The biggest impediment to any worthwhile discussion on Indo- American relations in public fora in India is the simplistic conviction among much of the country's political class that American policy in south Asia has to be in a straitjacket: it has to be either pro-India, as they would like it to be, or pro- Pakistan. What was largely forgotten in the heat generated in Parliament and elsewhere in the aftermath of the visit of the American secretary of state, Colin Powell, to the sub-continent was that a superpower like the United States of America does not tailor its policies to suit anyone else. It crafts its line, be it on India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia or Britain, to advance its own interests, not that of other countries.
If everything that Powell said and did in New Delhi and Islamabad had been viewed through the prism of America's self-interest, those who railed against the American foreign minister may have, instead, been tempted to see if his visit did at all advance India's national interest. That, in fact, should have been the bottom-line of any assessment of Powell's talks in south Asia.
It is impossible to consider this bottomline unless one goes back in time. It is a cliché to say that public memory is short, but when such short memory is collectively applied to politicians, it becomes the nearest to a national tragedy. Ten years ago, India was so vulnerable on Kashmir that in closeddoor meetings in North and South Blocks, officials were actually willing to consider the possibility - howsover remote - that Kashmir may not remain a part of India for ever. In any case, in those days, India's actual control over the valley could at best be described as tenuous: the militants could do anything they pleased.
Those who criticized the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government for allegedly having surrendered to Powell should have paused to consider how far India has moved off that road towards a precipice. There is an elected government now in Srinagar, whose legitimacy is not questioned by anyone abroad who matters. Not even the key members of the Organization of Islamic Conference equates Farooq Abdullah's government in Srinagar to the regime of Sardar Sikandar Hayat Khan in Muzaffarabad.
Pakistan still attempts to make noises about Kashmir at international events - even if it is a conference on AIDS or a conclave on climate change - but no one loses any sleep over those attempts any more. Indian delegations no longer have to look over their shoulders for Pakistan-sponsored potshots on Kashmir when they walk into multilateral gatherings. It is a far cry from what used to happen at the United Nations human rights commission in Geneva a decade ago - or even at the non-aligned summit in Durban in 1998 when the venerable Nelson Mandela referred to Kashmir, albeit followed by an apology to Vajpayee conveyed by his then deputy, Thabo Mbeki.
Yet there is heightened international activity over Kashmir at levels which were not witnessed 10 years ago. It is only to be expected. Ten years ago, it was unthinkable that a US secretary of state would visit New Delhi three times in a space of ten months. Or that a US defence secretary would travel to New Delhi twice within eight months. The Vajpayee government takes pride that it authored the most comprehensive dialogue with America in the last 55 years. But even that dialogue, hugely productive though it has been, was conducted by India's full- fledged foreign minister not with his counterpart, but with the equivalent of his junior cabinet minister in the Bill Clinton administration.
But all that has changed since the terrorist attacks on America on September 11. And it has changed not merely between the US and India. Even a third-rate power like Britain - to borrow I.K. Gujral's infamous description on the eve of the Royal visit to India in 1997, without necessarily subscribing to it - finds it necessary to have its prime minister's and foreign secretary's periodic presence in New Delhi. So, Powell cannot be faulted for saying that "Kashmir is on the international agenda". Ask Vajpayee, and if he was to honestly answer that question, he would have to agree with Powell as well.
But there is a crucial difference between the way the international community regarded the Kashmir problem 10 years ago and now. A decade ago, Kashmir was on the international agenda because Pakistan was able to convince a large number of countries that India was negating in the valley everything that the new, post-communist international order stood for: human rights, democracy, self-determination, ethnic rights, religious freedom...
All those who rambled in criticism of Powell and Vajpayee since the visit of the secretary of state should have realized that international concerns about Kashmir have undergone a sea- change since the days when India was in the dock for human rights violations and an unrepresentative government in Srinagar. Kashmir is today on the international agenda because it is a focal point for all governments which recognize south Asia as the fountainhead of international terrorism.
All those who simplistically accuse the Vajpayee government of grovelling in Washington fail to realize that such a change is a boon for India: in it rests any hope of ever settling the problem of Kashmir and forcing Pakistan to come to terms with the status quo in the state whose lot Maharaja Hari Singh cast with India.
