Patriot Games

Welcome to the Patriot Games

Antonin Artaud could not have done better. The timing was so
immaculate and surreal.

Celebrating the 50th year of our independence, Atal Bihari Vajpayee
erased in one stroke the legacy of the national movement and its
modernist
aftermath: Panch Shila, non-alignment, non-violence and the dream of a
world of alternatives. It was a killing of the fathers that Freud would
have
been intrigued about.

The props were simple. A man pretending to be prime minister. The
national flag as backdrop. Vajpayee announced that ’India today carried
out three underground nuclear tests at Pokhran at 3.45 p.m.' A quick
terse
announcement. A political statement to be followed by a technical
briefing.
One correspondent even felt it was like an American press conference. As
American as apple pie and Hiroshima.

The obscenity lay at several levels. It was not just the presence
of
Pramod Mahajan with a fascist bully boy smile,standing at the back
playing
Pierre Salinger in pyjamas. It was the timing.

On Buddh Purnima, India exploded three nuclear bombs. The era of
the pseudo-secularists has actually arrived. Only a civilization
illiterate
about itself would knit the bomb and Buddha together. Yet strangely,
Buddha was the signifier of continuity for both nuclear events. When
Pokhran took place in 1974, the news of the blast was conveyed to Mrs.
Gandhi as ’Lord Buddha has smiled'. History repeats itself, first time as
a
tragedy and second time as illiteracy. Gandhi was once asked what do you
think of western civilization? And he said ’It would be a good idea'. If
he
were to return today and had been asked ’What do you think of Indian
civilization', he might remark ’that would also be a good idea'. In fact,
the
first thing that went out of the window was the ideal of a civilization
with
its notions of myth, religion, morals, good conduct and tradition. We
abandoned it all for history and the Nation State. Welcome to the
amoralism
of the Patriot Games.

The Patriot Games is played on a subtle chequer board. Let us state
its moves. Step one. It enacts the national movement as a simulation.
There
is a new sense of imperial oppression and there are new liberators.
First,
there is George Fernandes, the eternal adolescent and the army as chorus
complaining about China. There is a touch of caring here. When George
talks of snowmobiles for our jawans, I love him for it. Then there is the
drumbeat of middle class machismo overthrowing Babar, Clive and Churchill
in cafes and the internet. Militarize. Muscularize. Masculinize goes the
modernist litany from Mambalam to Matunga. It is a plea for technology as
a sign of toughness. If only we would get our act together, we would be
taken seriously. We have the fourth largest army in the world. We have
the third largest pool of scientific talent. Beware. We are one of the
six
in
the nuclear club.

Beating the drums are two kinds of shakas; the RSS and the
scientists in designer khakhis. The Ramannas and the Iyengars and the
Brahmin hawks like K. Subramaniam. Hearing Raja Ramanna say ’Our boys
have done a wonderful job' reminded me of an old Groucho Marx joke.
Groucho is pretending to be a scientist. He gets up and says ’I am
going to make a great contribution to science. I am planning to retire'.

I
am reminded of the old men of Indian science, the Menons, the
Swaminathans, the Ramannas. I wish they would retire. They have done
enough damage to the idea of peace, sustainable development and the
transfer of technology. This generation of scientists are not like the
Ramans, Sahas or Kosambis. It is a generation of clerks salivating at
every
bell ring from the state. The Nation State. Sorry, the National Security
State which is against democracy and peer review, which will not even
allow a simple economic audit of the Indian nuclear programme. Scientific
connivance and political illiteracy make perfect bedfellows.

Step two. Stage a spectacle. Carry out a controlled experiment with
all its grandeur and secrecy. A circus no one saw but everyone has heard
about. Did you hear that India exploded three bombs at 3.45 in the
morning? A state secret to be shared by all. What more could a democracy
want?

The first three experiments encapsulate the history of the bomb
from
Pokhran 1974 to Pokhran 1998. There is progress for you. India has joined
the nuclear club. Club is the key word. Not community. Not movement.
Club.

Suddenly a whole nation feels upwardly mobile. We have arrived, after a
long pregnancy. Look at the way we read our history. The early efforts
at nuclearism were shrouded in ambiguity and hypocrisy, with weakness.
Remember how Narasimha Rao backtracked under US pressure. But now we
have moved from ambiguity to clarity. Clarity. A bully is clear. So are
the
stupid. Truth is more complex. But we have outgrown truth as we become
a national security state.

