Author: Rupa Sengupta
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: August 10, 2002
It's not often that the native talks
back. Following US Secretary of State Colin Powell's recent visit to India,
the wry and unruffled Chief Election Commissioner JM Lyngdoh did just that.
Kashmir is the White Man's burden, General Powell seemed to thunder from
a pulpit to a country that has held democratic elections for 50 years.
Let the West's shapers of Manifest
Destiny give you a certificate on whether or not you neanderthals can govern
yourselves. And, meanwhile, hold parleys with our blue-eyed subcontinental
lackey. He has done the world a favour by chaining up the dogs of Islamic
jihad and proxy war in his backyard kennels. It's time he was canonised
by India, the very country that had foolishly legitimised his shocking
usurpation of power in Pakistan by rolling the red carpet at Agra.
The otherwise laconic Lyngdoh must
have found it hard to stomach. The West is living in the "Stone Age", he
shot back. Or at least in the colonial past. "The days of the White Man
telling the natives what to do are long past," he smirked, on behalf of
a nation fed up of New Testament homilies that, curiously, come from devil's
advocates.
Lyngdoh's is not the only class
act this country can applaud. I once watched former External Affairs Minister
Jaswant Singh reduce his Hard Talk host Tim Sebastian to spluttering. The
issue was-but of course-Kashmir, which BBC continues to categorise as "disputed
territory". What piqued the supercilious Mr Sebastian-who talked about
Pokhran, human rights, oppressed Kashmiris and the need for "international
mediation"-was not that the then Indian Foreign Minister was defending
his position apologetically or badly. It was that he refused to defend
it at all.
More galling was the patronising
tone Mr Singh used. And the high horse he seemed to be perched upon- looking
down on the West's naivete, its hi-tech macro-cartography of the minutiae
of red-dotted places and stick figure earthlings who could be Martians
for all it cared-with that very refined and decadent emotion: Boredom.
Boredom, we know, equals sophistication.
A certain wryness that is mean. A barely concealed impatience that threatens
to become a yawn. It's a First World badge of honour; the mark of superiority
of the satiated; the emotional purgatory of those who have it all. A Westerner
wears it like his birthday suit. A native, like a hand-me-down.
Boredom in a native is more offensive
when coupled with nonchalance. The nonchalant Mr Singh articulated clearly
and precisely that India was not offended with his host's (mis)perceptions
on Kashmir. But that India couldn't care less. India had its own democratic
processes and institutions, its own human rights commissions, its own pace
and ideas on how to take care of its own business, which included a particularly
bloody-minded neighbour. So if Mr Singh's inquisitioner had to "lecture"
anybody-on human rights, democracy or the dangers of living in nukedom-he
had better do it with his own Social Darwinist "kith and kin".
It was a marvellous performance,
straight out of MAD comic's 'Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions'. Except
that it wasn't a performance. It was a calm, dignified and insulting rejoinder
to an unbelievably self-serving barrage of uninformed questions. Pakistani
President Pervez Musharraf, who recently shot his mouth off about India
needing to "lay off" Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, would have been incapable
of it. He never does come across as having the courage of conviction to
be cool.
Which is why the White Man and his
media love him: He fits in with their idea of what a native-characterised
by the belligerence born of living in perpetual moral and material penury-should
be. Here's a prize Crudie, they say, one we can do business with. He won't
peer through a magnifying glass at our inglorious motives; he doesn't have
it in him. If he does, he won't dare. And if he sulks, we'll throw him
some crumbs, like one billion dollars, reconnaissance aircraft, precision
guided munitions and fancy choppers. Or even better, we'll pretend his
enemy (democratic secular India) is our enemy (undemocratic Hindu Nationalist
India).
Why is General Musharraf so foreign-audience
savvy? For one thing, the Pakistani President never looks bored. How can
he? He has to survive in the jungle that is Pakistan-and what he did to
Nawaz Sharif, someone can always do to him. Also, General Musharraf, like
Macbeth, can never sleep (unlike Mr Alex Perry's caricatural Atal Bihari
Vajpayee, who nods off now and then). How can he? He would hate a rude
awakening.
Also, the General never looks quizzical
or unconvinced-facial giveaways that hardly suit the rattlers of tincups.
He is dapper, alert, always ready to perform a trick or two, like a master
networker or door-to-door salesman. With his foreign keepers, he is as
pertly turned out and articulate as any factotum can be. His foreign keepers
think: Here's a sharp bloke who will look out for himself-in the process,
he will look out for us and our vital interests in the region.
US Secretary of State Powell got
along with the pleasing and jovial General like a labyrinth on fire. It's
so much easier to transact with a dictator with simple wants: Kashmir,
and Kashmir and, again, Kashmir. And it's not as if he hasn't made, at
least publicly, the sacrifices that help the US save face vis-a-vis other
democracies on the issue of propping up a tinpot tyrant.
The General has been a ventriloquist's
dummy (remember January 12?), solemnly enlightening his people about introspection
on bigotry and the need to build a modern and progressive Pakistan. He
has joined the war against terror against the monsters he swears he didn't
create. And if he can't deliver Al-Qaeda and Taliban fugitives, it's because
he needs their services for a noble cause like helping indigenous freedom
fighters achieve liberty. But he does stage mock-trials ending in (suspended)
sentences of death by hanging of disposables who are better off dead.
It's India's multitudinous seas
that make rough sailing. One very reputed foreign magazine (not Time, this
time) recently came out with a very original 'definition' of Indian democracy,
the purpose being to snicker at it. It said that democracy works so well
in this country that foreign dignitaries have a hard time figuring out
who's in charge! Is it the Prime Minister? Is it the Home Minister? Is
it the Foreign Minister? Is it the Defence Minister? Is it the National
Security Advisor? The insinuation is clear: There is a global hierarchy
that makes national ones redundant. So whoever the West condescends to
send as emissary should be shown due respect by being led straight to the
Big Chief of the native tribe.
Thanks to Mr Perry, we know what
the White Man thinks of India's Big Chief. And we also know why the success
of Indian democracy should needle those who wish to club us with irresponsible
nuclear button- pushers. We only have one question: If Kashmir is a nuclear
flashpoint, what about all the specialist speculations about the horrific
consequences of a US invasion of Iraq?
It is important for this country-demoralised
by the West's doublespeak on Kashmir and its patronage of a terror-mongerer
like General Musharraf-to know that everybody out there doesn't love to
hate us. During his recent visit, French Foreign Minister Dominique de
Villepin used a word to define Indo-French ties that one doesn't get to
hear very often from supercilious fly-by-night Western do-gooders: "Respect".
Now, how do you expect respect from
envoys of the world's sole superpower, one of the Presidents of which (Lyndon
B Johnson) once referred to Vietnam as a "raggedy ass fourth-rate country".
That's the way they talk. They can't blame us for talking back.
