Homicide at Sea: Which Vessel is the Pirate in the Italy-India Conflict?

Please see the current issue of the Denver Journal of International Law and Policy

http://djilp.org/3711/homicide-at-sea-which-vessel-is-the-pirate-in-the-italy-india-conflict/

Some two dozen rounds of a powerful automatic gun are suddenly fired from one vessel on the high seas onto another. The latter is an unarmed Indian fishing boat with nets cast. Two fishermen are killed on deck, some eleven are asleep below deck and are injured. The vessel has some 16 bullets on it. The shooter, an Italian oil tanker, departs the scene and apparently does not report to the closest maritime authority that it has fired at presumed pirates. But of course, it *itself* may be the pirate by the Law of the Sea convention because the specific gunmen might just have been, while on their long voyage, bored or drunk when they saw some dark thin figures in the distance in the water and thought they would get some target-practice for fun.  Viz., “Article 101 Piracy consists of …any illegal acts of violence … committed for private ends by the crew or the passengers of a private ship or a private aircraft, and directed…  on the high seas, against another ship … or against persons or property on board such ship…”.  These homicides that took place on the high seas may have been accidental (e.g. the gun jammed) or unintentional or deliberate murder, we do not know because the facts have not been allowed to be tried in court proceedings.

The fishing vessel returned weeping to port, the Indian Navy and Coast Guard to their credit engaged in hot pursuit, and managed to arrest the Italian vessel on the high seas, and the Italian vessel to its credit did not make a run for it but came into port.  Then the local provincial police arrested the alleged gunmen and charged them with murder etc under domestic law; and also refused to let the ship free until it had paid a bond etc.

Who has had jurisdiction? Italy or India? From the beginning I, on the basis of my little learning in 1973-74 under the late great Professor DHN Johnson at the London School of Economics, one of the authors of the Law of the Sea Convention being written at the time, said the answer was both — it is a case of *concurrent * jurisdiction, where Italy obviously has jurisdiction as it was an Italian vessel that caused the homicide at sea, while India too has jurisdiction as an Indian vessel was assaulted and India made the ship-arrest on the high seas.   The case needed clinical adherence to law and forensics by both countries in cooperative pursuit of the truth such that that elusive thing *the interests of justice* could prevail.

Italy rightly said the local domestic law of  *the land* did not apply, and the Supreme Court of India agreed with them. But Italy wrongly said India did not have jurisdiction at all, and the Supreme Court of India was clear that India had to create a *Special Court* for the purpose of a trial under international law.  *Had India not made the ship-arrest and prosecuted the case, the possible criminal act that may be involved in this homicide at sea would have disappeared altogether.*

Italy then asked for the two alleged gunmen to go home on parole for Christmas, the Supreme Court was assured by the Italian Government they would return to face trial, the Supreme Court granted them parole to do so, and they did return; some weeks later Italy asked for the two to go on parole again, this time to vote in their elections; again, with the same assurances, the Supreme Court of India allowed them to do so.

Now Italy has breached its undertaking to the Supreme Court and refused to return them, saying India is in breach of international law, and Italy has sent the alleged gunmen back to normal work without even any purported trial of facts in the case under Italian law or Italian military law.

The Italian Ambassador would normally be in clear Contempt of Court — except he has diplomatic immunity and cannot be arrested or prosecuted.  India, it seems to me, has no recourse but to take the drastic measure of declaring the Italian Ambassador and perhaps others of his staff *persona non grata*, and to expect an equivalent retaliatory measure from Italy, and for a chill in trade and business relations and tourism etc to set in for a while before things can get better.  Diplomatic expulsions need to demonstrate swiftness of purpose because they are a metaphor for warfare; waiting until March 22 because it is a court deadline or to give the other side a chance to respond is both tedious and silly. Besides, an expulsion is retaliated with by an expulsion usually; where it is not, it is the diplomatic equivalent of a military surrender.

It is an unfortunate rift in relations between friendly countries due to a random event on the high seas; it required the right application of international law to the facts, which neither Government separately or together managed to do; that was something I have feared and warned against from when it started.  In June, the local Italian Government consul asked to meet me and came to be fully apprised by me of what I thought the legal facts were and what could be done in the interests of justice. But they chose not to accept the advice.

Dr Subroto  Roy blogs at www.independentindian.com

See also
also http://independentindian.com/2013/03/19/solving-the-italy-india-conflict-lawfully-without-mutual-diplomatic-expulsions/

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Pakistan’s Point of View (Or Points of View) on Kashmir: My As Yet Undelivered Lahore Lecture–Part I

Preface: Exactly a year ago, in late October-November 2010, I received a very kind invitation from the Lahore Oxford and Cambridge Society to speak there on this subject.  Mid March 2011 was a tentative date for this lecture from which the text below is dated.  The lecture has yet to take place for various reasons but as there is demand for its content, I am releasing the part which was due to be released in any case to my Pakistani hosts ahead of time — after all, it would have been presumptuous of me to seek to speak in Lahore on Pakistan’s viewpoint on Kashmir, hence I instead  planned to release my understanding of that point of view ahead of time and open it to the criticism of my hosts.  The structure of the remainder of the talk may be surmised too from the Contents.  The text and argument are mine entirely, the subject of more than 25 years of research and reflection,  and are under consideration of publication as a book by Continuum of London and New York.  If you would like to comment, please feel free to do so, if you would like to refer to it in an online publication, please give this link, if you would like to refer to it in a paper-publication, please   email me.  Like other material at my site, it is open to the Fair Use rule of normal scholarship.

On the Alternative Theories of Pakistan and India about Jammu & Kashmir (And the One and Only Way These May Be Peacefully Reconciled): An Exercise in Economics, Politics, Moral Philosophy & Jurisprudence

 by

Subroto (Suby) Roy

Lecture to the Oxford and Cambridge Society of Lahore

March 14, 2011 (tentative)

“What is the use of studying philosophy if all that does for you is to enable you to talk with some plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic, etc., & if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life?”

Wittgenstein, letter to Malcolm, 1944

“India is the greatest Muslim country in the world.”

Sir Muhammad Iqbal, 1930, Presidential Address to the Muslim League, Allahabad

 “Where be these enemies?… See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate,… all are punish’d.” Shakespeare

Dr Roy’s published works include Philosophy of Economics: On the Scope of Reason in Economic Inquiry (London & New York: Routledge, 1989, 1991); Pricing, Planning & Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1984); and, edited with WE James, Foundations of India’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s (Hawaii MS 1989, Sage 1992)  &  Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s (Hawaii MS 1989, Sage 1992, OUP Karachi 1993); and, edited with John Clarke, Margaret Thatcher’s Revolution: How it Happened and What it Meant (London & New York: Continuum 2005).  He graduated in 1976 with a first from the London School of Economics in mathematical economics, and received the PhD in economics at Cambridge in 1982 under Professor Frank Hahn for the thesis “On liberty & economic growth: preface to a philosophy for India”. In the United States for 16 years he was privileged to count as friends Professors James Buchanan, Milton Friedman, TW Schultz, Max Black and Sidney Alexander.  From September 18 1990 he was an adviser to Rajiv Gandhi and contributed to the origins of India’s 1991 economic reform.  He blogs at http://www.independentindian.com.

CONTENTS

  1. Introduction
  2. Pakistan’s Point of View (or Points of View)

(a)    1930  Sir Muhammad Iqbal

(b)    1933-1948 Chaudhury Rahmat Ali

(c)    1937-1941 Sir Sikander Hayat Khan

(d)    1937-1947 Quad-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah

(e)    1940s et seq  Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi

(f)     1947-1950 Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, 1966 President Ayub Khan, 2005 Govt of Pakistan, 2007 President Musharraf, 2008 FM Qureshi, 2011 Kashmir Day

  1. India’s Point of View: British Negligence/Indifference during the Transfer of Power, A Case of Misgovernance in the Chaotic Aftermath of World War II

(a)    Rhetoric: Whose Pakistan?  Which Kashmir? 

(b)    Law: (i) Liaquat-Zafrullah-Abdullah-Nehru United in Error Over the Second Treaty of Amritsar! Dogra J&K subsists Mar 16 1846-Oct 22 1947. Aggression, Anarchy, Annexations: The LOC as De Facto Boundary by Military Decision Since Jan 1 1949.  (ii) Legal Error & Confusion Generated by 12 May 1946 Memorandum. (iii) War: Dogra J&K attacked by Pakistan, defended by India: Invasion, Mutiny, Secession of “Azad Kashmir” & Gilgit, Rape of Baramulla, Siege of Skardu.

  1. Politics: What is to be Done? Towards Truths, Normalisation, Peace in the 21st Century

The Present Situation is Abnormal & Intolerable. There May Be One (and Only One) Peacable Solution that is Feasible: Revealing Individual Choices Privately with Full Information & Security: Indian “Green Cards”/PIO-OCI status for Hurriyat et al: A Choice of Nationality (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran).  Of Flags and Consulates in Srinagar & Gilgit etc: De Jure Recognition of the Boundary, Diplomatic Normalisation,  Economic & Military Cooperation.

  1. Appendices:

(a)    History of Jammu & Kashmir until the Dogra Native State

(b)    Pakistan’s Allies (including A Brief History of Gilgit)

(c)    India’s Muslim Voices

(d)    Pakistan’s Muslim Voices: An Excerpt from the Munir Report

1.  Introduction

For a solution to Jammu & Kashmir to be universally acceptable it must be seen by all as being lawful and just. Political opinion across the subcontinent — in Pakistan, in India, among all people and parties in J&K, those loyal to India, those loyal to Pakistan, and any others — will have to agree that, all things considered, such is the right course of action for everyone today in the 21st Century, which means too that the solution must be consistent with the principal known facts of history as well as account reasonably for all moral considerations.

I claim to have found such a solution, indeed I shall even say it is the only such solution (in terms of theoretical economics, it is the unique solution) and plan with your permission to describe its main outlines at this distinguished gathering.  I have not invented it overnight but it is something  developed over a quarter century, milestones along the way being the books emerging from the University of Hawaii “perestroika” projects for India and Pakistan that I and the late WE James led 25 years ago, and a lecture I gave at Washington’s Heritage Foundation in June 1998, as well as sets of newspaper articles published between 2005 and 2008, one in Dawn of Karachi and others in The Statesman of New Delhi and Kolkata.

Before I start, allow me for a moment to remind just how complex and intractable the problem we face has been, and, therefore, quite how large my ambition is in claiming today to be able to resolve it.

“Kashmir is in the Supreme National Interest of Pakistan”, says Pakistan.

“Kashmir is an Integral Part of India”, says India.

“Kashmir is an Integral Part of Pakistan”, says Pakistan.

“Kashmir is in the Supreme National Interest of India”, says India.

And so it goes, in what over the decades has been all too often a Dialogue of the Deaf.  How may such squarely opposed positions be reconciled without draining public resources even further through wasteful weaponry and confrontation of standing armies, or, what is worse, using these weapons and armies in war, plunging the subcontinent into an abyss of chaos and destruction for generations to come?  How is it possible?

I shall suggest a road can be found only when we realize Pakistan, India and J&K each have been and are going to remain integral to one another — in their histories, their geographies, their economies and their societies.  The only place they may need to differ, where we shall want them to differ, is their politics and political systems. We should not underestimate how much mutual hatred and mutual fear has arisen naturally on all sides over the decades as a result of bloodshed and suffering all around, and the fact must also be accounted for that people simply may not be in a calm-enough emotional state to want to be part of processes seeking resolution; at the same time, it bears to be remembered that although Pakistan and India have been at war more than once and war is always a very serious and awful thing, they have never actually declared war against the other nor have they ever broken diplomatic relations – in fact in some ways it has always seemed like some very long and protracted fraternal Civil War between us where we think we know one another so well and yet come to be surprised more by one another’s virtues than by one another’s vices.

Secondly, with any seemingly intractable problem, dialogue can stall or be aborted due to normal human failings of impatience or lack of good will or lack of good humour or lack of a scientific attitude towards finding facts, or plain mutual miscomprehension of one another’s points of view through ignorance or laziness or negligence.  In case of Pakistan and India over J&K, there has been the further critical complication that we of this generation did not cause this problem — it has been something inherited by us from not even our fathers but our grandfathers!  It is two generations old.  Each side must respect the words and deeds of its forebears but also may have to frankly examine in a scientific spirit where errors of fact or judgment may have occurred back then.  The antagonistic positions have changed only slightly over two generations, and one reason dialogue stalls or gets aborted today is because positions have become frozen for more than half a century and merely get repeated endlessly.  On top of such frozen positions have been piled pile upon pile of further vast mortal complications: the 1965 War, the 1971 secession of East Pakistan, the 1999 Kargil War, the 2008 Mumbai massacres.  Only cacophony results if we talk about everything at once, leaving the status quo of a dangerous expensive confrontation to continue.

I propose instead to focus as specifically and precisely as possible on how Jammu & Kashmir became a problem at all during those crucial decades alongside the processes of Indian Independence, World War II, the Pakistan Movement and creation of Pakistan, accompanied by the traumas and bloodshed of Partition.

Having addressed that — and it is only fair to forewarn this eminent Lahore audience that such a survey of words, deeds and events between the 1930s and 1950s tends to emerge in India’s favour — I propose to “fast-forward” to current times, where certain new facts on the ground appear much more adverse to India, and finally seek to ask what can and ought to be done, all things considered, today in the circumstances of the 21st Century.   There are four central facts, let me for now call them Fact A, Fact B, Fact C and Fact D, which have to be accepted by both countries in good faith and a scientific spirit.  Facts A and B are historical in nature; Pakistan has refused to accept them. Facts C and D are contemporary in nature; official political India and much of the Indian media too often have appeared wilfully blind to them. The moment all four facts come to be accepted by all, the way forward becomes clear.  We have inherited this grave mortal problem which has so badly affected the ordinary people of J&K in the most terrible and unacceptable manner, but if we fail to understand and resolve it, our children and grandchildren will surely fail even worse — we may even leave them to cope with the waste and destruction of further needless war or confrontation, indeed with the end of the subcontinent as we have received and known it in our time.

2. Pakistan’s Point of View (Or Points of View)

1930  Sir Muhammad Iqbal

This audience will need no explanation why I start with Sir Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938), the poetic and spiritual genius who in the 20th Century inspired the notion of a Muslim polity in NorthWestern India, whose seminal 1930 presidential speech to the Muslim League in Allahabad lay the foundation stone of the new country that was yet to be.   He did not live to see Pakistan’s creation yet what may be called the “Pakistan Principle” was captured in his words:

“I would like to see the Punjab, Northwest Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single state. Self-government within the British Empire or without the British Empire, the formation of a consolidated North West Indian Muslim state appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims at least of Northwest India… India is the greatest Muslim country in the world.  The life of Islam as a cultural force in this living country very largely depends on its centralization in a specified territory”.

He did not see such a consolidated Muslim state being theocratic and certainly not one filled with bigotry or “Hate-Hindu” campaigns:

“A community which is inspired by feelings of ill-will towards other communities is low and ignoble. I entertain the highest respect for the customs, laws, religious and social institutions of other communities… Yet I love the communal group which is the source of my life and my behaviour… Nor should the Hindus fear that the creation of autonomous Muslim states will mean the introduction of a kind of religious rule in such states…. I therefore demand the formation of a consolidated Muslim state in the best interests of India and Islam. For India it means security and peace resulting from an internal balance of power, for Islam an opportunity to rid itself of the stamp that Arabian Imperialism was forced to give it, to mobilise its law, its education, its culture, and to bring them into closer contact with its own original spirit and the spirit of modern times.”[1]

Though Kashmiri himself, in fact a founding member of the “All-India Jammu & Kashmir Muslim Conference of Lahore and Simla”, and a hero and role model for the young Sheikh Abdullah (1905-1982), Allama Iqbal was explicitly silent about J&K being part of the new political entity he had come to imagine.  I do not say he would not have wished it to be had he lived longer; what I am saying is that his original vision of the consolidated Muslim state which constitutes Pakistan today (after a Partitioned Punjab) did not include Jammu & Kashmir.  Rather, it was focused on the politics of British India and did not mention the politics of Kashmir or any other of the so-called “Princely States” or “Native States” of “Indian India” who constituted some 1/3rd of the land mass and 1/4th of the population of the subcontinent.  Twenty years ago I called this “The Paradox of Kashmir”, namely, that prior to 1947 J&K hardly seemed to appear in any discussion at all for a century, yet it has consumed almost all discussion and resources ever since.

Secondly, this audience will see better than I can the significance of Dr Iqbal’s saying the Muslim political state of his conception needed

“an opportunity to rid itself of the stamp that Arabian Imperialism was forced to give it”

and instead seek to

“mobilise its law, its education, its culture, and to bring them into closer contact with its own original spirit and the spirit of modern times”.

Dr Iqbal’s Pakistan Principle appears here the polar opposite of Pakistan’s 18th & 19th Century pre-history represented by Shah Waliullah (1703-1762)[2] saying

“We are an Arab people whose fathers have fallen in exile in the country of Hindustan, and Arabic genealogy and Arabic language are our pride”

 or Sayyid Ahmed Barelwi (1786-1831) saying

“We must repudiate all those Indian, Persian and Roman customs which are contrary to the Prophet’s teaching”.[3]  

Some 25 years after the Allahabad address, the Munir Report in 1954 echoed Dr Iqbal’s thought when it observed about medieval military conquests

“It is this brilliant achievement of the Arabian nomads …that makes the Musalman of today live in the past and yearn for the return of the glory that was Islam… Little does he understand that the forces which are pitted against him are entirely different from those against which early Islam had to fight… Nothing but a bold reorientation of Islam to separate the vital from the lifeless can preserve it as a World Idea and convert the Musalman into a citizen of the present and the future world from the archaic incongruity that he is today…” [4]

 

1933-1947  Chaudhury Rahmat Ali

Dr Iqbal’s young follower, the radical Cambridge pamphleteer Chaudhury Rahmat Ali (1895-1951) drew a picture not of Muslim tolerance and coexistence with Hindus in a peaceful India but of aggression towards Hindus and domination by Muslims over the subcontinent and Asia itself.  Rahmat Ali had been inspired by Dr Iqbal’s call for a Muslim state in Northwest India but found it vague and was disappointed Iqbal had not pressed it at the Third Round Table Conference.  In 1933, reportedly on the upper floor of a London omnibus, he invented for the then-imagined political entity the name “PAKSTAN”, P for his native Punjab, A for Afghania, K for Kashmir, S for Sind, and STAN for Balochistan.  He sought a meeting with Mr Jinnah in London — “Jinnah disliked Rahmat Ali’s ideas and avoided meeting him”[5] but did meet him.  There is a thesis yet to be written on how Europe’s inter-War ideologies affected political thinking on the subcontinent.  Rahmat Ali’s vituperative views about Hindus were akin to others about Jews (and Muslims too) at the time, all models or counterfoils for one another in the fringes of Nazism.  He referred to the Indian nationalist movement as a “British-Banya alliance”, declined to admit India had ever existed and personally renamed the subcontinent “Dinia” and the seas around it the “Pakian Sea”, the “Osmanian Sea” etc. He urged Sikhs to rise up in a “Sikhistan” and urged all non-Hindus to rise up in war against Hindus. Given the obscurity of his life before his arrival at Cambridge’s Emmanuel College, what experiences may have led him to such views are not known.

All this was anathema to Mr Jinnah, the secular constitutionalist embarrassed by a reactionary Muslim imperialism in that rapidly modernising era that was the middle of the 20th Century.  When Rahmat Ali pressed the ‘Pakstan’ acronym, Mr Jinnah said Bengal was not in it and Muslim minority regions were absent.  At this Chaudhury-Sahib produced a general scheme of Muslim domination all over the subcontinent: there would be “Pakstan” in the northwest including Kashmir, Delhi and Agra; “Bangistan” in Bengal; “Osmanistan” in Hyderabad; “Siddiquistan” in Bundelhand and Malwa; “Faruqistan” in Bihar and Orissa; “Haideristan” in UP; “Muinistan” in Rajasthan; “Maplistan” in Kerala; even “Safiistan” in “Western Ceylon” and “Nasaristan” in “Eastern Ceylon”, etc.  In 1934 he published and widely circulated such a diagram among Muslims in Britain at the time.  He was not invited to the Lahore Resolution which did not refer to Pakistan though came to be called the Pakistan Resolution.  When he landed in the new Pakistan, he was apparently arrested and deported back and was never granted a Pakistan passport.  From England, he turned his wrath upon the new government, condemning Mr Jinnah as treacherous and newly re-interpreting his acronym to refer to Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Iran, Sindh, Tukharistan (sic), Afghanistan, and Balochistan.  The word “pak” coincidentally meant pure, so he began to speak of Muslims as “the Pak” i.e. “the pure” people, and of how the national destiny of the new Pakistan was to liberate “Pak” people everywhere, including the new India, and create a “Pak Commonwealth of Nations” stretching from Arabia to the Indies.  The map he now drew placed the word “Punjab” over J&K, and saw an Asia dominated by this “Pak” empire. Shunned by officialdom of the new Pakistan, Chaudhury-Sahib was a tragic figure who died in poverty and obscurity during an influenza epidemic in 1951; the Master of Emmanuel College paid for his funeral and was apparently later reimbursed for this by the Government of Pakistan.  In recent years he has undergone a restoration, and his grave at Cambridge has become a site of pilgrimage for ideologues, while his diagrams and writings have been reprinted in Pakistan’s newspapers as recently as February 2005.

1937-1941 Sir Sikander Hayat Khan

Chaudhary Rahmat Ali’s harshest critic at the time was the eminent statesman and Premier of Punjab Sir Sikander Hayat Khan (1892-1942), partner of the 1937 Sikander-Jinnah Pact, and an author of the Lahore Resolution.  His statement of 11 March 1941 in the Punjab Legislative Assembly Debates is a classic:

“No Pakistan scheme was passed at Lahore… As for Pakistan schemes, Maulana Jamal-ud-Din’s is the earliest…Then there is the scheme which is attributed to the late Allama Iqbal of revered memory.  He, however, never formulated any definite scheme but his writings and poems have given some people ground to think that Allama Iqbal desired the establishment of  some sort of  Pakistan.  But it is not difficult to explode this theory and to prove conclusively that his conception of  Islamic solidarity and universal brotherhood is not in conflict with Indian patriotism and is in fact quite different from the ideology now sought to be attributed to him by some enthusiasts… Then there is Chaudhuri Rahmat Ali’s scheme (*laughter*)…it was widely circulated in this country and… it was also given wide publicity at the time in a section of the British press.  But there is another scheme…it was published in one of the British journals, I think Round Table, and was conceived by an Englishman…..the word Pakistan was not used at the League meeting and this term was not applied to (the League’s Lahore) resolution by anybody until the Hindu press had a brain-wave and dubbed it Pakistan…. The ignorant masses  have now adopted the slogan provided by the short-sighted bigotry of the Hindu and Sikh press…they overlooked the fact that the word Pakistan might have an appeal – a strong appeal – for the Muslim masses.  It is a catching phrase and it has caught popular imagination and has thus made confusion worse confounded…. So far as we in the Punjab are concerned, let me assure you that we will not countenance or accept any proposal that does not secure freedom for all (*cheers*).  We do not desire that Muslims should domineer here, just as we do not want the Hindus to domineer where Muslims are in a minority. Now would we allow anybody or section to thwart us because Muslims happen to be in a majority in this province.  We do not ask for freedom that there may be a Muslim Raj here and Hindu Raj elsewhere.  If that is what Pakistan means I will have nothing to do with it.   If Pakistan means unalloyed Muslim Raj in the Punjab then I will have nothing to do with it (*hear, hear*)…. If you want real freedom for the Punjab, that is to say a Punjab in which every community will have its due share in the economic and administrative fields as partners in a common concern, then that Punjab will not be Pakistan but just Punjab, land of the five rivers; Punjab is Punjab and will always remain Punjab whatever anybody may say (*cheers*).  This, then, briefly is the future which I visualize for my province and for my country under any new constitution.

Intervention (Malik Barkat Ali): The Lahore resolution says the same thing.

Premier: Exactly; then why misinterpret it and try to mislead the  masses?…”

1937-1947  Quad-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah

During the Third Round Table Conference, Dr Iqbal persuaded Mr Jinnah (1876-1948) to return to India; Mr Jinnah, from being settled again in his London law practice, did so in 1934.  But following the 1935 Govt of India Act, the Muslim League failed badly when British India held its first elections in 1937 not only in Bengal and UP but in Punjab (one seat), NWFP and Sind.

World War II, like World War I a couple of brief decades earlier, then changed the political landscape completely. Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939 and Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September.  The next day, India’s British Viceroy (Linlithgow) granted Mr Jinnah the political parity with Congress that he had sought.[6]  Professor Francis Robinson suggests that until 4 September 1939 the British

“had had little time for Jinnah and his League.  The Government’s declaration of war on Germany on 3 September, however, transformed the situation. A large part of the army was Muslim, much of the war effort was likely to rest on the two Muslim majority provinces of Punjab and Bengal. The following day, the Viceroy invited Jinnah for talks on an equal footing with Gandhi…. As the Congress began to demand immediate independence, the Viceroy took to reassuring Jinnah that Muslim interests would be safeguarded in any constitutional change. Within a few months, he was urging the League to declare a constructive policy for the future, which was of course presented in the Lahore Resolution[7]…. In their August 1940 offer, the British confirmed for the benefit of Muslims that power would not be transferred against the will of any significant element in Indian life. And much the same confirmation was given in the Cripps offer nearly two years later…. Throughout the years 1940 to 1945, the British made no attempt to tease out the contradictions between the League’s two-nation theory, which asserted that Hindus and Muslims came from two different civilisations and therefore were two different nations, and the Lahore Resolution, which demanded that ‘Independent States’ should be constituted from the Muslim majority provinces of the NE and NW, thereby suggesting that Indian Muslims formed not just one nation but two. When in 1944 the governors of Punjab and Bengal urged such a move on the Viceroy, Wavell ignored them, pressing ahead instead with his own plan for an all-India conference at Simla. The result was to confirm, as never before in the eyes of leading Muslims in the majority provinces, the standing of Jinnah and the League. Thus, because the British found it convenient to take the League seriously, everyone had to as well—Congressmen, Unionists, Bengalis, and so on…”[8]

 Mr Jinnah was himself amazed by the new British attitude towards him:

“(S)uddenly there was a change in the attitude towards me. I was treated on the same basis as Mr Gandhi. I was wonderstruck why all of a sudden I was promoted and given a place side by side with Mr Gandhi.”

Britain, threatened for its survival, faced an obdurate Indian leadership and even British socialists sympathetic to Indian aspirations grew cold (Gandhi dismissing the 1942 Cripps offer as a “post-dated cheque on a failing bank”).  Official Britain’s loyalties had been consistently with those who had been loyal to them, and it was unsurprising there would be a tilt to empower Mr Jinnah soon making credible the real possibility of Pakistan.[9]  By 1946, Britain was exhausted, pre-occupied with rationing, Berlin, refugee resettlement and countless other post-War problems — Britain had not been beaten in war but British imperialism was finished because of the War.  Muslim opinion in British India had changed decisively in the League’s favour.   But the  subcontinent’s political processes were drastically spinning out of everyone’s control towards anarchy and blood-letting.  Implementing a lofty vision of a cultured progressive consolidated Muslim state in India’s NorthWest descended into “Direct Action” with urban mobs  shouting Larke lenge Pakistan; Marke lenge Pakistan; Khun se lenge Pakistan; Dena hoga Pakistan.[10]

We shall return to Mr Jinnah’s view on the legal position of the “Native Princes” of “Indian India” during this critical time, specifically J&K; here it is essential before proceeding only to record his own vision for the new Pakistan as recorded by the profoundly judicious report of Justice Munir and Justice Kayani a mere half dozen years later:

“Before the Partition, the first public picture of Pakistan that the Quaid-i-Azam gave to the world was in the course of an interview in New Delhi with Mr. Doon Campbell, Reuter’s Correspondent. The Quaid-i-Azam said that the new State would be a modern democratic State, with sovereignty resting in the people and the members of the new nation having equal rights of citizenship regardless of their religion, caste or creed.  When Pakistan formally appeared on the map, the Quaid-i-Azam in his memorable speech of 11th August 1947 to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, while stating the principle on which the new State was to be founded, said:—‘All the same, in this division it was impossible to avoid the question of minorities being in one Dominion or the other. Now that was unavoidable. There is no other solution. Now what shall we do? Now, if we want to make this great State of Pakistan happy and prosperous we should wholly and solely concentrate on the well-being of the people, and specially of the masses and the poor. If you will work in co-operation, forgetting the past, burying the hatchet, you are bound to succeed. If you change your past and work together in a spirit that every one of you, no matter to what community he belongs, no matter what relations he had with you in the past, no matter what is his colour, caste or creed, is first, second and last a citizen of this State with equal rights, privileges and obligations., there will be no end to the progress you will make.  “I cannot emphasise it too much. We should begin to work in that spirit and in course of time all these angularities of the majority and minority communities—the Hindu community and the Muslim community— because even as regards Muslims you have Pathana, Punjabis, Shias, Sunnis and so on and among the Hindus you have Brahmins, Vashnavas, Khatris, also Bengalis, Madrasis and so on—will vanish. Indeed if you ask me this has been the biggest hindrance in the way of India to attain its freedom and independence and but for this we would have been free peoples long long ago. No power can hold another nation, and specially a nation of 400 million souls in subjection; nobody could have conquered you, and even if it had happened, nobody could have continued its hold on you for any length of time but for this (Applause). Therefore, we must learn a lesson from this. You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed— that has nothing to do with the business of the State (Hear, hear). As you know, history shows that in England conditions sometime ago were much worse than those prevailing in India today. The Roman Catholics and the Protestants persecuted each other. Even now there are some States in existence where there are discriminations made and bars imposed against a particular class. Thank God we are not starting in those days. We are starting in the days when there is no discrimination, no distinction between one community and another, no discrimination between one caste or creed and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State (Loud applause). The people of England in course of time had to face the realities of the situation and had to discharge the responsibilities and burdens placed upon them by the Government of their country and they went through that fire step by step. Today you might say with justice that Roman Catholics and Protestants do not exist: what exists now is that every man is a citizen, an equal citizen, of Great Britain and they are all members of the nation. “Now, I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State’. The Quaid-i-Azam was the founder of Pakistan and the occasion on which he thus spoke was the first landmark in the history of Pakistan. The speech was intended both for his own people including non-Muslims and the world, and its object was to define as clearly as possible the ideal to the attainment of which the new State was to devote all its energies. There are repeated references in this speech to the bitterness of the past and an appeal to forget and change the past and to bury the hatchet. The future subject of the State is to be a citizen with equal rights, privileges and obligations, irrespective of colour, caste, creed or community. The word ‘nation’ is used more than once and religion is stated to have nothing to do with the business of the State and to be merely a matter of personal faith for the individual.”

