J'accuse

J’accuse: the Congress is anti-Hindu

Secularism is a fig leaf for anti-Hindu attitudes

In 1919, after the First World War ended, one of the important issues facing the victors, chiefly the British, was the fate of the Ottoman Empire. The Empire itself had been defeated and had been partitioned into its mainly Arab successor states, but there was also the issue of the fate of the Emperor, Mehmed VI. He had, of course, lost the Empire because of his alliance with the defeated Central Powers, but there was a large body of opinion among the Muslims, particularly in India, that his status as Caliph [Khalifa] needed to be preserved. Gandhi, as leader of the Congress Party, joined the leaders of the Khilafat movement and agitated against the abolition of the Khilafat.

The purpose of this brief reference to an event of nearly a hundred years ago is to trace the roots of the wrong turn our leaders have taken in pursuing secularism as state policy. This was the original sin against secularism: not only was it the aim of the movement to save an overtly religious institution, it was also aimed at reaching out to one community, the Muslims. On both counts, it militated against the practice of secularism, in any common sense – as against the current, perverted - understanding of the term.

Since then, this wrong turn has only been accentuated by the Congress, from Nehru’s days. His proposed draft Hindu Code Bill was resisted even from within the Party by the likes of President Rajendra Prasad. This approach continued right through the years to include the control [and abuse of that control] over Hindu Temples’ funds, and further on to the way Education has been made almost a special preserve of the minorities.

This government – UPA 1 and 2 - has been particularly egregious in regard to the in-your-face anti-Hindu policies, including at the very top levels. This is reflected in several recent events, relating to the current UPA Government. There is, first, the Communal Violence Bill. The way it was drafted, the Hindus were the guilty party  in any communal incident. It was a clever piece of drafting, and sneaked in the presumption of Hindu guilt in the definitions; a “group” was by definition only a minority, and a victim could only belong to such a “group”. Interestingly, rape and gang rape were defined as instances covered under the communal violence bill. Thus, Nirbhaya would not, ipso facto, be a victim under this bill – but if she had belonged to a minority, it would have attracted the clauses of the Bill. By any measure, this is a grotesque distortion of the doctrine of equality before the law. And could anything be more divisive than this in thus dividing Indian from Indian?

Fortunately, the opposition, for once, stood up to this subversion of society and the Bill appears to have been shelved. Nonetheless, it is a window into the thinking of the top leadership of the Congress Party, for it was drafted by the National Advisory Council, under the chairmanship of Mrs Sonia Gandhi.

Once.

We then have the spectacle of Rahul Gandhi telling a diplomat that the danger from Hindu terrorist groups was, for him, more serious than that of the Jihadi groups. According to The Guardian of 16 December 2010, quoting Wikileaks, Rahul Gandhi observed that though 

there was evidence of some support for [Islamic terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba] among certain elements of India's indigenous Muslim community, the bigger threat may be the growth of radicalised Hindu groups, which create religious tensions and political confrontations with the Muslim community.

This view has not been repudiated at any level by the Party or Government, and the decision to leave it in the public domain must be seen as a deliberate statement of the views and assessment of the leadership.

Twice.

More recently, we had the Home Minister attacking the BJP and RSS camps at a Congress Party meeting in Rajasthan. Here, he alleged, “Hindu terror” was being promoted. The examples he gave included the Samjhauta Express bombings, the Mecca Masjid incident, and the Malegaon bombings. Even though the Government had itself blamed Pakistan-based Jihadi groups in all of these, the Home Minister had no compunctions in giving voice to this appalling lie. And all this is very much part of a pattern that the Congress has honed over the years: at the Party level, they attack the Hindus and paint them, against all evidence, as terrorists and extremists, though usually without specifying what they would do to the Muslims – just holding out  and fanning vague apprehensions. On the other, at the Governmental level, as a rule, the country as a whole is fed the soothing bromides about being ready to fight terror, about zero tolerance, about not politicising security issues - seeking to make the best of both worlds.

Thrice.

