The exposed double standards

Qazi Azad

AFTER a meeting with Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Narayanan advised a bleeding Sri Lanka last Thursday not to buy weapons from China and Pakistan to fight the Tamil rebels of the country.
While sending out his message or warning through the media, Narayanan told reporters, "We are the big power in the region. It is very clear. Whatever the requirements, they should come to us. We will give what is necessary". He also stated, India would not give any offensive weaponry to Sri Lanka.
But the Sri Lankan government forces are confronting presently better-equipped rebellious Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE). The rebels are now using low-flying aircraft, which evade detection on the radar, supplied previously to Sri Lanka by India. Ask not about the source of those aircraft or about how these could reach the LTTE. Rather question: What would the Sri Lankan forces do with defensive weapons now? Choose to  remain stagnant with such weapons and live with the burning problem to continue bleeding?
The Indian economy has recently crossed the trillion-dollar mark. It stood at about $1010 billion at the end of fiscal 2006-07. With 10,45,000 men and women in ranks and 34 divisions, India  has one of the world's largest armies. It has an expanding navy, equipped with one Russian-made aircraft carrier, a US-made aircraft carrier and a large fleet of warships, which aspires to petrol the entire Indian Ocean. The Indian air force is equipped with Russian, French and British-made assault aircraft and Israel-made modern radar systems. Lately, India is also a nuclear power. It has its short, medium and long-range missiles. The innovation of these self-fabricated missiles for further sophistication, accuracy and longer range goes on. All these clouts give India the image of a rising big power. The US administration of President George Bush Jr. also gave it the commitment to convert it into a major power quite a long while ago.
India's possession of its ever-expanding offensive weaponry in the backdrop of its 1962 war with China and three wars with Pakistan, both nuclear powers, is not unnatural. But it has always tended to conflict with New Delhi's articulation of pacifist views. At least some of its smaller neighbours-- like Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan, have always preferred to take those views in the face value. They raised no alarm. Perhaps, they wanted to reassure themselves about their individual national security by creating their own explanations about India's growing militarisation. But MK Narayanan might have shattered their peace by introducing an element for their anxiety.
Being an independent country, threatened with fragmentation by the raging rebellion of the LTTE, the small island Sri Lanka should have the choice to decide what kind of weapons must it acquire to defeat the rebellion. If she has to fight this rebellion, being waged for decades by a group, which has lately been declared a terrorist organisation in the West, with defensive weapons, as Narayanan insisted, it will never succeed in suppressing this menace. The terrorists will then survive well, gain more confidence and enhance their ferocity in fighting. They will also expand their control and corner the legitimate administration to either concede the partition of the country or go on bleeding endlessly until an unmanageable battlefield has decisively dictated the fate of the country.
Nehru's commitment to 'Pancha Shilla' -- the five principles of peaceful co-existence enunciated by him at Bandung along with Egypt's Gamal Abdul Nassr, currently dissolved Yugoslavia's Joseph Tito and Indonesia's Sukarno, seems to have been shrugged off and set aside by Narayanan. If he has exposed rising India's new face while seeking to dictate the bleeding Sri Lanka about how she should conduct her affairs, the overtly big brotherly attitude has torn off the benign musk of his country.
It is not known whether Dr. Manomohan Singh approves of what his security adviser has boastfully said about India's new clout, as a regional big power, requiring a small neighbour to obey its diktats or to henceforth enjoy conditional sovereignty. If Dr. Singh does not, he should publicly chastise Narayanan for being mindlessly arrogant in this particular public utterance. Otherwise, the veiled threat, which may be perceived by India's small neighbours from Narayanan's words of naked arrogance, uttered openly  on  behalf of his big regional power country, may spoil the climate of trust in the sub-continent.
The Sri Lankan Tamils of Indian origin, whose ancestors were transported to the island by the then colonial British for tea plantation, do have genuine grievances against their government. But their rebellion, which is partly a product of these grievances, was initially aided by India. Late Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi erased the memory about this involvement  by sending out troops of his country to quell the rebellion. But Narayanan's advice or message to Sri Lanka has revived the impression that his country still regards itself as the guardian of the Sri Lankan Tamils. This is discomforting not only to Sri Lanka, but also to other countries in the sub-continent.
New Delhi's preference for officially posing as the guardian of some communities in other countries will constitute not only an act of undesirable interference in the internal affairs of those sovereign countries but will also act as an incitement for 'Balkanisation' of this region. External support for the internal dissidents of a country never helps their meaningful integration. Assimilation of any community with the mainstream in a country has to take place under the influence of its internal social dynamics to be durable and fruitful.
The Europeans have tried, quite rightly, to reconcile the rebellious Sri Lankan Tamils with the mainstream people in their country by engaging them in a dialogue with the government. In the middle of the negotiations, when the process was faltering, they declared the LTTE as a terrorist organisation. That means the non-partisans have already made a judgement about the nature of the Tamil Tigers. How could Narayanan then tilt towards them in difference from India's declared support for the war on terror?
National Security Adviser MK Narayanan has thus clearly put his country's Prime Minister Dr. Manomohan Singh to shame by overtly suggesting that New Delhi still pursues double standards, wherever convenient.