|
|
|
|
|
| HOME | NEWS | DEAR REDIFF | |||
|
COMMENTARY
|
|
|
E-mail from readers the world over
Date sent: Thu, 21 May 1998 14:44:44 +0800 He must restrain his language when talking about a country as big as India. Who is he to call our acts "foolish?" How does it matter if Pakistan tests a nuclear device or not, the fact is they have it, and US could not stop them from accquiring it by any means. Now non-proliferation stares straight in the face of US, and US is hiding under the cover of tests not being conducted. It is the US, who is acting in a thoughtless manner on repealing the Pressler Amendment and agreeing to supply any amount of arms to Pak. The US needs to look at itself rather than preaching. Anurag
Date sent: Wed, 20 May 1998 22:34:57 -0700 (PDT) The only saving grace of the diatribe by this anti-BJP and overtly gross communist is, that the article is eloquent and peppered with flowery words and exemplary prose. The content stinks and leaves a bad taste in the mouth. I argue only on one aspect of the author's contention, that the government should have taken consent from its allies before the blasts. This claim is ridiculous as certain decisions concerning national security, and national interest should be done in total secrecy and not put to public vote. It was all the more interesting to note that about nine gentlemen knew about the impending blasts. The Indian government has to be complemented for this laudable achievement. It is a demystified fact that China has been pursuing a policy of undermining our country's security. It has been providing offensive capability to Pakistan and abetting cross-border terrorism against our nation. Pakistan is a small and inconsequential country, but we have to take into account the might of the Chinese and their hegemonistic and expansionist ambitions.
G Harindra Kumar
Date sent: Wed, 20 May 1998 17:26:35 -0400 Panicker raises some interesting points, but is obviously not familiar with the nuclear deterrence policy. Let me paint a different scenario: 1. It is the near future and India is without nuclear weapons. 2. China decides to take control of the large amounts of territory that its official maps show. It knows that the US will not intervene given its large commercial stake in China. The Russians, meanwhile, are too preoccupied with their own domestic problems to get involved in a "border dispute." 3. China sends the PLA (Peoples Liberation Army) into Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh. The Indian army holds Ladakh but loses ground in Arunachal Pradesh in a repeat of 1962. 4. The government become reluctant to commit more troops in the fear that the entire division will be destroyed for the sake of "barren territory." It tries to negotiate a settlement with China. 5. Pakistan takes this opportunity to "liberate" Kashmir. It also sends tanks into Punjab where its objective is to establish an independent Khalistan. 6. The Indian state breaks up. The Northeast goes over to China, Maharashtra becomes a Hindu republic. The south, in turn, decides that it can lead a path to economic revival without being handicapped by a north which has collapsed into social and economic chaos. CHINA: Is this nightmare scenario unlikely? Absolutely not. A key factor in this issue is the totalitarian Chinese state which aspires to be a superpower. The Chinese believe that the US will continue to be soft on China as long as the Department of Commerce conducts foreign policy. The recent attempt by the PLA to funnel money into the Democratic Party's coffers in return for the right to launch US satellites is an example of their confidence that the Americans can be manipulated. China has a history of using force in pursuing its foreign policy interests: 1. In the seventies it attacked its tiny neighbour Vietnam for reasons difficult to understand. 2. It periodically intimidates the even smaller state of Taiwan merely because its existence is an affront to the mainland government. 3. It has fought pitched division level engagements with the Russians. 4. The Chinese government has supported one of the most brutally genocidal governments in history -- the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. 