An arsenal of inanities

An arsenal of inanities
Shekhar Gupta

IF the strategic stature of a country or region is determined by the quality of military and spy fiction written about it, we can complain of being very shoddily served. Read, for example, Dragon Fire, written by the BBC's former Beijing correspondent Humphrey Hawksley (Macmillan, 9.99).

After all, we did not "go nuclear" to be treated like some òf40ófaltu third world banana republic by dimwit journos turned fiction writers. What compounds the humiliation is not just the fact that some such book is so generously endorsed by our Raksha Mantri but also that its acknowledgements page includes the names of so many respectable and knowledgeable people that, if they only counted the errors in the book, they would probably have hauled in the author for libel. Particularly as he claims that some of them have gone over his manuscript and made "invaluable corrections".

It is impossible, for example, to believe that retired generals Ashok Mehta and Dipanker Banerjee would have left their fingerprints on a book that told us our Kashmir operations were being led by our western army commander. Kashmir is the home of the northern command and there is no way the general there would allow his counterpart at the western command in Chandigarh in any more than he would let the Pakistanis past his forward defences in Chhamb or Batalik. Or would former foreign secretary J.N. "Mani" Dixit, TV mega-anchor Karan Thapar or the almighty K. Subrahmanyam have passed a book that claims a second hotline was set up between India and Pakistan in the Eighties when Gujral and Nawaz Sharif were in power. Gujral became prime minister almost a decade after the Eighties were over. Even Nawaz Sharif first came to power in 1990.

Why bother about accuracy in a work of fiction? Precisely because the real masters of the craft of military thriller-writing have perfected that meticulousness into a science. Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October, for example, is so authentic, so well-researched that even today, in the wake of the Kursk tragedy, Newsweek invites him to write a riveting -- and authoritative -- piece on the perils of the sea. Let's hope nobody ever calls Hawksley some day to write an article in India Today or Outlook on the problems in Gorkhaland or Guwahati or he might again tell you about India's vulnerabilities in the Siliguri corridor near Sialkot. Now, didn't we say, don't expect a fiction writer to get even his geography right? Savour the alliterative flourish instead. The jean-clad home minister who gets killed is sometimes Indrajit and sometimes Sadgopal Bagchi. Often he also becomes home secretary. Asom Gana Parishad, Prafulla Mahanta's ruling party in Assam, apparently, is the same as themurderous ULFA. Hari Dixit, the "prime minister", is once described as the former chief minister of Andhra Pradesh and once as the former health minister of Assam. And so what if your defence minister said -- in writing -- that he hoped nobody would dismiss this as a work of fiction.

You keep running into problems with the facts in almost each section of the 361-page book that paints the scenario of a catastrophic India-Pakistan-China war in May 2007 that results in the nuking of Mumbai, Delhi and an entire strike corps of the Indian Army, the destruction of Pakistan, which becomes a UN protectorate, and a total victory for China which becomes a world power, "obtaining by force which would have taken it generations to obtain through peace". Of course, India strikes back with its own nukes but confines its ineffectual attacks to military garrisons, because "Prime Minister" Hari Dixit insists we won't hit population centres. This after a Chinese nuke has struck the Fort in Mumbai and the other is about to vapourise Raisina Hill within the minute. This is something even Mani Dixit should object to. No Indian prime minister would be so stupid and spineless, least of all if he was anybody like Mani Dixit after whom Hawksley has obviously named his bumbling Indian leader.

Hawksley talks of India giving up its security obligations to Nepal. How long has it been since we had any? He paints a stirring picture of an Indian heliborne assault across the LoC in Kargil where helicopters take off in waves of 50. Such a fleet did not exist even in the late Sundarji's fantasy of the Flying Fifty-fourth, the futuristic airborne assault division for which money or justification was never found. Hawksley's tank battles in the desert are over in minutes and even though the Indians seem to be winning these, such a cakewalk was not envisaged even in Operation Brasstacks when our superiority against Pakistan was much greater than it would be in 2007. Hawksley does, however, look to balance out this tactical imbecility by painting a similar scenario of Indian capitulation in northern Kashmir. What else can you expect if your northern army is led by the commander of your western army. Even if his name, Prabhu Ninan, is a hybrid of the names of two most powerful editors of our times.

There is a suspicion that much of the book's plot was hatched in high-spirited brainstorm sessions at Delhi's Press Club. So, if the chief of the western command, who leads the northern command is Prabhu Ninan, the foreign minister is Prabhu Purie. Those who think it might be a realistic long shot, that the other Puri in the world of foreign policy, Hardip, our Deputy High Commissioner in London, might rise to become the minister, should see the way Purie is spelled. Does it sound like the second name of yet another powerful editor? Nowhere in the world, except in Delhi's Press Club can you find such a shortage of names to talk about.

Surely we live in dangerous times, in what is, most certainly, the most dangerous place on the earth. Wars can break out, between India and Pakistan and/or China. But the people of this region have a bit more intelligence than to let such ludicrous situations escalate into all-out nuclear wars. Tom Clancy, General Sir John Hacket Jr, Frederick Forsythe and John Le Carre, Alistair Maclean are read and re-read by generations because they painted such masterly, realistic scenarios that even strategists drew lessons from them. Even Craig Thomas, whose endorsement appears on the dust jacket, produced Bear's Tears, a gripping yarn drawn from the Afghan war. The essence of military fiction is that it should be realistic in its anticipation of events, tactics, technologies. Here, Hawksley would like us to believe that even in 2007 our prime minister would be using a white Ambassador car, produced by Hindustan Motors in Calcutta. We know that our economic reform is not moving as fast as we would like. But wouldanyone bet with me on whether the Ambassador would continue to be the official vehicle of Bharat Sarkar in 2007?

The real problem with this book is not that it is so asinine. It is, instead, that it is so politically loaded. Its central thread is Sinophobia of the most paranoid kind and while I am quite willing to believe that almost any journalist who survived Jianguomenwei, or any of the other diplomatic/foreigners' gulags in Beijing, should end up hating the Chinese, it would be disastrous if Indian readers were to be influenced by this. This is the danger in this kind of trash carrying "must read" recommendations from the Indian defence minister. It is also quite likely that George would never have written that testimonial if he had actually read the book.

BLURBS:

Let's hope nobody ever calls Hawksley to write an article on the problems in Gorkhaland or he might again tell you about India's vulnerabilities in the Siliguri corridor near Sialkot

The real problem with `Dragon Fire' is not that it is so asinine. It is that it is so politically loaded. Its central thread is Sinophobia of the most paranoid kind