It looks as if this column will appear just as the first US missiles crash into Baghdad to pulverise the blameless people of Iraq. The call is, therefore, for an obituary on the UN. But as there are those among us who exult at the death of the UN and glory in the ascendance of the US, this perhaps is the right juncture to write the obituary of a Nehruvian foreign policy based on nationalism, self-respect, self-confidence and the belief that India’s national interest is best served not by servile opportunism but through adherence to and advocacy of the basic principles to which our national interest must be anchored; of foreign policy as the external expression of internal sovereignty; of non-alignment as the continuation beyond Independence of the world-view which informed our struggle for freedom.Funerals to be fun need to be funny. So, the end of an independent foreign policy for India has been signalled by the US ambassador informing us through the columns of this newspaper that India’s Iraq policy is the same as the United States, only to be followed a few weeks later by the Russian ambassador to New Delhi informing the electronic media that India’s Iraq policy is the same as that of Moscow! Is this the apogee of non-alignment? Or proof of the Janus face of foreign policy under Vajpayee? Actually, the Greeks were wanting in imagination. They got no further than two faces for their god. We, of course, have God as panchamukhi. Now, Vajpayee, one-up on Hindutva, has emerged as saptamukhi. For consider.First, we had Jaswant Singh, standing in for Yashwant Sinha, inform the Lok Sabha on February 19 that India could not wait “indefinitely” for Iraq to disarm. On being asked (by me) where in UNSC resolution 1441 a deadline is placed, he muttered something about my suffering from a “syndrome” but did not deign to indicate where—because nothing validated Ambassador Blackwill’s interview to the Indian Express more than Jaswant Singh thus putting India firmly behind the US insistence, in Elvis Presley’s words, that “It’s now or never”.Second, notwithstanding Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s assurance that the “unanimous sentiments” of the House would inform Vajpayee’s speech at the NAM summit in Kuala Lumpur, not Parliament’s but Jaswant’s signature was written all over it. The NAM declaration on Iraq, however, did a somersault. PM’s speech looked so clearly at odds with the NAM declaration that Vajpayee was obliged at his parting press conference in Kuala Lumpur to take Stand III, mouthing the sweet sentiments his hard-nosed speech-writers had excised from his official statement. To take three different stands in three days on the burning international question of the moment must surely qualify Vajpayee as the Houdini of foreign policy.Yashwant Sinha then went on in the March 7 Rajya Sabha debate on Iraq to flatly contradict the emphasis of his predecessor (and Lok Sabha stand-in) to pronounce himself in Vajpayee Mark III terms. So reassuring were his words that the CPI(M) member who had moved the Private Member’s Motion graciously withdrew it, without seeking to inquire too closely how the principle of collective ministerial responsibility operated in this miasma of contradictory positions. Stand IV. Then came the all-party meeting on March 10. The Opposition’s demand for an unequivocal positioning of India in an unjust war in our vicinity was brushed aside. Vajpayee V.Vajpayee VI was the anodyne statement laid on the table of both Houses on 12 March, cunningly designed to mean all things to all men. The Lok Sabha, bound by its rules that a ministerial statement does not allow of an immediate debate, let Vajpayee off the hook. The going was not so smooth, however, in the Rajya Sabha, where members have the right to question the minister in the guise of “seeking clarifications”. Vajpayee, under questioning, took off his seventh veil. Departing completely from the content, tone and thrust of the statement drafted for him by his mandarins in an alien language he barely understands, Vajpayee laid bare his soul in his inimitable Hindi, reverting so definitively to classical Nehruvianism as to propel the Russian Ambassador to heights of praise—and the editor of the Indian Express into soaring indignation.There are advantages to having a government which does not know its mind. Whatever the outcome of the US invasion of Iraq and its proposed make-over of West Asia, Vajpayee can claim with selective quotation, “I told you so!” No one, of course, will believe us. We have lost all credibility in the run-up to the Iraqi Gotterdammerung. There was a time when India was all alone—but listened to. We are now in an era where we have more foreign policy partners than a strumpet—but count for nothing. The over-arching objective of foreign policy under the NDA has been currying favour with the high and mighty in the expectation that they will pull our irons out of the Pakistani fire. It is as fond a hope as Ayub Khan had when he thought Pakistan’s avid membership of the Baghdad pact would ensure US-UK support for pulling his irons out of the Indian fire.The only outcome of Pakistan becoming the firmest ally of the Western bloc was that as soon as it went on its own and launched its attack on India in September 1965, it lost all US military assistance for the next 15 years. India, without compromising its principles, indeed because Nehru and Shastri stood up for them, succeeded in wiping Kashmir off the UNSC agenda for 33 years. It was only the idiocy of Pokhran II which in June 1998 restored Kashmir to a UNSC resolution. There it ominously sits for the world’s sole superpower to take us out when it is through with taking out those who annoy it more. Either we stand up for ourselves to be worthy of the Independence which the BJP did nothing to achieve, or we surrender independence in foreign policy as the precursor to surrendering Independence itself.Write to msaiyar@expressindia.com