We have it on good authority that once is accident, twice is coincidence, and thrice is enemy action. The conclusion is inescapable: the Congress is anti-Hindu: and has been over several decades, though the country has been slow to recognise it. Truth be told, the Hindus have not really had anyone to champion their cause either.

Secularism as practised has been the cover for these anti-Hindu policies. Just as in the West, anti-Zionism is used in order to provide the cover for anti-Semitism, in India being anti-communal is the fig-leaf for those whose real agenda is anti-Hindu. High time for the Hindus to wake up to the reality and understand that time is fast running out to put an end to this stream of policies that will further weaken them and their role in India.

An important illustration of how the discourse is being distorted is the issue of the Uniform Civil Code. It is enjoined on the leaders of the country by the Directive Principles of the Constitution. Nobody in their right mind could argue that the framers of the Constitution were anything but secular. And yet, over the decades, this issue has been made a communal one by the Congress – again with the aim of dividing Indian from Indian, and preserving its vote bank. Even the Supreme Court, another unimpeachably secular institution, has asked the Government to move on this, but there has been no response from the Congress.

To sum up, it is the warped understanding of the meaning and practice of secularism that has created a situation where the Congress Party has caused deep divisions within Indian society, all in order to preserve its vote banks. Happily, this seems to coming to an end as the people are getting wise to these tactics, and are demanding better governance, rather than the counterfeit coin they have been given at each election so far. It is this awakening more than anything else that has led the Congress Party to its current dead-end. 

In the Name of God, Go!

While thinking about the state of affairs in India, and its politics specially, one is reminded of Cromwell's speech to the Rump Parliament centuries ago, which bears reproduction in full. This is what he said, in April 1653:

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would, like Esau, sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money. Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter'd your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth? Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil'd this sacred place, and turn'd the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress'd, are yourselves gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there [the mace], and lock up the doors. 

You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!

The last words were to be repeated by the Indian-born MP Leopold Amery in the House of Commons in 1940, while addressing the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. He was confronting Chamberlain over his policy of appeasement in the face of the gravest military challenge from Nazi Germany.


If many of the readers thought of the vast majority of Indian parliamentarians and of this government when reading the above lines, that is entirely understandable, indeed is the purpose of this essay. The purpose is, equally, to emphasize that India also faces a very serious security challenge, and has faced one for two decades or more. And yet, no leader has been able to look beyond appeasement, coupled with a willful neglect of our defences. The point, therefore, is deeper than the nature of the charges against the past British leaders, and the uncanny fit with Indian governance today. They say a wise person learns from the mistakes of others: a fool learns from his own mistakes. So what does one say about a person who does not learn even from his own mistakes?

We have seen efforts by civil society to address the challenge of corruption. Well and good. There are many questions about the way they are going about it, and about the nature of some of the representatives of civil society in the drafting panel. However, what is more worrisome is the aspect of national security, which is probably an even more serious challenge facing the country in the near term.

And here's the trouble: as we go forward, we find the likes of Arundhati Roy and Medha Patkar taking a higher profile among the civil society representatives. They are not only quite opaque about their own finances [while demanding transparency from others], but there is no cause hurtful to our national security or to our economic strategy that these people, between them, will not oppose and fight to a standstill.

Our security is under clear and present threat, let this be stated without prevarication. Appeasement in the face of these growing threats will not save the country. Appeasement has never worked in the past, and will not work in the face of the enemies confronting us. Of course, this is not a call to war, as many in the effete establishment would like to suggest. They ignore the fact that our weakness and military unpreparedness are an invitation to our enemies to launch a war against us. The call to strengthen our defences, if acted upon, will prevent war. Through the 1990's and the first decade of this century, we have drawn down our Armed Forces and equipment to the lowest level since the debacle of 1962. This needs to be reversed. Delay is criminal.

And this government still persists in ignoring our defence needs, and apparently keeps hoping that appeasement will bring us peace in our time. Well, it never did, and it will not now. The time is upon us for someone to say to this government - in the name of God, go!

