Author: K. P. Nayar
Publication: The Telegraph
Date: March 6, 2002
When the Union home minister, L.K.
Advani, was in Washington in January, some of his American interlocutors
thought that they could pin him down on the one issue on which they thought
he was vulnerable - his image as a Hindu hardliner and his reputation for
being soft on the more radical elements in the saffron parivar. The Americans
had been put in a spot by Advani's impeccable logic: on Pakistan, on India's
long fight against terror to which the United States of America woke up
only after September 11, on the logic of Indo-US relations. So they asked
him a question on a subject where they thought he would be on slippery
ground - about communal violence in India and the Bharatiya Janata Party-led
government's treatment of the minorities. Without blinking, Advani reeled
off statistics which floored the Americans. Between 1998, when the BJP
came to power at the Centre and now, India had seen the lowest record of
communal riots in all of the previous 10 years.
Every year, in February, the US
state department's bureau of democracy, human rights and labour reports
to the house of representatives and the senate foreign relations committee
on the state of human rights all over the world, including India. In May,
the US commission on international religious freedom similarly submits
a report to the congress on the state of religious freedom around the globe,
including India.
What Advani told the Americans about
relative amity in multi- faith Indian society under the dispensation led
by the BJP was something which these two US official reports of record
had omitted. Rather, it was something which US diplomatic missions in India
- the primary source of information for such reports - had failed to communicate
to the state department. To those Americans who listened to Advani talk
about the BJP-led government's record of communal harmony, what he said
was an eye-opener. For days after he left for New Delhi, in India- centric
circles of the George W. Bush administration, it was a subject of much
discussion.
The tragic events in Gujarat last
week have negated Advani's case, carefully made out during his landmark
visit to the US. It was a case which was imperative for India and needed
to be made in Washington. Shortly after Bush was elected president, when
many of the sanctions against India were still in place, an unofficial
emissary of the prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in Washington, was
told by prominent Republicans who had just occupied office that with some
of the friends that India had in the US, New Delhi did not need enemies.
These Republicans, who share the
vision of the ambassador, Robert Blackwill, of Indo-US relations, told
the emissary that some Indian Americans were advising the new administration
to hold back on cooperation with India; indeed, to even let the sanctions
continue to be in force against New Delhi. These groups were reporting
to the Bush administration that Christians were being persecuted by the
BJP, inevitably described as Hindu nationalists, who were in power in states
like Gujarat and at the Centre, albeit in alliance with other parties.
Christian-bashing is an issue which
makes waves in Washington - on Capitol Hill, in a Republican White House,
but especially in George W. Bush's Republican White House. Bush would never
have been able to leave the governor's mansion in Texas for Washington
's Pennsylvania Avenue if it were not for the solid backing which America's
Christian coalition, particularly powerful in America's south, gave him
during the presidential campaign in 2000. For that matter, it is doubtful
if Bush would even have secured the Republican party's presidential nomination
in 2000 if Christian groups had not united behind him for fear of the more
liberal senator, John McCain, Bush's rival for the party's nomination.
Bush has rewarded these Christian
conservatives as handsomely as he could, within the constraints in the
American system. One of his earliest actions as president was to set up
a faith-based initiative in the White House, drawing howls of protests
that America was violating the separation between the church and the state.
Then he gave in to anti-abortionists and decreed that US aid will be cut
off to any agency or programme which even remotely approved of medical
termination of pregnancies. And last month, he set apart tax-payers' money
to promote the institution of marriage, once again drawing huge protests
from those who argued that it was none of the state's business to get its
citizens to walk down the aisle.
If those who have been campaigning
against a BJP-led India for its alleged Christian-bashing did not fully
succeed in this environment, it was not for want of trying. Nor was it
because the Indian American leaders of some of these groups have been exposed
as gold diggers who have found a lucrative business in the US in bashing
the BJP-led government for its perceived acts of omission and commission
against minorities. The exigencies of realpolitik in international relations
fortuitously got the better of the reverse bigotry, which these groups
have been lobbying for so far.
