India and Pakistan tried to steal the Hiroshima Day thunder from Japan where nationwide ceremonies are held every year on August 6 to remind the global community of the first nuclear sin committed by a country which today demands the exclusive right to be the international peacekeeper. The protest of the liberal class in the sub-continent was not focused against the USA but India and Pakistan for having conducted nuclear tests in Pokhran and Chagai. Without going into the merits of the protest, it can be said with a fair degree of conviction that they got the timing all wrong. Of course, it is not just the liberals in the two countries who decided to question the policy of going nuclear. The CPM held a massive rally in Calcutta to attack the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition for having conducted nuclear tests. Without meaning to question the right of the liberals and the politicians to free speech the point which needs to be emphasised is that August 6 should not have been chosen to attack Pokhran II. Hiroshima Day should be observed to focus global attention only on the nuclear misadventures of the USA and four other countries which have together converted the membership of the nuclear club into a status symbol. Pokhran II has not altered India’s stand on total global disarmament. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s unilateral declaration of “no first use” of nuclear weapons against nations possessing these weapons should remove any lingering doubt about the country’s total commitment to the policy of resolving global disputes through dialogue and diplomacy. A discordant and disquieting note has been added to the nuclear debate by Ms Arundhati Roy who believes that the act of having invented “The God of Small Things” has given her the right to speak even on “big issues” — issues which are beyond the comprehension of this fiction writer. She is now being projected as the new icon of peace in the subcontinent. A signed article in an English weekly saw her raving and ranting that “if protesting against having a nuclear bomb implanted in my brain is anti-Hindu and anti-national, then I secede”.

She is welcome to do worse things so long as these are done to herself, like proclaiming: “I hereby declare myself an independent, mobile republic”. If only someone had cared to explain to the mother of “The God of Small Things” the import of her statement that “I am a citizen of the earth”, she might not have gone public with her confused ideas on a sensitive issue. Which part of the earth does she claim to be a citizen of having obviously renounced the part where Pokhran is located? There is hardly a part on the planet which has not been ravaged and raped by the USA and its nuclear allies. Hiroshima was just the beginning of the process of turning the earth into a nuclear cauldron. Just because napalm was used by the USA against civilians — it would have been as evil had the girl in the universally acclaimed photograph been a Vietnamese soldier — several years ago, is not a valid excuse for not reminding the world about the past deeds of the country whose present misdeeds are equally revolting.

What global cause was served by killing the little daughter of the Libyan President by bombing his palace in Tripoli? Who sustained Iraq’s war machinery during the prolonged skirmish with Iran? Who is suffering because of the USA’s stand on the lifting of the embargo against Iraq? The Taliban certainly do not draw their strength from sources in Pakistan. Of course, Ms Arundhati Roy was not born as a fiction writer when the world’s worst industrial disaster occurred in Bhopal. But the liberals and the politicians who have been in the business of protests ever since such acts came to be acknowledged as “politically correct” have not even cared to visit the site of the continuing tragedy. Those who have been hurt by the blasts at Pokhran should at least first observe Bhopal Day on December 3 every year to show that their heart really bleeds for India.

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The views expressed in the Article above are Author’s personal views and kashmiribhatta.in is not responsible for the opinions expressed in the above article.

Courtesy: The Tribune: 7 August, 2019