Coercive retirement

This is the second year of the Dialogue organised by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies IISS and George Fernandes had almost missed the first, held at the same time last year. I was then on my way back from Europe and received a frantic phone call from IISS Director John Chipman who had just heard that Fernandes had cancelled his visit in view of the near-warlike situation with Pakistan. This was within a fortnight of the Kaluchak massacre, and no more than a couple of days after Musharraf8217;s defiant 8220;Allah-o-Akbar8221; speech and the three provocative missile tests. The Institute had lined up bilaterals for Fernandes with Paul Wolfowitz standing in for Donald Rumsfeld and UK Defence Secretary Geoffrey Hoon. Pakistan was not even invited to the Dialogue and what a disaster it would have been if Fernandes, too, had cancelled. My intervention was sought purely on the basis of my senior citizen status, having just 8220;retired8221; after serving the Institute8217;s Council for six years.

Mercifully, Fernandes and his advisors defied the elements and arrived here, seeing the significance of the event. The networks were all seeking him out then and there was no doubt as to who was the star of the show. He may feel, relatively, a bit less wanted this time. And even when he is caught by the networks, the questions will be related to prospects for peace. Last year, these were all about prospects of war. Most of these questions will come up on Sunday, at the concluding press conference after two days of deliberations, now focused on terrorism and nuclear proliferation, and chances are most of these will be about Vajpayee8217;s new peace initiative and Fernandes8217;s interpretation of what he would have been saying far away in Europe on these very days.

You have to be here to see the significance of the transformation Vajpayee8217;s latest initiative has brought about in the mood. The international strategic community is now fixated on the Middle East. The who8217;s who of that small but influential group, now present in this one hotel off Orchard Street, are relieved that India and Pakistan may be heading for stabilisation, if not settlement, while the rest of the world gravitates to the Middle East. It is nobody8217;s case that the South Asian situation is anywhere near as significant as the Middle East or that Condoleezza Rice and George Bush are soon going to be headed this way these people are too seasoned not to understand India8217;s 8220;third party8221; sensitivities. But there is a great deal of pleasant surprise at the Vajpayee initiative and nobody is saying it followed a phone call from Bush or some not-so-gentle prodding from one of his flunkeys. It is seen pretty much to be a stand-alone Vajpayee initiative.

The questions that are raised, however, are entirely predictable: Does he have the energy and the time to sustain this initiative? Does he have sufficient support within his party and the coalition? How will this square with the BJP8217;s anti-Pakistan/anti-Muslim election agenda? And, finally, how long will it be before the Hindu hawks derail it?

It is in that light that the 8220;retirement8221; remark needs to be read. Vajpayee8217;s move at Srinagar was instinctive and statesmanly. He says he looked at the eyes in the crowd of Kashmiris, saw a new mood, a yearning for peace, and made his move8212;8221;from the heart8221;. But 55 years in public teaches you not to react entirely from the heart.

Vajpayee could still be derailed and he knows the roadblocks and pitfalls better than anybody else. He knows his hawks detest what he is doing, that they think they already have an agenda for next year8217;s elections, anti-terrorism, anti-Mian Musharraf, anti-Pakistan, a campaign so successfully lab-tested by Narendra Modi in Gujarat. What he is now building is an agenda entirely his own: That of peace, prosperity, stability. Give me a real mandate and five more years and I will bring permanent peace for your children. He will now be going to China8212;probably on June 228212;with a message fully in consonance with the very political agenda he unfolded in Srinagar.

The idea will be the same and you can8217;t see how so many more voters won8217;t find it more attractive than any agenda of hate and permanent communal rioting. If he succeeds, it is difficult to say what the Congress will come up with as its Plan B. If he doesn8217;t, he will obviously retire and that8217;s a message not so much for you and I, but for his own ideological kin. They can take it, or fight the next election on their own agenda, but without him in front. Is coercive diplomacy now making way for coercive retirement, or detachment?

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