1940s et seq  Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi, Amir Jama’at-i-Islami

The eminent theologian Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi (1903-1979), founder of the Jama’at-i-Islami, had been opposed to the Pakistan Principle but once Pakistan was created he became the most eminent votary of an Islamic State, declaring:

 “That the sovereignty in Pakistan belongs to God Almighty alone and that the Government of Pakistan shall administer the country as His agent”.

 In such a view, Islam becomes

“the very antithesis of secular Western democracy. The philosophical foundation of Western democracy is the sovereignty of the people. Lawmaking is their prerogative and legislation must correspond to the mood and temper of their opinion… Islam… altogether repudiates the philosophy of popular sovereignty and rears its polity on the foundations of the sovereignty of God and the viceregency (Khilafat) of man.”

Maulana Maudoodi was asked by Justice Munir and Justice Kayani:

 “Q.—Is a country on the border of dar-ul-Islam always qua an Islamic State in the position of dar-ul-harb ?

A.—No. In the absence of an agreement to the contrary, the Islamic State will be potentially at war with the non-Muslim neighbouring country. The non-Muslim country acquires the status of dar-ul-harb only after the Islamic State declares a formal war against it”.

“Q.—Is there a law of war in Islam?

A.—Yes.

Q.—Does it differ fundamentally from the modern International Law of war?

A.—These two systems are based on a fundamental difference.

Q.—What rights have non-Muslims who are taken prisoners of war in a jihad?

A.—The Islamic law on the point is that if the country of which these prisoners are nationals pays ransom, they will be released. An exchange of prisoners is also permitted. If neither of these alternatives is possible, the prisoners will be converted into slaves for ever. If any such person makes an offer to pay his ransom out of his own earnings, he will be permitted to collect the money necessary for the fidya (ransom).

Q.—Are you of the view that unless a Government assumes the form of an Islamic Government, any war declared by it is not a jihad?

A.—No. A war may be declared to be a jihad if it is declared by a national Government of Muslims in the legitimate interests of the State. I never expressed the opinion attributed to me in Ex. D. E. 12:— (translation)‘The question remains whether, even if the Government of Pakistan, in its present form and structure, terminates her treaties with the Indian Union and declares war against her, this war would fall under the definition of jihad? The opinion expressed by him in this behalf is quite correct. Until such time as the Government becomes Islamic by adopting the Islamic form of Government, to call any of its wars a jihad would be tantamount to describing the enlistment and fighting of a non-Muslim on the side of the Azad Kashmir forces jihad and his death martyrdom. What the Maulana means is that, in the presence of treaties, it is against Shari’at, if the Government or its people participate in such a war. If the Government terminates the treaties and declares war, even then the war started by Government would not be termed jihad unless the Government becomes Islamic’.

….

“Q.—If we have this form of Islamic Government in Pakistan, will you permit Hindus to base their Constitution on the basis of their own religion?

A—Certainly. I should have no objection even if the Muslims of India are treated in that form of Government as shudras and malishes and Manu’s laws are applied to them, depriving them of all share in the Government and the rights of a citizen. In fact such a state of affairs already exists in India.”

.…

“Q.—What will be the duty of the Muslims in India in case of war between India and Pakistan?

A.—Their duty is obvious, and that is not to fight against Pakistan or to do anything injurious to the safety of Pakistan.”

1947-1950 PM Liaquat Ali Khan, 1966 Gen Ayub Khan, 2005 Govt of Pakistan et seq

In contrast to Maulana Maudoodi saying Islam was “the very antithesis of secular Western democracy”,  Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan (1895-1951)[11] during his first official visit in 1950 to North America was to say the new Pakistan, because it was Muslim, held Asia’s greatest democratic potential:

“At present there is no democracy in Asia which is more free and more unified than Pakistan; none so free from moral doubts and from strains between the various sections of the people.”

He told his audiences Pakistan was created because Hindus were people wedded to caste-differences where Pakistanis as Muslims had an egalitarian and democratic disposition:

“The Hindus, for example, believe in the caste system according to which some human beings are born superior to others and cannot have any social relations with those in the lower castes or with those who are not Hindus.   They cannot marry them or eat with them or even touch them without being polluted.   The Muslims abhor the caste system, as they are a democratic people and believe in the equality of men and equal opportunities for all, do not consider a priesthood necessary, and have economic laws and institutions which recognize the right of private ownership and yet are designed to promote the distribution of wealth and to put healthy checks on vast unearned accumulations… so the Hindus and the Muslims decided to part and divide British India into two independent sovereign states… Our demand for a country of our own had, as you see, a strong democratic urge behind it.  The emergence of Pakistan itself was therefore the triumph of a democratic idea.  It enabled at one stroke a democratic nation of eighty million people to find a place of its own in Asia, where now they can worship God in freedom and pursue their own way of life uninhibited by the domination or the influence of ways and beliefs that are alien or antagonistic to their genius.” [12]

President Ayub Khan would state in similar vein on 18 November 1966 at London’s Royal Institute of International Affairs:

“the root of the problem was the conflicting ideologies of India and Pakistan. Muslim Pakistan believed in common brotherhood and giving people equal opportunity.  India and Hinduism are based on inequality and on colour and race.  Their basic concept is the caste system… Hindus and Muslims could never live under one Government, although they might live side by side.”

Regarding J&K, Liaquat Ali Khan on November 4 1947 broadcast from here in Lahore that the 1846 Treaty of Amritsar was “infamous” in having caused an  “immoral and illegal” ownership of Jammu & Kashmir.  He, along with Mr Jinnah, had called Sheikh Abdullah a “goonda” and “hoodlum” and “Quisling” of India, and on February 4 1948 Pakistan formally challenged the sovereignty of the Dogra dynasty in the world system of nations.  In 1950 during his North American visit though, the Prime Minister allowed that J&K was a “princely state” but said

“culturally, economically, geographically and strategically, Kashmir – 80 per cent of whose peoples like the majority of the people in Pakistan are Muslims – is in fact an integral part of Pakistan”;

“(the) bulk of the population (are) under Indian military occupation”. 

Pakistan’s official self-image, portrayal of India, and position on J&K may have not changed greatly since her founding Prime Minister’s statements.   For example, in June 2005 the website of the Government of Pakistan’s Permanent Mission at the UN stated:

“Q: How did Hindu Raja (sic) become the ruler of Muslim majority Kashmir?

A: Historically speaking Kashmir had been ruled by the Muslims from the 14th Century onwards.  The Muslim rule continued till early 19th Century when the ruler of Punjab conquered  Kashmir and gave Jammu to a Dogra Gulab Singh who purchased Kashmir from the British in 1846 for a sum of 7.5 million rupees.”

“India’s forcible occupation of the State of Jammu and Kashmir in 1947 is the main cause of the dispute. India claims to have ‘signed’ a controversial document, the Instrument of Accession, on 26 October 1947 with the Maharaja of Kashmir, in which the Maharaja obtained India’s military help against popular insurgency.   The people of Kashmir and Pakistan do not accept the Indian claim.   There are doubts about the very existence of the Instrument of Accession.  The United Nations also does not consider Indian claim as legally valid: it recognises Kashmir as a disputed territory.   Except India, the entire world community recognises Kashmir as a disputed territory. The fact is that all the principles on the basis of which the Indian subcontinent was partitioned by the British in 1947 justify Kashmir becoming a part of Pakistan:  the State had majority Muslim population, and it not only enjoyed geographical proximity with Pakistan but also had essential economic linkages with the territories constituting Pakistan.”

India, a country dominated by the hated-Hindus, has forcibly denied Srinagar Valley’s Muslim majority over the years the freedom to become part of Muslim Pakistan – I stand here to be corrected but, in a nutshell, such has been and remains Pakistan’s official view and projection of the Kashmir problem over more than sixty years.[13]



[1] EIJ Rosenthal, Islam in the Modern National State, 1965, pp.196-197.

[2] A contemporary of Mohammad Ibn Abdal Wahhab of Nejd.

[3] Francis Robinson in  WE James & Subroto Roy, Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s, 1993, p. 36.  Indeed Barelwi had created a proto-Pakistan in NorthWest India one hundred years before the Pakistan Movement. “In the later 1820s the movement became militant, regarding jihad as one of the basic tenets of faith.  Possibly encouraged by the British, with whom the movement did not feel powerful enough to come to grips at the outset, it chose as the venue of jihad the NW frontier of the subcontinent, where it was directed against the Sikhs.  Barelwi temporarily succeeded in carving out a small theocratic principality which collapsed owing to the friction between his Pathan and North Indian followers; and he was finally defeated and slain by the Sikhs in 1831″ (Aziz Ahmed, in  AL Basham (ed) A Cultural History of India 1976, p. 384).   Professor Robinson answered a query of mine in an email of 8 August 2005: “the fullest description of this is in Mohiuddin Ahmad, Saiyid Ahmad Shahid (Lucknow, 1975), although practically everyone who deals with the period covers it in some way. Barelwi was the Amir al-Muminin of a jihadi community which based itself north of Peshawar and for a time controlled Peshawar.  He called his fellowship the Tariqa-yi Muhammadiya.  Barelwi corresponded with local rulers about him.  After his death at the battle of Balakot, it survived in the region, at Sittana I think, down to World War One.”

[4] Rosenthal, ibid., p 235

[5] Germans

[6] Events remote from India’s history and geography, namely, the rise of Hitler and the Second World War, had contributed between 1937 and 1947 to the change of fortunes of the Muslim League and hence of all the people of the subcontinent.  The British had long discovered that mutual antipathy between Muslims and Hindus could be utilised in fashioning their rule; specifically that organisation and mobilisation of Muslim communal opinion was a useful counterweight to any pan-Indian nationalism emerging to compete with British authority. As early as 1874, long before Allan Octavian Hume ICS conceived the Indian National Congress, John Strachey ICS observed “The existence side by side of these (Hindu and Muslim) hostile creeds is one of the strong points in our political position in India. The better classes of Mohammedans are a source of strength to us and not of weakness. They constitute a comparatively small but an energetic minority of the population whose political interests are identical with ours.” By 1906, when a deputation of Muslims headed by the Aga Khan first approached the British pleading for communal representation, Minto the Viceroy replied: “I am as firmly convinced as I believe you to be that any electoral representation in India would be doomed to mischievous failure which aimed at granting a personal enfranchisement, regardless of the beliefs and traditions of the communities composing the population of this Continent.” Minto’s wife wrote in her diary the effect was “nothing less than the pulling back of sixty two millions of (Muslims) from joining the ranks of the seditious opposition.” (The true significance of Maulana Azad may have been that he, precisely at the same time, did indeed feel within himself the nationalist’s desire for freedom strongly enough to want to join the ranks of that seditious opposition.)

[7] “That geographically contiguous units are demarcated into regions which should be so constituted, with such territorial readjustments as may be necessary, that the areas in which the Muslims are numerically in a majority, as in the North-Western and Eastern zones of India should be grouped to constitute Independent States in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign”.

[8] Robinson ibid, pp. 43-44.

[9] In the “Indian India” of the Native Princes, Hari Singh and others who sent troops to fight as part of British armies (and who were nominal members of Churchill’s War Cabinet) would have their vanities flattered, while Sheikh Abdullah’s rebellion against Dogra rule would be ignored. See seq. And in British India, Mr Jinnah the conservative Anglophile and his elitist Muslim League would be backed, while the radicalised masses of the Gandhi-Bose-Nehru Congress suppressed as a nuisance.

[10] An anthology about Lahore reports memories of a murderous mob arriving at a wealthy man’s home to be placated  with words like  “They are Parsis not Hindus, no need to kill them…”

[11] An exact contemporary of Chaudhury Rahmat Ali.

[12] Pakistan, Harvard University Press, 1950.

[13] It is not far from this to a certain body of sentiments frequently found, for example, as recently as February 5 2011: “To observe the Kashmir Solidarity Day, various programs, rallies and protests will be held on Saturday (today) across the city to support the people of Kashmir in their struggle against the Indian occupation of their land.  Various religious, political, social and other organizations have arranged different programs to highlight the atrocities of Indian occupant army in held Jammu and Kashmir where about 800,000 Indian soldiers have been committing atrocities against innocent civilians; killing, wounding and maiming tens of thousands of people; raping thousands of women and setting houses, shops and crops on fire to break the Kashmiris’ will to fight for their freedom…Jamat-ud-Dawah…leaders warned that a ‘jihad’ would be launched if Kashmir was not liberated through civil agitation…the JuD leaders said first the former President, Pervez Musharraf, and now the current dispensation were extending the olive branch to New Delhi despite the atrocities on the Kashmiri people….the Pakistani nation would (never compromise on the issue of Kashmir and) would continue to provide political, moral and diplomatic support to the Kashmiri people.”

My Seventy-One Notes at Facebook etc on Kashmir, Pakistan, and, of course, India

My Seventy-One Notes at Facebook etc on Kashmir, Pakistan, and, of course, India (listed thanks to JD)

(I am afraid you need a Facebook account to see most of these, though several are in the newspapers and/or at this site too.  I will try in due course to have everything reproduced here too.)

1) Talking to my student and friend Amir Malik about Pakistan and its problems

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150297082781126

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

2) My thanks to Mr Singh for seeing the optimality of my Kashmir solution

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150271489571126

Sunday, September 4, 2011

3) Zafrullah, my father, and the three frigates: there was no massacre of the Hindu Sindhi refugees in Karachi in 1947

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150265008366126

Saturday, August 27, 2011

4) Conversation with Mr Birinder R Singh about my Kashmir solution

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150259831611126

Saturday, August 20, 2011

5) On the Hurriyat’s falsification of history

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150258949946126

Friday, August 19, 2011

6) Letter from a young Pashtun whose grandfathers were in the 1947 invasion of Kashmir (which the Hurriyat says never happened)

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150258851821126

Friday, August 19, 2011

7) More on my solution

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150258100876126

Thursday, August 18, 2011

8  ) A Hurriyat/Taliban Islamist emirate in the Valley subject to an Indian blockade would likely face famine.

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150257700231126

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

9) There is no Kashmiri nationality and there never has been in the modern era of international law

http://www.facebook.com/subyroy?sk=notes&s=20

Monday, August 15, 2011

10) Of the Flag of Pakistan, and the Union Jack, and the Flag of India — August 14-15 1947

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150255301456126

Sunday, August 14, 2011

11) Talking about Kashmir in 1947 to Ralph Coti

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150254871116126

Saturday, August 13, 2011

12) Conversation with Prof. Bhim Singh about 1947

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150254495896126

Saturday, August 13, 2011

13) The LOC represents the division of ownerless, sovereignless territory won by military conquest by either side…

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150245816611126

Monday, August 1, 2011

14) Talking to Mr Tauseef

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150245521131126

Monday, August 1, 2011

15) J&K had ceased to exist as an entity in international law by August 15 1947, at most by October 22 1947

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150244867021126

Sunday, July 31, 2011

16) Would someone be kind enough to tell me which freedoms Indian Kashmiris are being deprived of?

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150243323381126

Friday, July 29, 2011

17) Kunan Poshpora: I would say the evidence reported by the Verghese Committee itself was enough to indicate there had been rape 28 July 2011

18) Talking to Mr Rameez Makhdoomi about Kashmir

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150241973371126

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

19) And, as you well know, General Hasnain is both Muslim and Kashmiri, besides being the Commanding Officer of 15 Corps.

http://www.facebook.com/subyroy?sk=notes&s=40

Friday, July 22, 2011

20) Kashmir needs a Coroner’s Office!

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150238284741126

Friday, July 22, 2011

21) A slogan for Kashmir: No exaggerations, no hallucinations, no cover-ups please: Just the plain facts & accountability

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150238136556126

Friday, July 22, 2011

22) Towards a Spatial Model of Kashmir’s Political History

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150234599731126

Sunday, July 17, 2011

23) Why did Allama Iqbal say “India is the greatest Muslim country in the world…”?

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150233148866126

Friday, July 15, 2011

24) Conversation with Mr Arif

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150230793806126

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

25) Omar Qayoom Bhat: A Victim of State Repression in J&K

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150229389496126

Monday, July 11, 2011

26) Good and evil in Kashmir over more than a millennium…

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150217168656126

Sunday, June 26, 2011

27) Letter to Mr Zargar (Continued)

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150212034496126

June 23, 2011

28) From the Official Indian Army website re Human Rights Violations

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150210741356126

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

29) A Facebook Discussion on Kashmir with the Lahore Oxford & Cambridge Society

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150208871201126

Sunday, June 19, 2011

30) Answering two central questions on the Kashmir Problem

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150202054326126

Friday, June 10, 2011

31) Some articles on Jammu & Kashmir, Pakistan, Afghanistan

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150201498846126

Friday, June 10, 2011

32) Lar ke lenge Pakistan? Khun se lenge Pakistan?

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150195065706126

Thursday, June 2, 2011

33) On Pakistan & Questions of the Nature & Jurisprudence of Polities

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150165301016126

Saturday, April 30, 2011

34) On “state involvement” (January 2009)

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?

on Friday, April 22, 2011

35) My four main 2005-06 articles on the existence of a unique, stable solution to Kashmir

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150155305266126

Sunday, April 17, 2011

36) On the present state of the Pakistan-India dialogue

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150140448906126

Thursday, March 31, 2011

37) Mixed messages (from a Dec 2008 post on Pakistan just after the Mumbai massacres)

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150117696731126

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

38) New Foreign Policy? “Kiss Up, Kick Down”? (October 2006)

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150098854806126

Friday, March 4, 2011

39) Conversations with Kashmiris: An Ongoing Facebook Note

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=489267761125

Saturday, January 22, 2011

40) On Pakistan and the Theory & Practice of the Islamic State, 1949, 1954

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=486039761125

Saturday, January 15, 2011

41) A Modern Military (2006)

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=483556931125

Monday, January 10, 2011

42) India’s Muslim Voices: Sir Sikandar Hyat Khan (1892-1942), Punjab Prime Minister 1941

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=476020171125

Monday, December 27, 2010

43) Pre-Partition Indian Secularism Case-Study: Fuzlul Huq and Manindranath Roy

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=445015731125

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

44) A Brief Note on Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and the Pashtuns 1971-2010

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=414500306125

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

45) On the Existence of a Unique and Stable Solution to the Jammu & Kashmir Problem that is Lawful, Just and Economically Efficient

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=407478886125

Monday, July 5, 2010

46) Seventy Years Today (Sep 4 2009) Since the British Govt Politically Empowered MA Jinnah

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=407310716125

Monday, July 5, 2010

47) Justice & Afzal (Oct 14 2006)

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=393914236125

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

48) My (armchair) experience of the 1999 Kargil war (Or, How the Kargil effort got a little help from a desktop)

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=388161476125

Thursday, April 29, 2010

49) A Brief History of Gilgit

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=336081356125

Monday, March 1, 2010

50)  India-USA interests: Elements of a serious Indian foreign policy (2007)

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=299902341125

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

51) Ambassador Holbrooke’s error of historical fact

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=259713446125

Sunday, January 17, 2010

52) Of a new New Delhi myth & the success of the Univ of Hawaii 1986-1992 Pakistan project (Nov 15 2008)

https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=247284116125

Sunday, 10 January 2010

53) Was Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah (1905-1982), Lion of Kashmir, the greatest Muslim political leader of the 20th Century?

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=244956301125

Friday, January 8, 2010

54) On Indian Nationhood: From Tamils To Kashmiris & Assamese & Mizos To Sikhs & Goans (2007)

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=222511821125

Friday, December 25, 2009

55) India has never, not once, initiated hostilities against Pakistan (2009)

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=194400926125

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

56) RAND’s study of the Mumbai attacks (Jan 25 2009)

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=189261716125

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

57) Memo to the Hon’ble Attorneys General of Pakistan & India (January 16 2009)

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=189251816125

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

58) On Hindus and Muslims (2005)

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=172649451125

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

59) Iqbal & Jinnah vs Rahmat Ali in Pakistan’s creation (2005)

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=171039831125

Saturday, October 31, 2009

60) Have “mixed messages” caused a “double-bind” in the US-Pakistan relationship?

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=164051251125

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

61) Pakistan’s Kashmir obsession: Sheikh Abdullah Relied In Politics On The French Constitution, Not Islam (Feb 16 2008)

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=154064436125

Thursday, October 8, 2009

62) Two cheers for Pakistan! (April 7 2008)

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=154062896125

Thursday, October 8, 2009

63) What to tell Musharraf: Peace Is Impossible Without Non-Aggressive Pakistani Intentions (Dec 15 2006)

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=153985256125

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

64) India’s Muslim Voices (Dec 4 2008)

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=153977181125

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

65) Saving Pakistan: A Physicist/Political Philosopher May Represent Iqbal’s “Spirit of Modern Times” (2007)

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=153971996125

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

66) The Greatest Pashtun: Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890-1988)

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=153812126125

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

67) Law, Justice and Jammu & Kashmir (2006)

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=152464726125

Monday, October 5, 2009

68) Solving Kashmir: On an Application of Reason (2005)

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=152462776125

Monday, October 5, 2009

69) Understanding Pakistan (2006)

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=152348161125

Monday, October 5, 2009

70) Pakistan’s Allies (2006)

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=152345826125

Monday, October 5, 2009

71) History of Jammu & Kashmir

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=152343836125

Monday, October 5, 2009

and of course, from 20 years ago,

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=164040022284&set=a.136688412284.112038.632437284&type=3&theater

Silver Jubilee of “Pricing, Planning & Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India”

May 29 2009:

It is a quarter century precisely today since my monograph Pricing, Planning and Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India was first published in London by the Institute of Economic Affairs.

ppp1984

Its text is now available (in slightly rough form) at this site here.

Now in May 1984, Indira Gandhi ruled in Delhi, and the ghost of Brezhnev was still fresh in Moscow.   The era of Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in America was at its height.   Pricing, Planning & Politics emerged from my 1976-1982 doctoral thesis at Cambridge though it came to be written in Blacksburg and Ithaca in 1982-1983.   It was the first critique after BR Shenoy of India’s Sovietesque economics since Jawaharlal Nehru’s time.

The Times, London’s most eminent paper at the time, wrote its lead editorial comment about it on the day it was published, May 29 1984.

londonti

It used to take several days for the library at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg to receive its copy of The Times of London and other British newspapers.    I had not been told of the date of publication and did not know of what had happened in London on May 29 until perhaps June 2 — when a friend, Vasant Dave of a children’s charity, who was on campus, phoned me and congratulated me for being featured in The Times which he had just read in the University Library.  “You mean they’ve reviewed it?”  I asked him, “No, it’s the lead editorial.” “What?” I exclaimed.  There was worse.  Vasant was very soft-spoken and said “Yes, it’s titled ‘India’s Bad Example’” — which I misheard on the phone as “India’s Mad Example”  :D

Drat! I thought (or words to that effect), they must have lambasted me, as I rushed down to the Library to take a look.

The Times had said

“When Mr. Dennis Healey in the Commons recently stated that Hongkong, with one per cent of the population of India has twice India’s trade, he was making an important point about Hongkong but an equally important point about India.   If Hongkong with one per cent of its population and less than 0.03 per cert of India’s land area (without even water as a natural resource) can so outpace India, there must be something terribly wrong with the way Indian governments have managed their affairs, and there is.   A paper by an Indian economist published today (Pricing, Planning and Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India by Subroto Roy, IEA £1.80) shows how Asia’s largest democracy is gradually being stifled by the imposition of economic policies whose woeful effect and rhetorical unreality find their echo all over the Third World.   As with many of Britain’s former imperial possessions, the rot set in long before independence.  But as with most of the other former dependencies, the instrument of economic regulation and bureaucratic control set up by the British has been used decisively and expansively to consolidate a statist regime which inhibits free enterprise, minimizes economic success and consolidates the power of government in all spheres of the economy.  We hear little of this side of things when India rattles the borrowing bowl or denigrates her creditors for want of further munificence.  How could Indian officials explain their poor performance relative to Hongkong?  Dr Roy has the answers for them.   He lists the causes as a large and heavily subsidized public sector, labyrinthine control over private enterprise, forcibly depressed agricultural prices, massive import substitution, government monopoly of foreign exchange transactions, artificially overvalued currency and the extensive politicization of the labour market, not to mention the corruption which is an inevitable side effect of an economy which depends on the arbitrament of bureaucrats.  The first Indian government under Nehru took its cue from Nehru’s admiration of the Soviet economy, which led him to believe that the only policy for India was socialism in which there would be “no private property except in a restricted sense and the replacement of the private profit system by a higher ideal of cooperative service.”  Consequently, the Indian government has now either a full monopoly or is one of a few oligipolists in banking, insurance, railways, airlines, cement, steel, chemicals, fertilizers, ship-building, breweries, telephones and wrist-watches.   No businessman can expand his operation while there is any surplus capacity anywhere in that sector.  He needs government approval to modernize, alter his price-structure, or change his labour shift.  It is not surprising that a recent study of those developing countries which account for most manufactured exports from the Third World shows that India’s share fell from 65 percent in 1953 to 10 per cent in 1973; nor, with the numerous restrictions on inter-state movement of grains, that India has over the years suffered more from an inability to cope with famine than during the Raj when famine drill was centrally organized and skillfully executed without restriction. Nehru’s attraction for the Soviet model has been inherited by his daughter, Mrs. Gandhi.  Her policies have clearly positioned India more towards the Soviet Union than the West.  The consequences of this, as Dr Roy states, is that a bias can be seen in “the antipathy and pessimism towards market institutions found among the urban public, and sympathy and optimism to be found for collectivist or statist ones.”  All that India has to show for it is the delivery of thousands of tanks in exchange for bartered goods, and the erection of steel mills and other heavy industry which help to perpetuate the unfortunate obsession with industrial performance at the expense of agricultural growth and the relief of rural poverty.”…..

I felt this may have been intended to be laudatory but it was also inaccurate and had to be corrected.  I replied dated June 4 which The Times published in their edition of  June 16 1984:

timesletter-11

I was 29 when Pricing, Planning and Politics was published, I am 54 now. I do not agree with everything I said in it and find the tone a little puffed up as young men tend to be; it was also five years before my main “theoretical” work Philosophy of Economics would be published. My experience of life in the years since has also made me far less sanguine both about human nature and about America than I was then. But I am glad to find I am not embarrassed by what I said then, indeed I am pleased I said what I did in favour of classical liberalism and against statism and totalitarianism well before it became popular to do so after the Berlin Wall fell. (In India as elsewhere, former communist apparatchiks and fellow-travellers became pseudo-liberals overnight.)

The editorial itself may have been due to a conversation between Peter Bauer and William Rees-Mogg, so I later heard. The work sold 700 copies in its first month, a record for the publisher. The wife of one prominent Indian bureaucrat told me in Delhi in December 1988 it had affected her husband’s thinking drastically. A senior public finance economist told me he had been deputed at the Finance Ministry when the editorial appeared, and the Indian High Commission in London had urgently sent a copy of the editorial to the Ministry where it caused a stir. An IMF official told me years later that he saw the editorial on board a flight to India from the USA on the same day, and stopped in London to make a trip to the LSE’s bookshop to purchase a copy. Professor Jagdish Bhagwati of Columbia University had been a critic of aspects of Indian policy; he received a copy  in draft just before it was published and was kind enough to write I had “done an excellent job of setting out the problems afflicting our economic policies, unfortunately government-made problems!”

