HVK Archives: Signs of a strong govt. at the centre
Signs of a strong govt. at the centre - The Afternoon Despatch & Courier
Tavleen Singh
()
May 18, 1998
Title: Signs of a strong govt. at the centre
Author: Tavleen Singh
Publication: The Afternoon Despatch & Courier
Date: May 18, 1998
The day after the nuclear tests, the stock market in Mumbai
crashed and there should have been the usual nervousness in
business circles. There was not. Some of India's most respected
captains of industry were at a gathering that I was invited at
and there was general euphoria.
The television news was left on throughout and channels switched
>from BBC to CNN to Star. The news got progressively worse as the
evening advanced. Australia and New Zealand recalled their
ambassadors, Japan and Germany threatened to cut off aid and
President Clinton announced that India would have to suffer the
sanctions mandated by American law.
The businessmen laughed and one said when asked whether he
expected foreign investment to disappear, "Nonsense. China has
tested when it wanted and in open defiance of international
opinion, they get US$37 billion of foreign investment every year
and we get $3 billion for having been so good. Now, at least,
when we bargain in the world we can bargain from a position of
strength."
In Delhi's political circles, the mood have been a hotbed of
cynicism and scepticism, the sudden burst of euphoria that India
going nuclear inspired was even more astounding. Because if
cynicism have been the mood then the Leftist moralizers have been
the main population.
The conversations that rise above the smoke of cheap cigarettes
and the steam of endless cups of tea are more likely to spell
gloom for India than optimism. Even when Narasimha Rao changed
the economic atmosphere with his liberalization programme in
1991, in these circles peopled by politics and hacks, there was
pessimism.
How can -there be capitalism and consumerism in a poor country
like ours? What will happen to welfare programmes? What will
become of the poor? You met almost nobody who recognized that if
the country become prosperous it would help even the poorest of
the poor. Not because they did not consider this a possibility,
but more because it would dispel the gloom we were all accustomed
to. In these circles the general perception of a nuclear India is
a bad one based as it is on the usual guns or butter, food before
weapons argument, so it came as something of a shock to me to
discover that even the most cynical hacks in the pack were quite
elated by the tests that the Prime Minister sprang on us so
suddenly. The consensus was that it was about time that the
ambiguity ended and also that it was the first decisive step that
the BJP government had taken.
The reactions of ordinary people have been equally supportive
with a poll conducted by 'Times of India' indicating that more
than 90 per cent of people polled approved of the tests and more
than 70 per cent wanted India to make nuclear weapons. So, what
has happened to the land of Gandhiji and non-violence? Why is
everyone so excited about a step that the Mahatma would surely
have disapproved of?
The answer has something to do with the perceived, and to some
extent real, weakness of the Delhi government in the past twenty
years or so, a weakness that most Indians believe has been
exploited by counties like Pakistan and China. Indira Gandhi,
despite the fact that she spent most of her years in office
complaining about the threat from abroad, was seen by even
Indians who did not like her, as a strong ruler. Nobody believed
that she could be taken advantage of by Pakistan even though
Pakistani interference in the Punjab problem can be traced back
to 1984, just before she was assassinated.
After Operation Bluestar, which became necessary largely on
account of her ill-conceived Punjab policy, hundreds of Sikh
youths fled across the border to escape army crackdowns in the
villages and many returned as terrorists. Pakistan has always
denied that there were terrorist training camps on their
territory but I can remember wandering about the Nankana Sahib
area, on one of my trips to Pakistan, and discovering that many
of the Sikhs who came were taken to Faislabad jail and trained
there.
A couple of years later a senior police officer in Amritsar asked
me if I would like to interview some Pakistani trained terrorists
and duly provided me with the opportunity and a collection of
transcripts of other youths they had interrogated, nearly all of
whom confirmed that they had been trained in Faislabad jail. It
was an open secret in Pakistan that Sikhs were being trained by
their government, but the usual ham-fisted intelligence gathering
that typifies our intelligence agencies resulted in never being
able to prove what was happening.
Then, like a gift from the gods (really Rajiv Gandhi), came the
violent uprising in Kashmir. Till 1986, despite his mother having
foolishly and needlessly dismissing Farooq Abdullah's government,
there was no violence in the state of Jammu & Kashmir. Had he
simply ordered an election in 1986 there probably would never
have been either, but he decided to order an election only after
forcing Farooq Abdullah into an unwise and dangerous electoral
alliance.
The election that followed was widely seen as rigged and Kashmir
deteriorated into armed militancy Pakistan could not have dreamed
up a better reincarnation of a problem that had died by 1975 and
they took full advantage. The expression 'Voh paar gaya hai' (he
has gone across the border) is a commonplace among militants in
Kashmir. That their weapons and even some of their Generals also
come from there is also well known.
Things became so bad that no Indian Prime Minister dared visit
the Valley for nearly ten years. This was perceived as weakness
on the part of Delhi and the militancy grew stronger and stronger
with an estimated 5,00,000 troops stationed there to try and keep
a semblance of control. Kashmir never became an election issue
but it remained at the back of everyone's mind as a sign of
weakness. Meanwhile, our rulers continued to inform us that
Muslim militancy, as far down the country as Tamil Nadu, was the
result of ISI activities. It is on account of all these factors
that even business circles are openly appreciative of India going
officially nuclear even if this means economic sanctions. The
three underground tests are seen, therefore, as indication of a
strong government in Delhi at last.
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