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The Zen Of Ganne-Ka-Ras And Nuclear Explosions

On the long, hot walk to my office this morning, I stopped for a drink of that elixir of life: ganne-ka-ras (sugarcane juice). As I sipped it gratefully, I asked the young man manning the stall whether he had heard about India's nuclear tests. "Explosions? Bombs? Where?" he asked, in some alarm. I told him not to worry, there was nothing to be afraid of, these were our bombs, that many people were quite happy that we had exploded them. Hadn't the prime minister "warmly congratulated" those concerned with the whole exercise?

He looked at me as if I, and those I was speaking of, were madmen. "Yeh koi khushi ki baat hai? (Is this any reason to be happy?)" he asked. Then he turned away, muttering to himself in disgust.

Mad, actually, is what I've been feeling since I heard the news. Mad, as in angry. It was gratifying to see that my random sample, size one, was in 100 per cent agreement. If this column rambles somewhat, put it down to that anger.

Yes, amid all the hoopla ("Bravo India!" said Mid-Day's headline), I hope at least some people -- sugarcane squeezers among them -- demand to know just why we have conducted these explosions. In what way have any of us benefited? In what way will any of us benefit in the future? After all, the first of these tests was done courtesy of That Woman Indira Gandhi, all the way back in 1974. We might well ask the same question of that explosion: in what way did any of us benefit from it? What has that bomb brought us in the 24 years since it was exploded?

But let me guess: I'm not even supposed to be asking all this, right? When it comes to these matters, anybody who questions them is automatically unpatriotic, right? Defence and security are our true sacred cows, not subject to a single doubt. The benefits are supposed to be self-evident. We must all stand up as one, applaud our great achievement heartily.

Right? Right.

Why then, I wonder, was the sugarcane man so baffled and angry? Ignore my grouching, but just why was my random sample, size one, 100 per cent upset?

The abiding memory I have from Indira's 1974 venture in Pokhran is the famous cartoon -- I think it was from Punch -- that made the rounds at the time. It had a scrawny man with a turban -- India -- smoking a nuclear cigar and holding out a begging bowl to a gaggle of well-fed members of the nuclear club. The message was simple: a country that ignored its desperate poverty in pursuit of an atom bomb had just made itself the butt of jokes the world over. In those far off days of my youth, I cringed at the thought that the world might be laughing at us. These days, I really couldn't care less. We must go about our business regardless of what the world thinks, or sanctions, or how much it laughs.

Nevertheless, I can't help thinking: the real reason the world laughs at us is not, as numberless jingoists would have us believe, that we don't have weapons and missiles and get pushed around -- none of which is true to start with anyway. The real reason is that instead of concentrating on a better life for all our people, we buy toys for ourselves. We remain unwilling, year after year, to lick poverty and illiteracy; but we stock up without pause on missiles and planes, we explode nuclear bombs.

Of course, it's all for national security! We must protect ourselves from the evil neighbours who have piled up their own weapons, who are intent on destroying India.

Yes, there's no doubt we must protect ourselves. But allow me to make a case here. In our fifty years, far more Indians have been killed, maimed, betrayed, left in misery by our own government and society than Pakistan and China have managed together. Hell, throw in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Burma, Sri Lanka and the Maldives too. From the evidence, the truth is this: the greatest threat to India, to its well-being and prosperity, to the security of its people's lives, is from Indians themselves.

I mean the Bhagats and Thackerays who provoke and cheer on murderous riots. I mean the Dawood Ibrahims and Arun Gawlis who set off bombs and carry on their gang warfare. I mean the villagers who swung long swords at a tribal family I met two weeks ago, accusing them of stealing potatoes, inflicting deep wounds and burning down their home. I also mean the generations of politicians, from Nehru to Indira to Rao down to Gujral and Vajpayee, none of whom have cared enough to make educating all Indians the absolute number one priority for India.

It is people like these, and there is never a shortage of them, who bring insecurity to millions of Indian lives: far more surely, far more immediately, far more real, than Pakistan's Ghauri or China's whatsit. That's been their legacy for half a century now, in some cases for far longer.

Yet we never find it necessary to raise a fuss, let alone some kind of national endeavour akin to nuclear tests, to fight these very Indian peddlers of misery. Instead, we rally around to cheer on the nuclear tests. Why?

I think the reason, and this is my case, is: that the hundreds of millions most victimised by these peddlers are left silent, without either the knowledge or the voice to protest, or even be heard. Nobody asked the sugarcane man what he thought about national priorities. Nobody, either, asked the masses who languish even further below him on the national totem pole. What might they say, if asked? If heard?

I got an inkling of an answer two weeks ago. A man called Bharat Shiva Kale handed me a letter to read. Kale is a member of one of India's so-called denotified tribes, Pardhis, who are spread over much of Maharashtra. His letter was an appeal to the chief minister.

"The police have heaped injustices on us," it read. "I don't get loans when I ask for them. The police and the people trouble us in our own homes. They beat us whenever they want. Our children cannot go to school. I want some land for my house. I have no ration card. My request to you is to make the injustices done to me go far away."

My Marathi is not the world's best, but even I could see that nowhere in that sad letter were there words to this effect: "My request to you is to make certain India has nuclear weapons." Nor could I see those words in another letter a Pardhi woman gave me to read. Nor did I hear anything like those words from any of about a thousand Pardhis who had gathered for a meeting I attended, many of whom engulfed me as I sat, eager to tell me their own particular pathetic stories.

No, throughout that short trip, from everyone I spoke to, I heard these words over and over again: housing, education, land, food, rights, work, justice. Everyone asked for these things.

Why have we presumed to tell them -- and I'm sure the country is filled with millions more -- what's good for them? That they need weapons, and now nuclear weapons, before anything else? Why do we not listen to them, to what they really want for themselves? After all, the country's leaders and policy makers do listen to many others -- like some of you who are reading this column, I know -- who agitate for nonstop defence spending. Why does nobody listen to the voices asking for more mundane things?

Simple. Mundane things don't bring political mileage. That, didn't you know, is the real reason for nuclear tests. Even the honourable Mr Vajpayee admitted as much, CNN reported, in a letter to Bill Clinton after the explosions. "Domestic political considerations", he told Bill, were one reason for conducting the tests. "More than a demonstration of India's enhanced nuclear capability," The Times of India editorialised, "the tests represent a political statement by New Delhi under the saffron flag."

And, didn't you know, the government has got just the political reaction, domestically, it wanted. "The country rejoices," Mid-Day tells us, going on to say: "The national sentiment these tests [will] build up ... will provide Vajpayee with the much-needed glue to keep his coalition together."

It's easy, if cynical. You explode a few bombs, speak darkly about threats from the dangerous neighbourhood, and suddenly you have the whole country behind you. Nice, not least when you have a cacophonous coalition to run.

Except that ganne-ka-ras sellers and Pardhi tribals still have nobody to hear them.

Tailpiece:

This week, just one quote about the Srikrishna report:

"This dilly-dallying [about the report] seems to lend credence to a news report, attributed to government sources, to the effect that the Srikrishna Commission has recommended action against Shiv Sena president Bal Thackeray, Shiv Sena ministers Liladhar Dhake and Gajanan Kirtikar, Sanjay Raut and Sanjay Nirupam, the executive editors of the Marathi and Hindi versions of the Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamna, and a large number of Shiv Sena shakha pramukhs (area branch chiefs)."
Frontline, May 8, 1998

Dilip D'Souza