Weekend potpourri: Kashmir, BJP, Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam

Some links for weekend reading:

1. From the Telegraph, an excellent article by Ambassador K Sibal on why borders are (still) relevant.

2. A revealing interview with Govindacharya: Jaitley is BJP’s best, Rajnath saboteur

3. Why Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam may not mean what you think it does and finally,

4. Why India..while enjoying all the characteristics of great power, is unlikely to become one (a 2005 article but still relevant, in my view).

Excerpts from all the three articles are below.  Enjoy the weekend.

*** Excerpts from The Divide in Kahsmir by Kanwal Sibal (emphasis mine) ***

The current turmoil in Jammu and Kashmir began with the blatantly communal reaction in the valley to the decision to transfer a mere 40 hectares of land to the Amarnath Shrine Board for creating temporary structures for the convenience of the pilgrims. That the valley Muslims could at all believe that this decision could have the potential, even remotely, to change the demographics of Jammu and Kashmir, is astonishing. For 60 years the government of India has meticulously observed its constitutional obligations to not disturb the demography of Jammu and Kashmir by permitting Indians from the rest of the country to purchase property and settle down permanently in the state. That separatist propaganda can so easily negate this record of good faith shows how futile it is to continue making core concessions to win the hearts and minds of the valley Kashmiris.

…

The land in question at unlivable heights belongs to the Jammu and Kashmir state, not to any single religious community. Those “nationalist” Kashmiri leaders, who argue that their opposition is not “communal” as they oppose not the yatra but the transfer of land, are being specious. How can they oppose the yatra? Even the Chinese government allows the Mansarovar yatra, and that too in Tibet, the source of territorial tensions between India and China. Why does the valley oppose the land transfer? Because the decision is not that of a legitimate government? Because displacement of already settled people will take place? Because no precedent exists for any transfer of “forest” land for a public purpose? Because the reason for transfer is not good enough as more facilities for the pilgrims are not necessary? Or do the valley inhabitants consider that the land itself is “Muslim” and its use for offering better facilities to Hindus from outside is simply not palatable? Don’t the Hindus of Jammu and Kashmir have a say in the matter as citizens of the state?

…street mobilization of people through the network of mosques is not democracy in action. Is Geelani’s Islamic ranting compatible with democracy? Mirwaiz is by no means a secular democratic leader. …Self-determination is a political tool for the separatist agenda. If the Muslims were not in majority in the valley would they ask for self- determination?

…The aim of the secessionists was to go on the offensive by creating an emotive issue and deflecting attention away from their own initial guilt. The valley Muslims have long disowned any responsibility for the exodus of the Pandits. …The moment there was some show of strength in Jammu, the valley Muslims have retaliated with a seditious campaign of massive proportions, knowing killings in police firing will reinforce the sense of victimhood of the community, besides drawing international attention to their cause.

…Why are we giving a free run to the secessionists? Their pro-Pakistan demand for opening the Muzaffarabad road mocks at our sovereignty. It is a logical extension of policies to encourage cross-contacts over the line of control without first firmly controlling the political situation on the ground on our side. Why nurture the notion of a united Kashmir? Why help the Kashmiris create a common platform with Pakistanis in PoK? Will this make the Kashmiris as a whole more loyal to India? Borders remain relevant until the reason to violate them disappears.

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*** Excerpts from ‘Jaitley is BJP’s best, Rajnath saboteur‘ by Sudhir K Singh (emphasis mine) ***

…In a brutally frank chat with select mediapersons in the state capital on Sunday, Mr Govindacharya said the BJP was passing through one of its most difficult phases in which the central command had weakened and the Sangh was barely able to keep its flock together. The working axis of Mr Modi, Mr Jaitley and Mr Naidu stood seriously ruptured, especially after the recent CD scandal, and things were falling apart. The three were working at cross-purposes, he said.

…Under the circumstances, Mr Advani remained the safest choice to lead the party in the next poll. “But today’s Advani is not the same as the Advani of the 1990s.” Well into his ’80s, he is more dependent on the family (especially the daughter) whose proximity to power would sooner or later open the floodgates to influence peddlers in a “mutually encashable” environment.

