India’s Nuclear Gamble: Underlying Motivations And The Options For Future

India’s nuclear explosions on 11th May, 1998, were, as is universally agreed, neither triggered by a security threat, nor were they indispensably needed to practically test India’s progress in its on-going nuclear programme. They were also not a declaration of India having the nuclear capability; the earlier Pokhran blasts in 1974 had demonstrated that. If the purpose was to inaugurate a new nuclear policy, BJP had talked about during elections, that too could have been done by issuing an official statement to that effect. Taking the high-profile route of staging a nuclear exhibition at Pokhran was, however, an exercise motivated by a desire on part of BJP, to achieve certain vital social-political objectives. In this paper we discuss these objectives in detail, after which we make a critical evaluation of whether or not BJP has succeeded in achieving these. We then turn to an analytical appraisal of the situation as it obtains now in the South Asian sub-continent, and in the light of this we make a forward-looking attempt and explore the options, if any. As to the achievement of desired objectives, we believe, BJP has a mixed bag of failure and success, but its failures decisively outweigh its successes.Regarding the post-blasts situation, we hold that an extremely volatile situation exists in the sub-continent now, and we argue that there are no simple options. Pakistan bomb might have been the only possible, and may be the most suitable option in the given situation, but it definitely does not solve the problem created by Indian blasts. Although Pak blasts are not our direct concern here; we are only indirectly concerned with them in relation to the India’s, yet it may be said in the passing that Pak blasts in their own right have achieved some vital objectives, but they are not by themselves an effective option when it comes to secure the objective of peace and stability in South Asia. We reject the theory that since the bombs on two sides have created a balance of terror, it will automatically lead to stabilise the situation in the sub-continent.

1) Motivations Underlying India’s Blasts: Four main motivating considerations seem to have been behind BJP’s decision to opt for Pokhran explosions. These are:

a) Party Consolidation: One of the main considerations on part of BJP behind its decision of blasts was to consolidate its existing support base, and extend it further. The noteworthy points in this regard are:

• In historical terms BJP is gradually occupying the political space vacated by Congress. Like the latter, it wants to be seen as a party of stability and governance. In fact, these have been the planks on which BJP came to power recently. This also has to be borne in mind, that stability has come to mean much more in recent times for India’s big business, dependent as it has become on foreign capital. It may be for this reason that although BJP has always represented their interest, during the recent elections the support of big business to it was overwhelming and visible. As an instance one may note, that the special supplement carried by all the major Indian newspapers on 25th December, 1997 to greet AB Vajpyee on his 74th birthday, was financed by big business houses. With all the high expectations of its core constituency, BJP-led coalition was day by day emerging, thanks to its coalition partners, particularly Ms Jayalalitha of the Tamil party AIADMK, the weakest and the most unstable political formation, ever to have ruled at the centre. To undo this image, BJP had to take some sensational step, so that it can be seen as a government that works, decides, takes initiatives and lays down the agenda for its opposition.
• Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh(RSS) is the real mind, and BJP the executive arm governing India. This is very much according to RSS ideology, as its leader MS Golwalkar laid down in his Bunch Of Thoughts(p25) “Brahmin is the Head, King the Hands, Vaishya the Thighs, and Shudra the Feet.”The decision to explode nuclear devices was taken by RSS. As reported by Praful Bidwai(Times of India 17th May 1998), the RSS, according to its general secretary Mr Sudarshan, had thought of exploding the nuclear device even during the 13-day tenure of BJP rule in 1996.
• BJP thrives on a belligerent, a jingoistic ‘national’ mood, created by raising emotional issues. Instead of taking up Temple issue, where the opposition is substantial, this time, it chose to take up such an emotional issue where it thought the opposition to be minimal. It knew, its nuclear explosions will be greeted by a consensus. Initially it will be around explosions, but subsequently that temporary consensus will be converted by the BJP’s huge organisational machinery into a relatively permanent one — around BJP and its worldview.

b) Nation-building: Another important objective—-wider than the earlier one—-was what can be called ‘nation-building’. We have to do some explaining first, as to what is meant by ‘nation-building’ here, only after that one can appreciate its being one of the main motivating considerations behind BJP’s decision of nuclear explosions. However, let us note at the outset, that (a) and (b) are closely interlocked with each other. BJP wanted to build-up a pan Indian nation (now fragmented into communities), with itself attempting to assume an umbrella character by growing from a mere Hindu party into an Indian national party. Chronologically, it follows the Ayodhya mission of early nineties, which aimed at explicitly defining the cultural content of Indian nationalism, making Ayodhya and the Ram temple the civilizational focus of Indian nation-state, created in 1947. Therefore, before assuming the mantle of a national party, Indian nation and nationalism have already been given an explicit and elaborate definition. India is and has been a land of diverse cultures and communities. A monolithic Indian nation, or Hindu community have never before existed in real terms nor do they now. These are politically motivated concepts that can be traced to recent political history of Indian sub-continent. Professor Rommila Thapar, Emiritus Professor of History at the Jawahar Lal Nehru University, New Delhi, writes: “The need for postulating a Hindu community became a requirement for political mobilisation in the nineteenth century, when representation by a religious community became a key to power and where such representation gave access to economic resources. …Since it was easy to recognise other communities on the basis of religion, such as Muslims and Christians, an effort was made to consolidate a parallel Hindu community. This involved a change from earlier segmented identities to one which encompassed caste and region and identified itself by religion which had to be refashioned so as to provide the ideology which would bind the group”(Journal Of Asian Studies 23:2,1989) The conceptualization was done in the last century, and in this century, practically a homogenous ‘nation’ was carved out by MK Gandhi. Since society follows its own natural logic, as does the physical world, imposing a single nation-hood to a multi-nation conflict-ridden society as that of India’s, obviously did not work. The Gandhian patchwork somehow lasted only as long as Gandhi’s legacy the Indian National Congress did. Congress gave stable governments to India, thus creating an illusion that a well-knit nation was inhabiting the land of India. With the demise of congress, the age-old Indian reality has once again surfaced. India is undergoing a tremendous social tumult of far reaching political implications. The fact of Coalition governments at the Centre is only the tip of iceberg, and hence visible to everyone. The deeper social reality is far more exciting, and is getting a due attention from academics and social scientists world over. They are bringing up various dimensions and areas of this social change. To be brief, we need to note four points in this connection:

