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If there is one thing editors fear more than being hauled up by the
Supreme Court on a contempt charge, it is the proverbial printer's
devil. But it was no ordinary misprint that embarrassed the
editors of the Delhi edition of The Indian Express sometime last
month. In his rush to meet the paper's deadline, a distracted
sub-editor submitted the headline "Soviet Union beats India" for a
report on an innocuous hockey match between India and Russia. There
were, predictably, many red faces in the newspaper's offices the
next morning, although the general reaction was one of amusement
rather than outrage.
It is a pity that no sub-editor was similarly distracted during
Prime Minister Deve Gowda's three-day visit to Russia earlier this
week. A headline "India and Soviet Union agree on strategic
partnership" may have left a future historian somewhat puzzled, but
it would nevertheless have constituted the most telling description
of the United Front Government's most ill-considered foreign policy
misadventure. More to the point, such a headline would not have
prompted an irate telephone call from the minister's office in
South Block. Indeed, there are reasons to believe that the
anachronism would not have even occurred to him.
There is a strong temptation to view the visit of the Prime
Minister to Moscow as either a shopping expedition for arms and
nuclear reactors or an inconsequential distraction from more
pressing issues at home, perhaps the occasion for Gowda to flaunt
his latest sartorial embellishment - a leather jacket. Certainly,
the rapidity with which the visit was discarded from the front
pages of most English-language newspapers after the first day tends
to confirm the suspicion that Indo-Russian ties are a bit of a
non-event, and certainly of less consequence than Bill Gates'
reconnaissance mission to India earlier this month. Even Mulayam
Singh Yadav - the politician who has been assigned the defence
portfolio - did not think that an arms-buying spree in Moscow
should prevail over his politicking missions to Uttar Pradesh.
Such facile conclusions should be resisted. The Russia visit may
not have yielded instant results - there are grave doubts over
Moscow's ability to keep its assurance over the supply of nuclear
power reactors - but it was an important step in positioning India
as a country committed to waving the flag of anti-Americanism.
This is not an unexpected development. For the past few months,
whether in Parliament or outside, Foreign Minister I. K. Gujral has
lost no opportunity in informing the world of his unequivocal
opposition to the West's so-called "designs" on India. He has
systematically courted those countries, such as Iran and the
Central Asian republics, which share his profound dislike of Uncle
Sam and which, in turn, are viewed by Washington with suspicion.
Under the guise of crafting an independent foreign policy, Gujral
has lost no opportunity to fish in troubled waters. On February
11, for example, during his visit to Moscow, Gujral (according to a
report in The Hindustan Times of February 14) "told the Russian
Parliament Speaker Gennady Seleznev ... that India stood solidly
behind Moscow's opposition to the NATO expansion plan". During this
week's Moscow visit, South Block officials were active in briefing
the domestic media about the sense of humiliation felt by Russia
over the outcome of the Bill Clinton-Boris Yeitsin summit in
Helsinki.
President Yeltsin's unexpected offer of a "strategic partnership"
with India has to be viewed in this context. For all its monumental
economic difficulties and its uneasy transition to a market
economy, the power elite in Russia is still smarting under the loss
of its erstwhile Soviet empire and its superpower status.
Likewise, a section of South Block has not transcended the Cold War
mindset, particularly the comforting reassurance of having backed
the defeated side to the bitter end.
While economic liberalisation is underway in Russia and India,
recalcitrant elements in both countries view the experiments in
market-friendlieness as a ploy to win time before resuming old
adventures. In this scheme of things, China constitutes a major
attraction, not least because Beijing has made its determination to
strike out on its own quite clear. A Beijing-Moscow-Delhi axis
routed via Teheran - may seem quite fanciful today, but that is the
cherished goal of the Gujral doctrine.
It is important to inject a note of caution at this juncture. For
all its profound intellectual ramifications, the worldview of the
Gujral doctrine is completely at odds with the route India has
chosen for itself after 1991. Good relations with the immediate
neighbours, even at the risk of appeasement, is one thing, but to
consciously take up positions which are calculated to needle the
West is a different matter altogether. India may have delusions of
its importance, but its economic future is inextricably linked to
the access of capital and technology from the West. Acknowledging
India's immediate dependence on both North America and the European
Union - which recognise this country's untapped potential - is not
an act of slavishness; it is a measure of good sense and
pragmatism.
This, in turn, prompts the question: to what extent is Gujral
batting on his own? The answer is quite disconcerting, if not
alarming. If the Prime Minister - whose understanding of
international diplomacy is by no means legendary - can be caught
unawares in Moscow by a Russian proposal which goes well beyond the
original agenda, how much more is happening about which neither the
country nor the Government of India is aware? It is well-known
that this UF Government is pulling in 14 different directions, but
even the definition of autonomy (if not privatisation) is stretched
if foreign policy becomes the personal agenda of one individual
whose idea of national interest is frozen in time.
The situation is far more serious than is acknowledged. Indian
foreign policy is being hijacked at the behest of one solitary
member of the Union Cabinet. What happened in Russia is an early
warning which the country can ignore at its own peril.
Thanks to his wonderful media management, there has been a tendency
to view the Foreign Minister as a benign, well-meaning, if somewhat
romantic, elder statesman. After the Russian visit, it is
necessary to add another adjective to this self-serving flattery:
dangerous.
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