07/01/2005 Dixit & India’s status as a National Security State Enayetullah Khan
J.N. Dixit, informally known as Mani, was one of the most important actors in shaping Indian diplomatic and military involvement in the 1971 Bangladesh War of Independence. Although belonging to the bureaucratic order in a relatively junior position at the time, though holding a critical desk responsibility, Mani Dixit was not only witness to a momentous history that shook the world for nine long months, but was very much a part of it. And that perhaps explains his quasi-political persona even when he served as the Indian Foreign Office functionary in various hierarchic stations leading to the top job in the cold corridors of the South Block in New Delhi. The irony is that Mani Dixit is more known as the imperious Indian Viceroy in Sri Lanka during the critical Rajiv Gandhi and post-Rajiv Indian Peacekeeping Forces’ (IPKF) episodic period of the late eighties than as the immediate-first deputy in the Indian High Commission in newly independent Bangladesh. His early presence in the Indian Mission was naturally outshone by the glare of such other luminaries as DP Dhar and PN Haksar, the top-order advisors of Indira Gandhi on the 1971 affairs, among other things — the former oftener visiting Bangladesh in his formal capacity. But those were the years when it was the best and also the beginning of the worst of times in Indo-Bangla relations, the latter taking a dip even with the late Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, a triumphant returnee from a Pakistani prison taking charge first as President, then as Prime Minister and then what turned out to be a gory history—the one-party monolith and August 15, 1975. The late Tajuddin Ahmed was by then out in the cold, the breakaway JSD radicals — yet an unknown quantity — taking to the stage spitting fire, and the dissenters of the cult-rule of socialism by expropriation being put away in prisons or just going missing, never to return. Mani Dixit was not witness to everything that was unfolding during his stay in Dhaka. But he chose to script the accounts almost blow by blow in a book that sought to encapsulate the history of the Bangladesh war and the subsequent developments. The latter oftener pushed things to the brink between India and Bangladesh, (with the ex-Soviet Union and the renegade Kremlin comrades trying to make hay while the sun shone — parenthesis mine). I had known Mani Dixit quite closely as also frequently socially during his tenure in Dhaka in our respective homes in Lalmatia and the Thariani house in Dhanmondi — in that order — as also in umpteen other gatherings. Dhaka in those days, as it is even now, was a place where everybody who is somebody, or these days aspires to become somebody, would know everybody else. That apart, our meetings would oftener turn into sharp discourses on what Dixit termed in his book as the ‘strident anti-Indian’ polemics of mine and Holiday. We were the loners in those days when it came to calling the government ‘proto-fascist’ and also a client of the then Indo-Soviet axis at some peril of authoritarian wrath of the powers-that-be and of the private armies of what was fashionably known as the Vanguard Party. And they befell us in course. The malignancy of the Moscow-roader and the Kremlin media in print, or in networked whispering campaigns here, there and everywhere was another lot for the dissenters. There are no regrets, however. Though essentially a browser by habit, I took a good look at the book as a reader and came to know of facts hitherto shrouded by fiction and myth—the latter being hawked even now. While I will not go into those, but for recommending the book as a must-read, the value of the work also lies in the straightforward and unambiguous assertion of India’s interests as a National Security State (NSS). The NSS category, as in the case of the United States, say in the instance of Grenada in those days, is defined as a state entity that invokes the right to intervention in the neighbourhood if there is even the slightest ripple of what it sees as or deems a national security concern. The element of imperial posturing is built into the entire concept, particularly in the Cold War era, on either side of the then ideological world divide between two superpower overlords, now gone singular. And hence is the intervention far afield as in Iraq under the Project New American Century (PNAC) of the neo-cons. In the sub-imperial context, such interventions in the bipolar world had the sanction of one or the other superpower, though in most cases the sub-imperial states with National Security obsessions or logic, as the case may be, and then and now, were autonomous. In the Indian context, annexation of Sikkim and the alter-occupation, so to speak, of Sri Lanka, fit the bill of the concerns and the actions of a National Security State, which India still is. But now it is somewhat constrained by other factors, such as the sole superpower’s selectivity in the pursuit of the PNAC, among other disabling circumstances, local as well as regional. Nineteen Seventy One, however, was of a different order that fitted more into the thesis of the Indian strategic studies guru Subramanyam and his co-author Mohd Ayub, which talked about ‘the opportunity of a century’ for ‘the dismemberment of Pakistan’. There are or were no tears to shed for the latter, though. An armed resistance struggle was already on the ground, particularly after the Pakistan army’s genocide of the people of Bangladesh on the black night of March 25, 1971, and their role of occupation and extermination for 9 long months till they fell to the allied forces on December 16, 1971. The Indian case was built on the issue of close to 10 million refugees fleeing the land and crossing over — a case meticulously built up to gain international support for military intervention. The governmental and the non-governmental international support for the cause of independent Bangladesh, and the recognition of the government in exile, constituted and led by the majority party elected in 1970 polls to what was billed as the National Assembly of Pakistan, was, of course, the critical, enabling factor. JN Dixit, in his backroom capacity on the desk, effectively steered the issue and thus expedited the pace of the Indian benison of 1971 that, alas, had started going sour even in the earliest years. All the above discussions have come to reference in the course of the remembrance of a man who was more than a diplomat in pin-striped suit and impeccable carriage. Mani Dixit had certain beliefs, though not orthodox, quaint or that of right-reaction. But he was certainly dour in his national security perceptions from an Indian elitist state point of view — a point of view that he had upheld most conscientiously to the letter and spirit. They are not always the forte` of an average man, even though one may sternly disagree, as we do, with such a world-view. Mani Dixit had visited Dhaka, perhaps several times, since his retirement and journey into politics. I met him on two occasions when he invited a small number of his friends and acquaintances in Dhaka to a goodbye luncheon upon his retirement as the Indian Foreign Secretary, and the second time around in the year 2000 when he had come to attend one of the many conferences that Dhaka is famous for. I have had the occasion of meeting him in Delhi at the India International Centre (IIC) rather briefly. You are certain to meet one or the other person you would like to look up if you are around the IIC — a Delhi hub known for its quality crowd rather than for its coffee shop or the bar. Although some of his seniors from within the Indian steel frame of bureaucracy like DP Dhar and PN Haksar had risen high in the political hierarchy, they had been mostly handpicked by the powers that be for their excellence. Mani Dixit, also a man of professional and intellectual excellence, joined the rough and the tumble of the political process and also scaled the height to become the National Security Advisor to Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh — not an easy feat. His death was premature and he died a Cold War warrior having fought well and winning the armorial of the badge of honour. May his soul rest in peace. http://www.weeklyholiday.net/front.html#2 __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! 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