There is a man who can do this. He is LK Advani. Alone among the leaders of this country, he can stand up in the Lok Sabha and say to the Treasury benches - in the name of God, go! The BJP, for all its faults, is still the only political force that can face the security challenges that clearly lie ahead. It will need to explain to the people its abandonment of its core values under Vajpayee, and it will need to get rid of the factionalism at the top. But the people of India are hungry for reasonably effective leadership, and the bar is not too high.

The time is right, and Destiny is offering Advani that rarest of all political gifts - a second chance. For the sake of the nation, he must take it.

Common Sense on Civil Nuclear Cooperation

Churchill remarked after the Battle of Britain - never in the history of human combat was so much owed by so many to so few. I was reminded of these words after reading the text of the US Congressional Bill on Indo-US peaceful nuclear energy cooperation. Never, I thought, in the history of relations between states has so much been demanded of so many by so few.

The 500-odd members of the US Congress want India never to test again, regardless of circumstances. They want India not to enrich uranium. They want no reprocessing. They want no heavy water technology for India. They want India to adhere unilaterally to NSG and MTCR, as well as to PSI. This means India must accept all the responsibilities that go with membership of these bodies, but enjoy none of the benefits.

They are asking for intrusive controls, and oversight, on India's fissile material production.

The ultimate goal of the US Congress is to eliminate India's nuclear weapons. And they are proclaiming this in the Bill.

The Bill also wants to make India's foreign policy congruent to America's own, specially on Iran. This is truly breath-taking. You would expect that a country that is facing defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is pretty much snookered in North Korea and Iran, is heading for confrontation with Russia and China, has alienated significant elements in Europe, would tell its friends - don't be like us! But, no, hubris reigns, and the US Congress demands that India make the same mistakes that America has made.

The explanatory notes attached to the Bill are equally revealing. To my reading, the most important is that they all but openly contradict Prime Minister Singh. This is the part where they address the statement to the Indian Parliament by the Prime Minister that in case of disruption of supplies, America and like-minded countries will get together to overcome the problem. The position in the Bill is that this can only be in the event of a market-related disruption. If, however, the disruption is caused by any "violation" by India of the unilateral conditions, America will actually ensure that no other country can step in and help out.

All of this is only for a one-time exception for India, for what happened before July 2005, the date of the Indo-US Joint Statement. For the future, India remains bound by the rules applicable to non-NWS under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Indeed, the demands and the supervision are even greater. What is more, the US President must offer annual assessments on India's "compliance" with the demands, as well as on India's overall nuclear posture - how much uranium was mined, how much used for weapons, how many weapons manufactured, and so on.

It is clear that America has shifted the goal posts. In fact, it has changed the nature of the agreement completely. What started out as an agreement on civil nuclear cooperation, has ended up as the offer of an agreement to shackle India to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. In this form it is unacceptable. and, specially under a Democrat-controlled Congress, it is the only form we shall have on offer from the US.

It is also clear, from reading the text closely, that the Americans are leaving the door open for Pakistan to be allowed the same - or similar - terms. The chances are that America will not, itself, supply nuclear-related material to Pakistan, but this does open the door for China to do so. An agreement among NSG members to allow an exemption for India will probably only be passed if the NSG meets China's probable demand that the same be allowed for Pakistan.

It is also clear that America has lately - since the mid-1990's - been taking an attitude towards India that it would towards a client or dependent state. They ensured that India had no choice but to veto the CTBT by entering a provision that required an unwilling India (among other- willing - countries) to sign and ratify the Treaty for it to enter into force. This was unprecedented in the history of diplomacy and treaty-writing. All of this started a sequence of events that led to the eventual decision by India to test nuclear weapons in 1998. We are seeing the same kind of unilateral approach in this Bill.

It is likely that successive Indian Governments have given the Americans the sense that this kind of approach will yield results. But this is contradicted by the facts on the ground, and the history of later developments, which demonstrated that the pressure had backfired. You would expect America to have the good sense and intelligence to realise this. You would be wrong, it seems.

