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Arms wrestling

Talk about irony: The communalist-divisive-fundamentalist forces preferred to sacrifice the government rather than renounce a Union minister belonging to the Christian faith... If the BJP is only what the Pooh-bahs would have us believe -- corrupt, power-hungry, communal -- how long would it have taken for the party to retire George Fernandes and reinstate the Naval Scumbag? Wasn't that the demand made by Jayalalitha before she withdrew support? What's happened to all that concern which the Congress, Communists and casteists had for Niloufer's pawn? Where is he now?

I'll tell you where he was on April 25: In Trivandrum, claiming that his removal was part of a sinister plot to infiltrate the armed forces in which he stood as a stumbling block. He saw a "pattern" in the fact that the largest number of retired service men joined the BJP's defence cell. You see, the purpose of setting up the cell could only be to establish a link with serving officers in order to further the party's interests. It simply isn't possible that the avowed nationalists may have wanted to channel towards India's strengthening, the experience of those who've spent their lives defending the country.

Scumbag then ran out of sensational exposés. So he switched to those familiar, tiresome dialectics: the BJP just cannot function within the parameters of the parliamentary system. The parallel structures set up outside are so reminiscent of Hitler's rise to power and the fate of the Weimar Republic...

Georgekaka, have you heard of McCarthyism? Do you now see the advantages it had? You CANNOT have Marxist influence on the armed forces. For instance, the concept of an indivisible country is not sacrosanct for pinkos; they casually advocate ceding pieces of India if it could buy what they call "peace." They can be expected to incite a person to cast aside the dignity, decorum and discipline of a Flag Officer of the Navy if that suits their scheme of politics. Defence is about nationalism; it's not an ordinary job with benefits and promotions open to negotiation. It's not about unions, picket lines and holding management to ransom. Do soldiers lay down their guns because they didn't receive a bonus? I don't get it: haven't you heard of "with extreme prejudice"...? Scumbag's going around the country insinuating that the other service chiefs have been compromised!

Folks, I tell you again: cherchez le pinko. And if it's la femme pinko, *big* trouble. On January 16, Frontline carried a laudatory cover on Scumbag. It included an interview with Niloufer, replete with leading questions like, Was the timing of Harinder Singh's petition a little suspicious? Excerpt: ''Even before the new Government was in the saddle, rumours were floated by senior officers, now retired, of the Western Naval Command that the moment the new Government came in, Admiral Bhagwat would be dismissed. Many of the officers concerned had joined the BJP after their retirement. They all had a vested interest in seeing the Navy Chief out.''

India Today of January 11: "On that foggy winter evening of December 30 in Delhi, when Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat's star faded, another burst into prominence -- that of his lawyer and wife Niloufer Bhagwat. While the admiral refused to make any comment, Niloufer took command... 'The dismissal,' she said, 'was a political move with wider conspirators involved in the arms supply to the navy'... The media campaign against her husband had been personally orchestrated by Defence Minister George Fernandes, she charged... They have never hidden their left-of-centre beliefs nor 'militant' secularism. A lawyer of 27 years standing, Niloufer was the brain behind the 1990 petition that resulted in Vishnu's reinstatement to the mainstream of senior officers after he had been unfairly sidelined."

See what I mean? "Niloufer took command." She was the brains behind the agitation, right from 1990 till the retired-officers bit. The star burst into prominence, all right. Unfortunately, it was the Red star. Which left India poorer of Rs 40,000 crores within a fortnight, and will leave it poorer of millions more, thanks to a totally unnecessary mid-term election.

Scumbag's dismissal has been painted as a cabal, with George in cahoots with arms dealers. I've already touched on the Purohit case, but let's look a teeny bit closely at the capital. Wilson John -- a journo who'd make a good aide to George, if you ask me -- sniffed something foul in H D Deve Gowda's speech during the no-confidence debate, in which he'd cast aspersions on Deputy Chief of Army Staff Lt Gen SS Mehta. (George later requested the Speaker to expunge the reference from the record of proceedings as it created a furore among servicemen, from the Army Chief down, that "an outstanding officer with impeccable credentials" had been besmirched. Therefore, the allegations will not be reproduced in this right-wing column.)

Such was the background: In 1997, then PM Deve Gowda went to Moscow where he discussed the T-72S tanks with President Boris Yeltsin. Confidential minutes reveal that Deve Gowda knew the tanks were manufactured in Yeltsin's constituency. He'd said, "We shall consider this favourably" and promised to send his defence minister Mulayam Singh for negotiations. However, Deve Gowda was soon ousted and I K Gujral took charge. When Mulayam, still the DM, finally reached Moscow, he chose the T-90 tanks instead. Deve Gowda kept silent till...

In November 1998, when the papers for procuring three T-90s for trials were being prepared, Deve Gowda sent a note questioning the move to Prime Minister Vajpayee. In January, Deve Gowda called a media conference and released a 3-page note raising doubts about the T-90 and alleging that the deal was being pushed surreptitiously. In February, he wrote to the PM: "I shall be constrained to raise the issue in Parliament if I do not receive any satisfactory reply before the commencement of the session."

