A reply to Robert Hathaway's Abuse of India

[Guest guest]

Title: A reply to Robert Hathaway

Author: Koenraad Elst

Publication: Rediff.com

August 30, 2002

http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/aug/30guest.htm

 

The American South Asia scholar Robert M Hathaway has used

the opinion page of

the Chennai-based daily The Hindu (August 8, 2002) as a

forum for tendering

advice to his own government. Dr Hathaway is director of the

Asia Program at the

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a famous

think tank in

Washington DC.

 

The beautiful think tank network in Washington DC should, to

judge from the

generous amounts of money oiling it, provide American policy-

makers with the

fullest information and analysis base available to any

government in world

history. And yet, American foreign policy is by no means the

most intelligent

even in the contemporary world scene.

 

Hathaway's article illustrates what the problem is. Instead

of laying down

general principles or specific American national interests,

his advice

concerning Washington's South Asia policy focuses on

sectional demands whispered

into his ear by a foreign lobby whose nature and motives he

fails to comprehend.

In particular, he wants his own employer to investigate and

eventually to block

fund-raising in the US by "groups implicated in the Gujarat

violence." This is a

demand recently pushed by US-based Indian Communists such as

FOIL (Forum of

Indian Leftists) as their latest weapon in their struggle

against their

nationalistic compatriots.

Hathaway correctly reminds us that "terrorism comes in many

guises:" armed

assaults, suicide bombings, assassinations and "yes, hate-

consumed mobs

butchering innocent women and children". The latter

expression presumably refers

to the Muslim attack on Hindu pilgrims, a majority of them

women and children,

in a train in Godhra, Gujarat? Well, no, unfortunately

Hathaway is blind in one

eye and exclusively refers to those phases in the

conflagration when Muslims

were the victims. I will charitably assume that this bias is

not a matter of

considered opinion on Hathaway's part, merely an unreflected

borrowing from his

Indian sources.

 

Terror in Kashmir

Apart from poetry about a "sore" to be "healed," Hathaway

takes no interest

whatsoever in India's main terrorist problem, Islamic armed

separatism in

Kashmir. He merely warns Hindus not to use Kashmir as an

excuse for Gujarat, and

denies that Hindu exasperation at Muslim violence in Kashmir

has anything to do

with the Hindu reaction in Gujarat, as if he had

investigated the matter. Yet,

it is precisely on the Kashmiri frontline that America is

most directly

concerned, for it has provided indirect support to the

terrorists for more than

a decade. Many Hindus have been killed with American-made

weapons and bombs.

 

The only act of terrorism in Kashmir which has registered in

his consciousness

is "the assassination earlier this year of Abdul Ghani Lone,

who opposed Indian

rule in Kashmir but who in his final years had come to the

realisation that

violence and extremism offer Kashmiris no way out in their

struggle with New

Delhi," a struggle which Hathaway refuses to take distance

from.

Outrageously, he insinuates that this murder is the

handiwork of the Indian

government or its much-maligned Hindutva allies. That indeed

is the unmistakable

implication of his statement: "The Gujarat violence, Lone's

assassination, and

most recently, the designation of L K Advani as deputy prime

minister and most

likely successor to Mr Vajpayee have all raised new concerns

about India's

future among India's friends in the US."

 

Misinformed by Indian "secularists," whose Communist

background seems unknown to

him, Hathaway assumes that the soft-spoken Advani is some

kind of extremist, and

he blames the Indian government for Advani's promotion as

this is obviously a

governmental decision. (It is of course none of America's

business whom the

democratic Indian government nominates; for months after his

election, George W

Bush rightly gave the cold shoulder to European politicians

who had overstepped

diplomatic decorum by openly supporting Bill Clinton and

deploring Bush's

victory.) Again leaning on secularist sources, Hathaway

blames the Gujarat

violence at least partly on the Indian government; why else

should it "raise

concerns" as potentially damaging the inter-state relations

between India and

the US?

 

Finally, in the same breath, in his list of blameworthy

moves tainting the

Indian Government, Hathaway claims that Lone's murder is a

cause for worry about

the course India is taking. This is simply despicable.

 

Lone was murdered by Islamic separatists more extreme than

himself, by the very

terrorists whom India has been fighting for over a decade.

The murder was one

more anti-Indian blow struck by the international Islamic

terrorists against

whom America claims to be waging a war. How should it be a

cause for worry among

pro-Indian Americans that India was targeted once more, now

in the person of the

relatively loyalist Opposition leader Lone, by the

terrorists? Isn't the

merciless hostility of the terrorists rather proving that

India is doing

something right?

 

Sovereignty

Hathaway probably doesn't understand why the vast majority

of the human race is

fed up with American arrogance. And by this, I don't just

mean the anti-American

fanaticism and conspiracy theories in the Muslim world, but

also the healthy

skepticism about the boundless American self-centredness

which you may encounter

in India, China or Europe. He might do well to reread this

statement of his:

"Some Indians, of course, say that the tragic events in

Gujarat are a domestic

Indian affair, and that the United States and the rest of

the world have no

business intruding into a purely internal Indian matter.

