Date: Tue, 26 May 1998 06:57:37 -0400 (EDT)
From: Satish K Kolluri <kolluri-AT-comm.umass.edu>
Subject: (fwd) Nuclear Nationalism (fwd)


Forwarded message:
> From kolluri  Tue May 26 06:41:20 1998
> Date: Tue, 26 May 1998 06:41:19 -0400 (EDT)
> Message-Id: <199805261041.GAA26717-AT-lessing.oit.umass.edu>
> From: kolluri-AT-oitunix.oit.umass.edu (Satish K Kolluri)
> To: kolluri
> Subject: (fwd) Nuclear Nationalism
> Newsgroups: alt.india.progressive
> 
> 
> 
>  This essay was written in response to the current round of nuclear testing
>  in India. The article is due in Economic and Political Weekly, Bombay on
>  21st May, 1998. The writer, Shiv Viswanathan is a Senior Fellow at the
>  Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. He is the author of
>  "A Carnival for Science", (Oxford:1997) and has edited "Foul Play:
>  Chronicles of Corruption,"(Banyan Books:1998;forthcoming).
> 
> ******************************  
>  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 sibli[P1]ng. 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.
>  	Kanti 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 tersely 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.
>   
>   
>  Shiv Visvanathan
>  [P1]
>   
>   
> >  
> > 1
> >  
> >  
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> 



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