1. There is an immense social awakening taking place among the ‘low-caste’ groups, particularly Dalits. Politically consequential, this change is very serious, embedded as it is in the very structure of society.
2. There is a visible growth of Community Identities. Politically it is reflected by a steady growth of regional parties and an increase in their share of popular vote. In 1980 ‘national parties’ together got 85% of the popular vote; in 1996 it came down to 69%, and in 1998 it went further down to 67.98%. Conversely, regional parties improved their share of vote from a mere 8% in 1980 to 21% in 1996, and in 1998 the figure went up to 29.64%(this includes the share of ‘Registered Unrecognised’ parties as well). Prominent Indian political scientists have taken serious note of the fact that the question of identity has come to occupy the forefront of Indian politics. Professor CP Bhambri, for example, has noted the “process of growing social cleavage and vivisection around the question of identities” , and the fact that political parties are becoming the representatives of social groups.(Poineer, New Delhi, 7June, 1996).
3. Partly as a consequence of (i) and (ii), and partly as part of the overall social tumult, Indian politics is increasingly becoming violent. This is because the recently empowered social groups, like Other backward Classes(OBC’s), i.e. deprived caste groups, Dalits etc.etc. are determined to dislodgethe traditionally ruling castes, and to take hold of the levers of power, and , as analysts say, they are in a sort of hurry as if to jump the queue to achieve their goals. India’s elections speak of its live democracy, but they also camaflouge the fact that this democratic exercise is conducted under the shadow of huge armed force, far more than the normal police usually employed elsewhere in the world to ensure law and order. Leaving aside the places where the legitimacy of Indian state is challenged, like for example, the North East, heavy deployment of armed personnel is made in states like UP and Bihar, where no such problem exists, and every state government demands more and more central troops from the centre because the local police and administration acts in the interest of one caste group or the other. Professor CP Bhambri in an article in The Hindustan Times(March7, 1998), has termed this situation as an “alarming political development”.
4. The increasing growth of community identities means the fragmentation of Indian ‘nation’, and the force to push this process further, is in-built in the situation. As Professor Francis R Frankel, Director Centre Of advanced study On India, University of Pennsylvania, says, the leaders of regional(for that matter all ‘sub-national’ forces) parties “perceive the politics of fragmentation as the best way to leverage their own control over small vote banks into positions of autonomous power at the state and at the national level”(Seminar 459, November1997).

The situation described very briefly in (i)-(iv) above, has been a source of extreme discomfort to India’s established ruling e lites. BJP and Congress, two main parties representing the entrenched Brahmin power, have been looking at these developments with grave concern. It is, after all, these Brahmin elites, who in the last century conceptualized the notion ‘India’, and a homogeneous ‘nation’, co-terminus with the physical boundaries of the then British India. Leaving aside the Muslim defiance, Gandhi could manage to carve out a huge single ‘nation’ at the expense of the political and cultural autonomy of so many distinct communities inhabiting India. In the powerful, rather revengeful emergence of community identities, Brahmin elites are seeing the reversal of the whole process. What was done is being undone. It is in this context that BJP’s exercise of nation building has to be seen. It was not just nuclear testing, as was, for example, in China and France last year; the so-called scientific exercise was turned into full-fledged popular movement. In a polity where issues and concerns were increasingly becoming localised, BJP came up with something ‘national’, something common which most of India’s population could identify itself with. To carve out a nation once again from the fragmented pieces, BJP combined all the essential ingredients that had gone into the formation of national movement led by Gandhi, and as a result of which a ‘nation’ was carved out with Gandhi as its father. Now BJP is repeating the exercise with the same objectives in mind. Its main objective is to emerge as a nationally hegemonic power. Gandhi ‘struggled’, defied imperialism to ‘secure the soul of a wounded civilization’, to establish the golden age of ‘Ram Rajya’ which was disrupted by Muslims(these are integral ingredients of Indian nationalism); so does BJP now. Standing up against the US sanctions, defying imperialism, it is leading a ‘struggle’ for the glory of a ‘great nation’ that stands wounded in Kashmir and elsewhere by the Muslim Pakistan,. Like the earlier one, the current ‘struggle’ although led by Hindus,and for the glory of Bharat Mata, includes all the ‘sons of soil’: If Abul Kalam Azad held high position in the earlier struggle, so is Dr. Abdul Kalam holding now.

c) Power Ambition: After the collapse of the Soviet-Union, and the cosequent irrelevance of Non-aligned Movement, India has been facing an identity crisis in international forums. It wants to emerge as a global power, but its regional preoccupations keep it confined to the sub-continent. As analysts point out, compared to China, India has cultivated very little regional good will, be it vis-à-vis Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, or any other state in the region. With such a poor regional standing, India’s aspirations for a wider/global role remain unfulfilled. Now India thought, by becoming a Nuclear Weapon State, it may achieve the great power status, and also, it may take on the ‘third-world-leadership’ role on such issues as Nuclear disarmament and challenging the exclusive right of Nuclear Club states to have Nuclear weapons.

d) Imposing Military Solution: Pokhran blasts, and the subsequent utterances by such responsible BJP leaders as LK Advani, left nobody in doubt that India was planning a military solution of Kashmir.

