‘Shining arms in the midst of starving populations are an obscenity’
WE plead incessantly for talks. The Indians refuse. Forget the recent camaraderie, for it is too recent to be trusted. They want the existence of their economic and military superiority to get them what they have not been able to get with their military confrontation. But why do we seek talks when the correlation of forces is unfavourable to us? It appears that both sides proceed from the same premise: that the raw ingredients of military power are translatable into immediate political strength. The premise is false.
Someone wrote many years ago in the weekly New Statesman: “Shining arms in the midst of starving populations are an obscenity.”
They may be an obscenity, but they are also a need of the ruling class of the Third World. First a real need — to keep down the masses. Then also a psychological need. A child denied a particular toy for long is fascinated endlessly with it when he gets it.
Nehru betrayed this tendency more than any other leader of the newly-independent countries. For his first visit to Indonesia, he travelled on a Destroyer, which, being small, must have been pretty uncomfortable in the turbulent waters of the Bay of Bengal. But never mind. The British royalty often travelled in warships, though bigger ones such as cruisers, etc. So why not the ruler of India?
He was also “blessed” with weak neighbours. So, after the thrill of occupying Kashmir in a sort of poor man’s blitzkrieg, Nehru sent troops into Hyderabad and Junagarh and then went on to intervene in Nepal. Here was a big power putting the lesser breeds in their place. Pakistan was, of course, his bete noire. And it was, economically and military, weaker, its main strength being political — the will of its people to preserve their national independence. India, on the other, hand, had inherited the British Indian army’s only armoured division. It was placed in an offensive posture, opposite Lahore every time there was disagreement between Pakistan and India. Nehru continued with this bullying until he drove Pakistan into Western alliances.
It was this same spoilt behaviour which got India into a fight with China. Nehru insisted that China accept the Indian definition of their common border, most of which had never been even agreed upon, what to say of its delineation. He then ordered the Indian army to establish it by force. He calculated that since China faced the danger of a US attack in the East and was just then falling out with the Soviet Union, it would not spoil its relations with India. But not wanting to spoil relations with some country was one thing, accepting a public humiliation another. True, the Chinese army officers did not speak English with a clipped accent. Neither were their uniforms as well-cut as those of the Indians. But, just a decade earlier, they had fought the US army to a standstill. They could not agree to be “thrown out” of what they regarded a their territory.
When the Soviet Union attained a rough nuclear party with the US, with an edge in rocketry, Khrushchev sought to place some weapons in Cuba. The US response in the shape of a naval blockade of Cuba, showed up the inadequacy of the nuclear weapon as an instrument of diplomacy. The US superiority in conventional forces left the Soviet Union with a choice between capitulating and inviting nuclear destruction. It took the only course open to it — that of capitulation. Mao, in criticizing the Soviet action as “adventurism” and “capitulationism”, was not egging Moscow on to a nuclear war. His criticism was of “adventurism”, i.e. launching upon an action whose implications had not been thought through.
Our action in Kargil was of a similar nature, based upon a misconception of nuclear weapons. If our planning was predicated upon a nuclear stalemate, it meant that the test of strength would be decided by conventional armaments. India was superior there and we had no chance of success, except if India’s will failed, of which there were no indications.
If we calculated that the Indians would be held back from a conventional attack by their apprehension that we may resort to nuclear weapons, if pushed too far, the calculation was not rational. The Indians may see us as adventurous, but they do not consider us mad. They know that we would not invite a nuclear attack even for Kashmir, what to say of Kargil. Anyway, one cannot formulate a policy upon the assumption that the other side considers one mad.
Indian’s recent massing of troops on the Line of Control and the Pakistani frontier, with an ultimatum to Pakistan to stop “infiltration” of Kashmiri Mujahideen into Occupied Kashmir had two premises.
One, the “nuclear balance” in South Asia would enable India to use its conventional superiority. It could thus force Pakistan to accept India’s occupation of Kashmir without war.
Two, the US’s restraining hand would be removed because, by re-classifying the Kashmiris’ liberation struggle as “terrorism”, India would place in repression in Kashmir within the framework of the US’s new doctrine of war against terrorism. The US may even aid it by itself destroying whatever nuclear stocks Pakistan may have. Now, India is refusing political exchange with Pakistan, while going all-out to crush the liberation struggle in Occupied Kashmir. Its refusal to talk to Pakistan, however, lacks the force of persuasion because India has no economic beverage with this country. The political pasture is as empty of content as was the threat of war.
