O J's Corner : Reflections

Jaswant’s   cannonball

As a former Army man, Jaswant Singh is supposed to go in for precision strike. There should be no beating about the bush. A soldier is not known to go round and round and leave the target unhit.

Jaswant Singh has been doing precisely that these days. He is cock-sure, on the basis of a letter he chanced upon, that someone in the office of Prime Minister Narasimha Rao was a mole for America.

Initially, people thought he meant some junior Minister in the-then PMO. Jaswant turned around to say the fellow was a top civil servant. He is not in service now. Neither is he in the country at present. Everyone can draw his own conclusion. Or he would tell Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, if the PM invites him to do so.

Jaswant himself says information about the technology to produce a nuclear bomb can be downloaded from internet. So passing on information about concocting a nuclear device is not that important. But this mole informed his American contacts the exact schedule of Indian plans to explode a nuclear device.

Whether the mole’s trick worked or not, Americans were known to have pulled up Narasimha Rao for thinking about testing a nuclear device. Narasimha Rao had to beat a hasty retreat.

The NDA government led by A B Vajpayee, in whose Cabinet Jaswant Singh was External Affairs Minister for some time and Finance Minister later, did not give any chance for the US to trawl the secret about nuclear testing.

Close on the heels of our nuclear “blast”, Pakistan retaliated by exploding its devices.

India had an upper hand in traditional warfare with Pakistan. After both countries turned nuclear, there cannot be any more adventures. The BJP, to which Jaswant is a senior leader, used to refer to “hot pursuit” as allowed by the U N to chase and capture terrorists from their hideouts, even if these are in enemy territory.

After turning nuclear, the NDA government could not go in for hot pursuit. For Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf had explained that he would not mind using nuclear weapons, if India would do any adventure against his country.

India’s nuclear device is only for safe keeping, for we have extended a noble international gesture asserting that India would not resort to first use of nuclear weapons against any country.

Jaswant knew the implications of the helplessness. As External Affairs Minister he had to escort three hard-core terrorists, got released from Indian jails, in his plane to Kandahar to secure the release of hostages from the skyjacked Indian Airlines plane. He says he had not paid Rs 900 crore ransom. Neither did he carry a red bag containing explosives to the hijackers, who escaped to the safety of Pakistan. He could not launch a hot pursuit.

After Indira Gandhi’s assassination, it was known that some of her PMO staff were passing on intelligence to our enemies. The high-profile and seemingly meticulous principal secretary, Dr P C Alexander, could not have a modicum of intelligence about the wrong-doings of people sitting right under his nose.

Jaswant’s book, A Call to Honour, might get sold like hot cakes. But India was not shining when he had to escort terrorists to Kandahar. There was no other choice. But can we pour out encomiums on ourselves for the weak-kneed disposition?