7/29/2019 Delhiberations - The Eu and India - Money, Honey

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DELHIBERATIONS

Padma RaoSundarji

Srinagar | February 10, 2013, Sudy

When I began to write Delhibera-tions for GK Magazine, I decid-ed to keep away from politicalcommentary, since all major

dailies carry it wall-to-wall anyway. Thelast thing a Sunday reader needs is moreof the stuff television channels perforateeardrums with, throughout the week.

This time, I make a departure. Tocomment, not on our politics, but thatof others, specifically of the magnificent,well-meaning but somewhat bumblingentity called the European Union (EU).

On January 7 this year, the Germanambassador in New Delhi, Michael Stein-

er, held a lunch at his residence, to whichhe invited other ambassadors of the EU,of which Germany is the largest and mostinfluential member.

A meal shared by EU envoys is no bigdeal. Except that at this one, there wasan additional guest : Gujarat Chief Min-ister Narendra Modi, currently the BJPsposter boy and likely candidate for thenext prime ministerial elections.

Predictably, nobody knew about thislunch till last week, when the ambassa-dor of the EU in India, Joao Cravinho,blurted out that it had, indeed, takenplace. So that the Europeans dontmumble with tiresome predictabilitythat Indian newspapers misquote people,I quote Mr. Cravinho from Reuters :

We were pleased that he (Mr. Modi)

was able to tell us that because of anumber of changes that he has intro-duced, that such events (as the Gujaratriots) could not be repeated in 2013.

The German ambassador, Mr Steiner,too, commented briefly on his lunch. Iquote him from a report by the AgenceFrance Presse (AFP):

India is a democracy. We respect dem-

ocratic institutions. We respect electionresults in India and we have full trust inits judicial system. Because of this respectand trust, we are now in a new phase.

On February 8 and when Mr Stein-er justified breaking bread with MrModi, he had obviously not heard thaton February 7, the Supreme Court hadentitled the widow of an MP slain in theGujarat riots to access the closure reportsubmitted by the SCs own Special Inves-tigation Team (SIT), which had absolvedMr Modi of compliance in the riots inwhich more than 1500 persons werekilled, and given her six weeks to file afresh petition against the report.

It is not my brief to either condemn orpraise Messrs. Modi, Steiner, Carvalho orany of the luncheon guests. I leave that to the

courts, our collective gods and - you readers.

However and as a longstanding cor-respondent with the German media anda veteran EU watcher, I feel compelled topoint out to those who place their faithin international observers and Euro-pean human rights consciousness, thatthe EU is quite capable of turning a blindeye to any perceived violations, if its ownrequirements demand it.

The European Union had its great-est success when it was conceived as theEuropean Economic Community EEC apurely economically-linked entity. Indeed,the member states of the EC where I prac-

tically grew up in the seventies and whichI love as my second home, despite my cri-tique saw their greatest commercial and

economic success during that era.The EU as a political body, is, accord-

ing to an increasing number of Europe-ans themselves, a disaster. And on theheels of the Euro crisis, perhaps even afinancial one.

For a start and remaining within itsown borders, do recollect the immedi-ate and joyous embrace of eastern Euro-pean states (most in 2004) into the Union,despite their abysmal per capita incomesand the prevalent fear at the time, thatthey may drain the collective riches ofthe EU (as it turns out, Poland, for one, isa success story as is Estonia).

Now juxtapose that with the EUscontinuous dithering over the admissionof Turkey into the Union. What is thehold-up ? Yes, you guessed right. Brus-sels can issue as many wordy and convo-luted explanations as it likes, but the big-gest hurdle remains the fact that Turkeyis a Muslim-majority country. So, notquite kosher for the majority Christian-EU to admit equally ecstatically into itsfolds. Especially and more so since 9/11,never mind the fact that Turkey had littleto do with the attacks in New York.

But the greatest disaster of all is the

pretence kept up - rather wobblily - by theEU, of having a joint and mutual foreignpolicy. Heres the thing: how can say,France, aggressively pushing its Rafalefigher jet to weapon-hungry India andGermany, equally forcefully lobbying forits Eurofighter ( a deal the latter subse-quently lost) or France sending troops toMali and Germany not doing so, possiblydeclare a mutual foreign policy ?

Here are some examples of the EUsforeign policy (it even has a foreign min-ister ) closer to home:

Sri Lanka: in the eighties, thousandsof Tamils, many genuinely traumatizedby the terrible civil war in the northernpart of Sri Lanka between the LiberationTigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and theSri Lankan army, began to arrive on theshores of among other countries theEuropean Union. It was well-knownthat the EU grants asylum, social secu-rity, education, jobs and citizenship to

those who feel persecuted in their owncountry. At the time, hardly any EUcountry had the slightest notion of whatwas actually going on in Sri Lanka: thatthe LTTE was evolving into a totalitar-ian and deadly terror group which laterinvented and fine-tuned the art of suicidebombing and forcibly recruited womenand children into its ranks, whom itfinally used as human shields to protectits leadership in the last stages of war.To profusely bleeding European hearts,theirs was a struggle for freedom in far-away Sri Lanka, a country of which, theEU, at best, knew the sun-beds along thebalmy Southwestern coast. Many of therefugees the EU took on, became affluentand directed much of their wealth openlyand directly to the LTTE. Which, in turn,purchased weapons, gunships, warships,turning many of them against its ownTamil dissenters.

