Opinion - News Analysis   

Beyond the `mole' muddle

Harish Khare

If for six years in government Jaswant Singh did not realise the implications for national interest, he or his party now have no credentials to define it.

ON SATURDAY, Jaswant Singh was reported to have told the media in Mumbai that he had sent "the smoking gun [letter]" to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and it was up to him "to do whatever is right in the national interest." On Sunday, the PMO called the former Foreign Minister's bluff and went public with Dr. Manmohan Singh's reply: Mr. Jaswant Singh has sent a letter to the Prime Minister which had already been passed on to and published by a news weekly, and, what is more, in that letter, no names had been named. Earlier the Prime Minister had rebuffed Mr. Singh's much-published attempts to seek an audience to reveal the identity of the American "mole" during the P.V. Narasimha Rao regime.

Mr. Singh's position is untenable, if not downright intellectually indefensible. In no other democratic country, would any serious note have been taken of a disclosure of the kind Mr. Singh has attempted in his book, A Call To Honour. He denies any suggestion that he is trying to promote his book commercially.

Yet sections of the media continue to fan the controversy as if a substantial national interest is at stake. Some have already strayed from the path of fair journalism when they named this distinguished scientist or that respected civil servant as a possible "mole." All on the presumption that Mr. Jaswant Singh knew what he was talking about. That assumption no longer holds.

However, the former Foreign Minister continues to be given the benefit of the doubt. And this reflects a larger nexus. During the years Mr. Jaswant Singh presided over the foreign policy establishment, a sizeable section of the media (especially those who think of themselves as specialists in strategic affairs) serenaded him as a suave, articulate, cosmopolitan figure, at ease in the world's chancelleries; a man who could more than hold his own against the Strobe Talbotts of this world.

Now the same media are trying to square up this image of a wise and worldly-wise Mr. Jaswant Singh with the incoherence and fumble on display — in the book and since its publication. Having taken Mr. Singh at face value, the media are refusing to acknowledge that they had allowed themselves to be taken for a ride. Hence, the continuous stoking of the controversy and the attempt to suggest that somehow it was for the Government to answer a few questions. The Bharatiya Janata Party's political friends in the Rajya Sabha have even forced an adjournment and have demanded a discussion on Mr. Jaswant Singh's non-discovery of a mole.

The fact is that this needless focus on the spat between the former Foreign Minister and the PMO has distracted attention away from Kandahar. The BJP has all these years prided itself on being the sternest advocate and practitioner of a macho national security, but it forfeited all these claims when Mr. Jaswant Singh deemed it necessary to personally accompany a bunch of hardcore terrorists to Kandahar. Attention had to be deflected away from Kandahar and hence the "mole" controversy, which should have died a natural death weeks ago.

Mr. Jaswant Singh has undone the sangh parivar's monopolistic claim to deshbhakti. He belongs to a party that arrogates to itself the right to give certificates of good citizenship conduct, and claims to be more patriotic than any other outfit. By revisiting Kandahar, Mr. Jaswant Singh has reminded the country of how rusted these self-proclaimed iron men were.

The middle classes have somehow believed that the BJP was the natural guardian of national interest. Mr. Jaswant Singh has caused disillusionment among this critical section. If for six years the man who held four of the five most important portfolios in the country [the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, Foreign Minister, Defence Minister, and Finance Minister] did not realise the implications for national interest of a "mole" being allowed to get away with it, he or his party now have no credentials to define "national interest."

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