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Packed In Tight In Their Last Refuge

You could have predicted it, sure as the sun's going to come up tomorrow. The debate, if that's what we can call it, over last week's nuclear tests has metamorphosed into an exercise in pointing out who is or is not patriotic. As of 1545 hours on May 11, 1998, Indians suddenly have available to them a simple new test of patriotism. Approve of the bombs, support the government's decision to conduct the tests, and you're automatically certified as one of those strange beasts: a "true patriot."

It's that easy.

Naturally, if you dare to ask any questions, make any dissenting noises, wonder out loud why there's a need at all to set off bombs -- well, here's what The Times of India of May 19 quotes BJP minister Lalji Tandon saying about you: "Everybody who opposed or criticised the nuclear tests conducted by India was in fact a traitor." Just what do you mean, opposing the tests, you scumbag traitor? Have you no shame, no sense of national pride? Start "thinking patriotically" for a change! "True patriots" will naturally support the bomb!

Again, it's that easy.

Or is it? I want to tackle this business of patriotism here. Let's see what I come up with.

Somewhere between a third and a half of this country goes to bed hungry every single day of the year. No, these Indians are not all hidden away on some distant mountain tops or in dense jungles. You can see them in any of our cities: on the roads, the railway platforms, at intersections, outside glitzy restaurants with their hands stretched out to you. Atal Bihari Vajpayee might have come up with ways to address their hunger, to listen to their voices. Doing that, he might have truly built this country's strength.

Instead, Atal Bihari Vajpayee wisely exploded a bomb that "true patriots" have rushed to embrace. Before it blows them to that nuclear El Dorado they seem to lust for, they might reflect on this thought: their patriotism, their intense love for the nation, means they must necessarily ignore an entire chunk of India. If you do think about the interests of that third-to-a-half of India, you cannot be a true Indian. Neither can they be, if they are as bold as to worry about their own half-empty stomachs.

But what about that 91% that approved of the tests, in that famous Times of India poll the day after? If 91% of the country supports the tests, and if you are in the 9% minority that disapproves, naturally you must be traitorous -- Lalji Tandon spelled it out, didn't he? Take that, then!

Only, that poll was conducted in 5 big cities. Only, just 1 of every 4 Indians -- 25% -- lives in cities. A poll based on a small fraction of 25% of India is the vindication of the bombs the parrots -- sorry, the patriots -- are offering. No need to care about the opinion of the 75% of India that lives outside her cities. Let me guess: it's unpatriotic to do that, maybe?

This is how empty this bluster about patriotism really is. Today, you can forget entirely about the great majority of India, about its interests and opinions, and that's called being a "true patriot."

On from there. If you really love your own country, you must be eternally hostile to the other country. True patriots like you to think there's no alternative. If you want peace, if you want goodwill, if you want an end to the dreary, dismal killing of your brothers and sisters that has gone on for fifty years, you are a full-blown traitor.

In other words, quite apart from Pakistani and Chinese lives, it's patriotic to want Indian blood shed, Indian lives lost. Somehow, loving your country means you must want its citizens to die. You're unpatriotic if you ask for as ordinary a thing as Indian lives lived.

But what about thumbing our nose at the West? Didn't we do that? Didn't we show we're not going to be pushed around, that we stood up to the bullies? Aren't we walking taller in the community of nations today? Isn't there national pride to be felt in that?

Well, I do want Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee to stand up to the West. Here's how I wish he had done it. He might have turned West and found the courage to say: "To Beelzebub with you and your CTBT and your nuclear weapons! You can keep them and may you rot with them. Instead of working on bombs like you idiots are doing, our Indian scientists have found a simple cure for malaria. We will save millions of Indian lives every year with it, and it is available to anyone in the rest of the world who is interested in saving lives too."

Or words to that effect. Or things on similar lines: cure for AIDS, high-yield grains to bring food to all, cheap desalination to supply adequate water to everyone. Now anything like that would really have woken up the West, startled the bullies. That would have earned us enormous respect all over the world. The whole planet would have seen us as a nation with a difference. One that is truly in pursuit of the only goal a nation can have, a goal so easily overlooked: a reasonable life for all its citizens.

Instead, a country where thousands of children die every year of measles and diarrhoea -- measles and diarrhoea, yes -- now has the bomb. Its PM showed that he is just as weak and small a man as many of his predecessors. And we think we have stood up to the bullies. Really, all we have done is to stand up and say: "Hey, we're as foolish as you, and we don't give a damn about our own people either!"

There's no national pride there.

But the bombs were exploded to boost national security, no? How can anyone argue with that imperative? Well, let's see. Now national security is not some amorphous chimera, not in the least. If it means anything at all, it must mean the security, day in and day out, of Indian lives. My life, my fellow Indian's lives.

On at least three counts, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee's bomb has greatly diminished that security.

First, he has chosen to ignore the daily problems of countless ordinary Indian lives, the problems that make those lives fundamentally insecure. Hunger, injustice, shelter, water, ill-health, ignorance: the list is long and dishonourable. That the prime minister so neatly sidestepped it shames him and the country, in our own eyes most of all. That he chose instead to explode bombs shames him more. To the extent that, with the focus on the bomb, there's less reason to hope that those problems will be tackled, those ordinary lives are that much less secure.

Second, Pakistan -- where idiocy is as rampant as in India -- will now work full speed to gift itself its own bomb. I sit here in my Bombay flat today, knowing that if some Pakistani bigwig presses a particular button as I finish typing this word, a Ghauri missile carrying that bomb will explode on me before I finish this article. (If you're not reading this, you'll know I'm a piece of vapourised history). In fact, dear Ms Benazir Bhutto has already called in print for a military strike against India. This is the insecurity that Atal Bihari Vajpayee handed me on a platter on May 11. I do not feel particularly grateful.

Third, even in purely military terms, we are more insecure today. Before we had the bomb, we were far superior to Pakistan in conventional arms. That country knew it would get whipped in any war that used those arms. Now, it does not matter whether we have one or five or 35,640 bombs. All Pakistan needs is one, just one, that it can explode over India. That's the nuclear equation for you. All Atal Bihari Vajpayee's tests have done is to put us on par where we were far ahead.

In other words, Vajpayee's bombs have actually reduced our security. Made us weaker.

The same bombs we must feel patriotic about.

Samuel Johnson first told us that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. After watching what's been going on over the last several days, I can't help thinking: patriotism is also the last refuge of the fool.

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