But who has that distant a horizon? III

Arun Shourie: Thursday, November 15, 2007

There is every likelihood that pseudo-reforms will be pushed, and little possibility of the fundamental reforms that are required in Pakistan, writes ARUN SHOURIE

It really is ‘crunch time’ for Pakistan, says a keen observer: the mere installation of a civilian government will not change the character of Pakistan. In a sense, even under Musharraf, a civilian government has functioned — there has been a cabinet headed by Shaukat Aziz, a Citibank executive, no less; there has been an elected assembly; a ‘normal’ political party, the PML-Q, has fronted for Musharraf; there has even been a free press. And yet things have reached the pass they have.

A much more fundamental choice confronts Pakistan as well as the West: Pakistan’s rulers and its props have to choose — to either have the country lunge for the jihadi option or to wage an all-out struggle to root out the causes of the jihadi culture; to either hand the country over to extremists or to crush them completely. The problem relates not to whether the government is military or ‘civilian’. Even in the latter, given the way things are in Pakistan, the army and agencies like the ISI will control all vital decisions and policies, as they have done in the previous civilian governments. It relates to the nature of such government as controls affairs. It relates even more fundamentally to the nature of the society from which the government must necessarily be formed and which it has to steer.

As we have seen, the nature of Pakistan’s society today — in which, to recall just one symptom, jihad and shahadat have such exalted status, in which enmity to India has such a central place — is the result of developments over 60 years and more. Three features of the ‘solution’ that is necessary are at once evident.

First, as analysts like Ajai Sahni, Sushant Sareen and others correctly point out, it will entail deep, very deep surgery, a complete reversal. It will require not just that jihadi groups be absolutely crushed; but, in addition, that the army is completely subordinated to civilian authority; that constitutional government, and the rule of law are instituted; that the ISI in its present form is virtually eliminated; that the curricula of madrassas and government schools are overturned; that the objective of wresting Kashmir is abandoned; that the premise, to use Musharraf’s enunciation, that terrorism and proxy-war are ‘instruments of state policy’ is shed completely; that Pakistan comes to reconcile itself to more realistic notions of the extent to which it can ‘project’ its power; that either the populace goes back on the basic article of faith, ‘Pakistan is an Islamic state’, or that Islam is so thoroughly recast as to be almost unrecognisable.

But such an about-turn requires leaders of the highest legitimacy, it requires an intellectual ferment, it requires robust reformers. None of the three is around. The leaders are dwarfs, especially when it comes to religious discourse — none of them could hold her or his own even in front of the run-of-the-mill maulvis who crowd Pakistan’s Islamic TV channels. There is no intellectual ferment within Islam as it is practiced in South Asia. As for reformers, Iqbal is long gone, Maulana Maududi prevails.

Moreover, there are so many coils in which the current world-view is entangled. Recall, for instance, the deep links that Middle Eastern regimes have with the jihadi groups in Pakistan. Will they forego the links and the options that the links give them? The option, for instance, of directing the revolutionary zeal of fundamentalists to regions outside their countries and thus saving themselves? Within Pakistan, such surgery will go against the indoctrination of the last 60 years. The difficulties entailed in doing so, especially in the rural areas, can scarcely be imagined. There is another factor: Pakistan has relied on and stoked Islamic identity to neutralise ethnic nationalisms — Baloch, Pashtun, Sindhi, Mohajir. These will erupt even more ferociously than is already the case were the Islamic quotient in the concept of state to be diluted. In any case, such an exercise cannot even commence until the ruling elite of Pakistan comes to realise that it has no option at all except such a course. The fact of the matter is that, while they appear non-plussed today, the elite are far from such a point — on the contrary, they are confident that the West will, and that China and Saudi Arabia in the end will allow them, even assist them to go on as they have been doing. On the other side, with the breakdown of governance, security, even basic services, people are much more likely to leap for the messianic alternative that is being proffered by fundamentalists than to go along with such fundamental wrenching of everything they have been fed for 60 years.

The first point that stands out about what is necessary, therefore, is that, on the one hand, only deep surgery will work, and, on the other, there are almost insuperable difficulties in attempting it. The second feature is just as evident: even if it were to be attempted, such a solution will take one generation, if not two. And, third, neither the rulers of Pakistan nor the West — in particular not the US — have that far a horizon.

True, civil society has to be strengthened, the reasoning in the West is liable to go. But we need the army today, and the army feels that a strengthened civil society will necessarily weaken its hold... True, all these basic reforms should be initiated over the long run, the reasoning will go, but the army has to be humoured today — let us postpone these reforms till tomorrow — why not first start a pilot-project and see how things work out... And as the army will not be humoured by arms needed to fight the terrorists, we must give it the arms it wants — F16s if F16s are what they want — is it any surprise that of the eleven billion dollars that have been given to Pakistan as ‘aid’ since 9/11 by the US alone, only one billion are reported to have gone for ‘development’? Is it any surprise that, while military aid has been given ostensibly for fighting the Al Qaeda in the mountains, much of it has consisted of weapons systems that enhance Pakistan’s offensive capacities vis a vis a country like India?

