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Boy Scout mindsets

Boy Scout mindsets

Author: T. V. R. Shenoy
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: April 10, 2003
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/archive_full_story.php?content_id=21721

Introduction: The Left argues that India has always condemned aggression. Did Parliament attack the Soviet invasions of Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), and Afghanistan (1979)?

What links the French provincial town of Sevres with one of the biggest fiascos of the Indian freedom movement? Do Indian politicians really love the taste of egg so much that they insist on smearing it all over the face? And what does any of the above have to do with the war in Iraq? Trust me, there is a connection.

It is a common fallacy that World War I ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. Actually, it was concerned only with the fate of imperial Germany. Of greater historical consequence were the treaties of St. Germain and of Trianon, which shattered the ancient Habsburg dominions, laying the foundations for the Communist dictatorships in eastern Europe as well as the tangled and bloody Serbo-Croat-Bosnian-Kosovan relationship. And, more germane to us today, there was the Treaty of Sevres in August 1920, dealing with the Ottoman Empire.

The Ottoman Sultans had, since 1517, been simultaneously Caliphs of Islam, and reading the qutba in their names was the fashion in several Indian mosques in the early years of the last century. Splitting the Ottoman Empire was thus seen by some Indians as an insult to Islam.

This led to one of the most misguided decisions in Indian history - the voluntary choice made by the Congress under Mahatma Gandhi's leadership to join the Khilafat agitation, meant to preserve the privileges of the Caliph. In one of history's ironies, one of the few Congressmen to protest was a certain M.A. Jinnah, who pertinently demanded how it helped the cause of Indian nationalism to fight for the rights of a foreign monarch. (One, moreover, whose claims to Caliphate were rejected by the Sheriff of Mecca!)

But everybody was having so much fun making speeches and agitating against the British that nobody answered Jinnah. The drama ended in a fiasco two years later when the Turks themselves kicked out their Sultan, with the Turkish National Assembly abolishing the title of 'Caliph' for good measure. Two years of the Khilafat agitation served only to convince a section of Indian Muslims that they were a community with interests that transcended those of India. And all talk of 'Hindu-Muslim unity' ended with the murderous anti-Hindu riots of the Moplah Rebellion...

Learning nothing from history - except that it is possible to attract Muslim votes by raising extra-territorial issues - this generation of politicians seems set to repeat the folly of their predecessors eighty years ago. This time, it is not a Caliph, but the Butcher of Baghdad who is the unlikely target of their hero- worship. There has been heated debate on whether India must 'condemn' or merely 'deplore' the war to oust him. This is precisely the kind of behaviour which leaves one desperately ransacking the thesaurus for a polite way to put 'moronic' and 'Leftist' in the same sentence.

All this took place on April 8. Nobody seems to have noticed that American troops had entered the presidential palace in Baghdad twenty-four hours earlier. Nor that every other major nation had already begun preparing for the post- Saddam era, even those such as Russia and Germany who were at the forefront of the anti-war forces earlier.

Nor that the government of Iraq itself had declared just a few days ago that it was happy with the attitude adopted by the government of India! So what, pray tell, was the need for some parties to insist that Parliament pass a resolution on Iraq at this late stage?

The Left argues that India has always condemned aggression. Did Parliament attack the Soviet invasions of Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), and Afghanistan (1979)? Come to think of that, has Parliament ever actually used the word 'condemn' before?

I don't propose to waste time arguing whether the war was just or not, that is for history - and the Iraqi people - to decide. My question is this: Is such hyperbole in India's own interests?

Twelve years ago, in the wake of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, our then external affairs minister, Inder Kumar Gujral, was photographed hugging Saddam Hussein. When Kuwait was liberated a few months later, 'Indian' became a hissing-word in that part of the world. Billions were spent in the reconstruction of Kuwait; India didn't get a cent. Thousands of Indians lost their jobs; we were considered untrustworthy employees who fled at the first sign of trouble and then collaborated with the enemy. Why, pray tell, are we set on repeating history?

Who do you think will appreciate India's stance? The liberated Iraqis who danced in Najaf and Karbala, or those who looted Saddam's palaces in Basra? The Arab world at large? But Kuwait was the staging area for the invasion, Qatar was the headquarters of the US Central Command, the US Fifth Fleet lies at anchor in Bahrain, and Jordan's first reaction was to seal its border so that none of its Arab brethren might enter. As for Saudi Arabia, it has stopped negotiations for a US $800 million contract to buy tanks from France (the leader of the anti-American voices at the Security Council). No, we invite only the contempt of the Arabs with such tomfoolery.

A sentimental policy knows no reciprocity. It is an exclusively Indian fantasy to believe otherwise. Let us be done with these impotent expressions of anger and romanticism where the smug knowledge of having done a good deed is the sole reward for sacrificing national interests at Saddam Hussein's altar. Doing a good deed a day may be the Boy Scouts's policy, but there is a place for Boy Scouts - and neither Parliament nor the Foreign Office is the site for a jamboree.
 


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