government’s home minister L.K. Advani has sought to put the blame for the riots on Pakistani incitement, and even stated that Pakistanis are gloating over the happenings in Gujarat. This jaundiced view ignores the fact that the burning alive of hundreds of Muslim families causes anguish and concern among Pakistanis. In this age of instant communications, the international media have not failed to notice the inhuman cruelties perpetrated on the hapless Muslims by Hindu extremists.

The fact remains that the upper castes that constitute the base of BJP’s power, number only some 20% of the Hindu population. The philosophy championed by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Bajrang Dal and the Shiv Sena does not only constitute a threat to the rights of the minorities, but even goes counter to the interests of the vast majority of the Hindus belonging to the lower castes. With these oppressed and exploited castes asserting themselves, an era of fragmentation in Indian politics has dawned, and the approach reflected in the BJP policies is being rejected.

What are the repercussions of the Indian poll for the international community in general and Pakistan in particular? the decline in the support to Hindu extremism may be a health trend, and the implied rejection of the “war hysteria” approach may encourage self-examination in India. A distinguished Indian author, Pankaj Mishra, wrote in the New York Times of February 25, 2002, contrasting the influence and legitimacy Hindu “majoritarianism” was enjoying in India with the efforts Pakistan’s military government was making to control illiberal tendencies. His comments imply that it is unnatural for Hindu extremism that was once considered “unreasonable and aberrant” to find a hospitable home in democratic India. How unreasonable and aberrant Hind extremism is has been demonstrated by the riots in Gujrat and other states.

If the growing aversion towards this extremism results in a swing back towards a secular polity, the prospects of conciliation and dialogue could improve. In the immediate aftermath of the elections, the signal from the BJP-led ruling coalition, in the shape of the address of President Narayanan at the opening session of the Lok Sabha was that India would maintain its concentration of forces along the borders till Pakistan met its demands.

One would hope that after a more serious consideration of the risks and costs of the stand-off, India would move from the path of coercive diplomacy to that of negotiation and dialogue. The maintenance of the concentrations of the Indian armed forces on the border with Pakistan looks increasingly odd and irrelevant, when these very forces are needed to maintain law and order within India. The double debacle faced by the BJP should create the right conditions for a reassessment of its internal and external policies.

HAS anyone wielding authority in Islamabad or Karachi, or anywhere in the country, given any serious thought to the terrorist attack on a prisoners van in Karachi last week? At least one policeman, in uniform and on a highly sensitive duty, was killed. This was an audacious challenge to, and onslaught on, the authority of the state. To look at that incident in any other light would be an error, indeed an unwise misreading of a very ominous situation.

President Pervez Musharraf has been complimented by many important political and government leaders of the world for his courage in handling the religious extremists in the country. This praise has been well deserved. There is no doubt that the steps his government has taken following that initiative of last January 12, have made a qualitative improvement in the general climate in the country.

Now the shooting at the prisoners van in Karachi warns us that what has been done so far may have been correct but it remains far from adequate. The extremist fringe in the country has only been nudged on the defensive, by no means defeated. Most certainly not put out of action altogether. It is still doing battle, launching frontal attacks on the state itself.

In that incident, the attackers tried and succeeded in registering their presence in a pretty masterful way. They did all the shooting. Mind you it was targeted shooting. Then, as terror operators in our country always manage to do, the attackers made good their escape. It is about time somebody within the government, at the federal level as well as provincial, tried to discover why the killers always manage to escape after doing their fell deed. The emphasis here is on always. Behind this record probably lies a tale of dents in the law and order policy as well as apparatus.

The gunmen who so defiantly used their sophisticated weapons on the prisoners van were on a mission the nature of which is not difficult to figure out. They wanted to take possession of the under-trial detainees in police custody. That is, in the custody of the state. It amounted to a fairly straightforward attack on the state. The persons they had set out to take away were suspected of involvement in extremist excesses. The nexus and its nature is evident.

Who those desperate gunmen represented should thus be more than obvious to all concerned. We can safely infer from the circumstances surrounding incident that the gunmen were the activist projection of the religious and sectarian extremism. The president has promised to this nation, and to the world at large, to combat these very elements that use naked violence and reckless gun power to promote their unacceptable extremist agenda of violence and terror.

The lines are thus quite clearly drawn. It is now a declared battle between the misguided and violent religious extremism on one side and the forces of the state and sanity on the other. All that the president can claim to have won so far is to have played and won only the first round. Not a great deal more than that. The prevailing situation demands that the government should be prepared for a long-drawn-out campaign — and to fight it to the finish. No half-way houses in this endeavour.

On the other side in this no-holds-barred contest is a formidable combination of deeply entrenched forces of ignorance, bigotry, fanaticism and sadism that feeds on violence and blood for its own sake. If any foolproof evidence of the depth and strength of these organized forces was still needed, the Daniel Pearl case had provided it in more than enough measure.

