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The News International, Monday, June 10,
2002
Jaswant Singh on defending
India
Prof Khwaja Masud
The writer is a former principal, Gordon College, Rawalpindi
In order to understand the Pak-Indian relations, it is absolutely
necessary that we must know how the mind of Jaswant Singh works,
because he is the foreign minister of India. In order to
understand his mind, we must fully grasp his book "Defending
India", which came out last year. He has not minced matters.
He comes out clearly and definitely about the aims and objects of
the India's foreign policy in this book.
Jaswant Singh believes that "India is a Hindu nation, and
the Hindus do not see things the way others do". Indeed, it
is a fantastic statement. Since it comes from the foreign
minister of India, it has to be kept in mind, while attempting to
understand the contradictory statements of the Indian leadership
on our relations with India. One day, "a decisive
battle" has to be fought; the next day, "the sky is
clear of war-clouds, but the lightning may strike, even on a
clear day."
His first thesis is that Pakistan and China have loomed too large
on the Indian horizon. "It is a poor and myopic sort of
country," Jaswant Singh says, "whose strategic horizon
is limited to its geographical boundaries." "It is our
entire neighbourhood (defined in a very wide-ranging way) that we
have to focus on."
Jaswant Singh's second thesis is that with the exit of the Soviet
Union, the US is now the sole superpower. Getting into and
remaining in their good books could pay rich dividends. India
should get along with the US efforts to contain China, which
would give India an opportunity to expand its diplomatic presence
is South-East Asia and would enable her naval presence along its
shores. So far as US is concerned, China along with Russia in
strategic alliance, is its main contradiction.
According to Jaswant Singh "with China in the absence of any
social, cultural, political and economic commonality, a policy of
improving relations could yet again mortgage our future for
illusions of the present."
At the rate India is going west, India might soon find itself
with the US as its nearest neighbour, though US itself will
continue to have many nearer neighbours, both before and after
India has outlived its utility. Jaswant Singh has no qualms about
India leading from the front in the battle against terrorism not
only in Kashmir but in Pakistan and Afghanistan as well.
The third major point in Jaswant Singh's strategy is that India
has been at the receiving end for too long, because of, according
to him "our peace-loving nature" and the policy of
"limited retaliation."
Elaborating this point, he says: "Adversaries were
confronted only after invasion; then too, on a ground of their
choosing. They were never pursued (beyond our boundaries).
Threats were not recognised until they actually occurred: they
were neither anticipated nor neutralised before they could
actually materialise."
With reference to the operations in Jammu and Kashmir in 1948,
Jaswant Singh says: "Operations were limited to the
tactical. The strategic objective of denying routes of ingress,
denying lines of communication and supply, were not even
examined. Air power was not offensively employed; bridges and
road-arteries reaching into Jammu and Kashmir were left entirely
untouched. To pulverise the adversary's capacity to strike again
was not spelt out as a military task; a simple pushing back of
the Pakistani military became the primary goal."
Instead, Jaswant Singh says that India should reserve the right
to strike back in any manner at any time and place and target. He
continues that anticipatory strikes must definitely not be ruled
out. Therefore, Jaswant Singh makes a strong plea for a hi-tech
air force (consisting of missiles as well as planes). According
to him, India must abandon once and for all the policy of using
air force only for the limited purpose of supporting the ground
operations of the army.
As for the navy, Jaswant Singh complains that the
"political-military class" have failed to realise the
"natural destiny" of India, with its "oceanic
boundaries" stretching from the "southern fringes of
Asia to the east coast of Africa, and the northern shores of
Australia. He goes on: "India lies between the choke points
of the Suez Canal in the west and the Strait of Malacca in the
east. As a consequence, the growth of the Indian navy has been
unnaturally stunned. It has remained a coastal protection
force."
Even before Jaswant Singh became the foreign minister, he was
playing an important role in shaping the foreign policy, although
he was only deputy chairman of the planning commission. He was
one of the few people taken into confidence about Pokhran. After
Pokhran, Jaswant Singh met President Clinton's trusted deputy
secretary of state, Strobe Tabbott, along with a number of aides.
These hush-hush discussions were about the future role of India
in world-politics as "an emerging great power." As a
consequence, President Clinton visited Delhi and Jaswant Singh
was catapulted into foreign ministry.
Jaswant Singh is said to enjoy the confidence of both Vajpayee
and Advani. He is convinced that grand strategy must be the
exclusive concern of a small, select band of people who should be
chosen carefully. Jaswant Singh is highly critical of the Nehru
family and holds them responsible for what has gone wrong with
India. He is not in favour of subordinating the armed forces to
the defence ministry, because, according to him, "civilian
control has been cumbersome, time-consuming and
bureaucratic," and it has been the "principal destroyer
of the army's morale."
"Defending India" is compulsory reading for people
interested in Indian foreign policy, be they friends or foes.
Jaswant Singh emerges as a politician with innate fascist
leanings, as an exponent of Indian hegemony, with aggressive
diplomacy as an instrument. From Nehru to Jaswant Singh is a far
cry.
All fundamentalists irrespective of their religion have a strong
streak of fascism flowing in their blood. In India, fascism is
represented by the Sang Parivar (RSS family) consisting of the
RSS, the VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad) and the Bajrang Dall. The
BJP draws its support from the Sang Parivar.
Fascism rose in Italy and Germany after the first great war. In
Europe its garb was political, but it flourished on hatred and
intolerance. In South-East Asia its garb is religious, but it is
fascism nonetheless. We shall have peace only when the fangs of
fascism are exposed and fought by forging a united front of the
forces standing for democracy, social justice peace, and
progress.