India's dangerous idea
Dear Sunil,
I think we can both agree that India's recent nuclear tests were an attempt by a shaky coalition government to prop itself up for a few more months. But it has been hard for me to recognise what you describe as "legitimate strategic and security reasons" behind India's nuclear programme. The truth is that India has made more enemies than friends after 50 years as a dysfunctional democracy. Its immediate neighbours see it as a bully. In this, India probably suffers the fate of all large countries surrounded by small ones, but then its actions haven't inspired a great deal of trust. The mess in Sri Lanka is the fault of Indian adventurists; petty disputes with Bangladesh continue; relations with Nepal have never flourished. Decades of fence-mending with China have been reduced to nought after recent statements from the Indian defence minister.
As for Pakistan, the country's raison d'?re is a vigorous and consistent rejection of what you elegantly describe as the "Idea of India"; it has little choice but to keep levelling the score every time India seems to surge ahead. Zulfikar Bhutto vowed that if necessary his country would eat grass to build its own bomb. Nothing about Pakistan's nervousness and anxiety should surprise us.
It is up to India to behave in a magnanimous manner towards its perennially distrustful neighbour. More importantly, it is up to India to recognise that its stand on Kashmir is not tenable. To hold on to Kashmir simply because letting it go would undermine India's secular nature seems to me to be imposing abstract ideals over reality. It was exceptional men such as Gandhi and Nehru who ensured that secularism became India's official creed. However, India remains a religious, Hindu-dominated country where to be a non-Hindu is to suffer several handicaps at once. Muslims in India were a poor, insecure and resentful minority long before the BJP arrived on the centre stage; the Hindu nationalists have only sought to legitimise an already existing state of affairs.
The fact that some Muslims in Kashmir want to opt-out from India is understandable. India cannot hope to deal with the separatist problem there by blaming Pakistan, exploding nuclear bombs, or letting the army impose a slash-and-burn secularism on the Kashmiris. The answer lies in closing the gap between the highmindedness of the founding fathers and the awkward facts of the Hindu-Muslim relationship in the subcontinent. This is not easy.
It has become a western journalistic tic to refer to India's all-too-obvious problems and wonder how, if at all, they can be addressed by the nuclear tests. The condescension cannot be denied: look at how hard the poor chaps strive to keep up with the nuclear Joneses. But there is also an element of truth. Not much is gained by pointing at the double standards of western nations; these are too well known. What is more noteworthy is the larger consensus-perhaps the one great achievement of the anti-nuclear movement in the west-that nuclear bombs are a dangerous mistake and it is best to get rid of them. Even western nuclear powers recognise this, if not as much as one would wish them to.
Perhaps it is the sad fate of the so-called underdeveloped world to make the same mistakes as the developed world. India is the world's largest importer of conventional arms; spending on defence in the annual budget has gone up drastically this year. I can't see how the social and economic problems which India faces can be transcended by security concerns, most of which are induced by paranoia and, in the case of politicians and bureaucrats, by a corrupt craving for large kickbacks from European arms suppliers.
Yours,
Pankaj Mishra
3rd June 1998
Dear Pankaj,
Yes, the decision by the BJP-led government to test nuclear weapons was transparent opportunism. But from this point on I am less clear what your argument is. India's "dysfunctional democracy," you say, is bullying and ungenerous towards its neighbours; has always been Hindu-dominated; is obsessed with mimicking the west; and wastes too much money on arms when it should be spending it on other things. Some of these points are individually true, but do they add up to an alternative argument about how the Indian state should defend itself? In my view, your case is a loose muddle of bien pensant sentiment and political misjudgement.
You seem to have caught the insularity bug, which makes so many Indians today focus on rather local and domestic concerns. The fact is that the world situation has changed; India has to find a new position in it. Over the last decade Indian foreign policy has lost its way, thanks to an obsessive inwardness and cultural hermeticism. I do disagree with the BJP's decision to exploit a nuclear resource built-and managed with restraint-over three decades by previous governments. But, aside from the short-term interests of the present government, the Indian state does have legitimate long-term security and strategic interests which require protection.
