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ASSEMBLY POLL '98
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'Why would Melosevic become a Gandhi and let the Muslims take away a major part of his sovereign territory?'
E-mail from readers the world over
Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 23:05:26 EDT I totally disagree with Amberish's stand about India's position on Kosovo. I think the government has done the right thing by protesting the violation of the national sovereignty of a country. While talking about the refugees, he seems to be forgetting that the flow of refugees did not start till NATO started bombing Yugoslavia [illegally I might add]. Unfortunately, in today's world "human rights" have become a political stick more than anything else to be used to beat and berate the weak countries who don't agree with your point of view. [That's why China's human right violations go unnoticed]. I don't think the western countries, in particular the US, have any moral right to talk about human rights. Just consider this fact -- about 300 years back, more than 95 per cent of the population in the continent of North America was native American Indian. Now it is less than 1 per cent. If that isn't ethnic cleansing, I don't know what else is. And yes the danger of India being similarly attacked is very real. Maybe Kashmir would be the next focal point [if China/Pakistan instigate US enough, who knows!] Five hundred years back similar gunboat diplomacy led to most of the world being made slaves of the Western powers. It might be a stretch, but by no means impossible that the scenarios repeat themselves, this time with air power and Cruise missile diplomacy. Those who don't learn from history, are condemned to repeat it. It's time we took a step. Maybe tie up with Russia and/or China to create a joint defence strategy. A unipolar world is by definition very unstable and I believe we are headed for a very turbulent period unless a counterforce is created... and soon. Rajinder Singh
Sun, 11 Apr 1999 00:52:47 -0300 In the eyes of the world, the NATO attack on Serbia is one more example of America's bullying tactics. But to see this as a continuing pattern is to miss something more important: human rights. Human rights not as a goal like the way it is sought after in the Western world, but just the basic right of people to live freely either under a democracy or otherwise. Milosevic has conveniently exploited nationalistic feelings to further his own evil notions of a great Serbia and killed his own people. This should serve as a lesson to all two-bit dictators: don't expect to get away with murder. India has nothing to be worried about. Of course there are accusations of human right violations in India. But we are not that jingoistic that we would let our leaders get away with systematic murder. This has not happened and in an imperfect but nevertheless accountable democracy this will not happen. India is too diverse, thankfully, to be insensitive to other peoples suffering. About 'national sovereignty', I would go one step further: sovereignty has no meaning if life and property have no value. One's right to live a decent life without being hounded out of one's home is above anything else. I am sure many moons ago Kosovars asked themselves -- Yugoslavia as a sovereign nation, for whom and for what?
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 23:43:15 -0400 I must disagree with the tone of your article. The invasion of Yugoslavia is illegal, is not supported by UN or international law and the actions of NATO (read US) are in contravention to the reasons for NATO's policy of existence. NATO is a defensive alliance, not an offensive alliance. This is a matter of naked display of power, pure and simple. India is right to oppose it. To suggest otherwise is to be a banana republic. The situation with East Pakistan bears no comparison. Let us not forget that it was Pakistan that went to war with India in 1971, not India. It was the Pakistani attack in the West that led the Indian army to move and create Bangladesh. India did not attack Pakistan nor start that particular war. In Yugoslavia, that sovereign state has attacked no other sovereign state. Nor are the Kosovars blameless. The KLA has perpetrated many atrocities of its own. Also, I saw no tears shed in the West when the Serb minority in Croatia was persecuted and chased out of Croatia 4-5 years ago much as the Kosovars are now made to leave Yugoslavia. I saw no tears shed when the Indians in Uganda were brutally executed and those remaining were chased out of the country with only the clothes they were wearing. I see no tears for Liberia, Sierra Leone, Eritria, Rwanda, and the list goes on. Let us not be so selective in our memory. Great nations oppose injustice where and when they see it. The fact that India often opposes USA tells us that it is not India that is wrong, rather it is USA. Do not be so hasty to bow to the White Man.
Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 00:46:02 EDT When people like Diwanji talk, they make themselves irrelevant. The action in Kosovo is anything but humanitarian. It is about power. India is never irrelevant. Maybe Diwanji should taste US law and then he'll change his tune. Who is the US anyway to throw its weight around? You need people with a spine and Diwanji does not seem to have one. The US is looking for just this kind of person to spread their misinformation.
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 18:59:22 EDT I fully agree with the argument made by you.
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 21:00:41 -0400 What you say is complete nonsense. The only reason NATO wants to 'help' (god, the addiction to help people has gone out of proportion) is because Milosevic is the only memory of Communism left in Europe after the fall of the USSR. I hope NATO never 'helps' me. The nightmares I have these days is that India is getting help from USA or NATO. It scares the hell out of me. When they come to 'help' you, they are not going anywhere unless they are 'satisfied' that they have 'helped' you to the best of their assessment. Amberishji, just comment on your observation of Indian politics. Don't start commenting on International affairs unless you have gone through History lessons. 150,000 Serbs were driven out of Croatia in early 1990s. The Croats massacred these Serbs and so did the Muslims in 1995. If you want to educate yourself, go and buy the four-hour video from Discovery.com Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation and you will know the truth. Moreover, by not taking UNs approval, NATO and specifically US has given a clear signal to the rest of the world about who is the boss. But Amberishji, we in India don't have to worry about NATO and US attacks. We are way down in the list. You know why? Because first we have to hold a government in session for a full period. This will take several decades. Once we do that, we have to inculcate some nationalism within our populace. That will take another few decades. After that is done, we will be one of the contenders in the USA list of the top 10 countries to attack. So that's the state of affairs. The least Amberishji can do is not ask the intelligent readers of rediff.com to play to the tunes of NATO propaganda!
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 15:33:55 -0700 What does Amberish Diwanji want India to do? Support NATO aggression on Yugoslavia? The refugee outflow has reached this alarming proportion precisely due to NATO bombing. It was clearly known to president Clinton that Kosovars are going to be the first to suffer due to the Serb retaliation to the bombings. Without doing any groundwork to handle the anticipated refugee flow from Kosovo, NATO went ahead and bombed Yugoslavia and now they are shedding crocodile tears for the Kosovars. It is not true to say that the Serbs were the only ones to do ethnic cleansing. No cleansing happened in Slovenia, it was always an ethnically pure Slovan province. In Croatia, Serbs were the ones who suffered at the hands of the Croatians for an ethnically pure Croatia, up to half a million Serbs were driven out from the country of Croatia. The situation was different in the then Bosnia, third of whose population was Serbs. It was clear that the rest of the Muslims who were 50 per cent that the Croats would have cleansed Serbs from their territory had Serbs not armed themselves in defence. The Muslim Bosnian president had refused to acknowledge a separate province for Bosnian Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina. What happened in Yugoslavia was an outcome of a deep hatred among its ethnic groups mainly Serbs, Muslims and Croats for each other and willingness to go to any extent to exterminate the other race. Serbs claim the land of Kosovo as theirs, it was in Kosovo more than six hundred years ago that they fell to the invading Muslim Ottoman Turks. For Serbs the bravery of that losing Serb army is a source of inspiration and the land of Kosovo a revered land. Today Albanian Muslims outnumber the Serbs by 10:1 in Kosovo (incidentally Serbs have the lowest birth rate in entire Europe) and they fear the extermination at the hands of KLA, an outlawed terrorist group, from their holy land (haven't we seen the similar thing happening in Kashmir where pundits are being cleansed by Muslim terrorists). NATO response to Kosovo was an irresponsibility of the highest order, it reeked of machismo and arrogance much less the concern for Kosovars. Two wrongs do not make anything right. India is right to oppose US and NATO, the issue is most relevant to us than anybody else especially when we have foreign aided terrorist groups killing our people in our own backyards. In the American or the white world there are no friendly countries, only the slave and enemy countries. We need to decide what do we want to be? Colonial slaves again or the self respecting rivals? Given this, should we be shelving our missiles and nuclear technology development programmes? India is self-sufficient and will be. As long as people are willing to make efforts to correct our social and political order and develop all strata of society we have nothing but to grow stronger.
