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THE Pokhran explosions have brought independent India to a
watershed
comparable, in its long-term political significance, to the
Sino-Indian War, the
Emergency, and the destruction of the Babri Masjid. The
national equation as well
as India's international relations have been altered for the
foreseeable future.
From the opening of the propaganda offensive by Defence
Minister George
Fernandes in early April to Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee's
letter to U.S. President
Bill Clinton after the explosions, the BJP Government has
maintained its focus on
China as the strategic adversary that threatens India's
security directly and as the
main culprit behind Pakistan's nuclear capability, not to speak
of the threat it is said
to pose through Myanmar. This focus on China is deliberate, as
the beginning of a
methodical red-baiting offensive within the country, as the
inauguration of an arms
race on the Asian continent, and as an appeal to long-term U.S.
goals in Asia.
What we are witnessing is the staging of a short-term Indo-U.S.
tension as a
prelude to a long-term, comprehensive strategic alliance.
It is possible that there was an "intelligence failure" on the
part of the Central
Intelligence Agency and that the U.S. Government was caught
unawares, as is
being claimed in some U.S. circles. That is possible but not
probable, given the
American capabilities of global surveillance. Nor would it be
the first time in recent
history that the U.S. would claim an "intelligence failure"
when it was necessary for
it to pretend lack of advance information with regard to
developments that it
condones but is formally committed to opposing. The U.S. is
also bound by its
own laws to impose sanctions against countries that undertake
such tests. A degree
of tension in the short run is inevitable. But the sanctions
are likely to be imposed
indifferently and shall be gradually relaxed, in the
not-too-distant future. Multilateral
agencies such as the World Bank, and some countries such as
Japan, are likely to
follow the U.S. lead in the imposition as well as circumvention
of these sanctions.
Meanwhile, the immediate reaction from various Western capitals
shows that while
the tests are being condemned all around, there is no consensus
behind the
sanctions and the Bharatiya Janata Party Government shall be
able to ride them out
easily. The fact that key countries such as Russia, France and
Britain - three
members out of five in the nuclear club - have not imposed
sanctions is as
significant as the fact that the U.S. has done so. This fact
will also be cited within
the U.S. for relaxing the sanctions, in view of non-cooperation
from "allies" and
because American sanctions in the context of this
non-cooperation shall be
portrayed as favourable to European capital and detrimental to
American business
interests. This argument shall gain further strength from the
breakneck liberalisation
and privatisation that the BJP Government is now bound to
undertake.
Aside from a possible short-term irritation, the long-term
prospect is for a closer
anti-China axis between the U.S. and India. This possibility
gains greater credence
in the overall context in which these tests have been
undertaken. We are witnessing
immense intensification of an international campaign on the
issue of Tibet. Key
members of the Clinton administration, including high officials
from the Pentagon,
have visited India immediately after the BJP take-over,
explicitly endorsing the
regime. This occasion was used to announce, with deliberate
high visibility, the
impending Indo-U.S. joint exercises in high altitude combat.
The crash of economies in East and South-East Asia, from which
the advanced
capitalist countries have benefited enormously, is a key aspect
of the changing
international and regional environments. In this economic
warfare, China is the next
target, and the U.S. shall greatly welcome military pressure on
China. Americans
know from long experience that many distortions and the
eventual collapse of the
Soviet economy ensued, at least substantially, from the
unbearable pressure which
that economy had to endure as the Soviet Union sought to retain
some degree of
military parity with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
(NATO). Today, the
U.S. would like nothing as much as similar diversion of Chinese
resources toward
military expenditures in an Asian arms race. Behind the BJP's bogus
anti-imperialism and the American sanctions lies this prospect
of a far-reaching
alliance in a new Cold War.
THE deliberate demonstration of multiple technologies through
five different tests -
especially the thermonuclear explosion and the latter two tests
with the objective of
collecting data for further computer simulations - leaves no
doubt that this is a step
toward actual weaponisation, in keeping with the BJP's repeated
promises to make
the "bomb". Although these tests do not yet make India a
nuclear power in the
definitional sense, the BJP has nevertheless signalled that
India will now become a
nuclear power in the same sense in which Israel is. In this
context, the distinction
between testing and weaponisation becomes more or less a
scholastic eyewash.
