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The Tide is Turning
Praful Bidwai
Red Pepper, July 1998
Indian politicians are in the grip of a militaristic nationalism but amongst the wider public, opposition to nuclear weapons is growing. Praful Bidwai reports from New Delhi
As the reality of India's isolation in the world and the degradation of her security caused by the decision to go nuclear sinks in, public opinion is turning against nuclear weapons. The left strongly opposes both nuclear tests and plans to manufacture nuclear weapons. Parties of the centre (including the Janata Dal, which led the last government) and the Congress are demarcating themselves sharply from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP is on the defensive and has very little support even from its allies.
As people confront the fearsome prospect of living under the shadow of the bomb, the early, flimsy pro-nuclear 'consensus' is disintegrating. Most Indians, including the educated, simply don't know what nuclear weapons are, what happened in Hiroshima, what 'mass destruction' means. The decision to cross the nuclear threshold reflected no security rationale, but the obsession of a political current which has rooted for the bomb since 1951 as a macho symbol of militarism, the ultimate expression of Hindu 'manliness'.
And yet it took most Indian political parties - the two Communist parties and left groups were the first to condemn the tests - more than a few days to demarcate themselves from the BJP. The reasons lie more in India's domestic politics than in external factors such as security threats, or the deplorable refusal of the five nuclear weapons states (P-5) to fulfil their disarmament obligations.
If anything, India's security environment has improved in recent years. Sino-Indian relations could not have been better than they were just before 11 May, with two major peace agreements in five years, and trade rising by 30 per cent last year. Relations with Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka have also improved and, with the subduing of secessionism in Kashmir, even the biggest irritant in relations with Pakistan, connected with its support to that movement, had declined in importance.
As for the P-5s' perpetuation of an unequal global nuclear order, this is old hat. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which India, with some justification terms discriminatory, was indefinitely extended three years ago. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which India opposes for less justifiable reasons, was signed two years ago. India was not under great pressure to sign it or roll back its nuclear capability.
New Delhi's decision to go nuclear emerges out of the evolution of domestic politics since the mid-1980s - a combination of ascendant Hindu-communal ideology, a growing alienation of the elite from the people, a militaristic obsession with becoming a great power, and the growth of a profoundly cynical political discourse.
The BJP's lasting gain since the Ayodhya agitation has been not so much in its electoral support as its success in influencing substantial sections of India's social and economic elite - typically upper caste and urban - and ideologically penetrating the higher bureaucracy, judiciary and the professions. This ideology is based on a toxic, belligerent, paranoid and sectarian nationalism, which sees Hindus as the classical victims of invasion and conquest, who must now settle scores with the 'invaders' (principally Muslims) by 'uniting' and 'militarising' themselves and creating an awe-inspiring Hindu state. This framework regards peace, non-violence and justice as effete, and secular Gandhi as a villain out to emasculate Hindu 'manhood' - someone to be eliminated, as he indeed was by a fanatic inspired by the ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the BJP's progenitor and organisational master. This ideology has emerged as the dominant trend in sections of the once-liberal secular media.
With the collapse of the Nehruvian paradigm, consisting of democracy, secularism, non-alignment and 'socialism', the top 10 to 15 per cent have set their face against the rest of society, especially the poor. They look westwards and are culturally, economically and in political attitudes closer to northern elites and their own kin in North America and Europe. Strongly influenced by social Darwinist ideas, they see the poor as a drag on their India. They know that India, the world's biggest cesspool of poverty and backwardness, will miss the bus to 'Asian 21st century'. They want a shortcut to high global stature. What better route than the military one? All others demand a transformation of Indian society and its soft (on the rich) state.
The typically edgy, insecure Indian diplomat, businessman or lawyer is now increasingly inclined to demand equality with the north's elite on crude terms. Nuclear weapons are mystified as the ultimate currency. India can become a fully paid up member of the club of advanced nations by going nuclear. Greatness is defined purely in terms of power untempered by civilised conduct or compassion.
The growing importance of militaristic nationalism is reflected in India's public discourse. At the grassroots, there is the moral, liberating discourse of rights, justice, self-assertion by the disenfranchised and underprivileged. Amongst the elite, as if in opposition to this, is the discourse of power and privilege. This is a sort of primitive quasi-Hobbesian state, irredeemably immoral. Thus, when the typical member of the elite is confronted by a major development, what they ask is not whether it is good or bad, but rather, what's in it for us?
Within this framework, the real becomes rational. There is a separation between science and ethics, between technology and social responsibility. Developing instruments of mass destruction is seen as an 'achievement' enabling Indians to show the world that they are as good as anyone else.
The point is not that a majority among the Indian intelligentsia of all non-BJP parties have embraced this ideology, but rather that its articulation in public discourse is so powerful that only very few critics frontally question it. Nationalism has gained ground to the extent that it has begun to claim mainstream status. The political centre, represented by unstable middle-caste parties and the now exhausted Congress, cannot. The left alone has the rudiments of a comprehensive rational critique which could challenge it.
That explains the delayed response of the BJP's opponents. The situation among the larger public is more encouraging. The 'middle ground' opinion on nuclear weapons lies squarely to the BJP's left. This is some 60 per cent plus of opinion-shapers and makers who, until recently, favoured the retention, but not exercise, of India's nuclear weapons option. The Indian CTBT debate two years ago - dominated heavily by hawks - artificially compressed that space. The tests have destroyed its foundation: you are either for the bomb or against it.
There is growing opposition to the BJP's nuclear policy, evident more through newspaper columns and in personal conversations than in orchestrated public action. This is because there is no organised nuclear peace movement in the subcontinent to provide a focus for the disarmament constituency. Efforts are afoot in both countries to build such a movement involving concerned citizens, scientists, Gandhian groups, left wing currents, feminists and environmentalists. There have been peace demonstrations and meetings in Delhi, Bombay, Madras, Bangalore, Calcutta, Hyderabad, Poona, Jaipur and elsewhere.
In Pakistan there were spirited demonstrations both before and after the tests. In early June, a number of citizens courageously defied religious zealots to register their protest while calling for conciliation and peace.
A special role will be played here by recent joint citizen-to-citizen initiatives to promote peace, friendship and democracy. Over three years there have been three large joint conventions and other smaller initiatives such as school-to-school exchanges. Such groups have a moral and political influence far in excess of their numerical strength. They have drawn support from the left and NGOs and grassroots movements working on such diverse issues as women's rights, environmental protection, human rights and labour struggles. If they join hands with the peace movement and initiatives such as the recently formed Movement in India for Nuclear Disarmament (MIND), they could reshape the debate on nuclear policy by educating the public on the indefensibility, inhumanity and irrationality of these weapons and advocating a permanent cessation of nuclear testing, and a policy never to make or use nuclear weapons. There is a glimmer of hope on South Asia's mushroom-clouded horizon.
Copyright 1998 Red Pepper
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