Duck And Cover

Last year, I told my father the true story of how some over-zealous VHP guys, elated over India’s testingof their nuke at Pokhran, wanted to "gather the sacred dust of Pokhran and scatter it in the four corners ofIndia." (Sacred radioactive dust. Uh huh. Right. Let’s rub it on our foreheads, why don’t we? Let’suse it as prasad, how about that?) So, predictably, as soon as the war rhetoric and breast-beating betweenIndia and Pakistan intensified, the US embassy, consulate and warden weren’t the only ones telling me toleave the country immediately; my father said: "Those macho fundamentalist types have no idea what they’vetriggered off. I’m sending you a plane ticket. Be on a flight by next week." Luckily for me, I decided towait for results of the Armitage talks. Unluckily for the Indian economy, a lot of foreigners took theirembassy warnings seriously, and took themselves and/or their money out of India.

And who can blame them? Over the past few months they’ve seen out-of-control rioting and massacrescontinuing in the state of Gujarat while Atal Bin Vajpayee rattles on in Goa like the Superior Wizard of theKu Klux Klan and George Bin Fernandes declares rape a natural phenomenon in Parliament. They’ve seen GeneralBin Musharraf look into the camera and say, "Nothing is happening on the Line of Control". (Just like BillBin Clinton: "I never had sex with that woman.") Recently, they saw the MLAs of Maharashtra kidnapping andsequestering one another as if the running of the country’s financial nerve centre is some kooky schoolboys’game. Meanwhile, millions of troops are eye-balling one another across the LOC.

It is only natural then, that a majority of foreign residents and investors would wonder, "are we safewith these guys in charge?"

"Duck and cover, indeed," as my friend Neil put it.

For those of you unfamiliar with this term, when the USSR was still a major player and at the height ofnuclear paranoia in America, the US government ran a series of absurd ads in movie theatres and on televisionwith the alleged intent to advise citizens on what to do in the event of nuclear holocaust (as if one couldactually do anything). These ads were in stark and grotesque contrast with the reality of holocaust asexperienced by Japan. In the ads, a teacher would conduct a drill and school children would be shown duckingand covering themselves with their school desks in an orderly fashion (as if they’d have time to do this,and as if it would help). The ads were called "Duck and Cover". There was even a little ditty that wentwith the ads, to make the whole business of war and nukes appear less scary to an unsuspecting Americanpublic. But, okay, that was the fifties, when no one knew much about nukes, and the American government didn’twant them know.

Michael Moore is a film-maker, the author of Stupid White Men (which has sold more copies than HarryPotter), a rabble rousing man of the masses, and a perpetual pain in the ass for the US government andcorporate America. Shortly after the nuke testing at Pokhran, he made an appointment with the IndianAmbassador in Washington, posing as a US government official designated to "help" India prepare fornuclear war. The interview was video taped (and I’ve got a copy to prove it). Moore played the "duck andcover" ads from the fifties for the Indian ambassador. He did the same with the Pakistani ambassador. By theend of it, he had both ambassadors "ducking and covering" to the inane tune on the ad. It was hilarious.But it was also terrifying. Because it was a metaphor for how unprepared India and Pakistan are with regard tothe reality of a nuclear war.

Several domestic journalists have also exposed their mind-boggling ignorance of all things nuclear, blowingoff the entire affair as a "phoney war". As a matter of policy, the Indian Government routinely informsthe US State Department of both the intent and the level of military engagement, so it is unlikely, as somemembers of the domestic press have frivolously implied, that India was merely crying wolf to gaininternational attention, and the US merely panicking and responding in a knee-jerk fashion. Never before hasthe US issued such a warning to its citizens with regard to India. Another incredibly naïve proclamation fromthe press both in India and in Pakistan, was that the US was only acting as peace broker in its own interest.This is not news. Which country doesn’t act in its own interest? Whether we plebs like it or not, nationsare not charity organizations and this is not the point. The point is: is it in either India’s or Pakistan’sinterest to engage in a full blown war? And, given India’s military superiority, is it likely that such awar could remain restricted to conventional use of weapons? And, if not, what would be left of either country?

(Margaret Mascarenhas is, inter alia, theauthor of Skin)