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Wednesday, Mar 15, 2006

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

One nuclear deal, two narratives

Vidya Subrahmaniam

That the Western media have savaged the Bush visit and the nuclear deal shows India acted in its national interest. Yet looked at another way, India is befriending a world leader seen to pursue an agenda against Muslim countries.

CONSIDER THE paradox: The United Progressive Alliance Government signs a "historic" civilian nuclear deal with the United States, that, by most reckoning, is tilted in India's favour. Put simply, India's achievements are three-fold: It is now a de facto nuclear weapons power; it has demolished the technology denial regime in force since the first Pokhran tests of 1974, and it has fought and won its right not to subject its fast breeder programme to safeguards. Domestic reaction to the achievement ought to be euphoric. It is not. As the party that heads the Government, the Congress ought to feel elated. There is no evidence that it does.

Consider another paradox: The Government and the Congress Party are thought to be in a rush to woo Muslims. The Bharatiya Janata Party makes the alleged "minority appeasement policy" of the United Progressive Alliance the centrepiece of its plan to revive itself in Uttar Pradesh. But Muslims are not "appeased"; they are so sullen and angry that the Congress fears it has lost whatever little chance it had in Uttar Pradesh, indeed that the community has reverted to Mulayam Singh.

The two situations are related and flow from the same perception: Any deal with the U.S. cannot be to India's good. How did the Government manage to convey such an impression about an agreement that cold analysis reveals to be a huge success?

Critics who feared the Indian side would barter away vital security interests, concede Manmohan Singh & Co played their cards well. The breast-beating in the Western press dispelled any remaining doubt about who got the better of whom. The New York Times savaged both President George Bush's tour of the subcontinent and the deal with India. The visit was "spectacularly misconceived," while the "disastrously ill-timed" deal threatened to "blast a bomb-sized loophole through the Nonproliferation treaty."

In a cover story written on the eve of Mr. Bush's visit, The Economist bristled at the hard bargain India was driving, and argued that any compromise by the U.S. would be a "dangerous mistake." In a visceral follow-up edit, the magazine urged U.S. Congress to veto the nuclear deal with India: "Not only is nuclear-armed India being offered all of the civilian benefits available to countries that have accepted the NPT's anti-nuclear restrictions. It has also accepted few, if any, of the real obligations of the five official nuclear powers recognised by the treaty, America, Russia, China, Britain and France. All at least signed the treaty banning all nuclear tests; India declined. All have ended the production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium for weapons purposes (only China has yet to say so publicly); India flatly refused America's request to do likewise."

The unprecedented bad press forced U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to set out the importance of the deal — as much to the U.S. and the world as to India — in a signed article in The Washington Post. It is accepted wisdom that when the Western media start hyperventilating about a country, that country can be presumed to have acted in its own national interest. Thus, far from compromising its independence, New Delhi clinched a good deal, perhaps a great deal, judging by The New York Times' killer last line: "Mr. Bush should have just stayed home."

Yet contrast the outrage abroad with the less than enthusiastic domestic reaction. Is the continuing Indian public suspicion around the deal just nuclear illiteracy? The BJP is miffed because Dr. Singh pulled off what the more-than-eager Jaswant Singh could not through several rounds of negotiations with Strobe Talbott. If anything, the 1998-2000 talks centred on getting India to cap its nuclear programme — a point conceded ironically by Brajesh Misra, the National Democratic Alliance Government's National Security Adviser, in the course of a recent television discussion; the disclosure was intended as a warning that India could similarly be coerced on the civilian nuclear deal.

All the more reason for the Congress to have rejoiced in the Government's spectacular breakthrough. Had the BJP swung the deal, it would have been unrestrainedly joyous. In the Congress, the unease is palpable; hushed conversations about the deal stop short of insinuating a "surrender"; the anxiety is less about the specifics of the deal than about its likely impact on domestic politics. The huge Muslim presence at rallies protesting the Bush visit, in Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata, was a warning the Congress could not ignore. The Government's case that the nuclear pact was foreign policy not subject to shifting voter concerns was technically sound. Yet which Congressperson dared convey the foreign policy logic to the surging crowds that screamed for Mr. Bush's head? The beaming visitor, who threw a friendly arm around the Prime Minister, who seemingly granted India's every wish, though refusing to yield an inch in neighbouring Pakistan, was South Block's dream come true.

