[sacw] sacw dispatch (21 Oct.99)

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web
21 October 1999
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#1. The Return of the Generals
#2. Big hike in Indian defence spending likely
#3. Will the Srikrishna Commission report be implemented now ?
#4. The Saffron Agenda
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#1.
The Hindu
Thursday, October 21, 1999
Op-Ed.

THE RETURN OF THE GENERALS
By Radha Kumar

THE MILITARY coup in Pakistan has caused surprisingly little debate in
South Asia. While most Pakistanis view the coup with relief, its
sub-continental neighbours have responded chiefly with resignation,
almost as if to say that what happens in Pakistan is none of their
business. The impulse underlying this response is laudable insofar as it
refrains from crowing or exploiting Pakistan's crisis in more
substantive ways. However, it also comes close to the false premise that
one country's crisis does not impinge on its neighbours. There is the
danger that an essentially generous impulse can lead to a failure to
look at facts honestly. In the case of Pakistan, the failure to analyse
the implications of the coup and its consequences for the region could
spell an indefinite continuation of the stalemated hostilities,
especially for India.

We now know that the coup was primarily a reaction to the Prime
Minister, Mr. Nawaz Sharif's attempts to subjugate every one of
Pakistan's institutions - both fledgling and entrenched - to his
extraordinarily flip- flop dictate. Having looted the state and packed
the executive with cronies and relatives, he tampered with the
judiciary, altered the Constitution to consolidate his power, used the
peace process with India as an opportunity for both political gain
through Kargil and personal gain through sugar contracts, and finally
turned to playing divide and rule with the army. Up against the most,
and sadly perhaps only, powerful institution in Pakistan, he came a
cropper. Understanding this context should not, however, detract from
the fact that the coup was precipitated by the Kargil debacle, and that
many in Pakistan welcomed it on the grounds that at present democracy is
too costly for the country. Indeed, some Pakistani analysts went so far
as to argue that as eleven years of civilian rule have brought the P
akistani state to the brink of collapse, it is time to give the military
another chance. Others argued more modestly for an interim government of
technocrats - defined as lacking political ambition - who will reform
the economy. A rare few continue to call for early elections.

After vacillating for five days, General Musharraf has ruled out an
early return to civilian authority. Instead, there will be an interim
government of military chiefs and technocrats, with the balance tilted
in favour of the military. The country will be ruled by a National
Security Council, to which all administrative units will be
subordinated, from a Cabinet of Ministers to provincial Governors and
local authorities, all of whom will be appointed either by the Council
or directly by the General. Gen. Musharraf will be ``Chief Executive
Officer,'' a misnomer if ever there was one as he has no board to report
to but has instead assumed the mantle of a supreme authority. His first
tasks, he says, are to strengthen the federation, restore the economy,
establish law and order and impose accountability. In pursuit of his
effort to instill accountability, the army has already begun arresting
corrupt politicians, and has threatened to try the deposed Prime
Minister, Mr. Nawaz Sharif, for high treason.

This can only send shudders up every democratic spine. Why should an
alleged attempt to murder an army chief be considered high treason
rather than a common criminal act? Moreover, is it appropriate for the
army to prosecute corruption? It is only in exceptional circumstances
that justice can be delivered at the barrel of a gun, and Pakistan's
army, with its record of dictatorial intervention and rule, not to
mention chicanery, hardly qualifies as exceptional. What can and should
be said, however, is that despite its prolonged and best endeavours,
Pakistan's army has not been able to entirely subjugate its civil
institutions as in the military regimes of Spain and Chile - not to
mention Argentina. For twenty- five out of its fifty years of existence
Pakistan has been under military rule. The military has been responsible
to a great extent for Pakistan's present impasse. If there is any hope,
it lies in the fact that despite its domination the military has somehow
been restrained from turning security into a means of terrorising its
own citizens. Though individuals and movements have been repeatedly
penalised under military rule, Pakistan has not seen a regime under
which ``mass disappearances'' - a euphemism for political genocide - are
routine. This distinction does not redound to the credit of the
Pakistani army. Rather it testifies to the lingering principles of an
elite which is comprador but hankers for honourable compromise.

In other words, Pakistan's influential upper and middle classes have
rarely challenged the authorities, whether military or civilian, in any
serious way. But a substantial section of them have used their
complicity - in particular with the Bhutto ethos - to soften the
domestic impact of authoritarianism. Unintentionally, therefore, they
have helped allow a space for civil society, which the past eleven years
have in an equally willy-nilly way helped consolidate. The effects of
this have been that Gen. Musharraf is today stressing his commitment to
human rights, religious tolerance and a free press. All his initial
steps have been to concentrate power in his own hands, and while he
talks largely of accountability he has allowed no space for holding the
army accountable.