…In spirit, felt Mr Govindacharya, the BJP had still to outgrow its Delhi-centric mindset. The party’s understanding of the political dynamics in the cow belt, i.e. UP and Bihar, was still poor. Its combined Lok Sabha representation from the six north Indian states of Jammu, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana and Punjab was less than the total number of seats in Bihar. This anomaly, he argued, was reflected in the composition of the working committee whose discussions rarely dwelt on non-north Indian issues. Electorally, since the party’s numbers in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan were also bound to decline given the anti-incumbency factor, there was no way in which the BJP could hope to improve on its 2004 tally, it was felt. And the Congress, if anything, was in worse shape. Which is why the mandate of 2009 would be far more fractured.

…He said he didn’t foresee a revival of her (Uma Bharati) political career before 2010 when he expected a paradigm shift in Indian politics under the groundswell of muscular nationalism (prakhar rashtravaad) with a distinctly pro-poor hue.

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*** Excerpts from The Hoax Called Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam – I by Sarvesh K Tiwari (emphasis mine) ***

If a survey of the saMskR^ita verses most quoted in the modern times were undertaken, the following would certainly secure the top rank:

ayaM nijaH paroveti gaNanA laghu-chetasAm | udAra charitAnAM tu vasudhaiva kuTumbhakam ||

“’This is my own and that a stranger’ – is the calculation of the narrow-minded, For the magnanimous-hearts however, the entire earth is but a family”

Along with its short form ‘vasudhaiva kuTumbakam’, this shloka somehow finds a massive popularity among the modern Hindus.  Of late though, the secular variety seems to have developed quite a fetish for it and the verse has gained a rhetorical note.  Apparently it offers them an aesthetic emblem of multiculturalism and universalism, as well as an authority of yore to denounce the nationalistic thought as narrow-minded.  Even the most saMskR^ita-phobic ones therefore can be seen reciting this shloka on every sundry occasion.

…It has been generally taken for granted by them that VK (Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam) is an unquestionable value, a traditional nIti recommended by wise ancestors of how to deal with the world.

VK has also become an unchallenged cornerstone of India’s official policy-making in the last six decades, and has been officially proclaimed so on several occasions since independence.  No wonder then, that as a symbolic reflection, VK has been literally inscribed in stone, on the walls of the India’s Parliament House.

However…If we study the original sources which recited it in the first place, it becomes amazingly apparent that its application in the matters of policy is a height of ignorance and squarely flawed.  That is precisely the objective of this note in which we shall glean through the original sources, recognize the contexts in which the ancient Hindu-s uttered VK, and most importantly, validate whether it was meant by them as a recommendation.

Contrary to the popular myths, the verse is neither located in R^igveda nor in mahAbhArata, neither in manusmR^iti nor in the purANa-s.  Thus far, we have seen the verse in the following saMskR^ita sources:  hitopadesha, pa~nchatantra, certain compendiums of chANakya and bhaR^trihari….here we shall make an excursion into these texts identified so far, and understand the proper contexts and true purport of VK in each occurrence.

vasudhaiva kuTumbakam in hitopadesha

…Several centuries before Friedrich Froebel proposed the ideas about educating the child through entertaining activities – kindergarten as he called it – teaching young pupils through entertainment must have been a successful practice in India.  If the terse instructions are wrapped inside intriguing and memorable tales, not only are the lessons better received by the instructed, but also acquire meaningfulness and longevity of the teaching — arguably the discovery of this principle is to the credit of ancient Hindu-s, and hitopadesha is a shining evidence of the same.  It was compiled by nArAyaNa paNDita in roughly 5th century of the CE either in pATaliputra or in Bengal, as a textbook for two young princes who being hard at studies were dropouts from the conventional schooling.

