Strong winds of opinion have been blowing in from a
seldom-remembered, at least on this campus, part of the world.
South Asia, coupled with the Middle East, has entered the debated
fray. And it all started with a brilliant viewpoint published last
week (With blood on their hands, 11/06/03) which claimed,
summarily, that India and Israel, which have recently been enjoying
a boost in their diplomatic and defense relations, have a common
agenda in their alliance. The agenda is a composite state effort by
both countries to suppress religious minorities in their respective
domains (the viewpoint, by the way, was written by designated
chiefs of the Pakistani Student Association, the South Asian
Awareness Network and the Muslim Students Association). Ensuing was
another, or should I say two brushstrokes of brilliance. The
wounded party reacted. In this case, two letters to the editor,
both rebuking Pakistan, and defending India, and Israel (kind of),
were printed the following day. The writers both had Hindu names.
This case of Indian defense made three salient points:

n That India is the world’s largest democracy (thanks to
sheer the size of population) and that because in 2002 India held
an election in Kashmir, an internationally disputed territory which
it militarily occupied in 1947 — an election in which most
Kashmiri parties which are for Kashmiri self determination promised
to those people by a United Nations resolution in 1948, did not
participate — gives India’s claim to fair treatment of
its minorities respect. Hmm. So, should a grand and blandly
statistical title like “largest democracy” and sham
elections which most parties boycotted qualify for democratic
egalitarianism?

n That because the present Indian president is a Muslim,
minorities in India are hunky dory with the state. (The Indian
presidency, by the way is a ceremonial post, and the jolly old
Muslim president does not do much besides the university
convocation circuit, the power resting with the all- powerful prime
minister, who, just for the record, is an avowed Hindu nationalist
whose government has been involved in a couple of very interesting
things. Things like testing nuclear weapons in 1998, a step which
initiated a nuke and missile race in the region. Things like
promoting a pogrom against thousands of Muslims massacred in the
state of Gujarat just last year, only to be voted in again on an
agenda of wiping out the rest of Gujarat’s Muslim population.
And of course, things like following the trend of every other
“democratic” Indian government, which by the way,
governs the “largest democracy” in the world, by not
allowing the Kashmiri people (about 10 million of them) their right
to self-determination, by systematically manipulating elections,
governments, leaders and the political economy of that region for
the last 56 years. That and the brutal suppression of an indigenous
political and armed struggle through non-judicial killings,
assassinations, rape, and torture (which are all recorded in
unprecedented detail by monitors like International Human Rights
Watch and Amnesty International).

n That Pakistan is the real villain because it mistreats its
women, and arms and trains Kashmiri militants. Hmmm. Reasonable
criticism. Very reasonable for that bad-boy, nuclear rock-star
state, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

But what’s the connection? How does such bad behavior by
Pakistan, such terrible things (like training volunteers who want
to fight for their land and liberty in Kashmir) explain and redeem
India’s bad behavior (like depriving those volunteers from
their land and liberty) in Kashmir? And what about the Gujarat
pogroms? What does an uninvestigated honor killing of a 15-year-old
girl fornicating in Lahore, Pakistan have to do with the beheading
of a prominent Muslim politician and his family, followed by their
further dismembering and then torching, in Ahmedabad, India by a
government-sponsored mob? Why do bad things in Pakistan make it
okay for bad things to happen in India?