The Indian Government is right in being cautious to avoid any
insinuation of meddling in Pakistan's affairs. But those within and
outside the Government who say that India can as well make peace with a
military as a civilian government in Pakistan should take pause at Gen.
Musharraf's words. There are indeed significant steps which can be taken
towards de-escalating conflict between India and Pakistan, but as long
as there is a military regime in Pakistan there is no hope of a
political settlement. The Indian government could, therefore, encourage
army-to-army confidence- building, through the withdrawal of artillery
and joint mechanisms for border control to extend a buffer zone along
the line of control. The two countries could restart negotiations on
Siachen, and get their navies to agree on dispute resolution in the Rann
of Kutch. What India cannot and should not do is flirt with the idea of
reaching a political settlement with the Pakistani military. First,
because an army whose identity as Pakistan's saviour is intermeshed with
its identity as Kashmir's saviour is both less capable of and less
interested in delivering a political settlement than a civilian
authority. The most that can be sought of them, therefore, is military
confidence-building. Secondly, and as a consequence of this, to allow
what will essentially remain relatively minor military
confidence-building to substitute for a political agreement will serve
neither India's interests nor Pakistan's.

In this context, India should rule out Track Two negotiations until a
civilian administration is in place. Gen. Musharraf can choose whether
he will be an army chief or a dictator, but Track Two negotiations will
be meaningless in either case and will serve merely to muddy the waters.
Military issues are best addressed directly, and dictators are grist
only to an imperial mill. What India can and should encourage are
opportunities for civil society exchange, whether through peace fora,
women's groups, human rights groups, or the media. At this point in
time, such exchanges might most effectively take place at a South Asian
rather than Indo-Pakistani level.

For South Asia, whose development has long been held hostage to
Indo-Pakistani contention, the saddest fallout of recent events is that
they indefinitely set back hopes for a peace process between the two
countries which might allow the region to develop trade and encourage
freedom of movement. Those South Asian leaders who have an army ear will
help by quietly urging Gen. Musharraf to appoint a purely civilian
caretaker administration even if there are no early elections. They
could also quietly urge the Indian Government that there is no time like
the present to put its Kashmir house in order. At the moment India can
expect a respite from pressure to settle Kashmir with Pakistan. This
provides the Central and State Governments with an opportunity to
redress some of Kashmir's most pressing grievances, such as excessive
troops' presence, the violation of human rights and rampant corruption.
Without measures to curb these three, the Indian Government's attempted
crackdown on militants will only increase Kashmiri alienation.A
government of vision would, in fact, go much further. If would use the
respite which Pakistan's coup has granted it to open wide-ranging talks
on autonomy with Kashmiri, Jammu and Ladakhi leaders, and combine these
with a country-wide package for devolution. But who expects vision these
days?

(The writer is Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations, New York.)
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#2.
RS 8,000 CRORE DEFENCE SPENDING HIKE LIKELY
By Mahendra Ved

The Times of India News Service

NEW DELHI: The government is set to hike the defence spending by about
Rs 8,000 crore. Supplementary demands of grants are expected to be
tabled during the current Parliament session, well-placed sources said
on Wednesday.

This is seen as the new government's response to the security situation
in the wake of the Kargil conflict, now that the snowy heights along the
Line of Control (LoC) would need to be manned round the year.

It is also a way of blunting the criticism it might face for its
handling of the crisis when Parliament debates Kargil, political
observers say.

The armed forces are believed to have sought a 20 per cent hike and this
is being substantially met. A good deal of weapons systems and
ammunition, communication systems, as also training equipment and
clothing required for mountain warfare have either been ordered or are
likely to be ordered this year. Some of it is already on the way to
being inducted.

The single largest beneficiary is the Army, particularly the infantry.
The hiked amount is expected to be spent on increased dearness allowance
(DA) and for the indigenisation programme of the Defence Research and
Development Organisation (DRDO).

Union finance minister Yashwant Sinha had provided Rs 45,000 crore as
budget estimates for defence for 1999-2000. The revised estimates, which
are still being worked out, are understood to be over Rs 50,000 crore.
[...]
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#3.
The Asian Age
Thursday 21th October 1999 
Edit.