2) What did BJP Achieve?

(i) As regards its party consolidation and expansion, BJP seems to have made some gains. Aijaz Ahmad, Senior Fellow at the Centre for Contemporary studies, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, highlights the domestic fall out of these explosions, and referring to BJP’s Ayodhya campaign, Ahmad says: “If that spectacle paved the way for the BJP to emerge as an All-India party and eventually the ruling party, these nuclear fireworks help it cut across the Hindu/secular divide and reach out to claim the mantle of Indian nationalism as such. This will unite very broad sections of the Indian middle classes-and not only the middle classes-whatever the immediate behaviour of stock market might be…. This effect is not going to wear off in days, or weeks, or months. Only a sustained counter-offensive can prevent it from still being there 20 years from now.”(Frontline May23,1998).

(ii) As far as nation building is concerned, success in this domain will crucially depend upon BJP’s position as a party. If BJP grows stronger, it may afford to give concessions and accommodate, to a manageable level, the aspirations of rising social forces, in which case it may be able to contain and manage the conflict situation in India. However, things are not that rosy. We need to note following points

• The initial euphoria and a feeling of pride that was generated soon after the blasts, could not survive Pakistan’s counter blast. The rejoicing folks had a feeling of futility: Before blasts we(India &Pakistan) were equal, after blasts we are again equal, what has been gained from the exercise, they asked. In political and strategic communities, the feeling was, however, not just of futility, but of regret: Nuclear bomb has equalised two unequals.The unity between broad sections of Indian middle classes, that Aijaz Ahmad talks about above, cannot survive a feeling of demoralisation, generated after Pak blasts.
• BJP’s militarist and extremist approach to social and political issues, as demonstrated by its Pokhran decision also, is most ill suited to the nation-building exercise in the context of Indian situation. India presents a unique conflict situation, as such it is most suited to moderation. Gandhi did not believe in non-violence( it is he who authorised armed aggression on Kashmir), but it was his considered approach because of its success chances, and he did succeed, albeit temporarily, in neutralizing conflict.
• Although, immediately after Pokhran blasts, it looked, as if BJP had provided a strong stimulus uniting all the communities and sections of India, yet it was clear to the keen India-watchers even then, and is more so now, that fissures in Indian ‘nation’ are too deep and real to be cemented by such emotional stimuli. The process of various communities asserting their distinct identity, demanding their rights, and determinedly trying to change their historical situation, is simply irreversible.

(iii) As regards the big power ambition, and that of third world leadership, India is facing a stunning failure. Never before did India face such an international isolation as it is facing now. US admonitions, genuine or otherwise, are not important; what is immensely important, is the attitude of ‘developing’ countries. None of them including India’s close neighbours, Iran, Bangladesh and Nepal, who sent top visiting missions to India after blasts, supported India’s high moral claims, such as, India battling single-handedly to challenge the unequal global nuclear order. Pakistan was also wise enough not to invoke this logic as a reason for its nuclear test. It may be recalled, that at the CTBT debate also, India’s moral pretensions had not carried much conviction with the world community. But as of now, India’s moral sermonizing has completely backfired: its lustful power ambition and hypocricy, both, stand exposed. What Praful Bidwai has very succinctly remarked, seems to have been the universal understanding world over: “It just won’t do to pretend that India is the Boy on the Burning Deck single-handedly battling the unequal global nuclear order. India has not challenged that discriminatory order; it merely wants to join it — on the discriminators’ side”.( Times of India, 19 June,1998) .

(iv) India has also failed to impose a military solution of Kashmir on Pakistan. This is not to say, that the dangers of a devastating war are over; there is an extremely volatile situation now existing, as we will discuss later. But what needs to be noted here is that if India had sought, and it did seek, as an objective behind blasts, to terrify Pakistan and coerce it into some shameful compromise and surrender of its genuine claims, it has miserably failed on that count.

3) An Appraisal of the Existing Situation Because of the so many unsettled issues, there has been all along a tense politico-military atmosphere in the Indian subcontinent not to talk of three actual wars, fought between India and Pakistan. Now, the possession of nuclear bombs, both by India and Pakistan has created a definite possibility of , what in the strategic jargon is called ‘Mutually Assured Destruction'(MAD). Mad, it is said, creates a deterrence, thus preventing the concerned parties from attacking each other. Since most of the strategic doctrines, including MAD, were developed in the particular geo-strategic context of ‘Cold War’, they need not have the same universal application with the same results everywhere. In case of India and Pakistan, the balance of terror that has been created, is not going to bring peace and stability. There are two reasons for it. one, geo-strategic; the other, historical-political. The latter is very important, as far as the true understanding of situation is concerned, and we will discuss it fully. This is also needed, because, unfortunately it is almost missing from the public debate on the subject. But first turning to the former, it is said that Pakistan and India, unlike US and the former Soviet Union, are situated very close to each other, sharing a long common border. The flight time of missiles, loaded with a nuclear warhead, is so meager, that there is no possibility of prevention, only that of retaliation. In case of ‘Cold War’, however, at no point ‘was lagtime less than 30 minutes. There were, besides, scores of early-warning systems, hot lines, permissive active links, crisis defusing devices. There are none between India and Pakistan’.(Praful Bidwai ‘ A Deadly Deterrence’ The Times of India, 19th June 1998). Even a ‘No First Strike’ agreement between India and Pakistan cannot solve the problem because, as Col. Gouhar Ayub, the Pakistan Foreign Minister said, it will be difficult to determine who struck first. Now coming to historical-political reason, it turns out that a unique situation exists in the South Asian sub-continent, which makes such doctrines as peace through deterrence, inapplicable here, thus giving rise to an extremely volatile situation. This uniqueness of situation must be taken a serious note of. Some political analysts have noted it, but their identification of it is mainly with reference to the symptoms, rather than basic causes. For they identify uniqueness in such things as: India and Pakistan going to three wars, not having been able to resolve a single dispute, Kashmir remaining there for fifty years, so on and so forth. We need to, however, understand the uniqueness of Indo-Pak situation in terms of causes. This we will do by looking at the situation in its historical context, and arrive at certain conclusions. However, to set the tone of discussion here, let us state the conclusions right at the outset, and then proceed to the discussion:

