Where have all the general’s cheerleaders gone? I

Arun Shourie: Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Ulti ho gayin sab tadbirein, kuchch na dawa ne kaam kiya — every stratagem has boomeranged, no potion works. That’s Pervez Musharraf’s predicament today, writes Arun Shourie in a three-part series on Pakistan beginning today

The only persons who could have been surprised by what Musharraf has done are the Americans - who had invested everything in him, and as a consequence just would not see - and Musharraf’s acolytes here in India. Here is one of the most deceitful men we have had to deal with. It is not just that he was the architect of Kargil. Here is a general who insisted that the Pakistani army had nothing to do with Kargil, so much so that he did one of the most dishonourable things that any armyman can do: he refused to accept bodies of soldiers who had died in the operation he had himself planned. And yet the same man claims in his book that Kargil was one of the most successful operations of the Pakistani army! Here is a man who has repeatedly dishonoured his word — pledged to the people of Pakistan, to its courts — about sticking to his office. Here is a man who has repeatedly issued decrees exempting himself from law, from his pledged word. Here, then, has been a personification of deceit. And yet, what a buildup he has had in India — eulogising him has been almost a fashion-statement among many Indian journalists.

And not just among journalists. The very highest in this government allowed themselves to be persuaded by the Americans that we should do something that would strengthen Musharraf, as he was the best, it would seem the only option for us. Of course, they were nudged into accepting American ‘advice’ by that one mental ability they have in abundance — the ability to conjure wishfulfilling thoughts, thoughts that exempt them from standing the ground. This combination — American ‘theses’ and conjured rationalisations — led them to almost make a grand gesture of Siachin to bolster Musharraf, and yet again buy ‘peace in our time’, and that too under the exact camouflage that an American think-tank had stitched up. We have to thank Musharraf: by the morass he has created for himself, he has saved us from our do-gooders.

Yet his cleverness had convinced me long ago about the pass he would reach. For, in the end, few things do a ruler in as surely as cleverness. This is especially so when cleverness is combined with audacity, the ‘commando’s audacity’ that so many among our chatterati came to admire in Musharraf. For this audacity spurs the person to, among other things, lie outright. Soon, though not soon enough, karma catches up. A stage arrives when everything such a ruler does, recoils.

If he moves against the Taliban, he is in trouble. If he does not, he is in trouble. If he does not let American forces chase the Taliban into Pakistani territory, he is in trouble. If he lets them do so, he is in deeper trouble. If he does not storm the Lal Masjid, he is in trouble. If he does, he is in deeper trouble. If he does not remove the chief justice, he is in trouble. If he removes him, his troubles are just beginning. If he gives up his uniform, he can’t rely on the army. If he does not, he can’t rely either on his nemesis, the Supreme Court, or his sole prop, the Americans. If he lets Nawaz Sharif stay, he is in trouble. If he does not, he is in trouble. If he rigs elections again, he has to rely even more on the religious parties and fundamentalists, and he falls deeper in trouble. If he does not rig them, he is finished. Unless he throws the judges out, he is out. Now that he has thrown them out, even his patrons are insisting he bring them back — ulti ho gayin sab tadbirein — every stratagem has boomeranged — kuchch na dawa ne kaam kiya — no potion works!

Once a ruler reaches this pit, anyone and everyone who associates with him, gets tarnished. Americans and Musharraf got conflated: Musharraf came to be seen as the stooge of the Americans; Americans came to be seen as the ventriloquists. Whatever he did was attributed to them: ‘He could do none of this but for the fact that the Americans are behind him.’ And whatever the Americans did came to be pasted on him. As they came to be seen to be waging an out-and-out war against Islam, he came to be seen as the instrument of the enemies of Islam. Convinced, though, they have remained that he is indispensable for them, even the Americans came to realise the heavy cost that association with him was bringing upon them. But the Chinese came to suffer too: they were seen to have been the immediate trigger for the assault on the Lal Masjid, as it followed the kidnapping of Chinese women on the charge that they were running a brothel in Islamabad. (For their part, the Chinese have been increasingly concerned about the Uighurs who have been receiving training in Pakistani madrassas and terrorist camps.) The Saudis too, were shocked by the wave of resentment that hit them upon their being parties to the deportation of Nawaz Sharif. This was one of the main reasons for their subsequent decision to endorse Sharif’s proposal that he return.

And so did everyone within Pakistan who was associated with Musharraf. The ‘Q’ in the name of the faction of the Muslim League that had walked over to him — the PML-Q — came to stand not for ‘Quaid’ after Jinnah, but for an abuse. Look at Benazir till the attack on her procession. She lost heavily when it became known that she had struck a deal with Musharraf. Of course, the ignominy was compounded by two factors: as the deal was seen to have been authored by the Americans, it was contaminated from the very start. Worse, it became known that Benazir had been negotiating terms with Musharraf even as she was signing the Charter of Democracy with Nawaz Sharif — a charter in which both of them pledged that they would never have anything to do with a military dictator. It is only the attack on her procession, and the subsequent snuffing out of the Constitution that has helped restore some of her reputation. But no institution has suffered as much by association with Musharraf as the army: as he came to be seen as the instrument of the enemy, the army, which he controlled, came to be seen as the instrument of the instrument of the enemy...

What a pass for a ruler to reach.

And rulers are brought to this pass by their own stratagems. No ruler after Zia ul Haq gave as big a boost to religious parties and to terrorist groups as Musharraf. It is because of the way he rigged the assembly and provincial elections and the alliance he formed with them that the religious parties — which used to get 5 to 7 per cent of the popular vote — got to form governments in NWFP as well as Balochistan, and to become such a significant factor in the National Assembly. The consequence was as predictable as it has been disastrous. With governance in the hands of religious parties, for instance, the Taliban and Al Qaida acquired an open field in NWFP, and from there into FATA.

Similarly, his premise — one that he set out in as many words — that jihad is an instrument of state policy, and the way he patronised and facilitated terrorism in Kashmir, for instance, has had the same consequence. In her recent study, The Counterterror Coalitions, Cooperation with Pakistan and India, Christine Fair puts it well: one consequence of the jihad in Kashmir and that for the acquisition of Afghanistan, she writes, has been that ‘the concept of jihad has attained an unassailable stature,’ and ‘the political capital’ of groups engaged in it has multiplied several fold. And you can see the end result, even for Musharraf: recall the way he and his government remained paralysed for months in the face of what was being done in and around Lal Masjid. Second, she points out, it has meant that organised criminal groups have been able to extend their operations and reach within Pakistan itself under the banner of jihad. Third, over the past few years, new alliances and coalitions have come to be formed among the various groups. The operational consequence of the latter is just as evident, and it is one of the things that eventually led even his patrons in the US to conclude that he was not doing enough to curb terrorists: when the US or NATO allies were told that steps had indeed been taken against the terrorist groups whom they wanted brought to heel, they were soon disillusioned. And for the obvious reason: when one of the groups was targeted, all that its members had to do was to shift to the adjacent group in the coalition.

Two other features broke through during the last few months: that Musharraf was losing control, and that he had lost touch with what was happening. As for the first, recall how, for months and months, fundamentalists from the Northwest could go on piling up arms in the Lal Masjid right in Islamabad — and the military dictator with all his intelligence agencies should not have known. As for losing touch, recall how gravely Musharraf misjudged the way the public would react to the sacking of the chief justice.

Lessons for us

There has been a veritable industry in India urging concessions: when Pakistan or a ruler of Pakistan has appeared strong, when terrorism sponsored by it and him has been at its murderous height, concessions have been urged on the ground, “but how long can we live with a permanently hostile neighbour?” When he has been facing difficulties, the same concessions have been urged on the ground, “he is our best bet.” Such specious reasoning has almost prevailed when we have had, as we have now, a weak and delusional government, a government that does not have the grit to stay the course; when we have a government over which suggestions from abroad have sway of the kind they have today; when we have a government the higher reaches of which are as bereft of experience in national security affairs as in the government today. We must never sacrifice a national interest in the delusion that someone is the ‘best bet’ — he will soon be gone, and our interest would have been sacrificed in perpetuity. Nor should we ever sacrifice an interest in the delusion that doing so will assuage that ruler, country or ‘movement’.

The concession will only whet his appetite. To the ruler/country/movement, it will be proof that he can extract the next capitulation. Second, we should think for ourselves, and not be led by others, howsoever powerful they may be. One of the great strategic blunders of the US in regard to its ‘War on Terrorism’ has been to have believed, indeed to have proclaimed, that Musharraf is indispensable. The consequence has been predictable. Their having come to think of him as indispensable, Musharraf has done what suited him, not that war: look at the selective way in which he went after the terrorists. He first targeted only the Al Qaida in whom the Americans were interested; then, those who targeted him; then those who targeted the Pakistani state. The organisations that he, his army, the ISI had reared for breaking India, he left alone. The Americans had to shut their eyes. “You are putting all your eggs in one basket,” they were told. “But there aren’t that many baskets in Pakistan,” they said. Soon, they got their desserts too, and twice over. First, as was noted above, given the fungibility among such groups, the former set of terrorists had just to don the garb of the latter and continue to recruit, to rearm, to regroup. And then, Musharraf having come to be seen as merely their stooge, he couldn’t keep the system going — for them any more than for himself. In a word, powers, howsoever well endowed, can be dead wrong in their assessment even of their own interest. In any event, it is their own interest they shall be pursuing. Their own interest as perceived by a handful. Their own interest as perceived by a handful at that moment.

Today Saddam is good because he is a counter to Iran; tomorrow he is evil. Today the Taliban are mujahideen, freedom fighters, as they are necessary for throwing the Soviets out; tomorrow they are evil. Today the Kurds are good as a counter to Sunnis in Iraq; tomorrow they are evil as the fellows are dragging Turkey into the arena... This is not to blame the Americans or anyone else: through such twists and turns they are merely pursuing their interest. The lesson is for us: how very wrong, how very shortsighted it would be for us to outsource our thinking to others.

The even more important lesson is illustrated vividly by the relief we have had in Kashmir in the last few months days. As Balochistan, NWFP, and now FATA have flared up, Pakistan has had to withdraw its troops and other resources from its border with India to its western border. The killings and explosions in Kashmir have gone down. Just a coincidence?

Now notice two things. First, as Pakistan has had to move its troops away from the border with Kashmir, an orchestra has started in India demanding that we thin our troops in Kashmir: just another coincidence? Second, recall the ‘remedies’ that our secularists have been urging — ‘autonomy’ and the rest. “The Kashmiris feel alienated,” they have been declaiming. “That is the root-cause of terrorism... give them autonomy...” A formula-factory came into being: ‘Musharraf’s 7-regions’ formula...’

None of those ‘solutions’ has been put in place. Yet, the killings have gone down. Which is the medicine that has worked? The potion — ‘autonomy’ — we did not administer? Or the medicine that Pakistan has administered to itself? That it has got into trouble on its western borders? A lesson there...

