South Asia on Edge
If exit polls in Gujerat are to be believed, BJP will win nearly a hundred seats in the Assembly compared to the 70 for the Congress Party. This is bad news not only for India but for the rest of South Asia because the BJP victory is based on blatant exploitation of Hindu chauvinism, anathema to the concept of secular India. Having lost almost all State elections since coming to power, the electoral success will not only be sweet for BJP, it will unfortunately serve as their model for future electoral campaigns. To the credit of the Congress Party they stuck to their secular stance despite pre-polls suggesting that the BJP-inspired carnage of muslims in Gujerat was in line with what voters in the State wanted. Narendra Modi, who can easily be tried in the Hague for genocide in inspiring and inciting violence against the minority muslims while being the primary authority in the State as Chief Minister, was shamelessly paraded by BJP through the electoral hustings proclaiming his “Hindutva” credentials. BJP’s victory in Gujerat is not only a disaster for India, the two muslim countries in South Asia will begin to feel the heat as BJP articulates its immediate “east” and “west” foreign policy to go with its virulent domestic anti-muslim stance.
Abandoning the Bride at the Altar
Already faced with enough troubles economically and politically, Pakistan now has a full-scale war on its western borders that we did not want and a religious call to arms within our frontiers that we certainly did not need. Compounding our problems, frustrated at seeing years of meticulous planning to isolate and Balkan-ize Pakistan literally go up in smoke on Sept 11, India is like a frustrated bride abandoned at the altar by the bridegroom to return to his original mate. India seems hell-bent on provoking a conflict on our eastern front which both India and Pakistan may well live to regret, if it escalates into a nuclear exchange both may well not live to express those regrets. Lobbying the US for the last decade to get the freedom fighters in Kashmir declared “terrorist”, and Pakistan a “terrorist-State” for good measure, it must be galling for the Indians to have their well-laid plans come to naught. Though he seemed to retract a little when in New Delhi, US Secretary of State Colin Powell may have inadvertently added insult to injury by calling “Kashmir the central issue between India and Pakistan”, “core issue” are code words normally used by Pakistan. Pakistan has returned to doing what it does best, being the front line State for the US in a war against somebody or the other. Indian intelligentsia and commentators have had real fun over the past year gloating over how Pakistan was on the ropes geo-politically, and economically was about to go under. Well, to paraphrase Mark Twain, “rumours of Pakistan’s demise seems to have been greatly exaggerated”, unquote.