India super?
We are having a hard time with both our usual international news magazines, TIME and NEWSWEEK. Hardly over the Salman Rushdie affair, NEWSWEEK carried a depiction of our Prophet (PBUH), the blasphemy ensuring that the issue did not reach Pakistani newsstands as it was duly proscribed by the Government. TIME magazine of April 3, 1989 did reach us and one wishes we could also consign it to the dustbin because the cover story by Ross Munro with the descriptive caption “SUPER INDIA”, a PSY-WAR piece intended to inform (1) India’s neighbours that we should accept Indian hegemony as a fait accompli and (2) the world that any Indian adventure in this region must be deemed to be acceptable (PAX INDIA-NA). TIME magazine barely maintains its credibility as an impartial chronicler of events by its gloved criticism of recent instances of Indian gunboat diplomacy, even the guarded language seems to be a sleight of hand designed to further the acceptability of Indian actions in the future.
In this region, India is certainly the dominant power to contend with, its defence establishment eclipsing in numerical terms many times over all the forces of all its immediate neighbours except China. The bulk of these forces are concentrated on a 5:1 ratio against Pakistan. While the greatest mass of poverty concentrated in the world is in India, millions of people below the hunger line exceeding the total population of its neighbours by five to one, its defence establishment soaks up billions of US dollars for no apparent reason except the blind ambition to perpetuate its hegemony. All this is reflected ultimately in a desire browbeat its neighbours. Take today for instance, Indian forces in Sri Lanka, now estimated to be upwards of 100,000 (at least 70,000 combatants) do not seem to have intention of going back, in the Maldives they exist as a Praetorian bodyguard for the ruling elite and are engaged in an economic blockade of Nepal in total disregard for international norms. Pakistan is subject to infiltration by RAW agents in the province of Sindh, spreading mayhem and terror, very much in the pattern of successful violence they patronised (and are still patronising) through surrogates in Sri Lanka and in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. Bangladesh is also faced with a nascent movement for an all-Hindu enclave bordering Calcutta and its access to the Bay of Bengal while tens of thousands of unfortunate Bangladeshis drowned in floods which are a direct result of Indian intransigence over the Farakka Barrage.
While the real Honest-to-Goodness Super-Powers have discovered the joys of reticence in the matter of world control, withdrawing physically from known areas of influence, disengaging from areas of conflict, turning inwards to their own problems, most of them economic, India, having acquired the trappings of a false Super-Power has started believing it is one and as such is acting as one by flexing its military muscle very much as it pleases. In the neo-phyte hands of media-genic Rajiv Gandhi, beset by internal political problems ranging from personal corruption to wide-scale defections of key aides from his political base, external adventures becomes a safe diversion and thus a uniting factor for a disparate and diverse nation. While professing no deviation from the principles of Mahatma Gandhi for peace and amity with India’s neighbours, Rajiv gives the big lie without the bat of an eyelash as Indian forces continue to carry out a contrary policy everywhere, including upsetting the Australians by trying to smuggle guns into the Fiji Islands and causing the Indonesians to think about a major naval base to guard the entrance to their islands. Nuclear-powered submarines are not acquired to go on pleasure cruises, atomic devices are not tested for altruistic reasons and ballistic missiles are not experimented with to shower rose petals.
India’s propaganda machine is certainly SUPER, people like Ravi Rikhye did not just come out of the woodworks, they are a part of a long drawn out PSY-WAR multi-purpose campaign (1) to justify India’s huge defence expenditures and (2) to create doubts in the minds of India’s adversaries about India’s war plans. For sheer coincidence (or contrived fact creation) read the first pages of the TIME article and Ravi Rikhye’s book “The Fourth Round”. Both start from the Indian Paratroop Base at Agra. General (Retd) K M Arif gave an excellent analysis of the action and reaction to Exercise “Brass Tacks” or “The war that never was” attempted by “The man who would conquer Pakistan”, Sunderji. Ravi Rikhye is part and parcel of RAW’s general misinformation campaign, fulfilling a long drawn out Indian strategy over 5000 years old, of duplicity of design in the achieving of ultimate success. What should not be lost sight of was that India’s objectives were very real during this period, pushing Pakistan almost to war, Indian ambitions being the seizing of such vital territory that Pakistan would be forced into a dishonourable peace, the ultimate Indian AIM. The threat was very real and whatever reservations or otherwise one may have about the rulers of that period, we cannot take away from Gen Zia and PM Junejo the fact that it was a combined diplomatic and military exercise that dissuaded India from any military adventure, at a time that we were woefully exposed, our balance of military power positioned to take in the threat from the west.