Siddhartha Shankar Ray told me when  we first met that he had been in London when the editorial appeared and had seen it there; it affected his decision to introduce me to Rajiv Gandhi as warmly as he came to do a half dozen years later.

Within a few months though, by the Fall of 1984, I was under attack by the “gang of inert game theorists”  who had come to  Blacksburg following the departure of James Buchanan.  By mid 1985 I had moved to Provo, Utah, really rather wishing, as I recall,  to have left my India-work behind me.  But by late 1986, I was at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, where the perestroika-for-India and Pakistan projects that I and WE James led, had come to be sponsored by the University and the East West Center.

The unpublished results of the India-project reached Rajiv Gandhi by my hand on September 18 1990 as has been told elsewhere.  A week later, on September 25 1990,  Rajiv appointed a small group that included myself, to advise him.  It was that encounter with Rajiv Gandhi that sparked the origins of the 1991 economic reform.  Yet in 2007 one member of the group, declaring himself close to Sonia Gandhi, brazenly lied in public saying it was Manmohan Singh and not I who had been part of the group — a group of which I had been in fact the first member!  Manmohan Singh himself has never claimed to have been present and in fact was not even in India at the time it was formed.

I have explained elsewhere here why I believe this specific  lie  came to be told by this specific liar who shared membership with me in the group that Rajiv had formed:  because I had also pleaded with  many and especially within this group that Rajiv had seemed, to my layman’s eyes, very vulnerable to assassination, and none of them had lifted a finger to  do anything about it!  Such is how duplicity, envy and greed for power make people mendacious and venal in politics!

As for Pricing, Planning and Politics, Dr Manmohan Singh received a personal copy from my father whom he had long known through the Kaul brothers, Brahma and Madan, both of whom were dear friends of my father since the War and Independence.   From a letter Dr Singh wrote to my father,  he would have received his copy in late 1986 when he was heading the Planning Commission in his penultimate appointment before retirement from the bureaucracy.

Readers of Pricing, Planning and Politics today, 25 years after it was published, may judge for themselves what if any  part of it may be still relevant to the new government that Dr Singh is now prime minister of.   The work was mostly one of applied microeconomics or the theory of value; in recent years I have written much also of applied macroeconomics or the theory of money as it relates to India.  My great professor at Cambridge, Frank Hahn, was kind enough to say in 1985 that he thought my “critique of Development Economics was powerful not only on methodological but also on economic theory grounds”; that to me has been a special source of delight.

Subroto Roy, Kolkata

Important summits in the USA, Russia, Copenhagen can be attended by the Prime Minister of India as he is not a Member of the Lok Sabha

From Facebook:

Subroto Roy notes that since Dr Manmohan Singh is the first Indian Prime Minister ever to have chosen with deliberation not to be a member of the Lok Sabha, he has been free to hold important summits at the White House, Kremlin, Copenhagen etc while the Lok Sabha debates mundane matters like the Liberhan Commission report, inflation etc.

Do diplomatic parties help the common man?

From Facebook

Subroto Roy is afraid he does not think the interests of the common man and woman of India come to be served in the slightest by a fancy dinner-party whether given by the Queen of  England at Buckingham Palace for the President of India or by the President of the United States at the White House for the Prime Minister of India….(…though some businessmen and bureaucrats become happy…)

Crunch-time: Do New Delhi’s bureaucrats have guts enough to walk away from the ADB, World Bank etc? (And does India have a Plan B, or for that matter a Plan A, in dealing with Communist China?)

I have had slight experience with the so-called multilateral financial institutions — attending a conference and helping to produce a book on Asia & Latin America with the ADB back in Hawaii in the 1980s, and being a consultant for some months at the World Bank and the IMF in Washington DC in the 1990s. The institutions seemed to me gluttonous and incompetent though I did meet a dozen good economic bureaucrats and two or three who were excellent in Washington. The “Asian Development Bank” (under Japan’s sway as the Word Bank is under American sway and the IMF under European sway) was reputedly worst of the three, though the Big Daddy of wasteful intellectually corrupt international bureaucracies must be the UN itself, especially certain notorious UN-affiliates around the world.

Now there are newspapers reports the ADB has apparently voted, under Communist Chinese pressure, to prevent itself from

“formally acknowledging Arunachal Pradesh as part of India”.

This should be enough for any self-respecting Government of India to want to give notice to the ADB’s President that the Republic of India is moving out of its membership. Ongoing projects and any in the pipeline need not be affected as we would meet our debt obligations.  There is no reason after all why a treaty-defined entity may not conclude deals with non-members or former members and vice versa.

But New Delhi’s bureaucrats may not find the guts to think on these lines as they would have to overcome their personal interests involved in taking up the highly lucrative non-jobs that these places offer. They will need some political kicking from the top. Thus in 1990-91 I had said to Rajiv Gandhi that “on foreign policy we should ‘go bilateral’ with good strong ties with individual countries, and drop all the multilateral hogwash”… “We do not ask for or accept public foreign aid from foreign Governments or international organizations at “concessional” terms. Requiring annual foreign aid is an indication of economic maladjustment, having to do with the structure of imports and exports and the international price of the Indian rupee. Receiving the so-called aid of others, e.g. the so-called Aid-India Consortium or the soft-loans of the World Bank, diminishes us drastically in the eyes of the donors, who naturally push their own agendas and gain leverage in the country in various ways in return. Self-reliance from so-called foreign aid would require making certain economic adjustments in commercial and exchange-rate policies, as well as austerity in foreign-exchange spending by the Government….”

Today, nineteen years later, I would say the problem has to do less with the structure of India’s balance of payments than with trying to normalise away from the rotten state of our government accounts and public finances. I have thus said “getting on properly with the mundane business of ordinary government and commerce… may call for a gradual withdrawal of India from all or most of the fancy, corrupt international bureaucracies in New York, Washington, Geneva etc, focussing calmly but determinedly instead on improved administration and governance at home.” We need those talented and well-experienced Indian staff-members in these international bureaucracies to return to work to improve our own civil services and public finances of the Union and our more than two dozen States.

As for India developing a Plan B (or a Plan A) in dealing with Communist China, my ten articles republished here yesterday provide an outline of both.

Subroto Roy,
Kolkata

My Ten Articles on China, Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan in relation to India

I have had a close interest in China ever  since the “Peking Spring” more than thirty years ago but I had not published anything relating to China until 2007-2008 when I published the ten articles listed below:

“Understanding China”, The Statesman Oct 22 2007

“India-US interests: Elements of a serious Indian foreign policy”, The Statesman Oct 30 2007

“China’s India Aggression”, The Statesman, Nov 5 2007,

“Surrender or Fight? War is not a cricket match or Bollywood movie. Can India fight China if it must? “ The Statesman, Dec 4 2007

“China’s Commonwealth: Freedom is the Road to Resolving Taiwan, Tibet, Sinkiang” The Statesman, December 17, 2007

“Nixon & Mao vs India: How American foreign policy did a U-turn about Communist China’s India aggression”. The Statesman, January 7 2008.

“Lessons from the 1962 War: there are distinct Tibetan, Chinese and Indian points of view that need to be mutually comprehended,” The Statesman, January 15, 2008

“China’s India Example: Tibet, Xinjiang May Not Be Assimilated Like Inner Mongolia, Manchuria”, The Statesman, March 25, 2008

“China’s force and diplomacy: The need for realism in India”, The Statesman, May 31, 2008

“Transparency and history” (with Claude Arpi), Business Standard, Dec 31 2008

With new tensions on the Tibet-India border apparently being caused by the Chinese military, these may be helpful for India to determine a Plan B, or even a Plan A, in its dealings with Communist China.

Subroto Roy

Kolkata

Finally, three months late, the GoI responds to American and Pakistani allegations about Balochistan

Just about three months ago, on April 27 2009, I ended an article here on Balochistan saying “The Government of India obviously needs to address Dr Fair’s claim and seek to squarely refute what she has said in these remarks”. The American analyst Christine Fair had alleged Indian involvement in Pakistan’s problems in Balochistan, and this had been something gleefully taken up by the Pakistanis (almost on a par with the psychotic delusion on the part of some in Pakistan that the Taliban were  really dressed-up Indians, see the quote from Jemima Khan’s  brilliant reportage in my article).

On July 21, India’s top foreign ministry official finally responded saying:  “…Prime Minister Gilani mentioned that Pakistan has some information on threats in Balochistan and other areas. Pakistan has been saying this but our hands are clean”.

Better late than never I suppose.

Subroto Roy, Kolkata.

Disquietude about France’s behaviour towards India on July 14 2009

The Indian press and media, especially the Government-owned part, exulted about Dr Manmohan Singh’s presence at France’s Bastille Day parade this year.   And of course it was generally a splendid occasion and there were things that the organisers of Indian military parades could have and should have learnt from it.   But there were two sources of disquietude.

Did anyone but myself notice that Dr Manmohan Singh had been placed on the left hand side of the French President?   Is that the place of a Guest of Honour?

Who was on the right hand side?  Germany’s President Horset Köhler.   Why?  Some French reports said Dr Singh was the Guest of Honour; others said both were.  Either way diplomatic protocol should have placed Dr Singh to the right of President Sarkozy.  If President Köhler too was an equivalent Guest of Honour through some last minute diplomatic mishap, he should have been to the right of Dr Singh.

France slighted India by placing Dr Singh to the left of President Sarkozy and still calling him the Guest of Honour.  (And why Dr Singh was invited was clearly not because of any new great power status for India but firstly to reciprocate the recent invitation to President Sarkozy last 26 January, and secondly, to gain advantage in business deals with India.)

Secondly, what business did a French paratrooper have to parachute out of an aircraft holding India’s tricolour and then, upon landing, drag it momentarily on the ground?  What business did two French paratroopers have to be holding the Indian  tricolour in a salute to the French President?

Again, France has slighted India.

I love Paris and I am generally Francophilic — except for such  instances of Napoleonic self-aggrandisement.

Subroto Roy

Kolkata

Postscript July 15:  Where her husband did not, Mme Sarkozy  did get the protocol  right, placing Mme Singh to her immediate right and Mme Köhler to Mme Singh’s right.

sarkozy


Does the Govt. of India assume “foreign investors and analysts” are a key constituency for Indian economic policy-making? If so, why so? Have Govt. economists “learnt nothing, forgotten everything”? Some Bastille Day thoughts

Today is Bastille Day in France and the Prime Minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh, at the invitation of President Sarkozy, is visiting Paris (where the Government of India has flown in military contingents to participate in the annual parade), before he goes to another summit in Egypt with Present Mubarak and others, following his recent summits in Italy with the Pope and others, and in Russia with President Medvedev and others, and in London with President Obama and others, etc.   Dr Singh has  almost certainly become the most internationally well-travelled of all Indian leaders on official visits ever in history, which adds to his having had the longest experience in India’s bureaucracy of any Indian political leader in history, which came to be followed by his stint in the Rajya Sabha as Finance Minister and now as a two-term Prime Minister.

But as a result of being out of the country yesterday, the Prime Minister would have missed the TV interview broadcast last night with his chief economic policy aide when it was said that “foreign investors and analysts” are an important constituency for Indian economic policy-makers, as expressed in the President’s speech to the new 15th Lok Sabha or Pranab Mukherjee’s Budget speech last week.  The interviewer seemed to agree and constantly pressed the aide, who is doubtless the most prominent Government economist on television,  about how stock-market brokers and businessmen seemed to have found the Budget not to their immediate liking, and how  privatisation or “raising insurance caps” would have been seen by businessmen as  crucial elements of future economic reform.  In fact privatisation or the insurance business have little to do with any important economic reform but the lobbying power and spin-control of  organised business becomes manifest in getting interviewers to ask such questions of Government spokesmen –  all part of the (doubtless unconscious) process of camouflaging their private interests in the guise of purported public economic policy discussion.

I have taken a very different view.  For example, I said a few years ago in starkest contrast:

“Running through the new foreign policy is a fiction that it is driven by a new economic motivation to improve development and mass well-being in India. The bizarre idea of creating hundreds of so-called “Special Economic Zones” (reminiscent of 17th and 18th Century colonial fortifications) illustrates this. India’s ordinary anonymous masses ~ certainly the 850 million people entirely outside the organised sector ~ have little or nothing to do with any of this. Benefits will accrue only to the ten million Indian nomenclatura controlling or having access to the gaping exit holes to the outside world in the new semi-closed economy with its endless deficit finance paid for by unlimited printing of an inconvertible domestic currency. It is as fallacious to think private investment from foreign or domestic businessmen will support public “infrastructure” creation as it is to think foreign exchange reserves are like tax revenues in being available for Government expenditure on “infrastructure”. Such fallacies are intellectual products of either those who know no economics at all or those who have forgotten whatever little they might have been once mistaught in their youth. What serious economics does say is that Government should generally have nothing to do with any kind of private business, and instead should focus on properly providing public goods and services, encourage competition in all avenues of economic activity and prevent or regulate monopoly, and see to it all firms pay taxes they are due to pay.  That is it. It is as bad for Government to be pampering organised foreign or domestic business or organised labour with innumerable subsidies, as has been happening in India for decades, as it is to make enterprise difficult with red tape and hurdles. Businessmen are grown ups and should be allowed to freely risk their capital and make their profits or their losses without public intervention. An economics-based policy would have single-mindedly sought to improve the financial condition of every governmental entity in the country, with the aim of improving the provision of public goods and services to all 1,000 million Indians. If and when budgets of all governmental entities become sound, foreign creditors would automatically line up before them with loans to sell, and ambitious development goals can be accomplished. As long as public budgets (and public accounts) remain in an outrageous shambles, nothing can be in fact achieved and only propaganda, corruption and paper-money creation results instead. Whatever economic growth does occur is due to new enterprise and normal technological progress, and is mostly despite and not because of New Delhi’s bureaucrats (see “The Dream Team: A Critique”, The Statesman 6-8 January 2006).  The first aspect of the new Indian foreign policy has been for Government to become wholly ingratiating towards any and all “First World” members visiting India who may deign to consider any kind of collaboration whatsoever. The long line of foreign businessmen and heads of government having photo-ops with the Indian PM began with Vajpayee and has continued with Manmohan, especially when there is a large weapons’ or commercial aircraft or other purchase to be signed. The flip-side has been ministerial and especially Prime Ministerial trips abroad ~ from Vajpayee’s to a Singapore golf-cart immediately after commiserating Gujarat, to Manmohan receiving foreign honorary doctorates while still holding public office.  Subservience to foreign business interests in the name of economic policy extends very easily to Indian naval, military or diplomatic assets being used to provide policing or support services for the great powers as and when they may ask for it. Hence, Indian naval forces may be asked by the Americans to help fight pirates in the Indian Ocean, or escort this vessel or that, or India may be asked to provide refuelling or base facilities, or India may be requested to vote against Iran, Venezuela or whomever here or there. But there would be absolutely no question of India’s role in international politics being anything greater than that of a subaltern or comprador whose response must be an instant “Ji, Huzoor”. The official backing of the Tharoor candidacy was as futile and ridiculous as the quest for UN veto-power or the willingness to attend G-8 summits as an observer. While subservience towards the First World’s business and military interests is the “kiss up” aspect of the new foreign policy, an aggressive jingoism towards others is the “kick down” aspect….”

Dr Singh’s aide at one point challenged his friendly interviewer  suggesting the very need for “fiscal stimulus” could hardly be questioned as if such a thing was beyond his imagination.  And again, I am afraid, I may have been quite alone  in December 2008 in lambasting as counter-productive all this purported “fiscal stimulus”. Just another colossal, indeed perverse, waste of public resources driven by organised business lobbies in their own interests, since in fact no one — not Dr Singh nor any of his aides, acolytes or flatterers, foreign or domestic, or anyone else anywhere — has any empirical or theoretical models of any kind depicting the phase, period or amplitude of any possible business-cycle that India’s economy may be on.  Since none of them has any idea whatsoever of what the amplitude or frequency is of any such purported business cycle, they are as likely to have caused a pro-cyclical exacerbation of the amplitude as any sort of counter-cyclical dampening! (Viz., Leibniz ‘s principle of insufficient reason.)

How to see what is happening in Indian macroeconomic policy in the simplest comparative static terms is this: both the IS and LM curves are being pushed outwards drastically based on a deliberately erroneous assumption that there is  or might develop mass involuntary unemployment of the sort Maynard Keynes once described in 1936.  The overall impact on nominal interest-rates is indeterminate; the process of inflationary deficit-finance with an inconvertible currency that the Government has indulged in for half a century merely continues, further pushing us towards a potential hyperinflation.

The Bourbon regime swept away by the French Revolution that Bastille Day celebrates were said to have “learnt nothing and forgotten nothing”.   I am afraid the macroeconomic illogic often found among Government economists, private commentators and business lobbyists in India today suggests to me nothing less than that they have  either learnt nothing or forgotten everything from their economics classes decades ago! We in India may need our own storming of the Bastille to sweep away the perverse thoughts and power structures of the post-1947 Dilli Raj.

Subroto Roy
Kolkata

A Dozen Grown-Up Questions for Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, LK Advani, Sharad Pawar, Km Mayawati and Anyone Else Dreaming of Becoming/Deciding India’s PM After the 2009 General Elections

The 2009 General Election campaign is supposed to elect a Parliament and a Head of Government for the Republic of India, not a Head Boy/Head Girl at an urban middle-class high school or the karta of a joint family. Unfortunately, our comprador national-level media seem to be docile  and juvenile enough in face of power and privilege to want to ask only touchy-feely koochi-woochi pretty baby questions of the “candidates” for PM (several of whom are not even running as candidates for the Lok Sabha but still seem to want to be PM).   Rival candidates themselves seem to want to hurl invective and innuendo at one another, as if all this was merely some public squabble between Delhi middle-class families.

So here are a set of grown-up adult questions instead:

1. Pakistan is politically and strategically our most important neighbour. Can you assure the country that a government headed by you will have a coherent policy on both war and peace with Pakistan? How would you achieve it?

2. Do you agree with the Reagan-Gorbachev opinion that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought”? If so, what would your Government do about it?

3. If there are Indian citizens in Jammu & Kashmir presently governed by Article 370 who wish to renounce Indian nationality and remain stateless or become Pakistani/Afghan/Iranian citizens instead, would you consider letting them do so and giving them Indian “green cards” for peaceful permanent residence in J&K and India as a whole?

4. Do you know where Chumbi Valley is? If so, would your Government consider reviving the decades-old idea with China to mutually exchange permanent leases to Aksai Chin and Chumbi Valley respectively?

5. Nuclear power presently accounts as a source of about 4% of total Indian electricity; do you agree that even if nuclear power capacity alone increased by 100% over the next ten years and all other sources of electricity remained constant, nuclear power would still account for less than 8% of the total?

6. The public debt of the country  may now amount to something like Rs 30 lakh crore (Rs 30 trillion); do you find that worrisome? If so, why so? If not, why not?

7. The Government of India may be paying something like Rs 3 lakh crore (Rs 3 trillion) annually on interest payments on its debt;  do you agree that tends to suck dry every public budget even before it can try to do something worthwhile?

8.  If our money supply growth is near 22% per annum, and the rate of growth of real income is near 7% per annum, would you agree the decline in the value of money (i.e., the rate of inflation) could be as high as 15% per annum?

9. Do you agree that giving poor people direct income subsidies is a far better way to help them than by distorting market prices for everybody? If not, why not?

10. How would you seek to improve the working of  (and reduce the corruption in) the following public institutions: (1) the Army and paramilitary; (2) the Judiciary and Police; (3) Universities and technical institutes?

11. There has never been a Prime Minister in any parliamentary democracy in the world throughout the 20th Century who was also not an elected member of the Lower House; do you agree BR Ambedkar and Jawaharlal Nehru intended that for the Republic of India as well and thought it  something so obvious as  not necessary to specify in the 1950 Constitution?  What will your Government do to improve the working of the Presidency, the Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha and State Assemblies?

12. What, personally, is your vision for India after a five-year period of a Government led by you?

Subroto Roy,

Citizen & Voter

Kolkata

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What is Christine Fair referring to? Would the MEA kindly seek to address what she has claimed asap?

Almost three years ago when the Baloch leader Nawab Bugti was killed by bombardment during the Musharraf-regime, I was moved to research and write a short analysis of Balochistan for the first time. I said inter alia

“because there are two million Balochis in Iranian Balochistan, Pakistan’s Balochi nationalists have had a declared enemy to their west in the Iranian Government ~ the Pahlevi regime even provided Italian-made American Huey helicopter gunships with Iranian pilots to help Bhutto crush the Baloch rebellions of the early 1970s. In fact, Balochi rebels have had no military allies except the pre-communist Government of Afghanistan under Daud, who ‘ordered the establishment of a training camp at Qandahar for Baloch liberation fighters. Between 10,000 and 15,000 Baloch youths were trained and armed there’ (R Anwar, The Tragedy of Afghanistan 1988, p. 78). The Governments of India or the United States lack motivation or capability to help, and Balochistan may be doomed to becoming a large human rights/genocidal disaster of the next decade. An independent Balochistan may be unviable, being overwhelmed by its riches while having too small, uneducated and backward a population of its own, and powerful greedy neighbours on either side… Today, the Pashtun of Pakistan and Afghanistan (as well as perhaps Sindhis of Baloch origin) may be the only interlocutors who can prevent a genocide and mediate a peace between Balochi nationalists and Musharraf’s ruthless Punjabi military-businessmen determined to colonize Balochistan completely with Chinese help, effectively subsidising their misgovernance elsewhere with Balochistan’s riches…”

Raja Anwar had been a close friend and associate of ZA Bhutto, the founder of Pakistan’s ruling party,  and his book on Afghanistan published 20 years ago is required reading.

The wonders of the Internet sent me back to this subject a few days ago when a Pakistani website claimed that the American analyst Dr Christine Fair of RAND said she had visited an Indian consulate in Zahedan, Iran, and alleged to her interlocutors that the consulate was “not issuing visas as the main activity” .

Dr Fair’s reported words seemed to me to be surprising, so I wrote to her seeking a confirmation that she had been quoted correctly, when the Pakistani website very kindly sent me the link to her words at a recent gathering of American and British observers discussing Pakistan.  This is what Dr Fair said at that gathering on this topic (emphasis added):

“I think it would be a mistake to completely disregard Pakistan’s regional perceptions due to doubts about Indian competence in executing covert operations. That misses the point entirely. And I think it is unfair to dismiss the notion that Pakistan’s apprehensions about Afghanistan stem in part from its security competition with India. Having visited the Indian mission in Zahedan, Iran, I can assure you they are not issuing visas as the main activity! Moreover, India has run operations from its mission in Mazar (through which it supported the Northern Alliance) and is likely doing so from the other consulates it has reopened in Jalalabad and Qandahar along the border. Indian officials have told me privately that they are pumping money into Baluchistan. Kabul has encouraged India to engage in provocative activities such as using the Border Roads Organization to build sensitive parts of the Ring Road and use the Indo-Tibetan police force for security. It is also building schools on a sensitive part of the border in Kunar–across from Bajaur. Kabul’s motivations for encouraging these activities are as obvious as India’s interest in engaging in them. Even if by some act of miraculous diplomacy the territorial issues were to be resolved, Pakistan would remain an insecure state. Given the realities of the subcontinent (e.g., India’s rise and its more effective foreign relations with all of Pakistan’s near and far neighbors), these fears are bound to grow, not lessen. This suggests that without some means of compelling Pakistan to abandon its reliance upon militancy, it will become ever more interested in using it — and the militants will likely continue to proliferate beyond Pakistan’s control.”

Now I have nothing to do with the Government of India and have no idea about the evidence relating to the precise facts being alleged here. But I do have some circumstantial evidence as well as  a personal reason to be curious, as my father was an Indian diplomat in Tehran during 1954-1957 and I was in fact born there.

I recalled him having told me he had travelled in that region and today he confirmed that he had in fact, from the Tehran Embassy as part of his official duties as Commercial Secretary and Consul, visited what was then an Indian Vice-Consulate at Zahedan, peopled by a single Indian Vice-Consul with whom he had spent two days.

That was more than 50 years ago — so the “Indian mission” that Dr Fair said she visited in Zahedan is far from being anything new whatsoever. In fact, I would predict it was probably something that existed during British India too and that it was precisely an outpost of British India issuing visas for anyone headed towards Quetta in what was then British Baluchistan.

Could the Consulate be upto anything else?  Hmmm, let’s see, how about assisting in the complex overall discussions, now apparently stalled or aborted, between Iran, Pakistan and India over the gas pipeline perhaps?

In other words, there might be any number of perfectly legitimate reasons for India to be represented in Zahedan as it has been for more than half a century — the allegation contained in the American discussion of India fomenting trouble for Pakistan in Balochistan may be entirely baseless.

Did India once support the Northern Alliance? Of course, as did Iran too, but that was all pre 9/11 during the extended Afghan civil war before the toppling of the Mullah Umar Government by the Northern Alliance allied with the United States! That is wholly a separate thing from any claim that India from Iranian soil has caused trouble in Balochistan.

Such an aspersion coming from such a source would be easily and delightedly picked up by those in Pakistan looking for exogenous explanations of their problems.   For example, if you watch the video of the ghastly murder of the Polish engineer Piotr Stanczak by the Pakistani Taliban, you will find a demented Pakistani commentator in the background disclaiming any Pakistani responsibility for it saying instead it was all India’s fault and India has been financing the Pakistani Taliban with “billions”!   (Postcript June 8 2009: Jemima Khan reported a few days ago: “Pakistan pulsates with conspiracy theories. One, which has made it into the local newspapers, is that the Taliban when caught and stripped were revealed to have been “intact, not Muslims”, a euphemism for uncircumcised. (Pakistanis are big on euphemisms.) Their beards were stuck on with glue. “Foreign elements” (India) are suspected.”)

Such is the extent of the psychosis.  “Delta Dawn, what’s that flower you have on…?”

The Government of India obviously needs to address Dr Fair’s claim and seek to squarely refute what she has said in these remarks.

Subroto Roy, Kolkata

Did a full cricket team of Indian bureaucrats follow our PM into 10 Downing Street? Count for yourself!

British PM Gordon Brown welcomed our PM into his official home at 10 Downing Street — but did he know there would be something like a dozen Indian bureaucrats following Dr Singh in? What did all these people talk about in such a short time? Or did they just sit around creating a receptive audience for the two PMs’ discussion? Perhaps they were planning a cricket match between the Prime Minister’s Offices of the United Kingdom and the Republic of India, and so the teams were getting introduced to one another.

SR

The BBC gets its history and geography deliberately wrong again

Last September 27, I said here

“The BBC has unilaterally decided that Jammu & Kashmir has nothing to do with India.  On its 1530 Indian Standard Time broadcast of purported “World News” today, it unilaterally lopped off all of J&K from the map of the Republic of India (shown attached to mention of a Delhi bomb-blast). Usually, the BBC at least makes pathetic reference to something it has invented called “Indian-Administered Kashmir”.  There are senior BBC staff-members who are dual Pakistani/British nationals and who may be counted on to have been pushing such a line within the organisation, but lopping off all of J&K unilaterally may be a novelty. There are several “Indian-origin” staff-members too but perhaps they have renounced their Indian nationality, and apparently they have no ability to make any editorial protest.  Does the Government of India have the sense, and the guts, to call in the local BBC and ask them for an explanation about their insult of history?   For that matter, what is the BBC’s formal position on the J&K  problem?  The same as that of the UK Government?  What is that of the UK Government for that matter?  Has it remained constant since Clement Attlee in October 1947?  BBC staff may like to refer to my articles “Solving Kashmir”, “Law, Justice and J&K”, “Pakistan’s Allies”, “History of Jammu & Kashmir”, etc for enlightenment.”

Then on December 4, I had to say again:

“Ill-informed Western observers, especially at purported “think tanks” and news-portals, frequently proclaim the Pakistan-India confrontation and Jammu & Kashmir conflict to represent some kind of savage irreconcilable division between Islamic and Hindu cultures. For example, the BBC, among its many prevarications on the matter (like lopping off J&K entirely from its recently broadcasted maps of India, perhaps under influence of its Pakistani staffers), frequently speaks of “Hindu-majority India” and “Indian-administered Kashmir” being confronted by Muslim Pakistan….”

Well this morning, in its purported “World News from America” received in India in its 0530 IST broadcast (in a story about that dreadful British film Slumdog millionaire), the BBC has done it  yet again, lopping off the whole of Jammu, Kashmir amd Laddakh from its purported map of India. Clearly the powerful Pakistan lobby in Britain continues to affect British policy deeply,  especially  perhaps through the BBC’s dual-national Pakistani staffers.

I remain intrigued to know the official UK Government position on both J&K and the legality or otherwise of a UK public broadcaster distorting history and geography like this.

Specifically, I wonder if  modern British foreign policy  has, in  a nutshell, taken a hardline, regardless of the facts of  history, on the Israel-Arab dispute and a corresponding softline, regardless of the facts of history, with the Pakistani viewpoint on J&K.  “Accept our position on Palestine and we will accept your views on Kashmir” might be the implicit trade that has been offered to the UK’s powerful Pakistani immigrant community.