Step Three. Declare a holiday. Create a festival. Tell the people
the
bomb is for them. Fernandes is already claiming people should be involved
in security. Involvement... Participation. The lovely language of World
Bank
governance. Now we know his sibling. Wonder what his German socialist
friends think of Fernandes. Hello Petra Kelly. Didn't know your Judas
friend, did you? When Petra died, George and Jaya Jaitley shed crocodile
tears over her "suicide" at Gandhi Peace Foundation. Wonder how Petra
would have reacted to this green Judas had she lived? Khadi and Nuclear
bombs can only exist in complementarity in a mind like George Fernandes.
The radio-active Gandhian.

There is a tremendous sense of euphoria, of achievement. Of
competence. Of David against the Goliaths. Every--almost every--Indian
stands proud at being nuclear, of becoming Goliaths. Look at the long
lines
waiting with flowers to congratulate Vajpayee. The Prime Minister stands
bedecked and bewildered like the bridegroom of the year. Our tryst with
destiny is complete. Everyone feels nationalistic. Pass out the barfis.
It
could be a hockey match. A Tendulkar century. A riot or a nuclear blast.
We are happy with all four spectacles. Our scientific Tendulkars have
struck effortlessly five times in a row. The crowd is berserk with joy.
Yet
there is a sadness when everything is a spectacle. A match. A riot. A
blast.
When there is little difference between these events. Worse. People
forget
that the worst kind of consumerism is the unquestioning consumption of
science.

The BJP got it right. It knows that nationalism is tough to beat as
a populist idea. After all, caste is fragmentary and class is divisive
but
the
Nation represents the whole. Look at the way dissent is silenced. Every
political group wants to be implicated, get a lick of the nuclear
ice-cream.
The Congress insists that it was Rajiv and Indira who made the ice stick.
The UF insists it is a three-in-one ice-cream. The first layer belongs to
Indira, second to Gujral and the third to BJP. A truly coalitional
ice-cream.
A national nuclear ice-cream. Even communists are salivating wondering if
there is a Soviet component they could lay claim to. What is worse, they
know you can't criticize nationalism. When Vajpayee fights the US
imperial
bully, Bardhan and Basu will clap. Dissenters sound silly. Praful Bidwai
on
BBC sounds as if he has got up from a hangover and murmurs the first
thing that comes into his head, that it is a BJP plot to look decisive.

He is right but when he mouths it, the message has all the inanity of
the
butler did it. The audience orchestration is superb. Gujral loves it.
And
Ramanna. And K. Subramaniam. And Jasjit Singh. Throw in a touch of Raja
Mohan and Bharath Karnad. It is an orgy of agreement. Prim and proper.
All the newspapers quote IAEA as saying "it was not illegal". The patriot
games of Vajpayee beats any Asiad spectacle of Indira and Rajiv.

Even luck favours the BJP. Abdul Kalam is the ideal citizen and
scientist. Ascetic as P.C. Ray. As nationalist as Meghnad Saha. A
bachelor
wedded only to science. You don~t get them better. It is as if Aslam Sher
Khan were to score the winning hockey goal against Pakistan. All of India
seems to be celebrating. We have beaten China, Pakistan, USA, Germany and
Britain. We have gatecrashed into history. Every Indian feels proud. We
have won the Battle of Plassey, the Swadeshi struggle, the 1962 China
war,
all at one go. It is victory as virtual reality. Saare jahan se accha, ye
nuclear India hamara.

There is truth in the lie. A convincing truth. A fragment of
history.
The nuclear club has been a coercive and hypocritical one. It is a search
for monopoly. A demand of good behaviour by the one nation that has
used the bomb twice on a people. The amoralism is stunning. Whether it is
Thatcher, Blair, Bush or Clinton, you can't get lower than that. Third
rate
moralism dished out with equal ladles of Dale Carnegie and Ron Reagan.
The
Original sin pretending to be the Immaculate Conception.

