Doing the ‘Right’ thing

File photo of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in New Delhi on 19 May, 1996 | PTI Photo

The prime minister has gone on his long weekend to Manali with the comfort of a man who believes he has worked a fruitful week. With a little help from the killers of Kaluchak, he has been able to rejuvenate the strategy of coercive diplomacy which had begun to get jaded. He has made an overdue visit to Kashmir and said all the right things there, besides displaying very appropriate body language whether addressing the troops at Kupwara and the media at Srinagar. He has got his armed forces, and public opinion keyed up for war as they’ve never been since 1971. What is firmly in place, now, is the moral outrage that justifies the idea of war and which inspires an entire nation to back its armed forces. Most important, the world, by and large, believes that India is poised to go to war and bring to an end Pakistan’s strategy of bleeding it through a thousand cuts in its 13th murderous year.

Yet, the central objective of this strategy is to avoid the eventuality of war. Wars take place because of miscalculation. Often because the bully believes his victim won’t go to war for reasons one, two, three, four and so on. But once he is convinced that the price for any further adventurism will be war, he usually steps back. This is what happened on January 12, with Musharraf’s speech. You would have also hoped his statement this week, promising to deny terrorists the use of not just the Pakistani soil but also that of occupied Kashmir, is the beginning of what we may call the Backtrack-II diplomacy.

Two facts are evident. One, that this would not have worked if India’s war-like posture was not so realistic. To be convincing to others it has to be so real that even we believe we are heading for war. The preparation, physical and mental, had to be real, presuming an inevitability of war. That is the message to the armed forces. They are not to get confused by the diplomatic and political twists and turns in the situation. They are to prepare, stay in zero-alert status and await the order. Diplomacy meanwhile goes on, quite successfully. It may even end up averting the war.

Second, would coercive diplomacy have worked if a BJP-led coalition had not been in power? You don’t have to be a BJP voter or supporter to appreciate the fact that the reason why this strategy has not been dismissed as mere rhetoric or posturing is because this government, howsoever fragile it may be internally, is seen to be tough internationally. It is India’s first government of the Right and while its other policies (including the economic ones) and style are not particularly different from that of its predecessors, its view on national security is tougher, clearer, less flexible.

This is the way the Washington analysts would see it: they said they will test the bomb, they did it irrespective of the consequences. They said they won’t accept a ceasefire in Kargil until Pakistan withdrew behind the LoC, and they remained firm despite slow progress and casualties. Now they say they will go to war unless international community can persuade Musharraf to give up terrorism, and they will probably do so. The more realistic the threat of war in this case, the more likely it is that it will be averted. If that happens, thank the BJP for once.

There are other interesting lessons from this government’s handling of this crisis. First of all, that a government’s internal stability or strength does not always determine its ability to deal with the world, particularly on issues where there is broader consensus. Also, it does not come in the way of your firm, philosophical beliefs. So just as today this government has been successful with this aggressive approach, despite electoral setbacks, tomorrow — were Musharraf to keep his promise — it can push for a serious dialogue. Even a settlement.

This is India’s first govt of the Right and its view on national security is tougher, clearer, less flexible than that of its predecessors. You don’t have to be a BJP supporter to appreciate the fact that this is why New Delhi’s hard talk hasn’t been dismissed as mere rhetoric When was the last time you saw a government in the same, hard mould in India? Forget everybody between Vajpayee and Rajiv. Rajiv was almost there. While his detractors would snigger about his motives, he invested more in military hardware in his five years than anybody else. If a war were to break out today, the weaponry bought/ordered by him (including Bofors) would still represent our cutting edge. Yet, he was not seen as tough and, despite his brute majority, would not have been taken so seriously today. He did make his famous ‘‘naani yaad dila denge’’ speech, held Exercise Brasstacks and sent his troops to Maldives and Sri Lanka. But deep down, he was still a softie. Brasstacks did bring us close to war with Pakistan but history does not see it as a deliberate, strategic ratcheting up of military tension to achieve any objective. The Rajiv reign, in fact, is already being rubbished for lacking control over its military that almost pushed us into a war for which we had neither prepared nor set any objectives. So Rajiv doesn’t quite pass the hardness test.

The only one who does is Indira Gandhi. She set an objective in 1971 and pursued it, even if it meant signing away some of our non-alignment fig leaf by entering a security treaty with Moscow. She carried out the nuclear test in 1974 and when today we sometimes mock her for calling it a peaceful nuclear explosion we forget that the balance of world power then was very problematic. Cold War was at its peak, the Soviets were weakening and in any case did not appreciate our nuclear ambitions, China and the US were cosying up. It was tougher to defy that world than in 1998.

While savouring the success so far, Vajpayee and his colleagues have to watch for the pitfalls of the Right approach. One, danger of getting trapped in your own rhetoric. Two, if they achieve their goals without war, trying to assuage the disappointed BJP cadres This government’s handling of national security and the larger foreign policy has the temperament of Indira Gandhi even if the style is distinctly its own. When did you hear about CCS meetings those days? Or a home minister and a foreign minister who actually made policy? She took the decisions, the rest implemented them. This is the essential difference between her government and that of the BJP’s. In her case, the toughness came from the steel in her own personality. For the BJP it comes from its ideological upbringing. Nevertheless, after Sardar Patel she is the Congress leader the Sangh parivar most admires and it is probably a matter of time when they will begin to claim her as their icon as well.

While savouring their success so far, Vajpayee and his colleagues have to watch for the usual pitfalls of the Right approach. First, it is the danger of being trapped in its own rhetoric. So far they have avoided that. It is almost as if the whole thing has been choreographed. Some people raise the temperature, some talk diplomacy while the PM himself indulges in poetic double entendre: skies are clear, lightening should not strike, but may strike, but hopefully won’t strike… But it would need a great deal of skill now to assuage the BJP’s disappointed cadres if we are able to achieve our objectives without the war they’ve been pining, and primed up for. Second, if this strategy succeeds, there will be the temptation to push similarly in other areas of the BJP ideology: society, history, education, religion. That is where its leadership’s real test would lie because the positioning for a real national alternative to the Congress would still belong in the political middle ground.