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The good, the bad, and the ugly

There were a few happenings in the last couple of weeks: the reactions of Muslim leaders to General Musharraf's overtures -- the good part; and the hilarious trial of Nawaz Sharief -- the ugly part. There is a bad part too -- civilian deaths in Anantnag and elsewhere in Jammu and Kashmir, which are most regrettable -- and I shall write a separate column on that topic.

The first item is something I said before in my column 'Barbarians at the gates'. The extremist Sunni Wah'abi Pakistani-Saudi-Taliban axis is becoming a headache to more reasonable Islamic states such as Indonesia and Malaysia. For one thing, they are worried about increasing radicalization of their hitherto moderate populations. Moreover, their religion is getting a bad brand from the antics of the Pakistani Army.

Furthermore, they genuinely have a gentler culture, those Southeast Asians. My hypothesis is that this is yet another illustration of geography being destiny. The Middle East, where the most fanatic Semites live, is mostly a harsh, barren, arid land. To survive there you are willing to follow strict rules. Thus the Jealous Gods and Absolute Certainties -- you break The Rules at your peril. Whereas in tropical, fertile Southeast Asia, life, and therefore the Gods created (or imported) by the inhabitants, tend to be more tolerant.

India, as part of its foreign policy, and Muslim Indians, as part of asserting their faith, need to cultivate the Southeast Asians -- after all, we have strong cultural ties to these countries, and they are likely to be friendly to a secular, tolerant Islam if Muslim Indians articulate such. They were essentially cultural colonies of India from the time of the early Buddhist missions and the later conquests by Rajendra Chola; even their Islam was taken to them by Gujarati traders from the Rann of Kutch, not by Arabs.

There is a fabulous incident that illustrates these strong ties -- an Indonesian leader, I think General Suharto, went to Pakistan on a state visit some years ago. He presented a personal gift to a stunned Pakistani prime minister (Bhutto Senior?) -- a copy of the Ramayana! When the bemused Pakistanis asked why they were giving them a Hindu epic, the Indonesians pointed out that their Hindu/Buddhist past was a major part of their culture, which they had no intention of abandoning.

This must have been a rude shock to the Pakistanis, who make-believe that their history did not exist before the arrival of Islam in Sind in the 10th century CE, and who invent fairy-tale Arab ancestors for themselves, as V S Naipaul said in 'Beyond Belief'. Talk of poor self-image, and the Arabs despise Pakistanis for this, too! Pakistanis are trying to erase five thousand years of Indian history with fifty years of Pakistan Standard Time, as Salman Rushdie said in 'Shame'.

There was another rude shock in store for General Musharraf when he went to Malaysia recently to seek support from a fellow-Muslim nation after the kick in the pants he received from Bill Clinton. Mahathir Mohammed, although he has had a few run-ins with democracy himself, chastised Musharraf nonetheless for his tardiness in returning Pakistan to civilian rule.

A few weeks ago, the new Indonesian president, Abdurrahman Wahid, visited India. Although this did not generate any hysteria, this was a significant event -- as I have mentioned before, India and Indonesia have common interests: keeping a diverse, multi-religious populace united with the idea of nationhood.

Indonesia worries that mischievous Westerners might attempt to do another East Timor on it in Aceh, the Moluccas, etc -- using 'human rights' to dismember Indonesia. Given the West's professed 'solution' to the Jammu and Kashmir issue, which is to give the whole thing to Pakistan (this was the recommendation of the late Josef Korbel, UN diplomat and incidentally the father of the redoubtable Madeleine Albright), India can empathize with Indonesia.

Not to mention the fact that Aceh is just a hundred miles away from India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands. There is some talk of Indonesian oil or natural gas being shipped to the Andamans. We do need more friendly faces in the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal, given Chinese forays into the area using so-called 'fishing boats' bristling with electronic spying gear. In this context, recent visits to India by Singaporean, Vietnamese and Cambodian leaders, and by George Fernandez to Vietnam, show, I hope, a thought-through 'look-east' policy. Long overdue. Partly economic, partly an encircle-and-contain-China thrust.

India can also use some friendly faces in the Organization of Islamic Conference; Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation in the world, can surely be a friend there. And there was good news from a totally unexpected quarter -- Turkey. Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit visited India recently. Interestingly, Ecevit pointedly turned down an invitation from Pakistan to visit them also, saying in effect. "No, thank you, I prefer democracies, and I have enough trouble from terrorism to want to engage a terrorism-exporting state."

