Besides the catchy head lines in the INDIAN news paper Indian Express …it goes against all the Hindians denial of this Maxim …
Indias like a female in a tango dance, follows what Pak does
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?India?s like a female in a tango dance, follows what Pak does
Among the most forthright voices of liberalism in the Middle East, Amir Taheri divides his time between London and Paris, where he is editor of France?s leading foreign policy journal, the Politique Internationale. He has written extensively on issues of Islamic terrorism, independently and in almost every major newspaper in the world from the International Herald Tribune to The New York Times, Guardian and The Wall Street Journal. Taheri flew into India on the eve of the J&K elections, and spent nearly a week in the Valley and in New Delhi. He shared his impressions with Sonia Trikha:
India versus Pakistan: states of war
Since 1989, there has a continuous low-intensity war between India and Pakistan. Ideologically, you are in a state of war, and you have to treat it as such. Then you can say, I?ll treat it like diabetes and keep using insulin to fight it, but Pakistan always has 3,500 trained men for every 3,500 you kill. Or you can raise the costs. Pakistan is like the smoker who spends only 5% of his income on the habit, so he keeps indulging himself. But if you raise the cost of cigarettes to 95% of his income, he will think about quitting.
But the way India behaves is confused. In terms of your communications to the world, you make it sound like a high-intensity war but on the ground your reaction is that of a low-intensity conflict. Pakistan?s strategy is to keep India caught up in the irrelevant, and India is dancing that dance.
Kashmir an issue, with or without Pakistan
There must be a recognition that the issues of Pakistan and Kashmir are related only accidentally. Even if Pakistan did nothing, the Kashmir problem would still be there. There are issues that need to be tackled anyway, like the autonomy definition, Article 370, the deficiency of democracy in Kashmir compared to the rest of the country. These are independent of Pakistan. But there is no policy on Kashmir. The government treats Kashmir as a security problem. It ignores the political and economic dimensions. The initiative is entirely with Pakistan. If they want to turn the heat on, they turn it up, if they want to cool it, they turn it down. India is like the woman in a tango performance, it follows what the male does.
Why is the Army fighting terrorism?
They are overreacting in Kashmir. I have a Taheri Scale of Terrorism that measures from 1 to 7, where 7 is the worst. If Kashmir is at 4, the security forces reaction is at 6. This the peculiarity of Indian democracy: on the one hand, you check people four times before entering a government office and life is akin to a military encampment under siege; on the other, you allow people to sell Osama t-shirts. Fighting terrorism isn?t the Army?s job, you need to train special anti-terrorist units.
The Americans throw money at people who will fight terrorism because that?s what they have. The Indians throw people because you have a population of 1 billion. You have sent 40,000 troops into the Valley for elections. That will only multiply the targets for terrorists. India needs to understand the grammar of terrorism before fighting it. They don?t.
Foreign observers: give up old-fashioned ideas
You have to give up this old-fashioned nationalism. The international media is determined to be there in force. The Jimmy Carter Foundation will send people, maybe even Carter himself, and the European Union wants to come. The Americans are already involved. Kashmiris have a sense of loneliness. They feel abandoned, so allowing foreign observers will be a welcome move. Officials in Srinagar believe the government wants to have the cleanest elections. They are saying that we want fair elections even if the turnout is 25%.
India and Middle-East: Blur on the horizon
The majority has only a vague notion of India. India is like a character in search of a role. India?s foreign policy was destroyed by the end of the Cold War, and you found nothing to replace it with. In the tea houses in Baghdad and Teheran India is a blurred image.
Politically active and secularist groups have both admiration for and resentment towards India: admiration for your secular credentials, resentment for not preserving them. Gujarat has had a bad impact on India?s image because it undermines democratic and secular principles.
The fundamentalists, on the other hand, see India as a godless entity, one that?s trying to dismantle Pakistan and destroying the Kashmiris. All this is because India doesn?t have a foreign policy. You?re living on a day-to-day basis, you?re basically reacting to events.
India vs Muslim world: democracy dilemma
India faces the same dilemma as do other democratic states in the world like the US in dealing with the Muslim world. The present dictatorial regimes hate the Indian democratic model. The other option is to engage the democratic movements. What the democratic world needs is a long-term strategic option. We must remember that only democracies don?t go to war with each other. But at the moment, democratic nations are flirting on both sides. The Muslim world is still dark?there is a lack of democracy and no human rights, the status of women is pathetic and 80% of executions take place here.
If we take Pakistan as an example, then India needs to make a strategic choice that there will be no peace with Pakistan till it becomes a democracy. That New Delhi will not deal with Pervez Musharraf, that they will only deal with democratic forces because only democracies don?t go to war. At the moment they are confused.
It is an investment decision. I believe that in 20 years the whole world will be democratic, so we must invest in democratic movements. For instance, India should be in the forefront of the fight against Zimbabwe but it is not. It was easy to lay your chips down in the Cold War, now India has to make a choice.
?India?s like a female in a tango dance, follows
what Pak does