Clear Words at Last?

Have the unbearable images of Gaza’s starved and shriveled children finally stirred the hearts of our world’s powerful people? Trump admits there is starvation in Gaza and Macron says France will recognize Palestine. After having written thus far, I find with some relief on BBC that the U.K., too, will do so in September, unless “Israel agrees to a ceasefire in Gaza,” a curious caveat that I am disinclined to probe. 

In India, where Narendra Modi, prime minister now for 11 years, has abandoned long-standing policies in support of an independent Palestine and emerged as one of Israel’s staunchest backers, Sonia Gandhi, widow of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and currently chairperson of the opposition Congress Party’s MPs in both houses of parliament, has asserted that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza amounts to “genocide”. 

Criticizing the Modi government for being a "mute spectator to this affront to humanity", Sonia Gandhi adds that the Indian prime minister’s “shameful silence in the face of Israel's relentless and devastating assault on the people of Gaza” was "deeply disappointing" and a sign of "moral cowardice". These remarks by Sonia Gandhi were made in an article that the strongly pro-Modi daily, Dainik Jagran, printed in Hindi and read more widely than any other newspaper in India, was willing to publish. Sonia Gandhi went on to urge the prime minister to speak out "clearly, boldly and forthrightly on behalf of the legacy that India has long represented.” 

WE’LL SOON FIND OUT 

How clearly the world asks for bare justice and elementary humanity from the state of Israel will be known in the coming weeks. Thus far, thanks to memories of the Holocaust of the 1930s-1940s and limitless U.S. backing, Israel has been able to hurt and humiliate its Palestinian neighbors year after year. Will people now emerge – in Europe, the U.K., the U.S., and the Middle East – who can turn the present modest but noticeable current in favor of justice, a current generated by the Gaza images, into a force for an honorable settlement? Millions yearn for this to happen.

The Russia-Ukraine War is in many ways a more recent story, but its toll of blood and tears is no advertisement for 21st-century sanity. If a president or prime minister, or a team of bold citizens, tips the scale in favor of dignified co-existence in either conflict, or preferably in both of them, not many would grudge the bestowal of a Nobel award. 

WAR DEBATE 

I type these lines as India’s parliament concludes a discussion on the four-day India-Pakistan war of early May, which had been triggered by a terrorist attack on April 22 that killed 25 holidaying tourists and a local helper in Pahalgam in Kashmir. While standing unreservedly with the government in the war, the opposition had demanded the debate, which the Modi government took more than 11 weeks to arrange. 

Who the Pahalgam terrorists were, how they had managed to reach Pahalgam, which lies about 200 km from the Line of Control that separates Indian Kashmir from Pakistan-held Kashmir, why the attackers remained at large, and why Trump was permitted to mediate were questions that were being asked every day. Opposition MPs repeated the questions at the start of the debate.

But lo and behold! By a most wonderful coincidence, images of the alleged perpetrators of the Pahalgam attack being found and killed by units of the Indian army were released just as the debate progressed in both houses of parliament. Even more curious (if hardly surprising) was the fact that some of India’s prominent TV channels, whose loyalty to the government has earned them the moniker of “godi media” (= lapdog media), displayed these images on a split screen right next to images of opposition MPs asking why the terrorists had not been apprehended.

With the loyal media providing instantaneous answers to the charges that opposition MPs were making, the treasury bench’s task was considerably lightened, except for the fact that the “answers” being telecast, which Home Minister Amit Shah too had just presented to the house, looked too punctual and too neat to be entirely convincing. 

Narendra Modi was absent from the house for most of the debate but came to deliver the concluding speech, which was impressive, well-prepared, and carefully crafted. Among other things he praised India’s soldiers, air force, and defensive weaponry. Terrorist camps and Pakistan’s airbases and launching centers had been disabled, he said. One thousand Pakistani missiles had been destroyed in the skies. Not one could hit its target in India.

In the end, said Modi, Pakistan’s Director General of Military Operations, phoned the Indian DGMO and pleaded for an end to the fighting. Because of that call, and because, in any case, India’s aim -- from start to finish -- was non-escalatory and limited, India agreed to a ceasefire.