POTO: Approve Swiftly, and then Toughen it (Part II of II)

Arun Shourie

The provisions of TADA were much more stringent than those of the new Ordinance. The constitutionality of those provisions, of TADA itself had been challenged in the courts. The Supreme Court specifically upheld TADA, and declared its provisions -- the much more stringent provisions -- to be in accord with the Constitution.

While I happen to be in Government, my assessment for Parliament is the opposite one to that of the critics: the Ordinance bends too far back to accommodate human rightists, and that includes some impractical judgments too -- like that of the Supreme Court in D. K. Basu Vs State of West Bengal.

Under TADA, as we just saw, the accused was allowed only one appeal that to the Supreme Court. Even with that restriction, the judgment in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case took all of eight years. By allowing another intermediate appeal -- to the High Court -- we are ensuring that the period would be not eight but a multiple of eight years!

Similarly, recall the provision that allows a lawyer to meet the accused while he is being interrogated. Imagine that the police have nabbed a terrorist sent across by the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba. He is certain to have been saturated with indoctrination to the point that he is nothing but a killing machine. Do you think he is going to give you information over a cup of tea? And if lawyers are going to be meeting him from time to time during interrogation, is there the slightest chance that you will be able to extract information -- information about their plans, about their networks, that is information which is literally a matter of life and death for our people and our country?

But-such is the condition of public life and public discourse in India today, and so far removed from reality are some of our judgments that a provision like that one about lawyers has had to be incorporated in the Ordinance.

Based on their experience in dealing with organized gangs of criminals, the states of Maharashtra, Andhra, Karnataka have formulated laws. Why should the law for combating terrorists be more circumspect than the laws required for neutralizing gangsters? But that is what the Ordinance is. To give just one example, the state laws provide that the Review Committees -- to consider orders passed by the Home Department shall be headed by the Chief Secretary, but the Ordinance requires that the corresponding Committee for terrorists must be headed by a High Court judge. What entitles terrorists or their agents to greater solicitude?

Similarly, consider the deletion of "disruptive activities" from the Ordinance. TADA provided that any action that questions or disrupts the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India or is intended to do so, or which is intended to bring about or supports a claim for the secession of any part of India from the Union shall be a crime under TADA. Imagine how far we have fallen when even such a provision has had to be jettisoned -- even from a law the specific purpose of which is to thwart terrorists out to break our country.

The charge that such provisions were used against Muslims, that TADA was an anti-minorities law was a travesty. The facts, as I had pointed out at the time, were completely to the contrary. The notorious case of abuse was by the Congress-I led Government of Gujarat: it threw almost 19,000 persons in jail under TADA, and these were farmers opposing its policies. I don�t recall any protests against that abuse by those who are now imagining possible abuses in the future. Just as important, ninety eight per cent of those arrested in Gujarat got bail under that very Act from the courts. In Kashmir it is true that the overwhelming proportion of persons held under TADA were Muslims: but they were arrested not because they were Muslims, they were arrested because they were out to break the country. These two instances apart, the proportion of Muslims among the total arrested under TADA was only 4.5 per cent.

But such is the shadow that the falsehoods circulated at the time cast, that even six years later, and with thousands more having been killed by terrorists, the provision about activities aimed at disrupting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country has had to be excluded from the Ordinance.

"But what was the need for an Ordinance? Should the Government not have first evolved a consensus on the matter?"

Is there never to be a finality? Not even in a matter relating to the security of the country? Guess since when the efforts to bring about a consensus on this law have been going on? Since May 1995. TADA was allowed to lapse because opportunist politicians looking for issues that would curry favour with the Muslim vote bank saw an opportunity. That itself was a crime -- an instrument vital to the security and defence of the country was sacrificed to the crassest political calculation. Then began the long march.

A Criminal Law Amendment Bill was drafted and circulated in 1995. It was abandoned. Consultations continued with all and sundry. The matter was eventually referred to the Law Commission in 1998. That Commission deliberated on the question for two years -- giving its report and draft Bill in April 2000.

That draft was considered at meetings of Directors General and Inspectors General of Police, of Chief Secretaries and Home Secretaries of state governments. It was considered at the Chief Ministers� Conference on Internal Security last year. It was sent to the Human Rights Commission for its observations. It was sent to the state governments for their comments.

Should the process go on indefinitely? And what are the prospects of "evolving a consensus" when it has become an article of faith of everyone who is out of office that his job is to block everything a Government does? That his job is to block even what he was doing when he was in office, in fact even what he is today doing in the states in which he is in office?

The comments that the states sent to the draft Bill themselves tell the tale. The Congress(I) is opposing the Ordinance. In fact, when the Law Commission�s draft was circulated, the (Congress-I) Government of Delhi supported the enactment of the law in toto. The (Congress-I) Government of Karnataka supported the enactment of the law in toto.

The (Congress-I) Government of Nagaland supported the law in toto. The (Congress-I) Government of Madhya Pradesh, the (Congress-I) Government of Rajasthan, and the (Congress-I) Government of Maharashtra supported the enactment of the law, they sent suggestions about specific clauses.

The CPI(M) Governments of Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura sent their usual "principled" opposition. That Government in Kerala has gone. The one in West Bengal is trying to cover up its embarrassment for having finalised its own version of the Maharashtra Act. The Government of Tripura, after some initial show of reluctance because of "the party�s stand", has begun using corresponding provisions from other enactments relating to national security.

Not just those governments in the states, representatives of those parties at "the national level" have in general endorsed the need for a law to deal specifically with terrorists and their organizations. The leading figure in Parliament from the CPI(M) went so far as to counsel Government that it should study what Israel is doing in the matter. One of the most highly regarded leaders of the Congress(I) in Parliament stated that the Indian Penal Code is inadequate for combating terrorism, that a special law is needed, that in fact the draft Bill itself was not adequate. Nailing the falsehood that is being circulated, he said that the Bill does not shift the onus of proof on to the accused, that the provisions only seek to raise a presumption in certain circumstances. He said that there were many loopholes in the Bill, and for that reason it should go to the Select Committee or Standing Committee of the House...

This process has been going on for six years. In the meanwhile terrorists have continued to maim, kill, blow up, bum...

Fifty-five thousand people killed... that is five times the number we have lost in the 1962, 1965, 1971 and Kargil wars. And we are still stalled -- awaiting a consensus before getting even a law in place to deal with terrorism.

My plea, therefore, is the one opposite to that of the critics: the Ordinance should be approved at the first opportunity, and soon thereafter toughened -- the diluted provisions should be replaced by tougher ones -- closer to those of TADA.

Part I - POTO: Interception, Confession, Confessions, Torture

BJP Today
December 1-15, 2001

Pocket Edition

Arun Shourie

"Not one paisa has been taken from the Trust," declared the Congress spokesman with a show of righteous indignation. He was declaiming on the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts. But the charge had been altogether different -- that the Trust had been a Government-trust, that it had received Rs 134 crores of Government money and 23 acres of invaluable land, that it had been converted into a private Trust by fraud, that the conversion had been sanctified by collusion between a trustee and the President of the Trust, Sonia Gandhi. Not one of these facts had been disputed by the Congress. Within days, the Delhi High Court itself came down in the strongest possible words on the fraud. It went so far as to say that the pendency of the writ before it must not come in the way of the Government undoing the usurpation.

But the Congress was following the rule: when cornered, deny -- with great passion -- what has not been alleged!

That "denial" was typical. The entire campaign of the Congress has been crafted around the all-too obvious rules of advertising companies, and the all-too obvious propagandists!

"The bigger the lie, the more likely it is to be believed" -- Hitler, not Goebbels; the latter counseled against outright lies! As Congress has become a synonym for corruption, allege corruption in everything the present Government has done -- even when, as in the case of the Telecom policy it has been done at your urging; as Kargil was a striking victory, assert that in fact it was a defeat; as Sonia Gandhi's foreign-ness is an issue, portray Vajpayee as a traitor.

"Confine yourself to little, and repeat this eternally," "A thousandfold repetition of the most simple ideas" -- both Hitler and Goebbels. That rule in turn rests on what is a fundamental proposition with such cynics: that the people have an extremely limited understanding. One must have the "courage", they said, to go on repeating those few points endlessly. "The nature of propaganda lies in its simplicity and repetition," Goebbels wrote in his diary, "Only the man who is able to reduce the problems to the simplest terms and has the courage to repeat them indefinitely in this simplified form despite the objections of the intellectuals will in the long run achieve fundamental successes in influencing public opinion. If other methods are pursued he may influence a circle of unstable intellectuals here and there but will not even scratch the surface of the people."

Sugar scandal, sugar scandal, sugar scandal.... Even after the lie has been nailed, in fact specially after the lie has been nailed you must go on repeating it. When, in the face of facts, you keep repeating the lie, the people -- of limited understanding as they are on this theory -- are liable to infer, "There must be something to it, the fellow would not go on sticking to the allegation."

Hence,

(i) hurl a few simple allegations;
(ii) specially those of which the propagandists themselves are guilty;
(iii) repeat these endlessly;
(iv) specially in the face of facts.

The impression you want to convey about the adversary should be simple. To drill it in, you must have not one lie, but a barrage of them. In fact, you must not stick to one lie for long: the adversary will prove the truth with evidence. So, keep running. A fabrication every other day. True, soon enough that they were all falsehoods will be established, but by then the campaign will be over, the people will have been overwhelmed by other problems. Hence, Bhagwat. Then Mohan Guruswamy. Then Telecom Policy. Then telephone exchanges. Then sugar. Then wheat. Then planes. Then a Category-III flat! Back to sugar....

That Category-III flat was a quantum leap! The Congress spokesman had told all and sundry in Delhi with much flair that he was going to Lucknow to reveal a sensational, explosive scandal. The UP Congress scheduled a special press conference at noon for the explosion. A number of newspapermen turned up. Vajpayee applied for a flat and got an out-of-turn allotment in Delhi, announced the spokesman -- that was the explosion.

Pressmen were incensed. Is this what we were called for?, they remarked. At least Vajpayee paid for the flat. What about the persons sitting to your left and right? These leaders of your party in the state have not purchased a flat or two, they have just taken over government bungalows -- what are you going to do about that?....

Vajpayee has spent fifty years in public life. The "sensational, explosive" revelation of the Congress spokesman reminded people that he hasn't even a house to his name. That all he has is a Category-III flat. That too something he paid for. And who was the Prime Minister when this allotment was made?, the pressmen asked. Narasimha Rao, it turned out!

Soon it was established that some notable Congressmen too had been allotted flats from the same quota. The government had made the allotments for the distinguished services they had rendered to the country.

Not just that, the Supreme Court had instituted a detailed inquiry into out-of-turn allotments. Every irregular allotment had been scrutinized. The allotment to Vajpayee had never been called in question as being even faintly irregular. On the other hand, two Governors -- conspicuous members of the Congress -- had felt constrained to resign. Cases were going on against the then Congress ministers for converting their discretionary quotas into commerce....

