Posted on 05/29/2005 3:24:41 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
An astonishing feature of India's bumpy ride to great power status is the near-total absence of public discourse on the country's foreign policy. There may be occasional bouts of interest in matters relating to Pakistan and, maybe, China, but these are linked to internal security concerns and questions of territory.
In eastern India, Bangladesh, too, features on the mental horizon, but again as a part of the ongoing debate on demographic changes. However, larger questions are invariably subsumed under a grand foreign policy consensus forged by South Block. It is simply not done for either the political parties or the media to question the fundamentals of this cosy arrangement.
The profound damage this mentality can inflict on national self-interest is best illustrated by the non-debate on India's policy towards Nepal.
The revelation that Indian intelligence agencies facilitated a meeting between the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) leader Babulal Bhattarai and his fellow Jawaharlal Nehru University alumnus, the CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat, has merely invited token outrage.
The Bhattarai affair is a scandalous example of the effrontery, recklessness and inconsistency that has marked the Nepal policy since the royal takeover in Kathmandu on February 1.
Consider the facts. Bhattarai, the number two man in the insurgent hierarchy in Nepal, is an internationally-wanted terrorist, blessed with an Interpol red corner notice.
A fortnight ago, the Nepalese authorities released tapes of an intercepted wireless conversation involving the Maoist chief Prachanda. During the exchange, Prachanda revealed that the Indian authorities were anxiously seeking a meeting with Bhattarai.
Predictably, the Indian embassy in Kathmandu denied that any such plans were afoot. A week later, it emerged that not only had Bhattarai met Indian Intelligence officials but had even exchanged Marxist dialectics with Karat.
The implications are both hideous and ominous. Apart from constituting a blatantly unfriendly act, the incident shows India has a reckless disregard for all international norms of anti-terrorism. There is a marked inconsistency between demanding that Pakistan scrupulously adhere to the red corner alert for Dawood Ibrahim and rolling out the red carpet for Bhattarai.
If the indulgence shown by Bangladesh to ULFA chief Paresh Barua constitutes an affront to India and warrants diplomatic opprobrium, New Delhi is guilty of the same as far as Kathmandu is concerned.
There are two issues involved in the kerfuffle over Bhattarai. First, it would seem that the Indian intelligence establishment is anxious to emulate the CIA and KGB of the '50s and '60s and get embroiled in political machinations of another sovereign country.
Second, it would seem that in its hatred for the King, a section of officialdom is willing to ally with the Maoists. Finally, there is enough evidence to warrant the belief that Intelligence agencies and a section of the South Block were acting in tandem. Both these wings of the State have turned roguish and are guilty of putting personal agendas above official policy.
The matter is more serious than the Government would care to admit. India may have serious misgivings over King Gyanendra's post-February 1 approach to his country's problems.
However, that does not give it the right to undertake a covert war in Nepal. How is this any different from the operations mounted by Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir and North-east India?
In one stroke, the heads of the Intelligence services and the MEA have demolished the ethical high ground of India's diplomacy. We, too, are guilty of encouraging terrorists in a neighbouring State and acknowledging them as freedom fighters.
In political circles, the identities of those who were responsible for this subversion are well known. Will they be held accountable for their misdeeds?
Or, because their actions are linked to committee room intrigues and because the Prime Minister doesn't control the appointments in his own office, will they be rewarded?
India is far from being a "Great Power."
India in its history has never exerted any power north of the Hindu Kush. India has been invaded often but never been the imperial invader.
India IS the Hindu world. If it stood in the middle of a Hindu region that looked to it for leadership the way the Orthodox world looked first to Byzantium and then to Russia or the way the Islamic world has looked to a state to play the role of core state vacated since the fall of the Ottoman Empire (Nasserite Egypt, then Saddam's Iraq) then it would have more ease with the concept that it has a geopolitical role to play. But its cultural isolation means that there is no network of client states looking to it for leadership.
I should have qualified it with "for any sustained period of time".
321 BC - 180 BC
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