The threat of war was an attempt to translate mechanically the stock of arms into politics. The verbal re-classification of an armed liberation struggle as “terrorism” and expecting it to turn into indentification had an element of fetishism about it. The same misperception led to the expectation that the US would accept India’s re-classification to the extent of radically changing it policy in South Asia.
The US may not have attacked Pakistan in order to facilitate India’s “war against terrorism” at a time when Pakistan was cooperating with the US’s own war upon terrorists. If India had attacked Pakistan in that situation, and its conventional attack had developed into a threat to Pakistan’s integrity, Pakistan would have escalated the war. The resultant nuclear exchange would have destroyed Pakistan, but it would also have thrown India back a hundred years and most likely led to its fragmentation.
As to the evolution of the US policy in South Asia, it wants all South Asians to accept status quo. And it looks upon the Kashmir dispute as Pakistani irredentism, of which it disapproves. However, it does not follow that it would countenance an outright defeat of Pakistan by India, as the present South Asian inter-state system gives it greater beverage with India than would be the case otherwise.
The US proclamation of India as a near-world power even while its industry is puny by world standards (its GDP being little bigger than that of Belgium), and that it is now capable of developing indigenously any major weapons system, is a political statement.
The US is a retreating power. Indeed, when the young men of a great power refuse to die for its interests abroad and when its rich are not prepared to pay for its wars, it is hampered in pursuing its vocation — that of exercising power. The first war against Iraq had been paid for by the Arabs and the Europeans. And the US troops had not been required to occupy a hostile population. So the casualties had been negligible. Now, the US has to pay for its invasion of Iraq, both in men and money. This it finds difficult US, therefore, seeks local allies, as Britain did towards the end of the 19th century to safeguard its interests in the regions which it could no more dominate unilaterally. The US seems to have chosen India in our region for the purpose. India is strong in the midst of the weak, and it would have no internal opposition to aiding the US in its drive to being under control the Arab East, Iran and, possibly, Central Asia, all inhabited by Muslims.
Even so, the terms of such an alliance are far from settled, as the contradictions between the US and India appear to be as important as their shared interests. Will the US give India a free hand against Pakistan? Will India support US interests in the Persian Gulf or strike out for its own independent interests? Will India have the same access to US technology as does Japan? India and the US both have contradiction with China. But they are of different natures. Will India support the US politics beyond a point?
The growing Indo-Israeli relations are better defined than the Indo-US entente, but have a smaller scope whatever the rhetoric. Israel seems to have set itself up as the enemy of all liberation movements in the world. It has, at one time or another, aided every dictator in the Third World, including Mobutu, Somoza, etc, and the racist regimes of Southern Africa. Dayan visited South Vietnam in the ‘60s not to study the struggle of a small nation against a great power, but to see how that small nation could be defeated.
True to its tradition, Israel is happy to aid India in suppressing the Kashmiris’ freedom struggle. Why should a people which has suffered more discrimination, oppression and violence than any other in history, identify itself with every oppressor against every oppressed, is, one supposes, a question for social psychologists.
In our region, Israel cannot bring its forces to bear directly upon us. But it may strengthen further the “law and order maintenance” capabilities of the Indian army and be conduit for such US technology as the latter may not wish to transfer directly to India.
It is no use wailing before the US about these developments. And certainly no inanities about “double standards”. A great power states its decisions. It does not change them at anyone’s behest. Further, any talk of matching India in armaments is meaningless. A country with 10 times our GDP cannot be matched even by selling our freedom.
Of course, India would want to establish its hegemony over Pakistan. But there may be a time lag between the desire and its realization, since the establishment of India’s hegemony over South Asia may not fit into US thinking at this time. We must use this time lag, this breathing space to strengthen our defensive capabilities. Here, accumulation of more military junk would not do. For once, we should look to the people of Pakistan for the purpose. A country can be defended only if its people want to defend it.
Let us industrialise fast, not seeking military industrialization, which can only be the outgrowth of general industrialization not its basis, but general planned industrialization. Only this will give the people employment and hope of economic betterment for them and their children. In this effort, no IMFs or WTOs should be allowed to stand in our way. And let us carry out real land reforms, land going to the tiller. This will release the infinite energy of the masses. This will give them a stake in their future, in that of their country.