This is exactly what the nostrums that are being pedalled today show once again. You must hold elections as you promised, Bush tells Musharraf. We can be quite confident that exactly that was Musharraf’s preferred option even when he was giving in to American pressure and striking a deal with Benazir. Get her to sign the deal. That will at once break the political configuration that the Charter of Democracy presaged. Then do the customary thing: rig the elections so that no party, certainly not Benazir’s PPP, wins an outright majority. The new ‘civilian’ government will then have to take your own surrogates on board. And you could certainly tell Benazir, “With a hung assembly, what can I do? I can’t amend the Constitution to remove the bar on your becoming PM for a third time...” Musharraf would have had little difficulty in ensuring this outcome — his Election Commission had already begun the process: the number of voters had suddenly fallen by several million, by so many that the number of voters for the elections scheduled for 2008 was less than the ones that were there in 2002; that the electoral rolls would have to be ‘corrected’ at top speed would give the agencies and the army all the opportunity they needed for ‘correcting’ them correctly! There would have been no difficulty, it is just that a random variable barged in, the chief justice and the suddenly independent court!

You have to give up your uniform, Bush tells Musharraf. Assume he does so, and Benazir becomes PM. As Wilson John and others have remarked, she will be one of a trio — Musharraf and Kiyani, the army chief, will be the two other members. She will almost certainly be kept out of the vital areas — foreign policy, in particular everything concerning relations with the West, India and Afghanistan; the fight against terrorists; nuclear weapons... This, after all, is exactly what was done in the past — and not just with her. In any event, the provision that allows the president to dismiss the elected government — Article 58(2) of the Constitution — would be still on the statute book, indeed it has been formalised once again in Musharraf’s Legal Framework Order — the precise provision that was used by a previous president, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, to dismiss Benazir earlier. Even if none of this comes to pass, and the trio comes to function, she, or in her stead some other civilian prime minister, will be the weakest of the three. As has been rightly pointed out, to stand up to the president, she/he will have to seek the help of the army chief. Even if she/he gets this help, the hold of the army over governance will be reinforced. And yet, everyone is fixated on, ‘you have to give up your uniform,’ as if it were a sovereign remedy.

Thus, the ‘solutions’ that are being pushed are liable to turn out to be merely pro-forma. Others are liable to be worse. One of the problems always is that those who have a particular thing make themselves believe that that thing will turn the trick. Those who have superior technology think that technology will solve the problem — witness Iraq. Those who have money think that money will solve the problem: announcements from Washington suggest that $750 million are to be pumped into the NWFP and FATA to ‘develop’ them; as Jagmohan has documented in the case of Kashmir, as K.P.S. Gill has pointed out in the case of left-wing violence and other insurgencies, we can be certain that the funds will end up with the terrorist groups and will finance the insurgency further.

The other nostrum — ‘modernise madrassas’, introduce science, computers, English — will fare no better. Quite the contrary. As Ajai Sahni writes, such steps will only help close a ‘competence-deficiency’. Today the would-be graduate of these institutions has some difficulty, for instance, in blending into the country he is tasked to target. Having been taught English, being familiar with science and modern technologies, he will be all the better able to use those technologies, he will be better able to blend into western societies for carrying out the operations for which he has been primed.

Hence, there is every likelihood that pseudo-reforms will be pushed, and little likelihood of the fundamental reforms that are required. At each turn, the latter set of reforms will be begun nominally, and soon postponed to the indefinite future. And every step that will be taken to put existing realities to work will only reinforce the current configuration.

The other development that is likely in the coming two or three years, if not sooner, will be even more consequential for us. American and NATO forces will retreat — from both Afghanistan and Iraq. They will retreat in defeat. We must bear in mind that American forces did not lose a single engagement in Vietnam. Yet they had to retreat. The Soviet forces did not lose a single engagement in Afghanistan. Yet they had to retreat.

This retreat will provide a tremendous boost to fundamentalist forces. While they will continue to try to penetrate the US as well as target American installations abroad, their immediate targets are likely to be one or two regimes in the Middle Eastern — regimes that have thus far been buying security by exporting revolutionary impulses; Europe — which is still caught in effete notions of political correctness, and in which there now is a quantum of population that is large enough to be a political force, as well as to contain within it the few who will be hosts to and provide members for fundamentalist cells: intelligence sources state that volunteers who left for training in Iraq and Pakistan are now returning for carrying out operations in Europe itself. But the most likely of all potential targets will be soft states like India.