• India’s ruling elites(BJP and non-BJP) have never willingly accepted the very existence of Pakistan, and hence;
• Dismantling of Pakistan continues to be on the political agenda of Indian state, and;
• Nuclear parity does not make a difference to this situation, if it does not aggravate it further, because;
• This attitude towards Pakistan is based, not on strategic logic, butstems from a fanatic mind-set of the ruling elites, and, therefore;
• No simple options exist to really change this situation, and;
• One has to look beyond simple solutions, and find out effective options, howsoever, complex or long-term they may be.
• One has to understand the nature and historical origin of the present day Indian ruling elites, in order to have a proper understanding of the post-British South Asian political reality. By present day ruling elites, we mean India’s power establishment, dominated by ‘Upper’ castes, mostly by Brahmins. In this class, we do not include the new social forces, who have been getting mobilised and empowered in the recent years and becoming autonomous power entities (not dependent on the traditional power establishment). Earlier in this paper, we have mentioned about this phenomenon, but this has to be noted that this is still a process, though highly consequential and meaningful, and the traditional power continues to be entrenched in all walks of life—politics, media, bureaucracy, industry, art and literature etc.etc. The historical origin of present day Indian ruling elites can be traced back to the arrival, establishment and subsequent consolidation of the British in the Indian sub-continent. It was at this point in history that, as Girilal Jain, the late Chief Editor of The Times of India, says ‘a fundamental shift’ took place in the power balance between Muslims and non-Muslims. Muslims ruled the land; their power was entrenched, and since the British displaced them, breaking Muslim power became their prime task. It is for this reason that the consolidation of the British Empire, took place at the expense of Muslim power, a fact admitted by even official Indian historians like MJ Akbar. At the outset there was no Hindu communityas such, those whom we call Hindus now, were identified by there caste, region, language, occupation etc.etc. It was the relatively powerful class of Brahmins(commonly referred to as Neo-Hindus in History books), who after taking to Western education and culture, developed hegemonic ambitions, and themselves being a small minority, went on conceptualizing the notion of a pan-Indian Hindu Community, and a uniform Indian nation. Nationalist movements, in general, originate from educated, middle class, and then they seek to, rather, impose their own vision of ‘nation’—its past and future on the general people (the natural sentiment in general people is that of patriotism—a love-sentiment—not of nationalism—a basically hate-sentiment. The latter exploits the former for its own–class/sectarian– ends, making it exclusionist). Indian Nationalist movement also originated from a few, being no different from other such movements in this respect. But what sets the Indian movement apart, is the historical fact that “Nationalism as political movement, national identity, and nationalist ideology, as Professor Achin Vanaik, in his book ‘The Painful Transition: Bourgeois Democracy in India'(London:Verso.1990), writes, did not develop in the wake of religious decline. A Hindu religious ‘renaissance’ was central to the emergence of all three”. This is contrary to what happened in the cradle of nationalism, Europe: here the dawn of nationalism followed the dusk of religious modes of thought. In the course of a thorough process of secularization, when the religious authority declined, not only at the political level, but at the social and family levels as well, the Nation-state emerged as an independent secular centre of loyalty for the people. In India, things moved differently. Here a religious-civilizational tradition (also referred to as neo-Hindu tradition), to act as an ideology binding different communities with segmental identities, into a single ‘Hindu’ community, was constructed first, and in this, as Professor Romilla Thapar argues( see Achin Vanaik’s book cited above), Brahmanical beliefs and rituals came to constitute the core of the tradition; from this tradition derived the Indian Nationalist ideology, which because of its source of inspiration, sought to recreate a future in the image of a ‘golden Hindu past'(in Gandhi’s words ‘Golden age of Ramarajya’) that had existed in ancient times, but was disrupted by Muslims. From the Nationalist ideology sprang the political movement led by Gandhi.
• Two vital points follow from the above discussion:

First, Muslims are the ‘Other’ in the Indian Nationalist thought, because in the historical narrative that has gone into the genesis of Nationalist ideology-the definitions of ‘nation’ and national identity, Muslims are regarded as the outsiders who in the first place enslaved the ‘nation’, and from whom the real independence had to be achieved. This is a fact, whatever the reasons. Hardly there is a disagreement on this in the academic community. Some say, for example, Professor Barbara Metcalf, Professor of History at the University of California, that It is the British who did it: they projected themselves as good, enlightened rulers as compared to their predecessors, the Muslim rulers, shown to be oppressive and intolerant. Thus “Muslims served as a foil against which the British defined themselves”(Metcalf “Presidential Address: Too Little Too Much: Reflections on Muslims in the History of India” Journal Of Asian studies 54:4, Nov 1995). Others blame Orientalists, as MJ Akbar says ” It was the western scholar who helped revive, through his research, memories of a golden past…Muslims became the fashionable whipping boys as the evil which had interfered with the evolution of the golden Hindu age”( see Akbar’s Nehru-The Making Of India, p37). But whatever the reasons, whosoever projected Muslims as the ‘demonized Other’, is now more of academic importance; what is really important and has tremendous practical implications is that, this historical ‘perception’ fitted well in the Indian Nationalist thought, and continues to be an essential element of it.

