India After Gandhi (116 page)

In the second week of May 1998 the Indians blasted five nuclear devices in the Rajasthan desert. Three kinds of bombs were tested: a regular fission device, a thermonuclear bomb and a ‘sub-kiloton’ weapon. Before and after the tests senior members of the NDA government made provocative statements aimed at India’s neighbours. The defence minister, George Fernandes, described China as India’s ‘number one threat’. The home minister, L. K. Advani, said that India was prepared to give hot pursuit across the border to any terrorists that Pakistan may send to make trouble in Kashmir.

Opinion polls conducted immediately after the tests suggested that a majority of the urban population supported them. The most enthusiastic acclaim, however, came from the BJP’s sister organizations, the VHP and the RSS. They announced that they would build a temple at the test site, and take the sand, contaminated by radioactivity but nonetheless ‘holy’ for them, to be worshipped across India. The Shiv Sena chief, Bal Thackeray, saluted the scientists for showing that Hindu men were ‘not eunuchs’. The scientists themselves posed triumphantly before the news cameras, clad in military uniforms.
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Two weeks later this balloon of patriotic pride was punctured and deflated. On 28 May Pakistan tested its own nuclear device. Their atomic programme had been built on the basis of designs and materials acquired in dubious circumstances from a Dutch laboratory by the scientist A. Q. Khan, supplemented by Chinese technical help. The Indian bomb was wholly indigenous. But these discriminations were made meaningless when six atomic blasts (deliberately, one more than the other side) disturbed the Chagai hills in Baluchisthan province. The Pakistani public greeted the news by dancing and singing in the streets. The ‘father’ of this bomb, A. Q. Khan, told interviewers that ‘our devices are more consistent, more compact, more advanced and more reliable than what the Indians have’.
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The Pakistani achievement was glossed as an ‘Islamic’ bomb, in part because at this time no other Muslim nation had one. In India, too, both supporters and opponents of the tests tended to see them as ‘Hindu’ inspired. In truth, although the BJP was in power in May 1998, the preparations had been laid under successive Congress regimes. The policy of nuclear ambiguity – we have the bomb, but we won’t test it – was
becoming unsustainable. Pressed by the West to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, India decided to make its nuclear status a matter of public record.
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The BJP naturally tried to make political capital out of the tests, but faced with signing the CTBT and thus shelving further nuclear ambitions, a Congress regime would have acted likewise. Indeed, it had been Congress prime ministers who had, in the past, most insistently laid claim to a ‘great power’ status for India. These claims became more persistent after the end of the Cold War. Indian leaders demanded that in deference to its size, democratic history and economic potential, the country be made a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. That the claim was disregarded made the matter of nuclear tests all the more urgent. Across party lines, strategic thinkers argued that an open declaration of nuclear weapons would make the Western powers sit up and take notice. Reason and argument having failed, India had necessarily to blast its way to world attention.
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The only countries to be acknowledged as nuclear powers were the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – the US, Russia, China, France and the UK. It was also known that Israel had nuclear capability. When, in the summer of 1998, India and Pakistan simultaneously entered this exclusive club it created some disquiet among the older members. It was feared that the Kashmir dispute could spark the first atomic war in history. Pressure was put on both countries to sort out their differences on the negotiating table.

In February 1999 the Indian prime minister travelled by bus to Lahore to meet his Pakistani counterpart. Atal Behari Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif spoke of increasing trade between the two countries, and of putting in place a more liberal visa regime. No progress was made on Kashmir, but the fact that the two sides were talking was, to subcontinental eyes as well as Western ones, a most reassuring sign.
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Barely three months after the Vajpayee-Sharif talks Indo-Pak relations were once more on a short fuse. The provocation was the infiltration into the Kargil district of Jammu and Kashmir of hundreds of armed men, some Kashmiri in origin but others unambiguously citizens of Pakistan. The operation had been planned by the Pakistani army, who
told their civilian prime minister about it only when it was well under way. The idea was to occupy the mountain tops that overlooked the highway linking Srinagar to Leh, the only all-weather road connecting two towns of crucial importance. The generals apparently believed that their nuclear shield provided protection, inhibiting the Indians from acting against the intruders.
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The Indian army was first alerted to the infiltration by a group of shepherds. Scanning the mountains with binoculars in search of wild goats to hunt, they instead spotted men in Pathan dress digging themselves into bunkers. They conveyed the information to the nearest regiment. Soon, the army found that the Pakistanis had occupied positions across a wide swathe of the Kargil sector, from the Mushkoh valley in the west to Chorbat La in the east. The decision was taken to shift them.
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The shepherds saw the Pathans on 3 May 1999. Two weeks later the Indians began the artillery bombardment of enemy positions. Air force planes screamed overhead while on the ground
jawans
made their way laboriously up the mountain slopes. Men reared in tropical climes had now to battle in cold and treacherous terrain. ‘In battle after decisive battle Indian infantry battalions clambered up near perpendicular cliffs the entire night in freezing temperatures before lunging straight into battle at first light against the intruders.’
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The exchanges were fierce and, on both sides, costly. Dozens of peaks, each defended by machine guns, had to be recaptured one by one. A major victory was the taking of Tiger Hill, in the Drass sector. The battles raged all through June. By the end of the month the Pakistanis had been cleared from 1,500 square kilometres of Indian territory. The areas reoccupied included all vantage points overlooking the Srinagar-Leh highway.
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In the last week of June the American President, Bill Clinton, received an unexpected phone call from the Pakistani prime minister. The two countries were close allies, and now the junior partner was asking to be bailed out of a jam of its own creation. More than 2,000 Pakistanis had already lost their lives in the conflict, and Nawaz Sharif was in search of a face-saving device to allow him to end hostilities. Clinton granted him an appointment on 4 July, American Independence Day. In that meeting Sharif promised to withdraw Pakistani troops if America would put pressure on India to resolve the Kashmir dispute. Clinton agreed to take an ‘active interest’ in the question. With this
assurance, Sharif returned to Islamabad and formally called off the operation.
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Approximately 500 Indian soldiers died in the Kargil conflict. They came from all parts of the country, and when their coffins returned home the grief on display was mixed with a large dose of pride. The bodies were kept in public places – schools, colleges, even stadiums – where friends, family and fellow townsmen came to pay their last (and often first) respects. A cremation or burial with full military honours followed, this attended by thousands of mourners and presided over by the most important dignitary on hand – often a state chief minister or governor. The men being honoured included both officers and soldiers. Many hailed from the traditional catchment area of the Indian army (the north and the west of the country), but many others were born in places not previously known for their martial traditions, such as Ganjam in Orissa and Tumkur in Karnataka.
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And some who died defending India came from regions long thought to be at odds with the very idea of India. A particularly critical role in recapturing the Kargil peaks was played by soldiers of the Naga regiment. Their valour at the other end of the Himalaya, hoped one army general, would allow the ‘brave Nagas [to] finally get their Indian identity’. Their bravery was certainly saluted by their kinsmen; when the body of a Naga lieutenant was returned home to Kohima, thousands thronged the airport to receive it.
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The Kargil clashes also furthered the reintegration of the Punjab and the Punjabis. Farmers along the border insisted that if the conflict were to become a full-fledged war, they would be at hand to assist the Indian army, providing food and shelter and even, if required, military help. ‘We shall fight with the
jawans
’, said one Sikh peasant, ‘and teach the Pakistanis a bitter lesson for violating our territory.’
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Across India the conflict with Pakistan unleashed a surge of patriotic sentiment. Thousands volunteered to join the lads on the front, so many in fact that in several places the police had to fire to disperse crowds surrounding army recruitment centres.
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The war with China had likewise fuelled a similar response, with unemployed youth seeking to join the forces. Yet there was a significant difference. On that occasion, the intruders had overrun thousands of square miles before choosing on their own to return. This time they had been successfully thrown out by the use of force.