Democratic states, like all others, survive through their ability to withstand external threats. These threats are of two kinds: military challenges and the jagged rhythms of the global economy. How should India respond? The disintegration of the Soviet Union removed a pillar of Indian military security. India today is surrounded by an arc of non- or precariously democratic states; and is confronted by an altered strategic situation in west and central Asia-the new and older states of this region have begun to sense the mutual benefits in stressing their cultural and religious links. Further, the US has consistently aided Pakistan by turning a blind eye to its nuclear programme (this suited the US when it was channelling funds through the Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) to Afghan rebels fighting the Soviets), and it supports an authoritarian government in China because this suits its economic interests. Other likely friends of India, such as Britain, have taken to sending red-bearded gnomes to lecture the subcontinentals on how to avoid their periodic spats.
It is true that India's military security environment improved in the very recent past, thanks to the efforts of previous governments and especially of the former prime minister, IK Gujral. There was little reason to upset this. But in a sense the decision to test now simply made overt a situation that had existed covertly since 1974, when India conducted its first "peaceful" nuclear explosion. We must also remember that in April, Pakistan tested its Ghauri missile-capable of reaching every large Indian city. Meanwhile, nuclear technology has passed regularly from China to Pakistan-with the US sitting on its hands. Judgements about the degree of threat faced by a state are always and properly open to dispute. Judging between the relative claims of military as against economic security, and deciding which risks to invest against, is a chancy business. None of the existing forms of political reflection-conservative, liberal, socialist, Gandhian-have faced this problem openly. Nor, I think, do you. In modern democracies, these judgements are usually left to experts-this is especially so in the case of India. Happily there are signs that a more public debate is beginning.
Yes, the majority of Indians do practise one of the many Hindu faiths. But religious belief has never been reflected in the architecture of the Indian state. Non-Hindus have suffered handicaps, but the state has tried actively to remedy this. It has stood above religion. The new and threatening development is that the BJP would like to change this. I disagree with you when you say that the BJP is only trying to legitimise an existing state of affairs. It is not; it is drastically changing it.
In this context, you raise the issue of Kashmir. There are at least two reasons why things took such a bad turn over the last decade: the systematic destruction, by governments in New Delhi, of democracy in the state, and the actions of the Pakistani ISI. Since the end of the Afghan war, the ISI has supported insurgents in India-controlled Kashmir. Things had been improving. This can continue, if democratic politics is re-established, and if the two states are willing to give up something to gain something more. There is no God-given sanctity to territorial boundaries. One way forward in resolving the Kashmir question may be for India and Pakistan each to retreat from ideas of absolute sovereignty to a more shared, blurred conception-such as that pioneered in the Northern Ireland Agreement.
It is true that India is pursuing an excessively military definition of security; the government is deceiving itself if it feels it has become a world power simply because it has blasted a few craters in the Rajasthani desert. Economic security is clearly more important. What makes modern states powerful is their capacity to trade-India's share of world trade is laughable: less than 1 per cent. But contrary to what you say, India does not spend excessively on defence: about 3 per cent of GDP (compared with 6 per cent in Pakistan). While it is true that this has been increased in the current budget, by about 14 per cent-after several years of cuts-it is not a drastic rise.
The May nuclear tests have cleared a cloud of hypocrisy which has hung over the world for many decades, and especially since the end of the cold war. Now the reality of a multipolar world, deeply unequal, seething with aspirations and frustrations, will have to be recognised by the cosy club of nuclear and economic powers-N5 and G8. They will have to renegotiate terms with the rest of the world. What the idealism of the non-aligned movement could not bring about may finally happen through realpolitik. It will be more messy, more dangerous, but perhaps more decisive.
Yours,
Sunil Khilnani
3rd June 1998
Dear Sunil,
Take Kashmir. You say that this conflict is partly the result of governments in New Delhi undermining democracy in the state. This would have been a rare acknowledgement of the Indian state's real role, except that it sets up a false opposition between then and now. The shady deals which Nehru and then Indira and Rajiv Gandhi struck with a corrupt Kashmiri family never amounted to democracy. Unsurprisingly, after experimenting with puppet regimes, the Indian state had to resort to military repression in order to hold Kashmir. The question-often asked of the US-whether a country has the right to impose its idea of democracy on a subject people, is not raised by you at all.
