The ISI bogey

By V. Krishna Ananth

``WHILE POLITICAL approximation may be a somewhat difficult and tardy matter, there is no reason why Pakistan and India should not jointly enter their teams for the various events at the World Olympics.''

Those in politics today can hardly afford to even refer to this statement, made by none other than that leading light of the Indian socialist movement, Ram Manohar Lohia, as early as in June 1952. Lohia could make this point in the course of a public speech in Hardoi (a small town in Uttar Pradesh).

A statement of this kind today, when even an India-Pakistan cricket match is turned into a war-like situation, is bound to be condemned and the speaker is likely to be labelled an agent of the ISI. And one does not have to wait for such fanatics as Mr. Bal Thackeray or Mr. Ashok Singhal and their ilk to react in such fashion. The Indian state itself has begun indulging in this project.

In the national political discourse today, one is urged to look for the ISI's hand anywhere and everywhere. The day is not far off when the hapless masses will be told that the ISI is involved in siphoning off foodgrains meant for the Public Distribution System, that the ISI is behind the poor quality of the grain supplied in the ration shops and that it is the ISI's game to dismantle whatever little health care and education facilities exist in the public sector in the country.

It is not the case here to portray the ruling dispensation in Pakistan - whether under Gen. Pervez Musharraf now or under Mr. Nawaz Sharif until a few months earlier - as well-meaning saints. Nor can there be any illusion that the rulers of Pakistan now want to turn the heat on militants. How can Gen. Musharraf rein in the mercenaries just because the task for which they were put together - to dismantle the democratic structure in Afghanistan - has been ``accomplished''?

And given this reality, it is the mandatory responsibility of the Indian state to ensure that the games that these mercenaries are engaged in are scuttled. Those concerned with the democratic and secular social fabric cannot relish the thought of the Taliban trying to do to us what they managed to do with Najibullah and his regime in Afghanistan.

The trouble, however, is with the rhetoric that has come to dominate the political discourse in recent times in this connection. Take for instance an incident in Delhi about a month ago involving a member of the staff in the Pakistan High Commission. He paid the term fees in the school where his ward studies just like any other parent and it so happened that there was a counterfeit note in the bundle. On being informed about that, he agreed to replace it; and as is the normal course, a case was registered in the local police station.

What was shocking was the manner in which this incident made news and one particular private TV channel had it in its headlines that a Pakistani mission staff was found involved in counterfeiting. And a couple of weeks after that, a news agency sought to club this incident with the recovery of huge amounts of counterfeit currency in the capital and reported with unquestioning certainty that pumping in huge amounts of fake notes is the means adopted by the ISI to fund its subversives.

Such small details as to whether at all a person would deliberately use a counterfeit note while paying his son's school fees, particularly if he is part of a conspiracy, did not occur to those reporting the incident. Then there are the reports, handed out recently by the Delhi police, of subversives having smuggled in detonators and such devices from across the border. While it is likely that explosives - RDX in particular - may have to be smuggled in from elsewhere, do detonators too have to be brought in from Pakistan? In a similar vein was the report that the subversives depended on the public transport in Delhi to ferry the stuff from one end of the city to another.

Many members of the political class may not know that it only requires some rudimentary knowledge of physics and some locally- available material to put together a detonator. The Defence Minister, Mr. George Fernandes, will vouch for this. So will the personnel in the police and paramilitary forces. But then, when there is an ISI angle to it, the stories gain ``legitimacy'' and anyone raising doubts over the veracity of such claims will be treated as anti-national.

And herein lies the problem which becomes worse when people like Mr. Fernandes, himself a victim of such propaganda some 25 years ago (as part of the Baroda Dynamite conspiracy case), adopt the same language and aid the right-wing dispensation in its attempts to construct a nationalist discourse loaded heavily with jingoistic expressions.

That Mr. Fernandes, who insists on looking up to Lohia to give an ``ideological'' justification to all that he does - including his ganging up with the BJP to fight the Congress - went to the extent of citing the Quran (while speaking at a conference recently) to argue that the regime in Pakistan cannot be trusted only confirms fears that the present dispensation in India is itching for a long battle with its neighbour.

The intention is only too evident: to build up a case for another armed conflict with Pakistan. After all, it is a fact that the sangh parivar outfits were not all that successful in their attempts to help the BJP capture power on its own via the Kargil route. For if the majority of the people had been convinced the BJP would have managed more than a majority on its own in the Lok Sabha.

It is not for the first time that rulers have resorted to such rhetoric and war mongering in times of crises in their own backyard. And such rhetoric is resorted to not just in India. The rulers in Pakistan too thrive on an anti-India rhetoric. After all, the BJP-led orchestration around Kargil would not have been possible without the Nawaz Sharif dispensation in Pakistan aiding the militants, with sophisticated arms and other accessories, to cross the LoC.

The adventure must have helped the rulers there to mute resistance at least for some time. It is this aspect that stares us in the face now in the context of the renewed vigour and thrust being put by our rulers into this campaign about the ubiquitous ISI. Through this campaign, the Vajpayees, the Advanis and the Fernandeses have managed to sweep under the carpet any debate on why there has been an increase in the number of those living below the poverty line; from 34.88 crores in 1997 to 40.63 crores in 1998 (as reported by the National Sample Survey Organisation, Government of India).

Rather than initiating any meaningful measures to end this downslide in the quality of living of the poor - using the 32 million tonnes of foodgrains now rotting in the FCI godowns - the ruling clique seem to have decided to feed the hapless millions with the ISI rhetoric and conjure up fears of an Islamic conspiracy to over-run our nation.

Indira Gandhi too tried this in the early Seventies and ended up putting the democratic structure on hold for a couple of years. The Congress(I) repeated the trick in the Eighties too when members belonging to a particular faith were presented as agents of forces bent upon destabilising our country. What is happening now is different in only one sense. Indira Gandhi and the Congress(I) were only able to put democracy on hold. The present dispensation with the large network of the RSS to back it and a definite ideological objective - to render India into a Hindu state - has the potential to lead the polity towards a bigger danger than what Indira Gandhi could between June 26, 1975, and March 1977.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Opinion
Previous : Beyond Seattle
Next     : He should know best