Foolish stridency

THE PRIME MINISTER, Mr. Vajpayee's recently delivered stinging remarks directed at Pakistan and the scarcely veiled campaign mounted by Indian representatives against Islamabad at Cartagena and Havana reveal a dangerously hardening stance. Mr. Vajpayee's warning of a further dismemberment of Pakistan and his similar such hardline rhetoric are bound to further vitiate the bilateral atmosphere and ill serve the national interest. New Delhi's continuing rejectionist stance towards the Pakistani Chief Executive, Gen. Pervez Musharraf's repeated offer of unconditional talks ignores the damage this can cause by undermining the moderate elements in Pakistan who are already under siege by militant fundamentalists. Through its unrelenting assaults on the Musharraf regime, the Vajpayee Government is doing precisely what it should not: it is driving that nation into the waiting arms of fundamentalists. By imposing conditions practically unachievable in the short term, New Delhi is making it more and more easy for the Pakistan Government to renege on its promise to try and rein in the militant elements.

Mr. Vajpayee's calculated outburst, carrying all the symbolism that the Hindutva forces seem to so cherish, came during a week that saw an incredibly narrow-minded Indian performance at two international forums. It is incomprehensible what national purpose was served by India's strident advocacy of democracy and the rule of law at the ministerial meeting of the nonaligned movement at Cartagena, Colombia, and the Group of 77 South summit which followed immediately after in Havana, Cuba. Both groupings bring together under one umbrella a broad spectrum of global interests and India, as a leading player, should have focussed on the unifying socio-economic issues facing them so that the developing nations could present a united front against assaults by the rich nations, the so-called North. Instead, India launched on a narrow partisan course, allowing itself to be constrained and constricted by its obsessive preoccupation with Pakistan.

The essence of voluntary multilateral groupings like the nonaligned movement is the independence of judgment and scope they offer for joint action for the common good. India undermined this ideal of multilateralism by its strident advocacy of the democracy norm under which a member whose government is an unelected one is sought to be expelled. This ignores the fact that political plurality has been and is irrelevant to the working of such groupings, and by seeking to impose its values on the others, India exposed its own partisan motives, also serving to devalue the organisations simultaneously. The shallow triumphs at Cartagena and Havana will come at considerable diplomatic cost. That an emaciated and leaderless NAM fighting an existentialist battle acquiesced in India's action with unremarkable indifference is certainly no cause for celebration. As for the G-77, a more alert and politically aware audience tended to ignore India's strident single-point campaign. Little did the campaigners realise that neither the NAM nor G-77, both loosely knit and built on a convergence of clear socio-economic interests, would have survived if the criterion for membership had at any time been ``democracy.'' In support of its campaign, India cited the Commonwealth and the Organisation of African Unity, which last summer took the democracy pledge. But the OAU was addressing problems peculiar to the continent where trigger- happy armies and mercenary groups armed by the former colonial interests have been causing havoc to civil society. To cite these two outfits as examples worthy of emulation by the NAM was to be extremely naive or plain cunning. Government spokesmen have vehemently denied suggestions that New Delhi's target was Pakistan. The denial flies in the face of facts.

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