It is also instructive to read the writings of the supporters of the current Bill in India. Of those that I have read, none is offering a justification of the Bill that has emerged from the US Congress. Their basic position is that this is the best you can expect from the US. They also implicitly accept that the Bill does indeed depart substantively from the 18 July 2005 Statement. But, they say, look at the bigger picture, move beyond the minutiae and stop auditing the pluses and minuses. In my experience, when someone asks that we see the bigger picture, there is a defect in the smaller picture.

Also, the standard counsel of fear: if India will not accept this, it will damage ties with America.

For the rest and the bulk, a lot of abuse aimed at the opponents of the Bill. That is not good enough a defence of the Bill.

Friendship between India and America is important for India. No one in their right mind has any doubts about this. Fortunately, this is also what is happening. Economic relations are growing at an unprecedented rate. Business-to-business ties are on the up. Military contacts are increasing. Science and technology is another area where the two countries are moving forward.

In fact, in the high-level focus on the nuclear deal, many have lost sight of the equally important defence agreement that was signed in June 2005, just a few weeks before the nuclear deal. This has the potential to set a new level of defence cooperation between India and the US.

So let us leave this infructuous effort aside - a false start. This happens in human affairs, and there is nothing to be ashamed of in having tried and failed. No great harm will follow. It didn't when India refused to sign the NPT back in 1968. Nothing happened when India blocked the CTBT in 1996. Even after India's nuclear tests in 1998, bilateral relations were back on the upswing by 2000, when President Clinton visited in March that year.

So there is no need to get pessimistic as some people are being. They are putting it out that if the deal falls through, relations will suffer grevous harm. Not a bit of it. India and America are two mature democracies, with long-standing traditions of diplomacy. both recognise that there will be breakthroughs and there will be setbacks. But in historical perspective, these are small blips. Long-term national interest is vastly more important.

It is clear also that there is no consensus on the two sides in favour of the deal. As it stands, the Indian side is dissatisfied. The left and the right are opposed, unusual though it is for both to agree on anything. If the offending conditions are removed from the Bill, the consensus will disintegrate on the American side. That doesn't sound like a good long-term bet.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is facing a serious choice. I am convinced he will be doing India a service by making the right choice, which is to go with the logic of his earlier public postures and say that the Bill departs from the commitments in the July 2005 Statement, and does not provide the basis for further talks. That is not just the right thing to do, it is also wise politically. The people of India respect leaders who stand up for the country. Indira Gandhi is the most respected Indian leader for just this quality. Deve Gowda did not suffer for blocking CTBT. AB Vajpayee positively benefited from conducting the nuclear tests. Manmohan Singh will gain in stature if he calls a halt to this deal.

Choices before India and the US

Iran is in the news and countries are lining up one way or the other on the question of a referral to the UN Security Council. America and Europe for once seem to be agreed on the need for Iran to be referred to the UN Security Council as a violator. China and Russia are on the other side. America wants India to side with it, making it almost a test case of the new relationship between the two countries.

My sympathies are with America. It is engaged in the search for a historic new concordat with the Shias of West Asia. A bloody search admittedly, but the stakes are so high that it would be unnatural for the Sunnis to give in. They have a sense of themselves being the natural rulers of the region over the last hundred years, albeit with western blessing and support, and they are not easily going to let the same supporters in the west cut them out of their position of power and wealth.

But why are the Shias - and Iran in particular - also fighting the Americans? Light on this open question would be welcome.

Anyway, to India. The US Congress has voiced the sentiment very clearly that India's ties with Iran are a sticking point for them to approve the changes in the Non-proliferation Act that the US Administration seeks. There must be a two-pronged reply to this.

First, what right does America have to make such a demand on us? They say that Iran is a national security issue for them and India must demonstrate its commitment to the new friendship with America by supporting them. My question is - does America have to demonstrate its commitment to the new relationship with India? If so, it should not supply arms to Pakistan. It should stop leaning on us to make concessions to Pakistan as it did when Ms Rice called on PM Manmohan Singh in New York with that explicit request. These are not the acts of a friend.