Yes, said Modi, Vice President Vance did attempt to reach him. However, since the prime minister was conferring with his generals, it was an hour or so before he could return the call. Evidently Vance said that the Pakistanis were preparing a major attack. Modi said his reply was, “We will respond with a much bigger attack.”

The above was Modi’s answer to the question that MPs and people on India’s streets were asking: “Why is Trump claiming credit for stopping the war?”

Only a few hours before listening to India’s parliamentary debate, I had watched (on BBC) Trump speaking from his Turnberry golf course on Scotland’s western coast. There, as he stood with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Lady Starmer, Trump repeated for the nth time that he had stopped the war between India and Pakistan – “countries with nuclear weapons” -- as well as other wars elsewhere in the world. 

TRUMP WAS NOT DISPUTED 

In his speech in parliament, Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition, had repeatedly asked Modi to say directly from the house floor that the American president was wrong in claiming credit for the ceasefire. India’s prime minister did not take the bait. After the debate, Rahul Gandhi stressed two points before reporters. One, Modi had not disputed Trump’s claim. Secondly, said Rahul, neither Modi nor any of his ministers had made the slightest mention of China, which, from all accounts, had given Pakistan crucial support during the four-day conflict.

Modi, in his speech, repeatedly accused the Congress Party of parroting Pakistan’s talking points. Whether or not the Indian people continue to swallow this standard BJP line will be revealed in state-level elections that are due later this year and in 2026. To this statement an important rider must however be joined.

An unprecedented demand by the Election Commission of India for hard-to-produce proofs and records of citizenship from voters in Bihar who are expected to choose a new state assembly this coming October or November has caused some democracy-defenders to ask opposition parties to boycott the coming elections in that populous and poor state in eastern India. Many of Bihar’s Dalits, Muslims, and tribals, who together form about 35 percent of Bihar’s population, will find it impossible or prohibitively expensive to produce the proofs that are evidently being demanded by a supposedly autonomous agency that has lost its reputation for impartiality.

HUMANIZING MOVE 

But I should return to the debate on the India-Pakistan war and on the Pahalgam attack that had precipitated the war. At the end of a strong but calm intervention from the opposition, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who happens to be Rahul Gandhi’s sister and represents one of Kerala’s constituencies in the Lok Sabha, slowly read out, one by one, the names of each of the 26 individuals who had been gunned down.

To this humanizing move, which was also, of course, politically quite compelling, the BJP responded by shouting the word “Hindu” after each name that Vadra pronounced. Except for the local helper, who was a Muslim, and one tourist who was a Christian, all the 24 others whose lives were ended were Hindus. The BJP was determined to underline the sad yet true fact that after separating and sparing the women in the vacationing group, the killers of Pahalgam had asked each victim to announce his religion before he was shot.

Each time the BJP MPs shouted “Hindu,” the opposition MPs added, “Indian.” The battle for the persona of the Indian nation was being fought on the parliamentary floor.

Let me end by noting an interesting Rahul Gandhi initiative. A couple of days before the debate in parliament, he and the Congress Party president, Mallikarjun Kharge, addressed a large OBC rally in New Delhi, before which Rahul confessed that while in earlier years he had attempted to understand the story of the Dalits (the former untouchables), the Adivasis (India’s indigenous or “tribal” communities), and the minorities (Muslims, Christians and Sikhs), he was only now making a bid to understand the OBCs, who seem to make up 50 percent or more of India’s Hindus, who are 80 percent of the Indian population.

WHO ARE INDIA’S “OBCs”? 

The three letters stand for “Other Backward Classes”, a phrase in the Indian Constitution for communities who because of historical and social conditions are marked out in that document as being eligible (along with Dalits and Adivasis) for quotas in jobs and schools. Not that OBCs are homogeneous. They comprise hundreds of large communities engaged in agriculture and numerous other professions. One well-known OBC is Narendra Modi.

Said Rahul at the rally: "I have been in politics since 2004. When I look back, I can see that I made a mistake. It was because I could not understand your issues in depth at that time... It is not the Congress party's mistake, it is my mistake. I am going to rectify that mistake.” 

Though long ignored if not despised by so-called high castes – which include Brahmins, Rajputs, Banias, and others – impressive numbers of OBCs have in recent years been pulled into the Hindu Nationalist orbit. The Congress Party’s apparent effort to partner with OBCs is an overdue if spirited response.