HEIGHT OF SERVILITY

The imperialist arrogance that underlined the Clinton visit was evident even before he set foot on the Indian soil. Many days before the visit, US security personnel descended on the Indian capital to supervise the security arrangements, and sidelined the Indian security personnel in the process. Then, when the US president's plane touched the Palam airport, to quote the same commentator, "it was the US security personnel and not the Indian police who were in effective charge" of the airport. Finally, after Clinton arrived at New Delhi, the number of US security men reached the high figure of 2,000, not to talk of the 300 from the US Marines and the security dogs. Overall, the impression given was that a big democracy like India was not considered capable of protecting its state guest. One may well ask: Will the US government allow the Indian prime minister to take as many Indian securitymen to Washington as Clinton brought with him to India?

On its part, the Vajpayee government did not lag behind in showing to what extent of servility it could go. As if aping the military clique of Pakistan, the GOI banned all the rallies and demonstrations in Delhi. Then, not content with denying the people their normal democratic right to organise peaceful protest, the Union home ministry instituted something like a police state in the capital, issuing instructions for the common citizens that on March 21, they must not use some of the roads in central parts of the city; residents of these areas were told not to come out of their houses during specified hours. This was quite unprecedented in the history of Indian democracy, and no wonder the citizens and the media ridiculed every bit of it. According to The Hindu commentator, "the ban on public demonstrations in New Delhi during Mr Clinton's visit is no sign of a confident democracy."

The Vajpayee government also spent astronomical sums of money for the visit. Moreover, even ministers were deputed to take care of and entertain the US president's daughter and mother-in-law, which is beyond all protocol. Needless to say, the US president's itinerary in India was set by the US officials and not by the host country, as is the normal practice.  

RIDICULOUS DEMAND

And what did the Vajpayee government ask for in return? That Clinton must not think of going to Pakistan.

This was a ridiculous demand, to say the least. There are two aspects to this demand. First, nobody

while making its demand, the government of India even forgot the simple fact that, while trying its best to drag India into its sphere of influence, the US cannot really write off Pakistan that holds an important place in the its geo-political strategy. In fact, it is through Pakistan that the US tries to influence the entire Islamic world; once it even asked Pakistan to use its influence on the Taliban of Afghanistan for securing Osama Bin Laden's extradition to the US.

And, secondly, the BJP government made its demand as if it really believed that Clinton would like to be told as to where he should go and where not.

The US intentions in this regard were pretty clear from the very beginning. On one occasion Clinton himself said, perhaps to humour the GOI, that he was going to visit India and not South Asia, and the very next day he announced that he would make a brief stop-over in Pakistan while returning.

CLINTON IN BANGLADESH

While Clinton arrived at New Delhi on March 19 evening, his official visit to the country started only on March 21. In between, he made a one-day visit to Bangladesh where it is understood that he tried to negotiate with the Bangladesh prime minister, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, about supply of Bangladeshi natural gas to India. It is another matter that Ms Hasina categorically said at a press conference, in Clinton's presence, that her country would think of exporting gas only after "fully meeting our domestic needs and ensuring reserves for the next 50 years." She, however, welcomed the "proposals that are commercially viable for the export of power based on our natural gas."

Clinton's real attitude to Bangladesh was evident from the fact that he did not even show the minimal courtesy of paying homage to the martyrs of the liberation war of 1971, including late Sheikh Mujibur-Rahman. Nor have the Bangladeshis forgotten the role the US imperialists played at that time in helping the military dictatorship of Yahya Khan in suppressing the Bangladeshi freedom fighters. The Bangladesh people's anti-Clinton demonstrations all over the country on March 20 well showed their sense of anger against imperialism. It will also be recalled that when India was playing a positive role in the Bangladesh liberation war and helping the freedom fighters, it was the US that sent its nuclear-armed Seventh Fleet to the Indian Ocean with the clear-cut aim of scaring and deterring India; at that time it was only the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation that saved the situation and contributed to the liberation of Bangladesh.

Clinton's visit to Bangladesh was, going by newspaper reports, not much of a success from the US point of view. As is well known, the US has for long been cherishing the dream of having a military base in Chittagong. Significantly, it appears that this issue did not even come up for discussion. 

EARLIER FOREIGN POLICY SLANDERED

With India, it was a different matter altogether, thanks to the existence of a government that was ready to capitulate from the very beginning. Clinton enjoyed an unprecedented official support from the powers-that-be in New Delhi.