Furthermore, in the event the UK Government  and the European Union recognise Indian sovereignty de facto and de jure over J&K on the Indian side of the Line of Control with Pakistan and on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control with China, does the BBC, as a public British broadcaster, have any  legal business to be setting that aside and instead  inventing its own history and geography as it pleases?

The Government of India really needs to formally ask the UK Government  what its opinion is.

The organisation that presently goes by the name BBC seems to be  only very   distantly related to the organisation by the same name whose radio news-broadcasts  used to be definitive in my childhood.

Subroto Roy

POSTSCRIPT: But see now “Progress! The BBC retracts its prevarication!”

Kasab, the young misguided Pakistani mass-murdering terrorist, needs to be given political asylum in India! (Matt Damon, Will Smith: here’s a real-life case!)

Life imitates art or rather Hollywood again as young Kasab, the misguided primary-school dropout Pakistani mass-murdering terrorist caught by Indian police after the Mumbai massacres,  becomes a kind of Jason-Bourne/Enemy-of-the-State character who is said to be being targeted now by Pakistan’s terrorist masterminds for not being dead already! There have been all kinds of weird assassinations by and of government agents using poisoned umbrellas and radioactive pills etc in real life, and who is to say that young Kasab is not going to be given a small cyanide capsule along with a letter of farewell from his parents when His Excellency the High Commissioner’s consular agents receive access to him?

Shortly after Kasab’s remorseful confessions (which flowed from his natural gratitude at having survived and having been treated humanely by Mumbai’s police), I said here that if I was the judge trying him, I would send him to an Indian prison for 20 or 30 years (given his 20 or 30 murder victims), but I would add that he should be occasionally, say once a year, permitted to offer namaz at India’s grandest mosques. He could become a model prisoner,  possibly a potent weapon against Pakistan’s terrorist masterminds who have ruined his life and now wish him dead.

(Message to Matt Damon, Will Smith and assorted Hollywood cinematic personalities:  there is a confessed, remorseful mass-murdering 20-year old Pakistani terrorist in an Indian prison who is being targeted by the very people who sent him on his vile mission.)

In present circumstances, young Kasab needs to seek political asylum in the Indian Republic as his life in his own Pakistan Republic is as good as over for political reasons. He would become the first person ever in history to receive political asylum in a country that he attacked despite being a confessed terrorist mass-murderer.   But Mahatma Gandhi would have approved and smiled at the irony of it all!  Ahimsa paramo dharmaha in practice.

SR

RAND’s study of the Mumbai attacks

RAND’s study of the Mumbai attacks

by

Subroto Roy

Kolkata, January 25 2009

The conspicuously good thing that can be said about the RAND Corporation’s study of the Mumbai massacres (“The Lessons of Mumbai”, RAND January 2009) is that there is no sign of it having been affected by the powerful Pakistan lobby.  Far too many purported studies emerging from American or British “thinktanks” cannot say the same.

If anything, the ten American authors of the 25-pages of the RAND text have among them two prominent advocates of better US-India relations.  This is helpful to truthfulness because of the simple fact India has been in this case a victim of aggression that originated in Pakistan. Whether elements of the Pakistan Government were involved is almost the wrong question – if some retired underemployed former soldier drawing a Pakistan Army pension helped the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s commando training of the Mumbai terrorists, the existence of Pakistani state involvement is proved. Commando training requires technical skills of a sort that can only originate with a military.

In Pakistan as in any other large populous country including India, the state tends to be a hydra-headed monster and it may be foolish to imagine instead a rational, unified, well-informed or even a benevolent political entity.  State involvement in Pakistan, India, China or elsewhere is something hard to isolate when there is so much mixing of private and public property or misuse of resources arising from the public exchequer.

What Pakistan’s PR campaign has done after Mumbai is not so much raise the Kashmir dispute as to obfuscate things by shedding crocodile tears and pretending to share victimhood saying, oh we sympathise with you but please sympathise with us too as we have been victims of even bigger terrorist attacks by the same kind of people, we have lost Benazir, we have lost many more people than you have, therefore  cooperate with us and we will try to do what we can to help you in this matter.  English-speaking liberals educated at places like Karachi Grammar School have then appeared on Indian TV stations (owned by Delhi people from places like Doon School) purporting to represent Pakistan on “the Mumbai incident”; none of them can have much credibility because the real India-haters in Pakistan might cheerfully make them murder victims too given half a chance.

The RAND study deserves credit for avoiding all misleading Pakistani rhetoric about the Mumbai massacres and at least intending to try to get to the bottom of things in a systematic manner.  Beyond that, unfortunately, it has made logical and factual and methodological errors which cause it to fail to do so.

The key logical error made by the RAND authors arises from combining a central front-page statement

“Evidence suggests Lashkar-e-Taiba, a terrorist group based in Pakistan, was responsible for the attack”

with assertive suggestions about Mumbai’s police being backward, incompetent, cowardly etc (“passive”).  Yet how precisely did evidence about LeT culpability come to light?  Only because Mumbai’s police and the Railway police engaged, injured and then captured Kasab using their antiquated equipment the best they could.  There is no evidence of police cowardice at CST Station; to the contrary, it took courage to aim .303′s at adversaries firing back with assault rifles.  Kasab received his first hand injury there. ATS Chief Karkare and his fellow-officers may seem foolhardy in hindsight to have been driving in the same vehicle but they did engage their unknown enemy immediately they could and died doing so, crippling Kasab badly enough that he could be captured in due course at Chowpatty.  [Correction: it appears that though Kasab was fired upon by the police at CST Station  he  received both his hand injuries from the firing by the ATS squad.] And the Chowpatty police action showed obvious bravery in absorbing injury and death in order to kill Ishmail and capture Kasab.  (Kasab, among the youngest, had been paired with Ishmail, the apparent leader of the group.)

Furthermore, Kasab upon capture was treated humanely and lawfully.  His injuries were treated, he was produced before a magistrate within a week who asked him if he was being mistreated to which he said no.  Slumdog millionaire may get undeserved Oscars portraying torture of a British actor by Mumbai police but it is ridiculous fiction – Kasab the captured Pakistani terrorist mass murderer was not tortured by Mumbai’s police.

Contrast such Indian police behaviour with the “enhanced interrogation techniques” the Bush Administration used with negative results in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib – which President Obama has now started to end.  Kasab, an ignorant misguided youth, was grateful enough for the humane and civilized treatment to start singing like the proverbial canary.  The result of that has been precisely all the evidence the Government of India has now presented to the world and Pakistan about the LeT’s culpability.

As for the anti-terrorist actions of the Indian Army, Navy and NSG, the RAND study is right to point to multitudinous errors and it is useful to have these listed in orderly fashion.  But many of these errors were obvious to millions of lay Indian citizens who watched events on TV.  The central fault was the scarcity of trained NSG officers and men, and the failure to apply standard emergency management protocols.

The RAND study, by relying overly on government sources, has failed to point to what ordinary Indian citizens already know – the NSG is being utterly wasted protecting our politicians.  India has no proper equivalent of the US “Secret Service”, and even if we did, we would probably waste that by spreading it too thinly among politicians.  As it happens if almost any politician in India today did happen to be unfortunately assassinated, the main mourners would be family-members and not the general Indian public.  Despite politicians constituting rather “low-value targets” for terrorists, India’s scarce anti-terrorist and police resources have been misallocated to protecting them.

Finally, the RAND study makes the lazy-man’s methodological error of supposing outfits like the LeT think and behave in a manner explicable by American political science textbooks, or ought to do so.  What Western analysts may need to do instead is learn from the old Arabist and Orientalist traditions of how to think and see the world from Eastern points of view.    But that may require greater self-knowledge than the modern world tends to permit.

Postscript:

My December 6 2008 analysisA Quick Comparison Between the September 11 2001 NYC-Washington attacks and the November 26-28 2008 Mumbai Massacres (An Application of the Case-by-Case Philosophical  Technique of Wittgenstein, Wisdom and Bambrough)” is republished below.  I have corrected “Rome Airport” with “Lod Airport” on the basis of  reading the RAND report, though may not have received the courtesy of aknowledement for the reminder of the  Japanese Red Army attack.

“In my book Philosophy of Economics (Routledge, 1989) and in my August 24  2004 public lecture  in England  “Science,  Religion, Art and the Necessity of Freedom”, both available elsewhere here, I described the “case-by-case” philosophical technique recommended by Ludwig Wittgenstein, John Wisdom and Renford Bambrough.  (Bambrough had also shown a common root in the work of the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce.)   Herewith an application of the technique to a contemporary problem that shows the “family resemblance” between two modern terrorist attacks, the September 11 2001 attack on New York and Washington and the Mumbai massacres last week.

Similarity:  In both, a gang of motivated youthful terrorists acted as a team against multiple targets; their willingness to accept  suicide while indulging in mass-murder may have, bizarrely enough, brought a sense of adventure and meaning to otherwise empty lives.

Difference: In the 9/11 attacks, Mohammad Atta seemed to have been a single predominant leader while each of the others also had complex active roles requiring decisions, like piloting and navigating hijacked jumbo-jets.  In the Mumbai massacres, the training and leadership apparently came from outside the team before and even during the operation  – almost as if the team were acting like brainwashed robots under long-distance control.

Similarity:  Both attacks required a long prior period of training and planning.

Difference: The 9/11 attacks did not require commando-training imparted by military-style trainers; the Mumbai massacres did.

Difference: In the 9/11 attacks, the actual weapons used initially were primitive, like box-cutters; in the Mumbai massacres, assault rifles and grenades were used along with sophisticated telecommunications equipment.

Difference: In 9/11, the initial targets, the hijacked aircraft, were themselves made into weapons against the ultimate targets, namely the buildings, in a way not seen before.  In the Mumbai massacres, mass-shooting of terrorized civilians was hardly something original; besides theatres of war, the Baader-Meinhof gang and the Japanese Red Army used these in the 1970s as terrorist techniques (e.g. at Rome Airport  Lod Airport; Postscript January 26 2009: I make this correction after reading and commenting on the RAND study which unfortunately  did not have the courtesy of acknowledging my December 6 2008 analysis) plus there were, more recently, the Columbine and Virginia Tech massacres.

Similarity: In both cases, Hollywood and other movie scripts could have inspired the initial ideas of techniques to be  used.

Similarity: In both cases, the weapons used were appropriate to the anticipated state of defence: nothing more than box-cutters could be expected to get by normal airport security; assault rifles etc could come in by the unguarded sea and attack soft targets in Mumbai.  (Incidentally, even this elementary example of strategic thinking  in a practical situation may be beyond the analytical capacity contained in the tons of waste paper produced at American and other modern university Economics departments under the rubric of  “game theory”.)

Similarity: In both cases, a high-level of widespread fear was induced for several days or more within a targeted nation-state by a small number of people.

Similarity: No ransom-like demands were made by the terrorists in either case.

Similarity: Had the single terrorist not been captured alive in the Mumbai massacres, there would have been little trace left by the attackers.

Difference: The 9/11 attackers knew definitely they were on suicide-missions; the Mumbai attackers may not have done and may have imagined an escape route.”

Pakistan’s New Delhi Embassy should ask for “Consular Access” to nine dead terrorists in a Mumbai morgue before asking to meet Kasab

After two weeks of pointblank denials that Pakistan had anything to do with the Mumbai massacres (“the  Mumbai incident”, “the Bombay event” as Pakistan’s social butterflies put it), Pakistan’s diplomats are now asking for Consular Access to Kasab, the lone captured terrorist!   The cheek of it!   Would they please request Consular Access instead to the nine dead terrorists who were Kasab’s companions, and who are presumably in a Mumbai morgue at present because India’s Muslims have denied them a burial?   It is certain the Government of India would be relieved and delighted to hand over  full custody of the mortal remains of these nine Pakistanis to representatives of His Excellency the High Commissioner of Pakistan to New Delhi for transfer back home to Pakistan.

As for Consular Access to Kasab, the Government of India will doubtless inform His Excellency that His Excellency may appreciate that in present circumstances in which the individual Kasab, not to put  too fine a point on it,   is singing like a canary, the Government of India deems the security of India could be jeopardised by any possibility of such a song becoming jeopardised.  The Government of India will however doubtless assure His Excellency that Kasab is being well cared for in custody and has reported as such to the magistrate.

The Indian Revolution

The Indian Revolution

by

Subroto Roy

Prefatory Note Dec 2008: This outlines what might have happened if (a) Rajiv Gandhi had not been assassinated; (b) I had known at age 36 all that I now know at age 53. Both are counterfactuals and hence this is a work of fiction. It was written long before the Mumbai massacres; the text has been left unchanged.

“India’s revolution, when it came, was indeed bloodless and non-violent but it was firm and clear-headed and inevitably upset a lot of hitherto powerful people.

The first thing the Revolutionary Government declared when it took over in Delhi was that the rupee would become a genuine hard currency of the world economy within 18 months.  This did not seem a very revolutionary thing to say and the people at first did not understand what was meant.  The Revolutionaries explained: “Paper money and the banks have been abused by all previous regimes ruling in Delhi since 1947 who learnt their tricks from British war-time techniques.  We will give you for the first time in free India a rupee as good as gold, an Indian currency as respectable as any other in the world, dollar, pound, yen, whatever.  What you earn with your hard work and resources will be measured by a sound standard of value, not continuously devalued in secret by government misuse”.

The people were intrigued but not enlightened much.  Nor did they  grasp things to come when the Revolutionary Government abolished the old Planning Commission, sending its former head as envoy to New Zealand (with a long reading-list); attached the Planning Commission as a new R&D wing to the Finance Ministry; detached the RBI from the Finance Ministry; instructed the RBI Governor to bring proper work-culture and discipline to his 75,000 staff and instructed the Monetary Policy Deputy Governor to prepare plans for becoming a constitutionally independent authority, besides a possible monetary decentralization towards the States.  India’s people did not understand all this, but  there began to be a sense that something was up in Lutyens’ Delhi faraway.

The Revolutionary Government started to seem a little revolutionary when it called in  police-chiefs of all States — the PM himself then signed an order routed via the Home Ministry that they were to state in writing, within a fortnight, how they intended to improve discipline and work-culture in the forces they commanded.  Each was also asked to name three reliable deputies, and left in no doubt what that meant.  State Chief Ministers murmured objections but rumours swirled about more to come and they shut up quickly.  The Revolutionary Government sent a terse note to all CMs asking their assistance in implementation of this and any further orders.  It also set up a “Prison Reform and Reconstruction Panel” with instructions to (a) survey all prisons in the country with a view to immediately reduce injustices within the prison-system; (b) enlarge capacity in the event fresh enforcement of the Rule of Law came to demand this.

The Revolutionary Government then asked all senior members of the judiciary to a meeting in Trivandrum.  There they declared the judiciary must remain impartial and objective, not show favoritism even to members of the Revolutionary Party itself who might be in court before them for whatever reason.  The judges were assured of carte blanche by way of resources to improve quality of all public services under them; at the same time, a new “Internal Affairs Department” was formed that would assure the public that the Bench and the Bar never forgot their noble calling.  When a former judge and a former senior counsel came to be placed in two cells of the new prison-system, the public finally felt something serious was afoot.  Late night comics on TV led the public’s mirth — “Thieves have authority when judges steal themselves”, waxed one eloquently.

The Revolutionary Government’s next step reached into all nooks and crannies of the country.  A large room in the new Finance Ministry was assigned to each State – a few days later, the Revolutionary Government announced it had taken over control under the Constitution’s financial emergency provision of all State budgets for a period of six months at the outset.

Now there was an irrepressible outcry from State Chief Ministers, loud enough for the Revolutionary Government to ask them to a national meeting, this time in Agartala.  When the Delhi CM sweetly complained she did not know how to get there, she got back two words “Get there”; and she did.

There the PM told the CMs they would get their budgets back some day but only after the Revolutionary Government had overseen their cleaning and restoration to financial health from their current rotten state.   “But Prime Minister, the States have had no physical assets”, one bright young CM found courage to blurt out.

“That is the first good question I have heard since our Revolution began,” answered the PM. “We are going to give you the Railways to start with –  Indian Railways will keep control of a few national trains and tracks but will be instructed to devolve control and ownership of all other assets to you, the States.  See that you use your new assets properly”.  There was a collective whoop of excitement.  “During the time your budgets remain with us, get your police, transport, education and hospital systems to work for the benefit of common people, confer with your oppositions about how you can get your legislatures to work at all.  Keep in mind we are committed to making the rupee a hard currency of the world and we will not stand for any waste, fraud or abuse of public moneys. We really don’t want to be tested on what we mean by that. We are doing the same with the Union Government and the whole public sector”.  The Chief Ministers went home nervous and excited.

Finally, the Revolutionary Government turned to Lutyens’ Delhi itself. Foreign ambassadors were called in one by one and politely informed a scale-back had been ordered in Indian diplomatic missions in their countries, and hence by due protocol, a scale-back in their New Delhi embassies was called for.  “We are pulling our staff, incidentally, from almost all international and UN agencies too because we need such high-quality administrators more at home than abroad”, the Revolutionary Foreign Minister told the startled ambassadors.

Palpable tension rose in the national capital when the Revolutionary Government announced that Members of Parliament would receive public housing of high quality but only in their home constituencies!  The MPs would have to vacate their Delhi bungalows and apartments! “But we are Delhi!  We must have facilities in Delhi!”, MPs cried. “Yes, rooms in nationalized hotels suffice for your legislative needs; kindly vacate the bungalows as required; we will be building national memorials, libraries and museums there”, replied the radicals in power.  Tension in the capital did not subside for weeks because the old political parties all had thrived on Delhi’s social circuit, whose epicenter swirled around a handful of such bungalows.  Now those old power-equations were all lost.  A few MPs decided to boycott Delhi and only work in their constituencies.

When the Pakistan envoy was called with a letter for her PM, outlining a process of détente on the USSR-USA pattern of mutual verification of demilitarization, both bloated militaries were upset to see their jobs and perks being cut but steps had been taken to ensure there was never any serious danger of a coup.  The Indian Revolution was in full swing and continued for a few years until coherence and integrity had been forced upon the public finances and currency of a thousand million people….”

Indira Gandhi in Paris, 1971

This is a photograph of Indira Gandhi emerging with Andre Malraux for a press-conference at the Embassy of India in Paris  in the Autumn of 1971.   (My father, pictured in the centre, had been posted to the Embassy  just a few weeks earlier in anticipation of the visit.  [My father recalls her asking him during or between one of these meetings, "Mr Roy, I am very hungry, can you please get me something to eat?", and he went and grabbed a small hotel plate full of peanuts which she devoured...])  Indira was making the serious diplomatic effort that she did in world capitals to avert war with West Pakistan over its atrocities in East Pakistan.  War could not be averted and within a few weeks, in December 1971, Bangladesh was born.

“Indira Gandhi’s one and paramount good deed as India’s leader and indeed as a world leader of her time was to have fought a war that was so rare in international law for having been unambiguously just. And she fought it flawlessly. The cause had been thrust upon her by an evil enemy’s behaviour against his own people, an enemy supported by the world’s strongest military power with pretensions to global leadership. Victims of the enemy’s wickedness were scores of millions of utterly defenceless, penniless human beings. Indira Gandhi did everything right. She practised patient but firm diplomacy on the world’s stage to avert war if it was at all possible to do. She chose her military generals well and took their professional judgement seriously as to when to go to war and how to win it. Finally, in victory she was magnanimous to the enemy that had been defeated. Children’s history-books in India should remember her as the stateswoman who freed a fraternal nation from tyranny, at great expense to our own people. As a war-leader, Indira Gandhi displayed extraordinary bravery, courage and good sense.” (From my review article of Inder Malhotra’s Indira Gandhi, first published in The Statesman May 7 2006 and republished elsewhere here under “Revisionist Flattery”.)

“She had indeed fought that rarest of things in international law: the just war. Supported by the world’s strongest military, an evil enemy had made victims of his own people. Indira tried patiently on the international stage to avert war, but also chose her military generals well and took their professional judgement seriously as to when to fight if it was inevitable and how to win. Finally she was magnanimous (to a fault) towards the enemy ~ who was not some stranger to us but our own estranged brother and cousin.  It seemed to be her and independent India’s finest hour. A fevered nation was thus ready to forgive and forget her catastrophic misdeeds until that time….” (From  “Unhealthy Delhi” first published in The Statesman June 11 2007,  republished elsewhere here).

My father, Indian diplomat, in the Shah’s Tehran 1954-1956

On the reverse of this photo is stated the date, 8 July 1955, and “the King enquiring about Indian development projects after the ceremony”.   The person he is talking to is my father, then India’s Trade Commissioner in Tehran.  The  two photos below show Mohammad Reza  Shah Pahlevi striding by a line of guests (my father is seventh from the right in the line-up) and then meeting them.

The next photo is of  Reza Shah and his Queen Soraiya Esfandiary being greeted by a senior Sikh member of the Indian community.

India’s Ambassador to Iran, Dr Tara Chand, author of History of the Freedom Movement in India, accompanies Prime Minister Hossain Ala, probably at the Indian Embassy in Tehran (there is a map of India and the figure of Mahatma Gandhi on the right).

My father with members of the Indian community in Tehran.

See also

http://independentindian.com/2012/01/14/life-of-my-father-1915/

 

China’s force and diplomacy: The need for realism in India

China’s force & diplomacy: The need for realism In India

Subroto Roy

First published in The Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article, May 31 2008, http://www.thestatesman.net

It is almost as large an error to overestimate Chinese military aims and capabilities as it has been to underestimate them. On 8 May 2008 at Tokyo’s Waseda University, China’s President Hu Jintao declared in a speech broadcast live “China has taken a defensive military policy and will not engage in any arms race. We will not become a military threat to any country and we will never assert hegemony or be expansionistic”. This was as clear and authoritative a reply as possible to the June 2005 statement in Singapore of the then American defence minister Donald Rumsfeld: “China appears to be expanding its missile forces, allowing them to reach targets in many areas of the world, not just the Pacific region, while also expanding its missile capacities here in the region. Since no nation threatens China, one must wonder: why this growing investment?”

By 2006, Rumsfeld’s generals were saying China had “the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States,” and could “field disruptive military technologies that could over time offset traditional US military advantages absent US counter strategies”. The “sizing” of China’s military by American and other Western analysts became a parlour game ~ one with major business implications since the threat perceived or misperceived from China affects American decisions on the size of its own military.

As recently as 13 May 2008, the Wall Street Journal carried opinion that China’s military expansion demanded America have a 1000-ship navy not a 280-ship one, 40 aircraft-carriers not 11, 1000 F-22 aircraft not 183. Exaggerating China’s military and the threat posed by it to the world can mean big business for militaries opposing it!

Dominating India

Communist China’s physical, political and psychological domination of independent India since the 1950s has been achieved more by diplomacy, subterfuge and threat of force than actual military conflict. In its first phase, the policy was expressed clearly by the Chinese Ambassador to New Delhi on 16 May 1959 when he told India’s Foreign Secretary: “Our Indian friends, what is your mind? Will you agree to our thinking regarding the view that China can only concentrate its main attention eastward of China but not south-westward of China, nor is it necessary for it to do so?…. Friends, it seems to us that you, too, cannot have two fronts. Is it not so? If it is, here then lies the meeting point of our two sides. Will you please think it over?” (BN Mullick, Chinese Betrayal, p. 229).

At the time, Pakistan was in military alliances with the USA through CENTO and SEATO, and the Pakistan-China alliance was still years away. The Chinese had used subterfuge to construct their road linking Tibet and Sinkiang through Aksai Chin, ignoring India’s sovereignty, and were now suggesting they had no interest in fighting India because their major military interests were to their east as India’s were towards Pakistan.

The second phase was the short border conflict itself in 1962-63, which consolidated China’s grip on occupied territory in Aksai Chin while establishing its threat to the Brahmaputra Valley that has been perpetuated to this day. The third phase is represented by the 27 November 1974 conversation between Henry Kissinger and Deng Xiaoping, recently made publicly available:

Deng : There’s something very peculiar about Indian policy. For example, that little kingdom Sikkim. They had pretty good control of Sikkim. Why did they annex it?
Kissinger : It is a good thing India is pacifist, I hate to think (of what they would do) if they weren’t. (Laughs).
Deng : Sikkim was entirely under the military control of India.
Kissinger : I haven’t understood Sikkim. It is incomprehensible.
Deng : After the military annexation, their military position was in no way strengthened.
Kissinger : They had troops there already.
Deng : And they haven’t increased their troops since. We published a statement about it. We just spoke for the cause of justice.
Kissinger : Is it true that you set up loudspeakers to broadcast to the Indian troops on the border? It makes them very tense. (Laughs)
Deng : We have done nothing new along the borders, and frankly we don’t fear that India will attack our borders. We don’t think they have the capability to attack our borders. There was some very queer talk, some said that the reason why the Chinese issued that statement about Sikkim was that the Chinese were afraid after Sikkim that India would complete the encirclement of China. Well, in the first place we never feel things like isolation and encirclement can ever matter very much with us. And particularly with India, it is not possible that India can do any encirclement of China. The most they can do is enter Chinese territory as far as the Autonomous Republic of Tibet, Lhasa. And Lhasa can be of no strategic importance to India. The particular characteristic of Lhasa is that it has no air-because the altitude is more than 3,000 metres.
Kissinger : It’s a very dangerous area for drinking mao tai (a Chinese hard liquor).
Deng : Frankly, if Indian troops were able to reach Lhasa, we wouldn’t be able to supply them enough air! (Laughter)
Kissinger : I don’t think their intention is with respect to Tibet, their immediate intention is Nepal.
Deng : That is correct. They have been recently exercising pressure on Nepal, refusing to supply them oil. It is the dream of Nehru, inherited by his daughter, to have the whole subcontinent in their pocket.
Kissinger : And to have buffer zones around their border…. It is like British policy in the 19th Century. They always wanted Tibet demilitarized.
Deng : I believe even the British at that time didn’t make a good estimate of whether there was enough air. (Laughter)
Kissinger : I think an Indian attack on China would be a very serious matter that cannot be explained in terms of local conditions, but only in terms of a broader objective….”

Our self-delusion

The attitude that is revealed speaks for itself, and has been essentially continued by Deng’s successors in the next decades, especially Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. It is because China does not perceive a military threat from India that it has agreed to military exercises with us ~ exercises which, if anything, reinforce their psychological dominance by helping to spook our military’s morale. During this third phase also, China went about systematically creating a major military threat to India in its support of Pakistan’s military, exploiting our subcontinent’s communal conflicts fully to its own strategic advantage.

China has been engaged for more than a decade now in a massive exercise of modernisation of its armed forces, improving productivity, technology, organisation and discipline while trying to cut corruption. It has a right to do so, and such modernisation does not in and of itself signal aggressive intent. The last aggressive war China fought was almost 30 years ago against Vietnam. It is possible that what simply explains the military modernisation (besides conflict with Taiwan) is China’s awful history of being exploited by foreign powers over the centuries.

Indian analysts have expressed concern about nuclear submarines based in Hainan; but where else would China put them? We delude ourselves if we think we are the guardians of the Straits of Malacca. We may do better being concerned to try to modernise, improve productivity and reduce corruption in our own forces, as well as integrate them better with national goals as China has done instead of continuing to maintain them in a rather old-fashioned colonial / imperial manner.

Assessing Manmohan: The Doctor of Deficit Finance should realise the currency is at stake

Assessing Manmohan:

The Doctor of Deficit Finance should realise the currency is at stake

by Subroto Roy

First published in The Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article, April 25 2008, http://www.thestatesman.net

The best thing that may be said of the Manmohan Singh premiership is that when it began in May 2004, it seemed, for a short while, refreshing in comparison to the dysfunctional arrogance and brutality displayed by its predecessor. By the last months of the Vajpayee-Advani Government, there were party appointees who had ended all pretence of purportedly Hindu values and were raking it in shamelessly. The Golden Rule of Democracy is “Throw the rascals out”, which is what Indian democracy upheld as it has done time and again. By 2009, India’s electorate will have the chance to decide whether the incumbent government deserves the same fate.

Lok Sabha

Manmohan Singh was seriously discussed as the Congress’s putative nominee for PM as early as 2001. The idea brewing at the time with the party’s next generation of wannabe leaders (in their 50s and 60s, where Manmohan was near 70) was that they needed to maintain good relations with the Great White Queen and wait out one term of an inevitable Singh premiership before having a shot at the top job themselves.

What is surprising is Dr Singh appeared never to feel it necessary to educate himself privately on how to retool himself for the necessary transformation from being the archetypal bureaucrat he had been in his working career to becoming the national statesman he wished to be after retirement. It is doubtful, for example, if he ever stood in front of a mirror and practised an extempore political speech in Hindi in preparation for the highest executive post in the country, let aside writing a clear-headed, original vision or mission statement of substance as to where he wished to lead it. As Narasimha Rao’s Finance Minister, he could meekly take orders from his PM; it seemed he wished to continue in the same mode even when PM himself.