As should now be clear to all who have eyes to see and a modicum of common sense to understand, the dimensions of the extremist forces are simply mind-boggling. One should like to hope that at least some minds inside the ministry of the interior and in the corridors of the intelligence establishments have at last begun to boggle.

It is not too soon to be asking ourselves about how wide open those eyes of the state have been that should be focusing on what other eyes cannot penetrate? Obviously, the state did not have a clue about the web in which Daniel Pearl got caught and could not be rescued from, some Herculean efforts by experts of international repute notwithstanding. Much the same has to be said about the gunmen who attacked the prisoners van in Karachi the other day and got away with it without so much as a scratch. The forces of the state could neither anticipate the attack, nor give the attackers a return fight.

Let no one be under any illusions about how the fight against extremism has gone so far. At the very best, it remains a draw, with the foe most probably having an upper hand on points. An impartial verdict from Islamabad would be that the government has neither been steadfast nor persevering in its pursuit of the extremists. The view from Karachi is, if anything, more disappointing. Here the forces of law are daily losing battle after battle against petty vehicle thieves, not to speak of organized international terror networks of the kind Sheikh Omar possibly represents. One can name some more.

It was only for a brief while that the illiterate professional mulla could be seen as halted. He is back in his business without even a bruise, not to speak of injury or hurt. For reasons known only to itself, the government has made no visible or perceptible moves to follow up on the initiative of last December. It may appear to be sliding into inaction, if not actual retreat.

On the issue of the deeni madaris the federal government seems to lack the requisite will to act systematically and firmly. It has chosen the line of least resistance, having passed the buck to the city nazims. Who does not know that, as it is, these poor elected creatures are beset against the deeply entrenched babus — the hardened do-nothing government bureaucrats.

The nazims have yet to find their feet. Many, probably most, of these nazims do not yet have an established office of their own. Their financial powers are no more than an illusion. In most cases the officers under the nazims are the unwilling workers who know their way about the official labyrinth and red tape, leaving the nazim to tie themselves up into knots.

To expect these city nazims, still too new to their own jobs, to carry out a major reform in the deeni madaris is the very depth to which one can push naivete. Why is the federal government fighting shy of organizing and implementing a national movement to reform the deeni madaris? What is needed is a unified, systematic national policy, strategy and implementing instruments. This matter simply cannot be tackled effectively from any level lower than the national level.

Leaving this matter to the town nazim level is bound to send dangerously encouraging signals to the obscurantists on the one hand, and on the other depressing messages to the law enforcing bureaucracy, such as it is. This would strongly suggest that the president has downgraded the entire campaign. Any vacillation on the deeni madaris reform will be seen as foot-dragging by none but the president himself. This may amount to putting the whole campaign in the reverse gear.

Having cleared the initial phase, now was the time for the federal government to move full steam ahead with its programme to rescue the country from the stranglehold of the mulla fascism. Any faltering on this front at this supremely sensitive moment will have a very negative effect on the rekindled interest of foreign investment in Pakistan. And this will have a domino effect all over the national economy.

This country’s economy has been hostage to the extremist violence for so long. Now that the barren patch appears to be ending, giving in to the obscurantist mafia would ruin whatever improvement has been achieved by some resolute initiatives. Don’t we know to our cost that poor economy breeds all manner of political and social evils? Surely that is not what the president and his government were playing for. Why appear to be developing cold feet after winning the first round? Any concession or compromise now would be tantamount to hoisting the white flag.

MY book Once Upon A time was about growing up in British India but running through it, as an unavoidable sub-text, was the communal divide. In one chapter of the book, I raised the question whether there was such a thing as a Hindu mindset or a Muslim mindset?

I chose not to answer the question myself but quoted the distinguished writer and scholar Nirad Chaudri who wrote in his book The Continent of Circe, a book whose main feature was the interpretation of the Hindu personality.

He wrote: “there is something unnatural in the continued presence of Muslims in India and of the Hindus in Pakistan, as if both went against a natural cultural ecology. Whether a person is Hindu or Muslim makes a substantial difference.”

I added, off my own steam that “such ‘substantial difference’ was not highlighted between a Hindu and a Christian. At any rate, it was not the cause of automatic hostility, it was, as if, the Hindus and Muslims were created to be sworn enemies. Indian nationalism had tried to sweep this inherent hostility under the carpet but when the chips were down, what was bred in the bones came out in the flesh.”

I write this so that we can better understand why, otherwise, normal human beings, should have turned into savages in Gujarat. I wouldn’t call them animals because animals do not kill mindlessly nor do they burn and rape and loot as we have seen in Gujarat. What we have seen in Gujarat is a carnival of blood-letting with rampaging lynch-mobs in a celebratory mood.

