Mr. PM: Speak For India. Not For Ghost Of NAM

The Non Aligned Movement was a bad idea from the start. It almost seems that it was done to shirk away from the responsibility of making hard choices. It is always said that Indian are a proud lot and thus do not want to become a vassal state. This of course assumes that becoming friends with a powerful country would reduce us to that. That has some truth to it. But the world of international politics mirrors the microcosm of life. Not all countries are equal. The powerful ones will get away with more than god intended to (or maybe God did). But then what is a country like India to do? This is where hard questions need to be answered. There are no easy solutions here.

NAM was a group of countries trying to stay independent i.e. not taking sides in the cold war. Noble thought indeed. But were we really non-aligned. As the UN records show that until mid 1980’s we voted against the USA more than 75% of the times. If the USA was on the wrong side of an issue, we needed to oppose them. However, a closer look would tell you that we were actually helping the Russians against the US. KGB records show that during those days almost all our Congress politicians and leftists were on the KGB payroll. So our NAM involvement was in name only. Dictators like Castro and Tito were the stalwarts of the movement. That is how ridiculous it was. And somehow, the ghost of the NAM is still haunting us.

The PM’s latest speech at the UN goes to show you that NAM still finds currency in the south block. The speech writing babu must have been instructed to do so (the guy made a grammatical error in the speech. WOW!). Not only did the speech reek of NAM rhetoric, it almost seem to compound recent mistakes and lay grounds for some new ones. In a well written article, Mr. KC Singh who used to be a diplomat says the following:

The PM then went on to justify through circumlocutory reasoning that Indian abstention on UNSC resolution 1973 on Libya, authorising a 'No-Fly Zone', and permitting all measures to protect civilians was right. Subsequent developments in Libya have shown the Indian judgement to have been flawed both on the basis of realpolitik, as Muammar Gaddafi could not survive, as well as the emerging principle of a global Responsibility to Protect when a massacre of citizens, even by its own government, is imminent.

Now we are once again on the wrong side of history because we were too cowardly to take a tough decision against Gaddafi who was no friends of India and we had no vested interests in the continuance of his brutal regime. The PM went on to support the Palestinian cause of nationhood despite of the fact that the Israelis have been our most reliable suppliers of weaponry. The Israelis are our kindred spirits and they could use our support. The Indian interests lie in helping the Israelis. But we chose to support The Palestinians in the spirit of NAM. I can only hope that this does not hurt the Indo-Israeli defense relations.

The PM then went on to engage Iran’s president Ahmedinejad. Here is what Mr. Singh writes about that:

The most pathetic was PM's interaction with President M Ahmadinejad of Iran. Ignored for six years, the PM's advisers have suddenly found virtue in engaging him when he had just finished embarrassing Iran and offending the US by questioning 9/11 on its tenth anniversary in the very city where it happened. How would India have reacted if a foreign leader had said the same about 26/11 while visiting India and then the US President was photographed hugging him.

This is reminiscent of the picture of Mrs. Gandhi hugging Fidel Castro which was then plastered on all kinds of publications the world over. I don’t think that earned us too many friends in the US or other places. Of course a knee jerk reaction would be “to hell with the US. Why do we need them. They are a bunch of racists who would like nothing more than to make India into a vassal state”. A close look at the friends of USA (Pakistan is no friend of the US) would tell you that it is in our interest to stay on the right side of the US rather than opposing them. That is the nature of the beast. From independence to the day PV Narsimha Rao took over we saw what our non aligned policy got us. Nothing but poverty, misery and defeat on the world stage. Since then, we have engaged the US and the west (and vice versa) and look at the results. Are we more respected today or when we were practicing Nehruvian economics and non aligned policies? The answer may be painful to swallow but it is very clear.

Of course there exists an uglier possibility for the latest snafus at the UN. Was the support for Gaddafi and the Palestinians or engaging Ahmedinejad meant to showcase the Congress’ secular values for their Muslim votebank? There are enough number of instances to support that as well. Now that is not only short sighted but a clear example of putting the party (or in this case that Family) before the nation. After all, Rahul Gandhi’s future Prime-Ministership is at stake.

We need a PM who will put India ahead of votebank politics or a family or his legacy or his party. We need a PM who should be willing to make otherwise unpalatable deals if it benefits the Indian people. We need a PM who would take care of poor Indians before taking up the cause of poor people elsewhere. We need a PM who worries about domestic governance rather than the global kind. We need a PM who will speak for India before speaking on behalf of a failed idea. It is painfully clear from just one speech that Manmohan Singh is not that PM. Not that we needed this speech to surmise that fact.
Mr. KC Singh analysis can be read at:http://www.rediff.com/news/column/why-the-pms-un-visit-wont-help-indias-cause/20110926.htm

Our blog post on the topic of Indian politicians on the KGB payroll can be read at:http://thenethindu.blogspot.com/2011/06/soul-of-india-is-at-stake.html