5. Its occupation of Tibet has been accompanied by a concerted plan to destroy Tibetan culture. Tibetan refugees still stream into India every year, risking death in their dangerous trek across the Himalayas. The first use of violence is historically characteristic of totalitarian regimes. China is on the path towards becoming a military and economic superpower. This growth in power has been unaccompanied by any sign of progress towards democracy. The Chinese government, unlike those in India and in Pakistan, does not have to face elections and can take decisions unfettered by such trivialities as public opinion. This lack of accountability gives nightmares to Indian foreign policy makers. Democracies are understandably reluctant to go to war because the consent to war must be given by people whose sons and daughters are likely to die in the conflict. China's authoritarian leaders, on the other hand, do not have to worry about such matters. PAKISTAN: Pakistan posed a threat to India as long as it was under a military dictatorship -- a good 24 out of its 50 years of independence. The decrease in threat perception has come with the establishment of democracy in Pakistan. The Indian foreign policy establishment is sure that Pakistan's possession of nuclear weapons poses no threat to India. Deterrence theory, of course, points out that nuclear weapons are "not meant to be used" but it would be absurd for Pakistan to use nuclear weapons against the Indian civilian population-- given that one out of every five possible victims is going to be Muslim. The acknowledgement of nuclear reality in the subcontinent will ensure that both India and Pakistan will be forced to come to the negotiating table to settle their problems. It will dramatically decrease the possibility of armed conflict because no general will want entire divisions to be vapourised by tactical nuclear weapons. INDIA: It is said that large states have insatiable appetites for security and must follow expansionist polices. India is one of the few counter-examples. In its fifty years of Independence, it has not fought a single unprovoked war. Indian armed forces are firmly under civilian control and, as Tunku Vardarajan puts it in The Times, London, "cannot buy a paper stapler without civilian approval." Indian economic growth has lagged behind China's. However, India has the long term advantage of having an open society capable of flexibly reacting to change. Indian economic growth will be to the benefit of its neighbours. It is not unforeseeable that the near future will bring a subcontinental common market into being along with concomitant peace, stability and prosperity to the region. NUCLEAR TESTING: The fundamental idea behind nuclear deterrence is that an attack -- conventional or otherwise -- will bring an overwhelming retribution to the party that chooses to attack. Nuclear testing sends a clear signal to the other side that aggression will be met by extreme force. The PLA will be precluded from attacking India because the Indian government has sent a message with the sub-kiloton devices -- that aggression will be responded to with the use of tactical nuclear weapons against Chinese military formations. Nuclear deterrence theory is certainly a frightening set of ideas. However, the world we live in is a complex one and there are rarely simple solutions to complex problems. India has been forced into using nuclear deterrence. However, it would be criminally irresponsible for the Indian government to deal with China from a position of weakness. CONCLUSION: Contrary to popular opinion, Indian nuclear testing will ensure stability in South Asia for the near future. A region which faced the prospect of a resurgent Chinese superpower will now have a powerful counterweight. Nuclear deterrence ensured a long period of peace in the post war period. The Cold War has ended but as long as India has a totalitarian regime with nuclear weapons across its borders, the only sensible policy it can follow is to arm itself against all eventualities. India's courageous decision is based on sound thinking by its foreign policy establishment. We have much work ahead of us, but we can now look forward to a stable and prosperous subcontinent in the near future?
