Nothing has exposed the grave failure of India’s recent
policy towards its immediate neighbourhood as thor-
oughly as New Delhi’s support for Burma’s military dictatorship – just
when the hated junta was confronted with the greatest pro-democracy
upsurge since 1988.
Thanks to this support, backed by lethal arms supplies,
India has become complicit in the ruthless repression of the popular
movement, which killed up to 200 people and led to the detention of 6,000.
The repression hasn’t ended. Opposition leader Win Shwe reportedly died
due to torture by the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC).
India has reluctantly, unconvincingly, revised its stand
under international and domestic pressure but this hasn’t salvaged its
credibility. (On October 2, 2007) India voted at the United Nations Human
Rights Council for a resolution calling for the release of incarcerated
National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and condemning the
‘violent repression’ of demonstrations, ‘including thorough beatings,
killings, arbitrary detentions and enforced disappearances’. The motion
called for a ‘reinvigorated national dialogue with all parties with a view
to achieving genuine national reconciliation, democratisation and the…
rule of law’.
India voted for the motion but only after regretting
that its text isn’t ‘fully in conformity’ with its own
‘forward-looking, non-condemnatory’ approach. India’s ‘explanation of
vote’ said the resolution’s tone won’t contribute to ‘engaging
constructively’ with the Burmese authorities. India’s kid-glove approach
to the junta sits ill with the latter’s grave human rights violations
against which the world community is duty-bound to protect the
Burmese people.
India wants the Burmese regime to conduct an investigation
into the violence which saw soldiers raining bullets and tear gas shells
upon peaceful demonstrators. What this investigation will achieve is
unclear. The violence was clearly state-ordered and – executed.
Yet India opposes economic sanctions or other tough
measures against the Burmese regime. Foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee
said in New York, "We should instead try to engage [them] in negotiations…
Sanctions… [can]… end in the suffering of innocent people." Blanket
sanctions can be ineffectual. But ‘engagement’ has proved futile in
Burma. This was again confirmed on September 23-24, 2007 when petroleum
minister Murli Deora accepted an invitation to visit Burma to sign a $150
million gas deal – just when state repression was peaking.
"This sent a terrible message," said Soe Myint, a Burmese
pro-democracy activist exiled in India and editor of the Mizzima news
agency (www.mizzima.com). "The message was that democratic India wouldn’t
lift its little finger to restrain the Burmese regime. Instead, India
would tail the generals as they butchered innocents. We were greatly
disappointed."
Mukherjee has again given a clean chit to the junta. On
October 7, 2007, in Guwahati, he pledged India’s commitment to
Burma-specific projects "in diverse fields such as roads, railways,
telecommunications, information technology… and power" – as part of the
so-called ‘Look East’ policy, itself linked to ‘a strategic shift’ in
India’s world vision.
Ironically, he was only reading out excerpts from an
earlier speech he made in Shillong in June! So much for the attention
India pays to ‘Look East’! Now India is to reward Burma with a $100
million transportation project (Kaladan) which will give it overland
access to Sittve port.
India’s ultra-conservative Burma position derives from
four considerations: eagerness to enlist Burma’s help in fighting
insurgencies in the North-east; interest in Burma’s natural gas; anxiety
to counter China’s regional influence; and concern for ‘stability’ in the
neighbourhood.
It is shameful that India’s Burma policy should be
determined by such narrow parochial factors. This involves jettisoning
universal principles and doctrines, including democracy and human rights,
which India loudly stresses in the western-sponsored Concert of
Democracies. This speaks of double standards. ‘Look East’ also means
turning a blind eye to dictatorship.
Yet Burma isn’t just another country. It is India’s land
bridge to South-east Asia. Until 70 years ago it was part of India and
bound to it through close cultural, economic and political ties. Without
‘Burma teak’, Asia’s best known hardwood, many of our historical buildings
might never have been built. Burmese rice was as important in our kitchens
as is Afghanistan’s hing.
Rangoon, now Yangon, was as Indian/subcontinental in
ethnic composition and character as Bombay, Madras or Karachi. Many
eminent Indians – BG Verghese and Prakash Karat, to name two – were born
in Rangoon. Not long ago we had a Burmese origin first lady (Usha
Narayanan). India’s South, East and North-east all have major ‘Burma
connections’.