Jawaharlal Nehru is supposed to have been a hero of Dr Singh’s ~ but Nehru was a thorough parliamentarian, among the finest anywhere, and someone who always respected the Lok Sabha immensely. Dr Singh, after he lost to VK Malhotra for the South Delhi seat in 1999, made not the slightest effort to enter the Lok Sabha again, even when the Akalis indicated they might not oppose him in a Punjab contest. When asked specifically at a large press conference about not entering the Lok Sabha, Dr Singh murmured words to the effect he had better uses of his time ~ a display, if anything, of the misplaced arrogance of many New Delhi academics and intellectuals. Dr Singh may be the first PM in any parliamentary democracy never to have won a seat in the lower house nor felt a need to do so.

Dr Singh’s bureaucratic expertise assisted him well in the first national crisis that came his way, which was the Tsunami of 26 December 2004. There appeared to be an air of efficiency about the Government’s response and he seemed in his element as commander of bureaucratic forces while working with Pranab Mukherjee in enlisting the military. George W. Bush (not a great geographer or historian) was apparently impressed to see on a map that India had naval forces deployed as far as the Andamans.

By 2005 though, Dr Singh’s bureaucratic mindset had its negative impact. Montek Ahluwalia had been his Finance Secretary when he was Finance Minister. Mr Ahluwalia’s spouse had been a main supporter of Dr Singh’s unsuccessful Lok Sabha attempt. During the Vajpayee Government, Mr Ahluwalia remained a Planning Commission Member for several years before moving to Washington. With Dr Singh as PM, Mr Ahluwalia returned from the USA in mid 2004 to become Deputy Chair at the Planning Commission. Simultaneously with his return, the idea that the American nuclear industry would like to sell “six to eight lightwater reactors” to India arose.

That is as much as is presently known in public. Dr Singh and Mr Ahluwalia may in the national interest want to frankly and precisely explain to the Indian people the full story of the sudden origins of this idea. Certainly, none of the lessons of the Dabhol fiasco a decade earlier seemed to have been learnt, and the Maharasthtra Government (and hence the Government of India) ended up paying some $300 million to General Electric and Bechtel Corporation for Dabhol before any nuclear talks with the USA could begin. Nor had any serious cost-benefit analysis been done or discussion taken place comparing nuclear energy with coal, hydro and other sources in the Indian case.

Indian foreign policy became frozen in its focus on nuclear negotiations with the USA, swirling around Dr Singh’s fife-and-drum welcome at the White House and President Bush’s return visit to India. At the same time arose the issue of Paul Volcker’s UN committee mentioning the name of India’s foreign minister. As The Statesman put it, regardless of the latter’s involvement, “the damage to India’s diplomatic reputation in the world” was done and it was inevitable a new foreign minister would be necessary. After dilly-dallying and much 10 Janpath to-and-fro, Dr Singh followed Nehru’s mistake of becoming his own foreign minister. The idea was that this would be temporary but it became almost a year.

Instead of transforming himself towards Indian political statesmanship, Dr Singh advanced other retired bureaucrats’ ambitions on similar career-paths. Foreign policy went out of the MEA’s control and seemingly into the control of the new “National Security Adviser”. Dr Singh, sometimes with MK Narayanan beside him, travelled a large number of countries from Brazil to Finland and Uzbekistan to South Africa and Japan. Dr Singh also found time and willingness to accept honorary degrees from British and Russian universities during these short months.

While Dr Singh seemed thus preoccupied, two of India’s main neighbours underwent massive democratic revolutions (leave aside magnificent Bhutan). Nepal’s people practically stormed their Bastille while Dr Singh and Mr Narayanan visited Germany to discuss BMWs. Pakistan’s democratic forces could hardly believe the cold indifference shown to them by a New Delhi merely following Bush’s support for Pervez Musharraf. While Pakistan and Nepal, and to lesser extent Bangladesh, saw movements towards better governance, Sri Lanka descended towards civil war ~ India’s PM remained obsessed with the magic wand that the nuclear deal was supposed to be.

Inflation

Then suddenly the magic vanished ~ Dr Singh seemed to finally come to a silent private recognition that the economics of the nuclear deal simply did not add up if it meant India importing “six to eight lightwater reactors” on a turnkey basis from the USA or anywhere else. Dr Singh seemed to come out of his self-imposed trance and return a little better to reality. By the time he visited China, although he was as deferential to Hu Jintao in his body language as he had been to Bush and Musharraf and even accepted an indoor guard of honour, he also seemed willing to stand up for India. The Arunachal visit was a reality-check.

Now there is inflation ~ and one year left in the UPA’s term. What the country needs is tough sensible macroeconomics and clean public finance. A pandering profligate budget in February was not a healthy sign. Instructing Mr Ahluwalia to close down the Planning Commission and make it a minor R&D wing of the Finance Ministry would be instead a good step. Instructing the RBI to clean up its bureaucratic wastefulness and prepare itself for institutional independence from the Finance Ministry would be even better. Getting proper financial control over every Union and State government entity spending public money and resources would be most important of all. Such major institutional changes in the policy-making process are what an economist might expect of an economist prime minister who wishes to lead India in the 21st Century. India’s currency is at stake.

(Of related interest:  ”The Politics of Dr Singh”.)

Two cheers for Pakistan!

Two cheers for Pakistan!

by Subroto Roy

First published in The Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article, April 7 2008, http://www.thestatesman.net

A century has passed since British rulers in India like Curzon and Minto became self-styled interlocutors between Muslims and Hindus of the subcontinent. Up through the 19th century there had been no significant national political conversation between India’s main communities. The “Chief Translator” of the High Court in Calcutta was highly prized for his knowledge of Sanskrit, Persian and English because at least three different sets of laws governed different people in the country. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad wrote of his experience in the Bankim-inspired revolutionary societies of Bengal who treated him with extreme suspicion because they could hardly believe a Muslim wanted to join them as an anti-British rebel.

Jinnah vs Azad

Then came MA Jinnah, Iqbal, Rahmat Ali and others, initial creators of Pakistan whether through greater or lesser motives. Azad, Zakir Hussain, Sheikh Abdullah and other Muslims were equally firm the Pakistan idea was not only bad for India in the world it was bad for Muslims in particular. The Azads condemned the Jinnahs as greedy megalomaniacs, the Jinnahs condemned the Azads as minions of the Hindus. Larke lenge Pakistan, marke lenge Pakistan, khoon se lenge Pakistan, dena hoga Pakistan was the mob-cry during the bloody Partition, while the British, weakened by war and economics and bereft of their imperial pretensions, made haste to leave “this beastly country” to its fate ~ rather hoping the bloodshed would be such someone might hire them to stay on.

Certainly, having used the Indian Army for imperial purposes in the War, Britain (represented locally by a series of smartly dressed blundering fools) behaved irresponsibly in not properly demobilizing that Army during a period of intense communal tension. There were no senior Indian officers ~ KM Cariappa became a Brigadier only in 1946, Ayub Khan was a Colonel under him. Then there were the fatuous “princes” the British had propped up in “Indian India”, few being more than cardboard creatures. Among them was J&K’s ruler who was a member of Churchill’s War Cabinet and had come to harbour illusions of international grandeur. Once J&K’s Muslim soldiers returned to their Mirpuri homes, Jammu and Punjab were in communal conflict, months before the decision that Pakistan would indeed be created out of designated areas of British India just before British India extinguished itself. Army-issued Bren guns came to be used by former soldiers in communal massacres of the convoys of refugees going in each direction.

Part of the problem over J&K since then has been that it seems a dialogue of the deaf. Pakistanis since Zafrullah Khan claimed it was communal violence against Muslims in Jammu and Punjab that prompted the Pashtun invasion of Srinagar Valley beginning 22 October 1947; Indians have always claimed the new (and partly British-officered) Pakistan Army organized and instigated the invasion, coinciding with the planned takeover of Gilgit.

As in all complex moral problems, there was truth on all sides though no one doubts the invasion was savage and that the Pashtuns carried off Kashmiri women, Hindu, Muslim and Sikh. J&K descended into civil war, Abdullah’s secularists backed by the new India, Ibrahim’s communalists by the new Pakistan. Field Marshall Auchinlek, who commanded both Indian and Pakistani armies, had the decency to resign when he realized his forces were at war with one another. That J&K could not be independent in international law was sealed when the 15 October 1947 telegram sent by Hari Singh’s regime went unanswered by Attlee. The tribal invasion from Pakistan caused the old State of J&K to become an ownerless entity in international law, whose territories were then carved up by force by the two new British Dominions (later republics) and the result has been the “LOC”.

ZA Bhutto was perhaps Pakistan’s only politician after that time. The years between the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan and the rise of Bhutto saw Pakistan’s military begin its liaison with the Americans ~ from the US Ambassador’s daughter marrying the Pakistan President’s son to the leasing of Peshawar’s airfields for U-2 flights over the USSR. Yet Bhutto’s deep flaws also contributed to the loss of Bangladesh and to brutality, supported by the Shah of Iran’s American helicopters, against the Baloch.

Bhutto’s daughter now may have succeeded in death where she could not in life. Like Indira Gandhi, there seemed a shrill almost self-sacrificial air about Benazir in her last days, and, like Indira, her assassination caused all her countrymen including her enemies to undergo an existential experience. Perhaps the public death of a woman in public life touches some chivalrous chord in everyone.

Benazir’s husband was transformed from seeming a rather dubious self-seeker to becoming a national leader of some sobriety. Her old adversary Nawaz Sharif, brought to power by one Army Chief and removed by another, is now a constitutional democrat – seemingly adamant that there be the Rule of Law and not of generals. Most of all, Benazir’s death seemed to completely shut up that most loquacious of Pakistanis: Pervez Musharraf. Musharraf seemed stunned and promised free, fair and transparent elections; though no one believed he would deliver, he somehow did. He would like now to be a senior statesman though it seems as likely his countrymen will not forgive his misdeeds and instead exile him to America.

Afghanistan

Pakistan’s main international problem is not and has never been J&K. It has been and remains its unsettled western border and identity vis-à-vis Afghanistan (as India’s problem has been the eastern border with China). Dr Khan Sahib and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan knew this but they were not allowed to speak by Pakistan’s Kashmir-obsessed elite. Zaheer Shah’s Afghanistan was the only country that voted against Pakistan joining the UN sixty years ago.

The present author has said before that Osama bin Laden may well be safely and comfortably in the deserts of North Africa while NATO and the Americans raise hell in Afghanistan and Waziristan pretending to look for him. It is not in India’s interest as it is not in Pakistan’s interest that Western militaries, who seem to have nothing better to do, brutalize Afghans of all descriptions in the name of nation-building or fighting “terrorism”. Afghan nation-building can only ultimately come from the Afghans themselves, no matter how many loya jirgas it takes. What Pakistan dislikes emerging from New Delhi is the sometimes rather supercilious and ignorant condescension that our officialdom is infamous for. Instead, with a new, seemingly clear-headed and well-intentioned Government in Pakistan elected for the first time ever, it may be time for all good people in the subcontinent to raise a glass of fruit juice and say “Two cheers for Pakistan!”

China’s Secretly Built 1957 Road Through India’s Aksai Chin

This map accompanied my article Lessons from the 1962 War published in The Sunday Statesman of January 13 2008:

aksaichinroad.jpg

Lessons from the 1962 War: there are distinct Tibetan, Chinese and Indian points of view that need to be mutually comprehended

Prefatory Note: This is part of a series of articles published in The Statesman since October 2007 and republished here, viz., Understanding China, India-USA Interests, China’s India Aggression, Surrender or Fight?, China’s Commonwealth, Nixon & Mao vs India, China’s India Example and China’s Force and Diplomacy.

Lessons from the 1962 War

Beginnings of a solution to the long-standing border problem: there are distinct Tibetan, Chinese and Indian points of view that need to be mutually comprehended.

By SUBROTO ROY

First published in The Sunday Statesman, January 13 2008,  Editorial Page Special Article, http://www.thestatesman.net

WAR is an existential experience from which nations emerge altered, reflective and sometimes more mature. Germany tried to purge anti-Jewish hatred, Japan to adopt pacifism, Britain to break class-structures, Russia to explode Stalin’s cult. America learnt little from its Vietnam debacle, creating new tactics and technologies to reduce American casualties in war but not showing any improved capacity to comprehend the world beyond its shores and borders.

India after the 1962 defeat by Mao’s China learnt less than was possible and necessary to do. The Government’s official history concluded: “In a fundamental sense, the origins of the 1962 Sino-Indian conflict lay in Chinese expansionism and occupation of Tibet. The issue got further aggravated due to failure of the Chinese to win over the Tibetans. Indian asylum to the Dalai Lama raised Chinese suspicions about ultimate Indian intentions. On the other hand, India, while tacitly accepting the Chinese occupation of Tibet through a treaty in 1954, failed to obtain any quid pro quo on the border issue.” This is true enough but a deeper probe is also possible.

India’s 20th Century political and intellectual leadership may have grossly failed to comprehend critical world events in a realistic manner, specifically Vladimir Ulyanov’s German-assisted Bolshevik coup d’etat, the Kuomintang and Maoist takeovers in China, as well as India’s own struggle for Independence. After BG Tilak, Annie Besant, GK Gokhale and other founders of Indian nationalism passed from the scene, leaders arose like MK Gandhi, MA Jinnah, SC Bose and J Nehru who tended to be consumed, to lesser or greater extent, by their own hubris and were less able to see India’s fortunes and capacities in context of a larger world. None had military, administrative or public finance experience needed for practical government; instead there arose almost a new hereditary caste of the “professional politician” who has no other vocation or anything better to do in life. Nazi-admirers like Mashriqi and Rahmat Ali among Muslims and the Mahasabha and RSS among Hindus also lent mainstream Indian nationalism a harsh distasteful colouration.

Czechoslovakia’s great nationalist Masaryk (who famously denounced Austro-Hungary as a “corrupt, pretentious, senseless relic”) was said to be “a leader who planned further ahead than his contemporaries, understood the corroding effects of power, the vital need of restraint in the ruler, and above all the need for taking the nation into his confidence, educating it in the sense of drawing out all its innate qualities and sharing its manifold aspirations” (Seton-Watson). India’s clear-headed statesmen of that calibre were not among its most visible or ambitious. Vallabhbhai Patel, MAK Azad, C Rajagopalachari and others were left on the sidelines of free India’s politics ~ as Plato predicted, the genuine pilot of the ship of state will be hardly invited to take its wheel nor even want to do so.

Nehru alone, as chosen by Gandhi, came to wield actual power in the 1950s, having maneuvered Rajendra Prasad to being President. And Nehru, besotted in middle age with a married British woman, seemed awestruck by appearance of a victorious Maoist communism in China just as he had been adoring of Stalin’s Russia two decades earlier. The Congress’s friends among India’s official Communists and fellow-travelers never had much original indigenous grassroots support and always looked abroad for guidance. Non-alignment needed to be made of sterner stuff.

Nehru’s flawed management of the relationship with Communist China included not merely choosing a favourite like Krishna Menon to head India’s military, but also imagining himself a competent world diplomatist. Girja Shankar Bajpai would have been far superior as India’s first Foreign Minister. In 1952, Bajpai, then Governor of Bombay, wrote to Nehru saying India should inform Zhou Enlai the McMahon Line was firm in law and non-negotiable.

Was the McMahon Line firm and just? Nehru was no Curzon but it was as a Curzonian imperialist that Mao and Zhou saw him. All Chinese, whether Communist or Nationalist, chafed at the way the Manchu-dynasty’s Empire had been carved up. “China is our India” was Czarist Russia’s intent towards China itself. China had an awful political and military history from when foreign depredations began in the 1840s all the way until the Mao-Zhou era ended in the 1970s. Indeed China’s polity between the 1840s and 1940s suffered far greater chaos and anarchy than India’s in the same period.

From a Chinese standpoint, Younghusband’s diplomatic and military invasion of Gyantze and Lhasa in 1903-1904 was an insult they had been unable to militarily confront. Curzon sent Younghusband’s expedition because there appeared to be Russian intrigues with the Dalai Lama via the Russian/Mongolian agent Dorjiev who had transmitted Russian ideas of extending its new Siberian railway to Lhasa and posting Cossack soldiers there. The Russians seemed to want to adopt the Dalai Lama given his religious influence over Mongolia. The British were alarmed and determined to annihilate the influence of Dorjiev which they did. Thence came the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1907 which specified British and Russian spheres of influence in Iran and Afghanistan, and stated Tibet would be dealt with internationally only through the Chinese Empire. The McMahon Line, as a recognition of the traditional boundary, flowed naturally from the legitimacy of the Anglo-Russian Treaty. As for Sinkiang, though a Chinese province since 1884 it came to be ruled by warlords under Russian influence.

The Mao-Zhou war machine was determined to take over and militarily hold both Sinkiang and Tibet as an assertion of new China’s self-definition against Russia and Britain; hence their denunciation of Nehru as a pawn first of Britain and then of Russia. China building a road surreptitiously between Sinkiang and Tibet through Aksai Chin was reminiscent of Russia’s coercive behaviour against China in building the Trans-Siberian Railway through Chinese territory to Vladivostok. At worst, the Indians would have to admit that erstwhile J&K State since October 1947 had become an ownerless entity whose unclaimed territory had been carved up by force by the new Pakistan, new India and new China.

From an Indian standpoint, the traditional recognised boundary placed Aksai Chin clearly in Ladakh and not Tibet. Aksai Chain is a salt pit without “a blade of grass” but for all anyone knows, it could be rich in minerals. Karakorum Pass is also newly valuable to the Chinese as they seek to develop a land-route from Baluchistan’s Gwadar Port through Pakistan to China. If India has lost Aksai Chin and Karakorum Pass by force of arms without compensation, force of arms may be the only means of retrieval. Due compensation from China could be Chumbi Valley between Sikkim and Bhutan, and China seems once to have mentioned mutual perpetual lease of Aksai Chin and Chumbi Valley.

From a Tibetan point of view, the Amban representing the Chinese Emperor was driven out of Lhasa in 1912 and Tibet was independent of China for 38 years. Tibet has as much of a claim to be independent of China as Poland or Ukraine have had to be of Russia. As for the McMahon Line, it is indeed legally non-negotiable between China and India as it flowed directly out of the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1907, and it was under that Treaty that China received international recognition of its formal suzerainty over Tibet since 1720 until that time. Mao once likened Tibet to the palm of a hand with Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan and Assam as five fingers. Modern China must decide between such a metaphor of Maoist expansionism (which India would have to militarily resist) and joining the world of international law created since Grotius. Democratic conditions in Tibet would also have to be insisted upon so the Dalai Lama and other Tibetans may return home from India in peace and freedom.

Nixon & Mao vs India: How American foreign policy did a U-turn about Communist China’s India aggression

Nixon & Mao vs India
How American foreign policy did a U-turn about Communist China’s India aggression. The Government of India should publish its official history of the 1962 war.
By SUBROTO ROY

First published in The Sunday Statesman, Jan 6 2008, The Statesman Jan 7 2008, www. thestatesman.net, Editorial Page, Special Article

THE 1972-74 conversations between Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger on one hand and Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping on the other, especially about India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, have been public for a few years now. They make disturbing reading for Indians and Bangladeshis, and for Pakistanis too who may be concerned about the political health of their country. Yahya Khan, Pakistan’s debauched military dictator, made the Nixon-Mao meeting possible and received much praise from Zhou and support from Nixon and Kissinger. Pakistan’s official assessment of Yahya following the 1971 military defeat and secession of Bangladesh was far more candid and truthful, giving the lie to the praise bestowed upon him by Nixon and Zhou in their conversation.

Nixon and Kissinger were decidedly second-rate intellects in political power who believed themselves first-rate ~ a dangerous circumstance. Their policy caused Chiang Kaishek’s Republic of China to be expelled from the UN, its veto-wielding seat taken by Mao’s People’s Republic. The Government of India, under influence of communist sympathisers like Krishna Menon, KM Pannikar, KPS Menon et al, had been pleading the same case at the UN since 1949/1950, rebuffed each time by American veto. Now Nixon and Kissinger yielded to the idea to the delight of Mao-Zhou, and ganged up with Pakistan’s military against democratic India and the new Bangladesh.

Nixon went to Beijing at a time the catastrophic American involvement in Vietnam had reached a peak ~ something that itself was an outcome of the Dulles-Nixon doctrine of a “domino effect” in South East Asia. The Americans failed to comprehend Vietnamese nationalism against France or recognise how that had been historically directed at imperial China. Nixon’s carpet-bombing of Cambodia in needless extension of the Vietnam conflict was to cause the rise to power of Pol Pot and his vicious Khmer Rouge (to remove whom Vietnam attacked, causing China to attack Vietnam in 1979).

Nixon was in Beijing in February 1972 ostensibly to seek Chinese cooperation in ending the Vietnam War, as well as opening an Eastern Front in the Cold War against the USSR. Nixon fancied himself a Metternich-like statesman whose wisdom and brilliance would redesign the international order for a century. What was plain to unsentimental observers was that his underlying purpose was greedy and hardly statesmanlike, namely, winning re-election in November 1972 by outflanking domestic left-wing criticism using photos of having been toasted by Mao himself. That Nixon was no Machiavelli, Metternich or Bismarck but more likely just delusional and paranoid came to be revealed in his subsequent political debacle over Watergate.

The US attitude towards China’s 1959-1962 aggression against India changed drastically because of Nixon’s Beijing visit. Tibet’s people and culture had not been attacked and brutalised by Chiang Kaishek’s Nationalist Army nor by India’s soldiers ~ the Mao-Zhou Communist war machine, fresh from their Korean adventures, did that. There would have been no border conflict between China and India today in 2008 if Communist China had not first invaded and occupied Tibet.

All such fundamental facts used to be perfectly clear to the Americans as to everyone else. India’s Defence Ministry’s excellent official history of the 1962 war acknowledges the vital aid sent by President Kennedy with the help of Ambassador Galbraith. Ten years later, in 1972, Nixon and Kissinger in Beijing changed all that completely and did a U-turn against India using the dubious book of a single journalist as cover for their dissimulation:

“ZHOU: …. Actually the five principles (of peaceful coexistence) were put forward by us, and Nehru agreed. But later on he didn’t implement them. In my previous discussions with Dr Kissinger, I mentioned a book by Neville Maxwell about the Indian war against us, which proves this.
NIXON: I read the book.
KISSINGER: I gave it to the President.
NIXON: I committed a faux pas ~ Dr Kissinger said it was ~ but I knew what I was doing. When Mrs Gandhi was in my office before going back, just before the outbreak of the (1971) war, I referred to that book and said it was a very interesting account of the beginning of the war between India and China. She didn’t react very favourably when I said that. (Zhou laughs)
ZHOU: Yes, but you spoke the truth. It wasn’t faux pas. Actually that event was instigated by Khrushchev. He encouraged them. In looking at 1962, the events actually began in 1959. Why did he go to Camp David? In June of that year, before he went to Camp David, he unilaterally tore up the nuclear agreements between China and the Soviet Union. And after that there were clashes between Chinese and Indian troops in the western part of Sinkiang, the Aksai Chin area. In that part of Sinkiang province there is a high plateau. The Indian-occupied territory was at the foot of the Karakorums, and the disputed territory was on the slope in between.
KISSINGER: It’s what they call Ladakh.
NIXON: They attacked up the mountains.
ZHOU: We fought them and beat them back, with many wounded. But the TASS Agency said that China had committed the aggression against India…..They just don’t want to listen to reason. Anyway, the TASS Agency account had the effect of encouraging India. And also Maxwell mentioned in the book that in 1962 the Indian Government believed what the Russians told them that we, China, would not retaliate against them. Of course we won’t send our troops outside our borders to fight against other people. We didn’t even try to expel Indian troops from the area south of the McMahon Line, which China doesn’t recognize, by force. But if (Indian) troops come up north of the McMahon Line, and come even further into Chinese territory, how is it possible for us to refrain from retaliating? We sent three open telegrams to Nehru asking him to make a public reply, but he refused. He was so discourteous; he wouldn’t even do us the courtesy of replying, so we had no choice but to drive him out. You know all the other events in the book, so I won’t describe them, but India was encouraged by the Soviet Union to attack.
NIXON: I would like to ask the Prime Minister a question with regard to Bangladesh recognition. We have delayed recognition though Britain and other countries have done so.
ZHOU: France has also recognised Bangladesh.
NIXON: Before we make a decision on that, we have tried to find the attitude of (Zulfikar Ali) Bhutto. And Bhutto indicated he does not object to recognition. In fact he could see that we would have some advantage in not leaving the field clear to the Soviet Union in that region. It is our understanding that India is supposed to withdraw all its forces from Bangladesh by the 24th of March. And based on what we have for consideration, we have for consideration the possibility of recognising Bangladesh about that time….”
“ZHOU: …. we truly wish to see (India) truly withdraw their troops in East Pakistan, now called Bangladesh. We wish to see them truly do this and not just with words. Of course they can only do that superficially, because if they get some Bengali forces to remain and join Mujibar Rahman, there would be no way to be sure because the Bengalis all look the same. But that would trouble to the future of India and Mrs Gandhi herself. The Indians said they have no territorial ambitions, but the development of events is that they have remained in their place and refused to withdraw. Once again we can only cite the events of Indian aggression in the 1962 war. At that time our troops pressed to the foothills quite close to Tezpur in Assam, and when they reached that place, Chairman Mao ordered that all troops should turn back. We turned back to the Indians ~ this is in Maxwell’s book ~ and we withdrew all troops back north of the so-called McMahon Line because one must show one can be trusted and must not wait for others to act…. India should withdraw its troops from the areas it is occupying in West Pakistan, and Pakistan should also withdraw from the lesser areas it occupies in India. Bhutto agrees. These two things, at least, the Indian side should abide by. If the US recognises Bangladesh after this situation is brought about, then we believe this would raise the prestige of the US in the United Nations.
After all, what you want is to bring about the withdrawal of all troops from Bangladesh and West Pakistan. Also, you will be able to encourage Mr Bhutto and give him some assistance. That is what they need. You said your actions should be parallel to ours, and we don’t mind that. We said this both to Yahya, the former President, and to the present President. Both of us owe something to Yahya, although he didn’t show much statesmanship in leading his country, for (bridging) the link between our two countries.
NIXON: He is a bridge.
ZHOU: We should not forget and we cannot forget, especially that Dr Kissinger was able through him to come secretly for talks here. And when a man makes a contribution to the world, we should remember him.
KISSINGER: Actually the President sent a message to Bhutto that he should treat Yahya well in retirement and we would not look favourably on any retribution. It was a personal message from Pakistan.
ZHOU: …. At the time of the ceasefire they (the Pakistanis) still had 80,000 troops in East Pakistan. It was not a situation in which they couldn’t keep fighting….. Yahya should have concentrated his troops to win a victory, and once the Indians had suffered a defeat they would have stopped because West Bengal was not very secure either. So at that time even our Vice Foreign Minister still believed they could win the war. Bhutto too…. .
KISSINGER: (Reading from a cable) Mr President, you were speaking of military shipments. We have information that the Soviet Union has shipped since November 150 tanks from Poland and 100 armored personnel carriers from Czechoslovakia. They were shipped in two ships each month in November and December. In January a third ship was to bring military equipment to India.
NIXON: To India?
KISSINGER: To India.
NIXON: The problem is to find some way that West Pakistan can find some military equipment and assistance. On our side, what we will do is to supply substantial amounts of economic assistance to West Pakistan. That would enable West Pakistan to ~ we would think in the interest of its defence ~ to acquire arms from other sources. As a matter of fact, that is the tragedy of our policy in India. We supplied almost 10 billion dollars in assistance to India in the last 20 years ~ very little was military assistance, it was economic ~ and that relieved India so it could purchase very substantial amounts of arms from the Soviet Union, and also manufacture arms. That was not our intent, but that’s what happened. With regard to our aid to India on this point ~ economic assistance ~ we are going to move in a very measured way. I am resisting considerable pressure from the public and the press to rush in and resume economic assistance at former levels. We are going to wait and see what India does with regard to the border problem and our relations generally.
ZHOU: And India actually is a bottomless hole. (Nixon laughs)
NIXON: When the Prime Minister referred to the problem India has with Bangladesh, as I look at India’s brief history, it has had enough trouble trying to digest West Bengal. If now it tries to digest East Bengal it may cause indigestion which could be massive.
ZHOU: That’s bound to be so. It is also a great pity that the daughter (Madame Gandhi) has also taken as her legacy the philosophy of her father embodied in the book Discovery of India (in English). Have you read it?
KISSINGER: He was thinking of a great India empire?
ZHOU: Yes, he was thinking of a great Indian empire ~ Malaysia, Ceylon, etc. He would probably also include our Tibet. When he was writing that book in a British prison, but one reserved for gentlemen in Darjeeling. Nehru told me himself that the prison was in Sikkim, facing the Himalayan mountains. At the time I hadn’t read the book, but my colleague Chen Yi had, and called it to my attention. He said it was precisely the spirit of India which was embodied in the book. Later on when I read it I had the same thought.
NIXON: …. Germany and Japan, received US aid…. why (they) have done so well, it is because they have qualities of drive and are willing to work hard, whereas some other countries we have helped do not have this quality. This brings me to the point: it is not the help that is provided a country that counts, it is whether the people of that country have the will to use this help. If they don’t have that, the money just goes down a rathole. A pretty good example is aid to India. (Zhou laughs)… India is not able to do much with aid because as compared with Japan, it does not have the drive, or the spirit of determination that the Japanese people have…..”

