Editorials

India Today, July 5, 1999
July 5, 1999

War Gamesmanship

Election season can wait, national consensus cannot

Edits If there is indeed a divide between democracy and soap opera, no society has done more to efface it than India. For mint condition evidence, consider the reaction of politicians to the war in Kargil. India is in the midst of the greatest threat to its security since 1962. These are momentous times in a nation's history. That, of course, is the bird's eye view. The politician, unfortunately, is congenitally gifted with the worm's eye view. Whether it is the BJP or the Congress or any of the proliferation of smaller parties, the focus of interest is the coming election. It is not a question of how your politics can help win the war; it is a matter of making the war fit into your politics. The prime minister talks of building a national consensus but does little to put his words into action. The onus of uniting the political class has to rest with the government. Where are the regular meetings with the opposition parties? Rather than have generals brief the BJP's National Executive, would it not have been appropriate to have held an all-party briefing?

Not that the ruling coalition's adversaries have done much better. There is the Congress, a party with more aspiring foreign ministers than a Treaty of Versailles could accommodate. There is I.K. Gujral, whose doctrine is now consigned to the dustbin of diplomacy. This has not prevented the man from spending the good part of the past month advocating a "national government" that only the most puerile mind believes is possible. Gujral's mate in this harebrained quest has been H.D. Deve Gowda. In other countries former prime ministers use a war to elevate themselves to statesmen; in India, they see it as an opportunity to re-enter government through the backdoor. While soldiers put their lives on the line, political parties demand a Rajya Sabha session for an almighty shouting match. At the best of times, few Indians trusted their politicians. After Kargil, even die-hard optimists will be consumed by cynicism.

Using Uncle Sam

After Kargil regional peace could be an Indo-US joint venture

Edits This may be a premature conclusion but the Kargil episode holds the potential of transforming India's foreign policy. For the first time in recent memory -- to be precise, for the first time since the war with China in 1962 -- India finds the West backing it in an exchange with a contentious neighbour. For a mindset accustomed to knee-jerk opposition to anything American this may seem unfamiliar, even uncomfortable, territory. A year ago, the US attacked terrorist camps in Afghanistan. The BJP government, unable or unwilling to break away from the very Congress-style doctrinaire world vision it had previously criticised, was quick to condemn. A few months later western intelligence agencies issued warnings that the Mujahideen were infiltrating Kashmir. The reports were scoffed at by both North and South Blocks. Not for the first time a misplaced sense of political correctness rendered India blind.

It is nobody's argument that India should now swing to the other extreme and join the vanguard of Pax Americana. Rather, the realisation should finally sink in that India's relations with the western bloc have to be guided by a commonality of interests. The West's primary security concern is the free market in arms and munitions that operates in the arc from Central Asia to Afghanistan, right into the heart of Pakistan. It is a phenomenon that can overwhelm many governments. Certainly a soft state like Pakistan is unequal to the task of arresting this trend, presuming of course that it wants to. As the invasion of Kargil makes evident, Washington's security nightmare is Delhi's reality. If peace in this region be a mutual quest, India and the US are natural allies. One need only look at Russia and China to see how apparently less powerful countries manipulate their relations with the US to suit national goals. There is a lesson here for India, if it is willing to learn it.

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