That is the prospect for which we must prepare — a Pakistan the nature of whose society does not change, and a triumphalist extremism.

A host of steps is necessary for meeting that prospect — from shedding the perverse nonsense that leads so many to lionise those who assault our country: witness the campaigns for Afzal Beg; to exhuming the ideological bases of Islamic extremism; to showing up the pretensions of ‘Islamic states’ — how come, as Pervez Hoodbhoy, the Pakistani physicist asks, that such states are among the richest in the world and yet their work in science and technology is so far behind? How come, as Maulana Wahiduddin has asked, while it is claimed again and again that no religion gives as exalted a place to women as Islam does, the position of women in every Islamic state is woeful? For exhuming the ideological bases and nailing such pretensions to reviving the Northern Alliance so that, even if the Taliban win, they remain busy within Afghanistan; to supporting groups that are struggling for the most elementary rights in POK, in Gilgit-Baltistan, in the northern territories of Pakistan; to ensuring honest and effective governance in Kashmir... first we have to clear our minds. First we have to give up what has become our fixed policy — hoping that something will turn up.

Till then, let us be clear, the best possible outcome for us, one for which we can do little, is that a discredited and besieged Musharraf continues in office — so that the fount of decisions remains preoccupied with his own problems. And that the Pakistan army remains encoiled in protracted and bloody hostilities with the extremists that it and ISI, and so on, have reared — so that the trust and working alliance between them is ruptured. If prayers are to be the only policy we are capable of, pray for these, not for democracy!

TRACKING TERROR: Ceding Kashmir

TRACKING TERROR

PART-2: Ceding Kashmir

Third-class governance can’t give first-class response to terrorism

Arun ShourieWednesday, August 02, 2006

In the concluding part of his analysis, Arun Shourie details how a weak-kneed government response, in terms of both administration and diplomacy, has cost India the momentum and the edge in the Kashmir issue

By the end of 2003, we were being told that our agencies had neutralised over 160 ISI modules — counting only those outside Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast. Since then, up to July 11, 2006, again counting only those outside Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast, another 75 modules are reported to have been neutralized.

These are substantial achievements — we can imagine how many more deaths and how much more dislocation would have been caused if these had not been got at and the persons caught or killed. But the figures have another side to them.

First, that there were that many cells to be neutralized shows that ISI had been able to set them up. Second, the cells that have been unearthed were found to exist across the entire country.

Going by the tabulation of the cells that have been located and finished just since January 2004, we see them having been found in state after state, town after town. In Andhra: Hyderabad (several), including one at the Begumpet airport, Nalgonda; in Karnataka: Alamati, Hesaraghatta on the outskirts of Bangalore, Jelenabad area in Gulbarga district; Delhi (several separate ones in several localities across the city); in Bengal and neighbouring regions: Ghosepur, Darjeeling district, Rishra, Hooghly district, Chowgacha village, Nadia district, Kaliachak, Malda, Kolkata; in Uttaranchal: Dehra Dun; in Maharashtra: Mumbai, Aurangabad, Manmad, Malegaon; in Rajasthan: Jaipur, Ajmer, Jodhpur; in Punjab, where a serious effort is being made to stoke up Sikh militancy: Jalandhar, Amritsar, Nawanshehar, Ropar, Hoshiarpur, Batala, Malerkotla; in UP: NOIDA, Lucknow, Hardoi, Lalkurti; Goa; in MP: Gwalior; Faridabad; in Gujarat: Ahmedabad; and so on.

The list of these 75 modules apart, just look at the far-flung places from which suspects of the July train blasts in Mumbai are being picked up — that itself shows the long reach of the ISI and its terrorist limbs within India, of the faraway places at which they have been able to set up sanctuaries.

Finally, that the blasts and other terrorist operations have continued unabated shows that the cells which have been located are but a fraction of the ones that have been set up. Several factors have afforded such easy access for the ISI. The principal one is the near collapse of law enforcement — from intelligence to investigation to combat to the courts.

As is well said, you cannot have a first class response to terrorism in a third class system of governance. Why should anyone be deterred from executing another round of blasts in Mumbai trains when he sees that those caught for the blasts executed 13 years ago are well and kicking; when he sees that their lawyers have been able, and with such ease, to ensnare Government prosecutors in the courts?

But the evaporation of governance and of the law-enforcement mechanisms is just one aspect, indeed it is in large part a consequence of complicity. In particular, of the perversion of pubic discourse — by which every action against terrorists, their sponsors and their collaborators is called into question and the national resolve dissipated; second, by the ever-strengthening nexus of rulers and criminal elements. And by the permissive atmosphere that has been fomented by these factors.