Genocide
Every Bangladeshi knows the causal role Z A Bhutto had in Pakistan’s civil war yet it is upon the word of such a man that Nixon’s recognition of their nation seemed based. The famous “Archer Blood telegram” by the American Consul-General in Dhaka reporting the genocidal Yahya-Tikka assault on East Pakistan starting March 25 1971 meant nothing to Nixon and Kissinger. Benazir retained her charm in Washington’s power circles because she was Bhutto’s daughter. Similarly, as recently as the 1999 Kargil conflict, Bill Clinton flatteringly referred to China for advice on how to deal with India and Pakistan.

Perversely enough, many in New Delhi, Kolkata etc express so much confused love for both China and the United States that they have accepted as their own the biased baseless opinions about India expressed by Nixon, Kissinger and the Communist Chinese. They would do well to read instead the Defence Ministry’s excellently researched historical account of the 1962 war, which the Government of India should not only publish properly at once but have translated into Mandarin as well.

Dr Manmohan Singh has as recently as 29 November 2007 expressed the opinion: “The type of leadership that China has produced since the days of Deng, I think, is the greatest asset that China has”. Dr Singh might have said, but did not, that China’s greatest asset has been in fact the preservation of Confucian values despite decades of communist tyranny and destruction. With such deep misapprehension about post-1949 China on the part of India’s present Head of Government, it may be unlikely that New Delhi or Kolkata acquires a realistic view of our neighbour or of a healthy China-India relationship in the 21st Century.

Map of India-Tibet-China-Mongolia 1959

This map reproduced from the 1964 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica is said to have been prepared by the US CIA and is dated 1959.  It is something I published to accompany my November 5 2007 article “China’s India Aggression”.  The Government of India and Government of China have a hard time with maps in discussing the boundary-dispute; this might help them.

China’s India Aggression

China’s India Aggression

German Historians Discover Logic Behind Communist Military Strategy

by

Subroto Roy

First published in The Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article, Nov 5 2007, http://www.thestatesman.net

There are four main aspects to the China-Tibet-India problem over the last century, some of which are only now becoming apparent. The first is historical prior to the 1949 Communist takeover, in which the British, Tibetans and Kuomintang were participants in background discussion and events. The second is historical too, namely, the appeasement by Nehru and his diplomats of the Mao-Zhou Communists and betrayal of normal Tibetan and Indian interests in the period 1949-1959. The third is political, to do with reaction, confusion and conflict among Indian Communists leading to the CPI/CPI-M split in response to Communist attacks upon Tibet and India. The fourth is military, to do with the 1962 war itself, the nature of the surprise Chinese attack and Indian defeat.

Chinese claims

A 1954 Beijing publication not only claimed Tibet but alleged vast areas of Asia to be Chinese: Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, NEFA (Arunachal), Assam, the Andaman Islands, Burma (Myanmar), Malaya, Singapore, Thailand, Indo-China, the Sulu Islands, the Ryukyus, Korea, Formosa (Taiwan), the whole of East Turkestan (Sinkiang), Kazakhstan, Siberia west of the Amur River, maritime provinces east of the Amur down to Vladivostok, and Sakhalin (viz., Coral Bell in FS Northedge (ed) Foreign Policies of the Powers, 1973).

America’s CIA reported in a secret 1962 analysis, declassified in May 2007, that the Left faction of India’s Communists had been repeating what Mao Zedong said to Ajoy Ghosh: “that Tibet, Sikkim, Bhutan, and NEFA are provinces peopled by the same race, that China had a historic right to these territories, that the McMahon line was not valid, and that the Indian government’s raising of ‘the bogey of Chinese aggression’ had resulted from its realisation that Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan and India would be deeply affected by the social and economic revolution in Tibet” (CIA The Indian Communist Party and the Sino-Soviet Dispute, Feb 1962, page 76). Referring to Chinese designs on Mongolia, Kruschev’s USSR condemned its fellow-Communists: “… The true schemes of the Chinese leaders (are) obvious. They are permeated through and through with great-power chauvinism and hegemonism”, Pravda 2 Sep 1964, quoted by Bell, op.cit.

China’s 1962 India war was rationally consistent with carrying out precisely such an expansionist policy in Sinkiang and Tibet. As the German historians Hermann Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund have stated most succinctly, the NEFA conflict was merely a deliberate diversionary tactic which has worked brilliantly for decades:

“The consolidation of the Chinese hold on Tibet, as well as on other areas of Central Asia… (required military infrastructure) to maintain it and a ring road was constructed which led from China to Tibet and from there via the Karakorum Range to Sinkiang and Mongolia and then back to China. At a crucial point some Indian territory (Aksai Chin) obstructed this connection. Beyond Aksai Chin was the terrible desert, Takla Makan, which was a major obstacle. Faced with the dilemma of violating Indian territory or getting stuck in the desert, the Chinese opted for the first course and quietly built a road through Aksai Chin. In the meantime, they provoked incidents on the northeastern border so as to divert attention from their real aims. They also published maps which showed the border in Assam at the foot of the mountains rather than on the watershed. The watershed line had been settled by the McMahon border commission, which had also included a Chinese delegate who initialled the protocol, although it was not subsequently ratified by the Chinese government. Actually, there was no disagreement about the watershed line at that time when debate was focused on a different line, supposed to divide Tibet into an Inner and Outer Tibet on the same pattern as Inner and Outer Mongolia. Inner Tibet was to be under Chinese influence and Outer Tibet under British influence. But Communist China made use of the fact that the agreement had not been ratified and accused India of clinging to the imperialist heritage with regard to the Himalayan boundary. This harping on the legal position in the northeast was a tactical move made in order to build up a bargaining position with regard to Aksai Chin where the Chinese could not raise similar claims… Finally, a border war broke out in October 1962. It was a typical demonstration war conducted with great finesse by the Chinese. They completely perplexed the Indian generals by pushing a whole division through the mountains down to the valley of Assam and withdrawing it again as quickly as it had come. The Indian strategic concept of defending the Himalayan boundary by cutting off the supply lines of the enemy if it ventured too far beyond the border could not be put into operation: the Chinese were gone before the supply lines could be cut. But why did they do this? They wanted to divert attention from their moves in the northwest, where they did reach the Karakorum Pass in a swift offensive and did not withdraw as they had done in the east.” (History of India, 1998, pp 321-322).

Chinese casualties were some 1,460 dead, 1,697 wounded, Indian casualties some 3,128 dead, 3,968 captured, 548 wounded, each as reported by itself. JK Galbraith, the friendliest and fairest observer India may have hoped for, found our Army populated by “tragically old-fashioned” peacetime generals full of bluster, while brave soldiers under them remained woefully ill-equipped and came to be outgunned and out-manoeuvred.

Mao Zedong’s racist reference to the people populating NEFA being of Chinese origin was misguided, even nonsensical. On such a basis, China might claim Japan or Korea next, as might West Africa claim sovereignty over North and South American blacks or Mongolia over Turks and Afghans. NEFA’s five administrative divisions ~ Kameng, Subansiri, Siang, Lohit and Tirap ~ are populated by indigenous animistic tribes including the Momba, Mishmi, Abor, Miri, Dafla and Aka, each with defined areas. The 1883 Survey of India showed these areas administered de facto by British India from Assam. The 1908 Edinburgh Geographical Institute’s map by JG Bartholomew showed most of the same to be part of Bhutan, a British Indian protectorate, as did earlier 18th Century maps.

Less than legitimate

Communist China’s claims of sovereignty over NEFA (Arunachal) in any case derive from its claims of sovereignty over Tibet. Britain, India and other nations guided by international law have allowed that Lhasa, though long independent, may acknowledge Chinese suzerainty ~ but only subject to the condition of traditional autonomy. The 1907 Anglo-Russian Treaty stipulated Tibet would be dealt with officially through China, leading to the Henry McMahon Commission of 1914 which followed the normal international cartographic practise of the watershed defining the boundary in NEFA. That came to be generally followed by British and Indian maps of NEFA since. The CIA’s official 1959 map of the region concurred and the United States Government explicitly instructed Galbraith, its New Delhi Ambassador during the 1962 war, that the American position was the same as the British and Indian. There appears to be no record of any serious Chinese cartography of the region ever ~ Chinese maps prior to 1935 agreeing with the British Indian position but disputing it afterwards, placing Tibet’s boundary along the margin of the Assam plain. China was ravaged by war, civil war and revolutionary excesses during much of the 20th Century and hardly had well-preserved national archives at a time when its own capital and central government was changing several times.

China’s Communists, being themselves in political power for decades somewhat less than legitimately as a one-party dictatorship, have been loath to admit all such inconvenient facts, and instead continue in their hegemonic mode. A new liberal democratic China guided by law on the Taiwan pattern may have to be awaited before this conflict comes to be resolved.

India-USA interests: Elements of a serious Indian foreign policy

India-USA interests: Elements of a serious Indian foreign policy
by Subroto Roy

First published in The Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article, Oct 30 2007
http://www.thestatesman.net

If there is a “natural alliance” between India and the United States, it arises to the extent that both are large democracies and more or less free societies that happen to be placed half way across the globe and pose no perceptible military threat to one another. The real long-term strategic and political dimensions of such an alliance are quite independent of the business interests driving the “nuclear deal” or selfish interests of the few million “elite” Indians who have fled to the USA as immigrants in recent decades. The interests of Indian immigrants in the USA and interests of the vast masses in India are, after all, quite distinct. Also, America derives most if its own energy not from nuclear reactors but from abundant hydroelectric resources. If the nuclear deal has been ill-conceived and fails in implementation at any stage, India will not import expensive nuclear reactors but can still learn much from the USA in developing hydroelectric power which constitutes India’s greatest energy potential as well.

China and Pakistan
Key strategic interests of India and the USA are fully convergent in East Asia, especially in respect of Communist China. But in West Asia, American attitudes and actions towards the Muslim world, specifically the invasion and occupation of Iraq and now a possible assault on Iran, have been deeply disconcerting for India which has some 120 million Muslim citizens.

It is not a coincidence that Pakistan, an overtly religious Muslim state, has had a marriage of convenience with Communist China, an overtly atheistic anti-religious state. Both have been militarist dictatorships that have seen democratic India as a strategic adversary, especially over territorial claims. It was Pakistan that facilitated President Nixon’s desired opening to Communist China and later permitted President Reagan’s attack on the soft underbelly of the USSR in the Afghan civil war (an attack in which China participated too). With the USSR’s collapse, the USA removed its main strategic adversary only to be left with two new adversaries: Islamic fundamentalism in the short run and China in the long run!

Indian diplomacy can credit a rare (indeed exceptional) success in having warned the USA from the early 1990s onwards of the dangers brewing in the jihadist camps in Pakistan sponsored by the ISI. The US Government has now declassified its assessments of those dangers and what it tried to do as early as 1995 and as late as 2000 through the Saudis with the Taliban’s Mullah Omar ~ who refused to hand over Osama Bin Laden to Saudi Arabia and openly spoke of plans for revenge against American interests. With a continuing Cold-War mindset, US policy-makers thought state-actors like Saddam Hussein were a graver risk to Israel than non-state or  pan-state actors like Osama could be to the American mainland. Having distracted itself with Saddam, the US Government’s response to Osama has been far too much far too late ~ the maddened bull chasing the matador’s cape, in Stephen Holmes’s recent metaphor.

Pakistan’s consistent motivation was one of gaining advantage with the Americans in the hope of undermining India, and indeed the nexus created in Washington by Pakistan’s bureaucrats, politicians and military over decades has been the envy of all lobbyists. But Pakistan overplayed its hand, and once the 9/11 genie was let out of the bottle it could not be put back in again. Meanwhile, Pakistan allowing Gwadar port to become a haven for China’s Navy would have obvious new strategic repercussions.

American interests in West Asia are to protect Israel, to protect trade-routes and to defend against non-state or pan-state terrorism. American interests in East Asia are to protect Japan, South Korea and Taiwan from communist attack, to protect trade-routes and to defend against new terrorism arising from places like Indonesia or the  Philippines. All American interests in Asia would be facilitated by appearance of genuine multiparty democracy and free societies in China and Pakistan.

China as a two-party or multi-party democracy and a free society, even on the Taiwan-model, is unlikely to be an expansionist militarist aggressor in the way it has been as a dictatorship and unfree society. Communist China in the early 21st Century makes the same outrageous unlawful claims on Indian territory as it did half a century ago. Only the USA came to India’s assistance in a tangible way when Communist China attacked in Ladakh and Arunachal in the late months of 1962. John Kenneth Galbraith was President Kennedy’s Ambassador in New Delhi and his memoirs tell the tale of the landings of C-130 aircraft in Kolkata carrying infantry weapons, light artillery and quartermaster stores for the beleaguered Indian Army in Tezpur and Leh.

Nehru, Krishna Menon and India’s whole political and diplomatic leadership revealed gross incompetence as did the Army’s top brass. Indian Communists virtually betrayed the country. The Chinese massed in the Chumbi Valley near Nathu La, and had they attacked all the way to Siliguri, India’s North East would have been cut off. As a demonstration, the Chinese in division strength took and held the whole of Arunachal for a month, withdrawing before there could be anyIndian attempt to retaliate or cut supply lines. The geography has not changed in fifty years. What can yet change is the ideology, away from the communism that has ruined China’s great people, to a new and bold commitment to liberal democracy and the Rule of Law.

As for Pakistan, its people under crude military rule have hardly allowed themselves to become the source of Muslim culture that Iqbal had dreamt of. Pakistan today is not a place even the most ardent pro-Pakistani person in Jammu & Kashmir can find very appealing or inspiring. If there was multiparty democracy and a free society in which the military had a normal small role of defence (as opposed to a large purportedly offensive role against India), Pakistan could calm down from its neuroses and become a normal country for the first time~ one in which the so-called “extremists” of today are transformed into a politically legitimate religious conservatism, who could seek to take power responsibly through the ballot box.

Neutrality
India should be a friendly neutral in the conflict between the West and Muslim world, doing whatever we can to bring better understanding between the two sides. Both have been invaders in Indian history, bringing both evil and good in their wake. India’s culture absorbed and assimilated their influences and became more resilient as a consequence. India also was a haven for Jews and Zoroastrians fleeing persecution. India as a country must condemn fanatical terrorist attacks on the West and bizarre reactionary attempts to return to a caliphate in the world of modern science. Equally, India must condemn vicious racist bombing and warfare unleashed by technologically advanced countries upon ancient societies and cultures struggling to enter the modern world in their own way.

As for the central issue of Israel in Palestine, Martin Buber (1878-1965), the eminent Zionist scholar and philosopher of Judaism, said to Rabindranath Tagore in 1926 that the Jewish purpose should be one of “pursuing the settlement effort in Palestine in agreement, nay, alliance with the peoples of the East, so as to erect with them together a great federative structure, which might learn and receive from the West whatever positive aims and means might be learnt and received from it, without, however, succumbing to the influence of its inner disarray and aimlessness.” If India could guide the region towards such a “great federative structure” of reason and tranquillity, while encouraging democracy in China and Pakistan, the aim of our “natural alliance” with the United States half way across the globe would have been fulfilled.

Understanding China

Understanding China

The World Needs to Ask China to Find Her True Higher Self

by Subroto Roy

First published in The Statesman, October 22 2007, Editorial Page Special Article, http://www.thestatesman.net

The most important factors explaining China’s progress since the deaths of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai have been the spread and quick absorption of modern Western technology under conditions of relative peace and tranquillity. The “capitalist road” came to be taken after all and the once-denounced Liu Shaoqui was posthumously rehabilitated by his shrewd old friend Deng Xiaoping.

To be sure, the new technology itself has combined with democratic hatred felt by young Chinese against the corrupt elitist police-state gerontocracy, and this produced first a Wei Jingsheng and Democracy Wall and later the Tiananmen Square protests. There have been also in recent years many thousands of incidents of peasants resisting State-sponsored brutality, fighting to prevent their lands being stolen in the name of purported capitalist industrialisation, in an economy where, as in India, land is an appreciating asset and the paper-currency remains weak because inflation by money-printing is the basis of public finance. China’s multitudinous domestic tensions continue to boil over as if in a cauldron, and it seems inevitable Chinese Gorbachevs and Yeltsins will one day emerge from within the Communist Party to try to begin the long political march towards multiparty democracy and a free society ~ though of course they may fail too, and China will remain condemned to being a dictatorship of one sort or other for centuries more.

Absence of war

What has been seen in recent decades is the relative absence of war. The last military war the Chinese fought was a month-long battle against fellow-Communist Vietnamese in 1979, after Vietnam had run over and destroyed the Chinese (and Western) backed Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Before that, fellow-Communists of the USSR were fought in a border war in 1969. Before that was the border-war with India in 1959-1963 and occupation of Tibet 1950-1959.

The really savage, fierce large-scale fighting in 20th Century Chinese history was seen in the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945, the Civil War of 1945-1949 and the Korean War of 1950-1953. The occupation of Tibet and fighting against India resulting from Tibet’s occupation were really, from a Chinese Communist point of view, merely light follow-ups to those major wars of the Mao-Zhou era, especially fighting the USA and UN in Korea. Peaceful Tibet and naïve non-violent India stood no chance against the aggressive highly experienced Mao-Zhou war-machine at the time.

It may even be that Mao could live only with incessant external tumult ~ after fighting military wars, he orchestrated domestic conflicts in the Little and Great Leap Forward of 1949-1963 and Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of 1964-1969, all among the failures of a cruel ill-educated man who led his people into social, political and economic disaster from which trauma they have been slowly recovering over the last thirty years.

Today, Communist China’s military is geared to fight the non-Communist Chinese of Taiwan in a continuation of the Civil War. It seems unlikely there will be an actual invasion for the simple reason that Taiwan, though much smaller, may not suffer eventual defeat but instead inflict a mortal wound upon invading forces. Mao succeeded in driving Chiang Kaishek across the Taiwan Straits but it is post-Chiang Taiwan that displays the model of how strong, prosperous, democratic and self-confident Chinese people really can strive to be in the modern world. Everyone agrees Taiwan and China must one day unite ~ the interesting question is whether Taiwan will get absorbed into China or whether China shall take Taiwan as its new model! Just as Liu Shaoqi had the last word over Mao on the question of taking the capitalist road, Chiang Kaishek may yet have the last word over Mao on the best constitutional method for modern China’s governance.

Peculiarly enough, China’s Kuomintang and Communists were both allies of Russian Bolshevism (not unlike India’s Congress Party and Communists). Sun Yatsen’s collaboration with Comintern’s founders began as early as 1921. By 1923 there was a formal agreement and Stalin sent Gruzenberg (alias Borodin) to China as an adviser, while Sun sent many including Chiang to Russia on learning expeditions. “In reorganising the party, we have Soviet Russia as our model, hoping to achieve a real revolutionary success”, said Sun hopefully. But by March 1926, Sun’s successor Chiang, had begun purging Communists from the Kuomintang-Communist alliance; in July 1927 Borodin returned to Russia after failing at reconciliation; and by July 1928 Chiang had unified China under his own leadership, and Moscow had repudiated the Kuomintang and ordered Chinese Communists to revolt, starting the Civil War and instability that invited the vicious Japanese aggression and occupation.

China’s problems today with Taiwan and with Tibet (and hence with India) will not come to be resolved until China looks hard in the mirror and begins to resolve her problems with herself. No major country today possesses a more factually distorted image of its own history, politics and economics than does China since the Communist takeover of 1949. “Protect the country, destroy the foreigner” was the motto of the Boxer revolts in 1900, a natural defensive reaction to the depredations and humiliations that Manchu-dynasty China suffered at the hands of the British, French, Germans, Russians, Japanese etc for more than a century. The Boxer motto seemed to implicitly drive Mao, Deng and his modern successors too ~ hence the “One China” slogan, the condemnation of “splittism” etc. But the ideology that Mao, Liu, Deng et al developed out of Stalin, Lenin and Marx seems base and stupid when it is unsentimentally compared to the great political philosophy and ethics of ancient China, which emerged out of wise men like Mo Tzu, Meng Ko (Mencius) and the greatest genius of them all, K’ung Fu Tzu, Confucius himself, undoubtedly among the few greatest men of world history.

Tibet

India has not been wrong to acknowledge Outer Tibet as being under China’s legal suzerainty nor in encouraging endogenous political reform among our Tibetan cousins. The Anglo-Russian treaty of 1907 undertook that Tibet would not be dealt with except through China, and the Indian Republic has been the legal successor of British India. Lhasa may be legitimately under Beijing as far as international relations goes ~ the more profound question is whether Beijing’s Communists since 1949 have not been themselves less than legitimate, and if so whether they can now transform themselves in the post Mao-Zhou era through good deeds towards greater legitimacy.

The root problem between China and India has not been the Tibet-India border which was almost always a friendly one and never a problem even when it remained imprecise and undefined over centuries. The root problem has been the sheer greed and aggressiveness of Chinese Communists ~ who now demand not merely Aksai Chin but also a minimum of some 2000 sq km of Tawang and Takpa Shiri in Arunachal. The CIA’s 1959 map of the region, which would be acceptable to the USA, UK, Taiwan and the international community in general as depicting the lawful position, shows the Communist Chinese territorial claim to be baseless and Indian position to be justified.

Nehru’s India was naïve to approach the Mao-Zhou Communists with the attitude of ahimsa and a common Buddhism. But Mao-Zhou Communism is dead, and the Deng capitalist road itself has lost its ethical way. What India and the world need to do now is ask China or help guide China to find her true higher self. China’s Tibet problem and hence border-dispute with India would have been solved peacefully by application of the ways of great men like Confucius, Mencius and Mo Tzu, who are and will remain remembered by mankind long after petty cruel modern dictators like Mao, Zhou and Deng have been long forgotten. Why China’s Communist bosses despise Taiwan may be because Taiwan has sought to preserve that memory of China’s true higher self.

Dalai Lama’s Return: In the tradition of Gandhi, King, Mandela

Author’s Note: Shortly after this, I published  in The Statesman beginning October 2007 more than a half dozen articles on China, Tibet, Taiwan, etc beginning with “”Understanding China”.

Dalai Lama’s Return: In the tradition of Gandhi, King, Mandela
by

Subroto Roy

The Dalai Lama must exercise his traditional right in international law, enshrined in the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to enter his own country, namely Tibet. After he left Tibet as a young man to seek political asylum in India decades ago, the de facto sovereign over Tibet had become the new People’s Republic of China following the brutal attack its armies had made upon the Tibetan people. It was not clear if the de jure sovereign over Tibet was the PRC or Republic of China (Taiwan) though since then the PRC has been included in the United Nations at the expense of Taiwan. The Dalai Lama may declare his intention to exercise his right to return to his country, and then simply do so – walking across the Nathu La Pass or any other convenient location, and then travelling on foot or by other means to Lhasa. The Government of China may ask to be assured that there will be no public disturbance to law and order by his followers, and subject to that mild and reasonable condition, it shall have no right to stop him from entering his own country. At the same time, the Government of India (e.g. at the behest of the Government of China) will have no right to prevent him from leaving India. The same body of international law that gives a person the right to enter his/her own country also gives a person the right to leave any country. The Dalai Lama is manifestly a man of peace and non-violence. His return to his own nation and his people is long overdue. He has been in forced exile in Dharamsala, and even if he has been a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize during this time, his heart and soul are in Tibet and that is where he must be free to return to. It will be a walk similar to Gandhi’s to Dandi, or Martin Luther King’s in Alabama, or Nelson Mandela’s first walk in freedom. They are similar men, all four of them, men of courage and peace and non-violence and yet of firm political principle who shall be remembered with love for all time by their peoples. The Government of the People’s Republic of China must demonstrate to the world that it is a civilised, legitimate and magnanimous authority. It must not kill, shoot at, assault, arrest or otherwise stop the Dalai Lama from returning to Tibet. Rather, it must encourage him to walk home in peace and freedom as is his right to do.

To Clarity from Confusion on Indo-US Nuclear Deal

(Author’s Note September 3 2008: This article “Need for Clarity” published in The Statesman last year was one of several I have published on the subject; see also, for example, “Towards an Energy Policy”, “India’s Energy Interests” , “Against Quackery” all published first in The Statesman in 2006 and 2007; also “India and ‘Energy Security’” which was my lecture to a KAF conference on the subject.  It seems quite prescient in that it anticipated by a few  months the “secret”  letter from the US Executive Branch to the Legislative Branch, released by the Washington Post today . India’s UPA Government has put forward a junior spokesman from the Congress Party  to waffle around with a purported explanation. )

Need for Clarity
A poorly drafted treaty driven by business motives is a recipe for international misunderstanding

First published in The Sunday Statesman, August 19 2007, Editorial Page Special Article, http://www.thestatesman.net

By SUBROTO ROY

Confusion prevails over the Indo-US Nuclear Deal. Businessmen, bureaucrats, politicians, diplomats, scientists and now the public at large have all joined in the cacophony in the last two years. On Wednesday August 15, America’s foreign ministry made the clearest most unequivocal statement possible as to the official American Government interpretation of the Indo-US nuclear deal: “The proposed 123 agreement has provisions in it that in an event of a nuclear test by India, then all nuclear co-operation is terminated, as well as there is provision for return of all materials, including reprocessed material covered by the agreement” (Sean McCormack). Yet our Prime Minister had told Parliament two days earlier: “The agreement does not in any way affect India’s right to undertake future nuclear tests, if it is necessary”. What is going on? Our politics are in uproar, and it has been suggested in these pages that the country go to a General Election to allow the people to speak on the matter. Clearly, we need some clarity.

Let us start at the beginning. How did it all originate? The private US nuclear industry prevailed upon India’s government bureaucrats and businessmen over several years that nuclear power is the way forward to solving India’s “infrastructure” problems. They would sell us, in words of the Manmohan-Montek Planning Commission’s energy adviser, “six to eight lightwater reactors” (especially as they may not be able to sell these anywhere else). Our usual prominent self-seeking retired bureaucrats started their waffling about the importance of “infrastructure”.

Then Manmohan Singh felt his foreign travels as PM could be hardly complete without a fife-and-drum visit to the White House. But before he could do so, Dabhol would have to be cleared up since American business in India was on a self-moratorium until GE and Bechtel were paid settlements of some $140-160 million each by the Governments of India and Maharashtra. GE’s CEO for India kindly said afterwards “India is an important country to GE’s global growth. We look forward to working with our partners, customers, and State and Central Governments in helping India continue to develop into a leading world economy”.

Also, before Manmohan’s USA trip, the Confederation of Indian Industry registered as an official Washington lobbyist and spent half a million dollars lobbying American politicians for the deal. (“Why?” would be a good question.)

So Dr Singh was able to make his White House visit, accompanied by US business lobbies saying the nuclear deal can generate $100 billion worth of new American business in India’s energy-sector alone. It is only when business has lubricated politics in America that so much agreement about the India-deal could arise. The “bottom-line” is that six to eight reactors must be sold to India, whatever politics and diplomacy it takes.

Now Dr Singh is not a PM who is a Member of the Lower House of Parliament commanding its confidence. He says his Government constitutes the Executive and can sign treaties on India’s behalf. This is unwise. If he signs a treaty and then the Congress Party loses the next General Election, a new Executive Government can use his same words to rescind the same treaty. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. One reason we are so confused is that India has not signed very many bilateral treaties, and there is barely a noted specialist in international law anywhere in the country. Dr Singh’s original mentor, PN Haksar, had gone about getting a treaty signed with the USSR back in 1971 which tided us over a war, though the USSR itself collapsed before that treaty ended.

Signing a treaty is much more than signing an international MOU. It requires a national consensus or a least a wide and deep understanding on the part of the public and the political class as to what necessitates the treaty. That plainly does not exist at present. Most people in India do not even know how nuclear power is generated, nor how small and insignificant nuclear power has been in India.

Natural uranium is 99.3 per cent of the U-238 isotope and 0.7 per cent the radioactive U-235 isotope. Nuclear power generation requires “enriched uranium” or “yellow cake” to be created in which U-235 has been increased from 0.7 per cent to 4 to 5 percent. (Nuclear bombs require “highly enriched” uranium with more than 90 per cent of U-235.) Yellow cake is broken into small pieces, put in metal rods placed in bundles, which are then bombarded by neutrons causing fission. In a reactor, the energy released turns water into steam, which moves turbines generating electricity. While there is no carbon dioxide “waste” as in burning fossil fuels, the “spent” rods of nuclear fuel and other products constitute grave radioactive waste, almost impossible to dispose of.

India’s 14 “civilian” nuclear reactors presently produce less than 4% of our total power. 70% of our power arises from burning fossil fuels, mainly coal. Much of the rest arises from hydro. We have vast hydroelectric potential in the North and Northeast but it would take a lot of serious political, administrative and civil engineering effort to organise all that, and there would not be any nice visits to Washington or Paris involved for politicians and bureaucrats.

