A Moment of Truth for India, an Admission of Failure By Modi?

Imagine that the one country which India regards as the epicentre of terrorism, namely, Pakistan, should be having it so good even as Indian delegations have been making India’s case to the West.

There could be no more poignant admission of the failure of India’s diplomatic outreach to America and Europe than Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s lament in Croatia that terrorism continues to be “openly supported” and “rewarded” by “nations”.

The rather petulant hurt with which this accusation was addressed to the “developed” world indeed registers a moment of greatly disillusioning truth.

Nor is the context around the statement too obscure to grasp.

Imagine that the one country which India regards as the epicentre of terrorism, namely, Pakistan, should be having it so good even as Indian delegations have been making India’s case to the West.

Not only has Pakistan succeeded in garnering a bushel full of sustenance from the IMF and the World Bank – a turn of events unthinkable without the consent of the Americans especially – Pakistan was appointed vice chair of the United Nations Anti Terrorism Committee and chair of the Taliban sanctions committee as well.

There is that old adage: the booty is best entrusted to the thief for safe-keeping; so Modi’s consternation is truly more than understandable.

What must have been unbearably galling is the chief of the terrorist-patrons, as India sees him, the military head of Pakistan, dining royally with the most powerful political head of the globe, i.e. the US president.

This must have come as a coup d’ grace to the Indian prime minister who is propagated everyday by satraps at home as the darling of the world’s corridors of power – a rather pathetic iteration of which India’s co-opted media never tires.

Alas, those “Howdy Modi” memories accompanied by a public endorsement of Trump – “ab ki baar Trump sarkar” – must have hurt, as memories of a love gone sour inevitably do.

But, perhaps the all-powerful Modi may consider this cruel truth: that realpolitik or Chanakya Neeti, as the Indian right wing proudly owns and practices both at home and abroad, is a game other countries can play too.

Nor may India’s chief concern – “terrorism” – be everybody’s chief concern, or quite in the same way and measure as the Hindutva forces recommend.

Recall that the Americans were the originals who first spawned the terrorists in Pakistan to nibble at the Soviet army in Afghanistan.

Those we call “terrorists” have been both spawned and spurned by the West through the decades, here, there and elsewhere to suit their global requirements.

If Pakistan was once seen as America’s conduit to China (Richard Nixon), so it is again seen as crucially indispensable in any likely imbroglio that America may engage in vis-a-vis Iran which sits next door to Asim Munir’s realm.

Nor is Trump as averse to striking it friendly with Xi Jinping as we might think; as is now remarked, not ideology but transaction is the forte of the mercenary head of the United States.

This raises some instructive posers for the Indian establishment: if America can strike deals with China, why not India? If America can look upon Putin as buddy number one, should India be abandoning its most trusted old ally, Russia, for silicon valley technologies and ruthless American proposals which seek to draft India against China while befriending that country itself, and for American private investments which seek to bleed the Indian market for Muskite wealth creation, no matter how India’s own per capita income keeps falling, no matter how it sinks further and further in the Global Hunger Index?

Then there is the beloved diaspora, alas no longer the blue-eyed boy of the Republicans in America.

No exception is made for either Indian students or sundry fortune-hunters of Indian origin in America any more, as ruthless nativism sweeps across the “home of the brave and the land of the free.”

So what leverage does Modi’s India have over Trump’s America, barring the seduction of a market which the Muskites eye for exploitation?

And why should Trump, who has embraced an erstwhile designated terrorist, now the leading man in Syria, lose any sleep over India’s troubles in Kashmir, while Pakistan promises to aid and abet his concerns in more than one way?

Yet, in the teeth of those discomforting realities, even Modi cannot pick up the courage to say publicly or in parliament that embracing the ceasefire on May 10 had nothing to do with Trumpean edict but was a gesture made by India of its own volition in the face of Pakistani entreaties.

The point is, was it? And if it was, why the generosity towards a regime we consider our principal enemy?

And do please say how it was Trump who first announced the ceasefire deal if he had nothing to do with the matter.

And, if we did step back on our own, why cannot such politics be extended to seeking a modus vivendi with Pakistan, when even America manages to do so with nearly all nations with whom it has fought brutal wars?

Can India be principled only in the matter of “terrorism” and tactical in everything else, or should “terrorism” of the sort that afflicts us now be seen as the expression of a political cul de sac which is best dealt with as such

Finally, what may be most emphasised as emerging from all that is said above:

There is potentially no more effective antidote to our “terrorism” conundrum than to return all political dues to Kashmiris in full trust and in uncompromised adherence to the secular injunctions of the Preamble of our Constitution.

Neither breast-beating nor bluster is the answer to India’s internal and external conundrums.

Source: https://thewire.in/politics/a-moment-of-truth-an-admission-of-failure