Which terrorist group, which potential recruit to terrorism will be deterred when he sees the solicitude with which the prime suspect of the blasts in Coimbatore, Abdul Nasser Mahdani, is being looked after? When he sees, as The Indian Express has reported (July 24-25, 2006) the comforts that the DMK Government has arranged for him, including Ayurvedic massages — with 10 masseurs and a senior physician labouring over him; and that too at the tax-payers’ expense? When he sees that even the elementary restrictions on Mahdani’s moving about in the prison have been cancelled in the face of opposition from security services?

When he sees that the representatives of the CPI(M) come calling on him in jail to seek his help in fighting elections? When he sees the Kerala Assembly pass a unanimous resolution on his behalf — and sees that that Assembly has not passed any comparable resolution for any other individual?

When he sees how doggedly the Government of Karnataka holds up the investigation into Telgi’s doings? When he sees a Chief Minister defend SIMI, an organization that has been banned for secessionist and anti-national activities? When he sees what happens in our Parliament — how members shout each other down and cannot speak in one voice even while discussing the blasts in Mumbai? When he sees how, even after the Supreme Court has struck down the IMDT Act as unconstitutional and as a threat to national security, the Government, the principal party of which depends on votes of illegal infiltrators from Bangladesh, incorporates those very provisions in the Foreigners’ Act? Who would not feel emboldened to sign up for the greater glory of jihad and shahadat?

THE FATAL CONCESSION

Nor is it just the terrorist module that is encouraged. The organisers and controllers of these modules are given a free hand. In the statement that Mr Vajpayee and General Musharraf issued on 6 January, 2004, the words that Pakistan was made to agree to were very, very carefully chosen. There was great resistance from Pakistan. But, in the end, it had to agree to those words. By that declaration, Pakistan was made to commit that for sustaining the dialogue it would stop cross-border violence, and ensure that no part of the territory under its control — that is, including PoK — shall be used for terrorism.

By contrast, in the statement that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed with General Musharraf in April 2005, India agreed that to ensure that terrorism will not be allowed to thwart the ‘‘peace process’’. This was a fatal concession — for by it Pakistan was in effect enabled to continue terrorist activities at will. The onus would henceforth be on India to continue the ‘‘peace process’’ and the ‘‘dialogue’’ in spite of the terrorist attacks.

The result has been dramatically brought home in the wake of the Mumbai train blasts. The Prime Minister’s address to the nation was anaemic. Perhaps that registered even in the Government. The second statement had a hue of firmness. And with much background briefing — ‘‘we won’t put up with this nonsense forever’’ — the Foreign Secretaries’ meeting was called off.

And then? The Prime Minister goes to Moscow. Meets Bush. And suddenly, the official line becomes, ‘‘We won’t let the terrorists succeed in their design to halt the peace process’’!

So, Pakistan can pursue both limbs — talk peace, wage war! And all we can do is to go through the ritual again.

Blasts in Mumbai. Blasts in Srinagar. Another debate in Parliament. Another slew of statements — ‘‘We resolutely/ strongly/unequivocally condemn this dastardly/ cowardly/treacherous/barbaric act... It shows their desperation... Government remains committed to fighting terrorism in all its forms... We will not allow them to disturb communal harmony… We will not allow them to derail the peace process...’’

The Home Minister repeated all the standard phrases in his statement to Parliament last week. He also implied that his ministry had done its job. ‘‘The Central Government has been sensitising the state governments/UTs about the plans and designs of terrorist outfits. They were asked to streamline physical and protective security of vital institutions...’’

And the Government is on the job even now, he assured. “The Government has made an assessment of the situation following these blasts,” he told Parliament. And what did the assessment yield? “The security apparatus has to focus greater attention and improve intelligence-gathering capabilities particularly at the local level to collect actionable intelligence... There is also a need to further enhance physical security and access control at airports, metros, vital installations... besides accelerated border fencing, overall coastal security... State Governments have been asked to improve coordination between the Railway Police Force and the Government Railway Police to enhance security of trains and railway stations...’’

Should he not have said, “The Government has made yet another assessment of the situation following these blasts”? And did we really need yet another “assessment of the situation”? After all, what is new in this list? And what happened to that claim of 100 per cent of the recommendations of those Task Forces having been implemented?

THEIR SUCCESS

But while we keep repeating, “Terrorists will not be allowed to succeed,” the fact is that through them Pakistan has already succeeded in several respects:

• It has succeeded in creating the impression — I dare say, in India too — that the status of Kashmir vis a vis India is not a settled issue. Indeed, that what will happen in the future, what some Government of India will do is an open question. When it is asked in Parliament, “Does the Government stand by the unanimous Resolution which Parliament had passed, namely that the only unfinished business relating to J&K is that we have to get back the parts of the state that Pakistan has usurped?,” the Government remains silent.

• Pakistan has succeeded in establishing that it shall have an equal say in what the final solution shall be.

• It has succeeded in establishing that the secessionists it has been patronising, arming, financing are the representatives of the Kashmiris, and so they are the ones to whom the Indian authorities must talk.

