June 1, 1998

Celebrations over, time to win the psychological war

Swapan Dasgupta

Ten days after the sand has settled in the Pokhran test range, one thing is becoming increasingly clear: the fear of international sanctions exists only in the mind. The mind of those Indians who tenaciously believe it is the destiny of the effete to inherit the world's leftover crumbs. The 90 per cent or so Indians who have given Atal Bihari Vajpayee a resounding thumbs-up believe that India's moment has come. For the avant-garde minusculity, this is the high noon of contrariness. It is an "obscenity", decries academic Shiv Visvanathan on the Internet, "the new Indian self violates ... my emotion of being Indian". The N-tests have "lowered India's global stature and (are) likely to cause the people serious economic hardship", activist Praful Bidwai informs Pakistani readers of Dawn. Not since Lord Haw-Haw taunted fellow Britons on German radio during the 1940 blitz has so much invective been showered by so few on so many.

It is not a laughing matter. The challenge to India's status as a nuclear weapons state does not come from the feeble sanctions imposed by a remorseful Bill Clinton. There are far too many takers for the great Indian market for White House diktats to be truly effective. If the ultimate US goal is to pressure India into signing the CTBT without a corresponding change in the Non-Proliferation Treaty, it will be preceded by a fierce psychological offensive. India has to prepare for a sustained campaign of demoralisation and destabilisation at home and a spell in coventry abroad. Having exercised the N-option, India will have to fight every inch to retain it.

There is little percentage in minimising the threat. The BJP may be actively filling in the political space vacated by the Congress, but it has not yet succeeded in forging a new nationalist consensus. The BJP machinery is formidable, but its leverage over the centres of intellectual power in the country is nominal. The state-funded, left-leaning edifice created by Indira Gandhi in the early '70s is disoriented but firmly intact. Now, bereft of Marxist sustenance, it has deftly shifted its gaze across the Atlantic. The escalating campaign to denigrate India's nuclear achievement is, for example, strongly networked to US think tanks and institutes. The clout of this comprador intelligentsia could have been glossed over if India had no overpowering ambition to be counted on the world stage. Today's agenda calls for the active nurturing of a new intelligentsia committed to the post-nuclear resurgence.

Nor is Indian diplomacy in a better position to further a new policy of expediency. The rupture has been so abrupt that there has been no time to effect a considered shift from P.V. Narasimha Rao's economism and I.K. Gujral's "Chamberlain" doctrine. If NRIs complain of ineffectual diplomacy, it is because South Block hasn't evolved a Vajpayee doctrine that blends nimble-footedness with bespoke suits. Neither, incidentally, is in evidence in our missions today. The new diplomacy requires a fresh approach and style. It requires the sanctimoniousness of Bandung to be subsumed by the grittiness of Pokhran. Maybe, just maybe, it requires a new foreign service.

Vajpayee should not delude himself that India has turned the corner. The N-tests restored Indian pride. but it also generated a fierce countervailing force. As yet, the Government is inadequately prepared to meet the challenge. Time is not on its side.

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