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Journalism of Courage
The debate whether Lal Krishna Advani was a 8220;traitor8221; or a statesman groping to prepare for a future coalition government in which the BJP could be a partner, will and must continue. There are also bound to be two views on whether M.A. Jinnah was at heart secular or had always believed in a separate theocratic state for Muslims. This debate, however, raises a broader question: should we expect lifelong consistency from political leaders?
Most professionals and intellectuals find it safer to follow the footprints of the past. It is only statesmen who can repudiate the rhetoric of their earlier perceptions. A.B. Vajpayee led a torchlight procession protesting against the Simla Agreement in 1972 but in 1978 8212; disregarding virulent warnings in the Lahore press that he was not welcome 8212; went to Islamabad and openly acknowledged it was in India8217;s interest that a sovereign Pakistan should be stable. This transformed the climate of Indo-Pak relations.
In 1962, Robert McNamara was prepared to risk nuclear war if the Soviet Union did not withdraw its nuclear missiles from Cuba; he was also an unashamed hawk on American involvement in Vietnam. Today, in retrospect, he confesses, 8220;I was wrong; we were terribly wrong.8221; He is now unconditionally opposed to nuclear weapons. According to the Chinese author, Jung Chung, 70 million Chinese were killed because of a succession of ill-conceived policies of Mao Zedong, but his one-time comrade-in-arms, Deng Xiaoping, as party secretary-general, adopted market-oriented reforms which have turned China into one of the most powerful economies in the world.
Closer home, Manmohan Singh, as secretary of the South-South Commission, advocated socialist principles and emphasised state trading. But, in 1991, as the Union finance minister, he liberalised the Indian economy, gave it unprecedented dynamism and facilitated its adjustment to globalisation.
Prophets with infallible crystal balls are of course rare, but next to them are decision-makers who can confess to mistakes and make timely course corrections. The fact is the last century has witnessed monstrous misperceptions. If the clock could be turned back, the British government would not have planted the seeds of partition in a geographically, demographically and culturally united subcontinent. It did not perpetuate its empire nor give it lasting leverage against India and Pakistan.
Similarly, the 40 year-long Cold War was essentially a case of mutually reinforced paranoia between superpowers. Nuclear weapons and their demonstrated use in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were supposed to permanently dominate international politics, but the US monopoly lasted barely four years and while these terrible devices gave confidence to those who possessed them, they did not ensure victory even against small countries. US in Vietnam, Russia in Chechnya, the Chinese in Vietnam, and so on. The greatest political 8220;disaster8221; in history was the disintegration of nuclear-armed USSR in 1989-90. Nor has there been a bigger intellectual failure than when the US and India misinterpreted Soviet intervention in Afghanistan when perceptive observers in Kabul knew it aimed only to dislodge the Communist Hafizullah Amin and posed no threat to the Gulf oil artery. India by abdicating non-aligned principles facilitated the re-militarisation of Pakistan followed by political ducks and drakes in 1984, rigged elections in 1989, igniting 14 years of insurgency in the Valley. The CIA itself encouraged Osama bin Laden to go to the Afghan caves and fuelled Islamic terror, which culminated in 9/11. If India had not alienated Pushtoon nationalism, we might have been saved the Kargil intrusions in 1999. The mistakes cannot, of course, be undone but we should not slur over the astronomical penalties of not getting contemporaneous.
A more analytical explanation must be sought for this succession of avoidable mistakes coinciding with the knowledge revolution. The gallop of the technology of peace and war expanded trade, travel, development and condign power, but human comprehension followed only at a slow trot. We failed to grasp the consequences of the devolution of political awareness, which actually paralysed military power. Despite economic globalisation, emotive nationalism has become stronger, specially during the 8220;Fog of War8221;. What we are seeing is that the new 8220;superpower8221; is the people8217;s capacity of suicidal defiance.
We must constantly re-scrutinise the positive and negative legacy of history. The misadventure in Iraq turned Muslims anti-America but, collaterally, it also catalysed the rediscovery of a functional complementarity between Pakistan and India. We in India associate Pervez Musharraf only with Kargil but the agreement with Atal Bihari Vajpayee in January 2004, condemning all terror, is now a superseding reality. Meanwhile, India with its resilient democracy has moderated its own earlier excesses of anti-Americanism and Islamaphobia. It is the US which is now intellectually 8220;partitioned8221; between the liberals on both coasts and the evangelical heartland. Lessons can be gleaned from our experience; the hypnosis of size and strength compounded by unthinking insensitivity should not be allowed to delay rectification of rigid self-righteousness. It requires courage of confession to shift the focus to a constructive future. Diplomacy for contemporaneous sagacity must not be deflected by the fetish of consistency with the past.
