Kashmir, Hindutva, and a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty

by Suroosh Irfani

While the signing of the PLO-Israel Declaration of Principles might have reduced the threat to international security from the Middle East, such a threat seems to be shifting to South Asia. In a dramatic reference to South Asia before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee on Feb. 22, CIA Director John Deutch called the subcontinent “the greatest threat to world security” because “the potential for conflict between the two nuclear-capable states is high.”

A similar concern was voiced earlier by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) during a START IISenate debate in Washington, DC. Speaking just three days after an Indian rocket attack on Forward Kahuta in Pakistani-administered Kashmir killed 20 civilians in a mosque on Jan. 26, Harkin urged India and Pakistan “to pull back from a nuclear collision course.” He added that “nowhere on earth [is] the potential for nuclear confrontation more real than in the subcontinent.”

That such American apprehensions have a “real” basis is borne out by public opinion in India and Pakistan. A recent survey by India Today showed that 85 percent of Indians polled believe that nuclear weapons would be used were there to be another Indo-Pakistan war. A Gallup poll in Pakistan revealed that 80 percent of Pakistanis want their country to conduct a nuclear test should India press on with its second nuclear explosion.

American apprehensions about the subcontinent, however, mostly present a distorted picture of a volatile region inasmuch as Pakistan is unfairly equated with India in terms of nuclear proliferation or reluctance to sign a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). After all, since conducting its first nuclear test in 1974, India has rejected as many as eight proposals from Pakistan for a ban on the development, testing and use of nuclear weapons. Moreover, Deutch’s statement makes no mention of the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir, under Indian occupation since 1947 and the epicentre of a potential South Asian flashpoint.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars linked directly or indirectly to the Kashmir dispute. A United Nations-brokered cease-fire ended the first Indo-Pakistan war in 1948 when both sides accepted a U.N. Security Council resolution allowing Kashmiris to decide their state’s future through a referendum under U.N. auspices. However, reneging on its promise, India continues to occupy the mainly Muslim Jammu and Kashmir provinces through rigged elections and massive military repression. The ongoing freedom movement in Indian-held Kashmir (IHK), therefore, reflects as much U.N. failure to implement its resolutions as Kashmiri alienation under Indian rule. In fact, Delhi is no closer to suppressing a mass Kashmiri upsurge against its rule, notwithstanding the deployment in Kashmir of more than 600,000 Indian troops and the killing of 50,000 Kashmiris since 1989.

Pakistan is unfairly equated with India in terms of nuclear proliferation.

This failure is partly responsible for Delhi’s new belligerence against Kashmiris as well as against Pakistan. While Kashmiris are becoming victims of a new round of violence, Pakistan also is being subjected to pressure. Examples of this pressure include the Indian rocket attack on Forward Kahuta on Jan. 26, marking India’s National Day; the test-firing of a nuclear-capable Prithvi missile a day later amidst reports of Indian plans to conduct a second nuclear test; and the imminent deployment of Prithvi missiles on India’s borders with Pakistan.

Delhi’s escalation of state terror in Kashmir, scaling up of military pressure against Pakistan, and subversion of Geneva talks for concluding a CTBT are different facets of the same Indian belligerence. So is former Indian Ambassador to the United States T. N. Kaul’s call for military action against Pakistan as a final solution to the Kashmir problem as well as his urging Delhi not to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

For Kaul, such refusal by India and other “nuclear threshold states” is the best insurance for global nuclear disarmanent. As Kaul would have us believe, by following the path of proliferation, “India would be rendering a service to all mankind,” as proliferation could “compel nuclear weapons powers to global nuclear disarmament” (The Tribune, Jan. 1, 1996).

Such logic lies at the heart of Indian ambiguity at the ongoing talks in Geneva concerning conclusion of a CTBT. Likewise, an inversion of reason also forms the core of Delhi’s Kashmir policy: If nuclear proliferation is to lead to global disarmament, then Kashmiris, too, could be disarmed of their right to self-determination through mass military repressioneven if such repression becomes synonymous with genocide, as Kashmiri leaders, even including the pro-Indian Farooq Abdullah, have claimed.

The Roots of Belligerence

It is not difficult to locate the roots of India’s new belligerence in a resurgent Hindu fundamentalism being packaged as Hindutva (“Hinduness”). The ascendance of Hindutva as a militant political force in recent years has blown the cover of India’s false pacifist persona symbolized by its use of the code-name “the Smiling Buddha” for its first nuclear test explosion in 1974.

Hindutva’s genuinely militant face exploded into international media in December 1992 when a nationwide rally of Shiv Sena extremists was convened to demolish the Babri mosque, one of the oldest Muslim places of worship. The extremists claimed that the mosque, built by King Babar, whose Moghul dynasty gave India its Taj Mahal, was built on the birthplace of Ram, a Hindu diety.

For many Hindus in post-Babri mosque India, the demolition of the mosque remains a continuing source of inspiration. In its Feb. 12, 1996 issue, Newsweek described an interview with Bal Thackeray, leader of the Hindu fundamentalist Shiv-Sena, the party ruling Mahrastra, India’s most prosperous state. The magazine reported that Thackeray “still cheers the rioters who tore down the Babri mosque…making him the happiest man in the world.”

As for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the mainstream Hindu fundamentalist force challenging rule by India’s Congress party, the demolition of the Babri mosque reflected the essence of Hindutva as it was done “for building a mandir (temple) to the Hindu god Ram” on the site of the centuries-old mosque. Voicing these views, BJP parliamentarian Satyadeo Singh said that the “litmus test of patriotism [is] adherence to Ram…anyone who does not believe in Ram becomes an enemy of the nation, a terrorist, a spy.” (See True Visage, the Indian journal, Sunday, Dec. 10-16, 1995.)

Though BJPleaders like L.K. Advani couch Hindutva in less virulent language, their vision retains the morally questionable objective of Hindu cultural uniformity in a multicultural society. Says Advani: “The BJP believes India is one country and that Indians are one people…the basis of unity is our ancient [Hindu] culture. For us…nationalism is a cultural concept. Whether you call it Hindutva, Bharatiya, or Indianness…it is all the same.”

While South Asia’s stability might seem predicated on reversing the tide of a militant Hindu fundamentalism in India and a possible Islamic backlash in Pakistan, attempts to do so will be useless unless the Kashmir issue is resolved. And even if international pressure for a peaceful settlement of this issue seems indispensable, much of the international community seems reluctant to use it, given its tendency to fall in line with an Indian discourse of dominance.

So long as world powers continue to see South Asia through Delhi’s eyes, and India’s thrust for regional nuclar hegemony remains unchecked, it would be unrealistic to expect Pakistan to sign a CTBT or refrain from conducting a nuclar test in the face of a second nuclear test by India. After all, the second incarnation of “the Smiling Buddha” may well turn out to be a thermonuclear Hindutva, making the entire region hostage to an irrational Hindu fundamentalism.