From Lahore to Kargil

Who could have predicted the dramatic upheavals on the sub-continent over the past year? Within three months of it’s cobbling together a majority to lead the government at the Centre, the stridently ‘nationalistic’ BJP conducted nuclear
tests at Pokhran to establish its patriotic prowess. Weeks later, Pakistan declared its own entry into the exclusive club of nuclear powers, never mind the brave protests from its own peace activists to desist from the matching of nuclear
machismo. The initial patriotic fervour notwithstanding, the hungry masses on both sides of the Wagah did not take long to realise that bombs don’t fill bellies. Faced with mounting mass disenchantment and burgeoning peace movements internally and growing international pressure, nine months after the blasts, the sworn enemies, the BJP’s Atal Behari Vajpayee and Muslim League’s Nawaz Sharif chose to ride high on bus diplomacy. But less than 90 days after the rendezvous in Lahore, it seems as if the spirit of the Summer of 1998 is sought to be ruthlessly revived with fierce combat on the ground and missiles shooting out of and being shot at warplanes hovering over the cold and barren reaches of Kargil. When will the curtain fall and what shape will the climax take? Do the internal political fortunes of the two tottering governments have anything to do with the bringing of the sub–continent to the brink of war so soon after the promise of peace? Our cover story this month examines the motive behind the war drums being beaten again. An accompanying report records the response of peace activists from both sides and the strategies they think should be evolved so that sane voices may silence the war cries again.

Before the war–front was opened at Kargil, the issue of the Congress president and prime ministerial aspirant Sonia Gandhi’s origins that had hogged newspaper headlines. The ‘Amar, Akbar, Anthony’ trio of Sharad Pawar, Tariq Anwar and P.A. Sangma deserted the Congress(I) on an issue that was initially raised by the saffron brigade and later echoed by the Samajwadi Party’s Mulayam Singh Yadav. Does every Indian citizen, whichever the country of her or his origin, have the right to run for political office, the Prime Minister’s post included, or not? What are the long–term implications of demanding a constitutional limitation on that right? A comment piece examines the implications of this argument.

A reader of this journal has sent us a piece that argues that the constitutional right given to India’s religious minorities to run and manage their own educational institutions violates a basic principle of secularism and this makes the Indian constitution and the republic pseudo–secular. We are publishing the article in the interest of debate.

An important report released recently by an international human rights’ group, titled Broken People, documents in detail the atrocities that continue to be perpetrated against the country’s Dalits who constitute over one–sixth of our population. Fifty years after independence and the Indian Constitution, they continue to be shunned through the discriminatory practice of "untouchability" (premised on the inhuman notion of "too polluted to be touched"), discriminated against, denied access to employment and land, Dalit women are raped and routinely abused by the police machinery and other wings of the Indian state. As we enter the twenty–first century, will Indians have the moral strength to admit to this "hidden apartheid" and take urgent steps towards its complete eradication? Or will be continue to comfort ourselves with the myth of the "inherent tolerance" of Hinduism?

In the context of the Akali government in Punjab celebrating the tercentenary of the birth of the Khalsa panth, Satyapal Dang — a communist from Punjab universally respected for his principled and highly courageous opposition to the ‘Khalistan’ movement – questions the complicity of the BJP and the opportunism of the Congress in the Akali attempt to progressively turn Punjab into a Sikh theocratic state within secular India.

Down south, in Karnataka, the local unit of the BJP continues with the wider agenda of Hindutva, which includes a selective manipulation of history. Thanks to the hue and cry raised by them, the Karnataka government backed out of its plans to celebrate the 200th death centenary of Tipu Sultan. A piece in this issue examines Hindutva’s claim that Sultan was an intolerant Muslim bigot.