This is a self-serving

falsehood."

No, this is purely a matter of national sovereignty. India

wants no foreign

interference, a principle which America not only endorses

but takes to

inordinate lengths. Just recently, President Bush has

declared he will not

tolerate the arrest and sentencing of American intervention

personnel by a

non-American court, not even the UN-sponsored international

tribunal in The

Hague. He even reserved the right to invade the Netherlands

to free American

citizens brought before that court. India's insistence on

managing its own

communal problems is far more modest than the bullying

American conception of

national sovereignty.

 

America and the Muslim world

While not providing any reason whatsoever why India should

have an interest in

conceding to America a right to intervene, Hathaway focuses

on America's own

self-interest in supporting the Muslim pogromchik side in

the Gujarat carnage:

"Important American interests, including the global war

against terrorism, can

be directly impacted by what the US says -- and fails to

say -- about Gujarat.

At this particular moment in history, the US cannot allow

the impression to take

hold that Americans somehow value a Muslim life less than

the life of a person

of another religion."

 

In the Indian subcontinent, there is no danger whatsoever

that anyone will get

this impression, for the reality is too obviously the

opposite. American

meddlers, Hathaway among them, consistently turn a blind eye

towards Hindu

victims of Muslim violence, in India as well as in Pakistan

and Bangladesh.

America has consistently given material and diplomatic

support to the very

forces which have been butchering Hindus.

 

Hathaway insists strongly on this point, that America is not

at all anti-Muslim:

"Sadly, there are those in the Islamic world who assert that

the present

conflict is a war directed not against terrorism, but

against Islam. That the US

does not care about Muslims. That Washington seeks to hijack

the tragedies of

9/11 to carry out long-held plans to repress the Islamic

world. These are

detestable lies, but many in the Muslim world are prepared

to believe them."

 

If Muslims believe these "detestable lies," it must be

because of America's

anti-Palestinian position in the Middle East, or because of

its tacit support to

Russia's campaign in Chechnya. It seems that Muslims just

want to have it all

and are ungrateful for the American support to the Muslim

side in many other

conflicts: against the Greeks in Turkish northern Cyprus,

against the Soviets in

Afghanistan, against the Serbs in Bosnia and Kosovo, against

India in Kashmir.

No further pro-Muslim gesture is going to convince those who

attribute

anti-Muslim motives to an American government which has

already so consistently

supported Muslim interests on many fronts.

 

What anti-American Muslims also fail to understand, is the

structural economic

reason for America's preferring the Muslim world over the

fledgling infidel

superpower India. The Muslim world is not very dynamic and

has a lot of

purchasing power, so it is the perfect market for American

hi-tech (and

low-tech, eg, agricultural) products. India, by contrast,

has only limited

purchasing power but is a very dynamic competitor in all

advanced industrial

sectors. For this reason, and also to compensate the Muslim

world for the

permanent grievance over American support to "the Zionist

entity," America is

bound to take the Muslim side in purportedly peripheral

conflicts, especially

against India. The peptalk about India and the US

being "natural allies" as "the

biggest and the oldest democracy" has little impact on real-

life policies.

 

War against terrorism

Hathaway's concept of a "war against terrorism" is flawed:

terrorism is a

strategy, not an enemy. As Daniel Pipes has remarked, "war

against terrorism"

makes as much sense as "war against trenches" or "war

against carpet-bombing".

If American policy-makers cannot define their enemy more

properly, their

mindless muscle-flexing dooms them to misdirected aggression

and ultimately to

humiliation and defeat. You can bomb only so many Afghan

wedding parties by

mistake without paying a price.

But at least Hathaway is aware of India's consistent stand

against terrorism:

"Following the trauma Americans experienced on September 11,

India was one of

the first countries in the world to step forward with a

pledge of unconditional

and unambivalent support for the US in its quest to bring to

justice those

responsible for the terror attacks in New York and

Washington. The

administration of George W Bush, already keen to upgrade

relations with Delhi,

took notice."

 

Unfortunately, it is unclear to what this "notice" has

amounted in practice.

True, the US has lifted the sanctioned imposed against India

for conducting

nuclear tests in May 1998. But this gesture of goodwill

toward an anti-terrorist

frontline state was counterbalanced by the same gesture

towards Pakistan, the

prime sponsor and organiser of terrorism, eventhough

Pakistani links have been

proven in a number of terrorist attacks against not only

Indian but also

American targets. Just recently, the US has resumed the

delivery of advanced

weaponry to the Pakistani army, whose prime target is not

terrorism but India.

 

Dr Koenraad Elst is a Belgian author who has written more

than 15 books on

Indian nationalism, history, politics, religious conflict.