Author: Swapan Dasgupta
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: October 16, 2005
Till the mid-seventies, it was routine to
encounter a breed of humans who went all gush-gush and gooey-eyed at the mere
mention of either China or the Soviet Union. They were not all Communists.
Indeed some of them would balk at the very
idea of living in dreary Moscow or spending more than a day in some make-believe
Fanshen. They were the Fellow Travellers, the noble intellectuals who worshipped
socialism from a discreet distance. Leon Trotsky had an even better description
for these deeply gullible souls who saw salvation in evil. He called them
the "radical tourists".
The Berlin Wall has crumbled and the mythology
surrounding Chairman Mao has been well and truly demolished, but the fellow
traveller and the radical tourist have not been put out of business. In India,
they have been reborn and reinvented to further another trendy cause and propitiate
another ugly icon.
"It is such an unnecessary controversy",
rued NDTV's star reporter from Uri last week, after the earthquake. She was
referring to the wave of indignation in both India and Pakistan at a report
that Indian soldiers crossed the Line of Control to rescue Pakistani soldiers
who were trapped under the debris of a collapsed bunker. It was suggested
that the Indian jawans subsequently helped the Pakistanis rebuild the bunker.
The story was subsequently denied by Islamabad
and modified in New Delhi. The Indian Army says its jawans did cross the LoC
in response to an SOS and rescued trapped Pakistani soldiers. There was, however,
no question of helping reconstruct a Pakistani bunker.
To the radical tourists nurtured by the sadbhavna
industry, it was an "unnecessary" controversy because Indians rebuilding
a Pakistani military bunker seemed the most natural thing. To them, last Sunday's
earthquake was not merely a natural disaster; it presented an opportunity
to embrace Pakistan even more tightly. For them, it was not merely a case
of contiguous regions being united in grief; it was an earthquake of peace.
Their body language, their lachrymose tone said it all: This tragedy was special
because it also touched Pakistan.
We have all decried the tendency of politicians
to feast on human suffering. What the media-driven sadbhavna groupies have
been attempting over the past week is more despicable. Under the smokescreen
of human compassion, they have attempted to exacerbate capitulationist tendencies
within India. The argument that Kashmir is a contrived dispute and that what
matters is human suffering is calculated to whittle down Indian determination.
It is a tacit encouragement to our Kashmiri separatists. The humanitarian
agenda of the bleeding hearts conceals a deeply political agenda.
Let us never forget that neither Pakistan
nor their sponsored terrorists have been taken in by this sentimental drivel.
The throat-slitting of Hindu families in Jammu remained uninterrupted by the
tremors on the ground. Worse, Pakistan took advantage of the Indian Army's
preoccupation with rescue work to push in armed infiltrators across the LoC.
President Pervez Musharraf cited "political sensitivities" for keeping
Indian assistance at token level. There is no evidence to suggest that the
earthquake forced a mindset change in either the Pakistan establishment or
society. The hatred of India still determines Pakistani existence. We can
pity this perversion; to deny its existence would be dangerous.
India must continue to offer all possible
humanitarian assistance with absolutely no strings attached. If Pakistan is
not interested in our help, it is no skin off our back. This is no time to
get wistful over the destruction of terrorist camps at the epicentre of the
earthquake. Musharraf will attempt to leverage the natural disaster to secure
international advantage. There will be pressure on India to be more accommodating
but it will be in national interest to let Musharraf stew, like Yahya Khan
stewed in the aftermath of the 1970 cyclone in East Pakistan. To assist the
process, our radical tourists must be encouraged to travel to Muzaffarabad,
report the mess and devastate the enemy.