Nitin Raut
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 15:31:12 -0700 I agree basically that America acts in its self interest. However, its self interest extends outside its borders. I was in USA in the 'sixties at the beginning of the Vietnam war. I had not met any American -- I was a post doctorate fellow in an American institution -- who was opposed to that war. Most were whispering that we have to fight the communists and it is better to fight outside America than inside it. Well, when Americans started coming in body bags, the opinion changed. I don't think that that kind of thinking has changed. The air war where technological weapons fight and destroy the enemy is a new kind of warfare and is suitable. As long as the citizens of the enemy country die and the Americans are safe, the war is acceptable. The current war in the Balkans is not being opposed in the USA and Canada but what interests of these counties are at stake that they are bombing Belgrade? The native population of these countries, called Indians here, have been marginalised and European culture and civilisation dominate. I have talked to enough of these natives to know that under the so-called Christian conversion and Christian education these people have been made to loose their soul and identity. Having said this, I would say that there is a kind of equality here and that is based on the socio-economic improvements. If the Americans are threatened that their standard of living will decrease they will support a war. There's still an unconscious feeling that the western civilization is better and the European culture is superior and must be maintained. Countries like India and Pakistan should not be strong. Sooner the citizens of these two countries realise this wrong notion, better will it be for them and the world. A reader in Canada
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 13:27:12 -0500 This guy is smart. He knows what he is talking and writing about, unlike most other writers on your site whose hearts rule over their heads, and who write fantasies and fiction rather than facts. Harsha Hegde
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 11:34:58 PDT The author has some good points for both sides, and I can see that he is trying to give a neutral point. But in the process, he has forgotten some facts, and farsightedness, in drawing up his conclusions: I agree with the author that that there is a thin red line between sovereignty and human rights of citizens. No country can take the right to slaughter its citizens. I agree that in case of such a human rights catastrophe, as in Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Burundi, Tibet, other countries should not ignore it, and should stand up and raise the issue at appropriate forums. How about involving the United Nations in deciding the case of Kosovars in Yugoslavia? There is no doubt that NATO has seized the chance to flex its muscles in East Europe so that a weak Russia, and the only defiant country in Europe is punished, for whatever reason, and what a perfect opportunity to test new weapons? I am sick of the same stale argument that India has no right to oppose NATO action, as itself it had liberated Bangladesh. Excuse me sir, while you were sleeping the world has changed a lot. The cold war is over. There was no strong United Nations in 1971 to take the issue of former East Pakistanis. The US was trying to support Pakistan, and even moved its aircraft carrier closer in the Indian Ocean. In that strongly polarised world, neutral countries were on their own. The situation is more different now. Countries are prepared to negotiate, and as in the Gulf War ready to take joint actions against errant nations. If there is to be a strike against the sovereignty of a country, it has to be decided by a council that represents the whole world, not a bunch of lunatics who want to test their new weapons. Is NATO doing everything in the war? They say that there is high radioactive content in the air and soil where there were bombardments... (is this a repetition of the Gulf War syndrome?) Is NATO targeting only Yugoslav military? They themselves acknowledged that their weapon malfunctioned and killed 24 civilians. What's the point in targeting power plants.. What are the implications of making Russia uneasy.. and humiliating a nationalist country. Are you repeating the conditions that prevailed pre-World War II? Weapons of mass destruction used nowadays are far more deadly than weapons in earlier days -- so peaceful negotiations are to be preferred even more. For lunatics or so-called intellectuals who say India has no choice to oppose NATO actions because of the Bangladesh War, please remember India committed ground troops from day one, and finished the war in 13 days with minimum fuss, and did not bomb civilian areas. By defeating Serbia, can you ensure that they will coexist peacefully with the people of Kosovo again. Can force ensure solution for a problem that defied solution for 600 years? Please don't be supportive of the use of force. The implications of force are more catastrophic now, than earlier. Finally, granting all your arguments, are you saying that because India liberated Bangladesh, it should agree passively to every use of force even 28 years after the Bangladesh war? If so, please wake up! Consider yourselves lucky, if the world does not slip into dangerous times because of this NATO bombing, by a bunch of people who are inebriated with power, and who have to sustain their huge military industrial complexes on the spoils of war. Prasad
