India and Three "Emerging Democracies"
    By J. Sri Raman
    t r u t h o u t | Columnist

    Friday 22 December 2006

    In an unbeatable illustration of double irony, President George W. Bush is pushing through the much-discussed US-India nuclear deal, not only as a non-proliferation measure but also as a blow for democracy. Enough has been said about the Indian establishment's pious anti-proliferation protestations. It is time to talk of its pro-democracy tasks immediately ahead.

    The less-informed may wonder how India 's nuclear development is linked with the cause of democracy. Along with the statement on the envisaged deal issued by Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on July 18, 2005 , however, came the announcement of a US-India Global Democracy Initiative. A State Department fact sheet of the same date stressed the resolve of Washington and New Delhi to help "emerging democracies."

    By that phrase, the Bush administration may have meant countries like Iraq, where its crusade for democracy is camouflaged as aggression and occupation. To South Asians, however, it is likely to suggest the struggles for democracy in three of India 's neighbors. Millions in Nepal, Bhutan and Burma are waiting for support from India for movements for a more basic democracy than Bush and Singh had in mind.

    In Nepal, a US-India initiative could have been disastrous for democracy. US Ambassador to Nepal James Francis Moriarty is no stranger to these columns, and we have frequently taken note of his unusual diplomacy, designed less to promote democracy than to prevent the acceptance of the Maoists in mainstream politics. Moriarty's threat to end US assistance to Nepal if the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), or CPN(M), were allowed to enter a ruling coalition, however, failed to stop the democracy movement from forging ahead. The process is still incomplete, but pacts have been concluded between the ruling Seven-Party Alliance and the CPN(M) about the management of army and rebel arms, and a coalition interim government to conduct elections to a constituent assembly.

    If Moriarty was obviously unhappy at the end of Nepal's unpopular monarchy last May, New Delhi also greeted the news with grave concern. Overthrown King Gyanendra had strong family and feudal links in India, and the Singh government had sent a scion of the Kashmir royal house, Karan Singh, to Kathmandu in a vain bid to save the threatened crown.

    The mandarins of India, however, have modified their approach to the Nepal issue since May, mainly under pressure from the Left, which extends conditional support to the Singh government. The Left seems to have sold the government the idea that the Nepalese Maoists' abandonment of armed struggle will influence their Indian counterparts active in several pockets of the country.

    Popular skepticism about India's future role, however, persists in Nepal. Not a few share the fear that moves for preserving monarchy in a diminished form have India's support, though the majority, including the Maoists, prefer the abolition of the institution. Top Maoist leader Prachanda (aka Pushpa Kumar Dahal) said the other day that India must not "retreat" from its support for the peace process. "If India retreats now," he added, "and there is an attempt to compromise with monarchy, it would be going against the wishes of the people who want a democratic republic."

    New Delhi has responded by airing surprise over Prachanda's recent statement, in response to questions, about "autonomy and self-determination" for Kashmir and the insurgency-prone northeast India. There should really be no surprise since this is an old stand of the Maoists. Official India also prefers to ignore the fact that the CPN(M) has taken a similar stand in relation to China's Tibet problem.

    Apprehensions about New Delhi's role may not be allayed by a massive petroleum scarcity that hit the Kathmandu Valley today. This follows a hefty 20-percent cut in supplies from Nepal's only fuel supplier, the public-sector Indian Oil Corporation, to the Nepal Oil Corporation, the only authorized importer of petro-products. Not many in Nepal may readily believe that the cut was only due to non-payment of dues by the cash-strapped Nepalese company.

    Even as uncertainty grips Nepal again, the cry of democracy is being raised in next-door Bhutan. Here, 50-year-old King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, who has ruled the tiny kingdom almost since his adolescence, announced his abdication and the enthronement of Crown Prince Jigme Kesar Namgyel. Many political observers saw the proclamation, issued on the eve of Bhutan's National Day (December 17), as a ploy to meet the country's pro-democracy movement that had received a shot in the arm from developments in Nepal.

    The assurance from the 26-year-old, Oxford-educated new ruler that he would work toward a democracy in Bhutan testifies to new apprehensions in Thimphu, capital of the minuscule Buddhist kingdom. The promise has failed to enthuse the pro-democracy camp, which feels it has not received a fair international hearing for its complaints about human rights abuses in Bhutan over the years.

    Particularly aggrieved are the several hundred Bhutanese of Nepalese origin, evicted in the early nineties for protesting "discrimination" and demanding "introduction of democracy." Refugees in Nepal now, they want to return to Bhutan and vote in the promised elections of 2008. They made a concerted effort on December 17 to enter Bhutan from Nepal as well as India and were beaten back by the Bhutanese and Indian police.

    Given the close relations between India's successive rulers and Bhutan's royal family, New Delhi will have to do more than produce the Bush certificate to prove its commitment to democracy to the Bhutanese people.

    Better known is the saga of Burma's struggle for democracy, and so should be the story of India's growing indifference to it. Last May, which witnessed the overthrow of a hated monarchy in Nepal, Burma's military junta yet again extended the detention under house arrest of indomitable pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The 61-year-old Suu Kyi has spent 10 of the last 16 years under house arrest. Her travails have not ended since her National League for Democracy won a landslide victory in a general election in 1990 and the junta decided to punish her for the people's verdict.

    No strong protest against the extension of her detention, despite an appeal from United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, has emanated from New Delhi. Burma's campaigners for democracy now plead with India to at least deny the junta cooperation in economic and technological fields. Hopes rose in this regard on December 3, when Bangladesh decided to defer its support for the three-nation natural gas pipeline running through its country from Burma to India. India's response, however, has only been to appoint Brussels-based company Suz Tractebel to recommend alternative routes for a gas pipeline from Burma to India, bypassing Bangladesh.

    The chances of a bold democracy initiative in India's backyard by the parties to the nuclear deal would seem to be rather bleak.