To be perfectly candid, I have not had a great feeling of sympathy for Turks -- after all, many of the invaders of India, including the Moguls, were of Turkic stock, and they were generally ruthless barbarians. Then there was the Ottoman Turk genocide of the Armenians a hundred years ago. And, finally, there was the Khilafat issue, which, for some strange reason, Muslim Indians were upset about. I mean, the Turkish Caliph? What's he got to do with Indians?

When Mustapha Kemal Ataturk and the British abolished the caliphate in Turkey in the 1920s, Muslims in Malabar went on a rampage, the Moplah Rebellion, murdering, raping and converting by force many Hindus. I have never understood how something that was happening in distant Turkey became an excuse for rape, loot, pillage and general jihad in Kerala. Strictly speaking, of course, this was not the fault of the Turks. In fact, Ataturk did impose some secular rules on the Turks, to quench potential Islamic fundamentalism.

The Turks, until recently, have generally supported Pakistan for two reasons: one, that they were treaty-bound through participation in CENTO to do so; and two, that they were fellow Muslim states. Ecevit's rebuff is an ironic reversal indeed -- it means Pakistan is fast becoming the untouchable of the world, through its own terrorist and authoritarian ways.

That brings me to the 'ugly' part, the trial of Nawaz Sharief. I am a bit relieved Sharief wasn't hanged, purely on humanitarian grounds, although he did abuse his position. But I found the whole trial to be a charade -- as though the Pakistanis didn't quite understand what the rule of law means but they were going to pretend like mad that they did.

First of all, the charges -- treason? For diverting a plane carrying General Musharraf, who was at the time the fired chief of the armed forces? Isn't Musharraf acting rather Louis XIV-ish? I mean, 'l'etat, c'est moi' (I am the state) and all that? If Sharief committed treason, it would have to have been, I assume, against the State of Pakistan, not against a then unemployed general?

Second, the other charges -- hijacking, terrorism, kidnapping and attempted murder. So I presume these are all charges of a serious nature in Pakistan. So when is India going to demand a trial of Musharraf on these very charges? After all, there is substantial evidence that Musharraf's men were behind the hijacking of the Indian Airlines flight to Kandahar in December.

The Pakistanis have taken India to the World Court over the downing of their Atlantique AWACS plane in the Rann of Kutch. In the world of hi-tech, suits are generally followed by counter-suits, and this is a pretty effective tactic. I wonder if a countersuit in the World Court by India naming the Musharraf government as a defendant in 'hijacking, terrorism, kidnapping, murder (Rupin Katyal), reckless endangerment, mental distress', etc would fly, so to speak. Where are my legal-eagle friends when I need them?

Postscript

I received several hundred emails regarding my columns 'Why I am not a South Asian' and 'Veni, vidi, vici'. I am slowly reading through them. I will only quote one of them here, some others in future. Here is an email from reader Ravi, verbatim. I found it quite amusing; I would add it was effectively the Indian foreign policy goal too:

You quoted George Kennan - "The US has eight per cent of the world's population and enjoys 33 per cent of the world's resources. US foreign policy is intended to keep it that way." He doubtless had admirers in the Nehru-Gandhi cabinets. For the economic and industrial policy of India has been -- "India has 17 per cent of the world's population and enjoys 2.9 per cent of the world's resources. Indian economic policy is intended to keep it that way." Indian Stalinists have done a pretty good job of keeping us poor, backward and reducing the daily lives of its citizenry (of all save the very wealthy) to a snarl.

Reader Ashish from Canada wrote commenting on a Canadian journalist, Eric Margolis, who was quoted in a rediff.com article on Rep Benjamin Gilman of the US. As Ashish said, Margolis, a self-styled "foreign correspondent, broadcaster and war correspondent", is a rabid India-hater. I used to be on his mailing list, and his views are simple: he hates Israel, he hates India, he loves Pakistan, he loves China. He is full of compassion for oppressed Muslims, but not for oppressed Tibetans. And his grasp of facts is somewhat tenuous -- according to him, in 1962, the Chinese were on the point of occupying Calcutta when they, magnanimously, retreated. Do take whatever Margolis says with a very large pinch of salt. He is not an objective observer.

Rajeev Srinivasan