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 15:33:23 -0400 Amberish has missed one main point in this article. India has opposed NATO bombing but never said that Yugoslavia was right. True Slobodan Milosevic must be punished but bombing is not the solution. It is because of the bombing that the refugee situation has worsened. It is not sure if we can bring back Milosevic to the table. Similar thing happened with Saddam. Since Saddam was not allowing the UNSCOM to check some chemical weapons sites they bombed Iraq. Now where do they stand? They have no access into Iraq. The US has to just showcase its might to the whole world. This is just one of the ways. Kumar
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 07:27:48 PDT What Amberish K Diwanji claims in the name of "world is changing" is the fact that let the media play politics and that too in dismembering countries. First of all, if the Albanians really felt that Kosovo was their own homeland, at least one of them would've expressed concern about NATO bombs flattening off cities like Pristina etc which are their own.... And god knows how many civilians perished in the bomb raids. According to BBC reports, they're lobbing Uranium shells. Yet these West-leaning scribes, because of their love for Americans, want to hoodwink the Indian public into supporting all their atrocities. Don't let the scribes do their own petty politics like in USA. Don't let the media run policy. It will only kill democracy and people will become a bunch of sheep like the American citizens. (Get fed by their media and know nothing other than what the media claims) If the Americans had genuine interest in solving the problem, they would've never take sides in an ethnic conflict and turn it into a humanitarian nightmare. All these west-crazy scribes should ask a question that why weren't Kosovars fleeing before the NATO bombings began? Amberish K Diwanji, I think you need a reality check. Otherwise, maybe you already know... But like usual, you are resorting to opposing every policy of the present government like you have been doing in the past. And to think that is exactly what this article is against. Anamika
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 06:53:33 MST Amberish Diwanji has missed the point that in India it's not the "minority" but the "majority" that picks up a gun, starts terrorism and treason and demands a separate state. Jammu and Kashmir and the North-East are regions of discontent. I challenge Rediff and its jaundice-eyed journalists to cite one example of situation where a "minority" have picked up a gun against Indian democracy. On another issue, he equates Bangladesh with Kosovo. Were Kosovo and Serbia parts of America's history and territory as Pakistan and Bangladesh were of India? I would like to request Rediff to finance Diwanji's trip to an optician to get his myopia fixed. Amol Joshi
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 09:39:09 -0400 I read your article on India's views on the Kosovo Crisis. I hope more articles like these will be written in future. I understand India's concern if they back US policy on this issue as India has Jammu-Kashmir to take care of. But India should also give some thought to the highly oppressive regime in Yugoslavia of Slobodan Milosevic. Even more so because India is a democracy. India should never back any dictatorship, no matter what the consequences are as it will only contradict that India believes in democracy. What is happening in India is the absence of a strong position on the issues itself. Every issue is different and every bombing is different. And this one in particular on Yugoslavia definitely can be defended. Indian politics need to take humanitarian issue more seriously as it is one of the most popular issue nowadays in the world. With so much of media coverage given to it, it is hard to go against what NATO forces are doing. Kedar Kolhatkar
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 09:07:44 -0700 Name the French, Germans and the Christian European countries that do not want a Muslim country sitting in Europe, that is why Milosevic so brazenly slaughtered Muslims. The bubble only burst when "Slow Down Milosevic" refused to slowdown. Freedom seeking groups have always faced the heavy handedness of the ruling government. Most recently about six years ago a bunch of people in Texas got roasted in a fire set by the government because they had stockpiled illegal arms. USA is the largest exporter of arms in this world, it is no surprise that some groups have more arms than the other. No one questioned America's right to tackle the Texas group with so much excessive force. I do support America's role in Yugoslavia because so many refugees will offset all the neighbouring countries' economies. India should support USA when things are done right, we cannot be sucking up to the Russians because they sell us their useless junk at low prices. China was supposed to support Yugoslavia otherwise people would point a finger at the Tiananmen square massacre.