Advani's statistics - and his contention
about relative communal peace during the BJP's years in office in New Delhi
- gave enough ammunition for those in Washington who did not want religion
to be one of the issues to which Indo-US interaction could become hostage.
But those who worked to make this official US policy are now finding that
Godhra and what followed in its wake have expended this ammunition to New
Delhi's detriment. The state department released its latest human rights
findings on Monday, when the secretary of state, Colin Powell, and the
assistant secretary in charge of preparing the report, Lorne Craner, briefed
the press extensively on the report for 2001. There was not a single question
on India, notwithstanding the events in Gujarat, which has been on top
of the headlines for almost a week.
The explanation is simple, but it
is neither a source of comfort nor is it politically correct to be acknowledged.
The prime minister may say the events in Gujarat are a "disgrace to the
nation". But the fact is that India has escaped any significant negative
international fallout of these events primarily because, after September
11, it is no longer abhorrent in America to kill Muslims. No one will acknowledge
it - least of all the officialdom - but not only in the US, but in many
parts of the Western world, it will even be said in private, post-September
11, that such killings are desirable - or inevitable.
But that can only be cold comfort
for New Delhi. To those in North Block who have to deal with the fallout
of Godhra, it must be clear as crystal that the trigger was pulled on Sabarmati
Express after careful planning. Crowds of thousands do not simply materialize
at small-town railway stations within minutes of accidental altercations
either among rail passengers or between passengers and others.
Indians have a penchant for conspiracy
theories, but even after making allowances for those, there is merit in
the argument that Godhra is history repeating itself. Nine years ago, almost
to this day, another attempt was made to pit Muslims and Hindus against
each other in Mumbai in the expectation that the serial bomb blasts which
almost ripped apart India's number one metropolis and brought it to a halt
would tear India's social fabric to shreds.
Because India was able to obtain
documentary proof of how Pakistan planned and ordered Mumbai's serial blasts
- evidence which has not been made public - it opened New Delhi's eyes
to a new strategy from across the border. Those sceptics who blame the
hotheads in the Hindutva movement for what happened in Gujarat and the
secularists who trace Godhra to Ayodhya ought to remember that what was
attempted by India's enemies last week has been tried before.
In the Eighties, General Zia-ul-Haq
spent time, energy and resources to turn the Sikhs in Punjab against the
Hindus there. He almost succeeded in this mission to avenge the creation
of Bangladesh in 1971. Nawaz Sharif failed in 1993 to carry out a similar
mission in Mumbai: that time it was Hindus versus Muslims. Sharif failed
largely because of the leadership of the Maharashtra chief minister, Sharad
Pawar. Pawar fought the then Union home minister, S.B. Chavan, at the Raj
Bhavan in the presence of the governor, P.C. Alexander, to have his way
in bringing Mumbai back to normal in record time on the chief minister's
terms.
For leaders in Gujarat to be able
to rise above considerations of community, religion and vote-banks the
way Pawar did, it is necessary to see Godhra in its origins as a conspiracy
which did not originate there but was imposed on its unsuspecting people.
It was not all that difficult to get to the root of the Mumbai serial bomb
blasts because of the intelligence network which exists in the metropolis.
And the extent to which the Mumbai police had always penetrated the underworld.
It did not take all that long to uncover the Memons in 1993 as the authors
of the conspiracy and even trace them to Dubai - and onward to Karachi.
By comparison, the challenge in
Gujarat is greater. For those who have believed that India is under siege
from external forces, the shoddy state of intelligence in Gujarat has always
been a matter of concern. And the only guarantee that the events in Godhra
and its aftermath will not be repeated in Gujarat is a willingness to accept
these as an intelligence failure - as severe as in the US on September
11 - and take steps to deal with such a colossal intelligence failure.