Second, Indian nationalism is not merely an instance of a wider phenomenon of nationalism, it is basically a typical case of nation-worship. As such fanaticism and irrationalism are its inherent characteristics. This is an important truth about the evolution of the political entity, India, as it exists now, and once this is grasped, one can understand why the authors of Nationalist ideology, conceived of the geographical entity—India(the whole British India) in terms of ‘Mother goddess’, and why they demanded of the innocent people to die for the goddess. Vivekanand, one of the architects of the Neo-Hindu tradition, while addressing a public gathering in Lahore in 1897 said: “for the next fifty years that alone should be our keynote, our mother India. Let all other vain gods vanish for the time from our minds. This is the only God”. Almost one hundred years later, in 1993, the then President of India, Dr Shankar Dayal Sharma, expressed the same sentiment when he asked the people in western Indian city of Pune ‘to worship India as a God’. He also reminded the people of a similar appeal made by Vivekanada, a hundred years before.

A nationalist mind-set sees the world divided between ‘we’ and ‘they’. ‘We’ seeks to redeem its lost honour and glory by subduing ‘they’. As noted above, in the Indian Nationalist thought, ‘we’ referred to the territorial Indian ‘nation’, theoretically homogenised in the mould of neo-Hindu tradition, whereas ‘they’, meant mainly the Muslims. Nowhere is this truth so clearly borne out than by the attitude of Indian National movement led by Gandhi i.e. the Congress, towards the question of Muslims in the sub-continent. Muslims were the largest single community in India, and on the face of it, it sounds completely illogical, why there should have been so bitter a dispute about Muslims demanding their own sovereign state. India, as we said in the beginning, was a vast sub-continent of so many diverse communities, all of whom were perfectly entitled to think of their post-colonial future. Globally also, empires were giving way to sovereign nation-states. Indian communities, not to talk of the Muslim community, which had a global character, had every right to plan their future according their culture, values, traditions and socio-economic condition. They had a more natural case for thinking on independent lines, because never in history had they lived with each other; all of them had lived individually under kings and emperors, under a politically unified centre or otherwise. As Allama Iqbal had rightly pointed out in his 1930 Allahabad address, these communities were “intensely jealous” of their collective existence. A true democratic reasoning would dictate that these communities should have conceded due space to each other, and then engaged in constructive cooperation in the overall pursuit of freedom from British rule. That this did not actually happen, suggests an underlying reason behind it: Indian Nationalist ideology, of which the Congress was a political offshoot, did not recognise the existence of any distinct communities in India, so the question of sovereign community rights did not arise. For Muslims the implications of this were far more serious: as a distinct religio-political community, Muslims were not a part of ‘we’ that constituted the ‘nation’ seeking freedom through the ‘national’ movement, the Congress; they were the’other’. To be viewed otherwise, that is, a part of ‘we’, Muslims had not to be a distinct community, just a part of the homogenous Indian/Hindu (the distinction is irrelevant, because it means in any case territorial) ‘nation’. If in the early phase of ‘national’ resurgence, when Muslims came to be identified as the real evil, and hence the ‘other’, the Calcutta press used to refer to Muslims as ‘yavana jati’ meaning barbarians, it was Gandhi who called Muslims as brothers, but (and the single ‘but’ tells the whole story) only after persistently denying them their distinct community identity. The message was simple: Muslims are not barbarians, but then they don’t have to be Muslims. Jinnah-Gandhi correspondence brings out very clearly Gandhi’s rigidity on not recognizing the distinct identity of Muslims. Even after very detailed exchanges with the Leader of the Muslim League, Quaidi-Azam MA Jinnah, when Gandhi agrees to the details of the Lahore Resolution, he remains adamant on his opposition to the fundamental principle underlying the resolution i.e. Muslims constituting a separate nation. It is amidst this ideological tussle, that India and Pakistan emerged as two states in 1947. The issues that had so far become a bone of contention between Congress and the Muslim League, did not settle here; just what happened, was, that Indian National movement converted itself into Indian National state, and the distinct identity of Muslims became more pronounced and institutionalised in the form of Pakistan. At this juncture one would expect either of the two scenarios to develop: Now that Pakistan was a reality , the Indian national movement would, taking a pragmatic approach , reconcile to the fact as well as the creed of Pakistan as a sovereign geo-political entity, or else, the ideological battle would continue, now onwards with state-power not just party-power, as was the case earlier, at its back. None of the two materialized. Instead, what followed, was a one-sided onslaught. India continued, whereas, the Pakistan side gave up the battle, thinking, perhaps, their achievement of Pakistan, had automatically clinched all the contentious issues, and their neighbour(India) was now convinced of their genuine case. This, however, was not true. Indian National state was equally vehement, if not more, in its opposition to a distinct political existence of Muslims in the what they thought as the territorial jurisdiction of their Mother Goddess, India, and this was quite manifest. Its first evidence was India’s negative characterization of Pakistan’s emergence: instead of positively looking at it as the emergence of a new state resulting from the post-colonial reorganisation of the Indian sub-continent, it treated it as severance and secession of a small portion from the parent entity resulting into ‘Partition of the Country’, the most pathetic phrase in Indian political vocabulary. As its natural implication, Indian leaders counted days for the ‘ceded’ part to return in repentance. Evidences to this effect have been documented by various scholars. They have talked of the various economic pressures, Indian leaders put on the new born state, to force it to return.(see, for example, Kalim Siddiqui ‘Conflict, Crisis and War in Pakistan’, London:Macmillan, 1972;Khalid Bin Sayeed ‘Pakistan the Formative Phase’, London:OUP 1968). With this view of Pakistan—a case of secession–, the new Indian state could maintain it opposition to ‘Two-Nation Theory’, making it an official policy now. If in the phase of National movement, the leadership had only words, ideas, and manipulative methods available to it, after the new state it could make use of full state power to not only oppose but practically defeat the ‘Two-Nation Theory’. Invading Kashmir on 27th October, 1947, and forcibly annexing it was meant to put a question mark on the foundational principle of Pakistan. What happened in latter days only confirmed India’s fanatic nationalist beliefs, and, therefore, its unwillingness to accept the reality of Pakistan. India’s pivotal role in the birth of Bangladesh was meant to celebrate the demise of Two-Nation theory. Mrs Indra Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India, openly declared ‘today we have invalidated the Two-Nation theory’. Mr AB Vajpayee, then a member of Parliament and now India’s Prime Minister, stood up in the parliament, and in a jubilant mood proceeded towards Mrs Gandhi, as if to hug her, and praising her for the extra-ordinary courage called her ‘Durga’, the name of eight armed Hindu Goddess. When we talk of India’s opposition to ‘Two-Nation Theory’, we are not talking about a scholarly disagreement on a principle or theory; the significance of India’s opposition to it does not lie there. Where it precisely lies, is in its practical meaning: What did opposing ‘Two-Nation theory’ amount to, in practical terms? In practical terms it meant challenging the basis of Pakistan, even after it had come into being. And when Mrs Gandhi made the statement in 1971, it meant that India not only opposed it, but worked for almost 25 long years to defeat it. We already heard Vajpyee, let us go to the other end of spectrum now. Here it is Mr Pran Chopra, known as a liberal-secular intellectual, as opposed to Vajpyee of BJP. On the demise of East Pakistan he had to say this “In a very real sense the liberation of Bangladesh has been a second liberation for India. It carries a step further the independence she won 25 years ago.” (Pran Chopra ‘India’s Second Liberation’ Vikas.1973). This means that the ‘Mother Goddess’ had to be liberated, not essentially from the British rule, but from Islam, the Muslim political power—ghost or reality of it. A part of the territory, East Bengal, had been ‘lost’ to Islam on the basis of Muslim nationhood, now it has been reclaimed, and in the process of reclamation it is the second step, first one being that of 1947. Similar was the message from Babri mosque demolition: liberating the ‘Mother Goddess’, India from the ghost of Muslim political power, because the ‘nation’ can redeem honour and glory, only by comprehensively liberating itself from its ‘Other’. So far, We looked at the genesis of Indian Nationalist ideology, and how the Hindu resurgence preceded and inspired it. We looked at the Indian National movement, and how it dealt with the Muslim political agenda. We looked at the initial phases of the Indian National state, and what it did to force Pakistan to revert back. We looked at the latter stages, and how Mrs Gandhi engaged in a full-fledged war, in order to defeat ‘Two-Nation Theory’. Then we looked at the historic destruction of the Babri Mosque, and how it defined once again, in the most explicit terms, the place of Islam and Muslims for the Indian state. What is the conclusion now, we may ask? It is:

