The Same Old Pattern
By Akhtar Mahmud Faruqui
CA
At a hearing of the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Vann H. Van Diepen, Acting Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Non-Proliferation, is reported to have observed, ‘By definition, we do not support any activity that goes against the (NSG) guidelines. Based on the facts we are aware of, it would occur to us that this sale (of two Chinese reactors to Pakistan) would not be allowed to occur without any exemption from the NSG.’
For Indian commentators, Van Diepen’s view was a fitting remark to play up to question the Pak-China deal for the supply of two nuclear reactors to Pakistan. Said N.V. Subramanian: China could disregard the NSG completely if it decides that assisting Pakistan, its all-weather ally, is worth the risk of courting international opprobrium. It might also see defying the US as part of its rise, although it would also make it harder for this rise to be described as ‘peaceful.’
These developments follow the unholy pattern of the past - consistently chastising Pakistan and willfully ignoring India and its misguided adventurism.
A screaming headline “Indian firm aided Iraq” splashed across the front page of the January 19, 2002, issue of The Los Angeles Times should have created quite a stir in the United States at a time when the country was abuzz with war hysteria against Iraq.
The charge against India was well substantiated. Said a paragraph preceding the news story’s explosive text: “In defiance of UN resolutions, a company used deceit to export material that could be used in weapons, Indian court records show.”
Replete with evidence, the exhaustive story filed by the LAT staff writer Bob Drogin in New Delhi, made startling disclosures: “An obscure Indian trading company has provided the first clear evidence that Iraq obtained materials over the last four years to produce or deliver weapons of mass destruction. The company, NEC Engineering Private Ltd., used phony customs declarations and other false documents, as well as front companies in three countries, to export 10 consignments of raw materials and equipment that Saddam Hussein’s regime could use to produce chemical weapons and propellants for long-range missiles, according to Indian court sources....”
Yet, the news hardly created a mild stir in the American press. Bob Drogin was quick to furnish an explanation for the muffled response: “ US officials have not publicized the NEC case, in part to avoid embarrassing the Indian government about the lapse in its export controls....” The media appeared equally mindful of the sensitivities of the issue and maintained a studied indifference. But while India’s complicity in the sinister weapon-manufacturing designs was conveniently ignored, there was no let-up in the media’s zeal to censure Iraq or to malign Islam.
The attitude is consistent with the media’s policy to ignore Delhi for its misdoings and to chastise Pakistan instead. This is also true of US diplomats. Thus, while the the-then US ambassador to India, Mr Blackwell, gleefully won accolades in Delhi for his outburst against Islamabad vis-a-vis Kashmir, his counterpart in Islamabad did not hesitate to cause all-round embarrassment to Pakistan by accusing it of cross-border terrorism in his comments at a meeting in Karachi.
Is there a method in this unbecoming display of levity? Perhaps yes. Thus India’s test-firing of the nuclear-capable surface-to-air Akash missile and its attendant threat to Pakistan went largely unnoticed by the Western media. Diplomats and political analysts too demonstrated equal indifference though the implications of the Akash test-firing are manifold and worrisome.
What did the test signify? And, more importantly, what does the clandestine sale of propellants for long-range missiles demonstrate? The two are vivid indicators of India’s missile production capability and the threat it poses to Pakistan. The seriousness of the threat is unmistakable.
The Indian missile build-up has been a sustained process. Its first success came in May 1989 with the test-firing of an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), Agni. The test, according to the then defense minister, K.C. Pant, signified the country’s “potential to carry lethal warheads over long distances and deliver them with great accuracy.” Lethal in the parlance of IRBMs and ICBMs signifies nuclear payload capability.
Described as the ultimate weapon, the Indian IRBM poses a threat not only to Pakistan but to targets as 1600 to 2,500 kilometers away. Agni has the reach to strike at Saudi Arabia, Iran, the Gulf states, China, Russia and Diego Garcia.
Thus, while Agni has launched India into a new orbit — one which it shares with the US, Russia, France, China and Israel — and has given it the trappings of a mini-superpower in terms of military clout, if not the economic well-being of the country’s teeming millions, it occasioned criticism, both at home and abroad, for its colossal destructive potential.