To blame the Pakistani ISI for the mess in Kashmir is a well-rehearsed tactic of the Indian state, particularly of the BJP. The allegation is not without truth; but the ISI's presence in Kashmir is a recent one; the Pakistanis have come in to exploit a situation originally created by wrong-headed policies of the Indian state. As for the "arc of non- or precariously democratic states" around India, which of these states is likely to pose a realistic threat to India? I have already said that Pakistan has to respond to India's provocations: that is its tragic fate. But Nepal? Myanmar? Bangladesh? Afghanistan? Sri Lanka? Iran? Even China? These countries are locked in such exacting struggles of their own that the idea that they would have any designs on India is absurd. (You do not even bother to explain India's poor image among its neighbours. Instead you lapse into a BJP-style dread fantasy of a united and resurgent Islam in central and west Asia.)
You assert that the Indian state was "above religion" and actively worked to remove discrimination against minorities; and that the BJP threatens to change all that. Once again I detect a false opposition: an idealised reality set against the alien forces of darkness. Once again you provide a rose-tinted portrait of the Indian state which dissolves the moment one examines the record of Nehru's successors. What, for example, was the Indian state under Indira Gandhi up to in Punjab? You also misread the role of religious identity-as distinct from religion itself-in ordinary Indian life. Any lower-middle class Muslim in India looking for a job, or place to rent, has sufficient proof of his second-class status. The near-total absence of Muslims from what you grandly call the architecture of the Indian state-including the civil service, the police, the military-is only part of the large body of evidence against India's mostly rhetorical secularism.
It is true that I have been infected by the "insularity bug." I happen to be one of the 640m people in India without access to safe drinking water-although not, luckily, one of the 450m who live in absolute poverty. This fact makes me, like many other Indians, too focused on what you belittle as "rather local and domestic concerns." If, as you say, the world has passed India by, it is not because of the "obsessive inwardness and cultural hermeticism"-whatever that means-of Indian politics. It is because the Indian state has failed properly to feed and clothe a substantial part of its population; and failed to generate enough internal resources of the kind China-to take an imperfect example-has accumulated in its years of obsessive insularity in order to be counted among the strong and self-sufficient.
I am not surprised that much of what I say seems like a "loose muddle of bien pensant sentiment and political misjudgement" to you. This may be because I do not deal with such important-sounding matters as "altered strategic situations" and "multipolar worlds." These are merely words in the serene groves of academe and the shallow waters of think-tanks where a thousand experts flourish, but they have a terrifying reality in the brutal world of realpolitik (which you accurately-and approvingly?-point out that India now seeks to enter). In this world the Henry Kissingers always win and the Indians, despite their bombs, are destined to be losers.
Yours,
Pankaj
5th June 1998
Dear Pankaj,
I have no reverence for the Indian state: it is not a pretty thing. But I do recognise that its stable existence is a necessary condition for anything else which we might agree is desirable-democracy, prosperity, a more equal society. Your anti-statist posture has a radical chic appeal; but produces a kind of hyper-criticism, which frees one from having to think of any practical alternatives.
You question my intellectual fairness and accuracy on four counts: Kashmir; the degree of threat India may face; the character of Indian secularism; and what you see as a too airy view of the quotidian problems of most Indians.
On Kashmir, it is clear that India's claim to the territory has been in dispute since 1948. Nehru was evasive on the vexed subject of India's boundaries: he recognised that a democratic state was a "daily plebiscite"-which led him to promise a referendum to the Kashmiri people. But equally he found himself subject to the dictates of raison d'?t. For the last 50 years in Kashmir-and as tragically, in Nagaland-India has enforced its claim to sovereign control of its territory by military means. My point is that this took a turn for the worse from the 1980s-when even the semblance of democratic government in Kashmir was undermined. In my first letter I did raise the matter of the legitimacy of sovereign claims-by India or Pakistan-to Kashmir, and suggested that new thinking was necessary.