The footnote to the story was truly delicious. It turned out that the spokesman who had traveled all the way to Lucknow to make this sensational disclosure, and his family members had received not a Category-III flat, but five plots of land from Bhajan Lal, the then Chief Minister of Haryana! Each one of the five had been an out-of-turn allotment. Bhajan Lal's largesse had been taken to court. A Division bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court had found the allotments to be so bereft of merit that it had canceled all of them in March 1997. Of the five plots, the spokesman and his family had to forfeit three -- the remaining two had survived because the Court chose to put the cut-off date at 1995, and these two had been made over earlier.

But it would be wholly wrong to think that there was any remorse at having hurled such a silly allegation. The purpose of such hurling is not to convince, but to confuse. Corruption was your characteristic. By these allegations -- wild as they are -- you convey that the facts which have been established about your misdeeds are also just allegations. Second, that similar allegations exist about your adversary too.

The Congress seems to have been advised about an additional advantage. Should your adversary bring up some new embarrassing facts about you during the campaign, you can take the high road, and regret that the campaign, "instead of focusing on real issues," has descended to personal attacks! Better still, you can get friendly journalists to lament "the levels to which the campaign has descended"! This in turn yields several advantages.

(i) You are seen to be concerned about "the real issues".
(ii) That you are the one who has been hurling baseless allegations is covered up.
(iii) You and the adversary are put at par.
(iv) Once you have conditioned the people to believe that everybody is hurling allegations and charges, you don't have to answer the facts that have been revealed about you -- they are no better than the baseless allegations which you have been hurling!

The more unverifiable the "event" the more useful it is for lies! Summarising the practice of master-liars, Jacques Ellul cautions, "Such lies must not be told except about completely unverifiable facts. For example, Goebbels' lies could be on the successes achieved by German U-boats, because only the captain of the U-boat knew if he had sunk a ship or not. It was easy to spread detailed news on such a subject without fear of contradiction." Hence, fables about unrest in the Army "because the Prime Minister is not speaking up to shield the higher command in the wake of the controversies that have risen as a result of the letters that Brigadier Surinder Singh is said to have written..."

As there is always the risk that some damned fool may come out with the facts sooner than you expect, a handy device is to demand, "All we are asking is that the Prime Minister come clean with all the facts." That leaves a way out: "After all, what did we demand? All we said was that the Prime Minister come clean with the facts." Even better, the demand sets you up as the referee! The Prime Minister is to state the facts, and you will decide whether what he has disclosed amounts to "all the facts"!

Recall Sonia Gandhi's response to questions about her friend, Ottavio Quatrocchi. There are no papers which link him to Bofors, she said. If there are any such papers, let them show us the papers, she demanded. The first part was an outright lie: when the judgments of the highest court in Switzerland, of the Delhi High Court, of the Supreme Court were given out, sudden silence.

A glance at the advertisements they have placed in the newspapers -- and even more, the advertisements worth crores which they have had placed in the name of a near-bankrupt organization, "Communalism Combat" -- will show that there are other Goebbelsian maxims too which the Congress has been following in this campaign.

The negative is stronger than the positive: not one positive advertisement in their entire series.

Hatred is stronger than love: killers of the Mahatma, butchers of Christians....

Fear is stronger than hope: the advertisements placed in the name of "Communalism Combat" are textbook illustrations of this maxim.

The central ingredient here is an instrumental view of truth! The test is not whether what one is saying is true or false. The only test is whether it serves the purpose!

In a sense, therefore, it is indeed appropriate that the Congress fielded a lawyer as its spokesman! In theory, lawyers are supposed to be officers of the court. In fact, large parts of the profession have come to believe that their job is to serve their client --- and for the purpose use whatever device seems handy.

So, it has been entirely in character, that the spokesman should -- in his capacity as a lawyer -- have appeared for private cellular operators and argued that the then Telecom Policy with its high license fees was a disaster, and, when the switch was made to a revenue sharing regime, the very same person should -- in his capacity as spokesman for the Congress -- have denounced the changeover, and alleged a scam. It was entirely in character for the spokesman to have raised doubts about the Prime Minister having acquired a Category-III flat in a perfectly normal manner, when he and his family members had got Bhajan Lal, the then Chief Minister of Haryana, to grant them -- not one but -- five plots out of the discretionary quota. It was entirely in character for him as the spokesman of the Congress to cast doubts at the professional integrity of the Attorney General, without mentioning that in his other capacity he is the lawyer for a paper in a suit which the Attorney General has been constrained to file against it for the falsehood it published about him. It was entirely in character for him to be releasing fabricated letters ostensibly written by a Brigadier, and thus, apart from advancing the interests of the Congress of which he was the spokesman, building up a sort of defence through the press, without disclosing that he was himself the lawyer of that Brigadier.

Of course, I do not want to push the parallel too far: Goebbels and his kind -- Lenin and his lot, to take an allied example -- were masters -- diabolic masters. These fellows are just pocket editions! Those masters would never have put out statements which were so patently false: that Vajpayee is a traitor, that he was arming the ISI and the Pakistan Army to invade Kargil... The lies of Goebbels, Lenin and company held the field for decades. These fellows' allegations could not withstand a simple miscalculation: that the campaign was a little longer than usual turned out to be enough for their allegations to be shown up to be the falsehoods that they were...

Saved again! In 1987-89 we had been saved by the ham-handedness of the forgers. This time we have to thank the incompetence of these fabricators.

India Connect
September 27, 1999

To the Bitter End

Arun Shourie

"Congress insists PM ignored I-B reports on Kargil," ran the six column heading of The Indian Express on 16 September. Other papers too gave much prominence to the allegation. This time the Congress spokesman had used as his peg a front-page story in The Tribune of that morning about a "strategy backgrounder" which the paper said the Army had prepared and circulated.

Entitled, "PM ignored intelligence reports," the front page story of The Tribune was an elaborate one. It claimed that the Army Headquarters "has gone to the extent of blaming Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee for ignoring intelligence reports on the intrusion." "The strategy paper, 'Important issues: Case of Brigadier Surinder Singh,' prepared and circulated recently by the AHQ clearly states that it was possible that the Prime Minister may have been given some information of Pakistan's designs by RAW and IB, but he ignored it, 'in the context of the Lahore Bus ride.' " "The paper has made allegations against the Government for ignoring its needs," The Tribune reported. But not just against the Government, it would seem! For The Tribune went on to report that "the strategy paper makes allegations against all and sundry." "Similarly, the Joint Intelligence Committee, whose responsibility is to carry out an assessment of threat and prepare position papers, never did so," the newsreport quoted the strategy paper to have said...

Every syllable of the story smacked of concoction. The title, Army Headquarters suddenly going back on what it has itself been maintaining, its doing so before the internal review instituted by the Army Chief has been completed, its doing so before the Subramanyam Committee has completed even its hearings.

The story was replete with nonsense so patent that even a fool would have spotted it. Recall that sentence -- the one on which the Congress based its charge of the day -- "The strategy paper... clearly states that it was possible that the Prime Minister may have been given some information of Pakistan's designs by RAW and IB, but he ignored it, 'in the context of the Lahore Bus ride.' " That something "was possible". What was possible? That the Prime Minister "may have been given." And what may have he been given? "Some information of Pakistan's designs..."!

In one para -- and that too on the basis of "may be" raised to the power 3 -- the Army was said to have "clearly state(d)" that the Prime Minister may have been given information. Two paragraphs later the Army paper was said to have hurled allegations "at all and sundry."

"The failure is of external intelligence agencies," The Tribune quoted the "strategy backgrounder" to have observed, only to elaborate, "Military Intelligence Directorate is responsible for external intelligence"! Not only would that imply that Army Headquarters was owning up to the failure, it would imply that Army Headquarters does not know what the function of the Directorate of Military Intelligence is!

Within hours of the newspaper being available, the Army issued a strongly worded press release. "It is categorically stated that no 'strategy backgrounder' as mentioned in the article has either been prepared or disseminated to any source," the Army said. " ...The news item under reference is baseless, malicious and has been presented to tarnish the apolitical image of the Army," it stated. "The article appearing in The Tribune dated 15 September 1999 appears to be sponsored / published by an aggrieved party for self-motivated reasons best known to the individual sponsor. The Army Headquarters once again most emphatically denies preparation / dissemination of such a document."

The Prime Minister's Office also issued a denial -- just as categorical.

Both statements were available by early afternoon. But of course the Congress could not allow mere facts to come in the way of hurling its allegation-for-the-day!

The headlines secured, the Congress forgot all about the "strategy backgrounder" at its press briefing the next day!

But not The Asian Age! By the 18th September, it had an altogether new theory. It could not argue that the so-called "strategy backgrounder" was genuine. While earlier newspapers had been insinuating that the Army and the Government had been working hand-in-glove to cover up failure on the Kargil front, the paper now asserted that the Government had left the Army to fend for itself during the Kargil conflict, that the Army was incensed that the PM had kept silent on the controversies kicked up around Brigadier Surinder Singh. So much so that, without citing any source, the paper asserted, as the headline across the top of its front page proclaimed, that a war" had erupted between the PMO and the Army!

As for the Congress, The Tribune fabrication have been squeezed for such milk as it could yield, its allegation for the next day had at its prop statements which Niaz Naik, a former Foreign Secretary of Pakistan, and Sartaj Aziz, its current Foreign Minister had made. These gentlemen have to contend with the political turmoil that encircles Nawaz Sharief and his circle there. There is a war of statements going on there: that ex-diplomat had alleged that India and Pakistan had come close to an agreement on Kashmir, and it is the Pakistan Army which had killed it by its incursion into Kargil; the Foreign Minister -- who had earlier been saying that the Pakistan Army had done nothing in Kargil -- had countered by saying that whatever the Pakistan Army had done in Kargil was in the interests of Pakistan! That is the impulse and origin of statements emanating from Pakistan these days. But the sole concern of the Congress was to locate some news peg for its allegation-of-the-day.

Brajesh Mishra, the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, who is the one who had dealt with Niaz Naik, stated on record that no secret deal had been in the works. But for the Congress, the Indian Army is not to be believed, Indian civil servants are not to be believed, of course the Indian Prime Minister is not to be believed. But every tid bit from Pakistan is gospel truth.

Telling reciprocity! During the Kargil war the statements of Sonia Gandhi and her spokesmen were of such succour to Pakistan that they became top stars on Pakistan TV. During the elections, the statements from Pakistan have become props for the Congress!

The consequences are obvious. By making statements of Pakistani personnel as the basis for charges here, these spokesmen contrive a situation in which Pakistan can set the agenda of debate even during elections in India: they can say whatever they think will help the side they think is better for them.

The other side is that there are statements and statements of Pakistani politicians. To which of these would these spokesmen of the Congress respond? In her interview to the magazine Sunday of 1-7 August, 1999, Benazir Bhutto maintains that she and Rajiv came to an agreement about, among other things, "withdrawal from Siachin". As Indian forces alone are in control of Siachin, this would imply that Rajiv had agreed to withdraw Indian forces from Siachin. Benazir provides a circumstantial detail: she says that when she was at the Commonwealth meeting, Rajiv telephoned her and told her that while he could not see through the agreement during elections, he would implement it after the elections. The Congress lost.

