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| June 19, 2000 | ||
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| Keeping
the Peace Sierra Leone is a test of India's great power aspirations
Rather than take alarmist postures, the critics of an Indian presence in Sierra Leone should consider what makes the Indian jawan such a model peacekeeper, a valuable servant of the UN from Congo to Somalia. Defence analysts refer to the Indian Army as a "developmental army", not just an aggressive unit but a force equipped for a larger community service. The army, warts and all, has done such duty in the North-east, taking medicare to remote villages. This is what makes the valiant men in olive green India's ambassadors to the land they hope to calm. They represent the best India has to offer -- in terms of protocol and manpower. The battalions serving in Sierra Leone include soldiers who won the Kargil war in 1999. They did not go there expecting to be ambushed by a treacherous militia. No doubt they will fight back the challenge. India must keep its faith in them -- and in its obligations to the world. Imaginary Homeland Free
speech, a noble trait of democracy, has an exceptionally Indian variation:
loose talk. In the loosest of democracies -- with due apologies to Italy
-- this is perhaps quite There is, Karunanidhi should know, a national policy on Sri Lanka, and that policy is certainly not the vivisection of the island. Rather, it is the territorial integrity of the island nation. More, the free-speaking Karunanidhi is not some autonomous entity. He is part of the ruling coalition, the National Democratic Alliance; and he is not India's extra-constitutional foreign minister to set policies that will have implosive consequences -- both territorially and extra-territorially. Karunanidhi the loose cannon is as dangerous as Pirabhakaran the man-eating Tiger. He cannot tap the rich vein of Tamil subnationalism at the cost of Indian nationhood -- or Lankan oneness. Time, Mr Chief Minister, to silently retire to the imaginary homeland of Eelam. |
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 © Living Media India Ltd |
There
is a certain facile persuasiveness to the argument that the 3,000-odd
Indian soldiers stationed as part of the UN Peacekeeping Force in Sierra
Leone have no business to be there. After all there is a near national
consensus that the Indian Army should not be sent to neighbouring Sri
Lanka. Why then must Indian lives be put to risk in a remote African
country that does not figure on Delhi's diplomatic radar? The questions
have sharpened after 23 Indian soldiers were held hostage by gunmen of the
rebel
Revolutionary United Front. Such protests are not unique to India. In the
US, a country where public discourse is sometimes insular to the point of
exasperation, they are common enough. Their logic is also innately naive.
A country that has ambitions of great power status and aspires to a
permanent seat in the Security Council cannot abjure its concomitant
responsiblities. A role in a UN mission is certainly one such.
understandable,
this Babel of national interest. Well, national interest is an
overstatement here. Invariably, it is personal -- or realpolitikal --
interest. So when Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi, in a
bleeding-heart display of O-My-Beloved-Brother, cries balkanise Sri Lanka,
it is an assault on history as well as the well being of the nation of
which he is supposed to be a very important citizen. But it was not
Citizen Karunanidhi who was speaking. It was an irresponsible Tamil show,
staged by a Tamil-First, India-Who-Cares showman, exclusively for the
so-called victims of Jaffna. On the history part, Karunanidhi, like most
politicians, deserves amnesty; subjects like balkanisation are too
remotely European to his provincial mind. But his Tamil-First populism is
unpardonable. It goes against the national interest.