Columns: The Usual Suspects

Columns

India Today, July 19, 1999
July 19, 1999

THE USUAL SUSPECTS
Batting For India

During the Kargil war some familiar voices were silent

By Swapan Dasgupta

For India, it's been an exhilarating six weeks. There was a war in the barren and inhospitable climes of Kargil. The army fought that one valiantly and victoriously. The government chipped in with a diplomatic offensive that conclusively nailed the lie that post-Pokhran India was more isolated than ever before. But there was another battle being fought in the cities and villages -- a battle to re-embrace Indian nationhood.

The significance of this emotional churning shouldn't be underestimated. For the past few years, cosmopolitan intellectuals, leftists and gung-ho free-marketers have inundated impressionable minds with the belief that India is just a geographical term, bereft of emotional relevance -- except during cricket matches. These upholders of global networking heaped contempt on the tinsel patriotism of A.R. Rahman's Vande Mataram and Border and Sarfarosh. They seceded from India to take up causes like Narmada and disarmament, causes that are rooted in western fashion.

Now, they will have to think again. The national awakening over Kargil wasn't contrived or orchestrated. It was real, spontaneous and touched every corner of India. From the bride in Orissa who donated her wedding jewels to the Congress MP who donated satellite phones so that soldiers could call home, the popular response to the war effort was overwhelming. Those who contributed hadn't ever seen Kargil. Nor are they likely to ever visit it. Yet, Tiger Hill and Mashkoh Valley became as much a symbol of India as India Gate. Call it nationalism, call it xenophobia, call it whatever you want, but the Kargil war demonstrated that India lives in the soul of Indians. Quite unwittingly, Mian Nawaz Sharif helped restore India to its people.

He did more than that. In forcing India into a war we never wanted, Sharif forced us to choose between nationhood and a spurious cosmopolitanism. Regardless of voting intentions, most Indians waved the flag vigorously. But some stayed curiously silent or spent their time in an insidious game of demoralisation. Didn't it strike you as curious that the NGOs who are the biggest recipients of foreign funding for so-called "development" were hardly to be seen or heard during the past six weeks? Why weren't their elaborate networks -- so assiduously mobilised in protesting against the Pokhran tests last year -- put to use in the war effort?

Where were groups like Sahmat that were so incredibly active in raising money for Cuba and promoting Pakistani artistes in Delhi? What can be said about CPI(M) politburo's Biman Bose who says jingoism got its just desserts from the Chinese in 1962? Or the CPI(M) Rajya Sabha member Ashok Mitra who in a newspaper column last week described the Indian troops in Kashmir as an "army of occupation"? Booker prize winner Arundhati Roy was photographed dishing out a note to a beggar. Strange we never saw her signing a cheque for the National Defence Fund? Weren't the jawans fighting for her country too?

India is an easy-going, sab chalta hai country that makes way for all sorts of views. It will continue to remain that way once the guns become silent and diplomacy takes over conflict resolution. Yet, when normal life resumes and our gaze reverts to the swings and splits of electoral politics, it is important to remember the weeks of Kargil -- those who batted for India and those who preferred to be superior and look the other way.

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