Monday, September 13, 2010
An open letter to Mr. Anil Padmanabhan, deputy managing editor of MINT, Mumbai (Exclusive Partner with The Wall Street Journal).
Dear Mr. Anil Padmanabhan,
This refers to your article: 9/11- Requiem for an idea gone awry?
In an excellent raconteur piece, you have very judiciously covered a host of issues around 9/11; though I feel while you succeeded in narrating the historical events spread over the 9 year period, you did not attempt to analyze the cause and effect scenario and did not propose any solution. That is a gross failure of your attempt. It fails short of what you could have achieved by boldly posing the question: Why terrorism.
You came to touch a modicum of answer to the question – why terrorism? – when you wrote: “ Now, a slew of intellectuals in the West are voicing the view that the onus is on countries such as India and China to pick up the slack. While the latter (China) has flatly declined to be involved in any policing or stabilizing efforts and continues to play to achieve its own material ends in conflict situations, India does not have the capacity.”
If China is not bothered by world terrorism that has wrecked western nations’ peace and stability, what are its reasons to feel safe and secure. In comparison, why India feels threatened by terrorism? A deeper study of this question would have been worthwhile in chalking up future responses that India would be called upon to come up with.
I will try to write out my thoughts in an order of my choice.
Why after half a century, India is more prone to terrorism or even war and serious internal strife that is more destabilizing to India, than any comparable threat, internal or external to China. My comparison of events attending the history of the two nations will not be hundred percent comparable, but salient features will bring out the differences in the present status of both nations vis a vis terrorism and wars.
I feel India at its birth, chose to carve out a compatible nation fully in consonance with its Brahmin Idea of India. Though it would have tried to keep India intact, it agreed to partition as its Brahmin leaders wanted an India, like Israel, to have a clear Hindu (non-Muslim) majority so that they can rule the nation according to their own ethos and aspirations, unhindered by any Muslim minority demands on the nation. Like Israel, India had to struggle to get the ‘other’ out from its borders. They failed where Israel succeeded; as India’s Muslim population was too large and too scattered to be banished from its boundaries. It rid itself of some northern and western states with Muslim majorities, after British could not wait any longer to get an approval from India’s Brahmin leaders for some future strategic tie-ups and decided to enroll Jinnah to carve out a Pakistan in the name of Islam, though in fact, a proxy and a military outpost for US and UK, in their future strategic need in the great game that they feared they will be forced to play with the emerging post war Communist Russia.
Brahmins thought this was the best way to get rid of Muslims who could not have given them a free hand in fashioning India to their cherished designs.
While at one hand, India was willing to shed territories to make India a more Hindu viable state, some of its leaders like Vallabhbhai Patel, were more ambitious and wished to follow the western mode of colonial rule for territories that tried to slip away from India’s too strict centralized Idea of India. India moved into Junagadh, Hyderabad, Goa and Kashmir. Junagadh, Hyderabad and Goa posed no problem, but Kashmir stuck out like a sore thumb, and that is still simmering.
The two pronged approach from within the top Congress leadership, did not see any conflict/contradiction in trying to fashion a Hindu state, and at the same time to try to colonize a Muslim state. It is exact replica of Israel’s dilemma, which wants its nation as a Jewish state, but wishes to hold on to occupied territories as a colony to be ruled with iron hand. India like Israel had in a way chewed more than it could absorb and kept itself open to insecurities on that count. It had to keep heavy army presence in Kashmir that would be an anachronism for a democratic state which claims Kashmir its own territory.
The Brahmin India fixation had muddled its leadership’s thinking on global interactions. Its deep communal underpinning impacting all its moves in foreign relations has by default made it an ‘other’ in a Muslim neighborhood. Its reluctance to engage Muslim nations in the North and West has seriously jeopardized its security paradigm. Even its belated efforts to befriend Muslim world with mutual interest considerations, does not overcome its image as an anti-Muslim nation. Nine years after 9/11, even US and Israel find it absolutely essential to come to terms with Muslim world. India has yet to make any meaningful commitment to any such ‘wild’ idea and prefers to build up its security with armed might that is increasingly becoming irrelevant at grass roots levels. India therefore should rise up to the modern day challenges and not subject its people to grave challenges for the sake of a minority-led Idea of India.
China is not been wrecked by such existential problems since Communists have come to power. Their economic development has an essential component of being all things to all people. They do not have any ideological hangovers that could restrict their moves overseas from Africa, Latin America, South East Asia and even Muslim world. They have kept their status at low key and not tried to project their country as a colonizing power. India has yet to overcome its innermost diffidence to humanize its approach to the world and it is still gripped by the notions of conquering the horizons that open up.
The threat of terrorism that India has faced much earlier to what the world has finally come to face, has to be tackled by analyzing if India is stepping on other people’s foot. If so, India should be prepared to lift its foot and let others go free.
