Tags:
Journalism of Courage
The defence minister has done it yet again. His shooting from the hip on China has stirred up even more potential trouble than the country has learned to expect from this maverick. George Fernandes has, in fact, opened up the prospect of undoing the painstaking fence-mending with China that was the single most important foreign-policy achievement of Rajiv Gandhi, furthered ably by Narasimha Rao.
By rights, that process should move apace under Atal Behari Vajpayee as well 8212; provided his defence minister can be persuaded that more subdued speech is not to his detriment. Vajpayee certainly deserves some sympathy for the embarrassments that Fernandes seems bent on inflicting upon him. The still-fragile process of building long-term peace with China apart, Fernandes would do well to keep it in mind that Vajpayee and not he is responsible for the conduct of foreign policy in this government. He has been assigned the job of minding the country8217;s defence, not apportioning blame for endangering its securityenvironment. In any case, his outbursts are designed not to improve India8217;s security environment but to significantly worsen it.
Last, but hardly least, the defence minister is not meant to take his cue from a Chief Minister, as Fernandes has manifestly done from the Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh.
India and China8217;s efforts to improve ties can be likened to what Deng Xiaoping said in the context of Japan: leave it to a wiser generation. The purport of this was that the exact contours of a durable and permanent solution could be left for later. In the meantime, the two countries have laboured in the last several years on things such as artillery withdrawals, patrols straying into disputed territory, getting to agree on the contentious Macmahon Line, land surveys and mapping, and much else. This is obviously a difficult process, and it seems outrageous that one man8217;s urge to stir the pot should be allowed to endanger it.
The government has done well to persuade the Chinese that Fernandes speaks forhimself, and the Chinese have in turn shown happy restraint in confining their protest to Fernandes and not taking his remarks as representative of government policy. But this is hardly a credible position. A Minister speaks by definition for the government he represents, and Fernandes has to be persuaded that much he may have has his own agenda, he has no proprietary rights over the Ministry of Defence. What is more, even if the direction of India8217;s foreign policy were to change under this government 8212; and the Prime Minister has been at pains to stress that it is not 8212; such sensitive policy decisions are to be communicated diplomatically, not through inflammatory public statements calling China the mother of Ghauri. It is not without good reason that India has had a tradition of self-effacing and low-profile defence ministers since after Krishna Menon8217;s time, ranging from Jagjivan Ram to K.C. Pant to Sharad Pawar. If Fernandes is not to plunge this government into an entirely uncalled for foreign-policycrisis, he had better learn quickly that it is not for one man, no matter how strong his convictions, to hijack the agenda of a government and of a nation. Failing that, it is incumbent on the Prime Minister to subdue his unruly colleague.
