A foreign policy without a script

The reason for this unfortunate state of affairs is simple: our tiny elite is so obsequious and westward-looking that its reflexes on most issues are conditioned by the conventional wisdom forged in the West.

Some of this is on account of our history. Colonialism has left behind its stamp. Those who could afford it, sent their wards to British universities.

But it can be argued that Indianseducated in Britain also formed the reservoir from which most of the national movement leaders were drawn.

Those who studied in British universities came from families that were economically and intellectually secure. Liberal education opened their minds to new ideas, including notions of freedom for their country. From their proximity to the English they acquired tastes and manners exactly as Lord Macaulay had scripted. By the late ’60s-early ’70s, the quasi-feudal elite had lost in economic power and British education became expensive. To respond to a by now habitual urge to “study abroad” came the American universities flush with funds after the economic boom of the ’60s.

There was a difference in what the British and Americans institutions respectively sought from their Indian students. Britain needed them in colonial times as civil servants and army officers to keep the colony stable. Subsequently, they would be generally sympathetic to British interests. The American scholarship blandishmentcoincided with the emergence of Pax Americana. The US became a global power with a reach unparalleled in world history. Woodrow Wilson’s dream of exporting values that were at the heart of American success required, eventually, the emergence of a global elite that would think like the World Bank.

From this pool were drawn those who regularly participated in seminars at, say, Harvard or Austin. To the seminar network were other allurements teaching assignments for former Foreign Office hands, for instance.An elite so beholden to the West would need to summon up extraordinary courage to take a stand on, for example, the nuclear issue in total opposition to the prevailing conventional wisdom in the West. This is why no position papers can be drawn up in India spelling out the various options in the wake of a development as important as the nuclear tests.

In the absence of a comprehensive script of this kind, the system embarks on frenetic ad hocism. This, I fear, is what has been happening in managing themost-Pokharan scenario. Sending Jaswant Singh to Washington and New York, to explain the Indian position was an excellent idea. To his American interlocuters he came across as extremely reasonable. But the very day he was projecting himself as a moderate on Pakistan and Kashmir, South Block issues a statement totally contrary in tone to what Jaswant Singh said.

Since I happened to be in New York at the time, I can only report the general bewilderment among those who were beginning to see the reasonableness of our case.

Absence of a coherent script is also evident on how the UN secretary general ought to be engaged. A more understanding man would be difficult to find. In his 40-minute conversation with me he said nothing that South Block would find offensive. On the contrary, he was most understanding of the situation in the Indian sub-continent. He too found Jaswant Singh eloquent and persuasive. And we have refused to receive his special envoy! According a reception to an envoy is quite different fromaccepting UN mediation. This is not policy. This is paranoia.