I watched an interview of Mr Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, given to the BBC Television which can be very revealing. Mr Modi told his interviewer that he was satisfied with the performance of the police who had brought calm to the province within 72 hours.

When his interviewer told him that far from doing a good job, the police had stood idly by and in some instances, actually provided the gasoline to the lynch-mobs, parrot-like, he maintained that the police had done a good job. He was asked that he (Mr. Modi) had quickly announced compensation of 200,000 rupees to the bereaved Hindus families, why was there no word of compensation to Muslims? He came up with an extraordinary answer. He said in Gujarat, they did not distinguish between Hindus and Muslims.

He seemed to be all but smirking, no worry lines on his forehead. The authorities in India may have banned PTV but the BBC and CNN are carrying graphic details of this shameful hour of the world’s largest democracy. The printed word is even less cheerful.

Writing in The Independent of London, Peter Popham minces no words. He writes: “These two events, the Gujarat bloodbath and the Ayodhya temple are intimately connected. Taken together they throw into urgent focus the question of what sort of people are ruling the world’s biggest democracy today? Where are they headed? The men who have been ruling India for nearly four years, including the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee and his powerful second-in-command Lal Krishna Advani, the Home Minister, are true believers of this, India’s exotic variety of neo-fascism.

But the world at large has gradually lost sight of this fact. The nuclear tests conducted in May 1988 immediately after they came into power gave due warning that they meant business.” Further down his article, Peter Popham writes: “The BJP rose to power, as fascists do through violence and the threat of more: the Ayodhya demolition signalled its rapid rise from obscurity, the vision of a state where Hindu rule continues to excite its ideologues.

In this amazing but horrifying immature democracy, muscle power and that includes the mass burning alive of women and children — can yield political power. The liberal, English language papers here have tut-tutted in a worried way but encouraging communal carnage has done Mr Modi’s government no harm at all. With the parliamentary opposition still weak and divided, India has set off down a nightmare road.”

There is no one that I know here who has taken any comfort from India’s troubles, and they are deep troubles. On the other hand, we have drawn our own lessons of what can happen when fanaticism is allowed a free rein. Every religion teaches a respect for human life.

Gujarat is still tense though we are told that some semblance of peace has returned. But it is a fragile peace and can be shattered easily, if not in Gujarat, then in Uttar Pradesh and if not Uttar Pradesh, then Mumbai. Will this madness ever end? India may be massing its troops on Pakistan’s borders. But the real enemy is the one who is fanning the flames of communal hatred and who has been issued with a licence to kill or roast men, women and children.

I went to Ahmadabad in 1987 with the Pakistan cricket team. There had been communal riots in that city, freshly. The Muslims decided to stay away from watching that test match. And a few came to my hotel to tell me that that is why we wouldn’t see them at the test match. Even then peace was fragile.

NOT in recent memory has a presidential comment evoked the acrimony, especially in Europe, as has President George Bush’s phrase “the axis of evil.” Remarkably little of the avalanche of disapproval addresses the substance; its focus is on motives: the imminent congressional election (this from the British foreign secretary); American imperialism (the European Commission foreign policy head); simplistic thinking (the French foreign minister); the trend toward American isolationism and hegemonism (leading German newspapers).

Yet the president has raised an issue central to international security: the “nexus” between large, well-organized and deadly terrorist organizations (such as Al Qaeda), states that have used and supported terrorism (such as Iran and North Korea) and states that have developed (and, in the case of Iraq, used) weapons of mass destruction.

Until September 11, the United States and its allies withheld military action until after terrorist attacks had, in fact, occurred; constraint was sought via the same principle of deterrence that was applied to weapons of mass destruction in the hands of the major powers: the expectation that rational leaders would avoid actions leading to their own destruction.

But when such weapons are within reach of countries that have employed them against their neighbours and their own people (as Iraq), or of nations that at times have made systematic assassination part of their policy and where hundreds of thousands have been sacrificed to death by starvation (as North Korea), or of national leaders who have backed virulent terrorist groups and hostage-takers (as Iran), and if attacks are made by suicide bombers, these constraints may not operate any longer. Especially where covert use and linkage to terrorists are ever possible, preventive action must be considered.

Obviously the three nations cited by the president need to be dealt with by methods appropriate to their situations. Iraq clearly poses the most urgent challenge; Iran will require the most sophisticated policy; North Korea is comparable to Iraq domestically but, in recent years, has occasionally seemed to grope for a new approach. The scope for diplomacy is least with respect to Iraq, greatest with respect to Iran. This is why both the president and secretary of state Colin Powell have indicated that there is no intention to deal with Iran and North Korea by military means. But in the end, the test of any policy will be the degree to which the risk to global security inherent in the possession of weapons of mass destruction by dangerous regimes is brought under control.

