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Journalism of Courage
And so it has come to this pathetic pass that after six desperate years of wooing by Atal Behari Vajpayee, Jaswant Singh and Yashwant Sinha, the United States considers a nuclear rogue as its 8220;Most Important Non-Nato Ally8221; MINNA. Worse, the US secretary of state condescends to confer on us 8212; the founder-member of the Non-Aligned Movement 8212; the status of MINNA Second Class. That would make India to the US what the Trinamool Congress is to the BJP!
It was Pokhran II that began the unravelling of independence in India8217;s foreign policy. The ganging up of the nuclear weapon powers against us meant that we would either have to stand up in splendid isolation Ekla chalo re or bend our knees before the insolent might of the N-5, who are also the P-5.
Meanwhile, it took under a fortnight for Pakistan to enact its nuclear nautanki. With both countries now put in the doghouse, a shameful competition started between the two as to who could beat the other in getting out of the kennel. Pakistan won that round within a week 8212; when first the G-8 in Geneva and then the P-5 in New York pulled out the Kashmir Sword of Damocles, which had remained sheathed in the UN for 33 years since the war of 1965, and dangled it over India8217;s head in the shape of a Security Council resolution pointedly referring to Jammu and Kashmir.
And to underline the point that India8217;s rehabilitation in the international community depended on American tutelage, President Bill Clinton had the gall to include J038;K in his list of 8220;disputed areas8221; in his address to Parliament in the sacred precincts of Central Hall, an outrage never before permitted by any previous Indian government to any visiting foreign dignitary. The Talbott-Jaswant compact, however, ensured that Prime Minister Vajpayee kept his mouth firmly shut as genuflection towards Washington got indelibly inscribed as the first principle of the NDA8217;s foreign policy.
Under the terms of this subsidiary alliance, India After NAM was permitted to call itself 8220;Non-Aligned8221; but only provided it committed itself to the Superpower camp, just like the native princes of India, after William Bentinck, were permitted to call themselves 8220;raja8221; but only provided they put their Raj in hock to the Angrez. So desperate was the Vajpayee dispensation to keep the smile on the Yankee face that after our jawans had thrashed Pervez Musharraf8217;s troops in Kargil, the NDA endowed the credit for ending the war to the wigging given by Clinton to Nawaz Sharif.
Worse was to follow. The NDA commerce minister, Murasoli Maran, spoke up for India and all developing countries in his brilliant opening address to the WTO ministerial meeting in Doha. Vajpayee happened to be in the US at the time. Like the British resident whispering a word in the raja8217;s ear, George W. Bush told Vajpayee to shape up or ship out. Promptly word went to the Indian delegation in Doha to can it.
On the morrow of 9/11, the NDA rushed in where angels fear to tread. Without so much as being asked, New Delhi pledged its heart and soul 8212; and the sacred soil of Mother India 8212; to the Americans. The Americans quietly spurned the offer. Pakistan, they knew, mattered much more to them militarily than India ever would. Thus the worst state-sponsor of terrorism became their closet ally in what they chose to call their 8220;war on terrorism8221;.
Anxious, nevertheless, to prove that New Delhi and Washington were langotiya companions in the war on terrorism, Vajpayee tried to interest the White House in Pakistan8217;s role in the attack on the J038;K Assembly and then on Parliament. Washington and the rest of the West demurred. So, to impress Cowboy Bush in his own idiom, the NDA government drew up a dramatic list of its 8220;Twenty Most Wanted8221; residents of Pakistan, preliminary to cutting off air, train and bus links to Pakistan, recalling high commissioners or getting them recalled, and mobilising the army to the borders.
Thoroughly alarmed at India opening this second front in the 8220;war against terrorism8221; without American sanction, not one western government bought the NDA argument that Pakistan had sponsored the attack on the Indian Parliament. Instead, they firmly tucked the NDA8217;s tail between its legs and bullied it into pulling back its forces from the frontier.
Thus firmly catching the two nuclear-weapon armed neighbours by the ear, Washington brought Musharraf and Vajpayee to the negotiating table. Like errant but still recalcitrant schoolboys, the two signed on the dotted line 8212; but not before the NDA prime minister reneged on his 8220;principled8221; stand that there could be no talks with Pakistan until a cross-border terrorism was ended and b the infrastructure of terrorism dismantled. The earnest of Pakistan8217;s commitment was to be its acceptance of the expression 8216;8216;cross-border terrorism8217;8217;, a buzzword Jaswant Singh had altogether forgotten to include in the Lahore Declaration but which became the straw with which Vajpayee broke the Indo-Pakistani back at Agra.
Musharraf dug in his heels at Islamabad and rejected the expression. Vajpayee cravenly gave in. This provided Musharraf his opening to unambiguously delink the 8216;8216;freedom fighters8217;8217; of J038;K from the 8216;8216;terrorists8217;8217; against whom the US-led 8216;8216;global war on terrorism8217;8217; is allegedly being fought. The NDA is, therefore, left comforting itself with a 3-2 victory in the ODI cricket series. What a fall there was, my countrymen!
Musharraf, in his newly acquired avatar as Busharraf, has now become Target Number One for the Al-Qaeda. Like the French colonialists who honoured black Africans who killed other black Africans for the greater glory of France by conferring on them the title of 8216;8216;Legionnaire d8217;Honneur8217;8217;, Colin Powell has conferred on his erstwhile co-sponsor of the Taliban, Pervez Musharraf, the title of 8216;8216;MINNA8217;8217; for his taking up the White Man8217;s burden of America8217;s war on Osama bin Laden.
South Block is, therefore, left red with embarrassment, green with envy, and white with surrender. Substitute orange for red, and you have the colours of the Indian flag. This is what the NDA has done to India8217;s honour, independence and sovereignty.
