#dnaEdit: Moral timidity

The NDA government has been caught on the wrong foot, for a second time in the last four days. On Monday, the government was caught on the issue of little known journalist Ved Pratap Vaidik’s meeting with Hafiz Sayeed, the main accused in the terror attack in Mumbai on November 26, 2008. Two of the senior ministers of the government fumbled, denied government’s connection and condemned the meeting, leaving the government confused and embarrassed.

The government has repeated its folly once again when it had agreed to a discussion in the Rajya Sabha over the issue of the Israeli military onslaught and killing of Palestinian civilians, especially children and women, in Gaza, and then minister for external affairs Sushma Swaraj made an intriguing objection to the discussion in her letter to Rajya Sabha chairman Hamid Ansari. The chairman overruled the objection of Swaraj on Thursday morning, but another letter from Leader of the House and finance minister Arun Jaitley came up with the request that the discussion be put off for a future date.

It is clear that the government is unable to make up its mind and it is in the process of buying time. It is this hesitancy that gives rise to the suspicion that the BJP-led NDA government is unwilling to be critical of Israel through the misplaced belief that India and Israel face the common threat of Islamic terrorism, and therefore it is not right to criticize or condemn Israel. The government has to clear the air and state its views unequivocally.

It is not just the BJP that is wrapped in a cloud of misconceptions about the Israeli-Palestine conflict. The Congress and other political parties are guilty too on this count. The Congress and others always looked over their shoulders to the Muslim constituency in the country while standing up for the rightful Palestinian rights. The Palestine question is not about Muslims — though a majority of Palestinians are Muslims, there are a significant number of Christians too among them. The Palestinian issue is about national independence and rights. To reduce the Palestinian cause to that of the cause of Muslims is nothing but a travesty of truth.

There is also the broader issue of Indian foreign policy as well. Ever since the 1991 economic reforms, the pseudo-realists in the Indian foreign policy and strategic community have adopted the cowardly position of silence on difficult international issues, especially when they do not directly affect India’s national interests on the pusillanimous plea that India should not indulge in moral grandstanding as it had done in Nehru’s period in the 1950s and 1960s. The country has been very coy about the many crisis points in Palestine-Israel while at the same time claiming that India is a regional power and staking claim to the permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council. India cannot hope to be a world power if it is afraid of taking a moral stance on difficult questions. Israel has a right to defend itself but it has no right to kill civilians indiscriminately in doing so. If India, and more pointedly if the BJP-led NDA government, considers itself to be a friend of Israel, then it is its moral obligation to warn, criticise and condemn Israel’s inhuman acts of violence in Gaza. It would be inadvisable for the government to avoid condemning killings of civilians in Gaza. There have been earlier occasions when the Congress governments of the day failed to condemn then Soviet Union’s military intervention in Hungary in 1956, then in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and in Afghanistan in 1978. The BJP should avoid the Congress’ failings.