The terms of the discussion about the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty (CTBT)
have been changed drastically. Refusing to sign the CTBT on
grounds of its
discriminatory character when India was not a nuclear power
could be reasonably
construed as an act of resistance to unreasonable foreign
pressure. By contrast,
conducting actual tests, becoming a de facto nuclear power and
then offering to
consider accepting some portions of that treaty shall now be
presented by the
BJP-controlled media as an act of responsible statesmanship in
the international
arena. The BJP will try to take credit not on one count, but on
three: for not signing
the CTBT, for signing it, and for signing it only partially to
the extent that Indian
national interests are safeguarded.
This is a sophisticated approach with great propaganda value,
and an alternative
approach needs to be developed that is somewhat different from
the alternatives
being posed, even after these tests, by advocates and opponents
of the CTBT. A
call to sign it now converges alarmingly with what Clinton is
demanding and the
BJP itself is proposing. A call not to sign it amounts to pious
nostalgia for the way
the world was before these tests. The BJP can in fact live with
either of these
options. By not signing it, it keeps open the option for
further tests and open
weaponisation. By signing it, all of it or parts of it, the BJP
manages to diffuse
international condemnation, appeases the CTBT activists,
carries on perfecting
technology for weaponisation in laboratories, and paves the way
for the Indo-U.S.
axis sooner, rather than later.
In practice, the BJP will act precisely the way it acted on the
Ayodhya issue and
the way it has been acting on the nuclear issue until now. It
said openly that it was
going to do in Ayodhya what others would shudder even to think.
Then, it did what
it said it would do, in contravention of all legality, human
decency and its own
bogus promises. With that design accomplished, it restrained
its allies from
immediately going on to similar vandalism in Kashi and Mathura,
so as to project
for itself an image of relative moderation while keeping that
issue alive but
simmering only very slowly, for another time, even as the
situation on the ground in
both those places has been changing imperceptibly but
fundamentally. The issue of
the Ram Mandir itself was largely taken out of public debate
while the most
meticulous preparations have been made, right under the noses
of all the official
guardians of Indian secularism, for the building of the Mandir
at an opportune time,
exactly in the place where the Masjid once stood.
The BJP has acted in the same fashion on the nuclear issue. It,
and the Bharatiya
Jan Sangh before it, have repeatedly promised weaponisation.
Upon taking power,
it assigned the highest priority to carrying out these tests,
without informing either
friend or foe, with exactly the kind of covert preparation and
lightning strike that it
had practicised at Ayodhya. Having demonstrated its
hawkishness, it will now offer
to sign the CTBT, but only partially, knowing that the
alternative pressures, to sign
all of it or sign none of it, will only grow in the coming
weeks and months, and that
it must allow time for the sense of horror to get routinised
and for the passions to
subside. Then it will strike again, with yet another surprise,
just as it will one day
undoubtedly launch the building of the Mandir in the most
dramatic way possible.
The CTBT is going to remain an issue in public debate. So a
position has to be
taken and the only possible position is that decisions of such
far-reaching
importance ought not be used, cynically, as bargaining counters
and that the
situation, therefore, must be frozen until the nation has
sorted out the very basic
parameters of its governance. The point needs to be made that
India has to have
the capability but also has to refrain from tests and
deployments. The more crucial
point, however, is that, having acted like thieves in a night
of long knives, this
Government has lost the right to rule and must resign so that a
more responsible
government can take over.
That a party which commands merely a quarter of the national
vote could take an
action of this magnitude so secretly and unilaterally, without
a national debate,
without consultation with senior leaders of the Opposition,
without a strategic
review it had promised, without informing its own allies in
Government, raises
questions not only about the competence of the BJP to rule but
also about the kind
of powers that are concentrated in the Prime Minister's Office
(PMO). What this
event demonstrates most dramatically is not that we need a
presidential form of
government but that far-reaching reforms are needed to prevent
the PMO from
acting in so presidential a manner. Moreover, when the PMO
itself has been taken
over by the semi-secret organisation of the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS),
which then brings its own mode of functioning to this high
office, the question arises
whether or not the PMO alone should continue to have sole
authority over
decision-making on the nuclear issue. Should there not be an
autonomous agency
for this critical area of decision-making that is equally
answerable to the executive,
the legislature and the judiciary? There needs to be a debate,
in Parliament and
outside Parliament, as to the kind of mechanisms we require
which guarantee
operational secrecy but decision-making transparency on issues
of basic national
policy?
Nor can the argument be made that such precipitate action was
necessary in view
of some immediate foreign provocation. China had taken no steps
in recent years
and even decades that posed any threat to Indian security.
