Opinion What India Can Say?
We can be an important part of the nuclear debate,we need to have a position on democracy in Pakistan,and we must have a clearer focus on subcontinental security.
During elections,our main parties need to articulate their global stand. We can be an important part of the nuclear debate,we need to have a position on democracy in Pakistan,and we must have a clearer focus on subcontinental security.
On the nuclear front,champions from both parties,having won their laurels as a nuclear power,must now conceptualise a larger role when giving up this power would make a country more powerful. The argument for global denuclearization originated in India. Barack Obama has made this his agenda. One can understand China and Russia,the dirty nuclear powers,in fact defending North Korea. But for India to not respond to total denuclearization and a new Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is tragically melodramatic to the point of being funny.
Our stand is the global shadow of our geriatric leadership flexing its non-existent muscles in gyms. The cartoons of old men with six packs for once look real.
There is also no new thinking on the global energy problem by a country once looked up to for its leadership on sustainable development. It’s not enough only to contribute the president of the ICC.
We have no take on democracy in Pakistan. In an earlier time,Indias borders were seen as protecting its interests in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. Its strategic interest in central Asia and the frontline states was there for all to see. When some portrayed the world in terms purely of an ‘Islamic’ and ‘non-Islamic’ clash of civilizations,India said,’Hey,we are also a large Muslim country!’.
Fanatics all over the world pull along very well with each other,but when the Chinese president visited India he told me,the Indian minister accompanying him,that the importance of chaos theory to the future of the world was as much as the repudiation of the clash of civilizations. He also told an incredulous press that he discussed chaos and history with the Indians.
Besides Pakistan,what is our take on the American initiatives in Afghanistan and Iran? As the howling of the wolves gets closer home,our silence is baffling. A Lone standing for elections in Kashmir reminds me of the CPI(ML) president of my JNU students union,whose party had “also agreed to use non-violent methods”. When he pushed me,I would remind myself that he was young and idealistic,and his predecessors were as much outside the range of middle-class politics when they were in JNU,but were now national leaders and it was my job to train the leaders of tomorrow.
The Goanese Catholic musician Remo Fernandes brings out the Universal Indian spirit in his extraordinary rendition of the Gayatri Mantra. Our politics is not there.
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