To take a broader view: I have listed some of the diplomatic goals and aspirations of India, and try and judge countries by where they stand on these. India wants to be a permanent member of the UN Security Council; it wants to enter the Nuclear Suppliers' Group without fullscope safeguards; it wants a secure neighbourhood, meaning no arms to Pakistan; it wants commitment to the territorial integrity of India, hence support on J&K; it wants cooperation on counter-terrorism.

The surprising outcome of such an audit is that America fails comprehensively. Except for the nuclear deal, which is still not settled, it is on the opposite side of our aims and objectives on all counts. Not very different from China.

So, we have something to talk about with the Americans. We have our national security concerns just as does America. Let us sit and talk things over. If we can agree, we have a deal. If not, both sides need to think some more. And let us cut the false hype.

The second is Iran itself. It is a nation in trouble. The clerical regime is unpopular, and any free election will throw it out. I believe that the Islamic tide will begin to subside in Iran, just as it began there too. It is hard to say when that will happen, but the regime is weaker than it looks. Or sounds. It has also been a difficult partner for India. It did play a marginal role in helping us in the early 1990's. However, it has played a hurtful role in forcing an unwilling but pusillanimous India to go along with the gas pipeline proposal. This is a dangerous idea for India, which is why Pakistan has delinked this from the package of our talks and is not insisting on a Kashmir settlement first, as it does in all other economic proposals. Pakistan will not even give our goods MFN treatment, as it obliged to do under the WTO rules, unless we first settle Kashmir.

So we have nothing to lose by distancing ourselves from Iran, but it has to be worth the risks. A decision to support the proposal to take Iran to the UN Security Council will temporarily inflame Muslim, specially Shia, opinion. Why should we do this unless there is something in it for us?

If America will make the changes in their strategy to South Asia that this requires, we should be willing to make corresponding changes in our appproach to West Asia. If not, we shall continue to flunk our obvious destiny, which is to become friends and partners in the face of the many challenges ahead.

A word to the Americans, specially to our friends there. May your tribe increase, you have done well by India. We welcome this, but you have one more step to take: allow us to judge what is best for us. Too many of our friends are now lecturing us on how to behave and how to deal with Pakistan or Bangladesh. Secretary of State Rice is supposed to have told PM Manmohan Singh to make some concessions to Musharraf so that he could show some results back home. How odd that a dictator needs to show results to his people, but the democratic leader presumably does not.

If Musharraf really cares about Pakistani public opinion all he needs to do is step aside and allow free elections. He will be remembered as the military dictator who allowed a return to democracy without being coerced into it (as were Ayub and Yahya) or killed (as was Zia). And all this will cease to be the military's problem. The people of Pakistan are tired of army rule and of confrontation with India. The army has only to recognise this and let the democratic parties run the policy.

We have done our share of "saving" Pakistani rulers. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was once upon a time our best bet, before Zia became our best bet, before Benazir became our best bet, before...

Indira ji gave Bhutto a major concession at Simla on his verbal assurance, and lived to rue her generosity. We do not owe any Pakistani leader his or her longevity, and such considerations are an unfair demand on us from the American leaders. They may well end up with nothing to show for it, if Indians do get jaded by this attitude.

While on the subject of US-Pakistani relations, I am unable to understand why America is so supportive of Pakistan. America has defined its major challenges in the coming decades as being WMD proliferation, terrorism, and Islamic fundamentalism/extremism. The "axis of evil" is defined on the basis of these criteria. But who fed Iran and North Korea with WMD technology? Pakistan. And which is the hotbed of terrorism and fundamentalism? Pakistan. So America makes it a major non-Nato ally! If anyone can make sense of this, please educate me too.

The only framework in which this makes sense is that America wants a hostile Pakistan to be able to use against India should the occasion arise and India should become too independent and strong. India, in turn, is being used to keep China from dominating the Asia-Pacific region. Here is the American conundrum: they want an India powerful enough that can some day, maybe, play a role in balancing China, but not one that is powerful enough to overwhelm Pakistan. Not a sustainable strategy.