Pakistan had not carried
out any nuclear tests, and its 'conventional' intervention in
Indian domestic affairs,
as in Kashmir and Punjab, should be dealt with through
'conventional' and political
means. Meanwhile, India already has enough technology, as the
BJP Government
itself said, to match Pakistan's recent missile test, so that
'Pokhran' simply cannot
be presented as a response to 'Ghauri'.
Nor have these tests any element of anti-imperialist
nationalism. The BJP has not
said that these were designed against the U.S. nuclear threat
in the Pacific-Indian
Ocean zones. It has targeted neighbours, instead. Far from
securing us against
imperialist threats, this action will lead to an unnecessary,
expensive, dangerous and
unethical arms race in Asia, will sabotage the South Asian
Association for Regional
Cooperation (SAARC) within South Asia, and will negate the
process of
normalisation with China. In so doing, the tests indeed play
into the hands of
imperialists who are keen to keep Asia divided and have all of
us squander our
resources on weapons of destruction instead of mutual, regional
cooperation that
can free us from imperialist pressure. In this sense, of making
the people of Asia
fight each other, the BJP is acting today in imperialist
interest as the RSS, through
its communalism, used to undermine the national struggle
against British colonialism.
THE crucial reason why the BJP Government needs to be
confronted has to do,
however, not so much with external relations as with what these
explosions have
wrought inside the country. The combination of (a) the show of
Indian might and
independence in decision-making, (b) the inviting and defying
of U.S. sanctions,
and (c) the ability to act decisively despite coalition
constraints, has enabled the
BJP to pick up the mantle of anti-imperialism in the tradition
of the National
Movement. This is a crucial moment in our history because the
issue of
anti-imperialism has hounded the RSS throughout its existence.
Everyone knows -
and therefore the BJP and the U.S. also know - that defiance of
imperialism is a
basic ingredient in Indian nationalism. For the BJP to graduate
from 'Hindu'
nationalism to 'Indian' nationalism, and thus to become a
nationally hegemonic
power, it too must go through this baptism of fire. The real
fire it will not go
through, but such fires as can be simulated by organising mass
frenzy and on the
electronic media. For this to happen, spectacles must be
organised, just as the
destruction of the Babri Masjid was orchestrated essentially as
a fascist spectacle.
If that spectacle paved the way for the BJP to emerge as an
all-India party and
eventually the ruling party, these nuclear fireworks help it
cut across the
Hindu/secular divide and reach out to claim the mantle of
Indian nationalism as
such. This will unite very broad sections of the Indian middle
classes - and not only
the middle classes - whatever the immediate behaviour of the
stock market might
be. The impression will gain ground that the BJP is the only
party capable of
providing India with a coherent, assertive, visionary
leadership. This effect is not
going to wear off in days, or weeks, or months. Only a
sustained counter-offensive
can prevent it from still being there 20 years from now.
The BJP had so far established its leading role in defining
Indian culture and Hindu
religion. Now it has made its first massive attempt to capture
the high ground of
anti-imperialism. In both cases, the appeal is made to
atavistic feelings of
aggression, in the form of a promise to redeem honour.
Meanwhile, if the Ayodhya
movement re-defined the role of Ram in Indian belief systems as
an all-India deity
and warrior-prince, the Pokhran explosions were deliberately
scheduled on
Buddha Purnima and were nick-named "Buddha Smiles Again"; if
Ambedkarites
have their anti-caste Buddha, Hindutva will have its own Buddha
who will bless
nuclear weapons for the greater glory of Bharat Mata. These
fantastic re-writings
of the Indian past must not be dismissed simply as ludicrous,
which of course they
are. It is precisely the evocative power of this irrationality
which is the most
frightening, the most dangerous part; such are the raw
materials of which fascist
victories are made.
SO powerful, in fact, is the lure of this mob psychology that
the Congress as well
as much of what remains of the United Front have already fallen
in line. A story is
doing the rounds that what Vajpayee accomplished was only what
P.V. Narasimha
Rao had attempted. In his TV appearance, Jaipal Reddy tried
hard to make out
that the BJP was only taking credit for an event that had been
prepared by the
U.F. Former Prime Minister Deve Gowda has pronounced that the
explosions are
"necessary" for Indian security. Arjun Singh, the chief
custodian of Congress
secularism, has declared that the tests were not at all
designed to enhance the
political prestige of the BJP. Many more statements of this
kind can be expected as
time goes by.
