India won’t fit BJP straitjacket

Four years after Pokharan, when the nation rose to support the BJP’s decision to go nuclear across political lines, the government’s determination to stifle all contact with a neighbour because it has decided to do so smacks of complete disdain for all those who dare disagree.

National security has become such a holy cow that questioning the whys and wherefores of the policy under that rubric could lead to questions about one’s own patriotism.

The BJP has not only disallowed official-level dialogue with Pakistan — the ‘epicentre of terrorism’ — but has over the last year shut down all traffic across land and air borders. Apart from hugely hurting outbound air traffic that must overfly Pakistani airspace to get to most of the west, the sense of isolation it is causing within the country is beginning to verge on the dangerous.

There are a large number of Indian citizens, mostly Muslims, who have family and friends across the Radcliffe Line. These are Indians who chose to stay back in India after Partition because they preferred to go with the idea of India.

But more than 50 years later, they have been rendered speechless for fear they will be accused by the government of not keeping national interest to the fore.

It’s not as if New Delhi has never invoked the national security clause in the past and stopped talking to Pakistan. During Rajiv Gandhi’s government in the mid-eighties and then again under P.V. Narasimha Rao in 1994, New Delhi walked out of a number of official-level talks because of Islamabad’s determined refusal to play by the rules.

But at all times, even at the worst of times, there was no attempt to tamper with that lovely euphemism, ‘people-to-people interaction’, because these governments had a sense of history behind them.

They knew the dangers of tampering with the notion of a liberal democracy, of suffocating and limiting the multi-hued idea of India. Let the other country behave with indignity and small-mindedness. India, on the other hand, from Kanchenjunga to Kanyakumari, Kashmir to Kamakhya, is an anarchic, nebulous idea that refuses to be tied down to a single dimension and monocolour. It is the exploration of life, the celebration of difference.

But what is the BJP’s idea of India? More and more, the invocations of terrorist attacks on Parliament, at Kaluchak, at the Ansal shopping centre in Delhi, are becoming single-word answers. But let’s put the record straight: never, not even for a second, have Indians not condemned these attacks. But why stop talking to the ‘enemy’? Doesn’t the BJP realise that its most powerful propaganda tool against terrorism lies within? That the power of discussion and critique can sometimes demolish the ‘enemy’s’ argument far more effectively than enforced silence?

The silence, at the moment, is deafening. The home ministry has a metaphorical placard at its entrance that says: ‘Let Pakistan first hand over those criminals on India’s list of 20.’ The external affairs ministry has another: ‘Let cross-border terrorism end first.’ Minor variations exist in other government departments. India is being squeezed between a rock and a hard place. Or maybe it’s the devil and the deep blue sea. Take your pick.