America must choose. So must India.

looking around

the title of this blog is taken from the epitaph of the architect christopher wren at st paul's cathedral. si monumentum quaeris, circumspice - if you seek my monument, look around.

the aim of this page is to look around at the world we have made and encourage readers to do the same. we shall find, i don't doubt, that much of what we seearound us leaves us puzzled, dissatisfied, even angry. i certainly am. all three.

many of us live our everyday lives and accept things that we do not like. after a time, we no longer even realise where we have reached. we stop looking around and seeing the effects of our mental shrugs. things get steadily worse, and - often when it too late - we see that what is today intolerable could have been preempted, if only we hadn't kept quiet.

i am an Indian who has lived abroad for the greater part of my life. i feel very strongly about things that are going on in my country and around it. i have been trying to understand these matters, and have reached a stage where i feel i have something to say, and lots (lots!) more to learn.

i start today with the situation in iraq. why did the americans need to remove saddam from power? i do not think it was wmd ever - not really. for if it was, they would actually have treated the issue with much more respect. see how they are responding to north korea, or even iran.

nor was it oil. or not oil alone. for saddam would have done anything the americans asked in the last few months before the invasion in 2003. in order to survive, he would have raised or reduced oil production, whatever the americans wanted. and the americans could have easily seen to the lifting of the sanctions that prevented iraq from becoming a full player in the global oil market.

no, i believe it was a deeper strategy. ever since oil was found in significant quantities in the middle east in the first decade of the 20th century, the british decided that their favoured candidate to control that oil was the sunni arab.

between them, harold st john philby and t e lawrence, ensured that their admiration for the bedouin became a pillar of the british policy in the region. as a result, the territorial dispensation that they created in the aftermath of the first world war saw sunni arabs on the thrones of the states that emerged from the ottoman empire. in particular, the richest deposits which were in iraq and saudi arabia were placed under sunni arab rulers. this in spite of the reality that iraq was a shia majority area. in other oil-bearing areas of iraq, the kurds were the dominant part of the population. in saudi arabia, the oil-bearing gulf coast was likewise dominated by the shias. the british experience with the iranians (or persians as they were then called) who were shias made them wary of entrusting the oil wealth to them. there was no choice with regard to persia itself, but that was in any case not part of the ottoman empire and was not part of the mandated territory after the first world war.

thus arose the arabist tradition of the british foreign office. this was taken over by the state department following the second world war. and state has been equally true to the arabist commitment.

this arrangement reached its apogee in the fourth afghan war 1980-1989, when the americans worked closely with some of the most fanatical elements who fought the "jihad". some time in the 1990's, the arrangement began to turn sour. even though the americans supported the bosnians, the kosovars, the palestinians, the kashmiri militants, later the taliban and even the chechens (the last four more passively than the others) their relationship with the sunni muslim deteriorated.

the first world trade centre bombing in 1993 showed that the war was being brought ashore for the first time since the colonial wars. subsequent events are well-known and need not be repeated. however, 11 september tilted the balance in the internal debate in washington: the sunni arab was an implacable enemy, and had to be defeated. the arabist commitment had had its day, at least under president bush.

it is in this sense that the leaders of america say that the invasion of iraq was a part of the war on terror. and that is true and correct. the more technical point that the baathist regime was secular is true. however, the violent change in iraq is the beginning of a longer-term series of changes in the entire middle east, aimed at reducing arab sunni power. in that way, it is hoped, the terror machine will be crippled and eventually destroyed.

will the shias be easier to come to an accommodation? not if we go by what we have seen of the shia forces in lebanon and in iran. still, the shias of iraq are pointing to a willingness to make a historic new accord in the middle east. iran remains the key, and hence the mounting pressure on that country from america. this is all building up to a crescendo over the presidential elections in that country this summer.

it would be in order to expect a very tense election process - president bush's focus on freedom and democracy in his inaugural speech and state of the union speech point clearly in that direction.