An NRI friend of mine was arguing with me that we should send the army against Maoists/ Naxalites/ whatever-you-may-call-them. I disagreed, couching my arguments not in idealistic but in realistic terms. In a large heterogeneous country like India where religious, ethnic, linguistic, tribal and caste divides exist there will always be tension between different groups and forces. Such a situation requires a nuanced approach, not a simplistic one. We need to allow for many voices to keep talking; talking is the central feature of a democracy and over time (extending into years and decades), we talk ourselves out of old problems and then start talking about new problems. It is my argument that, in our battered republic, the much-maligned politician is actually doing a very good job at this.

Consider the Nagas. Their insurrection and demand for independence pre-dates the Kashmir issue. We have been talking to various Naga leaders as long as I can remember. Nehru talked with them. Morarjibhai talked with them. Manmohan Singh talks with them. But we have conceded nothing of substance. We have separated the Naga majority districts of Assam and created the state of Nagaland. Beyond that, not much has happened. We have not agreed to their demand for inclusion of parts of Manipur in Nagaland, and rightly so  we have to worry about Manipuri sentiments, don't we? If the decibel level gets too high, we are always willing to appoint a commission to "study the issues and make recommendations". These commissions can extend their lives years on end; finally, they are perfectly capable of giving a set of vague, platitudinous recommendations, which again the government of the day need not implement. We can and we do go in for a "fresh round" of talks and maybe yet another commission.

Some problems go away. The Mizos seem to be relatively happy. No one seems to be asking for Khalistan. The erstwhile separatist Dravidians are ensconced in attractive ministries in Delhi and are enjoying that experience. Mind you, some problems do not go away. They go underground, simmer and come back in different avatars. This only means that we need another round of "talks" and another set of commissions. Chandigarh is unresolved; river water disputes are very much around; Gorkhaland seems lost in fratricidal blood-letting, but it almost certainly will make a comeback; ULFA and the Bodos still make the newspapers occasionally, and I am sure some honourable minister and some distinguished secretary of the great Indian Republic are having "talks" with these worthy people even as we speak. As for Telangana, which too has been around for decades on end, we have just appointed one more commission, haven't we? And of course, there is always Jammu and Kashmir. We have had more "accords", "talks", "papers" and "non-papers" on this by now boring piece of geography than any of us care to remember. The ramifications of Kashmir are not just purely internal. So we have endless talks with our neighbouring country also. As far as I can tell, despite all these talks, despite the 1965 war, despite the Kargil war, our troops are pretty much where Generals Thimayya and Sen got to in 1948. As a betting person, one could argue that 50 years from now we probably will be having "fresh" talks. The only matter that we should bet about is the location of the talks: Tashkent or Thimphu or Sharm el-Sheikh!

For every Chidambaram who would like India to be a hard state, we have leaders like Digvijay Singh and Mani Shankar Aiyar who would like us to be friendly with violent insurrectionists who "after all are our own poor who have been possibly forced into violence. They may be misguided, but they are not a bad lot." I would argue that this kind of response on the part of our politicians is a sign of extreme sophistication. It is almost as if the two sets of leaders have jointly thought up the script! We need some people clamouring for the use of the air force because this tells the Naxalites that the Indian state might get very vicious indeed. At the same time, we need the Singhs, Aiyars and a host of NGOs reaching out with an olive branch. Otherwise, we run the risk that the insurrectionists react like wounded stags at bay. Net-net, we are never going to allow a soviet state to be created in central India. But we will fight and talk at the same time; in 20 years, the Maoist movement will go away and we will have another set of issues to deal with.

I think it is a mistake to categorise India as a soft state. It is certainly not a hard one. It is a flexible one with a deep survival instinct. Our science teacher in school would tell us that grass blows with the breeze but never gets uprooted however strong the winds. A big tree which does not bend or blow can and sometimes does fall down in a severe storm. The Republic of India and our political leaders (who, despite all their faults, need to be admired) are like grass. They have figured out that a good-cop bad-cop approach works. Sometimes we do have to use the army against some alienated groups. But even as one set of leaders are behind that effort, another set is offering an olive branch to that same group. Our greatest contemporary intellectual refers to Indians as an argumentative people. I think we can refer to our country as a "talking republic". And that central fact is of great importance. Binary either-or solutions, while attractive on the surface, could easily destroy our country. We need both efficient toughies and talking softies. We never need to make fundamental concessions that we find unpalatable. Holding our own while talking and talking about talking is what this big fat democratic Indian republican party is about. The combination has kept us together, and hopefully it will continue to do so.

jerry.rao@expressindia.com

ALSO READ Degrees of irresponsibility

Please read our terms of use before posting comments