Going by its criteria, would the Congress, therefore, explain how its much-vaunted Prime Minister agreed to hand back Siachin? Moreover, going by its daily mud-slinging about non-existent "secret deals", would the Congress explain whether Rajiv Gandhi took Parliament, to say nothing of the country into confidence before coming to such an agreement -- an agreement to vacate land which our Army has sacrificed so much to retain?

While it is at the job, will the Congress explain whether Pandit Nehru took the country, did he even take Parliament into confidence before halting our advancing troops in 1948, and thereby inflicting a loss of 83,100 sq km of territory on our country? Did he work out a national consensus, did he work out a consensus even in the Cabinet before needlessly referring Kashmir to the UN, and thus saddling us with the problem that plagues us to this day? He did not: Sardar Patel was ever so opposed to this unnecessary show of internationalism -- in fact, even Liaquat Ali was pleasantly surprised as even he had not asked for this to be done.

Dr P N Dhar, one of the main participants in the Simla negotiations, who later became Principal Secretary to Mrs Indira Gandhi, has disclosed on record that she and Z A Bhutto came to an agreement to convert the Line of Control into the international border between Indian and Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir. Indeed, this would have been a part of the documents signed at Simla but for Bhutto saying that such a step would disable him on his return, that instead it should be left out for the moment and he would see it through within a few months. Did Mrs Gandhi take the country or Parliament into confidence before coming to such an understanding?

Rajiv Gandhi commenced aid to LTTE: that has caused a lethal civil war in a neighbour which has been our friend for centuries, it has caused the death of over 1500 Indian soldiers. Did he take the country or Parliament into confidence before doing so? It is known, in fact, that even after he sent the Indian Army to fight the very terrorists that he had foolishly agreed to arm and equip, his Government continued assistance to those very terrorists. Is there a single instance of another Government arming terrorists who were killing its own soldiers? Did he work out a national consensus or take Parliament into confidence to continue assisting terrorists so that they could kill our soldiers?

But today, cock and bull concoctions about secret deals, peremptory demands about taking the country into confidence!

And in any case, where does the Congress allegation based on Niaz Naik's statement stand now? For just two days after the Congress built up its conspiracy theory on his reported assertion, Niaz Naik repudiated what had been attributed to him! The report which had him saying that India and Pakistan had been close to a secret deal was a "fabrication", he stated in a written statement.

No problem for the Congress. It had passed on to the next allegation!

Forgeries have of course been an industry with the Congress since Rajiv's time.

The "letter" which was supposed to have been written by the then Director of CIA, William Casey, to the President of the conservative think-tank, the Heritage Foundation of the USA -- spelling out a design to destabilise Rajiv's Government.

The forgeries to establish that V. P. Singh and his son, Ajeya Singh, had a foreign account in St. Kitts, that $ 21 million had been paid into it as kickbacks.

The forged letter by which my colleagues, S. Gurumurthy and A. Janakiraman were arrested, and V. P. Singh hounded on the ground that a foreign detective agency had been engaged to excavate facts about Rajiv's associates.

The "letter" which V. P. Singh was supposed to have written to the President naming his colleagues, Arun Nehru and Arif Mohammed Khan as having been involved in corrupt deals.

The "letter" JP was supposed to have written in which he was said to have called V. P. Singh "spineless" and much else.

The "hotel bills" proving Arun Nehru's stay in New York, and "telephone records" that established that he had been calling tax havens in the West Indies.

The "letter" to that same American detective in which V. P. Singh is supposed to have asked him to locate the foreign accounts of his colleagues -- including ones who were dead, like Karpoori Thakur! And so on.

In each case, there was a pattern. The forgery would be elaborate, as was the one in The Tribune, with details and all. It would appear in one, preferably out-of station paper: the St. Kitts forgeries started in distant Middle east, in The Arab Times! It would be picked up by one or two papers -- The Telegraph and The Hindustan Times led the rest in the St. Kitts affair. Waving these "news reports" Congressmen would hurl their falsehoods.

A well-practised routine, therefore. But even by the lamentable standards of the Congress, forgeries in this round mark a new low. They seek to implicate not just political opponents. They have implicated the Army of the country. First, spokesmen of the Congress talked of a letter and file that contained intelligence information that had been furnished to the Government about the Pakistani buildup. They spelled out an elaborate number. They declared that if the Government denied the existence of the letter and file, they would produce it. The Army stated that it wasn't just that there was no letter or file of that number, there was no numbering system that matched the number that had been put out. The Congress spokesmen just let the matter drop!

Next, they and friendly magazines like Outlook, flaunted "letters" that Brigadier Surinder Singh was said to have written in August and November, 1998, in which he was said to have warned the Army about the Pakistani build up. The letters had never been received in Army Headquarters, nor at any other level or part of the Army.

The Congress spokesman then flaunted a receipt which he said established that the letters had been received. Friendly papers -- some of which have been campaigning even more energetically for the Congress than Congressmen -- ran with this receipt. "Lying Kargil Generals nailed," ran the headline across the front page of The Asian Age. They reproduced the facsimile of the receipt.

The legend on the top of the receipt itself said that it was for a "Redressal of Grievance" communication from the Brigadier -- the officer had been transferred, he had filed an appeal against it. Moreover, it was dated 28 June, 1999. How could it prove the receipt of letters in August and November in the preceding year? On inquiry I learnt that this oddity had not been noticed!

But the next day the paper compounded the fib. "Army acknowledges receiving the letters," it proclaimed. What the Army had done was to state what the receipt itself stated, that the Redressal of Grievance communication had been received -- on 28 June, 1999. How did this amount to an acknowledgment that the letters in question -- ostensibly written in eight and eleven months earlier had been received?

But the paper was no less zealous than the Congress!

The remedies are obvious. Things have reached such a pit that readers should as a rule disbelieve what papers say till the record of the publication or journalist in question establishes to the contrary.

Second, newspapers should scrutinize each other's work, and report the findings to the reading public.

And in the present case so should at least two other institutions. The Election Commission has been so concerned about things that may affect the fairness of the election process. Surely, nothing but nothing has so polluted the electoral atmosphere, no one has done as much to mislead voters as the liars in the Congress. Why not make a study of the allegations which were hurled, and give us your finding about their veracity?

The other institution of course is the Press Council. Its function is to help maintain standards in the press. It is evident that the fabrications would have got nowhere -- not in 1987-89, not now -- without the active collaboration of some of our leading newspapers and magazines. Why not examine the allegations they broadcast, and what the basis was for them?

After all, to purvey a libel uttered by another is libel. To broadcast falsehood uttered by another is to compound it.

India Connect
September 21, 1999

Two Questions Recent Crises Throw at us

Arun Shourie
"A thousand Pakistani militants have entered the Baramula and Poonch sectors of Kashmir" -- that was the lead story on the 9 pm news bulletin of a leading TV channel on 27 July. I was properly alarmed. Pakistan had been soundly thrashed on the ground, its government was still trying to explain the retreat to the Pakistani public, the country had been roundly censured by the US, by the UK, by foreign ministers gathered at Singapore. And yet it had so swiftly resumed pushing terrorists into India.

And so I was even more surprised when the next morning not one paper carried anything about fresh infiltration. But it might have been a scoop of the TV channel, I thought. And was therefore triply surprised to see that the TV channel itself had no follow-up on the story the next day. The story vanished as swiftly as the terrorists.

But in such matters it is the single shot that serves the purpose: "Once again, while this Government is busy celebrating victory, the Pakistanis have come in," "Kargil is no victory, see the terrorists have spread even farther," viewers would have concluded from that broadcast. Now, if you go on repeating it, someone is bound to ask what the source for the story is, someone else is bound to start following it up, and discover the truth. As elections approach, such stories will multiply. The President has written a letter to the Prime Minister about the telecom policy, ran the lead story of "one of the world's greatest papers" the other day. There had been no letter. "Vajpayee and Advani at logger-heads" -- an item which had become a staple of some papers, and journalists has resurfaced as a regular feature again, as has its companion, "RSS unhappy with..."

For years now, Delhi reporting in The Hindu has been in a class by itself: its correspondent does not report what has been said at the press conference; the correspondent gives her opinion on what the person should have said and, in her reckoning, didn't, she lists the questions which were asked, and, as for the answers which were given, she merely adds, "To none of these questions did the BJP spokesman have a convincing answer"! That is a news report! A breakthrough: day after day, report only the questions which are asked, indeed the questions you and one other correspondent ask, omit the answers as you have decided that they are not "convincing"!

It isn't just the political parties that are running for elections. A TV channel and some papers are too!

With these "natural allies" being so enthusiastic, the Congress and our Comrades are able to deploy their customary devices all the more easily. Their sparkling logic for one! Pokharan-II? The credit goes to our scientists, they say. Agni-II? The credit goes to our scientists, they say. The victory in Kargil? The credit goes to our Army, they say. The inability of Military Intelligence and RAW to detect the infiltration into Kargil? The responsibility is that of the Government! In any case, what worked was American pressure, not anything this Government did, they declare. Would Pakistan have succumbed to any pressure had it not been for the fact that it was being driven out from peak after peak? "But the Government has given the Americans the opportunity to mediate, to meddle," they declare. Clinton is saying the USA has no mediatory role, the American spokesman, Karl Inderfuth has said this time and again, the US Government has conveyed the same message through diplomatic channels on several times -- but we should believe Natwar Singh!

And the other favoured device: sow a doubt, and run! Bhagwat, Mohan Guruswamy? Recall what a din they raised? The Defence Ministry put out an entire compendium of facts on Bhagwat and his allegations. Ever heard them mention the matter recently? Guruswamy? "Scam, scam," they shouted. Their leader, Dr. Manmohan Singh, had to acknowledge in Parliament that they had no information on the "serious questions" Guruswamy had raised beyond the articles he had written. But Guruswamy had said more than once in his articles that he was leveling no charge of corruption against anyone! Have you heard any of them raise the matter since?

Even more telling is the case of "atrocities against Christians". What a din was raised. Most of the incidents had not taken place at all. Of the three that had, persons were arrested in regard to two -- the rape of the nuns in Jhabua, the incidents in Gujarat. Have you heard any of them demand that the trials of those arrested proceed swiftly? In regard to the third, the murder of Staines and his sons, the Wadhwa Commission submitted its report several weeks ago. Have you heard any of them demand that it be released, or make even a pro-forma, nominal effort to have the Government act on its recommendations?

That was the sum total of their war-effort during the Kargil operation: ask questions, sow doubts. My favourite of that series was one by their Inquisitor-in-Chief, the head of their mental activity on foreign policy, Mr. Natwar Singh. Mr. Jaswant Singh, the Minister for External Affairs, had gone to Europe. He was meeting one representative of the P-5 after another. His meetings were being reported in newspapers. That they had telling effect has become more than evident. What was the Congress expert on foreign policy -- of the "inhein chullu bhar pani mein doob marna chahiye" fame -- saying? We have their house-journal, the National Herald to help us: "The Union Minister for External Affairs has not yet returned to India," the paper's issue of 29 May reported Natwar Singh as declaiming. "May be, he has been asked to stay abroad by the Prime Minister. Why is he taking so much time? All these questions are to be answered by the Government. The people have a right to know..."

