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At
a recent workshop, I got into an argument with a student. We were
discussing the 1998 nuclear tests, and I mentioned that I believe
they were a great mistake. In an article in this space in January,
I wrote of how politicians labelled as traitors those who opposed
those tests; and at the workshop, this was the general thrust of
my argument with this student.
He agreed with the labelling. "How can you oppose
something," he asked me, "that makes the country more
secure?"
Glad you said that, young man! That is precisely the point. In
1998 and later, we heard from all our leaders that the tests would
strengthen India's "national security", that now we
could stand tall in the world, that nobody would dare to invade
us, that all Indians could now feel safer.
Stirring pronouncements all. So why have I wondered, ever since,
what this notion of "national security" really means?
For one thing, just a year after Pokhran our nuclear capability
was of no use to us in heading off war – the Kargil war. If the
bombs were supposed to strengthen our security and ensure that
nobody invades us, how is it that a few hundred soldiers strolled
across the border and occupied those peaks? Just what good did the
bombs do if we still had to pay with the lives of 500-plus fine
soldiers to push the invaders out? What good do they do when we
have bloodshed not just in Kargil, but almost daily on our border?
But perhaps more important is a second thing, and I've been even
more conscious of it after the blasts in Bombay on 25 August. I'm
supposed to feel safer as of 11 May 1998, they say. But now I must
live with the prospect that wherever I step in my city, a bomb can
blow me to pieces. In what sense do I feel safe?
Think that's wimpy? Then consider this: one day during the Kargil
war, I woke to read in my paper that Pakistan's Nawaz Sharief had
hinted darkly, but unmistakably, that he would not hesitate to use
his nuclear weapons against India. The thinking always is that the
first target of such a strike will be Bombay. So I sat there
wondering: is a nuke about to fall on my head? Will I be alive
tomorrow? An hour from now? Five minutes from now?
I sat there and felt an almost physical fear that I had to
deliberately quell. In what sense was I safer? Because I certainly
did not feel safe or secure.
This is really the heart of the matter. We hear so much talk about
national security. When important strategic analysts use the term,
they speak grandly of our borders, realpolitik, the urgent need to
increase defence spending, that sort of thing. Yet what else is
the nation's security if not the sum of the security of each of
our lives? And if I felt tangibly less secure during Kargil –
and surely I cannot be the sole Indian who felt so – by what
perversion is it said that the Pokhran tests increased our
security?
And once you begin thinking on these lines, you find other
ingredients in this broth called security. What, after all,
defines the security of an ordinary Indian's ordinary life? Is it
that somewhere in Delhi, a man has at his command the deadliest
weapon known to humankind? Or is it the quest to get the next
meal? The worry about access to drinking water? The concern about
our children's education; or reasonable health care; or whether a
poorly-maintained bridge will collapse under us, as in Daman in
August; or recourse to fair justice; or other features of Indian
life I could list? What about the fear of riots, of neighbours
assaulting each other? After all, given how often riots have
blotted our history, the prospect of such an attack from within
our own surroundings is every bit as real as, and arguably more
immediately threatening than, any terror that comes from abroad.
Do these things have to do with Indian security?
To a large number of Indians, these are real, daily issues. And if
you tot up their effect on how Indians live, if you look at
security as a measure of the certainties in our lives, you come to
a simple conclusion: many Indians live profoundly insecure lives.
Every single day. Nuke or no nuke.
Of course, this situation need not be the only part of the
national security equation. But it must at least be a part. It
must be a consideration in how we understand and evaluate
security. Yet it never is. When we talk about security, it is
never about water and education, hunger and health care, crumbling
bridges and criminals ruling us. It is only, and always, about
bombs and jets and elaborate weapon systems and foreign-trained
terrorists. Why?
This is not to downplay the threat that terrorism poses. But to
pretend that it's the only threat to us, as leaders do, is
short-sighted and stupid. It is also the politician's tactic in
his effort to blind us to his crimes: crimes that have left us to
cope with everything from bridge collapses to murderous riots.
Yet we need not fall for this subterfuge. Not least because I
think that if we tackle the things I've mentioned here – health
and education and so on – we will automatically build a strong,
wise and just nation.
And in that kind of nation, because it's that kind of nation, national
security will mean something to every one of its citizens.
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