As for the West, it had a deliberate plan to invade Muslim countries to secure its oil supplies. It had at one stage, promoted terrorism and came to now become victim of its own mistakes. The way the entire world focused on the apparent calamity of the 9/11 Quran burning threat, showed the strength of the unity of Muslim world at least at some level. As a show of force, it came cheap as the Muslim world has not invested any sizeable fortunes to build up armies and navies and air force. Nobody, even the so-called Al Qaida had in their wildest dream, would have thought that the world would stand still for fear of reprisals around the globe. ( A Kennedy/Khrushchev moment in history?). But it did happen. Even a mighty super-power had to yield to the demands of the world Ummah, even without any declared threat. The turn of event were so logically patterned that US and other nations had to keep aside their differences with Muslim world and sue for peace. There is a lesson in this for India too.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
P.S.: A contrarian view on 9/11: http://www2.ae911truth.org/11rfa911.php
That opens the possibilities of all terror being organized by the same forces that would like the world to believe they are fighting terrorism.
9/11: REQUIEM FOR AN IDEA GONE AWRY?
By Anil Padmanabhan
But a year ahead of the 10th anniversary of the attacks next year, the situation, it seems, has come full circle. While this does not mean status quo, it has caused the emergence of new state of disequilibrium undesirable for a host of reasons.
For one, controversially at that, the attack was a hugely successful effort from the point of view of the terrorists. They grabbed attention for their cause, unjust or otherwise, in a dramatic manner and also raised the bar, as it were, for copycats (such as those who so brazenly unleashed the 26/11 mayhem in Mumbai in 2008).
Second, it demonstrated to the US in particular and the world in general that every country was vulnerable to terrorist attacks—some more so than others.
Thirdly, it showed up the follies of American foreign policy that revolves around a one-size-fits-all strategy and one that lacks flexibility; particularly exposing the fact that a superior military force is not sufficient to curb terror—something that is painfully apparent as the US withdraws from Iraq, having committed to also pull out of Afghanistan.
Finally, together with the global economic crisis that originated in the US, it accelerated the change in global polity that had been under way from the previous decade following the emphatic economic emergence of China.
It is not that the American hegemony has been completely set aside; instead, it is that the world has become a far more democratic place as the relative decline of the Western powers has coincided with the emergence of developing economies such as China, Brazil, India and South Africa.
The sum total of these factors is that the US has failed in its self-defined role as the global sheriff. Now, a slew of intellectuals in the West are voicing the view that the onus is on countries such as India and China to pick up the slack. While the latter has flatly declined to be involved in any policing or stabilization efforts and continues to play to achieve its own material ends in conflict situations, India does not have the capacity.
A further point of concern is that terrorism is nowhere close to being exterminated. If anything, terrorist forces have gathered fresh wind, having found a fertile haven in dysfunctional Asian countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan.
From India’s point of view, it is a disaster because this ascendancy comes at a time when the country would rather have focused on fostering its economic emergence than being distracted by the perennial fear of suffering a fresh terrorist attack.
These adverse developments are ironic for India, as almost exactly a year preceding the attack in New York, the government had gone public with its warnings about terror networks spawned from within Pakistan.
Prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had in his address to the United Nations General Assembly in 2000 cautioned the world against ignoring India’s repeated warnings and calls for action against terrorists/terror networks fostered from within Pakistan, arguing that it was potentially harmful to other countries too.
And this was not a random observation, but based on an assessment by the then foreign policy establishment. I recall that Brajesh Mishra, the national security adviser at the time, responding to a query from a colleague, identified the Taliban as the biggest threat facing India—this was in early 2000 when the anarchist doings (including terrorizing a nation in the name of religion and the unprovoked destruction of the Bamyan Buddha statues) of this grouping in Afghanistan were largely ignored.
As things stand, it may well be that by the time the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks comes around, some elements of the Taliban (with the seemingly innocuous nomenclature of “good” Taliban) may be part of the ruling establishment in Aghanistan. This was the same political grouping that had been outlawed for its association with Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda.
What is more worrying is that the terrorists are also winning the battle for the political mindspace. Not only has their message gained a dangerous legitimacy following the failure of the allied doctrine over the last decade, the right-wing opposition of the kind that threatened to burn the Koran to mark the anniversary of 9/11 on Saturday (the plan was eventually called off) has also become more bellicose. For the terrorists, this is perfect fodder to stoke more collective hatred, portray themselves as victims and provide a communal spin to their cause.
The simple fact is that the battle is—and has always been—political. You know politicians are completely off the message (till after a pastor threatened to burn a holy book) when people protesting the construction of a mosque near the World Trade Center hold up posters saying: “Islam builds mosques at the sites of their conquests and victories.”
Two years after his historic election, it is evident that the time has come for President Barack Obama to walk the talk: Yes, we can!
Anil Padmanabhan is a deputy managing editor of Mint and writes every week on the intersection of politics and economics. Comments are welcome at capitalcalculus@livemint.com
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