Another take

Yet looked at another way, India was befriending a world leader seen to pursue an agenda against Muslim countries — Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran, with Syria shortlisted for future action. Distrust of Mr. Bush was strongest among Muslims but, as newspaper surveys revealed, even those welcoming the President felt he was bad for the world.

The irony was difficult to miss: Diplomatic India, with a direct stake in world affairs, wanted to pursue a U.S. policy uncluttered by the superpower's unforgiving conduct in Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. Domestic India, which ought to have felt remote from America's conduct in Afghanistan, Iraq, etc., was aggrieved by it.

President Bush's speech at the Purana Qila made Congresspersons cringe. If the deal was the Government's victory, the speech was the Congress' defeat. Mr. Bush invited India to partner him in the pursuit of freedom across the globe, "from North Korea to Burma to Syria to Zimbabwe to Cuba ..." The world, he said, "needs India's leadership in freedom's cause." Iran was singled out for denying basic freedoms, sponsoring terrorism, and pursuing nuclear weapons.

The more the Government tried to keep the focus on the civilian nuclear deal, the more the visitors embarrassed it by speaking of a "deeper, longer" relationship with India not contingent on the success of the deal. En route to India, Ms. Rice sang the friendship tune: "This trip is not a civil nuclear power trip. This trip is about a very broad relationship that is deepening."

On the same day that Mr. Bush painted a merry picture of India and the U.S. spreading democracy hand-in-hand, Government sources clarified that the nuclear deal was not to be construed as a "paradigm shift." The strategic thinking of India and the U.S. did not necessarily converge, and the deal did not amount to endorsing all of the U.S.' foreign policy initiatives. But the damage was done. On the one hand, there was much American flaunting of the "broadening, deepening" relationship between India and the U.S.

On the other, there were stern, "or else" messages, such as the one on the Iran vote from Ambassador David Mulford. The signals converged to project a picture of Indian servility, of an India willing to partner the U.S. in all its crimes. More propaganda value came by way of other seemingly minor but nonetheless discomfiting details: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's decision to break protocol and receive the visiting Head of State, the housing of presidential sniffer dogs in five-star comfort, their objectionable presence at India's holiest of holy sites — the Mahatma's samadhi.

The visit over, the Government tabled the nuclear separation plan in Parliament — again acknowledged by experts as being to India's advantage. Prime Minister Singh issued all the necessary clarifications — on the deal, on India's independent foreign policy, on its unwillingness to be a part of the U.S.' regime change plans. But as Congresspersons see it, the intervention came way too late.

The Congress' immediate worry is Uttar Pradesh where it was hoping to make some advance in the coming Assembly election. A crucial part of its calculation was the Muslim vote, now substantially with Mulayam Singh. The Bush visit, the party fears, has driven the community back to the Samajwadi Party, which for its part has done everything to stoke minority insecurity. In recent days, the U.P. Chief Minister has happily played to the gallery, deliberately permitting intemperate elements like Yaqoob Quereshi to run away with the agenda. It does not help the Congress that the Muslim factor weighs equally with the Bahujan Samaj Party — and for a different reason with the BJP. Mayawati's party has registered phenomenal progress on the ground, and in the post-Bush situation, is the likely first choice of Muslims disillusioned with the Samajwadi Party. The BJP needs Muslims — but in order to gather Hindu votes. It is only by projecting the community as pampered and aggressive that it can achieve the objective. The loser in all this is quite evidently the Congress. On one side is the SP, determined to harness Muslim anger over the Bush visit. And, on the other, is the BJP, bent on raising the spectre of "Muslim appeasement". The villain in both schemes is the Congress. The party must hope and pray that the two opposing narratives neutralise each other.

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