Several years later and when it

became clear to many intelligent andstraight-thinking western diplomats whohad served time in Sri Lanka and knewwhat was going on at close quarters, sever-al countries like the US declared the LTTE

a terror group and froze money transfersfrom former refugees to Sri Lanka.

Predictably, the EU immediatelythought of following suit. (this is muchlike the EUs fresh look at Mr. Modi,which merely follows in the heels of theUS and Britain last year).

However, this came at a very inoppor-tune time. A peace agreement brokered by

the Norwegians between the two warringsides in Sri Lanka was teetering yet again.

The Tigers had issued an open warningthat an EU ban would mean a return towar. I was in Sri Lanka. I knew the Nor-wegian mediators well. They, too, threwup their hands at the impending EU banand declared that this would be their lasteffort at mediation, if war broke out afresh.

Just weeks later ironically at thevery time that Brussels was meeting tovote on the ban of the LTTE in Sri Lanka,I was invited in Delhi to the five-star suiteof the then EU foreign minister for a pressbriefing. The occasion was the histori-cal firs t Indo-EU strategic summit. Withbreathless enthusiasm, the fashionablelady outlined the agenda : to addressmutual strategic concerns and to helpensure each others security. At questiontime exactly when the Brussels meeton the LTTE had almost ended I raisedmy hand. Since a re-commencement ofwar in Sri Lanka would have seriousrepercussions on the safety and securityof Southern India, I asked what had beendecided in Brussels ? She looked blankand stunned. The foreign minister of theEU, attending a security summit in andon South Asia, had no clue about themeeting in Brussels that would ban theLTTE, lead to fresh war and endanger

security in South Asia. After whisperingto her aide, she at first and rather haugh-tily, tried to brush aside my question byinsisting that this meeting was restrictedto India-EU affairs. I persisted that war inSri Lanka very much concerned Indiassecurity, so why was the EU banningthe LTTE also responsible for killingMr Rajiv Gandhi now, at this delicatephase? She said she was running late forher tea with Mrs Sonia Gandhi and wewere ushered out of the room.

The EU banned the LTTE, frozeaccount transfers from refugees of SriLankan origin in Europe unfairly tothose among them unconnected to theLTTE - and the rest is very bloody history.

Two more recent illustrations.Several years ago, I stumbled into a

press conference at the German embassy.I wrote for a German magazine, but noother German journalist had been invit-ed so I was obviously there by mistake.

The interaction was exclusively for theIndian media, primarily television. Sit-

ting alongside the chiefs of Germanyslargest aircraft manufacturers, the thenGerman ambassador confidently pushedfor the sale of the Eurofighter ( a deal thatGermany lost to France). If India decidedon the aircraft, he declared, then all man-datory permissions from his government

in Berlin would be waived. This was hard-sell at its best.

Just a few months later and in anotherweapons-related matter, I gained accessto a classified document from the HomeMinistry in New Delhi. It was a list ofguns that the Home Ministry wishedto purchase from a German company.A potential hitch could be an absurdrequirement by the Berlin government to issue the very same permission thatthe ambassador had confidently offeredthe waiver of for the Eurofighter - thatIndia would have to certify that the guns

would only be used for defence and notagainst freedom-fighters.

When I scanned the list, I found thatthe Indian Home Ministry had cleverly and quite rightly listed the guns as foruse by paramilitary forces. (It is no secretthat most paramilitary forces like theITBPF have special anti-Naxalite unitswhich they advertise proudly on everyraising day, so I had a fresh laugh.).

Whether one agrees with anti-Naxaliteoperations, weapons sales or not, it is surelyhypocritical that a country like Germany,aggressively pushing for a piece of invest-ment pie in the emerging economy India,and manufacturing and openly lobbyingfor weapons sales to India, still insists oncertification in the name of human rig hts.

I am no war-monger. But for argu-ments sake, what a product is used forby the buyer, is surely no business ofthe seller ? More so, when it is a foreigncountry forcefully lobbying the sale?Would Germany or the EU promise to

certify that they will withdraw participa-tion in NATO operations in Afghanistanor Frances troops from Mali, or acceptTurkey into the EU, as a pre-conditionfor Indian business-houses, say the Tatas,taking over cash-strapped units of Europe-

an industry? Or for Indian software engi-neers to take up jobs in their countries?

Back to lunch.In April 2010 and barely two years

before Mr Modis recent mid-day meal,two German parliamentarians one ofthe currently ruling Christian DemocratsUnion (CDU) - and the director of a Catho-lic human rights group visited Orissa andGujarat. In an official press release datedApril 15, 2010 on the website of one of theparliamentarians, they reported :

We criticized Chief Minister Naren-

dra Modi that the administration mutelylooked on during the violence (of 2002)..Through this trip, we want to awakenpublic opinion to the fact that religiousfreedom in India often exists only onpaper. We want to show solidarity, notonly with our Christian brothers and sis-ters but also with persecuted Muslims.

Friends in Kashmir of all political

hues, I bring these stories up to stress theirrelevance of the European Unions so-

called unity over foreign policy and its con-venient smokescreen of human rights, onewhich is obviously easy to lift when trade or

any other self-serving interest - demands it.I bring them up to alert those, who,

no matter how divergent their views, ar ecertain that they will get support from thesupposedly greatest upholders of humanrights in the West: the EU.

Remember, at the end of the day anddespite the many rights groups in Indiawho bleed in solidarity with their coun-terparts and governments in the west: its all about money, honey.

I am laughing hard. And I bet Mr Modiis too.

(Theauthorisaseniorfreelanceforeigncorrespondent)

Its all about money, honey!