Why flog a dead NAM?

Forget what Nehru said, only money and military strength win respect

SUBRAMANIAM NARASIMHAN

This is apropos of recent columns invoking the ‘glorious days of the Non Aligned Movement’ by Kuldip Nayar and Mani Shankar Aiyar in this paper. Messrs Nayar and Aiyar, both members of Parliament, are excellent men of letters. It is sad to see them getting mired in a world of their own imagination.

The NAM, during the Cold War, was possibly a forum for discussing international matters. It had very little value in influencing the superpowers and the big economies. While showering plaudits on NAM, many NAM countries looked after their own national interests and overtly and covertly courted the US, USSR and the big economies. They grew. Even we had to tilt towards the USSR in the seventies and eighties.

No international forum without any financial and military authority can ever be effective. Contrast the NAM with the militarily mighty NATO or the financially mighty OPEC. NAM provided only travel and dinner opportunities to bureaucrats, diplomats and politicians, courtesy the taxpayers’ money.

The NAM may have provided India an escape route in times of adversity. But never a victorious path. India was never accorded the respect and influence in the international polity that Messrs Nayar & Aiyar repeatedly assert here and elsewhere. Only money and military strength elicit respect. It was the tests in 1974 and in 1998 that made the world sit up and watch us.

Armed with the NAM, and with all the superlative creativity, diplomacy and statecraft Nehru was touted to possess, he could influence no superpower to act in our favour in 1962. Despite the acknowledgement of Secretary of State Marshall that the accession of Kashmir to the Union of India in October 1947 was final and binding, do the US and other countries show the map of India the way we like it to be shown? And why did Shastri have to sign on a piece of paper dictated by the USSR? What was the NAM doing then? How many NAM countries supported our actions in 1970-72? Nearly all of them voted in favour of the UN resolution that condemned us.

It is only this NDA government, despite its frailties, that has gone on a path of controlled diplomatic offensive vis-…-vis the perpetual war monger-neighbour, Pakistan. They have at least attempted to identify the self-destructive policies we have been pursuing vis-a-vis China. This is only the first step in the right direction.

The second step this government should take is to ask these questions: Do we let Pakistan grab our territory and trouble us with their undeclared war of a thousand cuts? Do we allow countries such as China and N. Korea to overtly and covertly indulge in hostile acts against us? Do we allow small countries — Bangladesh, Burma and Sri Lanka — to bully us?

There are no simple answers to these questions. But the least this government can do is educate the people on these matters. Undo the blatantly wrong policies Nehru and his cohorts created. Encourage discussions and symposia by the party organs at the district/taluka levels. Use clubs and every available forum including the weekly village markets where people congregate. RSS and VHP and Bajrang Dal should abandon all their pet projects and start on this. Temples must and can wait. The nation shall not.