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J&K: Pre-1953 and its     implications J&K: Fact vs fiction The woes of Jammu     Ladakh Abdullah III talks     too much The autonomy shrill --     yet again

Uncle Sam, don't lecture us

Here the Government of India has bent backwards cajoling the separatists such as the Hurriyat Conference to participate in the coming elections for the J&K assembly, and Colin Powell tells us how to conduct those polls to ensure international credibility. There, in Islamabad, the next day, Musharraf reiterates changes in the country's suspended constitution that will rape his so-called democratic parliamentary elections in October, and Powell keeps mum -- as mum as he has been all along on Musharraf's fraudulent referendum earlier this year.

That recent event transforms America's hitherto hyphenated relationship with India into a blatantly anti-India full stop.

Sadly, going by a report in The Indian Express, Mumbai, July 31, at least two prominent Indians chose to wear blinkers on that partisan punctuation. They are I K Gujral, a former prime minister, and J N Dixit, a former foreign secretary.

These two men selectively edited Powell's full statement to the media and saw nothing insulting or adversarial in what the US secretary of state had said in New Delhi. Gujral, in fact, welcomed Powell's pontification, reading in it an endorsement of what he believes is India's stand: that the coming J&K elections is meant to tell the world that the polls are what the people of that state want. Dixit opined that Powell was simply repeating India's viewpoint that the J&K elections should be free and fair, and that Pakistan should not interfere with them.

Both these gentlemen forgot that Powell was being supercilious when he remarked, inter alia, that 'India should release political prisoners and should allow outsiders to monitor the J&K elections so as to add credibility to the process.' Also forgotten was his observation that the polls were the first step towards a final settlement of the so-called 'Kashmir dispute.' And his remark that 'Kashmir is on the international agenda' was a veiled threat so typical of the New World's master bully named Uncle Sam.

Such oversight is understandable in the case of goody-goody Gujral. Dixit's okay to Powell's stance could be put down to an aberration or to the media's selective reporting.

Be that as it may, the time has really come to put Uncle Sam in his place.

India's prompt and outright rejection of recognition to outside observers has been a good start. But much more needs to be done -- not only by the Government of India but by all Indians, here and abroad, especially those in the USA who have exhibited an almost passionate empathy with their motherland and have developed a networking system that enables them to collectively reach those who can influence policy in Capitol Hill.

The immediate thing to do is to tell America that, after the farce in Florida state that enabled Bush junior to become President two years ago, Uncle Sam now telling us how to conduct free and fair elections is a big joke. It must be rubbed into Powell by giving him the following thumbnail account of what happened then:

• Al Gore got the majority of popular votes, but the US president is decided by an electoral college system where the number of seats in each of the total number of states in the USA go to the winner in that state.
  
• In a close race among the 50 states, it all boiled down to Florida's 25 seats.
  
• Fox News announced that Bush had won in Florida and declared him President.
  
• As that news was quickly retracted, confusion galore descended.
  
• The difference of votes for the two candidates was so slender that everything hinged on postal ballots. Reports came to light that many blacks had been disenfranchised.
  
• Gore appealed to the local court for a recount. Florida's Secretary of State Katherine Harris didn't want the recount, and declared Bush the winner. But Gore got the recount.
  
• Bush filed an emergency petition in the Supreme Court and got the recount stopped because the deadline for declaring the result was over. Gore graciously gave in even as the difference in the votes had come down to a couple of hundred or so. Bush had become the new US President.

In the above chaotic scene, a few facts need to be recalled. Fact number one is that Ms Harris was the appointee of Florida's reigning governor who is Bush junior's brother. The emergency petition was upheld by the judges appointed by either Bush junior's daddy or his predecessor, Reagan, another Republican. And Fox, that jumped the gun with so much alacrity, had assigned the election results programme to a cousin of…Bush junior. All this, remember, in the "world's oldest democracy".

It is, of course, well known that most of the justice meted out in the US is based not on fairness but on whose puppets the judges are and what the colour composition of the jury is. If you don't believe this, read the latest horror story of African-Americans in a small US town reported by Bob Herbert in The New York Times of July 29, 2002 under the title 'Kafka in Tulia.' It was perhaps symbolic that in January this year John Ashcroft, the prude US attorney general, got draped the two naked figures sculpted as big aluminum statues, the female Spirit of Justice and the male Majesty of Law, that have long stood in America's Hall of Justice.

So please, Uncle Sam, don't hector us on elections and justice.

And don't lecture to us on democracy too because your record of supporting dictatorships like in Saudi Arabia is known to us. Indeed, after the US gloated over the business leadership's coup, assisted by some in the military, to unseat the hugely popular Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, this April, writers in the US itself have begun to say that 'The New World Order has re-defined democracy not as holding elections but as subservience to US diktat.' That Chavez, the old-style social reformer, made a quick comeback to upset America's plan for continuing cheap oil supplies vindicates the Indian nation's engraved motto 'Truth shall prevail.'

As for elections in J&K being a step towards the final settlement of the so-called 'Kashmir dispute,' whoever told you that, Mr Powell? For us, assembly and parliamentary elections are a constitutional commitment, not a bargaining point with our friend or enemy. And yes, we may, just may, talk to Pakistan after the polls, warts and all, but don't get away with the notion that our nation's Parliament is going to bypass the internationally legal accession to India of the whole erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. By the way, have you ever cared to ask for a copy of that document from the Indian government? Have you, your Congressmen and your 'think tanks,' ever cared to bother about the 37,555 sq kms of that territory of ours held by China with the courtesy of Pakistan? What 'final settlement of Kashmir' then are you talking about?

Lastly, there's that sword of Damocles you try to hang on our heads by saying that 'Kashmir is on the international agenda.' Just what do you mean by that, Mr Powell?

What do you mean when, on the 19th of last month itself, your Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca told the US House International Relations Sub-committee that the UN recommended plebiscite was not on after the Simla Agreement of 1972 made the issue a matter of bilateral agreement? The US is certainly welcome to be a facilitator but only if it first ensures that Pakistan behaves itself. Do you have the spine for ensuring that, Mr Powell? Equally important, do you have the sense of fair play for that?

And if you're really so panicky about the 'nuclear flashpoint' in the Indian subcontinent, why don't you force Beijing and Pyongyang to close their WMD route to Islamabad? Why don't you get "bosom ally" Pakistan to declare a 'no first-use' premise in its nuclear doctrine the way we Indians have? Instead, you allow Musharraf's crony in the UN to threaten us with nukes. Instead, you have drawn up plans to bomb a hapless Iraq where thousands of innocents have died consequent to the US-inspired UN sanctions. And to think that you, Uncle Sam, prepares an annual human rights report!

Yes, Indians in the USA must be more intense in doing what they're already doing and what the Indian government is shy to do. They must continually expose Uncle Sam's hypocrisy on issues that he uses to often embarrass India: i. the question of J&K's final settlement ii. human rights iii. treatment of minorities and iv. secularism.

A start can be made by sending a xeroxed copy of the Instrument of Accession bearing the signature of the Maharaja of J&K to every US Congressman. Readers can forward their request for a copy through Rediff along with their postal address.

Here's to happy activism in showing Uncle Sam his place.

Arvind Lavakare