• And the Indian authorities must talk to them without the secessionists agreeing to anything in advance — in the Rajya Sabha, on July 26, the Home Minister was specifically asked by Yashwant Sinha, “Has Hurriyat agreed to give up violence?”; all he could claim was that they are giving the impression that they are willing to do so! As for their avowed goal of taking Kashmir out of India, they are not even giving any impression that they have diluted that goal one whit.

• Pakistan and its local agents have already accomplished the “ethnic cleansing” of the Valley, having driven the Hindus out. They are now systematically driving them out of Doda.

Equally ominous is the fact that, while India has always maintained that issues between Pakistan and India shall be dealt with bilaterally, that we will not agree to any third party mediation, now the US is the very visible third party in everything. Recall the change in the Prime Minister’s tenor after he met Bush in Moscow.

Moreover, the initiative has by now passed completely into the hands of Musharraf. He is the one who is forever proposing formulae, and we are put to reacting. Worse, he has succeeded in bringing the various political groups in Kashmir to talking his language. Omar Abdullah, the PDP leaders as well as the Mirwaiz are now lauding Musharraf’s formulations, and proclaiming that these — “Self Rule,” division into Regions — are the ones that show the way forward.

FUNDAMENTALISATION OF DISCOURSE

It is because our media is so preoccupied with the “controversy” of the day, it is because it is so preoccupied with “life-style” journalism, it is because there is the censorship of “political correctness” that we do not realise how fundamentalist the discourse has become in Kashmir. We keep repeating nonsense about the great tolerant traditions of Kashmir, about the “Sufi Islam” of Kashmir, about the unique catholicity of “Kashmiriat”, about the incomparable blend of Shaivism and “liberal Islam” in Kashmir.

In fact, the very persons who are “people like us” are now taking positions that cannot but shock every Indian, and cannot but wreak a terrible outcome. Hari Parbat is sacred to every Kashmiri Hindu: how do you feel when Hindu refugees hear it being referred to in speeches and publications as Kohi Maaran — the hill of evil? Can you imagine a person who has held high office in the state telling Kashmiris that hey must learn from Hamas? Can you imagine his leading associate denouncing the Amarnath yatra as “a cultural intrusion”? Can you imagine a situation, when persons holding a peaceful observance against the massacres in Doda are killed, the Chief Minister proclaims in effect that the protestors invited the deaths upon themselves? Can you imagine a person who was till the other day Chief Minister telling the second “Round Table Conference” that we must accept “One country, two systems”? Can you imagine a leading political light of the Valley tell the same conference that the Kashmir Constituent Assembly was a “sovereign body”, that Article 370 was a “treaty between two sovereign bodies”?

How do you feel as you see the glee with which a Pakistani website reports a mainstream, “nationalist” Kashmiri politician proclaim that New Delhi “is responsible for the volatile situation in Kashmir, where its troops are killing Kashmiris unjustifiably and forcing them to take up arms”? How do you feel when you read him demanding to know, “Why is India killing innocents?,” and declaring, “By these evil designs, India forces our youth to take the gun and sacrifice their lives”? When he declares that the Indian Army has been given “a free hand to kill innocent people”? When you see that his charge against his political rivals, that is the current Government in the state, is that it is “in league with the occupation authorities to run a campaign of terror against Kashmiris”?

Such rhetoric is the staple today. And the results are brought home every other day. When a Lashkar man is killed these days, four to five thousand turn up for an ostentatious demonstration in his honour. The counter-insurgency groups which had been built up with such great effort have all been abandoned by Delhi. The killings by the terrorist bands become more and more brutal by the week — corpses are left with their heads hacked off, people are sent back to their homes with their limbs and parts sawn off... New technologies are introduced — car bombs; grenades — the man who throws it is paid when he produces the pin...

Has Pakistan not succeeded? Has its instrument, terrorism, not succeeded? And our Government applies itself to organizing yet another “assessment of the situation.” Actually, it does more. It is only by a hair’s breadth, it is only at the very last minute that the decision that had been taken — namely, to agree in the Indo-Pak meeting of May 21, 2006 to withdraw troops from Siachin — was abandoned.

The terrorist infrastructure remains intact in Pakistan, and securely in the hands of ISI and the Army. Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and other such groups have been allowed a free field to operate in POK after the earthquake — to organise relief, to open “educational institutions”. A better opportunity to pick up recruits for jihad and shahadat could not have been provided. Musharraf remains set in his singular aim.

