The Hindu : The costs of standing up

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Apr 01, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

The costs of standing up

By Pran Chopra

While regaining the resolve, India must readily respond to any opportunity for a safe scaling down of the mobilisation.

NOT BEING used to standing up for its rights, India is unfamiliar with the costs of doing so. Hence the fatigue so soon after India's first exercise in aggressive defence against terrorism. The enthusiasm with which this posture was greeted when it was adopted in December began to subside even before it was tested in the field. It was known all along that only the start of the summer and the melting of snow would show how well the mobilisation in Kashmir would check the flow of terrorists from Pakistan. But the resolve to maintain it has been melting faster than the snow.

The Government, quite rightly, remains firm in its insistence that there will be no standing down until cross-border terrorism ends and the offenders named by India are handed over. But the firmness is losing credibility as questions multiply whether we can afford its financial, political and diplomatic costs, and all the more so when the focus of public anxiety shifts from security to secularism, from safety on the border to stability in Delhi. But the doubters as well as rioters are only adding to the costs and reducing the dividends.

Witness for example the two immediate effects of the rioting in Gujarat. The State's border with Pakistan is a crucial sector for the mobilisation. But some troops had to be withdrawn from there in a hurry to man the streets of Ahmedabad, and more had to be re-positioned to cover the gaps. It is easy to see how much comfort this would have given to the forces arrayed against them across the border. India's image abroad plummeted and serious harm was done to the foreign policy component of defence. If it is the case, as is widely suspected, that the fire was started by Pakistanis planted in Godhra who were astute enough to know that it would spread far and fast, then the plotters must be very pleased with their handiwork. Compared with that, the cost of relieving the discomfort and maintaining the morale of the soldiers assigned to difficult locations is an easier matter.

Any crisis can call for more than one policy response. But no policy can deliver results unless it is backed by the patience required by its logic. Credible and sustained mobilisation has offered India the most promising alternative to a cruel choice it has faced for two decades: a choice between bleeding to death from the thousand cuts inflicted by terrorism and proxy wars, and on the other hand to end the problem once and for all by launching a full-scale war ( which India does not and Pakistan should not want.) In other words credible willingness to bear the burden of war is the only alternative to having to bear it. But the credibility of this alternative is being drained away, and the contribution of the media to this, as at the time of Kandahar hijacking, should not be underestimated.

Some of the public discourse is focussed less on the question how best to sustain the mobilisation than how to get out of it, reminding one of what was said some years ago by that sage and wit of the Indian judicial system, V. R. Krishna Iyer. He said ``Before you ask `how do I get out of it' you should ask `how did I get into it' ''. A mundane version of this wisdom but more relevant today would be that before you undo an action, ask why it was done in the first place, were the reasons for it right, did it pay, is it no longer needed? Mobilisation was needed, paid, is still needed and can continue to pay. But it demands a price, that our politicians give up throwing mud at each because it only defaces the country.

India made the correct assessment that the attack on Parliament on December 13 was no ordinary continuation of jehadi forays but a well planned onslaught which, if it had succeeded, could have had serious consequences, more serious than of Pakistan's adventure in Kargil. Hence the impressive display of the will to bear the costs. Several things then followed in quick succession, and all of them showed the path was right and India should stay on it. All big powers realised that India meant business this time, and they put pressure on Pakistan to mend its ways before it got too late. Pakistan's own people anxiously asked how far America would go in supporting India and thus began to demand that the jehadis be reined in. The result of all this was the speech by General Musharraf on January 12 which even a stern judge like Mr. L. K. Advani found to be a path-breaking performance. His demand for matching action on the ground by Pakistan was matched by similar demands by America, and for the first time in over a decade India began to hope that the combined pressure of mobilisation and assertive diplomacy might work.

In more than one journey from Islamabad to New Delhi, Colin Powell brought assurances that Gen. Musharraf would respond soon to India's twin positions on terrorism and ``wanted'' criminals. But as the Indian resolve faltered so did American assurances, and it makes one wonder whether Gen. Powell had been kidding India or Gen. Musharraf had been kidding him or both had been simply playing for time while waiting and watching how India's resolve subsides further. At the same time the latest reports from Pakistan and PoK confirm that more of the jehadis-turned-terrorists are being let loose again.

But while regaining the resolve, India must readily respond to any opportunity for a safe scaling down of the mobilisation. India has often been first in giving peace the first chance, and has always responded to genuine offers of peace. There is no need to spoil that record. There is no contradiction between keeping up full readiness to throw back any challenge to India's territory and safety, and at the same time being willing to take a careful look at any gestures by Pakistan such as its offers to resume over flights or ease other travel restrictions or to re-open trade or to send its foreign minister for talks. If he puts political kites on the table, show him the two Lahore documents, which are the best ever signed by the two countries. They contain a full and agreed agenda for talks on everything, with Kashmir at the heart of it and going right up to nuclear weapons of the two countries, over which the world is misplacing so much concern. If Gen. Musharraf wants talks, tell him to begin with what the elected Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan had signed at Lahore. If he wants to go back on anything accepted by Pakistan at Lahore then he must begin with what was agreed then and explain what he wants changed and why. If he wants to begin with a clean slate then he must begin with cleaning out of Pakistan not only the extremists who bother him but also the terrorists and other wanted criminals who have been wounding India for years. These are clear positions, and India must hold them fast.

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