:: Inder Malhotra

Puerile peddling of current history

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No matter how often one might lament it, but there seems no escape from the dismal reality that we Indians remain an unchangingly ahistorical people. Worse, the knowledge of history continues to be abysmal even when a mere touch on a computer button can produce a mind-boggling surfeit of relevant information. Sadly, even experts and pundits pontificating in print or on TV day in and day out, often turn out to be shockingly ignorant of current history on which there is no dearth of documentation in the public domain.

A depressing case in point — neither the first of its kind nor is it going to be the last — was the strident claim by one of the 24x7 TV channels for three days running, every hour on the hour, that it had a "startling revelation" to make. And pray what was that earth-shaking disclosure? That this country had planned a nuclear test in "December 1994" that had to be abandoned "under pressure from the United States!" Now, there are two things terribly wrong with this. First, there is nothing in this story that hasn’t been publicised in lurid detail over the years; and secondly, the episode took place not in December 1994 but exactly a year later, in December 1995.

Ironically, the distinguished nuclear scientist, who duly appeared on the TV channel to buttress its bogus claim, was undoubtedly involved intimately in both the aborted 1995 test and the Shakti series of tests on May 11, 1998. Yet, he mulishly went on insisting that the contretemps had taken place in 1994. Strangely, he also argued that, apart from American pressure, what influenced the P.V. Narasimha Rao government was the consideration that a "test too close to the elections" would be embarrassing. As the wide world knows, the elections took place, as they were scheduled to, in April 1996. How would a 1994 test have been "too close" to them? But neither the scientist nor his TV minders were bothered. Eventually, the enterprising and excited reporters of the channel buttonholed former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. His understandable refusal to comment they cited as confirmation of their "scoop".

Moving from fiction to facts, of the reams and reams of material on the aborted test already on record, let me quote only briefly from the book of Strobe Talbott, former US deputy secretary of state, who held marathon negotiations with Jaswant Singh. The book, Engaging India, was published in 2004, but evidently the honchos of the TV channel concerned never read it.

"As 1995 drew to a close," says Talbott, "... pressure was mounting on the politically vulnerable Rao to give in to the nuclear lobby ... Frank Wisner, the US ambassador to India was (then) back in Washington for consultations ... Frank learned that American satellites passing over Pokhran test site had photographed evidence of suspicious activity ... Frank went to the CIA to get a full briefing and arrange for copies of pictures sent to the US embassy in New Delhi.

"While Frank was en route to India, the New York Times carried an article under the headline ‘US Suspects India Prepares to Conduct Nuclear Test,’ with attribution to American intelligence experts. The United States, said the story, was ‘working to discourage [the test], fearing a political chain reaction.’

"As soon as Frank arrived in New Delhi, he arranged a private meeting with A.N. Varma, Prime Minister Rao’s principal secretary (in effect, his chief-of-staff). Frank showed Varma a single sample of satellite imagery, put it back in his pocket, then warned that a test would backfire against India, incurring a full dose of sanctions ... When Clinton called Rao to reinforce Frank’s message, Rao replied only that India would not act irresponsibly. While that statement was far from reassuring, Rao did, as Clinton had hoped he would, pull the plug on the test, largely because he did not want to provoke American sanctions that would do harm to the Indian economy."

Can anything be clearer than this? Yet, for reasons of his own, Talbott, an outstanding journalist before he joined the Clinton administration, has left some gaps in his account. Let me fill them, thanks to authoritative information readily available. First, under the US laws, photographs taken by American spy satellites cannot be sent outside the United States. In the case of the 1995 test, President Clinton issued a special authorisation for the pictures to be carried to New Delhi and shown to Indian authorities.

Secondly, when Frank Wisner raised the subject of the preparations for the test at Pokhran, the late Varma protested vigorously that the ambassador was misinformed. Nothing of the kind was happening, he asserted. The late Varma was not dissimulating. The poor man had been kept out of the loop. He was startled therefore when Wisner produced the photograph, and communicated with the boss as soon as the envoy left.

Thirdly, and most interestingly, some of the unpublished details of the Clinton-Rao telephonic conversation are delightful. The US president began by welcoming a statement by Pranab Mukherjee, then as now, foreign minister, made in Assam, to the effect that India’s nuclear programme was entirely peaceful, and there was no question of a test. Rao’s response was that he had heard about the statement but hadn’t yet seen it.

Clinton then moved to the activity at Pokhran, including the laying of cables "running through L-shaped tunnels," presumably to transmit data from an underground blast. Wily Rao’s bland reply: "All the activity is for the proper maintenance of an existing facility."

Rao may have been forced to "pull the plug" on the test planned for December 1995, but, as Atal Behari Vajpayee stated in his obituary tribute to P.V. Narasimha Rao, it was Rao who had advised and encouraged Atalji to go ahead with the tests.

The Bible talks of the "blind leading the blind." In this country, it seems, the ignoramuses would continue to mislead the ignorant.