Foreign Policy No Mushaira. Bunk Gujral Doctrine

A 2001 novel by then BBC Asia correspondent Humphery Hawksley pictured third world war engendered by a covert Indian army operation deep inside Tibet. China retaliates with its full might, and even for fiction, results are not difficult to guess. I would review the book sometime later. But, here we have a reverse scenario. A deep incision by the Chinese inside Indian territory, and forget war or world war, we talked of pimples, acne, and clearsil! On the western front Pakistan has delivered an Indian spy in body bag for not having a strong enough case to eliminate him judicially. Sri Lanka is routinely lifting Indian fishermen around Adam’s bridge, and Maldives just cocked a snook by jailing its India backed president. And all smaller SAARC countries play the China card rather up our nose. Theek hai? The crux is that India suffers from a Gulliverian image crisis in the neighbourhood. Why?

After the 1962 debacle the intelligence community had realized the importance of the capacity to keep tabs on (and to occasionally finger) the neighbourhood. Thus was born the Special Frontier Force – Establishment 22 in common parlance. The benefits became visible soon in the form of Chittagong (1971) and Siachen (1986) operations that have given India everlasting strategic depth and strength. Then came Inder Kumar Gujral on the foreign policy horizon in mid-1990s and all the good, hard nosed choices made by India came undone.

Gujral’s Faiz poetry influenced mind brought a doctrine the ill effects of which are now becoming starkly visible. The Gujral doctrine, with its premise that India with its intimidating size could be avuncular to its smaller neighbours with unilateral concessions, was per se not wrong. But the problem lay in the way it was interpreted by those it was meant for. With the exception of Bhutan, everyone has cocked a snook at us. Gujral put stifling restrictions on covert operations by RAW and IB in the neighbourhood and reduced the Establishment-22 into an uncertain existence. His successor, another poet Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, continued with sham covert ops and gave it in writing that Tibet was an integral part of the Chinese republic. Just makes it clear that foreign policy is best left to minds that only understand prose.

A Mexican dictator once famously lamented, “So far from God, so near to the United States,” – such is the impression of their big neighbour. It is a view in Lat-Am that USA is like a big dog in a small room. Even if it wags its tail in love, it knocks down a chair or two. China is attaining similar proportions in its neighbourhood. That seems like a legitimate target for India: not to be an indulgent uncle of the neighbourhood but to be a no nonsense keeper of calm.

In another context, on the eve of India’s 1998 nuclear tests George Fernandez branded China, not Pakistan, as India’s enemy no. 1. Another Lohiaite Mulayam Singh Yadav has recently shown the sense to repeat the charge. Let us have an eternal clarity on this – it is China we need to focus on. Pakistan and the rest would be taken care off from that capacity building. After the DBO fiasco the strategic community would hopefully chart out a course with clear cut goals. But in the short term, India needs to immediately roll back the Gujral doctrine and start all covert operations. More specifically, recharge the Establishment-22. In the longer term we need to bury it for ever, for, foreign policy is no Kavi Sammelan, even with smaller neighbours as we have realized.