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 12:12:48 -0400 True, that India should not oppose each and every move of the USA. But irrational use of power has to be opposed, be it USA or Yugoslav Serbs. I think India is right in voicing its opposition to the NATO air strikes. All the people saying that India interfered in East Pakistan and has the moral right to object to Kosovo, should remember that US not only opposed it, it had sent USS Enterprise to the Bay of Bengal. USA had also prodded China to take action against India. Such memories are hard to forget. At least India is not instigating the Yugoslavs or asking the Russians to attack NATO. I just abhor people with short memories. Dheeraj
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 12:21:25 -0400 Excellent piece, and an original article. Kashmir is slowly becoming the albatross around India's neck since 1984. That year was the watershed. When Indira Gandhi died at the hands of Sikh assassins, the Indian policy makers started thinking that to stop the external support provided to the Sikh extremists, India also had to stop the (even moral) support for other groups in other countries. The support to LTTE was stopped first, then Tibetans (until that point I thought we provided at least moral support), then Burmese and Bangladeshis. To gain support for Kashmir, we never condemned Palestinian actions. We changed a bit only after Arafat openly went against India on Kashmir. (Today (4/10/99) he is in India and asking for support. Most probably we will support and take the backstab later). Our moral, ethical foundations in foreign policy have long gone due to the Kashmir issue. We offered the UN in 1948 to conduct plebiscite in Kashmir and never carried it out (there could be several valid reasons for that). Basically from then on we are on the defensive and after Indira Gandhi we never had a leadership who could lead us on a moral path. (May be no leader has been in a position to take a moral ground after Indira Gandhi because of some scandal or the other surrounding them). Devarajan Sundaravaradan
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 11:50:09 -0500 It is surprising how media propaganda can become so strong that even the media itself starts believing the propaganda. We have Amberish genuinely believing that the attack by NATO on Yugoslavia is simply because of human rights violations. If the facts of the case were to be explored, it would be found that before NATO decided to start bombing Yugoslavia, only about 2000 people had been killed in Yugoslavia because of racial tensions. Moreover, bulk of these deaths were Serbs. Then again, more people have been dying all around the world without US or any of its allies losing sleep over human rights violations. China and Rwanda being the best relevant examples. The US and NATO policies have precious little to do with these ideals, and are based entirely on commercial and strategic interests. It is disheartening to see the Indian media toeing the American propaganda, especially when the American media itself manages to look at both sides of the issue. I have heard "Public Broadcasting Service" anchor-men refer to the Black Sea oil fields and the need to run oil pipes through the Balkans when discussing the NATO attack on Yugoslavia. It may be fashionable to oppose the Indian government's foreign policy, but let us not just blindly oppose the policies. Let us get our facts right before we judge our own government. Amitabh Mathur
Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 09:04:46 -0700 This article is appalling. Amberish's knowledge about history and current affairs is not up to the mark. His views are one-sided and corrupt and lack character. Come on one-sided biased articles like this will only make Rediff irrelevant. Nitin Sharma
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 21:42:50 PDT Diwanji Bhai You need to get one thing straight. United States will do anything morally right or wrong to fulfill its commercial and strategic interests. I'm not complaining about this policy. In fact, I think every country should adopt this policy. My biggest problem with this policy, however, is not practising what they preach. Let me narrate a few facts in the same order as you have written in your article. As everyone knows, in Yugoslavia, it is again the Muslims (Albanians) who created the problem. Instead of living in Yugoslavia as Yugoslavs, they opted to distinguish themselves as Muslims and picked up arms to fight for a Muslim territory. What do you expect Milosevic to do? Give them Kosovo? Muslims in India did the same thing during our freedom struggle with the British. Don't you remember? It is because our freedom fighters adopted the principle of non-violence, we