Pursuing its policy of beating Pakistan with any stick that it can lay its hands on, the Hindu-nationalist government of BJP has attempted to involve Pakistan in the criminal incident that occurred last week at the American Center in Calcutta in which five policemen lost their lives and at least twenty others were injured.
Two men astride a motorbike fired automatic weapons on a bevy of over 60 policemen at 6.35 am while they were changing guard.
The Chief Minister of Bengal acknowledged it as “apparently a security failure”. The Police Commissioner attributed the constables’ failure to fire back to the bolt-action Enfield .303 rifles. The rifles were similar to the one used by Lee Harvey Oswald to assassinate J.F.Kennedy. He could land four bullets on his moving target in eleven seconds.
Evidently, the entire security squad got panicky and sought shelter instead of firing back even a single shot at the gunmen.
These details are of marginal interest to our query. What interests, and even hurts, a South Asian committed to peace and friendship in the region is the indecent haste of the BJP government, particularly its Interior Minister, L.K. Advani, in blaming Pakistan for the incident.
The gestures of President Musharraf in clamping down on the extremists of his country and extending his hand of friendship to the Indian PM and the pressure of the international community on India to seek a solution to Kashmir at the negotiating table, do not seem to have deviated the BJP government from its Pakistan-centric agenda which seeks to isolate Pakistan, draw the US away from it, tarnish it as a terrorist state and launch a series of psychological-war campaigns against it. Indeed, the BJP policies have been nothing if not Pakistan-centric.
In the current anti-terrorism hype, the BJP, particularly its Interior Minister, who represents the morbidly fanatic RSS party - the Hindu version of Taliban - continue to pin the blame on Pakistan for any act of violence occurring anywhere in India. No wonder, Advani pointed his accusing finger towards the ISI, Pakistan’s security agency, for the firing at the American Center in Calcutta. He did this within hours of the incident when the Indian investigating agencies had not examined even the preliminary evidence. The crucial video footage shot by the close-circuit TV camera at the Center had not till then been examined in detail.
FBI Director, Robert Mueller, who was in New Delhi at the time for talks on building international cooperation against terrorism, remarked: “My experience shows that making particular comments about what occurred just eight hours ago is premature.” Not for Mr. Advani. For, truth and reality, have marginal significance when the chief objective is to give vent to your animus and malign your target.
Since the September 11 tragedy, the BJP government has pursued like a mono-maniac its policy of Pakistan baiting and presenting it as the keystone in the terrorist structure of Afghanistan. It started singing the Siren song offering bases to the US. The objective was to put Pakistan in a pincer. This is best described by Arundhati Roy, the Booker award winning Indian novelist, in his write-up for the Guardian, London of September 29. He says: “Today, as some of us watch in horror, the Indian government is furiously gyrating its hips, begging the US to set up its base in India rather than Pakistan. Having had this ringside view of Pakistan’s sordid fate, it isn’t just odd, it is unthinkable, that India should want to do this.”
India did just that. Hate is more overwhelming than any salutary emotion, more so if it is self-hate embedded in a thousand-years of history. Hindu fanatics take it out on Babri mosque and hold out an indirect threat to blow even the Taj Mahal - one of the wonders of the world - just because it is a monument built by a Muslim monarch.
The silent majority of India is proud of its history and its monuments. The highly qualified professionals one comes across in the US, are intellectually miles ahead of puny politicians like Advani. Irrespective of one’s place of origin in South Asia, one feels so proud of these high-achievers.
Reverting to the Calcutta incident, the US embassy in New Delhi and the US State Department in Washington have categorically declared that it was not an act of political terror and that the American Center was not the target. The available evidence pointed to the attack as a revenge act by an indigenous criminal gang against the local police.
There is an inherent contradiction in the pronouncements and practices of the BJP. It proclaims India to be a secular state. But, several senior members of Bajpayee’s cabinet, including Mr. Advani, have been accused by Indian federal investigators of inciting Hindu fundamentalists to raze the Babri mosque. Some 2,000 people were killed in communal riots that followed the destruction of the 16th century mosque in December 1992. Efforts are now being made to build a temple on the site of the mosque.
Both Mr. Bajpayee and Mr. Advani have publicly proclaimed that they have accepted the reality of Pakistan as a sovereign and independent state. Yet, they have stationed bulk of their troops at the border with Pakistan. The Agni missile test of last week was meant to convey a message not to China, as indicated, but to Pakistan.
What are the intentions of the present Indian administration towards Pakistan? Addressing a seminar in Calcutta, moments after the tragic attack at the American Center, Mr. Advani said: “I think that it is not out of place to mention my hope and desire to see the coming together of India and Pakistan in some type of confederal framework in the years to come “
That reminds one of the vision of Mr. K.M. Panniker in his half a century old book “India and the Indian Ocean” in which he sees the entire ocean from Suez to Straits of Malacca as an Indian lake!
Both visions overlap and both are chauvinistic and acquisitive. International as much as inter-personal relations are based on give and take. Mr. Advani might start working on his vision by agreeing to make concessions in Kashmir.