India’s pre-summit jitters

No line of control on the moral high ground

Shekhar Gupta

Why are we allowing Musharraf to steal the moral high ground? This summit, after all, was our idea, and an audacious one as well. We should have been setting the tone and the agenda. But now Musharraf is making all the moves while we are responding. And, as always, in a negative, defensive manner.

Vajpayee does not have to match Musharraf interview for interview. But he, or his people, also should not sound as if they invited him on a whim and have been regretting it ever since. He has already made the moves to address his domestic audience, given out some interesting signals, first snubbing his mullahs and then encouraging the Hurriyat. He has already held a meeting with his political parties, such as they are, and our prime minister is still waiting for Farooq Abdullah to return from London so he could address his own political universe.

Already, despite being the initiators, we are beginning to look like the more unsure party in this exchange. This does no justice, either to our moral authority as a legitimate, confident democracy or to our unquestionable status as the greatest power in the region, at least several times bigger than the one we are engaging.

Stage fright is not entirely new to Indian diplomacy and foreign policy making. This confusion, lack of surefootedness in any major turn in an old, ossified policy formulation, inadequate faith in our own strength and stature, are very much of a piece with the way in which India has conducted its diplomacy in the post-Indira phase. It is sad now that even the Vajpayee government is falling into that trap. It is as if after initiating this summit we are not sure we did the right thing, that we are afraid this could be seen as an act of weakness instead of strength and that instead of finding a lasting solution we could end up legitimising Musharraf and conceding ground on Kashmir while coming across, internationally, as a spineless state.

THERE is a chronic phobia in our establishment of being seen as a weak state. Imran Khan once told me that the reason India lose so often to Pakistan in cricket is that they are always so afraid of losing they are not focused on winning. As with most cricketing logic you could stretch it to more serious aspects of our lives as well. Our exchanges with Pakistan are always blighted by the fear that we would be seen to be conceding too much, too easily, of being too keen to please, always searching for a new lollipop to this particularly bloody-minded neighbour, instead of a well-deserved kick on the ba- ckside — in short, of being a soft state. This is why we are afraid to take the lead even when it comes to peace-making. Or when we do, it is, to twist a metaphor, a quick thrust and parry. How else could we have clammed up so completely after setting up this summit? Is this the psycho-diplomatic equivalent of our cricketing paranoia?

We do probably lack faith in our own system. But the fear is also accentuated by the fact that both our traditional adversaries have been dictatorships. A dictatorship naturally is a hard state and a democracy is a soft one, is the logic. But if you look at the facts more closely it does not look so obvious. Dictatorships are tough and harsh, but with their own people. Democracies, on the other hand, are soft inside, they allow dissent and disagreement and a degree of chaos and confusion. But when it comes to their national interest or self-preservation, they are always tougher, more resilient, less forgiving, even more cruel than authoritarian states.

There has, after all, to be a reason why no modern, democratic state has ever broken up through internal strife or foreign aggression. Even in our neighbourhood, Pakistan broke neatly into two whereas not only have we survived so many internal and external challenges, even tiny Sri Lanka has shown strength that would be the envy of the so-called hard states. Even in Europe it is only the authoritarian states which have proved to be brittle in comparison with democracies. Which is the reason why so much of central and eastern Europe has unravelled so rapidly.

Democracies can afford to be tougher because both internally and externally they have moral authority that dictatorships cannot match. It is this that justifies harsher measures, even bombing of their own citizens. How many of us would know, for example, that India was the first nation to use air power against its own citizens involved in an insurgency? This happened in the sixties in Nagaland as well as Mizoram. At the same time India also implemented the most cruel resettlement and regrouping schemes for rebellious tribal populations and enacted a new set of laws giving special powers to our armed forces that would be the envy of their counterparts in many totalitarian systems — particularly as these were all formulated under a legitimate, democratic framework. There has to be a reason why democracies never break up. Just as they never lose wars — but that is another story, for another column.

IT is unlikely that the Pakistanis would have done any homework on this. Because just as we are obsessed with the fear of being seen as a supine, soft state, the Pakistanis are forever seized by their macho misconceptions, of India being on the verge of collapse, like the Soviet Union. In the Pakistani mind the metaphor for India is so often the shaky wall that needs one more push. You hear the slogan all the time from Pakistani supporters in cricket and hockey matches against India. ‘‘Hilti huyee diwaar ko, ek dhakka aur do’’ (it’s a shaky wall, give it one more push). But while they may have coined the ‘‘ek dhakka aur do’’ slogan before our own kar sevaks at Ayodhya discovered it, they made a great mistake in taking so self-serving a view of India. A few more Pakistanis may now acknowledge India’s resilience than in the past. But the dom- inant view still is that India is an artificial entity, too diverse, too chaotic and too large to hold together for ever. There is a belief, going back to the medieval battles, that a Hindu (read Indian) capitulation is an inevitability. That is why the tendency to look at every Indian move as a first sign of that inevitable weakening.

What would be more dangerous than Indian responses that strengthen that stupid psychology? Unfortunately, our conduct over the past fortnight has done just that. Our prime minister has been quiet, which is a good thing, but our establishment has shown confusion and an abysmal lack of conviction in a move he has initiated from a position of strength. Instead of being seen to be dragging Musharraf to the table, setting the agenda and the pace for the negotiations we want in our national interest, we now seem to be the way we traditionally are in such situations: being dragged to the table kicking and screaming. It is time Vajpayee corrected this drift. How tragic otherwise if we end up conceding the moral high ground even to a Musharraf.