Like India, Burma is a multi-ethnic, multilingual,
multi-religious society. The two share a great modern legacy as well – the
freedom movement. Aung Sang, Suu Kyi’s father, who led Burma’s
anti-colonial struggle, was inspired by Gandhi and Nehru. Suu Kyi studied
here and regards India as her second home, with which she has a deep,
abiding relationship.
The SPDC stands for the destruction of all these
bonds. It represents the dominant ethnic group (Burman) and excludes 17
others. This predatory and supercorrupt regime has brutalised 50 million
people with a huge 4,90,000 strong army. (This is like having an Indian
army 10 times its present size!) It consumes a third of Burma’s budget –
10 times the allocation to education.
The military is selling Burma’s magnificent resources
cheap and perpetuating the poverty of three fourths of its people. It
routinely practises forced conscription, slave labour and torture. Its
censorship is so drastic that anyone with an ‘unauthorised’ fax machine or
computer is jailed for seven to 15 years. The SPDC conducts extrajudicial
executions, ‘disappears’ dissidents and recruits child soldiers. It stands
accused of arbitrary detention and violating freedoms of belief and
religion, and of association and assembly. Regime-sponsored or tolerated
drug smuggling and gunrunning are Burma’s biggest businesses.
India’s Burma approach was spelt out in a crudely
forthright manner by the new army chief, Gen Deepak Kapoor. He said the
state violence is Burma’s "internal affair" and "we should maintain" our
"good relations" with its government. This policy statement is an
intrusion into the executive’s prerogative. Yet it captures the
essence of the government’s ‘realism’-driven stand which hypocritically
professes ‘non-intervention’ when that suits it while practising the
opposite when it can. In fact, serious rights violations anywhere are
everybody’s concern.
Ironically, India’s policy has yielded none of the
desired results. Burma has been ineffectual in preventing North-eastern
insurgents from establishing camps on its soil. It has only restrained the
National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Khaplang), with which it has a
ceasefire agreement. It has taken token or desultory action against other
groups. Burma has played China off against India while milking both for
assistance. India has walked into this trap.
India’s famed ‘interests’ in Burmese gas have produced
international embarrassment. Four Indian companies figure among the ‘Dirty
20’ implicated in terrible human rights violations and environmental
destruction, detailed by EarthRights International and other groups.
However, India has received no gas or gas supply contracts
from Burma. Just recently, Burma awarded two gas blocks off the Arakan
coast to China. Originally, two Indian public sector companies had a 30
per cent stake in these. India does have other gas sources.
Besides, Burma’s gas delivery will crucially depend on transit through
Bangladesh. Bangladesh isn’t cooperating.
It is specious to argue that India should befriend Burma’s
regime to contain China. Those who demand that India must act as a
countervailing force to China advocate a new Asian cold war – with
disastrous consequences for India’s long-term security. An arms race with
China – that too with a nuclear component – will sharply raise
India’s already bloated military expenditure.
Finally, ‘stability’, defined independently of legitimacy,
is a recipe for freezing existing iniquities. India’s long-term interests
don’t lie in a neighbourhood with ‘stable’ but tyrannical regimes.
India’s major political parties, including the Congress,
the Communists and even the Bharatiya Janata Party, have demanded a change
in its Burma policy. So have civil society groups. Particularly
significant here are North-eastern groups whose ethnic identities cut
across the Burma border.
Their pressure can bring Indian policy more in line with
the position of the early 1990s when India advocated a dialogue with Ms
Suu Kyi, who had won the 1990 election with a thumping majority, and
awarded to her the 1993 Nehru Prize for International Understanding. India
made a strong political point – without severing its relations with the
Burmese government. But it soon shamefully reversed its stand.
There’s a lesson in this: India can stand its
ground if it wants to. In the 1960s it did so on Vietnam despite
its ‘ship-to-mouth’ dependence on the US for food. Later, India backed the
African National Congress (ANC) in the face of western pressure. The ANC
eventually triumphed.
India can and should follow a broad-horizon policy based
on a universal international vision, which gives it many options in the
neighbourhood too. Ironically, India’s vision is shrinking just when its
global profile has risen, opening up new opportunities to engage with the
world. This isn’t a sign of a confident rising power with an independent
foreign policy.