Conclusion-1: Indian state cannot afford to tolerate sovereign political presence of Muslims in the region, or for that matter, of any other community lumped together, in the Indian Nationalist thought, as part of the Indian ‘Nation’. This is because of its official policy of opposing ‘Two-Nation Theory’.

The Indian ambitions on one side, on the other, however, is the world of facts and realities. Indian National movement opposed, but Pakistan emerged in 1947. India could annex Kashmir, even create political proxies there, but it fails to control Kashmir. The people of Kashmir could never become a part of Indian ‘Nation’, as was intended, but they always considered themselves to be a part of the wider fraternity, the Muslim Ummah (Community). East Pakistan could be converted to Bangladesh, but the Muslim loyalties of people in Bangladesh remain intact, as borne out, among other things, by Taslima Nasreen episode: Islamic bonds, linking Bangladeshi Muslims to Quran, occupy a far higher place than mere territorial-national ones, linking them to their fellow Bangladeshi, Tasleema Nasreen. Even the state of Bangladesh has not become its subservient ally, as was envisaged by India in the first place. On the vital Kashmir question, Bangladesh refused to toe Indian line. In fact, India, On so many occasions, officially accused Bangladeshi intelligence agencies of ‘active collaboration with their Pakistani counterparts’in supporting the on-going armed movement in Kashmir, and also harbouring important figures from North-East seeking freedom from India. Sought to be forced into desperate submission, particularly after the Babri mosque demolition and the subsequent India-wide riots, Indian Muslims are refusing to budge, and are finding new ways and methods to assert their distinct community identity and political existence. As mentioned at the beginning, because of various other communities asserting their distinct identities, the Neo-Hindu concept of the ‘homogenous Indian Nation’ stands shattered. The above world of realities weighed against Conclusion-1, brings out one more important conclusion:

Conclusion-2: In its fanatic bid to deny an autonomous space to other political entities, and establish national hegemony in the region, Indian state has been engaged in a relentless, but unsuccessful war, though, occasionally, wining some battles here and there.