Date sent: Wed, 20 May 1998 10:54:17 -0700 (PDT) It is hard to tell which is more depressing -- India's testing of a thermonuclear device, or the backslapping and the celebrations that followed the tests, provoked no doubt by a feeling that India has "arrived" in the international arena. In this noxious atmosphere Prem Panicker's special, "Mr.Vajpayee, did it finally...," was a whiff of fresh air. Mr Panicker might add that the bomb in addition to not serving anylogical defence purpose, also serves no purpose in altering the perception of India internationally, at least in any positive way. The BJP government wants a country of India's size and strength to be taken seriously by other countries and that seems to have been an overarching reason for the test. But, frankly, how will people who perceived India as a "a country of mass poverty" perceive India now? "A country of mass poverty, that has a bomb." Big deal! The non-hypocritical among the US commentators, note that doing something as outrageous as testing a nuclear device was an inevitable option for India to get the attention of the US. They note that diplomatic and peaceful moves by India have gone nowhere. But why bother about getting the attention of the US government and adopt childish tactics to get it? American business has long realised India's strengths and has been paying enough attention. If anything, India has spurned this sort of attention which is more likely to improve the economic standard of the living of its people, and has instead been miffed that the US government does not pay any attention to it! Ironically, the easiest way to the American heart is through commerce. If India eradicates mass poverty and gets its economic house in order, it will no longer be ignorable, not by the US government, not by anyone. And this seems the only responsible way to go about getting respect, not by blasting America and the rest of the developed world awake to assert India's existence. Krishna Kumar
Date sent: Wed, 20 May 1998 10:33:14 -0700 We are writing to voice a minority opinion among Indians (at least the upper class), by saying no to the tests. Let us make it clear that we are NOT saying this in support of the so-called international community, which has been morally bankrupt and hypocritical on this issue. Nor are we concerned about the so-called sanctions. We are saying this for our country. We don't need this now. It will take away too many resources from what needs to be paid attention to. It has changed nothing in terms of our security situation. If China is the threat, it is still much stronger than us anyway and we have needlessly raised tensions with it. If Pakistan is the threat, we have always been stronger with or without this explosion. Our security is threatened by transistor bombs, poor law and order, and caste and religious riots, none of which will go away because of this. Even if one supports the test for argument's sake, was the timing right in any respect other than pandering to domestic vote banks? Perhaps after several more years of sustained economic development, when India is much more of an economic force in the world, a test would announce that India 'has arrived' as a superpower. Right now, we do not look like anything more than regional bullies. What has been most scary about this whole episode has not been so much the bomb itself, as the jingoism among Indians both in India and overseas. The obscene celebration on the streets and the completely elite, urban upper class and establishment-oriented reportage of theEnglish press. All dissent is treated as unpatriotic. How are we different from the jingoistic American public which blindly waves the stars and stripes while the country is bombing Iraq? Two more things scare us. One, that a decision like this, which clearly affects the public, can happen with the public having no clue whatsoever about it. No discussion, no review, and for several decades, not even a simple economic audit of the nuclear programme. While this completely shadowy control by the government-military-industrial nexus is almost inevitable in a war situation, we are at peace. Can a decision on nuclear weapons be taken by a government with less discussion than would go into a taxrate increase? Secondly, there is now talk that the Budget will roll out the red carpet for foreign investment, in the hope that it will make up for sanctions. Well, so much for Swadeshi. Again, a course of action which will affect the course of our public for several decades will be taken abruptly in violation of everything the BJP has ever said about economic development, just to salvage the international fallout of this needless decision. If it happens, this could be the most thoughtless consequence of the explosion in the long term. We have seen enough as a country to be able to survive all this. But why are we doing this to ourselves? Don't we have enough unresolved problems that we have to go around creating new ones?
B Rajagopal
Date sent: Wed, 20 May 1998 12:43:59 -0400 Hats off to Prem for his article. A highly astute point of view, I should say. I would not say that the government was wrong in carrying out the tests. It should have handled public relations better. There was no reason to put to waste the diplomatic attempts by former prime ministers with China and Pak. The increasingly illogical statements made by some of our political leaders are really uncalled for. Things like the 'nuclear yatra' are just ways of playing on people's emotions. We better start thinking with our heads and not with our hearts coz it is time to take our nation forward against international sanctions. Srikanth
Date sent: Wed, 20 May 1998 00:54:29 -0700 I have been reading Mr Panicker's commentaries on various subjects from time to time. He not only has a flair for an ornate writing style, but he also has a pronounced tendency to be verbose. I wish he followed the well known adage that in "brevity lies the essence" of great journalism. It is difficult to sustain an interest in his commentaries, as they seem to stretch out well beyond the basic purpose of conveying one's point of view to others in as few words as possible. I do realise that journalists get paid by the number of words they string together, but drooling out long drawn out articles on the Internet misses the point that the Net is not intended to be a substitute for a newspaper. The sooner the folks at Rediff realise that, the better. P Kaul Mr Kaul: Prem Panicker is not a stringer who is paid on the length of his articles, but the Deputy Editor of Rediff On The NeT -- writing articles is just one of the several assignments that feature under his extensive brief.
