Faced with a pro-democracy popular upsurge in Burma, the Indian government first brazenly sided with the military junta. But it is now reluctantly revising its stand under international and domestic pressure, and trying to salvage what little is left of its credibility, writes Praful Bidwai.
NEW DELHI, Oct 5 (IPS) - Faced with a pro-democracy popular upsurge in Burma, the Indian government first brazenly sided with the military junta. But it is now reluctantly revising its stand under international and domestic pressure, and trying to salvage what little is left of its credibility.
On Thursday, India voted at the United Nations Human Rights Council in favour of a resolution calling for the release of incarcerated, pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. But India did so after expressing regret that the ‘’text of the resolution was not ‘’fully in conformity’’ with New Delhi’s own ‘’forward-looking, non-condemnatory approach’’.
India went along with the resolution that strongly deplored ‘’the continued violent repression of peaceful demonstrations in Myanmar, including thorough beatings, killings, arbitrary detentions and enforced disappearances’’ and called for ‘’reinvigorated national dialogue with all parties with a view to achieving genuine national reconciliation, democratisation and the establishment of rule of law’’.
But India still opposes economic sanctions or other tough measures against the Burmese regime. Earlier this week, Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said in New York: "I do not subscribe to penal sanctions at all times."
He added: "We should instead try to engage the country concerned in negotiations... Sanctions ... should be the last resort ...because (they are) counter-productive. Instead of correcting the errant rulers, they end in the suffering of innocent people."
Worse, India sent its petroleum minister Murli Deora to Burma last week to sign a deal worth 150 million US dollars for the exploration of natural gas off the Rakhine coast -- just when state repression was at its peak of brutality.
"This sent a terrible message to the world," says Soe Myint, a Burmese pro-democracy activist long exiled in India, who works with the Mizzima news agency. "The message was that India, despite its credentials as a democracy, wouldn't lift its little finger to counsel restraint upon the Burmese regime and prevent wanton bloodshed. Rather than use its leverage with Burma, India would meekly tail the generals as they butchered innocents. We were greatly disappointed."
It is only on Sep. 26, about a week after the pro-democracy demonstrations had gathered mass proportions, that New Delhi made its first official comment on the issue. India expressed concern at the situation in Burma and said: "It is our hope that all sides will resolve the issues peacefully through dialogue India has always believed that Burma’s process of political reform and national reconciliation should be more inclusive and broad-based."
India’s conservative and pro-junta position on Burma is widely believed to derive from three considerations: an eagerness to enlist Burma’s help in fighting insurgencies in its turbulent north-east, India’s interest in Burma's natural gas reserves, and India’s anxiety to contain and counter China's influence in Burma, and more broadly, South-east Asia.
"It’s utterly shameful that India should allow its approach to a major issue like Burma to be determined by such narrow, parochial realpolitik-based considerations," argues Anuradha Chenoy, from the School of International Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University here.
Adds Chenoy: "This means abandoning all principles and doctrines, including India's professed commitment to democracy and human rights, which it loudly voices in Western-sponsored institutions like the Concert of Democracies and the Global Democracy Fund. This raises a credibility issue. Worse, India claims to be pursuing a ‘Look East’ policy. In Burma, that evidently means turn a blind eye to dictatorship."
Dismayingly, India’s Burma approach was spelt out in a practical and forthright manner by India’s new chief of army staff, Deepak Kapoor, at his maiden press conference on Monday. He said: the state-directed violence is Burma’s "internal affair", but "we have good relations" with its government, and "we should maintain these."
The army chief’s policy pronouncement represents an intrusion into the executive’s prerogative. Yet, it reproduces the essence of India’s Foreign Ministry’s stand, driven by so-called "realism".
Ironically, India’s realpolitik-based Burma policy has yielded none of the desired results.
Thus, Burma has been ineffectual or highly selective in preventing North-eastern insurgents from India from establishing camps on its soil. It has effectively contained only the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Khaplang), with which it has anyway a ceasefire agreement.
"But the Burmese military has at best taken token and desultory action against other groups, especially those from Assam and Manipur", says a counter-insurgency analyst who demands anonymity. "Burma has shrewdly played China off against India, while milking both for military and economic assistance. India has walked into this trap".
India’s famed "interests" in gas in Burma have produced international embarrassment. Four Indian companies figure among the "Dirty 20" implicated in gas exploration -- with terrible human rights violations and environmental destruction, detailed by EarthRights International, the Shwe Gas Movement and Arakan State Human Rights Commission.
However, India has got no gas nor tangible contracts for gas supply from Burma. Just weeks ago, Burma awarded the A-1 and A-3 gas blocks off the Arakan coast to PetroChina. Originally, two Indian public sector companies had a 30 percent stake in these. And India had extended concessional credit to Burma to finance the project.
India has alternative gas sources. Besides, Burma’s gas delivery will critically depend on transit through Bangladesh. But Bangladesh is not yet cooperating.
Says Chenoy: ''The argument that India should befriend and favour Burma’s regime to counter China is specious. India can and must live with military relationships between some neighbours and other powers. This shouldn’t overwhelmingly determine foreign policy.''
Many of those who demand that India must become a countervailing force to China advocate a new Asian Cold War -- with disastrous consequences for India’s long-term security. An arms race with China --that too with a strong nuclear component -- will sharply raise India’s already bloated military expenditure.
However, the Indian government is now coming under pressure to revise its stand on Burma. The pressure comes from international opinion, and domestic sentiment which strongly favours solidarity with the pro-democracy movement in Burma.
Major political parties in India, including the ruling Congress, the Communists, and even the right-wing, opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) , have demanded a change in the government's stand. Civil rights defenders too want a major revision.
''Particularly significant here is pressure from India’s north-east,'' says Soe Myint. ''Many political and civil society organisations there are alarmed at the repression unleashed in Burma on ethnic groups which cut across the India-Burma border. They want India to support democracy in Burma.''
This would bring Indian policy more in line with the position of the early 1990s, when India advocated a dialogue between the military regime and the National League of Democracy led by Aung San Suu Kyi, who had won the 1990 election with a thumping majority.
India awarded the 1993 Nehru Prize for International Understanding to Suu Kyi and made a strong political point -- without severing its relations with the Burmese government.
''This only shows that India can follow a broad-horizon policy based on a global vision; it has many options in the neighbourhood,'' argues Chenoy.
Ironically, India's official vision is shrinking just when India's global profile has greatly risen, opening up new opportunities to engage with the world with the "larger ideas and objectives" which have long been at the core of India’s foreign policy agenda.
This is not the sign of a self-confident emerging power with a fiercely independent foreign policy orientation, commentators said.
Copyright © 2007 IPS-Inter Press Service
