New Delhi, May 17 -- The Congress party has a record of neglecting India's strategic needs. Nehru's infamous pampering of Krishna Menon and his neglect of India's frontier, along with his looking the other way while Pakistan encouraged China to gobble up the Aksai Chin region, though well-known, require periodic reiteration and assertion. Indira Gandhi bartered away our gains after she was duped by Bhutto at the infamous "Simla Conference" into surrendering India's strategic vantage.
Writing in his Nehru: The Lotus Eater from Kashmir (1953), D.F. Karaka (1911-1974), the well-known journalist who covered the Nehru era, argued that Nehru's neutrality implied, among other things, the "denial of any form of preparation for any eventuality, or any training for participation in any future conflict, other than required for guarding of our frontier with Pakistan." Militarily, Karaka pointed out, "India's prime concern is to be a little stronger than Pakistan, but no more." Describing the mindset of the Nehruvian era, Karaka wrote, "It is now officially accepted in India that Mao has no territorial ambition outside his own frontiers. The highly militarised manoeuvres of Chinese troops along and behind the Brahmaputra River, which the Chinese prefer to call the Tsangpo, have to be written off as P.T. exercise."
Eventually, everyone came to see the effects of Nehru's neutrality on India's defence and strategic options. Karaka pithily summed it up when he wrote that it had "brought one of the most dangerous enemies of democracy right on to our northern gates, while Pandit Nehru sleeps the soft slumber of innocence, exchanging goodwill missions with the Chinese." Karaka wrote this in 1953; the effects of this neutrality and neglect hit India in October 1962. Nehru never recovered from that blow. The Chinese attack also exposed the over-decade-long neglect to which India's defence had been subjected.
India's gains in 1971 were squandered away when Indira Gandhi, trying to act as the elder statesman, gave in to Bhutto's confessions and professions of good behaviour. Pakistan's hand in the Mujib assassination in 1975, and the reversal of India's fortunes in the region within a few years of such a massive military victory, are part of recorded history. For decades after that, it became a habit with Congress dispensations in Delhi to continue their neglect of border infrastructure and strategic imperatives.
Speaking in the Lok Sabha in September 2013, then Union Defence Minister and senior Congress leader A.K. Antony made a strange confession when he said that the post-Independence policy decision was that undeveloped borders were the best defence, and that is why there were no roads and infrastructure along the border, while China continued to build infrastructure along its side of the border. At the fag end of the Congress era, in 2013, Antony confessed that this policy was being reversed. The complete reversal of that policy was left to Narendra Modi, who, on becoming Prime Minister, made the development of border infrastructure one of the priority areas of his government.
Seen against this backdrop, it is not surprising to see Congress leader Rahul Gandhi oppose the strategically vital and game-changing Great Nicobar Project. In the case of Rahul Gandhi, his concern for the environment is only a veneer to camouflage his willing collaboration with external forces that remain inimical to India's strategic interests and progress. Over the years, Rahul Gandhi has acted as an active agent of these forces, especially when it concerned India's diplomatic and strategic interests. In opposing the Great Nicobar Project, the Congress is deliberately opposing the strengthening of India's economic, maritime, and defence capabilities. It is trying to stall a major initiative that will serve India's long-term strategic interests and make it a major player in the Indian Ocean Region, the Malacca Strait region, and beyond.
Before discussing the centrality of the Great Nicobar Project, let us examine the Congress government's disastrous track record in rehabilitation after the 2004 tsunami that struck the islands. Nicobar Island was flattened in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami, with over 90 per cent of its houses destroyed and hundreds of families washed away. Over 6,000 people died or went missing.
The rehabilitation drive undertaken from Delhi by the UPA government was another disaster, marked by poor housing quality, the ignoring of decisions made by tribal heads, confusion over land rights, and the undermining of self-governance structures. Rahul Gandhi, then a Member of Parliament, did not show concern for the rights and sensitivities of tribes in Nicobar.