Following Agni’s test-firing, Baiju Patnaik, Orissa’s Janata Dal chief, was quick to protest to the then Indian prime minister, “I sincerely hope that our defense experts are aware that attempts at mass destruction by nuclear strike are also a direct invitation to mass suicide at home.” On another occasion, he seemed to wonder: “Must India also participate in the ultimate crime of destroying life on this planet?”
Patnaik’s plain talking at that time was shared by many academics. Said Professor Dhirendra Sharma of New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University: “ India’s entry into the superpower club is meaningless without first providing its citizens with basic necessities.... Evidently there are no strategic parameters which necessitate the spending of our meager resources on non-productive and obsolete weapons systems.”
The hawks in India seemed to share a different perception. Indra Nil Banerjee, for instance, exhorted the Indian government to go the whole hog lest the labor of innumerable scientists, huge investment “and most of all a historic opportunity to assert itself in global politics” was lost. Not surprisingly, the post-Agni developments witnessed an aggressive posture on the diplomatic front. The hawkish mood displayed by an external affairs bureaucrat seemed to mirror Banerjee’s thinking. “Saarc is important to us”, he said, “but we have got to break out of our regional straitjacket and assert ourselves. Our area of concern extends from Afghanistan (which mythologically Hindus claim as part of India) to the Indian Ocean.”
Stemming from such intents, Indian efforts to produce missiles received a major boost in July 1983 when the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMBP) was launched with an initial funding of Rs 380 crores. More than 53 independent institutions from the public and private sectors, including 19 defense research laboratories, seven universities, 11 ordnance factories, the Indian Space Research Organization, and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, joined hands to pool the technical know-how and production skills to attempt self-sufficiency in missile production in the 1990s. The Defence Research and Development Laboratory (DRDL), the apex body to coordinate the effort, hummed with feverish activity under the leadership of Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam as the program gained momentum.
Dr Kalam did not believe in ‘catching up’ with the advanced countries but strove to develop front-line technologies on the drawing board. “Our aim is to be the first in at least a few key areas of missile technology,” he declared, adding, “the country which has indigenous design capabilities is the winner.... If you only got second-hand technology, you can never hope to catch up with or have access to state-of-the-art equipment. You will always be behind.”
With this insight and Dr Kalam’s belief that “technology respects technology and strength respects strength”, results were not slow in coming. In a short span of six years, India developed three missiles: Trishul, Prithvi, and Agni. The DRDL scientists later succeeded in developing a few more missiles, including Akash and the anti-tank Nag. The effort continues with renewed vigor. The Los Angeles Times’ revelation of the export of propellants for long-range missiles testifies to the awesome advances India has made in the production of missiles.
In his Agni baptismal speech, the late Mr. Rajiv Gandhi is said to have personally added a line to the prepared text, “We must remember that technological backwardness also leads to subjugation.” Ironically, these words carried a cryptic and deeper note for countries consistently subjected to Indian muscle-flexing.
Today there is no shortage of chauvinistic firebrands in India who share Rajiv Gandhi’s view. The country’s involvement in the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction — at home and abroad — continues unhindered and unabated. And as New Delhi vainly tries to maintain its facade of secularism, the seething hatred of Hindu fundamentalists against Muslims, Christians and other religious minorities mounts.
In his manifesto ‘We, or Our Nationhood Defined’ (1939), Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, supreme director of the RSS from 1940 to 1973, said that Hindus could ‘profit’ from the example of the Nazis, who had manifested ‘race pride at its highest’ by purging Germany of the Jews. According to him, India was Hindustan, a land of Hindus where Jews and Parsis were ‘guests’ and Muslims and Christians ‘invaders.’” (“The Other Face of Fanaticism” by Pankaj Mishra, New York Times, February 15, 2003).
The implications of such principled observations should not be lost on US diplomats and people in the corridors of power like Vann H. Van Diepen. Given the testimony of Bob Drog and Pankaj Mishra who should the US chastise: India or Pakistan?
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