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The Rediff Special/ Pallavi Agarwal

'A bomb does not have a faith'

How do Indians and Pakistanis, often working jowl by jowl, react to the nuclear crisis in South Asia? Is their passionate espousal of nationalism less tied to regional politics and more grounded in their present realities? Pallavi Agarwal finds out.

Several Indians and Pakistanis living in the US are both proud and scared of the recent nuclear testing undertaken by both their countries. There is a medieval sense of national honour with some of the victorious Indians here, reminiscent of royal wives waiting for the winning army to return, a certain echo of, perhaps, a little tasteless pseudo nationalism. And it certainly is surprising to hear 'right-wing' voices from starched suits buried behind huge tables and young people who hip-hop in dance clubs and date Americans.

But their approval is tied less to the regional politics of the Indian subcontinent and more to their present realities. Many Indians and Pakistanis are friends here and in many ways don't relate to the animosities back home. The Pakistanis, in particular, consider themselves the underdogs and openly point out the comparative sizes and strengths of the two countries as proof of their relative inequality.

Many of them are aware that the economic sanctions are going to hit them more. Mohammed Ayub, a Pakistani from Karachi, even calls India a "big brother who has to be reasonable, kind and tolerant." Many Pakistanis are quick to point out that the Pakistani nuclear reply was strictly a symbolic defensive move.

Those who endorse the nuclear testing of their countries, it appears, do it for other reasons. Their reaction, to a large extent, mirrors either their other life as third world citizens living in the first world or the frustration and anger every foreigner in America invariably feels about American megalomania and "lack of concern about the rest of the world."

It reflects the strange dichotomy of first generation minority America: Accept the opportunities, but don't commit to any misplaced patriotism for the adopted home. It also reveals a lot about the intellectual propensities of their adopted home, which diligently postures to take minorities seriously. The result has been a virtual industry built of, for and by the minority intelligentsia.

The West and the East

"It's a feel-good factor," Sanjay Mishra, marketing professor at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, says, summing up his hour-long conversation about American global hegemony and the Indian nuclear testing.

"It is like the volcano blaming the firepot," he says, referring to the five-member Security Council at the UN that sees it proper to possess nuclear weapons but fails to understand why somebody else should want to, as well. "If there were missiles in Cuba, the US would have done something in defense of its sovereignty," he says.

A Pakistani student at the same university, Arif Khan, says that he is happy with the Pakistani nuclear testing only in as much as it served as a "fitting reply" to the Indian testing. Otherwise, he terms the nuclear testing episode as "all politics and waste of money." He is scared about an outbreak of fighting between the two countries but says that in the event of a war, the instigation may come from America.

"America is going to make us fight," he says. "Every Muslim country that is a potential threat to America is destroyed. America considers the Pakistani bomb as an Islamic bomb and is insecure about it," he says.

A different take on the issue, which may smack of post-Colonialism to some, but gives Indians something to think about, comes from Professor Vinay Lal, who teaches South Asian history at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Post-Colonialism is a popular school of thought in America that interprets the history, literature and culture of former colonies from the colonial experiences of its natives. Lal, who published an opinion piece on the cause of the Indian nuclear tests in the Los Angeles Times the day the testing was announced, calls it evidence of an assertion of a new Indian "masculinity" that is departing from the tenants of Indian civilisation.

The roots of the return to masculinity, he says, lie in the British perception of Indians as an "effeminate people" or sissies, incapable of withstanding foreign onslaught, culturally, politically or otherwise. 'The British argued in some of their colonial texts that the Indians were effeminate people who could only live with foreign history. As a matter of state policy, after the 1857 rebellion, they divided the Indians into martial and non-martial races where the Muslims in general were the martial races and the Hindus, barring the Rajputs were non-martial The Indian middle class, which is insecure about India as a great nation state is emulating this masculinity to be taken seriously as a great player,' he says.

He cites Bal Thackeray's comment -- "we have proved not to be any eunuchs" -- as an example of the pumped up "hypermasculinity" being endorsed by middle classes nationalism. This neo-masculinity is regrettable, he says. He sees it unfortunate that a great civilisation like India, which has been founded on peaceful coexistence, would want to explode bombs to be heard.

The tussle between the East and the West is also evident in conversations with several Muslims who harbour anti-American sentiments and talk of discrimination from the West as a given thing against Muslims. Several Muslims are not angry with India. It is easy to see India as another Third World country and excuse its mistakes. It is the mistakes from the West that are more inexcusable, they say, because they are deliberate and constant, especially against the Muslims.

A conversation that is about India and Pakistan and the Pakistani bomb as a possible Islamic bomb invariably veers toward Middle Eastern politics and Western chicanery. Ahmed Zafer, Saudi Arabian student at the University of Kansas, sees discrimination in the American response toward India and Pakistan at the height of the nuclear testing crisis.

"When India tested the first time America did not talk about economic sanctions. They did it only when Pakistan announced that it had plans to test in reply," he says. He dismisses the talk of the Islamic bomb theory as a Western conspiracy cooked up by America and the American media to unnecessarily vitiate a regional issue.

"We see the Indo-Pakistan problem as a local issue. A bomb does not have a faith. The Indian bombs are not Hindu bombs. America dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan. They do not call it a Christian bomb."

Of course, not everyone agrees that nuclear bombs are the path of national nirvana.

Arsalan Nayyar, a Pakistani student at the University of Kansas, is a self-proclaimed cosmopolitan liberal. He calls patriotism an obscene emotion and given a chance would like to live in a world with no boundaries.

He is against the Indo-Pakistan partition and criticises the governments of both the countries as being guilty of misleading their people. He calls the recent spats and inflammatory statements exchanged between the two countries as "fights between two little boys."

"The world of weapons is obsolete and one can conquer countries by economic weapons," he says. An Indian Muslim graduate student at the same university, who refused to be named, also fails to understand the motivation behind the testing. "It's a diversionary tactic," she says. "Only the other day I was talking to my family in India and they told me how expensive everything there is. Instead of spending money reducing poverty, they spend the money exploding bombs," she says.

Surendra Bhana, professor of history at the University of Kansas, agrees. Bhana, who is of Indian descent, hails from South Africa. He is equally baffled by the motivation behind the tests and hopes the tension will blow over.

An Islamic Bomb?

Are Muslims in America jubilant about the Pakistani nuclear bomb? Yes and no. Some Muslims against the notion of an "Islamic bomb" concede that several Muslims hailed the Pakistani bomb as the new technological freeway of the Islamic world, but call their position flawed.

"It is the emotional, uneducated, nationalistic sects of Muslim countries that regrettably see it as one," says Ali Risvi, Pakistani student at the University of Kansas. He calls a bomb a joke on poverty. Professor Jeffery Lang, professor of mathematics at the University of Kansas, who converted to Islam in 1982 and has written two books on the religion, sees the militanism as a descent by Muslims into gaining greater parity with the West. "I don't see the bomb as religiously motivated. It is sad that Muslims worldwide are desperate to climb out of its humble position in the world by show of such strength," he says.

Pallavi Agarwal, former correspondent at Rediff On The NeT, is now taking a course in journalism at a midwestern university in the USA.

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