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VIEWPOINT: KAUTILYA
September 11 And Afterax
The three Ds-democracy, diversity and development-assume
new significance
By Jairam Ramesh
By the admission
of the new US Ambassador in Delhi, the scholarly Harvard don Robert Blackwill,
George W. Bush is fascinated by India, by how a billion people rooted
in democracy are trying to improve their standard of living.
But September 11, 2001 will undoubtedly cast
a long shadow. There is understandable nervousness in this country that
the US will once again revive its special relationship with Pakistan and
that this would be at the cost of closer ties with India. Blackwill has
denied that the US will let India down. He has, in fact, rejected suggestions
that the US has given a sympathetic hearing to Pakistan's "conditions"
for cooperation. But not everybody is convinced and there is widespread
worry here at the prospects of some secret deal between Pakistan and the
US that would result in greater American pressure on India on Jammu and
Kashmir.
 The
US cannot absolve itself of its responsibility for the awesome militarisation
of Afghanistan. Its role in making the Taliban possible has been detailed
in the noted Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid's classic Taliban which
was published last year. In October 1996, I recall meeting a very senior
State Department official in Washington who was making the case that the
Taliban would bring stability to Afghanistan and make possible vast supplies
of natural gas from Turkmenistan to India for which an American company,
Unocal, had prepared a detailed proposal. The US has also been very insensitive
to Indian cries about terrorism being supported by Pakistan, first in
Punjab in the 1980s and subsequently in Jammu and Kashmir over the past
decade and more. But this is not the time to remind the Americans about
the present-day consequences of their past policies and deeds both in
South Asia and West Asia. This is also not the time for India to adopt
the high moral ground with a "I-told-you-so" attitude for we
too are guilty of having fostered Frankensteins like Bhindranwale and
Prabhakaran as deliberate instruments of state policy. India has to understand
that September 11 has decisively changed the world and we just cannot
afford to be non-aligned as we were during the Cold War.
To be sure, India's predicament is acute and
there are no soft options. On the one hand, it can't allow the solid gains
made in Indo-US ties over the past decade to dissipate. It cannot be insensitive
to the fact that we have over 1.7 million Indians in America, a highly
distinguished and accomplished community that has acquired great economic
and political clout. On the other hand, we also cannot wish away the fact
that we are the world's second-largest Muslim nation with a Muslim population
now at about 125 million, quite apart from the two million or so Indians
working in the Middle East who are remitting $6-7 billion of their savings
back home every year.
We must certainly not succumb to the blackmailing
fulminations of obscurantist Muslim religious leaders and organisations
and must vigorously combat the activities of Pakistan's ISI in India.
Yossef Bodansky, an American expert on terrorism, has described these
activities and how they derive support from Osama bin Laden's own network
in his 1999 book Bin Laden which is now enjoying renewed sales. Yet, at
the same time, we cannot ignore mass Muslim sentiment altogether. Bodansky,
incidentally, is perhaps the only analyst who uses the term "Islamist"
instead of "Islamic" to make the distinction between the majority
of Muslims and a minority comprising terrorists, a distinction of special
significance in this country.
What then is the way out of this dilemma? How
do we ensure that the US does not abandon India and how do we guarantee
that whatever we do in its support-as indeed we must, both now and later-will
not hurt social harmony in our society?
The answers to these questions lie in returning
to basics and focusing on the three Ds-democracy, diversity and development.
India has only one truly sustainable mantra-strengthen democracy, celebrate
diversity and accelerate development.
Indian democracy faces its stiffest international
challenge in the matter of Jammu and Kashmir. September 11 does not, in
any way, diminish the importance of reinvigorating and broad-basing the
political process in the state and vastly improving basic governance.
India is a civilisation-state that has been defined by diversity. It is
the respect of this diversity-actually of multiple diversities-that has
kept us united and made us unique in the world. In recent years, nothing
has hurt India's image more than premeditated attacks on innocent Christians
by Hindu zealots who are as much enemies of the very idea of India as
Muslim, Christian or Sikh fundamentalists. And nobody can ignore a country
that records a broad based 7-8 per cent annual rate of economic growth
consistently and intensifies its engagement with the global economy constructively.
(The author is with the Congress party. These
are his personal views.)
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