Between 1969 and 1980, long before the tsunami, the Congress government had settled 330 families in seven villages, with each family allotted 11 acres of land. To connect these settlements, two principal arterial roads were laid through dense tropical forests, rupturing the fragile ecosystem that had upheld the Shompen ecosystem for millennia. One was the 51-km north-south corridor and the other a 43-km east-west corridor. If successive Congress governments had done this for national security in the past, how is the national security angle missing from the Congress's understanding of the project today?
In 1985, Rahul's late father, Rajiv Gandhi, had proposed opening parts of the islands to Indian and non-resident industrialists and had planned to set up over 2,000 industries over the years. Rahul must have been conscious enough then to protest against his father's proposed destruction of the pristine forests of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Rajiv Gandhi had also proposed developing the Andaman and Nicobar Islands as a free port rivalling Singapore and Hong Kong, including the creation of a tax haven. Rajiv's proposal also included cultivating red oil palm over 15,000 hectares, which entailed the destruction of precious forest cover.
The Congress, thus, is behaving hypocritically in its opposition to the strategically vital Nicobar project. In 2004, the Congress-led UPA government, of which the Left was a major constituent, had decided to lease islands like Havelock, Cinque, Little Andaman, Ross Island, South Andaman, and other islands to international private players. It was during the Congress-UPA's ten years in power that China was allowed to weave its "String of Pearls" network without a counter-push or strategy.
The Modi government has been pursuing this vital strategic project since 2019. It was first conceived by the NITI Aayog as a "mega development" plan for a strategic economic and military hub in the Indo-Pacific. In March 2021, the Modi government formally launched the project under the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Integrated Development Corporation (ANIIDCO), and by November 2021, the project was fast-tracked, receiving Stage-I forest clearance for the diversion of 130.75 sq km of land, along with final environmental clearance.
While the Congress remained silent when the project was mooted, its international proxies have now been activated. International NGOs such as Survival International came out with reports against the project, while former bureaucrats were activated to oppose it in courts. Surprisingly, a group like the Constitutional Crisis Group, supposedly manned by seasoned former diplomats and bureaucrats like Shiv Shankar Menon, a former NSA, S.Y. Qureshi, and the usual suspects like Aruna Roy, came out in opposition to the project.
International "genocide experts", whatever that means, led by the likes of Mark Levene, Raz Segal, Dirk Moses, Thomas Kuehne et al., wrote a "genocide letter" opposing the project. This letter became the principal weapon that the Congress leadership, with Jairam Ramesh in the fray, wielded against the project. Once again, the Congress invited international attention to a project that is vitally Indian and pertains to India's strategic interests. The other usual suspects - Harsh Mander, Nandini Sundar, and Ashish Kothari - all representing a cabal of a well-oiled NGO network, began opposing the project. Obviously, the question that arises is: at whose behest are these people, fanboys of the Congress, opposing the project, and at whose behest is the Congress opposing the project?
The Great Nicobar Project is vital for India's next-generation strategic leap. In an increasingly complex and volatile international scenario, the project, once completed in phases by 2047, will enable India to monitor and influence maritime traffic, activities, and events across the world's most critical sea lanes. It will enable India to strengthen, expand, and assert its maritime sphere of influence and capabilities, eventually transforming the country into a major player in the Indian Ocean, the Indo-Pacific, and the Far East. The project will also enable a deepening of maritime integration with other Indian ports such as Chennai, Haldia, Visakhapatnam, Paradip, Kochi, and Mundra, to name a few, leading to a more cohesive domestic-to-global shipping network.
In short, the Great Nicobar Project will propel India towards what it once was civilisationally - a major maritime power. Why would the Congress and its ecosystem desperately want to prevent that? Perhaps because it has already surrendered itself to, and been co-opted by, elements and ideologies that want to stymie the rise of India as a civilisational state.
Views expressed are personal. The writer is a member of the National Executive Committee (NEC), BJP, and the Chairman of Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.