lost a major part of our land to the Muslims. In spite of this, we did see a blood bath during and after our freedom struggle. Finally, Gandhi had to pay for favouring the Muslims with his life. Why would Milosevic become a Gandhi and let the Muslims in his country take away a major part of his sovereign territory? Yes, I do understand that lot of innocent civilians are driven out of their home and you run into human right issues. But who the hell created the problem to begin with? During such fighting there will be casualties on both sides and of course, it will be the innocent people who are the victims very often. United States did not think of human rights when it wiped out two civilised cities -- Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Are you going to tell me that there were more Japanese soldiers than civilians in those cities? Okay now, let's talk about the Bangladesh war. My friend, please do not compare our 1971 war with the Pakis to the Kosovo crisis. Since you wrote about this, let me ask you one question. If India went into Bangladesh to prevent the flow of refugees from East Pakistan into Assam, West Bengal, Orissa, etc...then why did the US help Pakistan to fight us? You can see that going by what the US did to us in the 1971 war with Pak. The justification that the US gives to bomb Yugoslavia is absurd. United States knew that Pak was indeed the rogue country. In spite of that, Nixon's government not only pumped in all kinds of weapons into Pakistan but also sent the USS Enterprise to the Indian Ocean to scare us. One of the senators, including Henry Kissinger said on TV (source: "The Nehru-Gandhi Dynasty" by PBS) that the US sent the USS Enterprise to the Indian Ocean to make sure that India did not acquire the partitioned lands back into its boundaries. Even if India did that, it would not be doing anything wrong. Do you now understand that the Human Rights issue that the US brings up to bomb Kosovo is nothing but a bunch of bull. The fact about the US helping Pak in the 1971 war is that Pak was and has been a US ally and the US needed Pak as a conduit to pump arms and weaponry to the Talibans fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. Since Pak was a friend of the US, it was okay to be a rogue in the eyes of the US and hence it was okay to imprison the democratically elected premier of East Pak. It was okay to drive 10 million East Pakis into India and finally, it was okay to help its rogue friend to fight India. Let's talk about Afghanistan for a moment. During the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, a common man in Afghanistan did not have to fear for his life, girls did not have to undergo genital mutilation and could go to school, women did not have to stay indoors, people could watch TV programmes and not study Quran by force during their leisure time. Lot of Indian movies were shot in the breathtaking scenic valleys of Afghanistan during the 60s and 70s. Also, Afghanistan was not the terrorist capital of the world. Thanks to the courtesy of the US helping the Taliban. Afghanistan now, is the terrorist center of the world. Yes, it would have been an internal matter for East Pakistan and West Pakistan provided India did not have to shelter and feed the 10 million refugees from East Pakistan. After all what did the Muslims do during our freedom struggle? Instead of asking the British to "Quit India" they chanted "Split India." There was no other religion who thought of splitting Bharat on the basis of religion. Refugees fleeing out of Kosovo are mainly going into Albania. I guess, that's where they originally belong. Let us not forget another fact that the refugee crisis took a big jump in number after NATO started its bombing campaign. "You bomb the Serbs, the Serbs in turn bomb KLA." The refugee crisis prior to NATO's bombing campaign was not at all significant and it was for the neighbouring countries to worry about. The problem was certainly not NATO's. I certainly don't think that India opposes every move of the US This is absurd. Look at the TV programmes about the US, we air in India. We do not show the problems in the American society, be it the beating of the Rodney King in LA, or burning of the cult members in Waco, or the heinous dragging death of James Bird, Jr. in Jasper. On the other hand, look at what 60 Minutes and other popular programmes pick up from India -- untouchability in some village in Orissa, massacres in Bihar, killing of a Christian missionary, etc. No society should feel intimidated to speak about international policies that are wrong. Vajpayee has rightfully said that no country or a group of countries should assume the duty of the world police. Bharath
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