You seem to believe that India faces no threats to its military security at all, or at least none which it has not created for itself. India has borders. These borders are disputed. China and Pakistan have thrice begun wars with India over them. Are you suggesting that no defence of these borders is necessary-that all spending on arms is indefensible? Or that too much is being spent? If the latter, then a much more precise argument is required.
I entirely agree-as I said in my last letter-that in ordinary Indian life, non-Hindus and especially Muslims suffer handicaps. The state has not done enough to improve their situation. But I can't agree with your claim that it has done nothing at all, or that, for the last 50 years, secularism has been a sham. Of course the Indian state has failed in huge areas-sometimes by not doing enough, sometimes by trying to do too much. The greatest failure is, I agree, not providing the basic necessities of life to hundreds of millions of Indians. But I am clear that India was right not to follow what-a little coyly-you refer to as the "imperfect example" of China.
My difficulty is not with your words, but whether or not they add up to an argument which can, to use your metaphors, swing-or sail-beyond the groves of academe or the waters of think-tanks. I think not. You use such a broad brush that all distinctions are obscured-it is hard to see how anything can change. Surely the state-dislike it how we may-is an important instrument of both change and protection.
Yours,
Sunil
7th June 1998
Dear Sunil,
I am sorry to have induced such gloom in you with my anti-state stance. I think you'll agree that we are both the beneficiaries, in different ways, of that very same Indian state and of its skewed priorities that created, among other lopsided things, an internationally mobile intelligentsia while condemning a majority of Indians to a darkness of poverty and illiteracy. Perhaps disloyalty to an existing dispensation that has endowed one with one's privileges does look like radical chic. However, I assure you that much less glamorous kinds of disaffection exist in India. The uniformed security guards of urban India, the private armies of big landlords, the communist protectors of landless peasants-these are only some signs of a diverse opting-out from under the state's tattered umbrella. The high incidence of rape-one each hour-and dowry deaths-one every two hours-illustrates the grim paradox of a state crying wolf about national security even as it fails to adequately protect the more vulnerable half of the population.
Yes, change will come, not because the Indian state in its present state of decay wishes it, but because millions of Indians want it: Indians whose aspirations for democracy and justice are no longer answered by the colonial structures inherited from the British and then adorned with some Nehruvian good intentions. After 50 years of corrupt and corrupting one-party rule, these structures have ceased to be effective. You say my criticism of the state does away with "having to think of practical alternatives." But the remark reflects an outmoded paternalism which was always part of the problem: that a metropolitan elite-policy-makers and think-tank sailors-would show the way and the masses would follow. The practical alternatives are now being tried out by India's grassroots movements, which constitute a great source of light in an otherwise gloomy world: the hundreds of thousands of Indians working in the fields of environment, human rights, adult education, women's rights, health, alternative technology-people, let it be said, pitted in many ways against the oppressive self-serving machinery of the crypto-colonial state.
Many of these individuals and organisations have rejected all justifications offered by the Indian state for the nuclear tests; it is all too clear to them that the tests have nothing to do with the needs of India's people, but express the geopolitical ambitions of its ruling elite, which, after the collapse of non-alignment, is desperately trying out a new way of being a global player.
I reject the terms of a safe 1960-ish third worldism whereby any waving of two-fingers to the west, is acceptable. It is more useful to examine the repercussions of the nuclear tests within India; to look, too, at that diseased holy cow, the Indian state, which, I am relieved to note, you have agreed is "not a pretty thing" even while you hope-against hope-that some health-giving milk may still be squeezed out of it.
Yours,
Pankaj
8th June 1998
There are certainly practical forms of dissent which are emerging in India, and which are part of the host of alternative conceptions of how India should be. But the very fact that these grassroots movements are imaginatively expanding the idea of India is testimony to the initial idea. What you describe as "Nehruvian good intentions" created a state which has remained democratic over the past five decades, and has made it possible for the people to organise and act for themselves-as they are now doing. I can't help feeling, therefore, that your critical position relies on a heavy dose of bad faith. Yes, the meanings and consequences of nuclear India should hold our attention over the next few months. As for me, I should reiterate my view that the tests were legitimate but, in their timing, wrong.
Yours,
Sunil