Organized into four chapters, hitopadesha is a fascinating loop of one tale inside the other which itself is inside the other tale – going all the way back up to the kathAmukha or the face-tale. Vasudhaiva kuTumbakam makes its sole appearance in its first chapter known as mitra-lAbhaH (’Gaining of Friends’).  A mouse named hiraNyaka relates to his friend laghu-patanaka the Crow, a story about another Crow, the Deer and ksudrabuddhi the Jackal, and inside this story ksudrabuddhi the Jackal would recite VK as a reaction after hearing from this Crow another story known as ‘jaradgava the Vulture and dIrghakarNa the Cat’.

…To understand the context in which VK is quoted and more importantly the instruction of the teacher about it, let us enjoy these two stories: one in which the VK is uttered; and another in response to which it is uttered.  Reproduced in the following paragraphs are both of these in a condensed form.

The Crow, the Deer and ksudrabuddhi the Jackal

“Long long ago, in the champakavaTI forest of magadha, there lived two friends – a Deer called chitrA~Nga and a Crow named subuddhi.  It so happened that a Jackal named kshudra-buddhi, (the proposer of vasudhaiva kuTumbakam, as we shall soon see), was passing by and his eyes caught hold of the healthy Deer as he was grazing nearby.  The lust to devour him immediately arose in the Jackal’s mind, but knowing Deer to be too swift in a chase, he decided to fall back on his cunning – to win first the confidence of the Deer.  The VK-preacher therefore approached the Deer, saluted him, and introduced himself as a lonely newcomer with friendly intentions, and proposed a friendship and brotherhood with the Deer.  The naive Deer fell for the sweet words of kshudra-buddhi, and not knowing his true intentions, invited him to his own dwellings.

So, they started towards the Deer’s place, and on their way sitting on the branches of a champaka tree was Deer’s old and wise friend subuddhi the Crow.  Seeing them passing by, the Crow asked the Deer, ‘O chitrA~Nga, who is this second fellow with you? ‘   ‘A Jackal, my new friend’, answered the Deer.  To this, the Crow asked: ‘But, do you know him well enough?  One should never extend friendship and shelter to anyone without knowing their real nature and intentions, learning the history of their ilk and giving them a test of time.’  The Deer lightly shrugged this aside, saying, ‘But this Jackal is very friendly’.

Seeing his friend in delusions, the Crow began relating to him a story about how jaradgava a Vulture was killed by unwisely trusting an impostor (that story reproduced later below).  He warned the Deer against trusting the Jackal without learning more about him.

So far the Jackal had kept quiet, and it is at this juncture that he opened his argument with the famous shloka of vasudhaiva kuTumbakam, demanding the Deer to not be of a narrow mind by considering the Crow a friend and himself an alien.  The vasudhaiva-kuTumbakam discourse successfully put to rest all doubts that had arisen in the Deer’s mind, and dismissing the Crow’s wise council he went ahead in bringing the VK-preacher into his home.”

The remainder of the story can be summed up in two sentences.  The cunning VK-reciting Jackal started dwelling with the naive Deer, and as soon as the opportunity arose, pushed him into a deadly trap.  However before he could kill the Deer, our wise hero subuddhi the Crow devised a clever trick by which not only the Deer was rescued but also the VK-reciting Jackal was slain.

…the great paNDita of politics, nArAyaNa…is unambiguously clear about its application when he assigns this shloka to come from a brotherhood-preaching shrewd subversionist.  It gives a clear warning against blindly welcoming any idea, individual or group without due diligence of studying their history, nature and intent.

However, let us also read the other story, in response to which the VK is uttered in hitopadesha, which would leave absolutely no room for any doubts in this matter of how hitopadesha treats vasudhaiva kuTumbakam:

jaradgava the Vulture and dIrghakarNa the Cat

While warning his friend against trusting the Jackal, subuddhi the Crow thus addressed the Deer:

“There, on the banks of the mighty bhAgIrathI is a cliff called gR^idharakUTa, and upon it grew a great fig-tree.  In the shelter of its hollow lived an old Vulture named jaradgava, who due to old age had neither any eyesight left in his eyes nor nails in his claws.  The other birds that lived on that tree were friendly to him, and out of pity used to donate from their own food small portions to him, and this way the poor fellow was passing his days.  In return, jaradgava used to guard the little offspring of the birds when the parent birds were away.