Date sent: Wed, 20 May 1998 16:24:53 +1000 What do you do when not covering cricket matches? Let me take a guess -- have breakfast with Dilip D'Souza, lunch with Pritish Nandy and dinner with some Chinese embassy official. Wise men (both Indian and Chinese) have said... learn from history. You have very conveniently forgotten 1962 and the Hindi-Chinni bhai bhai fiasco that preceded it. Perhaps you should realise that matters relating to the country's security is not a game of cricket. Your article smacks of pettiness and smells like "greasy stir fried noodles." And don't call yourself a patriot because as they say...'With patriots like you who needs enemies?' For thousands of Rediff readers like myself it is bad enough that there is a Dilip D'Souza and a Pritish Nandy and then you come along.... Panicker do us a favour...just stick to writing about cricket. (Thank God the Chinese don't have a cricket team....) Madhu Gurnani
Date sent: Wed, 20 May 1998 05:16:56 PDT First of all, I will appreciate the pains taken by Mr Panicker in writing the article. I must appreciate that Mr Panicker has lived in the present and immediate past, and his sense of optimism that the status quo would be maintained. However, Mr Panicker, just a humble thought -- What if the economical, political and defence scenario changes tomorrow? Will we start preparing then? Or you suggest that we should wait till the time a bomb is actually dropped on us? Well, the power equation in the world changes very fast and a quick flip through history will verify that. And you cannot expect the preparations to start at the last moment. It is a well known fact, and I am sure Mr Panicker also knows in his heart of heart that India will not use its nuclear capability for aggression but only for defence. I am sorry to say but could not resist to mention that Mr Panicker appears to be a sick bureaucrat-journalist whose way of looking at things is to condemn the actions of the government in power, whatever that may be. He happens to evaluate facts from an angle that could enable him to write anti-government articles. He appears to be one of those editorial room journalists who believes that journalists have utmost freedom to write (albeit crab), and their writing would mobilise mass opinion. Unfortunately, Mr Panicker, the masses are no longer relying on journalists like you to form their opinion or to decide what is right and what is wrong. A recent example of such kind of journalism is the media hype of Mrs Sonia Gandhi. She was projected as one who would rejuvenate the Congress party, and stop the BJP and its allies from forming the government. Whereas the opinion poll told a different story. And in the final opinion polls came true and projections of such journalist turned out be a big bluff. In fact, not only there was a fall in the votes received by the Congress, but she could not even manage to retain Amethi for her family friend and Congress candidate Satish Sharma.
Date sent: Wed, 20 May 1998 23:13:32 -0500 It is not a very informed article: Pakistan is a loser if it tests, and if it doesn't test: If it tests, it loses out on existing aid, may even get punitive sanctions. It loses in image. Already it is not perceived as a 20th century society (note 21st century is less than 2 years away). If it doesn't test, it loses strategically -- a clear statement in the eyes of the world that India and Pakistan are not equal, something which its leadership has been trying to portray for the last 50 years. And, of course, tested weapons are more likely to create havoc in the battlefield than untested ones -- and here we are talking of nuclear weapons, a very complex technology. I expect articles of better merit on rediff.com.
Rahul Jain
Date sent: Wed, 20 May 1998 00:24:45 -0700 About time India did something about Kashmir. Pakistan is only a problem because we didn't go all the way to Afghanistan in the last war in 1971...similar situation with US and Iraq recently.
|
||
|
HOME |
NEWS |
BUSINESS |
CRICKET |
MOVIES |
CHAT
INFOTECH | TRAVEL | LIFE/STYLE | FREEDOM | FEEDBACK |
||