Can Soulless India Help Aung Suu Kyi?

On Saturday (November 13) a charismatic  65-year-old grandmother stood perched behind spiked high iron gates of her home in Yangon where she had been incarcerated for 15 years.
TV pictures  on international channels showed thousands  of ecstatic and delirious supporters who had flocked  outside her gates on hearing of her release cheering and singing, welcoming her release. Fifteen years of  blacking out ‘The Lady’ — as she is called by the Burmese — from public view by  a  vicious dictatorship had not affected her relationship with her people. Calm and dignified she addressed the people without the aid of a microphone asking them to keep calm and await the next  day for her to discuss with them the future course of action.

Power of the powerless

Locked up in her home for 15 years she had by herself defied what foreign commentators had described as ‘one of the worst tyrannies in the world’. Aung San Suu Kyi had demonstrated once again her power — ‘the power of the powerless’ — as she was characterised by the President of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, Francis Sejested when she was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1991 after she led her party to a sweeping win but instead was incarcerated by the military junta.
Her release was welcomed by most world leaders except those who are waiting to make a fast buck from impoverished but resource rich Burma and dependent on Burma’s ally China. Some even compared her release to that of Nelson Mandela, Vaclav Havel of former Czechoslovakia but there was a difference. Mandela and Havel were released to countries that dictatorships had fallen or were crumbling. Suu Kyi’s country is still very much under the jackboots of the military.
The world is watching what awaits Burma or Myanmar (as it is now called) after the release of the country’s democratic leader. It is quite unlikely that the Generals will willingly give up power which they have held on to for half century. The release of Suu Kyi came after a sham election where a proxy party of the military contested and won most of the seats in the new parliament. Some of the MPs are former army officers — ex generals in plain clothes as we said in our commentary last week.

Dialogue  possible?

A move towards democracy necessarily calls for a dialogue between the army, Suu Kyi’s party the National  League for Democracy (NLD) and other ethnic and rebel groups in the north of the country which have been battling the army since the early fifties. Even during the sham elections a rebel group was engaged in a conflict with the army in the north.  The army during its half century hold on the country has been accused of gross violation of the basic rights of the people including murder, abduction, torture, illegal incarceration and many other crimes. The army is now in control of most of the economic and social infrastructure of the country. Reconciliation would indeed be a formidable task but it seems the only way out.
Suu Kyi has been making consistent calls for reconciliation, even while under house arrest. Last week on release she sounded extremely conciliatory notes. She ruled out violence to end military rule and added: ‘I don’t want to see the military falling. I want to see it rising to dignified heights of professionalism and patriotism’. She obviously knows too well that any attempt to challenge the junta would see her back under house arrest or even worse.
But whether the army is willing to make any concessions or even commence a dialogue is in doubt. Suu Kyi too has been maintaining that there can be no dialogue with the junta until 2500 of her supporters who have been arrested are released. She has also not been appealing to her sympathisers in Western nations to press on sanctions against the military regime that were imposed after the junta ignored results of the 1990 elections and jailed her. Some contend that Western sanctions are biting on Myanmar and that was the reason behind the NLD leader’s release while others are of the opinion that the army after the sham elections is quite secure of its position and Suu Kyi has now no political clout.  External pressure brought on the regime if effective could lead to change but the only country that can do so is China which has vital economic and strategic interests in Burma. China is tapping into Burma’s gas and oil reserves and a pipeline is being laid across Burma into South China while China has also constructed a port in Burma gaining access into the Bay of Bengal. Thailand’s economic interests are not significant enough to make the Burmese regime change its internal policies.

India’s influence

The other country that could influence the Burmese junta is said to be India, now the second biggest Asian economic power whose north eastern states border Burma. India also wants to be among the Big Powers and seeks a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. Western nations expect emergent India which seeks to be among the Big Five in the UN to take on responsibilities as well. That is perhaps the reason why Barack Obama in his address to the Indian parliament called upon India to take a lead in defense of human rights in the region.
India is considered to be the only power that can influence Burma on its human rights policies. Lectures to Burmese leaders on human rights and even economic sanctions do not seem to have had much effect. However, influential opinion makers and politicians have called upon India to play a positive role in this respect. Sashi Tharoor, former Indian Minister of State for External Affairs and former Under Secretary General in the United Nations has stressed the need for a change in India’s role in Burma. He points out that after the 1990 elections victory of Suu Kyi, students were shot  while NLD leaders were also arrested. India at that time gave asylum to fleeing students and even supported a newspaper and a pro-democracy radio.
Subsequent to this, India’s rivals — China and Pakistan – commenced courting Burmese generals. China began developing a port close to Calcutta and Burmese generals commenced providing sanctuaries to rebels in Indian’s north eastern states. This worried New Delhi’s strategists. Then came the discovery of large deposits of oil  and gas in Burma. Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf  visited Burma at this time and he was followed by Indian External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh. The Burmese then stopped giving assistance to Indian rebels and closed down the safe havens in Burma and India reciprocated providing military supplies and intelligence on Burma’s  insurgencies  to the Generals. During the 1990 riots in Burma, Buddhist monks were mowed down on the streets  and all India did was to ‘mutter banalities’ about national reconciliation while opposing sanctions being imposed. It also sent its minister for oil to negotiate an energy deal during the time of the riots. Tharoor says: India opted for national  interests over democracy. It was a policy of the head ruling over the heart but it also lost its soul.
Amartya Sen winner of them 1998 Nobel Prize for Economics, Don of  Cambridge and Professor  at Harvard in an article written before the release of Suu Kyi has  said: ‘As a loyal Indian citizen it breaks my heart to see the prime minister of my democratic country — one of the most humane and sympathetic  leaders of the world — engaged in welcoming the butchers from Myanmar’. Will India help Suu Kyi, the daughter of Aung San, the leader of Burmese Independence to restore democracy in her country? Aung San and Jawarhalal Nehru were good friends Tharoor points out. But has India lost its soul after acquiring the Great Power complex?