Author: Swapan Dasgupta
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: September 7, 2008
The conflict between national sovereignty
and the 'international architecture' of modern existence has been the source
of unending heartburn in the post-War world. Europe was the first to confront
it during transition from the Common Market to the European Union. If Ireland's
rejection of the Treaty of Lisbon in a referendum two months ago is any indication,
the birth-pangs of a new European order have not ceased. The attempt to graft
a European constitution on deep-rooted national cultures will continue to
agitate the minds of those who still see themselves as Irish, English or Poles.
India's experience with rule-based multilateralism
has been dominated by the WTO, a body whose mention arouses virulent populist
responses from earthy politicians. For two decades, India has had to face
a nuclear debate and demands to join the non-proliferation regime. So far,
India has resisted signing CTBT and NPT and chosen to plough a lonely furrow.
The Indo-US nuclear deal tickled the national imagination because it indicated
a desire by four Big Powers to redesign the 'international architecture' to
accommodate India on generous terms.
The debate on how much national sovereignty
to concede was bound to be stormy, more so because India's democratic culture
is inherently robust. As the deliberations enter the final leg, it is worth
taking a step back and examine what the nuclear debate reveals of India. By
far the most important discovery is the growing evidence that the Indian establishment,
defined loosely as official and non-official decision-makers and opinion-makers,
has changed dramatically in the past two decades. Whereas earlier, there was
an irrational but unflinching faith in Fortress India, growing prosperity
and global exposure has led to a significant erosion of the siege mentality
(the ultra-nationalist section of NRIs may be an exception). However, far
from generating a healthy cosmopolitanism there has been a temptation to swing
to the other end of the spectrum.
The point can be best illustrated by an observation
by Brian Sedgemore, a Left-wing British politician. Writing in 1977 on the
tedious negotiations over Europe, he noted that "officials interpret
being a good European as being synonymous with selling out British interests".
He smelt a "Vichy mentality", the willingness to mask surrender
in the cloak of nationalism, as Marshal Petain did after the fall of France
to the Germans in 1940.
There is little evidence to indict Indian
officialdom for displaying a capitulationist streak. On the contrary, there
is reason to believe that Indian diplomats fought hard, negotiated well and
upheld national interest during discussions on the N-deal. It is, for example,
now becoming evident that the Indian negotiators were unaware of the contents
of the 'secret' letter sent by the Bush Administration to Tom Lantos. Yet,
the statement by the American Ambassador to India that the US had shared with
the Indian Government the contents of the letter cannot be disregarded.
It prompts the conclusion that the Indian
leadership knew more about the real thinking in the US Administration than
it let on. In other words, there was a significant mismatch between how officials
and the political leadership perceived national interest. The divergence is
not difficult to fathom. Since liberalisation changed the face of the economy,
India has seen the emergence of a class more at ease with global citizenship
than Indian citizenship. The manifestation of this shift was evident in the
defeatist impulses that greeted the azadi hysteria in the Kashmir Valley,
the pusillanimity over terrorism and, earlier, in the pro-appeasement noises
over Pakistan and China.
On the nuclear question this perspective was
best expressed by Rajiv Desai, a publicist for the Congress. Explaining NDA's
defeat in 2004, he wrote: "When the Congress came to power three years
ago, middle class hearts were gladdened. Having supported the Neanderthal
Democratic Alliance led by BJP, many were dismayed by the 1998 N-tests, following
which India became a pariah of the international community." Match this
statement with those TV pundits who wonder why India is making a fetish of
retaining the right to conduct N-tests -- "we don't need it, so why insist
on it", they say -- and you can gleam the Vichy mentality in India.
There may be compelling arguments why science
has made N-tests as irrelevant as indigo plantations. In that case, why wasn't
the Government more forthright about it and willing to incorporate it in the
123 and NSG agreements? It would have made life easier at Vienna. If there
is an abhorrence of N-arms in India, why didn't the Government repudiate Pokhran-II
and undertake a rollback?
Are we to assume that the political leadership
is afraid of public opinion favouring a strong India, values sovereignty and
believes in nationalism? The nuclear debate has been marked by widespread
intellectual dishonesty. The Government has fallen back on needless secrecy
and practised covert diplomacy in an age of information overload. It refused
to make public the IAEA draft on the ground that it could provoke "nuclear
terrorism" only to see it floating on the Internet. Since 2004, the MEA
has closed its doors to scrutiny and prefers dealing with what Arun Shourie
calls a "managed media".
The daddy-knows-best syndrome, so prevalent
in the pre-information age, has persisted in today's India, triggering a distorted
debate and generating lively but needless conspiracy theories. So much so
that in the past three years there was more information about the deal coming
from American quarters than the Indian Government. This lack of transparency
will ensure that the nuclear deal will remain at the heart of many future
political storms. India's nuclear assets won't be compromised as long as there
is institutionalised vigilance to deter the Vichy mentality.
