WHEN countries talk of their national interest nine out of 10 jettison their principles. They do not stick to the values they preach. Take the US which told us to pursue the dream of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and other American visionaries to have a new world order dedicated to justice and freedom. The pre-emptive strike on Iraq is nothing but a grotesque expression of America’s narrow national interest.

I am more disappointed with my own country. It has betrayed Mahatma Gandhi who defeated a mighty empire by espousing the principle that the ends do not justify the means. When I heard the Vajpayee government taking shelter behind the national interest for not speaking out against America’s aggression, I knew that the sappers and miners were out to destroy whatever had been left of India’s moral stature. I wanted to know what they had in mind when they threw the slogan of national interest in the face of those who wanted America to know that India was opposed to what it had done.

It was the condemnation or criticism, which really mattered. Parliament unnecessarily wasted time on choosing an appropriate word. People wanted the government to convey to the US that the Indian nation, with its ethos of independence struggle, could not brook the bondage of another nation and that too when colonialism was a relic of the past.

The Third World does not call a spade a spade when it comes to naming a powerful country. In Pakistan also, most energy was wasted whether the word used against America be muzammat (condemnation) or afsose (sorrow). India chose a Hindi word, nindah, and parliament passed the resolution.

Even Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru avoided the word, condemnation, when he criticized the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia or Hungary. The problem with the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) constituents is that they are not willing to say anything categorical. They wish to hide their equivocal stand behind the phrase ‘national interest’ without spelling out what it means.

The government pronouncements show that New Delhi is afraid to rub America on the wrong side. To avoid such a situation is considered the ‘national interest’. In other words, our national interest ebbs and flows in proportion to our fear of America.

Surely, we could not be thinking of US economic assistance because, as Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has put it, our foreign reserves had touched the highest mark since independence. Nor could we be worrying about the import of wheat under America’s PL-480 — this was the case at one time — since our godowns are overflowing with food grains. Then?

I think we believe that America can twist our arm on Kashmir. If it is so, how will our fear help us? Even if we were to be more obedient than the UK which blindly follows the US, Washington would do what it considers best in its own interest. We have seen how President Bush pushed his agenda on Iraq unilaterally without bothering about its traditional allies or the United Nations.

There is little doubt that America wants to take up Kashmir after it is through with Iraq. US Secretary of State Colin Powell has said that he would give his attention to the ‘Indo-Pakistan dispute’ after Iraq. In a joint statement both he and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw have told New Delhi that it is better to start a dialogue with Islamabad, although they have told Islamabad to take steps to stop cross-border terrorism.

Last week Washington pulled up India because its proactive foreign minister Yashwant Sinha had drawn a parallel between America’s pre-emptive attack on Iraq and India’s right to chastise Pakistan for cross-border terrorism. “Any attempts to draw parallels between the Iraq and Kashmir situations are wrong”. A State Department official said: “that kind of rhetoric gets more to us than to India.”

Therefore, whether New Delhi likes it or not, the talks are very much on the cards. Washington looks like pushing it. That Pakistan should stop cross-border terrorism before asking for talks is a convincing argument. But officials and others have been meeting fondly and informally since General Ziaul Haq’s regime when terrorism was at its height. The question the State Department asking is: Why not do likewise during General Pervez Musharraf’s time? Pakistan’s argument that it is willing to have a dialogue anywhere at any time on Kashmir and other subjects is going down well in the world. Kashmir or, for that matter, the stand-off between India and Pakistan is no more a subcontinental issue.

Holding talks at America’s bidding will be embarrassing. No doubt, the US will try to defend itself by saying that it is only asking the two to sit across the same table, not suggesting any solution. Even Vajpayee has asked in parliament: How long can we refuse talking to our neighbour?

New Delhi has brought this situation on itself by not sorting out the Kashmir problem on its own, as American expert Stephen Cohen, who knows the mind of the Bush administration, says. Even India’s permanent membership of the Security Council has been made dependent on the solution of Kashmir. The Vajpayee government is too much lost in electoral politics. It does not realize how much it has impaired India’s image by not taking the initiative on Iraq on the assumption that an unhappy America might reopen the Kashmir problem. While addressing US Congress, Nehru, leading the Non-Aligned Movement, said that if an aggression took place anywhere, India would not and could not be neutral.

Vajpayee should have learnt from the manner in which Nehru made the UK and France withdraw from the Suez in 1956. India stood for principles at that time. The world expected us to stand up and we did. We were poorer and weaker then. Why has the Vajpayee government changed that policy of moral righteousness?

New Delhi should have made efforts at the UN to have a ceasefire when the attack on Iraq had begun. We should have held consultations with the NAM countries which had met only a few days earlier to pass a resolution against the attack on Iraq. New Delhi should have been seen consulting Paris, Moscow, Berlin and Beijing — all these powers are against America’s unilateral action-in stalling the attack on civilians who have died of bombing in thousands. Why couldn’t New Delhi start the exercise of sending an officer to the countries around Iraq earlier?

India has been the hope of small, weak countries all along. It has played a role even during the cold war to keep the two blocs apart. Its voice was respected because it had the courage to raise it. Because of some imaginary gain it has fallen silent. It has failed many countries and it has damaged the NAM the most.

At least New Delhi should now pick up courage and tell America that the Saddam regime has to be replaced by an Iraqi regime, not by a US military ruler however ‘short’ is the period. Bush seems to have got away with the gravest harm he has done to the UN by attacking a country which was supposed to be a threat to the world for possessing arms of mass destruction. Where are they? This was only a pretext to establish its hold on the region. It is unfortunate that the Vajpayee government chose the line of least resistance and stayed quiet.

The writer is a leading columnist based in New Delhi.