STATECRAFT BY HAPPYMON JACOB
India is gearing up to fight terrorism tooth and nail. Heads are rolling, new measurers are being announced, and more resources are being allocated to strengthen the national security apparatus. A lot of noise is being made. However, amongst the din there seems to be more anger than resolve, more clamor than commitment. Our problem is clear: in India we think we can resolve our troubles by shouting accusations from the rooftops and generally dissolving into uproar and outcry each time something goes amiss. Time and again, we rush to hold others responsible for what happens to us and revel when newspapers confidently run headlines such as: ‘Manmohan Singh Summons ISI Chief to New Delhi’. One thing is obvious to me though, whether it is fighting terrorism, weeding out corruption or preventing communal and regional conflicts from erupting, today this country faces two extreme choices: clean up its house and exist as a unified and secure nation, or refuse to do so and cease to exist. I do not want to sound presumptuous in trying to predict which of these two scenarios I think most likely to play out. Rather, I simply wish to comment upon a few key factors that may well hamper our fight against terrorism.
Shocking lack of accountability
This country’s security establishment has never been made accountable to the taxpayers, nor have they shown any respect for the responsibility vested in them. With an elitist tilt, they continue to behave as though they are colonial masters, owing no explanations or answers to anyone. While it is true that many of the principle sources of terrorism lay outside India, the fact remains that we ourselves are to blame for the way in which we have been successfully targeted by terrorists. If we don’t have a security apparatus that is transparent and accountable, there is nothing to prevent terrorists from repeatedly striking this country; lack of accountability leads to irresponsible behavior. It took more than one terrorist strike in the country for the Union Home Minister to be held accountable for his shoddy performance. One wonders why National Security Advisor M K Narayanan’s resignation has been rejected, despite the fact that he is as accountable as the Home Minister is, and more so: Narayanan has a history of being at the top when things go horribly wrong. Let us not forget that he was Director of the Intelligence Bureau when Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated, an event which is now widely understood to be at least partly the result of intelligence failures, both in coordination and response capacity.
Creating stakeholders in the nation
Again, this is an oft-repeated statement but like it or not, stakeholders are the key to stability and peace in a pluralist country such as India. If India the state and India the nation, separate yet unified concepts that they are, are to be embraced by their citizens, then simplistic and frenzied chanting of ‘bharat mata ki jai’ or ‘vande mataram’ will not suffice. Common people should feel that they are as much a part of this nation as anybody else, and they should benefit from being part of it just as anybody else does. Being a conscientious citizen involves a two-way process of giving and taking. Equally, if the state requests undivided legitimacy from its members, it has a responsibility to see that the citizens benefit from the bargain. When those that receive no benefits from being a so-called ‘citizen’ become aggrieved, is it fair to accuse them of ‘unpatriotism’? When a North Indian is chased away from Mumbai by the ‘marathi manus’, when a Kashmiri Muslim is made to feel like an alien at Delhi airport, when some poor bihari laborers are sent back from Kashmir, and when the minorities of this country are repeatedly told by the unnerving nation-wide diffusion of fundamentalists that the former exist in this country at the mercy of the latter, it becomes imprudent of us to ask them to be patriotic. When the state and nation oppress someone, why would that someone feel obliged to safeguard the interests of that nation and state? The scenario is obviously illogical. I am not suggesting that oppressed people have a right to violence. What I am arguing is that when and if they do resort to it, we must be mature enough as a nation to perform some honest soul searching in order to see where we have gone wrong.
Political leadership
This country desperately needs a strong, sensitive, responsible, visionary and pan-Indian political leadership that can think and act beyond narrow and petty political confines. Sadly, the majority of our leaders lack even the basic necessary qualities required to competently occupy the political offices of the country. Our leading politicians don’t seem to be able to think holistically, in terms of an integrated ‘India’. They apparently think only along narrow ideological, regional and religious lines; appeasement and partisan politics are the current order of the day. Our opposition leader did not even deem it necessary to attend the important all-party meeting that was held in the wake of the horrific Mumbai attacks. There is simply no cohesion of any kind among our political elites. This climate of political opportunism cannot be expected to give birth to national consensus. How can such a political class empower itself to fight terrorism credibly and responsibly?
Members of contemporary India’s ruling class behave like thieves stealing all they can from a burning building before it is razed to the ground. While our country burns, the mad scramble of our political class for power and resources reaches new heights. If ‘thinking for India’ becomes nobody’s business, this country can expect nothing better than a swift slide into disintegration and destruction, and in truth, it will deserve nothing better.
(Happymon Jacob is Assistant Professor at the Department of Strategic and Regional Studies, University of Jammu, Jammu and Kashmir, India)
Source: Greater Kashmir, December 3, 2008. URL: http://greaterkashmir.com/full_story.asp?Date=3_12_2008&ItemID=27&cat=11 )