In this respect the Kargil war was a sort of cathartic experience for the men in uniform and, beyond that, for their compatriots as a whole.
The Indian army had finally redeemed itself. It had removed, once and for all, the stigma of having failed to repulse the Chinese in 1962. At the same time the popular response to the conflict bore witness to the birth of a new and more assertive kind of Indian nationalism. Never before had bodies of soldiers killed in battle been greeted with such an effusion of sentiment. It appeared as if each district was determined to make public its own contribution to the national cause. The mood was acknowledged and stoked further by reporters in print and on television, whose competitive jingoism was surprising even to those familiar with that profession’s hoary record of making truth the first casualty of war.

In October 1999, Pakistan’s brief flirtation with parliamentary democracy ended. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was deposed in a coup led by the chief of army staff, Pervez Musharraf. The Indians were not best pleased with these developments; for it was Musharraf who was believed to have masterminded the Kargil operations.

In March 2000 President Clinton visited South Asia. He spent five days in India and five hours in Pakistan, in a historic reversal of the traditional American bias towards the smaller country. This was an acknowledgement of India’s rising economic strength, but also a chastisement of Pakistan’s return to military rule. The day after Clinton landed in New Delhi, terrorists dressed in Indian army uniforms descended upon the village of Chittisinghpora in Kashmir, pulled out Sikh men from their homes and shot them. In a village of 300 homes, ‘nearly every house ha[d] lost a relative, neighbour, or friend’. The tragedy was compounded when the security forces shot five men they claimed had committed the crime, but who were later found to be innocent.
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The Chittisinghpora killers were probably freelancers who did not have the sanction of the Pakistani government.
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Still, there was little question that it was the Kashmir issue which continued to divide the two nations most deeply. President Musharraf issued periodic reminders of Pakistan’s undying commitment to the ‘liberation struggle’ of the Kashmiris. The Indian prime minister chastised his counterpart for adhering to the ‘pernicious two-nation theory that brought about the partition’.
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Neither country was prepared to accept the other’s position on
Kashmir. However, a dialogue was recommenced, this motivated perhaps by the need to act as responsible nuclear powers in the eyes of the world. In July 2001 President Musharraf visited Agra at the invitation of the Indian government. He and his wife were put up in a luxury hotel overlooking the Taj Mahal. The general and Vajpayee talked for long hours, with and without aides. The meeting ended inconclusively, when a draft communiqué left both sides dissatisfied, India wanting a greater emphasis to be placed on stamping out cross-border terrorism and Pakistan asking for a more explicit acknowledgement of the democratic aspirations of the Kashmiri people.

While General Musharraf was in Agra terrorists struck again in the Valley. In a dozen separate attacks at least eighty people were killed. This was becoming a pattern – whenever important dignitaries visited New Delhi the violence in Kashmir would escalate. When the US Secretary of State Colin Powell came in October 2001, terrorists launched a grenade assault on the Jammu and Kashmir assembly. Two months later they undertook an even more daring action. Four suicide bombers entered the Indian Parliament in a car and attempted to blow it up. They were killed by the police, who later identified them as Pakistanis.
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The assembly building in Srinagar was a symbol of the state’s integration with India. The Parliament building in New Delhi was the symbol of Indian democracy itself. Within its portals met elected politicians representing a billion people. The attacks on these two places brought an end to the diplomatic dialogue. India accused Pakistan of abetting the terrorists. Appeals were made to the US government to rein in its old ally. While sympathizing with America after the incidents of September 11 2001, India added that their sympathy was made the more sincere by the fact that they had long been victims of terrorist violence themselves.