Atal Behari Vajpayee becomes prime minister about twice or thrice a year; anything more is for those with larger appetites. One reason why his leadership has not staled despite three years in office is that he does not spread himself wide, and thin. He is not an interventionist in his own government, a temptation that prime ministers and presidents are very prone to. He does not come in the way of his ministers, and start doing their job for them, although, God knows, there are times when India would be happier if he did.
Being aloof makes sense, for him. You cannot be a minister and not become unpopular in India. That is impossible. The ruling principle of the motherland is that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong in spades; and if anything goes right, no one will notice. That is the cost-benefit equation of power. If you don’t like the mathematics you can choose another profession. Hence, the less the prime minister is associated with his own government, the less vulnerable he is, personally. If the economy is in a mess, go and blame the finance minister. If bombs blast holes all over the country, check with the home minister. When Atal Behari Vajpayee, therefore, allows a free hand to his ministers, we should not confuse it with goodwill or generosity. Just put that in the category of good politics.
However, the obverse is that if you do not understand when those two or three moments of crisis, or national need, come every year; or appreciate what needs to be done when you are standing alone on high ground, then you are irretrievably sunk. Such space opened up after the terrorist attack on Indian parliament on Dec. 13, and nearly inflicted damage of the kind the worst nightmare could not have envisaged.
The response had to be multi-tiered. At one level was the immediate need for security forces to eliminate the terrorists. This was done with commendable speed after the embarrassing initial failure when the security ring was punched open. The political response and the overall management of the incident is a more complex business. The first duty of the government was to prevent any ugly internal fallout; there is no shortage of elements, some in the ruling phalanx, eager to fan communal fires out of every spark that comes their way. All political parties, very consciously and very carefully, refused to identify terrorism with Indian Muslims. There were times, during the debate in parliament, when one could see rhetoric beginning to wander in dangerous directions but at least one important politician pulled himself back from the brink.
The highlight of the national response to terrorism was surely the debate in the Lok Sabha. The context might seem slightly inappropriate, but what a pleasure it is to see a mature democracy in full flow. Parliament was attacked; it was obvious in 48 hours that the objective was to hold as many of its members hostage, spread death and havoc if necessary, and defeat the government on the bargaining table just as it had been defeated during the hijack of the Indian Airlines plane. India’s parliament responded with the strength of confidence and the grace of a democracy. Clearly the tone of the debate had to be set by the opposition: What can a ruling party MP do except be obedient to the powers that be or, if his IQ is on the lower side, find a surrogate to hit? The leaders of the opposition shaped national policy with their views. Mulayam Singh Yadav, who has no reason to be kind to the BJP with the elections in Uttar Pradesh only weeks away, defined the difference between the national interest and the national government, identified himself with the first and left no doubt that the second needed a wake-up call. The real impact, however, came from former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar. He spoke at a moment when war hype was dominant, and when any opinion poll would have found a majority of Indians urging a war that they wanted to start without knowing how it would end. If ever a speech can claim to have helped alter a mood, then that must be one. That speech did not change the mood, but it interfered with a rising spiral. Prime Minister Vajpayee acknowledged this contribution when he intervened during the debate, noting that Chandra Shekhar’s questions were worthy of Arjuna on war during Mahabharat. Mrs. Sonia Gandhi was the one disappointment of an outstanding debate. She should not really speak in parliament until she has learned the value of conviction over compromise as well as the art of discourse. She is not in the league around her.
You could be forgiven for believing that the prime minister, sitting in the House, was resting while the others had their say. His eyes were half-closed. The good news is that his mind was open. He could have turned the wind in whichever direction he wanted. Mercifully he chose to be a prime minister of India rather than a leader of a political party. By the time he had finished, he had become quite the master of ceremonies.
He achieved many things simultaneously, at least one of them good for his own political health. One presumes he realizes that the national anger against terrorism, and against Pakistan, will not translate into a vote for his party in the UP elections. If the war in Kargil could not change the UP mind in the last general elections, when Vajpayee was asking for a vote for himself, then Dec. 13 is unlikely to bring Rajnath Singh back to power. The goodwill Vajpayee is accumulating now will serve him in good stead when the backlash of a Lucknow defeat begins creeping toward Delhi.
The big question between now and those elections is relations with Pakistan. Delhi has done everything short of opening hostilities to indicate its rage, and its conviction that Dec. 13 was yet another battle in an undeclared war by Pakistan against India. There are enough Indians who believe that the only meaningful response to a undeclared war is to declare one.
There used to be a time when a clash between India and Pakistan had all the cozens of neighborhood acrimony. The two countries are now simply too powerful for the world to sit back and let them get on with it. Between them they could bring the most sensitive and unstable bit of unreal estate tumbling down.
However Indians must decide their own course of action, on the basis of the Indian interest. Every war has to have an objective. Indian objective is the elimination of terrorist camps and arsenals located in Pakistan. By definition such camps are unconventional, disguised and mobile. Can they be hit in a conventional war? Terrorists do not operate from cantonments. Will it help to defeat the Pakistan Army, assuming that the Pakistan Army can be defeated in a war that it will fight to protect its country’s borders? Can you defeat only those elements in the Pak armed forces who are encouraging this jihad against India? Is the objective of such a war to seize territory? If the answer is in the negative, what do you do with that territory? Are there are any guarantees that a conventional war will not escalate under the pressure of circumstances?
You cannot launch something as serious as war without thinking through the questions, answers and options. Colin Powell made a wise comment to Ariel Sharon when he reminded the Israeli prime minister that there was a tomorrow, and then a day after. Today’s anger must always be matched against tomorrow’s possibilities.
India has the sympathy of the world today; the challenge is to convert that sympathy into active and meaningful support. I do not think the terrorists realize how much they have hurt their own cause, if their cause is Kashmir, by this sustained, suicidal adventurism. However, there could be a method in this madness. Terrorists, living on the fringe of reality, may want to provoke a larger conflagration.
Gen. Pervez Musharraf is not a terrorist, but he is doing what he can to provoke Delhi. To describe India’s reaction as arrogant is stupid; there is no other word for it. President Musharraf is generous with his tongue because generals, not being familiar with the demands of democracy, are not used to accountability. They think they can get away with anything as long as it sounds faintly patriotic. Perhaps the General has been spoilt into believing that his interaction with the media is consistently brilliant. Sound bites can bite back, General.
If his genuine assessment of Indian feeling after Dec. 13 is that Delhi is being "arrogant" then the General has no appreciation of what is happening in a democracy next to his dictatorship. Such ignorance can do more damage than intelligent hostility.
Vajpayee will have to steer through difficult minefields in the coming days, and try to keep his balance when all around him are losing theirs. However, this might require becoming prime minister more than twice or thrice a year.