HENCE

The first thing that is required for standing up to what is in store can be put in the words that were used by a high-up in the present Government itself:

• The PM and others must see that this Government does not have the mandate to make any fundamental changes in our foreign policy, certainly not in our defence policy; that it does not have the mandate to take decisions that will jeopardise our country’s territory;

• They must give up the delusion that problems that it has not been possible to solve in 55 years can be solved by “out-of-the-box thinking” in five weeks;

• Individuals must give up the delusions of what has been rightly called “the Gujranwala School of Foreign Policy” — the delusion, namely, that while others have failed, I will succeed because I am manifestly more sincere, because I am from that part of the sub-continent.

Next, the Government must spell out what the ultimate solution is that it has in mind for Kashmir. It must share with the people and Parliament what is happening in talks around Round and other tables.

In the alternate, Parliament must insist that it be taken into confdence. Once the deed is done, it will be too late.

Parliament must also get Government to specify what it understands by “Self Rule”; by “making borders irrelevant”; by “autonomy” - is “the sky the limit” still?; by the proposals that are being bandied about — joint management for power, tourism, horticulture...

Most important, it must rescind the fatal concession it made in the April 2005 statement — that we will continue the “peace process” irrespective of terrorism.

And a final plea — to the media: report in detail what the “nationalist”, mainstream political leaders of J&K are saying in the Valley. Unless the country is alerted now, obituaries will be all that will be left to pen.

(Concluded)

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

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

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

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

On Dealing With Contradictory Signals

Arun Shourie

"I shall travel back with him," says Nawaz Sharif one day on taking the bus to Delhi with the Indian Prime Minister. "We will solve half the problems on the way back." Four days have not passed, and Pakistan observes "Solidarity-with-Kashmir Day." All the usual venom is spewed forth again. What is one to make of these signals?

Look at the same thing from Pakistan's point of view. Bal Thackeray declares that Pakistan's Cricket team will not be allowed to play in India. The RSS Journal, Organiser, counsels the Vajpayee Government to cancel the engagement: we can live without Cricket, it says. Vajpayee sees the series through. "But why go by bus to Pakistan?" thunders a "saint" at the VHP's Dharma Sansad, "Go by a tank... Instead of a match on the Cricket field, there should be a final match with Pakistan on the battlefield..." Should policy makers in Pakistan base their responses on what Vajpayee has been able to see through in this one round? After all, from their eyes, he would seem to be just an individual; true, he happens to be heading a Government at the moment, their analysts will be arguing, but it is a precarious Government. Or should they base their responses on what many there are certain to be arguing, is the more durable "ideological trend" represented by the Shiv Sena, the VHP, the RSS?

In a word, how should one respond when someone who for fifty years has conceived of himself, as or whom we have conceived as an enemy sends contradictory signals?

To dismiss the favourable signal can cause one to miss out on a rare opportunity -- an opportunity to reverse hostilities of fifty years. To disregard the symptom that signifies a continuation of old attitudes can expose one to grave danger. Prudence, therefore, consists in heeding both: proceed on the basis of the signal which offers an opening, but remain alert so that, in case it turns out to have been a ruse, or for effect -- in the current case, for instance, if the peace flag is being waved merely for the benefit of Americans -- the country remains safe.

That yields an operational rule: suspend from our side things which may be construed as hostile; and continue to defeat everything hostile from the other side. To continue with the former -- for instance, rancorous rhetoric -- can become an argument in the hands of those in the other country who are opposed to charting a new course. To allow any hostile activity of the other to succeed on one's soil -- for instance, in the current case, ISI's assistance to insurgents in the Northeast -- can become an equally potent argument for those in the other country who want to persevere on the old course.

Of course, balancing one's response to the two signals remains the key. That and remaining alert -- not only must the options be kept under constant review, the other side should have reason to see that they are under review all the time. The suspension of retaliatory steps for too long, to take one example, can strengthen those on the other side who argue that the mode of pursuing hostilities they have chosen is costless; equally, it can lead the adversary into believing that deception works -- that all that is required to wave those peace flags every now and then. Either conclusion will cause it to do things which will in the end force the victim of the deception to retaliate. And relations will be worse than they were before the peace overtures began. "See, you can never trust them," those who opposed responding to the overtures will say.

The second rule is to keep from expecting miracles. They should never be led to believe that there is some magic switch that the leaders are now going to turn, and that this switch will solve everything. Nor that results will be swift in coming. Quite the contrary. Leaders must at every opportunity drill in the opposite -- that there are bound to be many setbacks, that progress cannot but be a step, a tiny step at a time. That the principal leaders on the two sides are committed to the new course is seldom enough -- look at how close Hamas has come so many times to derailing the Mid-east Peace Process.

Therefore: expect impediments, and convert them into opportunities. Imagine what would have happened had the Government give to Bal Thackerey's threat: all sorts of conspiracy theories would have been floated; and perceptions in Pakistan would have been further embittered. Because the Government stood firm, the threat worked to the opposite effect: it proved that the Indian Government sincerely believes that people-to-people exchanges are the way ahead, that they are good for both countries.