One day, when the older birds were gone, a Cat called dIrghakarNa (’Long Eared’) came there to make a meal out of the nestlings; and those tiny birds alarmed at seeing him, created noise that roused jaradgava from his slumber.  ‘Who comes there?’ demanded jaradgava.  Now dIrghakarNa, on noticing the big Vulture, aborted his meal plans, but as a flight was not possible he resolved to trust his destiny and to approach tactfully.  ‘Arya,’ he responded, ‘my salutes to you!’ ‘Who is that?’ asked the Vulture.  ‘A Cat,’ answered dIrghakarNa. ‘Lay off, Cat, or I shall slay you,’ shouted the Vulture.  ‘I am ready to die if I deserve death,’ said the Cat, ‘but first let me be heard.’ ‘OK then, tell me first your purpose of arrival.’ asked jaradgava.

‘I live,’ melodramatically began dIrghakarNa, ‘on the banks of ga~NgA, bathing daily, performing the penance of chandrAyaNa vrata, strictly being a vegetarian like a bramachArI.  The birds that come there, speak very highly of you as the one firmly established in dharma and worthy of all respects.  So with my curiosity greatly aroused about you, I decided to drop by Sir, to learn from you about nIti and dharma.’

‘You appear like so deep gone in learning,’ he continued, ‘and still Sir, I am surprised that your sense of dharma tells you to be ready to slay a guest!  Doesn’t the nIti say unambiguously about what a man’s dharma is towards his guests?’  The Cat then went on delivering an elaborate speech, quoting eloquently from the shAstra-s about the dharma and cut quite an impressive lecture on peace and non-violence.

Shrugging that onslaught of quotations from shAstra-s aside, wise jaradgava interrupted, ‘Listen, I know only this, that you are a cat and the cats eat meat.  Since here are young birds that I am given to protect, I warn you one last time – leave immediately.’

Upon this, dIrghakarNa intensified his drama, and touching the ground with his two claws and then his ears, invoking all the Gods, he said, ‘I have overcome all the passions by practicing the chandrAyaNa vrata; I have learnt the shAstra-s; and I am a follower of the religion that is called non-violence itself.  And so he went on.

Such prolonged drama of the Cat finally silenced the old Vulture, who at last allowed him to live in the hollow of the tree with himself.

With the passage of days, and having gained more confidence of the Vulture, the Cat slowly began picking the nestlings for his meal.  After devouring them one by one, the cunning fellow would drop their bones near the hollow of jaradgava, who being blind did not notice it.

One day, alarmed at their children going missing, the parent birds began investigating.  The shrewd cat quickly made his escape, and the birds soon discovered the bones near the hollow of jaradgava.  They at once inferred that their children had been eaten away by the old Vulture in whom they had placed their trust.  Thus enraged the birds swiftly executed jaradgava in no time.  Although being innocent and a true well-wisher of the birds, he paid for the folly of giving shelter to the wrong kind.”

Above story is which evokes the vasudhaiva kuTumbakam from the cunning subversionist in hitopadesha.

We should be by now convinced that the ancient AchArya of politics nArAyaNa paNDita was not teaching the policy of universal and blind brotherhood to his pupils.  Quite to the contrary, he is actually warning precisely against this tendency of blind application of this brotherhood in the matters of policy, as is being apparently taught and believed by the modern powers that be of India.

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*** Excerpts from “Aim Low, Hit Lower” (2005) by Prof Bharat Karnad (emphasis mine) ***

STATES become Great Powers – other than on the back of the traditional attributes of size, location and human and natural resources – primarily on the basis of their strategic military strength and their willingness to use it especially against like states and only secondarily because of their economic muscle. (The Soviet Union imploded, not because of excessive military spending as alleged in shallow historical analyses, but because Mikhail Gorbachev lacked the political acumen of his Chinese counterpart, Dengxiaoping, in managing the transformation of a totalitarian system into a state that retained the dominance of the Communist Party while mustering, through whatever means, economic efficiencies.)