This later conclusion enables us to identify yet another important element, namely desperation-desperation on part of India’s present ruling elites of not having achieved any of the desired goals, particularly that of ‘National’ hegemony through the ‘National’ state. The feeling of desperation gets further exacerbated when, as outside political watchers realize so do the ruling elites themselves, that, because of the objective factors, success is moving farther from them with each passing day. But equally on the other hand, the elites are determined to move on. These are the two facets of the present Indian situation, and BJP’s nuclear bomb combines both: determination as reflected by the decision to go nuclear; desperation as indicated by the statements by responsible leaders, soon after the explosions. They referred to ‘worsening situation in Kashmir’, ‘India being perceived week, and, therefore, enemies getting emboldened’,’national unity in danger’ etc.etc. The two conclusions above have direct implications for assessing the political-security situation in the indo-Pak sub-continent. This situation is very grave because of the inherent conflict arising out of fanatic beliefs, unfulfilled ambitions, and unsatisfied political-cultural agendas. In fact a unique situation obtains in this region. Cold war comparisons hardly hold here: former Soviet Union and US were two satisfied powers. In Potsdam and Yalta Conferences, the two had agreed on their respective spheres of influence, and formalized it through treaties; the United Nations itself was created to manage the post war political-security agenda. So this was a typical case of fully agreed-upon disagreement. Such is not the case between India and Pakistan. India does not, in the first place, treat Pakistan as a fellow sovereign state, how can be their any agreements—either to agree or disagree? What else can explain a complete deadlock over Kashmir for the past fifty years? Not to talk of Indo-Pak bilateral matters, an effective regional co-operative mechanism has also not developed so far. SAARC is a dead entity, and the reason is that India instead of recognizing Pakistan as a fellow partner, and conceding it its own due space, concentrates all its effort on isolating it, and making it irrelevant in the regional power equation. The strategic community globally agrees, that this preoccupation of India with Pakistan, costs the former its wider/global role.(the point was discussed in detail in our ‘Kashmir Conflict: What motivates India’s Activism’, Leeds:1996) This thinking is emerging in India too, and it had formed the intellectual basis for the so-called Gujral Doctrine, which, not to talk of others, Gujral himself could not translate into action. The reason being what was mentioned above: India’s present ruling elites are a band of nation-worshippers, and as such they prefer emotional fulfillment to the strategic gain. What is, otherwise, India’s rationale in putting huge resources in fighting a war in Kashmir which it is convinced, it can never win?

Any Options?

So we have a unique situation in the Indo-Pak sub-continent, and India’s nuclear bomb must be viewed in this context. This should be the basic premise, on which options can be worked out. Bomb for a bomb, may not be an effective option in this situation. It can be the only possible option but that does not mean it will be effective as well. Its effectiveness mainly lies in its power to deter, but how if India is not deterred? We should repeat, that we are not talking here about the routine case of inter-state conflict, where conflicts are meaningfully addressed and solutions attempted on the objective basis of costs and benefits. If war costs more than the benefits it brings, it is avoided, and naturally nuclear deterrence works in such cases, as it did at the height of Cuban Missile Crisis, when US having an overwhelming nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union, was restrained by the thought, that even a single Soviet nuclear missile could destroy a US city. In the Indo-Pak sub-continent we have a unique case of one state (India) not recognizing the very existence of the other (Pakistan).We noted above, that right from 1947, Indian state has been engaged in a unilateral onslaught to undermine Pakistan, in order to ‘prove’ its ‘case’, and Kashmir was grabbed in the first place precisely for this purpose. Now, when Kashmir issue has got revived since the past nine years, and Pakistan has started an open advocacy of this cause, it has recreated in essence the whole pre-47 ideological-political scenario, bringing Pakistan actively on the other side of the fence by converting the unilateral onslaught into bilateral battle. This is , after all, the tremendous symbolic significance, Kashmir issue has. In the preceding sections we went into some detail to explain, what it is, that the Indian Nationalist mind is made up of. It should not be, therefore, difficult to realize that the more Pakistan insists on the resolution of Kashmir, the more intolerably painful it becomes for the Indian nationalist mind, not just because of Kashmir per se, but more because of the fact that the nationalist mind sees in this insistence a deliberate, clear and powerful assertion by Pakistan, not only of its distinct, as was the case with Muslim League before1947, but also of its sovereign nationhood. This assertion is intolerable, and any perceived climb down before Pakistan, is unthinkable for the Indian Nationalist mind, for in their view it violates the spirit of Indian Nationalism, which seeks to build the ‘Nation’ and redeem its lost honour and glory by ridding it from any and every kind of Muslim power and influence. Indian nationalists will find the raison d’être of their created ‘nation-state’, hit by any step that amounts to accepting parity, or worse, superiority of Pakistan. With this mindset, Indian ruling elites can go to any extent to assert their ‘national’ hegemony, and using the nuclear muscle can not be ruled out. Soon after the blasts on May 11, when Mr Advani went about issuing war threats to Pakistan, it reflected the regime’s impatience to use the ‘toy’ as early as possible. They haven’t dropped the idea forever; Pakistani bomb has made them bring down the tone, and retreat on the war threats temporarily. The simple conclusion that could be drawn from an earlier one that India has been wining some small battles, but losing the greater war, is that India has yet to dismantle Pakistan, and in doing so using a nuclear bomb is not off its agenda. One may ask that, given the nuclear capability on the other side i.e. Pakistan, this may prove a costly affair for India in terms of men and material. One answer to this, perhaps, will be, that strategic calculations do not determine the decisions motivated by fanatic beliefs and hatred. Another no-non-sense answer is that, we are discussing the present situation and finding it unique and dangerous mainly with reference toIndia’s present ruling elites, historically the creation of Indian Nationalist Thought and the Movement. Numerically, these elites, being ‘Upper Castes’ and mostly Brahmins constitute a very small minority of the Indian population, and in any disaster such as a nuclear war they stand to lose least; the ‘untouchables’ and other ‘low castes’ will be the main victims. Leading Dalit(‘untouchable’ community) intellectual and the editor of monthly Dalit Voice Mr VT Rajshekhar, recently wrote: “No doubt, the ‘Hindu bomb’ and the proposed war on Kashmir are destructive activities. The country and its SC/ST/BCs will not gain anything out of it. They may not gain but certainly they stand to lose a lot. Those who will die in this war will be our people. But the Nazis are not bothered about any amount of death and destruction because the very Hindu philosophy is based on hate. What will the Hindu Nazis gain by the ‘Hindu bomb’, war and violence? They stand to gain the whole world. The propaganda they will gain out of this bomb, hate, war, and violence is that they will succeed in giving a new cultural identity(emphasis author’s) to India. The new identity will be that they will see to it that the country is called ‘Hindu India’ though in fact India is not Hindu.”(Dalit Voice, Banglore, India. July 1-15, 1998)