A din having been raised, doubts having been created, the purpose of our friends having been served, they have forgotten each of the matters! And in this they are true to pattern. Remember the Thakkar Commission they had set up to unravel the "wider conspiracy" behind the assassination of Mrs Indira Gandhi? Ever heard any of them mention it after, their lies about it having been nailed, they were compelled to place it in Parliament? Remember the Jain Commission set up to unravel the "wider conspiracy" behind the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi? Remember how they pulled down two governments, and plunged the country into uncertainty using that report, -- to say nothing of how they buffeted one of their own governments, that of Mr Narasimha Rao, using that Commission? Remember how they paralysed Parliament on the charge that the Action Taken Report on that Commission's findings was designed to shield some of those responsible? Ever heard any of them so much as mention the matter recently?

The penchant of the Congress for falsehood remains unimpaired -- that is an important fact that we should remember as elections near. It has been compounded, I would say. For the Congress has been taken over by high-school debaters, it seems. A smart one-liner, a sly phrase, a seemingly penetrating question for the day -- the Party seems so satisfied with these. And so oblivious of the consequences: you would have to watch Pakistan TV for just two-three days to learn what comfort Sonia Gandhi's falsehoods on Kargil have been to the Pakistanis.

When this is their facility with untruth when they are out of power, what will they not do should they gain control of the State apparatus?

Event after event during the last year has been a reminder of the perilous times through which we are passing. The economic breakdown in South East, sanctions, the invasion in Kargil... In a word, in addition to our long-standing problems, here is a new danger: a squall can hit us suddenly from any side.

On the other side is what is by now a central feature of our system of governance. We style ourselves as a Parliamentary form of government, as a Cabinet form of government. Such characterizations are only partially correct. A Prime Ministerial form of government -- that is much nearer reality. The Prime Minister is not what the outdated phrase suggests, the first among equals. He is the one person who matters. His instincts, his nature, the kinds of persons he is comfortable with -- these determine policy and performance much more than almost any other feature. Mrs. Indira Gandhi's instinct -- for timing, as well as for not tolerating an assault on the country -- that determined more than anything else what the country did to Pakistan in 1971, her instinct for self-preservation more than anything else caused the Emergency in 1975. In the face of the collapse of what was then, in effect, our patron State, the Soviet Union, it was Mr Narasimha Rao's adroitness more than anything else which ensured that our foreign policy landed on its feet. Similarly, it was his nature -- of benign neglect -- which ensured that institutions which were fortunate to have good persons heading them at the time -- the Supreme Court under Justice Venkatachalliah -- were restored. The same facet of his nature ensured that several ministries stagnated.

In Kargil too, the instinct and long experience in public affairs of Mr Vajpayee have made all the difference. The pincer that caught Pakistan in the end -- that our response was massive, and simultaneously so restrained, so carefully calibrated -- has everything to do with those two personal traits of the Prime Minister: his instinct and his experience.

Another circumstance, all too visible in the case of the Congress, compounds the apprehension. Even when the cabinet and party are robust it is the nature and inclination of the one who is Prime Minister which determines the outcome more than almost anything else. Now that the Congress is reduced to a sack of domesticated "jee memsahib"s this becomes all the more certain. Among the developments which have struck me since I got to sit in Parliament, this has been one of the most disheartening ones: to see persons for whom I had developed great regard become so totally servile, to see them agitate, to see them take positions which are so plainly alien to their nature has at times well-nigh broken my heart. What this internalised servility spells for the future is evident. Recall June 1975. The prime impulse for imposing the Emergency was of course Mrs Gandhi's scale of values -- her continuance in office ranked higher in that scale than law and institutions. But what made the Emergency inevitable, what made it to so easy to throw a lakh and half people into jail was the servility to which the Congress had already been reduced: what with the then Congress President being so proud of his enunciation, "India is Indira, Indira is India," how could there spring any corrective from within? But that was twenty five years ago. Since then the Congress has become infinitely less of an organization. So, should the party be catapulted to power, Sonia's instinct -- the greed for the Prime Ministership that led her to lie to the President and the press, the imperious streak, "Those who do not agree with me should leave the party here and now" -- her ignorance will act completely unimpeded on the country and its future.

Thus, perilous times on the one hand, and, on the other, the fact that in our system of governance everything depends on the person of the Prime Minister. That is the central question that the crises of these months -- the South East Asian economic collapse, sanctions, Kargil -- pose for the electorate. In such a time, is the country to be put in the hands of a person about whom it knows nothing?

About whose views on no matter does it know anything -- save her anxiety to become the Prime Minister?

Is the country to be placed in the hands of a person about whom, as she merely reads speeches written by someone else, no one knows whether she even has a view on any matter -- save that one exception of becoming the Prime Minister?

About whose associates, the persons she trusts, the ones she listens to, even the ones who write her speeches the country knows nothing?

Is the country to be put in the hands of a person who has absolutely no experience of any governmental office?

Is the country to be put in the hands of a person who is so much at ease with falsehood -- "I have the support of 272 M P's" "The President has asked me to continue my efforts to form an alternative government," to say nothing of what Mr. P. A. Sangma has since revealed -- that the Congress Working Committee had not authorized her to stake a claim to be the Prime Minister at all, that all it had authorized her to do was to see whether an alternative government, one not necessarily headed by her, could be formed.

The other point is as important. Even the most astute Prime Minister can do little if he does not have sufficient numerical strength in the Lok Sabha. It was a stroke of luck for the country that the war broke out after the Lok Sabha had been dissolved, and hence Mr. Vajpayee and his team were able to craft a coherent and massive response. Had the Lok Sabha been in session, he and the Government would daily have been baited and jostled in Parliament. The war effort would certainly have been impaired. Short of insulating the conduct of governance better from our legislators, the crises teach us that we must give sufficient numbers to the government we vote into office.

And in today's context the key to that is to rise above caste.

India Connect
August 2, 1999

The Jihadi Mentality: Its Recoil and Danger

Arun Shourie
The war in Kargil has ignited an intense reaction across the country. War does. War that results from aggression by the other does even more. This time round two factors have caused the reaction to be even more intense. There is the element of betrayal: India had extended the hand of trust and friendship; Pakistan, it now turns out, merely pretended to reciprocate. And then there is the effect of television. This is the first war which has been brought into our living rooms: we see the extreme conditions in which our soldiers are defending our country, we see the majesty and beauty of our sacred mountains which the enemy has violated, we see the bodies arrive, we see and hear the valour of the bereaved parents and wives.

There is another reaction. We are all humbled: by the valour of the soldiers, by the fortitude of the relatives. Would I agree to begin the trek up some God-forsaken, distant hill, each of us is forced to think, knowing that as a result, within three-four hours, I may be dead?

The form the reaction has taken is just as telling. Each time a body is taken back thousands upon thousands stand in reverence along the route. When it arrives in a city or a village, thousands come out to pay homage. Neighbours and others visit the family of the soldier. Contributions to funds have exceeded all expectations.

The visits are out of empathy. The funds are for caring: to care for the soldier who has been disabled, to care for the wife and children of the soldier who has been killed.

The papers of Pakistan, especially the Urdu papers, on the other hand, have been full of reactions of an entirely different kind. Of "Jihad conferences" being held, of "Jihad centers" to be opened for recruiting volunteers, of collections for yet another "Jihad fund". The volunteers are not to care for anybody, their mission is to go across, and vanquish and destroy the land of kufr, the Hindu-India. The funds are not for caring, they are to destroy and dismember the land of kafirs, the Hindu-India. The speeches that are made at these gatherings, the slogans that are raised -- "Kashmir banega Pakistan" -- the very words that are used -- "Hindu-India, the birth-enemy of Pakistan," the "Battle for Hind" -- contain a venom, which we cannot comprehend.

But it is something we should learn to comprehend. For our neighbour is saturated with it. The venom, and the actions it triggers, will recoil on Pakistan of course. But that will take decades. In the meanwhile, unless we develop antigens to that poison, untold costs will be inflicted on our country. Moreover, if we falter in crushing every single action which that poison triggers, the poison will acquire greater and greater potency in the eyes of the Jihadis -- see, it is because of the Jihadi-spirit that our mujahideen have given those banias such a licking, they will conclude. So, every single action that is spurred by that sort of spirit must be completely crushed. But how will be ever ensure that it is crushed if we turn our eyes from what triggers it?

Lt. General Javed Nasir is one of Pakistan's "thinking Generals". He has been head of the ISI. He is among the Generals who were associated with Pakistan's successes in Afghanistan. Not just a typical voice, therefore, a crucial one. Recall that Nawaz Sharif made his desperate flight to Washington on July 3, that he signed the capitulatory joint-statement with Clinton on July 4. On July 1 -- that is, just three days before Nawaz Sharif had to accept that Pakistan would withdraw behind the Line of Control -- Lt. General Javed Nasir was telling Pakistanis that India was on the brink of defeat and collapse and disintegration! Readers would have concluded that the Indian defeat was so overwhelming that Vajpayee had as good as lost his mind!

Defeat in Kargil will spell disaster at the polls, that is what is staring Vajpayee in the face, this former controller of the ISI wrote. "He was angry," the General wrote, describing, no doubt from secret sources of the ISI, a meeting of the Indian Prime Minister with our Service Chiefs, "froth coming out of his mouth, shaking with anger, a little bit stammering [sic.], he let the Khakis have it." "I order you to throw them out, otherwise there will be large-scale sackings irrespective of ranks."

The Kargil operation has already inflicted unbearable cost on India, the General calculated. Each shell of Bofors costs a thousand dollars, his spies told him; in just one week India has fired nearly 30,000 rounds, his sources on the front told him. That means India has burnt up three billion dollars in just one week, his calculator indicated. And now India will have to spend another ten billion dollars to replace the barrels of the guns. Four days earlier, in another article, the General had recalled how, at the time of the Lahore Bus diplomacy, in an article in The Nation, "I had implored the Pakistani Army and Mujahideen to interdict the Srinagar-Drass road to make things more difficult for the Indians in Siachin. The Mujahideen executed a brilliant plan." His brilliant plan having been executed so brilliantly, Indians are on the run, the General informed his countrymen.