…Great powers define their vital national interest expansively, delineate their defence perimeter far from the homeland – on the shores of distant littorals, oceanic chokepoints and the away steppes (even as lesser countries concentrate on territorial defence), and by seeking to extend their military protection to an ever widening circle of countries, increase their legitimate sphere of influence. And they do all this by expending a lot of political and military effort and, in the process, blood, sweat and riches. But the payoffs are huge. With overwhelming military force as backdrop, morality becomes a handmaiden and the great power can more easily propagate its values and culture.

…It is the plan-form China has faithfully followed in the last 50 years until now when it is giving American strategists sleepless nights, not least because it prioritized the securing of strategic military wherewithal (nuclear ICBMs) to take out the US West Coast by the late 1960s thereby compelling Washington to talk with Beijing as equals, and is now involved in augmenting these same capabilities as a means of neutralizing American influence in Asia and the Pacific in the decades to come.

India, on the other hand, while enjoying all the characteristics of great power, is unlikely to become one because it has no fixity of strategic vision nor sense of purpose. Is it a status-quo-ist power happy to go along with the international order as-is or is it intent on reordering the international hierarchy whatever it takes? Is India to be a substantive counterpoise to China in Asia or merely a US satrap in the region? Should it be the natural centre and the engine of an extended regional security and economic complex in the Indian Ocean area and Asia and the world at-large or an operational adjunct to the American global security architecture? Depending on the party in power and the vagaries of intellectual fashion in the strategic community such as it is in India, the vision shifts as does the purpose. But what is constant is a hankering for great power status, but minus the willingness to pay the stiff entry-price.

This hankering has been trivialized these days to even a veto-less membership in the UN Security Council, which is literally not worth the cost of the chair the Indian Permanent Representative may occupy in that august chamber. What this reflects is the absence of a grand vision for the country combined with an appalling historical sense, which fact not only highlights but explains the serious lack of national self-awareness and, ultimately, of national self-respect of the elite and the government. Great Power, in the estimation of the wise persons in and out of the official corridors, is apparently some kind of dole to well-behaved and ‘responsible’ states – not something that has to be wrenched from the grasp of those states that have already made it. That is the reason why, time and again, when on the verge of realizing genuine great power heft, New Delhi has chosen to buckle under pressure and sue for peace with the mighty.

This happened in 1964 when Lal Bahadur Shastri spurned the perfect justification for nuclear weaponization in response to China’s test, ten years later when Indira Gandhi stopped further testing that she had approved, and finally in 1998 when Atal Behari Vajpayee, rather than seeing an open-ended series of tests through as a first step in the acquisition of a credible and survivable full-fledged thermonuclear force, apparently perceived these as an end-point in the country’s nuclear weapons development and announced a moratorium on testing, the easier to cut deals with Washington.

‘Great Power’…is a recognition that has to be earned the hard way as other countries have done through the ages by impressing the great powers of the moment as much by one’s growing capabilities as by the implicit promise of doing great good by the world and a covert threat of inflicting immense harm on them and the extant international order if they do not make space at the high table. By this reckoning an India, sans the will to power, is not up to it.

…Unable to summon the required Vision, Conviction, Strategy and Will, such compromises invariably settle around what is thought to be a moderate median – the usually soft option – on every issue of consequence. Thus, we have a military that size-wise is amongst the biggest but capability-wise cannot fight long duration wars to a successful conclusion even with a minor foe, Pakistan. And the government has restricted the country’s so-called nuclear force to such thin proportions as to render it an apology for a deterrent, capable of only tackling phantom threats.