LAWS AND OUTLAWS

Shiv Sena supremo Balasaheb Thackeray has made his agenda clear: if the
new government in Maharashtra were to take follow-up action against him
on the basis of the Srikrishna Commission report that investigated the
Mumbai riots, his loyal sainiks will not allow the government to work
and its operatives to "roam freely" either. Mr Thackeray said this
barely a few hours after the new Vilasrao Deshmukh-led government took
charge, with the proclaimed intention of resurrecting the commission's
report from the dungheap to which it was consigned by Mr Deshmukh's
predecessors. In issuing his threat, Mr Thackeray has acted true to
form. Seldom, if ever, has he let the authority of the state become a
hindrance in his and the Sainiks' game plan. Apparently, the onus is now
on the Deshmukh government whether it takes its own pronouncements
seriously enough. The case otherwise is simple enough. After the
demolition of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya and the riots that broke out
in Mumbai among several other places, the then Maharashtra government
led by Mr Sharad Pawar had appointed the Srikrishna Commission.
Subsequently, there was a change of government in the state, and the
Shiv Sena-BJP alliance assumed power. The commission submitted its
report to the latter, which stalled any action based on its conclusions
since some of the leading lights of the Shiv Sena had been directly or
indirectly implicated by Justice Srikrishna. Given the fact that such
commissions of inquiry have hardly any effective legal teeth provided th
e Manohar Joshi-led government an expedient to ignore the Srikrishna
report. Similarly, the state government's summary rejection of the
commission's findings provided its opponents with an electoral platform.
Now the Congress and the NCP have an opportunity to prove whether its
pre-election promises were not just empty rhetoric. As a matter of fact,
Mr Deshmukh has only reiterated his resolve. While a conclusive answer
to what actually becomes of it will be available sooner or later, the
facility with which even those indicted after riots and other breaches
of the civilian order are able to cock-a-snook at the law enforcing
agencies is a matter that needs to be seriously debated. Fifteen years
after the ghastly November riots in Delhi and other parts of the country
following the Indira Gandhi assassination, most, if not all, of its
perpetrators, some of them enjoying a high profile then as well as now,
have been allowed to go scot-free. Same has been the case with others
similarly arraigned in earlier and later instances. If indeed such
commissions are appointed only as mere subterfuge rather than as genuine
attempts to book the culprits of a given carnage, where is the point in
going ahead with all the charade? A system based on ensuring
accountability and a certain transparency can certainly do better than
merely going through the motions of wanting to know the gory truth
behind periodic bouts of sadism and madness. Mr Thackeray is acutely
aware of the history of such commissions - that it needs huge amounts of
political will to actually act on their reports. He seems to think that
the new government in Maharashtra does not have the necessary will. That
may explain what seems to be a case of bravado on his part.
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#4.
The Hindustan Times
21 October 1999

THE SAFFRON AGENDA
By Harsh Sethi

With the BJP-led NDA now seemingly ensconced at the Centre and the
Congress relegated at least for the proximate future, to the sidelines,
speculation about the future of a broad secular platform is bound to
gain strength.

At the heart of the discourse lies a gut-level fear, shared by many,
that any long term prospect of the BJP as a ruling party may
irretrievably damage the secular fabric of the country. The continuing
obsession about the BJP-RSS links in the post-result discussions on TV,
as also the desire to pin the BJP down to issuing a clear statement of
intent with regard to its core issues - Ram mandir, Article 370, and
uniform civil code - provides a good indication of this tendency.

The secularist fear is informed by an understanding that the BJP, in our
political landscape, stands as a case apart; that it is more than and
different from a 'normal' political party. A wolf in sheep's clothing,
its current suspension of the Hindutva agenda is merely a tactical ploy.
Given time and somewhat more propitious circumstances, the party cannot
but return to its core issues. That, after all, is what defines it.

The persistence of this 'genetic code' understanding of a political
party is not totally without basis. BJP ideologues have never quite
hidden their belief in a restrictive notion of nationalism, of favouring
religion as a primary marker of identity, or of viewing those who
announce India as their pitrabhoomi and punyabhoomi as somehow superior
Indians. There is evidence to suggest that the BJP and its affiliates,
more than most other political formations, are prone to use religious
distinctions as a strategy to expand voter base.

Their ostensible involvement in anti-minority riots, the systematic
intervention in matters - educational and cultural - from textbooks and
TV programmes to selection of persons to head academic institutions,
their continuing fascination with a nuclearised and militarised India,
are cases in point. On all these fronts the country witnessed
significant developments in their previous stint in power.

There is, of course a counter-view which, while sharing a negative
perception about the BJP, sets store by a political maxim that both
growth and the demands of survival as a ruling party serves to modulate
extremist tendencies. Equally, the fact that the BJP to even come to
power has to be dependent upon allies, not all of whom share its
ideological-cultural predilections. Much, for instance, is made of TDP
decision to stay out of the NDA or the assertions by members of the JD-U
or the Dravidian parties about their secularist credentials. What is
disturbing is the position of the protagonists are more reflective of
ex-ante perceptions than any close scrutiny of the unfolding reality.

