It’s time to take sides

Only a country that has been Third World and second rate for as long as India has could be frightened by a naval exercise. So frightened that the communist parties took to the streets waving placards that evoked memories of their Cold War angst. ‘Stop joint military exercise with US imperialism’, ‘US hands off the Bay of Bengal’. Imperialism? Really? If the Marxists are serious, we need to ask how last week’s naval exercise compares on the imperialism Richter scale with the Chinese occupation of Tibet. Any answers?

As if the placards and the protests in and outside Parliament House were not enough, they also took off on a jatha along the east coast of India to protect it from American contamination. Commissar Karat went on national TV to pronounce that a ship that carried nuclear weapons and had been involved in killing innocent people in Iraq was not welcome in Indian waters.

Speak for yourself, Comrade Commissar. Yet, in an odd sort of way the communists have done us a favour by making such a hoo-ha over last week’s naval exercise in which Indian warships sailed alongside those of the United States, Australia, Japan and Singapore. It is time to take sides as we approach the sixth anniversary of 9/11. And, I have not the slightest hesitation in admitting that I would be very nervous if India was not on the side of the United States because it is the side of democracy and open societies. No hesitation in admitting either that I would think it a terrible shame if we fell back into the crowd we used to hang out with before. I could be wrong, but I seem to remember we were the only democratic country in the non-aligned club.

Our friends during the Cold War were a truly grim bunch. To a country they were totalitarian states of one kind or other and we gained nothing from them except an inferiority complex and a chip on our shoulder that remains embarrassingly evident. A treaty makes us fear that our ‘sovereignty’ is in terminal danger and a naval exercise has some of our citizens running around hysterically in fear of the US taking over the Bay of Bengal.

If it were just the Marxists who were behaving in this way we could ignore them, our problem arises when ideologically unaffiliated commentators start talking about a ‘New Great Game’. This is when the discussion deteriorates into worrying silliness. There is no new Great Game and there are no mysterious designs that lie beneath the naval exercise or our increasing closeness to the US. It should be clear to anyone who is not ideologically blind that we live in troubled times and in a very difficult neighbourhood.

... contd.

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