The Atlantic Alliance, which has been the keystone of the foreign policy of its members for a generation, cannot any longer avoid this issue. On one level, the controversy reflects a fundamental change that has occurred in European domestic politics. Generational change is a contributing factor. The Atlantic Alliance’s first generation of European leaders, though they led countries weakened and impoverished by the war, had their formative experience when Europe was the centre of world affairs. They understood that their ultimate choice was the alliance or a kind of neutralism that, while acceptable to some groups on the left, was anathema to centre-right governments. No such consensus as to the danger exists today.

Hence attacks on America as violence-prone, unilateralist and emotionally unbalanced — the slogans of the opposition during the cold war — have become the standard commentary of intellectuals and media, feebly resisted, if at all, by governments. The most favourable comment about the United States tends to urge governments to base their policy on “encouraging” moderate members of the Bush administration presumed sympathetic, as if it were a revolutionary government in danger of veering out of control.

This trend is reinforced because for European governments, the dominant foreign policy concern for more than a decade has been the creation of the European Union — a historic task from which the United States is, by definition, excluded. And for many European leaders, European identity has come to be sought in distinction from and, not infrequently, in opposition to the United States.

The vast gap in military power between Europe and the United States compounds the difference in perspectives. There is no precedent for the military dominance that the United States has achieved over the rest of the world. There does not exist now — nor for the foreseeable future — any country or group of countries capable of posing a military challenge to the United States.

Differences are inevitable. But they should challenge leaders on both sides of the Atlantic to remember the importance of the continued partnership of the democracies, especially in a world of increasing turmoil. The United States owes its coalition partners some description of the military options it is considering and of the political outcome it is seeking. Allied leaders, if they want to preserve an essential traditional relationship, need to counteract the caricature of America as a trigger-happy, domineering colossus.

The basic theme of American foreign policy has been — sometimes naively — to prevail by the power of our ideals and to reserve military might for the resistance to aggression. The dominant trend in American foreign policy thinking must be to transform power into consensus so that the international order is based on agreement rather than reluctant acquiescence.

At issue in the axis-of-evil debate is not America’s attempt to impose an international order but whether every member of a coalition should have a veto over fundamental perceptions of security. It must be remembered that one country’s perception of unilateralism is another’s perception of leadership. A definition of consensus based on unanimity leads to paralysis; a definition of leadership insisting on unilateralism on every issue leads to an imperialism that in the long run exhausts the imperial power. To navigate between these extremes is the challenge for American policy.

But it is an even deeper challenge for European leaders. The United States has put forward a reasoned definition of the dangers: the possession of weapons of mass destruction by governments that have demonstrated their willingness to use them, professed hostility toward America or its allies, and are not restrained by domestic institutions.

This definition of the issue deserves a substantive response. Do our allies reject the American definition of the danger? Or do they accept it but reject military means for dealing with it? And if military means are rejected, what is the alternative? If “engagement” is defined in psychological terms — the pacification of the adversary — it becomes a synonym for traditional appeasement.

What changes has “engagement”achieved in Iraq? What did the British foreign secretary’s visit to Tehran bring Britain other than a rejection of its nomination for ambassador to the revolutionary regime? And in what way did the obsequious mission to Pyongyang of a delegation from the European Union as a gesture of dissociation from statements by Bush considered too insistent in Europe ameliorate Pyongyang’s conduct toward either Seoul or the rest of the world?

The principal concrete alternative put forward to the Bush administration’s approach — especially with respect to Iraq — is for an inspection scheme to discover weapons of mass destruction. But no scheme now on the table has even remotely remedied the failure of previous inspection regimes that, before the Gulf War, failed to uncover Iraq’s nuclear weapons programme and afterward failed to find most of Iraq’s biological programmes. Our allies help neither themselves nor other members of the coalition if they treat inspections of Iraq primarily as a stratagem to prevent American military action.

With respect to Iran and North Korea, there is more scope for devising a long-range diplomatic strategy. And it involves a fundamental choice. The debate on dealing with these regimes generally focuses on how to encourage moderate elements within the existing structure, especially those assumed to be around President Mohammad Khatami in Iran. But a strong case can be made for the proposition that the real struggle is between the increasingly sophisticated public and a repressive regime. Dialogue with the ayatollahs is important, but it must not become a device to strengthen their hold on power. Room must be left for appealing to the democratic aspirations of the general public. At some point, engagement must lead to reciprocity; it must not become an exercise in psychological self-fulfilment. However the issue of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of the so-called axis of evil is resolved, the longer range goal must be to devise a system for dealing with new attempts by additional countries to acquire weapons of mass destruction or biological and chemical weapons. The survival of civilized life requires that this problem be dealt with pre-emptively, and it cannot be done by unilateral American action. Thus the issue of terrorism merges with the challenge of international order — a challenge to the leadership and imagination with which the administration has managed its response to the attacks on America on Sept. 11. —Los Angeles Times Syndicate International.