We are now living in a changed world. Democracy in Pakistan has ushered in new problems for India, the foremost among them being the excellent international credibility of the Prime Minister, Ms Benazir. While it can be believed that temporarily she can be swayed by the massive India propaganda designed to disarm her defences, she is after all her father’s daughter and if there was an implacable foe/articulator of Indian designs in this sub-continent it was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, did he not promise to fight for a thousand years? How can one begin to believe that a product of that man will resile from the fact that Pakistan can never accept Indian hegemony. That due cognizance of this has been taken by India is confirmed by the fact that the Indian High Commissioner in Sri Lanka, J N Derit, who in all terms of the word was the Pro-Council in Colombo dictating Indian policy is now coming as the Ambassador to Pakistan. In a sense he is the Indian A Team.
We are one of the deprived nations, maybe not such a hopeless case as others but all our economic ambitions are in shambles, thanks to financial geniuses without depth of commitment. Huge defence expenditures have been necessitated because of the manifold build-up of Indian might. We had hoped for a respite in the western front as the Russians withdrew from the Asian Cauldron but the Afghan war continues unabated and the economic cost of maintaining the refugees is going to multiply as the faucet controlling western aid slowly drips dry. Even at the best of times, our economic position has been tenuous because of the deficit burden.
Economically speaking, India’s attempt at turning herself into a Super-Power has been done at great human cost. Nowhere in the world are there more people without shelter or food. The infrastructure of services and facilities are in a state of absolute collapse, bodies may not be exactly strewn in the streets but it seems half the population of the urban cities and towns sleep on the pavement (wherever pavements exist). There is light years difference between the urban and the rural areas, more pronounced in the maximum population areas of South and East India. Aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines are costly toys, in the face of universal misery and deprivation of India’s teeming millions it becomes a crime. The effect is not confined to India alone, it has side effects in countries like Pakistan, who in order to maintain their dignity and independence get into the rat-race of competing on a pro-ratio basis. The so-called disciples of Mahatma Gandhi have consigned the economic living in this region into a living hell by their voracious ambition to become a Super-Power. Under the camouflage of democracy and eulogies for peace, India practices an expansionist philosophy, the only nation in the world with designs across its own frontiers. Their only problem is Pakistan, a resurgent democratic Pakistan, with an internationally acclaimed leader and an Army free of extraneous duties, committed to its primary aim, along with the other components of the Defence Services, the Defence of Pakistan.
We live in an era of deprivation, in an area of burgeoning population endemic with demand exceedingly supply. Whereas all our energies should be directed towards ameliorating the sorry lot of our masses, we run an obstacle course of Indian created problems. As time passes, the future is leaving us without a yesterday even, the present having been hocked away for many generations. If this is not economic apocalypse, what is? And all because of the rapacious ambition of one country and its delusions of grandeur. Ms Benazir has taken, at great personal political risk, steady steps towards peace. She has extended, despite reservations, a brave hand to India to bring peace in this sub-continent. In the face of many variables, this has been her most courageous action to date, fraught with imponderables. One can never doubt that her aim and commitment is to ease the discomfort of our poverty stricken masses by lessening the burden of defence expenditures. India can show some reciprocity or it can elect to try and become a Super-Power but never will she become anything without the friendship of Pakistan. India can only become SUPER when conditions inspiring economic growth exist in this region. When it would be madness not to seek peace, we must have peace with honour, creating economic conditions fit enough for human beings to live in. That is essence of being super. When India reaches that, conclusion, economic bliss for its people and that of this region, it will be SUPER, otherwise they should just forget it. India Super? Never, not while one Muslim breath exists in freedom in this sub-continent, and that is a simple unemotional statement of a fact of life.
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