So the options for peace and stability should be worked out on the basis of this presumption that a Pakistani bomb is not enough to deter India from using its nuclear arsenal. One would suggest then, as a possible way of defusing tension, that Pakistan should give up its advocacy of Kashmir, so that there do not remain any causes of tension in the region, and a war-situation does not develop. This, however, is neither right nor correct. A few points can be made in this regard:

First, Kashmir is a real issue by itself, Pakistan’s advocacy does not make or unmake it. It will continue to be a source of tension, even if no one supports it.

Second, when it comes to Kashmir, Pakistan has hardly a choice: its advocacy of Kashmir has a very direct bearing on its claim of independent, sovereign nationhood. In choosing between supporting and not supporting Kashmir, Pakistan has essentially to choose between political independence and subservience vis-à-vis India. If it chooses subservience, there hardly remains any meaning in its initial decision to have opted for a sovereign state on the basis of the distinct identity of its people.

Third, Kashmir is basically not a cause but a consequence of the hegemonic ‘national’ vision and mission of Indian Nationalists, which, in the most real terms, is the root cause of all tension and misery in the post-colonial South Asia. Once this root problem is addressed, a major headway towards a peaceful and stable South Asia would have been made.

The search for peace should start by first recognising the crystal-clear fact of India being inhabited by various Communities, who in their own right are nations, and in the absence of a supra-national creed, principle, ideology(as for example Islam in case of Muslim communities with diverse socio-cultural backgrounds), these communities cannot be lumped together, as they have been, into some sort of an imagined ‘nation’. As Allama Iqbal, in his 1930 address, had rightly emphasized, without recognising this fact “the principle of European democracy cannot be applied to India”. In India, democracy is limited to elections; the power distribution is most undemocratic and inequitable. Securing a right balance of power within India through an equitable distribution of power between communities should be seriously considered as an option to quell the threat emanating from the Pokhran blasts. No doubt an indirect one, yet it may prove to be the only effective option in the long run, because this will address the basic causes behind this mindless weaponisation, which are the peculiar Nationalist mind-set, and the present power-structure, that being unjust is inherently instable, and can only thrive on militarist agendas. Hopefully, things are already moving in this direction as we mentioned in the beginning. The emerging social forces in India are struggling to change their miserable plight and build a better future. Their movement is inspired mainly by their objective conditions of living, rather than by imagined fanatic notions. They do not share the Nationalist view of a monolithic pan-Indian Nation. Their nation is their own community, and they do not treat Muslims as the historical ‘evil force which had interfered with the evolution of Golden Hindu age’; in fact they hardly have any golden ages to remember, being oppressed from centuries together. They can have their own conflicts with Muslims, but a distinct political existence of Muslims as such, is not an aberration for them, as is for the Indian Nationalists.

I will conclude, once again, by quoting from Allama Iqbal’s 1930 address, in which apart from proposing the idea of Pakistan, he had also suggested “the creation of autonomous states based on the unity of language, race, history, religion and identity of economic interests” as “the only possible way to secure a stable constitutional structure in India”. This should also serve to underscore the point that Allama had not proposed the idea of Pakistan alone in his Allahabad address, as is generally made to believe, and conceded the major portion of the Sub-continent to Indian Nationalists; he had given a deep thought to India’s objective situation, and he honestly believed that all the Indian Communities had “a right to free development” according to their own “cultural traditions”. In their insistence on unitary visions of Indian ‘nation’ and unitary electorates, Allama very clearly saw through the Indian Nationalists’ game “to secure permanent communal dominance in the whole of India.”

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Dr. Syed M Inayatullah Andrabi is a well-known figure in the circles of political Islam. Born in Srinagar, the capital city of Indian Held Kashmir, Dr Andrabi has been intimately involved at the intellectual level with the global politics and political issues since his student days in 1980 at Pune (India), where he completed his Ph.D. in Linguistics in 1983 at the Centre of Advanced Study in Linguistics, Deccan College, University of Pune, Pune, India. Upon completing his doctorate he returned home to join the University of Kashmir, first on a post-doctoral fellowship and later as faculty, but could not continue because of the deteriorating security situation in Kashmir, and had to move to United Kingdom in 1994 where he continues to live since along with his wife and five children.