If the British acquired an empire in a fit of a absentmindedness, India seems ready to be pushed to regional eminence by Western prognostications. Rajiv Gandhi is proud to boast that the USA sees a “greater role for India in the region”. Henry Kissinger and the Australian Defense Minister, Kim Beazley, have both been on about it for some time now; and more recently, American publications like Time and Defense and Foreign Affairs have taken up the refrain.
The expectations may have appeared to falter last week as two developments brought to an end one phase of the emergence of a new India personality. But the agreements to withdraw the handful of paratroopers left in the Mal dives by November 3 and the IPKF by the end of the year would have been a setback only if New Delhi had banked on a permanent military presence overseas. There is no evidence to support such a supposition.
Nor need the failure to find a solution to Sri Lanka’s ethnic strife be cited to dismiss this aspect of Indian diplomacy. Power politics may need the excuse of internal unrest, but rarely does if claim to provide a cure. Superpower involvement did not solve the problems of Vietnam or Afghanistan.
It may be assumed that the rationale for New Delhi’s interest in Sri Lanka’s politics will continue after the last Indian soldier comes home. The “alternative” force that Mr Gandhi mentioned when speaking to Army commanders the other day might make it possible to continue to wield influence with out having to bear all the blame.
But these are relatively small matters compared to the vast Opportunities that may be assumed. if there is, indeed, a superpower withdrawal from the Indian Ocean. But it sometimes seems as if Western statesmen and analysts are a little too anxious to stress the coming vacuum and India’s ability and willingness to fill it to the exclusion of any other regional government.
But exaggerated though Western reports of an imminent with drawl might be, it is possible that domestic compulsions might prom at the two superpowers to scale down activity in the Indian Ocean. It was in the context of such a reduced presence that Mr Beazley ‘once predicted a repetition of the experience of 19th century Europe where there were several foci of attention and “alignments shifted all the time and people could agree on some issues and disagree on others”. Lee Kuan Yew warned more bluntly that a U.S. withdrawal would precipitate a power struggle between India, Japan and China.
Not that the other littoral states are sitting idle. Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand the ASEAN powers have recently effected considerable improvements in their naval and aerial capability and are continuing to do so, As is well known, too, claiming that Australia “has legitimate interests in the Indian Ocean region which needs to be promoted and protected”, Bob Hawke’s Government has evolved the “Two Ocean Navy” theory.
But the great question mark hangs over China’s progress and ambitions. The Chinese silkworm missile was an important factor in the Gulf war; supplies of arms and) submarines to Thailand have fuel led speculation about Chinese de fence stockpiles in that country; the Chinese navy and the USS. fleet held a signal exercise in the South China Sea in January 1987; and not only does China collaborate militarily with Pakistan but it is now Asia’s leading arms exporter.
The bogey of intervention haunts New Delhi still. Indian strategists are convinced that super power read U.S. pat rolling of the Indian Ocean is not to safeguard oil lines but to intervene on behalf of selected clients. it is pointed out that the USA and USSR both played a proxy role in the Gulf war, and 18 years after it happened Mr Gandhi reminded Mr Hawke in the course of a banquet speech that the U.S. Task Force, 74, headed by the nuclear powered carrier USS Enterprise had tried to intervene in the Bangladesh war or, at least, to intimidate India.
Hence the alarmed response to early reports of Israeli and South ‘African military assistance for J’ R. Jayewardene’s regime. Hence. also the accord’s restrictions regarding Sri Lankan Ports, broad casting stations and use of foreign military and intelligence personnel.
Some might see this concern as political paranoia. Others interpret it as a thin disguise for Indian domination. Operation Eagle the air dropping of food and medicine packets over Jaffna was perhaps, the first indication of a new daring in India’s regional policy. It was dismissed at the time as a cheeky prank; but however the initiative may have been intended, the episode remains a reminder of the determination of the region’s most Powerful nation to reach out into Jands and skies other than its own, even in brutal disregard of an unwilling host’s sbrill protests.
That watershed in New Delhi’s diplomacy may have encouraged the speculation that already existed about India’s might and sights, Nor can it be denied that India’s size, population, defense capability, industrial base, and achievements in science and technology entitle it to special consideration in a region of small and scattered States. But these calculations do not adequately take into account the weak economic base on which a powerful military superstructure is sought to be raised.
It is all very well to talk of more than 100 million Indians who are as rich as any European, but there are also the 700 million exceedingly poor Indians, about 300 million of them languishing below the poverty line. Indian society has to be assessed in. its entirety the Achievements of the Defense Research and Development Organization must be compared with the shoddy finish of Indian household goods. When we boast that India is self-sufficient in food grains we should remember, too, that the majority of Indians cannot afford to buy those grains. India’s external debt has, gone, up from, $18, billion. to $44, billion: and the deb. Service 1 ratio, is now. 26 per cent: against eight percent in 1980. Taken in its totality India has not the means to sustain the dangerously overextended role that some seem to envisage, and which our Government is flattered
Those who have read Oscar ‘Wilde’s short story, Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime, subtitled “A Study Of Duty”, will recall how, the young hero knew no peace until he had killed someone simply because a famous chromatist had claimed to read murder in his hand. But all Lord Arthur’s attempts at homicide came to naught.
Article extracted from this publication >> November 24, 1989
