Footnote in Political Life

THE EXHAUSTIVE debate in both Houses of Parliament on Operation Sindoor and its aftermath was both welcome and overdue. It is not very often that relations between India and another country gets the attention of Parliament. Foreign policy is at best an interesting footnote in political life. Even the Standing Committee on External Affairs, of which I was a member during my term in Rajya Sabha, spent more time discussing passports and cultural diplomacy—a shorthand for ICCR—than our relations with neighbours and important trading partners. Yes, there were exceptions, but these proved the rule.

There were many—cutting across the political divide—who expressed dissatisfaction with the debate, even as they praised the performance of some ministers and backbenchers. The two most frequently heard complaints were that some MPs failed to make a distinction between speaking in Parliament and addressing a political rally. The other complaint that I encountered mainly on social media was that there was an exaggerated focus on history. The political class was constantly reminded by (what I presume is) the younger generation that Jawaharlal Nehru died in 1964, more than 61 years ago.

The belief that everything we are experiencing is ‘unprecedented’—a very loosely used expression—is a feature of semi-literate journalism that, alas, exercises a hold on the popular imagination. The reality is that while the context is undeniably unique, it is always instructive to know how the country dealt with situations in the past. When Amit Shah narrated the parliamentary exchange involving Nehru and the then Opposition stalwart Mahavir Tyagi, he wasn’t telling me something I hadn’t read before. However, to a younger generation, the bitter national mood in the aftermath of the 1962 debacle was worth reminding. I saw Gaurav Gogoi jump up to feebly protest at the home minister’s reference to Nehru’s infamous broadcast to the people of Assam—in effect, telling Indians in the Northeast that China had prevailed and that “heart goes out to the people of Assam”. But that was the cruel reality of a time when the entire Nehruvian edifice collapsed ignominiously.

The Sino-Indian war was the experience of defeat and 1971 was India’s first unambiguous encounter with victory. Many years ago, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Pakistani surrender in Dhaka, I wrote an article suggesting that this was the first Hindu victory after a thousand years. The article got some people very upset because it was clear that I was using the Bangladesh war to egg on the new Hindu nationalism centred on Ayodhya.

My earlier assessment of the 1971 war and the implicit praise of Indira Gandhi would have been a little more qualified had I factored in the aftermath of the war and the Shimla Agreement that was negotiated with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. As the Operation Sindoor debate quite clearly demonstrated, a subsequent generation now feels that India’s handling of an emphatic victory was totally muddle-headed. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah made clear in their interventions, India suffered from a misplaced sense of magnanimity. We released some 93,000 Prisoners of War, including about 120 officers believed to be responsible for some of the worst excesses in East Pakistan, without securing anything in return. We blindly believed Bhutto’s assurance of good behaviour.

The greatest irony is that the Shimla Agreement was negotiated from the Indian side by a clutch of Kashmiri Pandits who formed the inner coterie around Indira Gandhi. These included the likes of PN Haksar, DP Dhar, PN Dhar and TN Kaul. Even the RAW chief was a Kashmiri Pandit. If PN Dhar’s memoirs are to be believed, the argument was that India shouldn’t repeat the behaviour of the Allies after World War I. Unfortunately, magnanimity was equated with Hindu supineness and instead of turning over a new leaf, future generations of Pakistanis have plotted unceasingly to avenge the defeat of 1971.

To cap it all, in just two decades after displaying magnanimity, Kashmiri Pandits found themselves turfed out of the Kashmir Valley by Islamists who, no doubt, also wanted to pay India back for the humiliation of 1971.

The experience of 1971 and the grim record of Pakistani-inspired terrorism since the Mumbai blasts of 1993 deserve to be reinjected into the public imagination because Indians tend to forgive and forget. I know that crude retribution is not a civilisational attribute, but there are moments in history when we should undertake the difficult task of steeling the national personality. India must learn to remember.

Cultural diplomacydiscussionGaurav GogoiIndian politicsJawaharlal NehruParliament