HVK Archives: The steeling of India
The steeling of India - India Today
Swapan Dasgupta
()
June 1, 1998
Title: The steeling of India
Author: Swapan Dasgupta
Publication: India Today
Date: June 1, 1998
Ten days after the sand has settled in the Pokhran test range,
one thing is becoming increasingly clear: the fear of
international sanctions exists only in the mind. The mind of
those Indians who tenaciously believe it is the destiny of the
effete to inherit the world's leftover crumbs. The 90 per cent or
so Indians who have given Atal Bihari Vajpayee a resounding
thumbs-up believe that India's moment has come. For the avant-
garde minusculity, this is the high noon of contrariness. It is
an "obscenity", decries academic Shiv Visvanathan on the
Internet, "the new Indian self violates ... my emotion of being
Indian". The N-tests have "lowered India's global stature and
(are) likely to cause the people serious economic hardship",
activist Praful Bidwai informs Pakistani readers of Dawn. Not
since Lord Haw-Haw taunted fellow Britons on German radio during
the 1940 blitz has so much invective been showered by so few on
so many.
It is not a laughing matter. The challenge to India's status as a
nuclear weapons state does not come from the feeble sanctions
imposed by a remorseful Bill Clinton. There are far too many
takers for the great Indian market for White House diktats to be
truly effective. If the ultimate US goal is to pressure India
into signing the CTBT without a corresponding change in the Non-
Proliferation Treaty, it will be preceded by a fierce
psychological offensive. India has to prepare for a sustained
campaign of demoralisation and destabilisation at home and a
spell in coventry abroad. Having exercised the N-option, India
will have to fight every inch to retain it.
There is little percentage in minimising the threat. The BJP may
be actively filling in the political space vacated by the
Congress, but it has not yet succeeded in forging a new
nationalist consensus. The BJP machinery is formidable, but its
leverage over the centres of intellectual power in the country is
nominal. The state-funded, left-leaning edifice created by
Indira Gandhi in the early '70s is disoriented but firmly intact.
Now, bereft of Marxist sustenance, it has deftly shifted its gaze
across the Atlantic. The escalating campaign to denigrate India's
nuclear achievement is, for example, strongly networked to US
think tanks and institutes. The clout of this comprador
intelligentsia could have been glossed over if India had no
overpowering ambition to be counted on the world stage. Today's
agenda calls for the active nurturing of a new intelligentsia
committed to the post-nuclear resurgence.
Nor is Indian diplomacy in a better position to further ii new
policy of expediency. The rupture has been so abrupt that there
has been no time to effect a considered shift from P.V. Narasimha
Rao's economism and I.K. Gujral's "Chamberlain" doctrine. If NRIs
complain of ineffectual diplomacy, it is because South Block
hasn't evolved a Vajpayee doctrine that blends nimble-footedness
with bespoke suits. Neither, incidentally, is in evidence in our
missions today. The new diplomacy requires a fresh approach and
style. It requires the sanctimoniousness of Bandung to be
subsumed by the grittiness of Pokhran. Maybe, just maybe, it
requires a new foreign service.
Vajpayee should not delude himself that India has turned the
corner. The N-tests restored Indian pride. but it also generated
a fierce countervailing force. As yet, the Government is
inadequately prepared to meet the challenge. Time is not on its
side.
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