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| Junk junkets | | | S.K. Sinha | 8/5/2011 10:04:24 PM |
| Ghulam Nabi Fai, an American citizen of Indian origin, has hit the
headlines in the US, India and Pakistan. He was arrested in the US for
taking millions of dollars from the ISI to propagate the Pakistan case
on Kashmir through high-profile seminars and also influencing US
Senators and Congressmen. He had been at this for nearly two decades
and is currently under house arrest.
As expected, Pakistan has supported him, saying that being a Kashmiri
he had every right to support the Kashmir cause. The CIA must have
been fully aware of his activities but had turned a Nelson’s eye to
them for the sake of good relations with Pakistan, a long and trusted
ally. Things have changed in the post-Osama phase and there is now a
freeze in relations between the two allies. Moreover, with increasing
demand for action against a duplicitous ally, US authorities have now
chosen to take action against Mr Fai.
Indian intelligence agencies could not have been unaware of Mr Fai’s
shenanigans over such a long period. They would have even known what
transpired at his high-profile seminars for so many years. It has been
the practice of our government, on the plea of freedom of speech, to
allow Kashmiri separatists to openly express treasonable and
anti-India views not only in Delhi, Kolkata and Chandigarh but also in
Washington, London and Brussels. This only shows pusillanimity and
abject appeasement. Eminent selected citizens from our country, chosen
deliberately from the majority community, were invited by Mr Fai to
his seminars on Kashmir in the US, to lend them respectability.
Executive-class air travel, five-star accommodation and other
facilities were generously provided. Some of them may have projected
the Indian viewpoint at the seminars but it appears that they were not
reflected in the resolutions passed at the seminars. The one-timers
going to Mr Fai’s seminars were taken for a ride but that cannot be
said of those who went repeatedly — a senior journalist from Jammu is
reported to have gone 17 times and has been writing prolifically
against India’s stand on Kashmir while the Indian government has
remained blissfully inactive. Prudence demanded that eminent Indians
going to these seminars should have been circumspect.
It would not be out of place for me, in all humility, to mention how I
responded to foreign invitations after resigning from the Army in
1983. I had launched a movement for restoring Patna’s glorious name of
Pataliputra and was surprised to receive an invitation from Paul
Berenger, then Leader of the Opposition in Mauritius, to visit the
island as his guest. His proposal was to name a city on the island
Pataliputra and twin it with Patna. Mauritius has a very large Bihari
population and he obviously wanted to draw political mileage. I was
tempted to accept. Apart from a junket to a holiday destination, it
would have boosted a project dear to me. Notwithstanding this, I wrote
to the ministry of external affairs seeking advice. They replied that
our government had very cordial relations with the then Prime Minister
Anerood Jugnauth and it would be inadvisable for me to go there as a
guest of the Opposition leader. So I declined the invitation.
The second occasion was when I was on holiday in the US in 1994 and
was invited to speak on India’s Kashmir policy by the Rand
Corporation, a partly US government-funded leading security think
tank. I held no official position at that time. Yet, as Kashmir was a
sensitive issue, I sought the advice of Siddhartha Shankar Ray, then
our ambassador in the US, whom I had known from before. He told me
this was the first time they had invited an Indian to speak on Kashmir
and that I must go there to put across the Indian viewpoint. I
enquired if the embassy would like me to project any particular line.
He laughed and said that I knew things better and should bat on my
own. I went and addressed an audience of some 200 scholars from the US
and Nato countries. During the question-answer session, I was asked a
tricky question by an American. He said that irrespective of the
merits of India’s stand on Kashmir, the fact was that there was
widespread violence in Kashmir and the people wanted to break away
from India. Being a democracy, India must respect popular will. My
reply was that fundamental values are more important than the game of
numbers in a democracy. Abraham Lincoln opposed slavery and believed
in the liberty of the individual. Despite the will of the people of
the southern states, he fought the American Civil War to uphold that
basic value and the integrity of the Union. More Americans were killed
in that war than the combined total of casualties suffered by them in
the First World War, the Second World War, Korea and Vietnam.
Similarly, we in India believe in secularism and cannot afford to
compromise on that fundamental issue. We could not sacrifice the
interests of over 100 million Muslims in India for the sake of five
million Kashmiri Muslims. I sent a synopsis of my talk to our embassy
for record. Mr Ray told me I had given the embassy a good debating
point in what I spoke about Abraham Lincoln.
We must be very careful while accepting invitations to speak in
foreign countries as it may affect our national interests. The Indian
government needs to be more vigilant and prevent separatists from
pursuing their anti-national agenda in foreign countries. Apart from
being reactive, we must be pro-active in projecting our national
viewpoint. No doubt we must strive to have a peaceful solution in
Jammu and Kashmir, but that cannot be Valley-centric, ignoring the rest of the state. The majority of the population of the state, comprising non-Muslims and other Muslims like Gujjars, Bakherwals and Kargil Shias, does not want any truck with the separatists. Even among the Kashmiri Muslims, there is a sizeable section which does not support them. As per a Mori opinion poll conducted in 2002 by a British NGO under the patronage of Lord Auckland, a known protagonist of Pakistan, 61 per cent Kashmiris want to remain in India, six per cent want to join Pakistan and 33 per cent are undecided. In 2007, the European Union Parliament endorsed Baroness Emma Nicholson’s fact-finding report by 400 against nine votes, despite desperate efforts by Pakistan. It strongly castigated lack of democracy in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and was appreciative of democracy in Indian-administered Kashmir. These facts are little known within our country, leave alone internationally. Pakistan relentlessly conducts high-decibel propaganda against India, even using the likes of Ghulam Nabi Fai, while we seem to have chosen to remain mute. The author, a retired lieutenant-general, was Vice-Chief of Army Staff and has served as governor of Assam and Jammu and Kashmir.
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