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India-Today, July 12, 1999
July 12, 1999

FIFTH COLUMN
Nuke Nuts in the RSS

Just when the world backs India, Sangh loonies talk of nuclear war

By Tavleen Singh

Having had the dubious pleasure of discourse, if it can be called that, with the RSS' top leaders, I am not usually surprised by the stupidity of most of their comments on the affairs of the nation and the world. The RSS specialises in leaders of limited analytical ability who combine this limitation with the sort of intellectual arrogance that can only come from stupidity. It's a combination that often causes uncontrollable urges to expound on everything under the sun. And though the RSS claims to be a cultural organisation , we have heard its leaders hold forth on everything from globalisation to domestic policy.

Since Atal Bihari Vajpayee has never properly fitted into the RSS mould, he has been a regular target ever since he became prime minister. But even given this record and the chronic verbal diarrhoea that afflicts the organisation, you would think that there would be some desire to desist in a time of national crisis.

This, alas, was not to be. So just when Pakistan was beginning to look its very worst, the RSS stepped in with its "nuke Pakistan" comment to remind the world that India is as capable as Pakistan of irresponsible behaviour and nuclear blackmail. RSS comments can be dismissed as inconsequential most of the time. But not when there is a BJP government ruling India. So when its main mouthpiece, Panchjanya, writes an editorial urging the prime minister to drop the bomb, the world will perceive it -- correctly -- as evidence of a powerful lunatic element within the Indian government itself.

The RSS never pulls its punches. So the editorial made it absolutely clear that it wanted Vajpayee to use nuclear power to finish Pakistan: "Rise Atal Bihari, who knows whether you have been destined to write the last chapter of this process (of Pakistani treachery and incursions)? After all, why have we made the bomb? Only for the sake of its successful testing?"

Yes, you morons, yes. That is why it's called a nuclear deterrent. Besides, can either country exercise the nuclear option without killing vast numbers of its own people? Often, when I meet RSS leaders or read their comments in the press, I find myself wondering whether they even live on the same planet as we do. This latest remark comes as final proof they do not.

What is particularly annoying about their views on the bomb is that they have chosen to express them at exactly the time when most of the world is beginning to recognise -- probably for the first time -- that India is a very different country from Pakistan. Even China, with whom Sartaj Aziz recently reminded us Pakistan had "very, very friendly relations", has been so reluctant to side with Islamabad on Kargil that Nawaz Sharif cut short his visit to Beijing. Zhu Rongji did not exactly come out on India's side but indicated as much when he said he believed only a peaceful solution would work in Kashmir.

If the RSS had proper analysts instead of ideologues, it would have read this to mean that China did not approve of the incursion in Kargil. The US, with whom Pakistan has also always had friendly relations, too has chosen to get tough this time and warn Pakistan that it needs to order the intruders to withdraw from our side of the Line of Control (LoC). It has also dismissed out of hand Pakistan's suggestion that the line is not clearly defined.

On the morning that I read the latest foreign policy statement from the RSS, I happened to read a report in International Herald Tribune that said: "Pakistan's incursion into Kashmir has turned US diplomacy upside down." It added: "After initially promising public neutrality, Mr (Bill) Clinton has authorised American officials to say there is no doubt that the intruders on the Indian side of the line are Pakistan regulars, as India claims, not Kashmiri separatist guerrillas, as Pakistan says."

All wars are ugly but the one in Kargil seems uglier than most. Every time images of that barren, icy battlefield flash on to television screens across India everyone feels personally for the men who are fighting and dying there. If the only achievement of the war is that we succeed in pushing Pakistan's Islamic warriors back across the LoC, the victory will be a limited one. If our soldiers are not to have died in vain, we must be able to use what happened in Kargil to find a final solution in Kashmir.

Everyone knows that the solution cannot include any further change of borders in Kashmir. Whenever a solution comes it will be based on both India and Pakistan accepting the LoC as the border. So far India has had trouble convincing the world of its case and most western countries have been inclined to sympathise with Pakistan. Kargil could have altered this forever because Pakistan has finally come out as a country capable of not just irresponsible behaviour but of nuclear blackmail, as we have seen from the statements of some of its ministers.

Sharif's information minister, Mushahid Hussain, has come out as one of the ugliest faces of Pakistan. Not many people believe him any more, especially not when he says, as he did on BBC, "We are the good guys, we are at the receiving end, we are the victims of aggression." This time, for the first time, it's clear who the good guys are. So would the RSS do us a really big favour and keep its mouth shut? Nuclear bombs and defence strategies should, after all, have little to do with the concerns of a cultural organisation.

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