HVK Archives: When a giant wakes up
When a giant wakes up - The Observer
P P Bala Chandran
()
May 20, 1998
Title: When a giant wakes up
Author: P P Bala Chandran
Publication: The Observer
Date: May 20, 1998
Why should India's five nuclear explosions cause more global
tremors and diplomatic radioactivity than America's 1500 or
Russia's 700 or even China's 45 explosions? The answer lies not
so much in colour blindness or discriminatory mind-set of the so-
called super powers as in the collective DNA of our civilisation,
in the racial timidity of our people and their leaders - the
political, the social and even the religious ones.
Both as a nation and as a civilisation, India has always furrowed
a pacifist approach every time it came face to face with the
harsh realities of history foreign invasions, religious bigotry
and political oppression.
The collective sense of fatalism that we demonstrated through
centuries on such occasions was understandably tattooed in our
racial memory, mostly by our adversaries and to some extent by
ourselves. The assimilative quality of Hinduism was often
misrepresented as part of this fatalism, this lack of spirit to
assert oneself and aggress the oppressor. In other words, we
revelled in our genius to submit to the adversary, instead of
regret in our inability to give a bloody nose to him, when a
bloody nose is the only thing that he understands. The
misinterpretation of Hinduism as a defeatist or a pacifist way of
living has done more damage to our nation state than to Hinduism
itself.
Which is why when this nation, perceived for centuries, to be
slow in body and weak in spirit, decides to stand up and be
counted as a worthy defender of its life and property, there are
tectonic tremors across the globe. Like it happened during
India's first nuclear explosion in 1974.
What Mrs Indira Gandhi did was not just defying those handful of
nations who usurped wholesale right to nuclear weapons and world
dominance. More than that, she was giving the impression that it
was a valiant attempt to affect an attitudinal change in the
country's pacifist tradition. Although praiseworthy as a first
attempt, Mrs Gandhi's Pokhran blast 24 years ago could not bring
about that attitudinal change in any substantive measure,
primarily because, she herself was not convinced about the
nation's inherent strength to stand up to its challengers.
The fact that Mrs Indira Gandhi called the 1974 experiment a
peaceful explosion and not a bomb only showed that hers was a
mere act of bravado, shorn of substance. Meant primarily as a PR
exercise. Along the way, she also lost the grit to pursue the
experiment to its logical conclusion, the weaponisation of the
bomb. As a result, India's first bomb went dead in the attic.
In the 24 years that followed, the first Pokhran blast was
reduced to an instance of archival memory and like 'good'
forgiving Hindus, we went back to our national pastime of self-
pity.
What Atal Behari Vajpayee did on May 11 and 13 was to shake us up
>from this defeatist slumber and re-assert our national pride.
Naturally, the guards of the nuclear garrison are not amused.
No doubt, everybody likes a nice guy, and everybody likes to be
one; but v respects a tough guy. Still better, everybody loves
and respects a nice, tough guy. A gentle giant is not just a
child's romantic Idea of a hero, but of the adult world's as
well.
>From Darwin to Nietzsche to Indira Gandhi could be a dizzy
downward spinal. But the fact is that all of them had sung in the
different tunes, to the virtue of being strong and thereby being
the fittest to survive in a harsh world. Darwin found a
biological formula to justify his conclusion, Nietzsche built his
philosophical argument over his theory of power and Mrs Gandhi,
one of the shrewdest political minds of our times, perfected it
into a fine art.
Twenty four years later, Atal Behari Vajpayee has now translated
that virtue into a talisman that would protect the nation against
all evils.
Too bad, if Bill Clinton and Nawaz Sharif did not like it.
Vajpayee could have pleased these men by being a 'nice' guy. But
the fact is that a nice guy often gets burnt out in the scorching
reality of geopolitics. And Vajpayee knows it just as anybody
else hi his position. If Israel still survives, it is because the
Jewish state, right from the beginning, decided not to be a nice
guy. If Japan matters In the global scenario, ft Is not just
because it is an economic super power, but also the protectorate
of a tough guy called the United States of America. If Vietnam
lived to be a sovereign nation, ft is because it proved that it
could get tough when it is needed.
It is India's turn to let the world know that it can get both
nice and tough depending on the adversary's attitude. Non-
violence is an idea that will only work in a world run by
statesmen and not by rogues; In a world where rules are the same
for everybody and not m a world where half a dozen smart alec
nations share a mountain of nuclear weapons among themselves and
tell the rest of the world to trust them with its well-being.
Luckily, Gandhiji did not have to deal with these nuclear thugs.
But nothing comes in life without a price. And there are things
that extract the maximum price, things like liberty and
sovereignty. That brings us to the question of sanctions. The
question is whether a civilisation that survived history's worst
calamities can also withstand the economic non-cooperation of
half a dozen countries, all of whom put together will not measure
up to one of our states.
The answer is a resounding YES. What touches all should be
approved by all. India's nuclear explosion is a matter of
national survival, a matter that touches all Indians. And as the
resounding approval that came from the 900 million people of this
country, from the entire political spectrum, the mass media and
even the non-resident Indians showed, Washington and other world
capitals had better think again before they go ahead with these
sanctions.
Even economists and other experts of global market tell us that
sanctions would only amount to a flea bite. If anything, it would
hurt the other side more than it does us. The credit rating
agencies such as Standard and Poor and Moody's, too, have
predicted that India's credit rating would not be affected m any
way by these sanctions.
So the choice is not for India but for the United States and its
cronies who are lined up against India. And the choice is:
Whether to accept India as a nuclear power or to impose what has
been universally agreed upon as toothless sanctions. One is a
reality, the other is a myth. And for Bill Clinton, as the
leader of the world's only super power, it poses a particularly
hard choice.
Because he would not like to be called a Don Quixote and the
Americans would not like to be led by a man who tilts at
windmills.
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