Knee jerk responses to developments on the international chessboard are not what a good doctor would advise. Around a month and more ago, a retired Indian diplomat penned a column worthy of Rip van Winkle, the man who awoke from his sleep to discover that had he had slept through a century and that the surrounds once familiar to him had changed beyond recognition.
Similarly, our retired diplomat, awakening to unfamiliar reality, asked that the new world around him be reconstructed to fit the halcyon dream of a past age, now consigned to memory and dusty, discarded shelves in a disused attic. His preposterous suggestion was that India should ignore the contemporary great powers and opt for a leadership role of non-aligned states. Who might these be, one may well ask?
The faded picture accompanying his piece provided his answer: a jocular Jawaharlal Nehru in the middle with Abdel Gamel Nasser to his right and Josip Broz Tito on his left, each brimming optimism of the sunshine days when life appeared worth living. The hallucinatory embrace of history in the making has long dissolved into nightmare for Egypt and for the once buoyant Yugoslavia.
Egypt today is a crippled tree: military rule, the dispossessed Muslim Brotherhood, jihadi terrorism, stagnant economy and sullen population, reflecting a state of nullity devoid of purpose. Yugoslavia has disappeared from the map, destroyed by NATO bombing and ethnic discords. The once heroic Tito, darling of Western establishments, was consigned to the bin as a tyrannical communist. Tito, like Gorbachev after him, consumed by the flattery and attention of the great and good in Washington, London, Paris and Berlin, failed to read the signs. Strutting on the stage, they were duly cast into predestined oblivion when their roles were done.
Our retired diplomat, alas, is addicted to the nostrums of Ptolomy in the age of Copernicus. Fundamental truths cannot be discarded on a whim. Nor can ground realities. Some people of diminishing importance are given to pontificating on the four poles of global power, namely the United States, the Russian Federation, China and the European Union. Here, also, physics and mathematics are seriously flawed.
The crisis between the West and Russia has less to do with the poisoning of a former Russian spy working for Britain and that of his daughter and is more a tale of geopolitical rivalry. With the credibility of British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson increasingly tarnished, with the European Union exposed as an American stalking horse, we see unfolding before us a potential conflict with murderous consequences. This is no new cold war in likeness to its previous incarnation in which red lines were drawn and respected, but combustible rules of engagement prefiguring Armageddon.
President Trump’s mood swings and the craven loyalty of America’s European satraps is a cause for alarm. The American Empire’s acquisitive instincts, first revealed in the Monroe Doctrine of the early 1820s, and continuing through the westward expansion to the Pacific Ocean involved the genocide of the indigenous communities of the North American plain and entrenched black slavery the legacy starkly self-evident in the country’s oppressive inner city ghettos and overstocked prisons. ‘The pursuit of happiness’ exalted in the Constitution is reserved for the wealthy and privileged.
The accumulated riches in the early post-war years have been squandered in war without end. South East Asia was ravaged, the Korean Peninsula made desolate, the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki subjected to the world’s only nuclear assault, the Greater Middle East, from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya destroyed, with a Biblical exodus across the Mediterranean a living witness to unending horror and a society back home wracked by gun violence, low inner city education, social deprivation and much else. The search for an elusive security is manic, as is the detection of national enemies.
Such is the first of the multiple realities that foreign policy makers must ponder. India is no exception to the rule. Located in a fraught neighbourhood, requires a calibrated response to choices of policies with promising dividends. Harsh Pant, the London-based academic, went viral at what he perceived to be India’s ‘supine’ Chinapolicy. India stands by its position on Doklan, has not given way to Chinese claims to Arunachal Pradesh, or signed up to membership of China’s One Belt One Road club.
Nor has India ceased to strengthen its military presence on its northern border, or opt for an exotic Hare Krishna pacifism. Quite the opposite. India designed, manufactured and recently tested its very own seeker technology to service the fearsome supersonic BrahMos cruise missile, its range extended from 290km to 400km and soon to be increased to 600km. In a topsy-turvy world, India has decided to engage with China.
It is the sensible thing to do. Mindless truculence is posturing, firing a blank and captivated by the sound.
Whither Indo-Nepal relations?
Indo-Nepal relations, determined geography, culture and shared history have been close and are surely destined to remain so going forward into the 21st and beyond. Tranquility has given way occasionally to bursts of turbulence, followed by restored peace. The visit to India by the new Prime Minister of Nepal, Khadga Prasad Sharma Oily, has been awaited with interest on both sides of the border. During his first tenure in office, Nepal’s relations with India were stressful. Prime Minister Oily accused India of interfering in Nepal’s domestic politics through its perceived support for the Nepali Madhesi agitation for greater recognition of their place in the country during nationwide consultations on a new democratic constitution to replace centuries-old monarchical rule. Situated on the Nepali plains adjacent to the Indian border, the Madhesi leadership made their point by blockading the roads and highways from India to the capital Kathmandu and into the Nepali interior. So much for the troubled past, which Prime Minister Sharma Oily hoped to put behind him. That period was done and dusted. The Madhesis had joined the mainstream, a free and democratic nation election had voted him to power. His prime concern now, like that of his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, was to tackle corruption, promote development and prosperity. That was the best way forward to a workable future.
Asked about the slow progress of Indian projects in Nepal, he accepted that this a problem which would be addressing in his discussions with Prime Minister Modi. Nepal was a sovereign country and was watchful on any possible dilution of its sovereignty. Nepal had an even-handed approach to ties with India and China, each crafted with an eye to the national interest. Nobody would fault Prime Minister Oily making the priority of Nepal’s well-being the cornerstone of his foreign policy. Why ever not? India obeys similar compulsions, as do most countries, if not in deeds, certainly in words.
If there was a resemblance to discordance, it was Mr Oily’s reference to Pakistan’s view that the South Asian grouping known by the acronym SAARC should be reactivated. Under normal circumstances, yes, but conditions are far from normal. Jihadi attacks on Mumbai, India’s financial capital, have resulted in horrendous losses of life and property. Such attacks have occurred elsewhere in India. The sine qua non of a normalized Indo-Pakistan relationship is the cessation of Pakistani support of terror groups as an instrument of its foreign policy. It is not too much to ask.
No citizen is above the law
The rule of law entails obedience to the law. That was where the Bollywood megastar Salman Khan transgressed. He was accused of poaching two black bucks designated as an endangered species. The deed was committed on the night of October 12, 1998, when he, fellow actors and a crew were shooting for a film. They were acquitted for lack of evidence. Mr Khan was deemed guilty as charged and sentenced to five years in jail, and was led to the Jodhpur Central jail to serve his sentence. Chief Judicial Magistrate Dev Kumar Khatri read out his 201-page judgment upholding the law and punishing the transgressor, however eminent he might be.
The Bishnoi community, wedded to the sacredness of nature and its creatures great and small fought for justice for 19 years. Justice was eventually done and seen to be done, much to satisfaction of the humble Bishnois. The wheels of justice grind slow, they grind exceeding well. Mr Khan was released on bail, pending an appeal.