And for good and obvious reasons, he said. "Whereas the Mujahideen are fighting for a just cause and Shahadat is the greatest honour they can receive and as such they are fighting for this noble objective, the Indian soldiers are highly demoralized. Most of them have already completed their Kashmir tenure and want to go back to the safety of the mainland. They are being forced into the attacks and kept in Kashmir against their will. They only fulfil the formality of attack." This plain truth was being portrayed by Pakistan TV, he said, and that is why the Indian Government banned it! But Indians continue to watch Pakistan TV "for factual and correct situation", using dish antennas, he said, "despite house raids by police"! All we have to do is to keep the road to Siachin closed, he wrote the next day. That will force India to spend Rs 30-40 crore a day, "which will break the Indian back"! The General painted even rosier gardens. If the Indian Army can be prevented from retaking the Kargil positions, Vajpayee will be forced to lunge into Pakistan crossing the LoC. This prospect "offers the Pakistan Army the opportunity of the century to redeem its honour and take revenge for Dhaka." Once Pakistan makes a major penetration into India, the Sikhs will get and grab "the opportunity of the millennium to rise and play havoc with India's lines of communications." And once there is a major setback to India in Punjab, "the Sikh dream of Khalistan will become a reality." And that will induce the Tamils to revolt in the South, and the Nagas and the Mizos to proclaim their Unilateral Declaration of Independence"!

Faced with disintegration, Vajpayee will have to opt for the nuclear option, the General forecast. Therefore, he counseled the world, before India reaches that point, the world should solve the Kashmir problem "in accordance with the resolutions of the Security Council." Q E D! Not only has Pakistan the opportunity of a century because of the bind in which India is caught, Allah has conferred a special boon on Pakistan to enable it to avail of this opportunity, the General's reasoning went. And what is that boon? "In Parvez Musharraf we have an excellent General," he explained, "who has the blend of dynamism (his SSG background) and superb professionalism. Allah chose him for this occasion. He will not only deliver but deliver beyond expectations of all. He is the gift of Allah to the nation."

The only thing to guard against is American perfidy, the General wrote. On his reckoning, the Pakistan Army has won each and every war with India, and it is only the USA, "which has a history of betrayals towards Pakistan," that has compelled Pakistan to forgo what it had won on the ground! General Hamid Gul, an even more formidable former head of the ISI, was announcing victories in even more vivid colours. "General Gul predicts Indian troops surrender," ran the headlines of The Pakistan Observer on 27 June. That the Indians were concentrating so many troops in the area is all to the good, General Gul told the paper. Soon, the monsoon will set in, and they will be trapped in "the hills, dales and jungles of Kashmir while this terrain is familiar and friendly to the Mujahideen." "He said," the paper reported, "it is pre-ordained that this military machine that subjected Kashmiris to terrorism will be humiliated and disgraced at the hands of a handful of Mujahideen."

These are the analyses of Pakistan's "thinking Generals," of its "strategic thinkers," these are analyses appearing in the country's "responsible, sober" English papers. The Urdu papers of course carry reports of even more glowing victories -- as I write this I have at hand reports from Nawa-e-Waqt, al Dawa, Ausaf, Jasarat, Khabrein, Din -- they give even more Allah-ordained reasons on account of which India is about to disintegrate before the might of the Mujahideen. "Enemy is being thrashed from all sides;" "These militants are battle-hardened having fought in Afghanistan for over ten years;" "The Mujahideen have been waiting for open war with India since long. Now they have the opportunity with the opening of the Kargil front;" "The Amir of Markaz Dawat wal Irshad, Professor Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, further claimed that the foolish Europe does not know that Mujahideen have arrived there also in a clandestine manner;" "Maulana Mohammed Azim Tariq, President Sipah-e-Sahaba, said that the moment Government declared Jihad the Sipah-e-Sahaba would provide 50,000 trained Mujahideen for fighting alongside the Pakistan Army;" "The meeting of the Jamiat Ahl-e-Sunnat-o-al-Jamat held in Islamabad under the Chairmanship of Qazi Abdul Malik decided that the Jamiat will send 20,000 volunteers;" "Qazi Hussain Ahmed, Amir Jamiat-e-Islami has started collecting Jihad-e-Kashmir funds, and Jamat-e-Islami is issuing pamphlets urging people to obtain the blessings of Allah by taking part in the Battle of Hind;" "A pamphlet issued by Abdur Rashid Turabi, Amir of the Jamiat-e-Islami in Azad Kashmir says that the shadows of war are deepening, and Pakistanis should give a fatal blow to the birth-enemy of Muslims, India, the Mujahideen have reduced the pride of the enemy to ashes, he says;" Ausaf reports that according to its survey ninety five per cent of the people in Islamabad and Rawalpindi believe that the Kashmir issue can be solved through war and not through negotiations; according to the survey, 99 percent of the people in the North West Frontier Province want the Government to declare Jihad against India for solving the Kashmir issue; "Thousands of armed tribals at a public meeting on 27 June at Miran Shah in Northern Waziristan Agency announced Jihad against India and took an oath that they would not rest unless they hoist the Islamic flag in Delhi".

The article of faith, that India is the "birth-enemy of Muslims," the conviction that the opportunity of the century has come, that Allah has given them an instrument for availing it, the hallucinatory reports that the enemy is being routed, the conviction that Jihad is the solution, the fever for it.

And the foundation of all this: the conviction that everything that is being done is in the cause of Islam. The Ausaf of 30 June: " A group of Al-Badar mujahideen left Mansehara for Kashmir on June 29 for taking part in the Battle of Hind. Bidding them farewell, Commander Ejaz Ali, Amir Lashkar-al-Badar, instructed them to eliminate Indian troops and hoist the flag of Islam in Kashmir. They had to fight the Indian Army from Kargil to Delhi." Two days later, on 2 July, the Ausaf reported, "Pakistani ulema, including Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, Mufti Jamil Khan and Dr. Abdur Razaq issued a Fatwa of Jihad against India in Islamabad on July 1. In the Fatwa, issued in response to a query from the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, they said that students should be sent on Jihad by shutting down all religious schools." Ideologies become blinkers: believers keep looking at the world through one pair of pre-fabricated spectacles, they keep fitting developments into one straitjacket when in fact the world is changing inside out. The adherents are therefore "pre-ordained", to snatch General Hamid Gul's expression, to flounder. Hallucinatory reports of non-existent victories can only make the ultimate defeat more certain, more thoroughgoing, and swifter. But that very preconditioning predisposes believers to invade and assault.

That is what we must see, at last. 1948, 1965, the brutality unleashed on East Pakistan in 1971, the terrorism they caused in Punjab throughout the 1980s, the insurgency they spawned in Kashmir in the 1990s, Kargil now: is it right to be surprised each time?

And, other things apart, Pakistan is by now the hub of what can only be described as an "International Islamic Rapid Action Force": Jihadis from various Islamic countries, available for one Jihad after the other.

Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia, Kosovo, and, of course and always, Kashmir. "Taliban Minister for Communication, Naimatullah Khan Naumani, Minister Hajj-o-Auqaf, Maulana Abdul Wali, Special Force Chief, Maulvi Gul Zarin, I.G. Police, Maulana Anwar, addressing a function on the occasion of the 14th death anniversary of Maulana Irshad in Kabul (on 29 June) announced war against India alongside Kashmiri mujahideen," reported the Ausaf on 30 June. "They said that the help of Kashmiri and Pakistani mujahideen during Russian aggression was a debt on them, and it was now high time to clear this debt. They did not fear India, they said, nor any other power. They would fight alongside Kashmiri mujahideen for the freedom of Kashmir and their preparations in this regard are complete."

In a word, Kargil is but one step for the Pakistan Army and the terrorists Pakistan has spawned. We must see that defeating them in Kargil can be but one step for us.

India Connect
July 12, 1999

What Propels Them? What Blinds Them?

Arun Shourie
"India has massacred 60,000 Kashmiris, but the people of Kashmir will never rest till they have won freedom;" "India has deployed 700,000 soldiers in the Valley, and yet the Kashmiri mujahideen are inflicting heavy losses on them every day;" "How laughable it is that India has packed the Kargil sector with 40,000 troops, and just a handful of mujahidin are able to inflict humiliation upon humiliation on them;" Indian infrastructure has collapsed to such an extent that even those Indian casualties which were "lucky enough to be evacuated by air, had to wait for three days for a bed in Srinagar hospitals" -- such "facts" are repeated ad nauseum in Pakistani papers. Sixty thousand Kashmiris killed by India? Seven hundred thousand troops in Kashmir? Forty thousand troops in Kargil? Soldiers waiting for three days to get a hospital bed? We tend to dismiss such assertions as the usual lies -- friends who run one of our most conscientious news services about happenings in our neighbourhood, Public Opinion Trends, are so inured to these concoctions that they excise them from their reports! In fact, the concoctions deserve attention.

For one thing they are part of a world-view, they are part of an Ideology. Everything Pakistan does about Kashmir -- stoking terrorism, sending army regulars, spreading fabrications at every international gathering -- it pictures to itself as jihad, as a religious undertaking, indeed as an Allah-ordained duty. Concocting lies then becomes a device for discharging that duty. "War is stratagem," the Prophet has said, "War is deceit." [Sahih Muslim, Volume III, pp. 945, 990-91; Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume IV, pp. 166-67; Sunan Abu Dawud, Volume II, p. 728] Thus one may lie, one may kill the enemy while he is asleep, one may kill him by tricking him. [For instance, Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume IV, pp. 164-65, 167-68.] That is one problem: for the man or force weaned on jihad, the concoctions are an intrinsic part of the struggle he is waging, for him the fact that the war he is waging is Allah-ordained is a complete justification for cruelty, for lies and the rest; on our side, we don't just shut our eyes to the concoctions that result from it, we shut our eyes even more tightly to the Ideology of which they are but the result.

There is an immediate, practical result also. These sorts of "facts" and assertions are repeated so often that by now they have sunk into the subconscious of the average Pakistani. He actually believes that India has massacred sixty thousand Kashmiris, he actually believes that Kashmir is aflame, that Kashmiris are dying to merge into Pakistan, that it is just a matter of months and they will be able to do so. From this it is but a step to conclude that all that is necessary is to give one more push, to launch one more offensive, and the Kashmiris will rise, the place will go up in flames, India will be broken, the job will be done.

The believer, having internalised the concoction, just can't see why the world doesn't believe what he is putting out. As we have seen, Pakistani papers had themselves been reporting -- with evident self-congratulation -- that soldiers of the Pakistan Army have wrested posts from the Indian Army, that they have occupied a village in... As international opinion turned against Pakistan for that very reason, suddenly, as if a switch had been turned, references to the Pakistan Army ceased, and the victories were ascribed to the valiant mujahidin. Within days, references to these mythical mujahidin too were replaced -- now it was the "Kashmiri freedom fighters" who were inflicting the "humiliating defeats" on the Indian Army. One feature of course is that these switches come naturally -- as the war is a jihad in the cause of Allah, whichever thesis will serve The Great Cause is the one which must be pushed. The other is that the believer is just not able to see why the world does not swallow his fabrication.

As everything is a matter of belief in Allah, to question the "fact" which has been put out, to doubt a scenario -- the sheikhchili's scenario in which one favourable twist leads to another devastating turn -- becomes blasphemy, it becomes proof that one lacks faith, it is betrayal. Thus, not to believe that Indians have massacred sixty thousand Kashmiris, to doubt that Kashmir is on the brink of breaking away from India, not to believe that Kashmiris are pining to join Pakistan is to be unpatriotic, it is to lack faith in the fundamental notion that, as they all believe in Islam, all Muslims constitute one, seamless ummah. As a consequence, while not even the allies and props of Pakistan are buying its assertions today, self-delusion remains a duty!