Simple arithmetic says that even if all our principal energy sources stayed constant and only our tiny nuclear power sector grew by 100%, that would still hardly increase by very much our energy output overall. Placing a couple of expensive modern lightwater reactors around Delhi, a couple around Mumbai and a few other metros will, however, butter already buttered bread quite nicely and keep all those lifts and ACs running.

The agreed text of the “treaty” looks, from a legal standpoint, quite sloppily and hurriedly written ~ almost as if each side has cut and paste its own preferred terms in different places with a nod to the other side. For example, there is mention of “WMD” initially which is repeated as “weapons of mass destruction” just a little later. There is solemn mention of the “Government of India” and “Government of the United States of America” as the “Parties”, but this suddenly becomes merely “United States” and “India” in the middle and then reverts again to the formal usage.

Through the sloppiness comes scope for different interpretations. The Americans have said: try not to test, you don’t need to, we don’t test any more, and you have to know that if you do test, this deal is over, in fact it gets reversed. We have said, okay, we won’t test, and if we do test we know it is over with you but that does not mean it is over with others. Given such sloppy diplomacy and treaty-making, the scope for mutual misunderstanding, even war, remains immense long after all the public Indian moneys have found their way into private pockets worldwide. Will a future President Jeb Bush or Chelsea Clinton send F-22 bombers to bomb India’s nuclear facilities because India has carried out a test yet declined to return American equipment? Riding a tiger is not something generally to be recommended.

The answer to our present conundrum must be patience and the fullest transparency. What is the rush? If it is good or bad for us to buy six or eight new American reactors now, it will remain good or bad to do so a year or two from now after everyone has had a thorough think about everything that is involved. What the Manmohan-Montek Planning Commission needed to do first of all was a thorough cost-benefit analysis of India’s energy requirements but such elementary professionalism has been sorely lacking among our economists for decades.

Saving Pakistan: A Physicist/Political Philosopher May Represent Iqbal’s “Spirit of Modern Times”

Saving Pakistan: A Physicist/Political Philosopher May Represent Iqbal’s “Spirit of Modern Times”

by Subroto Roy

First published in The Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article, August 13 2007, http://www.thestatesman.net

Pakistan’s Nobel winning particle physicist Abdus Salam (1926-1996) was, like Pakistan’s most eminent jurist Zafrullah Khan (1893-1985), treated badly by his country and compatriots merely because of his religious beliefs as an Ahmadiya/Qadiani. This itself may be an adequate reason for secular thinking when it comes to identifying Pakistan’s or any country’s interests. Pakistan has had eminent poets and writers but there have been no dedicated first-rate technical economists ~ and no serious political philosophers other than, recently, Pervez Hoodbhoy who is a physicist. Most political economy by Pakistanis about Pakistan has tended to be at the level of World Bank bureaucratic reports or traveller’s tales, which have their uses but hardly amount to profound insight or significant scholarship. (We in India also have had numerous minor World Bank/UN bureaucrats, with or without PhDs about anything, passing themselves off as experts on India’s political economy.)

Yet during Pakistan’s present national crisis (and Pakistan has continually faced crises ever since 1947) people must go back to first principles of political economy and ask questions like “Who are we?”; “What are we doing to ourselves?”; “What is our future?” etc ~ questions about national identity and national viability and national purpose.

Abu Dhabi Pact

On 29-30 July, a deal was reportedly struck in Abu Dhabi after a secret face-to-face meeting between Pervez Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto: he would stay on as President for five years, she would be PM and Head of Government, have prosecutions against her dropped and get back her enormous frozen wealth. Such would be the intended outcome of the long-touted return to fair competitive elections later this year. The deal was brokered by British, American, Saudi and other go-betweens outside Pakistan, and is an overt way of keeping Musharraf in power while also seeming to allow a large concession by way of the return of a purported symbol of democracy like Benazir.

But Benazir seems out of touch with reality. When she returned two decades ago as a young unmarried woman confronting General Zia ul-Haq, she was a genuine popular hero. Her father’s judicial execution at Zia’s hands was still fresh in public memory, and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, no matter how misguided his ideologies, had some makings of a serious modern Pakistani nationalist politician.

Benazir as a middle aged matron is not her father and has lost almost all political credibility with her flip-flopping opportunism, and is now seen merely as a face agreeable to the West. Her good looks were discussed on American TV by the comedian Bill Maher while Musharraf’s publicity agent had him sharing jokes on a rival TV comedy – however, American TV audiences are or should not be a Pakistani constituency.

Benazir also forgets that Zia had set up Nawaz Sharif as an ally of the Pakistan military against her own populism in the late 1980s, just as she is being set up now as an ally of the same military against people like Sharif, Javed Hashmi, Maulana Fazlur Rahman and Imran Khan. Musharraf overthrew Sharif and jailed Hashmi and they are his declared foes; the other two have expressed opinions hostile to Western military presence in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Maulana made a nationalistic overture towards India, while Imran has openly praised Indian democracy despite its faults. But Indian foreign policy has not responded and seems under manifest influence of the Western powers ~ had we felt and thought with genuine independence we could have, for example, easily declared and implemented large-scale humanitarian food-aid from the FCI’s wheat-stocks for the people of Afghanistan and Iraq as was suggested in these pages a year ago.

A Musharraf-Benazir alliance is hardly destined to save Pakistan and will be no more than a cynical example of short-term opportunism: we in India can expect them to use J&K as traditional rhetorical camouflage for their own continuing misgovernance and corruption. As in Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan, the Western powers face the dilemma that any government they support in Pakistan will be perceived as lacking legitimacy while a genuine hands-off policy could result in legitimate popular governments which seem to Western Governments beyond their control and hence seemingly adverse to Western interests.

The West has long ill-understood Pakistan, partly because it has seen Pakistan merely to be used as a source of convenient military manpower and real-estate for itself as and when necessary. American diplomats were reporting as early as November 1951 that Maulana Maududi’s Jamaat were hostile to the “evils” of Western materialism which they wanted to “do away with root and branch” in the country. In January 1976, American diplomats were reporting Pakistan’s “crash program to develop nuclear weapons”, and by June 1983 that Pakistan was close to nuclear test capability, intended to deter aggression by India “which remains Pakistan’s greatest security concern”. For Islamic revivalism to coincide with nuclear weapons in the last decade has been something long-predictable if there had been adequate will to do so.

Right wing politicians and religious fundamentalists have come to power in countries with nuclear weapons without untoward results, e.g., Likud in Israel or the BJP/RSS in India. (It is America’s present leaders, as well as all main Democrat and Republican presidential candidates except Ron Paul, who have unilaterally threatened nuclear attacks on a non-nuclear country that has not committed aggression against anyone.) There is no obvious reason why an elected legitimate “conservative” or right wing government in Pakistan must come to pose a special nuclear danger to anyone. If it is serious about governance (which Musharraf-Benazir may not be), it may even succeed in finding enough sobriety and political honesty to start to face up to Pakistan’s real economic and social problems which are vast in size and scope.

Wali Allah vs Iqbal

“We are an Arab people whose fathers have fallen in exile in the country of Hindustan, and Arabic genealogy and Arabic language are our pride,” said Wali Allah (1703-1762). Two centuries later, Mohammad Iqbal (1877-1938), in his 1930 Presidential Speech to the Muslim League in Allahabad conceptualising today’s Pakistan, wished precisely to become free of that Arab influence: “I would like to see the Punjab, NWFP, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single state… The life of Islam as a cultural force in this living country very largely depends on its centralisation in a specified territory… For India it means security and peace resulting from an internal balance of power, for Islam an opportunity to rid itself of the stamp that Arabian Imperialism was forced to give it, to mobilise its law, its education, its culture, and to bring them into closer contact with its own original spirit and the spirit of modern times.”

That “spirit of modern times” is today represented most prominently in Pakistan by Pervez Hoodbhoy. In a December 2006 speech, Hoodbhoy suggested a new alternative to MA Jinnah’s ”Faith, Unity, Discipline” slogan: “First, I wish for minds that can deal with the complex nature of truth…. My second wish is for many more Pakistanis who accept diversity as a virtue… My third, and last, wish is that Pakistanis learn to value and nurture creativity.” And he has spoken of bringing “economic justice to Pakistan”, of the “fight to give Pakistan’s women the freedom which is their birthright”, and of people to “wake up” and engage politically. We shall witness a most engaging battle if Benazir and her new military friends all representing the jaded and corrupt old political power structures, come to face in the elections a new conservative alliance of people like Sharif, Hashmi, Fazlur Rahman and Imran all infused with Hoodbhoy’s scientific liberalism representing Iqbal’s ”spirit of modern times”.

America’s Pakistan-India Policy

US Pak-India Policy
Delhi & Islamabad Still Look West In Defining Their Relationship

First published in The Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article,

July 27 2007, http://www.thestatesman.net

By Subroto Roy

“Balance of power” between other nations while pursuing one’s own commercial and political self-interest, was the leitmotif of British foreign policy throughout the 19th Century and up until World War I. This came to be broadly absorbed and imitated by US foreign policy-makers afterwards. It remains the clear leitmotif of US policy between and towards Pakistan and India in recent years, especially since the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. Pakistan’s armed forces have been induced through the usual incentives of modern weapons like F-16s, comfortable officer-visits to US military academies, and hard cash to behave cooperatively with perceived American objectives.

Osama bin Laden
For some bizarre and unknown reason (though it might be as simple as ignorance and thoughtlessness), the USA has made itself believe that arch-enemy Osama bin Laden has remained in the Pashtun areas ever since the American attack took place on the-then Taliban Government in late 2001. The Taliban’s leader Mullah Omar certainly remained there or in Balochistan, but anyone who recalls the reported last conversation between Omar and Osama at the time may well have surmised that Osama was planning a long and permanent trip away from Afghanistan and Pakistan. The present author’s own speculation has been that Osama bin Laden probably moved westwards and has been in a safe and comfortable hideout somewhere in the deserts of North Africa ~ while everyone continues to frantically and ridiculously look for him very far away from where he is.

American policy towards Pakistan has been determined by the parameters of the new policy towards Afghanistan ~ which has been to prop up the Hamid Karzai Government in the hope a pro-American “moderate” “modern” Pashtun like Mr Karzai might one day become a constructive role model for all other Pashtuns, while NATO extends itself “pacifying” any new Pashtun insurgency and attacking poppy-crops on the pattern of the anti-narcotics war in Colombia, and US “Special Forces” continue to look for Osama and friends. Pakistan’s Musharraf has been expected to play along with this, and, in order for him to release and transfer some 80,000 soldiers towards that end, India has been requested not to give him a reason not to want to do so.

General Musharraf was one of the major beneficiaries of the officer-exchange programmes between the US and Pakistan militaries in the past. Like Benazir Bhutto, he is a “known” quantity, well-understood and hence rendered predictable by the American military and diplomatic establishment. Both are also explained and advocated for by their go-betweens, the extremely influential Pakistani bureaucrats within the Washington Beltway and their K-Street lobbyists. Musharraf’s departure to a nice retirement/exile in the USA helped by royalties from his book etc as well as his already-exported son, presumably constitutes a well-planned exit strategy for him personally.

The American problem is that Musharraf may be among the last if not the last of such pliable old-style Pakistani generals ~ the officer-exchange programmes came to slow down or end after the USA pulled out following the defeat of the USSR in Afghanistan, and at the same time Zia ul-Haq had initiated an overt Islamisation of younger officers of the Pakistan military. With such a level of uncertainty as to where the post-Musharraf Pakistan military can or would take itself (along with the country and its nuclear weapons), the only strategy has been to buy them out.

In the current Foreign Affairs, Daniel Markey of the US State Department and Council on Foreign Relations says as much (amid the usual little rhetoric about supporting Pakistani democracy): “Washington must win the trust and confidence of Pakistan’s army. This goal can only be achieved through closer working relationships and tangible investments that lock the United States into a long-term commitment to the region” (italics added).

If American policy towards Pakistan has been to pay to pacify Pakistan’s unpredictable nuclear-armed military, the policy towards India has been one of business, business, and more business. The “US-India Business Council” is merely an official Washington lobbyist protecting American business interests in India such as getting the Governments of India and Maharashtra to pay several hundred million dollars over the Dabhol-Enron fiasco. Yet that is where senior Indian politicians, like the Finance and Commerce Ministers, feel the need to routinely visit on pilgrimage if only to be made to feel important while in the USA. Even Dr Manmohan Singh felt the need to send a personal emissary to gift Condoleeza Rice a basket of Indian mangoes not at her office in the US State Department but when she was addressing a closed-door meeting of that business-lobbyist.

Certainly in case of the so-called “nuclear deal”, there is a political motivation on the American side that India must be prevented from conducting future nuclear explosions, although this may be something mostly symbolic as US intelligence agencies had notoriously failed to predict Pokhran I and Pokhran II. And there is doubtless some reliance that the Indian side to the negotiations has not really properly understood the intricacies of the American political and administrative system, e.g. the insignificance of a Presidential “signing statement”. Hence, if the deal goes through as seems likely now, it will certainly indicate the American side is more than comfortable that if a future Indian Government does not do what the US-side has intended in the nuclear deal (whether or not the Indian negotiators have understood that now), a future US Congress and President will be able to reverse the deal without too much difficulty.

What has mainly driven the deal on the American side is the prospect of very large nuclear business ~ specifically, that India will import six to eight American lightwater reactors. As I have said before in these pages, India’s national energy outlook will barely improve through the nuclear deal (given the miniscule size of the nuclear sector compared to coal and hydro), though a few favoured metros, and Delhi for sure, may see improvement after a decade or two when and if these expensive nuclear reactors become operational.

Short-sightedness
The short-sightedness and indeed sheer imbecility of Indian and Pakistani foreign policy is made clear by the fact we are unable to properly communicate with one another about our common interests as neighbouring countries with the same history and geography except through Washington. The elites of both countries have either fled already or would like to flee or at least travel to the USA to visit their exported adult children as often as possible. It is not dissimilar to our imperial relationship with Britain, where Indians had to travel to London to have their Round Table Conference, England being of course a place of national pilgrimage as the USA has now become. The result is not merely that the militaries and polities of Pakistan and India have wasted vast immeasurable resources in struggles against one another and continue to do so, but also and as importantly, have failed to define robust national identities after six decades.


India and “Energy Security”

First published in India’s Energy Security edited by Anant Sudarshan and Ligia Noronha, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, New Delhi 2007

“On the Political Economy of India’s Energy Policy: One Citizen’s Viewpoint”

by

Subroto Roy

For the idea of “energy security” to have meaning, “energy insecurity” must hold meaning as well.  Looking back a generation, the average American, European and  Japanese citizen became anxious and insecure when the cartel power of the oil exporting countries was first exercised, and energy prices quadrupled.   The idea of the US Government accumulating a “strategic reserve” of petroleum originated due to the oil crisis, and amounted to no more than a buffer-stock or commodity price-stabilisation scheme so “cheap gasoline” could be had always, and lifestyles would not be suddenly inconvenienced, and hence presidential popularity ratings would not suddenly drop.

In many ways energy insecurity has been a creation of bad design.  Hawaii is a good example of this.  Hawaii’s renowned climate is cooled by the magnificent trade-winds which blow all year long except in September.   Architecture suitable to those trade-winds would have created homes a few stories high with windows which could be opened.   Instead, Honolulu has become a city of high-rises and skyscrapers in the middle of the Pacific Ocean — many with New York-style permanently closed windows and centralised airconditioning.

Energy Insecurity, and hence Energy Security, may be notions mostly relevant to advanced Western economies.  North American, European and Japanese homes, lifestyles, architectures and urban sprawls are all highly capital-intensive and inelastically dependant on domestic or imported energy.   The reason a vague undefined notion of “Energy Security” tends to make New Delhi anxious is because many inside the Delhi Beltway live in dreamlands or fantasy-worlds where they would like to imitate Western lifestyles in their personal lives.    But New Delhi is not Europe or America and certainly India is not New Delhi.

There are hundreds of millions of Indians in rural India.  What is the appropriate National Energy Policy for them?   It quite simply is for there to be genuine electrification of India’s 600,000 villages (where more than 70% of the rural Indian population still have no electric lighting even according to Government data), as well as better trains, better all-weather feeder-roads to reach bus routes and primary schools, and conditions to arise for technological change and normal prosperity among ordinary people, so those who are today transporting a whole family of four on a bicycle, are able in a few years to do so on a motor-scooter, and some years after that perhaps in a small private car.      Economic theory speaks of preferences, resources and technologies.   Preferences define and give rise to the demand-side; resources and technologies define and give rise to the supply-side.   Relative prices (which include interest-rates, reflecting the force of the present relative to the future) tend to intermediate equilibria between demand and supply conditions.    In policy-making, private preferences for public goods and services must somehow become translated through a tolerable political process into reasonable public preferences.   It must have seemed a good idea privately to someone to create skyscrapers with closed windows in Honolulu forgetting the trade winds and ignoring the energy-dependence of the Hawaiian Islands, yet in retrospect that may seem to have been publicly unwise.   Similarly, India is a coal-abundant coal-exporting and diesel-importing country yet we got rid of all our steam locomotives and replaced these with diesel engines – if there were enough reasons to do so, I at least remain ignorant of what they were.   One problem with our energy policy-making that has emerged in the current nuclear deal-making with American businessmen and politicians, is that it has seemed to lack rational assessments being made of relative costs and benefits in the Indian case of nuclear/fossil fuel/renewable energy, especially hydroelectric energy.  Indeed it reveals the same lack of transparency as other policy-making in this country – like the $12 billion worth of commercial aircraft from Boeing and Airbus bought for our bankrupt nationalized airlines.

Moving from preference-formation to resources and technologies, it will be recalled that no economist of any school of thought anywhere ever backed the Club of Rome/“Limits to Growth” idea a generation ago that mankind was doomed in some sense to run out of resources.   There are always alternatives, each with a relative cost attached to it, and there are always new and unpredictable opportunities and ingenuities arising which dynamically change the set of alternatives on offer at a given time.   Prices and costs tend to adjust when possible to make myriad individual decisions consistent with one another, and in fact, futures, forward and option markets for petroleum products are among the most active and well-traded that there are in the world.  Design improvements in nuclear reactors will also improve productivity; e.g.  “fast breeder” reactors “breed” more fissile material than they use, and may get 100 times as much energy from a kilogram of uranium as existing reactors do.    We in India also have one innovatively designed thorium reactor under construction.

Coming to the nuclear deal, the plausible part of the Government of India’s official line on the Indo-US nuclear deal is that removing these international restrictions will — through importation of new technologies, inputs, fuel etc — improve the functioning of the 14 existing nuclear plants that are going to be designated as “civilian”.   However, those purchasing decisions involved in enhancing India’s efficiency gains must be made by the Government’s nuclear scientists on technical grounds of improving the working of our existing nuclear infrastructure.

It would be a different animal altogether to be purchasing new nuclear reactors on a turnkey basis from American, French or any other foreign businessmen in a purported attempt to improve India’s “energy security”.   The central question over such massive foreign purchases no longer would be the technical one of using the Indo-US deal to improve efficiency or productivity of our existing inefficient and even crippled nuclear infrastructure.   Instead it would become a question of calculating social costs and benefits of our newly investing in nuclear power relative to other sources like hydroelectric power.   The contribution of nuclear power to India’s electricity production has been close to negligible.  Among India’s energy sources, the largest growth-potential has remained hydroelectric.  Even if all other sources of electricity remained constant, and our civilian nuclear capacity alone was made to grow by 100% under the deal that Dr Manmohan Singh and Mr Montek Singh Ahluwalia have been promoting, that would still make up less than 8% of total Indian electricity produced.

In 2004, the International Energy Agency’s estimated that the new energy capacity required by rising economic growth in 2020 will derive 1400 GW from burning coal (half of it in China and India), 470 GW from burning oil, 430 GW from hydro, and 400 GW from renewable sources like solar or wind power.  Because gas prices are expected to remain low worldwide, construction of new nuclear reactors for electricity will mostly remain  unprofitable.   By 2030, new energy expected to be required worldwide is 4700 GW, of which only 150 GW is expected from new nuclear plants which in any case will replacing existing plants due to be retired.   I am afraid the thought cannot be avoided that a proper cost-benefit analysis may reveal that the reason why potential American, French and other sellers of new nuclear reactors to India are becoming so keen on India using civilian nuclear energy is that they are unable to sell these reactors under free market principles elsewhere in the world  economy.    There is enough circumstantial evidence that the current nuclear deal-making has been promoted mostly by big business lobbies and has had little to do with anything else.    The nuclear deal was promoted by the US-India Business Council and the US-India CEO Forum. The Confederation of Indian Industry registered as an official lobbyist in Washington, and went about spending half a million dollars lobbying American politicians for the nuclear deal.  After President Bush’s visit to India, the US Foreign Commercial Service reportedly said American engineering firms, equipment suppliers and contractors faced a $1,000 billion opportunity in India, and the US Chamber of Commerce said the nuclear deal can cause $100 billion worth of new American business in India’s energy-sector alone.

If the Indo-US nuclear deal helps India improve or maintain its existing nuclear infrastructure, well and good.  If in fact the underlying motivation of the local and foreign business lobbies driving the deal has been to sell India nuclear reactors on a turnkey basis at a time when nuclear energy is uneconomical elsewhere in the world because of low gas prices, then India’s ordinary citizens may demand to know from the Government whether the deal is principally aimed at allowing such importation of new nuclear reactors, and if so, why such an expensive alternative is being considered.  Thus must include a realisation that while the transactions, organisation and political costs of getting new hydroelectric power investments off the ground are high, it is hydroelectric and not nuclear power where India’s real future potential exists.   As a general rule, I put it to you that we need to be less worried about “Energy Security” anywhere and more worried about thoughtless irresponsible corrupt governments everywhere.     There is no shortage of energy or resources as such anywhere in the world; what should be making us feel insecure is the shortage of  wisdom in political decision-making.  That there is everywhere.

What To Tell Musharraf: Peace Is Impossible Without Non-Aggressive Pakistani Intentions

What to tell Musharraf:

Peace Is Impossible Without Non-Aggressive Pakistani Intentions

First published in The Statesman December 15 2006,

Editorial Page Special Article, www.thestatesman.net

By SUBROTO ROY

In June 1989 a project at an American university involving Pakistani and other scholars, including one Indian, led to the book Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy: Towards an Agenda for the 1990s published in Karachi, New Delhi and elsewhere. The book reached Nawaz Sharif and the Islamabad elite, and General Musharraf’s current proposal on J&K, endorsed warmly by the US State Department last week, derives from the last paragraph of its editorial introduction: “Kashmir… must be demilitarised and unified by both countries sooner or later, and it must be done without force. There has been enough needless bloodshed on the subcontinent… Modern Pakistanis and Indians are free peoples who can voluntarily agree in their own interests to alter the terms set hurriedly by Attlee or Mountbatten in the Indian Independence Act 1947. Nobody but we ourselves keeps us prisoners of superficial definitions of who we are or might be. The subcontinent could evolve its political identity over a period of time on the pattern of Western Europe, with open borders and (common) tariffs to the outside world, with the free movement of people, capital, ideas and culture. Large armed forces could be reduced and transformed in a manner that would enhance the security of each nation. The real and peaceful economic revolution of the masses of the subcontinent would then be able to begin.”

The editors as economists decried the waste of resources involved in the Pakistan-India confrontation, saying it had “greatly impoverished the general budgets of both Pakistan and India. If it has benefited important sections of the political and military elites of  both countries, it has done so only at the expense of the general welfare of the masses.”

International law

Such words may have been bold in the early 1990s but today, a decade and a half later, they seem incomplete and rather naïve even to their author, who was myself, the only Indian in that project. Most significantly, the position in international law in the context of historical facts had been wholly neglected. So had been the manifest nature of the contemporary Pakistani state.

Jammu & Kashmir became an entity in international law when the Treaty of Amritsar was signed between Gulab Singh and the British on March 16 1846. British India itself became an entity in international law much later, possibly as late as June 1919 when it signed the Treaty of Versailles. As for Pakistan, it had no existence in world history or international law until August 14 1947, when the British created it as a new entity out of certain demarcated areas of British India and gave it the status of a Dominion. British India dissolved itself on August 15 1947 and the Dominion of India became its successor-state in international law on that date. As BR Ambedkar pointed out at the time, the new India automatically inherited British India’s suzerainty over any and all remaining “princely” states of so-called “Indian India”. In case of J&K in particular, there never was any question of it being recognised as an independent entity in global international law.

The new Pakistan, by entering a Standstill Agreement with J&K as of August 15 1947, did locally recognise J&K’s sovereignty over its decision whether to join Pakistan or India. But this Pakistani recognition lasted only until the attack on J&K that commenced from Pakistani territory as of October 22 1947, an attack in which Pakistani forces were complicit (something which, in different and mutating senses, has continued ever since). The Dominion of India had indicated it might have consented if J&K’s Ruler had decided to accede to Pakistan in the weeks following the dissolution of British India. But no such thing happened: what did happen was the descent of J&K into a condition of legal anarchy.

Beginning with the Pakistani attack on J&K as of October 22 upto and including the Rape of Baramulla and the British-led Pakistani coup détat in Gilgit on one side, and the arrival of Indian forces as well as mobilization by Sheikh Abdullah and Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad of J&K’s civilians to repel the Pakistani invaders on the other side, the State of Jammu & Kashmir became an ownerless entity in international law. In Roman Law, from which all modern international and municipal law ultimately derives, the ownership of an ownerless entity is open to be determined by “military decision”. The January 1949 Ceasefire Line that came to be renamed the Line of Control after the 1971 Bangladesh War, demarcates the respective territories that the then-Dominions and later Republics of India and Pakistan acquired by “military decision” of the erstwhile State of J&K which had come to cease to exist.

What the Republic of India means by saying today that boundaries cannot be redrawn nor any populations forcibly transferred is quite simply that the division of erstwhile J&K territory is permanent, and that sovereignty over it is indivisible. It is only sheer ignorance on the part of General Musharraf’s Indian interviewer the other day which caused it to be said that Pakistan was willing to “give up” its claim on erstwhile J&K State territory which India has held: Pakistan has never had nor even made such a  claim in international law. What Pakistan has claimed is that India has been an occupier and that there are many people inhabiting the Indian area who may not wish to be Indian nationals and who are being compelled against their will to remain so ~  forgetting to add that precisely the same could be said likewise of the Pakistani-held area.

Accordingly, the lawful solution proposed in these pages a year ago to resolve that matter, serious as it is, has been that the Republic of India invite every person covered under Article 370, citizen-by- citizen, under a condition of full information, to privately and without fear decide, if he/she has not done so already, between possible Indian, Iranian, Afghan or Pakistani nationalities ~ granting rights and obligations of permanent residents to any of those persons who may choose for whatever private reason not to remain Indian nationals. If Pakistan acted likewise, the problem of J&K would indeed come to be resolved. The Americans, as self- appointed mediators, have said they wish “the people of the region to have a voice” in a solution: there can be no better expression of such voice than allowing individuals to privately choose their own nationalities and their rights and responsibilities accordingly. The issue of territorial sovereignty is logically distinct from that of the choice of nationality by individual inhabitants.

Military de-escalation

Equally significant though in assessing whether General Musharraf’s proposal is an  anachronism, is Pakistan’s history since 1947: through Ayub’s 1965 attack, the civil war and secession of Bangladesh, the Afghan war and growth of the ISI, the Kargil incursion, the 1999 coup détat, and, once or twice removed, the 9/11 attacks against America. It is not a history that allows any confidence to arise in Indians that we are not dealing with a country misgoverned by a tiny arrogant exploitative military elite who remain hell-bent on aggression against us. Like the USA and USSR twenty years ago, what we need to negotiate about, and negotiate hard about, is an overall mutual military drawdown and de-escalation appropriate to lack of aggressive intent on both sides. Is General Musharraf willing to discuss that? It would involve reciprocal verifiable assessment of one another’s reasonable military requirements on the assumption that each was not a threatening enemy of the other. That was how the USA-USSR drawdown and de-escalation occurred successfully. If General Musharraf is unwilling to enter such a discussion, there is hardly anything to talk about with him. We should wait for democracy to return.

New Foreign Policy? “Kiss Up, Kick Down”?

NEW FOREIGN POLICY? “Kiss Up, Kick Down”?

Seven phases of Indian foreign policy may be identifiable since Nehru; the current phase seems to involve subservience to the strong, jingoism otherwise

by Subroto Roy

First published in The Sunday Statesman, Oct 8 2006, The Statesman Oct 9 2006 Editorial Page Special Article, www.thestatesman.net

The outlines of a new tri-partisan Indian foreign policy may be becoming discernible. That it is “new” or that it commands near unanimity among the Congress, BJP and “Left” and their respective friends in the Indian media and political classes, does not make it sound or robust in any way. In fact, its basis in the history, geography and economics of India is wholly inadequate, and it is also entirely divorced from any clearly enunciated new Indian political ethics for the modern world.

The new policy, which may be fairly dubbed the Jaswant-Manmohan policy after the BJP and Congress politicians who have been its putative authors and leading practitioners, is as likely as not to lead to an India that is no longer a free decision-maker in any meaningful way in world affairs by 2047, one hundred years after Independence. Our great grandchildren may well be taught that for some decades in Indian history a sovereign unitary republic actually existed which then came to be effectively lost.