And while all this documented drama was unfolding, arms dealers representing the T-72S manufacturer, camped in Delhi, were wining and dining people while educating them about the advantages of the T-72S over the T-90...

The government promptly dispatched Additional Secretary P R Nair, Lt Gen SS Mehta and Major Neel Martin to settle Deve Gowda's doubts. But in March, Deve Gowda wrote to George, listing 22 points, some extremely technical, and all suspecting the government's intentions. The strange thing is, no decision whatsoever had been taken on buying the T-90. A senior army official said: "We have only evaluated T-90. It will be put through rigorous trials before even beginning price negotiations. Gowda, in fact, has jumped the gun. Why, we do not know."

John writes: "Why is Mr H D Deve Gowda so keen on a possible Rs 4000 crore tank deal that he even dragged the name of the Army Deputy Chief into the controversy during the no-confidence debate in Parliament? How come the 'poor and humble farmer' from Hassan has suddenly become an expert on tank warfare?"

How, indeed... India has a lot to watch out for from this "third front". Especially since king-makers like Harkishen Singh Surjeet would like nothing better than to see the return of the days when the pinkos wielded immense power without a grain of responsibility. It's one of the benefits of the ignominy called "lending issue-based support from outside."

There have been three big defence deals on the anvil since over a year: Advanced jet trainers for the IAF -- with British Aerospace, France's Dassault Aviation and Russia competing; modernisation (which includes new weaponry and electronic systems) of aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov -- for which firms from France, Germany, Israel, Russia and the CIS nations are competing; over 300 tanks for the Army, from the shortlisted T-72S and T-90, both of which are Russian but have different agents in Delhi, and which the humble farmer is also interested in. And then there are the Mirage and SU-30 and air refuellers and submarines and... Imagine how many brokers are involved.

The arms thing worries me, for it's the defence minister who's been systematically targeted. Why did JJ demand only George's head? I believe that arms dealers *have* played a part in toppling the government. They have reason to: More than Rs 4,000 crore in commissions are at stake as defence deals worth over Rs 40,000 crore are in the works. They are known to often finance elections. And, as we all know too well, they have strong political links, without which they cannot survive. Since decades have such dealers invested in Congress regimes. Those who've had liaisons with ministers and leaders in the past -- what would they try to do about a stubborn, principled defence minister?

Can we discount old Bofors? Mr N R Singh, former deputy director of the CBI, has detailed how the investigation was stonewalled after the toppling of the V P Singh government in 1990: The CBI's request for permission to prevent Ottavio Quattrocchi from leaving the country remained with Margaret Alva (then, minister in charge of the affair) till he was safe in Malaysia. Now, Kanchan Gupta informs us that another crucial Bofors file awaits approval -- of the Presidential Congressman. While the request to Alva was in storage for six weeks, this file's been resting since... when Operation Topple took off. Another file, another stall, another fall. What a coinkidink.

Last January, the Shroud herself raked up the Bofors issue, challenging the UF government to release the names of the recipients of the kickbacks. Problem was, the Swiss court had asked the government not to make the documents public, failing which, it wouldn't transfer other documents. The Bofors offensive was a calculated move: One, the tangled trails of transactions could take decades to unravel. Two, if Sonia's demand became an electoral issue, the government could well have made the disclosures -- thereby preventing the names of the *ultimate* beneficiaries from becoming public. No wonder Mr Gujral said, "the people who are being suspected of having a hand in it, have very long arms. They are trying to see that full information does not come in."

As things stand, the last installment of documents is due any day. Would it do to have the BJP -- with pugnacious George in tow -- in power? If not for Mulayam, we'd have had the backdoor entry of a PM who hasn't *yet* been given a clean chit by the CBI for her role in the gun deal.

You know, the average, middle-class, urban desi is a more voracious reader than his white American counterpart. We absorb fiction and non-fiction, by diplomats, savants and the savvy, about covert deals and conspiracies that shake governments all around the world. And then, when its implications become applicable to the Indian political scenario, we promptly junk it all. I haven't yet understood why we believe our administration to be impregnable to international manoeuvres. Are we that astute? What makes India so invincible that we should simply brush off any theory that suggests there's more than meets the eye? Guys, we're not talking Arun Gawli and Pandu Havaldar. This is the international arms racket. It recognises no frontiers.

And then there's the Beijing Military Academy recommending that China specifically target the BJP because of its "hard-line, nationalistic" stance... And Swamy who's always bragged about his ties with China's rulers... And Kumaramangalam saying, "We knew that Jayalalitha had met Sonia in January. She was only waiting for the go." And Surjeet with all his efforts behind Sonia...

WHY did they bring down the government at this point of time? WHAT was the urgency? Damned if I know...

Varsha Bhosle