…My strategic paradigm had posited derating Pakistan from a threat, which it manifestly is not, to a security ‘nuisance’ which it is, and tackling it at a lower level by low-key means with the ultimate aim of co-opting that country into the wider Indian economic and strategic matrix if Islamabad is willing or to leave it out to stew in irrelevance if it was not…

…a country that does not think very much of itself and shows it by compromising its national security is unlikely to elicit respect from other states. Weak collaborator states may be liked but are not, in the final analysis, respected or even trusted.

…What is at stake and why should we worry? Almost seven years after the supposedly decisive Shakti series of nuclear tests (Pokharan-II) that the Vajpayee government said had propelled the country to the status of a ‘nuclear weapon state’ and gained for it ‘strategic autonomy’, India is not only not a bonafide nuclear weapons power which has successfully guarded its strategic independence and expanded its operational domain, it is on the verge of becoming a security dependency of the United States in the region, a’la Pakistan. It is a cryptovassal state that joyfully accepts small-time jobs. Like having the Indian Navy escort US warships across the Malacca Straits or agreeing to train Iraqi poll officials and policemen. Will this downsliding ever stop? Not any time soon.

…And there’s the rub. Nuclear testing and full-scale thermonuclear weaponization and ICBM deployment is the one thing the Indian government and political leadership (across the parties) do not want to do, the one decision they do not care to make, even though it is the only action that will vault India willy-nilly into the great power ranks, ensure ‘strategic autonomy’, endow the country with unparalleled political leverage and afford it a role in shaping the world order, as happened with the United Kingdom, France and China when they did these very things.

It is, of course, majorly in the interest of the P-5 – the US and the four other Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT)-recognized nuclear weapon states – Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom, to keep India from attaining this strategic level. A minimally nuclear armed India on the margins safely feuding with a nuclearized Pakistan is, from their point of view, manageable and the preferred option. Because the alternative of an India with a ready thermonuclear-ICBM force handy will compel this most powerful coterie of countries into an accommodationist stance and into diluting their individual power and leverage. The P-5 do not wish the issue to become, as an earlier Texan in the White House, Lyndon Baines Johnson put it, one of having the powerful outsider ‘pissing into the tent’; better under the circumstances, he said, for him to be brought in so he can piss out of the tent!

The cost of a thermonuclear war-headed ICBM force is highly affordable. The acquisition cost, for instance, of a second tier nuclear force (alongside of China, the United Kingdom and France) with 400 plus weapons/warheads and the delivery triad of bombers, IRBMs-ICBMs, and nuclear ballistic missile-firing nuclear-powered submarines of some Rs 100,000 crore over 30 years is far less than what the country will spend, say, on its armored and mechanized forces in the same period. What is required in planning for future war is the reprioritizing of threats, contingencies and military expenditure programmes, without which the money will be funnelled into sustaining obsolete capabilities and the cry of ‘no money’ for genuinely strategic force structures and armaments will continue to be heard.

…

The fact is the US will string India along for as long as it possibly can with promises of high technology and collaboration in some rinky-dink projects with no imminent military-use prospects. When have suckers gotten an even break? A ‘mutual dependency’ can be generated between equals or near equals, or between countries who hope to gain equally from defence cooperation…

…If it is ‘mutual dependency’ India wants it can be realized by my paradigm wherein, India with consequential thermonuclear and conventional military capabilities provides the sinews of an expansive security structure in Asia meant primarily to serve its national interests, secondarily the security interests of its Asian strategic partners and, by the by, making itself indispensable to the US as well. This more equitable relationship is evident in the Information Technology sector, where the US companies are not doing India any favour by setting up software development and microchip/semi-conductor design centres and BPOs. The two sides are in the game for mutual profit.

That is the way for India to go. It is high time New Delhi stopped begging for a UN Security Council seat and badgering every notable passing through Delhi about it, stopped looking to the United States and other countries to provide the country overarching security – it is demeaning – stopped being diffident and eager to please the big boys, and instead got on with the business of acting its size, and mustering the will and the vision and speedily acquiring real teeth so that when India barks everybody will be aware it can bite.

Read the article in full here: http://www.india-seminar.com/2005/545/545%20bharat%20karnad3.htm