Indeed the new policy may amount to being less a coherent new doctrine of India’s role in international relations than a mere change in attitude on the part of politicians, bureaucrats and their intelligentsia friends: from seeming universally arrogant in the world to becoming pliant and subservient towards those world powers perceived (accurately or inaccurately) as strong, combined with a vainglorious jingoism towards all others. It is an application to international diplomacy and politics of the classic bureaucratic principle of “kiss up, kick down” in an organisation, and may reflect the fact the two main institutions the Mughals and British used to run their empires were the bureaucracy and military ~ both of which have grown and continued to run New Delhi (and Islamabad) afterwards, co-opting whatever domestic political development that has arisen. There is plenty of wishful waffling too about India becoming a “great power” or being a “swing state in the global balance of power”, and about how well the economy is supposedly doing ~ as if what Government spokesmen say about the economy is to be believed at face-value. Indian Leftists and their fellow-travellers ~ as great lovers themselves of bureaucracy, collectivist groupthink and propaganda on the USSR or PRC pattern, and fearful or envious of all individual criticism, creativity and achievement – have taken to the same principle like fish to water.

The first phase of Indian foreign policy was Nehruvian in that it began with Nehru’s Fabian misperception of Stalin’s USSR, and ended with the military debacle he led the country into at the hands of Zhou’s “human wave” armies in the mountains of Ladakh and NEFA.

A second phase was Kashmir-centric, overlapping with the first insofar as it may be traced to Karan Singh’s iniquitous dismissal of Sheikh Abdullah’s first Government, but really beginning after Nehru’s death with the Ayub-Abdullah summit, and being marked by Ayub’s 1965 attack in J&K ~ Shastri’s riposte reaching the Ichogil Canal signalled that no longer would war over J&K be confined to J&K.

A third phase was forced on India by the Pakistani civil war that led to Bangladesh’s creation, and was marked by the Indira/ Haksar alliance with Brezhnev’s USSR, as well as by Pokhran-I.

A fourth phase of Indian foreign policy may be identified in the late 1970s and 1980s, marked by rebellion of the fundamentalist Sikhs whom Indira and Sanjay Gandhi had provoked, which led in due course to her assassination. The turmoil that followed in Punjab and North India was financed by anti-Indian Sikhs from Vancouver,California and Britain, with gleeful help from the Pakistanis, and Indian diplomats had their hands full in trying to counter that phenomenon. It was during this phase of domestic Indian turmoil that New Delhi wholly missed the seismic changes occurring in the USSR, East Europe and international relations generally, and completely failed to predict its consequences for India.

The phase came to end when the Narasimha Rao Government (upon advice of a well-known communist cabal in the IFS and JNU) instantly showered praise on the anti-Yeltsin coup in August 1991. When Yeltsin returned to power, the new anti-communist Russians took their revenge on New Delhi, exacting hard dollars for the soft rouble-trade of friendlier times.

A fifth phase may be seen in retrospect as one of relative success.The main plank of Indian foreign policy in the late 1980s and early 1990s was to get Pakistan designated a “terrorist state” in American eyes, as well as to warn of the dangers of a Pakistani nuclear bomb. It had been prompted by the end of American involvement in the Afghan war, which caused the ISI to shift the jihadis to J&K, and the Indian policy was destined not to succeed. No matter how hard Kanwar Sibal tried in 1992-1993 as Minister-Political in the Washington Embassy to tell the Americans that their Pakistani friends were dangerous, he was destined to fail as the MEA had entirely failed to realise how far ahead the Pakistanis were in their lobbying power in Washington ~ the Pakistani super-elite has been entrenched among the K-Street lobbyists and in expensive real-estate along the Potomac River for more than two generations. Yet after the 9/11 attacks several years later, the Indians were able to look back at that fifth phase and say to the Americans, “We told you so”.

In the late 1990s came a short-lived sixth phase of Pokhran-II and the Lahore bus-trip, which may be credited as Vajpayee successes, and also contained the Kargil War and Kandahar hijacking, which were more dubious. This overlapped with the last and currently continuing seventh phase of Indian foreign policy with Jaswant Singh breaking the ice with the Americans when they had recovered from the fact the CIA’s failures included not foreseeing Pokhran-II; it coincided too with Osama bin Laden’s declarations of jihad against the USA. The Americans enlisting themselves on the side of the Northern Alliance to defeat the Taliban after 9/11 was beneficial from an Indian standpoint since Afghanistan had been effectively lost to secular Indian influence for two decades, and the Taliban had shown themselves no friends of India during the Kandahar hijacking.

But the BJP’s anti-Muslim thought processes quickly took over, as did its proximity to organised business lobbies. When Iraq was attacked and occupied in 2003, there was hardly a whimper from the BJP leadership, and instead their businessmen friends started to fly to Amman hopeful of “reconstruction” contracts. The Sonia/ Manmohan Congress/Leftist combine has effectively continued and expanded that trend, though now the business lobbies have been much more muted and subtle, especially in their backroom dealings and payoffs with respect to the nuclear deal. There is also an occasional burst of anti-Americanism from leftists though it is hard of course to beg for American foreign investment in Marxist-run areas while also being sincere in quaint street demos or agitprop.

Running through the new foreign policy is a fiction that it is driven by a new economic motivation to improve development and mass well-being in India. The bizarre idea of creating hundreds of so-called “Special Economic Zones” (reminiscent of 17th and 18th Century colonial fortifications) illustrates this. India’s ordinary anonymous masses ~ certainly the 850 million people entirely outside the organised sector ~ have little or nothing to do with any of this. Benefits will accrue only to the ten million Indian nomenclatura controlling or having access to the gaping exit holes to the outside world in the new semi-closed economy with its endless deficit finance paid for by unlimited printing of an inconvertible domestic currency.

It is as fallacious to think private investment from foreign or domestic businessmen will support public “infrastructure” creation as it is to think foreign exchange reserves are like tax revenues in being available for Government expenditure on “infrastructure”. Such fallacies are intellectual products of either those who know no economics at all or those who have forgotten whatever little they might have been once mistaught in their youth. What serious economics does say is that Government should generally have nothing to do with any kind of private business, and instead should focus on properly providing public goods and services, encourage competition in all avenues of economic activity and prevent or regulate monopoly, and see to it all firms pay taxes they are due to pay.

That is it. It is as bad for Government to be pampering organised foreign or domestic business or organised labour with innumerable subsidies, as has been happening in India for decades, as it is to make enterprise difficult with red tape and hurdles. Businessmen are grown ups and should be allowed to freely risk their capital and make their profits or their losses without public intervention.

An economics-based policy would have single-mindedly sought to improve the financial condition of every governmental entity in the country, with the aim of improving the provision of public goods and services to all 1,000 million Indians. If and when budgets of all governmental entities become sound, foreign creditors would automatically line up before them with loans to sell, and ambitious development goals can be accomplished. As long as public budgets (and public accounts) remain in an outrageous shambles, nothing can be in fact achieved and only propaganda, corruption and paper-money creation results instead. Whatever economic growth does occur is due to new enterprise and normal technological progress, and is mostly despite and not because of New Delhi’s bureaucrats (see “The Dream Team: A Critique”, The Statesman 6-8 January 2006).

The first aspect of the new Indian foreign policy has been for Government to become wholly ingratiating towards any and all “First World” members visiting India who may deign to consider any kind of collaboration whatsoever. The long line of foreign businessmen and heads of government having photo-ops with the Indian PM began with Vajpayee and has continued with Manmohan, especially when there is a large weapons’ or commercial aircraft or other purchase to be signed. The flip-side has been ministerial and especially Prime Ministerial trips abroad ~ from Vajpayee’s to a Singapore golf-cart immediately after commiserating Gujarat, to Manmohan receiving foreign honorary doctorates while still holding public office.

Subservience to foreign business interests in the name of economic policy extends very easily to Indian naval, military or diplomatic assets being used to provide policing or support services for the great powers as and when they may ask for it. Hence, Indian naval forces may be asked by the Americans to help fight pirates in the Indian Ocean, or escort this vessel or that, or India may be asked to provide refuelling or base facilities, or India may be requested to vote against Iran, Venezuela or whomever here or there. But there would be absolutely no question of India’s role in international politics being anything greater than that of a subaltern or comprador whose response must be an instant “Ji, Huzoor”. The official backing of the Tharoor candidacy was as futile and ridiculous as the quest for UN veto-power or the willingness to attend G-8 summits as an observer.

While subservience towards the First World’s business and military interests is the “kiss up” aspect of the new foreign policy, an aggressive jingoism towards others is the “kick down” aspect. One influential voice among the media friends of the new foreign policy states it as follows: “The search for `equity oil’ has been the single most important new element of Indian economic diplomacy in recent years… Equity oil raises India’s stakes in the stability of regimes or even individuals who preside over these resources… the big question is how far would India go in defence of `regime stability’ elsewhere? And if it’s assets fall into hostile hands, would India be prepared to consider promoting `regime change’?” Just as surely as a pacifist Fabian socialist Nehru misperceived Stalin’s USSR, New Delhi’s new capitalistic jingoists have misperceived the Cheney-Rumsfeld grab for “equity oil” and have even defined Bush-Blair adventurism as being “the side of the angels”. How they must love to want to project Indian military force ~ paratroopers in the Maldives perhaps, though they need to recall what happened with the LTTE too!

Multiple Jallianwalla Bagh massacres may have been occurring in front of us in Iraq, Afghanistan and Balochistan, and there may soon be an attack on Iran too. New Delhi’s new “kiss up, kick down” attitude has rendered India’s once-dignified and sober voice silent, our eyes closed or our face turned away.

The obvious alternative to bureaucratic “kiss up, kick down” would be “kick up, kiss down” loved by all individualists and anti-bureaucrats. In other words, it would be for India to take each case and circumstance in international politics on its merits; be seen to stand up seriously to the powerful in world politics wherever and whenever necessary; seek to protect those who may be vulnerable to international or other brutality in world affairs, while getting on properly with the mundane business of ordinary government and commerce at all other times. That mundane business may call for a gradual withdrawal of India from all or most of the fancy, corrupt international bureaucracies in New York, Washington, Geneva etc, focussing calmly but determinedly instead on improved administration and governance at home. Such was what Rajiv Gandhi was advised in January 1991 (see “Memos to Rajiv,” The Statesman 31 July-2 August 1991; Freedom First October 2001), when for one futile moment he even formed a peaceful bridge between the Americans and Saddam during the first Gulf War. The New Delhi establishment may be too intoxicated with power and insecure intellectually to be able to reflect on such sober alternatives.

Is Balochistan Doomed?

Is Balochistan Doomed?
by Subroto Roy

First published  in The Sunday Statesman Editorial Page Special Article

Sep 3 2006, www.thestatesman.net

Nawab Mohammad Akbar Khan Bugti’s death (apparently in a cave that was precision-bombed by the Pakistani military using American equipment after he had spoken on a Thuraya satellite-phone) lengthens Pakistan’s list of political killings and assassinations, many still unsolved.  Liaquat Ali Khan, Dr Khan Sahib, ZA Bhutto and sons as well as their enemy Zia ul Haq, are prominent members of the list. The Rule of Law is better in India to the extent we tend to solve and punish our major assassinations.

Bugti’s killing is symptomatic of many of Pakistan’s continuing ills, not least of which is the continuing inability of the military to comprehend politics as a discipline that accommodates competing interests and uses two-way dialogue, not one-way instruction, as its method. There is also the personal failure of Pervez Musharraf, seven years after his coup détat, to transform himself into Pakistan’s first genuine statesman in many years. Musharraf is a well-read, well-spoken soldier who sees himself as a man of destiny but he has quite simply failed to recognise statesmanship requires far more than personal ambition; he has become a Napoleon at home and a Quisling abroad when what he aspired to become was Pakistan’s Attaturk.

The roots of Pakistan’s Balochistan problem are depthless. When Pakistan was first created, Punjabis constituted 25 per cent of the population but 77 per cent of the new armed forces. East Bengalis constituted 55% of the population ~ a fact inevitably leading to the idea of a “one-unit West Pakistan wing” governing itself independent of the numerical majority of Bengali-speakers. Equally inevitably perhaps, this led to Punjabi military domination of East Pakistan; the history of Bangladesh’s creation is too well-known to need recitation here except to say the Mukti Bahini, like Balochi separatists today, were incapable of taking on Pakistan’s military on their own.

After Bangladesh’s secession, Pakistan became the four areas originally named in Iqbal’s 1930 speech conceptualising a Muslim country in North Western India (which, incidentally, excluded J&K despite Iqbal having been Kashmiri). Pakistan’s Pashtun and Baloch highlanders were never of Hindu/Indian origin, whereas the plainsmen consisting of Punjabis, Sindhis and migrants from India were (despite protestations and pretensions), closely related to their Hindu/Indian cousins and neighbours. Muslim and Hindu religious and cultural beliefs and practices may be very different, but DNA testing would likely identify most of the subcontinent’s Muslims and Hindus as ethnically indistinguishable from a scientific point of view.

The central fact driving and explaining Pakistan’s political history has been that the idea of Pakistan arose in the subcontinent’s Muslim-minority areas, not among the peoples of the areas that today constitute Pakistan ~ least of all the Baloch (viz., F Robinson in WE James & S Roy (eds) Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy). Having created a country based on an ideology imported by a handful of super-elite Indian migrants like Jinnah and Liaquat, serious political conversation and democratic nation-building of a high order was required immediately from Pakistan’s national statesmen to make the enterprise a success. That was never forthcoming simply because there were no such national statesmen, only rather thick bungling soldiers and some corpulent corrupt politicians. In an alternative universe in which ZA Bhutto had been born a generation earlier, things might have been different. Musharraf’s efforts since his January 2002 speech to become an intelligent modern soldier-statesman amount to far too little, far too late, rather the way the French physiocrats were too late and came to be swept away by revolution.

The Baloch are a tribal people who defeated and later assimilated the Dravidian(?)-Brahui inhabitants of the area. For most of their modern history they were independent though owed nominal allegiance to the Afghan ruler in Kabul. The 19th Century British created a strip known as “British Balochistan” including Quetta and Sibi, but were interested in the region solely to the extent it controlled access to Afghanistan and otherwise left the Khan of Kalat to himself. The British also annexed Sindh from a Balochi dynasty. In the 21st Century, it has become Balochistan not Afghanistan which has immense economic potential and strategic value in international politics. Yet its future must be filled with foreboding because Musharraf’s military-business state, goaded on by Western and Chinese business and military interests, has recognised its potential and begun to behave ruthlessly against Balochis as a result. Balochistan contains Pakistan’s reserves of uranium, coal, gold, silver, copper, aluminium, and of course plentiful natural gas at Sui. The Makran Coast had been gifted by the Khan of Kalat to Oman, and was bought back by Pakistan in 1958. Development of Gwadar and Ormara ports and naval bases (whose strategic value is self-evident) and a road link through the Karakoram to Sinkiang have now become top Pakistani and Chinese military and business priorities.

Gwadar real-estate speculation is rampant among Lahore and Rawalpindi’s military-businessmen, while two Chinese workers were killed in Gwadar by Balochi nationalists in 2004 causing ruthless Punjabi reprisals. Also, the Americans have long had secret CIA-built bases in Pasni and Dalbandin in Baloch territory, which are being used presently in military operations in Afghanistan; their Pashtun/Taliban enemy also use Quetta and northern Balochistan for rest and recuperation while fighting in Afghanistan! And Balochistan’s caves are where Pakistan’s nuclear-armed F-16s against India are hidden. The Balochi are a small, poor, traditionally peaceful, politically divided tribal minority of perhaps 6.5 million people spread sparsely over this vast arid area that constitutes more than 48% of Pakistan’s present territory. Despite the pretensions of an articulate expatriate rebel elite (including even a self-styled Government-in-Exile based in Jerusalem dreaming of a secular free Balochistan), Baloch guerrilla fighters are wholly incapable of taking on the organised military might of the Pakistani state, armed by America and China. The expansion of Pakistan’s 74 million Punjabis, 30 million Sindhis and 17 million Pashtun into Balochistan seems as inevitable at present as the expansion of the Han Chinese into Tibet ~ a similarity doubtless noted by Musharraf’s Communist Chinese friends and advisers. Also, because there are two million Balochis in Iranian Balochistan, Pakistan’s Balochi nationalists have had a declared enemy to their west in the Iranian Government ~ the Pahlevi regime even provided Italian-made American Huey helicopter gunships with Iranian pilots to help Bhutto crush the Baloch rebellions of the early 1970s. In fact, Balochi rebels have had no military allies except the pre-communist Government of Afghanistan under Daud, who “ordered the establishment of a training camp at Qandahar for Baloch liberation fighters. Between 10,000 and 15,000 Baloch youths were trained and armed there” (R Anwar, The Tragedy of Afghanistan 1988, p. 78). The Governments of India or the United States lack motivation or capability to help, and Balochistan may be doomed to becoming a large human rights/genocidal disaster of the next decade.

An independent Balochistan may be unviable, being overwhelmed by its riches while having too small, uneducated and backward a population of its own, and powerful greedy neighbours on either side. In effect, a weak Balochistan has been divided rather like a weak Poland was divided by Hitler and Stalin in the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact.

Today, the Pashtun of Pakistan and Afghanistan (as well as perhaps Sindhis of Baloch origin) may be the only interlocutors who can prevent a genocide and mediate a peace between Balochi nationalists and Musharraf’s ruthless Punjabi military-businessmen determined to colonize Balochistan completely with Chinese help, effectively subsidising their misgovernance elsewhere with Balochistan’s riches. Like Bhutto and Zia, Musharraf has chosen military suppression and failed to see the only way forward for Pakistan is political accommodation of both Baloch and Pashtun aspirations and desires, while solving Pakistan’s grave fiscal and monetary problems separately. The terms of a peaceful accommodation could involve e.g., a vertical administrative division of Pakistan between its tribal highlander peoples and its Indus Valley plainsmen (viz., The Statesman 16 July 2006) followed by slow, steady, sustainable development and modernization consistent with tribal cultural wishes ~ not Shanghai or World Bank capitalism. To be a man of destiny, Musharraf must transcend the military-business complex he rules over and reduce its role in Pakistani life, not increase it. Statesmanship involves taking risks for a noble cause and these are the main risks he needs to address and build a national consensus upon. Instead, he has enhanced military capabilities and seems hell-bent (perhaps on advice of his MBA prime minister) on ruthless exploitation of Balochistan as a Lahore/ Rawalpindi colony. It is the road to catastrophe.

(NB The original article said grandsons of Nawab Bugti had been killed with him, but this is not confirmed.)

India’s Energy Interests

OUR ENERGY INTERESTS
Subroto Roy

First published in The Sunday Statesman, August 27 2006, The Statesman August 28 2006, Editorial Page Special Article, www.thestatesman.net

Americans are shrewd and practical people in commercial matters, and expect the same of people they do business with. Caveat emptor, “let the buyer beware”, is the motto they expect those on the other side of the table to be using. Let us not think they are doing us favours in the nuclear deal ~ they are grown-ups looking after their interests and naturally expect we shall look after our own and not expect charity while doing business. Equally, let us not blame the Americans if we find in later years (long after Manmohan Singh and Montek Ahluwalia have exited from India’s stage) that the deal has been implemented in a bad way for our masses of ordinary people.

That said, there is a remarkable disjoint between India’s national energy interests (nuclear interests in particular), and the manner in which the nuclear deal is being perceived and taken to implementation by the two sides. There may be a fundamental gap between the genuine positive benefits the Government of India says the deal contains, and the motivations American businessmen and through them Indian businessmen have had for lobbying American and Indian politicians to support it. An atmosphere of being at cross-purposes has been created, where for example Manmohan Singh is giving answers to questions different from the questions we may want to be asking Montek Ahluwalia. The fundamental gap between what is being said by our Government and what may be intended by the businessmen is something anyone can grasp, though first we shall need some elementary facts.

In 2004, the International Energy Agency estimated the new energy capacity required by rising economic growth in 2020 will derive 1400 GW from burning coal (half of it in China and India), 470 GW from burning oil, 430GW from hydro, and 400 GW from renewable sources like solar or wind power. Because gas prices are expected to remain low worldwide, construction of new nuclear reactors for electricity will be unprofitable. By 2030, new energy expected to be required worldwide is 4700GW, of which only 150GW is expected from new nuclear plants, which will be in any case replacing existing plants due to be retired. Rational choice between different energy sources depends on costs determined by history and geography. Out of some 441 civilian reactors worldwide, France has 59 and these generate 78 per cent of its electricity, the rest coming from hydro. Japan has 54 reactors, generating 34% of its electricity from them. The USA has 104 reactors but generates only 20 per cent of its electricity from them, given its vast alternative sources of power like hydro. In India as of 2003, installed power generating capacity was 107,533.3MW, of which 71 per cent came from burning fuels. Among India’s energy sources, the largest growth-potential is hydroelectric, which does not involve burning fuels ~ gravity moves water from the mountains to the oceans, and this force is harnessed for generation. Our hydro potential, mostly in the North and North-East, is some 150,000MW but our total installed hydro capacity with utilities was only 26,910MW (about 18 per cent of potential). Our 14 civilian nuclear reactors produced merely 4 per cent or less of the electricity being consumed in the country. Those 14 plants will come under “international safeguards” by 2014 under the nuclear deal.

It is extremely likely the international restrictions our existing nuclear plants have been under since the 1970s have hindered if not crippled their functioning and efficiency. At the same time, the restrictions may have caused us to be innovative too. Nuclear power arises from fission of radioactive uranium, plutonium or thorium. India has some 8 million tonnes of monazite deposits along the seacoast of which half may be mined, to yield 225,000 tonnes of thorium metal; we have one innovatively designed thorium reactor under construction. Almost all nuclear energy worldwide today arises from uranium of which there are practically unlimited reserves. Fission of a uranium atom produces 10 million times the energy produced by combustion of an atom of carbon from coal. Gas and fossil fuels may be cheap and in plentiful supply worldwide for generations to come but potential for cheap nuclear energy seems practically infinite. The uranium in seawater can satisfy mankind’s total electricity needs for 7 million years. There is more energy in the uranium impurity present in coal than can arise from actually burning the coal. There is plenty of uranium in granite. None of these become profitable for centuries because there is so much cheap uranium extractable from conventional ores. Design improvements in reactors will also improve productivity; e.g. “fast breeder” reactors “breed” more fissile material than they use, and may get 100 times as much energy from a kilogram of uranium as existing reactors do. India has about 95,000 tonnes of uranium metal that may be mined to yield about 61,000 tonnes net for power generation. Natural uranium is 99.3 per cent of the U-238 isotope and 0.7 per cent of the radioactive U-235 isotope. Nuclear power generation requires “enriched uranium” or “yellow cake” to be created in which U-235 has been increased from 0.7 per cent to 4 to 5 percent. (Nuclear bombs require highly enriched uranium with more than 90 per cent of U-235.) Yellow cake is broken into small pieces, put in metal rods placed in bundles, which are then bombarded by neutrons causing fission. In a reactor, the energy released turns water into steam, which moves turbines generating electricity. While there is no carbon dioxide “waste” as in burning fossil fuels, the “spent” rods of nuclear fuel and other products constitute grave radioactive waste, almost impossible to dispose of.

The plausible part of the Government of India’s official line on the Indo-US nuclear deal is that removing the international restrictions will ~ through importation of new technologies, inputs, fuel etc ~ improve functioning of our 14 existing civilian plants. That is a good thing. Essentially, the price being paid for that improvement is our willingness to commit that those 14 plants will not be used for military purposes. Fair enough: even if we might become less innovative as a result, the overall efficiency gains as a result of the deal will add something to India’s productivity. However, those purchasing decisions involved in enhancing India’s efficiency gains must be made by the Government’s nuclear scientists on technical grounds of improving the working of our existing nuclear infrastructure.

It is a different animal altogether to be purchasing new nuclear reactors on a turn-key basis from American or any other foreign businessmen in a purported attempt to improve India’s “energy security”. (Lalu Yadav has requested a new reactor for Bihar, plus of course Delhi will want one, etc.) The central question over such massive foreign purchases would no longer be the technical one of using the Indo-US deal to improve efficiency or productivity of our existing nuclear infrastructure. Instead it would become a question of calculating social costs and benefits of our investing in nuclear power relative to other sources like hydroelectric power. Even if all other sources of electricity remained constant, and our civilian nuclear capacity alone was made to grow by 100 per cent under the Manmohan-Montek deal-making, that would mean less than 8% of total Indian electricity produced.

This is where the oddities arise and a disjoint becomes apparent between what the Government of India is saying and what American and Indian businessmen have been doing. A “US-India Business Council” has existed for thirty years in Washington as “the premier business advocacy organization promoting US commercial interests in India.… the voice of the American private sector investing in India”. Before the nuclear or any other deals could be contemplated with American business, the USIBC insisted we pay up for Dabhol contracted by a previous Congress Government. The Maharashtra State Electricity Board ~ or rather, its sovereign guarantor the Government of India ~ duly paid out at least $140-$160 million each to General Electric and Bechtel Corporations in “an amicable settlement” of the Dabhol affair. Afterwards, General Electric’s CEO for India was kind enough to say “India is an important country to GE’s global growth. We look forward to working with our partners, customers, and State and Central Governments in helping India continue to develop into a leading world economy”.

Also, a new “US-India CEO Forum” then came about. For two Governments to sponsor private business via such a Forum was “unprecedented”, as noted by Washington’s press during Manmohan Singh’s visit in July 2005. America’s foreign ministry announced it saying: “Both our governments have agreed that we should create a high-level private sector forum to exchange business community views on key economic priorities…” The American side includes heads of AES Corporation, Cargill Inc., Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Honeywell, McGraw-Hill, Parsons Brinckerhoff Ltd, PepsiCo, Visa International and Xerox Corporation. The Indian side includes heads of Tata Group, Apollo Hospitals Group, Bharat Forge Ltd, Biocon India Group, HDFC, ICICI One Source, Infosys, ITC Ltd, Max India Group and Reliance Industries. Presiding over the Indian side has been Montek Ahluwalia, Manmohan’s trusted aide ~ and let it be remembered too that the Ahluwalias were Manmohan’s strongest backers in his failed South Delhi Lok Sabha bid. (Indeed it is not clear if the Ahluwalias have been US or Indian residents in recent years, and if it is the former, the onus is on them to clear any perception of conflict of interest arising in regard to roles regarding the nuclear deal or any other official Indo-US business.)

Also, before the Manmohan visit, the Confederation of Indian Industry registered as an official lobbyist in Washington, and went about spending half a million dollars lobbying American politicians for the nuclear deal. After the Manmohan visit, the US Foreign Commercial Service reportedly said American engineering firms, equipment suppliers and contractors faced a $1,000 billion (1 bn =100 crore) opportunity in India. Before President Bush’s visit to India in March 2006, Manmohan Singh signed vast purchases of commercial aircraft from Boeing and Airbus, as well as large weapons’ deals with France and Russia. After the Bush visit, the US Chamber of Commerce said the nuclear deal can cause $100 billion worth of new American business in India’s energy-sector alone. What is going on?

Finally, the main aspect of Manmohan Singh’s address to America’s legislature had to do with agreeing with President Bush “to enhance Indo-US cooperation in the field of civilian nuclear technology”. What precisely does this mean? If it means the Indo-US nuclear deal will help India improve or maintain its existing nuclear infrastructure, well and good. There may be legitimate business for American and other foreign companies in that cause, which also helps India make the efficiency and productivity gains mentioned. Or has the real motivation for the American businessmen driving the deal (with the help of the “CEO Forum” etc) been to sell India nuclear reactors on a turn-key basis (in collaboration with private Indian businessmen) at a time when building new nuclear reactors is unprofitable elsewhere in the world because of low gas prices? India’s citizens may demand to know from the Government whether the Manmohan-Montek deal-making is going to cause importation of new nuclear reactors, and if so, why such an expensive alternative is being considered (relative to e.g. India’s abundant hydroelectric potential) when it will have scant effect in satisfying the country’s energy needs and lead merely to a worsening of our macroeconomic problems. Both Manmohan Singh and Montek Ahluwalia have been already among those to preside over the growth of India’s macroeconomic problems through the 1980s and 1990s.

Lastly, an irrelevant distraction should be gotten out of the way. Are we a “nuclear weapons” state? Of course we are, but does it matter to anything but our vanity? Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev had control over vastly more nuclear weapons and they declared together twenty years ago: “A nuclear war cannot be won and must not be fought”, which is how the Cold War started to come to an end. We need to remind ourselves that India and Pakistan are large, populous countries with hundreds of millions of materially poor, ill-informed citizens, weak tax-bases, humongous internal and external public debts (i.e. debt owed by the Government to domestic and foreign creditors), non-investment grade credit- ratings in world financial markets, massive annual fiscal deficits, inconvertible currencies, nationalized banks, and runaway printing of paper-money. Discussing nuclear or other weapon-systems to attack one other with is mostly a pastime of our cowardly, irresponsible and yes, corrupt, elites.

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