The Indians were brilliant in their counter response. Not since
Krishna Menon played Chanakya in English were Indians so pleased with
their own performance. It was the debate on CTBT that convinced India
that it was on the right track. Arundhati Ghosh was superb as Rani of
Jhansi. Translate that as Joan of Arc for first world illiterates. It
showed
us as powerful dissenters of the global world. That set the stage for our
moral crusade. But we were not just heroic. We were realists. It is this
transition from Nehruvian idealism to global pragmatism that needs to be
emphasized. It is like switching from the old Ambassador car to the new
Maruti. Morality is now more slick, mobile and profitable.

Implied in this is a sense that mere goodness is weak, that good
guys are dead guys. What one needs are good guys with nuclear sharp
shooters. Acquire the nuclear colt, look the enemy dead in the eye and
talk
of a nuclear free world. Peace is what tough guys understand. Suddenly
every Indian feels a nuclear bulge in his biceps. The Akhada langurs show
it to the world. The Mani Dixits play it down. To see this in operation
one
had to watch his performance in Aap ka Faisala, Aap ka Adalat. It was
debate between Dixit and Kanti Bajpai, professor of International
Relations
at JNU. Bajpai is the peacenik as scholar. Quiet. Quietly courageous.
Full
of questionmarks and footnotes. Bajpai understands peace. He knows it is
a slow bumbling process and Indians have played a great role in its
evolution. He is honest, ready to cite chapter and verse when Indians
have
sinned. Ironically he appears shy, hesitant, ectomorphic. A Ph.D., still
fresh
behind his ears.

Mani Dixit is like an old bear, amiable with a pot of honey inside,
oozing the experience of power. The foreign secretary as hero. Talking to
his IIC group. He exposes the hypocrisy of USA, the nukespeak of China.
He underlines the Indian efforts to be moral. The struggles with
complexity
and ambiguity; of how Nehruvian idealism was whipped into muscular
pragmatism. It is time to tell the world we are tough like you that we
are
high calorie nuclear heroes.

Kani Bajpai is sincere, persistent but Dixit is tough, clipped,
amiably
dismissive. A politician who smells a crowd. History is about tough guys.
No more subaltern pap, old chap. We are pragmatists now. Love me, love
my bomb.
The crowd loves it, applauds, happy to be a part of history. Even
compere Manoj Raghuvanshi~s moustache quivers like a weathervane in the
right direction. How many Agni missiles did Gandhi have?

To the potent nationalist gin, the BJP adds the right twist, a
touch
of swadeshi lime. The bomb is Indian. Conceived by Indian science.
Executed by Indian technologists. We don~t smuggle technology like Dr.
Khan. No nuclear Dawoods please, we are Indian. Our nuclear bomb is home
grown as Abdul Kalam. The MIT in his bio data stands for Madras Institute
of Technology. Between Kalam, K. Subramaniam, Dixit, Ramanna the swadesi
hum kissi se kum nahin is echoed clearly.

There is a hijacking and distortion of discourse that we must
challenge. The new Dandi march must begin at the villages of Pokhran by
challenging the trustees of this new official morality. We have to state
that the above cast of characters cannot define our moral universe,
anymore than ethical mutants like Clinton or Thatcher. We have to apply
to the bomb, the Gandhian model of technology as one enhancing
innovation, community, debate, trusteeship, and love.

Let me put it tensely and personally. The current ideas of the
bomb,
of the nation state, of the new Indian self violates:


-- My sense of security

-- my feelings of community

-- my theory of democracy

-- my celebration of science

-- my idea of foreign policy

-- my sense of history

-- my legacy of swadesi

-- my emotion of being Indian, very very Indian



The nuclear rath yatra has to be halted.

I appeal to our scientists to stand up and be counted. Say no to
the
bomb but do it openly and in conversation.

I request PUCL, PUDR to accept Indian and even Pakistani dissenting
scientists as Prisoners of conscience.

I appeal to our people and those in Pakistan to start a people to
people foreign policy. Our states have run out of ideas for peace.

I ask every community to say no to the bomb from Panchayat to
Internet.

I request our human rights activists, our Gandhians, our feminists,
our ecologists, our Dalits, our housewives, tribals, trade unionists to
stop
this closing of the Indian mind.

India is and has to be a clearing house for ideas on peace,
alternatives, non-violence for the global world. The future is now. We
owe it to our children. Withdraw from the Patriot Games. Its noise as music
covers the jackboots of a coming totalitarian era.