In a quick poll of 1,007 adults in six metropolitan cities
conducted in the wake of
the explosions, the IMRB found support for them among 91 per
cent of the
respondents. The cynics of the Congress and the U.F. are
responding to this
jingoistic consensus that BJP has crafted. In the process, we
are witnessing a
sea-change in public discourse. The BJP has, in reality,
departed from the national
consensus on nuclear policy as it was first formulated in
Nehru's days and was then
adjusted in the early 1970s. But the indecent haste of the
Congress and U.F.
stalwarts to take credit for what the BJP has wrought is
creating the impression that
the Vajpayee Government has only implemented what has been
Indian policy all
along.
These are the most dangerous of times. The whole process of
coalition-making that
brought the BJP to power has shown that not only is Congress
secularism merely
pragmatic, but so has been the secularism of majority of the
non-Left political
formations in the country. Most of them can easily move into an
equally pragmatic
communalism, as the Trinamul Congress is now showing. Even in
that arena, the
Left is in reality rather isolated but secularism itself has
been such a fundamental
value in India that most of these pragmatic communalists dare
not confess to their
ideological shifts even as they join up with the BJP. Thanks to
this ambiguity, the
Left has a relatively wider area of manoeuvre in anti-communal
politics.
In the wake of these hawkish tests, the extent of collaboration
among virtually all
the non-Left parties is far greater and much more openly
professed. The Left,
therefore, has a much narrower room for manoeuvre, much more
squarely in
danger of being called "anti-national" and being made, in the
forseeable future, an
object of full-scale repression on the charge that it has
"extra-territorial loyalty".
The spectre of the repressions that took place in the wake of
the Sino-Indian War
of 1962 now haunts the land, less than two months into the BJP
Government. And
yet, the Left will lose its very raison d'etre if it does not
differentiate itself from the
kind of national chauvinism that is represented by the BJP's
designs in the nuclear
arena, and if it does not define for itself and the nation, a
nationalism different, more
comprehensive, more fundamentally anti-imperialist than the
kind that the BJP will
predictably unleash on the question of U.S. sanctions. The Left
has to move with
the greatest of caution but move it must. On the nuclear issue
itself, three things
need to be done.
First, all the secular, anti-communal and anti-fascist forces
should come together on
the platform that in acting in a unilateral, irresponsible and
chauvinist manner which
threatens regional peace, the Vajpayee Government has lost the
right to rule and
must therefore resign.
Secondly, on the question of sanctions, all patriotic forces
have to take the position
that no foreigner has the right to threaten us with economic
strangulation. But this
point has to be made alongside the equally fundamental points
that (a) the BJP's
irresponsible behaviour has brought upon us not only American
sanctions but also
ridicule from peace-loving peoples worldwide, and (b) the
American sanctions are
themselves a bargaining position and a prelude in the formation
of a long-term
Indo-U.S. axis in Asia.
Thirdly, public discussions and hearings should be organised in
as many places as
possible, involving eminent scientists, the more sane military
experts, some sensible
politicians, social scientists, philosophers, jurists,
economists and political activists
of various kinds, to consider various issues of nuclear power
in the drastically
altered situation that now exists. The arbitrary nature of the
PMO's powers
should be part of this discussion. Similarly, we need a
nationwide discussion and
perhaps even an independent commission, to investigate issues
of nuclear safety
and the environmental and ecological costs involved in adopting
this nuclear road.
After all, Indian citizens do live even in Pokhran. In the
process, the Reds may
learn to be a little more Green and the Greens a bit more Red.
Initiatives of this
kind can help break the initial isolation that is inevitable in
opposing the BJP's
jingoism.
But isolation on the nuclear issue can be broken most
effectively only if this issue,
for all the gravity it has, is not addressed in isolation. The
connection must be made
with the communal agenda, with the fact that a step of this
magnitude has been
taken purely for the greater glory of the RSS, and that the
consensus behind
Vajpayee's nuclear policy amounts to a consensus behind
Hindutva. Equally
strongly, the point needs to be made that this act of bogus
anti-imperialism is
designed to facilitate the ability of the Hindutva forces to
implement a programme
of liberalisation and privatisation far more drastic than
anything P. Chidambaram
was able to implement or even envision. If the consensus built
on nuclear
sabre-rattling is not broken, public properties shall be sold
to private capital more
or less in the style of Russia, because after a swadeshi
nuclear bomb there need be
no other swadeshi.
[From: Frontline, Vol. 15 :: No. 11 :: May 23 - Jun 05, 1998 ]