The insurgency which Pakistan had orchestrated in Kashmir is dead: to cite a single index, while the number of tourists in the Valley had fallen to just 600 in 1996, this year they are running close to 250,000. Recruitment of locals has evaporated. But in the Pakistani press the insurgency is at the point of overturning the Indian State! A fundamental change has taken place in the area, writes a commentator in The News of 3 June. " ...Freedom fighters in Kashmir have attained self-sufficiency in weapons and have developed indigenous techniques of fighting which have become a way of life for them," he writes. "They fight under the cover of darkness, under the protection of mountains and in their own area which they know very well. They move in the area like wild goats and can reach anywhere without any difficulty. They return to their homes and hearths in the morning after accomplishing their task and join their family on the jobs which are needed to be done to earn livelihood." "Two weeks of fighting in the Kargil sector have established the following facts," the analyst continues. "That the indigenous insurrection movement in Kashmir is so strong and so well-armed that India can no longer hold it in check. It is also no longer possible for India to cross the international boundary and so the fighting will remain confined to Kashmir where India has always been the loser..."

"On the diplomatic front the Indians are playing on the back-foot," writes an analyst in The News of 4 June. "....The Kargil operation [of India], aimed at killing the Kashmir issue, will have helped to chisel away at the paralysed and hardened Kashmir position of the international players [an acknowledgment there!]. And the Kashmiris living under Indian control know that. Much like the Intifada which proved to be a potent stimulus for the Palestinians under Israeli occupation, India's Kargil fiasco will renew the Kashmiri resolve to fight on. Psychologically, the fact that a mere 400 - 600 mujahidin have bogged down the world's third largest army for a few months, irrespective of the final outcome [another acknowledgment there!], will be a major morale booster for the Kashmiris of Kashmir." The diplomatic isolation of Pakistan is for all to see, but the analyst remarks, "Nawaz Sharief meanwhile, ably supported on foreign policy issues by his Information Minister and Foreign Office, has pursued a near-faultless India policy. He has mixed peace offers with commitment to his country's defence and projected nuclear strength with gentleness. He is indeed South Asia's strong man of peace...." Remember, The News is the paper which was till recently the special target of the attentions of Nawaz Sharief and his Information Minister!

Belief makes one not just blind, it makes one reckless. The Taliban in the madrasas are of course fed Quranic stories of the "wars" of Badr etc. But they are not the only ones. The regular soldier and officer of the Pakistani Army has them drilled into him just as deep. And the lesson from these stories which is stuffed into him is not some particular stratagem to be followed in a siege or an assault, say; the lesson he internalises is that Allah shall always come to the aid of believers, that the side of Allah shall prevail. So all one has to do is leap.

One of the things that strikes one in reading books from Pakistan, the analyses in their newspapers, judgments of their courts is the singular absence of subtlety, of shades. The analyses are gross: the categories are basic, the conclusions predictable. This is not the result merely of mental habits or capacities. Ideology makes grossness inevitable. Everything is either black or white, everyone is either a co-religionist or one who will some day deceive one, every engagement is going to turn out one way -- capitalism is certain to collapse, it is on the verge of collapsing, Allah is bound to come to the assistance of believers, His cause is bound to prevail...

There is another consequence -- Pakistani newspapers are replete with instances of it. The belief having been drilled into him that he is doing Allah's Will -- or, as in Marxism-Leninism, of History -- the believer just cannot believe that the fault may lie with him. As the war he is waging has been ordained by Allah, the one who is opposing him must, by definition, be doing so for some perverse reason, for some ulterior purpose. Pakistanis have been genuinely surprised at Washington's statements disapproving their crossing the Line of Control. They just cannot see that Pakistan might be in the wrong. Their analysts hint that the USA is tilting towards India because it is drooling at the prospect of India's large market! Commenting on a statement of the American Secretary of State, The Nation of June 6 remarks ruefully, "India being the bigger market for trade does not mean that the world should give up its moral values on political issues"! By the 8th, the paper is hinting at some even deeper mystery! Repeating the new fabrications on the Line of Control, the paper remarks in an editorial, "If despite India's strange illogicality, the US State Department chooses to buy the Indian accusations and discounts the Pakistani version of the incident, there has to be more to it than a fair assessment of the situation"!

The Indians cannot be fighting Pakistani troops because they have occupied Indian territory. They are doing so for some other, unworthy, deplorable reasons. Vajpayee is facing an election, and launching a war against Pakistan has been his party's traditional way of gathering votes! "The BJP government has collapsed despite its 'popular' nuclear policy," observes Najam Sethi's The Friday Times of 4-10 June in its editorial, "but it still clings to the old political tricks to garner votes. It is also hostage to an aggressive policy in Kashmir. If it lets up, the Congress will pillory it by adopting a more hawkish stance. India's politicians have therefore hog-tied themselves by their devotion to this vote-getting gimmick..." "They [the Indian politicians] have made de-escalation more difficult all round," it continues -- Pakistani troops cross the Line of Control, our forces, by fighting back, make de-escalation difficult! "The Congress government committed the 'popular' folly of sending troops to Siachin. But no later government has dared to withdraw troops from it..." So long as Pakistani troops were occupying Siachin it was far-sightedness, it became folly when Indians occupied it! And daring would consist in vacating Siachin for the Pakistani Army, not in holding it!

In this analysis the BJP government is strong enough to push its "old tricks to garner votes". In other analyses, the reason is the opposite! Writing in The Nation of 28 May, an analyst tells his readers that an Interim, weak government is in office in Delhi, and that "hawks in the Indian military establishment are ruling the roost," and that this is what accounts for the scale of the response, the air-strikes and the rest!

But such objective factors -- "old political tricks to garner votes" and the like -- are never enough for a believer. He must detect something deep, some fundamental perversity in the one who is being so obdurate as not to fall at the believer's feet. Predictably, therefore, that staple of Pakistani papers has returned: "Hindu cunning"! And this time, just as predictably, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee is the epitome of it. "Mr Vajpayee has proved more two-faced than his predecessor," notes The Friday Times. "Vajpayee -- the man who showed statesmanship by describing his visit to Minar Pakistan as 'the defining moment in history' -- has only appeared at the bar of history as a clumsy pygmy," The News of 30 May tells its readers. "A short-sighted and pathetically parochial politician whose instincts for political survival are both reactionary and jingoistic. His passion for the cheap thrill coupled with the BJP's desire to regain a foothold in contemporary Indian politics have resulted in airstrikes on Kashmiri freedom fighters..."

It isn't just information from which Ideology insulates one. Ideology insulates one from experience just as much. When the believer succeeds, he is confirmed in the belief that the Ideology has driven into him -- that Allah is with him. But the Ideology has also driven another notion into him -- a notion that protects the Ideology from an adverse outcome, but by the same token disables the believer from learning. When they are defeated, the faithful have been taught to conclude, Allah is just testing their faith: Allah has put defeat in their path, they have been taught, to ascertain whether at such a time they lose faith in Allah's promise. Do they abandon their faith in Allah?, Allah wants to see. Do they blame Him rather than themselves?, Allah wants to make sure.

This Ideology-induced deafness is compounded in the case of Pakistan by the essentially authoritarian nature of both -- its society as well as polity. In free, democratic societies there is incessant self-examination. In authoritarian societies pasting blame on The Other becomes nature. The defeat in Vietnam caused an enormous amount of introspection in America: it led, among other things, to new strategic thinking, to new technologies. The rout in Bangladesh caused none in Pakistan. We see the same sequence today. Indian forces are rolling back the Pakistanis in Kargil. Internationally Pakistan stands isolated as never before. But Pakistani press is singing hosannas: the success of the mujahideen in holding the Indian Army at bay has inspired the freedom fighters of Kashmir, they sing to themselves, the uprising against India will now reach new heights; the Kashmir issue has been "irretrievably internationalized," they exult; the world now realizes that Kashmir can be the nuclear flash-point, they declare to their own satisfaction.

These features hold for Pakistanis in general, immersed as they are in, committed as they are to an Ideology, Islam. Each of them is compounded ten-fold in the case of the officer and soldier of the Pakistan Army. Stephen Cohen has noted how the "Sandhurst" and "American" generations of their officers have passed, how the officer-class consists increasingly of persons from the lower middle class and peasant stock. In the country at large these classes are among the ones which have been swept up most by Islamic rhetoric: and, what with the continuing collapse of educational institutions, at an accelerating pace. The success which the Army has achieved through the Taliban in Afghanistan also buttresses the notion that "the time of Islam has returned".

There are other factors too. The more intense Islamic rhetoric has become, the more cut-off from outside influences and opinions Pakistan has become, the Army even more so than other sections: almost the only thing which has kept an aperture open to the rest of the world is Pakistan's technological backwardness -- because of this backwardness, it has had to continue relying on other countries for technical upgradation, and hence some contrary ideas must still be sneaking in. But it is a tiny aperture: the countries from whom it secures the weapons are also ones whose life and ways its Ideology teaches it to hate and reject.

Not only is the Army, like other sections of Pakistani society, insulated from the world, it is insulated from those other sections within Pakistan too. The Army is overwhelmingly Punjabi. Within that one province, its recruits are overwhelmingly from a small clutch of five or six districts.

Furthermore, that the Army has such an over-weaning, predominant status in Pakistani society and governance impels a certain deafness: few dare question what it says and does, all the greater reason for the Army to conclude that what it is thinking is valid. And there is another twist. The Pakistani Army has great power, overwhelming power vis a vis other sections of society, but not esteem. That went -- first with the way it lost Pakistan in 1971, and then with the mess that the Army made of the country during the years it had absolute sway, the Zia years. Since then, while the success in Afghanistan has restored its esteem somewhat, this is counter-balanced with the reputation for corruption, the reputation for being involved in the drug-trade etc. which have got stuck to it.

To the faith of the believer, therefore, has been added a compulsion -- to prove itself again.

Each of these factors applies to organizations like the ISI twenty-fold. And to the terrorist organizations the ISI etc. have spawned -- a hundred-fold.

In a word, Kargil is but the latest of what Pakistan will continue to inflict on us. Defeating each such venture with demonstrative harshness is as much a part of the peace-process as pursuing every opening like Lahore.

The Afternoon Despatch & Courier
June 25, 1999

Kargil: Who and What is Responsible?

Arun Shourie

To attribute the occupation by Pakistanis of such extended stretches in Kargil to "an intelligence failure" is too facile. It is an evasion -- an evasion of the basic cause, an evasion of responsibility.