As set-backs are inevitable, leaders on both sides have to be robust enough, determined enough, and durable enough to resume the process after each reversal. Given the State of affairs in the two countries, two factors that may introduce uncertainties are obvious. First, this in the age of revolving-door governments: initiatives taken by one leader can end with him; even if he is of the same mind as the leader he replaces, the new leader will have other worries to contend with in his first few months, and many things can happen in that period to derail the process. Second, it is also the age of adversary politics: just because one Prime Minister has taken the initiative, his opponents will denounce it -- recall the minatory warnings from fundamentalists that came in the wake of Nawaz Sharif's overture. At the least, they will try to belittle the initiative -- recall the Congress response to the "going-by-bus" idea: it should not be a gimmick, the Party proclaimed, implying that a gimmick is what the Party feared it was, exactly the kind of implication which will be grist to the hawks' mill in Pakistan.

The general rule is: deafen yourself to statements. Of fringe groups. Of the opposition. Even of the leader who has reached out. He may have to go on saying several of the old things for domestic consumption -- for the domestic population has to be weaned by degrees from the conditioning of decades. The rule thus is, do not react to statement: instead, see what is happening on the ground. For us the criterion should be, "Is assistance which Pakistan is giving to insurgents in the Northeast waning or swelling?" to this reality we should react, the statement we should ignore.

Naturally, a Government has to assess not just the intention of the other to sue for peace, but also his ability to wage war. In this one must guard in particular against two sources of information -- the press of the other side, and the intelligence agencies of one's own.

If one were to assess the prospects of either India or Pakistan solely by reading the press of that country, one is certain to conclude that the country is on the brink of collapse and disintegration. That sort of an impression can lead one to delay one's response to an overture -- just wait a while, many will argue, the place is coming apart, we will soon be rid of the problem forever. But that picture which the press communicates has more to do with the nature of the media, and what it considers news than it has to do with the nature of reality in either country. We newspapermen focus almost exclusively on problems, on what is going wrong. But that is not all that is going on in the country.

What holds for newspapers, holds even more for specialised agencies, and for activists most of all. An agency like a Human Rights Commission, a group of activists dedicated to protecting the rights of some particular group will, by the very nature of its assignment, be forever looking for atrocities, injustice and the rest: an observer going by the reports of these agencies alone will conclude that the society is coming apart. The Government of the country should take its press and the reports of these agencies seriously -- to see what it has to alleviate; the Government in other country should not form a view of the first one's prospects from that press or those reports.

The position is the reverse when it comes to intelligence agencies. They are forever doing the opposite -- that is, they are only too ready to conclude that the other country is on the verge of collapse, that all it requires is just one more push. That is how they establish the case for a "bold move," for "one decisive intervention." Pakistan has tried open warfare. That having failed, its agencies and rulers thought they had hit upon the infallible, and low-cost solution: sponsored terrorism. Though over 23,000 have been killed as a result, India has not broken up. The insurrections in Punjab and Kashmir have been rolled back. But the moral which agencies such as the ISI will be drawing from the failure will be that the next time round the outcome is bound to be different: the people have once again become disillusioned with the Governments they elected in Punjab, in Kashmir, ISI analysts will be reporting; the Government at the centre is as good as non-existent, they will be reporting. So one "decisive operation", and we are home...

When confronted with such advice, the policy-maker should ask some questions of the agencies. Indeed, it would be better to preempt the advice, and order an internal study. How often in the past have the agencies forecast that such and thus operation will cause the other country to disintegrate? For instance, how often did the ISI assure Zia or his successors that the spark it was lighting would become a conflagration, that the people were on the verge of breaking out in rebellion, that all they needed were arms, and a few examples of successor? Did those rebellions break out? And what explanations did the agencies come up with to explain away their forecasts?

Is the advice they are giving now based on information that is any more reliable than the past, does it rest on fewer uncertainties?

Furthermore, a Nawaz Sharif should ask, "What do you advise I do if India does not break up, what should I do if it does not give in?" Second, "By continuing to inflict killing, am I going to be fortifying the moderates who are arguing for peace, or am I strengthening the hand of those who are urging that the only way to make us desist is to do the same thing to us?" Third, "What is the scale of the effort which will make India break, or reconcile itself to breaking up? Can we mount, and sustain an effort on that scale? Faced with that level of effort, will India just keep bearing deaths and proceeding calmly to certain break up? Will it not launch a counter-operation?"

There is an asymmetry between Pakistan and India in this regard: intelligence agencies and the armed forces have never had the clout that they have in Pakistan; it is that much more difficult for a Pakistan Prime Minister to over-ride them. Nor are those agencies the only ones that will present hurdles there: they have spawned a dozen jihadi groups -- they have become monsters in their own right by now. And with the success in Afghanistan, these organizations have acquired great prestige. Nor do they float in the air; they are backed by the network of madrasahs right across Pakistan -- there were just about 140 madrasahs in all of Pakistan in 1947, today there are over 2,500 in Punjab alone with a quarter million "Taliban". For these organizations, as much as for the intelligence agencies and the Army, jihad against India, as Pakistani papers say, is gosht-roti (bread and butter).