The government of India's position was made amply clear on March 17 itself when the foreign affairs minister, Jaswant Singh, lamented of the "wasted decades" and stressed the need of developing the Indo-US relations in an altogether different direction. (See the CPI(M)'s reaction to Jaswant Singh's statement elsewhere in this issue.) And what he meant by "wasted decades" of the Cold War period? In fact, these were the decades when India was playing a significant, highly positive role in world affairs and was one of the leaders of the non-aligned movement -- to which every remaining colony was looking for support in its liberation struggle, to which every newly independent country was looking for support in consolidating its hard-won independence, from which indeed every part of mankind was expecting leadership in the struggle for total nuclear disarmament so that the threat of a third world war is averted and the world is spared nuclear annihilation.

It was this extremely positive, indeed glorious, foreign policy of peace, disarmament, independence and anti-imperialism which Jaswant Singh had the audacity to slander. It was this very consensual foreign policy, to which every party and group in the country subscribed (except the BJP, its predecessor the Jan Sangh and their likes), which our foreign affairs minister sought to castigate.

THE MOOT QUESTION

The moot question is: Why have the BJP stalwarts forgotten, in fact why are they ignoring, what the US imperialists have done in different parts of the globe since the end of the second world war? Are the Indian people being asked to forget the bloody US interventions in Vietnam, Korea, Iran, Sri Lanka, Chile, Middle East, Grenada and scores of other countries?

But why to go into the remoter past? Even today, we can see how the Iraqi children, women and the aged are starving to death because of the criminal US-UK sanctions imposed in the name of the UN. More than 1.3 million hapless Iraqi citizens have so far died since these sanctions were imposed. Can one forget the criminal and illegal US embargo against Cuba, continuing for the last 38 years, that has heaped untold miseries on the Cuban people? The US refuses to lift this embargo even though the UN General Assembly has castigated it three times, showing how isolated the US has been on this score. That the US has not been able to browbeat the Cubans into submission is a different thing altogether, and an inspiration for the peace-loving people the world over.

Or, can one erase from public memory the 78-day long, continuous, US-led NATO bombing against Yugoslavia? Can one forget that the US is not only maintaining but even expanding eastward the NATO war alliance even after the Warsaw Pact no more exists? One will ask: What for, if not for imposing US hegemony on the entire globe? And what is the justification of the US nuclear base in Diego Garcia in Indian Ocean?

Will the BJP stalwarts ever ask themselves such questions? 

"VISION STATEMENT"

And what is indeed meant by the new direction in which the BJP rulers want to develop the Indo-US relations? As already told, nobody would object to development of Indo-US relations on a sound footing, on the basis of equality. But that is not what the BJP stalwarts have in mind. They, in fact, want to push the country into total subservience to US imperialism in the economic, foreign and defence policy spheres. That Clinton's visit was intended to force India further for economic concessions was also evident from the large entourage of US businessmen and NRIs that accompanied him.

The so called "Vision Statement" signed by Vajpayee and Clinton on March 21, makes the BJP government's real intention still clearer. Entitled "Indo-US Relations: Vision for the 21st Century," the statement says the two countries want to "create a closer and qualitatively different relationship" among themselves. But in fact the US wants to impose, and the GOI wants to acquiesce in, the same policy of globalisation that is today ruining many a third world country and even the toiling sections in developed countries. (See the editorial for the economic aspects of the Indo-US agreement. Here, the BJP government would do well to recall how China deals with the US in its trade relations. Even the US threat of withdrawing the Most Favoured Nation status from China failed to cut any ice; on the contrary, the Chinese threat of retaliatory action forced the US to come down from its high pedestal. The fact is that China has a much bigger share in the USA's foreign trade than India has, but it deals the trade-related issues from a position of strength.)

While applauding "India's success in opening its economy," talking about joint "unrelenting battle against poverty in the world" and pledging "a common effort to battle the infectious diseases," the statement does indicate that India has conceded to the US imperialists a role in bringing about "strategic stability in Asia" and in countering "terrorism" and meeting "other challenges to regional peace." Thus even though the two countries acknowledged "that tensions in South Asia can only be resolved by the nations of South Asia," in fact the GOI has cleared the decks for US intervention in the sub-continent in the name of a joint fight against terrorism.

It is here that every patriotic Indian will have a cause of concern, particularly because of the USA's long-standing evil designs about intervening in the Kashmir issue and see to it that Kashmir becomes an independent entity. The US media and thinktanks are already busy preparing blueprints of this very kind of "resolution" of the Kashmir dispute.

The statement also talked of ending nuclear proliferation and said the two countries "share a commitment to reducing and ultimately eliminating nuclear weapons" even though they have differences over the issue. This is the height of imperialist hypocrisy. While the US has wrested a promise from India that the latter will not conduct any more nuclear tests, the US itself is not prepared to agree to a time-frame for eliminating its nuclear weapons, nor has it to date committed itself to no-first-use of such weapons. Nor did the Vajpayee government demand that the US dismantle its nuclear base in Diego Garcia, that directly threatens India and other countries of the Indian Ocean rim.