The basic reason why we are always taken by surprise lies in the notions of political correctness in which we have imprisoned discourse, and through that policy. Anyone who talks of the plans of Pakistan, its single-point programme to harm India, indeed anyone who talks about anything to do with our security is dubbed a war-monger. Agencies like RAW are routinely traduced. Hurling allegations at our security forces -- fabrications about human rights violations by them, and the rest -- is de rigueur. When persons who have put their lives on the line to save the country are encoiled in false cases -- as officers and men of the Punjab police have been encoiled -- not a soul raises a finger to support them.

You can do a little exercise. Look up papers or Parliamentary proceedings of the last year, and find out what happened each time Mr L K Advani drew attention to the continuing murderous activities of the ISI, and what they portended for the country, he was set upon -- in Parliament, in newspapers, in public meetings. War-monger, right-wing Hindu chauvinist, alarmist, deliberately embarrassing the Prime Minister who is trying to improve relations with our neighbour...

At my own minuscule level I have had this experience first-hand. I have had occasion to write about the way Pakistan perceives itself -- as "the not-India"; about the sway that fundamentalism has acquired there; about how this is drilled into the populace -- from quaidas to history books; about what organizations like the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba are openly proclaiming as their agenda -- to break India, to kill Hindu kafirs; about the vast resources and facilities which Pakistan's ruling establishment is channeling to them.

Each of those write-ups has been based entirely on published material, on material published in Pakistan. But each time I have written on these things, I have invariably been set upon. He is pursuing an anti-Islam agenda, he is just using Pakistan as a device to malign Muslims and Islam, he is out to create disharmony between communities...

Consider a recurring example. Today we are very exercised about occupation of some spots in Kargil by Pakistani forces and mercenaries. They are a few hundred -- assume a figure higher than anything anyone has mentioned as yet, say they are a thousand. The peaks where they have dug in are isolated, uninhabited. Recall now that on the estimates put together by the Home Ministry -- not now, but in 1992 -- over two crore Bangladeshis have made their way into India. As a result of this demographic invasion, large tracts of our country -- for instance, in Assam -- are such that the state police does not dare to even enter them. But the moment the matter is raised, the shout, "Anti-Bengali," "Anti-Muslim"...

This shutting of eyes is being made worse by the new ideology. Take out the newspapers of the last three weeks, the period during which the enemy has been killing our soldiers, during which, diplomatese apart, we have been invaded and have been at war. Total up the relative space that these papers devoted to the cricket World Cup and to the fighting in Kargil. Now, it is not the case that the country has suddenly become sports-minded during the last five years. It is just that corporations invested vast amounts to make use of the event to advertise their products. Papers have reported figures ranging up to eight hundred crores. These amounts having been invested, a hype about it was created.

One part is the obscenity of it, I can think of no other word: that our soldiers should be laying down their lives, and our papers should be whipping up lather about matches in England. The other thing is the effect such hype has on, literally, the ability of a country to prosecute a war. Ridding an area so remote, an area with terrain of the type Kargil has is not a one-day match. Every inch has to be fought for, with lives. The engagement is bound to take long. And, given the singular aim of a country like Pakistan, wresting the area back is not going to be the end of the matter by any means: ensuring that Pakistan will not get an opportunity to reoccupy the place will require protracted, arduous, meticulous work. A people who hear about Kargil for three-four minutes in the evening news, and then settle down to watch the day's match for four-five hours will never have the staying power that defence against a focused, indoctrinated enemy requires.

It is this atmosphere -- not just the failure of some one agency -- which paves the way for an enemy. Mental habits are fatal by themselves But so feeble has our State and our society become that we will not be able to put even crass self-interest away for the defence of our land, certainly not in any substantial way, certainly not for more than a moment. Take the failure to detect the occupation in Kargil itself. To prevent intrusion in that kind of area requires continuous physical presence. It requires sophisticated equipment. Maintaining a presence in Siachin costs the country Rs 3.5 crores a day. Armymen say that maintaining an equivalent presence in the entire Kargil area will cost three to four times that amount. That would amount to 10 to 12 crores a day. A person like me certainly believes that as such amounts are required, they must be provided, that the way we are placed leaves us no option. And the amounts can be found: half the total amount can be found by cutting just one boondoggle -- just eliminate the 2 crores which is placed at the disposal of every Member of Parliament to spend on "development projects" in his constituency. You will get sixteen hundred crores by doing just that little thing.

But here is an exercise. Find the MPs who will agree to abolish this largesse they have conferred on themselves. Or find a group which will accept a reduction in the subsidy which it has wrested from the State.

So, when we say there has been an "intelligence failure" we are stating an important fact, but we are also just using a phrase. By it we are evading the basic cause. We are diverting attention from our own responsibility in the matter.

I have already dealt with what happens when, even on such a matter, we deal with our ministers and governments as if they were the enemy who is to be trapped, and made a fool of. That itself is just the symptom -- it results from the basic mental fashion: not to be finding fault with those defending our country, not to be denouncing those who are speaking up for it is seen as being a primitive. The release of the Parvez Musharraf tapes holds another lesson. At least on occasion we should have faith in what our governments are saying. Repeatedly, the Prime Minister and the Defence Minister hinted that what they had said about who had known what in Pakistan was based on evidence. But pressmen and politicians were so intent on finding fault that they paid no attention. And now?

A sense of priorities, a little faith, and an even more elementary thing: a little work. Pakistan, like all countries in our neighbourhood, is important for our future. But how many of us take the trouble to read even the newspapers of Pakistan? I will give an example of what we would have learnt if we had been glancing at those papers, and make a forecast based on them. The first has a dual advantage: it shows what we would have been alerted to, and it also nails what Pakistan has been trying to cover up.

In reading what follows please bear in mind that while small, stray news items had been appearing earlier, it was only on the 27th of May, the day after air-strikes were launched, that Kargil became big news in our papers.

On 9 April, 1999, The Nation of Pakistan carried an interview with Zakiu Rehman Lakhvi, the Amir of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, one of the most rabid organizations which has been spawned by Pakistan's intelligence agencies. "We are extending our network inside India," he declared, "and have carried out various attacks on Indian installations successfully in Himachal Pradesh last year." An open, unambiguous claim. Also a revealing one, for it gives us a glimpse into the mentality of this kind: the "installations" they annihilated were poor workers constructing a road -- such is their concept of jihad in the cause of Allah! But I am on another allusion in the interview: the paper reported him as saying, "the task to hit specially the Indian artillery targeting Azad Kashmir's border population has been given."

On 7 May, apropos nothing, The Nation suddenly reported a huge attack from India, and claimed that it had been repulsed. It said that Indian forces had launched an unprovoked attack in the Shyok sector, and that "valiant Pakistani troops, displaying traditional courage and determination to defend every inch of the country's territory, thwarted the attack in which a large number of intruders were killed and several others injured. The Indian Army withdrew in disarray and even failed to retrieve the bodies of its soldiers..." India denied any such attack, saying the Pakistanis had fired at a routine forward patrol. But the patriotic reporting told the tale: a case was being prepared.

On 15 May, successes of the Pakistani Army were being claimed on the authority of "a senior Indian official"! "A senior Indian official," The Nation claimed in a dispatch datelined New Delhi, "confirmed that the Army Headquarters and the Ministry of Home Affairs received a message on May 13 evening that Pakistani troops had advanced in Kargil and wrested five posts in a 5 km radius from the township...." Could a Pakistani correspondent really have access of that kind? Would "a senior official" in New Delhi be sharing such information with him?

The News of 16th May was more specific. It reported -- ostensibly from Srinagar! --that there had been intense shelling and deployment by Indians, and said that these had come "amid reports that Pakistani troops on May 14th captured a village after bombarding the frontier town of Drass, some 160 km southwest of Srinagar." "Some 40 shells pounded snow-covered Drass and adjoining areas before Pakistani troops took control of the village located on the Line of Control."

By the 17th of May, several papers were proclaiming triumphs, and attributing them -- not to some ghostly mujahidin but -- to the Pakistani Army. "With shelling and firing between Pakistani and Indian troops on the LoC continuing for the last seven days," The Nation observed in its editorial, "our forces have captured another seven Indian posts in the Kargil sector..., captured a village after bombarding the frontier town of Drass..., and severely disrupted the Indian Army's logistics by taking control of important passes in the Kargil sector, choking off the Jammu-Kargil highway. The Indian troops in the Ladakh region too are facing pressure from the Pakistani forces as well as Kashmiri freedom fighters... It is gratifying that the state of preparedness and capability of our armed forces have prevented Indian adventurism on the LoC from making any gains..."

That very day, that is on 17 May, The Frontier Post reported, "Indian troops after having been defeated in the Kargil sector where the Pakistan Army seized five very important Indian posts with a radius of more than 28 km, have opened fire in almost all the sectors of the LoC... The gain of the Pakistan Army at Siachin has disrupted the communication system of the Indian troops..."

"War between India and Pakistan has started in the Kargil sector," proclaimed the Jasarat of 17 May. "According to Army sources, in this war some special units of the Pakistan Army are participating as they are full of martyrdom sentiments for the country..."

The paper from Lahore, Khabrain, reported on 18 May, "Twelve Indian Army posts have come under the control of Pakistani forces. The Indian Army movement on the Ladakh-Srinagar road has completely stopped..."

In its editorial the next day, the Nawai Waqt said, "Clashes are continuing between the Indian and Pakistani forces along the Line of Control in the Kargil sector..."

Reviewing developments over the preceding days, on 27 May, The Nation observed, " ...The concentration of Indian troops in the Kargil sector started taking place after they suffered heavy losses at the hands of the Pakistani troops..."

No circumlocution about who had scored the victories, is there? As countries began blaming Pakistan more and more, references to the Pakistan Army disappeared, and were replaced by acclaim for the so-called mujahideen!

Our Government had the Parvez Musharraf transcripts all the while. Their statements were in part based on these. Had our papers been keeping us posted about what was appearing in Pakistani papers we would have been quite up-to-date on our own.

Nor would we have needed any confidential briefings about what the objective of the Pakistan Army has been. In prescribing what should be done, General Hamid Gul, the pir and ideologue of fundamentalism within the Pakistan Army, revealed what the aim has been. Speaking to Nawai Waqt he said that Pakistani men who had occupied the heights in Kargil must at all costs be enabled to continue there for four or five months. The area would become totally inaccessible after that. They would then be able to choke off the Indian highway completely. India would have to vacate Siachin, and after that it would lose Ladakh...

And now for the forecast. Look around Tamil Nadu. It is at peace. There are no communal clashes. There are no caste clashes. But listen to the former head of the ISI, Lt. General (retd.) Javed Nasir. The Jang of 23 April reported his talk to the Jang Forum. "Gen. Javed also said that if the Kashmir issue goes on for three years more, then Tamils will also rise against India and the country would disintegrate within three years...." That is not an astrologer's forecast. It reveals one of the key areas that ISI is concentrating on. Surprised at the explosives that keep turning up in the state?

In a word, a sense of proportion, some faith in our agencies and authorities, and a little work -- don't wait to get hold of some secret document, read what is being published. Specially what is being proclaimed over loudspeakers by the opponent.

Intelligence is too important to be left to intelligence agencies.

India Connect
June 14, 1999