The agencies as well as the jihad groups and madrasahs have become a boomerang for Pakistan, no doubt; by the 18th century syllabus, the Dars-i-Nizami, the graduates of the madrasahs, for instance, are rendered totally unfit for normal, modern occupations; they are the ones who have been swelling the ranks of sectarian organizations, and executing heretics of other sects. Successive Governments have announced several measures to curb and regulate the activities of the organizations and "centres of learning". But none has been able to carry through even one of those steps.

Moves for conciliation with India will, therefore, turn on the extent to which Pakistani society feels the cost of these organizations to such an extent that, for its own safety and tranquility, it curbs them.

The agencies and organizations reinforce and broadcast further a murderous ideology, of course, but they are themselves products of that ideology. Till that ideology is turned inside out, the moves for conciliation will be overturned sooner rather than later. That is the real difficulty: for fifty years Pakistanis have been fed an "ideology" of a kind that we just cannot imagine; the ruler who proposes peace with India has to now proclaim that ideology to have been poison.

For fifty years Pakistanis have been taught that their mission, their Allah-ordanied mission is to break India, that patriotism consists in firing up the youth for that task, that he who sacrifices his life in that cause will have attained shahadat, that he will find Allah waiting for him with the most delectable pleasures in Paradise. If an operation seems to have gone well, the agencies argue, "But how can you ask us to stop when we are winning?" If it has floundered, and hundreds of their own men have been killed, they argue, "But how can we abandon it now? Are all these young men to have died in vain? This temporary setback is just a trial that Allah has put in our way to test our faith..."

On this also there is asymmetry between the two countries. Because Pakistan has been conceived of in terms of an exclusivist ideology, even when the fundamentalist groups do not get many votes, they set the agenda, they set the norms of fidelity. Here, because the world-view of the overwhelming majority is pluralist and because we have remained a plural society, every individual or group which has adopted an extreme position has been quickly isolated.

To paraphrase what F C Ikle set out in his excellent study, Every War Must End (Columbia University Press, 1991), a Nawaz Sharif will have to convince the people there, or their own experience would have had to convince people that their mission is not to "avenge" past deaths -- deaths which were completely self-inflicted in that they resulted from pursuing a "cause" which was wrong in the first place -- but to prevent further deaths. That devotion to the country consists not in wearing Pakistan down in the attempt to break India, but in saving it from the consequences of pursuing that objective. That courage does not consist in sending youth -- other people's sons -- to slaughter, but in speaking out that the goal for which they are being sent to death has been wrong. The Pakistani ruler will have to, in a sense, "betray" the very groups which Pakistani Governments have themselves spawned.

It is a formidable task. Not impossible by any means -- others have reversed course exactly in this way: General de Gaulle was carried to power by Frenchmen and Algerians who expected him to fight to retain Algeria as a colony; once in power, he led France in freeing Algeria; the Algerians who has stood by France were smothered in the sequel, the Frenchmen felt so deeply betrayed that they attempted many times to assassinate the General. But he preserved, and thereby liberated not just Algeria, he liberated France.

In a world, it is going to be a long haul. The outcome will primarily turn on internal developments within Pakistan.

For us the lesson is: respond to every gesture -- with a gesture. Never respond to a gesture with a substantive concession in the illusion that doing so will "strengthen the moderate elements in Pakistan." Quite the contrary: once a people have been fed poison, it has to work itself out of the system. It is only when, by long and painful experience, the Pakistani people have themselves come to see that the goal they have been pursuing -- by war yesterday, by terrorism today -- is not going to be attained, when they come to see that the goal itself is wrong, that the organizations and agencies which have been set up to accomplish that goal have become a deadly boomerang, only then will peace finally break out.

That realisation will come mainly from costs which Pakistani society comes to bear within Pakistan. We have little role to play in that consummation. Save one: by defeating every effort they launch on our side of the border, we will hasten the realisation.

Thus, respond to every gesture with a gesture, to every substantive step with a substantive step. And in the meantime watch the following:

* Is Pakistani assistance to violent groups in India lessening?

* To what extent is Pakistan prepared to move on issues other than securing what it has been saying is "the solution to the Kashmir problem?"

* What is happening to the standing of fundamentalist and extremist groups within Pakistan?

* What is happening there to the current staple, the anti-India indoctrination and propaganda -- for instance, what is happening to the content of broadcasts on Pakistan TV, and of the textbooks in their schools?

These will be the surer guides to what the future holds.

Daily Excelsior
February 14, 1999