Time to remember a lost strand of India's political history

The recent incidents of attacks against Indian targets in Afghanistan and Kashmir were only to be expected. There will doubtless be more such in days to come. There is little point in stating the obvious; this piece is about a deeper issue.

Every time such a thing happens, most Indians react like Pavlov’s dogs to the bell. One lot always wants immediately to march to war, another always wants to pretend nothing happened, while a third keeps yelping ‘peace peace’ even as it is getting kicked.

This is because of their parentage, politically speaking. The inheritors of communal thinking, descendants of Golwalkar and Jinnah, see India and Pakistan in religious terms. For them, Kashmir is unfinished business from Partition, and that business can only be finished by continuing a fight that started a thousand years ago.

The descendants of Gandhi and Nehru’s political thought, with their ideas of an inclusive India at peace with its neighbours, are eternal optimists about human nature. Gandhi himself was shot dead, and Nehru died of a broken heart when his Chinese pals screwed him over, but the optimists are uncomfortable talking about such uncomfortable events. So they pretend nothing really happened.

The third lot is a curious one. This is the Martini Marxists and their friends, who do not recognize borders (but somehow recognize caste), who don’t see the need for security (but are always ready with candles after every rape/murder/terror attack), who don’t have clear ideas about anything (but nonetheless talk loudly about everything). They are what you get when you cross a Communist and a socialite. The Communist was traditionally opposed to India’s independence movement and tried to subvert the Quit India movement, supported the Chinese during the war with China, etc. Their loyalties always lie elsewhere.

This is why there is no clear response from India. The problem is one of a missing political gene.

That gene, which has been perhaps deliberately erased from our history, is the secular nationalist one represented by Netaji Subhas Bose. There was a man who was not corrupt, not wedded to communal identities for Hindutva or Pakistan or any kind of Ram Rajya, of modern temperament and egalitarian outlook, inclined towards boldness and action rather than eternal forbearance.

The country needs his political legacy to be brought alive again. It will help not only India, but all of South Asia, because the antidote to religious extremism cannot be administered by Jinnah’s and Gandhi’s heirs.

 

After Mumbai

As suspected, it has turned out to be LeT terrorists with backing from the ISI and al Qaeda who carried out the Mumbai Nov 26 attacks. As expected, Pakistan's military has prevented all attempts at cooperation in bringing to justice the perpetrators of these attacks.
The arrests of these terrorists and their detention in Pakistan can be expected to yield no benefits for India. This is just a sham, and meaningless. Criminals run operations from their jail cells even here, without state patronage. Surely they can do so from jail there, with a little help from their friends.
The US and UK will not help India any more than they are. Like true romantics, they are unable to give up hoping against hope that the Pakistan ISI will somehow have a change of heart, someday, and really start fighting against terrorists instead of training and arming them.
India must therefore learn once again to help itself.
A first step in this regard would be the launch of a trade contest versus Pakistan. The products they mainly export - garments, textiles, yarn, petroleum products - are items India also does business in. The areas they export to are also our markets.
We must therefore suspend trade with Pakistan immediately and attempt to replace their goods with ours everywhere.
Pakistan government officials have already admitted that the attackers were Pakistani and said they had camps inside Pakistan. International economic sanctions against the key individuals and organisations named for involvement in the attack must be pushed through.
If UN sanctions could be imposed against Col Gadaffi's Libya (over handing over of two terror suspects), why can't they be imposed against at least the individuals and organisations in Pakistan who are known supporters of terror?
All this eventually is also in the world's, and Pakistan's, interest. A Talibanised Pakistan wouldn't be very good to Sherry Rehman, for example - or to anyone who prefers the 21st Century to the 16th.

Why they attacked Mumbai...

The attack on Mumbai is having its political fallout at this moment. It will continue till at least the general elections around March 2009. Perhaps I should worry about that, but frankly, both the BJP and the Congress have proved to be bunches of dickheads when it comes to matters of national security. There's little to choose between the two. The only difference is in the noises they make.
So my concern is more about who launched this attack and why. Several observers are saying it was Lashkar-e-Toiba with al Qaeda strategising. A few are saying ISI and Pak army - their SSG commandos. On Thursday and Friday, I was telling folks in office it's the former, but today, in light of more information, I'm more inclined to think it's the latter or an amalgamation of both. This was most likely strategised by elements in the Pakistan establishment. Training was excellent, Pak army. Execution - we'll know soon, for sure.
My initial hunch was this was done to ease pressure from the al Qaeda on the Pak-Afghan border, besides hurting India, and other countries hated by Pak extremists, like USA, UK, Israel. However there are other strategic factors that also may have played into this.
The Pakistan military is worried about the possible balkanisation of the country, and those fears have grown since the appearance of maps put out by US agencies showing exactly this. The US's recent National Intelligence Committee report questioning whether Pakistan would hold together until 2025, and talking of the erasure of the Durand Line, can't have done much to ease the worries of those chaps. In early November, maps also appeared on billboards in NWFP that showed a free Pashtunistan. Wonder who put those up - the moderate, nationalist Pashtuns or friends of the Taliban?
The Taliban is looking for a homeland, but in whose interest is it to give it to them? Is Mumbai the first point on a trajectory that will lead to a war which will see either the creation of a new country between Afghanistan and Pakistan or the fall of Kabul?
I have no access to information to be able to analyse this properly, and no time after my day job to give it a proper go. However, those who do may perhaps ponder deeper into the matter. And do let me know what your thoughts on this are.

No denying responsibility for terror

I've always liked all the Pakistanis I've met, but clearly the people I've met are not the people launching terrorist attacks.
Yesterday, The New York Times ran a story saying:
"American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s powerful spy service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to United States government officials."
The story went on to quote a US State Department official as saying there was finally 'direct proof' of ISI involvement in aiding a terrorist attack, specifically the one on the Indian embassy in Kabul.
The ISI is supposedly this 'state within a state' that goes off on its own and helps the Taliban, Al Qaeda, pretty much every terrorist group operating in Kashmir, Dawood Ibrahim, and anyone else in this part of the world who wants to start their own terror franchise.
The Pakistani state denies knowledge of all this.
It works just fine for the Pakistani state, but it's not so hunky dory for the people who come in at the receiving end of the terror.
Since the Pakistani state has proved incapable of locking up its loonies, shouldn't someone else go in and do it for them - maybe someone who's bearing the brunt of their incapacity? The Pakistan government can't really talk about sovereignty if it's not in sovereign control of its own spy agency. I wonder if the Pakistan government would believe it if an Indian missile were to land in downtown Karachi, and Mr Singh were to adjust his spectacles and say, "Er, sorry, I don't know who did it."
That wouldn't make everything all right, would it?