However visceral or habitual the dislike of America may be for some politicians in India, the truth is that this change could not have come about without a shift in the way Washington looked at India - and Pakistan. Washington's kaleidoscope on India and Pakistan did not change on September 11. The fundamental changes occurred during the second Clinton administration: in part, they came about because P.V. Narasimha Rao had rewritten New Delhi's rules for engaging with America. The Vajpayee government built on that foundation after the nuclear tests in 1998.
Other nations helped too, especially Russia and France. But the catalyst for change in Kashmir was the US. Today, it is axiomatic in every world capital - including Islamabad - that the line of control in Kashmir must be respected. General Pervez Musharraf, who personally violated it when he ordered his troops into Kargil, was forced to recognize this fait accompli when he gave a commitment to the Americans in June that he would end infiltration across the LoC. This is lost on those in India who rubbish the Powell visit. Given America's power and influence, the LoC would never have got its present level of international acceptance if the Clinton administration had not held it up as the standard during its intervention with Nawaz Sharif over Kargil.
It is to the credit of the Vajpayee government that after September 11, it doggedly pursued India's supreme interests vis-à-vis Pakistan and on Kashmir in major capitals, but primarily in Washington. If not Musharraf, some of his key advisers in uniform, who are used to the ways of New Delhi, may have grossly miscalculated in thinking that the Vajpayee government would throw a tantrum when George W. Bush decided to cosy up to the generals in Rawalpindi after September 11.
Indeed, the pressure on the National Democratic Alliance government to do just that was very great. But Vajpayee's key advisers resisted the temptation to do so and argued vigorously against it in internal meetings. The change, as a result, is there for all to see; if only those who rush to criticize the NDA government's America policy would pause to see logic and reason.
A year ago, when Musharraf had his famous television breakfast with Indian editors in Agra, he was unwilling to even concede, for the sake of argument, that there was cross-border terrorism in Kashmir and elsewhere. In private, he was even more uncompromising. This general who scaled unlikely heights in Islamabad for a mohajir was cocksure that he could have his way in Agra. He almost did.
What a change it has been since then! The man who once believed that he could bring India to its knees by exporting terror across the border and calibrating General Zia ul-Haq's low-intensity war against India - as evidenced in Kargil - has been forced to abjure terrorism in public irrespective of its root causes.
Nine years ago, Narasimha Rao refused to share any intelligence about the serial bomb blasts in Mumbai with the Americans although he had conclusive evidence of Pakistan's complicity in the plot. He told his cabinet colleagues and other aides that the Americans would not act on it even if they were convinced about the evidence. All that may happen is that India may compromise its valuable intelligence sources in Pakistan in the process.
Today, India's wireless intercepts of terrorist communication and other evidence, which are shared with the Americans, constitute valuable information about terrorism in south Asia. India had no hope of ever undoing on its own even a fraction of the Pakistan-sponsored terrorist network not only in Afghanistan, but all across India's neighbourhood, including non-Muslim Nepal and Sri Lanka. If any government has used another government to achieve its ends in this battle against terror in south Asia, it is the Vajpayee government which has used the Bush administration, post-September 11, to achieve its goals, however modest they may be.
The question is logical: where do we go from here? It is in constructing an answer to this question that one has to recognize America's compulsions and the logic of its ways. The US really couldn't care less how much India bleeds from terrorism or the Musharraf-inspired low intensity war. But the US certainly wants to make sure that Kashmir is not a new breeding ground for al Qaida or its other incarnations which have the potential to bring down another skyscraper in America.
There are enough people in the Bush administration who recognize that this objective cannot be realized simply by joining a chorus with India against terrorism emanating from Pakistan. The solution, as they see it, lies in the US cooperating with Musharraf, even going along with him in the hope of manipulating or coercing him - on occasions even giving him ultimatums, as it happened after September 11.
Those in New Delhi who advocate
a Jawaharlal Nehru-Krishna Menon style of confrontation with the US fail
to recognize that there is much more to be gained by playing along with
the Americans, extracting the best deal possible and unabashedly pursuing
the single-minded objective of what suits India. Diplomacy, after all,
is the art of telling your interlocutor to go to hell in such a way that
he thinks he is being sent to heaven. So far, Vajpayee has been able to
do that to Bush, of course, to Powell and even to Donald Rumsfeld.