The earlier description of the BJP as a party of the urban, upper caste,
middle class Hindu clearly needs reformulation. So does a
characterisation reducing it to the representative of petty trading
interests, or even of those ritualistically inclined. The growth in the
last decade and a half, of the BJP from a fringe 6-8 per cent force to a
party enjoying the confidence of nearly a quarter of the electorate,
claiming for itself the earlier Congress status of the 'natural party of
governance', owes significantly to its ability to reinvent itself.

Electorally, at least, it has made advances - both spatially and into
different social segments - be they the OBCs, SCs or STs. Of course, its
appeal within religious minorities remains limited. And while its spread
to newer regions in the South and East- Andhra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka,
Orissa, West Bengal and Assam, even the north-east -owes as much to its
ability to broker strategic alliances as its 'intrinsic' appeal, if
needs to be underscored that behind these developments lies a modulation
of its unitarian, centralising and homogenising ideology. Of course, the
fact that its regional partners have long been in contestation with the
Congress helps.

What is intriguing and disturbing is that despite the phenomenal growth
of the BJP in electoral terms, a research-based understanding of the
party, even more its affiliates, remains limited. Take the RSS,
ostensibly the 'shadowy' power behind the electoral face. The most
quoted study about the organisation is still the Anderson and Damle The
Brotherhood in Saffron, a book which came out in 1987. Whatever its
insights, much of the data, interview-based, deals with even earlier
years. Our knowledge about the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, a prime mobiliser
of the Ram mandir movement, continues to be based primarily on newspaper
accounts and speeches of its leaders, barring the doctoral thesis of Eva
Hellman. The situation regarding the Bajrang Dal, the Rashtriya Swayamse
vika Samiti or the dozens of sadhu samajs is far worse. Why, it is
difficult to think of even a single detailed account of the Bharatiya
Mazdoor Sangh, arguably the country's largest central trade union.

Most studies on political Hinduism or Hindu nationalism, and the current
decade has seen many, seem to focus either on the electoral performance
of the BJP or a textual/discourse analysis of the affiliates. There is a
relative absence of politics - organisational studies - even simple
empirical data on membership, composition by caste, age, profession,
gender or behavioural studies about motivations and aspirations. It is
thus not surprising that on either side of the ideological divide we are
presented with an essentialist rendering, almost as if these
organisations are frozen in a frame defined by their foundational
principles viz. Guru Golwalkar's We and our Nationhood Defined.

Not enough is read into the need of our saffron organisations to
incorporate a Babasaheb Ambedkar into its pantheon of greats. Or the
fact that a Sakshi Maharaj, one of the prime accused in the Babri masjid
demolition case, not only campaigned against the BJP ostensibly with
support from UP Chief Minister Kalyan Singh, but has now joined Mulayam
Singh Yadav, a bete noir once calumnised as Maulana Mulayam. Even more
that a Shankarsinh Vaghela, once the prime architect of the BJP/Sangh in
Gujarat, is now implacably opposed to them.

The continuing failure of social and political mobilisation against
forces and organisations deemed communal can partly be traced to this
flawed understanding. Despite evidence that members of these
organisations speak in different voices or that they articulate
different interests, in fact political projects, conditioned by their
socio-economic backgrounds, the secularist forces continue to treat them
as a relatively homogeneous bloc. In so doing we underestimate the
restraints the diversity of the country places on any ideological
project.

The reference here is not to the secularist hope in Mandal defeating the
Mandir, but that different regions and socio-cultural groups inevitably
favour different imaginations; that ideological strait-jacketing is
foredoomed to failure. More infantile is the tendency to fall back on
legal-coercive strategies to combat these bodies, be it taking the
Ramjanmabhoomi battle to court as if matters of faith can be reduced to
property disputes or calls to ban the RSS/VHP. All that this does is to
imbue the organisation with the halo of a victim or martyr, often adding
to its strength once it resumes legal form.

Now that the prospects of instability in the BJP-led NDA created by
unfavourable parliamentary arithmetic have somewhat receded, those
concerned about the BJP and its core agenda need to rethink their
strategy. They need to seriously engage with the fears, real or
imaginary, of both faith and existence, that fuel a culture of
intolerance. As a start they could encourage a programme of serious
research into these organisations. A failure to do so may prove fatal.
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South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch is an informal, independent &
non-profit citizens wire service run by South Asia Citizens Web
(http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex) since1996.