Sanity First!

Events and places compel attention, but the world can do with voices that insist on “Sanity first!” 

The “America first!” slogan fetched clinching votes a few months ago for Trump, who claimed nonetheless that for the world’s good, and also for the good of the economy of the US, he would start by stopping the war in Ukraine. For a master of the “Art of the Deal,” this was only going to require a few phone calls to Moscow and Kiev.

Now, four months plus a week after inauguration, Trump complains that his good friend Putin is not as helpful as once imagined. Not just that. Russia has multiplied its aerial attacks on Ukraine, which seems to have responded in kind if not on the same scale. In support of Ukraine, Germany’s new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has publicly declared that there will be no objection from his country, or from the US, France or the UK, if Ukraine uses the missiles and other weapons these countries have provided to attack military facilities deep inside Russia, instead of confining their use to Moscow-controlled portions of Ukraine, which appears to have been the understanding thus far. 

After this, reports CNN (quoting Russia’s state-owned news agency, TASS), Dmitry Peskov, who is the Kremlin’s spokesperson, slammed Merz’s announcement and termed the lifting of restrictions as being “rather dangerous.”

CNN recalls that Russia had “previously openly threatened that any lifting of restrictions on long-range weapons would mean war with NATO.” Even more ominous is CNN’s reminder that “Putin has warned the West that Moscow would consider any assault supported by a nuclear power to be a joint attack – and that Russia could use nuclear weapons if it was struck with conventional missiles.”

Barely conceivable last year, such talk today seems to invite no denunciation. Those who followed the fiery four-day India-Pakistan clash earlier this month are aware that the possible use of nuclear weapons in South Asia seemed less unimaginable this time, compared with earlier India-Pakistan confrontations. Mercifully, a ceasefire was reached, although a credible account of how and through whom has not yet surfaced. 

CEASEFIRE CREDIT 

Declarations by Trump and Secretary of State Rubio that the two of them -- and Vice President Vance -- achieved the stoppage were not challenged by Modi, although lower-level Indian voices claimed that Indian success in damaging key military airports forced Pakistan to sue for peace. On the other hand, Pakistan’s leaders too claimed victory and displayed trophies, while hinting simultaneously that their China-supplied weapons played a crucial role. Keen to be seen as a responsible global power, Beijing said very little publicly on the conflict.

India’s TV channels have persuaded many of the hundreds of millions of Indians they reach that Pakistan-backed terrorism is the world’s principal if not sole scourge. As I type these words, all-party delegations of Indian parliamentarians have showed up in different capitals in hopes of persuading the entire world to think along similar lines. These MPs from India will point out that the four-day war had been precipitated by the horrible massacre on April 22 of 25 Indian tourists in beautiful Pahalgam in Kashmir.

In a world of “America first,” “Britain first,” “France first,” “Japan first,” and so forth, the objective of India’s MPs will not be easily realized. It is possible that some of the people they wish to persuade may ask the visiting Indian MPs, “Tell us please about that young Ashoka University professor who has been arrested in India, Ali Khan Mahmudabad.”

I urge viewers to read Kalpana Sharma’s latest article on this website about the young professor, who was arrested swiftly after two individuals had objected to what he had posted online. In his posts, Mahmudabad had declared his opposition to terrorism, praised the Indian army, appreciated the fact that Sofiya Qureshi, a colonel who was a woman and a Muslim had been part of the team that presented the Indian government’s report on the conflict with Pakistan, and had added that an average member of India’s Muslim minority also merited fair and impartial treatment.

FOUND OFFENSIVE 

That last bit was found offensive.

It is a most intriguing situation. People from India, including the young and the highly educated, are doing everything they can to find a future in the rest of the world -- in the US, Canada, UK, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Taiwan, anywhere, even in China, with which India has had serious problems, even in war-affected Russia and war-hit Ukraine. Universities in the US enroll more students from India than from any other foreign country. Fees these hundreds of thousands of Indian students pay, and other moneys they spend, assist the US economy.

Indians don’t go out only for studies, careers, or riches. They covet also the freedom to think, speak, and argue, which is why China and Russia are not their priority destinations. Moreover, Prime Minister Modi claims that India is the mother of democracy. Shouldn’t visiting MPs from India be asked questions about young Ali Khan Mahmudabad and also about a letter that scores of pro-Modi academics in India have signed in justification of the young professor’s arrest?

Shouldn’t visiting MPs from India be asked also about India’s Supreme Court? While granting interim bail to Mahmudabad, the top court directed the police of the state of Haryana, which had arrested him, “to holistically understand” and analyze the two online posts of the young professor that had invited his arrest.

GOING TOO FAR 

When the highest court of a state that claims to be not just a democracy but also its parent wants a police panel to x-ray a professor’s remarks in praise of his country to see if the remarks contain hidden suggestions of harm, isn’t that going too far?

The set of actions taken against Mahmudabad show a desire not only to control speech but to control thought as well. It is troubling indeed when India’s Supreme Court appears to be party to such an extreme exercise.

Also troubling was the Indian government’s earlier announcement that because of the Pahalgam killings the Indus Waters Treaty between India and Pakistan, which was signed in 1960 and which has been adhered to in all the calm or turbulent decades that followed, would be “kept in abeyance.” This IWT treaty governs the use of the Indus and other rivers that flow through Kashmir on their way to India and Pakistan. It is a life-sustaining document. 

Many in India and outside have pointed out that suspending IWT would not only go down poorly in the world; it will invite greater global attention to the Kashmir question, which New Delhi insists should only be a bilateral matter between India and Pakistan and should not involve other countries.

WHITE HOUSE AMBUSH 

I must return to Trump and then to something else. On May 21, millions in the world -- Americans, South Africans and others – saw the US president “ambush” (the BBC’s phrase) his guest Cyril Ramaphosa, the South African president, and “humiliated” the visitor, as the New York Times put it. 

No doubt one president must speak frankly to another – that is why two heads of state meet. But when videos are flung in the guest’s face – to his surprise and in full view of millions – and when, in the interests of a domestic political base, the host erroneously interprets the videos to his guest and to millions of viewers, then, it must be said, limits have been crossed.

As was clearly pointed out in the end by Ramaphosa and others on his multiracial team, including by his agriculture minister, a white politician from South Africa, while their country does face a serious crime problem, the charge of a wholesale oppression of white farmers that Trump publicly levelled before the whole world while his guest listened with silent courtesy for most of the time, is a gross exaggeration. Does “America first” mean a surprise attack on a guest? And on a country? Does it mean a volley of half-truths? How smart is it, moreover, to alienate hundreds of millions of Africans, not just those who live in the country of South Africa, within an hour?

Finally, I must return to Gaza and to Palestinian children. I don’t know when an independent Palestinian state would emerge. Going by current realities, it may take a while. But a birth of respect for those calling the shots in Israel may take much longer. If your hunger for revenge is not appeased even when babies die one after another in merciless and endless sequence, you are leaving a crushing weight on the shoulders of your descendants.